The blood drained from Adell's face when Aris was held at knife-point, though it only made her a lighter shade of white. She looked up Silas, who shared the same fear in his little yellow eyes. There was little he could aim for and not end up killing someone. Thugs were thugs, but he was in no position to judge and deal death.<br/><br/>Silas felt a lump in his throat. His gun began to feel uncomfortable in his sweaty hands, and all he felt like doing was to stare.<br/><br/>Down below, the sun's presence began to grate on Adell. She scratched her white head of hair nervously, and looked around. Other than the four thugs, either unconscious or helpless, there wasn't another soul in sight. No police officer on the site, even though hoping to see a police officer walking on the streets in these parts was rarer than a unicorn.<br/><br/>There were the four thugs. It struck her mind, the cruellest idea ever to cross her thoughts in a long time. There was no need for any decisive action, just attrition.<br/><br/>She slowly lifted up one of the unconscious thugs by the neck, knocked to the ground by Nathaniel. The thug himself must have weighed close to a 170 pounds, and it was a strange sight when Adell, a 'gentleman' of average build, lifted up some neighbourhood thug.<br/><br/>"Hey, let him go!" yelled the man with the knife.<br/><br/>"You've got a lot more to lose than us, here. I don't even know the girl." Adell's grip tightened on the man she held. His eyelids opened slowly, before the shocking realisation that he was being choked occurred to him. He pawed helplessly at Adell's hand, too weak to remove her grip on his throat.<br/><br/>She had hoped that it wouldn't come down to choking any of them. Adell did not have the nerve for that. She glared at the armed thug with the evillest smile she could bluff. His expression had begun to change to a slight nervousness, but his eyes did not betray what decision he would choose to make.<br/><br/>Silas fumbled his gun when he saw Adell pick up the thug. He had met Adell a year ago, when both of them were hospitalised in the same school event. 'Severe silver allergies', they were said to have, but Silas knew better. He wasn't human, but whatever he was, he did not know.<br/><br/>Adell was sent to the same hospital ward with Silas, by mistake. Girls and boys were not supposed to be warded together, but an administrative lapse caused that to happen. It did not help that Adell certainly looked like a guy, and Silas never found out the truth until the day both of them was discharged. The expression on his face was one of absolute shock when Adell dropped the proverbial bomb.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"I'm actually a girl," she said, smiling at the exit of the hospital.<br/><br/>Silas froze in mid-step, and stared at Adell's face. He, or rather, she, had just about no feminine traits on her face or anywhere else. While Silas looked younger than he actually was, Adell looked the wrong gender.<br/><br/>"Uh. Ah. Uh. Ah. Uh," he blabbered.<br/><br/>"Yeah, I don't look like one. Story of my life," she said, with a measure of resignation.</span><br/><br/>Nothing he knew about her made him think that she would consider killing someone else.