The Start of a Bloody scene

Kazimir's grin didn't falter even when Renji's blade thrust through the dark void and sought out his heart.

But at the last moment, the shadows contorted in a queer way, wringing Kazimir's body aside, as if he were a ghost slipping between dimensions.

Renji's sword cleaved through nothing but air.

"F*ck," he hissed, whipping around just in time to evade a slashing tendril of darkness that was headed toward his throat.

Kazimir reemerged a couple of feet away, completely unfazed.

Red eyes betrayed his amusement as they glowed.

"Predictable," Kazimir whispered, flicking his wrist.

The shadows blasted outwards to swallow the battlefield once more.

Ayame, behind him, reloading the guns with fast, practiced movements, gritted her teeth.

"This son of a b*tch doesn't go down easy, does he?"

Stumbling forward, Sora was still dazed from Kazimir's earlier attack, only the fires of defiance burning in his eyes.

"He's transforming space," he muttered, his chest rising and falling heavily. "It's not teleportation… it's something worse.

He's changing the very nature of reality."

"F*cking great," Ayame deadpanned.

Just as they were about to straighten up, a sound pierced through the air the deepest, lowest growl, inhuman and rife with malice.

Renji had no time to react before a monstrous figure barreled through the burning wreckage.

It was twice as large as a man, its skin gray and leathery, muscles coiled like steel cables under the ugly flesh.

Its face was a gnarled collection of scars, and its eyes were black holes consisting only of rage.

A hound of the Syndicate.

"Say hi to Malakai," purred Kazimir. "A small… experiment of mine."

Malakai lunged forward with menacing speed, swinging an arm the size of a battering ram.

Renji braced, realizing he was a second away from becoming a stain on the concrete floors. Rags of debris shot out in all directions.

Ayame fired, her bullets tearing through Malakai's chest, but the bastard didn't budge.

"Motherfucker," she hissed as Malakai lunged at her, and she rolled to the side.

Renji rushed forward, his sword cutting a clean arc toward the beast's throat only to have Malakai catch the blade with his bare hand.

Renji's eyes widened.

What the hell was this thing grown from?

Malakai chuckled deep and low, then his other hand snaked out, wrapping around Renji's neck and slamming him enough into the ground that the dirt cracked beneath him.

A jarring explosion of pain reverberated in Renji's skull.

"Renji!" Sora roared, pushing himself to continue even though he was burnt out.

Renji gritted his teeth, muscles refusing under Malakai's weight as that bastard pressed down, trying to crush his windpipe.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed more Syndicate troops pouring into the warehouse, armed to the teeth.

Too many.

But Renji was not going to die here.

He clenched his sword tighter.

Snarling like a feral animal, he wrested the blade from Malakai's hands and rammed the edge into the monster's wrist, slicing through muscle and bone.

Malakai screamed with rage, finally losing his grip.

That was all Renji needed.

Adding insult to injury, he drove his knee into Malakai's gut and then brought his other hand across Malakai's chest in a decisive stroke, opening up a deep, gaping wound.

Blood sprayed.

Malakai stumbled back. Not down yet, but wounded.

Ayame seized the opportunity, ghosting, flipping over Malakai's wide shoulders, and shooting a full clip into the back of his head.

The bullets ripped through flesh.

Malakai swayed and then dropped to his knees.

Renji didn't hesitate.

He moved a pace forward, extended his sword high, and swung it down in one perfect stroke.

The blade cut through Malakai's head flesh.

Blood sprayed across Renji's face, hot and viscous, as the creature's corpse collapsed in a pile.

For a moment, the battlefield fell still.

Then Kazimir began to clap, slow and derisive.

"Congratulations," he said, his eyes bright. "But let's see if you get through the rest."

Waving a finger, the shadows rushed forward like a wave.

Three steps from the black: the real hunters of the Syndicate.

Kain the Butcher.

Juno the Phantom.

Lazarus the Immortal.

Renji's heart thundered in his chest.

This… this was a f*cking nightmare.

Kain was seven feet of blood-soaked metal, a colossus in fuming armor, his death cleaver scraping the dirt, trailing sparks.

His face was hidden behind a steel mask, but the unhinged laughter rolling from his chest gave him away.

Juno was the opposite: small, quiet, and deadly. In her hands were a pair of curved daggers, and her movements were so fluid, so silky smooth, that she almost didn't seem human.

And then there was Lazarus, the worst of them all.

He was wearing a long, ragged coat, and his skin was covered with scars, evidence of the times he should have died and didn't.

There was something unnatural in his eyes something not exactly human.

Renji grasped his blade even more tightly.

Ayame muttered, "Well. We're f*cked."

Sora exhaled shakily. "Renji… what do we do?"

