The kid looked at him, frozen.
"Get down and stay down," David said, his voice flat. "Don't lift your head. Don't move. Don't even breathe if you can help it."
"W-Wait, I—"
"No arguments. Just do it."
The kid didn't need to be told twice. He dropped to the ground and scrambled under a nearby table, pulling his hoodie over his head like a turtle retracting into its shell.
David turned toward the backstage door.
*POP POP POP!*
More gunfire. A woman screamed, high and sharp, cutting through the chaos. The sounds of shattering glass and splintering wood filled the air.
Tsk.
Was it the alcohol?
He... felt weaker.
David moved toward the backstage door. His head was buzzing from the alcohol—four drinks deep, maybe five—but he'd been fighting drunk since he was a teenager. His legs knew what to do even when his brain was swimming.
He kicked the door open and walked into... hell.
The backstage area was a wreck. Tables overturned, bottles shattered, blood splattering the walls. A group of men in mismatched gear were exchanging fire from behind makeshift cover, their muzzle flashes illuminating the smoke-filled room like strobe lights.
He ducked behind an overturned table, scanning the chaos.
There were bodies everywhere. Some were groaning. Some weren't moving at all. The lucky ones had been shot in the leg or the arm. The unlucky ones had gotten caught in the crossfire of whatever powers were being thrown around.
In the middle of it all, two people were locked in combat.
One was a woman with long purple hair that seemed to shimmer and shift like liquid, wearing what could generously be called an outfit. Strips of black and purple fabric covered the essentials, but most of her skin was bare, gleaming with a strange reflective sheen. Her body shimmered, flickering like a broken hologram, as she dodged and wove around her opponent's attacks.
He knew that woman.
Mirage. Leader of the Shades. A D-rank illusionist.
The man she was fighting was built like a refrigerator--easily six and a half feet of bulk and muscle wrapped in a worn leather jacket covered in patches and chains. A hockey mask covered his face, the kind from those old horror Jason movies, with dark eyeholes that seemed to swallow the light. His hands were covered in thick gloves that sparked with faint orange light every time they touched something.
David knew the man too.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me..."
David felt his blood run cold.
Flint was B-rank. One of the heaviest hitters in the city's underworld. And he was here, in this cramped backstage area, where a single mistake could blow up the entire building.
"I'm gonna kill you, you masked freak!" Mirage shouted, her voice distorted by some kind of gadget. She gestured, and her illusions shifted, creating copies of herself that darted around the room.
"Fuck fuck fuck..."
Flint could pump a few seconds of charge into any object, and it would blow like a frag grenade. If that guy got pissed enough to start laying hands on the building's structural supports, the whole place would go down in a second.
"Great," David muttered.
The woman lunged, her knives flashing. The giant sidestepped with surprising agility for a man his size, swinging a massive fist at her head. She ducked, rolled, and came up behind him, striking at his back.
Her blade barely scratched his leather jacket.
The giant laughed, a low, gravelly sound. "You're gonna have to do better than that, sweetheart."
"Screw you!" the woman spat, her form flickering as she used her illusions to split into three copies. All of them lunged at once.
He was about to find a way to get between the two of them when he heard it.
"Help! Please, help me!"
He turned. The stripper from the stage, the one who'd winked at him, was crawling through the crossfire. Her costume--a tiny sequined dress that barely covered her ass--was torn. Her leg was bleeding, and she was dragging herself toward a door at the end of the hall. She was terrified, her face pale, her eyes wide as she watched the chaos around her.
A Shade thug spotted her. He grinned, raising a pistol.
David didn't think. He just moved.
Speed was his thing. Even half-drunk, even hungover, he was fast enough to close the distance before the thug could squeeze the trigger. He slammed into the man, tackling him to the ground, and they rolled across the debris-strewn floor.
"Get down!" David shouted at the stripper.
She ducked behind a fallen table. He got a quick glimpse of her, then the Shade thug swung a fist at his head, which he had to block, letting out an annoyed grunt.
The thug was about to fire again when a blur of black and red dropped from the ceiling, landing right in front of David.
"Hey, hey, hey! Look who it is! So we meet again, Sonic! My arch-nemesis."
David blinked. Standing in front of him was a lean guy in a cheap red ninja outfit that had seen better days. A red ninja mask, the kind you'd buy at a Halloween store, covered his face, leaving only his eyes visible. A katana hung across his back, also cheap, probably.
"...You are...?" He tried to remember the name of the man in front of him.
"Oh. It's you." He failed.
"Yes! The one and only Red Shinobi!" The man struck a pose, cape billowing dramatically behind him. "We meet again, Sonic! I've been looking forward to this rematch for a long time!"
