Part 1:

My eyes are locked to the clock waiting for both hands to hit twelve, I sit atop of my bedroom window sill, leaning against the wall. The noise of the outside intruding into my room, the blaring of horns and noise of the commute are still present, and soon I’ll be going right into it all.

The clock strikes ten to midnight. I trick my phone into my main right hand and open up the cab app, requesting one to pick me up right outside the gate entrance. After a few seconds of inputting my destination and qualifications, the app has finally found me a driver. The app obviously shows the name of the driver as well as their car and their average rating but I don’t really care about that, if the driver can get me to the destination then that’s all that matters, right?

Then again, I might as well find a way to kill the time so it shouldn’t hurt to check out his profile at least. The name of my taxi driver is a guy called Dante Aloisio and his average star rating is a 4.5. Not bad! The guy is twenty one which is surprising, it’s mostly middle aged to old men working in the taxi industry. He’s probably doing this to make an extra buck or two I’d say, nothing wrong with that. His profile picture is him I assume; he has a long dark brown mullet with tiger looking eyes that can scare away those that dare approach him and a smirk worn on his face, he looks kinda sinister… I decide to look at his description and everything seems normal until I get to his height which he proclaims is over seven feet tall… I mean- it could be true but was it needed? You’re sitting in your car ninety percent of the time! I don’t think your height would matter, maybe he was thinking of dating purposes too… Oh well… That’s about it for this Dante guy. I should make my way down towards the gate.

In the process of dismounting my window, I hear a sudden cry of pain as well as a loud thud, followed by a bunch of incoherent swearing and shouting from down below… the parking lot? Ryan and his gang are usually down there hanging around but- they’re not that loud, they’re never that loud. Not only that but that was a shriek of pain… 

something’s going on… 

Without a second to waste, I put on my black padded jacket, black crowned beanie and wrap my extremely long beige scarf around my neck before jumping out of my window and swinging onto the nearby pipe to slide down. As I slide, I try to scout out the situation in the parking lot. I see the tiny figures that are Ryan’s guys surrounding a damaged SUV, that must’ve been the loud thud’s source. I look past that and find more of his buddies are surrounding a small group of individuals not from here… don’t tell me that they’ve finally decided to throw hands…

Just as the pipe that I am sliding down begins to end, I proceed to jump down onto one of the broken lampposts and use that as an extra obstacle to stop me from breaking my legs. Afterwards, I jump down from the lamp to the ground, a fairly far drop but I am none the worse for wear. With my feet finally planted on the ground, I make my way towards the predicament.

I close my distance and as I do it begins to snow. Weird… snow in October? Whatever! Now’s not the time! 

Now within range of the group I can finally get to see what is happening-

“ACK-!”

One of Ryan’s buddies just got thrown onto the hood of the SUV, further denting it from the first impact. What the hell is going on? 

“JOSEPH!”

That’s Ryan’s voice, deep and mature.

“Ryan?! What’s going on?!” I question.

“Those Shit heads threw Murphy and Karl onto the car!”

“Who?!” I say.

“Them.” 

He points towards the small group of individuals not from here, the same ones I saw on the slide down. Now that I am up close, I can finally identify their attires. From what it looks like they’re all pretty much wearing the same thing; cyan jackets with a logo of two swords crossing each other that are located at the back or on their shoulders. Is this a gang or a cult?

“They’re the Prodigal Blades. They won this summer’s Sword Dueling Championship and now they’re just here to rub it in everybody’s faces by unfairly dueling everybody here! No one here has sword fighting skills other than…”

I stare directly into Ryan’s eyes as his eyes light up with revelation. Uh-Oh I’m about to be dragged into something.

“Joseph! You know how to swordfight right?!”

“Sure. My dad taught me the basics and a little more before he went back into service. Why?” I say, trying to act clueless.

“Then can you please try and drive those knuckleheads out as well as teach them a lesson?”

I audibly sigh, “Ryan, you know I don’t like doing favours.”

“But-”

“But if they think they’re strong when they are picking on the weak then I guess I can make this one personal.” I say.

“Alright, Joseph! I’ll be cheering you on from the back.” Ryan says as he pats my back.

A swordfighting team that has won a tournament has already proven how strong they are and they should have their eyes set upon another goal higher than their previous one. They shouldn’t have to get their name around by going to the various estates just to beat defenseless children up… 

I know I already said this before.

But things are gonna get personal…