Toka-Ace #1: The Re-Emergence
Chapter 22

I met up with the others near the field that was between Saint Vincent High and a residential neighborhood. We were a stone’s throw away from Menomonee Falls.

Yasmine had arrived at the same time I did with a couple of boys who were my age and who I presumed to be their legal guardians, one of the boys, a stringy fellow with long dark hair was accompanied by a couple, the woman had her arm around the boy looking concerned, while the man was slowly and nervously looking around. The other boy, a guy with curly brown hair, was with an angry looking man.

Adam, Francis, and Francis were there already. There were a few teens whom I did not know who were there with their legal guardians.

“Good, you’re safe.” Francis said as Yasmine walked up.

“It was a close shave.” Yasmine admitted. “I managed to save Kirk and Thaddeus as well as their legal guardians but Tovlin came awfully close to catching us.”

“Are you okay?” Francis asked.

“I’m fine,” Yasmine said.

“What about you Troy?” Yasmine asked.

“I tried going in to get Nathan but it was already too late.” I said.

“Tovlin most likely got the others.” Adam said. “I hate to say it, but we can’t rescue anyone else. We need to get to safety.”

“Adam’s right.” Katherine said.

“Let’s get everyone to my place.” Yasmine said.

“Excuse me,” The woman whom Yasmine had arrived with tapped her on the shoulder. “Not that I’m ungrateful, but you said that when we got here, you’d explain in more detail what was going on. Who are you all? And why were those people trying to grab us?” she asked.

“We’re just about to get to that,” Yasmine promised.

Everyone was huddled in a small crowd talking to each other trying to gleam what information they could to make sense of their situation.

Adam, Francis, Yasmine, and Katherine lined up in front of everyone.

Adam held his hands up. “May I have everyone’s attention please?” He said loudly. “My name is Adam, and these are my associates, Katherine, Yasmine, and Francis.” He said gesturing to each of them as he said their names. “We’re going to get everyone to a secure location. The people who attacked you will not be able to replace us when we get to where we’re going. But we have precious little time.”

I knew that Sharron, Eugene, Ivan, Layla, and her grandmother would cooperate because they knew what was going on, and what was at stake.

“How do we know we can trust you?” One of them men asked. It was the balding man whom Yasmine brought. “Just who are you guys and why should we go with you?”

“Are you kidding?” Sharron spoke up. “If you’re here, that means that one of these four had to risk their ass to save yours just so you could be here safely. Believe me, I didn’t want to believe it either, but this is real, and we owe it to these people to hear them out, they are on our side.”

“We are here to protect your children and you.” Francis said. “But we don’t have much time, the group who came after you before is still after all of us right now. We need to.”

“Ella wait!” Adam called.

Ella and her legal guardian had started to walk away

“You need to listen.” Adam said. He ran to cut off Ella and her legal guardian.

“Get out of my way.” said Ella’s guardian. He was a black man with a shaved head and a patchy beard. He had thick bags underneath his eyes

“Avery, maybe we should listen to them.” Ella said.

“Me and my people will take care of Ella.” He declared.

I walked over to the scene.

“Are you ignoring the fact that you were just targeted and nearly killed?” Adam asked. “They will kill you trying to get to her.” Adam said pointing at Ella.

“I got this, all I gotta do is call my niggas to back me up. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with us.”

I looked at Ella.

The small crowd had come over to where we were.

Ella looked embarrassed at her guardian‘s behavior. It looked as though she wanted to say something but was biting her tongue.

“Let’s go Ella.” Avery commanded. He began to walk away. Ella reluctantly followed.

“I agree.” Said Thaddeus’ legal guardian.

“Jack,” Thaddeus hissed, “I’m staying here, you know, with the people that just saved us from the people who just tried to kill us.”

“You should do the same.” Adam told Avery.

“Are you giving me orders?” He turned back towards Adam his body language challenging.

“If were going to go just come on.” Ella pleaded.

There was no mistake, Ella was most definitely embarrassed about her legal guardian.

Avery started to leave.

Adam ran to catch up to him. He placed his hand on Avery’s shoulder.

Avery swung suddenly.

With reflexes like a cat Adam ducked and grabbed Avery’s arm, stepped on the back of his knee forcing him down and got him in an arm lock.

“We’re sitting ducks out here. Every moment we spend here is more time that Tovlin can close in on us.” Katherine said. “If he wants to go then just forget him.”

“But we can’t leave them.” Adam pleaded.

“I don’t feel right about it either.” Yasmine said. “But it wouldn’t be the first morally questionable thing that we’ve done. But this time, we’re working to do something good. We’ll have to leave Ella to chance.”

Adam let Avery go.

“So what are we doing?” Ella asked.

“Come on.” Avery growled. He left with Ella following.

“You don’t have to go with him Ella,” I called.

Ella turned back and Avery glared at her angrily. The pair left without a word.

“Us too.” Jack said. “Come on Thaddeus.”

“No.” Thaddeus said. “You can go if you’d like, but I am staying here.”

“Thaddeus.” Jack gritted his teeth. “I’ll go, but at the first sign of trouble, we leave end of story.”

“I managed to get a fifteen passenger van.” Francis said. “Yasmine, Francis, Katherine have cars, so we’ll be able to transport everyone to where we need to go without any complications.”

Adam sighed. “I never thought that the gun battle would be the easy part.” He leaned in to tell me.