00141. Helping out a legend. (Patreon)

How about another one? Can you dig it?

After watching Yojimbo with Sanhildr and the other valkyries, Ezekiel went home and switched places with his clone to sleep for about an hour before he needed to wake up. Once he was up, he did his normal morning routine before he went to the mirror in his bathroom. As he stood in front of it, he closed his eyes and injected chakra into his eyes. When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by a pair of two tomoe in each of his sharingan.

Last night when they awakened he didn’t notice it at first, most likely from being in that mostly dark tunnel. But his vision was a lot clearer now, everything seemed to be in high definition to him. Theo shook his head, out of everything that went bad last night. At least this was a positive… But it might not make up for having extra training with Tao.

Before Theo left the bathroom he placed a visual genjutsu over his eyes. It would allow him to keep his eyes active for as long as possible, without drawing attention to himself. Theo then left his room and headed upstairs where he was greeted by the smell of fresh waffles being made. His dad smiled at him as he said, “Good morning sleepy head. I was about to send Milly down to get you, if you didn’t come soon.”

Milly nodded from her place at the table as she said, “Ya! Why weren’t you up? You always wake me up.”

Theo moved towards the cabinet to get dishes and help set the table as he said, “I forgot to turn on my alarm last night.”

As Theo set the table, Daniel walked in with Issac and as she set him up in his high chair she said, “When you get home from school today, you should check the email account that’s set up for your website.”

Theo moved to the sink to clean the dishes his dad used to make the waffle batter mix as he asked, “Why? Did something happen?”

“Well besides the fact it’s good to check your email regularly. I checked it this morning and noticed people are offering to buy your game.” Daniel said as she played with Issac.

Theo glanced at his mom as he asked, “Buy my game? All they have to do is go on the website if they want to buy it… Or is there an issue with the site?”

Daniel smiled before she said, “They don’t want to buy just a single copy. They want to buy the rights to it and make it their own.”

“Oh… I don’t get it.” Theo said while he tried not to laugh.

Daniel shook her head lightly before she said, “They want to offer you a large amount of money for the rights to your game, so they can take the game and sell it themselves.”

After Theo finished the last dish he turned around and asked, “Why would they want to do that?”

Jacob finished placing the waffles, eggs and sausage on the table as he said, “Because they think the amount of money they can make from selling the game themselves will be more than what they pay you for it.”

Theo sat down at the table and started to load up his plate as he said, “That doesn’t sound that bad. Would me and Peter still have to update the game?”

Daniel chuckled before she said, “No. If you sold the game rights. Whoever bought it would have to take care of everything for the game going forward.”

Theo poured syrup over his waffles as he said, “Oh, that makes it even better. But could Milly, Peter and I still play it?”

“I don’t see why not. You could even add that into the contract if you wanted.” Daniel said as she tried to feed Issac some eggs.

“Okay, then I guess as long as Peter and Milly don’t mind, we can sell the game rights.”

Daniel shared a glance with Jacob as she asked, “Why would you have to ask them? Isn’t it your game?”

Theo shook his head as he said, “I might have started it, but we all worked on it… Well Milly mostly played it, but she helped in her own way.”

“Yeah, Milly helped!” Milly said before she stuffed a piece of waffle in her mouth that looked like it was made of syrup.

“So it would only be right if they are okay with it.” Theo said.

Daniel smiled before she asked, “What do you think Milly? Should Theo sell the game?”

“But I like playing it.” Milly said with a little pout.

“What if he can sell it and you can still play it?” Daniel asked.

“Oh… That’s fine then. As long as I can still play it, it’s fine.”

Conversation continued for a little while longer before everyone left the house to go about their day. At school Theo talked to Peter about selling the game and he was fine with it. So after school that day, Daniel started to go through all the emails of companies that wanted to purchase the game. Once she had about ten of them, she sent out emails to each company to inquire about their asking price for the game.

A few days after he went vampire hunting and his mom started looking into selling his game. Ezekiel visited Blade and Whistler at their hideout. With Tsunade's skills and some modern technology, Whistler was mostly healed. His leg was still missing and both arms were in casts, but they were on their way to healing.

After Ezekiel stepped out of the portal, he saw Whistler sitting at what passed for their kitchen table. He smiled as he moved towards the table and asked, “How're you feeling?”

“Like shit. That doctor lady told me I couldn't drink for a month.”

Ezekiel sat down at the table as he said, “You'll heal faster if you don’t drink.”

“Who cares. It's not like I'll be useful anymore. Who hunts vampires in a wheelchair?” Whistler said as he smacked the stump of his leg.

“You don't need to hunt, to be helpful to me old man.” Blade said as he came into the kitchen area.

“Shut it kid. At this point I’m just dead weight.” Whistler said with a frown.

Ezekiel smiled as he said, “I guess you're both in luck. I came here today with an offer.”

“An offer? What, you got some kinda magic spell to replace my leg?” Whistler asked with a bit of sarcasm in his voice.

Ezekiel glanced at Blade as he asked, “You didn’t tell him?”

Blade shook his head as Whistler asked, “Didn’t tell me what?”

