Lag 6.15b

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

It all started with a text.

One text.

One simple text and everything fell apart like a fucking Jenga tower.

[Iinitiation compromised. Leave targets. get out NOW.]

That had been enough to set him on edge, a strong sense of unease having crept down his back as he took in the three short sentences. There wasn't much to read but what was there served well enough to throw him off his game something fierce.

A text message from Krieg of all people was rare enough.

The cape in charge of this section of the Empire was somewhat old-fashioned and chose to eschew text-based communication in favor of setting up a call—conference or singular— or simply holding a meeting with the men he chose as his own lieutenants. From there, the man would deliver clear and detailed—yet at the same time, concise—plans and expectations with a timetable and a deadline by which he expected things to be completed and reported back to him.

Krieg was detailed, organized, precise.

He didn’t send short, clipped messages.

He didn’t make fucking spelling errors.

Hell, the man barely ever texted.

Even on the occasions he did send a text, as rare as those were, they were written like you’d expect from a memo or a business email. Quite literally, any text from Krieg would be coded so that they’d appear like an especially wordy manager in some office building in Downtown sending work-related instructions to the staff that worked for him.

Not…

[Iinitiation compromised. Leave targets. get out NOW.]

Not this.

Cameron Duncan resisted the urge to chew on his bottom lip, thoughts going a mile a minute as he scrambled down the last flight of stairs and stomped out the door leading to the first floor.

He had given the message to all the boys on the three middle floors on his way down from the fifth, as quickly and as tersely as he could to make sure they got the message. Despite his effort to control his face, Cam’s tight expression betrayed his own anxiety, keying in his men as to how serious this whole situation was and their worried reactions and quick scrambling made sure the recruits got the same message.

They needed to drop whatever they were doing, leave the kids and book it. Initiation would have to wait for another day.

As he quickly passed on the same message to each door guard he passed by on the first floor, Cameron found his mood worsening with each single stop. By the eight door, the man had to struggle to hold himself back from returning another annoyed look from a fresh recruit with a well-deserved punch.

Ruining their fun? A muttered reply from one of the idiots repeated itself in his mind as he squeezed his hands tight, knuckles on both hands white as he kept moving. Fuckin’ idiots. It’s like they don’t get that what ‘we’re fuckin’ burned’ means.

Despite his ire, Cameron couldn’t act like he wasn’t pissed at the situation himself. All the work he’d put in, all the coordination, all the distraction plays and pay-offs to police and emergency services…

All of it down the fucking drain.

Hell, he might be even madder if he was a fresh recruit expecting to get initiated. All these “kids” they had jacked were chosen for a specific reason. All of them…

Just wannabe ABB or close enough that had decided to mouth off, acting hard in that run-down shit school back when Lung had gotten captured the first time. They had all tried to tuck their tails in and act like sweet little angels after their gang of fucking animals had gotten ripped apart.

“All this work and we get fucking burned?” The words left his mouth in a hiss, the Empire crew leader’s pace becoming even more hurried as he turned a corner leading him from the hallway to the wall of mailboxes leading to the front door. Through the thin wooden walls, he could hear the rapid scramble of movement from all the rooms he had made his way past, even more hurried footsteps from upstairs letting him know the boys had taken his message seriously.

The fact that the screams and groans of the targets had eased down to barely-audible whimpers didn’t exactly help his mood, but they didn’t have the time. For all he knew, this place would be flooded with capes in under ten minutes.

Five, if they were unlucky.

“Lutz. Kell. Beck.” The names left his mouth in a surprisingly restrained bark as Cameron stepped down the small set of stairs leading to the front door of the old tenement. The three men standing guard closest to said door quickly stood up, their attention focused on him and the few others milling around them talking about whatever followed suit almost immediately after.

“Boss?” Lutsford Andrews, an older man who was on the heavier end of heavyset with a beard like a salt-and-pepper Santa Claus, leaned forward. Confusion visible on his face even with the flickering dim lighting, the man unfolded his burly arms and stepped away from the door slightly as he gave Cameron a slight nod of the head in respect. “Boss, something happen?”

For someone who was barely more than muscle, Lutz had experience and he could tell when things were off. It was a given, considering how many years he had spent running low-level street work for the Empire, and at any other time, it’d put something approaching a smile on Cameron’s face.

Right now, though… not so much.

Cameron brushed a spot of nonexistent dust off his leather jacket as he glanced over his shoulder to see several of the E88 muscle and the recruits they brought leave the rooms they occupied and begin moving towards the back doors. He gritted his teeth for a moment, not seeing what he had hoped for before he glanced back to face his subordinate.

