Chapter 10 - "It's kill or be killed."

"Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you Natalia Hercules!"

The cheers and roars from the crowd bounced off the walls, echoing across all rooms that they were lucky there were no nearby establishments. They all clapped, raising their hands as they watched the unclothed seventeen year old being dragged towards the front stage, still unconscious.

There were three men waiting on stage for her, one of them being the bodyguard from the front who licked his lips and squealed, "I've been waiting for this all night."

At the front of the stage, there was one chair, and Kane Keen, leader of a new upcoming troop called the Shifters, sat in it. His light brown eyes scrutinized her body, and he had short black hair with the backside into a fade while front bangs fell in front of his eyes. He was wearing an expensive navy suit, and at either sides of him were Ava and Bella, on all fours, both with a glass of wine on theirs backs.

Natalia kept slipping in and out of consciousness, but she felt every single thing that they did to her.

She wasn't even chained from how much they had drugged her, and the nightmare felt as though it lasted for a decade before she finally came to. It was evident they hadn't expected her to get conscious at all, especially after all she had drank. However, Natalia had been trained for any fight or flight circumstances, and this was one of them. What she felt that night had been excruciating, painfully and emotionally, and there were flashes of camera as though this was all an act.

When she gained full consciousness, her eyes were still blurred, and there was still a man on top of her. It took a few seconds for her to realize it was the bodyguard from the entrance. She couldn't feel anything though since her body had numbed itself, a self-defence mechanism from her brain to prevent her from going insane.

However, his hands were planted in the floor at either sides of her head, and she observed his hungry eyes and his grunts with every single one of his thrusts, his jaw squeezing as he tried to go deeper and deeper.

All of a sudden, it felt as though everything in the room had paused. All of her surroundings had blurred and all she could focus on was the vivid memories of the training she had done.

"Men are dogs. The good ones are good, but the bad ones are savages," she remembered Lucius saying outside on the training grounds. "Women, on the other hand, the bad ones are still good-hearted and don't usually act on those vile things. You're young and beautiful, they'll definitely try to...take advantage of that."

"You mean, they'll try to rape me—"

"Natalia, we don't fucking use words like that," Lucius snapped, narrowing his eyes. Eventually, he sighed and slowly nodded his head. "Yes, they might. And I want you to be prepared in case it happens."

"You're jinxing it."

"I'm not jinxing anything," he growled, folding his arms. "I want you to be able to fight off an attacker if it happens. And if worst comes to worst," Lucius paused for a moment before exhaling a long sigh and adding, "you kill them."

"Alright," Natalia raised her fists, "what's the first step?"

"You're on the ground, right?" He laid flat on the ground, motioning for her to come closer. "You have a few options. It depends if your hands are free or not. If they are free, you either," he swiped his elbow over, "knock into their jawline with your elbow, or," he acted as though he was giving someone a head-but, "hit them with your forehead on their nose. Either or, that should destabilize them to give you enough time for your next move. But it has to be hard, with all the strength in your body."

That was exactly what Natalia did.

She swiped her elbow across his jaw as hard as she could which caused the man to be dizzy.

"After that, you use that momentum from your hit to further throw them in that same direction. So, if I do a right elbow," he swiped his elbow from right to left, "since I'm already here and their body is going that direction already, you quickly wrap your arms around their head, like a backwards headlock, like this," he enacted it, "and try to bend their neck like this, so that their body has to follow the motion from their neck. It doesn't matter how big or tough they are, if you pull hard enough on their neck, their body will follow."

Those words were unbelievably loud and clear in her head. It was as though her mind wasn't even thinking, her body was moving on its own as she reached around his bulky neck and threw him onto the side, his body flailing over.

She tried a couple times on Lucius, and when he was satisfied with her training, he stood to his feet, patted his hands together and smiled, "That's all we'll do for today."

Natalia could read her father like an open book, which was why she noticed the discomfort in his furrowed brows, how he suddenly avoided her gaze and tried to walk away right after he said that. But she wasn't done, she wanted to know what to do next. "Can I learn what to do next tomorrow then?"

Lucius paused for a moment before forcing a smile. "Let's train on something else tomorrow."

"Dad?" She stepped closer to him, still out of breath from the exercise, and with her hands on her hips, she asked bluntly, "What's going on?"

Lucius met her gaze without saying anything for a few seconds. Then, after a long sigh, he had admitted, "The thought of that happening to you..." Those images had been racing in his mind ever since he started guiding this exercise, and he couldn't get rid of them. "It makes me sick, Nat. And the scariest part is that," he bit his bottom lip, turning away again, "I might not be there to protect you from it."

It was nice to hear these things from her father, since he had trouble sharing how he felt most of the time. Although, throughout the years, he did continuously apologize that he wasn't as emotional as he was supposed to be.

She reached for his shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly before she said, "I'm not going to live here forever dad. And you're not there every second of every day. It could happen, but this," he motioned towards the training ground, "is the best way to protect me from it. So please," she walked away from him and returned where they had been, "tell me what to do next."

Lucius was still a bit reluctant, but she was right. Just because she lived at home didn't mean that he was there to protect her all the time. The faster she learned these techniques, the faster she will be equipped to defend herself in case it did happen.

That was why he approached her again and folded his arms. "After you threw him off of you, the next milliseconds will determine if you will live or die."

