Ares went to go open the door for his brother but it seemed like Leo was already on top of things, flying up to the handle and purring as he pushed it down and pulled it back with a surprising amount of strength. That something so tiny could be so powerful was still a weird sight but, then again, treetop tigers were basically just condensed, fireball shooting tigers anyway. Their bodies shrunk but their mighty power did not! Leo had been cultivating a lot recently and had killed a good many rats in combat so he was getting up there in terms of cultivation. He might even learn to speak at some point or gain the ability to transform into a human if he kept going like this. He could be a little twerp sometimes but he was a part of the family too. If nothing else, he was great when it came to playing with Appa. Sometimes it was hide and seek or maybe he would increase his size and take Appa for a ride on his back through the sect''s farms as he worked. Between all the pills Allie fed him, and the fish Ares cooked for the guy, he was quite content with his life so good for him!


    The door opened and Aejaz stepped through it without much fanfare. There wasn''t any particular dead give away on his face that he''d succeeded but he walked as though he had a massive weight lifted off his shoulders so Ares could take a wild guess as to how things ended. Still, Ares was curious to know what exactly went down because Aejaz didn''t seem all too pleased with the result considering he''d just rid himself of someone who''d made his life difficult, and had plans to keep doing as such, with his own two hands. Aejaz entered the living room and sat comfortably between Allie and Trixie before he explained from the very beginning. Fortunately it wasn''t a very long story but, unfortunately, it wasn''t very interesting. More so disappointing if anything.


    "So, after the match ended, I left the coliseum and headed around to the south side so I could catch Job taking the other exit. I was a bit late so I used Voidwalk to catch up to him, and the rest of the family, and scouted things out for a bit by remaining invisible with my bloodline and undetectable with my Concealed Serpent... But they didn''t go anywhere. They just kinda stood around in the same spot for a long while and I didn''t really get what was going on... And I don''t think Job did either... I was going to wait a bit longer and see what they were up to, ''cos I thought backup was on the way or something, but I heard Yvonne call out to me. She didn''t know I was there but her educated guess was correct and so I decided to come out of hiding and see what was up. I could always retreat if anything went wrong, or disengage and try again from another angle, so I figured I would hear out Yvonne. I thought she would try and negotiate for Job''s life but... Well... I''d clearly forgotten how much of a bitch she is.


    As soon as she saw me, she pushed Job''s back and sent him tumbling into the street before me. Apparently she wanted to negotiate a very different price than what I thought she was after. In exchange for Job''s life, I would leave them alone forever... I was going to do that anyway but, hey, free stuff''s never hurt anyone right? Of course Job, and his father, were mortified but Scowl and Phlo seemed to already know this was coming as they''d been told in advance via a mental message. Anyway, before I could even respond, Yvonne and the rest of the family swiftly abandoned Job. Fletch hung around for a small period of time but he''s a useless father and just left Job alone with me in the end... And that kinda sums it up. I wasn''t in the mood to listen to Job beg, and God knows he was about to try, so I just stole his memories of the previous day and gave him a quick and painless death when he was trying to figure out why he was in the middle of the street for no apparent reason. I didn''t want to drag it out ''cos it had all been kinda anticlimactic and I wasn''t really feeling it anymore... Here I was hoping I could maybe try and assassinate a target who had some serious heavy duty protection and then sneak away like a little mouse but, well, life''s disappointing sometimes I guess."


    "Wow." Ares gave his dejected brother a wry smile. "No wonder you''re so down in the dumps. I would be too if the prey I was looking forward to hunting just rolled over and died for me the second I found it. You were on a roll today and then it all just stopped, your momentum was stolen from you in such a boring way... Tell you what, I''m heading over to Hans soon. Wanna come with and see if he has any work lying around? Probably not but it can''t hurt to check, right? I''m sure you wanna get that itch out of your system so tag along and let''s pay the old fella visit yeah?"


    Aejaz pursed his lips together as he thought it over and eventually gave a hearty sigh. "Alright, here''s hoping he''s got a target or two. I just wanna hold the Prowler for a bit longer! I''ve barely even used it..."


    "... Alright fine, I''ll let you hold onto it until the final match of the tournament, how about that? I won''t need it until then so you''re free to train with it as long as your heart desires."


    "Woohoo!" Aejaz threw his hands into the air, one of which was still clutching the Prowler like it was some kind of priceless heirloom, and his spirits seemed to have instantly been raised. His glum and moody aura had bene turned around just like that. He was an easy person to please. If that little bribe hadn''t worked then Ares could have taken him to a gambling den or something. Just letting him go wild with his stealing for half a day or so was enough to make him right as rain again. The family was getting extensive but Ares was keen on learning what made them all tick so he could push the correct buttons and get a factory reset when they weren''t feeling too good.


