‘Oh, sh*t.’ I cursed. Is it necessary for the main room to be located at the entrance? Now there are a bunch of criminals looking at me standing by the door. There were twenty-three people in the entrance room. I thought there would be less than ten or something! Not twenty-three! And I’m just in the entrance room! Wait… why is there a pole on the stage and a woman going to it…? ‘Fu*k.’ I realized what kind of establishment this is… and now I’m getting headaches from it.

I looked around the establishment and saw a bar on the right side. I sat on a bar stool. A bartender came to me, gave me a menu, and said, “What can I get you?”

“Hm….” I read the menu and chose a drink. “One soda with lime.”

“One soda with lime coming right up.” The bartender took a soda siphon, added in ice and water, and then tightened a soda charger. When the soda charger tightened, white smoke came out of the soda siphon’s mouth. He shook it by tilting it, then straightened it and repeated it. He took a highball glass to the table, filled it with ice, poured in half a cup of lime juice, and a bit of sugar syrup. Then he put a sliced lime on the glass rim and poured out the soda water inside the soda siphon into the glass. After putting away the soda siphon, he handed me the highball glass. “Anything else?” He asked while cleaning a glass.

“Yes.” I took the glass and sipped it. “You know where I could buy the… the…—” I whispered the next part, “—drugs?”

The bartender squinted his eyes at me. “See that door over there, sunshine?” His head pointed to the door on the left side of the stage. As my head turned to where he pointed, I noticed that he reached under the bar’s counter to do something. “Go there.”

I drank the rest of my drink in one go. Bad idea… I almost choked on the ice cubes… I’m sure the smugness of the bartender told me that already. I strutted my way to the door as he pointed, not wanting to reveal my embarrassment. A deep voice told me to open it after knocking on the door.

I opened the door and saw five people inside the room. Four were at each corner of the room and one was at the center end. Goons and boss. A muscled hyena man, a porcupine man, one slender… man? Woman?—I don’t know anymore—with their bracelet…? Is that a bracelet? It looks like spikes growing from their wrists. The next goon is quite a normal, typical mafia-clothed man—Wow! The most normal-looking one out of them. The last man with crab claws was their boss.

“Need something, Sunshine?” said Crab Claws. "Crab Claws" is too long… Chela? Yeah, that’ll do.

I activated my new skill, [Stamina Drain: Vision] on him and said, “I want to buy drugs.”

“Drugs, huh? That’s not quite what we’re selling, sunshine.”

My eye twitched at my nickname. Seriously! I wear all black, and they’re calling me sunshine! Unless I have Midoriya’s smile—which I definitely do not! Just ask my parents!

While I was thinking, the four criminals in each corner of the room stood up. First, the WoMan slammed their hands on the ground as they attacked. Their bracelet grows spikes in my direction. My [String Manipulation] skill enabled me to backflip the WoMan and kick them to Porcupine. Hyena moved in front of Porcupine in time to redirect WoMan to the ground beside him.

Plain Mafia Guy upholsters his Thompson 1928 submachine gun… He… didn’t get the memo on what year this is, huh? Well, a gun’s, a gun; still deadly to me. So, I manipulate the WoMan’s cloth—including themselves—to block the incoming bullets. ‘I hope they're not dead…’

Click click click

As soon as I heard those sounds from his submachine gun, I threw WoMan at him. Both the WoMan and Plain Mafia Guy collided into the wall. Plain Mafia Guy’s head hit the wall first and knocked him out.

Hyena goes for a punch to my gut and Porcupine stands behind my back with his quills facing me. ‘Sh*t.’ I took Hyena’s sense of balance, which made him lean to the side and only grazed my shoulder. He also punches his comrade’s quills. All of us took damage, a graze, bleeding knuckles, and broken quills.

The boss had fallen asleep, so I used [Stamina Drain: Vision] on Hyena. I used it on him because he was better than me strength-wise—even with my daily mission, I lacked strength. This is not One Punch Man universe. Porcupine will be an easy pick as I will blind him.

Hyena punches me again, but I’m no longer within his reach. Porcupine moves his hands to wipe his eyes to remove his blindness. Surprise surprise, he can’t. I struck Porcupine’s stomach, and he flew to the wall, impaling it with his quills.

I avoided Hyena’s punches, but as time passed, his punches got sloppier and sloppier. Until he slumped down and nose-dived into the floor.

After my adrenaline dropped, a spike in pain just below my right rib announced itself. I gritted my teeth at it and raised my shirt to see what the pain came from. A bullet wound. No, two freaking bullet wounds! Sh*t! sh*t! How do I heal this!? No… Yes! That’s how! I’ll have to endure it for now. I ripped fabric from Hyena’s really tight buttoned shirt—a tortured buttoned shirt…—and wrapped it around the wound.

RevonZev

I had originally intended for this chapter to get a LOT darker. However, I thought it was too dark to post it comfortably for me and wayyy too early for that dark of a scene….