The Substitute

Chapter 9

Light flooded both groups, effectively blinding them. Everyone turned toward the illumination, squinting to see.

Reita thought he made out one human-sized shadow, standing in front of the pair of headlights that had interrupted the potential brawl.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." The shadow advised in a casual drawl.

Yankumi blinked in confusion and tried to peer further into the light as Junpei cut her last leg loose.

"Oh?" Sato asked, redirecting his rage towards the newcomer. "And why is that?"

"Well, it can't possibly end well for you." A different voice commented, and a second shadow skipped over to join the first.

Yankumi was whispering to herself, but Reita wasn't about to take his eyes off Sato quite yet. "That sounds almost like…"

"Really?" Sato responded sarcastically. "Is that because I'm supposed to be frightened of some lights and two bozos?"

"Hey, there are three of us bozos!" Another, much larger, shadow appeared in front of the car.

"Nice one, Kuma."

"Thanks, Noda!"

Yankumi was leaning so far forward, Reita thought she was going to fall. "It can't be…?"

"Actually there's a little more than three of us." A fourth figure spoke up.

"Well, there's thirty of us, so what are you going to do about it?" Fujita yelled in a challenging tone.

Reita couldn't quite tell, but he thought the shadows were smiling.

The first shadow raised one fist in the air. "This."

He snapped.

And with that snap, lights flooded the scene from every direction, revealing far more than thirty shadows.

Sato, Fujita, and the rest of his men raised their hands up to shield their eyes, then kept turning as they realized how many people were actually there.

"Beating up on a pregnant lady and a bunch of kids?" With lights coming from all directions, they could actually see this speaker, located on the opposite side of the first shadows.

The guy next to him added, "Pretty pathetic for a bunch of grown men."

"Odagiri?" Yankumi gasped. "Hayato?"

"Aren't you guys supposed to value your manhood, or something?" Someone else added cheekily.

"Or at least they could pretend to fight fair." A long-haired man chimed in from leaning against the warehouse wall.

"Nah, they're drug dealers. Bunch of punks." The young man on the other side of the warehouse door responded as the rest of the newcomers laughed.

"Takeda? Ogata? Kazama?" Yankumi squeaked her surprise as 3-D gradually gathered that these were allies.

"Who the hell are you people?" Sato roared, silencing the crowd.

The guy who Reita remembered Kuma called 'Noda' just smiled at the infuriated man.

"Us?" He asked innocently, then looked at the first guy who spoke with a smug grin. "Tell 'em, Uchi."

"We are her students ." Uchi announced in the same protective tone they had heard Yankumi use countless times.

As Sato, Fujita, and the rest of the men gaped, a guy with a few blonde highlights added, "A few years removed, maybe. But still."

It seemed that all Yankumi could do was muster up names to say in a shocked tone. "Honjo?"