Eyes screwed up in clear frustration, he finally replied back with a simple, “We’re burned. Fucking burned. Shit’s gone south.”

His words were met with widened eyes from the half a dozen men milling around him, Lutz’s mouth falling open in surprise. Before any of them could do so much as form a word, the obvious single syllable question clearly heavy on their tongues, Cameron didn’t bother to give them a second as he continued speaking. “Already passed on the message to the boys upstairs.”

He sighed after a moment and raised a single hand up to knead his forehead. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know what’s coming our way, but it’s coming and we gotta move.”

“...shit.” The simple word left the mouth of the reed-thin man standing barely a foot from Lutz. Kell, a platinum blond with sunken, sallow eyes like a raccoon shook his head as he spat the word again. The man was a good soldier, fuckin’ deadly with a knife and always handy for fights and intimidation despite always looking like he needed sleep.

“Fuck.” Standing across from Lutz with his distinct half-grimace was Beck, a small-bodied but wiry man with a demeanor that seemed more appropriate to a drug addict considering how wired he often acted. That was always rather odd to Cameron, considering the man was more straight edge than a fuckin’ nun but he never bothered to ask.

“Yeah, all that,” Cameron spat, his frustration peeking through as the footsteps from above and around him grew louder and more hurried. “Now, we gotta move. Kellan, Wenz, you’re riding with me. I’m parked out back. Lutz, drive as many as you can in one of the vans. If they’re not inside in two minutes, you book it.”

The three nodded, responding to his command without hesitation.

“Good, now let’s move already!” They responded on his order, Lutz’s hand already reaching for the rusted door knob when he paused a half-moment later, a shout from Cameron freezing him in his place.

“Wait,” their boss repeated more quietly this time. “My kid.” The two words left his mouth with a complicated expression on his face but he soldiered on regardless. “You guys seen my kid down here? I asked around upstairs and they said he was heading down to smoke a bit before the main event.”

Their confused expressions told Cameron everything he needed to know.

The situation wasn’t the only thing contributing to the rapidly deteriorating state of his current mood. No, if that was all he had to worry about, he’d be fucking chipper compared to how he felt right now.

He felt a new sort of pain making itself known between his eyebrows as he turned back to face the nearest stairwell leading back the way he came from. Don’t fuckin’ tell me that kid went u-

Cameron’s thoughts were interrupted, a shrill sound from outside shattering his focus as he whipped his head back to face the door, all eight of the men standing around him suddenly alert with wary expressions on their face as they did the same.

Lutz’s expressions turned down into a frown, the heavy man stepping back for a second before he seemed to reconsider and reached toward the doorknob again. “What the f-”

Cameron Duncan was already scrambling back as fast as he could, acting on his instincts even as a shout left his mouth. “Don’t fuckin’ open that d-!”

It all started with a punch.

One punch.

One simple punch and the door shattered with such overwhelming force that Cameron could almost swore someone had launched a missile at it.

Only in place of heat, there was simple raw force.

Either way, the wood barrier ruptured inwards, shrapnel flying with abandon as a single fist obliterated the entire thing with pathetic ease. Cameron barely had time to catch sight of it as he tripped over his own feet and fell to the floor in a scattered heap, ears ringing from the sound of what seemed like an explosion.

The bearded man with tattoos worn proudly on his shaved head had his words shift to screams courtesy of a face full of wood chips. Lutz’s shout became a pained gurgle as a second punch slammed into each and every one of his necks.

The portly biker collapsed back with an empty expression, hands raised to his throat as red leaked from his open mouth like a lazy faucet.

The figure responsible ignored him, stepping past the dead man without even a downward glance. His face seemed twisted, the little of it Cameron could make out from beneath a ragged domino mask and above a tattered scarf, warped and distorted in a way that didn’t seem quite right.

His entire face just came off as monstrous for some reason, like a Renaissance artist's idea of what the Devil would like but transplanted onto the face of a human. As if to drive that point home even further, the cape’s eyes shone with an utterly inhuman color as they turned their head in a slow but steady rotation, irises flickering like firelight but with a deep red like fresh blood.

The aura didn’t isolate itself just to his eyes, that much was obvious at a glance, the phenomenon seeming to pervade his whole body. His entire body was the same, a red haze of jagged looking light spiking intermittently from the visible parts of his skin. It didn’t even seem to just sit atop his flesh, so much as it pulsed from beneath, so strongly that even his veins stood out gruesomely; the blood vessels swollen, throbbing and dark against his red-tinged skin as they seemed to burn and heal from the light in quick succession.

