As Dan looked at Tony"s body on the floor, before he had realised it himself, he had fallen to his knees. The blood now soaking and flowing onto his knees. "Hey, Tony," Dan mumbled, "It"s a lie, right?"
The other VSW members were too horrified to even look at the body for more than, a split second. One second there was a life, a person who would wake up tomorrow and do their usual thing but now all of that was gone in an instant.
The second David had pulled out his gun and fired those shots, the official who was in the centre and members from the crowd had all pulled out their weapons. The tension was high between the gang members as someone had just died.
"David, what do you think you are doing?" The referee who was stood in the centre of the ring said. He held a gun of his own in his hand and had it carefully aimed at David, while other members of the Ruman family had their guns pointed at the referee and other people around them.
"This is crazy!" Alex said, "How do this many people even have guns in the first place, I thought they were hard to come by in England." Alex was frightened, a man had just died and he feared he would be next.
Scarlett to stayed dead silent and remained still, the whole thing was reminding her of what had happened before.
Then an unexpected voice had given them comfort.
"Don"t worry you little wimps, I won"t let the Ruman family hurt you and I don"t think the other side will hurt you as well," Mac said.
Everyone felt this was oddly strange but, Mac had a serious tone to his voice when he spoke those words.
"Will everyone relax?" David said as he put the gun away. "I"m not here to fight, Noir won the duel fair, they can keep their territory as agreed. I was just punis.h.i.+ng one of my own, can I not do that?"
"Sure you can," Kyle said as he stepped forward. "But this isn"t your territory, you can"t just do what you want. You could have waited until you got back, now get out of here!"
David then snapped his fingers and two men from the crowd hurried and grabbed Tony"s body. As they started to move Tony"s body, suddenly, the realisation of what was happening had hit Dan.
He saw the two men lift his body and the blood continue to drip onto the ground, a trail of blood was left behind as they took him outside. Dan clenched his fist and looked at David.
"Novis, stop Dan, right now before he does something stupid!" Arthur shouted.
Dan stood up from the floor, not letting David out of his sight, as he took one step forward Novis placed his hand on Dan"s shoulder.
"Please Dan, not now. We can"t do this now, look around you." Novis said.
As Dan looked around him, he noticed there were still members of the Ruman family leaving the warehouse. There were at least thirty members around them and each of them carried a weapon of some sort.
Even if Dan was filled with rage, it would be suicide to act but still, he wanted to do something. However, what had affected him the most was when he looked at his teammates. Scarlett was s.h.i.+vering in fear, while Alex looked like he would faint at any moment from everything that had happened.
"Come on guy"s let"s go home," Dan said forcing a smile.
*****
The group didn"t ask Dan what happened that day and they never did. They felt like Dan would tell them all everything when he was ready.
That day when each member got home, they couldn"t get the image of how easily someone"s life could be ended just like that. Most of them stayed locked in the rooms trying to do whatever they could to forget about today"s events.
Then when Dan had arrived at the orphanage, his face had swollen up a bit from the match. He had been given an Ice pack form his brother Kyle to try to reduce the swelling down.
Hayley had seen Dan enter the orphanage and go straight to his room. It wasn"t unusual for Dan to come back home beaten up. She had seen it a lot in the past, but lately, it hadn"t happened so much.
Concerned for Dan, she went up to his room and pressed her ear up against the door.
Inside Dan looked at his desk. On there was an envelope, he picked up the envelope and looked inside. It was the ticket for the semi-finals game.
The ticket he had ordered and wanted to give to Tony this weekend.
He scrunched up the ticket in his hand and an uncontrollable cry was let out. The sound, the emotions, everything had been too much for him and he just couldn"t stop sobbing.
He promised himself one day, he would get his revenge on the Ruman family.
****
The next day had arrived and it was a Friday, the last day before the semi-final match tomorrow. Yesterday"s events allowed the VSW team to focus.
They went to practice in their matches and not one person spoke of what had happened yesterday. All their attention was on the game. Dan had finally turned up to practise as well, he had let out everything last night and needed something to concentrate on.
The team had played excellently, better than they had ever done before and finally, they had gotten out of their silver ranking and each of them had moved into gold. It was a great achievement for a team of newbies who hadn"t been playing the game for long.
It was only a few weeks ago that they were all at bronze.
But as soon as the group started to play matches in gold, everything started to get a lot more difficult. The grouping up method worked less. Even when Alex gave them on the spot orders.
This was because the players were just better at reacting to a situation. They made fewer mistakes and were cautious when they couldn"t see the other players in their lane.
Right now their win and loss rate was at about 50/50 in gold. And the problem was Westgate was going to be a lot better than these players in gold.
Watching the team Alex knew they had come far, but he could only count on one thing. The hope that Lucas would be a problem for his own team. It was the one thing that could turn the tide of the match.
"We did great guys, each one of us has improved so much," Alex said. "I literally didn"t think we would come this far, we have a good chance of winning tomorrow."
The response wasn"t all that energetic in the room but everyone was still determined to win this game. You only had one life in this world and they wanted to make it count.
"Get some good rest, ideally I would say play a couple of games before the match tomorrow as a warm-up, but don"t play too much okay? You can really overwork yourself before the big game." Said Alex. "And I will see you all tomorrow at school."
As everyone went to head home, Novis had routinely been heading back with Ashley for the last few days to train with Daiki. Daiki had given Novis a workout routine to strengthen his body with a meal plan and so far, Novis had been following it to the last letter but still, there was no luck in sword energy.
Today the two of them stood in the Dojo once again, ready to face each other. As he looked at Daiki the thought of Tony dying popped into his head. The idea that it could have happened to anyone of them and Novis wouldn"t have been able to do anything to stop it.
Daiki readied his blade and swung it out filled with sword energy.
Novis gritted his teeth and lifted it up. The anger fuelling his body, something started to come out. A faint light aura had covered his blade. The normal human eye couldn"t see the aura but George and Arthur could.
As the attack came forward, Novis blocked the attack, it was powerful and started to drag him across the floor. He gritted his teeth and started to push back and finally, the sword energy had shattered.
"You did it, boy!" Daiki said exited, "All though you still can"t attack using sword energy, at least you can block an attack from it."
Novis had a huge grin on his face but it didn"t last for long. Novis needed to remember this feeling he had right now. He needed it for the match tomorrow and use it at will. Otherwise, their game would come to a quick end.
"Alright!" Novis shouted. "Let"s do this Daiki, give me another one, one more time!"
****
Special thanks to Samantha_Lyons_8955, WEIRD, edboy49 and AsuraNineThoughts
For the gifts, they really help me on my journey to becoming a full-time author.