Forgotten But Not Lost

22

His arms were sore and his head throbbing from another day spent being batted around by his sensei, but he liked the feeling. It was the feeling of getting stronger. While some others might have bitched and moaned about their little aches and bruises, Itsuki reveled in them. Knowing that each time he got thrown off that horse and he stood back up, he was one step closer to beating that damned horse to death and presenting it to Lord Skulheill.

In the beginning, they had looked down on him because he had been short, and the other guys used their size to push him around. But now, he was stronger than they were, and soon, he would be the strongest.
He had a goal, to become the strongest around, stronger than his devil of a sensei, stronger than this Soma guy everyone kept going on about, stronger even than Shirou. That was why he would never spend his days off bumming around town. Every day he would push himself harder and make himself better.
Still, after a hard day's work, when he could no longer feel his arms due to the sheer number of times he had swung his sword, he wasn't opposed to having one or two well deserved beers. Not enough to get wasted, but enough to give him a good buzz to go with the high that came from his workout. It was after all one of his life's greatest pleasures, and he was practically required by Skulheill to indulge in it.
"Here you go ser, fresh from the stores." The wench said as she gave Itsuki his flagon of ale.
Itsuki didn't thank her, he just grinned and grabbed the flagon, starting to nurse it slowly. It wasn't the best tasting thing in the world, but he knew that the slower you drank it, the better the buzz, so if you didn't plan on drinking a lot, might as well drink it slowly.
However, his sinful happy place was broken when he heard a few words coming from another nearby table. "Hey, isn't that one of the brats from Team Kindergarten?" A man from a table of five larger individuals said, pointing at Itsuki.
Itsuki froze, a bit of ale still in his mouth that he didn't swallow.
"Yeah, I think it is. Someone should probably tell his mommy and daddy that he's here trying to drink the grown-up drinks." One of the man's friends joked along with him. All of them laughed. Laughter than made Itsuki's muscles twitch angrily.
"Must be nice, having the best Hunter and Mage combo in the city taking care of you all the time. Hell, I suppose if I was in their shoes, I wouldn't mind being babied either." The first man said with fake longing.
It had started a month ago. The Wild Angels, an all-girls clan, in been attempting to convince Rin to join their ranks and invited her to join in on one of their raids. At first, she declined, but after hearing the bounty up for grabs, a trade shipment between the Kobolds and the Orcs, she accepted, so long as she could bring Shirou along.
The Wild Angels had had their eyes on Rin ever since rumors started about a talented rookie mage summoning Elemental Familiars, and the raid had been meant as a showing for the them to prove to her that there was no need for 'disgusting' boys and that she should join their group. But Rin had plans of her own.
While the others had been setting up their plan of attack, she had gone with Shirou up the road to where the Orcs were coming from, and then she and Shirou slaughtered them all themselves. Two people killing over a hundred Orcs. Shirou later insisted that Rin and her Elementals did just as much of the work as he did. Even so, it was fifty Orcs a piece, all killed within five minutes.
After that, practically every veteran team started to approach the two of them, trying to get them to switch teams. Each time, they were turn them down, staying with their rookie team. That was when the mockery started.
Even after they ditched the worst of the dead weight onto that loser team months back, they didn't move forward as quickly as it could have. Rin was so damn careful about every move they made, planning for this and that. She spent a whole week in the Cyrene Mines purposefully tripping traps and alarms just so that she could observe how the Kobolds would react to it, so they could plan escape routes accordingly. As if they couldn't just tear though any resistance that those mutts showed. Even after that she didn't keep them there for long expeditions, sticking to the first four levels, while the more valuable stuff and stronger enemies were all down deeper. She also didn't take jobs that would take them more than a day's walking distance away from the city.
Whenever Itsuki would complain, saying that the front runners from the groups after them were already passing them by, she just pointed out how half of them were already dead. Damn that woman and her sound arguments. It wasn't like it was even really relevant. So what if the weaklings died? Their group was way stronger.
Because of the party's only average progress, other Reserve Soldiers started to make fun of them. Saying that they were always being babied and couldn't handle themselves. Saying that they were a party of weaklings that had to rely on mommy and daddy being there to rescue them all the time. They jokingly called them 'Team Kindergarten'.
