Austin did as he was told, while staying at the hotel he would head down to the reception room. It wasn’t large by any means, there were a couple of sofas here and there and a bar where no one was there to serve you. He knew the Shadow Fighter wouldn’t turn up tonight since it was the same day they had left each other but he just wanted to check the place out.
The place was completely empty, so he was sure if he would recognise the Shadow Fighter if they were to appear or not.
‘Wait, will I actually get to see what the Shadow Fighter looks like? They wouldn’t come up in their get up here, right?’ Austin thought.
The mask he wore made sense, since a few people would wear them if they were sick, but the whole ninja get up certainly stood out, even in a tier 4 place like so. In the end no one arrived and it soon was the next day.
“Hmm, I still haven’t received any text from Gary or anything like that, I guess he’s doing fine, and no one was able to find me in this place, so what the heck do I do now?” Austin thought.
The hotel room wasn't the best of places, it was dark even with the light on, and if one was to draw the curtains and look out the window the view was just another building, where if one was to reach out of they would be able to touch the wall.
Attempting to turn on the TV, the channels were fuzzy which was hard for Austin to believe because he thought everything had turned digital, or at least you could watch something with a TV connection. Yet there was no Wifi, fuzzy TV and nothing to do.
“Arghh!” Austin said, jumping out of the bed he was lying on. “Screw this.”
Going to the door he opened it white and shut it behind him, as he did the door broke off its hinge slightly, he turned around to look at it for a few moments.
‘Was that me using too much of my strength, or this crappy hotel… oh well it should be fine right… if I have to pay for it.’
A shiver ran down his neck imagining what Kai would say to him, but it was a problem he would have to deal with later. For now, he would roam the streets, if he ran into other gang members then so be it, it was far more interesting than staying up in a hotel room all day.
While walking the streets, Austin was aware as he turned his head. He walked past several beggars that would be on the street, and was worried they might be disguised, yet no one had approached him.
Before he knew it, he had ended up back at the school, the school where the first incident had occurred.
‘Vlad, that kid, he helped me out so much, and right now, I have no clue where he even is, or if he’s even alright.’ Asutin thought. ‘This, just doing nothing and allowing that to happen, it's not the way I roll.’
Rather than entering the school, Austin decided to turn away, the last thing he wanted to do was get another bystander involved, that was until he heard a voice call out to him.
“Austin!” A voice shouted out.
There weren’t many that would know his name, especially in a city like this, and when he turned around, Austin was stunned at who it was.
“V..Vlad!” Austin said, with a raised eyebrow.
The reason for his slight stutter was because although it looked like Vlad, he looked completely different. His face was extremely swollen on the side, and his eye was black. He had been hurt.
“Vlad!” Austin ran up to him and grabbed him by his shoulders. He winced in pain, causing Austin to let go immediately.
“Sorry, was it those guys, the Scavengers, they had to have done this to you!” Austin said.
When speaking and looking at Vlad there was something else about him though, the look in his eyes. It looked like he hadn’t slept, and he was staring straight ahead.
“What did they… do to you?” Austin said.
Vlad didn’t speak for a while, but eventually words came out from his mouth.
“Can we… errg… go to a nearby park… I need to ask you something?” Vlad asked.
Right now seeing the way the kid was, Austin would have done anything for him, just the sight of him made him feel extremely guilty and as he thought about it more, anger was starting to build up.
‘These damn Scavengers, they're worse than the delinquents. They're a gang that needs to be taken care of, otherwise they might continue to torment Vlad, and eventually we're going to have to leave this city… maybe I should ask Gary if we can do something. If the Howlers can take over this place or something.’ Austin thought.
However, it was a big ask, did Austin have the right to ask Gary for something like that. For now, he shook off the thought and entered the park.
It was hard to call it a park, there was grass here and there but it certainly wasn’t an area for playing in. There were piles of rubbish all over the place that were taller than humans, spread out. It looked more like a junkyard than a park, it was no wonder that there was no one in a place like this.
Vlad eventually stopped walking, and turned around to look at Austin, he still had that look as if he wasn’t staring at anything.
“What did you want to tell me?” Austin asked.
Vlad didn’t say anything, instead he started to take a few steps back, and then behind the piles of junk and trash, laughter was heard as full grown adults started to walk out.
“It looks like the boss was right, if we let this kid go, then he would lead us right to the person we're looking for.” One of the men said, holding onto a baseball bat.
On top of one of the piles, a man jumped up an extraordinary height, far higher than what a human was capable of, and landed right in front of Vlad. The people here weren’t any of the ones that Austin had seen from before, and there were at least fifteen of them.
“Well they led us to one, we still need to find out where the other one is as well.”
*****
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