The bold step

Oliver spent the whole afternoon on the rooftop with Felicity, listening to her stories. It was so far, the longest time he'd ever spent with her in a day. The both of them were becoming more closer than imagined, certainly, the closest he'd ever been with a girl.

He had left now to find Jasper and settle things with him, just like he promised her he would. As he walked along the passage he could hear some noises coming from ahead of him, like someone was in pain. As he came further, he noticed a group of boys ahead, violently assaulting a weaker boy. He couldn't really identify the boy they assaulted due to the manner they surrounded him, but he could tell the bullies were Drake Parker and his friends.

Oliver wanted to mind his business and pass them unidentified, but when he got closer he noticed some familiar tone in the voice of the victim, so he stopped to check. Lo and behold, the person whom he was looking for was the helpless victim at the mercy of what looked like an angry gang of bullies. Oliver was totally clueless about what to do at this point, he just stood there trying to think out his next course of action, but making sure not to attract their attention. Unfortunately, one of them saw him and alerted the others.

"Yoo, check it out," one of the boys said, "It's Oliver."

"Hay Oliver, what happened to being responsible for something else worse than murder, huh? Or are you gonna try and run your lame ass to the woods?" said another boy.

"Let him go, Drake," Oliver demanded.

"And what is it that you intend to do if I don't?" Drake asked him.

Jasper was crawling around the floor, searching with his arms like a blind person. He had lost his glasses. Oliver immediately found it lying by the corner. As he stretched out his head to pick it up, Drake quickly kicked it away before it touched the glasses.

"Back off!" he said in a rudely demanding tone.

Oliver tried to pick it up again and Drake kicked his hand off again.

"I said back off!!" he sounded even louder.

Oliver wisely left the glasses now and stood back up to his feet.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked Drake.

"This doesn't concern you, Oliver. Leave now!" Drake demanded.

"I don't know why you're doing this, but I refuse to be intimidated by a bunch of simpletons and cowards," Oliver said.

Drake seemed really infuriated right now.

"So what are you gonna do tough guy? You're gonna fight me or what, huh?"

"I say we go one on one, without any outside interference from any of your little pawns," Oliver said, "except you're too big of a coward to fight me on your own."

Oliver was so fired up with vengeful annoyance. The maltreatment he and many more others had been receiving from Drake and his friends was too much already to endure. He wanted it to end now, and he thought there was no other way except by proving that he was a more formidable opponent than Drake. Though Drake had a better advantage when it comes to size and body mass, he thought his slick quickness and cat-like agility would be the odds evener, he also thought this was an opportunity to finally utilize his fighting skills against an actual enemy.

Oliver was so overconfident about fighting Drake Parker, that he forgot totally about his injured leg. His morale was so high he didn't realize that he might be on the verge of running headlong into making a regrettable decision.

Drake delightfully accepted the challenge with a sadistic smirk. Perhaps, to him, this was his free chance of getting his hands on Oliver once more and giving him the beating of his life. By now Jasper had found his glasses where they fell, he could not believe what was about to happen right in front of him.

"Don't do it, Oliver!" Jasper said.

"I got this," replied Oliver, "I wanna teach this jerk a lesson."

"No! You're gonna get hurt!" warned Jasper.

Oliver simply ignored him. Right now there was only one thing in his mind, which was getting his hands on Drake.

"You're gonna regret this," Drake told him, "You're sure you don't want to listen to your buddy? I'd save you the trouble."

"I'm not in for silly games," Oliver replied, "let's do this."

Drake scoffed out mockingly.

"Just to make it clear, Logan, I'm gonna cripple you," he sounded in a deeper tone, "literally cripple you."

"We'll see about that," Oliver replied, holding up his tightly clenched fists closely in front of his face, and posing in a fighting stance.

Without wasting a second, Drake came right at Oliver and forcefully swung his fist at him, but Oliver had seen it coming on time and was able to move out of the way before the punch could land on his face.

"Come on," Oliver said, motioning to him to come.

