The remaining eleven men glanced at the odd scene briefly, then shrugged and made their way to the counter. It was time for a drink.
Raven appeared to have his face turned toward Koran, but he was watching everything out of the corner of his eye—especially his own men’s movements. Experience had taught him: looseness invited trouble. Diana had silently filled the gang’s glasses. They leaned comfortably against the counter without paying a single credit.
Raven’s eyebrows knit together. There was a fury in his eyes, just waiting to explode.
“Hey!” he said, his voice sharp and challenging.
“Alright, man, we get it — this is your turf. You wanna collect tribute, fine. That’s the game. But drinking for free? Kinda pushing it, don’t you think?”
His words echoed in the air as he pointed at one of them. The man was holding a glass of top-shelf liquor.
“You down a hundred-credit drink without blinking, then bitch about missing tribute like it’s a mystery.”
Raven turned his gaze to Koran.
“Look, like I said — taking your cut, no problem. Your turf, your rules. But if you keep doing this, what’s this girl gonna pay you with next week? Dirt?”
His voice softened, but the anger still lingered beneath the surface.
“Anyway, I’ll cover the shortfall like we agreed. We cool?”
Koran was silent for a few seconds. With the composure of a gang officer checking his men, he turned and looked at those leaning on the counter.
“Pay for your drinks!” he ordered, with a tone that brooked no argument.
One by one, the men grumbled and pulled out their e-wallets. A few taps, a few eye rolls… and the payments were done. The tension melted like ice in a glass of alcohol.
Raven picked up right where he left off, as if nothing had happened.
“Look, bro — we’re doing it just like I told you. I get in the pit, you bet on me. We both walk out loaded. Simple as that.”
Koran leaned back in his chair, eyes sweeping over Raven.
“The guys in our arena ain’t amateurs, Rex. Not sure how many times you can pull that trick.”
Raven smiled. He reached for his belt and pulled out the Super Punchinator. When he placed it on the table, the cold gleam of metal shimmered menacingly under the dim light.
“Check this out, man!” he said, voice now tinged with excitement.
“This thing’s next-gen. Bionic arm, leg, whatever — one tap, and it fries the whole system. Remember your man that got wrecked? This baby did the job.”
He leaned in, eyes gleaming.
“And the tougher the fighters, the better. Everyone in Delta-7 knows me. But here? I'm nobody. No one bets on a scrawny nobody. That’s the whole point. I take a few hits, people say, ‘He only won because of that weird glove’. Odds stay stable. After three or four matches — boom, payday. Trust me.”
Koran’s eyes were clouded with doubt. B12 didn’t have many men with bionic limbs, but he knew what those enhancements could do. One of the guys he’d sent to the bar had a bionic arm—looked like he’d been mauled by a dog last time he saw him.
And there was still the RustJaw insignia on Raven’s chest. Not just a threat—it was a credential. Raven wasn’t some nobody.
Koran drowned his thoughts in a sip of liquor. He set his glass down without breaking eye contact with Raven, then quietly stood up. He brushed off his coat and extended his hand.
“I’ll swing by tomorrow night to pick you up. And I'll look into the man your crew's looking for.” he said in a firm tone.
Raven shook the offered hand.
As Koran and his men walked out with slow, heavy steps, Raven sat alone at the table under the dim lights, taking a deep breath.
The bar fell into an ominous silence. Raven stood with arms crossed, facing the door. Finally, a cold voice echoed in his mind, breaking the stillness.
“Clear. They’re gone.”
Raven sprang into action like an arrow loose from a bow. He rushed to the door and secured the old, heavy lock in place. The soft click of the lock echoed through the bar, followed by a deep exhale from Raven’s chest—a sound of fleeting relief.
But it was only temporary.
Diana was behind the counter. Her face was pale, with tiny beads of sweat forming on her forehead. Under the dim bar lights, her fair skin looked even paler. Raven noticed her hands were trembling slightly.
Diana pulled a bottle from beneath the counter—dusty, full, and pungent. She poured a glass quickly and downed it in one gulp. As the glass rim trembled against her lips, her hands were still ghostly white.
Raven reached the counter in a few strides.
“Alcohol is prohibited for minors, y’know.” he said with a teasing tone, trying to ease her nerves.
Diana rolled her eyes, setting the empty glass on the counter.
“Then call the cops.” she shot back. Then, pointing a finger at him with a smirk:
“Need me to remind you who got wasted at seven stealing alcohol?”
Raven chuckled softly. For a moment, the shadows of the past flickered inside the bar. Diana smiled too, then leaned against the counter. One hand instinctively twisted a strand of her hair around her fingers. That gesture would’ve said a lot to anyone who had known her for years. She was tense. Worried. She took a deep breath.
“Alright, Raven. You fooled them. Situation’s handled — for now, at least. Good to see you alive.”
