Party III

"Finally, I found you! Leonard and Howard are in trouble in the backyard!" Lauren exclaimed, out of breath.

Andrew and Pippa exchanged a glance before quickly getting up and following Lauren down the stairs. She gave them a brief summary of what had happened.

A guy had been hitting on her and was very persistent, seemingly unable to understand or accept "no" as an answer. He kept following her, insisting, until she lost her patience and slapped him, which enraged him. He then grabbed her wrist tightly.

That was when Leonard stepped in. He managed to get the guy to stop harassing Lauren, but now he became the guy's target. Lauren made it clear in a few words that the guy was much taller and bigger than Leonard, meaning his chances of winning a fight were exactly 0%.

Howard jumped into the fight, boasting confidently that he was friends with Andrew. However, what no one expected was that the guy didn't even know who Andrew was. He wasn't from their school—he was just some random guy who had shown up at the party.

They arrived at the backyard, which was in even greater chaos than before.

A large crowd of teenagers had gathered around the fight, forming a tight circle of bodies pushing and shouting excitedly.

Male voices rose in cheers and encouragement for the fighters, while many of the girls watched with concerned expressions—some murmuring to each other, others recording with their phones.

Andrew wasted no time. He shoved aside a couple of guys blocking his way, easily making his way to the front.

Pippa and Lauren followed closely behind—Pippa with a focused expression, and Lauren clearly worried.

When Andrew finally reached the edge of the circle, he quickly assessed the situation: in the center of the crowd, Kevin was trading blows with three guys.

One of them, clearly Lauren's harasser, was the most aggressive—throwing punches without much technique but with a lot of force. His two friends backed him up, attacking Kevin from the sides while Leonard and Howard tried to intervene without much success. Their legs trembled, but running away would have been even more humiliating.

"Well… looks like he didn't come alone," Pippa muttered, frowning.

Her eyes locked onto the harasser—a tall, burly guy who had to be at least 1.85 meters tall.

At that moment, Kevin dodged a punch from one of the goons, but another blow landed on his right side, courtesy of the main harasser. Kevin staggered back, wincing in pain but holding his ground.

'Damn it… Why did they have to go buy beers right now?' Kevin thought, referring to Reggie and the rest of the guys.

They had a fake ID and wanted to try their luck after the beer Spencer had stolen from his parents ran out.

Without thinking much about it, Andrew stepped into the circle. The crowd's noise lowered slightly as some people noticed his presence.

"Who the hell are you?" the main harasser asked, glaring at Andrew.

Kevin finally got a moment to breathe, as the three guys stopped throwing punches.

"You okay?" Andrew asked, looking at Kevin and the others. He completely ignored the harasser's question.

"Yeah, this is nothing," Kevin replied with a slight smile, wiping some blood from his nose. He had taken a couple of hits to the stomach, but nothing he couldn't handle.

Howard, seeing that Andrew had stepped in and that the situation was shifting in their favor, grinned confidently and put his hands on his hips.

"Yeah… this is nothing. I could do this all night," he said.

Kevin raised an eyebrow, looking at him in silence, unsure whether to laugh or stay quiet. Howard had only dodged a couple of punches—purely out of luck—while Kevin had absorbed most of the hits.

Leonard, on the other hand, nodded slightly, still feeling the pain from the punch he had taken to the face. Blood trickled from his lip, but that was the only hit he had suffered—the first punch the harasser had thrown before Kevin stepped into the fight.

"Answer the damn question! Don't just stand there like a moron!" one of the harasser's friends shouted—a blond guy with a goatee.

Right after that, he lunged straight at Andrew, attempting to tackle him with a quick charge.

Andrew didn't flinch. He waited with his legs slightly bent, his stance perfectly stable.

When the blond guy tried to tackle him, Andrew blocked the charge with his arms extended, planting his hands firmly on the guy's shoulders.

With a speed that shocked everyone, he used the blond's momentum to lift him completely off the ground and, twisting his hips, hurled him backward with brutal force.

The blond was lifted over Andrew's head, and in a quick, precise motion, he was slammed into the grass. He crashed onto his back with a loud thud against the cold ground, the impact echoing through the air.

"Uh!" The crowd reacted instantly, some looking away or squinting at the brutal impact. A few girls couldn't help but turn away, unable to watch as the guy flew through the air like a sack of potatoes before slamming into the ground.

Andrew, with a slight look of disapproval, stared at the blond lying motionless.

"Maybe a suplex was too much..." he muttered, leaving everyone around him stunned—not just by how effortlessly he had taken the guy down, but by the sheer brutality and coldness with which he had done it. No one was used to seeing this side of Andrew.

