Capítulo 15: All I ask
Once again, Sayo could feel lucidity take to her as her eyes flickered open. Seeing the same, stone form ceiling above. Yet she didn't sit up, she didn't utter a peep. It was like one second she was, the next she was wide awake with a much clearer mind.
And with that clearer mind came the feeling of loss, she tried to lift her leg, yet all that moved was the blanket by her hip. Everything below that was just gone, lost to that psychotic girl who had kidnapped her and Ieyasu.
Sayo's eyes burst open, shooting till she was seated, "IEYASU!" she screamed, head darting across the entire room searching for him, but finding nothing but dust.
"You okay!?" Someone burst into the room, causing Sayo to jump, her entire body trembling in fear until she saw who it was, "you okay? I heard you scream," Parc said, his voice soft as he scanned the room for any sign of danger.
"N-no, I'm fine. Ieyasu, where is Ieyasu," she pleaded. Causing Parc to freeze in place. "Parc?" she asked, feeling something welling up within her chest that she never wanted to ever feel.
"I'm sorry Sayo. But he…" there was no way to say that in a 'tasteful' manner, "he's gone."
Sayo's world felt like it was crumbling around her. Here she was, alive even though of the two, she had been damaged the most. Or, at least, last she remembered Ieyasu was still whole. "I… I… Oh… Ieyasu…" Sayo hugged herself for a the slight bit of comfort it gave her. Yet tears did not flow. She wanted to cry, but her body refused. She wanted to weep, yet she remained clear headed.
Parc pulled a stool up besides her and sat, "Sayo, I know what you're going through is terrible. But don't linger on Ieyasu, he passed besides you with a smile on his face. I don't think there's any other way he would have wanted to go." He attempted to give her a bit of happiness to hold onto.
"How could anyone be happy when their dying?" she questioned, her voice lacking any hope.
"Well, for one, he axed Aria Tellien in the back of the skull and put her on a first class trip straight to hell."
Sayo's eyes widened, "he what?" she squeaked, "he-he killed her?" was she supposed to be so happy about that… that… monster, being dead? She was still a human. She, even with the terrible things she did deserved to at least be taken to trial.
'But then… why am I smiling so much?' she though, her hand lifted to her cheeks feeling the very pronounced wrinkles of the widest smile she has ever had on her face.
"Yeah," Parc chuckled, "actually stopped me from doing it myself. Wanted the honour himself. And god did it look glorious. I should also mention, the mother and father of Aria are also dead and gone. They will never be harming anyone again."
"That… that does make me happy. It really does," It was then, Parc learned that Sayo was adorable when she was giggling like a happy schoolgirl. Even if the topic she was giggling at was the brutal murder of numerous people, not just including the Tellien family but the guards as well.
"Ha…haha…" her giggling came to an end as she caught her breath. Her head raising, seeming to look through the stone ceiling to the midnight sky. Tears finally dripping down her cheeks.
Wiping them away, she lowered her gaze to Parc, "thank you for saving me, Parc. I don't know how I can repay you."
"Don't." Parc put bluntly, drawing a confused look from her at how quickly he reacted, "I knew you and Ieyasu were in there. I watched as you two were carried into that hellpit. And yet I was too late to save either of you."
Sayo's mouth fell open in surprise, before softening into a weak smile, "while I don't know how you watched that. You still saved me and Ieyasu. Even if…" her voice cracked sadly, "even if one of us passed on. You still came for us." She rested a hand atop his, clenching it softly in her grasp.
"So, thank you. Again. You will forever have my thanks." She bobbed her head to the side, eyes near shut with a radiant smile on her face.
Parc's cheeks lit up slightly with a red tinge. "It's okay. Really, it feels weird being thank for that."
Sayo giggled at his constant apprehension of her thanks. But decided to just let it slide.
"Parc?" her voice rose, "if… if I could ask, what happened to his body?"
Parc nodded and said, "I buried him outside. I can take you to him in a bit if you want."
"I would like that." Sayo's eyes wandered around the room once again, "so… where am I? And who was that boy who was here when I first woke up?"
Those, were questions he could answer. How she would react being his main concern. "Well, uh… how do I explain this," he scratched his cheek in contemplation before opting to just start at the beginning.
"So, I guess I'll start from when I… we… first rescued you till now," he said, Sayo latching onto the 'we', "that was about two, two and half months ago, plus minus a few days. After what that girl did to you, you were in a deep sleep, a coma."
Sayo sucked in a breath. She knew she had likely been unconscious for a while. But two and half months? That was longer than she could even reason.
