"You need help from me to help protect your faction?" I raised my non-existent eyebrow at her in muted surprise.

"Yes I...we do, I hate to say this or admit this but..." Sheila bit down on her lips but not strong enough to draw blood. "We are not strong enough to win this fight nor do we have the chance to escape without a large number of sacrifices...me coming here is already pushing it...so please I beg of you please save my people!" At first, her voice was soft and quiet, but at the end and the more she thought about it, the louder, more passion, and more desperate she became. I could hear the trembling in her voice.

It reminds me of...while me...what I use to be like...desperate for help when I was shrouded in darkness, the early years of my life...when my parents were at their worst. The only saving salvation was that I was very young back then, and so I didn't remember most of it vividly...but my body did. What I do remember was that I cried for help...desperate for it...but it never came.

Now here there is someone who is in a position like the one I use to be in, and I had the power to help...the answer was a non-negotiable for me.

"Of course I will help you and your people. I answered with the biggest and most genuine smile I had ever given since coming to his land.

"W-What?" She looked up at me with tears in her eyes and the shock visible on her face, her guards no less shocked, at my selflessness, and my council looked on with smug grins hanging from their lips.

"Yeah, you heard me correctly. I agree to help you and your people." I turn to walk back to my council, as she continues to look upon me in confusion. After that room falls into a hushed silence, as we wait for her to speak again.

"...W-Why?" She is finally able to let out after her speechlessness, the silence, her anxiety, her curiosity, and her...suspicion all bundled together to bring out that question.

Why? Because of some devious plan or motive? Because I'm trying to play the hero? Because I want something from them?

"...Because I feel like helping." I let out as I turned my head slightly in her direction and said cooly while walking back. If I truly had a motive for helping them, it is because I want to build an alliance with the Renewal Faction. As my true goal is to build a family and expand it, that is my first and most important goal, besides protecting them of course, and I will do anything to achieve that goal, of course, I have morals and won't do anything insane or anything of that nature, but I can if I need to.

But the most important reason is that if I can, I will lend a hand from one tortured soul to another.

"That's all! Because you feeeel like it! Are you being serious, this is not a joke!" I can hear the sarcasm, and angry in her voice, as she truly thought I was joking around with her.

"I'm being dead serious. But if you don't believe me, then how about a deal?" I turned to her sharply and gazed at her intensely. She flinched at my intense gaze and gulped nervously.

"O-Ok...what's the deal?" She asked nervously, anxiety building up in her, and her guards tense up in anticipation of a fight, one they know they are bound to lose.

"Yeah, how about we make an alliance." That raised some eyebrows around the room.

""""An alliance?""""

"Yep." I say popping the "P".