Tedet knows a little bit of boxing, at least one of the radera styles. However, knowing how to fight an opponent with different anatomy doesn’t translate completely from a boxing style made to fight someone of your same species, and even from your same planet. But knowing how to fight is still knowing how to fight. He is an amateur still, so he isn’t that great anyway.

In any case, when you can punch someone into a five-meter ground skipping, you don’t really need to know how to box. And knowing how to fight doesn’t help when someone can send you into one either. I knew it, the kids knew it, and Tedet was counting on that calculation.

I still don’t know why earthly animals are capable of calculating something like this, because even with the scene that developed before their eyes the kids didn’t seem to be wanting to flee. I guess this would be the same thing if a pack of husky dogs trying to take down a big polar bear. Strength in numbers. A pack is stronger than an individual.

The rest of the kids, the conscious ones, spread around Tedet, circling him. Not good. Not for Tedet, and neither for the kids. They might not be coming out of this unharmed.

“Uhm, Ted,” I called out from inside the vehicle. “I don’t think this is developing the way you wanted it to.”

Tedet croaked a new sound, while his back was pointed towards me.

“Ted, I don’t get it,” I said. “What was that?”

“Silence, Ed,” he said.

“Were you hushing me? Was that what that was? Because I--”

“Ed!”

“Right, okay,” I hushed myself while watching the circle close around the car. “Not good, not good, not good.”

The kids start closing in and Tedet pulls a vial from his left leg pouch, a brown liquid inside it, and breaks it inside his palm. I couldn’t see his face but he was probably wincing since he broke the glass inside his hand. I don’t see any blood dripping, yet.

His hand glows while he whispers words to activate his alchemical spell. I’ve seen him do it before, it’s a simple spell that uses a small incantation. The noise he makes when he does it is weird; all I can do to translate those sounds to ‘human’ is put it into Latin letters.

“Gye hakayaka,” he whispered -- or something along those lines.

Tedet’s body began shining or reflecting light metallically. It’s a hard thing to describe. Maybe he glowed in a weird and barely visible opalescent light. His skin looked like a low-quality gem for a second. He said the words meant ‘rock skin.’ And I remember it being something similar to the human alchemical spell ‘iron skin.’

The spell turns his skin hard, like rock or iron, and helps him increase his defenses. It is best for dealing with slashing and piercing weapons, but not as effecting with bludgeoning ones, and the kids were armed entirely with them. He could use other spells, but that would require better and rarer materials that he obviously wouldn’t want to use against a bunch of foolish mortal kids. That’s alchemist for you; greedy bunch.

The first kid stepped forward and swung his bat. Tedet received the blow with his forearm and the blow made him wince but not much happened. Rock skin could be a good defense against the bats, but he surely can’t deal with the metal rods.

I watched as he punched the kid in the face without harvesting the energy from his battery. Meanwhile, the kids that circled behind the car were sneaking behind us.

“Ted!” I called out. “They’re coming up from behind us!”

“Get out!” he shouted back.

“What am I gonna do? Run away?”

“Get out, Ed!”

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Damnit, I’m useless. I thought while pushing the door of the passenger seat open and quickly running around the front of the car behind Tedet. I placed my back against his.

“They’ll overrun us,” I said in a low voice.

“Push them away,” he answered.

“Are you crazy? I’ll kill them!” I shouted the last phrase a bit too much. The kids definitely heard it because they flinched, stopping for a slight moment before advancing.

“Can’t you push them with air magic?” he asked.

“I can try, but the results vary every time I use it.”

“Damn, wizards…” he whispered.

“Damn, alchemists,” I answered in kind.

The next kid came running, a second one behind him, and Tedet met the first one carrying a bat with his left hand, palm meeting the wood. The hit drove his arm backward and made it buckle at the elbow. That had to hurt. But Tedet grabbed the bat and swung around the kid to match the second one, which was carrying a metal rod. He moved in position to punch with his right hand. He made a fist and his hand glowed a tiny bit as he used the battery to punch the kid that was coming closer.

