The Black Swan Behind

65 Caught

It’s Brian! He pensively found his friends already lying on the floor covered in blood. Then, there were two men in thief costumes who definitely were the perpetrators of the massacre.

“INTRU...”

BUGH!!

Emma immediately threw a pillow beside her right into Brian’s face to shut the guy. Then, she ran towards him to immobilize him. Emma was forced to use the Neil Knot technique to lock Brian’s upper body with her legs and arms while covering his mouth to keep his screams from being heard by those outsides.

“Leave now! I’ll take care of him. Don’t get caught!” Emma said breathlessly because she was expending energy while holding Brian’s body which was trying to fight back.

Roger had no other choice but to leave Emma for the success of their plan. He immediately picked up his metal baseball bat which was lying next to Poppy, “Get away! Don’t interfere!” He said it again to her as he walked away.

Roger had already gone past Emma. He went straight up to the next floor while Emma was still having a hard time dealing with Brian. It wasn’t that she was losing power, but rather that she had to perform the locking technique in a slightly wrong way. Emma should have hooked her hands to lock Biran’s right shoulder, but she didn’t because she used one of her hands instead to cover the big mouth of him.

Poppy who saw that the situation had become chaotic, immediately stood up. She wanted to run out of the room. But her legs were too weak to move after being worked on by those bastard men. Because of that, she accidentally fell.

When she saw Poppy fall, Emma immediately lost her focus for a moment because she was worried about her friend condition. But her carelessness made Brian get an opening to fight back. With his left hand which he had been using to resist the pressure that Emma’s legs were putting on his shoulders, he directly hit the helmet randomly.

.....

Emma, ??who was not alert, immediately lost control because she was suddenly hit hard in the face. Instantly, Brian could be released from Emma’s lock, which also caused the hand that had been covering Brian’s mouth to finally off.

As soon as his mouth was free, Brian immediately shouted loudly, “INTRUDER!!”

Emma didn’t care anymore. Even Brian managed to break his mouth from Emma’s hand, but the position of his body was still in her lock. Brian’s behaviour annoyed Emma. It won’t be long before the hoodlums would arrive. And Emma wasn’t going to let Brian tell his friends that another intruder had gone upstairs.

Emma’s position was still more advantageous than Brian’s. Plus, Emma’s lockdown had already made the guy weaken due to difficulty breathing. Brian just kept shouting with a red face. It was as if his blood had pooled in his skull from suffocation.

“Now you don’t have to be silenced anymore,” Emma muttered by making the same lock pattern as before, namely the Neil Knot technique. But this time, Emma did it in the right position. Her hands intertwined to perfect the locking technique.

Brian’s shoulders were in the inserts of Emma’s legs and elbows. Then, with one strong tug, there was a sound, ‘CRACK!’

Finally, Emma let go of Brian’s body. The man still had his eyes open. But he made no more sound and could not move. His face was so badly reddened with veins sticking out around his neck and forehead. From the pattern of his deep breathing, Emma could tell he must be having a hard time breathing.

“That’s a lesson for degrading women and bullying my friend.” Emma mumbled while glancing at Brian’s oddly shaped shoulder, because it had already been dislocated from Emma’s lockdown earlier.

As Brian lost consciousness, a loud noise approached. Emma looked ahead, where there were already about ten men standing there. They all alternately looked at Brian who was already lying on the floor and then at the figure of the midget man in the helmet. Emma smiled faintly because she saw Donny among the men. The only guy she desperately wanted to kill with her own two hands.

Without asking again, the ten men immediately rushed to attack Emma at the same time. Emma knew many of them were quite good at fighting. But she could dodge their haphazard attacks with ease. Because, Emma was really excellent in gang fights like this. Her small and agile body moved like a squirrel. She combined it with Kung Fu and Taekwondo techniques that rely on the speed of body movement.

“Shit! He’s good at some martial arts techniques! I’d better not underestimate him,” Donny said after glancing at the conditions in the room which filled with all his friends that had been made into cans of sardines by the mysterious man.

