When they returned to the conference room, Leona did not feel so ashamed as she thought she’d be. In a way, releasing all of her negative energy was cathartic like popping a dislocated arm back into place. Her head was swimming less in a dark fog. Little could be said for her physical condition because it was alarmingly abysmal how she’d treated herself since the Barrier fell, but having a strong head meant having a strong body.

That was what she hoped because goodness, the muscles in her legs were trembling so much that they could give out at any second.

As much as she preferred sleeping for twenty-four hours—after enjoying a feast fit for an ugly fat baron of course—she had to kill the vultures circling around Angels Guild.

And something told her that the new guest could make it happen with less of a struggle.

But his sudden presence was met with caution from the others. Vernon had his eyes mainly locked onto Althea’s as if he was attempting to communicate using looks alone, while the B-Ranks turned to their former professor for guidance and leadership. Arguably the most important—and currently most despised—member, the blonde demon of lightning, was glaring at the three of them.

She scowled, locked eyes with the man. “Who the hell are you?” Her eyes quickly flicked from shoes-to-hair. “Otherguard?”

“No,” he stated simply, “I’m a systemic therapist licensed in Maryland.”

The simple yet staggering response actually stunned Levin for a little bit. “...Eh?” She turned to Leona. “First you went crazy and now you’re bringing in random men from fucking nowhere—”

“Uncle Ali…” Vernon muttered loud enough for the entire room to hear. “You’re the uncle. Thea showed me a few pictures of you. You’re their uncle.”

The revelation sent small reactions throughout the room. Victor in particular gulped, probably recalling the time he’d gotten into a physical altercation with his nephew.

Alistair curtly nodded. “Mhm. You might’ve heard of me before but I’m Alexander’s and Althea’s uncle: Alistair Romanos. I’d say it’s a pleasure to formally meet you all but these aren’t happy times. I’ve just arrived and heard everything that happened; thankfully, I managed to acquire Rector’s number, told him I could help, and he gave me your location.”

“How the hell did you get past the front gates?” asked Levin. “Why did Rector give you the info?”

“I said ‘please’. Both times.”

“Seriously? I… Ugh.” Levin cursed under her breath before returning back to the subject matter. “Look—”

“Before we begin our new discussion,” Alistair’s voice overpowered the Acting Guild Master without effort, then he took a surveying look at the population present, “I’d like for everyone to take a seat around the table. I know it’s difficult to keep your wits together but it’s these little things that make the most difference in my experience.”

Levin glowered. “Hey—”

Alistair pulled out one of the chairs from the conference table and thumped the backrest against her hand. “You’re first, Acting Guild Master. Take a seat so we can get started. Now.”

The sheer bravery of his act had, perhaps intentionally, rubbed poorly against Levin. She openly licked her lips and rubbed her tongue against her sharp and blood-dried teeth. “I’m sorry, since when did we let a therapist come in and run the show? Who the hell are you to make orders at me?”

“If you refuse to sit down, then leave.”

“What?”

“Sit down or leave. There are no other options for you.”

Levin clenched a hand hard on the backrest, holding her strength just enough so it wouldn’t snap right off. “This isn’t elementary school. If I wanted to, I could make you and your lousy Wings sit the fuck down, so get the hell outta my sight—“

“You wouldn’t enjoy the consequences of carrying out that threat, Acting Guild Master,” Alistair replied stonely as though he was talking to any regular person. Then suddenly, he gripped the woman’s arm so fiercely that not even she—an S-Rank—could pull away. “I’ll allow you to lay a hand on me but if a single finger touches my kids or any of their allies, then don’t misunderstand. You will leave.”

He let go of her.

During this exchange, Leona had seen unbelievable anxiety from the other Baptists. Once Alistair made the first move, they all had seemingly assumed there would be brutal retaliation. But not a single word or even a move was taken by their current thorn. For some reason, Levin was clenching the arm Alistair had grabbed and it convulsed.

Levin gasped for air. Her arm might be convulsing but every part of her was shaking. Sweat poured down her face. “Wh-What did you do to me?”

Alistair, decidedly, said nothing and sat down first.

