A tall seller exhaled, as if nothing had happened.
"Yeah. Supply's low and the demand rate are going high which does result in that good profit. in our pockets. Now bag him up before someone spots us."
Arjen remained hidden.
'What the hell did I just walk into and what was that "incident"? That's enough, it's brief, but Mrs. Shuren… might have the rest of the story.'
He turned, making sure to tread lightly. His foot landed on a shard of glass, the sound slicing through the murmur of voices in the alley and the sellers froze.
"…Did you guys hear that?" the scarred one asked, squinting suspiciously.
The tall man lifted his gun again, his face a mask of unreadable tension.
"Over there. Go check it out."
Arjen Jurrien's heart raced,every fiber of his being screamed for him to flee, to disappear into the night. But when he tried to move, nothing happened. His legs felt like they were made of stone. His body wouldn't cooperate. Instead, he remained anchored in the shadows, waiting and watching.
'Why can't I move?'
Footsteps crunched closer. Assad's hands balled into fists, his breath coming in shallow gasps. The fear clawed at his chest, but on the outside, he was motionless almost as if it was intentional. It wasn't what he meant to convey, but to the approaching sellers, he appeared less like a terrified prey… and more like a predator lying in wait.
Arjen sensed it before he could fully grasp the strange tug at the corners of his lips and a smile, foolish and out of place, spread across his face.
'Why am I smiling?' Arjen wondered.
He tried to stop his mouth, but it refused to listen. The sellers eventually surrounded him.
"Alright, Shiko, We have to kill him right? We can't let him live since he saw us killing that guy." the scarred seller asked.
Shiko exhales slowly, a mix of annoyance and something colder simmering beneath
"Why do I even have to deal with this?" He shrugs, then shakes his head, flatly. "No witnesses remember, so just kill him."
"Damn, Shiko you're cold," the tall one chuckles, more to ease the tension than out of genuine amusement.
Inside, Arjen's mind is a chaotic storm. He wants to apologize, to plead for mercy, to explain that he was accidentally overheard in the conversation. Out of nowhere he let out a chuckle. This caught the seller's of guard.
"Kill me? You all look so worn out." he said.
The words are harsh, a string of streetwise insults and taunts crafted for this exact moment the most disrespectful thing he can think of and they hit like boiling oil. The lean one's sneer alters. The scarred man curses under his breath making even Shiko blinks, his eyes sharpening, a flash of irritation crossing his face.
They close in as one every instinct screams for him to run. But Assad's legs refused to obey. His body felt disconnected, like strings being pulled by someone else, until the first fist connects.
Pain erupts in his cheek, bright and red.
His mouth moves again, this time with purpose.
"This'll be fun, it's been a while since I've torn through some weak guys." He said.
He lunged forward like a dog desperate for scraps, his hands flying in a chaotic flurry of rough, practiced strikes designed to intimidate and overpower someone weaker.
Assad greeted them with a smirk.
He didn't flinch nor did he panic,instead he absorbed the blow. The seller's knuckles jolted. A second strike quicker, angrier whipped through the air.
Assad slid sideways.
The seller's fist sliced past his cheek where Assad's jaw had just been a heartbeat earlier. He ducked low on the rebound, catching the man's balance with a fingertip to the sternum. The scar-faced man stumbled, crashing straight into a brick wall, his face smashing against it with a sickening, wet thud.
Shiko remained calm. The tall seller was surprised with how Assad was fighting.
"This guy might be a professional street fighter. " The tall seller remarked, a mix of awe creeping into his voice.
"That doesn't mean anything to me," The scared seller shot back, pushing himself up to his knees and flexing his fingers.
He squared his shoulders, ready for whatever came next."
He's still weak in my eyes."
Shiko came up and put his hands on both the seller's shoulders.
"Don't get too cocky. Ario, Ryoko, keep an eye out for bait. Small, trashy bait."
Ario and Ryoko exchanged glances and nodded, their expressions sharpening. Assad's smile remained unsettlingly thin, a dark glimmer in his eyes.
"Now that's the spirit, I thought I would be beating up children, next thing they would be running to their mom's for help."Assad drawled.
"Man, this guy's a pain," Ryoko muttered under his breath.
"Yeah let's take him down a notch," Ario grinned.
Ario charged in, his fists swinging in wide.
Ryoko, smaller and quicker, darted in like a viper, ready to strike and confuse.
Assad didn't flinch; he met the blow and tilted his chin back just enough to let the knuckles graze his cheek.
His hand slid down Ario's bicep, gripped his elbow, and with a sharp twist, the bigger man's shoulder gave way.
Ryoko burst in, quick and sharp with a knife. Assad stepped into the range of the knife, closing the gap where those knives became useless.
He pressed his shoulder against Ryoko's chest in a close, crushing embrace and the kid let out a thin squeal as his breath escaped. Assad's forearm slammed across Ryoko's throat, hard enough to rattle his teeth. Ario came with a kick aimed at Assad's knees. Assad dropped his weight like a coiled spring, redirecting the kick with a flick of his foot, then hooked Ario's ankle.
The big man toppled sideways, flinging his arms out to brace himself against a dumpster. Assad slid behind and drove his heel into the small of Ario's back.The impact folded the big man in half; his ribs protested with wet snaps and sharp curses. Ryoko lashed out with quick palm strikes aimed to blind; Assad stepped aside, letting the arms graze him, feeling the rush of air and sweat.
He countered with a sideways elbow that struck Ryoko's jaw like a cannon, sending the kid spinning into the wall. Ryoko's skull met the brick with a hollow crack. Assad stood on the body of Ryoko with a very disappointed expression as they were totally weak here.