For a moment, Natalia felt a sombreness engulf them, even a cloud passing over the sun and shading them. Lucius' jaw tightened as he explained, "That attacker may have a weapon; it could have been tucked in their waistband. Or, maybe he had it in his hand. If they do, you have to get it, no matter what. No second delay; while he's destabilized from that throw, you get that fucking weapon."

"What if I can't get it?"

"That's not an option, Natalia," Lucius insisted with much more stern, his eyes getting even more narrowed. "We've done knife training so if it's knife, you start going for the kill points. The jugular," he pointed to the neck, "even the thigh since it has so many vessels. Or hit the organs in the abdomen. It really depends on the knife, but if you think you can stab deep enough to hit the heart, go for it."

Without any thought, Natalia reached for the most evident weapon on her attacker, which was a gun sticking out of his waistband. Before he even realized what was going on, she snatched the gun for its hostler.

"What if it's a gun?" she had asked Lucius, tilting her head to the side.

Lucius shrugged his shoulders. "We've done gun training before, you know how to use one."

Natalia slowly nodded her head. "Yeah, but I'm not really going to kill them, right? That's only if worst comes to worst. With a knife, I can at least injure them without it being lethal, but guns are much more severe."

"Natalia, you being in that position is the worst of the worst. If they have a weapon, it's kill or be killed, and you're not going down without killing them first."

She swallowed hard; she hadn't expected her father to say that. "Then what do I do?"

"They should be on the ground, so you bring the muzzle of the gun directly on their forehead and you press the trigger. That way," he pointed to his own forehead, "that brain's exploding in there and they're definitely dead. Or," he pointed to the left side of his chest, "you bring the muzzle of the gun right above his heart, against his chest and shoot."

"Why not the neck?"

"Because there's a chance that they survive if you go for the neck. It's slim, but there's still a chance. Forehead and heart," he shook his head, "there's no chance."

She couldn't hear a thing, not the blaring music in the background, not the cries from the crowd, not even the curses from the other two men on stage that were realizing what was going on.

All she could hear was her father's loud authoritative deep voice in her brain, guiding her through what to do next, and shouting over and over again, "It's kill or be killed, and you're not going down without killing them first."

Without realizing what she was doing, her fingers unlocked the safety, she pressed the muzzle against the bodyguards forehead and pulled the trigger. The blast had been much stronger than she had prepared for, her body flung backwards by the momentum of the shot, but it was perfect because the other two men behind her had attempted to grab onto her but didn't expect her to roll backwards.

"What if there's more than one?" Natalia asked after they had gone through several versions of what could happen. If she was on the ground, if she was in restraints, how to get out of restraints, what to do if she couldn't get out of them, using her teeth as a weapon, gouging out eyes if necessary; every single thing Lucius had thought of, they had practiced for hours. However, this was the last thing he hadn't really mentioned. "What if I take down one but there's two or three more?"

"I taught you how to fight, Natalia," Lucius exhaled, wiping his forehead from the sweat that had accumulated. "If you have a weapon, you use it. If they have a gun and you're close to them, you do anything you can not to get in their line of fire. If they have a knife, we've trained for that too. And most importantly," he pressed his finger against her forehead, "you do not use this; stop thinking and just do. The only thing you should be thinking is to fucking survive so you can come home to me and tell me everything and I can go kill whoever did this to you. Capeesh?"

Her legs were sore, and as she tried to stand to her feet, she collapsed back onto a knee. At the same time, one of the men on the stage lunged towards her. Before he could grab onto her, she raised the gun and shot him directly through the skull, watching his body fall onto the ground. There was a third, and that one didn't move. Instead, with a smirk, he raised his hands and said, "I don't want to die, so I'm not going to try to—"

That monster had been on top of her too, had violated her body, had known about the pink slip and said nothing. His pants were still down, and that was why she didn't even hesitate to point the gun in his direction and see the horror stretch his face as he realized what she going to do. But he had no time to dodge, since she pressed the trigger and the bullet sprang directly through his forehead.

Natalia's adrenaline started to slow down, and when her mind began to think again, she realized what she had done and her trembling fingers released the gun from her grasp. She looked down at her quivering body, splotches of their blood all over her, to the point that it was even all over her face.

"After that, you run, and you don't fucking look back until you're home. There's no calling the cops. I'm better than the cops, so you get home, you come to me and you tell me. Not Sarah, not Jake, but me." His face had saddened when he said that, and Natalia had been surprised when he suddenly admitted, "I love you Nat, and I would've be able to live with myself if that happened to you, so please be careful."

Natalia heard the final order from Lucius in her mind, and she was seconds from starting to run when she heard claps begin to echo in the room. That was when she finally looked up and saw dozens of pistols with flashlights aimed directly at her.

In front of them all was the same man who had been seated on the chair, now on his feet and clapping as he approached the stage. "Bravo! That was magnificent! Such an impeccable show!" He reached the stage and forcefully grabbed her hand, raising it as he cheered, "Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Natalia Hercules!"

Suddenly, the entire crowd began to cheer and scream even louder, as though it had all been a planned performance that had been executed perfectly. Kane Keen reached for the back of her neck, forcing her to bend forward into a bow towards the audience.

Unfortunately, all that had happened had been way too much pressure and stress on her body, especially on her mind. The fact that her hands were now tainted, having killed three people without even hesitating, the feeling of their hands on her body, forcefully using her as if she was a toy, and the feeling of the drugs overwhelming her mind and being pulled in and out of conscious and initially not being able to do anything at first but lay there; all of that was way too much.

That was why she suddenly collapsed on the ground, falling unconscious.