"Have you now."
"Yes! Ever since you humiliated me in the warehouse district, I've been training! Meditating! Honing my skills so that I can finally defeat you and prove that I am the—"
"Cool, cool. Listen, man." David gestured vaguely at the chaos around them. "I'm kinda in the middle of something here. Can we reschedule?"
Red Shinobi blinked. "What? No! This is my moment! I've been waiting for this!"
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"Busy saving a whore?" Shinobi tilted his head. "Didn't peg you for the heroic type. Thought you'd given that up after—"
"Don't."
Shinobi laughed.
"Touched a nerve, did I? Good. That makes this more fun."
David sighed.
"Come on, there's literally a guy with OP bullshit explosion powers a few feet away, and I'm pretty sure if he gets mad, we all die, so if you could just—"
"You're not taking me seriously!"
"I'm not taking you seriously."
"Exactly!" Shinobi pointed a finger at him, voice cracking with indignation. "That's your problem! You always underestimate me! But this time is different! This time I've grown stronger!"
David sighed and checked the hallway. Mirage had managed to separate herself from Flint, and the two were now fighting through a doorway that led deeper into the club. The gunfire was still going, but it was more scattered now.
"Okay, you know what? Fine. Let's get this over with."
Shinobi's eyes lit up behind his cheap mask. "Yes! Finally! A serious figh—"
David turned back to Shinobi just in time to catch the next strike.
*CLANG!*
The force of the blow threw him off balance. He didn't have a weapon—his gloves weren't designed for combat—so he had to rely on his speed and agility to avoid Shinobi's slashes.
David moved.
He closed the distance in a blink, throwing a punch at Shinobi's head. In the past, it would've connected clean.
But something was wrong.
He was slower.
His footwork was sloppier. His reactions were delayed by a fraction of a second. The alcohol in his system was making him sluggish, and his nights of drinking and cheap hookups had taken their toll on his body.
He felt weaker.
Shinobi ducked. Not exactly dodging, but it was enough to avoid the blow.
"Whoa! Close one!" The man hopped back, grinning. "Looks like you're not as fast as you used to be, Sonic!"
David gritted his teeth. He threw another punch. Shinobi dodged again, this time with an embarrassing amount of room to spare.
"Huh? Wait... You seriously got weaker." The grin in Shinobi's voice was unmistakable. "Were you fucking slacking all this time... or is it the alcohol? I can smell it on you, heh. Did your girlfriend's death really--"
"Go to hell," David muttered, throwing a kick.
Shinobi stepped aside and grabbed his ankle. "Man, this is too easy! I trained for a long time to beat you, and now you're just..." He laughed, shoving David back. "A sad, drunk loser!"
David stumbled. He caught himself on a fallen chair, his head pounding.
Shinobi circled him, his steps light and playful.
"What happened to you? Did the guilt finally catch up? Did you start drowning yourself in cheap whiskey because you can't live with what you did?"
"I said go to hell!"
David lunged.
He was faster this time—the anger burning away some of the alcohol-induced fog. He feinted left, then drove his right fist into Shinobi's ribs.
Shinobi grunted, stumbling back.
"Ow. Okay. That actually hurt."
"Good."
David pressed the advantage. His punches were wild, sloppy, but they were landing. And each hit fueled him, pushing him past the pain and exhaustion.
Shinobi fought back, his blades flashing, but David was too close now. He couldn't get the distance he needed to use his weapons properly.
Fuck.
He felt weaker.
Shinobi was E-rank. A jobber-tier villain who made his living on the fringes of the criminal underworld. He wasn't a threat to anyone above D. He was a footnote in the records of the heroes who'd fought him. A minor nuisance. He'd beaten this clown at least four times in the past, and he'd never even worked up a sweat.
But right now, he was moving through molasses.
Shinobi lunged again. He threw a punch that was laughably telegraphed, but David was too slow to dodge it properly. It clipped his jaw, and he tasted blood.
"Ugh—"
"See? See? I'm actually hitting you! Me, Red Shinobi! The guy who's been clowned on by every hero in this city! I'm finally beating a D-rank!"
David wiped blood from his lip.
He felt we—
You know what? No. It doesn't matter what he felt. He wasn't about to lose to that fucking clown.
He straightened up, rolled his shoulders, and looked the man dead in the eye.
"Okay. Enough."
"Enough what? You've got nothing left, Sonic! Just give up and I might let you crawl out of here alive!"
David walked toward him.
Shinobi threw another punch. David grabbed it out of the air.
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He twisted, hard. There was a wet popping sound, and Shinobi screamed, dropping to one knee.