A suplex is an offensive move used in professional wrestling, in which the performer lifts his opponent and throws him backwards.

What they didn't know was that he had already been in a bad mood before this, and seeing his friends injured had only pissed him off more.

"Go check if he's okay. I don't want him ending up quadriplegic or something," Andrew said, looking at Kevin, who nodded and walked over to the blond sprawled on the ground.

Even though his tone was calm, the words had an immediate effect—terrifying the two remaining guys who were watching.

'Quadriplegic?' they thought, staring at Andrew like he was some kind of maniac.

As soon as Andrew took a step toward them, they exchanged looks and, without a second thought, bolted—running as fast as they could without looking back.

An eerie silence settled over the area, interrupted only by the fading sound of their footsteps as they fled. Andrew stood there, watching them go with a strange expression.

'Did they seriously believe the quadriplegic thing?' he thought. He had only said it to scare them a little—he hadn't expected them to abandon their friend who was lying on the ground like Yamcha.

Andrew had perfectly controlled his strength and the impact during the suplex. Even though the slam had been brutal, his goal had never been to cause serious harm. He had made sure the blond wouldn't suffer any spinal cord or critical injuries.

The blond regained consciousness a few minutes later, feeling pain in his back but nothing too extreme. Without wasting any time, he left the house as fast as he could, desperate to get away from Andrew.

"Your cousin won't do that to me, right?" Dylan asked, looking at Haley.

"What? Are you scared? You'll have to face him at some point if you want him to stop interfering with us," Haley said, holding back a smile as she saw Dylan's terrified expression.

"O-of course..." Dylan muttered, not entirely convinced.

Meanwhile, the crowd around Andrew had mostly dispersed, but people were still talking about the fight.

"Your boyfriend is scary," Cara commented, glancing at Andrew as he spoke with Kevin.

"No, don't worry. He only said that 'quadriplegic' thing to scare them… or at least I think so," Pippa said with a giggle, shrugging.

Lauren, on the other hand, walked over to Leonard, who still looked a bit tense, with a faint trace of blood on his lip.

"Are you okay?" she asked, concerned as she noticed the small cut on his face.

Leonard nodded with a smile, but Lauren wasn't satisfied with his answer. Seeing the blood on his lip, she frowned.

"Come on, let's go inside. You can't stay like this," she insisted, gently but firmly pushing him toward the house.

Howard watched the scene unfold with a frustrated expression.

"Seriously? Not a single girl is gonna ask if I'm okay? What's up with that?!" he exclaimed indignantly.

"You didn't do anything, man," Kevin said with an amused smile, glancing at Howard before turning his attention back to Andrew.

"Could he actually have ended up quadriplegic?" Kevin asked, sounding slightly concerned.

Andrew let out a light chuckle, completely unbothered. "No, no. I just wanted to scare them a little. It worked, didn't it?" he said, shrugging with a smile.

"What idiots. They really bought it. Say the word 'quadriplegic,' and they piss their pants," Howard laughed along with Andrew.

However, the rest of the group was looking at them with strange expressions.

"Oh, come on, guys. Do you really think he could've ended up quadriplegic from a move like that?" Howard said, noticing their faces.

"For that to happen, you'd need a much more specific and intense impact. The spinal cord is protected by the vertebrae, and to cause paralysis, you'd have to apply direct pressure on it at a very precise angle or hit it with a brutal enough force to damage it. But that wasn't the case. The way Andrew lifted him, you'd need way more strength and precision to actually leave him paraplegic," Howard explained, crossing his arms like he was teaching basic math to a bunch of chimps.

Andrew nodded, happy that someone understood him. After all, it's not that easy to leave someone quadriplegic. He had only said it to scare the other two so he wouldn't have to fight.

After that episode, the party continued. It actually turned out much better for Andrew since Dylan and Haley stayed in sight the entire time. In fact, it almost seemed like Dylan wanted to stay within Andrew's view, as strange as that might seem.

Because of that, Andrew was able to enjoy spending time with Pippa in a different setting than usual, which wasn't bad at all. Neither of them drank a single drop of alcohol.

The other big news was that Leonard finally kissed Lauren. Andrew saw them making out in a hallway and was genuinely happy that his friend had finally worked up the courage to make the first move. Getting punched in the face and splitting his lip wasn't entirely a bad thing, after all.

Before midnight, Andrew and Haley went back to her house.

Andrew had completed his mission, giving Claire a summary of the night, and she was satisfied with his performance.

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