Raven woke up with a startled gasp, something that was becoming common with every passing day due to the increasing violent nature of her nightmares. She calmed herself in seconds, another thing that was becoming a common act – A delicate balance.
The reoccurring dream was a constant worry as it did nothing good for her. And she knows the reason why.
That accursed date was approaching.
Are you up?
She blinked and reflexively replied with a subconscious nod before realizing what she did and swapped it for a bland mental wave.
Going through what was slowly becoming a morning routine – can you believe that? – Raven quickly got ready for the day.
When she came down, she saw the familiar scene of Taro moving deftly around in the kitchen with a can of one of the numerous drinks in his fridge in his hand.
Everything was slowly becoming familiar to her and she was beginning to love it as much as she grew to dread it.
"You good?" She felt the slowly rising concern and quickly replied with a nonchalant nod before it grew any bigger.
"Nightmares. Nothing new." Though she said that, she has never once told him about the type of nightmares she has every time she closes her eyes at night.
She wants to but she knows he wouldn't understand. No one would.
"Really?" He glanced at her from the side of his glasses and gave her a shrug. "If you say so."
Great. He saw through her lie. Again.
She sat on the countertop and watched Taro's daily ritual of preparing breakfast – another thing that was slowly becoming familiar.
"Hmm? What are these?" She picked up a couple of papers that sat at the edge of the countertop.
"Bills."
Oh yeah, bills. People pay those. She was kind of exempt from those. Perks of being her, she suppose.
'Hmm, Taro Sakamoto.' She looked at him. "Your name is Taro Sakamoto?"
"Mm. Anything of it?" He asked as he expertly mixed the bolognese sauce.
"Mhm-mm, just curious." He only had one bill unpaid and the rest were receipts. "Is that Chinese?"
"Japanese actually." The spaghetti has already been filtered and drained. He poured it into the sauce and mixed away.
She looked confused for a moment as she twiddled her thumb. "And how did you end up in Gotham?"
A certain fateful night was tremendously successful in destroying the last dregs of a good image she had of the city.
"Traveled a lot when I was young. A huge lot." He said that last part with something like a wince but Raven wasn't quite sure. "I drifted for a while in my last years until I ended up here while visiting a friend."
She hopped off the countertop and handed him two plates. She went ahead and set the table for their breakfast before he came outside. It wasn't anything fancy but it was slowly becoming familiar. And she'll take that familiarity over anything special any day.
"The city is not that bad." He said as he came out of the kitchen only to meet with her updated deadpan.
She scoffed lightly. "Not even the people who live in it will agree with you."
They finished breakfast in a comfortable shared silence, one more thing that was becoming familiar to her. The fact that she had someone that wants to wholeheartedly cook for her is something she was still coming to terms with. So not familiar yet.
"Anything new today?" She asked as she did the dishes, something she was new to but hoped it would become familiar soon.
She could picture him behind her striking up a comical thinking pose. She would have laughed to it once or twice if she could. Big boo to emotional impairment.
"I don't think so." She heard him say after some time. "As long as nothing changes, it'll just be things you are familiar with."
"Mm. No problem then." She could think about her nightmares or the looming death sentence it was foretelling later. Score for the emotionally traumatized teen. She was done with the dishes.
.
…..
.
The van was repaired. The store was stocked-full with the most miscellaneous range of goods anyone could think of in a minimart. Taro Sakamoto was satisfied.
How couldn't he be? With this move of his, the red will be all but a forgotten event.
He radiated a smug aura (Source: Raven) even as he sat neutral-faced on his chair behind the counter as he watched the few customers in his store.
"Huh? A carburetor? Do they usually sell things like these here?" Taro's eyes landed on the quietly muttering customer like laser points. "Well, I don't really care. My bike needs one." Taro smiled imperceptively.
"What the fuck? When did they start selling perukes in neighborhood marts?"
Those baffled mutterings and shock-filled exclamations were like music to Taro's ears. Each of them was like an opposing force, slowly and steadily pushing him away from the red.
"We have a few walking sticks behind the third aisle. Should I get you one?"
The red will never see this coming.
"Are you still waging a mental war with the red?" He heard Raven's silent whisper just as she finished scanning a customer's haul.
He looked at her with one of his best poker faces and slowly shook his head.
"Whatever."
He will never hold it against her. She was but a child, how can she understand just how important those figures are and how they dictate an adult's life?
Just then his phone rang and cut off his peaceful musings. It was an unknown number but when he saw the number his face hardened to something different for a brief second, something Raven failed to notice.
"Taro, your phone is ringing."
"Don't worry about it. It's probably those online marketers." He silenced the phone and let it ring off. A few seconds later it vibrated. A text just came in. He picked up the phone and deleted whatever text just came in without even reading it.