Kazimir's coolly regal voice sliced through the tension.

"Kill them."

The three assassins sprang all at once.

Renji caught Kain's cleaver just in time, but the impact knocked him back several steps.

Ayame narrowly evaded Juno's knives, rolled into a firing position, and emptied her clip only for Juno to disappear in the instant it took to blink.

Lazarus? The bastard took the psychic blast head-on and walked through it like it was nothing.

Renji ground his teeth.

This was not going to be an easy fight. It was going to be a fucking bloodbath.

But he had no choice.

To survive, they'd have to kill every single one of them.

And no more holding back from Renji.

The warehouse sagged with the burden of inevitable death. Smoke and embers still fluttered like spirits, the blood and sweat thick in the air.

Renji refused to back down, panting, his blade draped with Malakai's viscera. The three new threats Kain the Butcher, Juno the Phantom and Lazarus the Immortal advanced with a predatory grace.

Behind them, Kazimir smiled coldly, patiently, like a god awaiting slaughter that would not end.

Renji's instincts damned: Move. Now.

But Kain was already there.

A storm of steel and fury.

The weighty cleaver came crashing down, like a collapsing building.

Renji had hopped back, but the blade kissed the ground still, splintering the concrete into jagged chunks.

"Shit," Renji snarled, rolling aside as Kain swung the cleaver down again.

The impact cracked the floor underneath.

He's fast for his size. Too fast.

Ayame fired from the side, her dual pistols barking.

Pop-pop-pop!

Kain was hit in the shoulder and chest with bullets, but the brute barely flinched. The rashes could have been mosquito bites.

"He's armored!" Ayame shouted.

"F*cking noticed!"

Renji grunted and parried another swing that rattled his bones to the arms.

He didn't even have time to react before Juno was upon him, silent death in motion.

A flash of her dagger gleamed. Renji spun, narrowly evading a cut to his throat.

The blade sliced his shoulder instead hot pain flared.

"Goddamn it!"

Juno was smoke, her feet striking the ground without as much as a whisper. She poured herself around Renji's defense, knives a blur.

Ayame turned to assist, but Lazarus moved to block her his dead, cold eyes focused on her like a shark following a meal.

"Stay the fuck down!" Ayame growled and emptied a whole clip into him.

Lazarus took every shot.

Chest. Shoulder. Stomach.

He didn't even blink.

"You'll need more than that," Lazarus whispered, her voice like razor glass, before she took Ayame by the throat and hurled her against a rusted support beam.

She coughed blood.

Sora, still half unconscious, found her pinned.

His vision swam, but he collected every psychic ounce of force still in him.

He couldn't lose them.

Not here. Not now.

With a primal scream, Sora released a shockwave, a telekinetic burst that rippled the air like a sonic boom.

The force flung Lazarus from Ayame, sliding him along the floor.

Ayame fell to her knees, hacking, but alive.

"Sora!" she rasped. "Are you okay? "

"No, not really," he said, his words disjointed, but somehow remaining upright.

"But I'm not done yet."

The fortune teller was running on fumes, but there was no alternative.

Meanwhile, Renji was engaged in a deadly pas de deux with Juno and Kain speed against brutality.

Juno's daggers were everywhere slashes at his arms, his ribs, his legs.

Renji's sword was faster, but she was relentless, her attacks searching for a gap, an opening.

And Kain… Kain was only there to pounce on that mistake.

One second's pause, and that cleaver would bisect Renji.

I can't keep this up. Not like this.

Renji knew it.

So he stopped playing defense.

"Fine," he growled. "Let's f*cking end this."

Juno lunged for his heart.

Renji didn't dodge.

Instead, he fell into her blow, took the blade through the side of his abdomen, pain exploded, hot and electric, but he was within striking distance.

Before Juno could respond, Renji seized her wrist, wrenched it hard, and shoved his sword upward through her ribs.

The blade emerged through her chest, out her back, blood spraying in an arc.

For the first time, Juno sounded a short, erratic gasp of shock.

"Guess you're not so quiet anymore," Renji said in her ear before tearing the blade free.

Juno crumpled, lifeless, blood oozing from her in a dark, spreading pool.

One down.

Renji looked at Kain, his chest pumping, blood from his side mingling with the blood of his kill.

Now the big man smiled under his steel mask and was pleased.

"Good," Kain rumbled. "Let's fucking go."

He lunged a second time with his cleaver raised.

But this time, Renji was prepared.

At the last moment, Renji sidestepped and rammed his sword into Kain's thigh deep, twisting the steel with savage cruelty.

Kain roared in pain and fury, stumbling forward.

Before he had a chance to shake off his disorientation, Ayame emerged behind him, pressing the muzzle of her pistol into the back of his knee.

Bang!