Everyone else obediently followed after him. Leona sat between Althea, who sat next to her uncle, and Victor; and surprising the group, Levin was the last to take her chair at the head of the table but appeared far from one. All the dried mud and blood on her armor had converted her from a hardened commander to a routed soldier, losing the bluster she’d had minutes ago. She did not start the conversation, she did not even look at anyone but the gritty table-surface.

Victor shuddered and nudged Leona with his elbow. “At first, I was skeptical but now, yeah… That is definitely Alex’s uncle. Who the hell is he?”

She shrugged. “He was a Marine, that’s all I know.”

“What kind of Marine fights an S-Rank and wins? Without a bug?”

Alistair cleared his throat and the B-Rank froze, shutting up. “Update me on what I need to know.”

They took turns explaining their circumstances to him, except for Levin who only contributed as needed and in short sentences; for most of the conversation actually, she was fidgeting with her arm like a puzzle and wincing whenever she pressed a finger against her seemingly sensitive flesh. They explained the investigation and the operation behind the cause—to which Alistair had zero reaction when he was informed that Seraph’s accusations were wholly true—the status of the cosmic material in Problem’s possession (and his following disappearance), and the state Alexander and Chie were in at the Hospital.

The events leading up to the fated declaration was told in considerable detail, and they answered any questions Alistair had. During this time, still Kosmos and Rector and Scrutiny hadn’t come back to the group with a response on their end. Nor Problem and Shinzo, but luckily Aiden’s battle was proceeding smoothly. The eight-fourteens were not seeking Ariella out but he was told to stay there just in case.

Alistair tapped a finger on the table. “I think I understand everything now, thank you for telling me.”

“Aren’t you a little bit conflicted?” Kaiya braved to ask. “After listening to us?”

He shook his head. “It’s far from the worst I’ve experienced, and I don’t care if it’s true or not. My kids trust you and Seraph, so I’ll do everything within my power to set her and the rest of your friends free.”

There were soft inklings of a smile spreading throughout the chairs.

Leona leaned forward, feeling the gears turn smoothly inside her head and chest. “Where do we start, err…”

“Ali’s fine. I’m not going to make my nephew’s girlfriend call me ‘sir’. That goes for the rest of you too, including the Acting Guild Master.”

Ah, that’s definitely not the problem. Her eyes drifted to the pacified Levin before she cleared her throat. “Where do we start, Ali?”

“First, let’s address the main problem with your approach so far: your passivity. You’ve correctly identified the areas needing the most defense and assigned appropriate personnel to maintain them. That being Problem and the Society, and Shinzo and our injured. You were aware of the capacity of your enemies: Senior Agent Murke, the eight-fourteens, what have you. But your defenses fell not despite your actions but because you had a losing hand from the beginning. From the start, you should’ve been focused on offense instead of defense.”

“Yet attacking the Guards is a dangerous prospect,” said Chunhua.

Alistair laughed as though he had a dozen novels worth of stories to talk about that subject. “What difference does it make when the Guards attacked Kosmos first?”

Nobody had a rebuttal.

“Now that Seraph and your friends are taken off the board, there’s only one other avenue left,” said Alistair as he measured the reactions of everybody at the table. “Direct conflict. However you’ll hit them, you need to do it violently and swiftly and leave no time for reaction.”

Victor hummed and whispered again, “Yeah, now I know where Alex gets it.”

Alistair continued, “You might be on the backfoot now, but there’s a reason why the saying, ‘A wounded animal is the most dangerous one,’ exists. The Guards are largely arrogant and self-entitled. Seeing as they have wounded one of the greatest guilds to walk this planet, they’ll feel invincible. This is precisely the attitude you need to retaliate most viciously.”

“But we need to focus on our defenses now more than ever,” said Gul.

“Then we need to touch base with Rector.” Alistair paused, gave himself a moment to recollect his thoughts. “Now I’ll say something possibly offensive but you need to hear it: Angels Guild is not your priority. Forget about Angels.” He looked at Levin. “Forget about Royals. Your priority is the Guards and you are going to hurt them. How? Leo.”