"Told you. Telemarketers."
Since they couldn't man the store while training, Taro had them closing early in the evenings so he could help Raven's training for a few hours before dinner.
Taro held a wooden ladle as he faced Raven who was levitating with her eyes closed and magic gathered around her hands.
Taro looked at himself, a rotund body with a spoon, facing off against a talented young mage with dark magic and his only ammunition was a handful of pebbles.
"I'm too old for this." He couldn't move or react like he used to when he had been younger. "Thankfully this much is enough."
"Remember. This is perfecting your control in deathly situations." He said out loud to her.
Her only response was a nod and that was all he needed.
The first pebble flew away from her before it was blasted to dust.
"A delayed instinctual reaction. Worse than a subconscious reflex or an overreaction. Dodge what you can. Defend what is optimal. Attack for a chance."
Even as his clarification echoed in his tiny basement, another pebble flew at Raven with an impressive speed, one the dark brood dodged but also counterattacked.
"You attacked in fright. Remember, control first." Another pebble flew only for her to repeat her first mistake. "Be sure of your actions, even if they are futile."
He could see her trying to retain her calm, a critical moment, and without a word he flicked up a pebble and hit it with the back of the ladle in perfect synchrony.
Raven froze even as the peddle harmlessly flew past her head and drilled into a wooden pillar.
"You froze." He remarked.
She swallowed heavily but didn't move an inch from her spot. He could see the goosebumps on her skin from where he stood. "W… what was that?"
Even if her emotions were dulled and suppressed that she hardly felt anything, her body knew when it was in danger. Good.
"An unforeseen outcome." Was his even response. "And that was your worst performance yet. Why?"
She was still stuck in the motion when her reply was blurted out in a bare murmur. "I stopped moving."
He didn't say anything more. He readied the next pebble. "Dodge, defend or attack. As long as you're in full control of the action then you're progressing."
She dodged, but it was a wide berth from what was a simple-although-deadly attack. She failed again.
"Once you get your control down, your instinct will be even sharper. Trained instinct is the byproduct of ingrained habits."
She watched her closely, never letting her fall into a pace or dwell on her reactions. He kept increasing the speed and lethality of his projections whenever she started getting her actions and emotions in control. That was why he had used the ladle to break up the rhythm she was getting into.
'She is getting it all wrong.' Taro thought as he watched Raven fail again. The goal was not safety, but control. It was fine if she got hurt or almost killed in the projections, as long as she dictated her actions. That was control.
'She's too worried about the consequences.'
Their exercise continued for the next hour with constant failure until a time where Raven avoided the demonic killing magic by simply tilting her head. It injured her projection, but she survived.
That had been the first one.
She failed a few more but her movements were becoming minimal as the minutes passed. Her movements were still exaggerated but now there was a sense of awareness in them, no matter how loose it was.
The second instance was when she sent a small sphere of magic to collide against an enchanted lunging spear. Whether her actions were correct or sufficient didn't matter at this point. As long as there was a sense of thought behind her actions other than fight or flight then she was progressing.
"That's good." He acknowledged her efforts. She truly was talented. He couldn't deny even if he wanted to.
He looked at his hands. Only two pebbles left. Two pebbles and a ladle.
How about a surprise?
He flicked the first pebble towards her and hit the other one with the ladle. The ladle-shot pebble smashed into the first pebble as Raven started her reaction only for both of them to change their trajectories by going sideways and ricocheting off the walls and coming at her from sideways.
Taro laughed good-naturedly and stopped his mental projection just before the pebbles shot at her arms.
"Your movements were interrupted mid motion. You did try to react to one of them so at least there's progress."
Raven softly landed with measured breaths and heavy perspiration on her forehead.
"You alright?" Taro was already in front of her by the time her foot touched the ground with a towel in hand that soon started wiping off her sweat.
"Mm. It's just mentally taxing. We've done this before, remember?" So far the record count for successful controls was four, something she managed a few days ago.
'Just because we've done it a few times doesn't mean it's not dangerous. I don't want to kill someone's daughter's psyche. Demonic father or not.'
After making sure she was okay, he wrapped the towel around her neck and left her to go wash up.
She opened the basement door to leave only to jump back when she saw the grey smoke that was just behind the door.
"Raven?"
"Acolytes. We're under attack." She exclaimed.
Taro's hands immediately went under a tarp and fiddled for a moment before it brought out a military-style tactical knife.
"Let's go." He said as he grabbed her hands.
"Through that?"
"Either through it or it traps us in the basement." He was already dragging her along before the sentence was completed.
The smoke was so thick that they couldn't see their hands in front of them. But that didn't bother Taro in the slightest.