Drake immediately charged at him, sending two heavy fists as he came. Oliver quickly dodge them both, but Drake caught him with a right elbow to the jaw right after he evaded the second punch.

"Guessing you didn't see that one coming," Drake taunted.

The other boys laughed.

Oliver could already perceive the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. About a couple of teeth had been partially loosened from their sockets. He managed to suck in the pain as he motioned to Drake once more to come. He had just one goal in mind, and he was focused.

He made sure to maintain direct eye contact with Drake, with the right positioning of his hands and feet. Drake went ahead to deliver another heavy fist. This time, instead of dodging the punch, Oliver blocked with his arms, then delivered a quick roundhouse kick to the side of his right knee.

It came so unexpected to Drake, as Oliver had perfectly distracted him, making him focus his whole attention only on his upper body, ignoring the lower part. Without wasting another second, Oliver continued on his attack with a devastating right hook to the side of his face, then a quick jab to the bridge of the nose with the left, sending him staggering backward, his back crashing heavily against the wall.

Without allowing him even a millisecond of recovery, Oliver immediately met him with a knee strike to the guts. Oliver was about to go for a second knee strike before Drake caught him with a wicked elbow to the temple. And because it came from a close range with a great deal of force exerted, Oliver was sent crashing to the opposite wall, almost knocked out clean. For the moment it felt as if his brain had been toned off. His visions were temporarily impaired, making the individual images around him seem as though they were in pairs. The sensory fluids for balance inside his head had momentarily been reset and disabled, making him incapable of discerning his left from his right. The pain was so heavy that the loud rolls of laughter from the other boys seemed so indistinct and inaudible to his ears.

Still struggling to shake his nerve cells back to a normal functioning state when all of a sudden he felt something wrap tightly around his neck from behind. The pressure was so firm and, it felt like there was no escape. Drake had viciously trapped him in a very dangerous chokehold.

"Yeah! How do you like it, Logan?! I'm gonna squeeze the hell out of you till you turn purple," taunted Drake in a malicious tone, adding insult to injury.

Oliver had squarely zero awareness of where he was. Frantically, he furiously waved his arms around instinctively, looking for a way to somehow free himself from the agonizing choke hold executed by the nasty lead bully.

Drake steadily increased the pressure on Oliver's neck. Oliver's face had soon grown red from the severe obstruction of air from his windpipe, and the energy he had initially shown while waving his arms had steadily dwindled. Jasper became extremely worried when he noticed this, he thought Oliver might be fading fast.

"Come on, it's enough already, leave him alone!" Jasper pleaded.

"You've made your point already, let him go," he added.

It was already turning into a display of next-level brutality by Drake, and the other boys also became a bit worried their selves that now he was crossing the line, and if peradventure something happens to Oliver, they would all be in trouble as well.

"Hay Spikey, don't you think you're going a little too far? That loser's had even already," one of the boys finally said.

"Yeah, right now you're totally way out of line," said another boy, "You're gonna us into trouble."

"I'm not yet done!!" Drake bawled out at them ballistically.

That momentarily distraction made Drake release a little bit of the pressure he had on Oliver's neck. Having noticed that Oliver managed to tuck his chin to his neck, easing the pressure therein, then pushing him back against the wall to finally force a separation.

As he was still trying to catch his breath by the corner, Drake wrathfully charged back at him, swinging a fist directly toward his eye. Oliver saw it coming just at the nick of time and narrowly avoided what would have been a catastrophe. On dodging the punch from Drake, Oliver immediately countered with a reverse roundhouse kick to the side of the face, slapping him back against the wall.

"Bloody hell!" exclaimed one of the boys, "I thought they said he'd broken his leg."

Judging from the looks on the face of everyone, including Jasper, they were all shocked at how Oliver was able to deliver that kind of kick, even in his condition.

"Look at you, you're not even half as tough as you pretend to be," Oliver mucked.

"Aaahhhrrr…!!" roared Drake, charging back at Oliver with his eyes flared with intense rage, and his face reddened with fury.

