Unfortunately for Henri, although having succeeded in shaking the man's hold, time appeared to catch up to him all at once, and the man's fist caught him fiercely while he was in the process of dashing to the right; it was bound to be a powerful hit, but it lacked any of the throughput as any of the young man's training partners had. Henri's opponent, intimidating as he was, was just a brawler, a man who had been in a few fights, but had never learned to fight. His form was incredibly flawed, but he could still do some damage, however.

Right, the voice said during what may have been a forced cough, I forgot I can‘t do that anymore. What was it . . .?

Drifting back into silence - or thought, apparently - the voice stopped speaking entirely for a moment; however, the man was now stalking towards Henri with an impressively big shit-eating grin.

"Gonna sell your teeth to one of 'em Greoul fellas," he said with excessive, morbid glee.

Whatever trick Aurelius had up his sleeve died out just in time for Henri to get punched. The man's fist sped up, and only afforded Henri about a second to be startled by the sudden change, and feel his teeth scrape against his cheek. He swallowed down the metallic taste of pennies, denying the son of a bitch the pleasure of seeing the red run from his mouth.

Now he just waited. There were many things he wanted to say to Aurelius about his sudden memory loss, in fact, Henri was almost certain this whole ordeal was for his amusement, but said nothing just in case he'd cause the voice to leave because damnit if the voice chose to help he wouldn't turn it down.

He couldn't come up with a comeback to the teeth comment. The man stalked towards him, grinning like a maniac. Henri stood there staring at him, waiting for his next move, feeling his own adrenaline pumping through his body, tensing up and preparing for what was gonna happen next.

Anytime now Aurelius.

"What's wrong? Not talking so much now, are ya? Can't even put up a fight now, huh?"

The man came within arm’s reach of Henri and dared him to attack; he didn’t fear the little man in front of him at all, and he made no attempt to hide that fact, either. Raising the flat of his hand the man went to press it onto the side of Henri's shoulder, to give him a bit of a jostle, and goad him into attacking; after all, he had started this fight . . .

This simple gesture was one that Henri had no doubt witnessed several hundred times before; it was even one of the first things Dasari had shown his two pupils how to counter. When the hand came towards you, all you had to do was raise yours, as well, place it atop the oncoming hand, grab the thumb, and force the digit back. Violently. Practice, however, was a fair bit different than a real fight, and it was hard to say if Henri was able to execute even that simple gesture in the heat of the moment.

For some little hot headed spitfuck running his mouth about his mom and horse penises, he was suddenly quiet. Looks like he was done in, one punch was all it took, he was doomed now.Served him right.

The little man stood perfectly still, resigning to his fate, waiting patiently for the next move. Aurelius still hadn't responded, so he had to help himself, and this time he would try to be a bit more creative. He learned how to deal with grabby people from Dasari, but instead he would try something different. He would try to sweep his the guy's arm away, and hopefully leave him open enough to punch him in the nose.

Henri did, in fact, succeed at sweeping the man’s arm away from and outwards; in part, this was because the man had (mistakenly) saw no point in resisting. With his arm being guided wide away from his body, the guy just sort of looked at Henri with a mixture of range and disgust - at least, those were his range of emotions up until Henri cuffed him in the face. For his part, the man didn’t so much as stumble or back away, but although Henri was not a large man, the strength of his hit did give cause for surprise; it was solid and weighty, and, fortunately, very poorly executed. The punch had gotten the man just at the raise of his left cheek, it would bruise over, might have even fractured, but it wasn’t nearly enough to knock the man out. Though, it did hurt like a bitch.

An electric tingle spread down the length of Henri’s arm - it was brief, and quick to pass.

“You,” the man growled, “mother,” he straightened himself, and advanced, “fucker.”

The guy, like a wounded animal, threw himself at Henri with wild abandon. In an effort to drop Henri to the ground, the man would slam into Henri’s chest and try and buckle his legs from underneath him. From there, all it would take was getting completely on top of the younger man and beating him until he quit moving.

Henri's arm twitched and jolted as if he had just be shocked. It felt like stickin your tongue in an electrical socket, but the feeling was in his arm, and as the man charged him it extended through his whole body. That wasn't anything electrical, that was the surge of energy from fear. The man was acting like a wild animal, charging at him like a herd of angry rhinos.

Somehow, from an energy born from the need to survive, he might be faster if he tried. Very quickly he sped off to the right, sticking his foot out to trip him.

There had probably never been a sloppier, lazier attempt at tripping a charging assailant than Henri's, but, fortunately, it succeeded in as much a sloppy, lazy trip could; he managed to cause the man to stumble over his leg and sent him barreling across the ground in a jumble of limbs and pain.

