Stronger Than Fire

By: Aviantei

Chapter Six

"Shima, I'm certain the Boss cares absolutely nothing for my precise grammatical choices," Nikita said, allowing a dose of irritation into xir voice. "If you wish to finish in time, I suggest we move on?"

Renzo was more than apprehensive at the moment, his stomach doing a strange dance between a tango and river dance. The first stage of his assignment—analyzing all of the gathered information and producing a plan from there—had been a lot easier than he had thought. Tedious, yes, but relatively straightforward. And Emília had offered him Nikita's help, so Renzo wasn't sure how much of the project was definitely from his own merit; the third-in-command had been growing the slightest more verbose, offering of insights that Renzo would have never been able to come to in his half-month of personal Illuminati experience.

It was the second half that he had been procrastinating on for nearly an hour: the cause of Nikita's latest input. Renzo was scared of looking at himself critically, considering how others saw him. There was how he wanted them to see him; that was easy, the key factor in his determining actions. It was the implications of the discrepancies that put him on the verge of a cold sweat.

Glancing aside, Nikita muttered, "It's only by facing things we don't want to see that we can grow as people."

Renzo looked up, feeling his eyelids stretch apart.

"I don't believe that the Boss is trying to mess with you," xe continued. "Listen, she's personally invested in you, though I don't really know why. Anything she does is going to be in your best benefit, even if it doesn't seem so at first. She made me do this exercise when she was considering my promotion. It…changed me, but I wouldn't change back. So don't hold yourself back. If you don't want me to transcribe for you, I won't anymore, and you can build this report on your own. As long as you can write legibly, the Boss really won't care."

A slow waltz pivoted Renzo's stomach acid. Despite Nikita's increased talking frequency, this was the first time Renzo had heard anything relatively personal from the bigender. Before they had been colleges in the vaguest sense of the word. But this sort of admission stepped beyond the boundaries of normal encouragement.

This is…intimate, a personal admission, an indicator of a bond.

Connection.

"No, it's fine," Renzo said. He retrieved his own tablet and the pen that came with it, swiping open to the notes application. Nikita looked in the verge of raising an eyebrow. "Even if I kept it private, I think Emília-chan's trying to turn you into my handler or something. Let's just get it out of the way and air the dirty laundry, so to speak."

Renzo tapped his pen on the tablet's screen, blotting it with a small spot of virtual black ink. Nikita only sighed, though. "Really, you've picked up on English's oddest colloquialisms," xe commented, but Renzo could still see the traces of a smile on xir face. "Still, if you want, I'll keep anything we discuss right now to be private information between us and the Boss."

I guess xe's actually a pretty good person… Renzo allowed himself the slightest smile. He didn't even have to think about the pronoun this time.

"Okay," he said, more to psych himself up than anything else. Nikita waited throughout the prolonged pause, expression deadpan. Renzo grimaced playfully. "Sorry, I don't think my ego can take just diving into the bad stuff about me from the get-go. Is it wrong to just start out with my strengths and go from there?"

Nikita's hands were tapping away at the keyboard in an instant. "'Needs to be more willing to accept negative thoughts about self…'"

"Hey now!" Renzo protested, though part of him wanted to laugh. It was a truth, one he knew held to most people. It was a common message in fiction to insist on "accepting yourself and feeling proud" or whatever, but it also sometimes made people blind. Feeling good about yourself too much could make you feel proud about things you shouldn't. "I guess I really don't feel good or bad about myself; I just sort of…feel? But it doesn't really have a name…"

"In that case, I think it would be better to say that you're 'aware' of yourself; at least on a minor level," Nikita suggested. Renzo scribbled down ryosho on his tablet in hiragana, then drew a few outward facing arrows around it. "It's not a bad place to start. What we need to do from there is expand that awareness."

Renzo nodded. "Preferably without destroying my self-image, though. Girls don't like guys without confidence, you know."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Nikita said, and Renzo realized he couldn't read what xir sense of sarcasm sounded like yet. "That being said, I think you should tackle your insecurities first." At that, xe lightened xir tone a bit. "If you want to take a more roundabout route, though, we can work our way into it."

Renzo held up the hand not preoccupied with his pen. "No, it's fine," he said. If he could say it enough, make someone else believe it, convincing himself would be a simple task. "I think having other people know that I'm capable of being a spy is what bothers me most. Because then, I think, there's no reason for them to believe what I'm saying." Absentmindedly, more hiragana were added to his screen.

Nisemono.

Usotsuki.

Fake.

Liar.

"That's actually a fairly common concern amongst rookie spies," Nikita said. Xe didn't hold back. Xe didn't have to, because Renzo knew for sure, that he was a rookie, and no amount of talent could make up for it at the moment. "You'd have to be someone like the Boss not to even think about that kind of stuff."

