ch.16

I will be releasing a new story on Monday, please give it a try and leave a review.

>>>>Bai Hu<<<<

A victorious grin formed on Bai Hu's face as he hung up the phone.

He had just received news that his men were done solidifying their hold on the territory he had ordered them to usurp from the Six Dragons gang the night before.

Faizul's men had retreated instead of fighting back as he knew they would. He was the one that had his men spreading the rumor of Faizul's death, after all. No common gangster was going to fight to the death for someone already dead.

They might even end up working for Bai Hu now that Faizul was dead. Angering him over the territory of a dead man didn't seem like a smart thing to do.

Bai Hu leaned back in his chair and let out a boisterous laugh, his plan had worked better than he had ever hoped it would. Ever since Faizul saw through his plan to use his son's newly established gang to create unrest from within his territory. Which resulted in the destruction of the said gang, Bai Hu had been using the unprovoked attack on his son as an excuse to pick a fight with Faizul.

A fight that was declared both stupid and reckless by everyone watching from the sideline.

There is a reason the four big gangs kept the status quo as it was and didn't openly fight against each other, they were simply too evenly matched. They were all afraid that even if they did win one battle, one of the other gangs will swoop in and slaughter them while they were weak and tired from their previous battle.

Which is exactly what was happening right now, both the Heavenly Phoenix gang and the Earth Tortoise gang were circling the fight between him and Faizul like vultures, waiting for their chance to strike.

Bai Hu may have stolen some of Faizul's businesses and properties but if you compare it with the men he lost while doing so, it was barely worth it. Faizul, on the other hand, had been playing it smart. He had ordered his men to do as much damage as they could to Bai Hu men before forfeiting the property when they couldn't hold it anymore.

Faizul may have been losing territory and bleeding money in the short run but compared to Bai Hu he had barely lost any of his men in those scuffles and could, in the long run, get everything and more back when he was done bleeding Bai Hu dry of all his men.

However, what no one, not even Bai Hu's own people knew, was that those frontal and frankly stupid attacks were nothing more than a smokescreen for Bai Hu's real plan. After spending almost half of his yearly revenue to bribe everyone he could think of, he had finally come in contact with the fabled League of Assassins and hired one of their members to assassinate Faizul.

And he had to admit the assassin was worth every penny he spent on him, he was barely done positioning his men in the places he wanted when the assassin had texted him that Faizul was dead.

Knowing that he couldn't be too greedy lest the Earth Tortoise gang and Heavenly Phoenix gang team up against him, he only took ⅓ of Faizul's territory for himself. He did take the best ⅓ however, he did do all the work after all.

Bai Hu's laugh turned into a slight frown as he thought back to the other news he received last night. With the death of Faizul, he had expected Huang Yingzhe to take charge and try to minimize the damage Bai Hu was doing. But contrary to what he expected, the last message he got from his spies inside the Six Dragons gang informed him that an unknown person had taken charge of the gang instead of Yingzhe.

Shortly after that, all the Six Dragons members had been called back to the Red Dragon Hotel and Casino before the whole building had been locked up tighter than Fort Knox, no one was allowed in or out.

"Maybe Huang Yingzhe's position wasn't as solid as I assumed and now there is in fighting for the position of the new boss," He pondered out loud after a moment.

But who could this new player be?

None of his spies had informed him of anyone he had to keep an eye on other than Huang Yingzhe.

And that still didn't explain why his spies had gone silent.

Before he could think any further on the subject, his office door was thrown open and his son Biao walked in. Bai Hu pursed his lips in confusion at the disrespect of his son, barging inside his office without knocking or so much as a by your leave from him wasn't the usual M.O. of his son.

Noticing his father's look, Biao paused his frantic stride to his father's desk and bowed, "I'm sorry for the intrusion father, but I have urgent news!"

Nodding his son forward Bai Hu wondered what news could be so important that it made his son forget his manners.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Biao approached Bai Hu's desk and put a newspaper on it.

