A group of 4 unlikely people were walking through the streets of Gehenna. A small child with dirty blonde hair and clothing leading them at the front, with Akira trailing close behind him while Melon and Min-Su hung in the back.
After dealing with the thug and making a quick escape, Akira offered to take the child back home. Since he interfered, he was worried that the Black Bone clan member would follow him after they left for revenge.
"So what's your name?"
"My big sis told me not to tell that to strangers."
"But we can follow you home?"
The boy remained quiet for a couple seconds, before quickly responding,
"It's Leroe."
An Awkward silence hung in the air after he replied. As they passed by the numerous alley's of this filthy place, they all had a corpse or two rotting inside them. It turns out that the body Akira and co had found earlier, was a very common occurrence in this city of death.
It wasn't just that too, but every now and then, they would see members of the Black Bone clan harassing other people too. Akira wanted to get involved, he wanted to teach them a lesson, and yet, Min-Su and Melon quickly stopped him.
If he got involved with them again, the three would surely stand out even more, and they would get caught before they could even do anything.
'Disgusting! Absolutely disgusting! This place.. this damn city, how could they do this? Just to what? Preserve an image? The second I get my hands on whoever's running this place, I'll kill him for sure. If I knew the Unison council were such scumbags, I wouldn't have come here in the first place.'
This feeling of hatred and anger quietly grew inside Akira, until it slowly but surely started to leak out. Min-Su was the first to notice it, and quickly patted him on the shoulder.
Although he only nodded, Akira understood what he was trying to say.
"Thanks..."
But even then, that did not quell his rightful anger.
**
As night fell, the group eventually arrived at a building near the walls of Gehenna city. Surprisingly, this place seemed awfully clean compared to its much worse environment, but it was still quite dirty compared to the outside.
It was a two storey terrace house made out of thin walls of steel sheets, with partly shattered windows. The whole thing was clearly rusted as a single wooden door stood as its entrance, but unlike many of the homes they've walked past already, this one had the embers of lighting visible through the windows.
Leroe walked up to the door and was just about to open it, but before he could even grab onto the door knob, it opened by itself. The soft voice of a women then spoke to him,
"Leroe? Where were you?"
The woman herself had long Maroon hair with slightly tanned skin. Under her lip she had a mole, and her face was unusually beautiful despite how filthy this place was, making her appear like a ray of light in this dark pit. She also wore a long dress that resembled something closer to rags, but even those were unusually clean for these parts.
Despite that however, her presence was simply radiating. Immediately, Kai fell into a trance, and just as quickly it was shattered.
The woman quickly grabbed onto Leroe's hand, and pushed him behind her. Then she raised a knife while pointing it at the group. Her once kind voice quickly turned into one of aggression as she said,
"What do you want!?"
"Huh?"
Upon closer inspection, the woman had an orange armband which was unsurprising. Leroe then tugged on her dress.
"Wait, these people helped me from the Black Bone Gang. They're kind... I think.."
'I think??'
Before the situation could even resolve itself, a crowd of people slowly started to make its way down the street. They all had rather strange hair cuts and varying builds but they all shared one thing in common, and that was the ripped leather jacket with the Black Bone gang logo on their back.
One guy at the front looked awfully familiar. It was the member that Akira defeated earlier.
"I knew I recognised that kid from this orphanage! And the one who beat me up is here too! Attacking us is a crime ya know!? It doesn't matter if you have the backing of some big shot, we're the ones who run things around here!"
Pointing a finger at them, the man shouted,
"Get them!"
The woman quickly pushed Leroe back into the orphanage, before slamming the doors shut as hordes of Black Bone gang members began to charge towards them. Akira just cracked his knuckles while Min-Su just sighed.
Melon was of course shaking with fear as he banged on the orphanages door, begging to be let in.
"Hey!? Can't I at least hide in there?? I'm not a fighter like them!"
One of the windows on the second storey then opened, as the women from before pepped outside. Seeing Melon cry for help at the door, she just threw a pebble that she happened to have at him.
"Are you really a man who lives in this city? Everyone your age knows how to fight... it's simply time for you to grow a pair!"
"b-but I'm a lover, not a fighter!!"
Akira snickered a little when he saw the two argue, and in that distracted state, one of the skinner black bone members snuck up behind him and smashed a steel pipe at on his head. His face slowly turned into one of horror though as the pipe bent. Akira just slowly turned around to look at him, largely un harmed.
The two made brief eye contact for a while, in which the Black Bone member got to see the forbidden darkness inside Akira. All he could say in response was one word,
"D-Demon!!"
Shortly after, a powerful left hook hit him the face, sending him flying back into the crowd as blood spurted from his nose and teeth clattered to the floor. A stampede of gang members quickly surrounded him, but he was already making quick work of them, delivering carefully placed punches in vital spots, knocking them out in one hit.
While doing this, he recalled a lesson that Xander had taught to him one day.
"You're just above the physical limit that a human can reach without Aether, so when you fight a large group, focus on conserving as much stamina as possible. A single punch should be all that it takes. That doesn't mean your immune to damage though, something like a gun could still kill you if your not careful."
Akira quickly weaved a punch, and delivered a quick jab in another gang members face. Several others tried to jump on him at once, but he managed to dodge every single one of them with decent effort.
Meanwhile, Kim Min-Su wasn't having as much trouble.
He was stronger than Akira himself, and he could also kill them all just as easily which would cause a lot of problems down the line. Carefully controlling his strength just like Akira, he was also making quick work of the gang members.
As he delt with a group in front of him with the same well placed punches, just enhanced with Aether, one of the gang mates, with a menacing grin on his face, snuck on him from behind.
'One more step, and I'll bash his head in! That other fool messed up, but not me! I'm a borrower!'
Using Refinement, the gang member prepared to hit Min-Su in the back of the head with his powerful wooden bat. On the surface it looked ordinary, but it was coursing with Aether inside, giving it a might that could destroy a brick wall in one hit.
Just before he could take the last step he needed to however, he found that couldn't move. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't control his legs. At the same time, a strange coolness was also surrounding them, as if they had been frozen.
In fact, they were.
Once he looked down, both of his legs were covered in ice, welding him to the floor. The grunt panicked in surprise, and in that brief moment his Enhancement had disappeared. At the exact same time, Min-Su quickly kicked the grunt with his right leg square in the chest.
The force from the kick was enough to break the ice shackles, sending the grunts body into the air before collapsing on the floor.
Within an instant, all who noticed his abrupt defeat either began to back away, or rushed forward with anger. However no matter how much they would try, the duo of Akira and Min-Su would be enough to beat them all.
As the battle began to reach its end, dusk began to fall and night was approaching. Strangely, none of the Unison council guards had come to check on the fight despite the large group of unconscious bodies that started to pile up, but they probably wouldn't have been able to catch the two perpetrators anyway.
Akira quickly finished off the last of them as he prepared for what came next, surprisingly no one was left so he breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
'How long did I fight for? I was starting to get tired too.'
Cleaning the sweat from his forehead, he turned around to check on Melon who was stuck outside. He was largely unharmed, but any gang members that did try to hurt him appeared to have been taken care of by Min-Su.
Min-Su on the other hand... was steaming? A thick cloud of hot air was floating up from his body, while his skin slowly turned pink from the heat. Akira curiously asked, with a subtle tone of confusion in his voice,
"You okay?"
Min-Su just nodded while saying something, but his voice was muffled by the neck of his jacket. Akira just lightly smiled, but he was still struck at whatever he tried to say.