As more ABK gang members broke away from the main brawl and surged toward the flank, Dion and his three friends were quickly overwhelmed.
Anthony took two lazy steps forward. He raised his left hand and caught a descending steel pipe inches before it crushed twelve-year-old Kevin's skull.
The Albanian attacker blinked in shock. He yanked hard, trying to pull the pipe free, but Anthony's grip felt like it was welded to the metal.
Anthony stood casually, a cigarette pinched between his right fingers. He took a drag. Then he smoothly twisted his left wrist.
The torque ripped the pipe out of the attacker's hands and pulled him entirely off balance. The massive man pitched forward, crashing face-first into the gravel. He didn't get up.
Another ABK member cursed in Albanian, lunging at Anthony with a switchblade aimed squarely at his ribs.
Anthony didn't even turn his head to look.
He caught the pipe as it fell, spun it like a baton, and struck the attacker's wrist in a violent downward arc. The bone snapped with a dry pop. The knife clattered against the concrete.
Without breaking his rhythm, Anthony delivered a punishing front kick to the man's chest. The impact threw him backward through the air, crashing into a third gang member who was charging in from behind.
The entire sequence took three seconds. Anthony made it look like he was brushing lint off his coat.
Dion, Lamar, Tyrone, and Kevin stood completely paralyzed. They stared at Anthony, then at the groaning Albanians on the ground, their brains struggling to process the math of what they had just seen.
The commotion on the flank finally caught the attention of the surrounding crowd. Four more ABK thugs wielding wrenches and heavy chains turned and charged the small group.
"Sick," Anthony murmured.
He flicked his cigarette butt into the chest of the lead attacker.
Anthony didn't use flashy martial arts. He didn't even adopt a fighting stance. He just moved.
He slipped a swinging wrench and drove an elbow upward into the first man's trachea.
He ducked a whistling chain and buried a brutal right hook into the second man's liver.
He caught the third man's swinging arm, twisted it against the joint, and drove his weight downward. A sickening tear echoed over the noise of the yard as the shoulder dislocated, accompanied by a shrieking howl.
The final attacker caught a blinding low kick to the side of the knee. The joint inverted. The man collapsed, screaming.
In under ten seconds, four more men lay in a heap of broken bones and groaning agony.
John stood perfectly still the entire time. He was mostly debating whether he could use the distraction to throw the greasy bag of lamb skewers into a nearby trash fire.
The massacre on the flank was too clean and too loud to ignore. A ripple of confusion tore through the ABK ranks. Several Albanian lieutenants stopped fighting the 18th Street members and turned to look at the slaughter happening on the edge of the yard.
Chico, the 18th Street boss, noticed it too, but he was too busy trying to keep Igor's machete out of his neck to figure out what was happening.
Dion and his crew were petrified.
"Fuck..." Dion croaked, his eyes wide. "Anthony..."
"It seems making thirty bucks just by standing around isn't as easy as you thought," Anthony smiled.
The sudden loss of momentum on the ABK flank caused the battle lines to shift. The Albanians pushed their reserve fighters forward, while the less committed 18th Street members began to panic and retreat.
The rout became contagious. The Hispanic gang's rear guard turned and fled toward the chain-link fence.
Dion and the kids were caught in the crush of retreating bodies. They were shoved backward, separated from Anthony, and cornered against a rusted wall of tires.
A six-man ABK hunting party broke through the fleeing crowd and boxed them in. They carried heavy clubs and iron rebar, smiling with the cruel anticipation of a cat that had finally cornered a mouse.
"Fuck you, Little Devils," the leader spat. He was bald and heavily muscled, swinging a baton modified with heavy steel bolts. "I'll send you all to hell right now."
Dion gripped his tiny hunting dagger. He was backed flat against the tires. He knew he was going to die.
The bald man raised the spiked baton high over his head, aiming directly to cave in Dion's skull.
"Hey."
The bald man froze. He turned his head.
Standing next to the tire stack was the older man in the hoodie. He was holding a paper bag of cold tea eggs.
"Who the fuck are you?" a skinny Albanian next to the leader snarled.
John ignored him. He stepped past the thugs, grabbed Dion by the shoulder, pulled the kid behind him, and placed himself squarely between the killers and the four terrified teenagers.
He looked at the spiked baton. He looked at the five other men.
"They're my employers," John said, his voice a flat, dead drone. "They're paying me thirty dollars today. If you break them, I don't get paid."
"I'll break you!" The bald man roared in rage and swung the heavy baton directly at John's head.