Using his precise knowledge of every single corner of his house, the older man easily led her out of the house.
"They teleported us."
Well that didn't need pointing out since this looked nothing like Taro's street but more like an underground graveyard.
"Argh!" A painful groan came from Raven who was now clutching her head.
"Raven!"
"Their voices… hngh… my head. Nngh!" The pain slammed into her skull so heavily that she could barely articulate her words.
"I can hear them." The voices were getting close. Taro looked around to see that they were in some type of demonic cathedral hall and were definitely underground if the airflow and lack of windows were anything to go off on.
"They…. Argh!... Already…. Here– Nnghhh!"
He laid her on the ground that was slowly glowing. 'A magic circle. Was it for the teleportation or whatever ritual they want to do?'
"Keep trying to fight it. I'll see what I can do." He patted her reassuringly on the head, conveying what small amount of comfort he could with that little action.
'Ten acolytes. Maybe more. Possible demonic summon. A priest, the only visible high-ranking member.'
All he had was a ladle and a knife against ten sorcerers (or was it warlock?) with dark magic equal to or more experienced than Raven.
Yeah, this was way over his paygrade.
He looked at the writhing girl on the ground and his eyes hardened. She didn't deserve any of this.
He might not be anywhere near his prime but he would be damned if he didn't do everything in his power to make sure she was back home by dinnertime.
The priest was his prime target but also the most dangerous one. And when it came to those who dabbled in magic, that spelt all kinds of trouble.
'First things first,' the nearest acolyte to him collided against the wall and cracked it, only for Taro's eyes to narrow dangerously when he saw that the man was still chanting their demonic language despite being knocked out.
'No choice then.' His decision was instant and its reprisal was just as swift.
The force needed to decapitate someone with an axe ranged anywhere from 70 to 100 kilograms of force(154 – 220 pounds of force).
The same was generated from a simple flick of Taro's wrist.
Taro Sakamoto gave up killing years ago so he could retire peacefully from a life casted in blood, and here he was unhesitatingly giving it all away for a strange homeless girl he met on his way home from a late birthday party.
He was no stranger to compassion and other sentiments. He was no emotionless husk. But this was the first time he felt such compassion and pity towards someone.
A clueless and hunted 15 years ago child with no one to turn to. Running ragged with the barebones of what could hardly be called a plan and a faded script of what could be called a plan.
Whether he was her father or not, or whether she was his daughter, none of them mattered. None of them deserved the other.
Trigon, be he the devil or not, did not deserve someone as innocent and frail as Raven, and neither did Raven deserve someone as terrible and sinister as the demon Trigon was for a father.
He saw the glow of the circle a catatonic Raven lay on dim a little, something that did not escape the priest and a few of the acolyte's notice.
He was running out of time.
He dodged a hex bolt that created a small tuft of dust that he used as camouflage to appear behind the nearest acolyte to his right.
The ladle held their throat from behind and forced them to rest their back necks against Taro's shoulder – an action which exposed their necks.
Two dead. Eight to go.
The glow receded and this time he was sure of his conjecture. Except that it will gradually get harder for him with the more acolytes he kills.
They couldn't chant and fight back at the same time so some of them had to pull back from chanting and focus on killing him. And like he expected, it was way harder to combat against magic as a human.
But he wasn't about to give up yet.
'They can't fly above a certain level. Probably because of the ritual. That is good to know.'
He rolled on the ground, evading two magic blasts, and wiped his glasses as he stood up.
He was in the open of the two acolytes attacking him so he raised up his hands in surrender, prompting both of them to let out dark chuckles, before pointing at Raven.
One of them was dumb enough to look at Raven in confusion and Taro took advantage of the opening. He first shot two stones towards the wiser acolyte who kept him in his sights and when that one hastily dodged and creates distance between them, Taro was already in front of the other acolyte, like a phantom, with his blade lodged to the hilt into the man's heart.
He didn't waste time looking at his third kill as he immediately went after another one.
Killing was his profession. It was something he was good at. A craft he had brought close to perfection from the time of his first kill as a fledgling teen to last kill before he retired. He was dabbling in that personalized craft once more.
He grabbed the head of a chanting acolyte that had panic-filled eyes and with a jolting tilt, the acolyte's head faced his back.
He was going for the fifth one who had a little distance between them when he felt the cold chill in the air and the ripple in his skin. He abandoned his charge and retreated but was a moment too slow as a blast of magic impacted him for the side and sent him crashing into the walls.
For a second the room was filled with only rhythmic chantings and Raven's pained groans before a chubby hand burst out of the walls and Taro Sakamoto crawled out of the hole he had created with a bleeding head and cracked glasses.
His eyes were trained on the culprit.
The priest had made his first move.