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nThe group were all currently sitting on the floor, with a basket in the middle filled with the sandwiches Marie had made for them. They were nearly all gone, and Marie thought that training would soon start up again. That was until Austin asked the question that the boys wanted to know the answer to.

nAs soon as Austin had finished speaking, Marie gave Kai a certain look. It was clear that she knew something and was wondering what his reply would be, whether or not Kai would tell them.

n“I guess you guys got curious after seeing me fight and use the knifes back there, huh?” Kai smiled, unfazed by the question as usual. On the other hand, Innu’s face was a little red, though he wasn’t exactly sure why he felt embarrassed, they had only been caught peeping.

n“You’re right, you do deserve to know more about me. I don’t explicitly want to hide who I am from you guys… but now’s not the time. I promise I will tell you everything once we’ve taken over Slough. Just trust me when I say it would do you more harm than good right now.” Kai sighed. “Besides, our great leader isn’t here, and I don’t want to have to repeat it. When I do tell you, I’ll tell all of you at once.”

nOf course, Kai’s cryptic answer just made them more curious, but by now he had earned their trust. The bond between all of them had grown greatly after the events at the grey colour gang’s hideout.

n“Speaking of, why didn’t you invite Gary here? As our leader, shouldn’t he like, you know, lead by example?” Innu asked. “Also, why did you send me a message telling me not to pry into his matters? I assume you did it to the others as well, but… when he went in there with those twins… you’ve seen what he did with them. How’s that even possible?”

nAnother fair question, even though half of them knew the answer to this, though Marie had come to the wrong conclusion.

n“If you’re really curious, you can ask him yourself, but he’ll more than likely lie to you.” Kai shrugged. “Besides, does it matter? He saved us back there, risking his own life. Just like any of you, he has his own secrets. I feel that it’s for the best to let him choose to tell it to us on his own.

n“As for the reason I didn’t call him… well you’ve seen what he did to those twins. Do you really think the kind of training we do will be effective for him? As such, he doesn’t need to take part in things like this.”

nThe others certainly agreed, especially if Gary was keeping something from them. Just one of those twins had been too much for all four of them to take down, yet their leader had taken them on both, at the same time no less. What’s more, he had spent suspiciously little time… not to mention the state they had been left in…

n“About the things you said to Marie.” Austin spoke up. “This training is great and all, and I think we will improve… but I don’t think it will be enough. Sure, we can get stronger, so that we can be on par with those highly skilled real gang members and not those colour ones.

n“Maybe even to the point where even the real gang members will be scared of us, but it’s nothing in front of Altered. From what I’ve been told, only one gang in Slough has one… but if that’s enough to take over this town, what will we do if someone else comes along?

n“I don’t know about you, but I don’t like just relying on Gary. He might have been able to deal with those twins, but we don’t even know if he can do the same against an actual Altered.”

nAustin was looking Kai straight in the eyes as he posed his question. Surely, their vice leader must have realised this problem as well, so the large teenager was hoping Kai had already prepared an answer to this.

n“You’re right, Altered aren’t called ‘super-humans’ for nothing. While I have a solution… it’s unfortunately not something we’ll be able to get anytime soon.” Kai stood up and walked towards the corner of the roof. He opened his school bag and took out a laptop before coming back over.

n“Initially, I had believed that we’ll only have to deal with Kirk when taking over Slough. However, that was before we fought the twins. Now, I’m honestly afraid that the Grey Elephants gang might have more of that strange solution that turned them into those beasts. If they start to target us, we’ll seriously be in trouble…

n“Just another reason to take this training seriously. If possible, we should also try to team up so we don’t get attacked when we’re on our own.” When Kai said that, he couldn’t help but look at Innu, unaware that the Billy issue had already been solved.

nAfter typing a few things on his computer, Kai opened it up and spun the computer around. Here they could see a mostly black screen but a name at the top with a date underneath it. The name read ‘Dark Guild Auction House’.

n“What is this?” Innu asked. The date was set to be two weeks from now, but there was no other information or anything. “What’s with the name ‘Dark Guild’, did an eighth grader come up with that?”

nKai closed the laptop there, as he got ready to explain.

n“As stupid as the name might sound, those guys are legit. They’re one of the biggest gangs in our country, and what’s more they’re led by one of the Kings. They’re one of, if not THE, richest gang there is. The sums that change hands at their auctions is rumoured to be enough to upgrade all Tier-3 towns and below to Tier-1 cities.

n“Pretty much every major gang in the country knows about these auctions. They all attend it, and from what I heard, it’s not even rare for the Kings to come and bid as well. Those auctions are announced on the website. They don’t have them all the time, but it’s a big deal whenever they do.

n“Unfortunately, with our current fund, we wouldn’t even be able to pay the entrance fee for a single member. Even if we had the funds, they might prevent us access, simply because we’re too small-time at the moment.

n“I want us to keep this in mind for the future. We will expand our business and bring in more money and when we finally have enough we can head to the auction house. Their sortiment appears to change each time, but… from what I heard they’re most famous for one thing…Altered DNA!

n“And I’m not talking about regular Altered, but quite exotic Altered. Ones the public doesn’t even know about. THAT will be our key to rise to the top! With enough money, we could literally buy ourselves the power to rule the current world.” Kai explained with grandeur.

n******

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