    "Then let''s get going. I''ve got a date later so the sooner we go, the sooner I can return and get ready for it. Chop chop!" Ares followed Aejaz out the room and into the hallway, lightly kicking him in the ass to speed him up whenever he was being too slow. The idiot tried to use Voidwalk to run away but Ares wasn''t having any of it! Ares controlled the nothingness mana in the air and starved Aejaz of it, preventing him from using enough to chant the art properly. Ares could have just prevented the Appropriate Skillset in the first place but he wanted to experiment controlling the mana as he rarely had a reason to in the first place. Normally, a person''s control over the mana they had an affiliation for was pretty minimal up until they apotheosised so for Ares to already be able to stifle anyone else using destruction mana was incredible. Then again, nobody else should have been able to use it to begin with so that was probably the weirder thing happening right about now.


    Anyway, a fundamental had certain benefits and controlling the mana in the air freely earlier than most was just one of them. It didn''t do particularly much but it did put Ares on the path to controlling all instances of destruction around him without the need for arts. I.E if, say, Theodore shot a mortar shell at him, Ares wouldn''t be able to control the shell in mid-air but when it blew up on the ground the explosion was fair game to manipulate. Ares would be basically immune to most explosions and only monstrous, planet destroying bombs or bombardments could even scratch him. The same was also true of disintegration and nothingness but those weren''t exactly common throughout this dimension. Nothingness might appear occasionally, what with severed domains and all. Plus Ares could always pay the void a visit or shatter reality to bring forth a nothingness flood... But disintegration?... Ares wasn''t sure if it had ever existed outside of the destruction pillar whatsoever. The freedom to reign in destruction out in the wild wasn''t looking to be all too valuable but maybe it would wind up being more useful than he expected as it was a fundamental pillar after all. The uses of this little trick could be more vast than he was aware of and that would be a welcome surprise. Either way, it wasn''t going to happen for a while so messing with his brother occasionally, whenever he used Appropriate Skillset, was going to have to suffice.


    The bandit brothers left the sect, made their way through town, passed by city hall and gave a passing wave to some of the people working there that they recognised, and eventually arrived at the mayor''s building / house. This was where all the important decisions were made but it was also were the mayor lived so it was rather convenient for the incumbent to laze around if he wasn''t busy with anything... Although that should realistically be a rare occurrence. If you weren''t meeting with someone then you ought to be either slaving away on paperwork or discussing measures to be implemented throughout the city. Trade with nearby cities, social laws, taking note of what the citizens wanted to change in the city, and sending letters of reprimand to greedy nobles, businessmen, and cultivators who were defrauding people or outright abusing them via ''work'' that was more akin to slavery. Now did Maro actually do any of this or did he just have really competent aides that were worked half to death?


    Surprisingly, a bit of both.


    You''d think him the type to just toss all his work at his lackeys and dream up ways to be evil and scrounge up stardust but he did, from time to time, get off his ass and do... Stuff... It was very much a look busy kinda deal, so whether ot not anything he was responsible for in this city actually mattered was debatable, but he did make some small changes. He put a few new bins, benches, and fountains in key spots that were missing them. Changed the unwritten rule that allowed shops to force people to buy something before they could use the toilets! That was good!... There really wasn''t much else honestly. He kinda just took bribes from clans like the Chens and then kept half while giving the other half to the people actually doing all the relevant work... At least he didn''t withhold all the money though... Even if it was only because he wanted to maintain power and an angry populous wasn''t conducive to that goal. Granted there weren''t any elections or anything so they could be a teensy bit mad here and there and it wouldn''t be the end of the world or anything. The average citizen was too stupid and stuck in their ways to care about a few minor inconveniences from time to time so Maro had gotten away with a lot in his time.


    All in all, he wasn''t the worst thing to happen to Red Sun, he was more like an annoying rash that just sort of persisted pointlessly. Now though? Now this place was under new management. It was impossible to tell how things were going currently because, although Ares and Aejaz had literally only just entered, the place was currently a madhouse filled with scrambling, headless chickens. Not literally but that is most definitely what the rank and file workers resembled as they scurried around while dropping countless papers that they then had to turn around and pick up. It was a cacophony of indecipherable gibberish as people talked over each other without feeling even remotely guilty for the racket they were causing because, really, they just wanted to go home and see their loving families! The quicker their job was done the better as far as they were concerned. As long as they could hear the person they were yelling at from across the room, and vice versa was also true, then everyone else could kick rocks! They weren''t getting paid overtime or any other kind of bonus so why should they care about being polite!? If it wasn''t for the current circumstance they would have gone on strike over these abhorrent conditions!... Although they were all at least partially aware that Hans was in contact with a cabal of assassins who he could dispatch at the drop of a hat so maybe picking an elongated fight, in the form of a protest, with him wasn''t the best idea as some of them might happen to conveniently ''disappear''...


