In a manner similar to an avalanche, the torrent of blue fire widened into a cone of destruction and flew towards the ground in a split-second, washing over the parked vehicles and nearby sicarios with a resounding boom, the first of many as the vehicles in range erupted in separate explosions.
Trusting the intensity of the flames to do the work, Mason flew forward at blinding speeds and played flamethrower, washing the land in fire and igniting any moving silhouette in sight.
He left screaming, running and tumbling sicarios in his wake, their skin blistered, weapons unwieldy, and clothes and hair wilted to nothing despite their enhanced durabilities.
Aware of how tough this nut he’d been tasked to crack was, he completed more passes over the sicarios, the stream of flames still blasting and ruining everything in its path.
Every sweep brought him closer to the mine, where the leader and about a dozen of the sicarios were positioned.
Over two thirds of the entire mobilization had been turned into charred corpses. The rest were running.
Some toward their leader and the mine, and others in a dozen different directions. Mason ignored the stragglers and swooped toward the mine, only for a sudden sense of weakness to assail him.
His flames fizzled out and his vision turned spotty, the suddenness of this development turning his dive into an unceremonious and undignified fall that sent him rolling in the dirt.
Whatever the attack was, hitting his head gave him some semblance of focus, enabling him to end the tumble in a crouch, albeit a wobbly one. At least his vision wasn’t spotty anymore.
Bullets flew his way from all sides, the stray ones whizzing past and throwing up dirt while the lucky ones hit him head on but accomplished nothing. He didn’t even move an inch.
His energy levels had plummeted all of a sudden. He was dead on his feet, as if he’d worked for three days non-stop.
Above the gunfire drawing nearer and nearer to his position, he heard shouts promising murder and death in a hundred different ways.
Temp V in their veins and sudden weakness or not, these sicarios would never be a threat to him. That’s why he ignored them all and forced himself up despite the mountains tied to every part of his body.
What even was this? Were his powers flaking on him? Or was it something else?
Staggering and ambling like a wasted person, he did his best to look around. Sensing how incompatible his sudden weakness and the bloodthirsty people closing in on him were, he called upon his ability to move despite injury and found it responsive.
Unlike his fire and stamina, this one remained untouched. Renewed hope and energy of an indescribable kind burned in his chest and he stood tall, his posture going from zombie to hero in a split second.
He did so just in time to catch a machete coming down on his head like a butcher knife. It clanged in his palm and broke with a simple clench. As for the offending sicario, a leg sweep brought him low, his head hitting the ground first.
Mason punctuated that by stepping on the head at the same moment, ending the sicario for good.
Unperturbed by the brutal execution of their comrade, a second and third sicario gained on him attacked at the same time. One held his gun like a club thinking that would achieve something and the other went for a tackle.
Mason dealt with the tackle guy first, leveraging his weight shifting and ability to puppet his own body to stay rooted.
A loud, sickening crack echoed when his elbow came down on the sicario’s back, loosening his hold immediately. Rather than let him fall, Mason grabbed and tossed him into a group of his approaching friends.
As for the guy whose gun had been reduced to warped parts by his pointless efforts, his fists, though capable of shattering concrete, exhibited no such effect even though he struck Mason’s back relentlessly.
Swinging his elbow backwards in a swift move, Mason clocked the sicario in the temple, staggering him. A weight-enhanced punch followed and spun the sicario’s head past its normal range of motion, producing a crack before dropping him on his face.
Little by little, Mason got used to fighting like this—relying on his body puppetry—and used his weight shifting to bridge the strength gap. As for the invisible thing sucking his endless stamina dry? He’d located the source in the course of the fight with the remaining sicarios.
A pile of bodies had formed around him, yet the sicarios kept coming, running to his fists, running to their deaths. All because of the one man. Mason remembered him now.
He was the Victor Zzazz looking guy wearing a purple shirt in Kelsey’s presentation. If his memory hadn’t been affected, Kelsey switched to his image in particular when she talked about trained killers.
Back then, he didn’t bring it up because she didn’t. However looking at him now, through the lenses of heat sense, it all made sense. He was a supe.
What else could explain the amount of heat radiating from his bulked up physique that didn’t seem to stop growing? Against the backdrop of the night and Mason’s thermal sight, he shone like a sun, a ball of heat that grew brighter and hotter with each passing second.
After socking the latest dumbass in the face and adding him to the pile surrounding himself, Mason deemed his current level of adaptation to the draining effect enough and took off with an explosive burst, the ground and corpse mound blasting apart in his wake.
His daring charge got interrupted again, turning into another unceremonious tumble that saw him kiss concrete this time. Turns out the draining effect grew stronger with proximity.
Fortunately for him, he could still move. The sudden spike in drainage only jilted his focus for a brief moment.
Up on his feet again, he didn’t have to complete the arduous journey to the musclebound monstrosity. The moment he raised his head, a fist larger than his head smashed him in the face and planted him firmly in the ground.
Despite feeling none of it, Mason still braced himself for what happened next. The signpost sized fists rained down like jackhammers, rattling his bones and teeth and keeping him in place, digging him deeper and deeper into the earth such that he began to taste it.
The beatdown continued till Mason had disappeared from view completely. The ultra muscular buchon was left panting, yet he still found the strength to raise both arms in the air and shout, his surviving subordinates mirroring him and chanting his cry of victory.
