The silence that followed his words barely lasted the time it takes for a heart to beat three times, but it wasn't fear that filled the void, but a stupid fury.
The group of costumed psychopaths did not have the mental capacity to comprehend the magnitude of the being they were facing.
They only saw their "partner" fly through the air and, far from being cowed, the direct violence acted like gasoline on the fire of their madness.
"Kill that son of a bitch!"
One of the clowns abruptly raised a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun and, without hesitating an instant, aimed directly at Lief's chest.
Boom
Quinn felt her heart stop in her chest and closed her eyes tightly again, waiting for the terrible sound of flesh being torn apart.
"...."
However, it never came.
Opening her eyes trembling, she saw an illogical scene: Lief was still standing in the same place with the same expression.
But in front of him, the air seemed to ripple, forming an invisible barrier where the pellets had stopped dead, suspended for a fraction of a second before losing all their energy and falling.
Dealing with such a rudimentary attack was... truly disappointing.
"You know? I don't know why but I expected something more from you...," he sighed, Lief took a single step forward, and that simple movement was enough for the armed clown's pupils to contract with panic.
He tried to back away clumsily, while his fingers searched frantically for new cartridges in his pockets, but his time had run out.
Swish
"Ugh…"
Lief's figure blurred and the next instant, the clown felt a bestial pressure closing around his throat.
Crack
Without sparing him a second glance, Lief threw the inert body to the side.
And now the carnage began.
He launched himself toward the center of the circus, moving among the clowns who were barely starting to react.
"Aaaah!"
One, armed with a demolition hammer, let out a bestial roar and unloaded a downward blow with all his strength, seeking to crush Lief's skull.
However, Lief simply raised his left hand and caught the head of the hammer in mid-flight, stopping dead an impact that would have pulverized cement.
!
The clown stood paralyzed, pulling uselessly on the handle, unable to comprehend how his blow had been nullified so easily.
Looking him in the eyes, Lief closed his fingers slowly.
The metal screeched under the pressure of his fingers until the solid steel head deformed, turning into a twisted mass.
And without letting go of the ball of scrap, he used the momentum to throw a brutal backhand blow.
Boom
The fist, wrapped in the metal, impacted squarely on the chest of another clown who was coming running with a sickle in his hand.
The sound of ribs collapsing was atrocious, and the force of the impact lifted the man off the ground, sending him flying several meters back, landing on the earth already lifeless.
"HE IS A DAMN MONSTER!" shouted one of them with absolute terror.
Finally, the reality of the situation penetrated their sick minds and fear replaced fury.
They tried to turn around, seeking desperately to get lost among the corn, but Lief had no intention of leaving loose ends.
Swish
The clown running in the lead suddenly felt an icy breeze on the back of his neck followed by a strange lightness.
His vision of the world spun violently, seeing the sky, then the corn, and finally his own headless body that kept running a couple of steps more before collapsing.
Stopping in front of everyone, Lief shook off the thick blood covering the sickle he had just snatched from one of them.
"Why run so fast? The party has barely just begun," he said with a polite tone.
With those words, the spirit of the last clowns broke completely.
They dropped their weapons and dropped to their knees, raising their hands and babbling incoherent pleas before the death that watched them.
"Please don't kill me! I beg you! We made a mistake!"
"Forgive us! We won't dare to do it again!"
"Tell that to the people you murdered," Lief replied with a monotonous voice and with that his figure became blurred again.
The air filled with a symphony of violence, the dry sound of punches breaking bones with the ease of dry twigs, the swoosh of the sickle cutting flesh, and the heart-rending screams that ceased abruptly.
The entire process didn't take more than sixty seconds.
When Lief crushed the skull of the last clown with a kick, the entire world went silent.
"..."
Quinn and Ronnie, now pressed against the truck, were petrified, turned into two statues of terror in the middle of a real slaughterhouse.
Before them stretched a scene for which the human mind was not made.
Shattered bodies with twisted limbs, scattered organs, and clown masks soaked in blood.
And the man who had created all this massacre stood in the center of the pool of blood and viscera, immaculate, without a single stain on his jacket.
Without showing the slightest emotion at the scene, Lief swept the place with his gaze and, suddenly, seemed to detect something on the ground.
Approaching, he bent down next to Matt's head, whose eyes remained open in an expression of horror that would never find rest.
Next to the severed face lay a small clown doll with a strange smile and red hair.
Picking up the doll, he examined it for an instant and casually put it in his pocket.
He was done.
Without saying a word to the girls, he began to walk toward the road.
Seeing that tall figure was about to disappear from her sight, an inexplicable impulse forced Quinn to use the last reserves of her voice to shout the only question that mattered.
"Who... who are you?!"
Lief's steps did not stop and without turning, he raised his right hand in a gesture of farewell.
"Batman"
He finished speaking just as he was getting on his motorcycle, without giving Quinn time to react or respond.
Boom
The violent roar of the engine sounded again and the black motorcycle instantly became a lightning bolt that devoured the asphalt, and soon disappeared at the end of the road.
'Batman...'
Quinn chewed on that absurd word, looking at the corpses scattered around her.
________
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