Just a Mere Man
The sounds of motors whirring drew Cody's attention as they got louder. Cody turned around and saw six hog motorcycles, such as Harley-Davidson and Yamaha bikes cruised towards him. The louder the sounds of the motor, the closer the bikers were.
What were usually empty streets at dusk wasn't the case this time. Sure, there may have been cars parked, but with the crime wave at its core, there was a reason pedestrians hardly walked the Metro City streets at night. Whenever that happened, any citizens would fall victim to any Mad Gear thugs and their prey.
Cody turned around. There were six bikers driving, all in formation with two at the forefront but there were lines as each had two fellow bikers behind him one by one. One of the bikers at the front brandished a lead pipe and held his right arm out as he approached Cody.
"SHIT!" Cody yelled. He ran as fast as he could down the sidewalk, about as far as he could go from Tom's Gym. As the biker closed in, Cody quickly jumped towards the sidewalk with the pipe barely missing his head by an inch while he descended onto the concrete.
While Cody ducked, he saw the same biker, Slash, turn from the street onto the sidewalk. The biker went to a stop.
What the hell is this guy doing? Cody said.
Slash faced Cody. This biker had a dark skin complexion and wielded a lead pipe. The biker gripped his right handlebar and rolled his hand forward.
VROOM! VROOM!
The sound of the revving continued while Cody stood there and stared blankly into the biker's eyes. One would expect him to move off the sidewalk, but he stood there. The rest of the crew sat on the saddles and watched. Did they think Cody was stupid or just scared shitless that he was frozen stiff?
Little did they know that Cody had a plan of his own while he stood there with a smirk on his face.
The dark-skinned biker ascended the kick start and started to move. Cody started to run. Much to the other bikers' surprise, he ran towards Slash who was gunning right for him. At full speed, Cody ran and quickly descended from his feet. He jumped into the air and folded his right leg into his left and then extended his left leg in midair. The biker's face was about to meet the sole of Cody's white shoe.
BAM! Slash fell backwards. The bike continued to roll until it tipped to its left, skidding along the sidewalk until it came to a stop.
The other bikers all went to a stop, set their kickstands down. The blonde-haired biker, Axl, yelled, "Get him, now!" The other four bikers busted out anything they had. Knives, brass knuckles, chains, crowbars, these guys were not messing around.
Cody was outnumbered, but this was not his first rodeo. The only thing he did while he looked at all six bikers, including the one who he knocked off as he slowly got to this feet, was yell out "Come on, assholes! Let's do this!"
Through his right peripheral, Cody saw a small piece of concrete. It looked like it was broken off a cinderblock or at most, chipped off the sidewalk. None of that mattered. Cody quickly reached for the piece of concrete and looked at the six bikers.
The bikers looked at him with devilish smiles on their faces. In their eyes, this was guy either had big balls or was just plain stupid to think he would stand a chance against six men.
Cody tossed up the piece of concrete like if someone tossed up a ball and caught it when it landed on the palm of their hand. He gave off a cocky chuckle and delivered an overhand throw as the piece of concrete slid from his hand and then landed on the face of one of the bikers.
But he didn't stop there. He raised right arm and delivered a hard elbow to the gut of a biker and ascended to use his left elbow and smashed his upper back and then kneed the guy in the face, causing blood to spray onto the pavement.
Slash whacked Cody in the back with the lead pipe. Cody screamed in pain and dropped forward. Axl and a few other bikers kicked him while he was ground. Cody yelled in pain some more.
No one said this was going to be a fair fight.
But Cody ascended and grabbed the legs of Axl and tackled him to the ground. Knowing there were five other men on him, he ascended and elbowed another biker to the face and delivered a hard palm strike to the face.
But Axl had another idea. He wrapped the chain he had around his knuckles and swung a hard right to Cody's face and knocked him down.
"Brothers, pick him up!" Axl said.
The rest of the bikers grabbed Cody by his arms and carried him to a nearby alley. Beating him down right there in the open wouldn't look good to the general public.
Slash and Axl led the rest of the Disciples of Apocalypse to the alley. They stopped near a dumpster. The area was strewn with garbage all over the place. Food wrappers, newspapers, empty alcohol bottles, and on top of that, a stench so rank that it was likely some of the garbage hadn't been picked up in about a week or more.
"This looks good here," Slash said. "It's time to take out the trash."
Cody knelt there and wondered what he meant. Were they going to execute him and dump his body in the dumpster? Fuck that! Cody thought.
Slash looked to the two bikers. "Skull, 8-Ball, hold him down." He turned his attention towards another. "Crush, you know what to do."
