How to Start a Fire

CH14 [Kill Your Darlings, Act One]

I spent a full hour in my room, collecting all information we had on hand before putting together the sketch of a plan. We only had one problem: We literally only had two fighters in our team- Aleksander and Millicent- And from those two only one was at least mentally capable of raising his fists against Gagnier. I really wanted to put in Selem, knowing that he was literally a trained fighter, but he was not allowed to... I had to find a way to get him in there. I could try to make Millicent include the werewolves... but I had no idea who else we could get in there. The last thing I wanted to do was get humans involved... they always had plans parallel to mine and it wasn't always a problem, but it would be tonight.

As I was done I walked downstairs towards Millicent to ask her about the werewolves.

"Huh? Yes, I can make them come along. I'll go over there and then I can tell you what kind of people we will be working with..." She said and left. This was going well already.

"Erm... Nelly..." Mamoru came towards me, looking a little shy.

"Yes Moru you have to work with us, we need all the help we can get." I responded and went back down to my piece of paper, still thinking about who else to ask.

"Yes, yes I know. Isamu asked if he can help." He said, pointing at his phone. "He can't do much but he'd try..."

I stared at him. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to write down another team member because the more people we had the better, but... Isamu was an untrained kid. While Mamoru was already a problem because I had to make him stay as a correspondent, Isamu knew even less because he went through no training at all...

Apparently all of that was written all over my face because Mamoru quickly added: "Isamu is a werewolf, he's really fast and he's strong, even if he doesn't look that way. Give him a knife or something and send him in there!"

"You know that... he could die, right?" I asked, staring at Mamoru. "Even a normal bullet can kill him, he's in way more danger than we are. Do you want that?"

Mamoru swallowed hard. "No... but... I wanted to help..." He stuttered and tapped on his phone again.

"Thank you, that's super nice but we kind of can't afford doing something like that right now. We need stronger allies, I don't want to send him in there to die." I said and wanted to walk off.

"What about Danielle, then?" He asked before I could go back upstairs.

"Who?" I asked back, turning around.

"Remember the nightmare we met at the bakery that one night?? That's Danielle, they're really nice..." Mamoru said and tapped some more.

"Moru, really... We need fighters we can trust." I said. I didn't even know what that demon guy could do...

"They say they're interested." Mamoru's eyes lighted up as he stared at his phone screen. "They ask when they should show up, they're apparently annoyed by Gagnier themselves!! Danielle is super strong, trust me."

I sighed. "Okay, let them come over now." I said, turning back around. "And if they have some little friends, I'll look at them too... I just want people that will listen to me."

Even before I reached the top of the stairs, Millicent stormed back in. "We get 15 werewolves." She said, huffing. I guessed that she ran back in order to make this as quick as possible.

"Great. If you find anyone else we could take with us, tell me. We need all the help we can get." I said and smiled at her. That made 17 official people we could send out there. Still not that much, but way better than two.

15 minutes later Mamoru knocked against my door and told me to go downstairs because Danielle had finally arrived.

They were standing in the kitchen, making it obvious that they had no concept of how relevant an obvious gender was to human society by simply not giving a shit, drinking some apple juice out of a juice box with a straw.