PoV Daniel
The kids' names were Nami, John, Marcus, Manni, and Shirley. The first three were around the age of 13 to 14, with the oldest being Marcus and the youngest being Nina. Manni was eight and about to turn nine, while the girl had recently turned seven.
Marcus and Manni were the easiest ones to manage as they never really did anything crazy, they didn't seem very social, and they didn't want to go outside the house. Manni was almost inseparable from Shirley, while the other two were always moving around, getting into all sorts of trouble. On our first day, they even got into a fight with some neighbor kid over a small misunderstanding.
That day started as usual; Kane woke us up at six a.m. While I and Aisha were barely able to hold our heads straight, the kids seemed just fine. They apparently get up at 5 a.m. to start their training, and they wake us to make sure we prepare them breakfast when their training session ends.
"Can you prepare something for them? I don't have much time, so I'll just do the usual morning sparring, then I'll send them to you. Ok? Yes! Thank you; you're the best." He then called the kids, and they went training outside.
'As usual, he doesn't even bother to wait for our response.'
I dragged myself toward the kitchen and started preparing some coffee while Aisha was still sitting, half asleep, in the living room watching random TV shows.
After having prepared my coffee, I started working on the breakfast, then I started preparing Kane's drink, which is something puke-inducing that apparently he enjoys a lot. It's made by blending celery, carrots, apples, beets, and pears. Just the smell was puke-inducing, but Kane really enjoyed that drink.
I then started to prepare some scrambled eggs for everyone, and it was then that I noticed that this house eats around a full box of 12 eggs just in the morning.
'They sure eat a lot.' I thought while I put the pan on the stove at high heat.
'For sure, the girl eats far more than her brothers, yet she's losing weight at an incredible rate.'
I then put some butter on the pan while also lowering the heat.
'Lately after they witnessed Kane and the other dude sparring, those two started to get heated up a lot.'
While Marcus and Manni were doing the bare minimum when it came to learning magic, Mina and John were putting most of their efforts into their training.
"Should I bring this to him'" asked Aisha.
I was probably too immersed in my own thoughts to notice her; she was standing behind me. I ignored her and started pouring in the eggs while vigorously whisking them in the pan.
'This Kane, he surely is rich; I never saw fresher ingredients than these ones.' I thought as I began to season with salt and black pepper.
The eggs, the meat, and the fish they had in their storage were something out of this world; even Aisha's family didn't eat this much meat in a week.
'No, maybe they had to cut some corners after they bought me at such a ridiculous price.'
'That made sense; after all, I'm the only one who can hold such large quantities of mana at a time to handle someone who had broken all the records previously set by Valis. Even after six years, I was barely feeling it. Sadly, all the mana I accumulated got consumed in the making of that damned tree.'
Then I emptied the pan into a large green container and went towards their massive refrigerator room.
"I doubt the kids want to eat any more fish after that minor incident, which is unfortunate."
Apparently there were many fishbones left, and Nina swallowed some.
So I started looking at the various cuts of meat. Since I didn't know what was what or how to properly cook it, I gave up. Then I looked in the kitchen fridge to see if there was something easier to make. There I found some smoked fish, bacon strips, ham, spam, and some meat preserved in jelly.
"Somehow I feel like a cheap person to use this with all the things stored in the fridge room."
'I mean, if what they wanted was some tasty food, they should've hired a chef instead.'
Of course I wasn't courageous enough to say that to his face, especially after witnessing what he was capable off twice.
"Ben I think-"
I grabbed a yogurt cup that was there and threw it at her to shut her up; she dodged it, and the yogurt splashed all over the floor.
As I was searching for more stuff to add to their breakfast, I found some sort of very soft cheese with a creamy texture. Whatever that was, it looked expensive, so I put it in a place near the bottom of the fridge so that I could take it later.
'Maybe I could try a sandwich with that cheese, maybe some tomatoes, and the filling; the kids can choose between those types of meat, the eggs are on the side; and as for the drink, we can just have some orangeade.'
"Does the meat in the jelly need to be cooked?"
"I don't think-"
This time I grabbed an apple and threw it at her to remind her that I still didn't want to talk to her. She didn't duck this time.
'Whatever, I'm sure it'll turn out good no matter what.'
It didn't.
I just threw the jelly meat on the thrash and vowed never to touch those cans again.
So I toasted some bread while preparing the bacon strips and serving the smoked fish on a silver plate since I wanted this to feel a bit more fancy than what it actually was.
'The plate is probably not made of silver, but since I cleaned it yesterday, it should still be fine.'
I cooked the spam, I grabbed the cheese and spread it on the toasted bread, and then I finally started plating: first the scrambled eggs, then the bread with the cheese on top, some tomatoes on top of the bread, and lastly, I put the various fillings each on a different plate so that they could serve themselves what they liked.
As usual, the first ones to arrive were Marcus and Manni, but they didn't eat anything till Nina and John came back. Marcus and Manni didn't even fill their sandwiches until Nina and John did, which was something that surprised me a little.
Nina put a bit of everything in the sandwich and even put in the scrambled eggs, while John simply took the smoked fish, canned fish, and ham.
Manni took the spam and ham, while Marcus only took the ham.
"What about Shirley?" Asked Manni.
"Don't worry, we saved something for her as well." I said to him while showing him the sandwich ready for her, along with a glass full of chocolate milk and some grapes, as she seemed to really enjoy those in contrast with the rest of the family.
After eating breakfast, they went right back to studying magic. I gave Shirley's plate to Aisha mainly because I enjoyed listening to their lessons, and although I couldn't put their teaching into practice, it was still a refreshing experience for me.
"Kane, can I ask you something?" Asked the little Manni while raising his hand.
"Yeah sure."