One of the other bikers, Crush, who was taller and had long brown hair and a goatee, pulled out a knife. Axl and Chains, the other biker stood there and watched.
Axl walked towards Slash. "So you think this worth the money Damnd is paying us?"
"What I wonder is if he will only pay us or if we split all the money together."
"This was too easy." Axl shook his head.
But was it? Crush got the knife as Skull and 8-Ball held him down. Crush gripped the blade while Cody was kneeling, breathing hard.
However, Cody saw that the two bikers weren't holding him down hard enough. He saw a sharp alloy move down before his very eyes and went to a stop and felt the sharp edge against his flesh on the left side of his neck. He knew what the man was going to do.
There was no time to try to break away from the two bikers. If he moved a certain way, the blade will do more than just break through his skin. Cody opened his mouth and bit Crush's forearm.
"AAAAAHHHH! FUCK!" Crush yelled. If that wasn't enough, he felt the back of someone's head ram right into his stomach.
The knife dropped to the ground. Cody moved around with all his might to break away from Skull and 8-Ball. He rushed right towards Skull, who was on his right, and pushed him to the wall and punched him three times to the stomach and butted his head against the biker's face and then dropped. In such an enclosed space, there wasn't a lot of room for movement. 8-Ball spread out his arms as he stalked behind Cody, but was met with an elbow to the face. Cody then grabbed him and threw him towards Axl, Slash, and Chains.
The knife on the pavement drew Cody's attention. There could be only a few ways out of this. Cody could try to fight all of them off, whether he would reign supreme or would fall to their offense. If he won this fight, it was likely they would find him and maybe he wouldn't be so lucky. If they beat him up, who knew if they would kill him right then and there, or take him somewhere else to inflict even worse harm?
The smarter choice would be to just walk away.
This was no time to think. So Cody picked it up and brandished it. "Back up! Back the fuck up!"
Except there was one man left. Crush was behind him, with a venomous glare that meant one thing.
Cody slowly turned around and saw Crush, who had a glass bottle in hand and smashed it against the wall. The other bikers could have easily tried jumping him, but with them knowing how angry Crush was after he got bit, they decided to let him handle Cody himself. Cody spun the knife around and shot him a look of "don't even try." Crush spun his broken bottle around into a stabbing position.
As Cody gripped the knife, thoughts came to his head. He could try slashing or stabbing this man, but the rest of the motorcycle club will jump him and likely kill him if he kills one of their brethren. Cody just walked forth towards the man, who just sidestepped each time he walked beside him in an attempt to leave.
So Cody chucked the knife to the side and put up a stance. Crush started laughing, as did the rest of the bikers. Cody quickly delivered right and left hooks to Crush's face, then a couple of blows to the stomach before ending it with a hard uppercut sending him flying to the ground.
After taking down Crush, Skull, and 8-Ball, there were only three men left. Chains rushed towards Cody, who then run and slid while ascending his right leg and delivered a hard roundhouse kick to the man's head. Chains dropped. The other bikers were bruised and bloodied. Cody was, too, but he wasn't going to give up.
He stared straight into the eyes of Axl and Slash. "It's just us now."
There was so much adrenaline in his system. It didn't matter if he got jumped earlier on. The amount of energy Cody had was mindboggling. He could have simply just walked away and not dealt with the last two bikers, but he didn't want to back down, either.
Cody laid a few hits to Slash and Axl, who had shown that they could defend themselves because they blocked each attack he tried to lay into them. One thing Cody noticed when he was attacked was that they didn't hit his legs. A simple kick to Axl's leg grabbed his attention. Cody elbowed him the face and grabbed him by the shoulder and then also grabbed Slash by the shoulder and collided their heads into one another.
All six bikers were down. Right then, Cody ran the hell out of there. He ran as fast as he could for three blocks. He didn't want to stop until he knew those bikers were nowhere to be seen.
He stood near a brick wall near a corner store to see if anyone had followed him. There was no one in sight. It wouldn't take too long for them to look for him. He would also hear the whirring sound of a motorcycle engine nearby if it was the case. With there having been six bikers, the sounds combined would have been louder.
It was now time to go home. Just to think what he would have to tell Jessica and Kyle about this. Hell, he would probably have to tell Mike about this, considering he was something of a father-figure to him growing up. If his brother got jumped by some Mad Gear thugs, this was no different, except Cody managed to fight them off. He knew Kyle could fight, but no one knew what those ruffians were packing in that moment.
