The Hunt

"Bro, you've got to try this beer!" Razor's voice echoed too loud in the empty stairwell as he stumbled into view. The skinny man wore a black leather jacket torn at the seams, his spiky hair catching what little light filtered through the broken windows. Burns scarred his pale skin in jagged patterns, and even from ten feet away, he reeked of cheap alcohol and stale cigarettes.

"Keep your fucking mouth shut!" Bones hissed, sweeping his flashlight beam across the concrete steps ahead. The bald man's skull tattoos seemed to shift in the dancing light. "You're going to get us killed. There could be heroes prowling around here."

Razor scoffed, taking another swig from his transparent bottle. "Come on, man. We're villains now, might as well enjoy it." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Heroes don't operate like this anyway. They're too righteous for ambushes."

"Whatever." Bones kept his voice low as they climbed the abandoned office building's central stairwell. Fluorescent light fixtures hung broken from the ceiling, their shattered tubes crunching under their boots. "You sure King said we should come here?"

"Yeah. Don't know how he gets his intel, but the other crews said his tips always lead them straight to hero hideouts." Razor picked his nose absently, then noticed Bones' rigid shoulders. He clapped him on the back—harder than intended in his tipsy state. "Relax! Heroes don't sneak around like cowards. If one was here, they'd have already jumped out announcing themselves with some cheesy one-liner."

Razor's grin revealed yellowed, crooked teeth. "Besides, we're actual villains now! We've got powers!"

As if to demonstrate, a third arm burst from his lower back, biceps as thick as his normal ones. The extra limb flexed experimentally before retracting. "We can handle whatever comes our way."

But Bones remained tense as they climbed higher into the skeletal remains of the office tower. The tremors from the approaching war sent vibrations through the building's concrete pillars—distant explosions that made dust rain from the ceiling tiles above. They'd been sent here with dozens of other 'minor villain' crews, tasked with hunting down small hero cells and eliminating them before the main assault on the capital began.

"You think we'll run into Brett up here?" Bones asked quietly. "Have to fight him?"

Something dark crawled across Razor's face—a look of pure disgust. "Don't bring that bastard's name up. He made his choice when he went crawling to AA, trying to become some kind of..." He spat the next word like poison. "Hero."

"Don't know what the hell got into his head, but if it comes down to it, I won't hesitate to put him down. You?"

Bones sighed, focusing his flashlight on the endless spiral of stairs above them. The stairwell stretched up through the building's hollow center, emergency lighting long since dead. "I'm not answering that."

They climbed in relative silence for several more floors, their footsteps echoing off bare concrete walls. Office doors hung open on either side, revealing cubicles stripped of everything valuable. This place had been abandoned for months—perfect for a hero safehouse.

Then Bones' boot caught something.

It felt like wire at first, but thicker. Almost sticky. He looked down just as something shot out from the darkness above.

"Watch out!" Razor twisted hard, his extra arms sprouting to catch the projectile before it could take Bones' head off. The object was solid—a black iron block the size of his palm, heavier than expected.

"What the hell?" Razor held it up to the light. The metal was scratched and dented, like it had been used as a weapon before.

"Some kind of booby trap?" Bones knelt to examine what he'd stepped on. In his flashlight beam, it looked like green thread, but when he touched it, the material felt squishy. Organic. Like jelly.

A chill ran down his spine. Something about that texture...

"Think it could be another villain crew? Maybe we stepped into their territory—" Razor's words cut off in a yelp as his foot sank into something soft.

Bones swung his flashlight down. A blob of that same green material had enveloped Razor's boot, holding it fast like quicksand. But Bones had just swept his light across that exact spot seconds ago. It had been empty.

His blood went cold. Either he'd missed it—which was impossible, given how alert he'd been—or someone had placed it there in the last few seconds. While they were talking.

That texture. That color. It reminded him of something from weeks ago, back when Brett had cornered some quirkless kid from the arcade. The kid who'd claimed he wanted to be a hero. Brett had been beating him senseless when suddenly the kid had erupted with torrents of this same green slime, nearly crushing Brett to death before they'd all fled in terror.

Those eyes. Burning green and full of murderous intent.

No. It couldn't be possible. The kid had disappeared after that fight. Nobody knew what happened to him. But what if...

A soft sound from above made every hair on Bones' neck stand up.

On pure instinct, he jerked his flashlight upward. The beam illuminated a figure dropping from the darkness like a comet—burning green eyes behind a cracked helmet with twisted black horns, iron-plated boots aimed straight at them.

