The Assassin's Ghosts

Chapter 4: New Friends

A/n: This chapter is not the most exciting, but it is important so bear with me. Everyone finally meets towards the end and there are some definite relationship dynamics right off the bar so that's exciting. There will, of course, be some Kyros x Adira banter going on because I love writing tiny arguments. Enjoy!

 Kyros stood at his desk, leaning on his hands, staring down at the map. On it, there were five bright red dots where their new enemy's most important attacks had taken place. The other eight attacks had been marked with a dark green since they held less importance, but they still needed to be marked. It bothered him that each attack was relatively sporadic. It was a great deal harder to guess someone's next move if they didn't seem to have a thought process at all.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to be working with Corpse?" Raelyn asked. Kyros hadn't heard her enter the room, but he had felt some sort of a change in the air that alerted him of her presence.

"It's good to have their resources, it's good to have leverage on them and have them temporarily indebted to us, and it's good that they're too noble to go back on their word and turn us in or deny us the money we earned," Kyros replied.

"Okay, but that- that doesn't answer my question. I asked if it was a good idea to be working with them," Rae reminded him. Kyros stood so that he was no longer leaning on the table, straightened his tie, and turned to her, his eyes piercing hers.

"That remains to be seen," he replied evasively.

Scoffing, Rae replied, "Thank you for that. That's very comforting."

"Right, I forgot I was your mother and my main focus in life is to comfort you," Kyros joked dryly. Without another word, he walked out, leaving her not feeling any more reassured than she had when she asked. That was actually one of the nicer things about him; he never sugar coated anything. It was also quite aggravating at times. He left out key details because he wanted to, he lied about lots of things, and he acted like he was better than most people.

Admittedly, Kyros was better than a lot of people at a lot of things. He was smart, cunning, good at planning, flawless at avoiding the authorities unless he wanted to be caught, and countless other things. He could always be trusted to do what was best for himself and the team. But he was also ruthless, secretive, vengeful, and horrible at dealing with most of the basic human emotions. Hell, he couldn't even come in physical contact with another human being without his mind panicking. All of this in consideration, it wasn't just Raelyn who was concerned about this new plan of his.

Kyros sauntered into the common room, where he found Neo patting Akoni on the head. Akoni looked very put out as Neo played with his tight curls of black hair.

"If you could both stop flirting long enough for us to go over the plan, that'd be great," Kyros interrupted. Akoni's hand instantly shot up and snatched Neo's wrist, pushing the blonde boy's hand away. Neo chuckled at Akoni , but turned to focus on what Kyros was about to say. "Wonderful. Now that that's over, there are some things we must discuss."

"Of course," Akoni agreed.

"Firstly, since Cruz will be working with us and obviously will be spending time in our vicinity, we need to have a new base of operations that we can operate from temporarily and then clear out and abandon after so that, should anyone come after us eventually, we are no longer using that space. We need to pick one of our lesser-used safe houses and move all of the things we use most often into that space. When Euphi returns from patrols, we can decide on which one. In addition to that, we need to decide where to start once we have acquired the necessary resources for tracking down this porse den nunscabe." Creator of disruption.