Today, Gary was walking to school a lot slower than he usually would. He was constantly looking around, checking to see if anyone was following him. He had recognised the three deceased gang members on TV as the same ones who had been after him at the construction site.

‘The Underdogs must have tried to get their package back. Whatever was inside must have been important enough for them to have killed the gang members! If they killed them that easily, then what are they going to do to me? The unknown blood, it has to be mine from the stab wound.’ Gary thought. Then he thought back to the system and the news report, of how it was an Altered’s doing.

He stopped in the middle of the pathway, and gulped.

‘At least I hope it was the Underdogs, it couldn’t be…could it? I would have remembered something like that.’

Shaking the horrible thought from his head, he decided that he better hurry to school. It was about the only thing that was normal at the moment for him.

“Argh!” A loud piercing shriek was heard.

Looking around, Gary discovered the female shriek to have originated from an alleyway closeby. The poor girl was surrounded by four guys who had brought her there, with one of them currently pinning her up against the wall. His neighbourhood wasn’t exactly the best, but for something like this to happen in broad daylight so early in the morning…

‘Really, is it just that kind of day?’

Gary’s initial reaction was to just walk away. He didn’t want to get involved, especially since there was nothing he could realistically do against four adult men. After all, he was no hero, but merely a teenager. Besides, if they were about to commit such an atrocity who was to say that they were unarmed? Maybe they would do more than just beat him up if he tried to interfere…

The group of males continued to push her down the alleyway, out of sight from the main road, around the back of one of the apartments. At this point, when the girl turned the corner, Gary’s sharp eyes spotted something on her uniform.

It was his school's crest. She went to the same school as him.

‘Damn it, my own arse is already on the line. Should I try and bluff, telling them I’m part of the Underdogs? No, that won’t work, given my age it’s clear that I’m merely a transporter. And using their gang name might not be the best idea. Shit, why did it have to be a girl?!”

In all honesty, if it had been a guy then Gary wouldn’t have struggled this much. People were struggling all over the world, and had bad things done to them. He knew that since he himself had even joined a gang in hopes of a better future.

However, when he saw a girl being abducted, especially in his own neighbourhood, not too far from where he lived, he couldn’t help but imagine the men doing the same thing to his sister. Who knew whether she had a brother, who would blame himself for the rest of his life that he hadn’t been there? Even if she was an only child, what about her parents?

Gary considered creating a ruckus. Looking around there weren’t many others that would help, and if he explained the situation he knew no one would for fear that the group of men belonged to one of the gangs. It was easier to just hide their head in the sand, pretending not to have noticed the situation, telling themselves there’s nothing they could do…

Alternatively he could try to call the police, but one of the things he had learned in the Underdogs was that the police reacted slowly to such cases, not only because they were understaffed, but also because those higherup had been paid off, to make sure the response time was delayed. By the time they would actually get here, whatever those guys were planning would have already happened by now.

‘Looks like I got to figure this one out myself,’ Gary thought.

As soon as he had made the decision to act, a notification screen appeared in front of him.

[New Quest received]

[Save the girl!]

[You have assessed that there are no other options and you're the only one she can rely on, are you really going to turn your back on her now? It’s time for you to show off your new skills!]

‘New skills? That’s right, I'm an Altered now! ... well at least I think I am. I have super healing and…and…good eyesight? Hey, system, how the hell am I supposed to beat them with those things?! Do you want me to act as their punching bag?’

“Get away!” Gary heard the girl scream again, but it was quickly muffled up.

He knew he didn’t have the time to think about what to do next. If there was one thing he was known for, it was his tendency to just act. Right now was no different, his legs had started moving and he was already heading down the alleyway. When he took the turn, he could see one of the guys with his hands over the girl’s mouth.

The group of men turned their heads, and they didn’t look like the friendliest bunch, that was for sure. Most of them were wearing similar clothing. Baggy trousers with a black top of some kind.

‘A colour gang? Damn it, I should have noticed sooner!’

