Luc slowly blinked his eyes open. The
first thing he saw was a black stone wall. It seems he has been sleeping
sitting up with his side and head resting on the wall. He clearly
remembered what head happened. His back still hurt on where the man had
hit him. Luc moved his legs to better position himself and, in the
process, caused the chains around his ankles to rattle.
“Finally awake, huh.”
It was Sasuke’s voice. Luc turned his
body away from the wall to see clearly the rest of the room. Where they
were in was no room at all.
Their legs were chained by the ankles to the
walls of a tiny squared prison. He and Sasuke were chained to the corners
of one wall and Futch in the middle of the opposite wall. The only light
coming in was from a small window with bars covering it.
“Hey, how is your leg?”
The manacles around Luc’s ankles were not too
tight so it didn’t hurt his ankle too much. The medicine the man gave him
earlier also helped him recover a bit.
“Fine.”
Luc summed it all up with the one word.
‘It seems Sasuke was doing alright if he’s still in the mood to talk,’ Luc
thought, ‘but what about Futch?’
Luc moved his eyes to the boy on the opposite
wall. Futch had his face buried into his arms and legs. Upon closer
inspection, the boy was not just silent, but was shaking with some small sobs
escaping from him.
‘He’s crying…?’
Luc had no idea why but he was starting to
worry.
“What happened to him?” Luc asked Sasuke.
“It’s Bright,” Sasuke answered. “The man
and his bandit friends came by earlier saying that they’re going to sell Bright
to the Black Market.”
Sasuke finished with a sigh and the whole room
was quiet again except for Futch’s small sobs.
Luc couldn’t believe it. How could they
have fallen so deeply for a bandit’s trap? How could he have fallen for
such a silly trick? Now that he thought about it, the man and his friends
probably dug that hole too. Luc was getting angry. Everything was
starting to tick him off and why is Sasuke being so calm about this?
‘Isn’t he usually the one that’s the noisiest?’ he thought.
“And why are you being so calm about it?”
Luc asked again, this time with an angrier
tone. Sasuke let out another sigh.
“It’s not like we can do anything about it.”
‘At times like these a ninja has to remain
calm and wait for the right moment to attack.’
Sasuke thought to himself, but it seems Luc
wasn’t getting any of this. Hearing his reply only made Luc
angrier. He finally exploded.
“Of course you are so calm about this.
It’s not like you were the one who got dragged into all of this because someone
else was stupid enough to drink tea from a stranger!”
Luc had to shout
“Hey,” Sasuke said a bit more loudly, but not
to the point of shouting yet. “I’m still a ninja in training so I may not
be able to sense every sort of danger around me yet.”
Luc sighed in disbelief. “You don’t have
to sense it to know that man was up to no good, especially when he served you
tea.”
Sasuke was a ninja in training after
all. He quickly forgot all about patience and endurance and exploded into
a full blown argument with Luc.
“Well, if you had enough sense to listen to
me, you wouldn’t have fallen into the trap and we wouldn’t have met that
bandit!”
Sasuke was right, but Luc was too angry to
listen and he hated to lose in an argument. “If you didn’t choose to go
this way and to all the other shortcuts we took, we wouldn’t have ended up
here!” Luc responded.
Sasuke and Luc’s personality were similar in
that they both hated losing and it’s perfect for fueling loud, long and
senseless quarrels.
“If we didn’t go to Radat, I wouldn’t have had
to choose to go to Muse!”
“If we didn’t need to pick you up all the way
in Antei because you were fooling around instead of staying in Rokkaku, we
would’ve made it to Radat before that monster problem and before those thieves
made the trap!”
“I was not fooling around in Antei, I was
running an errand for Kasumi…”
“Oh great, we were delayed because you were
trying to please a girl.”
Futch covered his ears. He didn’t want
to hear any of this. He was still sobbing and was worried sick about his
Bright, but the argument refused to die down. The two went on and on
about each other’s faults until, eventually, somewhere into the night, they
stopped.