Leona jumped in her seat when her name was called. “Y-Yes?”

“I’ll put you on the spot. You know the field the best out of everyone here; what is the first thing we should do?”

“Me? You’re asking me?”

“Mhm, I have an answer myself but I want to see if we're on the same wavelength.”

Same wavelength… Leona bit her lip. She glanced at Althea but she shrugged hard. Think back to what he said earlier: they had to strike the Guards without mercy like this was an actual fight to the death. This single strike had to do everything: incapacitate them while regaining ground. How could they do that when the fight was split in three different directions?

Before she could give her answer to the class, Gul brought her hand to the air. She had the System pulled up. “It’s Scrutiny. There’s a lot of fragmented messages but it’s bad.”

Levin began to stand. “We need—“

“No,” Alistair said, and with eyes alone he forced her to sit down and made everyone else stay seated. “We need to decide what we’re doing now. Leo, I’ll give you a hint: if we move correctly, if they move correctly, then we don’t have to do a single thing.”

“Not a single thing…?” Leona muttered. “Who could…”

Her eyes widened.

When Alistair said they were too passive, he was mainly referring to not the Baptists but a singular person.

Once Alistair saw the answer in her eyes, he nodded. “Gul, forgive me if I mispronounce your name, but can you please do me a favor?”

~~~

The world was falling apart. Murke and his lackeys were putting Angels in cuffs and walking them down to whatever makeshift station he had prepared for the fallen warriors. Kashan could barely keep order. Shinzo got herself detained too because one of her own staff members had leaked the Hospital’s location to the Anomalous Entities Bureau. Of the Baptists, Problem was holding out but it was only a matter of time before the Phenoms and the Guards break into the hold and loot Angels dry of everything valuable.

Wait, don’t forget about Ariella and Aiden.

They were okay.

No, they weren’t.

Aiden knew Chie could be kidnapped but he couldn’t leave Ariella’s side.

And his little girl… His little girl was living with the fact that her mother was treated like a criminal. A no-good awful bad guy she read about in storybooks and fairytales. The whole world was saying the meanest things about her, about her father and their parents’ friends and the guild they had worked so hard to build and sacrificed so much for. All the broken promises and missed dates, there had to be meaning behind these failures as a father.

Nathan looked down at his helmet. Dirty, crusted, cracked and chipped, his reflection half as dirty as he himself was. Sweaty, reeking of everything bad, and most of all ashamed.

He looked out the window of his old office. It had been his, shared with his wife. They had two desks and often stored their own papers on the other, making it impossible to find and sort and Kashan would always yell at them for being disorganized idiots. Nathan remembered when Angels was first pitched by a starry-eyed Sera, who believed in charity and humanitarian work. But most of all, knew that good was created through intentional banishment of evil.

Angels, so the world could have wings.

He remembered when his days were spent painfully in bed and numbered, listening to the adamant young girl read his homework out loud.

“…Was it all for nothing, Mister Romanos?” he asked the man standing behind him, silent and without presence, having teleported into Headquarters. Even a middle-rank Slayer wouldn't sense him without a specific skill.

Alistair Romanos shook his head, unfazed by seeing Nathan’s real face. “What was?”

“I don’t know. It’s just me being moody and pessimistic. I try my best to be a positive force of nature but the world’s beating me down now. I’ve almost forgotten the feeling. It’s uh—well, most people don’t know this but I’m a total pushover. Whenever my daughter begs for ice cream, I give her it despite everyone telling me otherwise because I’d spoil the crap outta her. I…”

He gulped. “I’m at a loss here, Romanos. Everyone I can rely on is either occupied or detained and I barely ripped myself away from Murke so I can have this talk with you. I try my best to isolate my personal feelings from my work but I can’t. Not today. Not now. I’ve fought for nine days straight worrying about my home and family. What vacation did I get? Heh. They took my wife in front of me, insulted her and tarnished her image to billions. My daughter is probably crying right now and I can’t physically be there. The Guards are trying to destroy a guild I founded, and once they’re done I’m next.”

