To my surprise, I did not experience a robbing attempt as soon as gang marks, graffities and shady groups of teenagers in the backstreets came into view. When I walked past, my improved sense of smell felt whiffs sweat, stale alcohol, heavy and spicy smoke and occasional heavy odors of old blood and sharp whiffs of chemicals.

I took several turns, moving away from central streets that retained some modicum of civilized appearance. Perhaps it was too early or too bright, but the people I saw were just barely beginning to wake up, with dominant majority busy nursing their hangovers.

Soon the stench of long-overfilled garbage bins was close to gaining substance and even February’s chill and Albion’s constant winds could not deal with it. I was seriously contemplating the option of switching off my olfactory bulb or whatever was responsible for my sense of smell.

But then I saw that some mob had blocked the entrance and the exit of the alley that I was passing through.

---

I stopped and narrowed my eyes as I focused a part of my perception to observe the people who were closing in towards me.

The approaching gang was all male, dominantly dark-skinned and apparently around the age of late teens or early 20s. Who drew my attention though was a big, rough-faced bloke with shaven head and pitch black skin who wore extremely long-sleeved leather jacket that hid his hands and baggy pants that apparently had enough material for a zeppelin. He was even a little taller than me, and at least twice wide. A real gorilla, I had to admit, and I also felt something being wrong with him. He had at least triple the amount of energy compared to the surrounding people, which made him even more vigorous that the special SAS guys I had met the day before. While it made me a bit thoughtful, it was still far from being a danger to me.

I listened to some heavily slang-laden talk mentioning “turf”, “bayden whiteboys”, “taxed stuffs”, with occasional nasty-sounding barking laughs, dry coughs and snorts covering the light tinkling of numerous chains and bottles. I confirmed that the area was out of sight of the few (and mostly broken) cameras in the area and stopped, waiting for them to approach. I still had a few seconds until they reached me, so I quickly ran through my mind some of the possible scenarios and dialogues I could use.

“Wadda ya doin’ here, ah?” - was the first thing I heard from behind me when they reached me.

I did not turn around, ignoring the obvious attempt to confuse and distract.

Then one of the guys by the big bloke’s side stepped out, loudly jingling with numerous neck chains: “Dude, ya ken where ya slipped? This end here is under us, so ya wanna pass here, ya gotta pay.” - he finished his speech with a loud cough, revealing yellowed nicotine-stained teeth. I looked at him, noting the yellow whites of his eyes hinting at hepatitis C and light smell of metal and mineral oil coming from him.

I looked into his eyes: “You are the leader, but,” - I pointed with my chin at the big black one: “.. he is the boss.”

The sudden change of topic caught the guy unprepared, so he could only nod with confused expression: “Manz dat, speak for dred boss in our ends here. But reelz, how ya ken it?”.

I shrugged, trying to look as relaxed and bored as possible: “You are the only one with gun here. But you stay by that bloke’s side. Obvious, I think.”

“Ya see ma mash?!” - the guy got nervous and the surrounding murmurs got more intense, as the grips tightened over knives, pipes and chains: “Are ya po-po or fuck, ya shit?”

“What the hell is “po-po”?” - that one got me confused instead. I couldn’t say I smelled the metal and oil of his gun, could I?

“Allow chattin, nosey!” - the situation got critical pretty quick. The next moment, a bunch of “wicked rudebois” were charging towards me to do some “merking”.

Not to be outdone, I threw my stuff onto relatively clean-looking pile of pallets near a wall and rushed into the oncoming mob.

---

Lowering my hips, I slided sideways, confusing the trajectory of the running gang members. One of the opponents raised his hand, aiming to whip a chain at me. I grabbed his wrist, and with a squeeze dislocated or broke some of his bones, before stepping aside and using his outstretched hand to pull and then push him, who had lost his balance and was currently busy screeching from sudden pain, at the foes who were approaching from behind.

That created a small opening as the path behind me was now blocked by several fallen bodies, so I used the time to quickly rush forward and whip out three sharp jabs with my hands, dislocating or perhaps breaking due to my lack of skill two shoulder joints. My speed and reaction time were just too superior compared to the drug-addled ghetto gangsters. Unexpectedly I still felt some sort of a mental block that discouraged me from killing these hoodlums, so I just focused on incapacitating them as ruthlessly as possible.