It pissed Itsuki off so damn much.
"You know, he kind of looks like a big bald baby if you ask…" Itsuki snapped. He turned around, throwing his flagon at the group, cocked his fist back and punched the closest one clear in the jaw.
Itsuki didn't stumble. He walked upright as he took the streets back towards the barracks. His face was badly bruised, and his ribs ached from where they had gotten a good kick on him. But the only thing that really hurt was his pride.
He had managed to down two of the five bastards before they got the better of him, but even so, that didn't stop them from laughing. No one stopped laughing. It was their laughter that rang in his ears, that made him bite down on his cheek until he tasted blood.
"I will become stronger. Stronger even that Shirou. Then no one will laugh at me." Itsuki said through his clenched teeth. "They won't laugh once I beat him."
Even as he said it, he heard a low laugh echoing in the back of his mind. "You are going to beat Shirou? Now that is amusing." Belra, the demon who Itsuki was bonded with, chuckled at the boy's declaration. "That boy is the White Goddess's personal pet, enjoying the full benefits of her blessings, and he was barely even human to being with. Sorry to tell you kid, but you don't compare."
"Shut the hell up, Belra." Itsuki hissed angrily at the demon. "I don't care if he is a human, a monster, a demon or even a god. I will surpass him."
"You haven't even reached the point he was at on the very first day." Belra said before giving a long hum. "What I wouldn't give to have a Dread Knight like that. Someone who could supply me with hundreds of vices rather than just the meager numbers you bring me."
Itsuki didn't rise to Belra's taunt. He knew that he had actually gathered vices much quicker than the average Dread Knight. He averaged around five or six a day even when taking into account his days off. He had long since passed the hundred vices mark to allow him to summon Belra during the daylight hours. But regardless the power that Belra gave him, Shirou was still stronger, faster, and more skilled than he was.
"Listen kid, I actually like you, so let me give you a piece of advice. Forget about competing with that Hunter and ignore the mockery. You've got it good, so try to just enjoy your life until it is time for me to take you." Belra said, but Itsuki ignored him. "Fine. You want to meet Lord Skulheill so bad, be my guest. It will take more than the Dread Knight's trait of luck to save a dumbass like you."
Itsuki didn't care if he died. Death was preferable to this life of mockery.
When Itsuki finally arrived at the barracks he found a few of the others lazing about. Figures as much. When they saw him, he could already see the comments in their eyes before any of them said anything.
"Got into yet another fight?" Riku said, eyeing Itsuki's bruised face.
"No. I was just teaching some people manners." Itsuki scoffed.
Yui started to approach him, holding out her hand and mumbling her prayer to use her healing spell. "Knock it off! I don't need healing!" Itsuki shouted, batting her hands away.
"You don't need to be mean, Itsuki." Niko said from her bench nearby where she lay on her back, looking up at the clouds.
"If you're going to go around getting yourself beaten up, at least accept healing afterwards." Richard said, giving the Dread Knight a sidelong look.
"I didn't get beaten up!" Itsuki growled, clenching his fists. "This is so stupid. Fuck! I'm tired of people mocking us! How can you all stand it!?" The others all looked down and remained silent. All accept for Niko.
"I guess I just don't really care." Niko said lazily.
"You don't care? You don't care that no one takes us seriously!?" Itsuki demanded incredulously.
"Well… why should I? I didn't join the Volunteer Army because I had a choice. Why should I try to excel in being a soldier when I could just keep on living on?" Niko said with a shrug.
"Don't you have any pride at all, you lazy Priest!?" Itsuki shouted at her.
"Pride is a sin. So why should a Priest have it?" Niko said before sitting up. "It's noisy. I'll find somewhere else to nap." Getting up, she started to walk away. "Just wait till dinnertime. You'll all feel better after that."
"Tsk, spineless bitch." Itsuki spat, looking away as the green haired Priestess walked back inside. He looked at the others. "So what? Do you all not care about anything either?"
The remaining three exchanged looks and then shook their heads. "Of course it pisses us off. It's humiliating. Can't even talk up the girls at the tavern because of it." Richard admitted weakly. "I know that our group could handle harder monsters, but Rin refuses to let us even try."
