The alleyway was a jagged scar of shadow, walls pressing in like the ribs of a starving beast. Ruben's back was flush against the cold brick, the grit of it biting into his palms. Corbin's breath came in ragged bursts beside him, his lip split and swelling, a thick red bruise already booming across his cheekbone from Elise's boot.
Felix loomed over them, his navy hair a dark spill against the light. His longsword was still sheathed but his fingers drummed the hilt like a pianist waiting for his cue. Elise stood a pace behind him, her gloved hands clasped behind her back, her smile a razor's edge.
"Pick your commands wisely." she murmured, voice slick with condescension that Ruben was sure she didn't even know.
Felix didn't glance at her. "I know what I'm doing."
He reached for Corbin.
Corbin recoiled like a struck animal, slapping Felix's hand away with a snarl. "Don't fucking touch me!" The words tore from his throat, raw and violent, loud enough to echo off the lacey walls.
Ruben stiffened. That reaction, it was too sharp. Something about touch seemed to set Corbin off.
Elise didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, her boot lashing out in a blur. Ruben saw it coming, the way her weight shifted, the twist of her hip, but he was too slow.
CRACK.
Corbin's head snapped back, blood flecking the brick behind him. Ruben lunged, fingers hooking toward Elise's ankle to yank her off-balance.
"Stop Moving!"
Felix's command was a guillotine's drop.
Ruben's body locked mid-reach, muscles seizing as if bound by invisible wire. Corbin was frozen too, his fingers curled into claws, his teeth bared in a silent scream.
Elise straightened, brushing imaginary dust from her sleeve. "Was that wise?"
Felix exhaled through his nose. "It's fine."
"They still need to forget this."
"They only need to not speak of it. That's what the last command is for."
Ruben's mind raced. Commands.Three of them. One already used.
Felix crouched, his dark eyes scanning them like specimens under glass. "Why are you here?"
Silence.
Elise's lips thinned. It was obvious we were still under his stop moving command, he didn't command us to answer that question. But he could have made us, that could be a waste of a question though.
Felix ignored Elise, probing like a surgeon with a scalpel. "You're not from Branneth. Maybe not even Ostara. Sent to spy?" A pause. "Children are the last anyone would suspect."
Corbin laughed, the sound jagged and bloody. "If we were spies, we'd be better equipped, dipshit."
Felix's jaw tightened. "Next question." He tapped Corbin's knee with one finger. "I respect keeping your Egos secret. But I don't respect disrespectful brats."
His second command unfurled like a noose.
"Speak aloud everything you've hidden in the last twenty-four hours."
Ruben's throat convulsed.
It was like his body had been hijacked, his lungs expanding against his will, his tongue pressing against his teeth. He twisted his neck, catching Corbin biting his own lip hard enough to draw blood, his whole body trembling with the effort to stay silent.
Ruben's mind scrambled. Twenty-four hours. His father's corpse. The other world. Corbin spoke of a dead cousin. But he never said how he had died. He probably didn't want people to know it.
His teeth ground so hard his skull ached. He could feel the words bubbling up, acidic and unavoidable. He forced them out in a stilted, robotic monotone.
"{I killed my dad. Was being arrested… And then I died in a car accident.}"
Ruben clamped his mouth shut, his skull splitting with the effort of trying not to say any more. As long as his mouth was closed and no sound came out nothing would be revealed, but it hurt. Hurt like someone picking at pieces of his brain and pulling them out.
Elise's phone was out, recording, her grin widening. Bitch.
Corbin was losing. A strangled noise escaped him, his lips parting…
SCREECH
The tabby cat launched from the shadows, claws raking Felix's face. Felix yelled, recoiling, the alley erupting into chaos.
Ruben seized the opportunity.
He couldn't move, the 'stop moving' command still held him in place, but his Ego didn't need motion. A navy-blue dragon, wingless and sleek, materialized in a burst of golden static. It darted forward, snatching Elise's phone mid-distraction.
CRUNCH.
The phone shattered in the dragon's jaws before being hurled into a nearby ravine.
Elise's shriek was of pure fury. She lunged, her boot connecting with Ruben's face, once, twice, thrice, until blood slicked his chin.
Then, like a snapped tether, the first command broke.
A whisper in their skulls: Command session over.
Five minutes. Up.
Corbin was on Elise before she could react, his fist driving into her ribs. The dragon, still alive despite its bisected twin, latched onto her ponytail with Ruben's control, yanking it back.
Felix kicked the cat away, snarling. "Enough!"
But Ruben was already dragging Corbin toward a broken window. They tumbled through, glass biting into their palms, and sprinted up the crumbling stairs of an abandoned parking garage.
Corbin's breath came in ragged bursts, his chest heaving as he pressed a hand to his aching ribs. The metallic tang of blood coated his tongue, and his knuckles throbbed. His fingers flexed, curling into fists again as fury burned through him. "I'm gonna rip her head off," he spat, voice hoarse with exertion. "Kick it like a fucking football."
