Dan

Dan ran up to the edge of the landing pad and pulled his leg back. He lashed out and kicked Kate Razor in the chin, stopping her from climbing onto the platform and kicking her back down to the floor of the roof. During this, Dan had time to power up.

The familiar, yet excruciating pain returned as muscles throughout his body swelled up and bulged in size.

Berserk mode activated.

Before Dan hopped off the landing platform to deal with Kate and Adam, he heard someone shouting at him.

“Dan! Enemy aircraft on your right!” The shouting came from Li. His teammate fired another burst of shredder rounds, blowing the face off of another Kodak agent.

Dan turned and stared at a ship hovering in the air somewhat above the roof. It wasn’t the same eagle head design as the Alpha dropship. Since it was an unknown aircraft, he had to assume it was an enemy’s.

He watched in horror as the minigun barrels on the wings of this craft began spinning. Dan instinctively ran forward and dived off the landing pad. He didn’t stick the landing as he smashed into the ground on his left side. He stared at the aircraft still hovering in the air until a missile struck just under its cockpit and sent it down into the rain and hail.

“Don’t worry I got this,” Angie yelled.

Dan felt his hot tears mix in with the rain water on his face.

He then remembered the threat of the razor hail and quickly rolled himself out of the path of a ice shard. He didn’t feel like swallowing any hail today.

Dan didn’t have time to remain lying down as he narrowly rolled away from getting his head stomped by a dark boot. Dan got back to his feet and was suddenly face to face against a bloodied and pissed off Adam Torrent.

The Kodak agent pulled his arm back and shot out his fist. Dan nearly gave himself whiplash by swerving his head out of the way of the quick punch. He followed up with his own punch right into Adam’s abdomen before grabbing him by the neck.

Dan employed none of the martial arts techniques he learned from his training with Jane. His muscles were already crying out to him in pain and the bleeding from eyes only intensified. He just needed to deliver the hardest hitting blows he could against Kate and Adam. Dan reached into his coat and grabbed the throwing knives Li had tossed to him.

Spotting a small gap in between Adam’s thigh and knee guard, Dan brought down one of his knives into the gap, burying it deep into the agent’s flesh and penetrating the chink in the armor. Using his monstrous strength from the berserk mode, Dan shoved the knife into Adam’s leg as hard as he could, even through the resistance of what he assumed to be bone.

Adam let out an intense scream. He tried grabbing Dan’s wrists with both hands, but Dan’s tightening grip on his neck preventing any hope of the Kodak agent getting free.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Dan said in a strained voice. “How does it feel to be in such a hopeless fight you can’t win? You made me feel the same mix of emotions back when we first met. I hope you savor this, asshole.”

Dan grabbed a second throwing knife and got ready to jam the blade into Adam’s neck. Midway through the motion, Dan coughed up blood from a surprise kick to the side. He let go of Adam’s neck and rolled across the wet ground of the roof. He stopped himself by extending his arm and grabbing onto one of the metal pipes underneath the landing platform. Dan pulled himself up back onto his feet.

Dan hacked and coughed up more blood. He staggered, struggling to maintain his balance. Looking ahead, it was obvious who kicked him. Kate stood facing him head on with grim determination. She glanced down looking at Adam’s injured state. Dan took in this moment and simply laughed. The strain the berserk mode caused him combined with the amount of blood still in his throat made for a unsettling and raspy laughter from Dan.

He pointed his finger at her. “I’ll make sure worse happens to you, Kate. I’m going to dish out some justice on behalf of the Alpha Corp for what you did to my team. Get ready, bitch.”

In the brief stare down between Dan and the one his anger boiled the most towards, he caught more aircraft in his peripheral vision. Dan could hear the air being slashed above him, the familiar sound of helicopter rotar blades. How helicopters could still manage stable flight was beyond Dan’s guess, but from a single glance he knew they didn’t belong to Alpha.

Luckily, Angie also caught to this and Dan had the pleasure of watching a grenade arc its way toward one of the two helicopters in the air. The grenade didn’t hit its mark, but it forced one of the choppers to bank sharply to avoid being hit. As a twisted consequence of this move, the chopper collided with the second one in midair and the two aircraft fell and crashed the side of the hotel in flames.

The umbrellas around them continued to hold up against the heavy rainfall and descent of razor hail from the dark skies. The shattering of ice and carbon fragments aginst the nano glass ringed in his ears.

Dan refocused his attention back to Kate, who had already began moving and charged him. He spotted a regular combat knife in her hand and a handgun in the other. She popped off a few shots as she ran and Dan met her challenged and charged herare too. The bullets impacted his coat and his bodysuit.

His HUD popped up with some message of an incoming call but Dan was too focused on the battle to see it properly. He grabbed the Aero SMG off his back, but Kate kicked the weapon out of his hand so hard the SMG smashed to pieces and clattered onto the wet ground.

Dan jerked his HUD abruptly to the side, narrowly dodging a close shot from Kate’s pistol. The shot caused intense wringing in his left ear. He grabbed the pistol and squeezed with his hand, crushing the handgun with his monstrous grip.

