Thinking back to Tey’s explanation behind her anger reminded him a bit about his life before he became a Framer.

He had been a member of a gang…well not really.

He had been in a somewhat large friend group. Eight people to be precise. Although they all came from three different schools within his home city of Tryack. They all hung out after lessons all the same. They messed around together and played pretty much wherever they wanted.

Unfortunately, this got them in trouble. Not with the law, at least not initially. But with other gangs. Tryack city id not exactly the safest city within the Northern Federation. Actual gangs and other illegal criminal group roamed seedy streets and alleyways. This meant that at a certain point in their teenage years they were seen as a rival gang when they had simply been messing around with each other in a public field. Of course, they had noticed that it was weirdly empty but did not care to think too much about it.

The gang that arrived had threatened them and they had made the attempt to leave. It was never that simple as the gang went after them as they turned their backs to leave.

One thing his older brother instilled in him was loyalty to his family and friends. And so, while he did not like trouble Parth was willing to get into the thick of things when people close to him was in danger.

His group fought back and it was in that moment that Parth realized that he was a talented fighter. He had always been quite athletic without putting in a lot of effort. He would qualify to be in teams but never put in more than the bare minimum since he was not particularly interested.

However, he never got into fights in school. Something well known about him throughout his younger years was his ability and willingness to avoid fights. In fact, he tended to compromise a lot and his chill nature made it easy for others to ger along with him.

So when he kicked ass in the first physical fight in his life, it surprised him. None of the people they fought that day were particularly good fighters. His friend group crushed them despite being outnumbered. After that day news spread that the gang that terrorized that area had been destroyed by a new gang. Rumors of who had been the culprit began to surface.

At first no one believed it was them despite knowing that they had hung out in the same area. After all they were completely harmless and never caused trouble. And considering they did not exact talk about it, it was dismissed as baseless.

Then it happened again. A similar situation, they are just hanging out and then get harassed by a new gang leading to a fight. A fight that they won once more.

Once is a coincidence. But twice? People started suspecting something fishy was going on.

The third time they were straight up challenged by another gang. Seeing his friends as a new gang trying to make a name for themselves. They denied this of course. But it went nowhere, and they were forced into a fight. The gang had come with even numbers to make it fair so that they could claim that they beat them fair and square. They obliterated the challengers. And that had them labelled as another gang. A self-fulfilling prophecy. They did not have a name of course. Thus, they were simply called Eight gang, due to their number of members.

This led to them being famous despite their reluctance. They were forced into situations they did not like repeatedly. But their victories were frankly ridiculous. Even outnumbered at just over two to one, they could win. It was as if all eight of them were born to be good fighters, but they had met naturally like any group of friends. They did have some losses of course when up against very large groups. But they were never completely beaten only suffering small injuries before managing to get away.

Eventually they began to look for fights as they embraced the label, almost like a vigilante group they fought other gangs and even rescued a few people forced into bad situations by other gangs.

Things went like this for a while, about three years to be precise. That until something unexpected happened.

They met a Pre-Alpha. Every Framer is registered and would either be in the Pre-Alpha training away from the rest of society as they learned to control themselves. Or had a year grace period after said training where they were kept under some sort of watch.

They met an illegal Framer. One that was not under governmental influence and was leading one of the strongest gangs in the area. At that moment they had nearly all lost their lives as the Framer lost control of his emotions during the desperate fight. If it were not for a timely call to the officials bringing the military to suppress the Framer, they would have all died. Of the eight only three were left after the battle. Parth had no clue where the other two were now.

He wandered if he would eventually feel the same about her as he with his old group.

The twins stood in front of him arms behind their back, short black hair in bob cuts that hid an eye each. He wondered what their physical change was after their transformation into Framers as they were not visible at the moment.

Honestly, he was nervous it was one thing to fight humans as a human. You know that without weapons in sight it would just be your fists and feet.

But with Framers anything could happen and so you needed to be prepared for anything. He had shown them a little of what he could do the first night, but he knew nothing about their own fighting style.

Luckily all he had to do was hold them back and he was used to a defensive style of fighting.

The black smoke materialized from his body once more, some of it coalescing to form the crystal-like black doubled headed scythe. The scythe form was not something he chose. The smoke just naturally formed that weapon and he was unsure why that was the case.

While in the Pre-Alpha training course he had learned to use the scythe as part of combat training and found that it came somewhat naturally to him, likely a by product of his ability in the first place.

One twin stood behind the other, and interesting position to take. He suspected they had roles when fighting together. Maybe that was part of why it was a three versus two.

“Our names are-” The one in front started.

“I don’t care what your names are.” He interrupted. “What is it with people trying to introduce themselves to me unprompted.”

“…We would crush you knave.” She growled. If the looks from the girls could kill…well, they were well past that at this point.

It was deliberate for him to anger them. Angered fighters were flustered and made mistakes in their eager attempt to be aggressive.

“Spare me.” He yawned.

The air between them became oppressive, just off the edge of emitting Hyper Logical Essence. If he could force them to do that perhaps the lady from before would show up, which would be a good way to end the fight…But Tey was right. They had to end this asap and show they were not to be messed with.