John didn't block it. He merely turned his shoulders an inch to the right. The heavy iron swung through empty space, grazing the fabric of his hoodie.
The missed swing pulled the massive attacker entirely off balance. The moment the man's momentum shifted forward, John caught the center of the baton shaft with his left hand and gave it a sharp, guiding tug.
The man stumbled forward.
John drove his right knee squarely into the man's solar plexus.
Hrk!
The bald man's eyes bugged out. The breath exploded from his lungs in a wet gasp. His body folded in half and flew backward, crashing heavily into one of his own men.
John kicked the bottom of the spiked baton, flipping it up into his hand. He weighed it.
"Not bad," John muttered.
The remaining five ABK members roared and rushed him.
John's fighting style was the complete opposite of Anthony's lethal, bone-breaking brutality. It was concise, rhythmic, and incredibly fluid.
He didn't swing the heavy baton to kill. He used it as a lever.
He parried a descending wrench, sliding the base of his baton directly into the attacker's floating ribs.
He sidestepped a thrusting knife, sweeping the iron shaft cleanly across the man's shins, dropping him instantly.
He used the grip of the baton to smash a length of chain out of the third man's hands, then stepped inside the man's guard and drove his shoulder into his sternum, sending him crashing to the concrete.
It looked entirely casual.
It didn't look like a fight for survival. Every strike landed perfectly on a nerve cluster, a joint, or a soft rib -- inflicting instant, paralyzing agony while surgically avoiding a fatal blow.
In five seconds, all five men were on the ground, wheezing and clutching their ruined joints.
Ten yards away, Anthony was still working.
An Albanian charged him with a machete. Anthony stepped offline, shifting his shoulder directly into the inside of the man's elbow. The joint locked, the arm went numb, and the blade violently reversed direction, sinking deep into the attacker's own stomach. The man screamed and collapsed.
Another thug tried to put Anthony in a rear chokehold. Anthony caught both wrists before the arms could lock. He twisted sharply.
Two sickening snaps echoed across the yard, followed by a high-pitched scream. Both of the attacker's arms hung at grotesque, inverted angles. Anthony silenced him with a casual backhand to the throat.
Anthony and John moved through the mob like two tigers dropped into a petting zoo.
They used no wasted energy. No shouting. No wild swings.
Every step, every parry, every casual shift of their weight was designed to completely destroy the anatomical structure of the men attacking them. They turned the gang members' own momentum against them, rendering men useless with a single, devastating counter.
Dion, Lamar, Tyrone, and Kevin stood pressed against the rusted cars. Their minds were entirely blank.
"My God..." Kevin whispered, his legs shaking violently. "How... how are they doing that?"
"Is that Bruce Lee?" Tyrone choked out.
"Shut up. Stay behind them," Dion commanded, his voice a ragged croak.
His heart was hammering against his ribs, but his street survival instinct was screaming at him: Do not lose sight of the monsters.
"Thirty dollars," Anthony's voice drifted back to them, perfectly calm over the sound of breaking bones. "Do you still think you got a good deal?"
Dion swallowed hard. He looked at the mangled bodies surrounding them, then at the elegant, terrifying man in the suit. He shook his head wildly.
The violence rippling outward from Anthony and John finally caused a strange, paralyzed stillness on the flank of the battlefield.
The surviving gang members stopped fighting each other and backed away, staring at the two men in sheer, unadulterated horror.
Then, the wail of police sirens cut through the night air.
The spell broke. Both gangs instantly scattered, dragging their wounded toward the exits.
Before he slipped through the fence, Chico, the 18th Street boss, stopped and cast a long, calculating look at Dion and the two men standing with him.
"Time to go," John said, tossing the spiked baton into the weeds. He looked at Anthony. "Have you had enough fun?"
"That was very entertaining," Anthony smiled. He turned to Dion, who was still staring at the bodies on the ground. "Next time you hire muscle, make sure you know who you're buying."
Dion looked at the two men. His hands were shaking. "I... I don't have the cash on me right now."
Anthony laughed. "Go ask Chico for it. Tell him an extra five dollars isn't too much to ask for saving his flank."
Dion nodded frantically. "I will! I swear, Anthony. Uncle John. I'll get you your money."
Anthony pulled a small notebook and a pen from his inside pocket. He scribbled down a burner number and handed it to the teenager.
"When you get the money, call this number. I'll come collect it."
Dion took the paper like it was made of gold. "I'll bring it to you personally."
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