"Shit! Razor, move!" Bones threw himself sideways, but not fast enough.

Instead of getting his skull caved in by those metal boots, he managed to twist away just enough that the iron gauntlets caught him across the jaw instead. The impact sent him sprawling, copper flooding his mouth as his vision blurred.

Their attacker hit the concrete landing with perfect balance, already spinning toward Razor. But Razor's quirk activated instinctively—his double arms burst from his back, catching the follow-up punch with surprising strength.

Bones spat blood and activated Skeletal Warp. Immediately, his left arm went limp, muscles and bone density flowing into his right side. His right arm swelled grotesquely, skin stretching tight as his bones lengthened and sharpened. With a grunt of pain, curved bone blades erupted through his flesh like scythes.

He lunged forward, catching their attacker's free hand in his transformed grip. The bone hooks bit deep, drawing blood as they curved into pale flesh.

With one hand trapped in Razor's grip and the other pinned by Bones' skeletal claws, their attacker was momentarily immobilized.

Now Bones could get a better look at him.

The kid—and he was definitely young, maybe seventeen, eighteen—didn't look particularly strong. Beneath his makeshift armor of metal plates and leather straps, he was actually thin. Malnourished, even. His costume was a patchwork of ruined materials: reinforced knee pads, iron gauntlets that broken, and that distinctive cracked helmet with black horns on either side.

And yet he'd moved fast enough to nearly kill Bones in a single strike.

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" Razor snarled, reaching with his free hand to tear off the helmet.

But their attacker moved before Razor could touch the mask, as if letting anyone see his face was unthinkable. Green tendrils erupted from his shoulder blades, shooting upward through the stairwell toward the roof.

Bones' blood turned to ice. He thought they had their opponent trapped, but this was just another trap. As he moved to drive a bone spike through the kid's skull, the worst possible thing happened.

The tendrils snapped taut.

All three of them were yanked upward like they'd been fired from a catapult. Even Razor, despite his size and the slime still binding his foot, was pulled along by the sheer force. Their attacker shifted position mid-flight, angling Bones toward the stairwell's concrete railings.

What followed was a nightmare of pain and physics.

Every floor they passed, Bones' head and shoulders slammed into the underside of the stair landings. Concrete edges shattered the bones of his face into fragments, threatening to spill his brain with every impact. His Skeletal Warp tried desperately to repair the damage, fusing broken pieces back together, but another collision would immediately break them apart again.

Crack. Third floor landing—his nose caved in.

Crack. Fifth floor—his cheekbone exploded.

Crack. Seventh floor—his jaw came unhinged.

Each impact sent black spots across his vision, but the worst part was staying conscious through all of it. Dying on loop, as his skull reformed just in time to be shattered again.

Halfway up, their attacker released Razor, slapping him against a concrete wall with a cocoon of hardened slime. Razor's struggles were muffled but frantic—he'd be kept fresh for later.

With the reduced weight, Bones and his captor accelerated even faster. The impacts came quicker now, a drumbeat of destruction that reduced his head to pulp and bone fragments before each desperate reformation.

Just as unconsciousness finally threatened to take him, they reached the roof.

Bones lay gasping on the gravel surface, his face a map of fractures that refused to heal properly. But as his vision cleared, he looked down through the open stairwell and saw something that made his bladder release.

Bodies. Dozens of them scattered across the landings they'd just passed. Some had crushed skulls. Others were beaten beyond recognition. A few had died with pools of green slime hardened over their faces like death masks.

All of them wore the same makeshift villain gear that he and Razor sported.

His eyes found their attacker's face—or rather, the burning green eyes visible through his helmet's visor. There was no anger there. No satisfaction. Just emptiness, as if killing Bones meant nothing at all.

That's when recognition hit him like a sledgehammer.

The quirkless kid. The one Brett had called "footmat" and "hero" with such vicious mockery. The one who'd nearly killed Brett with torrents of slime when he'd finally snapped.

Bones remembered those eyes from that night—how they'd burned with rage and pain as the kid crushed Brett beneath waves of green death. He'd been surprised Brett survived at all.

But now, looking into those same eyes, there was nothing. As if all that rage had burned out, leaving only cold ash behind.

"Please," Bones whimpered, tears and snot streaming down his broken face. Piss stained his pants, but he was beyond caring about dignity. "Please don't..."