Picking up the newspaper Bai Hu read a beautiful sob story that could make anyone want to smile and cheer. It was about the accidental death of a businessman and an upstanding member of the community.

The businessman, Faizul Zhu, ended up estranged from his daughter Nina Zhu, after the death of his wife. Feeling more and more guilty over the years that he wasn't there for her growing up, he ended up leaving everything to her in his will, making her one of Macau's youngest and richest bachelorettes.

It was a moving story and also complete nonsense.

Not even two days ago the word on the streets was that Faizul was trying to kill his daughter and her friends for some slight against him. There is no way he left everything to her in his will.

Could the new player who had taken over the Six Dragons gang after Faizul's death, be Nina?

"Faizul has been dead for less than a day and already his death has been declared an accident, something is not right. Someone is clearly pulling strings to smooth everything over, and I want to know who!" Bai Hu gritted out after he was done reading the newspaper, "sent some men to investigate where this rubbish story came from, start with the reporter."

"Yes father, I will personall-"

"*ROAR!*"

A frightening roar interrupted Biao and made him shiver in fear. He almost fell to his knees ready to plead for his life and submit to the predator that made that roar, luckily before he could do just that the feeling disappeared.

The roar was quickly followed by sounds of gunfire and fighting coming from the lower floor.

Shakingly standing up, Bai Hu looked around in surprise and let out his own pitiful roar, "What the hell is going on!"

>>>>Nina<<<<

Nina dodged around a gangster rushing at her with a sword, a thought had her silk cloth become as hard as steel before hitting her attacker in the face.

Nina winced at the ugly sound the gangster's nose made as it broke around her silk cloth before he fell down unconscious with what she was sure was a concussion. She had to work on her control.

She had orders to keep as many mooks, as Alexander liked to call them, as she could alive after all.

If she didn't know any better she would have thought it was because he was being compassionate but as he had so nicely explained to her the night before, 'killing them would be a waste of resources'. Nina was pretty sure that Alexander was a borderline sociopath when it came to anyone he considered an enemy, and it was only borderline because he still saw some use in them.

Alexander had the bright idea to surprise the other 3 gangs by attacking them before the news of them taking over the Six dragons gang gets out. He sent her and the rest of the Hellions to take over the White Tigers gang while he took care of the two other gangs himself.

A bullet hitting her silk shield brought Nina out of her thoughts and back into the fight.

After throwing the culprit who was shooting at her into a wall, she glared at where Xiao Long was currently flying in his dragon form, slapping around guards with his whiskers. His roar was completely unnecessary, if Alexander hadn't given them an orb that made 1000 feet around it uninteresting, the police would have already swarmed the building in response to that loud roar.

Noticing her glare Xiao Long huffed a blast of air out his nose before sheepishly looking away.

No matter how many times she sees it, it never gets less weird seeing such an intimidating creature as a dragon, even one as small as Xiao Long, make such human expressions.

Nina's glare softened as she remembered what Alexander told them about Xiao Long's power. So that Xiao Long would be able to move, let alone fight, in his dragon form without a ton of training Alexander had given him the instincts of a real dragon. This means that Xiao Long's pride, ferocity, and need to make others submit with his roar, among other things, had been enhanced tenfold.

And honestly, it was kind of handy that his roar had brought every 'mook' running to their location instead of having to search the building for them like they had to when fighting the Six Dragons gang.

"Xiao Long, Dodge!" Mili screamed in all their heads at once.

Not having been threatened by anything since becoming a dragon and thus never having been warned by Mili before, Xiao Long was a little slower in dodging than the more vulnerable members would have been, but it was enough.

Nina watched as a bullet aiming at Xiao Long's eye narrowly missed as he turned his head away and instead hit his side.

At first, she didn't understand why Mili had told Xiao Long to dodge, while it was true that his eyes were a bit weaker than his scales they were still bulletproof nonetheless. But then Nina realized that the bullet hadn't rebounded away like it was supposed to, the bullet had penetrated Xiao Long's scales.

