Brooklyn, a quiet neighborhood swallowed by night, had just been turned into Vought's kill net.
Vought's operational speed was fucking terrifying.
Thanks to the pinpoint intel personally "provided" by Homelander, dozens of black unmarked tactical vehicles rolled in like ghosts from every direction, silently locking down every street around Frenchie's underground room.
Doors slid open. Heavily armed elite troops poured out, loaded with the latest anti-supe weapons, moving like trained attack dogs as they finished the encirclement without a sound.
Their Gauss rifles fired special armor-piercing rounds that could punch through superhuman skin, and every soldier carried the cold, professional murder vibe of hardened killers.
At the heart of this deadly force was the real star of the show: the new, patched-together members of The Seven sent to bag some "terrorists."
Queen Maeve stepped out of an armored truck looking bored out of her mind. She scanned the whole over-the-top setup with zero emotion in her eyes.
Lamplighter looked pissed off, flicking flames between his fingers like he couldn't be bothered with this small-time shit.
Stormfront stood with her arms crossed, staring at everything like she could see straight into their souls.
The last one out was the nervous newcomer in the black eye mask.
Blindspot.
Vought had deliberately put him front and center to show off the new guy to the public. If this went well, Blindspot would shoot straight into the spotlight as the next big supe.
He tilted his head, listening. The whole world turned into a crystal-clear 3D map made of sound waves in his ears.
His super hearing sliced through concrete and dirt like nothing.
Seconds later, he locked onto three chaotic, terrified heartbeats pounding underground.
"Found them," he muttered to Queen Maeve behind him. "They're right down there."
The elite troops' commander didn't hesitate.
"Breach!"
A soldier slapped a high-powered plastic explosive onto the plain iron door of the underground room.
Boom!
The iron door exploded in a deafening blast, sending thick smoke and dust billowing everywhere.
Dozens of elite soldiers stormed in, weapons raised and sweeping every corner of the underground room.
But they didn't find three terrified ordinary guys ready to surrender.
They found three brand-new monsters whose powers had gone completely feral, backed into a corner and pushed over the edge.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
A inhuman roar full of pure rage and agony ripped out from deep inside the room.
Billy Butcher charged first.
His twice-enhanced body was mutating right in front of them, turning grotesque.
Thick, black fleshy tentacles exploded out from under the skin of his back and arms like deep-sea octopus limbs.
They whipped around wildly like the Grim Reaper's scythes, smashing the first wave of soldiers backward with ease.
Their tough tactical armor shattered like paper under the raw force, ripping flesh and spraying blood everywhere.
"Fire! Fire!"
The soldiers in the back turned white with terror. They opened up with everything they had, pouring a storm of bullets straight into Butcher.
But the special rounds that could punch through armored vehicles only sparked uselessly against his mutated hide, not even leaving a scratch.
He had become a walking, invulnerable meat grinder that only knew how to kill, carving a bloody path through the cramped underground room.
At the same time, Hughie was losing his shit in the middle of the bullet storm.
Staring at the hellish bloodbath, pure survival instinct made his shaky new teleportation power go haywire.
His body flickered like crazy, vanishing and reappearing all over the room.
One second he was on the east side, the next he popped onto the ceiling, then slammed into a pile of junk.
He wasn't attacking anyone, just bouncing around like a glitchy video game character, but his random spatial jumps made every shot miss and turned the whole enemy formation into total chaos.
One soldier even accidentally blew away his own teammate while trying to track Hughie's flickering ass.
As for Frenchie, he showed exactly what a mad scientist could do.
Frenchie didn't bother fighting head-on. Instead, he used his supercomputer brain to turn the entire underground room into one giant, interconnected death trap.
He stayed behind cover, clutching a remote that looked like a game controller, fingers smashing buttons like crazy.
"Taste this, you bastards!"
He triggered the homemade bombs he'd planted earlier.
Some exploded into thick clouds of corrosive acid that hissed and melted straight through the soldiers' armor.
Others unleashed powerful electromagnetic pulses that fried their comms and targeting systems instantly.
Watching their elite troops getting slaughtered by three "terrorists," Queen Maeve and the rest finally had no choice but to jump in.
A real superhuman bloodbath exploded across the cramped underground room and the streets outside.
...
High above the chaos, on a nearby rooftop, Ryan stood perfectly still, relaxed as hell.
Like a VIP in a theater box, he watched the bloody gladiator show he had personally set up, calm and entertained.
His senses, boosted by multiple powers, let him read every fighter on the battlefield — their abilities, weaknesses, and every move they made.
His first target had been clear from the start.
Blindspot.
The newest, weakest, and greenest member of this rushed-together team.
His super hearing was great for scouting, but on this noisy battlefield packed with explosions, gunshots, screams, and whipping tentacles, it became his worst fucking nightmare.
The constant barrage of sound stabbed into his brain like needles, crippling him with pain and making it impossible to focus.
And his close-combat skills were a joke against a freak like Butcher, whose strength and durability were off the charts now.
Ryan waited patiently for the perfect one-shot opportunity.
It came soon enough.
Blindspot stumbled backward, dodging a brutal tentacle sweep from Butcher, right as Frenchie's flashbang went off right next to him. The bright explosion completely fucked up his sense of direction.
Ryan moved.
His body, boosted by the fused super speed of A-Train and Shockwave, appeared behind Blindspot like actual teleportation, completely silent, without disturbing even a whisper of air.
The chill of death made every hair on Blindspot's body shoot straight up.
!!!
His super hearing caught it — the tiniest sound of air being sliced open right behind him.
Panic exploded in his head and his brain screamed at his body to dodge.
But his body couldn't keep up.
It was already too late.
At some point Ryan had extended Popclaw's sharp obsidian-black claws. They gleamed coldly as he swung his arm with zero hesitation.
Swoosh!
Those claws, capable of shredding anything, ripped across Blindspot's unprotected back like the scythe of death.
They tore through his expensive tactical vest like it was paper, sliced through flesh and bone, and ripped his still-beating, fear-pounding heart clean out of his chest while he was still alive.
"Uh…"
The agony on Blindspot's face froze. He slowly looked down in disbelief at the massive, gaping bloody hole in his chest where blood poured out like a faucet.
Then he toppled forward without a sound.
[Plunder successful! Target: 'Blindspot'.]
[Obtained: Extraordinary Hearing, Echolocation, Master-level Combat Skills…]
The cold system message rang in Ryan's mind.
His figure turned translucent again, melting into the chaos of the battlefield like a drop of ink in water, vanishing completely.
His next target was Lamplighter, who was still uselessly trying to light up the place with fire.
Blindspot's sudden death froze both sides in the middle of the brutal fight.
Queen Maeve and the others stared at their teammate's corpse with its heart ripped out, faces twisted in shock and pure fury.
She roared a warning.
"There's someone else here we can't see! His power is the same as Translucent's!"
___
12 advanced chapters- P@t: slept01