Cody walked and then the glare of blue and red lights rose on the wall of the building he walked alongside. Then the high-pitched sound a siren got louder. Cody turned around. An MCPD squad car pulled up. Could it have been Lucia and her partner? Could it be any other MCPD cop?
Out walked two other cops. One looked African-American and was heavyset, but not to point of immobile and looked to pack some muscle. The other was Caucasian and looked more muscular than anything else. Neither of them looked familiar to Cody.
"Oh, good evening, officers, what seems to be the problem?"
The large heavyset cop, whose nametag read "Evans", approached him. "Hello, young man. We have reason to believe there was an assault nearby."
Cody looked away in confusion. "Not sure what you mean."
The other cop, whose nametag read "Walker," said, "Some citizens reported a fight taking place a few blocks away. Some mentioned a blond-haired man was involved. It matches your description."
Cody's eyes widened while his jaw dropped a bit. "Not sure what you mean. I was the one getting assaulted. Some thugs just tried to jump me."
Evans said, "That's not what we heard. Come on, you're coming with us."
"Whoa, whoa, hold up, those guys were kicking my ass!" Cody yelled.
"Yeah, yeah," Walker said. "Tell that to the judge. We're taking you down the station."
"I don't fucking believe this," Cody said as he tried to break away from them.
But Evans pulled out a nightstick and whacked him the back, while Walker grabbed a taser and put it against Cody's back. The electrical current went against Cody's system enough that he fell to the ground. Walker picked him up and threw him into the backseat of the police car.
From a distance, two women walked down the street. They were Poison and Roxy. It was a quiet evening, but they had some business to take care of.
They were walking down the quiet streets of the Westside. They weren't too far from their usual hangout, the Surf Bar.
"So who do you think Hugo should fight?" Roxy said.
"I don't know," Poison said. "A lot of the guys have been too easy for him."
"What about your boyfriend? You know, that guy you can't stop talking about?"
"Cody?"
"Yeah, I know you want some of that."
"Eh, I don't know. I don't want to see him get hurt, not by Hugo."
"Oh, so you do like him? You don't want him to get hurt?"
"Oh, come on, he's just getting started. Besides, what about Hugo's brother? Or the others in his family?"
Roxy stood there and looked at her friend and business partner with so much confusion. It appeared that the Andore family was hurting for some cash and also to fight.
"Well, those two guys just started fighting," Roxy said. "Don't you think we should look for a challenge for the two new guys? You really want to make him the top fighter. I know you're sweet on him."
Poison looked at Roxy. "What are you talking about?"
"Do you think he even remembers you?"
Poison didn't know how to answer that. It seemed that Poison may have known Cody in the past, but at what capacity?
Speaking of which, while Roxy tried to talk, Poison looked away as she a familiar face being put into a police car. Who was this person? Why did she have a worried look on her face?
At the Travers residence, Kyle sat in the living room watching TV. He came home right after school and went right to doing his homework. He had done some of it at school in his study hall class, mainly to keep his mind occupied from stressing about Vanessa. After coming home, he finished the rest and then started watching TV.
The news was on. There were reports of a young martial artist named Ken Masters, who was a part of the Masters family, a well-known wealthy family in the United States, winning the premiere U.S. Martial Arts Tournament and that he wanted to take part in another tournament. Then came a report about some problems overseas involving a seemingly terrorist organization named Shadaloo.
Kyle was unable to keep his focus. All he thought about was Vanessa and that night. Maybe he should go to the gym his brother trains at to unleash any rage he had.
"Kyle?"
The mention of his name caused him to turn to his left. A stunning blonde woman stood there dressed in regular clothes.
"Oh, hey, Jessica," Kyle said.
"What's wrong?" Jessica said.
Kyle sat up and looked at her. "Nothing is wrong."
"Kyle, I'm not stupid. You're just like your brother. I know when something is wrong."
She was right. Kyle had been around this woman for a long time and even he knew what his brother was like in situations like this. When he was younger, he would see when his brother tried to hide stuff. However, Jessica was not gullible. All he could do was take a deep breath.
"It's Vanessa," he said.
"What? What's wrong?"
Kyle looked down. He couldn't look at the TV or even at Jessica.
"I feel like it was my fault the other night. I almost got my friends killed."
Despite that same day that the rest of his friends not being angry about what happened, Kyle couldn't shake that if he didn't instigate that fight in the subway that none of that would have happened.
Jessica sat on the couch next to Kyle. "I don't think you should be upset about this."
"Why not?"
"Because Cody was the same way when he was your age."
"What? He got his ass kicked by some criminals as well?" He said in an emotion that mixed sarcasm and condescension.
