Dogfight

"Go get 'em!" Sayako flung open the door, shoving Mangchi and Pete inside.

Before the two of them had a chance to react, Sayako sealed the door behind them with an exterior lock.

*Click*

Aiko paled as she realized that her two friends had just been locked in.

"S-Sayako, what - why did you do that?!" She screamed as the doorknob quivered, but did not successfully open.

The door desperately shivered as fists slammed against it.

"Now let's check the cams. Don't worry, I won't help them but I'm sure they'll do just fine."

That didn't reassure her at all, Aiko thought as Sayako ran her fingers across the wall.

The woman's fingers touched a hidden latch, revealing a high-tech station filled with hidden camera feeds of the inside.

"See, Aiko, these two don't need my help. It's not your fault, it's just that their weapons are much more intuitive than yours."

Sayako pointed to the camera feed of the kitchen, at the top left corner of the array of live recordings.

"And look at Mangchi go..."

She could not resist exhaling a breath of admiration.

As Aiko looked at what she was pointing to, a disgusting sense of adrenaline coursed through her veins.

...

Mangchi lowered his rate of breath as he found himself in a completely different, dark environment.

"Oh man, what the fuck! Let me out, open the door!" Pete shouted under the shroud of darkness, completely disoriented.

His voice died down as the sounds of growling emanated from what seemed like all around him.

"Mangchi, found a light switch?" Something in Pete's brain switched as he felt the raw danger he was in.

"Yes."

With a flick, they could see what they were dealing with.

Mangchi let out a noise of surprise as the sheer number of rabid dogs in his view overwhelmed even him.

Five shaggy, golden... things padded forward, silently. Under their fur was a pair of intelligent, hostile brown eyes.

"Prepare yourself, Pete. It seems Sayako wants us to learn or die." The plain truth. He had an unsettling revelation that if they were overpowered in this room, Sayako would not come and save them.

Pete shifted his club nervously. Then, he brought it to his shoulder.

The nervous jitters gave way to a level-headed calm.

"First move-!" The blonde boy dashed forward, pushing his club against his shoulder to infuse it with a searing velocity.

Sensing the danger, the dog underneath the club's path dashed to the side, narrowly avoiding the solid metal bar.

The floor splintered with a loud crack.

"Ugh!" Pete grunted as he clenched his knees, attempting to wrangle out the club lodged into the ground.

"Mangchi, cover me!" The boy could hear the frantic sound of dog nails on tile behind him.

Like a phantom, Mangchi flitted to Pete's rear.

As the dog rushed toward him, he closed his eyes.

He ruminated over the video of that fight he secretly saw on Tube late last night. That video, the one that he didn't even dare show Pete or Aiko.

They wouldn't find it anyway, since they've never used the site.

Mangchi thought about how Asher fought.

Especially when-

With the attacker giving him no more time to think, Mangchi thrust his fingers forward, stabbing into the dog's eyes.

He grunted with exertion as the dog writhed in pain. Mangchi's fingers kept the dog roughly in place.

"Ack!" As the dog squirmed with desperate strength, Mangchi felt his fingers bend against their joints. In the instant before his fingers snapped, he clenched them taut, pulling the dog's head horizontally into the sharp corner of the kitchen counter.

The body in his hand fell limp, and Mangchi extracted his fingers from it, massaging them with his other hand.

After a split second, Mangchi raised his head again. This was no time to be nursing injuries.

"Pete, behind you!" Mangchi yelled a warning as another dog leapt forward, flinging its body at Pete's neck.

Pete twirled around. He had already freed the club quite a bit ago and was only waiting for Mangchi's warning. Without a second of delay, he swung the club like a bat, catching the incoming dog straight on the neck.

The boy smirked as its neck snapped with a satisfying strength.

The dog flew through the air, slamming onto the refrigerator door, dead long before it hit the ground.

Two down.

Pete backed a few steps, shooting a grin at Mangchi as they regrouped for the next round.

They were raised in the Backstreets, after all. Violence was a part of their very being.

