Back to business

It had been almost two years since the gang known as Fearless had gone to meet another gang for a showdown. Most of them had followed Daitan's lead after she left and turned their sights to more normal activities like school, jobs and clubs. Yet, much like keeping a wild animal in a zoo, if you left the door open, pretty soon there would be blood in the water. A few of them reclaimed some of the items that hadn't been used since: masks, bandanas, leather jackets. Marching in an unordered cloud, they all maintained their cold exterior, but there was an almost visible energy radiating from the group. While it was nice not getting the piss beaten out of you or returning the favor every day, the routine of everyday life just wasn't stimulating enough for the former members of Fearless.

They had missed the adrenaline of meeting a group of punks and trampling them underfoot until they cried for mercy. The sound of fighting, the feeling of pain, the taste of blood, the smell of fear and the sight of a trampled enemy. It just gave feeling of completeness that being on a sport's team just couldn't quite measure up against.

Walking through the town, Daitan led Fearless to the bar called Stomping Ground. She wasn't particularly worried about the skinny little creep that Kusakabe had under his thumb. Why would she be? No, she was just in a foul mood because of that upstart Kusakabe. He was never much of an upstanding citizen, but this was a clear spit in the face. Every delinquent in the city had their pride, but there was a pecking order for a reason. The strong ruled and the weak fell into line. Their last encounter hadn't ended well, everyone knew that, but Daitan had expected that Kusakabe was smart enough to realize when he was beaten.

'Although, that little love tap I gave him would probably make me hard to forget', Daitan chuckled darkly to herself.

The streets around the Stomping Ground were almost completely devoid of people, save for the bums and the rubberneckers. The sight of what used to be a bar was a depressing one, but Fearless wasn't there for the lack of scenery. They stopped just outside of the door, looks that screamed how badly they were craving excitement crossed the girl's faces. Some among them were cracking their knuckles, whipping out a pocket knife or brandishing whatever makeshift weapon they had on hand. While her underlings were savoring the pre-battle tension, Daitan was listening to sounds escaping from inside the pub. There was a girl, she was screaming at someone to stop. Stop? Stop what? And there was clearly the sound of someone's fist beating another person's face.

'Bastard!', Daitan thought, 'He wouldn't have'

The girl's foot shot forward and knocked the creaky doors off their rusty hinges.

"Well well well. Look who finally decided she wanted to show up."

Tracing the sound of the voice, she saw Kusakabe in all his nonexistent glory. She didn't have to see his face to know that underneath that dumb skeleton mask, the slimy dirtbag was grinning at her. Sitting with tears in her eyes in one corner of the room was that Yamanaka girl. She didn't appear to be harmed, but she was clearly shaken. But what caught Daitan's attention wasn't the scared girl or the rival leader's tacky fashion choice, it was who he held in his hands. It was the nerd. His face had plenty of blood on it and one eye was swollen shut, but she could tell who it was.

"I was wondering if you were going to just skip out and let this guy die", Kusakabe said, his voice tinged with crude excitement, "I was getting bored with beating on him. He just sits there, staring into space and doesn't even cry."

The masked leader let Benjiro slide from his hands and slump against the pool table. The battered boy didn't say anything, but just kept staring blankly into some faraway abyss, lightly humming. Nobody felt like acknowledging it in the tense atmosphere, but they found his lack of doing anything to be extremely creepy. Although she'd never say it out loud, Daitan almost felt pity for the sorry looking bastard. Sure he was an odd one, but after he had trapped her into actually learning with those musical lessons, she had come to realize that he wasn't exactly evil.

"What the hell do you want, Kusakabe", Daitan asked, "I thought we finished our feud months ago."

"We did... for a short while. But I wanted an excuse to pay you back for what you did to me."

Daitan snorted, "You're still mad that I broke your nose? What's the big deal, I've seen you almost get killed in a few fights, but you got over it."

The short haired girl could've sworn she saw Kusakabe's eye twitch.

"You ever hear of the Nakagaki group?"

Fearless clearly wasn't expecting that question.

"The yakuza group?"

Kusakabe didn't need to show his face for everyone to know how evilly he was grinning.

"The very same. They recruited us a few weeks ago. It's pretty low-end work, but it pays nice enough."

Daitan wasn't sure where he was going with this but she didn't like it.

"What does that have to do with us? Most of us aren't even in the game anymore."

"Nothing wrong with picking up some extra hands along the way", Kusakabe said as he looked at the rival gang, "Problem is, they all follow you, even if you've grown soft."

Without taking her eyes off of the young men with murder gleaming in their eyes, Daitan flicked her eyes to the battered boy, "What about them? They're not even a part of this."

"Well, I'd heard that recently you'd been cozying up to a certain boy", he said as if it were obvious, "What better way to get your attention than to nab your new boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend! He's just my tutor", Daitan quickly exclaimed.

Quite a few people on both sides gave the tomboy suspicious looks that made her uncomfortable for some reason.

Like a shark smelling blood, Hachirou decided to play things out, "Seeing as how important this 'tutor' is to you, why don't we sweeten things a little? If you can last five minutes against me without begging for mercy, I'll let them both go. But if you lose, they become my slaves and your whole gang falls under my command."

Daitan whispered to Shiro, "Find a way to grab the Scarecrow and his friend. This isn't their fight, and I don't like the idea of this petty motherf***er, having a hostage."

Turning back to Kuskabe, Daitan bent her head to crack her neck, "Are we gonna do this, are you just gonna stand there and have a pissing contest all day?"

Kusakabe cracked his fingers individually, "I was just waiting on you."