He scrambled for anything that might convince this hollow-eyed killer to spare him. What would a hero want? Information. Intel. Something useful.

"If you don't kill me, I'll work for you!" The words tumbled out desperately. "I'll tell you everything about the villain operations! Their plans, their locations, where they're going to hit next—you need that intel, right? Please, just—"

"Die."

The word came out flat. Not angry. Not vengeful. Just... done.

The slime tendril connecting them dissolved, and Bones found himself in free fall.

The stairwell's center was a straight drop down the building's hollow core. He tried desperately to use his bone scythes to catch something—anything—but he was falling too fast. When he did manage to hook a railing, the bone simply snapped under his weight and momentum.

He hit the ground floor with a wet crunch that echoed through the empty building.

Every bone in his body shattered on impact. His spine compressed like an accordion. His ribs punctured his lungs and liver. Blood filled his mouth as fractured bone fragments tore through organs and arteries.

Skeletal Warp tried to fuse the broken pieces back together, but it required focus, and his consciousness was fading fast. Even if he could repair all the bone damage, he'd still die from the internal bleeding, the punctured organs, the blood loss.

Above him, he could hear their attacker returning to Razor. Despite his partner's shouting and struggles, the slime restraints held firm. Without solid ground to fight from, Razor didn't stand a chance.

The sounds that followed would haunt Bones' final moments. The sharp crack of metal against flesh. Razor's angry cursing dissolving into bloody whimpers. The wet sound of iron crushing bone and tissue.

One hit. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

The screams cut off with brutal finality. The last impact had a different sound—the squelch of metal punching through skull into brain matter. Blood pattered down through the stairwell like rain.

'Looks like you died for nothing, brother,' Bones thought, paying silent homage to his partner. Only now did he understand what a suicide mission this really was. Just two minor villains sent in with no backup, no communication, no real plan beyond "find heroes and kill them."

He managed to form a half-broken bone shard and used it to drag himself across the concrete floor. The exit door was still open, sunlight streaming through the gap. If he could just reach it...

But footsteps were already bounding down the stairs with inhuman speed.

Bones turned back to face his killer, fingers brushing against those precious rays of sunlight. So close.

The kid stood over him, green eyes empty behind his cracked visor. Up close, Bones could see exhaustion in his posture. This wasn't his first hunt today. Probably not even his tenth.

"If this is for revenge," Bones forced out through blood-frothed lips, "I'm sorry. I could have stopped Brett from beating you up. I could have—"

A slime tendril shot into his mouth, cutting off his words and his air.

The viscous material flowed down his throat and into his windpipe, sealing off his breathing completely. It pushed into his nostrils, creating an airtight seal. He flailed desperately, clawing at the slime, but it was like trying to fight quicksand.

His vision tunneled. His lungs screamed for oxygen. His heart hammered frantically against his broken ribs.

In less than a minute, Bones joined the glassy-eyed collection of corpses scattered throughout the building.

The killer—no longer Hero, no longer the quirkless kid from the arcade, just Mateo now—stood alone in the desolate stairwell. He wiped blood from his gauntlets with mechanical precision, then carved a small mark on the inside of his left bracer.

Fifty-eight.

No names. No faces. Just numbers.

In the abandoned office building, silence returned. Only the distant rumble of explosions marked the passage of time, as dust continued to fall like snow through the empty stairwell where three more lives had been added to the city's growing count of the dead.

Mateo trudged toward the exit, each step dragging like it cost him something. His body ached in places he couldn't even name—torn flesh on his knuckles from Bones' skeletal hooks, bruises layered over infected scabs from previous fights. The hunger clawing at his gut felt like background noise compared to the weight in his chest.

He needed to move. The villains would keep coming now.

He'd heard Bones and Razor say it clearly: the King had ordered a hunt. Somehow, they always knew where to find him. He'd checked every corpse for tracking devices, found nothing. That spy quirk—whatever it was—meant his location was compromised the moment anyone with powers laid eyes on him.

The stairwell trap wouldn't work anymore. Too many bodies, too much evidence. And he was getting weaker with each fight, running out of tricks and stamina. His stomach cramped again, a sharp reminder that he hadn't eaten in two days. Every scrap of food had been hoarded by fleeing refugees or raided by villain crews.

Another reason to abandon this place.

"Did you really have to kill them, though?"

The voice came from Alec as his brother stepped over Bones' shattered skull. Mateo kept walking, not looking directly at the apparition. He'd learned that lesson—stare too long and Alec would vanish like smoke.