But apparently, the battle that seemed to be almost won by Emma ??was too noisy, so the noise was heard throughout the other room, even to the upstairs and downstairs floor. Even Donny didn’t even call for help support, because it turned out that a group of men had approached the location that looked like a fighting arena.

Emma saw a bunch of big guys coming up from downstairs. She took a deep breath, still fighting the remaining two men who were still trying to beat her. Emma hadn’t felt this way in a long time.. No, in retrospect, this was her first experience fighting alone without the help of her father’s men.

But compared to all that, there was one thing that really bothered Emma. Since then, the loser Donny was just kept watching beside Brian. It made Emma even more irritated because she felt like she was being watched like a fighting show by that damned guy.

‘You cowardly bastard!’ Emma screamed in her heart. She couldn’t touch Donny because the attacks from other men kept coming.

Emma could see the difference between the bunch of men that had just arrived compared to the bunch of half-drunk guys she’d all knocked out. She could immediately tell that it was the mob that would be bothering her time. Because, from their body shape and style, it was obvious they were the kind of men who used to go down for gangs fights.

“Okay.. You can do this, Emma.” She muttered herself to build up her confidence. As Jonas said, if she wanted to win, she must believe in herself that she is the winner.

A barrage of attacks rained down on Emma. But she managed to avoid all the Kicks and punches. Almost all of those men had a street fighting style. They made it difficult for Emma because there were so many of them. Emma beat them while counting in her heart. Because, as much as she knew, the number of members living in this base building was over fifty.

‘I’ve beaten over thirty. But why do they keep coming?’ She thought to herself. Emma was gasping for breath and sweat was dripping under her oversized black jacket. Something went wrong. There were too many of them.

And what’s even weirder.. Why wasn’t anyone coming down from upstairs? Did that mean Roger had been caught by the members upstairs?

***

Roger’s heart was pounding. There was a faint noise from downstairs. He was very worried about Emma. Could the girl defeat the fifty-plus members of Hell Gate? But even if Roger came down, he couldn’t help Emma at all because he was too weak. In fact, it’s possible that Emma would be bothered instead to protect him.

Humans can make plans, but fate determines what will happen.

If they followed the initial plan, the two of them should have sneaked straight to the sixth floor which was the location where the server units were stored. But things got messy when they find Poppy who turned out to be in trouble, plus the sudden appearance of the big mouth Brian.

However, Emma Hilland wouldn’t be her name ??if she didn’t have a plan B. As Jonas has taught her, in carrying out a mission, she must have at least two backup plans.

Like the backup plan Roger had agreed with Emma at the back door earlier, If their whereabouts were finally discovered, Emma had already said that she would face all the members of Hell Gate alone. That way, Roger could go to the server room without a hitch. Emma would buy time for him.

Roger arrived on the next floor. It was a floor with several rooms separated by a glass wall which turned out to be an office. There was no one in the rooms. All lights were off. There were only small lights flickering from the CPU connected to the computer screen.

According to the map he had studied, upstairs was the real predator’s cage. The predators should be sleeping now, right? Roger hoped so.

And it seemed, for the first time in his life, Roger’s wish had been granted by God. The floor that was said to be the monster’s lair was very deserted. However, it was different from other floors’ rooms which were dominated by glass walls. On that floor, all the rooms were tightly closed. There were only a few thick, dark brown wooden doors that led to each room.

Not wanting to waste any more time, Roger immediately walked quickly to the next floor. But when he arrived at the crossing of the stairs, his steps were immediately stopped when he found a man in a white shirt standing in the middle of the stairs.

The man with the high sharp outer corners eyes smiled at him. Then, with his long legs, he kicked Roger’s chest so that the guy fell to his back.

Roger tumbled back down the stairs. He groaned at the pain all over his body and coughed as his chest was kicked so hard. It felt like his lungs were going to burst.

The man walked down each step leisurely. His hands were tucked into either side of the pockets of his long black trousers. On the bridge of his sharp and slender nose, perched a pair of glasses that perfectly matched his small face. From the man’s demeanour, Roger could guess, that he was Kei Matsumoto, the vice leader of Hell Gate group.