[Location: Safehouse – Private Chamber]
The screen played in silence.
No audio. Just the image of a boy standing in blood, drenched in steam and rage. A rooftop. Four tendrils curling behind him. A cracked white mask. Human bones strewn like paper.
Magneto stood with his arms behind his back, posture regal and unmoving.
The footage ended. The screen turned black.
A young mutant in a dark uniform turned from the monitor, clearly shaken.
"Sir… what should we do?"
Magneto didn't answer immediately. His gaze remained locked on the fading glow of the monitor. There was no fury in his eyes. No alarm.
Just understanding.
And a small, knowing smile.
"Why should we do anything?" he said quietly.
Magneto turned to him. The room went still.
"Humanity has already done more than enough."
He turned away, stepping toward the tall window. Outside, the ocean shimmered. Quiet. For now.
"They put him in a cage. They broke him. And now they act surprised he's chewing through the bars."
He looked back over his shoulder, voice low — nearly gentle.
"This is what happens when you treat gods like vermin."
[Location: Benny's Diner – Brooklyn, New York]
The coffee was shit.
But Carlos didn't care.
He sat stiffly in a cracked vinyl booth, fingers curled around a mug that had long gone cold. All his focus was on the ancient diner TV bolted above the counter — where a bleach-blonde anchorwoman delivered the news with a face that had forgotten how to blink.
"We're warning viewers now… the following footage is disturbing and not suitable for children."
"What you're about to see was released by an anonymous whistleblower. It appears to be internal footage from a government facility — one that housed an unregistered mutant subject."
"Codename: Oracle. Held in secret containment for over four years."
"We urge viewer discretion."
The screen glitched.
Then the slaughter began.
[LEAKED FOOTAGE — INTERNAL SURVEILLANCE + CIVILIAN DRONES]
Static.A bright lab. Sterile. Screaming. Gunfire.
A reinforced blast door — dented, trembling — explodes outward in a burst of steel and viscera.
Tristin emerges.
Face half-covered by a bone-white exoskeletal mask.Four tendrils whip from his back, slick and muscular like living weapons.He walks through a haze of blood and alarm lights.
"Subject 016 is loose! Contain—"
A tendril slices a man in half.
Cut to another angle — rooftop drone feed.
Civilians run, screaming. One trips over a curb. Another faints.
Tristin doesn't chase.
He just looks up.
Gunships. Drones. Riot teams.
"STAND DOWN! DO NOT MOVE!"
He tilts his head. Then vanishes.
One soldier is decapitated mid-command
Another is gutted and dragged into smoke, screams fading
A third is crushed by a collapsing security truck
The last tries to run — Tristin bites into his throat, rips free, and spits blood onto the next man's face
A chopper opens fire — .50 cal rounds tear up the rooftop.
Tristin is hit. Staggers.
Then climbs.
Bare hands. No armor. Just rage and bone.
Tendril lashes to a drone — he swings through rotor wash and slams into a gunship's side.
Glass shatters.
He rips the gunner out with one hand — throws him into the second chopper mid-bank.
It explodes.
Another gunship tries to ascend — too late.
Tristin launches upward, lands on its back, and rips the rotor clean off.
The spinning blade becomes a disc of death, slicing the tail off a third helicopter.
Both fall.Screams vanish into fire.
[RETURN TO BROADCAST – LIVE]
Silence.
The anchorwoman sits frozen for a beat, blinking at nothing.
"What you've seen is authentic. Confirmed by multiple sources within the U.N. Mutant Ethics Commission."
Her voice cracks just slightly.
"This was not an enhanced soldier. This was a minor — taken at age twelve. Held in isolation. No trial. No record. No oversight."
She shifts in her seat.
"Official documents referred to him as 'Oracle'... but internally, some called him by another name."
She glances at the producer off-camera. Then back.
"Cannibal."
"Survivors described direct acts of consumption. Biting. Feeding. Postmortem dismemberment. The footage appears to support this."
A second still image flashes on screen:Tristin crouched on a rooftop. Eyes glowing. Blood soaking his chest. Four tendrils curling behind him like demonic wings.
"If this is real — if this is what's been hidden from us — then we have to ask..."
She leans forward.
"What else have they buried?"
No one spoke.
Someone dropped a fork. The sizzle from the kitchen had stopped. The cook stood frozen, spatula in hand.
Carlos lit a cigarette. His fingers trembled slightly.
He stared at the screen — at that still image
At the thing they called Cannibal.
He didn't speak to anyone in particular when he said:
"What the hell did they do to that kid…"
Behind the counter, Benny—the diner's owner—reached for the remote. "Alright, that's enough. We don't need this crap—"
BANG.
The door slammed open.
Everyone jumped.
A police officer stood in the doorway, face grim. "Power grid's been hit. Lower Manhattan's going dark. We're advising all civilians to—"
The TV fizzed—then switched to live footage of a power plant exploding, flames licking the sky.