Shiro grunted in response, but didn't like the idea. Even if the skinny scarecrow did have the daylights beaten out of him, there was something suspicious about him. Daitan stepped into the only area of the floor that wasn't cluttered with broken furniture and bottles. Getting into her fighting stance, Daitan tried to block out everyone's shouting and jeering. She could feel her heart beating in anticipation, but getting too caught up in that feeling left her open to overconfidence. In a fight against someone like Kusakabe who was a slippery little opportunist, such a thing would cost the fight. She kept her eyes focused on Kusakabe's body, watching to see how he would move.

The Hachirou bobbed on the balls of his feet, while Daitan remained planted, biding her time. He darted forward, firing a front kick faster than his opponent could blink. Daitan barely moved her head out of the way in time as the kick grazed her head. She tried reaching out to grab his leg but he already drew it back. Hachirou began throwing rights and lefts with surprising speed. Daitan was dodging so much that she barely had time to think. She launched a ballistic kick of her own to make him back off. She shot a left cross. A jaw was only worth so much in pieces. Kusakabe sidestepped the punch and hit Daitan in the ribs. Ignoring the pain, she elbowed the older boy in the head, grabbed him by the neck and kneed him twice in the midriff. Not willing to be outdone, Hachirou latched onto his opponent and drove his fist into her kidneys. Both of them released each other to catch their breath and shake off the cartoon birds flying around their heads.

'Sh*t', Daitan inwardly cursed, 'This guy's punches are just as powerful as before, except this time he's not pissing around.'

Kusakabe chuckled humorlessly, "It's nice to see that living like the rest of those pathetic wastes of oxygen hasn't made you weaker."

"That or you're just not as strong as you think you are."

...

While everyone else was keeping their eyes peeled on the fight, Yamanaka crawled her way over to Benjiro. His face was bleeding, but luckily, it looked like Kusakabe only hit him in the face a couple times. What unnerved her as much as the little gangbangers was that although his eyes were open, his expression was completely vacant. Was he in a coma or did he get hit hard enough that he was just completely dazed and couldn't come to his senses? Saori began lightly slapping his face to get his attention, but it didn't appear to provoke a reaction. Hot tears were forming in the corner of her face as concern was slowly turning to panic.

"Cmon, cmon, you need to snap out of it, Nojiri. Please just be alright."

His eyebrow began twitching and his face began to register that he was back in the real world.

"H-Hey, Yaman-naka. Is h-he done beating me alr-ready?"

Benjiro expected a few things when he returned to reality. Being hugged by a pretty, disheveled girl wasn't one of them.

"You're back", her voice shook, "I thought that guy beat you into a coma or something."

The lanky boy awkwardly patted her on the back and tried to reassure her that his brain was still in its proper container and running as well as it could. After that came the question of how they were going to get out of the bar.

'When did all those gangster girls get here', Benjiro wondered, 'And why are they all shouting so much?'

Yamanaka gave him a quick explanation when she saw his confusion at the newcomers. Even though everyone's attention was on whatever it was, all the obvious exits were blocked. It was only an assumption but, he was glad that Daitan was here to help them, but he didn't exactly like the look of some of her fellow delinquents. They may be his pupil's friends, but they didn't look like they'd think twice about picking up where Skeleton Mask left off.

Speaking of him, through the forest of legs, Benjiro and Saori could see the two gang leaders rolling around on the rickety floor, trading fists and elbows through a verbal spar of insults and swearing. No matter which way the two captives looked at the situation, they were trapped. All they could do was keep their heads low and hope that the violent girl Benjiro called his student, would be able to pull through.

No sooner had those thoughts passed through Benjiro's head when the doors to the bar opened again. Everyone ceased what they were doing to see five suspicious looking men enter the bar. Even Daitan and Kusakabe paused their fight to see what had everyone so distracted. Hachirou let out a small gasp before lowering his head.

"Good afternoon, sirs!"

The rest of the Kusakabe gang followed suit, "Good afternoon, sirs!"

Daitan and the rest of Fearless, putting two and two together, figured these must be their rival's new bosses.

"Hachirou, you were supposed to report to us an hour ago", said a tattooed man wearing a printed shirt with a snake on it.

With his head still bowed, "Pardon me, Kawamura, but I was just attending to some business and lost track of time!"

"More important than the job we assigned to you", Kawamura's voice lowered dangerously, "Are you saying you don't consider our orders important?"

"Of course not", Kusakabe squeaked, "I was just in the process of acquiring some new recruits, but their leader was refusing to comply."

Some of the members of Fearless began to voice their disagreement before the gaze of the other yakuza silenced them. Kawamura took stock of the situation before resting his eyes on the two hostages.

"And what purpose do these two serve", he asked rhetorically, "Didn't we tell you not to involve civilians randomly? That it sets a bad image for us and could lead to some rather uncomfortable questions being asked?"

"It was necessary for this situation, I assure you", Kusakabe stumbled.

Kawamura stepped over to the pair and raised his eyebrows at them once he got a better look.

He pointed at Benjiro, and with something that sounded almost like worry, "You, boy. What's your name."

Unsure of what was happening but scared all the same, he responded, "B-B-Benjiro Noj-jiri."

Kawamura gestured for one of his men to come over, "Put these two in your car."

Calling to the other two men, "You put those two in the other car", he pointed at the two gang leaders.

"The rest of you, scram. You're all done for the rest of the day. Go home."

The two gangs may not like taking orders, but they knew when they were out of their league and cleared out in a matter of seconds. The men took their respective charges to the cars and began driving off.

Yamanaka more scared than ever asked, "Where are you taking us."

Kawamura didn't even turn around, "It's most likely nothing that will affect you, but I just think the Captain will want to handle this one."

The two cars made their way from the scummier side of town and towards another unknown destination.