That same scarlet glow radiated out not just past the veins and the flesh, but even from under the tight leather of the cape’s torn costume, the brightness dim yet still enough to light up the figure’s chest from beneath like the world’s largest firefly.

It was a stunning sight, and even as one of their own drowned in his own blood barely two meters away from the closest one of them, nearly everyone remained frozen in shock.

Even the cape stood still.

Then, like a trick of the light, he flickered.

The wood floor beneath him exploded like the door that once stood behind him, shattering from the force of his movement as he leapt forward.

Cameron could only watch in shock as one gloved hand shot out and grabbed the nearest man—Kell, Kellan Mynes—by his throat. The cape wasted no time in lifting him up over his head. Even as the long-haired man swung his treasured Bowie knife with all the desperation of a dying man, the cape in black and red didn’t seem shaken.

In fact, he didn’t so much as flinch as Kellan dropped the knife in another flailing attempt to stab the life out of him and simply tried to claw at the boy’s evil red eyes, the things slitted like a lizard’s. A second later, his movements ceased and his body hung limp after a sudden and final CRACK.

Tossing Kellan’s lifeless body out the door and over his shoulder without even looking back, the figure—boy, Cameron realized from his position on the floor, the sudden realization not doing a single thing to fill the growing pit deep in his stomach, that’s a boy—hunched his shoulders and let out a roar that reverberated through the halls of the brownstone and shook everyone present back into awareness. “WHERE IS HE???”

Cameron scrambled to his feet, already running back towards the back end of the hallway even as more of his men ran forward and past him, another mission clear on their minds.

As if it would make a difference, several of them carried weapons, whether they had pulled them from the rooms they left or carried them on their persons, they held them up proudly as they charged to attack the cape like the brave white warriors that the Empire drummed into their heads that they were. Idiots!

He wanted to scream back at them, warn them, anything. Most of them were doing the smart thing, running for their lives but Cameron seriously doubted that less than a couple dozen of them would charge right to their deaths. Fuckin’ meth’d up idiots!

After all, it’s not like many of them would really care or even think straight right now. Part of the initiation rituals involved getting high on some real raw shit to ease past any hang-ups any of them would have with their first kill but it was gonna be the death of them tonight. You don’t fight a fuckin’ cape. Not like this! Not like that!

He wanted to but he couldn’t.

Instead, the man charged forward, one leap clearing a short landing of stairs before he even had the confidence to glance over his shoulder at the proceeding massacre behind him.

He turned back just in time to witness the cape’s open hand strike the jaw of the man everybody just knew as Beck — Wenzel Becker, a good friend who had managed to save Cameron’s ass several times. The simple slap was enough to shatter the bottom of the small man’s face, teeth sent flying and jaw coming loose in a way that was nothing short of cartoonishly gruesome.

Wenzel’s body flew back as he slammed hard into the wall behind him, a spray of blood from the back of his head visible from the moment of impact. All of it done with an ease that zig-zagged the line between both frightening and disgusting given the strength on display.

The cape didn’t stop as he swung his other arm like a weapon, his enclosed fist a hammer as he bashed the side of it into another one of Cameron’s men, this one smart enough—or stupid enough—to at least raise his gun first. The gunshot rang out, a bullet tearing through the cape’s shoulder with a powerful spray of blood behind it, but it wasn’t enough to save the man as the cape’s limb slammed into his gut. Even halfway down the hall, you could hear the snap of bone the instant the man’s feet left the floor, the limpness of his body making it clear he wouldn’t be getting up again the moment his back slammed into the ground.

“WHERE IS HE???” His arms were raised as he roared again, shoulders hunched and digits claw-like as if he were some animal that managed to force itself onto two feet in defiance of nature.

The kid’s gloves were slick, Cameron could tell, the thought in his mind even as he took off running toward the stairwell again. Blood clung to leather tighter than you would think, he knew that fact for himself.

The hallway was filled with noise and a crowd of bodies impeding his path as they rushed the opposite way, pupils dilated and a bunch of them twitching like psychos. Recruiters, muscle and recruits armed with weapons, the former two thinking they could kill the cape and the latter just following their lead like lemmings, all of them probably thinking a cape kill would be all they needed to earn either membership or glory.

Idiots! Cameron mouthed the word over and over as he elbowed his way past, mind focused on reaching the stairs. They clearly hadn’t seen the cape they were dealing with and they had no idea how strong this fucker clearly was. He had seen the video, after all.

