Make sure to check my Patre.on out if you want to support me and want to read advanced chapters: Patre.on.com/VQuintessence
[20 Chapters in Advance on Patre.on]
...........
Chapter 37: KING SHIT!
...........
His eyes had just registered the impossible light when it reached him.
The plasma beam, fired from The Harvester far away, passed through Bullseye's torso.
There was no explosion, just a brief, sun-hot flash.
Where a master assassin had stood, now there was only the lower half of his body, his legs, toppling to the ground.
The rest of him; from the waist up; had been deleted from existence, vaporized into superheated gas.
The edges of the severed legs were cauterized into a blackened, glassy crust. No blood. Just the smell of cooked meat.
He was cooked alive, and the chef wasn't careful. The steak was beyond well done.
The beam continued, punching a molten, glowing hole deep into the asphalt before winking out.
Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the distant fire and Frank Castle's ragged breaths.
He stood frozen, his charge halted, staring at the space where his enemy had been.
[HOLY FUCKING SHIT!]
[HE DELETED BULLSEYE!]
[That was the PLASMA SNIPER! The Harvester!]
[Adam just one-shotted a major villain! What the actual hell?!]
[I want to say that's anticlimactic, but what the fuck, that looked so cool!!]
[So fucking bloody. Way way too much gore.]
Frank slowly looked up, his gaze tracing the imaginary line back through the city skyline to where the shot must have originated.
Strangely, it came from the opposite side of the first sniper shot. Were there two snipers?
He was in a daze, not expecting that at all.
Adam mustn't have told him the whole plan. He turned his eyes to the remains of Bullseye; just the lower half, standing for a moment like a macabre sculpture before toppling over.
If Adam were here, Frank mused with a grimace, the weirdo would probably call for a barbecue party and brag about the "flavor profile" like the artist he pretended to be.
[Frank's internal monologue is spot on! Adam totally would!]
[He'd call it 'artisanal vaporization' or something.]
[The fact that Frank is even thinking this shows how much Adam has gotten into his head.]
It was unnerving. Someone as lethally skilled as Bullseye had been erased from existence in a heartbeat.
What the fuck was that shot? Since when did the world move on from bullets to… energy weapons?
It felt wrong. But Frank was a pragmatist, kinda. With police sirens wailing in the distance, he vanished into the maze of Hell's Kitchen's sewer systems, a blood-soaked ghost.
The authorities had indeed surrounded the area, but experience had taught them a grim lesson.
Charging into an active super-powered or gangland conflict in this neighborhood was a recipe for a body bag lottery.
They set a perimeter, evacuated civilians, and waited for the storm to pass.
Miles away, on a different rooftop, Adam Cypher was dealing with the consequences of his power.
The plasma shot from The Harvester was not truly lightspeed, but it was inhumanly fast.
Perhaps a fully alert Bullseye, with his preternatural senses, could have reacted.
But he had been mid-leap, if only for a split second, but it was enough. Adam had prioritized raw, overwhelming power, and it had paid off.
The cost, however, was immense. A single shot consumed an entire energy magazine.
The specific energy cells were proprietary Hydra tech he hadn't yet reverse-engineered; he only had a limited supply salvaged from the facility.
He was, however, working on using a different energy source for it.
The weapon itself was another issue; massive, heavy, and utterly impractical for quick deployment.
The scene now was Adam, humming cheerfully as he disassembled the colossal rifle.
"Tatata, Tatata, Tatata," He sang, his voice light and entirely at odds with the act of packing away a weapon of mass destruction.
"Ta, Tatata, Tatata, Tatata
Ta
Tatata, Tatata, Tatata
Ta, Tatata, Tatata, Tatata
Taaaa..."
He sang in Dutch, his pronunciation surprisingly good.
"Voor ik vergeet dat hier een kerk heeft gestaan
Voor ik vergeet dat ik jarig was
En een Tic-Tac in mijn neusgat had toen we naar Zeeland zijn gegaan
Voor ik vergeet, Koninginnedag."
[Why does he know Dutch?!]
[Oooh, I know that song. Voor ik vergeet is the name, I think.]
[This is the most bizarre post-assassination routine ever.]
