Henrik made the first move.
He took off his black cloak, and Rhett's jaw dropped from what he saw.
Underneath the black fabric, Henrik was shirtless and only wore simple black shorts. What shocked Rhett wasn't what was on Henrik's body, but rather, what was inside. Or more accurately, fused with him.
His torso was rife with gun barrels poking from his ribs, forearms and chest, like a macabre demon. The gun barrels even exposed his flesh and muscle when they protruded outside—raw, angry wounds where metal met tissue, skin stretched taut around cold steel. That was why Henrik's footsteps felt so heavy whenever he ran, why he covered himself with the black cloak.
This was what he was hiding underneath his cloak, lugging several kilograms of steel on his body, why his face and fingers looked so thin and gaunt. The weight had carved him hollow, stolen the fat from his bones until only sinew and purpose remained.
What an absolute monster.
And in his right hand, the sleek, tiny barrel of a sniper round was aimed right at his opponent.
Rhett's breath hitched at the sight, and without hesitation, Henrik let the round go off. Decisive. The crack split the air like thunder in the enclosed space.
The Colossus shrieked and twisted its body just in time to absorb the impact of the slug. It bounced almost harmlessly off the cracked shell of the top half, only leaving a tiny dent—a mosquito bite on a tank. The beast's carapace gleamed with thick, viscous fluid that seemed to absorb the kinetic energy, dispersing it across its armored surface.
There was absolutely no hope in trying to kill the Nightmare with bullets. It was like trying to kill a human with fly bites. Might take thousands to tens of thousands of attempts, but it was too inefficient and time consuming, and it wasn't like the person was going to stay still and let that happen.
No, that wasn't what Henrik was trying to do. Killing the monster was impossible madness, so he had to go for the master.
His first shot to snipe the Beast master was blocked, and now the terror was coming down to finish them off. The creature's bulk shifted, muscles rippling beneath its chitinous armor as it prepared to crush them both.
"At least Akira isn't here to see this," Rhett heard Henrik mutter under his breath, something bitter and broken in his voice. Then he kicked Rhett aside just as the monster's girth slammed against the concrete ground, fracturing the worn-out tiles beneath it. The impact sent shockwaves through Rhett's broken body, rattling his teeth.
A dust cyclone formed furiously as the dragonfly wings struggled to lift the monster's weight, the membrane stretched taut and translucent, veins of darker tissue visible beneath. It turned to Henrik, who had barely avoided the slam, and then something emerged from Henrik's back—a kind of nozzle, mechanical and flesh fused together—and a silver grappling hook that faintly reflected the fluorescent lights shot toward one of the subway trains, pulling Henrik sideways like a slingshot, away from the Beast master's next hit.
He broke through one of the windows with a shower of glass and fell into the empty train car. Before he could even breathe, the Beastmaster didn't waste time launching a counter attack.
"You're not going anywhere, you fake Hero!" The greasy-haired boy roared as he directed the beast, his voice cracking with adolescent fury and something deeper—a hunger that made Rhett's skin crawl.
The behemoth roared, though it felt more like a sonar vibration that rattled through bone and marrow. It settled Rhett's broken teeth and shook the metal fixtures until they sang like tuning forks. The frequency was so high that it shattered the glass windows of the subway train in a cascade of crystal rain, and its head dove into the car where Henrik had taken shelter.
Its teeth were a haphazard collection of dentition from multiple animals—a nightmare museum of predatory evolution. It had two fangs on each jaw, curved like scimitars and dripping with acidic saliva, and the rest were sharp canines from dozens of different beasts. Tigers, sharks, wolves, things that had no name—all crammed into a maw that defied biology.
The giant teeth easily tore through the metal train car, turning it into a shower of steel particles in seconds. Henrik emerged from the carnage like a demon from hell, his body steaming from the heat of his internal weaponry.
He had relied on his sniper for the first shot, but since that didn't work, he had no choice but to go completely on the offensive. The other barrels attached to his body fired furiously—a symphony of destruction erupting from his ribs, his arms, his chest. The sound of multiple rounds flew toward the boy on the head of the beast, muzzle flashes turning Henrik into a living constellation of violence.
The Beastmaster's eyes widened as he realized the feint and made the monster twist its gargantuan mass, deflecting the bullets with its black underside. Most of the bullets slid off the slick black scales coated with some slimy substance that seemed to move on its own, only a few actually piercing through, drawing small amounts of dark blood which were inconsequential to the monster.
The monster let another low, rumbling growl from the depths of its belly as if to assert its dominance. The sound made Rhett's vision blur, made his broken ribs ache with sympathetic vibration. It made another rotation and the bullets fell against its upper half full of hard, scaly carapace, the bullets clunking against its surface like hail on a roof.
Rhett had thought the monsters they fought earlier were scary, but now they felt like tame prototypes. This was the real deal, a being bio-engineered to be the ultimate mix of offense, defense and terror. Every inch of it screamed predator, from the way its muscles coiled beneath its hide to the caged and tortured intelligence gleaming in its eyes.
