• • Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way
• October 11, 2025

Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way (Chapter 26)

Aleti Ra’non 

Promises

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I turn the shower dial off, and try to get out before it goes from being scalding hot to frigid cold. It’s broken, no one will fix it because Mom likes it..

This is Mom’s shower. I can’t use the one in Jackal’s old room since I can’t even reach the temperature dial without it being a hassle. 

Tonight is the last night before the Ruleden Tourney and I want to talk to Rom before he goes to sleep. I mean, rest is important, but on the last night before such a big day, who can sleep? This feels like the time for several different power naps.

Afterwards, after Rom wins I assume we won’t be staying here much longer. I haven’t asked Mom where we’ll go next, but I can see why we wouldn’t stay here afterwards. We can’t sit around and walk the Rivertans through every step of their own problems.

KNOCK! KNOCK! comes from the door. Then I hear a guy yell, “Aleti?! Are you still in there? I was kind of planning on going to sleep, and you… you’re kind of still in there.”

It is Rom. Shit, I forgot Mom is letting Rom sleep in her room. The Reeky-tites are in Womby’s bedroom, and she’s staying on the lounge couch, it’s all a mess. It’s weird to have so many people living in such a small space, a weird first for me.

“Give me a minute! I just got out of the shower!”

“Oh, sorry, my bad,” he apologizes. 

I quickly throw on my clothes, when I call to him, “Come in!”

The Rango comments to Rom, ‘You may now enter Romulic. Aleti is no longer nude.’

“Rango!” I yell at it embarrassed. 

When the door opens Rom walks in with a comical look on his face. He reminds me, “While I don’t know why the computer mentioned it, you do know it’s understandably normal to be naked after a shower.”

“I know… but… still.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles a sardonic nod of the head. Then Rom walks past me and adds, “Goodnight, Leti.” 

He had started calling me that the day before yesterday after I told him what I was named after. 

Wait, he said goodnight. Does he really just want to go right to sleep? I do complete a one-eighty turn and practically yell at him, “I thought we could talk!” 

He practically jumps after I yell. As if I hadn’t yell, I repeat more softly, “I thought we could hang out. This may be the last time for a while.”

Rom gives me this depressed smile. “Could very well be the last time, I imagine life is going to be a bit busier.”

“Yeah,” I say as I twiddle with my fingers behind my back. But that’s a good thing, right? We’re here to change things, change is good, in the long run at least, even if it sucks in the moment.  “Hey, Rom, you don’t really think you can lose, do you?”

“Of course I do,” he admits. “Leti, I have to be ready for anything. I can’t underestimate my opponent, in most ways that’s worse than overestimating him,” then he adds, as if I really care, “or her.”

I let out a little cackle.

I don’t know why, but I just feel really worried now that I realize he thinks he may lose. It’s like he’s stealing away my own confidence. “You can’t think like that! You have to walk in like you know you’re going to win!” I yell at him.

“Why? You don’t disrespect your opponent, even if you are one-hundred percent sure that you’ll beat them. Kind of sounds like a dick move to assume you’ll win?”

“Yeah, but it’ll make me feel better!”

I wish I hadn’t said that immediately. Tomorrow isn’t about me, I’m barely included. I’m just… I’m just a spectator.

I immediately apologize. “I’m sorry, I know that’s not fair.”

Rom mutters as he reaches a hand towards me, “Leti…”

I shake my head as I wrap my arms around me. I admit, “I can’t really do anything. I’m not a planner like my mom, I’m not a part of the plan like you, even Terra gets to be a distraction, but I just have to sit watch my friend maybe….”

“Maybe what?”

I try not to look at him, it feels particularly… vile to tell someone you think they will die. It’s not a video game, or a book, or some metaphor for social suicide, Rom could actually get beaten to death, or stabbed, or bludgeoned or whatever they use as weapons if they allow them. “I think it’s because, while the chance is small, you could get seriously hurt, or die.

“You can’t die.”

“Why?” he asks almost comically.

“I… you’re… I don’t have a lot of friends… my mom and her friends don’t really count, but then, you’re also my first, rival I guess? I need to beat you, I want you there. Life’s been pretty lonely, I didn’t realize how lonely it was until there was… not alone.

“I know that’s mega-unfair… but… I kind of want you around for everything, especially to beat you.”

Rom’s chuckle helps me feel a bit less tense. “Why do you need to beat me so bad?”

“That’s the only part you heard?” I ask him, a bit exasperated, as if he isn’t clearly messing with me.

“That’s the thing you came back to when you said you wanted me there. It wasn’t to see you pass a test, or get powers, or save someone. You want beat me up, it’s kind of funny.”

Oh well, I guess it’s funny on paper, but it never made me laugh. “My… mom is a… a lot, she’s strong, she’s a leader, she’s got… credentials, whatever that means.”

“You mean medals?”

I laugh at my own mistake.

“Yeah, and my dad does too, and… I don’t live up to that. The least I can do is to get stronger, be useful, be more than deadweight.

“And then I see you, and I know that that’s not enough. You fight to protect your people, you find something you can actually do. Who am to sit here and do nothing? And beating you… feels like the best first step I can come up with.”

It feels pathetic to admit all that, to tell him just how small I really am in the world collapsing and rebuilding and collapsing again all around us. That in all of that noise, the only thing I can pick out as a goal is to be stronger than him.

How small I must look… probably even smaller than how I feel.

“Okay, I won’t die then.”

I look up to see his expression, rather nonchalant, unchanged by what I’ve said.

“I won’t die, and you’ll get your chance to beat me, and I’ll make it hard. You know, it’ll give you time, give you the chance to come up with a better life goal than beating me.”

“Thank you, Rom… for living so I can kick your ass.”

We don’t really laugh, it’s like we’re about to, but we just don’t.

“What if I win and I just keep kicking your ass?” he asks me.

“Then you will forever be my rival.”

Rom smirks. He looks up as if considering something and comments, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a rival before. I look forward to it.”