When you're alone against a crowd, there are a few rules worth following if you actually want to walk away in one piece.
First: don't fight them all at once. Move constantly. Keep it to one or two at a time, maximum—and always know where you're moving toward, not just what you're moving away from. Getting surrounded is how this ends badly.
Second: if the opportunity presents itself, take them out of the fight permanently. Killing is the most efficient solution, but that's not on the table today—so breaking their legs it is.
Third, and most importantly...
"There are no rules!"
I lunged toward the side with the highest concentration of men, grinning as I went.
Charging directly into a cluster of enemies looks idiotic on the surface. It is, in fact, the opposite. The moment I stepped into the middle of them, their own instincts became my greatest ally—each one suddenly acutely aware that swinging freely meant the very real risk of hitting the man next to him. Hesitation, even a fraction of a second's worth, is all I've ever needed.
"...!"
Right on cue. The anger in their expressions stuttered, interrupted by a half-second of uncertainty as I slipped between them.
Half a second was more than enough.
BAM! CRACK!
I swung the crowbar in a tight arc, driving it with the elbow rather than the wrist for maximum transfer—and the target, the nearest man's leg, snapped cleanly and bent in a direction legs were never intended to bend.
"Argh—!"
I didn't pause to appreciate the result.
In the span of a single breath, I carried the motion through—shin, thigh, the man beside him, the one beside him—a continuous rhythm, almost mechanical, like a drummer working through a particularly violent fill. Three men, three broken legs, one unbroken chain of movement.
I caught each of them across the chin with the crowbar on the way out. A courtesy, really. The legs were already enough to take them out of the fight, but unconscious men don't drag themselves back in. Better to be thorough.
WHOOSH!
With all three down before any of them had finished falling, I was already moving right—working clockwise, systematic, not giving anyone time to recalibrate.
Roughly twenty still standing. The first three dropping so fast had shaken something loose in the rest of them; their movements turned sharp and agitated, belligerence climbing to compensate for the fear underneath it.
Suits me. People fighting angry fight sloppy.
Two of them came in together—one swinging a bat horizontally, the other bringing his down vertically, trying to catch me in the intersection of both arcs. The trajectories were so straightforward I would've had to actively try to get hit. I'm not a masochist, so I didn't.
I planted my foot hard, killed my momentum dead—the horizontal swing carved through empty air inches from my face, the vertical one just as close—and the instant both of them were committed and off-balance, I stepped in deep and swung.
BAM! BAM!
Temples. High risk, technically, but I had faith in the structural integrity of people who do this for a living. They'd survive a single clean hit to the head.
...Probably.
"You bastard—!"
"Don't let him move!"
"I'll murder you, you hear me—?!"
Two more down, and the remainder had started clustering—groups of five or six, clearly deciding that numbers in close proximity was the solution. Which would have been reasonable tactical thinking, if I hadn't already demonstrated exactly what happened when people bunched together within crowbar range.
Their logic was almost endearing.
"Is this really all you've got?" I called out, not breaking rhythm. "I'm not even sweating."
Taunting mid-fight is a strategy, not an indulgence. The one who loses composure first loses the fight—almost every time. Making them angry enough to stop thinking clearly is just good practice.
Slowly, the sun began to bleed toward the horizon.
By the time the last light shifted orange, every single goon was on the ground.
Most were still conscious, in the technical sense—awake enough to produce a steady, overlapping chorus of groaning that echoed off the alley walls. Not one of them had been spared a broken leg. The local hospital was going to have a very profitable evening.
"And?"
I turned to the one man still standing—Mokuro—and smiled pleasantly.
"Change your mind at all?"
He hadn't moved throughout the whole thing. Arms crossed, jaw set, eyes tracking me with an expression that hadn't softened an inch. His men were literally crawling across the ground around him, and he was still performing composure.
Tough, or just stubborn. I'd find out shortly.
After a long silence, he opened his mouth.
"...Are you really from Ares?"
An interesting question to be revisiting, given that he'd already exposed the badge as outdated. That he was asking again now meant something had shifted in his thinking—the evidence his eyes had just collected was rewriting the math he'd done earlier.
I tilted my head, just slightly.
"What—now you believe me?"
Mokuro exhaled. Not quite a sigh—something closer to a man quietly recalculating his options. His gaze swept across the field of his men: crying, groaning, dragging themselves across pavement, several of them with distinctly damp trousers.
"With what I'm looking at," he said, voice low and grudging, "you being an Ares elite is a hell of a lot more plausible than you being some random unaffiliated lunatic."
He uncrossed his arms. "You said you wanted cash. Give me your account and I'll transfer it."
"Good." I nodded slowly, letting the approval sit in the air. "Very obedient. Good doggy."
He didn't take the bait. Didn't even twitch.
Which told me everything—he was genuinely afraid of the implications. Not of me, necessarily. Of what I might represent.
Not that I actually represented anything, but details.
I pulled up my QR code. He scanned it without a word, and a moment later my phone buzzed with a notification.
$100,000.00.
Exact to the dot.
'This guy's loaded, as expected.'
With this, the game hardware and everything else I needed was covered—comfortably.
"Pleasure doing business." I beamed at him. "Excellent work."
Mokuro said nothing. Just stared at me with the flat, contained expression of a man who had decided the smartest thing he could do right now was absolutely nothing.
A wise call.
I turned and started walking—
"Ah."
—then stopped, struck by a thought, and turned back.
"Kanna Street is my turf now. Make sure none of your people make a mistake there." I held up my phone, giving it a small wave. "If they do and I find out, consider this a preview of the next inconvenience fee."
I left without waiting for his response.
Behind me, I had no doubt, Mokuro was wearing an expression I wouldn't have particularly enjoyed looking at—which was exactly why I didn't look.
Next destination: Akihabara.