Henrik's grappling hook met the carapace and he tried slashing the spikes with his blade, but they clinked uselessly against the armored surface. There were no weak spots to exploit, no amount of strategy to end this. Henrik had no other option but to keep firing his bullets, his body smoking from the heat and friction.
If Rhett closed his eyes, it almost sounded like he was in the middle of a military battle, and he would've thought Henrik was an entire squadron on his own. The rat-a-tat-tat of automatic fire mixed with the beast's roars and the Beastmaster's screaming commands.
As Henrik ran across the Titan's bulky frame to get to the head to kill the Beastmaster, it writhed violently in an attempt to throw Henrik off. When that didn't work, the claws that acted as appendages—some even looking strangely like human hands, complete with fingernails and knuckle joints—lined at either side of the monstrosity like the legs of a centipede extended themselves unnaturally to scrape Henrik off its back.
"Rhett, get out of here!" Henrik roared desperately as he barely parried another massive claw rearing to reap his life. His voice cracked with exhaustion, with the knowledge that he was losing.
It was as if the boy had accepted that he wasn't going to win this fight. His body was smoking and steaming from the friction heat of the guns and the overexertion of his quirk. Sweat rolled off his body like rain, mixing with the blood from several cuts and bruises he'd sustained. Steam rose from the fusion points where metal met flesh, and Rhett could smell burning skin.
Almost like Henrik didn't want to put Rhett through unnecessary pain and was trying to let him go when his plan failed spectacularly.
"Maybe you should've thought about that before you blew my fucking legs out!" Rhett spat out as blood flew from his lips. He was bleeding internally and externally, dark spots dancing at the edges of his vision. Henrik had shot his kneecaps to stop him from escaping during the 'bait' phase of his plan, which had failed spectacularly.
Shortcut to freedom, my ass. More like a shortcut to hell.
He attempted to "get out of here," as Henrik insisted, but with his right arm still cut off at the forearm, and his left arm tied stiffly with rope to his torso, his locomotion options were severely limited. His legs throbbed with pain, nerve endings screaming where bone and flesh had been shattered.
Still, he tried. He tried arching and shifting forward, slowly like a worm, but he was getting nowhere. The battle was still raging above him, metal shrapnel flying in the wake of Henrik's desperate assault, and Rhett wasn't sure he would escape fast enough before the debris crushed him.
At the moment he said that, the monster shifted, and one of its spikes almost impaled Henrik. He was fighting, but only escaping death by a hair's breadth. Each dodge was slower than the last, each shot less precise.
Rhett couldn't even help. He couldn't even fight or contribute even if he was in the right shape. His regeneration barely helped him in combat, let alone against Lovecraftian horrors. What good was healing when you couldn't land a single blow?
He couldn't even take the escape option. He was still weak, even though he had been given a quirk. He was still useless. Dead weight dragging everyone down to hell with him.
I have to kill myself, he thought, the realization hitting him like ice water. There was no other option if he wanted to escape. If he died, he could regenerate back to normal and use functioning legs to run away.
But how was he going to do that? There was nothing to end his life quickly with. And could he really end his life if it came to it? He was going to bleed to death anyway, right? The thought made his stomach churn with more than just blood loss.
Blood fell from his nostril to the dirty ground, and through the faint lights above, he could see his reflection in the dark red fluid. He could remember the dream where he was drowning in blood, and his doppelganger had pulled him out.
Was that what the dream meant? He needed to kill himself to save himself? The irony was so twisted it made him want to laugh—or scream.
Even though he had experienced death countless times, had long stopped seeing death as the end and fearing it, he still didn't want to die, especially by his own hands. Despite the monster he had become, despite all the times he'd welcomed death's embrace, it still felt unnatural. Wrong. Like violating some fundamental law of existence.
In the distance, echoes of horrifying screeches and groans traveled through the dark tunnels. The direction he was supposed to go. The Beastmaster was calling reinforcements, as if what he had here wasn't already overkill.
He truly had no hope anymore. The despair settled into his bones like poison, making everything feel distant and surreal.
A chill went through his body. He felt cold. His head felt faint from blood loss, but this was different.
"I'm finally dying," he thought, imagining death's cold fingers coming to clutch at his heart again. And then he would escape it again, trapped in an endless cycle of death and resurrection.
He was prepared to accept it, until he saw something peculiar.
When he let a soft breath out, white mist left his mouth. He wasn't just feeling cold. The atmosphere was getting cold. The temperature had been warm before, but now his weak shivers told him it was definitely getting colder. Frost began forming on the metal debris around him.
That wasn't natural.
"Guys," he muttered to the two boys still in the fight of their lives, obviously unable to hear him over the chaos. "Something's wrong."
The dripping water from broken pipes began to slow, then stop entirely as ice crept along the tunnel walls. The beast's roars seemed muffled now, as if the cold itself was absorbing sound.
Less than a second after he said that, another voice joined the scene. Like a frigid breeze on an ice-capped mountain, cutting through the heat and violence.
"Freeze, villains."