"Why aren't we learning how to use mana but are focusing everything on aura?"
"Well, there are two main reasons for that. First of all, mana is not something that can grow with training or effort; you either have it and have a lot of it or you don't, and you're useless when you're up against someone that has more than you. The second reason is that Nina and John want to become hunters, so learning anything other than aura would not only be detrimental for them but also a complete waste of time." He explained in a calm, slow, and gentle tone.
"But if you're curious about the difference between the two, I can rapidly explain it to you." he added while patting his head.
By then, Nina had also raised her hand.
"Yes?"
"Why did you continuously put your hands on the ground before using any ground technique against Chris?" She asked.
"It's similar to conditioning; this will become more important later on. Many hunters rely a lot more on simplicity to hunt, and as a result, they rarely know how to expel mana out of their bodies other than maybe their hands and feet, allowing for faster switches and more precise blows while lowering a lot the power of their techniques."
"But you always taught us to expel with our whole body."
"I was faking it, faking to fool the enemy into thinking they were safe, not that it would work on someone I know like Chris, but I was hoping you'd ask me about that detail, good catch, Nina."
"Anyway, back to what we were talking about, internal flow. It's important to create-"
It was then that Aisha distracted me. She kept tapping on my shoulder until I finally lost all my patience.
"Ben, I think we need to talk."
"Talk about what?"
"About us."
That phrase "about us" echoed a few times in my head before I fully understood it. I felt something pulsating right under my eye, and I could feel something beating in my ears. I don't know what it was or what caused it, but it wasn't a pleasant feeling.
'About us? Is there something left for us to talk about?'
I remained silent, I started remembering all the things that happened between us in the last four months, and the more I thought about them, the more my head would ache.
"Ben?"
"I don't think there's anything left for us to talk about; after what happened, our positions are pretty clear, aren't they? They need you, and you need me, so for as long as they need you, I will be bound to you like the battery I already was." I said it in the most calm tone possible.
'I was the fool to actually expect a relationship from you; since the start, I have always been the object you bought to survive.'
"Ben!"
"Don't Ben me; everything ended between us the moment you locked me up in that shitty apartment only to berate and cheat on me on a daily basis."
"I didn't… I wasn't myself back then."
"You think I'm an idiot? You made me feel every second of it; do you know how humiliating and gross it felt? You can't just say something like-"
I had probably raised my voice a bit over the limit because then the world turned dark, and when I woke up, it was already evening.
PoV Diego
For some reason, I was on the floor, drenched in cold sweat. The floor was white except for some weird symbols. There were many extremely blinding lights all around. My vision was still a bit blurry, but I still managed to recognize Forren. He was shouting something at me, but all I could hear was this constant high-pitched beep.
'Where am I?'
Everything felt so slow, my body felt heavy, and my mind felt so loud that I saw some sort of fence separating me from Forren. Behind him was a crowd of people.
No.
They were just about everywhere, some were cheering, some were sitting on the edge of their seats.
'What is happening.'
I then started to get up. First was my right arm, then the left one, and soon after I was able to stand on all fours. I noticed that I had some sort of gloves in my hands, and furthermore, I wasn't wearing a shirt. But I still felt incredibly disoriented.
'Is this a ring? Why am I inside a fighting ring?'
I started taking a deep breath before I felt ready to stand back up again. First was the right leg, then I pushed with all my strength, and I managed to get up in no time. The only problem was that I still felt a bit dizzy.
As soon as I got up, the crowd started to get more excited and loud. The referee was on my left side and was trying to say something, but I was too zoned out to understand a single thing.
As I turned around, I found the culprit of all my sufferings: a man with pink hair jumping around the cage with an arrogant smile stamped on his face, trying to incite the crowd to cheer for him.
'Who's this clown?'
I never saw a man like that in my life; his nose was bleeding and he had many cuts on his face, but he was still brimming with confidence.
He wasn't exactly fit; he had a lot of fat in his arms and his belly, and with each hop he did around the cage, I could see his body jiggling like some sort of jelly. He was jumping around like a little rabbit that was thirsty for the approval of the audience.
'Of all people who could've...me, him?'
"How dare you…"
Just the mere thought of being … by such an effeminate guy was enough to give me strength.
'Unforgivable.'
I can already imagine the weapons mocking me for the rest of my life for being... by such a small fry.
"I'll end you."
My head felt no longer dizzy, my vision was no longer blurry, and my body felt as light as a feather. It was probably all the adrenaline kicking in, or maybe another hidden feature of my mysterious body; I couldn't care less. All I wanted was to kill the guy in front of me.
"Hey fuckface!" I shouted at him.
"Diego please calm down!" Was Forren shouting in the background?
"It's nothing serious, DIEGO!"
As soon as he turned around, I charged at the pink-haired bastard, tackling him, grabbing him by the waist, and lifting him.
I made sure to keep lifting him for a long time, to show him how useless his techniques and blows were, using my ability to make sure he couldn't land a single hit. Then, once I saw him getting a little desperate, I slammed his body to the ground.
I quickly mounted him and raised my fist as high as I could to show him what was coming next. Of course the idiot tried to block, but it was all useless; thanks to my ability, my punches could easily go past his guard and hit him directly in the face. I also wanted to show the difference in strength between us, so I hit him as hard as I could.
The referee intervened almost instantly; I had time just to land a couple of punches before he decided to stop me.
"Diego! STOP!" Forren yelled once more.
The referee then tried to kick me in the face for some reason, so I grabbed his leg and dragged him to the ground. I got up, and as I was about to stomp his face, Forren tackled me and pushed me away.
"Stop, or else we'll fail the stage!" He said.
So I took a deep breath and sat in a corner of the cage, waiting for the pink-haired dude to wake up.