Renzo tried to think about Emília younger, less than seventeen but with the same pout on her face. For some reason, his mental image had her with ten-centimeter short hair, though he knew that hair growth rates didn't work like that at all. "That's stupid. Just because I can fool everyone doesn't mean I'm going to. What idiot goes around deceiving their own team! Was that about it?" Renzo asked.

"Actually, I think it was closer to, If you have enough time to be doubting your own sincerity, then why don't you find a different line of work," Nikita corrected. "Then again, I wasn't working here at the time, so I can't say for certain, but that's what the rumors say." Renzo grimaced; Nikita only shrugged. "She was just impossibly headstrong. She always said she was just doing her job, but everyone always thought she was aiming for the top job."

At that, Renzo had to shake his head. "No way," he rejected. "She hates paperwork and anything that involves sitting around for more than forty-five minutes at a time. Having to do anything other than fieldwork would—no, does drive her insane." He may have only been here for two weeks, but that much, Renzo was certain of.

Nikita offered a smile. "That's what I think, too."

The connection twanged, having been plucked at but also reinforced. "But I'm nothing like Emília-chan," Renzo said. He didn't even feel hurt by the assessment; it was just a fact of the world. "So then I'm going to think too hard, become apprehensive. I may lose any desire to be honest, to start to lose the grip on the 'real me.' What sort of things can be done to counter it?"

Nikita's finger swiped in the familiar motion of xem switching applications and loading documents. "Ideally, having a close friend that knew you before taking on spy work that can reassure you of yourself is the best. That sort of bond of trust can be critical."

Well, that wasn't an option. Bon and Konekomaru—who had known Renzo his entire life—were the best and only candidates. And they were in Japan, probably having crises. They probably weren't sure of who Renzo really was any more than he was.

Reading his expression, Nikita moved on, "Secondly, you have people like the Boss. Their whole catharsis is self-fulfilled. They reassure themselves, claiming that their own assertion should be enough. Of course, most people can't do it all internally like the Boss, and they use an external aid. Commonly, they take self-reflection time and determine the model that is their true self, and check against it often. Some even keep written records, though they take care to eliminate them obviously."

That wouldn't work either. There was too much going on in Renzo's head to even begin putting it down on paper. And he knew for a fact that if he took some physical writing down, Emília would insist on seeing it. As a double agent, it was far too risky of a strategy. "Too much of a pain," he said instead. "What else you got?"

"Well, depending on the severity of the case, some people just need a confidence booster—a minor mission that's short, but still requires a façade." Nikita slowly scrolled through his files. "The psychological reasons vary: 'If people believe me when I'm putting my all into this, then why wouldn't they believe the real me?' for example. Usually the spy tries to make their infiltration's personality as far from their own as possible, but the method's up to you. If the mission comes out as a success, then there's enough confidence to make everything better. If one go's not enough, rinse and repeat."

That wouldn't be too bad. Besides, he needed to be in as active of a role as possible. So long as he was doing work, Emília would trust him with more. This would reinforce his infiltration of the Illuminati as well. "So then a minor reconnaissance mission with a set end date…" he murmured.

Nikita's fingers were already flying, and it was seconds for the New Message display to cover up Renzo's scribbles.

In katakana, deceit disappeared from view.

Sagi-shi.

His form was unstable, ever changing. He couldn't keep solid. There was no one to watch him, and he disappeared in and out—lines colors, vague images of existence. If he were to watch the scene, Renzo was certain he would feel sick. It was actually a miracle that he wasn't sick with how much he was getting pushed and pulled around.

Calm. He needed to be calm. In a deep breath containing thousands of smaller breaths, he imagined his face. A laugh and a smile, a pick-up line tossed out without a care. An idiot with no sense of the world. That was how he was at school, how he had decided to be. A kid who desperately wanted to be cool no matter what the cost.

And at home, with his family? A replacement. A place holder for someone he had never really met, having no choice but to be built up in the other's image. A shield, meant to be for Bon. A knight. He had to laugh at that one. Him? A knight? He could never be that brave.

Even "saving" Izumo had been false courage.

Courage?

Saving?

He was preserving the school self as much as he could. Some part of him missed it. Some part of it was because it was what he wanted to carry over. The rest was all a vague hope that he could still run away, go back, and pretend the whole thing had never really happened at all. But even if he went back, Renzo wouldn't know what to do. These sorts of times were perfect for an image shift, right?

An excuse to remain unstable.

Only one thing was solid for him, that he wouldn't be able to just dismiss or rewrite. Hate. He hated everything. That's what he had told Izumo, and he hadn't been lying. He didn't think he was. There was just a gouging war across his chest, and that had to be hate, right?