"A few days after we saved you, Ieyasu passed from some sick virus the mother was working on. Before he passed he was able to speak with Tatsumi who arrived in the city the same day he passed on."
"T-Tatsumi!? Where is he!? Is he okay!?" Sayo lunged forwards, grabbing Parc's vest as she remembered the third person in their party who came with them from the village.
Parc's cheek twitched, recalling how Tatsumi had joined the Imperial guard, 'do I tell her? That he might be collateral during one of Night Raids missions in the future?'
"Tatsumi is okay from what I saw. As far as he knows both you and Ieyasu are in another country working for a merchant. You as an apprentice, Ieyasu as a guard."
"What? Why? Why isn't he here!? How could you just tell him I'm not here!? I'm in the capital aren't I!?"
Parc sighed and rubbed the back of his head, "no, you're not, I'm afraid. You're in a hideout kilometres away from the capital in the centre of a forest filled with danger beasts. Very few people even know this place exists."
He could see she needed more information. The shock on her face asking for him to clarify everything. And Just tell her.
"Sayo…" he muttered, trying to think of how he should phrase his next words, "people like the Telliens are common. Very common, in the capital. Those people take reverence of their power over the weak and come to do sadistic and vile acts."
"All because of a single man, prime minister Honest, the right hand of the current child Emperor. Whatever Honest says, the Emperor states. Things have grown terrible, monsters lurk on every curb of the street."
Sayo listened intently to every word he said.
"Until, a few years ago, a group, the Revolutionary Army was formed to drag down the current Empire and turn it into something better. That is where I and the others come in, years ago, a covert group was formed inside the Revolutionary Army. It consists of spies and assassins. Each tasked with dealing with the corrupt in and out of the capital. Slowly whittling away at the walls of the Empire until all that is left is to drag Honest and the Emperor out and bring them to justice."
Sayo quickly began to realize, "and this…" she looked around the room, "is a hideout for the assassins… then aren't you…" she put two and two together. They couldn't just bring Tatsumi here, who knows what they would put him through if he learned of them. He may have just as well been locked into a cell to never see the sun again.
"an assassin? Yeah, I am." He could see Sayo flinch away slightly at the admission, but seemed to quickly calm down.
"You only kill these monsters?" she asked.
"yeah, though, not every one of them is connected to the Empire or working for them. Night Raid, as the groups called. Is open to hire from the public. So the citizens come to us, bring attention to someone and we'll investigate them before deciding to put them down. We only kill those who deserve it."
Sayo nodded along, happy to hear that, "so you're something of an assassin of justice then?"
Parc drew a blank, lips curling up as he began to laugh.
Sayo's cheeks went scarlet, "wha!? Whats so funny!?"
"Nothing, nothing," Parc wiped his eyes dry of tears, "it's just, I guess? We're still murderers, we do our jobs in cold blood and its not like we only kill the targets. We get rid of anyone in our way to keep our identities hidden and ensure the job is done. Everyone here is on a one stop track straight to hell once we're dead."
"That's… that's not right. You're saving people-"
"And we're killing more," Parc interrupted, "our goal isn't to, 'save people.'" His voice lowered slightly, "it's to kill the Prime Minister and reform the Empire. Saving people is a byproduct of our actions. If we could gut Honest now, we would all go straight for him whether the entire capital was filled with corpses or not." His tone cold, his eyes sharp. "and then once he is gone. We would mould the Empire into our image. Which may even lead to even more deaths, more than any Night Raid could ever cause. So don't mistake what we are doing as anything righteous, we are cold blooded killers. Nothing more, nothing less."
Parc tilted his head to the door after hearing a slight creak coming from it soon followed by a light thump while Sayo could only stare at him with widened eyes, unable to even respond anymore.
"I…I… If it means that nothing like that will ever happen to anyone again. Then I have nothing to argue about." She sighed, following Parc's gaze to the door frame. Brow raising when she saw a purple haired girl crawling on the floor searching for a pair of glasses laying just in front of her face.
"Sayo, meet Sheele. She may not look it. But she is an assassin," Parc lightly chuckled, watching in amusement as Sheele patted her chest with her glasses now on her face.
Sayo did a double take, 'she… is an assassin? She looks so… normal…'
Sheele pushed herself to her feet, taking quick steps towards Parc, "hello," she nodded to Sayo before looking to Parc, "it's time to change your- hiii!" Sheele tripped over her own feet. Falling forward into Parc's waiting arms, already having predicted she may end up doing this.
'At this point I'm sure she's doing it on purpose,' only reason he thought that being the near daily rate she would 'trip' over herself and land directly into his arms. And with how she lightly nuzzled against him, just seemed to further that thought.