And there, just for a second, silhouetted against the fire—
—a figure with too-long limbs and a grin like a knife wound.
Carlos stood up so fast his chair toppled.
The agent's hand went to his earpiece. "Confirmed sighting. He's heading for the substation on 12th."
Benny choked.
"That's six blocks from here."
The agent didn't deny it.
He just pulled his sidearm and said,
"Get somewhere safe. Now."
Sirens screamed in every direction.
Carlos stood outside the diner, motionless.
The cold morning wind brushed his jacket, but he didn't feel it.
"He's heading for the substation," the cop had said.
Six blocks.
Six.
He looked toward the smoke curling on the horizon.
Toward the street already beginning to empty.
He didn't know whether to pray the kid died…
Or that no one else got in his way.
[Location: Ravenswood Power Station – Queens, New York]
The coffee in Hank's cup had gone cold two hours ago. Didn't matter. He was too busy staring at the grainy news footage looping on the breakroom TV.
"—confirmed at least seventeen lab personnel killed in what sources describe as 'extreme predatory behavior'—"
"Jesus," muttered Delgado, leaning against the doorframe. "Another psycho mutant. Just what we fucking needed."
Hank didn't look away from the screen. The security tape showed a white-masked figure moving through hallways like smoke, those...things bursting from his back. "Says here he ate some of 'em."
Delgado barked a laugh. "Bullshit. Mutants are freaks, but they ain't fucking zombies."
The news banner flashed: CONFIRMED: SUBJECT DISPLAYED CANNIBALISTIC TENDENCIES DURING CONTAINMENT BREACH
Hank finally turned. "You calling the feds liars?"
"I'm saying—" Delgado tapped his temple "—if some labcoat bastards locked me up for four years, I'd chew through a few throats too."
A third voice cut in—Jenkins, the new guy, barely out of high school. "My cousin's mutant. Gets migraines from streetlights. This...this ain't the same."
Boom.
The entire building jolted. Coffee splashed across the security monitors.
All three guards froze.
Delgado was first to move, hand going to his sidearm. "The fuck was—?"
CRACK.
The eastern wall exploded inward.
Not a breach—not some idiot trying to cut through the fence.
The concrete itself ripped apart, steel rebar twisting like taffy as something forced its way through. Dust billowed. Alarms screamed.
And then—
Him.
The white mask gleamed under the emergency lights. Four glistening appendages arched behind him, twitching like a spider testing its web. The news footage hadn't done justice to how wrong he moved—not quite walking, more like the air itself carried him forward in jagged increments.
Jenkins made a sound like a stepped-on dog.
Delgado's gun was halfway up when a tendril lashed forward—so fast it didn't even blur—and snatched the weapon clean from his hands.
The room fell silent.
Then Jenkins blurted:
"M-my cousin's a mutant too!"
A beat.
Tristin tilted his head, mask unmoving.
The Kagune twitched behind him like it was deciding whether that mattered.
Hank's voice cracked. "We got families, man."
A pause.
And then—
Tristin stepped aside, clearing the ruined wall.
The message was clear:
Run.
Delgado didn't need telling twice.
Tristin stepped through the ruined wall, his Kagune retracting into his back with wet, slithering sounds. The guards were already gone—nothing left but overturned chairs and a spilled thermos rolling in slow circles on the concrete floor.
Good.
He didn't need to kill them.
[Location: Substation Core – Minutes Later]
The air buzzed. His fingertips touched the live filament. Pain. Then heat. Then—control.
[Energy Points +1]
[Energy Absorption Experience +1]
[Energy Points +1]
His eyes glowed faintly.
Thanks to the Six Eyes, every arc of energy was visible—flowing like rivers, winding into veins of light he could manipulate.
The Gojo template pulsed inside him, reacting as the energy flowed in.
[Template Fusion Rate: 5%]
[New Skill Unlocked: Limitless Technique]
[Energy Absorption Level Up! Lv2]
A system prompt scrolled before him, quiet and cold.
Limitless Technique (Lv1 – 1/100):Manipulates space at an atomic level. Objects slow indefinitely before contact.
Active duration: 5 minutes.
Tristin exhaled slowly.
He understood it now. Instinctively. The technique was no longer just knowledge—it was part of him. Etched into his soul by the template's evolution.
Energy Absorption Lv2 (1/300):Capable of absorbing most energy types, with average absorption speed and storage capacity..
The power surged within him—more than ever before. Electricity, heat, kinetic energy—they flowed into his core like breath into lungs.
Not enough.
Not yet.
But close.
His goal was simple now:Absorb more. Unlock the full Gojo template. Maintain the illusion of invincibility. Between his Kagune and Limitless, he could project that myth.
And until the world caught up—
He would perform.