"What I don't understand is why Shirou just does whatever she wants." Riku added, crossing his arms. "I know she's a coward, but we've all seen what Shirou can do. He's probably one of the strongest fighters in the entire city, and yet he willingly just follows whatever orders she gives him."
Itsuki wouldn't have called Rin a coward. Overly cautious, maybe, but that girl did have more balls than most of the men he had met. It took some serious stones in order to talk down to someone as intimidating as Shirou with a sword, and she never froze up on the battlefield. Still, he wasn't about to argue the point. Riku had always had a problem with Rin being the boss, and so had Itsuki. The only difference being that Riku's problem seemed to stem from her having a vagina, while Itsuki was constantly annoyed by how she treated them like children and constantly wasted their time helping out the weaker parties. She really did treat her job like a babysitting service, and it pissed him off. Which was why Itsuki was equally annoyed with Shirou as he was with Rin, while Riku's distaste was strictly for the latter of the two.
Riku always seemed to think that everything would be different if Shirou was just the leader. Itsuki suspected that everything would be pretty much the same. Only with a less effective leader. Strong as he was, Shirou didn't have good leadership skills.
"No great mystery there." Richard laughed weakly. "After all, the two of them are always talking alone with one and other and sometimes disappear at night only to comeback tired the next morning. The two of them are fucking behind everyone's backs and not doing a terribly good job of hiding it."
"What they are doing under the light of the full moon ain't none of my business. I only care about us getting the respect we deserve." Itsuki scoffed. Most of the party had known that the two had been porking for a while now. It was weird that they pretended that they weren't, but Itsuki wasn't about to judge. He didn't announce it to anyone when he decided to have a go at a tavern wench in order to take care of his needs. "How can Shirou stand all this baby stuff?"
"He doesn't." Yui said quietly, surprising the others. "He goes out of the city with Kuro and his party on our days off. He's out with them right now."
"No, he went off this morning with Megumin." Richard said with an uncertain shake of his head.
"He left her with the Laughing Stocks, he does so every week." Yui said with a shake of her head. "I surprised you having noticed. He often brings back more… additions to his weapon stockpile. I'm pretty sure those extra hunts were how Rin was funding all the extra spells she was gets from the Mage's Guild, since I've never seen anything to suggest that he was ever buying anything himself."
"That explains it." Riku grumbled, crossing his arms. "Figures she's been spending money behind our backs."
"Hey, it's their free time and money. They don't have any say in what we do with ours." Richard pointed out. Riku rounded on him and Richard put up his hands in a sign of surrender as the larger boy started shouting at him, but Itsuki wasn't listening.
All this time Shirou had been going out and been hunting stronger monsters without them. More than just the raids, he was doing it at least twice a week. That massive stockpile of weapons, the hundreds of swords he had casually brought back and hide away in the barrack shed until the landlord started to get on his ass and made him buy an entire extra room to store them all in, that stockpile represented his kill count. No, it wasn't his total kill count. He had rarely ever picked up anything off of the goblin's bodies, as the goblins almost never had equipment worth taking. The Lesser, and Worker class Kobolds were usually either unarmed or armed with pitchforks. So much of the armor and equipment he kept came from Orcs, and its number far exceeded what he had gotten during the raids. How had Itsuki not noticed it sooner?
Shirou was so far ahead of him, and he was only going to get further ahead so long as Itsuki kept being held back. "You know what, fuck this shit. I'm out of here." Itsuki said, grabbing the others attention.
"What do you mean your out of here?" Riku said his eyes wide.
"I mean I'm not putting up with this anymore. Rin always says that she doesn't let us hunt anywhere that we couldn't handle without her and Shirou around, so why should I bother sticking around?" Itsuki snapped. "I'm tired of being held back and I'm tired of being treated like a joke. I'm getting out of here."
Itsuki walked straight past them towards the guys' room. "Hey, wait a second!" Riku called after him.
"What!?" Itsuki snapped back at the taller boy.
"You planning on going solo, or can anyone tag along?" Itsuki looked back at the other three. Riku had a serious expression on his face while the other two seemed to be weighing their options before nodding along and getting up themselves.
"Do whatever the fuck you want."