"So you hate me, right?"

Whose voice was it? Izumo's? Bon's? Konekomaru's? It was someone, it was everyone. He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to talk to any of them, because they wouldn't understand. He never wanted to see them again!

"If you hate everyone so much, why are you even bothering with this? Why don't you just go and defect for real?"

Because that wasn't the truth. He wanted to talk to them. He needed to talk to them so bad it make him want to cry. He missed everyone. He hated being alone. He hated being here with everyone else. He wanted to go home, even with all that it meant for him.

He… There was no way…

"There's no way you can hate everyone, am I right?" Defiant, Renzo turned around. He wasn't going to just run away. He opened his mouth to respond, but stopped short, losing his breath, his vocal chords.

There was a reason he always chose to smile: because he hated how dead he looked otherwise.

"Because the only person you actually hate is yourself."

His own voice, his own laugh, echoing in a distorted stereo.

Trickster.

"Kamiki. Can we talk?"

The last thing that Izumo felt like doing was talking. She had tried talking to Paku and ended up bawling in front of a large fraction of the school's population in the middle of lunch hour. Nobody had called her out on it (probably from the force of her concentrated glare), but she could tell from the looks they gave her, even a few days later. Cram School, once the ridiculous bustle of idiotic energy she has learned to love, was now filled with a pile of awkward and depressed idiots.

One of those idiots which was Suguro Ryuji, who was trying to talk to her.

He looked odd without Shima in the wings, even odder without Miwa hovering under his other shoulder. Izumo didn't think she would want to talk to him whichever way he approached her, but she knew for certain that Suguro wouldn't take any form of no for an answer.

"Fine," she relented. She would have to apologize to Paku for running late once she got back. "But not here. You better have picked out somewhere private ahead of time or I'm going home." She didn't know why she bothered with the bluff. Suguro would have never made a move without significant preparation.

"There's a storage room downstairs that some of the teachers cleared out over summer," he said with a jerk of his head in the direction of the stairwells. "They haven't repurposed it yet, though. Should be clear." Izumo didn't say anything, just glared, and Suguro took that as his cue to get moving, the girl following in his wake.

She was regretting agreeing to this already, and they hadn't even started talking. She already knew what Suguro would want to know: about the pink head, what he had been like, if there were any clues to him coming home. But she didn't want to talk about it, just let it all go and try to move on.

But I could never hate you!

Why had he said that?

Why did he have to be a hero and just leave her all alone again?

"Ugh, the least that shitty headmaster can do is give us something to distract ourselves with!" she exploded, just barely resisting the urge to kick a wall in passing. Suguro stopped, and Izumo guessed she should be careful; not everyone seemed to have gone home already. She really didn't care. "Listen, I don't know what you want to know, okay? I can't talk about this! He said somethings—a lot of things—but I don't know him like you do. I can't tell you even anything you think I can. I have no idea if he was serious or if he was lying to me and I'm just sick of it! So is there anything else you can make my week worse with?"

Izumo didn't cry. She couldn't anymore. She didn't want to, though. She didn't want to yell, either, but didn't know what else to do.

"Listen, I…" Suguro sounded deeply apologetic, and Izumo hated it. Why couldn't he yell back at her like he did against Okumura? Was everyone just taking things easier because she had been the one captured? "I don't know a lot about him, either. When he talked to me, I could tell that much. I just want to know him better, so… please, how was he there? How did he act?"

Izumo clenched her teeth, her fist. Her jaw threatened to be stiff, to lock up and never open up again. She wanted to keep everything to herself, a wholly selfish desire.

"The same as always," she said. "A complete and total idiot."

Forging connections was easy. You just gave the other person the thing that they wanted to hear, and that was it. If you didn't want to maintain a connection with someone, you gave them nothing.

Fussing over relationships didn't make sense. After all, if you were serious about it, you would consider it early on, give yourself all the pieces you needed to win. Others might say things like, "That's not even human!" but it didn't matter. Being human was flawed.

As a human, there was no way to maintain relationships without making sacrifices, without getting hurt. In that case, not being human was probably better. Then it would be possible to do what was necessary, not bounded like silly things like morality and consideration. Not being human made it easier to please those that were, if that was the goal.

If the people around you then weren't human, then you only had to act for the sake of practicality, the sake of results. That sort of life was much easier than pleasing humans' shifting whims. Both were easy, but not dealing with humans was easiest.

Being human seemed like it would be the most unnecessary burden there was.

[NOTES] I have not have a very pleasant couple of days. Sorry for the delay.

Next chapter in two weeks.

[POST] 011315