He’d heard the news flickering around the Empire, too. This angry motherfucker was the ABB’s pet white kid. Maybe even their boss if some rumors had any truth to him.

If he was removed from the situation, he might find that idea funny. Some white kid in charge of the ABB, basically the Empire’s wet dream if he really thought about it. It wasn’t funny though, not now.

Not ever.

After all, this was the same red fuck that threw a fucking van into his drug hideout and blew the place sky-fucking-high.

The same masked bastard that made a video about it, literally calling out Kaiser and the whole of the Empire while a building full of cash and drugs burned to the ground behind him. If a couple guns, knives and bats would do him in, Cameron would be the first to join right the fuck in with his own piece.

“WHERE.” Cameron glanced over his shoulder again as the boy’s growling voice rang out again, too-sharp teeth visible as he roared the single word. His nails stood out, longer than they should be and viciously pointed as he slashed a single hand down.

A moment later, another of his men fell to his knees clutching his ruined face and screaming bloody murder. “IS.”

Cameron heard another scream as his hands closed around the stairwell door, another voice silenced immediately after that with the squelching noise of a powerful impact on fragile flesh. “HEEEEEE?!!”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

He saw red.

Red in his vision.

Red everytime something struck his body.

Red whenever his eyes flicked to someone new.

Harley Mack Lv 11

Tyson Cole Lv 10

Hunter Robertson Lv 11

Drake Wright Lv 12

Jacob Kirkson Lv 10

All of them red.

He screamed his question again.

They wouldn’t listen.

They wouldn’t answer.

He didn’t understand why.

At the same time, he didn’t care.

Hardkour’s eyes flicked to the side.

He also didn’t hesitate.

The teenager rushed forward, veins on fire and claws trailing red light behind him. He twisted in place, contorting as he avoided a nail-studded bat swinging toward him. Moving at a speed that left him pretty much a blur to human eyes, he cupped the fist of one palm with his other hand as he drove an elbow backward.

With another crack, he shattered the lower spine of the Neo-Nazi wielding the crude weapon.

He felt his shoulder knit closed, the sting of a bullet pushing itself out of his upper arm nothing noticeable compared to the burning pain searing his veins with every heartbeat. A fist lashed out, the impact shattering apart a nose, jaw, skull…

All three in quick succession.

In the next motion, he stepped forward with his other foot raised. A belligerent skinhead ran right into his extended limb, the man crashing to the floor from the blow to his gut. At the same time, Hardkour grabbed another attacker by the back of the man’s shirt, hurling that one bodily into a crowd of several others charging at him. With a sound of groans and screams, his airborne missile sent all of them toppling like squishy bowling pins.

The one he kicked could barely stand but it didn't stop the idiot from scrambling for a gun one of the bowling pins had dropped. The man's attempt at a second attack was cut brutally short when Hardkour's boot stomped down on the middle of the man’s searching limb, elbow giving way with a loud crack.

His blood boiled as the man screamed, the teenager fighting the twitch in his clawed fingers to quiet him. He didn’t even have the time to entertain the idea as something swung at him, a screaming voice behind it.

By instinct, Hardkour’s hand darted out, fingers and thumb closing shut around the machete blade and holding it fast before it could dig into his leather-clad palm. Uncaring of the pain, the cape tightened his grip around the blade and tore it from his attacker’s hand, the man stumbling forward with it.

The machete-wielder was launched back by the ensuing blow, body curled in on itself from sheer pain even before he hit the opposite wall.

He took a moment to take in a breath, the taste of blood that wasn’t his own fresh on his lips. Hardkour could see them running, some to other rooms, others the opposite end of the hallway. Even a scant few shuddered like prey animals, stumbling over bodies as they all but hugged the walls on their path toward the main door.

Yet, some still came towards him, thoughts of escape clearly not on their mind as they threw insults and whatever else they could think of at him. The screams, one over another, all of them making so much noise he could barely make anything out, let alone piece together any clues.

His Danger Sense rang out, an almost undetectable pulse against the base of his neck that rang of mild worry. The young blond spun around just in time to catch sight of one of the Empire members he had let run past him as the Neo-Nazi lunged forward with a knife in hand, shining blade on a direct arc towards Greg's un-shielded face.

Hardkour swung his fist, planting a punishing blow in the gut of the man in mid-air, only to pause for a moment as his Danger Sense pulsed again with that same middling warning. A half-second later, a grunt escaped his lips as a thick arm wrapped around his neck from behind. A much taller figure, body slick with sweat and what smelled like blood, struggled with all his might to strangle the life from the cape in his grasp while his other hand, a serrated knife slick with scarlet, stabbed out at his target’s chest as furiously as the gangster could manage.

