Max’s allies continued their fight and, with their high skill, they were able to do rather well even if they were outnumbered.
They moved like a single organism at times , a ring of shoulders and elbows and feet , each person aware of the other’s breathing, of the small shifts that said where an opening might appear. The group had naturally formed a circle of sorts, where they were able to cover each other’s backs in a fight. It looked messy to anyone not part of it, but there was a rhythm underneath the chaos. They had practiced this kind of movement before, in other places, for other reasons; it showed now in the way they flowed.
It wasn’t their first time fighting with each other, and on top of that everyone appeared to have been training in their own way. Small habits surfaced: the tilt of an elbow, the way a shoulder rose and fell, the quick breath before a strike. Even the pauses carried meaning , seconds taken to reset, to notice, to plan.
This included even Na. He never stopped. If anything, after the loss of the Rejected Corps and not knowing what to do with himself, he had trained harder than he had in the past. There had been a kind of hunger in him since then, a need to prove that he still had purpose. Now, not only could he give quick, concise, and heavy blows that were compact, but he could do so in rather quick succession. They were not flashy moves; they were efficient and dangerous. They landed like the finality of a verdict.
Stephen was noticing as he continued to fight himself and was analyzing Na. He watched the way Na’s shoulders coiled and released, the rhythm of his feet, the economy of movement. Small lessons showed themselves to someone looking for them.
’He’s naturally got a strong base for his hits,’ Stephen thought, eyes narrowing as he dodged a swinging pipe. ’He knows his strength and weaknesses; his body isn’t designed to be fast. He could never fight like Joe, who relies on his stamina and sharpness , Na’s body just isn’t that versatile like mine.
’His style is almost like a boxing brawler... but what’s amazing is how he can throw out haymakers after haymakers. He’s doing it without overextending, and he’s doing it without over-tiring.
’Could this be... the making... of another world champion?’
Stephen’s mind raced with comparisons, training theories, and the small, dangerous pride that comes when someone else’s potential looks like it could eclipse your own. He smiled under his breath for a moment and kept moving.
Just then a metallic bat hit Stephen right on his thigh, causing him to screech in pain. The sound tore out of him and went raw in the air. Pain sharpened his focus more than any scolding ever had.
"What is wrong with this weirdo, he was smiling in the middle of fighting us!" one of the Black Hound members shouted, anger and confusion tangling in his voice.
"Well, he ain’t smiling no more!" another barked back, the fight answering the shock with brute force.
The group swung the pipe again, but this time Stephen charged forward and threw out a punch, hitting the person in the face before the blow had landed on his leg. Movement and timing met like two gears sliding into place; the attacker’s balance broke and he staggered.
"Can’t any of you just let me dream a little!" Stephen snapped, breath heavy, the pain in his thigh forming a dull drum against adrenaline. His words were half-laugh, half-cry , a small human sound in the middle of the violence , and it hung there oddly, like an old song played in the wrong place.
As for one of the other superstars that Stephen was training, he was using his strengths to his advantage, running around all over the place. He couldn’t deal with multiple opponents at the same time yet , coming from multiple angles , so he began to break away from the others and started to run. Sprinting through narrow alleys of stacked steel, trying to keep distance and find pockets where his speed mattered more than brute force.
"Are your legs made of grandma’s or something!" Joe shouted, aiming to taunt the fighters he faced. He wanted to push their focus, to make them chase, to open a gap. After all, the last thing he wanted was to force those fighting against him to suddenly have to face others. He needed space to work , space to breathe, move, and use his own tricks.
"Yo, you guys think you’re hard, but you can’t even deal with a bit of cardio , what is this!" Joe shouted as a bike chain swung out ready to hit him again.
He moved to the side, dodging it, and then started to run around until he had run through one of the side paths and completely broken off from the others. He liked that part of fighting: the split-second decision that put distance between him and the threat. He was the kind of person who thrived in the moment when initiative let you bend the map.
’He’ll be alright, right?’ Stephen thought. ’That one always seems to make it through somehow.’ There was the small, grudging faith among fighters: even reckless ones had a way of surviving.
For Max he had managed to break away from Jett, who was his biggest worry, but now he was trying to look for where Sheri would be. The docks were an endless maze of stacked metal boxes and shadowed paths, and his eyes scanned each seam, each lid. While running around the place he also had a few people chasing after him , threats that needed to be handled, distractions that had to be trimmed away.
’Where could she be? Where would they hide her in a place filled with containers all over the place?’ He asked himself, knowing the ports were a map of possible rooms, each crate a potential cell. The place was built for hiding things.
Annoyed at the two on his trail, Max suddenly turned back around, and then lifted his leg up, kicking one right in the face and slamming their head against the container. The move was quick, not pretty, but effective. The man slid down the side, stunned from the suddenness and the force.
A bike chain was swung; Max tilted back his head just in time to avoid the attack. Reflex kept him alive again. But what he didn’t expect was the container to open right next to him, and someone to swing down a bat right at his head.
He moved his forehead to the side, causing the bat to hit against it. He could feel his skin ripping and his head swelling as blood began to drip down it. It was a sting that changed everything; the crimson line on his temple grounded him in the moment.
He quickly grabbed the bat, side-kicked the attacker with the bike chain, and then with that same head he forced it banging into the man that had come out of the container, dealing with all three of them. It was a messy, efficient response: pain returned with counter-pain, and the attackers were taught again the lesson of choosing targets.
’I need to calm down. I’m in unknown territory and on my own here. If I keep doing things like that, then I’m going to keep slipping up,’ Max thought, breath coming a little faster as adrenaline and thought scrambled for dominance. He understood how small mistakes grow into larger ones in a place like this. He had to slow his breath and sharpen his mind.
Seeing how the man had just come out of the container though, Max realized that all of them could easily be opened since the whole place was abandoned. Each crate’s door was a hollow promise , and a threat. Any one of those boxes might hold someone or something; the simple fact of abandonment made everything accessible to anyone with the will to pry metal and climb in.
"I think I know where she is."