The words hit Raven like an unexpected punch. His eyebrows lifted slightly, and his eyes locked on Diana.
“What?” he said, confused.
Diana was looking at him, but it was as if she wasn’t really seeing him. As if she was speaking to a different time, a different Raven.
“What do you mean ‘what’? You said it yourself — back on the roof. You were leaving. Problem’s fixed. Good job. Now leave. It was nice seeing you.”
She was right. Just a few hours ago, Raven had stood on the rooftop and said he was leaving. Like a ghost, he was meant to drift from one city to the next, from one address to another. But the fact that Diana wanted him to leave like this—that, he hadn’t expected.
His brow twitched. The corner of his mouth trembled. His face was suddenly shadowed by emotion. Doubt, anger, disappointment.
“I don’t want you to go…” Diana said suddenly. Her voice trembled. The tears gathering in her eyes glistened under the dim bar light.
“But you have to. They’ll figure out you’re not from RustJaw soon enough. And if you stay… you won’t just drag yourself down — you’ll take us with you.”
Raven’s hands lifted from the counter in a heavy silence. He turned his back on her. His footsteps echoed on the wooden floor of the bar. But just a few paces in, he stopped. He turned around. His eyes burned—with rage.
“No! I’m not leaving!” he roared.
His voice rang out in the empty bar. Before Diana could reply, he pressed on:
“Not this time! I’m done running! I’ll make sure those sons of bitches are too scared to even walk past this bar! I’m not going anywhere!”
Diana slammed her hand down on the counter with a heavy thud.
“Raven, enough! Just go! I’ll figure something out — get the money, tell them you skipped town! They’ll make noise for a few days, then forget it! Just go! Don’t drag more shit onto my head!”
Raven went silent. For a moment, he averted his gaze. But then he raised his fist and slammed it down onto the counter. The blow shattered Diana’s words.
“Do you remember the day we met?” Raven asked, his voice filled with fury.
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“Those two assholes who mocked you!”
Diana froze. She hadn’t expected that.
“Yeah… I remember. But what does that have to do with any of this?!”
“Everything! I told you — if we didn’t put them in their place, they’d come back. Remember?”
Diana’s eyes widened. She nodded silently.
“Yeah… I remember. But I also remember you were wrong. They never came back. You know that too!”
The air in the bar grew heavy. Time seemed to stop. Only the echo of the past remained.
Raven laughed.
But it wasn’t a laugh filled with joy or youthful innocence. It echoed with something broken, with repressed anger and the weight of years gone by. His voice rose like a low, guttural growl; so cold, so chilling, it made the air around them feel heavier.
“Of course I know, Diana!” he said. The anger in his voice was like a storm growing with every word. But the storm was suddenly silenced. He leaned toward her like a shadow, his voice now a whisper.
“Because I beat them so bad they couldn’t walk straight. I shattered their bones!”
Diana’s eyes widened. She took a step back, as if trying to escape the darkness radiating off Raven. At that moment, a primal fear began to stir deep in her chest. The darkness in Raven’s eyes was deeper than it had ever been. There was someone else living behind them.
Raven jumped over the counter. His landing made a solid, final sound. Like a predator cornering its prey, he stood in front of Diana. His shoulders were tense, heavy as if carrying the weight of all his memories. His eyes glinted, reliving every blow from the past.
“They were waiting for you, Diana…” he went on, his voice now ice-cold.
“Waiting for you to get that damn lemonade, like you always did before your mom woke up.”
Diana’s throat went dry. Her eyes were locked on his, but the terror rising inside her rooted her in place.
“But I… I knew they’d be there. While they were waiting for you… I was waiting for them! That’s how the streets work, Diana! You don’t stop until it’s over! You can’t stop!” He stepped closer.
“I laid them out, one by one—so you wouldn’t cry, so you wouldn’t get hit. You want to know what I did? Want to hear how those boys, three years older than me, cried as I beat the hell out of them? I still remember their tears, the sound of bones snapping, that pathetic thud as they hit the ground!”
Diana’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her shoulders shook. The person she was looking at was Raven… and yet it wasn’t.
“You really… really did that?” she whispered.
There was no change in Raven’s expression. No remorse, no pride. Just the weary mask of someone stating a fact.
“Do you know why I’ve been running, Diana?” he asked. He didn’t bother answering her question. His voice was now an echo only the two of them could understand.
“Was the Raven you knew… the kind of kid who’d run away from anything?”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting. Silence became the only thing that echoed in the room.
“Then why are you running, Raven?” Diana asked, her voice thick and muffled.
“From myself.”
The words drifted into the air like a bullet. No pause, no breath… as if they’d been lodged in his throat for years, finally released by a stranger’s whisper.
“I don’t want to be like before, Diana…” he continued. His voice didn’t tremble, but the emptiness inside it rang loud.
