Rhett wiped the blood from his hands on his torn shirt, the metallic smell still clinging to his nostrils. The tunnel felt different now—quieter, heavier, as if the air itself had absorbed the weight of what just happened. Natos' body lay crumpled against the damp concrete, neck twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes staring at nothing.
He forced himself to look away and focus on the distant sounds echoing from the streets of the Brookside district. Henrik had moved quite a distance in his fight against the hitdevil, so he needed to catch up. Fast.
The air was colder outside the tunnel. A storm was rolling in, casting the sky in muted grays and deep purples. Tiny droplets of water were already falling on his face, and he knew torrents would be moving in within minutes.
Finding their direction wasn't hard—the destruction made it obvious.
Cars had been mercilessly thrown and flattened against building walls. Small fires erupted on the streets from broken engines and leftover flammable materials. The most noticeable and frankly terrifying aspect was the gouges in the pavement left by the hitdevil's claws. Every couple of feet, the ground had been caved in by powerful strikes. Nearby walls bore the same monstrous craters, no doubt where the devil's claws had smashed through brick and mortar.
Even more chilling were droplets of dark blood that pockmarked the street. It could only be one person's blood.
Henrik.
Rhett picked up the pace as the sounds of battle grew louder, his chest tight with dread.
As he rounded the corner, a pickup truck went airborne, flipping twice before slamming into the side of a building. Smoke and sparks followed. The hitdevil stood at the epicenter, rippling with unnatural muscle, its elongated skull craning toward something in the debris like a predator savoring its hunt.
Henrik was backed against an overturned bus, his left arm hanging useless at his side, dark blood seeping through tears in his already torn cloak. He barely looked human anymore—steel and concrete debris fused to his flesh in some desperate melee strategy. But his life was hanging by threads.
The pools of rainwater were being stained red. Even when he sent the last of his bullets flying at the hitdevil, they bounced uselessly off its hide. Like it was unkillable.
"How does it feel being a hero now, Henrik?" Daimon mocked as he watched the fight unfold. He was obviously unharmed, but Rhett noticed the pistol at his side. He wasn't defenseless by any stretch.
"I told you, I'm not a hero!" Henrik growled weakly as the hitdevil took another swipe that would have claimed his life had he not used the grappling hook at his shoulder to propel himself upward against the crumbling building. "Fuck, I abandoned the post a week ago!"
"Why? Because you know what's coming is inevitable, isn't it?" Daimon berated him, his teeth bared and eyes wide with a mad glint. Gone was the calm demeanor he'd used to address them at first. "And yet, you left! After stealing from him, after witnessing the grand scheme of things, you still decided to leave! Isn't that sheer stupidity?"
Henrik gritted his teeth but couldn't respond. He couldn't remove his attention from the lumbering demon in front of him, scaling the vertical wall like it was a staircase. Even against the BeastMaster, he'd held his ground, even if barely. He'd still been tactical, still brave.
Now, he was just throwing anything he could and hoping it stuck.
Nothing stuck.
When he was certain his blades and bullets wouldn't work, he raised his leg, and a wide nozzle emerged, spraying an uncontrolled arc of fire against the beast.
That must be what he used to cauterize me the first time we met, Rhett realized. But even that was barely a match for the eight-foot demon. It brushed the fire away like it was a mere candle and rushed toward Henrik with relentless hunger.
The hitdevil moved with singular purpose—not intelligence, but something worse. Pure, mechanical devotion to its task. It didn't react to pain, didn't strategize, didn't even seem to see anything but its target. Like a missile with claws.
Rhett's stomach clenched as he watched Henrik stumble, exhaustion finally catching up. This was it. Unless he acted now—
"HEY, BONE-DICK!" Rhett roared from the side, desperation cracking his voice. "LOOK AT ME! DEFENSELESS! WEAK! THAT GUY'S TOO MUCH TROUBLE!"
Please. Please just look at me.
The hitdevil didn't even twitch. Not a glance, not a pause. It kept advancing on Henrik like Rhett didn't exist.
Daimon's head swiveled toward Rhett, his eyes widening with confusion, then shock, then realization. And fear. He'd pitched a man who could kill anyone with one touch against Rhett, and yet Rhett was here, and Natos wasn't.
He'd underestimated him.
Rhett swore under his breath. His element of surprise was wasted, and the hitdevil hadn't even acknowledged him.
"The hitdevil isn't a mere dog that gives in to distractions," Daimon growled as he reached for his pistol and raised it in Rhett's direction. "It has one command. One target. Nothing else matters."
Without waiting for a response, he fired.
The bullet struck Rhett straight in the eye.
Time fractured.
The world exploded into white-hot agony as the bullet tore through his right eyeball like tissue paper. He felt the moment his brain matter sprayed—warm, wet, wrong. His vision cut to black on one side, then—
Nothing.
Death was a breath between heartbeats.
Then the pain reversed itself. Tissue knitted back together with nauseating speed, bone reformed with audible clicks, and suddenly he was gasping, whole again. The bullet had torn clean through and out the back of his head, leaving a perfect entry and exit wound that sealed itself like it had never existed.
To anyone watching, Rhett's head had snapped backward from the impact, a spray of blood and brain matter painting the wall behind him. Then, impossibly, he was standing upright again, blinking with two perfectly functional eyes.