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Ares strolled directly through the centre of the mayhem, even juggling a few mugs that happened to come his way before carefully placing each of them on the head of a passing by worker, causing them to let out a few small tears now their work had gotten exponentially harder all of a sudden. Their hands were filled with paperwork and now they had empty coffee mugs sitting on their heads! Who was this cruel circus master?! One of the very few people here without anything all too urgent or pressing to attend to slid to a halt in front of the ''suspicious'' man before recognising him as the tournament participant Ares. "What are you doing here? We have enough on our plate as is, please don''t hang around unnecessarily or loiter. Better yet, we''re so stretched thin that we didn''t even have anyone at the gate to prevent you from entering so please, whatever it is you''re here for, come back some other time!"


    "No."


    Ack


    The poor man who tried doing the impossible, reasoning with ''unreasonable'' personified, nearly threw up in his mouth when he heard the blunt refusal to co-operate. "Look, kid, even our security guards are being made to lug stuff around so they aren''t here to kick you out right now. Don''t make this difficult! There''s nothing here for you anyway! If you think that just because you killed Maro his stuff now automatically belongs to you then you''ve got another thing coming bucko! It belongs to Hans now and, between you and me, he is not a guy you want to mess with!"


    "Yes he is."


    Ack


    "... Ares? Ares is it? It''s Ares right? Ares. Ares listen to me. Stop this! Stop it! Stop all of it! This is for your own good! You really don''t know what kinda guy Hans is. He''s got dealings. Shady dealings with guys you don''t wanna meet in a quiet back alley. You catch my drift?! Never mind the fact that Hans will sic an assassin on you at the best of times, we''re swamped right now and if you walk into his room unannounced all hell will break loose! He might even send guys after us as well for not stopping you! Are you really going to doom us all because you want to be nosey and look around for stuff?!"


    "Yes."


    Ack


    Ares was done playing 21 questions with this man so he walked right by the guy who was practically frozen solid. The unexperienced fool had never dealt with a revenant before so this conversation was beyond him and his ability to talk sense into people. You needed to use very different tactics with a revenant, such as taping their mouth shut, tying their hands, and chucking them out the building. For a normal person that sounds extreme but for a revenant? That was merely a beginner strategy. There were even some folks in the upper domains who were so fed up of revenants they created sealing arts specifically for them so they could have a break for a couple thousand years without being pestered by the annoying mutts. The revenants would get out of the trap eventually but there really was no such thing as permanently stopping a revenant from doing whatever they wanted to. Eventually you had to bite the bullet and let them have their way. Time was a powerful ally and these people had infinite of it. The number of times revenants had found some kind of secret treasure being guarded by an old warrior only to cheat their way past by outlasting the old coot instead of actually fighting them was not small. Hell sometimes they would even fight, die, come back, and just keep repeating the process until the other person got sick of seeing their face over and over again.


    The guy who failed to stop Ares hurried after him in a bid to at least try and calm down Hans who was most definitely not going to be happy right now. He might even have his Ifrit turn this place into an extreme sauna and bake everyone until they were crispy. As the door to Hans'' office opened, the worrywart crossed his fingers and said his prayers as he followed the duo into the room and tried to explain everything before anyone else could speak. "Hans! Uh, mayor Hans! I am terribly sorry about these two. There are no excuses to be made for letting them get this far but we don''t have the manpower available to stop them. I highly encourage you to burn them to ashes and end the problem once and for all!"


    "Wow, you''re quite vicious when you have the upper hand, huh?" Aejaz'' eyes widened as he stared at the dishonourable pipsqueak hiding behind Hans. Was this what Aejaz used to be like when he kept running away to go find Ares and metaphorically hug his leg? Yikes, how embarrassing... But not anymore! Aejaz was a real man now! A manly man! he would never cower before a frightening foe ever again! Maybe.


    Hans just sighed and smacked the cowardly fellow with a rolled up newspaper. "Ain''t nobody being burnt to ashes, not when there''s still yet work to be done and you can contribute to physical labour. When you''re all done hauling papers maybe then I''ll consider it. Anyway, Hugo, get lost. I know these kiddos and have done for a long old time. They''re free to come and go as they please so make sure to spread that around when you get a chance."


    "Oh, uh, heh, right right." Hugo bowed to everyone in the room, twice to Ares who was giving him a narrow stare for trying to throw him under the bus earlier, and promptly skedaddled down the hallway.