With another roar, the boy reached back and grabbed his attacker by the shoulders. Clawed fingers dug roughly into fragile flesh, forcing the man to let go of both him and his weapon as he let out a cry of pain. With another grunt, Hardkour pulled the man from behind him, holding the much larger figure above his head, before hurling the gangster down to the ground with a thunderous crash.

A groan escaped through the man’s mouth—teeth gritted from pain—but even still, the man tried to move, clearly attempting to stand despite the pain.

Greg’s hand moved faster than the eye could see as the teenager grabbed the man’s blade from the ground and slammed it back down in one quick blur. The sound of pierced flesh and the scent of blood confirmed just as much as his vision did, the teenage cape not needing to look down as the man began to scream like a banshee with his leg pinned to the ground.

His fingers flexed as he shuddered out a long drawn-out breath. The blond rose to his feet, the red clearing somewhat from his vision as he took in the blood, debris, and scattered bodies littering the floor just around him.

“W-where…” he stumbled over the word, lips shuddering as he tried to speak through a mouth full of blades, “where is he…”

He just wanted answers.

The question once again went unanswered as the teenager raised his head, anger fading slightly more as he noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye. The far end of the opposite hallway stood out to him, past the thinning crowd of people scrambling around simply to get away from the red figure of death in the midst.

Wait…

He tilted his head, barely catching sight of the man wearing what looked like a frustrated grimace -not fear- as he ducked into a stairwell, his leather jacket standing out as odd on a night this warm.

The man seemed familiar but… he wasn’t sure how.

Wait. He repeated the word in his head as something else forced its way into the forefront of his thoughts, a semblance of rational thought battling past a haze of anger and bloodlust. Everyone's running to get out. Why is he going upsta-

Before he could finish that thought, Greg snapped his head to the side. A half-instant later, the wall just a meter to his right exploded with drywall and wood chips as the powerful BANG of a gun rang out once more. In quick succession, two more bullets shot through the wall, both projectiles flying through where the boy had been just a moment before.

Hardkour took in a quick breath as both ears rang with something most people would think of as pain, enhanced hearing doing him very little favors.

It didn’t matter.

The shooter—

Hardkour ducked another set of gunfire as a second gunman poked their head out of another doorway, an old-looking shotgun in hand. A third rushed out from behind the corner of another hallway to stand one door behind Mr. Shotgun, two revolvers held up like a movie-style cowboy.

Almost immediately after, one more gangster poked his head out behind the cowboy, before quickly ducking back into the room like a scared chicken.

“...” With a barely-audible grunt, Greg threw himself to the side, moments before gunfire lit up the hallway. One foot out, he kicked off the wall, already in motion an instant before the weak material exploded from the force of his impact. Body a blur of motion, he bounded to the other side of the hallway, lazy leaps carrying him easily around the scattered gunfire with seemingly no effort behind the movement.

He was on the first man in under a second, the gunman letting out a scream as his vision became filled with raw red light.

His hand darted out and snatched the arm of the gangster, handgun falling from his grip and scattering to the floor. With another sudden movement, Greg jerked the man’s wrist, snapping it with barely any movement. Another slight yank and the man’s arm came loose, hanging limp from the socket with a distinct pop.

The Nazi’s scream rose to new heights, becoming even more intense as Hardkour flung the man by his useless arm, using yet another E88 member like a missile. A half second later, the airborne gangster impacted his friend with the shotgun, the weapon going off.

Immediately, both of them ceased their screams.

Greg didn't hesitate as he burst forward one more time, fist slamming into an unprepared chest. The last gunman flew back and through the weak, dilapidated wall, the entire thing collapsing and exposing the room behind it as the gangster’s broken body came to a stop at the feet of Hardkour’s next target.

“Don’t you fuckin’ move!”

The young vigilante blinked.

Hardkour’s head turned slowly to the right, eyes narrowed as he took in what he could of the dimly-lit room. Red irises flickered in intensity as over a dozen wide-eyed faces stared back at him, all but one of them young and of Asian descent.

The only outlier stood at the front of the room, knife in hand as he held it to the neck of a Japanese teenage girl standing stock-still. Said outlier stared back at Greg with pupils like pinpricks, his entire body trembling like a leaf.

Fear? Adrenaline? Drugs?