"They could not even last two minutes of fighting and they called themselves gangsters."
Shiko got annoyed by this; he did not expect that both Ario and Ryoko would be taken out this fast, he had no other choice but to fight Assad himself.
"You are one of those cocky types, am I right?"
Assad shifted his gaze to Shiko.
"I wouldn't say that, you guys are just weak, calling yourself drug dealers. That's disrespectful even for you guys."
"Is that so?"
Assad blinked his eyes and Shiko disappeared, this made him shocked and he started looking in every direction.
He accidentally blinked again and Shiko was right in front of him. Shiko went for a punch only to be dodged by Assad, but that was a feint as Shiko turns with a fast reflex and lands a kick. This forces Assad to block with his arms by crossing them.
Meanwhile Arjwn Jurrien, terrified, without understanding what's going on his body is moving on its own.
'WHY, WHY, WHY? WHY IS THIS BODY MOVING ON ITS OWN I'M NOT IN CONTROL WHAT'S GOING ON?'
Assad went for the offensive but was blocked, he tried to make a feint but is blocked as well, this annoyed Assad so he goes for a calculated move, by moving with a kick mid air this makes Shiko alerted so he tries to dodge but then Assad drops and kicks some broken glass into his eyes but Shiko slapped those glasses away but they scratched his hand.
The glass on the ground had broken. On the palm of Shiko's hand he saw a slight cut and the appearance of blood.
Assad grinned.
"Got you."
Shiko put down his hand and looked at the shallow cut made by the glass.
"Cute."
Before Assad could respond, Shiko stepped forward and punched him in the ribs. The punch felt similar to getting hit by a car going more than 35 mph. Air exploded out of Assad's lungs and he left the ground, but unlike the pain from being punched, he never lost his grin.
From deep within Arjen, the screaming was horrendous as he yelled for himself.
"What the hell was that?!"
Assad got himself up to his feet, and Shiko didn't pursue him; he stayed still.
"You have some decent tricks, but you're relying on them because your fundamentals are lacking," Shiko said calmly.
Assad spit blood at Shiko.
"You talk too much."
Assad then took off after Shiko, this time instead of punching, he sweep kicked Shiko's ankle. Shiko hopped back, and again Assad hit him with his elbow, but again he blocked it and each punch was the same.
He eventually stepped back for a moment to catch his breath.
"...F*ck!"
The smile disappeared from Assad's face completely. When Shiko turned his head quickly towards Assad, he noticed that the expression on his face had changed.
"Finally had some revelation?"
Assad started clicking his tongue, though all he wanted to do was fight on, as strong as his instincts were, they were not enough anymore. He was getting beaten badly, every attack he made was either blocked or countered easily.
'Why was I able to defeat his other guys so quickly and now I can't even land a single hit on him?'
As the fight continued on, Assad found himself feeling more and more frustrated. In order to survive he must run which is something that he truly hates and currently doing so, he took off running in a different direction without a second thought.
Arjen was stunned.
'Wait, are we running?'
Shiko continued to watch in silence.
"Boss, what are you doing, aren't you going to go after him?"Ryoko asked.
Shiko continued putting his hands in his pants pocket.
"I'm not going to chase after him."
"Not going to chase him?" Ryoko repeated Shiko's statement.
Shiko looked towards the direction Assad took off and the wind blew through the night air thinly and gently.
"He already knew that he had lost and besides, that was not the interesting thing."
Ario turned frowning.
"Interesting? What do you mean by that?"
Shiko smiled faintly while walking away from the broken piece of history that was the alley. Assad's pace slowed and his breath began to slow down after getting blood all over himself from his broken nose; but even though he was totally exhausted, a small grin appeared back on his face.
"Heh."
Arjen had not yet comprehended the significance of the smile, but in the next moment, he regained control of Assad's body.
"What the hell? I'm back in control again?"
He looked at the source of the blood that he saw dripping onto him, realizing then how completely drained from fatigue and exhaustion he was.
"I don't understand anything that just happened. I felt completely disconnected from what had been going on, that is, until I took over once again…"
While trying to understand what had happened, he suddenly stopped and looked up, taking in his surroundings. It looked like he was in some form of a town and from the condition of the buildings within it, it looked like it might be part of the poor sector of the city, yet the town was alive with activity.
He exited the alley with no experience of anything happening within the city, the city being reminiscent of a desolate Chinese city that would have corresponding poverty around it.
Arjen was astonished by the poverty depicted by the structures, the individuals themselves all appeared fairly normal. As he observed, he saw older males, and ladies, smoking tobacco from large pipes.
'By the looks of it, this has to be in old age right or am I wrong?
With an absence of better ideas, Arjen decided that he would try to tap into Assad's experience to determine when the world was taking place by using Assad's experiences. Arjen closed his eyes to focus his attention on his goal, and some of the stuff referenced in Assad's experience was relatively jumbled with a lot of the data being blurry while some were completely unable to be found.
Through persistence, he had the benefit of finding the location for the period of the world.
'The architecture looked centuries old, but Assad's memories contradicted everything. It does show signs of the mid 1990s.’
As Arjen struggled to catch his breath, after having completed a successful search, he recalled Shuren mentioning to go meet her at the other side of town, maybe the town he was in at the moment had to be it.
"I've got to be here but where would she be?" he said aloud.
Should he go looking for her despite the increased risk of getting lost or stay in one spot and wait?
"This is very frustrating! I really hate this!"