Before he could punch the kid swung the rod and Tedet had to change tactics, meeting the metal rod with his fist. The rod found the fist and it was sent flying backward. The grip the kids had on the rod was tight enough that the rod took his arms up before it slipped from his fingers. Tedet’s arm didn’t stop and his fist followed up from the momentum he had built up before it tore the rod from the kid's hand and followed through towards the kid's face.

The residual energy managed to found the kid's face before dissipating and made his head buckle backward. Momentum from the kid's advance made him slip when his legs continue moving while his upper body changed vectors from forward movement to backward movement. He pivoted from his center of mass and fell, his back hit flat on the floor. He didn’t stand up from that. The kid fainted midair, and when he fell he went rigid.

Tedet pulled the bat from the kid's hand and swing at his chest. The kid flinched, tucking his arms to his body in preparation for the hit. The bat smashed into his left arm that protected his thorax and most likely broke the humerus because I heard a loud snap and the bat was still intact.

“Sweet Mary!” I screamed. “The kids! Don’t kill them!”

The scene was horrendous. One kid was knocked out five meters away. Another was on the floor his arms bent up and his legs straight out, completely rigid. The other one was screaming and grunting in agony, his arm bent outward where it should be.

“What are you doing?” I asked, completely horrified.

“Making my point,” he answered casually.

“What? Is this what you do? Beat up kids just like that?”

“They were going to do the same to us.”

“We’re stronger than them!” I said enraged. “We have a responsibility to not abuse our power and hurt others recklessly! Otherwise, we’re just like them!” I pointed at the wide-eyed kids surrounding us. “A bunch of thugs!”

“You humans make no sense, sometimes,” he grunted.

“There’s a reason we call those acts of mercy and restrain ‘humane.’ ”

The kids weren’t moving but were still surrounding us. Tedet made a great point, and I had to give it to him. For a moment I made my own calculations, he hurt the minimum amount of people by doing what he did, otherwise, we could be seeing a bunch more bodies on the ground rolling in pain, including us two. This could be his way of being humane. The radera version of humane -- however you’re supposed to call it. I was not in the mood to think of possible candidates.

“What are you looking at?!” I shouted at the kids that were standing still watching the scene. “Take your guys and leave!” No one moved. That made me more furious. There was one thing I could do to make them snap back. I gather my magic and will and directed it below me. I bent my knees to lower my center of gravity and shouted out: “Tempesta!”

A gale rushed from below me, the power lifted my feet from the ground and I held to it by the tip of my feet, still touching the floor with my toes. My clothes flared upwards and Tedet was pushed a little away from me but managed to take the wind on by crouching, too. The rest of the powerful wind spread out and blew past the kids around up, pushing them back a little, moving dust against their face and maybe finding itself in their eyes. The struck of wind snapped them back to movement. The kids closest to the downed ones approached, dropping their weapons on the floor, and grabbing their friends.

The rigid kid was already limp and his eyes were blinking, barely conscious. He was grabbed by a friend and pulled him up his shoulder to take him away. The rest of the kids fled and left us alone.

“How could you hurt them like that?” I questioned Tedet.

“They are a gang,” he said, matter-of-factly. “They won’t learn otherwise.”

“You beat them up, almost to death.”

“We’re safe,” he said looking at me straight in the eye and before I could answer he stopped me. “And I only hurt three of them. I could’ve hurt more otherwise.”

I grunted. I knew that was why he did it, and it was most likely the best course of action that gave the best result. It was a bit of a gamble, too, the kids could’ve died from that punch.

“You’re upset,” he said, a statement.

“You gambled.”

“And everyone won,” he moved to the car.

“Damn alchemists,” I whispered.

“Damn wizards,” he answered back. “You’re a bunch of wimps. You don’t want to hurt mortals with magic, even if that is the only way to survive.”

“What I said before. It’s called responsibility.”

“I call it foolishness,” he sat down on the diver seat and close the door. “Get in, wizard. We need to find your nephew.”