“I don’t fight,” Arthur said quietly. “I remove threats.”
Trent roared, a primal sound of aggressive fury, and lunged forward.
He closed the distance in a fraction of a second, relying on his explosive speed. He threw a devastating, picture-perfect right cross aimed directly at Arthur’s jaw, intended to shatter the bone and end the altercation instantly. It was a punch that had knocked out a dozen men in the amateur leagues.
But Arthur wasn't there.
Arthur didn't block. He didn't slip the punch like a boxer. He executed a microscopic pivot on his good right leg, shifting his entire torso merely two inches to the left. The heavy wind from Trent's passing fist ruffled the fabric of Arthur’s shirt.
Before Trent could retract his arm, before his brain could even process that he had missed a stationary target in a three-foot-wide aisle, Arthur moved.
It wasn't martial arts. It wasn't a recognized style that Trent had ever studied. It was raw, devastating, military close-quarters violence, executed with a horrifying efficiency.
Arthur’s right hand shot upward in a blur. His palm slammed brutally into the inside of Trent’s extended elbow joint. At the exact same microsecond, Arthur stepped forward, driving the rigid blade of his left forearm violently into the side of Trent’s neck, striking the brachial plexus nerve cluster.
The sound of the impact was sickening—a sharp CRACK followed by a wet thud.
Trent’s right arm hyper-extended violently, the elbow joint popping backward with a gruesome snapping noise. A shockwave of pure agony exploded through Trent’s nervous system, but before he could even scream, the strike to his neck shut off the blood flow to his brain for a crucial millisecond. His legs, heavily muscled and perfectly conditioned, instantly turned to jelly.
He collapsed forward, gasping for air that his brain couldn't process.
Arthur didn't pause. He didn't back up to admire his work. He grabbed the thick fabric of Trent’s heavy black sweatshirt with his left hand, violently yanking the heavier man downward to utilize his falling momentum. As Trent’s head came down, Arthur brought his right knee up with the force of a hydraulic piston.
The heavy, steel-toed work boot connected flush with the center of Trent’s face.
The sickening crunch of shattering cartilage echoed through the silent bus, rising above the roar of the blizzard. Trent’s body went completely limp, rebounding backward off the knee strike, and crashing heavily onto the rubber floor of the aisle. Blood instantly began to pool from his shattered nose, mixing with the melted snow on the floor.
The entire exchange had taken less than 1.5 seconds.
At the back of the bus, the three remaining fighters—Greg, Liam, and Cody—stared in absolute, paralyzed horror. The man who had just dismantled their invincible leader, the man who had crippled a regional champion without even breathing hard, was a fifty-something bus driver with a limp.
“Trent!” Cody screamed, his shock finally breaking into panic.
The giant heavyweight surged forward, pushing past the seats, charging down the aisle toward Arthur like a furious rhinoceros in a narrow tunnel. He pulled his right arm back, telegraphing a massive, looping haymaker designed to tear Arthur’s head off.
Arthur stood perfectly still, standing over Trent's unconscious body. He waited until Cody was exactly two steps away, entering the fatal funnel of the driver's partition.
As Cody threw the massive punch, relying entirely on his sheer size and forward momentum, Arthur simply dropped to one knee. The haymaker sailed harmlessly over his head, smashing violently into the plexiglass barrier, shattering it into a spiderweb of cracks.
While on one knee, Arthur pivoted. He drove the rigid, reinforced heel of his steel-toed boot sideways, directly into the side of Cody’s left knee cap.
The joint, not designed to take lateral impact from a heavy object, exploded inward with a sound like a dry tree branch snapping in half.
Cody let out a high-pitched, shrieking scream of absolute agony. His massive body collapsed completely, his forward momentum driving his face heavily into the metal coin box. He bounced off the metal machinery and crumpled to the floor, grasping his shattered knee, howling into the freezing air.
Arthur stood back up, his face still completely expressionless. He looked down the aisle at the last two standing men, Greg and Liam.
Greg, the cocky lightweight, was trembling violently. All the color had drained from his face. Liam, the wrestler, took a slow, terrified step backward, raising his hands, his palms open in a universal gesture of surrender.