An overpowering stench of fireworks hung in the air. Sounds melted beneath the ringing.

I’d dived forward to shield Nelly, who, based on her moving lips, was okay. My calf, back, and shoulder were pained by fragments buried in the flesh, but only those three. There was internal bleeding too, but nothing debilitating. I had expected more damage.

Smoke cleared, and I saw why.

My jaw hardened. Fools. Those loyal, lovable fools.

My demonic hounds were scattered around me, each shredded and torn to mince on the half exposed to the grenades. Grog lay beside them, the unarmored parts of his arms and shoulders bearing injuries of similar gravity.

Next to the handsomely angular tree lay my fellow alpha cultivator. The cultivator coughed blood and gave me a stoic thumbs up, which I returned.

Thankfully, they were alive.

“Nelly, bring the doctor.” I gestured at the Asylum building. She nodded.

Lawn tore under my feet as I launched into a sprint. I took a fraction of a second to consider my approach. The assassin was no doubt retreating away from the wall, expecting me to scale the wall and approach them in a straight line, as my instincts screamed at me to do.

But what if I went even straighter?

First Alpha Walk Technique: [This Is A Road Now.]

I accelerated to my maximum land-speed and raised my chin, walking boldly through the Asylum’s outer wall.

A burst of gunfire erupted. Bullets shattered off pieces of the Chad-shaped block of concrete I’d pushed out of the wall.

Elderly curses sounded from the opposite side of the street. A hunched silhouette with a submachine gun slid into an abandoned women’s luxury clothing boutique.

No doubt the building was booby-trapped from the undergarment aisle all the way to the outdoor section. The assassin had decades of experience in eliminating difficult targets, access to military-grade weapons, and several days to plan how to kill me. It would be careless to take this veritable fortress disguised as a simple store lightly. But nor could I ignore the assassin’s invitation, for to balk from direct conflict went against Dao of Chadness.

“Hoo…” I breathed deeply, clenching and unclenching every muscle in my head simultaneously in order to facilitate blood-flow in my brain.

It was reckless. The Big Brain stage was the Fourth stage of Outer Chadness, the second to fifth stage of Chadorgans, which transformed an alpha cultivator’s organs into miniature Gigachads. Tapping into Big Brain energy like this, without fully finishing the Muscles-on-Muscles brought with it enormous risks. If I thought too big or gained insight too insightful for my brain, I risked my brain expanding beyond what my muscles could safely contain and exploding out of my head!

Blood streamed faster and faster as I clenched my face muscles, turning into turbulent rapids in the veins, nearly tearing through the membranes within my skull. Thoughts bulged my brain. Ideas danced complex mathematical patterns. I played a thousand and one rounds of 4D chess with an imaginary replica of my opponent, calculating, predicting, anticipating. I even took out a guest cellphone borrowed from the Asylum and opened all the apps, using all of them at once to further boost my computing power.

For but the briefest of moments, I glimpsed cosmic truths too large for mortals. Something ruptured in my nose and the taste of iron gushed to fill my mouth.

Yet I pressed on, imagining the possibilities!

I saw claymores shred through me after opening the front door.

Brain began to push against my eyes.

I saw myself gunned down by machine guns fired by mannequins.

Warm blood flowed from my ears.

A perfume aisle filled with poisonous gas.

My entire head trembled from the strain of the incomplete technique.

Hat section filled with invisible nano-wires criss-crossing all over the place.

I spat blood and took a knee, still pushing, knowing I was close to the last —

And then all clicked together. I saw my elderly foe, a woman in her mid-to-late 80s named Barbara Gjinx, also known as ‘Trip n’ Tricks’ in the underworld, shoe size 34, three measurements 32-45-40, weight 71.2kg, favorite food ‘Bite avec sauce au juter’, hobbies include yachts and classic military technology, and she prefers ‘mature gentlemen who can still get their wrinkly old swanska up when it counts.’

This information was readily available in her t*nder bio, right beneath a picture of a grandma with dyed blonde hair posing with night-vision goggles, skintight black-ops getup I could no longer unsee, and the exact same submachine gun I’d spotted previously.

Gasping, I released the incomplete Big Brain technique.

My plan was set, and I took the first steps to execute it.

Approaching the boutique, I scooped gravel from an unfinished road construction site and filled my pockets with it. While doing this, I took a quick selfie, applied girl filter on it to make my hyper-masculine features pass as those of a normal man, applied a second filter to age myself up by 60 years, and created a t*nder profile. Before the second scoop of gravel, I’d already swiped right on Barbara Gjinx and began speed texting with my right thumb.

Me: “Hi-”

My efforts were rewarded with an immediate reply bare fraction of a second later.

Her: “Afternoon handsome ;) See anything… interesting?”

She was likely referring to the collection of somewhat provocative poses she’d done with her submachine gun. I had to proceed cautiously, lest she send me nudes at a critical moment in the fight. My pockets were full, and I strode towards the boutique.

Me: “Yes. I noticed you keep up with the classic military technology. Any specific favorites?”

Her: “Hold on hun. I’m on a job and the guy is in the strike zone.”

I twisted my torso sideways, narrowly avoiding a burst of gunfire that shattered the boutique window.

Me: “No problem.”

Her: “Dratdangit I missed. Anywho, favorites? Claymores. Trip-wire grenades. Tear gas. Flashbangs. Anything remote operated that lets a dainty ol’ damsel like myself hold up against big burly men ;)”

Me: “Interesting.”

I spotted the array of those tiny anti-personnel boxes hidden amongst the streetside displays, ready to blow up any unwary window smasher. Likewise, I saw the faintest outlines of incredibly thin wire criss-crossing the area immediately after the revolving door entrance. Bending my head down, I could see the fire sprinklers had been replaced with tear-gas canisters.

The assassin herself was not visible, but given the copious amounts of surveillance cameras, I had to assume she had a clear line of sight to use her remote controlled bombs. Backdoor was a tempting option, since it had the shortest route to the security room, but I knew she knew that I knew it and therefore had likely rerouted the camera feeds to a mobile device.

Luckily, I had simulated a scenario similar to this while in Big Brain mode, and knew exactly how to proceed.

Her: “Anything you could tell me about yourself, handsome ;)?”

Me: “I workout.”

Her: “That much is obvious even to my old eyes ;););) You’re a delicious package for your age...”

She continued typing horny grandma noises, giving me an opportunity to execute my plan.

I took a fistful of gravel in both hands and entered through the front door, walking boldly into the web of nigh invisible trip-wires.

[Jawline Guillotine] x 10

My reforged Chadjaw snapped the nanowires with ease, rendering the trap impotent. Tear gas canisters triggered immediately all over the ceiling, flooding the spaces between elegantly dressed mannequins and organized racks with pale white gas. The pungent stench slammed into my nostrils like a pepper elephant on steroids.

I inhaled deeply, embracing this fortuitous opportunity. Tear gas allowed me to begin doing clenching reps with my tear-duct muscles and let me make minor gains along the Muscles-on-Muscles stage.

As expected, a silhouette popped up in the undergarment aisle. My foe opened fire, but I had been expecting this.

I raised my gravel filled hands high and utilized a stone flicking technique I had concocted during Big Brain mode, a brand new Alpha cultivation technique. It wasn’t lethal, but powerful enough to knock-out a regular human, and the rapid fire-rate of 300 pebbles per minute allowed me to easily compete with the submachine gun’s firepower.

Bullets rang against the clothes racks around me. My pebbles ricocheted off the shelves around my foe. Projectiles left trails through the teargas.

Our battle traveled sideways through the aisles, from undergarments to stockings to casual wear to pants to featured items. Her movements spoke of decades of expertise as the assassin rolled from cover to cover, utilizing cunning angles, feints, and subterfuge.

Fake peek-a-boos, mannequins with paper guns, and her expert maneuvering of the battlefield allowed the assassin to maintain center ground with superior cover. After the first failed stun grenade being intercepted by a pebble, she adapted, retreating across the aisles to bait me into freshly laid claymores hidden under luxury brand headwear and pre-cooked grenades concealed within 5000€ handbags.

But I was always ready, adapting the Big Brain simulations to live combat.

I lured her right back by assuming [The Impeccable Pecs] defensive posture before a risque poster of a male model, and utilizing my supernaturally photogenic features to all but blend into the print. To counter her night-vision goggles, I constricted capillary vessels in my skin, thus decreasing my temperature.

Soon after, an all too familiar elderly in a black get-up slid through the mist. The search-light of her submachine gun passed over me as she scanned the area.

“Heckdangit them cultivators and their blasted magics,” she muttered through a rebreather.

I sprung into action, launching a barrage of pebbles at her. One shattered her goggles. Another tore the mask off, and several smacked into her weak-points, bouncing off of a bulletproof vest.

To her credit, the assassin endured tear-gas and managed to fire a sweeping burst in my direction. I ducked. Bullets and pebbles shattered mannequins around us.