The two of them could honestly say nothing about the two furry bodies on the floor except that they were very satisfying to kill.

Years of bitter conditioning in the Backstreets turned off their empathy during fights, changing it to a near sadistic adrenaline. Only through this method could they survive.

It was either them or the dogs. This sadistic switch allowed them to strike with lethality, and without hesitation.

The three remaining dogs growled, ignoring the corpses of their kin next to them.

"I take two, you take one? Or one and two?" Pete shouted amidst the adrenaline, lifting his bat to his side.

"Just cover me. I want to try something." A glint shone in Mangchi's eyes as he stepped forward.

The boy's center of mass shifted downward as he leaned into a predatory stance.

"Hap!" Mangchi shot forward, rushing toward the dogs before Pete could react.

His hand shot forward, wrapping around the first dog's neck. With a quick twist, he snapped the thing's neck.

"Behind!"

Mangchi crouched, using both hands to grab the next dog's mouth as it soared over where his neck used to be a second previously.

With one hand clutching the top jaw and one clutching the bottom, Mangchi grunted in pain as the dog's canines dug into his skin.

'Just like the video...'

Flipping the dog so it was in front of him, he let out a satisfying howl as he spread his arms apart.

An unusually pained scream came from the dog's voicebox as it felt its jaw rip apart.

Though, Mangchi didn't have the time or strength to spare the effort to complete the process entirely. Flinging it to the ground, he silenced it with a simple stomp.

Mangchi turned around, but the last dog had switched targets to Pete, seeing Mangchi to be the stronger one of the two.

It took its chances with Pete.

Using its intelligence, the dog did not jump off the ground, as it knew it couldn't change direction in midair. Instead, it snaked along the floor in order to weave past Pete's swings.

But Pete wasn't normal either. He felt a connection to his weapon too, a bit like how Aiko did with her hammer and chisel.

The weight and grip of the handle seemed to meld with his other senses.

He rested his bat on his shoulder as the dog rushed forward.

When the dog approached the optimal range, he flexed his shoulder in preparation. In response, the dog skidded to a halt, waiting warily for his downward swing.

Only to be hit in the jaw with a vicious upward blow.

In the milliseconds when the dog stopped, Pete shifted his hand's grip on the bat, leading perfectly to an upward arc.

In other words, he had learned how to feint, without any previous combat experience with the bat before today.

Pete let out a breath as the shattered body fell to the floor.

Five brutalized bodies spread across the kitchen, the aftermath of a two minute long fight.

Sayako had chosen their weapons well.

...

("Alright, let's move deeper. You rested?")

Mangchi nudged Pete's shoulder, and the boy nodded lightly.

"Did you see how those two dealt with the dogs so easily? And that marvelous teamwork at the beginning??"

Aiko felt a bit of urgency as Sayako heaped praises onto Pete and Mangchi's performance in the kitchen.

She wanted to be praised too. But she could feel that she wasn't up to the standard of Mangchi yet. Perhaps not even to Pete.

She was the weakest of the three, and haven't used her hammer and stake at all yet in combat. All she did was watch Sayako.

Sayako turned her head back, sensing a bit of Aiko's emotions. She smiled reassuringly.

"Don't worry, Aiko. I feel like you have the potential to catch up to them in no time. I didn't pick that as your weapon for nothing.

Aiko smiled wanly. She didn't fully believe what Sayako told her. An expression of 'if you say so' was plastered on her face.

Sayako felt a slight pang of discomfort as her words didn't seem to reach the girl at all, who she regarded as her student.

"Hey... Don't doubt yourself. How about this, let's leave them here and go to another room. A private lesson, just you and me?"

"S-So they'll be fine stuck in there?" Aiko looked at the camera feeds once again, watching her friends exit the kitchen camera's view and into the vision of the hallway camera.

Sayako ran her hand across the girl's hair.

"Don't underestimate your friends, either. Let's go." Sayako quietly undid the lock on Pete and Mangchi's room, pulling Aiko to the next door down the hall.