2 Fated Meeting

It had been a couple of months since they finally broke out of the slave arena and since then they have lived on the streets. They didn't know what to do. They hadn't been free in so long that to finally be able to venture outside on their own was something so foreign to them that they didn't know what to do with the newfound freedom.

They sat across the street from a pawn shop that they had been casing for the past week. They had become thieves and robbers in their quest to live and so far had been pretty successful. They got to eat real food for the first time in a long while on consecutive days. So now they were planning their next target, which was this pawn shop they had passed a couple of times in the last week. The old man who ran it had one good arm but he looked full of life itself. His head is full of long hair albeit white but long all the same. His chin sharp and chiseled and those chilling blue eyes. The boys had gotten close to him once and when they did it almost felt like standing in place would have frozen them to the spot.

He didn't have a prosthetic arm; it was simply capped off with a black metal where his right arm ended, right at the elbow. He never left the shop though, finely dressed people would enter but the owner himself never left the comfort of his shop. The customers are what drew the two boys here it seemed like the only people who came to this man's shop were nobles. The two boys passed an apple between each other, each of them taking a bite and then passing it to the other.

"So Regius this is the plan, we wait until night falls to walk in like their customers rush the old guy and take whatever it is the nobles come here for and of course all his money then we skip to another part of town and sell it," said Peter.

Regius chuckled to himself and looked at him "That's not much of a plan Pete but you know, it's enough for me"

Pete laughed and chucked away the apple core before pulling another apple from his pocket and taking the first bite before passing it. Regius whipped his hand around and smacked the back of his head as he took the apple with his free hand.

"The first bite was mine on this one." Peter's face was the perfect depiction of a man who was wronged. "It's one bite you animal, get over it." He began to rub the back of his head and there we sat as we waited for the sun to go down and our plan to begin.

The night came quicker than either of them thought and with the silence and glowing lights of the city they approached the building. Regius got ready to go through the window when Peter tapped on his shoulder. The door had been left open, the slightest crack letting out just enough light from the interior for Peter to notice.

They pushed the door open slowly to see the shop owner sitting in a chair with his back towards them as he wrote something down. They both propelled themselves forward to the chair. Peter put his blade to the back of the chair and stopped right before the shop owner's heart would be. My blade was across his neck centimeters from his throat, the slightest movement ready to make the stroke.

Peter began to speak to the man "Write down the combination of your safe and…" Before he could continue the man put his pen down and held up his hand.

"Give me a moment kids, let me finish my accounts for the night and we can see to your business" he chuckled at the end of his sentence and still never looked at the two.

An alarm started to go off in Regius' head and he acted. He put strength into his left leg and kicked Peter in the side right as an explosion of mana would have blasted him to pieces. The white mana had caught Regius' foot and he could feel the intense cold it brought with it. Regius slid his leg back and shot mana from the bottom of his foot, rocketing it into the blade that had left Peter's hand and stayed lodged in the chair. At the same time, I drew my sword hand back to slit the man's throat. The kicked sword thudded into the desk and rebounded off of it as the sword in my hand swiped across empty air. The alarm bells went off in my head once again and I dashed forward as a laugh sounded behind me, deep and cold.

I kicked up the discarded blade and flicked it towards peter. We looked at each other and split up to come at him from different angles. The old man in the wheelchair was now standing tall in the middle of the room with his arms crossed and no sign of the supposed missing arm and frosty blue glow surrounding his eyes. Peter's strike was like a bolt of lightning, a solitary flash among the dreary brown backdrop of the store as a mass of gaseous green mana danced on the blade. The man took one step backward and it appeared the swing would miss by inches but right as the blade passed all of the green mana surged to a point almost turning the blade into a lance as peter from an impossible angle struck upwards in stab. The man's eyebrows raised in shock at this scene. The boy in front of him couldn't be more than 11 but was not past rank 1. How had the boy managed to control the gas from mana in the air to form shapes, a feat which should be impossible?

It was then that the old man realized that he had forgotten about the other boy. He unfolded his arms and pressed forward towards Peter with his left palm dispersing the mana and lightly tapping on his forehead which caused Peter's eyes to lightly close and slump onto the ground. This took no more than an instant but when the man looked up what he saw horrified him an 11-year-old child had pulled so much mana to himself that the blade he formed to augment his own gave the blade an aura several feet long it had bore a hole in the roof and the old man for a moment thought to himself that the massive shining red blade had gold strings floating inside of it, what type of mana was this boy moving.

In the next second this all went out the window because a slight ache from his mana core told him that the blade descending towards him was capable of taking his life. The old man beamed with eyes of pure happiness before he snapped his fingers and a coffin of pure ice closed on Regius cutting him off from outside mana and knocking him unconscious causing the massive gold and red blade to dissipate. The old man looked at the two boys now unconscious on his floor.

"I've waited six whole years for these two boys, six years I stayed my hand and left them in those pits because of her letter six years I've waited for my revenge and they are everything the note said they could be and more." said the old man.

He chuckled to himself as his wheelchair slid over and he sat in it as he lit his cigarette and stared at the stars through the new hole in his roof. He took a long drag and exhaled towards the hole. He sighed and a tear slid down the side of his face as he spoke.

" Okay Elizabeth you win, I'll raise them like they were my own, I'll train them to be better than we ever were. I'll take them under my wing and teach them all of the secrets to mana that took us years to unravel. I'll teach them the techniques that will make them stand above all others. I would have anyway. It's the least I could do since the night you and Leon needed me most I failed you both."