Private Talk

Nathan smiled even more as he saw Linus' nervousness. He glanced back at his mother in the kitchen.

"Mom, I'm heading out for a little."

Anita didn't even look up.

"Be back before dinner."

"Laters!"

Nathan dragged Linus outside and along the street until he found an alley where they could have a private talk.

Linus fearfully and obediently followed along. He let Nathan throw him against the brick wall.

"Now then. What could you possibly have to say to me that you came to my mother's restaurant first thing in the morning?"

Linus looked at Nathan, the image of the events from a couple of days ago vivid in his mind. He avoided his gaze.

"...A police officer came to talk to me."

"Marcus?"

Linus shook his head.

"Well, him too. But he only asked a few questions before leaving. After him, another guy with a bald head and a tattoo on his chest came by."

"Oh, no. A bald guy. Your worst enemy. What does that have to do with me?"

Nathan crossed his arms as he looked at Linus. Anita had asked him not to involve innocent civilians. But Linus had sided with the Vijang thugs and supported their testimony. He wasn't innocent in Nathan's books.

But he could still prove useful. After all, Nathan didn't know where the Vijang thugs were or how to find the rest of the Syndicate.

He could track them down sooner or later with his skill. But why not take a shortcut if there was one?

"He asked me questions about you."

"Isn't that only natural?"

"Can you let me finish?"

"Can you stop beating around the bush?"

Linus sighed.

"He wanted to know things the other officer didn't care about and things that he should have already known or had access to. He wondered about your address, what caused you to faint, if I saw how your skill worked, and…"

Nathan frowned.

"And what?"

Before Linus could answer, Nathan looked up and toward his mother's restaurant. He looked back at Linus.

"Fucking coward."

He stomped on Linus' shins, breaking both before taking off toward his mother's shop.

Since he had suppressed his senses to a level where he could actually interact with people, he hadn't noticed anything different about the people on the streets. But when he sharpened his senses as he ran, Nathan could perceive two familiar auras as well as smell the scent of leather jackets.

The Vijang Syndicate had decided to take the fight to his mother's shop to pay back what he did to their members.

Nathan wasn't sure if he could celebrate yet since he hadn't seen what they had done to his mother or her shop yet. But it saved him the trouble of looking for them.

However, more than anything, Nathan's memories of returning to a restaurant in ruins with nothing but his parents' corpses left behind burned like wildfire in his eyes as he ran like a mad tiger.

He rounded a final corner and saw the Vijang Syndicate members crowded around and outside the restaurant, blocked by one hairy man at the entrance.

Terrence was sticking to his promise about keeping bad guests away from the entrance.

But there wasn't much Terrence could do against a whole group of thugs.

Nathan frowned as he slowed down.

The Vijang Syndicate had supposedly tried to stay off the police's radar and pretend to be ordinary citizens. Harassing and possibly vandalizing a restaurant and its owners in a group of almost a dozen men wouldn't go unnoticed. Even now, people nearby had started calling the police and requesting street-level heroes.

However, Nathan understood when he saw that only one or two had decided to wear their leather jackets.

They weren't there to cause trouble. They were there to be victims again.

First, the son had beat up two of their friends. And then, by coincidence, his parents had kicked them out of a restaurant for nothing other than hatred and being poor restauranteurs.

Nathan's frown deepened as he looked at the scene playing out like a school drama. It was obvious when he took a closer look that his father wasn't even doing anything. The Vijang thugs were just clamoring, crying, and falling over all on their own.

He would have to be smart if he didn't want to implicate his parents.

But Nathan smiled at the bothersome situation.

He would much rather have to exert himself than lose his parents again.

Nathan walked over to the group.

"Excuse me!"

He spoke loudly enough for the bystanders to hear before he changed the pitch of his voice.

"Get the fuck out of here you mangy brat! You're lucky we didn't kill you the other day!"

Then, Nathan punched himself in the face before anyone could react and jumped back into a nearby car with enough force to buckle the car door and break the glass. Sparkling shards of glass rained down on Nathan.

Instantly, everyone nearby froze.

The Vijang thugs stopped crying out indignantly at Terrence. Terrence stopped trying to get them to leave. The bystanders' mouths stopped moving, and the police and heroe services on the other side of their phones were left wondering what that crash just now was.

But after a few moments, when Nathan coughed up the blood from his bit tongue, chaos erupted again.

It didn't take long before a couple of street-level heroes showed up and contained the situation.

Fortunately, there weren't any physical altercations to stop. They just needed to keep everyone involved at the scene and administer first aid until the first responders showed up and could arrest or ambulance away people.

It was a ruckus, especially when the Vijang thugs started trying to explain that they had nothing to do with the kid who looked like he was about to die.

But their words didn't hold much weight, especially when some of the Hobster family's neighbors who had heard the story made a few connections. Terrence and Anita also stepped up and called out the Vijang thugs for intentionally causing trouble, disturbing their business, and playing victims.

Their words wouldn't have held much weight before since Terrence looked scarier than most of the thugs, who looked like office workers or teachers.

But after Nathan's stunt, the Vijang thugs were under intense scrutiny by the surrounding bystanders and heroes until the police showed up and took testimonies. None of them managed to flee the scene, including the only one in the group with a skill.