Chapter 3: Bad Luck
Mark glanced at the one who spoke to him first for a second. He was a Caucasian male who seemed to be in his late thirties, his blonde hair and beard looked dirty and unkempt, sunglasses were rested on his nose bridge and a cigarette was silently burning in his mouth.
....He was pretty much your typical douchebag that was usually seen on TV and in propaganda.
Mark didn't say anything but just quietly stared at them, this made the one who was sitting next to the blondie frown slightly and said in an angry tone:
"Hey, big bro is speaking to you. Why aren't you brat saying anything?"
The one who spoke was a bald guy who looked a bit younger than the blondie. He also had a cigarette burning in his mouth and his build was less muscular than the blondie, but it didn't make it any less disgusting to look at.
Mark gave baldie an eye and couldn't help but showed a trace of pity and ridicule on his face when he looked at the top of baldie's head.
'To be bald while you're still in your thirties...Poor thing.'
Baldie narrowed his eyes a little when he saw the look on Mark's face, he was about to say something before Mark quickly interjected him and said in an indifferent tone to the blondie:
"I have the thing you want. Where's the money?"
Blondie pointed his finger to the man on his right and gestured for him to do his job. The man nodded and started walking towards Mark, in his left hand was a small stack of Nero with notes composed mostly of 5 Nero and 10 Nero.
When he was about a meter away from Mark, he was able to see his features. The man looked in his mid-twenties with dark brown hair. Although he seemed to be the youngest, he was actually the tallest and most muscular one out of the four.
He was so tall that Mark's height only reached his shoulder.
Mark took the money from the tall man's hand, then he removed a piece of paper from his right pocket and handed it to the tall man. He shifted his attention back to the money with a strange glitter in his eyes, almost as if they were sparkling with fireworks.
The tall man nodded slightly without saying a word and slowly backed away, returning to his original position. He gave the piece of paper to blondie.
Blondie accepted the paper and grinned from ear to ear after looking at its content, then he started to laugh out loud:
"Hahahaha...Good good, the boss will be very pleased with this."
He stopped for a moment, looked up at Mark, and said with a bright smile:
"Brat, I'm quite pleased with the information you provided. As a gesture of goodwill, I'll give you something extra."
He looked at the fourth person who had maintained her silence all this time and spoke curtly:
"Give the brat something extra"
Mark turned his head to his right a little, the person was actually a woman...an incredibly muscular one.
Mark's body shuddered a little, ever since he met this gang he had developed a phobia for overly muscular people. He felt uncomfortable whenever he looked at them.
...And now that he had seen an overly muscular woman, that uncomfortable feeling just got increased by three folds.
The woman didn't seem to notice Mark's reaction and just extended her hand to give him another sum of money, this one is not as thick as the previous stack of Nero.
'....What was I thinking again? Oh right, I just got a sweet deal of Nero, hehe...'
Mark saw Nero and forgot about everything that just happened in an instant. He quickly reached his hand out for the money and started to count each of them slowly while grinning from ear to ear.
...The other four saw this with their eyes filled with disdain, ridicule, and a mysterious glint of wickedness.
Mark was busy counting the money so he didn't manage to catch the glimpse in their eyes.
After finished counting, he looked up to the four and said:
"So are we done here? Am I free to go?"
"Of course, we hope to do business with you again." Blondie smiled amiably.
Mark didn't linger any further and started to turn around and walked out of the alley with steady steps.
...But just as he was about to leave the alley, he heard the voice of Blondie say coldly:
"Oh, I almost forgot."
Mark unconsciously tensed up, without turning around, he asked:
"...What?"
"Our boss had a meeting with an extremely important individual the other day. The person had offered us a pretty nice deal that we would gain many benefits if we fulfilled his request."
Blondie paused for a second, then continued in a mocking tone:
"...That we bring you to him."
Mark's instinct instantly cried out, he prepared to run off and escape out of here as soon as possible.
He didn't know why this mysterious person wanted to capture him, but he had to survive first to know the reason.
Bang!
...Before he could do that, however, Mark felt a blunt, heavy object make contact with the back of his head and he fell to the ground with a loud thud.
As he started losing consciousness, he managed to make out one final thought before his mind completely blacked out:
'...For some reason, I sort of expected this to happen, yet...'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I got the brat, big brother." Said the muscular woman while holding a dirty brick that was stained with a little bit of blood on one end.
"Hehehe...with this the boss will reward us greatly." Blondie said with a wide smile.
When the important person request this mission, Blondie and his group didn't know why that man would pay such attention to a brat like Mark.
But after they heard the reward for the commission, all their previous doubts got thrown out of the window immediately.
Who cares why he would want this brat? As long as he accomplished the mission, he and his gang would be rewarded greatly.
The Muscle Bros' hierarchy was based on their contributions to the gang. It was split into 3 major groups of around 100 to 150 people for a group, each group had 4 small teams ranging from 25 to 37 members each team.
The leader of the team, group were named captain, and commander respectively. All of them were led by one person named the Big Boss, most of the members had never seen his face before except for the commanders and a few highly valued captains.
Blondie and his team were one of the worst teams because of their tendencies to cause trouble with other gangs and the low amount of contributions to the gang.
They often received mockeries or got looked down upon by other groups and teams with higher value.
'With this, those bastards will never dare to look down upon us again.'
While he was fantasizing about the face of other teams when they saw what happened, Blondie turned his head to meet the tall man's eyes and spoke curtly:
"Grab the brat, we'll return to our base shortly."
The tall man nodded and quickly arrived next to Mark whose blood was dripping slowly, he grabbed him by the waist and put him over his shoulder.
He turned back to see Blondie gesturing with his hand to leave and the four of them started walking out from the alley with bright smiles on their faces, each one of them had their own thoughts.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone