‘Never seen one of his dumb plays. What’s that supposed to mean anyway?’

‘Perhaps I can explain,’ replied Yori. He took a deep lungful of air, then shouted ‘YAH!’ at the lad pinning him against the wall. The cry echoed loudly through the alley, half-deafening them all.

‘No use callin’ for help, little monk,’ laughed Porter. ‘No one in London hears or cares.’

But the lad with the stick suddenly slumped to his knees as if all the wind had been knocked out of him.

‘Get up, you wimp!’ snapped the girl irritably.

‘I can’t …’ he gasped, clutching his stomach. His face had turned pale with a combination of pain and confusion. But Jack knew exactly what had happened. Yori was an expert at kiai-jutsu, the art of the kiai. The vibrational energy of his shout had momentarily paralysed the boy, its power hitting him as hard as a punch to the gut.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ said the girl, booting him in the rear. ‘Get up!’

In that moment of distraction, Akiko grabbed the girl’s wrist and twisted the butcher’s knife away from her throat. The girl squealed as Akiko over-rotated the joint, pushing the bones to breaking point. She had no choice but to drop her weapon and was driven to the ground.

Meanwhile, his arms still pinned, Jack used the bear-man’s iron grip to his advantage. Lifting up his legs, he double-kicked Porter in the face, cracking the vagabond’s nose and sending him reeling backwards into the mud.

But the bear-man was another matter. He began to crush Jack like a walnut. Jack fought for breath as his ribs were compressed and, in a desperate attempt to free himself, he flung his head back to strike his captor on the chin. But it had no more effect than a light slap to the face. Growling in annoyance, the bear-man flexed his muscles and tightened his grip. It felt to Jack as if his chest was imploding. His head pounded and his vision misted …

All of a sudden the pressure disappeared and Jack felt the air rush back into his lungs. Akiko had struck a kyusho point in the bear-man’s upper arm, sending a shockwave of pain through his radial nerve and forcing him to loosen his hold on Jack. At the same time, Yori targeted the tip of his staff at another nerve point on his foot. Howling in agony, the bear-man dropped Jack and began hopping around like an enraged rabbit.

‘I … had … him,’ Jack protested, as Yori helped him to his feet.

‘Of course you did,’ his friend replied with a wry grin. ‘He would’ve tired eventually of crushing you!’