"Don't say it like that. Yes, Cody has tried to prove he was tough when he was your age. Your brother may be a good fighter, but I've seen him fight other guys who were stronger. But you know what? I talked some sense into him. My dad also talked to him. You know that my dad didn't like me dating your brother at first, right?"
Then it hit Kyle. Vanessa had told him about how her brother didn't like her hanging out with him. It felt too familiar now.
Jessica continued, "But I stuck by him. I love Cody, even though I know he's not perfect. You're a good guy, Kyle. From what you've told me about Vanessa, it sounds like she really likes you. You can't let this bother you."
Kyle looked at her in the eye. It was crazy to think that he would be told something like this, but because she had been with his brother for a long time, he had to consider that maybe one day she would become his sister-in-law. In his case, with Jessica and Cody living together, she practically was.
RING! RING! RING! The phone rang.
Jessica looked up. "I'll go get that." Jessica walked over to the phone and picked it up. "Hello?"
"Jess?"
"Cody? Where are you? You should be home by now."
"I got arrested. I'm at the police station right now."
"What did you do? Did you get into another fight?"
"Yes, but not like you think. Some cops wouldn't listen to me. I need you to call your dad. I need to get out."
"Can you at least tell me what happened?"
"I'll tell you later. Just call your dad."
"Fine, I will do that." Jessica hung up. What happened? The way Cody sounded, it seemed that he didn't deserve this. He had been arrested before, but he was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, or at most, he got into a fight because of some macho bullshit.
This didn't sound like one of those situations.
Jessica took a deep breath and shook her head. What could have happened here? Nonetheless, she punched in the number.
In Uptown Metro City, inside a big home with the American flag and two other flags in the front, Mayor Mike Haggar had come home from a long day at the office. He had some people working for him at his home, such as live-in cooks, butlers, maids, etc. and of course, Carlos Miyamoto, one of his bodyguards.
With Carlos being from Brazil, his father was of Japanese descent and his mother being Brazilian, living in a favela wasn't easy for him or his family. While Metro City was no picnic, it was tame compared to the favela. So he had proven that he was a good fighter and also worthy of being a part of Haggar's security.
Haggar walked around. The interior of this home was so ornate with nice furniture. A couch in the living room with a large portrait of the Haggar family, with Mike, his late wife Nancy, and Jessica, who was still a little girl at the time the photo was shot.
A light from a room glared. Haggar walked towards the open door and saw a muscular man doing pull-ups on a bar that was set up. It was Haggar's personal gym.
"Carlos, you're here, thought you'd be out."
Carlos released the bar. "Hello, Mr. Haggar. Yeah, I know, but I just wanted to do some extra training."
"What are you training for?" Haggar said.
"Just want to keep fit, and keep my skills fresh," Carlos said.
It was clear to Haggar that Carlos had a lot of dedication to his martial arts and the shape he was in. Carlos reminded Haggar of himself to a degree.
"Well, keep up the good work, maybe we should spar one day," Haggar said.
"Are you sure about that?" Carlos said.
"Come on, just because I'm the mayor doesn't mean I've gone soft," Haggar said.
Carlos smirked and slapped Haggar's hand and shook it. "You're on."
Out of the blue, a butler walked up with a cordless phone in hand.
"Mr. Haggar, your daughter's on the phone," the butler said.
The butler handed Haggar the phone. "Jessica, what's up? What? What did he do?" Haggar sighed and looked down. "Okay, I'll take care of this. Thank you for telling me. I'll come get you in a bit."
Haggar got off the phone with a minor glare. What the hell did that kid get himself into now?
Carlos saw the look on his boss's face. He knew something was up.
"What's wrong, Mr. Haggar?" Carlos said.
"Cody's in jail," Haggar said. "Come on, you're coming with me."
Carlos nodded his head.
Author's note: I hope you all enjoyed this. This was mainly a chapter devoted to Cody. I had the idea in my mind about him getting jumped by the bikers and then also getting into a fight with them. The next chapter will continue from this.
Also, the other bikers' names were based on the actual wrestlers who were the Disciples of Apocalypse (DOA; get it?), the same faction/tag team from WWE in 1997-1998. Crush was the ring name of the late Brian Adams (the wrestler, not the singer, whose name is Bryan Adams). Chains is based on Chainz, but I don't know if the use of Z for any edgy and cool spelling was a thing in the 1980s. Anyway, Chainz was the ring name of Brian Lee, as in "Primetime" Brian Lee from ECW in the mid-1990s and also the Fake Undertaker in 1994. Skull and 8-Ball were the ring names of Ron and Don Harris, who are twins.