Chapter 2: First Penance

First thing Jack tried to do, was track down where his targets went. That was actually much easier than anticipated, as like a hunting dog, he smelled something odd from the dead woman's corpse.

That small voice in the back of his head that fueled his desire for vengeance, told him exactly what that was. 'Sin. I can smell their sins, and hunt them down.' Now he just needed to chase them.

And with that, he burst off into a sprint, almost crashing into the alley wall before narrowly turning the corner. 'Oh shit I'm fast. Really fast. Oh I can get used to this.'

Making the decision that moving along the streets was a bad idea, he climbed the nearby fire escape onto the roof tops and chased them from there. At this point he was running 40 miles an hour, not bad for someone who just got his powers.

Feeling the wind whip around him as he ran and leapt gaps between buildings, Jack really wished he had a quirk earlier to feel this sooner. Soon, he passed by High Flier, who not only didn't notice him but was going the wrong way.

Deep down he had the desire to deal with him too, this one being his own and not the Rider's. But ultimately he decided he had bigger fish to fry, and kept after the scent of his prey.

Soon, like most villains ever he found their hide away in an abandoned warehouse near the docks. 'I swear in an age of heroes and villains, we'd at least learn to not leave abandoned things, either sell the building within a year or tear it down, something.'

Two choices lay before him. Enter through the top, and use stealth, or bust in through the front and kick all their asses in style. Going in through the front sounded like fun, what with the new powers and all, but rationality won out as he scaled the building and climbed in through a busted out window.

Flaming skull heads aren't exactly the stealthiest thing in the world, so he stuck up in the rafters so he could stay well out of sight. And thanks to being a large, abandoned building their words echoed, carrying it up to him with relative ease.

"Talk about a 'you scratch my back, I scratch yours', we get money, you get blood, and you laid out that annoying kid earlier."

The ball man then questioned something. "So Bobby, why'd we even target that girl anyways? She didn't exactly look the richest gal at the ball."

That's when the knife man, who seemed to be the brains of the operation, snapped his fingers. "Well that's the trick. She wasn't just any gal. She was the daughter of an old man that works at I-Island. Their relationship went sour, so despite the fact that she was at risk of this very thing happening by leaving, she left anyways."

None of them were stupid enough why they just settled for whatever loaded credit card she probably had instead of going for a ransom. They were small time criminals not super villains. A ransom to I-Island of all places would have dozens of heroes pouring in within days.

Having heard enough, Jack jumped down from the rafters, right onto the man named Bobby's back, seemingly breaking it in the process. He screamed in agony, his upper half writhing in pain while the lower half laid immobile. The muscle goliath stood still, whilst the midget bowling ball bolted for the door.

Knowing the latter was far more likely to flee than the former, he focused him first and dashed over, kicking him like a soccer ball. "Oh you done fucked up now kid!"

Using Super Ball, he bounced right back at Jack who just hit him again but harder. This simply made him bounce around fast. Wanting to test his own limits, Jack kept repeatedly hitting him, even as he changed his angles and his speed kept increasing.

Soon, the bounces outpaced his own reaction time, and he began to get barraged in high speed hits that blurred in his vision. The bloodsucking big man was the first to notice the problem though.

'Those hits are doing nothing to him.' The individual attacks didn't do crazy damage, but on anyone else they would seriously have added up at the speed this guy was bouncing, easily going 60mph now.

This didn't stop Jack from trying to keep countering, and he did land a few hits still every now and then. Such an ability, was basically the perfect training dummy. Allowing his reflexes to slowly catch up to his new speed and strength, as well as testing his own durability.

Soon he grew bored of this though, and caught the man with one hand palming his face. Just by looking into his eyes, he could feel all of the sins that had been committed by this team, and he grew disgusted.

'I can't use physical force, do I have anything else up my sleeves?' Thinking of the flames that currently covered his head, Jack imagined blowing them outwards.

Just like that, he breathed fire all over the midget man as he cried in agony, dying a slow burning death just like that, being incinerated into ashes within the minute. Once that show was over, he turned his attention to the big man of the hour.

