Crouched behind the cold metal bumper of the parked SUV, the two young women were completely frozen in absolute disbelief. One fleeting moment, they were safely drinking coffee in a warm cafe, entirely removed from the dark realities of the city. Now, they were paralyzed by the terrifying realization that they might actually not live to see another day.
Both of them had endured incredibly frightening, life-altering experiences before. Cindy still carried the heavy, lingering trauma from when she had desperately gone on the dangerous search for Abby, walking blindly into the dark corners of the underworld and finding nothing but despair. Sheri bore her own deep psychological scars from the terrifying day when she had been ruthlessly kidnapped by the Black Hounds—she still vividly remembered the cold steel of the van, the smell of damp concrete, and the suffocating feeling of absolute helplessness.
They intimately knew exactly how cold and dangerous the real world could truly be. That grim understanding was exactly why, when they were peering over the trunk and seeing the aggressive syndicate armies fighting against each other with lethal intent in the courtyard, both of them had instantly agreed that the absolute first course of action would be to silently retreat and leave the district.
But their escape route had been completely cut off.
The two of them might have hypothetically been able to scramble out of the situation if they foolishly chose to fight back against the lone Gilt Rat holding the bat, but reality wasn’t an action movie. There was an incredibly high probability that they would just get seriously, permanently hurt. They lacked the training, the strength, and the sheer malice required to take down a hardened gang member.
And so, they were frozen in pure, unadulterated fear, bracing for the heavy aluminum bat to come crashing down on them... until a highly unexpected, vibrant individual had confidently stepped out from the shadows to intercept the blow.
"Why... why is she actively helping us? We don’t even know who she is," Sheri mumbled, her voice trembling as she stared at the back of the stranger’s bright pink hair.
At the very least, as the dust settled from the intercepted strike, the two girls finally knew exactly what the large, cloth-wrapped object was that had been sticking out from the woman’s back earlier. The heavy fabric had fallen away, revealing that the weapon she expertly wielded was a perfectly carved, dense wooden practice sword.
"You stupid bitch!" the Gilt Rat thug shouted, his face twisting into an ugly scowl of wounded pride. His hands were completely numb from the jarring impact of the block. "You honestly think just because you have a little wooden toy weapon that I can’t easily take out some fragile girl like you?!"
The scarred man wound his arm back, his muscles tensing, and then charged forward aggressively, aiming a devastating haymaker directly at her jaw.
When he swung his heavy arm, relying entirely on brute strength, the pink-haired woman didn’t even flinch. She shifted her footing with practiced grace, stepping smoothly inside his wide guard. With a sharp flick of her wrists, she whacked his incoming hand completely out of the way. The dense wood struck his forearm with a loud, sickening crack, hitting the bone so hard that it forcefully flung his arm high up into the air, leaving his entire torso completely exposed.
Without missing a single beat, she fluidly pivoted her hips. Leading with the blunt tip of the wooden sword, she thrust the weapon forward with terrifying, pinpoint precision, piercing the man squarely in the dead center of his chest.
The man groaned in agonizing pain as all the oxygen was instantly forced from his lungs. The kinetic impact pushed his heavy body stumbling backward. Gasping for air, he desperately went to grip his bruised chest, attempting to clumsily reach out and hold onto the wooden sword to stop her next attack.
But the weapon had already been swiftly pulled back. The woman seamlessly redirected the momentum of her previous thrust, bringing the wooden blade around in a whistling, horizontal arc. The heavy wood swung around and hit the man squarely on the side of his head. The concussive blow almost spun his entire body around like a top before he collapsed heavily to the concrete floor, completely knocked out cold.
"Wow," Cindy breathed, her eyes wide in sheer disbelief as she slowly stood up from behind the car. "That was... that was honestly kind of awesome. It was like watching some type of choreographed action movie or something."
"Right? She took a hardened gang member down so incredibly easily," Sheri agreed, her heart still hammering against her ribs as she stared at the unconscious thug.
The pink-haired woman herself, however, didn’t look triumphant or boastful. Instead, she lowered the wooden sword and was currently staring down at her own open palms with a look of profound, deeply unsettling confusion.
"Did I... did I actually just do that?" she mumbled to herself, her brow furrowing as if she was trying to solve a complex riddle. "It was exactly as if my hands and feet just moved entirely by themselves. The muscle memory just took over."
"Thank you! Thank you so much!" Sheri said, cautiously coming over and breaking the strange tension. She looked at the woman with a mixture of immense gratitude and deep suspicion. "But... why exactly are you here in this restricted zone? Why did you come all the way down this blocked-off street? Was it specifically to help us?"
