Ron clenched his fingers, the lava receding beneath his skin.
"Let's go." The Bronx, an abandoned D-line subway station, nine kilometers from the safe house.
The two didn't use a car. Frank, wearing a tactical vest, ran along the back alley, his vertical pupils automatically magnifying in the darkness, making every sharp edge of the pebble on the ground clearly visible.
Ron was three steps to his left, the edges of his ripped suit jacket charred black, untouched.
Frank stopped near the entrance.
His nose twitched.
"Two on the east side, smoking the same brand of menthol cigarettes. Two on the south side, old right leg injury, uneven gait. North side—"
He paused.
"The two on the north side don't smoke, their breathing is much more controlled than the ones outside."
Not the same group.
Ron suppressed his Observation Haki to its lowest frequency, slowly penetrating twelve meters below the ground.
Forty-seven life forms.
Arranged with extremely neat, tactical spacing honed through training.
In the center of the platform, a life form lay motionless, its heartbeat incredibly slow yet extremely dense—without any extra gap between each contraction and relaxation.
It was constantly aiming.
There was something even more troublesome.
The underground space was covered by a broadband electromagnetic field, its frequencies alternating and overlapping from low to high, specifically designed to interfere with sensory supernatural abilities. Even with Observation Haki, the accuracy of the information dropped by 30%.
"There's an EMP jamming field. The ventilation ducts are impassable; they're equipped with infrared sensors."
Frank removed the silencer and slung the gun back over his shoulder.
"This isn't something Kingpin could have created himself."
"Right." Ron crouched down, his right palm pressed against the concrete of the parking lot. "Someone's behind him."
He pressed down.
Magma seeped from all five fingers simultaneously, drilling downwards, the heat concentrated at the point beneath his palm, causing the concrete to turn red.
"Cover your ears."
Frank lowered his head, pressing his hands against his ears.
"Big eruption."
Boom. A three-meter-diameter column of magma blasted downwards, penetrating the twelve-meter-deep foundation in two seconds. The EMP generators pre-embedded in the underground space melted instantly upon the arrival of the magma vane; their metal shells cracked, and the internal circuitry turned to molten iron, flowing into the drainage ditch along with the magma.
The ground tremors spread outwards, and the sirens of two parked cars in the distance simultaneously went off.
Ron jumped into the crater.
The incandescent light bulbs on the platform illuminated the entire space in a stark white light.
The Hydra agents reacted extremely quickly, but their first action wasn't to fire.
Four people on the left simultaneously threw vibranium nets—fine hexagonal meshes, the ropes less than two millimeters in diameter, with an unfolded area of twenty square meters, encircling from above and both sides, leaving no gaps in the front.
Ron's arms hardened with Armament Haki to their limit, pushing outwards.
The ropes dented, but didn't break.
The vibranium's toughness tightened with each pull, the reverse constriction forcing his arms inwards.
Three seconds.
Hydra seized the opportunity to fire liquid nitrogen grenades simultaneously from four directions.
The -196 degree Celsius temperature froze the surface layer of the magma, and a basalt shell enveloped his upper body within half a second, white frost spreading along the edges of the magma.
Ron didn't move.
He pushed the core temperature upward.
The internal magma rose again to 1200 degrees Celsius—the basalt shell cracked from the inside, fragments flew everywhere, and magma surged out again, simultaneously burning through the four alloy net ropes.
The nets were ruined.
"Shave." The figure vanished.
The four Hydra agents looked up; he was already in front of them.
Four elbows, four directions, in succession.
The sound of bones cracking rang out in a dense series; the four men fell to the ground, their bulletproof vests completely deformed.
The fifth agent had just raised his gun when a paperclip flew from the side.
Observation Haki caught the trajectory in the last 0.1 seconds.
His head tilted two centimeters to the right.
A paperclip grazed his temple, embedding itself three centimeters into a concrete pillar behind him, its tip still trembling slightly.
A half-second silence followed.
"0.2 seconds faster than I expected." Bullseye emerged from the shadows of the platform, toying with an ordinary white plastic fork he'd picked up from an abandoned convenience store in the subway station.
No tension whatsoever.
"I thought you'd use lava to directly heat the mesh, but I didn't expect you to explode it from the inside."
He tossed the fork up, caught it, and tossed it again.
"Quite an interesting way to dismantle it." Ron didn't reply.
Bullseye tossed the fork toward the ceiling.
The fork shot three times—to the ceiling, the pillar, and the fire hydrant valve. The last shot hit the valve, the pipe burst open, high-pressure water poured down, and steam filled the entire platform in a second.
His vision returned to zero.
His Observation Haki, interfered with by the ionization of the steam, lost another 20% accuracy.
The screw came from the front, then opened from the side.
Shards of glass came from the upper right; he blocked them with his arm.
A pen came from behind; he turned, using Armament Haki to protect the back of his neck.
A belt buckle came from the left—this wasn't completely blocked; the impact hit his left ribs, forcing him to take a step back.
Ron spread Armament Haki all over his body. The coverage area increased, but the defensive thickness decreased.
Bullseye's fighting style wasn't about a one-hit kill; it was about wearing down the opponent's senses before finding an opening.
"Frank." Frank burst in from the north entrance, using his sense of smell to penetrate the steam in his half-beast form, directly locking onto Bullseye's location, and unleashing a right punch infused with Armament Haki.
Bullseye sidestepped, deflecting Frank's wrist with a backhand, taking two steps back.
Frank pursued, sweeping his left claw horizontally.
Bullseye leaned back, casually picking up a pen from the ground and stabbing it into the tendon space of Frank's left arm.
It wasn't a blind stab.
It was a precise targeting of the blind spot covered by Armament Haki in his beast form.
Frank's left arm instantly lost its leverage, and his outstretched fist went limp.
Bullseye kicked him in the stomach, sending Frank flying and crashing into the metal railing, bending it.
The steam dissipated.
The three of them stood still.
Bullseye stood in the middle, Frank and Ron on either side.
In his hand was a playing card he'd picked up from the ground, the King of Hearts, its edge bent into a crook.
"Two people, huh?" He licked his lower lip.
"The last time I saw two of them was three years ago." He paused, "Those two ended up in the morgue."
Frank winked at Ron, his right hand slowly moving towards his waist, touching the black handcuffs.
Bullseye's gaze fell upon them.
He saw them.
Instead of backing away, he smiled, bending the playing card even more, the edge digging into his fingertips.
"Handcuffs?"
"Are you serious?"
Just then, a deep mechanical rumble echoed from deeper within the subway station.
All three turned their heads simultaneously.
The blast door at the far end of the platform slowly spun inward, dust from the hinges falling with the vibrations. Hydraulic levers pushed aside the forty-centimeter-thick steel plate bit by bit.
Behind the door was darkness.
Then came white light.
The operating room light.
Three stainless steel tables, three people, the numbers on the chest monitors still flashing.
The closest test subject had arm muscles at least twice the size of a normal person's, his skin covered with a dense network of blue veins—a rejection reaction to the forced injection of the Super Soldier Serum.
Ron's Observation Haki swept over them.
All three were still alive.
What Bullseye guarded was never weaponry.