“I don’t want to be a bloodthirsty fucking mutt like Rex used to say me. I didn’t rip those bastards apart who killed my dad… who killed Rex… because I’m scared of myself. I’m scared of becoming who I used to be.”
Diana’s tears now fell silently down her cheeks. She understood exactly what he meant. Once, when they were playing on the rooftop, Raven would always repeat the same sentence with pride:
“You know, my mom used to say I was Devil, D! Did you know a Devil was once an angel? God’s favorite angel, even! At least, that’s what Rex said! He knew everything!”
Raven approached Diana, who was trembling with tears in her eyes. His voice had started to rise; his words were cracking with emotion:
“But I’m not afraid anymore, Diana! Believe me, I’m not afraid! I’ll show those B12 bastards what it means to mess with my family—”
The sentence was never finished.
Diana took a step toward him and, without thinking, wrapped her arms around his neck. With all her strength, with all her heart. She held him tightly with trembling arms, pouring all the pain, fear, and past of the child within her into Raven’s chest.
“You’re… not Devil, Raven.”
Raven took a deep breath. The darkness in his eyes flickered for a brief moment. Diana’s words had shaken something inside him. But the moment was short-lived. Gently, he took her hands and unwrapped her arms from around him, pushing her back softly.
“It’s not about what I am… It’s about what I need to be, D.”
Without another word, he stepped out through the bar’s door.
Diana leaned against the counter, crying in silence. She wanted to say “Don’t go!” — but couldn’t.
But Raven wasn’t really leaving Delta-6.
He would stay. And he would fight.
He stepped out into the crowd outside. As the city’s noise slowly faded from his mind, another voice rose from within:
“Shall we move on to Plan B?” said ION, echoing inside his head.
Raven reached toward the combat knife hidden in his inner pocket and replied:
“Yes.”
ION // SYSTEM FEEDBACK — [Session: 016 | Operator: Raven Karr]
Interface: ION_v4.6.1_β // Connection Stable [?]
[?] [MRS-09] Molecular Restoration System
- Operational Efficiency: 10.4% (↑ 2.2%)
- Primary Function:
→ Facilitates tissue regeneration via nano-scale biosynthetic repair protocols
→ Applies localized reconstruction on muscle, epidermal, and limited neural tissues
→ Simulates auto-fibrin production and coagulation to suppress superficial bleeding
→ Engages limited immunosuppression to minimize infection risk
- Critical Limitation:
→ In cases of major tissue disruption or internal organ trauma, system enters “Hemostatic Mode”
→ Prioritizes active hemorrhage control; regeneration rate significantly reduced
→ If operational load exceeds 60%, system may enter temporary shutdown
??[?] [PSA-02X] Psycho-Social Analysis Module (Experimental Prototype)
- Operational Efficiency: 2.1% (↑ 2.1%)
- Primary Function:
→ Analyzes micro-expressions, vocal tone, and biometric feedback for intent profiling
→ Constructs probabilistic behavioral models in real time
Algorithmic Output Sample:
→ “Subject Raven exhibits an 83% likelihood of rejecting the concept of ‘trust.’”
System Notice: Stated efficiency percentages apply only under conditions of full, synchronized nanite allocation to each individual module. Partial or multi-tasking deployments may result in fluctuating efficiency levels.
Raven // BODYCHECK
→ Gear:
? Street style clothes (Even though the clothes are a bit baggy, they are cooler this way.)
? Active Defense Surface [Model: AS929] (ION did something. It works now!)
? Button shaped Hologram reflector (Raven got it from the RustJaw members he beat up in Delta-7. It reflects the RustJaw gang's shitty logo.)
→ Weapon:
? Left Hook of God? (Seriously? This ancient wrist-slam still here? Next to the Super Punchinator? No tech, no spark—just bruises and delusions of divine relevance.)
? Combat Knife [Model: M-12] (The only thing left of Rex.)
? Super Punchinator [Left] (Boom! It can punch now! Is Raven slowly turning into Thor? Still penetrating the Active Defense Surfaces!)
→ Additions:
? Sad vibes (Pov: Trauma)
? Stolen e-Wallet – Balance: 734 (Nothing's changed here.)
? VX-21 Commlink (Please, somebody call him!)
? Stylish Black Bag (Used to be cool. Now it’s just “Raven’s personal hell-pocket.” Still cursed. Still smells weird. It's a little lighter now.)
? Sustenance & Regret – Contents: Bottled Rations, Bottles labeled “Water” (Technically drinkable. Emotionally scarring. One hissed and called him “mom.”)
? Monkey Chocolates (Monkey? Where are you? Have you gone, you fucker! Yeah, it's gone! It's fucking gone! )
? (6) VX-21 Commlink (He's not gonna do anything with these.)