Ruben wiped at the blood trickling from his lip, his fingers coming away slick and red. The pain was distant, dulled by adrenaline, but the pounding in his skull was impossible to ignore. "We can't beat Paladin's," he muttered, though the words tasted bitter.
"Can't you summon more dragons?" Corbin shot back, his dark eyes flickering toward Ruben with something between frustration and desperation.
Ruben exhaled sharply, pressing his palm against his temple. The phantom pressure of Felix's command still lingered, a vise tightening around his thoughts. "My head's splitting. Whatever Felix did, it only made it worse, and it hurts my head when I summon them and have to control 'em too."
Ruben stayed quiet quickly before he grabbed and dragged Corbin behind a cracked concrete pillar, the rough surface biting into their backs as they listened. Footsteps echoed through the hollow expanse of the abandoned building.
Ruben noticed that ever since he had summoned his first dragon, or maybe even before then, as soon as he woke up in that hospital, his senses were just better.
His ears picked up Felix's voice explaining to Elise that he cannot use his Simon Says Game Ego again for another five minutes.
Ruben and Corbin walked down and were planning to get out of the building as they watched the two paladins run up a level. A shadow shifted in the dim light of the building.
Corbin reacted first. He yanked Ruben down just as Felix's sheathed sword whistled through the air where Ruben's head had been. The blade sliced nothing but dust. Elise landed beside them in a crouch, her once-pristine ponytail now frayed, strands of blonde hair sticking to her sweat-slicked forehead. Her glare burned.
"Ego users leave traces," Felix called, his voice took on that same condescension that Elise's usually had as his words bounced off the wall.
As Corbin was underfoot of Felix he pushed. And to everyone's surprise he was elevating, he was smiling feral as he noticed he was coming up.
It must have been his Ego.
Ruben watched as he got up and both Felix and Elise looked to be more on guard. Corbin's hand came up and balled into a fist. Felix took his sword out of its sheath.
"I encourage you not to try and fight against us." He said in a tone of authority. "Or I may have to be forced to take a swing at that hand."
Ruben stepped between them, his body acting as a shield. "You'll have to cut through me first then."
Elise lunged.
Ruben ducked to dodge a pierce from Felix's sword and hit straight. Straight from his height was Felix's genitalia. Felix stumbled back in pain and went red in pain.
Corbin behind him, threw his fist down to the ground.
The impact tore through the floor like a detonation, cracking spider webbing outward in jagged lines. The entire structure groaned, a shuddering beast on the verge of collapse. Dust rained from the ceiling in thick plumes, coating their shoulders, their hair, their lashes.
The building shook and with a second hit the building collapsed.
Such surprising strength.
The two boys emerged from the wreckage coughing, their lungs burning with dust and exertion. The city's neon glow was a welcome assault on their senses, the vibrant hues of electric signs painting their battered faces in streaks of blue and gold.
Corbin limped, his right leg protesting with every step. Ruben's vision swam, black spots dancing at the edges, but they were alive.
"We gotta find cat food," Corbin muttered, his voice rough.
Ruben blinked. Then, laughter bubbled up, startled and foreign, like a bird taking flight after years in a cage. Corbin stared at him before joining in, louder, wilder, until they were both wheezing, their ribs aching with something that wasn't just pain.
A voice cut through the night, smooth as aged whiskey.
"Trouble sticks to you two like glue, huh?"
Dario leaned against a bar's awning, a frosted beer in hand, his white hair glowing under the streetlights like a halo. He tossed them a towel each without looking, the fabric unfurling midair before landing in Ruben's outstretched hands.
"Clean up," Dario said, taking a slow sip. "You look like shit."
Corbin wiped at his face, the towel coming away streaked with dirt and blood. "Aren't you gonna ask what happened?"
Dario's grin was all lazy amusement, his eyes glinting with something unreadable. "Aren't you gonna tell me?"
Silence stretched between them.
"Didn't think so." he pushed off the wall, gesturing down the street with his beer. "Move it, I want to find something to eat!!!"
For now.
The boy's were safe.
***
The morning light spilled in from the kitchen windows in golden pools, painting the edges of the wooden table where they sat. The smell of warm bread and spiced tea lingered in the air, mingling with the faint medicinal scent of the bandages that had just been reapplied Ruben's knuckles and Corbin's split lip.
The two boys picked at their food, Ruben methodically tearing apart a buttered roll, Corbin shovelling scrambled eggs into his mouth like he was afraid someone would take it from him.
Dario sat across from them, one leg propped up on the other knee, a steaming cup of tea cradled in his hands. He had listened to their retelling for the second time of last night's disaster with an expression that hovered between amusement and exasperation, nodding along as they recounted Felix's commands, Elise's ruthless kicks, and their desperate escape. Now, as silence settled over the table, he swirled his tea and smirked.
