The Red Nights

" Are you really serious ? " Jamal asked to Lina with a surprised tone.

Lina remained with her fake innocent smile on her face when she responded " it is the crucial point of my plan. There is no way we could make it without that " " by the way I don't know where is the problem in what I asked you about " .

She gazed at the three people in the living room, they were presenting a dumbfounded expression on their faces. Jamal took a low and calm voice " Do you realize the width of your request? You want me to go finishing the war in the neighbors cities all by myself. "

Indeed , when Lina started to expose her plan to defeat the army of undeads which would come to intend destroying their dear Stainfall city in almost one week. She explained to them that before they looked for a way to focus the attack of the undeads only on Natasha, who was the only one able to kill them definitively, they had to find out, at first, a way to murder the humans. " The dream of Matteo explicitly said that at the beginning they would come in their human condition " she explained earlier " so we would have to kill them on a first time in their human form then kill them again after they transform into undeads" .

" Yeah I'm already aware of that and I think I got your point" Jamal said " For the plan to work well, we have only two options; whether we lay a trap for outlaws to guide where would be Natasha and kill them there or we kill them directly after they crossed the barrier and we will guide the undeads at the specific venue where we would wipe them out " he paused " however ... "

Natasha cut him and continued " both of these options will fail if we don't manage to kill them all at the same time, as they might get scared and in the panic spread in the town which would be the worst scenario "

" Yes . That is why I suggested to go stopping the war in the other cities, I'm sure you already know why I asked this. At this rate those battles would be fatal for the both sides and only the death would come out victorious" she turned to Jamal " however if you go to help them now, we might be able to limit the losses "

In a simple way , her plan consisted to recuperate the remaining soldiers in the neighbors cities who managed to survive after Jamal would end up the wars , then she would use them in their battle against the undeads. She explained that those people, whom they would save from the war, would be the solution to their problem as they would be largely enough to kill all the outlaws in one attack.

" What I wanted to say is that if we help them in their battles they would help us back in our battle, it would not be too difficult for me to implement an ambush which would serve to murder all the outlaws in one surprise attack, I just need those men for that "

" But you are asking Jamal to go winning four wars by himself moreover he must take less than one week to do it in order to organize our main battle " Matteo tried to resonate " how can he do it ? It is almost impossible, it is not like I'm trying to be pessimistic but I recall you that those wars have been keeping on for months ".

Lina rolled her eyes to show that she was exasperated " Oh please , I could have finished them since a long time if those macho men were not so stubborn to not let a woman guide them. I proposed to the mayors to let me commend their armies but they all refused otherwise they would all be over at the time we speak. I don't have any other choice but relying on Jamal "

Matteo turned to Jamal and tried desperately to convince him " it's suicide " he said with pleading eyes, but as his usual he chose to not run away from his task, he smiled at Matteo and within his eyes there was no trace of fear . That is one of the reasons Matteo was still a bit afraid of him, [ a man who has no fear to lose his life, that is what he is ] the boy thought. He turned to Natasha but she was close to him enough to know that he would never step back .

" Perhaps I should accompany him, like it would be less dangerous " she suggested as she thought that instead of trying to convince him in vain to not go it would be easier and more useful to help him in that way, but Lina directly turned down her idea . " Why ? " Natasha asked with a mix of anger, deception and astonishment in her voice.

" It is not the kind of mission you can handle " Lina responded , but it seemed that it was not very convincing as Natasha responded " in which way , he fully trained me to be able to use any kind of firearms, why would we have to always let him handle the dangerous situation and wait for him to come back safely ? "

Jamal sighed loudly and stepped forward and all eyes turned to him " well, first of all thank you guys to worry so much about me , I'm very grateful " he paused and gazed at Matteo and Natasha and at that moment they realized that his decision was already taken " but I will go and I will go all alone without you Natasha. "

She tried to protest but he didn't let her do and directly went on explaining himself " you have one week to upgrade your mastery of the sword so as to be able to deal with an army of more than one hundred super dead humans estimated, you cannot waste your time. Moreover in a raid like this I prefer to be alone and switch to mode rampage "