Romanos didn’t speak right away; rather, he allowed his words to settle into the air and allowed himself to digest them fully. They were two different men who’d lived different lives but on a strange, metaphysical level… They had the same definition of ‘pain’ without sharing a single story.

“...You can resolve this, Kosmos,” said the man. “If it’s you, you can fix this with one sentence.”

“Heh. I could’ve spelled away hundreds of things across the world, you know. Skirmishes between nations, scandals, major debates about policy, elections and candidates—injustice. I could assume the absolute best about my influence and still be underestimating it by a longshot. And…”

He recalled what he’d told Duskfire before he was whisked away by the Global Guards alongside his middle child. What he promised and how he broke it. How easily he faltered and doubted himself once he stepped onto the springboard and looked down at the large drop waiting for him.

Nathan had been so comfortable standing at the mountain’s summit, but even gods had to come down from their divine thrones at some point.

He reached outward to the window of his Headquarters to catch the skyscrapers in his small palm. “I wanted to be a superhero who made his career out of killing monsters. Sounds like something straight out of a comic-book. Now here I am, feeling like I’m neither, ha. Just a scared man who has no right being scared after all I went through.”

Romanos laughed with him and paced around to keep blood moving. “If I were you, Kosmos, I’d be reluctant too. It’s a double-edged sword once you think past the grandiosity of the title of the world’s sole guardian. Every life in this world is yours, you are in control of every life here. For one man, you did amazing.”

Nathan shook his head. “I could never do this alone.”

Romanos paused, then smiled happily. “We never could, you’re right. You and your family, you’ve done better than most.”

“I think so, but now I’m standing at a place I’ve been fearing since I left Angels.” Nathan stood like a rock, his eyes falling from the horizons of the clouds down onto the small streets of Ordo. “Where I can’t ignore the turning gears in the world anymore. They’re dragging me in. That’s why you’re here, Romanos, so you can determine what I’m going to do next.”

He nodded in solid affirmation. “It seems I didn’t need to do any persuasion. Your mind is set already.”

“It’s what I need to do.”

“Are you afraid?”

“A lot.”

“You should be.”

Nathan had a good laugh out of that. “I know we just met each other but I don’t think you have to be that rude.”

“No no, let me finish.” Romanos took a few steps closer to him. “You should be afraid, that’s a good thing. You’re perfectly aware of how far your influence can reach and how much of an effect it can have on others. You can inflict a lot of hurt by doing nothing, and I would be terrified every day of my life knowing one word can start hurricanes. I don’t blame you at all for keeping your personal identity a secret and your privacy sacred as much as it can be. Without it, I would go insane.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not, I’m telling the truth.”

“You’re not a normal therapist.”

“You’re not a normal Slayer either. All good men have aspects of themselves they’re afraid of but better men know that fear is what keeps us from the edge. But the best men, sir? They jump down and scream to their heart’s content during the fall, knowing their pure voices are keeping demons back and keeping discomfort in their stomachs. Big steps deserve anxiety, constant anxiety and constant ambition, otherwise we’ll be numb and hopeless and everything will be meaningless.”

“Big steps…” Nathan licked his lips and wondered how far the drop was if he broke the window and leapt. “Yeah, big steps. Okay. Okay! I guess I have to do it now. It’s time to make that step.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much. Your burden is ours. No one wants you to do it alone.”

“That’s what family is for.”

“Don’t I know it. We all had to learn that lesson the hard way, and we keep learning. Together.”

“Mhm.” Nathan compiled the details of the incident. “Alright, let’s start. Speak to me as your nephew’s guardian. To do this perfectly, we’re going to hurt him. Not physically, goodness no, but he could be upset once he finds out what had happened during his sleep.”

“I can’t completely deny the possibility but Alex has always been an understanding man. He trusts you after all, since you and your wife are the ones who roped him into this business. What are you planning to accomplish?”

With a deep exhale, Nathan had another question: “You came into Ordo by plane. With who?”

“Isabella Alvillar and a small crew of hers.”

“I need to speak with her immediately.”

Romanos blinked a few times. “Oh.”

*

Trending

EX-Rank

Conqueror

Kosmos

Ordo Disaster

Interview