If that bullet had hit where it was aimed, Xiao Long would have lost his eye.

Xiao Long let out a roar of surprise and anger rather than pain and was ready to charge the new attackers coming up the stairs from an underground room when Mili's voice made him pause, "they have armor-piercing and exploding bullets that can hurt you!"

"Ai, make a shield in front of Xiao Long!" Mili ordered.

Mili was barely done talking when a pink shield appeared in front of Xiao Long's dragon form. Unlike Xiao Long, Ai being the youngest has been taking orders from Mili since the beginning to help protect the more vulnerable members of the team instead of fighting.

A moment later a bullet hit the barrier and exploded, taking the shield with it. The new group of guards started unloading their weapons now that they knew their bullets would work. The only thing stopping the gang from becoming swiss cheese were the barriers Ai kept creating in front of everyone.

"Xiao Long transform back and let Yumi heal you, you are too big a target right now," Mili continued as Xiao Long did just that, "Lee, Kai, take care of those weapons but be careful. Especially you Lee, don't play around you aren't fast enough against this many opponents!"

Mili's voice faltered at her warning to Lee, making it easy to guess what she saw in the future.

Lee's face turned from its usual playfulness to a more grim look. He gave Mili a nod before moving so fast that only Nina, whose mind had been enhanced by her powers, could follow him.

Seeing Lee vanish in a blur of speed. Kai followed after him but instead of running, he simply disappeared from his place next to Mili and appeared behind one of the gangsters, his trusty baseball bat already in the motion of bashing the gangster's head in.

Before the other gangsters could react to his attack Kai was already gone from his previous location and behind his next victim. Together Kai and Lee appeared and disappeared from amongst the gangsters, taking them down with every passing second.

After the first friendly fire, the gangsters had given up the use of guns and had tried fighting the two of them in melee but you could guess how well that turned out for them. 20 seconds later every gangster was lying unconscious on the floor.

But relaxing was clearly not on the agenda because not even 5 seconds later the sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs and rushing their way could be heard. Before long they were surrounded by 20 armed gangsters, one even had a rocket launcher of all things.

Nina was about to go on the offensive when Mili stopped her with a shake of her head.

"Stop!" screamed a voice coming from the same staircase the guards had streamed in from.

Having recognized the voice of the one screaming for them to stop as their boss's voice, the gangsters paused uncertainty.

Four figures, 2 in the front with 2 behind them, walked down the stairs. On the right walked Biao, his hair was standing up and he had a scared look on his face. Behind him walked Yun, a 12-year-old girl with short black hair, who was currently using Biao's body to shelter herself from any trigger-happy henchman.

It was almost comically watching a 12-year-old girl using a grown man as a hostage, if you ignore the lightning sparking around her, that is.

That wasn't where everyone's eyes were pointed, however. No, that honor was reserved for the sword sticking out of Bai Hu's chest. Rui who had chosen for intangibility as his ability had made good use of it by shoving an intangible sword, that he could make tangible whenever he wanted, in Bai Hu's chest.

Rui moved the sword around Bai Hu's chest and looked pointedly at the weapons the gangsters were pointing at his family.

"Put your weapons down," Bai Hu ordered his men with a trembling voice.

The gangsters looked at each other for a moment, unsure of what they should do in a situation like this. The decision was made for them however when a healed Xiao Long transformed into his dragon form and let out an intimidating roar.

To the gangsters who had been contemplating giving up as their boss ordered them to, Xiao Long's roar, which instinctively made people want to submit, was the straw that broke the camel's back. The gangsters threw their weapons down in fear, some of the more weak-willed ones even went so far as dropping to their knees and submitting as was demanded of them.

Bai Hu's eyes went wide at the sight of the dragon floating in the middle of the base. His captors had ambushed him and his son in his office before he could even figure out what was going on and who was attacking the base.

His eyes were automatically drawn to the rest of the kids that had invaded his base. Especially the one that was grabbing all the weapons so fast that he was just a blur of colors. Did they all have abilities?