Ezekiel made a simple light spell as he said, “Magic’s real.”

“Bullshit.”

Ezekiel conjured a magic sword as he said, “This is made of magic. And it’s very real.” Before he used it to slice a thin cut through the concrete floor below him.

Whistler looked at the sword and the cut on the floor before he asked, “So that’s not your own power but magic?”

Ezekiel nodded before Whistler asked, “So what, are you just gonna make me a leg like that sword or something?”

Ezekiel shook his head before he said, “No, I am gonna do something better than that. But first both of you would have to go through some tests and background checks.”

“Why would we need to do that?” Blade asked.

“Because I wanna offer both of you a job working with my group.” Ezekiel said.

Blade shook his head as he said, “But we only hunt vampires.”

“And I would like for you to continue doing that, but working with more people. I would actually form a larger group to work with you and help you.” Ezekiel said.

“We’ve never needed help before.” Blade said.

Whistler glanced at his bum leg before he glanced at his missing lag and said, “Blades only ever worked with me, but there's another small team I know who hunts vampires.”

Blade narrowed his eyes as he said. “This is the first time I've heard about another team…”

Whistler looked directly into Blade's eyes as he said, “Because you don’t really get along with other people.”

As Blade glared at Whistler, Ezekiel said, “I’m just gonna let you guys sort this out…I’ll be back in a week or so. And if you wanna join, you can invite that other group you know. But everyone would still need to pass our checks to officially join.”

After that, Ezekiel left them to go talk with someone else he meant to recruit a while ago. He portaled to an area in the Bronx with Inoichi and then walked to a small house that looked well maintained. After they reached the door Ezekiel knocked a couple times and waited. After a few moments an older, gray haired black woman answered the door. She glanced between Ezekiel and Inoichi for a moment before she asked, “Yes? Can I help you?”

Ezekiel smiled as he said, “No. But I would like to help out you and your husband out Mrs. Bradley.”

The woman narrowed her eyes slightly as she said, “My husbands been through enough. Tell whoever sent you here, to leave our family alone.”

Before she could shut the door Ezekiel rested his hand on it and said, “Mrs. Bradley, no one sent me. I came to offer you and your husband something. If you don’t want it, I’ll leave.”

“We don’t want it.” Mrs. Bradley said as she tried to shut the door, but it wouldn’t move an inch.

“Just give me five minutes to talk with you and your husband. I promise we’ll leave after that, if you don’t want to accept my offer.”

The woman glared at Ezekiel as she said, “You know damn well you can’t really talk with my husband. Now I want you to leave before I call the cops.”

“You're right, Mrs. Bradley. Other people can’t, but we can. Just give us five minutes.”

She paused and stopped trying to close the door as she said with her eyes still narrowed, “What do you mean by that.”

Ezekiel pointed at Inoichi as he said, “While your husband might currently have brain damage, my friend here should be able to bypass the issue and talk with him properly.

The woman stared at Inoichi for a few moments before she asked, “Will that skill have hurt him in any way?”

Inoichi shook his head as he said, “No Mrs. Bradley. It’s all based in the mind itself.”

“Are you one of those meta-humans?”

Ezekiel nodded as he said, “We both are.”

She glanced between them one more time before she said, “I’ll give you five minutes, but that’s it.”

“Thank you Mrs. Bradley. I’m Ezekiel by the way and this is Inoichi.” Ezekiel said as he pointed at Inoichi.

“Just call me Faith.” She said as she opened the door and stepped out of the way.

After they stepped inside the house and closed the front door, she led them to the living room. On the floor sat an older black man who was busy playing with some toy cars. Faith gently moved next to her husband and said, “Isaiah, these men here came to talk with you.”

“I wanna play with my cars.” Isaiah said.

“It will only be for a few minutes and then they’ll leave, can you do that for me sweetie?” Faith asked.

Isaiah looked up at faith before he asked, “Can I have ice cream after?”

Faith had a sad smile as she said, “Sure honey.”

“Great!” Isaiah said before he set his cars to the side and stood up.

Ezekiel smiled and said, “It’s great to meet you Isaiah, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Ezekiel and this is Inoichi.”

Isaiah looked at both of them as he asked, “Hi. I’m Isaiah. Do you like board games?”

Ezekiel nodded and said, “I love games. Would you like to play one with us?”

Isaiah nodded as he said, “Oh! I want to play! What do you want to play? I have a bunch to pick from.”

“How about we all play something we brought with us?” Ezekiel asked the literal man child.

Isaiah nodded his head and asked, “I like new games, how do we play?”

“First let's all sit down and my friend here will show us how to play.”

After sitting down on the ground, Inoichi pulled out some seals and placed one on each person's head. Afterwards he pulled everyone into a linked mind space. Faith was a little confused at first but then Isaiah appeared next to her and after a moment he pulled her into a hug as he said, “I have no idea what just happened, but I hope it never ends.”

“Well that’s kind of the idea of this meeting.”

Faith and Isaiah turned to see Ezekiel. He smiled as he asked, “How would the both of you like a second chance at life?”