All of the above was most likely, but it didn’t matter.

“W-wh…” Greg frowned as the words fought against his mouth, forked tongue and razor teeth making it hard to speak the way he knew how.

“Wha-what are you fuckin’ saying?!!” The man with the knife screamed.

Greg raised his head, making firm eye contact with the Neo-Nazi. “Where. Is. He?”

There was visible confusion in the gangster’s eyes, the knife wavering away from the girl’s as he stood up a bit straighter. “...Wha-?”

He flickered.

The man’s unfinished question shifted to a scream as the hand wielding the knife went flying, a clawed hand tearing through flesh and bone like butter. Another scream rang out, shrill and terrified as the girl ducked to the ground, and Greg walked forward, dragging the man across the filthy, dust-covered floor as the man screamed bloody murder.

He raised the man up with one hand, launching a fist into his gut. The lieutenant spat blood, face twisted into a rictus of pure pain as he crashed into the wall.

For the second time in as many seconds, an unrelenting fist slammed itself directly into the gangster’s torso. Pressed up against the creaking wall, his chest resisted the force of it for a scant moment, the sounds of complaining bones somehow louder than those leaving his mouth.

Then, it all gave way with an ungodly cracking sound.

The blond boy's fist pierced through with only as much hesitation as it took for the unnamed man to let out a single tortured rasp of breath. With that last gasp, he collapsed backwards through the new hole in the wall, a smaller hole in his chest painting his surroundings with lifeblood.

Greg blinked again and opened his gloved fist, fingers splayed open.

The teenager kept his gaze on the corpse for a moment, then shook his head with an annoyed expression. A single second later, he raised his head and turned around to face the teenagers huddled against the opposite end of the wall from him in the barely-lit room.

He opened his mouth to speak, to offer them reassurance or ask them questions, he wasn't quite sure yet.

Then he heard it.

“Where the fuck is he?”

Pointed ears twitched as the faint crack of a gunshot rang out. Red eyes widened and the teenage cape’s gaze snapped up to the ceiling, mouth hanging open in disbelief.

With a flash of red and a scream, Greg moved again.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Sparky had learned two things in the last few seconds.

Things that he probably wouldn’t forget till the moment he died.

One, guns…

Guns were loud. Really loud.

That was the first thing he noticed.

The sound was like a physical thing, like another punch taken straight to the head. He flinched back as his head rang, the sudden pain enough to force a hoarse curse from his lips as the back of his skull slammed against the ground again.

Two, guns didn’t really hurt.

In hindsight, the first was really obvious. The second… not so much.

That had been the confusing part.

It literally felt like nothing, nothing but numbness and a slight sense of pressure in the middle of his chest. If he hadn’t seen the gun, Sparky couldn’t even be sure he’d have even noticed anything at all.

Even the second shot almost immediately after, that one piercing higher than the first, didn’t even seem to register. He definitely felt different, stiffer like he was suddenly carrying a lot of dead weight, but he wouldn’t call it pain.

“H-huh?” Sparky blinked and stared back at Mal’s father, the frantic-looking Neo-Nazi still pointing a gun at him as his mouth kept moving.

A second later, Sparky realized that he could barely hear anything, the ringing still in his ears making everything else seem extremely quiet.

Like someone had turned the volume settings in the world all the way down to 5.

He felt like laughing again as he lay there, but something in his chest seemed to keep the sound from reaching his mouth the way it was supposed to. Like a weight in his lungs, or something weird like that.

…oh, yeah. He realized after another second. I got shot.

His attempted laugh became a cough, something hot and funny-tasting coating his mouth before splattering out against his chest. I really got shot.

Mal’s dad stared down at him as he kept yelling something Sparky didn’t bother to pay attention to, fat tears visible in the man’s eyes. The gun pointed at him shook, the man barely able to keep it still as his mouth kept moving silently.

The laughter was almost worth the blood, really.

Eyes half-lidded, Axel “Sparky” Ramon grinned lazily up at the frantic ex-father, blood on his lips as something else even funnier popped into his head. “H-hey, you ever think it’s funny… you ever…” He spat another mouthful of blood out as he giggled, the thick sensation in his chest seeming to fade as it grew warmer. “K-kinda funny how there’s no v-version of orphan for parents, huh?”

That seemed to be enough to snap Malcom’s dad out of his quiet rant, the man raising his head as his mouth slammed shut and his gaze shifted entirely to rage. The gun stilled and rose again.

Fuck you too. Sparky’s smile didn’t fade an inch, slowly dimming eyes somehow filled with more life than he’d felt in years. Fuck all of this.