They kept doing it even though the buchon lowered his hands and brought them to his heaving chest. It’s only when he bent over and his knees impacted the dirt that they stopped.
Without sound or ceremony, the buchon dropped face down, arms splayed wide as he remained unmoving. Under the stunned gaze of every living sicario, the body just lay there and the seconds ticked by.
No more than ten of them later, they saw the hulking body shift and their expressions shifted to joy. That immediately did the reverse when the body rose up into the air and they saw Mason floating underneath it, holding it aloft with a single arm.
Run. They all ran without a second thought.
Hale and hearty, Mason tossed away the buchon who’d overeaten to the point of death and took off after the stragglers. Now that he was back at one hundred percent, they could forget about getting away.
They were going to join their bludgeoned and cremated comrades, whether they liked it or not.
.
.
.
.
Belen Vargas honestly struggled to process the sequence of events she just observed.
Through her night vision binoculars, she oversaw the arrival of that carnicero and the other sicarios. She’d been sent here by Rey to observe and relay any happenings to him.
The matter of the Temp V stocks were serious enough to warrant her presence here though she honestly didn’t know what Rey expected her to do in case things went sideways.
Sure, el gigante had mowed through her fellow sicarios like a bulldozer, demolishing the potent force of men with the ease a grown man would swat a toddler. But even overwhelming strength had its limits.
There’s no way he could face off against hundreds of juiced up sicarios and come out on top. Even if he did, there was still Maurico. His powers were invisible and lethal enough to pose a threat to even her.
Yet, despite this, Belen watched how her estimations were not just overtuned, but tossed to the side like common trash. When the night lit up with flames as beautiful as they were deadly, she understood why Rey was the leader and she wasn’t.
Her battle hardened brothers were capable of walking off car collisions, yet when the flames touched them, they writhed in agony and burned like regular men.
She stood there entranced as the masked giant strafed across the skies and whittled down her boss’ army, grinding their impressive numbers to dust. To ash.
It was so bad she’d forgotten about Maurico, her fellow supe finally announcing his presence by yanking the flame demon down to the ground.
Things should’ve been straightforward from here. Maurico was already loco before joining Las Sombras. He loved to kill and wore his black heart on his sleeves. He joined the cartel and became part of a kill squad for that exact reason.
His proclivities and the cartel environment were a match made in hell. He thrived and rapidly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the chief enforcer and one of the heads that answered directly to Rey.
While she obtained the ability to be anywhere in the world with a mere thought, he got what he always wanted—the ability to drain the life of those around with his mere presence.
There were no brakes with his power. Anyone who had had the misfortune of falling under its effects had died, including the doctor who administered the V to him and even some of his own men.
As for the civilians and other victims? Too many to count, most likely.
Long story short, when the fire demon went down due to his powers, he should not have not gotten back up. Yet, he not only did so but proceeded to slaughter a good chunk of her remaining brothers in arms until he ended up hoisting Maurico’s beefed up corpse in the air.
Yeah, he was done. Rey would want to know this.
That should have been her cue to leave, but she couldn’t. Watching the giant teleport around the place and knock down her fellow brothers with one blow each made her consider her options.
Maurico’s limited means of killing was his worst flaw. He always lamented it after fights, even when he was covered head to toe in blood and guts. He was always left unsatisfied, especially when some of the prey managed to escape.
Getting the power to literally kill any living thing by being around it had clued her in on the relationship between perceived flaws and the manifested powers after shooting up the V.
As one of the very few female sicarias, her greatest weakness was her physicality and inability to escape if the need arose. If even two of her fellow sicarios made her a target for whatever reason, her chances of getting away alive or even unscathed were very low.
She’d trained and continued to train like hell, but so did her comrades. By joining Las Sombras, she’d become tougher than most women out there, but she still felt trapped. Compound V had changed that.
The ability to leave any situation by just willing it was awesome, but she couldn’t help but wish she had it growing up. Well, that was the past and this was now.
She could go back and fill Rey in. Tell him what transpired here and receive her next orders like a good little soldier. Or, she could finally put her powers to good use and break away. Spread her wings and travel the world, do whatever her heart wanted.
She knew where Rey kept his money. Not all of it, but enough for her to truly make this her happily ever after.
That settled it. She took out her work phone, unlocked it and found the notes app. She wrote some vital information on it, hidden locations, moles in the government and the most notable of them all; Rey’s location.
Once she finished, her binoculars came up and she located el gigante. She flexed her powers and flashed over to his rear, intentionally announcing her presence as she lowered the unlocked phone on the ground.
In a display that stopped the operation of her heart, that brief instant was enough for the masked giant to turn around, appear before her and seize her neck in a tight grip.
Scared beyond words, she set aside questions of how he moved so fast and vanished, reappearing in her safe house in Milan. Breathing returned to her with a full body jolt as if someone pushed a button.
She sat up on the couch and rubbed her neck repeatedly, grateful for her power’s limitations for the first time ever. Ever since she got these powers, she’d lamented her inability to teleport other people, who knew that that would save her one day.
When she finally calmed down and her breathing resumed normal operation, her situation dawned on her and she smiled. She was free. Finally free.
Quickly scrambling off her feet, she found another of her prepared phones and started making preparations to get a few of Rey’s money and weapons caches moving. Her days of being a sicaria and lapdog were over.