'Can she really kill someone?' Sayo questioned, lip twitching uncontrollably as Sheele righted herself with a light flush to her cheeks that caused Sayo to squint a suspecting squint.
"Sorry… it's time to change you're bandages," Sheele pulled out a roll of white cloth bandages. "I thought we could change them here so you could keep talking."
Parc's lip quirked upwards, "you could just say you wanted to meet her," he shook his head, turning to Sayo who was sternly looking at him with a paralytic gaze.
"You're hurt?" she asked.
He could feel accumulating on his back, "not anything major. Just got nicked a few times during my last mission."
"Ahem," Sheele glared at him with an upturned brow.
"Okay, maybe I got gashed a few times. But I'm still alive and well." He shrugged, unable to look at either of the two as seemed to work in tandem boring into his very soul with their sharp, albeit soft eyes. Sheele's holding a strange aloofness that they always did but still unnerving nevertheless.
Parc pushed himself up, "I'll be right back then," he said, not wanting to let Sayo see the bloody mess that was his chest.
"Ah!" Sayo suddenly exclaimed, giving him pause, "you are going to stay right here. I still have questions I would like answered. It is not as if I haven't seen injuries before. Tatsumi and Ieyasu weren't exactly careful when they fought."
Looking between the two, he saw them both quite firm in their stances. Releasing a sigh, Parc sat back down on his stool. Unbuttoning his vest to open his chest up to the air. Revealing nearly every part of his upper body clad in white, turning scarlet bandages that had absorbed quite a bit of his blood.
Sayo remained non plussed on the outside, but inside she gasped seeing just how much of his body was covered.
Sheele also pulled a stool up to him and quickly fumbled her way around the bandages trying to pulling them off. Usually with too much force that would tear away any scabs Parc had formed. Reminding him of exactly why Sheele wasn't allowed to do any chores.
"Stop that!" Sayo came to his rescue seeing how much pain Sheele was causing him with her clumsy debandaging of him. "Haven't you ever patched someone up," Sayo leaned over the side of her bed, grabbing the bandage from Sheele's hands with a fire in her eye.
"You have to be gentle so as to not hurt them more than needed. Could you come a little closer please," she gently asked Parc, getting him to obediently scoot his stool closer as she went to work removing his bandages with much more gentle, caring hands.
"Sorry." Sheele said, "I always tend to mess things up," she said with a soft voice, unaffected from Sayo's harsh tone previously. "I'm useless at everything I do. Except killing. I've got a screw loose somewhere that makes me very good killer but terrible at everything else."
"I can argue with that last part," Parc blurted out without a second thought. Sheele was definitely not only talented in killing. She was also surprisingly quick to learn about sex.
"Hmm?" Sayo tilted her head while Sheele blushed.
"Nothing, ignore me, hahaaa…" Parc chuckled diverting his gaze from the girls.
Sayo finally got the last part of the bandage off, getting a good look at the three overlapping cuts across his chest with a frown. They were by far the worst wounds she had seen, but she could tell they were skilfully stitched together to halt the blood flow.
"Don't worry about it, Ieyasu was just as incompetent when it came to things. He once tried to help carry a bag of rocks up a hill for training, ended up tripping on a small pebble and slid all the way back down to the village. One time he even tossed in a poisonous mushroom into our food while I was cooking thinking it was edible." She chuckled, voice cracking before she went silent with a saddened sigh. "I'm going to miss him."
She looked up to Parc, "will I be able to see Tatsumi again?" she asked, a bit hopeful.
"I… can't say." Especially with him working in the enemy faction. He may just end up dead before she even got to look him in the eyes, "Sayo, about Tatsumi. I have to tell you something."
"And whats that?"
His teeth clacked against each other, "he… joined the Imperial guards. Meaning, that if we ever run into him on a mission…"
Sayo's hands jerked to a halt, her expression darkening, "…you may have to kill him." She muttered. Her hands remaining unmoving for a few more moments before returning to wrap Parc's wounds up.
"Just… if you can. Give him a chance to see the truth. Give him a chance to leave."
Parc locked eyes with Sheele, "I will try. But I can't promise the others will."
"That is all I ask."
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Question, I've been arguing about this in my head for a while. But does anyone actually care for the concubine limit per world? If not I have an idea/reveal for later in the story that remedies it. I can't exactly rid myself of it this far into the story, But I can work around it.
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Any Ideas for Parcs Teigu? I have one for something along the lines of a weaker version of the Enkidu noble phantasm from fate. But I'd like to hear your ideas as well.
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