Then the world exploded with red light.

No…

No, the roof door exploded outwards, imbedding itself into the wall as a beacon of red light rushed through the doorway.

Sparky blinked as Mal’s father turned slightly, gun in hand.

When he opened his eyes again, the man was…

Well, he wasn’t.

The gun was still there, and so was the hand.

And the arm as well.

All of it falling to the floor of the roof with a spray of blood behind like propellant from some very morbid rocket.

He blinked again, shifting his gaze to look up as red glared down at him.

The teenager on the ground squinted slightly as he stared back up at the light, only to find the action unnecessary as the red faded away, exposing a familiar face and a set of crying blue eyes.

A smile spread across Sparky’s face, this one not at all from a place of spite or bitterness, and he found it in him to speak again. “...s-sup, dork?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Sharp fangs bit down on his bottom lip as he stared down at his wounded friend, the action drawing blood and a pathetic whimper that had nothing at all to do with the pain. The fat, heavy tears pooling underneath a pair of big blue eyes also had nothing to do with that, but Greg Veder didn’t have the consciousness of mind to feel shame for blubbering like a baby, nor did he really care right now.

“Sp-Sparky, I’m here,” the words left his mouth shakily as he dropped to his knees, both gloved hands hovering just above the other boy’s bloody chest. “It’s me. I’m h-here. G-Man. Greg, okay? I’m here,” he repeated himself once more, a usually-speeding mind finding itself stuck in a rut as he stared down at another of his worst fears.

A faint laugh was the response he received as his friend stared back up at him, normally sharp, judging eyes clouded with shock and blood loss. “I.. I know it’s you, bro,” he laughed again, bloody teeth spread in a delirious grin. “Y-you’re the biggest f-f-fuckin’ dork I know.”

Greg nodded frantically, trying to match his friend’s mood as his hands sent pulses of Mana all through his friend’s body. “That’s me, I’m a dork.”

“My dork.” His grin widened.

“...Your d-dork.” Greg grinned back.

This wasn't too bad, the blond tried to reassure himself, his hands futilely trying to stem the blood pumping from the center of Sparky’s chest as well as his stomach. He could fix it, fix this.

"The bullets aren’t inside you," Greg rambled off quickly. "That’s good. That’s real good. That’s less of a problem. Less for me to fix. Less for me to…”

“L-less for you to what?”

"This might feel weird," warned Greg, as his right hand began to glow a vibrant blue as he held it over Sparky’s chest. CAPEGOAT!

Capegoat Active! Debuff Gained: Collapsed Lung (Severe) - Gunshot Wound

Fuck. Greg Veder bit down on his lip slightly as he felt the wound materialize in his own chest, the odd sensation of his lung just deflating an intensely unsettling one. It was far from the worst pain but it certainly wasn’t fun.

"Wow. That did feel weird,” the injured boy hummed. "You know what else is weird? Being shot. It didn’t hurt. Both times. Like, isn’t that weird?”

“It doesn’t hurt sometimes. It’s a thing,” Greg answered back, shaking his head as he tried to push back the urge to vomit. Capegoated wounds always seemed to hit him harder than his own, for some weird reason. “Sometimes people don’t feel it all.”

“Really?” Sparky questioned dreamily.

“Well, not for me. They always hurt,” Greg continued with a grimace. “Must be ‘cause I heal so fast my body doesn’t bother with dulling the pain or something?”

“Huh. Must be nice.”

“The healing?” He raised an eyebrow and nodded, conceding the point. “Yeah, I guess.”

“No, dumbass,” Sparky laughed, the sound and his speech coming easier with a fully healed lung. “Not having to worry about dying from shit like that, like us normies.”

"Sparky," Greg leaned in towards his friend as he held pressure on the boy’s lower gunshot wound, a serious look on his face as he made a promise. "You aren't going to die."

“U-uh-huh…”

“Sparky…”

“U-uh-huh…”

Blue eyes shifted from his friend’s face, Sparky having shifted to mumbling something that sounded vaguely like drumming noises, and down at the rapidly spreading patch of blood around his chest.

He still had Capegoat, right?

Right, he had that. All the points he poured into that one perk for times like this, he had at least four more uses left in it for this.

He could fix a bullet w- Fuck.

He could fix another bullet wound easy, Greg quickly corrected himself as the information filled his line of sight and flooded his mind. I can fix this, he convinced himself.

Greg tried it again, hand glowing blue as he held the image of the skill in his mind. A second later, the glow flickered out like a dying lamp. “What the…”

Capegoat Unusable!