No wonder they were able to act so brazenly in broad daylight. Colour gangs usually were university students, or high school students, some of them worked under one of the large main gangs, and to Gary's knowledge, the black colour gang just so happened to be affiliated with the Underdogs, which meant that fighting them would pose a risk.

“Kid, we're feeling nice, so why don’t you just get out of here, and head back to school.” One of the men at the back waved him off after recognising him as just a stupid brat.

Gary looked at the school uniform confirming he and the girl did indeed go to the same school. He was most likely looking for an excuse to avoid the current situation, but then he saw the fear in the girl’s eyes again. She even had a similar hairstyle to his sister, only that her hair was black. Seeing this was just building up the rage inside of him.

‘Four of them, I’m going to get hit a few times, but it can’t hurt more than getting stabbed, right?’ Gary tried to convince himself. Committing himself to the situation, he went into a boxing stance as Kirk had shown him.

The men started to break out in laughter.

“Oh, looks like we have a knight in shining armour. Alright, let’s see what you got, boy, maybe we'll give you a little invitation,” one of the men said walking forward.

Gary waited, focusing on the man's toes. He thought back to when he had landed a punch on the gangster that night, and to everything Kirk had taught him.

‘Not yet, he’s still not close enough.’

Then, when the man was finally in range, Gary threw out a perfect jab that even Kirk would likely praise him for. However, the punch ended up hitting nothing but air. The man had moved to the side and grabbed his fist.

“Do you have any idea how obvious that punch was? Seriously, if we allowed ourselves to be hit by amateurs like you, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing in the first place!”

The man berated him as he pulled Gary forward by the wrist. He punched him right in the head, flinging his body backward, yet the man didn’t let go, and pulled him forward again, this time kneeing him in the stomach.

The wind was knocked out of Gary, who was finding it hard to breathe.

‘I was wrong! This pain feels a lot worse than getting stabbed.’

While the men were distracted watching the beating, the girl saw this as her opportunity to escape. She pulled down the distracted man's hand that had been covering her mouth, and bit down as hard as she could. When he let go of her, she followed it up with a kick towards the crown jewels before running out of the alleyway from the other end.

“Now look at what you have done!” one of the men shouted, “You let her get away, now it's going to be ten times harder to catch her again! Kid, how are you going to pay us back for this?!”

Gary was on his knees still hurting from the knee to the stomach, when a notification screen appeared in front of him.

[Quest completed]

[40 Exp received]

‘She really got away, huh? But what’s the point in Exp, if I'm not going to live to see another day?’

The man had recovered from being hit in his sensitive area and was walking towards Gary heavy footed. The others went up against the wall not getting in his way, as he suddenly threw out a kick hitting him right in the head sending him to the floor.

“Hey, don’t you think you're going too far? You could kill him,” one of his companions from the side cautioned, but another one stopped him.

“Don’t try stopping Raph now, or he will just take it out on you instead.”

“Answer me!” Raph shouted at Gary.

‘Do people like this really deserve to live? I’m already beaten.’

The next kick was aimed at his stomach.

‘If I wasn’t the one getting hit right now, would they have done this to the girl?’

As he had these thoughts filled in his head, his temper was rising and so was something else.

[BPM is rising]

[BPM 85]

Another kick, again aimed at his stomach, and blood started to dribble out from Gary’s mouth.

‘These scum, would they have done this to Amy as well?’

[BPM 120]

[BPM 125]

Running up, Raph went for another kick.

“Bring that bitch back now!” He shouted, but this time, his leg was stopped, and looking down, he could see Gary holding it.

———

The girl was running back as fast as she could and behind her two policemen were following. As soon as she was set free, she had gone around looking for help, and had eventually found some that were in the area.

“It’s down here, we have to hur-“

She paused, as she looked down the alleyways and could see four men on the floor. Some of them knocked out, others rolling about in pain, and the leg of one of them had been bent to an unnatural degree.

‘What happened here? Was it done by that boy from before?’