He stopped abruptly, holding a capacitor module in his hand. "Can you believe it?"
He said to the empty air. "I'm learning Dutch. But why? Why am I trying to learn every language in the world? It's so fucking idiotic. My OCD is a bitch."
"I really just feel the urge to learn everything, even though I'm already working on an advanced translation app and AR glasses. What is my life?"
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the city's hum. Then, a voice, smooth as silk and sharp as a razor, spoke from the shadows. "I'm surprised you noticed me. How? I made no sound."
Adam didn't jump. He simply chuckled, slotting the capacitor into its foam-lined case. "The smell."
"...The smell?"
"You smell like Virgin Mary, that bitch Eve, and garlic." He closed the case with a definitive click. "Now, garlic, butter, and bread are some lovely, exquisite shit, I'll give you that. But yeah, garlic is heavy."
[HE SMELLED WHAT?!]
["Virgin Mary, that bitch Eve, and garlic." Tf kind of description is that?]
[She must be so confused right now.]
[I've noticed that he has a knack for talking nonsense.]
[To confuse your opponents, you must first confuse yourself -Barack Obama.]
[What????]
[...]
"..." The woman in the shadows was, for the first time in her professional life, utterly speechless.
She was Elektra Natchios, the world's most feared assassin. Naturally, she made sure she was a phantom, scentless, soundless.
And what did the Virgin Mary and Eve have to do with anything? Was this some kind of joke she was too cultured to get?
Adam stood, brushing a speck of dust from his three-piece suit. "You'll have to excuse my language," He said with a sigh.
"I think I'm decently intelligent, but my vocabulary is just getting worse. Street language. Where is the class? The style? The Aura?"
He adjusted his tie. "I blame those dirty novels. I read one that spat profanity faster than the Reverse Flash could count the hairs on the Flash's balls while stroking him. Ludicrous, really."
Elektra was dumbfounded with confusion. She had faced monsters and demons on Earth.
Yet, she had never been subjected to such audacious, nonsensical vulgarity. What had the world come to?
[What?! The Flash is gay? And he's had a relationship with Reverse Flash?]
[No fucking way, how did I not hear of that?]
[Trust me, the truth is worse than you could ever imagine.]
[Search for the famous meme "It was me, Barry".]
[Basically, Reverse Flash states he jerked Barry off so fast it led Barry to believe he nutted instantly at just a woman's touch.]
[Unfortunately, it's not actually canon, just parody, but imagine it was canon.]
[This man's pop culture references are multiversal!]
[Elektra's entire worldview is being shattered by his nonsense.]
Then, Adam did something even stranger. He turned his head slightly, looking directly at a point in space where he felt the audience was watching.
"I should ask you, My Friends. Do I lose style points when I talk like that? Do I gain or lose Aura?"
The audience, of course, exploded.
[YOU GAIN ALL THE AURA! KING SHIT!]
[Never change! This is peak performance!]
[Tf is this show? Why is the main character literally polling his audience mid-assassin confrontation!]
Satisfied with the response, Adam turned his full attention back to the shadows. His demeanor shifted instantly. The street-talk weirdo vanished, replaced by a classy, gentlemanly figure.
"My apologies for the unsightly display," He said, his voice now calm and cultured. "But I assure you, I am not crazy. My imaginary friends are very much real. Lovely, cute fellows. Everything is logical, as all things should be."
Elektra felt a wave of dizziness. He was a paradox; charming yet unhinged, exuding a charisma that was as compelling as it was terrifying.
The Kingpin had indeed found a worthy foe. That was why he had hired her.
She stepped from the shadows, clad in her iconic crimson, twin sai already in her hands.
"Why aren't you worried about your other partner? The one who fired the decoy sniper shot?" The plasma shot and the initial rifle shot had come from opposite directions.
Adam shrugged, picking up his own blade; a sleek, modern thing that hummed with brilliance.
"There is no other partner. It was a mechanical arm with a sniper rifle, controlled remotely. It might sound complex to the likes of you, but it's actually very simple. I'm sure even Frank could do it."
...............................
[ 1000 Power Stones For An Extra Chapter!!! ]
...............................