Clangs of metal rang out through the Baron’s abode from armed men standing at the ready. They instinctively knew it was time, not from the setting of the sun, a change difficult to observe due to the oppressive overcast which blurred the realms of night and day, but rather from the tolling of the 15 notched grandfather clock, announcing the descent of darkness. Together they left in groups of two. At the head of one group of seven was Suran. The other, Fletch. The 14 men hustled through the vacant city streets towards the harbor.

Waves crashed onto the wooden docks, the sea churning from the raging squall. The sky was ripe black, but not one drop did it spill yet. As they approached pier 21, they sorted out into their designated groups and split up while traversing through the building alleys. They set up across from pier 21 and its warehouses. No guards were posted outside on this damp, chilly night. Suran stepped forward out of the covering of a building and looked down the street.

Further down was the other team led by Fletch, creeping out from behind a building. Suran scanned the street one last time. There was nothing that made him think to hold off, so he waved his hand towards the warehouse for all to see, the signal visible in the flashes of lightning.

They left the cover of the buildings, one group sprinting down each side of the pier, weapons drawn. Fletch was to take his group and circle around to flank warehouse three, while Suran was to lead the charge straight in. From each warehouse emitted a soft, yellow glow from their windows; outside there was no one, but inside these wooden buildings, Suran felt life stirring.

Suran and his team approached the third warehouse, as indicated by the fading ‘3’ painted in white on its side. On the side facing the sea was a sprawling warehouse door, but they did not go for that one. Instead, they went towards the face of the warehouse and found a normal, worker’s entrance. Suran and his men stacked the door with Suran sitting at the back of the formation. The man in the front broke out of formation and stood several paces in front of the door. Lowering his shoulder, he rammed right into the door, busting it open. One by one, the line filed in and immediately Suran could hear surprised shouts and screams.

He followed suit and entered the building. A skirmish broke out on the warehouse floor; instead of crates and wares lining its floor, – those were set along the side of the building – the six men Suran brought were spread out across the clearing and were systematically engaging the enemy. As Suran joined the fray, in the back of the mind was the slight worry that this was all a setup. Either Shroom had tipped them off and this was some sort of a trap, or he had sent them to a completely wrong area. He pushed those thoughts away; nothing good would come out of such doubt.

Suran scanned the floor, searching for a spot to help out in, but found that the intrusion was progressing swimmingly. The six men he led were tactfully engaging the five men that were based in the warehouse. Instead of fumbling around and forcing his way into an engagement just for the sake of helping, Suran focused his energy to locating Annabelle, for, in this wide warehouse, she was nowhere to be seen.

With the main floor of the warehouse empty, Suran first headed toward the perimeter where large wooden crates were lined up. He hustled over a crate, pulled out his sword, and pried open the top of the crate, popping it open. The crates were large, large enough to easily fit a few persons in there. But inside the first wooden box was not a girl, but heaps of grain: wheat, barley, and corn. One by one he went through the contents of the crates as the striking of metal mingled in with the roars of thunder filled the air.

It was no good, he thought after going through several crates. Why would they even keep her in a crate? There had to be some other place. With that in mind, Suran took notice of a partitioned room nestled in the far corner of the warehouse. It was discreet, out of sight and out of mind behind stacks of boxes. He headed toward there.

The door was locked so he kicked it open. He took one step into the room and was greeted by a thuggish man lunging at him with a knife. Suran took a step back giving him room to grab the man’s arm and then twist it around then up, forcing him to lose his grip and drop the knife. Then Suran closed back in, rammed his shoulder into the man, and hoisted him up. With a heave, Suran threw him off and flung him across the room where he slid over a desk.

Suran took measured steps, inching around the desk with his sword drawn. The thuggish man did not rise immediately. Drawers were being rustled through, and when he did stand back up, he now held a short sword. The man charged Suran, his first strike deflected with ease. Suran was in a rush – he wanted to find Annabelle as quickly as possible – so he forced an opening in the man’s defense by aggressively pushing in after he deflected the first strike. It took three strikes to break the man, and, when he did, he pierced the man in the chest through his dirty suit coat.

