Ryo stood over him and glanced at Remi. She looked like she was wrapping things up as well. He sighed: in the end, the fight was nothing but a small distraction.

“You fight like a demon…” a voice groaned from the floor. “How are you… so fast?”

Ryo peered back down at him. His face remained emotionless. “I am no demon. Just a brat getting paid for services provided.”

“There is no honor in what you do. I fight for my people. You have no one.”

Ryo squatted down on his knees and slapped the man on the cheek lightly. “You pick barfights in the name of your people?”

“You’re a coward,” the man mumbled and spat as blood dripped down his chin from a bitten tongue. “This land’s comin’ apart… at the seams. Here you are talking of money while… the world changes. You don’t change with it… If you don’t protect your family then you’ll die a miserable nobody.”

Ryo gripped the man’s head by his hair and banged it against the floor. An unexpected resentment towards the man’s words swelled in him.

“Are you finished, Ryo?”

He froze, still gripping the man’s head in his hand. His eyes searched the man’s dazed face and the anger dissipated. He let the head go with a soft thud.

“Yes.” Ryo stood up slowly, examined some blood specks on his shirt and shrugged before walking to the bar and setting himself on a stool. The boy that had earlier been harassed eyed him with a mixture of reverence and fear, then set a clean glass by his outstretched hands and a bottle of what Remi recognized as their second most expensive whiskey.

“On the house, I presume?” He looked at Remi expectantly.

“Ugh. Fine.” Remi snorted. She rolled her eyes when Ryo lifted the bottle in thanks, the cork already yanked out in his teeth and a shot poured.

“Now then…” Remi turned to the man she had beaten, who sat cradling his brow dazed and breathing slowly through clenched teeth. “It goes without saying that you and your friend are permanently banned from this establishment. We will not restrict you from the greater Coalition’s territory,” she smirked, “because unlike you and your friends, we did not struggle from nothing for a private kingdom.”

“Times are changing, you bitch,” the man groaned. “The world is watching. They’re waiting for us to implode, and it’s gonna happen soon. The rest of this country is gonna die, and I plan to live.”