John Wick - Chapter 60: Joe: I Know a Little Bit of Everything (Patreon)

Nate was taking off his protective gear when Elena ran over and nudged him with her elbow.

“I wouldn’t have guessed it. You’re actually pretty good with a sword!”

“I’m all right.”

Joe removed his sparring gear and slowly walked over to John.

“Mr. Wick, I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have called you weak.”

The room suddenly went quiet.

Then Nate noticed something strange appear in Joe’s eyes.

John had the same look.

The corner of John’s mouth twitched.

So did Joe’s.

A second later, they both laughed.

Elena looked back and forth between them in confusion.

“You two know each other?”

“Of course,” Joe said. “In this line of work, who doesn’t know him?”

“John. Long time no see.”

Joe and John shook hands.

“Must be almost ten years,” John said as he stood and patted Joe on the shoulder. “We haven’t seen each other since you became a bodyguard.”

“Yeah. If we’d run into each other after that, one of us probably wouldn’t have walked away.”

Joe wore a slightly awkward smile.

Actually, it wasn’t just his smile. All of his expressions seemed a little stiff.

Was it some kind of facial paralysis?

Or had his face been injured before?

“You still fight just as... elegantly as ever.”

Joe paused halfway through the sentence, clearly searching for the right word.

“That’s not what you said while he was unconscious!” Elena immediately called out from beside Nate.

“Did he say I fight like a woman?” John asked.

“Yes!” Elena nodded emphatically.

John turned toward Joe with a blank expression.

“Uh...”

Joe looked embarrassed, though even that expression seemed slightly unnatural.

“I was just trying to see what our ‘top rookie’ could really do.”

“If I didn’t provoke him a little, I was afraid he wouldn’t go all out.”

“Next time, we’ll use guns,” John said.

“Hey! That’s just bullying me! You know what I’m like. Anything more than three meters away, I’ll miss nine shots out of ten!”

John ignored him.

Marcus came over and sat beside John, and the two began chatting casually.

Nate turned to Joe.

“Winston called you here?”

“Yeah. He said he wanted to help John get back into shape and improve his hand-to-hand skills, so he needed a sparring partner.”

“I only finished my last job recently. Winston called me in the middle of the night. I just got off the plane and came straight here without even eating breakfast.”

“Then let’s go eat,” Nate suggested.

“Sure, but I eat a lot.”

“Eat as much as you want.”

“Deal.”

That same awkward, almost goofy smile appeared on Joe’s face again.

With the sparring more or less finished, the whole group headed to the restaurant for breakfast.

The main reason was simple. The tables in the gym weren’t big enough for everyone.

Especially with Joe around.

With his massive build, sitting him at the table was practically enough to take up half of it by himself.

His appetite certainly matched his size.

He wasn’t picky either. As long as it was the kind of food he liked, he would eat anything.

Stuffed flatbreads, noodles, rice rolls, steamed buns. The smaller ones disappeared in a single bite, and even the larger ones only lasted a few.

The poor chef was the one suffering.

He simply couldn’t cook breakfast fast enough to keep up with Joe’s eating speed.

While waiting for fresh dishes, Joe picked through the Western breakfast options and ate whatever looked good.

“That is some appetite,” Elena remarked.

Joe gave her a goofy smile.

Everyone else had finished eating long ago.

Only Nate remained sitting beside him, slowly eating a fried dough stick to keep him company.

There was no helping it.

Having an entire group sit around watching one man eat would have been awkward.

“Hmm... this chef’s cooking is pretty average,” Nate said, trying to start a conversation.

The food wasn’t actually bad.

He just couldn’t think of anything else to say, and this seemed like an easy way to get the conversation going.

Winston raised an eyebrow.

“Really? I think it’s pretty good,” Joe said after swallowing his mouthful.

“I’m a chef too. You should try my cooking sometime.”

“Sure. You have no idea how miserable the last two months in Mexico have been.”

“The food was terrible. I swear I’ve lost weight.”

“Then eat more,” Nate replied.

Marcus, sitting across from them, looked at Joe’s enormous frame and wisely said nothing.

Joe nodded and accepted another tray of steamed dumplings from a waiter before immediately continuing to eat.

“By the way, are you a hitman too?” Nate asked.

“I used to be. I’m a bodyguard now,” Joe corrected him.

“A hitman can become a bodyguard?”

“Of course. Former hitman looks pretty good on a résumé.”

“Then why did you stop being a hitman?”

Joe nearly choked.

He swallowed his food, then avoided Nate’s eyes as he answered somewhat sheepishly.

“I can’t use guns.”

He hesitated.

“Well, it’s not that I can’t use them. I just can’t hit anything. So I could only do close-range assassinations.”

Joe straightened up and continued.

“But look at me.”

“I stand out way too much. Stealth just doesn’t work when you look like this. Every assassination ended up turning into an all-out fight.”

“The gold coins I earned from the job usually weren’t even enough to cover the cleanup afterward.”

“So... you get the idea.”

Nate knew exactly what Joe meant by cleanup.

Information processing fees.

When Continental hitmen worked, they were better off avoiding large-scale public disturbances. Cleaning up the consequences could become extremely expensive.

Elena had complained about that before.

Come to think of it, Nate himself had only accepted one bounty so far.

But he had never really needed to worry about gold coins.

There wasn’t much he could do about that.

Having powerful backing had its advantages.

Joe went back to eating.

Winston took over the conversation.

“Joe was never particularly suited to being a hitman, but he’s one of the best bodyguards you can hire.”

“And he isn’t cheap.”

“When it comes to killing someone with his bare hands, he’s the strongest person I’ve ever seen.”

Nate could believe that.

He could already picture it.

In the real world, it wouldn’t matter how good Joe was at hand-to-hand combat. Enough bullets would bring anyone down.

But this world was different.

This world had bulletproof suits.

And hitmen usually worked alone.

Imagine it.

Joe puts on a bulletproof suit.

An assassin appears.

His massive frame immediately shields his employer behind him, providing an almost absurd sense of security.

Then Joe protects his head and charges straight through the gunfire like a truck before beating the assassin to death with his bare hands.

Just imagining it was brutal.

[Unarmed Master (Max Level): While unarmed, Strength increases by 100% and Speed increases by 100%. Allows rapid mastery of all forms of hand-to-hand combat.]

When fighting barehanded, Joe possessed roughly twice the strength of a heavyweight fighter while still moving at speeds comparable to a featherweight.

(Heavyweight: the highest men’s weight class in the UFC.)

He really was like a human truck.

Joe kept his head down and continued eating while Nate studied the effects of his Trait.

When he reached the second half, Nate suddenly asked, “Do you know martial arts?”

Joe looked up.

“What?”

Nate assumed he hadn’t heard clearly.

“Martial arts.”

Joe slowly raised his head.

His entire presence changed in an instant.

“What I meant was... which kind?”

By the time he finished speaking, every trace of that goofy demeanor had vanished.

Joe looked at Nate and said calmly,

“I know a little bit of everything.”