With the man out of the way, Suran turned his attention to rummaging through the room. Annabelle was nowhere to be seen, but there might be a clue to her a location. He walked behind the desk that was now in a mess from having a man thrown over it, and began to rummage through its contents. Paper littered the desk. Picking some of them up, he found details on grain shipments, inventory logs, and so on. Next he went inside the desk, turning the drawers inside and out. Finally, he found one unmarked envelope that was torn open. The message was cryptic; it was vague and spoke in strange terms. Despite the name and terms that meant nothing to him, there was one that stood out: Namnoc. Suran felt slightly relieved that the possibility that they were in the right stop had increased significantly, but it still did not help him find her. It did not bode well that the information was scarce, but the room had more to search through. He went through filing cabinets and drawers and storage units, turning everything upside-down.

To his dismay, Suran found nothing. He walked over to the center of the room by the desk to take a broader look at the room to see if he was missing anything. He stopped in place then frowned. Suran hopped lightly in spot. The floor creaked. Stepping around, he repeated the same test in other locations in the room. In the center of the room right next to the solid desk, the wooden floor would creak when stepped on. It dawned on Suran that a secret criminal organization would likely have secret rooms. A conclusion that made sense to him.

Quickly, he went over to the desk and tried to move it out of the way to see what was underneath. He grunted as he tried to heave the desk out of the way, but it did not even budge an inch. For a wooden desk, it was exceptionally heavy. Nevertheless, he kept shoving on it.

“Oooo! Need help?” A voice rang out behind him. Suran didn’t process the voice and only heard someone stepping over next to him. He didn’t look over to see who it was. The sounds of fighting had died down, so he thought it was one of the men he brought, or even one of Fletch’s men. He never saw Fletch and his group arrive and had hoped they had reached the warehouse without trouble.

The person set up next to him, and he could feel him help with the struggle, throwing their weight in the effort. Just like that, the heavy table began to move with the strength of two people pushing it. It slid across the floor, scraping along the hard wood floor, and revealed a trap door underneath. He got up and turned to see who had aided him, and his heart dropped. Standing in front of him with a stupid-ass-grin was Natalya.

“What are you doing here?!” He shouted in disbelief.

“I wanted to come so I followed you guys,” she nonchalantly responded.

Suran clicked his tongue, “Why didn’t you say anything? Or even ask?”

“Because the answer would have been no!”

“Fine, just stay out of the way and don’t get into trouble.” There was no way to deal with this at the moment, so he had no choice but to let her stay. Sending her off would probably just create more problems. He pushed that throbbing problem to the back of his head and focused at the task at hand.

The trapdoor had an impressive lock on it. Suran fumbled around with it for a moment and determined it was not something he could just break, so he went over to the corpse in the room and rummaged through the pockets. Sure enough, a keychain with several keys was in the front right pocket.

“Great, keys! Now we can crack open this door and see what’s underneath!” Natalya commented while watching from the side.

Suran did not respond and huddled over the lock on the trapdoor and began trying each key on the lock. The third key of four popped open the lock, letting Suran swing the door wide open. A dark staircase sprawled before him that winded off out of sight. He took one look at Natalya before heading down.

It winded on longer than one might expect, and he found himself in a well-furnished room that was bathed in light emitting from strange orbs fastened to the ceiling.

“Who are you?” A light, feminine voice asked. Sitting on a bed was a plain woman with long golden hair knitting.

“Are you Annabelle?” Suran asked, stepping into the light.

“Why yes, yes I am. Why do you ask?”

“Your father, Baron Reginald, sent me to rescue you. So quickly, pack whatever you need right now; We need to leave.”

“Splendid news! Let me just get my sweaters, shirts, boots, dresses, necklaces, earrings – oh, better not forget my crochet!”

Suran watched in amazement how a girl who was kidnapped for political capital had so many items. “Pack light since we can’t bring everything. There is fighting going on so we can’t have anything slowing us down,” Suran added on as he watched her whiz around. There was no way they could move efficiently with the three suitcases she had already packed. What was frightening was that she was motioning to pack a fourth.

Upon hearing the comment, Annabelle scowled in disappointment, “Well Mister, I don’t want anything to go to waste!”

Suran rolled his eyes, “Do you want to leave or not?”

“Fiiine,” she groaned out, settling on taking only one suitcase. “There is no way I’m sticking around so that Harry Shroom freak can come around and harass me some more.”

