Aron stood perfectly straight amidst the settling dust, his grip tight on the cold grips of his two heavy steel batons. Under normal tactical circumstances, he would have honorably taken on his opponent straight ahead, facing him face-to-face from the very start. But he had deliberately decided on a lethal surprise attack from the ceiling to desperately try and secure the upper hand.
Even if he didn’t manage to completely beat the intruder in a single, skull-crushing hit, he reasoned that he could have at least severely injured him to gain some type of physical advantage for the brutal fight ahead.
Because when Aron had intensely watched this masked man through the security cameras—analyzing the simple, terrifyingly efficient movements he had used while casually slaughtering the frontline guards—he had absolutely no doubt in his mind. This person was an elite, trained killer bred by the Black Hand.
However, there were a few heavy, lingering issues that Aron was deeply worried about regarding this confrontation. For one, Aron had officially left the Black Hand at a very young age.
He had practically abandoned the entire brutal organization and their twisted assassin project, having been conveniently reported as "killed in action" so he could completely disappear and go to live a quiet life protecting the Stern family. Because he had left so long ago, it was incredibly hard to physically recognize any of the other killers from his original training camp. This was especially true since everyone had aged significantly, and it was highly unlikely that the masked man named Skull standing in front of him would have known his true identity either.
With this heavy secret resting on his shoulders, there was always a dark, nagging worry lingering in the back of Aron’s mind: What if his lethal skills had dulled? He had been rigorously broken and trained to be the ultimate, emotionless soldier from a very young age, growing up in a horrific environment where one needed to absolutely excel in violence, otherwise they would have ended up dead in a ditch. But that bloody, hyper-vigilant life had essentially stopped when he joined the Sterns. Meanwhile, the ruthless assassins around him in the Black Hand would have actively continued to live that exact, murderous lifestyle every single day.
Because of that massive gap in active experience, he was genuinely unsure how he would fare in a duel to the death.
"You must be incredibly confident in your skills," Skull said, interrupting Aron’s thoughts as he loudly cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing in the empty gym. "Since you’re standing here waiting for me completely on your own. But I’ll tell you right now, kid... that is a fatal mistake."
Skull slowly started to move forward, his footsteps silent on the rubber matting, while Aron stayed perfectly still, waiting for the exact moment to strike. Skull kept inching closer and closer, closing the gap, until finally, he stepped right into the lethal range of the batons.
Aron made the first blinding move. He violently swung his right steel baton forward in a deadly horizontal arc aimed at Skull’s temple. Immediately, Skull leaned his upper body backward with terrifying flexibility, allowing the heavy steel to whistle harmlessly past his mask by a mere millimeter.
Using the momentum of his dodge, Skull lifted his leg to snap a brutal counter-kick into Aron’s ribs. But Aron was ready; he perfectly blocked the incoming leg, violently cracking his left baton down hard against Skull’s shin bone. Instantly capitalizing on the block, Aron stepped aggressively forward and spun his entire body.
Using the centrifugal force of the spin to drastically increase his raw physical strength, Aron swung his right baton down from high above. The heavy steel slammed mercilessly onto Skull’s crossed forearms. Skull had barely managed to raise his arms to block the overhead attack, but the kinetic impact was so incredibly heavy that it violently forced the assassin down onto one knee.
But Skull didn’t freeze. Rather quickly from his kneeling position, he aggressively swept his leg out in a low arc to sweep Aron’s feet from under him. Aron expertly jumped the sweep, taking two quick tactical steps backward to safely reposition himself, resetting his stance as if he was perfectly ready to go again.
Skull slowly stood back up. He dusted off his leather jacket, and the arrogant, confident aura he had projected had slightly shifted.
"I... I honestly can’t believe it," Skull said. His deadly serious demeanor suddenly broke, turning into a dark, echoing fit of laughter. "I had heard quiet rumors in the underworld that my prized student might have perished recently. They said that someone had impossibly bested him in a fighting ring. That was the absolute last anyone saw of him."
Skull shook his head, looking at Aron with a new, twisted sense of respect. "I really thought to myself... someone that I had personally trained, and who possessed that mad scientist’s mechanical exoskeleton... could he have really lost his life to someone in this pathetic, no-name Bloodline group I had never even heard of before today? It didn’t make sense. But looking at you... now it does."
Refusing to listen to the villain’s monologue, Aron seamlessly shifted his weight forward again. He closed the distance and aggressively swung both of his heavy steel batons simultaneously from opposite sides, aiming directly toward Skull’s head as if he was going to violently squish his skull like a vice.
But just before the steel could crush his skull, a deafening, metallic CLANG echoed through the gym. Sparks flew as Aron’s batons violently skidded across Skull’s raised fists before they were aggressively swatted away.
Stepping back, Aron could finally see it clearly. Skull was now wearing two heavy, reinforced brass knuckle dusters on his hands, gleaming in the fluorescent light. And the assassin clearly possessed the terrifying raw strength to properly use them and back up his lethal counter-attacks.
"It’s completely true, isn’t it! I can tell without a shadow of a doubt that you are a rogue member of the Black Hand!" Skull laughed, his voice dripping with sinister delight. "The exact, clinical way you fight. The flawless way you reposition yourself after a strike. You are doing absolutely everything perfectly by the textbook. It certainly explains why you were so incredibly confident in facing me alone."
Skull slowly paced to the side, tapping his brass knuckles together.
"I bet the ignorant fools in the Bloodline group would never, ever imagine that they were harboring an active member of the Black Hand in their ranks. But the funny thing is... I don’t recognize you at all?" Skull said, raising a skeptical eyebrow beneath his mask. "Were you a high number? A disposable grunt? I never really bothered to learn the faces of the higher numbers before they died."
Skull lowered his fists slightly, his tone shifting to one of absolute, terrifying authority.
"Well, let me make you a generous offer right now so we don’t actually have to fight to the death," Skull suggested, extending a metal-clad hand. "Since you were once a part of the Black Hand, you should inherently know exactly how entirely useless it is to try and fight me. Stop this foolish defense and rejoin my side. Otherwise, you’ll just throw your life away in this gym for a boss who doesn’t even know what you really are."
Skull’s eyes narrowed, pinning Aron in place.
"Because right now, you aren’t fighting a foot soldier. You are fighting against a single-digit Black Hand member."