"Whoa! That was totally radical!" Michelangelo screamed excitedly.
"Focus!" Leonardo snapped, though a hint of shock flashed in his eyes as well. Hawk had greatly alleviated the pressure on the Turtles. He was like a moving fortress and energy turret, his fighting style simple, efficient, and powerful—distinct from the Turtles' but perfectly complementary.
Yet, the enemy was utterly insane.
One Super Soldier, whose arm had been severed by Raphael and was now in a full-blown frenzy, ignored the agonizing pain and the constantly oozing green blood. Its chest and severed limb suddenly flared with an extremely dazzling, unstable green light. Donatello's computer shrieked, a sound that pierced the eardrums.
"Energy readings off the charts! Core's gone critical! He's going to detonate! High yield! Get clear! Clear out now!" Donatello's voice was filled with despair!
The Super Soldier let out a final, chilling roar, dragging its crippled body as it rushed forward with life-burning speed. The horrifying energy wave generated by the self-destruct mechanism warped the very air.
"No!" Emily screamed and shut her eyes.
April also felt the suffocating grip of death. Raphael and Leonardo were too far away, and Michelangelo was tangled up with a group of ninjas.
Hawk's eyes narrowed. He couldn't retreat. Behind him were two utterly defenseless women.
In a flash of an instant, Hawk charged forward instead of retreating. He shot toward the self-destructing Super Soldier like a hunting cheetah.
BOOM—!!!
A cataclysmic explosion. Far more violent than any explosion before. A destructive green energy mixed with flesh and metal fragments erupted violently. The entire sewer base shook violently. Pipes overhead burst, pouring down sewage like a waterfall. Blinding light and thick smoke swallowed everything.
"Hawk!" Emily and April screamed simultaneously.
"Dude!" Michelangelo's heart sank.
But as the saying goes, all smoke, no damage.
As the dense smoke slowly cleared… a figure was still standing at the center of the blast.
It was Hawk!
Wisps of smoke curled off his body. His clothes were shredded, and his exposed torso was slick with flowing green liquid.
He had held the line.
Feeling the energy coursing through his body again, Hawk gave a slight grunt. His Level 2 Energy Absorption, while not as strong as someone like Sebastian Shaw's, was more than enough to handle this low-level threat. He had absorbed the vast majority of the explosion's energy and the deadly shockwave. Only the energy blasting upward, which he couldn't absorb, caused the pipes to burst. Emily and April were merely thrown to the ground by the residual concussive force.
When the two women looked up, a shocking scene unfolded before them. Beneath Hawk's feet was a charred crater, but its size was confined to a mere half-meter radius around him. His expensive clothes had been completely incinerated, revealing muscled contours that were both powerful and aesthetically sculpted, like they were carved by a master artist.
"Ahem…" Hawk felt the scorching intensity of the women's stares and gave a strategic cough. Hot steam rose from his body.
"Hawk! Are you alright?!" Leonardo asked urgently, slashing down the enemy in front of him.
"You'd better get me a new shirt immediately," Hawk half-joked, scanning the enemies who were momentarily stunned by the explosion. "It's not over. These flies are too much trouble, the space is too confined, and I've got two liabilities."
While the explosion cleared the enemies from the core area, it completely destroyed the cover and exposed their position. The base structure was severely compromised and could collapse at any moment.
"We can't stay! The base is coming down! Everyone evacuate! Route B! Move!" Leonardo decided instantly. "Take them! Hawk, stick close!"
Raphael savagely sliced through the last few blocking ninjas. Hawk tucked one woman under each arm and followed the Turtles' retreat. The other three Turtles covered the rear.
"This way! Hurry!" Donatello pointed to a narrow passage, half-collapsed, strewn with twisted rebar and dripping sewage.
The group, enduring falling debris and water flow, squeezed into the passage after Hawk set the two women down.
The pursuing ninjas rushed forward again in a frenzy.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Hawk saw a group of lithe, ghost-like ninjas using a momentary lapse in the Turtles' suppressing fire. With dazzling flips and slides, they tried to breach the side defense line and close in on Emily and April behind him. Hawk's eyes narrowed, and a brilliant, crimson-gold light flared within them.
In that instant, the air temperature in the entire space violently spiked, carrying an ominous premonition of metal about to melt.
In a flash, two beams of pure, blinding crimson-gold light erupted from Hawk's deep-set eyes. The light was so concentrated and fierce it was as if two small suns had been instantly ignited and compressed into beams, shooting forward with the destructive power to incinerate everything in their path.
SZZZZT—!!!
A sharp, ear-splitting shriek tore through the air, far exceeding the sound of any ordinary laser, more like an ultra-high-pressure furnace venting its uncontrollable energy. The two beams, each about two fingers wide, like the world-ending breath of a mythical dragon, locked with incredible precision onto the shoulder armor of the two lead ninjas and the weapons they held high.
The beams didn't touch the targets, but the extreme heat they contained surpassed the melting point of the ninjas' light armor. The hard alloy shoulder pads instantly softened, melted, and vaporized like ice tossed into a steel-making furnace. A terrifying, smooth-edged, glowing red, smoking hole appeared, with residual metal dripping like melted wax from the edges.
The katanas and shuriken gripped by the ninjas snapped instantly where the beams passed. The breaks were not clean cuts, but distorted, grotesque shapes from being instantly melted, twisted, and partially vaporized by the high heat. The severed weapon ends flew off as if struck by an invisible giant force, spiraling to the ground with a scorching red-hot trajectory.
After piercing the armor and weapons, the remaining power of the beams ruthlessly hit the ninjas' skin and flesh. Their shoulders instantly carbonized and blackened, accompanied by a sickening sizzle and the pungent smell of burnt protein, as thick smoke billowed upward.
——————————
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to my Patreon ——— patreon(.)com/PrimalDemon [remove the parentheses ( )]
There are 50+ advance chapters available for you to read!