He raised his eyebrow to question the statement.

“That fat guy keeps following me around showering me with stuff. When we were little we used to go to the same academy and I was sometimes nice to him cause no one liked him. Now the guy is obsessed me and just won’t leave me alone, ugh!” Her face showed obvious disgust.

“No time to waste,” Suran hurried her along. “Grab your bags and let’s go. I will lead the way.” She nodded and picked up her stuffed suitcase which was just a bit to heavy just for her to life. Natalya who was standing around had to come give her a hand.

Suran trotted up the staircase with the two girls behind him. It was time to get out of here. As he reached the top of the staircase, he felt something was off. Utter silence permeated through the air. He stepped out into the light of the warehouse floor to witness a massacre.

Everyone was dead, the Namnoc men as well his own, except for one man; in the bloody sea of corpses sat a man with a dashing stripped white suit, a matching white hat, gleaming black shoes, and a pair of large sunglasses. His appearance was flawless with not one spot daring to ruin it. As he sat the wooden crate with one leg resting on his knee and his hands clasped by his stomach, his head slightly swayed from side to side as he hummed an unrecognizable tune.

“Ah, you must be the one causing the commotion,” the dandy man plainly said.

“What happened here?” Suran said in disbelief.

The dandy man tilted stopped his humming and tilted his head, “What do you mean? If you mean this mess, then the answer would be I found some rats in my home and promptly took care of them.”

Suran recognized that voice. It took a moment, but it sounded exactly like the one he heard Shroom spoke to the other night when he left his house at night. “Natalya, take Annabelle through the door on the right and get out of her. Take her back home. I will handle this.” All he had to do was buy time for them to get out.

Natalya rushed out tugging Anna along. With those two out of the way, Suran turned his attention to the spotless man before him who was covering a yawn with his hand, completely uninterested. He took a gander at the watch on his hand before shaking his head in disapproval.

“Look at the time! I do apologize, but I have no time for this – so much to do, so little time. I hope you understand.” He rose from his wooden stool and began to trot towards a door at the opposite end. Before he left he said one thing: “Don’t worry. I may not have the time to play with you, but I know Sammy will,” he stated with a devilish grin.

He left, leaving Suran all alone. Suran had no intention in sticking around to find out who this ‘Sammy’ was, and motioned towards the door closet to him as soon as the well-dressed dandy departed. He froze in his tracks at the would-be sound of crackling thunder, but the problem was, that the violent explosion that just ripped through was not thunder at all. Another crash sounded out from right behind him and a man flew right up to the wall next to him. He took one good look and saw who it was: Fletch.

Suran turned around and saw a massive puncture in the wall, and climbing out of it was a giant. There was no way to describe the beast that stepped through the hole as anything else but the pinnacle of human size. At least eight feet tall, and a frame that was fitted with slabs of muscle.

“Oh, look. Another one.” The behemoth spoke with a gruff, raspy voice. Contrary to his monstrous visage, there was no enmity in his voice.

Suran unfroze himself and immediately went to see Fletch. His collision into the wooden wall left it dented, and he lay slouched over on the floor. Suran kneeled beside him and examined him. His body, ice. His eyes, glass. Suran waved his hand over and closed his eyelids. He then stood to face the beast.

The beast tensed up, his muscles throbbing, as he scrunched his face in perplexion. “Who... who are you?”

“Suran Ibrahim.” He met the beast’s gaze and readied his sword. As much as he did not want to engage him, he felt that running away was not possible.

“The name is Sammy. Pleasure to meet you.” Sammy climbed through the hole. The world behind him flashed white from lightning followed by the boom of thunder. “No sense in wasting time now, is there?”

“There is not.”

Sammy stretched out his hands and arms, cracking their bones. His hand was covered in a metal glove – a glove designed for punching.

Suran took the initiative, charging forward with his black sword. Sammy dodged the first swing and used his metal glove as a shield to parry the second blow. Sparks flew from the clash, and Sammy immediately followed up by throwing a jab at Suran’s stomach. He was able to block it, just barley, but the force of the punch launched him across the room as if a stampeded of bulls had come together to smash at one point at the same time.

