After an intense minute of deliberate easing of the arrow from his shoulder, Liu let out a huge sigh of relief as it finally came out. No poison, it seemed; usually, the blood around the arrow would be dyed black or something if that was the case. Throwing the arrow to the ground, the young hunter took up a meditative position against the tree trunk and, after tearing off a strip of cloth from his clothes, bound the wound to prevent it from bleeding out any further. With that out of the way, he took a deep breath and began to actually meditate. He was still aware of his surroundings, but this measure, as he had found in the past, would ease the pain for the moment.

[hr]
The bandit facing off against Torako stood there silently, his face unmoving as he held his weapon at the ready. What good were the words of a child, after all? The two were in completely different positions of power, and he certainly would have no trouble--!
Kyang's battle cry shocked the man out of his thoughts as he turned around, only to see a giant axe coming straight for his face. Barely raising his sword in time, the bandit deflected the weapon to the side before rolling away from both parties.

"Backup, huh? Well, if that's two of you here and one back there..."
A sickening smiled curled up the man's face his eyes gleaming with bloodlust.
"I think I might actually have some fun today~!"

[hr]
A sudden gust of wind blew around Dai Xin as the men closed in around him, and though it did not bring any stop to the bandits' weapons, it certainly heralded something a bit more... Malicious.

"Oh? What have we here?" came a voice from the shadows. Casually landing on a branch right in front of the red-headed martial artist, a pair of grizzled men--fighters looking to be in their late twenties, both draped in tattoos--stared straight at their new opponent.

"You know, the boss might not be happy we lost so many today," the one on Xin's left remarked, his fists covered by spiked knuckles and leather gloves. "Wasn't this meant to be a hit-and-run operation? One of our spies told us that--"

"You know how this usually goes," the other responded, a pair of katars strapped onto his arms. "We send the recruits to deal with the small fries, and we avoid the big fish. Seems they caught on, though."

"Oh, that's not very convenient. Well, the boss will kill us if we don't catch the ones responsible, so I guess we'd best get to work."
"Yeah. Chiu blew the whistle, after all."

The duo's lack of respect was, clearly enough, one based in overconfidence. After all, they had been the undisputed 'arms' of the group, so to speak; nobody had needed them yet...
And for good reason.