    "Sorry I can''t give you two boys a proper reception but, well, I think the mess around here speaks volumes for itself. This place is bigger than town hall, and way more staffed too, and yet things have ended up like this... Either I''m not as competent a manger as I thought I was or things were really dire around here before I took over... Whatever, this crap will all be sorted out soon and the town will be better off for it. So much money laying around going to waste or worse, going to be people who don''t even bloody well need it. Good thing these bribes are marked so I can go pay these scummy individuals a visit down the road. Let''s put that to the side for now, what can I do for you? I know you wouldn''t come here just to chit chat when I''m up to my neck in civic duties... If anything, you''re probably about to drop some kind of bombshell on me that''ll just quadruple my workload..."


    "Ah Hans..." Ares took a step forward and twirled past a stack of papers, coming to halt as he leant on the desk with his chin resting on his palm which was supported by his elbow below. "... You really do know me far too well! Great guess and spot on! It''s kinda complicated though sooo, you got a minute?"


    "Hell no I don''t! Especially not if you''re just gonna dump more work on me after!... Ah whatever, I''m in a good mood so I''ll reschedule an appointment..."


    "Oh? Despite all this humdrum you''re still in a good mood? Has today been a lucky day for whatever reason?"


    Hans took a seat and opened a drawer, revealing within a bumpy crystal vial with a neon orange liquid in it. "You remember a while back I made a bet on the tournament?"


    "Yeah... The phoenix blood that someone threw into the pot... Is that it?"


    "You got a good memory kid. Yes, yes it is. Turns out, the stuff belonged to Mako. As for why I have it now, the betting brothers weren''t entirely sure what to make of the situation because their client was long gone. They could have just held onto it and waited for the results of the tournament to see who it''d belong to but we have a lot of history, me and those guys. I promised them some good turf, which was an especially juicy offer given my new standing, so they were willing to ''cancel'' the phoenix blood bet. It was supposed to go back to Maro but, well, what''s Maro''s is mine now so as long as you ignore the backroom deals that went on I''ll have you know I obtained this bad boy perfectly legitimately."


    "Well you got your hands on it in a way that was at least more legal than the way Aejaz gets his hand on stuff like that so I''ll let it slide. It''s the betting brother''s loss anyway but I''m sure they''ve raked in a ton thanks to the tournament anyway right? They can afford to let that vial slip out of their pockets I''m sure. Anyway, before we get on to the main topic, do you have any assassination missions for ''Jaz? He was robbed of a kill earlier today and is kinda hankering for some action. The tease of it all has edged him and he''s been feeling a bit uppity as a result so I figured I would ask while I happen to be here."


    "What? He actually wants a mission? I thought he was just being sent on them ''cos of your, and I quote, ''bitching and nagging''."


    Ares smiled dangerously at Aejaz who proceeded to unashamedly hide behind Hans like the manly man he was. "Is that so? I''ll keep that in mind the next time I get some alone time with that idiot."


    "Yes well do that in your own time, not here. We''ve got enough of a brawl on our hands against the paperwork as is... Missions missions... Hm, I suppose there is a guy you can go put six feet under. A Maro loyalist who refuses to budge an inch."


    "No mercy? You''re being thorough and cleansing everything then?"


    "Nah, it ain''t like that. This guy''s actively plotting to blow up this building. I didn''t bother dealing with him yet because he wasn''t going to do it for a couple more days anyway and he was still gathering the remnants of those who supported Maro. Still, ''Jaz can go make an example of him and that ought to quieten things down for a while. The remnants might come back later but by that point I''ll be done with all this shoddy paperwork and can just hire some of the old crew to go and deal with them. Old ''business'' will be up and running again before they become an issue. ''Jaz, I''ll give you the details after I''m done with... Whatever Ares wants."


    A small thumbs out crept out from around Hans'' flank signalling that Aejaz was thankful for the work. Well, ''work'' that he was volunteering for anyway. He usually got paid for it but he was just in the mood to hunt someone down for fun this time. He would take his time and lead them around by the nose, watch as they call in backup, and then masterfully weave through his defences to deal the killer blow with his own magic and / or weapon as his eyes widened in horror before fading to a dull and lifeless grey! That could be his reward for doing well today in the arena. If only Job hadn''t been such a pushover in the end, that would have been incredibly satisfying... Oh well...


    Hans lit a cigar, ready for what would inevitably be a complicated talk with Ares. Nothing involving this kiddo was ever simple... "Lay it on me. What are you here for? What are you planning now?"


    Ares joined his hands together and stretched them forwards, rolled his neck, and took a deep breath.


    "I''m taking Red Sun into space!"


    Hans had no idea what this kid was talking about but there was one thing he knew for sure, today was going to be a very long day...