As he scanned over the kids, Bai Hu paused as he recognized Nina.

"What is the meaning of this, Nina," Bai Hu demanded, trying to make his voice as firm as he could, which wasn't all that much now that he understood just how great the power difference between them was.

Ignoring Bai Hu's stupid question, Nina looked at Rui who had been trying to catch her eye since arriving.

Meeting her eyes, Rui looked over at Biao before lifting an eyebrow.

Having known Rui for a long time, it took her less of a second to understand what he was asking with his look. Nina closed her eyes before slowly nodding, she knew that it had to be done, she just had hoped that she could shelter some of the younger members a little longer from the kind of world they were a part of.

A world where you could leave no one that could threaten you, now or in the future, alive. A world where if you didn't show that you meant business no one would respect or fear you.

It wouldn't take long before the mooks realized that they had gone out of their way to not kill anyone since the fight started, and they started wondering if the group of kids in front of them even had it in them to kill.

Rui removed his sword from Bai Hu's chest in a smooth movement, another movement had his now tangible and unimaginable sharp sword slashing through Biao's neck before anyone could react.

Everyone watched horrified as Biao's head fell off his body and rolled a few feet before stopping, a look of fear still on his face.

That will bring an end to those questions before they could even start.

A second later Yun realized that she was holding a headless body, that was bleeding on her and let go of it with a squeak.

Bai Hu looked down at his son's dead eyes in shock, and let out a scream of hate and grief.

"You are going to pay-" Bai Hu screamed rage and grief burning in his eyes. A blow to the back of the head with Rui's sword hilt brought an end to his rant as he fell down unconscious.

The gangsters being used to dead bodies, even if this was a little more gore than they usually saw, didn't react all that much after the initial surprise of the sudden brutal execution.

On the other hand the members of the Hellions who hadn't killed anyone before, that is to say, everyone except Rui and Nina, took Rui, a person they trusted, killing someone without a change in his expression a lot direr.

Nina watched on with regret burning in her chest as Ai broke down and cried in Yumi's arms. The boys and older kids tried to keep strong but it was obvious that it had affected them just as much as the other members.

In the corner of her vision, she could see Rui keeping an eye on the gangsters for anyone that would want to make use of the group's apparent weakness to attack them.

Nina nodded at that, reinforcing her resolve.

It had to be done, from what she knew of Alexander's ambitions, the fighting wasn't going to stop after this. She couldn't have one of her precious family members hesitating in the middle of a battle and getting hurt or worse.

"Kai!"

Kai pulled his eyes away from the corpse of the man his brother had just killed and turned to Nina.

"Yeah?" a pale-faced Kai asked.

Taking out an orb from her purse, this one different from the one that kept the police from getting on their asses, she handed it to Kai.

"Go tell Alexander that we are done here," Nina told him gently.

The orb was something Alexander had given Nina for emergencies or for if they were done with their mission before he was done with his, which was likely seeing as he had to take over two gangs by himself.

The orb could help Kai teleport to wherever Alexander was if it was safe for him to do so. Normally Kai had a hard limit in only teleporting to somewhere he could see or has already been to within a mile, but if he used the orb those limits pretty much disappeared.

"How does he make things like this," Kai asked, taking hold of the transparent orb with some sort of green smoke floating inside it.

"You know how bullshit Alexander is, he probably just willed it in existence," Nina joked, glad that Kai had something else to focus on.

Doing as Alexander had instructed him to, Kai smashes the orb in front of him. At first, nothing happens but then the smoke that was inside the orb starts circling his body before streaming inside his mouth and nose.

A second later an image of Alexander standing in front of a big mansion appears in his mind. The image was so crisp and clear that for a moment he thought he really was there. That wasn't all however, his body was also overflowing with some sort of energy, it felt like he could teleport anywhere in the world right now without any restriction.

There was a green, almost invisible shimmer around him and suddenly Kai was gone.