There was no way for him to win a straight-up engagement. His power as absurd, and Suran felt that he was only scratching the surface. He couldn’t charge in, so he waited from Sammy to come to him. But, he did not.

Sammy reared his arm and punched the air, a movement that one might think would accomplish nothing. Suran, however, felt nothing but danger and immediately rolled to his right to dodge. The effect he had anticipated came a moment after the punch. The air around the spot Sammy had punched exploded into a shockwave that came rumbling down the warehouse floor like violent gust of wind. Crates and grain were dragged into its vortex and tossed around as it sped right into, then through, the wall, leaving a resounding boom. When Suran got up from the ground, it was as if a tornado had barreled down the warehouse.

So that’s how it is, Suran thought. If he strayed at a distance, Sammy could launch that attack over and over again. Suran had no ranged attack so it would be impossible for him to beat Sammy in a ranged bout. His options were either to run away or close in and risk fighting up close. His body wanted to run, an instinct brought on by a murderous aura that began to arise from Sammy, but his mind said there was no use. It was fortunate that fear was nothing for him, so he charged forward.

Suran was thrown around like a ragdoll into a stack of crates. His back smashed right into them. If he got out of this alive, his back was going to kill him he thought. So far, nothing seemed to work on Sammy. He can dodge every strike, block every hit, and smash every opening in Suran’s defense. Defeat was passively staring Suran and the eyes, and still he got up to charge again.

First slash was diverted by the metal gauntlets. Suran ducked as a punch flew overhead. He could barely even see the jabs, but he could feel the intense displacement of air they caused. Relentlessly, Suran kept cutting at Sammy to no avail, like a man trying to chisel his way through a mountain. On the other hand, Sammy threw out punches casually. Suran could not break through his defense, but neither was Sammy making a move to end the fight.

“Over here, ya goof!” The shrill voice of a women broke the monotony and a potato flew into Sammy’s head, startling him. Suran took his chance and stabbed right into the Sammy’s chest. Sammy caught the sword without a second thought.

“Trying to get the jump on me, ehhh?” Sammy asked rather amused. His face quickly changed to one of disappointment, “When I first saw you, I expected more than some cardio. Maybe I was mistaken.” With his free hand, Sammy landed a punch square into Suran’s gut. He was vaulted into the air, through the warehouse wall, and onto the dock under the pitch black sky.

It was the first time Sammy had gotten a clean punch on him, but it was, truthfully, the only one he needed. Immense pain racked Suran’s body as he coughed up blood. Such pain overcame him, that if someone were to have asked him ‘what is hurting him,’ it would have been easier to answer what wasn’t hurting him. Which is to say was nothing.

“Oi, Love! What are you doin’ here?” Sammy exclaimed in the distance.

Suran struggled to pull himself up so he could see who had come. His vision was blurry from the pain. It took some time for it to clear enough for him to see, but, when he was able to make out what was in front of him, his heart sank. Natalya had come back to help him. While half laying down with most of his body refusing to respond to him due to crippling pain, he wondered how it came to this.

“You’re beating up my friend!” Natalya shouted at him. Without a hint of fear, she was wailing on Sammy’s body with a flurry of punches, but it was just like a small child trying to beat up an adult – a hopeless endeavor.

“That man is your friend? Well, I do apologize. If I had known. I wouldn’t have hit him so hard!” Sammy stood there with surprise on his face, taking the punches from Natalya without a single care. Sammy sighed, “Love, I do thank you for the meal the other day, but I can’t let your friend, or you, leave here freely. You know that right?”

“Of course I know that!” Natalya pouted. “Who the hell do you think I am, Sammy?”

“W-well, I don’t know?” Sammy looked around, as if searching for an excuse or way out and lightly tapped Natalya’s neck. She crumpled onto the floor. He hoisted her up and swung her over his shoulder, “Sorry, Love. Rather not come to this, but I guess it can’t be helped.” Sammy casually walked over to Suran who lied crippled on the ground. “As for you, I can’t assure you the same fate I will get for this girl over here. I would recommend you to think twice about crossing Namnoc. That is, if you can think twice when they’re done with you.” Sammy looked down on Suran with pity then walked away.

The sky that had swelled with water popped, and water begin to trickle down. The trickle became a torrent, and Suran could no longer stay conscious.