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The Crystal Ronin stands tall on a roof far above the streets Neo Old Tokyo and her eyes scan the streets of the city.
She is looking for someone.
When she spots her prey, she strikes.
Her three pronged spear clashes against The Magistrate’s katana, and a flurry of sparks erupts each time the metal re-introduces itself to the opposing weapon, as she tries to attack again and again.
“Why are you doing this?” The Magistrate demands.
The Crystal Ronin huffs angrily and stomps her heel’d boot into The Magistrates foot, making him wince in pain.
“You dare ask ME that question? You traitor! Do you realise how you left me behind to chase that.. that Samurai!” She shouts.
“What is he to you?! What sort of relationship do you even have?!”, The Crystal Ronin demanded, tears falling past her mask, her weapon thrust into the wall as she corners the man she’d at one point considered an ally, a brother.
The Magistrate jerked his eyes away from her own, and made a tck sound with his tongue. He thinks back to all thats happened between him and the Steel Samurai- no, him and Steel.
How even though he’d try to kill the man on multiple occasions and hurt those he cares about, Steel still came running to save him when he got trapped in that burning building.
How, despite everything, the Samurai had listened to him when no one else would. He had sat with him there next to the lake and simply listened to him talk about practically nothing in particular.
How Steel had always known how to get him to leave without too much of a fight.
How he.. how he looked in the rain, sakura petals stuck to his samurai garb, his breaths staggered. Steel had looked him in the eyes and BOWED. He BOWED, and THANKED HIM for the dual. A dual that was supposed to be to the DEATH, but the Magistrate was too much of a coward to end him, and even though Steel had won, The Magistrate remained alive.
How over time as he learned more about The Magistrate, he.. he stopped calling him The Evil Magistrate. Instead of The Evil Magistrate, he was just The Magistrate now. He had stopped wrecking towns, he had stopped burning homes to the ground, and he had stopped fighting The Steel Samurai.
He thought back to when he first realised it, and called Steel to a remote location, and told him he was done being what the Puppet Master turned him into. How he was going to instead change his path, and become the man he had told his father he was going to be. To protect Neo Old Tokyo, not destroy it.
And Steel practically lit up when he told him that it was all thanks to him that he was finally free of the Puppet Master’s chains, of the Puppet Master’s control, and that he was going to be a better man from there on out.
How every time they worked together, they always won. How every time The Magistrate even glanced in his direction, Steel’s face glowed like the sun.
How The Magistrate could never deserve him, or his adoration, even if he tried.
How he-
How he loved him.
A sigh leaves his lips as he sadly says,
“He is.. a dear and indispensable friend. If I were to ever lose him, I don’t know what I’d do.”
The Crystal Ronin simply huffed, removed her spear from the wall, and started walking away, only glancing at him once, and then leaving for good.
The Magistrate sighed, and simply heads back home, exhausted.
He.. loved him?
He, The Magistrate, in love with the man he’d previously repeatedly attempted to murder?
It was preposterous.
And yet, it was the truth.