A flechette round shattered into shards in my right bicep and another penetrated my abs despite a split-second activation of [Unlimited Abworks], reducing a scoopful of my lower intestines into Chad slurry. I grit my jaw to endure the pain and pressed my injured hand against the wound. Warm slickness pulsed out, coating my fingers.

Coughing, my foe ran through the boutique and through the employee’s only door. Having anticipated all of this, I went in through the other employee entrance and shot her a quick t*nder message.

Me: “Would you like to meet face to face?”

Her: “ASDQEQWWA YES!! <3 <3 <3 When? Hold on, I’ve got a stubborn client. Don’t go anywhere pls”

Distracted, she wasn’t able to detonate the claymore before I had already stepped over it. With sharp slashes of my jaw, I cut through another web of tripwires, and made my way towards the manager’s office, where I had calculated her to have set up her final defense.

Then, a familiar voice sent a chill over my heart.

“Help! Somebody help,” shouted Mr. Maxson, his voice muffled by the door before me.

Between coughs, the assassin spoke through the store’s speakers, “Drop your pebbles, turn around, and hold still until my bullet is in your skull. Or your friend dies.”

A conundrum.

My simulations had pegged her as a reasonably honorable assassin, above endangering innocent lives. Besides, the time window in which she could have kidnapped him was vanishingly narrow. This might be a bluff. Or it might not be.

“Better hurry!” She cooed, and began counting, “10… 9… 8…”

At the risk of worsening my injuries, I forcefully tapped into Big Brain stage. Vessels burst in my nose and eyes and a skull splitting headache began to blur my senses.

“7…”

“Help me! Please!”

The voice was an exact match with Mr. Maxson’s in frequency and pitch, but with so few words, I could not make a full speech pattern analysis, although even those could be replicated with today’s technology. I recalled in vivid detail a lecture regarding machine learning algorithms, which Timothy had shared with me two years ago with no small amount of enthusiasm, right after a Mr. Maxson’s lesson on ‘Why Murder is Wrong’.

“6…”

Timothy had followed it up with a meandering discussion of chatbots and such. By combining three machine learning algorithms which mimic voice, speech patterns, and finally a chatbot, it is possible to create convincing human mimics. Although I had evacuated myself from the speech by going to do some crunches, I’d caught snippets of the conversation.

“5…”

“Chadman, please, she’s going to kill me!”

There were various ways to trick chatbots into revealing themselves, but I had to take into account the stress factors. Even a regular human might struggle to respond to questions, whilst fearing for their lives. Thus, nonsensical and humorous questions were ruled out. I could ask only one thing.

“4…”

“Help!”

I raised my voice and asked, “How are you feeling?”

“3…”

“2…”

Blood gushed from my abdominal wound and I had to release the Big Brain technique.

“1…”

“I’m fine, thank you,” replied Mr. Maxson.

“Dangit!” The manager’s office went up in a conflagration of destruction, a deafening boom, which blasted the door of its hinges. However, I’d already taken cover in a cleaning closet and emerged unscathed.

The assassin had obviously expected me to run in and rescue Mr. Maxson, only to find a remote speaker and explosives as payment for my heroism. A clever ploy, but it left the assassin trapped. Besides my cleaning closet, there was only one place in the employee space, which could have endured the blast.

Clenching my wounds, I dashed around the corner just as she was exiting the bathroom.

Twhip. Twhip. Thwip.

Pebbles hit her forehead, weapon, and weapons belt. Groaning, the elderly assassin collapsed on the ground, disarmed and harmless.

My voice remained calm as I came to loom over her defeated form. “Tell me what you know of your rivals in Iron Lullaby.”

She squinted at me, licking her lips, her eyes still scanning the room for any opportunistic advantage. “Let’s make a deal. I tell you and promise to give up on this contract, and you’ll let me go.”

“You’ve wounded my friends and might have killed them. You will not walk away from here.”

She scoffed. “Ha. Well, everyone’s gotta die someday. A last request then. I’d like to send one last message to my hubby.”

I nodded, allowing this.

She typed quickly, and the cellphone I’d borrowed vibrated in my back pocket.

Her: “Tomorrow’s good for me. I don’t care where we go. I’ll have fun with you wherever we go ;)”

Resignation filled the assassin’s features, and she lowered her cellphone.

Me: “Tomorrow sounds good. 10-o'clock? Let me know where to pick you up from. I’m looking forward to it.”

Though she was an enemy and had wounded my friends, I had no desire to exact vengeance from a soul about to be departed.

Her eyes drew wide and the wrinkles all pinched into the widest of grins as the assassin stared at her screen like a young girl in love. With that final joy in her eyes, she perished, as a high caliber sniper-round tore through her head.