The horror of it—dying and returning in the space of seconds—should have paralyzed him. Instead, fury drove him forward.
If he couldn't change the hitdevil's direction, he'd go for the source.
In seconds he was within punching distance of Daimon and jumped on him, bringing him to the floor. Daimon seemed less martially trained than Natos, and it made sense. He must have relied on the hitdevil to win most of his fights, while Natos had trained in combat to actually land the touch that would kill his opponent.
"Call off that monster!" Rhett snarled, his hands finding Daimon's throat. The man's pulse hammered against his fingers.
"Once the hitdevil has been given a command, it can't be taken back—" Daimon smiled wickedly through perfect teeth, but sweat beaded on his forehead. "—until the command has been completed."
"Bullshit!" Rhett spat, squeezing harder. "You own the quirk! You control it! You—"
"Believe me, I have experience. I know how the quirk works." Something like regret flashed through Daimon's voice, and for the first time, he sounded genuinely troubled. "The command can't be taken back. Ever."
Rhett's grip tightened. Then a plan formed, cold and simple. If the quirk couldn't be controlled, then he'd just have to kill the quirk by killing the user.
Daimon apparently sensed this shift in Rhett's expression and bucked violently, throwing him off. Rhett couldn't get the leverage to break his neck like he had with Natos. Daimon raised his pistol, but his hand was shaking. They both knew bullets wouldn't do anything permanent.
Behind them, the one-sided battle between Henrik and the hitdevil miraculously continued. But not for long.
"What the hell do you want with that cockroach?" Daimon barked, frustration bleeding through his voice. This must have been his first target he couldn't kill.
"Saving him," Rhett muttered, scrambling to his feet.
He took off, rushing toward Henrik as they advanced farther into the city. The buildings began to thin out, and the scent of oil, rust, and saltwater hit him like a wave. Past a tilted sign reading BROOKSIDE HARBORMOUTH, the concrete opened up into a massive expanse of dockside terrain. Towering cranes stood like skeletal giants in the fog, and stacked shipping containers—some rusted, others bright with fading paint—formed a maze of color-coded corridors. The distant clang of metal on metal echoed through the darkening atmosphere.
The first fat drops of rain fell on Rhett's face as he pushed forward, his spleen burning with exertion.
Henrik was still fighting for his life against the hitdevil. As a last-ditch effort, Rhett watched in horror as Henrik's chest split open, revealing the red beating heart underneath. Something the size of a palm shot out from within his ribcage.
The projectile hit the hitdevil dead center, and in the next second, a sunburst of yellow fire erupted, engulfing the beast and throwing Henrik against the metal wall of a large red container.
He must have stored a grenade in himself. That crazy bastard.
The explosion was deafening—Henrik had literally fired his own heart like a cannon, somehow keeping himself alive through sheer will and whatever modifications his quirk had made to his anatomy.
Even from a distance, the shockwave threatened to deafen Rhett and knock him off his feet. But before the smoke had even cleared, the hitdevil shot forward through the flames.
Literally nothing could kill that bastard.
Henrik slumped against the container, his chest closing back. But he was fading fast, his skin pale as paper.
"I have to do something..." Rhett panted as he climbed up the giant metal cargo boxes. The rain was coming down harder now, making the surfaces slick and treacherous. His hands slipped twice, and he nearly fell, but desperation drove him upward.
He waited until the hitdevil was right below him, too engrossed in its hunt to notice anything else. The creature moved with that same mechanical precision, ignoring everything except Henrik's weakening form.
Now, Rhett muttered to himself, bracing as he jumped from the metal box.
He aimed for the beast's head but nearly missed, his hands clawing at bone and muscle as he fought to hold on. The hitdevil's skull was like gripping a moving boulder—smooth, hard, and sickeningly cold. Like it wasn't even a real living thing. Surprisingly, the monster didn't throw him off on instinct, still focused entirely on Henrik.
The sensation was nauseating. Every muscle beneath him moved with liquid power, and he realized he was essentially riding Death itself.
What should he do now? He remembered what Ryoji had told him about targeting eyes and nose, but this strange creature had no nose—only bone—and its eyes were nothing more than black orbs that felt like marble to the touch. Even when he pressed his thumbs against them, it didn't seem to notice, still chasing Henrik with relentless focus.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Henrik screamed as he barely dodged another strike, this one close enough to draw blood across his cheek.
"Saving you, you dumbass!" Rhett yelled back, but even as he said it, he realized it wasn't working. He couldn't even distract the monster from Henrik, let alone fight and defeat it.
He was starting to understand why it was called the 'hitdevil.' It was probably derived from 'hitman'—an assassin that stopped at nothing to hunt down their target and was distracted by nothing else.
Defeating it seemed impossible.
Almost impossible, Rhett corrected himself as his mind raced. His eyes swept the wasteland dock, taking in every detail. The cable wires of the cranes swayed in the wind, still attached to a cargo container as if someone had been lowering it and stopped abruptly.
A plan was forming. Maybe the hitdevil's inability to register any threats apart from its target would be its downfall. The creature was powerful, relentless, and seemingly indestructible—but it was also predictable. It would follow Henrik anywhere, through anything, without deviation.
Even if that meant following him into a trap.