I had previously fought against all sort of mysterious animals, constructs and reanimated corpses, but I did not expect I actually had some reservations towards killing people. They, however, did not have such qualms. The knives flashed towards my chest, stomach, liver and kidneys, and I had to use the speed which was well over human possibilities because I preferred to make an impression of being abnormally quick rather than invulnerable.

It would be much easier to explain superior speed and reflexes than being impervious to damage, in case such fights drew somebody serious’ attention. And although I doubted that anything that happened here would reach anywhere official, I was still too new to all this, so I stuck to the motto “better safe than sorry”.

However, I was not too surprised when the man who had talked to me finally pulled out his gun. That looked like a pretty serious semiautomatic pistol, but I had kept an eye on him, and before he had time to chamber the round, I had already grabbed one of the nearby gangstas by his parka vest and with a shove sent him careening towards the gunner. I dropped a piece of the vest that I had inadvertently ripped off and while keeping low posture, followed behind that human shield.

The drug-damaged brain does not go well together with firearms safety, and the gangster could not keep calm after seeing half a dozen of his underlings lying around moaning, so after he had raised his gun he immediately pressed the trigger, hoping to keep me away.

“Fuck, who was the dumb one who gave you the gun?!” - I cursed loudly as several bullets flew past me, bringing out small splashes of blood after piercing through the unfortunate hoodlum. That reminded me about the danger of believing into tropes - apparently a body was only good to break the line of sight and did crappy job in stopping even handgun bullets.

The next moment I was almost in front of the shooter and even took one bullet to my chest, although that one was stopped by the armor under my clothes. I used my shoulder to give a heavy push to the guy who had earned several unintended piercings by now and seemed to have stopped breathing already, making him slam the shooter into the brickwall behind him.

As I wanted to follow up to disarm the gunner, I had to dodge an attack from the side. With a whooshing sound, the air was cut where my shoulder had been a moment before, and the big gorilla-like bloke who had previously stood still, finally moved.

The gorilla man unleashed a flurry of attacks with his hands, forcing me to withdraw. When I jumped back, I encountered a few remaining gang members who were still trying to get at me. So I simply took hold of them and pushed them towards their boss to test the waters. I was somewhat surprised to see that they were apparently even more scared of him than me, and did their best to avoid going near him. Not that their weak attempts could change anything, as I simply shoved them with greater force.

The gorilla could not stop his attack because of his large and powerful swings and he landed a hit on one of the thugs. Blood sprayed, as the back of the gang member was cut through. The collision also pulled up the sleeve of the big goon’s jacket, revealing long, yellowing nails that formed palm-long claws.

When the spray of blood splashed the face of the big bloke, his scleras turned scarlet and he let out a low growl that became a low-pitched howl. In his open mouth teeth shone with metallic luster and I could see that his incisors were triangular like teeth of a shark and his canines were as thick as my little finger. With a jump, he covered the distance between us and clawed at me faster than I had ever expected possible considering his massive figure.

Even with my reflexes, I was still limited to physical movement, so I barely had enough time to ward off his blow with a sideways palmstrike. I did not hold back, but instead of shattering bones or pulverizing his limb I felt as if I had hit heavy rubber which absorbed most of the shock. With my magical perception, I saw that his previously human-like ordinary flow of energy became wildly pulsing, concentrating on his limbs and head.

I had just noticed the sudden explosion of energy in his legs, when he jumped to the height of third floor without any warning. There he used his legs to take hold of some pipeline on the wall, revealing that his previously hidden legs were deformed into some sort of claws or hooks, giving him a monkey-like agility and insane jumping power. No wonder that freak wore such unstylish clothing.

“Yee, daare! I kill ye!” - growled the monkey-man, without using any gang slang.

I looked back at him, ignoring whimpering goons who were trying to hide themselves into the cracks in the walls and ground around us. At that moment I felt a small amount of energy filling me up - apparently the bullet-riddled thug finally died. I wondered about the meager amount for a second, then made a motion of dusting off my hands: “Well, I just expected to get easy money here without drawing attention. Didn’t expect to find a freak show instead. What the ugly fuck would you be? You look a tad too tanned for Spring-heeled Jack. Mind that I am not being racist here, just curious.”