What Happened Here?

The room was mostly quiet.

A few groans could be heard every here and there but other than that, there wasn't much else going on.

Kyle the bartender was wiping away at a glass cup that his last customer had previously used. He figured he would keep it after the renovations were made. It was one of the few things that didn't get wrecked in the crossfire between the two groups.

He was smiling to himself and daydreaming away, he thought about how peculiar the strange group of people were and their masks. They were like cosplayers he heard of online, although this was his first time seeing such a thing in person.

'Who knew that people actually dressed up in such a strange way? Heh, they are better than me, for I would be too embarrassed to do such a thing,' he thought.

'And then there was that one lady with them, Mint. She was truly.... something.'

Kyle was left to enjoy his thoughts until he heard his door creak open. He wasn't expecting anyone else to show up so this would add to the number of surprises he had experienced thus far.

A young man entered his bar. He was a lean yet somewhat muscular young man with medium, flowing blond hair that reached just past his neck and close to touching his shoulders. His hairstyle was curly and he was fairly tall but still a tad shorter than Kyle.

He wore a ruffled white V-neck shirt with a white coat that was perched over his shoulder and he had on a black pair of trousers to compliment his look. On his feet he wore a pair of black boots to add to his height, making him much taller than he already was.

To all those around him, this person was seen as a Saint.

At least to most.

The young man stood still by the door, he looked around the bar as he accessed just how much damage had been done as well as how many casualties were caused inside.

He did his best to hide it, but there was an intense look of distress on his face.

He was shaken at what he saw.

"Saint Louis, Saint Louis," a small boy said as he ran up to where the blonde person was to greet him. He got on his knees and cried to him, "Saint Louis, it's Mikey! He's been hurt badly."

"What? Mikey's been hurt?" Louise answered surprised. He had originally thought that Mikey had been away, that was why the place got so wrecked. But to hear that Mikey was here and he lost? It made him ask himself, 'What kind of a monster managed to beat Mikey?'

'No, this has to be some kind of mistake.'

"Saint Louis," the calming voice of the male servant behind him said softly to Louis as he placed a hand on his right shoulder. After breaking him out of his trance, he quickly took it off.

"Take me to him," Louis finally said having regained his collected demeanor.

He was taken towards the far end of the room. There lying against the wall was a beaten down and bruised Mikey. Although he had been wounded, it was nothing life-threatening, so Louis figured that the boy exaggerated the term 'badly'.

Mikey recognized the person standing before him and couldn't help but smile at the familiarity of his scenario. In a partially harsh voice he said, "Saint Louis, you came."

Louis looked at Mikey with a glimmer of disdain in his eye. He then asked him, "What happened to you?"

"We were attacked," Mikey said with a small groan as he pressed on his sore shoulder.

"By who?" Louis asked in an impatient tone. It was partially filled with anger and partially filled with frustration.

"That's the thing, I don't know," Mikey answered. "The guys who attacked us, well, and girl, they were all wearing masks from the popular Arachnid kid show."

"Cosplayers?" Louis replied. "You got attacked by a bunch of cosplayers?"

"Cosplay aside, they were good. Real good," Mikey responded.

Louis then paused momentarily as he covered his mouth with his hand to think for a bit. "These cosplayers," he said as he removed his hand for a bit, "Which gang do you think they were from?"

"That's the thing, Saint Louis. The guys who attacked us," Mikey answered. "I don't think that they were a part of any gang, or family for that matter. This was done too unprofessionally for it to have been planned. And they had too few people for it to have been an organization of any sort."

"And yet, they managed to beat us... Me," Mikey said with a small pause as he looked away from Louis. "It almost feels as though they did this just because."

"Is this a joke?" Louis thought out loud. "These people walked into my territory, came into my place of business, beat up all of you, and you're telling me you think they did this, just because?"

"Well if they had another reason for doing this, then they didn't make it very clear," Mikey responded. He then faced away from Louis, for he felt unjustified to look his way after failing to defend his territory.

Mikey remained silent.

Louis then looked around the room again. But this time he wasn't assessing the damages, instead, he was looking for someone.

"Where is she?" he asked frantically.

"Where is who?" one of the boys in the bar responded.

"Where is that goddamn informant who was supposed to be here today? She was supposed to meet with you guys and give you information that you would later pass on to me. Did she not come here at all? Because if she did, then she must know a thing or two about what happened today!"

The people in the bar who could move all looked around and shook their heads at the fact that she was nowhere to be seen.

"We don't know," someone replied from the crowd.

'Goddamnit!' Louis screamed in his mind. He closed his eyes to think on the outside, but it was as though he was throwing a tantrum on the inside. 

He felt humiliated, no, worse than that. The small group of people he had been raising up to try and prove to his father that he was capable of leading others and taking over bigger projects in his family, were all beaten down and demolished by a random group of misfits whom he had no way of tracking down.

Louis thought, 'If word gets out, no, who am I kidding? When word gets out of this, I will become a mockery to the family.'