He laid his right hand on Natasha's shoulder " it will be okay, I will come back in six days with the reinforcements "

She didn't reply and started to remember two year ago when he decided to stop the increase of criminality in the city. He had a similar speech with the same determination and at that time he accepted Lina and her to help him by the only condition that they would not take part in the fights. At that time Natasha asked him how would he fight all those people as the criminality was constantly increasing but he just responded briefly [ now I understand, surely back then he already decided to kill whoever committed a severe crime without any trial , he kept his mouth closed as he thought I was too young to understand ] she realized [ it is his nature to always want carrying others weights even though it may hurt him instead of watching them suffer ] .

" You cannot carry our weights and problems all by yourself eternally " she said with a very low but everyone heard it, Matteo bowed his head and it could be seen the culpability on Lina's face but Jamal remained proud still smiling " I know that and I'm waiting for the day you will be able to release me , even a little , from those charges ".

[ how can this day come if you turn me down everytime I try ] but that she didn't let it come out from her mind .

" So what shall we do now as everything has been already decided? " Matteo asked to change the subject as he thought that the mood was about to become a little too dismal. " I wanted to discuss about Jamal's mission but I don't think you would want " Lina said " so maybe we'll go home and make the necessary arrangements "

" No need since we are here, let's discuss together " Jamal replied " first of all I have to know which among the four cities needs my help the most " .

" The ideal would be to go in the city where there are more people from the good side, since we are doing it to recruit soldiers " Matteo suggested.

" Said like that it could be thought that I'm just a cold hearted girl only interested by the profit " Lina commented.

" But this is exactly what you said " He replied, for almost ten seconds they engaged in a battle of look before Natasha interrupted them. " He should, on contrary, concentrate his efforts where the situation is the worst. Lina said that the four cities have the advantage over the outlaws but I doubt the situation is the same everywhere " she said.

" Yeah you're right, in the cities the number of soldiers is big , their situation must be more or less stable , counter to those with a small number of soldiers remaining and where the situation can change at any moment " Jamal commented.

" Wouldn't it be easier and faster to go where the situation is stable, there you would quickly finish and it would be a time saving, wouldn't it? " Matteo asked.

" It is the opposite, there we don't expect some immediate losses as the fight doesn't go on in the same rate like the cities with a small number of soldiers where we record two deaths per day " Lina explained.

The boy nodded to show that he understood. Natasha said " now we decided by which order he will intervene in the cities it remains another problem all the soldiers may not be able to fight in our own battle. We should not forget that the most of them must be severely injured with very grave wounds, so we may not receive the amount of soldiers we need " .

Lina shook her head " it is not a problem since I already considered that in my calculations. I inquire frequently about their conditions and according to my estimates we must get the number of soldiers we need or more than it ".

Seeing that the most important points have been already discussed, Jamal thought it was the moment to conclude the meeting , he clapped his hands and said " Well I think we came in a agreement so I shall go home to prepare to leave by tomorrow Lina will give me the details I must know " he turned to Natasha " from now on you will be in charge of both the patrols and the fighting trainings at the dojo , so tomorrow you have to wake up early and go alone at the barrier if there is no problem signaled you go on in your sword training ".

She nodded as to confirm that she accepted the request. Then Lina said to Matteo " I may be too busy to coordinate Jamal's mission , so I may not be able to fulfill my work at city hall so you will take care of it and you will have to continue collecting the information I need for the project we discussed earlier " and he nodded as well.

Both Jamal and Natasha were perplexed, he headed on to ask her " What is it? " , but she didn't respond to him and instead she chuckled slightly then she said " never mind, I never interfered in your affairs between you and your students so don't interfere in mine between my student and I " .

" Since when did I become your student? " Matteo asked . Lina laid a finger on her lips as to told him to not talk " you're right, you are not my student you are my probationer " .

They said goodbye to each other and they left, as Jamal was reaching the door Natasha shouted to him " good luck and see you in six days " , he smiled and responded to her " thank you and good luck to you as well, see you next week " Lina sent her a flying kiss and they left the house.