Mateo glanced at Bones' lifeless eyes, remembering the man in the white coat back at City Hall, still wrapped in hardened slime. Each kill felt like something was eating away at a part of him he didn't know existed. With Bones and Razor—people he'd actually known, even if they'd been enemies—that hole felt bigger.

"Of course I had to," Mateo replied, latching the blood-stained iron block to his hip without cleaning it. "That's what heroes do."

"That's not what I would do, though." Alec's voice carried that familiar note of disappointment before he faded from view.

"That's why you're not a hero," Mateo whispered into the empty air.

The silence that followed felt colder than the dawn.

Obviously, he wasn't talking to his actual brother. Just hallucinations—he'd confirmed it multiple times. Try to touch Alec, and his hand passed through air. Look directly at him, and he'd disappear. The visions had started back at the base after Amara's kidnapping, which wasn't exactly comforting.

But maybe some part of him still wanted Alec to stay.

Mateo finally stepped through the exit door into the cool morning air. The abandoned office building behind him had been part of an engineering college before the war crept close enough to empty it. Now the sun was rising over the horizon, deep orange bleeding across the sky. The air tasted of distant smoke and dew.

He needed to find Slave. That was his primary target, the one who mattered most. But he had no leads, no intel. Torture didn't work—villains would just lie and send him into ambushes. That's why he'd ignored Bones' desperate bargaining. Talk first, then strike.

"Who's that woman up there?" Alec's voice materialized beside him.

"What woman? What are you talking about—"

An arc of electricity struck the concrete centimeters from where he'd been standing less than a second ago. Mateo launched himself backward, his slime-enhanced joints absorbing the impact as he rolled to his feet.

A figure dropped from the building's roof, cracking the pavement on landing.

Mateo recognized her immediately. The athletic frame in the tight black bodysuit, now armored with chrome plating that covered her chest, joints, and back. A sleek helmet with a transparent visor. The woman who'd vanished when the Shadow Man infiltrated their base.

Eschart.

"Ha! So you really are real!" She laughed, but the sound had an edge to it. Not threatened by his pitiful appearance—amused by it.

Looking down at himself, Mateo could see why. Torn costume, dried blood, the stench of death clinging to his gear. Maybe he looked less intimidating in daylight.

Eschart looked better than before. Her chrome armor was more complete now, and her gauntlets seemed sleeker. Wisps of smoke curled from her right index finger where the electricity had originated.

"Honestly, can't believe you actually exist." Her silver hair spilled from beneath her helmet, contrasting with those cobalt blue eyes. When she looked at him, electricity seemed to run down his spine—though that was fear, not attraction. "Reports kept coming back. Rumors about some freak with black horns. They call you the Green Demon."

She stepped closer, power crackling around her fingertips. "Officially, you've taken out fifty of our people."

"Fifty-eight," Mateo corrected.

Her eyes lit up with something between trepidation and excitement. "Incredible." She looked him over like she was appraising a weapon, her gaze darkening into something that looked like rage. "Don't tell me... you're that kid who ambushed us at the base? You're from Reeves' AA team, aren't you?"

Her voice rose with each word, anger building like a storm front.

Mateo said nothing, settling into his fighting stance—arms raised, legs planted wide and firm.

"Silent type, huh?" Eschart chuckled, but there was no humor in it now. She cracked her neck and bounced on her toes. Sparks flew off her armor, and the air itself seemed to crackle with rising tension. "You think I'm impressed? I'm pissed. You made us look like idiots. Do you have any idea what the King does to people who fail him?"

Her smile twisted into something predatory. "I haven't had a decent fight in weeks. Think you can put up something fun?"

Mateo remained silent, as always.

"This should be interesting," Alec said, phasing back into existence at the edge of his vision.

Mateo's hand went to the bulge in his pocket compartment where his brother's remaining horn rested—the real one, not the hallucination. At least he had that memento. That reminder of what he was fighting for.

Eschart dropped into a combat stance, electricity dancing between her fingers like living things. Her eyes held the kind of wild intensity that came from too much violence and not enough restraint.

Mateo's heart hammered against his ribs, but his resolve crystallized like ice in his chest.

I will win, he thought, watching sparks cascade down her arms. I will destroy every villain.

For you, Alec.

Alec said nothing as Eschart lunged forward with lightning speed, electricity trailing behind her like the tail of a comet.