There was a sensation of regret in his heart, perhaps had he been here today then this never would have happened. He didn't think anyone would be bold enough to march into his family's territory and do such a thing, much less did he think that they would beat Mikey with such few numbers, for, Mikey was the one who beat Mazino.

These people managed to sneak into his territory past all the watchers he had observing this part of the city, got close enough to where they were only seen entering and exiting the premises, and then somehow vanished out of the area without getting caught or followed.

For an unplanned event, this felt pretty planned out to him.

'Was I sabotaged?' he wondered. 'Could any of my siblings have sabotaged me? That would explain why I was the only one attacked in this territory. But even if I don't have a good track record with them, would they be willing enough to upset our father just so they could bring me down?'

"I... don't know anymore," Louis said out loud with a deep sigh as he opened his eyes.

"Saint Louis," the man standing behind him said reassuringly. "We may not know what transpired in this place here today, but there is still one person who could perhaps provide us some answers to that.

Louis let out a deep groan as he shook his head and brought his hand down in vexation. He would rather eat a banana than have to do this, but he took it that he had no other options left to choose from.

As he turned around, he saw a smile on Kyle's face which only added more fuel to the rage that was already building up within him.

Kyle was in a joyful mood. So much so that he was still wiping the same glass cup from when Louis had walked into the room.

Louis came up to the bar counter and slammed one hand down on it. After doing so, he glared at Kyle as the two of them stood face-to-face with each other.

"Kyle," Louis said.

"Louis," Kyle responded.

Hearing this, the man behind Louis was irritated and decided to rebuke him. "Don't you dare address him so informally Kyle, This man standing here before you is a saint. Know your place," he said as he got closer to him.

"Well my place, happens to be in this bar, that I own," Kyle said with emphasis on that last part. "And you two happen to be in it, so what does that make of you?" Kyle replied.

"Stop," Louis interrupted. "I don't have time for this right now, just answer me this. Who attacked this place earlier and why?"

"How could I know what you don't know? After all, your network is far superior to mine," Kyle responded. "I'm just as clueless as you," he said as he spun the glass cup in his hand on one finger.

"Come on Kyle, is there anything you can tell us? A name, A face, An address!?" Louis asked in an anxious voice as he gave away his collected demeanor.

"These people were wearing strange costumes and showed up from who knows where. I couldn't give you those even if I wanted to."

"By the way, would you like a mint? I happen to have a couple stocked up inside this drawer," Kyle responded as he bent down to find the little compartment with mints.

"This is hopeless. I knew it would be a waste of my time," Louis sighed as he left the counter and made his way towards the exit.

"You know, the people who walked in here earlier," Kyle said to catch the attention of Louis as he pulled out a small bag of mints on the table. "Although strange, none of them had an accent. Well, except for the one woman who was with them, but apart from her, I would say that they are all local residents of the state."

"Woman?" Louis repeated.

"One was carrying a chain, one had brass knuckles, another a mace, and another a pair of daggers. There was a fifth person too but he didn't carry any weapons that I could see on him. All of them were masked and are shorter than you in height, well, except for the woman of course." Kyle continued.

"Tell me about this woman," Louis answered.

"Oh, where do I begin, she was a beauty like never before, a silver rarer than gold, A-"

"Never mind," Louis interrupted as he rolled his eyes.

Kyle scoffed it off as he threw his arms about in the air.

"And though I can't tell you who these people are, I can at least tell you who they are not. These people can't belong to anyone who happens to reside inside your father's territory. Be it directly or indirectly like a distant gang."

"And how would you know that?" Louis asked as he furrowed his eyebrows in suspicion.

"I just do, can't say anything else about it," Kyle responded.

Louis stared at Kyle for a long moment in silence. This was his way of calling Kyle a liar.

It wasn't until Kyle broke the silence that this stopped. "Look, I've been in this business far longer than you, so I happen to know a thing or two about some things, but that doesn't mean that I know everything."

"I bet you don't," Louis added.

Kyle chose to ignore the childish remark.

"So like I said, whoever is responsible for this is most likely someone from outside your family's territory. That is as much as I could gather from what little I had."

Louis thought to himself for a moment as he covered his mouth with his hand once again. After he was done, he nodded to himself in agreeance with what Kyle had said and then looked back to face him.

"I suppose at this point I should be thanking you for your information," he said.

"But that's the thing, will you?" Kyle asked.

"No," Louis answered. "It's what you get for wasting my time earlier."

"I had a feeling you'd be like that," Kyle responded.

As Louis made for the exit, he said one last thing to Kyle the bartender. "Just make sure you take better care of MY bar the next time." With that said, Louis was gone.

"That brat," Kyle said to himself, he didn't even say that he would pay for the damages, well, it's not like I needed him to anyway.

As Kyle said that, he remembered the moment when Mint threw her wallet at him. When he looked inside, there wasn't a single card inside of it. No driver's license, no credit card, nothing.

She had taken everything out beforehand when she passed it to him so that he wouldn't have any way of tracing anything back to her.

Kyle chuckled at this memory. "Truly, what an interesting group of people."