"Wait, hold on. Maybe she’s actually meant to be a part of the gang fight happening in the courtyard," Cindy deduced, narrowing her eyes as she looked toward the Fortis building. "That would actually make a lot of logical sense. She must be hired security."
However, the pink-haired woman quickly shook her head, dismissing the theory.
"No, I don’t know any of those angry men over there," the woman replied, her tone surprisingly soft and earnest. "When you two left the street earlier, you were looking incredibly worried and frightened. I thought that something terrible might be genuinely troubling you, so I decided to quietly follow behind you just to make sure you were safe. And then, I saw that you were cornered and in severe trouble."
The given context of exactly why this heavily armed, highly skilled woman had randomly decided to stalk them from the coffee shop sounded undeniably weird. If it was absolutely any other ordinary situation on a normal day, the two girls would probably be entirely freaked out and calling the police over such unsettling behavior. But since she had quite literally just saved their lives from a brutal beating, they simply couldn’t bring themselves to criticize her questionable boundaries too much.
"Oi! What the hell is going on over there?! I think we’re being actively attacked from behind!" one of the Gilt Rat grunts shouted from the edge of the courtyard.
The loud crack of the wooden sword and the heavy thud of their fallen comrade had successfully drawn unwanted attention. Now, several more hardened syndicate members were turning away from the main Fortis building and aggressively moving their way down the street, drawing iron pipes and serrated knives.
One of the more agile men sprinted forward, climbed rapidly onto the dented hood of a parked car, and then leaped fiercely through the air directly toward the three women.
However, the pink-haired woman didn’t panic. She reaffirmed her tight two-handed grip on the wooden sword, her eyes turning cold and calculating once again. She took one decisive step forward, meeting the descending attacker perfectly. With a devastating, upward golf swing, the heavy wooden blade struck the man squarely across the chest mid-air, entirely reversing his momentum and sending him flying backward until he crashed heavily into the shattered windshield of another abandoned vehicle.
Simultaneously, a second man armed with a hunting knife lunged out from the side, thrusting the jagged blade forward aimed right at her ribs. But the woman was effortlessly able to spin on her heel, her body twisting like a dancer to easily avoid the lethal thrust by mere inches.
Using the momentum of her spin, she completely bypassed the knife-wielder and attacked the third man rushing in right behind him. She snapped the butt of her wooden sword upward, hitting the third man sharply under the chin. As his head snapped back, she fluidly brought the weapon down, whacking his legs in a sweeping, horizontal motion that completely knocked his feet out from under him, making him slip and crash to the pavement.
When the initial man with the knife frantically turned around, attempting to stab the evasive woman in the back, her instincts were already two steps ahead. She had already spun back around, bringing the heavy wooden blade down in a crushing overhead strike. The wood connected squarely with his face, instantly sending him crumbling to the ground in a heap.
Three armed, lethal syndicate members dealt with in a matter of seconds.
"Come on, let’s get out of here right now," the pink-haired woman said, not even breathing heavily as she looked back at Sheri and Cindy. "The more of these thugs I take out, the more of a public scene I’m going to make. They have an entire army up there; it will be an endless wave of them."
The two terrified girls certainly didn’t need to be told twice. Driven by pure adrenaline, the three of them quickly turned their backs on the escalating gang war and frantically rushed out of the area, sprinting as fast as their legs could carry them.
Thankfully, it appeared that the rest of the Gilt Rat group was far too heavily focused on trying to breach the fortified Billion Bloodline building to give the fleeing trio any full-time attention or send a dedicated pursuit squad after them.
Eventually, after a lung-burning sprint through the twisting alleyways, the group had safely ended up back at the rear fire exit of the quiet business building they had originally used to secretly enter the cordoned-off district in the first place.
"I think... I think we’re finally safe here," Sheri gasped, leaning heavily against the cool brick wall and clutching her aching chest. "I definitely don’t think we should try to go back out there today."
"Agreed. We will just have to try and find some other, much safer way to ask Max about the truth next time," Cindy replied, wiping the cold sweat from her forehead.
"Max?" the pink-haired woman mumbled, her ears perking up as she caught the familiar name.
"Oh, right! I’m so sorry, thank you so incredibly much for stepping in and helping us back there... erghh," Sheri paused, standing up straight and looking at their mysterious savior with a deep sense of gratitude. "We don’t even know your name."
"Ah... right. My name?" the woman said softly.
She raised a hand, gently placing her index finger against her lower lip in a gesture of deep thought. The woman’s contrasting actions were certainly weird throughout the entire ordeal—shifting from a lethal, cold-blooded martial artist to an innocent, almost childlike demeanor in the blink of an eye.
"My name is... Vere," the woman finally answered, offering a small, uncertain smile. "Just call me Vere."