Unusable?! The blond had to hold himself back from screaming in frustration and panic. As the notification flashed in front of him. Instead, he simply slammed his mouth shut, teeth audibly grinding against each other. What?! Why?

Perk: Capegoat (Rank 5) has an individual cooldown of sixty minutes per individual use.

Find another target for Perk: Capegoat (Rank 5) or wait sixty minutes before additional use.

Four targets remaining for this use.

No, you’re my power. You’re not gonna fuck me like this. His pupils flashed blue as he instinctively used Structural Analysis on every inch of his friend’s injured body. Fuck no!

A litany of wounds and conditions flashed past his vision, Greg mentally filtering away everything that wasn’t at least Moderate or Critical hoping that would make things easier to deal wi-FUCK!

Unfortunately, it did not make any of this easier, with the exception of providing less distractions for Greg to slog past. The blond boy gritted his teeth as he flicked through the remaining serious medical issues, his expression growing more and more troubled with each one. Internal Hemorrhage, Gunshot Wound - Abdomen, Skull Fracture, Cerebral Contusion, Hemorrhage, Hypoxemia, Hemoptysis…

The list came to a stop with something that had Greg flinching, a curse slipping quietly from his lips with sadness and desperation behind it rather than anger. “...fuck.”

Spinal Cord Injury (Critical)

Greg took in a shallow breath as his eyes flashed blue, hoping with everything he had that things would look different from the last time he checked.

Axel "Sparky" Ramon

Student

Lvl 9

HP: 19/225

Best friend and a true bro. Thinks meeting you is one of the best things that ever happened to him, definitely Top 3. Doesn’t blame you.

Status: Resigned, Dying.

More tears filled Greg’s eyes.

"...I’m gonna die." Sparky didn’t ask a question, the statement clear albeit strained in his hoarse voice. “I am.”

“Stop being such an idiot,” Greg raised his voice, almost hissing the last word.

Sparky smirked. “That’s my line.”

“Then you should know better, dumbass.”

"Wow, shitting on me on my deathbed? Not cool, brah."

"Fuck. You. Fuck you, you’ll be fine to tell me that tomorrow," Greg bit back with tears in his eyes, lying to himself more than Sparky. He wasn’t sure how to save him, no time to get him to a hospital and moving him in this condition would just end things faster. Fucking Capegoat.

“You’ll be fine.” Fuckin’ useless piece of shit, waste of fuckin’ points!

He knew how it worked. He’d tried it over the last couple weeks, the Perk being something of a stabilizer for wounds as they transferred the five worst injuries on someone else to his body.

It was a quick fix, a miracle heal.

For one condition. For one person. Even with the upgrade, it only allowed him to use it on five people at a time, not five conditions.

If someone broke their arm, Greg’s arm would be broken and they’d be fine. In pain for a while, but with a perfectly working arm. If they got a cut, a concussion, a bruise, exactly the same.

For something like this, he could take the bullet wound, or the brain bleeding, or the spinal severing, or the low oxygen or the blood loss or the punctured lung but one still left the rest killing him.

Even if he had taken the spine wound first in some move of spectacular retarded genius, that’d leave him fucking useless right here on the rooftop next to a dead body until how many hours it’d take to heal a wound like that.

“Fuck me,” Greg whispered the word under his breath. It was pretty much just a band-aid at this point. Capegoat didn’t do multiple injuries like that. It didn’t do multisystem traumatic injuries either, it seemed, all the other morbidities that piled up as a result of one large one.

It couldn’t fix fucking everything.

Greg clenched his fists.

But… but… something could.

“...G-Man.”

"What?" he asked again, eyes closed. One chance.

"It’s okay, man."

"You’re not dying, Sparky," Greg repeated, eyes still closed. One shot.

"...h-heh, sure," Sparky replied back.

Let’s make this count. The blond boy took in a deep breath, mouth pressed in a grim line as he pressed his hands down on his friend’s chest harder. “Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”

Greg Veder opened his eyes, the sight forcing a slight gasp out of Sparky. Both of the blond’s eyes shone like searchlights, everything from the whites of his left eye to the very center of the pupil shining a single solid royal blue. On the right, the exact same was mirrored with the exception of the color being a brilliant, bright gold.

"...not really," his friend replied dreamily.

"Okay, then." Greg breathed in again, refusing to feel unsure of his actions. A second later, the phenomenon repeated itself for both of his hands. “You might wanna grit your teeth for this."

"For wha-aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"