This time around, as Drake attempted to deliver a blow, Oliver took advantage of his own momentum, using it against him by delivering an arm drag, overthrowing him to the ground.

"You're so slow," Oliver taunted, "…and weak."

The other boys were still finding it way difficult to believe what they had just witnessed. Never have any one of them ever seen Drake being manhandled in such a manner by anyone. It felt really strange and unreal, mostly for Oliver of all people; as small and lean as he was, to bring Drake to the ground.

"Get up and fight," Oliver said to him.

Drake got back to his feet and went right at Oliver to release a punch, but that wasn't his main motive, as he had learned of the slight limping in Oliver's movement. Oliver was able to avoid the punch, but not a heavy kick to his injured shin which came immediately afterward.

"Ahhrr…!" cried Oliver in agony, falling to his knees.

It came so unexpectedly, and now he felt nothing but a white-hot blaze of pain all over his leg. The pain was intensely crippling that he could barely even move his leg. He just sat there on the floor, groaning in pain and regret.

"It's over Logan. Looks like I kicked your leg so hard you'd be needing someone to wheel you around for a couple of weeks," Drake said.

"It's not yet over till you end up on the ground," grunted Oliver, with a savage stare in his eyes.

Drake scoffed.

"Well, where are you at now hothead?" he mocked.

At that moment, Oliver took him down with a back leg sweep, using his uninjured leg. He had been lying in wait the whole time, waiting for Drake to come to a close range so as to execute perfectly.

"Actually, I'm still fine on my feet," he told Drake, finally struggling back to his feet.

"Now it's over," he added.

Drake soon got back to his feet as well. The both of them were having a rival stare down at each other now.

"I was going to let go," Drake said, "But now you left me on choice."

"Please don't do it," Jasper pleaded, "It's not worth it."

"Don't do what?" Oliver asked with a bewildered expression displayed over his face.

"This!" Drake answered, swinging his arm at Oliver.

Immediately Drake swung his arm at him, an unseen force from out of nowhere suddenly lifted him high above the air, slamming him hard against the wall behind him. Oliver's eyes widened with terror and disbelief at what he was witnessing at this moment. Somehow Drake had used some kind of telekinetic ability to lift him about five feet above the ground and was now holding him up against the wall without making any form of physical contact with him.

Oliver couldn't even wrap his mind around what he was experiencing at the hands of Drake. It was so unexpected and unbelievable. He couldn't have but wonder how Drake was doing what he was doing since he had never heard of any orphan that had an ability book since arriving at Melrose.

Jasper kept pleading on behalf of Oliver, but Drake remained adamant about making sure pain was intensely inflicted on him. His body soon began to press harder and harder against the hard wall. The experience was so painful and unbearable like his entire bones were on the verge of getting crushed.

"Put me down," Oliver grunted in agony.

"You asked for it, Logan," replied Drake, furiously.

"If you had minded your business in the first place, you wouldn't have ended up there."

"Ahrr… Just stop this, you're hurting me," Oliver protested.

"Isn't that the main point? This little thief here stole something belonging to my friend Alex" Drake said.

He took out a silver chain necklace with a cross pendant from his pocket. Oliver recognized the chain necklace immediately after he saw it. He saw this same necklace yesterday night when he fell down in the woods.

"This was Alex's chain, but this little wimp was caught with it, that's why we decided we taught him a lesson," he said, referring to Jasper.

Oliver was in a state of thought even with the pain he was experiencing. If they were actually right that they saw Jasper with the necklace, Oliver thought, then that means he was also in the woods last night, and since the necklace belonged to Alex, he thought it might be a clue to finding evidence of who the werewolf was.

Drake kept on increasing the pressure he had on Oliver, compressing him against the wall. Most of his friends had headed off, after pleading with him that it was enough, only for him to keep increasing the pressure and agony on Oliver.

"Put me down," Oliver complained again in anguish, "You're gonna kill me."