"Man you just chilled while I dismantled your buddies. That's cold." As he said this, Jack walked towards the man. Despite being a fair six feet himself, he was still two feet shorter than the man.

Despite this, if anyone looked at the two stare down the way they were now, the terrifying visage of a man in a jacket with a flaming head would put him pretty equal to a giant muscle mountain of a man. Well, if you add in the fact that he just breathed said fire onto a man and immolated him.

Not wanting to waste anymore time, Jack decided to really test his strength and run into the man head on. Two fists clashed, a shockwave emanating from the impact and cracking the immediate ground below them, before the big man pushed forward and blew Jack back into the brick wall which he nearly broke right through.

Despite losing the clash of power, Jack took no real damage and stood right back up, before going at it again. This time, he used his smaller size to slide under a back hand and sweep kick the back of his ankle.

This brought him down onto one knee with a loud bang, putting his head at perfect height for Jack to cock his fist back and slam it dead on into his face, sending him sliding along the ground into the side of a shipping container which got dented inwards.

Standing up, the man spit out some blood from his mouth and prepared for round 2. Deciding to not rush this, Jack took this fight relatively easy and freely traded blows left and right for a solid hour.

Sometimes he'd get slammed into the ground, other times he'd drop kick the man in the face. But one constant thing is no matter how much he got hurt, he always recovered. And, he never got tired.

'Holy shit you're kidding me. I don't have stamina?! That's unfair man. I mean I love it, but that's just unfair.' The age old tactic of a war of attrition couldn't even be used on him if both his stamina and regeneration was infinite.

His big buddy over there learned that the hard way, as his body was now covered in blood and bruises as he slumped down in one of the many, many holes in the walls of this building.

Part of the reason this took so long wasn't just the fact that he was playing around, but his enemy was extremely durable, which given his muscles and bootleg vampiric abilities made plenty of sense.

Walking over, Jack pulled the man up and stared deep into his eyes. As if roused from it's slumber, something deep in his eyes stared back at the man. Pain wracked his entire body in an instant as he shuttered and screamed.

He was now feeling the pain of every single person he had ever killed. With a quirk like Blood Train, aptly named for the amount of blood needed to shovel into him like coal into an old school train, he had to kill a lot of people just to live to this age.

Luckily he thrived in the night, looked very different when he laid low, and didn't live in the same country as the Symbol of Peace. Those factors kept him alive as long as they did, but none saved him tonight. He died with a look of absolute terror on his face.

Jack was woken up from his use of the Penance Stare by something tinging off the back of his head. When he looked down behind him, he saw a knife on the floor, and Bobby still laying there.

"Well shit, good thing you did that I almost forgot you there." Casually walking over, Jack gave this man a good Penance Stare to send him on his way, though he had no idea it was called that.

Once again, looking at the carnage he was given two choices. Burn the bodies and hide them, or leave them as a message. A message that sins will no longer go unpunished in this city any longer.

With that, Jack made to leave the building as it is. But a certain someone busted right through the front door, despite two holes being right next to it that he could have walked through.

High Flier looked around the demolished building, and the two dead villains and the pile of ashes. Then, he looked up at the terrifying demon that stood before him. "You, what monster are you? Killing people like that, what the hell do you think you are?"

Using the ground as a springboard, he launched himself at Jack only to get plucked out of the air by his throat, and bring him close to his flaming face, as he sweated from either terror or the heat. "I, am vengeance."

The demonic, altered voice served as a great disguise and a great way to make someone piss their pants. With the message completed, Jack threw the crappy hero aside and walked on.

Knowing how his quirk worked, High Flier totally could have rebounded back there and kept on the attack, but he had decided not to, something that saved himself much pain.

Despite being a complete dick, he had seen nothing truly terrible in the mediocre hero's eyes and so he let him be. Despite that, he felt that thing deep inside respond. Even just those lighter sins, were potentially enough to kill him.

'I need to keep a good leash on whatever this is.' He wasn't quite terrified of whatever this new power of his was yet, but something told him that a normal person probably would be. With that, he left the warehouse, and went home for the night.