"So," he began. "You got ambushed, forced to play a game and then forced to spill your guts and nearly got crushed under a collapsing building. And if you hadn't run into me, you first would have decided to run around and try to get some cat food for the stray that helped you." He looked at them gathering their last pieces of food. "With what money?"
"You got the story wrong old man!" Corbin fired immediately. "We played the weird 'Game' thing but we… we didn't completely spill out guts. And the collapsing building was my plan to get us out of there. And it was a talking cat. What do you not get?"
Ruben nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, cat's do that sometimes…"
Ruben hid a smirk behind his cup of orange juice, but his amusement faded as soon as he noticed something, Dario's hand had been resting near Corbin's arm, as if he'd been about to clap him on the shoulder in that easy, careless way he had gotten used to doing. But he didn't.
Instead, he pulled back, shifting his weight, his fingers drumming against the table instead.
Ruben sat his cup down ignoring Corbin's further explanation and asked Dario, "How do we become Paladins?"
Dario's eyebrows shot up. He barked a laugh, loud and sudden, making Corbin flinch. "Oh, so the ass-kicking you got last night lit a fire under you, huh? What, you want revenge? Gonna march back and show Elise how hard you can kick?"
Ruben's jaw tightened. "No."
Dario's grin didn't falter, but his eyes flicked toward Corbin, who had gone very still, his gaze fixed on his plate. Ruben followed his line of sight and saw Corbin's fingers twitch, his shoulders had drawn up just slightly.
He can barely even hide it. Ruben realized. All Ruben wanted was to be strong enough with the power he was given so that no one could do that to him again.
Ruben met Dario's eyes again and repeated, this time in a firmer tone. "How do we become Paladin?"
Dario leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head. "Simple," he said. "You pass the test. Prove your worth. Only two conditions; have an Ego, and be fifteen years of age minimum."
Silence.
"Fifteen?" Corbin blurted, his scowl deepening. "We've got to wait two damn years?"
Dario shrugged. "Two years to train. It's not that long. It's certainly not a bad deal."
Corbin's expression shifted, something calculating flashing in his dark eyes. "So… you're gonna train us?"
Ruben glanced at Dario, waiting. That was the best outcome, wasn't it? Being trained by the strongest Paladin? What better way to prepare?
Dario scratched the back of his head, his grin turning sheepish. "Yes and no."
Corbin's face fell.
"I can guide you," Dario continued. "Point you in the right direction. Keep an eye on your progress. But as a Warlord, I'm not technically supposed to train anyone without Bureau approval."
Corbin's lips curled. "Only if they knew you're training us."
Dario's grin widened. "Exactly."
The tension in the room eased, replaced by something lighter. Ruben exhaled, a small smile tugging at his lips. Corbin leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, but there was a satisfied glint in his eye.
"Alright," Dario said, clapping his hands together. "One minute. Fire off any questions you've got about me, and I'll answer 'em."
Ruben didn't hesitate. "How don't you blow yourself up with your own explosions?"
Dario blinked. Then he laughed again, loud and unguarded. "Kid. I'm blast-proof."
Ruben nodded, filing that away. "When did you become a Paladin?"
"Seventeen."
Corbin leaned in. "You got any family?"
Dario's fingers stilled around his tea cup just for a second, so brief Ruben almost missed it. Then he shrugged. "Not that I know of."
Ruben frowned. That ruled out children or grandchildren since he's of that age now. And no siblings too. "Why do you follow the rules so much?" he asked. "They seem a little restricting and you could just… do what you want. You're the strongest."
Dario's expression softened and got a little more serious. "Because being a leader isn't about power. It's about setting an example. No one wants to follow some egomaniac who solves everything up by blowing it up." He smirked. "Well, maybe some people would. But I don't want to attract them."
Silence settled again. So far to Ruben, it all fit the character of Dario that he had made up in his mind from everything they knew of him so far.
"Okay. Why did you become a Paladin?"
For a moment, he didn't answer, and he closed his eyes. Then slowly he put his cup down as he opened his eyes again to give his answer. "Because I love this world," he said, his voice quieter and softer now, a voice that fit an old man. "And I know a lot of people who do, too. So I will protect it."
Corbin snorted. "Corny."
Dario ignored him, standing abruptly. "Alright, lesson time's over. I've got to pick up your school enrollment forms."
Ruben and Corbin both froze.
"School?" Corbin said, his voice flat. "Paladin still go to school?"
Dario grinned. "What, you thought I'd just let you sit around all day eating my food and getting into trouble? Nah. You're gonna get an education."
Corbin looked like he'd been slapped. "You're serious?"
"Why'd you think otherwise?" Dario grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair, shrugging it on. "Be back later. Try not to mess up my house."
And with that, he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving Ruben and Corbin sitting in silence.
Math. History. Geography and Sciences. All subjects Ruben never liked doing. But on the upside he would be able to learn more about this world that way. But school experience in another world was not something he was excited about.