Of course, because it was done in such a childish way, the man was quick to recover and immediately began to rise slowly form the ground with a few groans and a stream of curses that would've made a sailor blush.

Sadly, Henri not taking advantage of his opponent's rage may have cost him a decisive victory, and now it was unlikely that the man was going to go berserk again, especially now that his head was clear. A pity.

"Oh, I remember who ya are now," the man realized while smiling a smile full of resin-browned teeth, "and I know yer friend too, don't I? This'll be good," the man laughed.

The talking put Henri on end. Dialogue? Weren't they fighting? He kept a fair distance away from the man, confused, and very wary of him. Maybe this was an attempt to lead him into a false sense of security. Nope, Henri would feel insecure as hard as he could, tightly wound up and ready.

"Friends? What friends? I don't have any."

He was talking about Roland, he was baiting him into losing his shit, which would have worked. Threatening his pal made him want to rip his eyes out but he wasn't going to make the mistake of telling him anything he wanted to know, or reacting the way he wanted to.

Not over something he himself started.

Once recovered and standing up, the guy shrugged and spat to the side.

"Okay," he said without much worry. There was no getting out of this, he knew where he recognized Henri from now, and although he wasn’t all that keen on jumping the Dufort kid, he did have plenty of friends with grievances against the guy and his old man.

Spitting once more, the man’s smile slowly became a grim line on his face and he started walking away; he’d have to explain the blossoming bruise on his face and probably lie a bit, but he could have word to his buddies quick enough . . . Payback was going to be a bitch.

“Better keep a real good eye on that lighthouse, too.”

Slowly, he made to continue his walk back towards town. Unless, of course, Henri gave him reason to resume the fight.

"Lighthouse? Whatever."

Henri tossed his hand at the guy in that dismissive way, trying to keep up the act that he didn't know what he was talking about and stood there, waiting til the man was gone. When he was sufficiently far enough, he started running to Roland's house. He -knew- what he meant. He meant that the guy was going to get a gang of his friend's to kick the shit out of Roland and then burn down the god damned lighthouse.


**************************

Only a few minutes later (Henri was an incredibly fast runner) he was knocking on Roland's door with his very Henri specific knock. Five fast firm taps, the speed of the knocking indicating how urgent it was that Roland answered the door.

The Dufort residence was a large home somewhat detached from the town, although not by too great a distance, it was well within walking distance, after all, but it did have some land around it and even a small barn that doubled as a shed of sorts. The house was surrounded by a deck with access granted by a set of stairs off to the side of it. This was not the average home of a dock-master.

Several seconds passed before Henri’s knocks were answered by the sound of a few locks being unfastened, and a second longer than that, the door was pulled ajar with Roland standing behind it.

Surprise flashed across his face for a brief moment as he raised an eyebrow. Obviously, Henri had visited before, but it was usually Roland knocking on Henri’s door, not the other way around.

“What’s up?”

"Someone is coming, there's a man! A man with uh..."

Henri's mouth was going a mile a minute, and he must have as well, he was panting slightly from his running. He must have sprinted to Roland's house to tell him this. Sadly words failed, and for a second he stood there snapping his fingers trying to remember a certain word.

"Almost bald! A big almost bald man with brown teeth and his friends are after YOU and MY lighthouse. I gotta go!"

"You mean - -"

Roland could already tell it was going to be one of those days, one of those episodes where Henri makes little to no sense and desperately tries to sell whatever craziness he's got stuck in his head to everyone around him.

"No," Roland swung the door wide open, snapped his arm out, and caught Henri by the shoulder of his shirt; he held on tight. "Not so fast, Hen - slow down n’ shut up," he said, "what the hell are you on about? Who is after me? Yer not makin‘ any sense."

Nope, this time there was actually some trouble to be had, but given his zeal for drama the imaginary, he was basically the boy who cried wolf, and nobody in town would believe him. Roland would especially not believe him if he mentioned Aurelius, but he could leave that little tidbit out.

"Hurk!" The sudden stop in his running jerked him backwards. He turned around and told Roland some of the story.

"A guy with a..a..." He snapped his fingers more looking for the word, only this time he found it." SHAVED! A man with a shaved head and brown teeth told me he knew me and my friend and said that this would be good. Look can we go? Like run and talk at the same time?"

Roland took a deep breath and deliberately, slowly released it.

"A shaved head and brown teeth? Brown, like resin brown?" Roland asked, "probably Denton. Don't worry about it right now, just explain what happened and then we'll go do whatever, alright? Remember what Dasari's taught us," he paused and then continued: "Think," he let go of Henri's shoulder, "and go over what you know, don't just run off and do something stupid because of some kneejerk reaction."

Finally! Aurelius broke through the jumbled thoughts in Henri’s mind with uncharacteristic excitement.
Someone who makes sense!