That was the problem with villains. They always overestimated their strength when the odds were in their favor.
They were usually so used to bullying blanks and normal people, feeling like gods with their powers. And rarely fighting people stronger than them.
While heroes had to fight two to three villains daily on average.
They forgot what it felt like to actually fight someone with more experience.
"Ah-ah-ah— shit, fuck! Let go, let go!"
"It's just alcohol." David's voice was calm, almost bored. "And the grief. And the exhaustion. But mostly the alcohol."
"Please, please, please—"
"But I'm NOT weak."
David elbowed him in the face. His mask went flying, revealing the face of a man in his mid-thirties with acne scars and a weak-looking chin. Red Shinobi hit the ground and didn't get up.
"I'll let you live, since I'm not a murderer." David stepped over him, already scanning the corridor for the stripper. "But if I see you again, I might make an exception for the no kill rule—"
*BOOM!*
The wall exploded outward in a shower of brick and dust. David threw himself to the side, covering his head as debris rained down around him. The backstage area—what was left of it—became a warzone as Flint and Mirage crashed through into the main club floor.
"Shit, shit, shit. This is bad."
Flint was on the move. He was walking through the club like a force of nature, touching tables, chairs, bottles, anything within reach. Each object he touched swelled with orange light for a split second before detonating in a concussive blast that sent shrapnel and splinters flying.
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*
People screamed. People died. One man caught a blast to the chest and was thrown across the room, his shirt aflame. He hit a wall and crumpled, not moving. A woman tried to run, but a shattered bottle cut her legs out from under her. She went down in a spray of blood.
The whole place was turning into a tomato soup.
David grabbed the injured stripper, throwing her over his shoulder. Even through his numb haze, he could feel she was shaking violently.
"Please, don't leave me—"
"I'm not leaving you." He moved, fast as he could through the chaos. A speedster's blessing: he could cross the room in seconds, weaving between falling debris and panicked civilians.
He carried her to the fire exit, kicked the door open, and set her down outside in the alley.
"Stay here. Don't move. Someone will find you."
"Thank you—"
He was already gone.
Back inside was chaos. Flint and Mirage had taken their fight to the main floor, and bodies were piling up. David caught glimpses of the fight as he moved—Mirage leaping from wall to wall like a damn acrobat, her shimmering body flickering in the strobe lights, creating afterimages that confused and disoriented her opponent. Flint countered by simply exploding everything around him, a walking artillery piece that didn't need to be accurate when he could just make the whole area uninhabitable.
"You fucking thief!" Flint roared, his voice distorted through the hockey mask. He slammed his hand against a table, and it erupted, sending shrapnel at Mirage.
She flipped, dodging most of it, hissing as a splinter caught her shoulder. "Like hell I'd give it to you, you overgrown firecracker!"
"Just return the fucking Enigma and I'll let you live!"
"Like hell I would!"
David's eyes narrowed.
"Enigma..." he muttered under his breath.
He didn't know what that was. Some kind of artifact? A prototype weapon? He'd never heard the name before. But it was clearly important enough for a B-rank like Flint to personally come down with the gang, and petty enough for this two-bit criminal to hold onto it while a whole club turned into a warzone.
He noticed a small black box clutched in Mirage's hand. It was about the size of a paperback book, with strange glowing markings on its surface. She hadn't used it, which meant either she couldn't, or she was saving it for something.
And there was another thing.
Flint wasn't trying to kill her.
He threw punch after punch, explosion after explosion, but every shot was aimed just wide enough to miss. He was treating her like a threat he wanted to catch, not one he wanted to eliminate. The result was that the rest of the room was getting caught in his blasts instead.
Is he... trying not to hurt the box? Or is he trying not to hurt her?
David shook his head. Don't think. Move.
He spotted another woman hiding behind an overturned table. A waitress, young, terrified out of her mind. David moved, scooping her up and dodging a blast that would've turned her into ash.
"Come on, come on, move!"
Another one. A bouncer, bleeding from a gash on his head. He was heavy, but David was fast. He got him to the exit in seconds.
"Get out. Go!"
He moved back inside.
The club was a wreck now. The stage was torn apart. Support pillars were cracked, with chunks of concrete missing from where Flint had touched them. The ceiling was starting to sag. Any moment now, the whole structure might come down.
"Fuck!"
Flint and Mirage were still fighting, and they were getting closer and closer to the spot where the creepy kid was hiding. David could see the kid still under the table, his hoodie pulled over his head, unmoving.
He was... being surprisingly calm about the whole thing.
Maybe he's too scared to move. Or maybe he was just an idiot.
"Shit!"
David ran.