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Just below Dan’s torso, his hand just barely intercepted Kate’s attempt jab to his gut with her knife. While he knew he wore decent body armor, he knew not to underestimate the strength of a tier two agent like Kate, even if they only had a knife.

His HUD popped up a message, this time in a bright over-exposed red instead of the normal blue text.

Warning: your body is breaking down. Multiple organs ruptured and internal bleeding throughout.

Dan and Kate stood deadlocked once again, with Kate trying to get in a stab with her knife and Dan’s monstrous strength keeping the blade at bay thanks to his berserk mode. Kate was slightly taller than Dan, though he still caught movement over Kate’s shoulder. He cursed under his breath as he saw Adam struggle to get himself back on his feet.

Dan abruptly disengaged from his struggle with Kate as he rushed over to Adam, who still wasn’t back on his feet. He stomped his boot into the Kodak agent’s face then grabbed him by the collar of his armor. Dan using his strength hoisted the large and imposing agent. He glanced upward and knew a way he could end this fight, even though it was anti-climatic in his opinion.

Equipping his silenced pistol, Dan shot out thre of the poles holding up an umbrella behind him. The intense winds ripped the final pole from the ground and the storm carried away the umbrella, leaving more of the roof exposed to the rain and razor hail.

Kate stared at him with her eyes wider than Dan had ever seen.

“That’s right bitch, you know exactly what I’m about to do,” Dan said. He never ever thought he would be in a situation where he had to dangle a hostage over his enemy. “Come any closer, and your boyfriend gets thrown into that exposed patch. He’ll be a pin cushion filled with hards of razor hail by the time the storm is over. Back off and get the fuck out of my face or else.”

It was a desperate move, one that Dan had only thought of in the moment. The berserk mode had pushed his physique past its breaking point and every muscle and bone in his body cried out for him to stop and rest. Dan knew he had to end this shit quickly, even if he didn’t get the final punch in. Hopefully, Kate still had some shred of humanity left to care about her lover and backed off.

Kate stared at him for a moment but then raised her knife at him. Dan had forgetten that Kate was still a tier two who wouldn’t back down so easily. Dan, not knowing what the hell she was thinking, suffered a sudden piercing sensation through his head as a terrible headache developed from his overuse of the berserk form.

He forcibly shut his eyes from the pain and Adam’s body that he held in his grasp was yanked away from him. Dan opened his eyes again and saw Kate had snatched her boyfriend back and him down to the side underneath an umbrella.

While the agent was nowhere near in fighting condition, Dan did not fuck around. He used his glare and stared at Adam with all the anger and hate he could manage in that moment and once again set the Kodak agent ablaze with more flames, an inferno powered by Dan’s hatred and otherworldly influence.

Listening to Adam’s screams and watching him roll around in the rain trying to put out the fires distracted Dan just long enough for Kate to shove her knee into his groin.

A brief but intense electrifying pain shot through Dan’s crotch and then the rest of his body from such a cheapshot attack. But his berserk mode immediately compensated, fast enough for Dan to bring his arms up to block another kick from Kate.

The force of the kick knocked Dan’s pistol of out his hands and the weapon slid across the wet ground meters away.

Dan grabbed Kate by the shoulder and used whatever strength he had left to give but gripping her shoulder piece and squeezing. Dan’s monstrous strength allowed him to dig his fingers into the armored plating, gradually before Kate screamed and Dan could feel her soft flesh with his fingers.

He continued digging his fingers into Kate’s shoulder, but couldn’t confirm how much damage he had done. Dan coughed up a huge wad of blood and the red bioelectricity the radiated throughout his armor abruptly cut out. In an instant, Dan could no longer feel his power anymore and his body didn’t have the strength to even stand. He collapsed onto his back. At the very least, Dan saw his fingers drenched and dripping with Kate’s blood.

The moment he slammed his back onto the wet pavement and feel the heavy rain pounding his face, Dan felt every single second of his use of the berserk form. Dan never knew until this moment that it was possible for every fiber of one’s being to scream out in pain like this.

He couldn’t hold back the groans of agony as he lay on the ground. His muscles were still swollen to such an unbelievable degree. His body armor felt tight, as if he was being crushed to death by his own threads. The strains and possible tearing of his muscles from the berserk form in addition to the swelling within his form fitting suit resulted in a never ending loop of pains everywhere in his body.

The only thing that made this moment even marginally bearable was seeing Kate fall to her knees clutching her mangled shoulder piece. Her right arm went slack from Dan’s relentless crushing of her shoulder piece, and Dan mustered up the willpower and energy to flash Kate a toothy grin at what he did. He tilted his head slightly even though the minute gesture sent waves of pain throughout his neck. Adam was on the ground with light embers still lingering on his arms and back. He hadn’t moved a muscle since Dan set him on fire a second time.

It was a short moment of triumph in Dan’s mind. While Kate still wasn’t dead, the look on her face and the rage in her gaze towards him was glorious indeed. Her boyfriend laid smoldering on the ground behind her and she was brought down to her knees with an injured shoulder by someone who was supposedly far beneath her in rank and power.

Dan found it odd that Kate remained on her knees, staring at him while clutching her wounded shoulder. Any time she could have took out a healing stim and simply injected herself to get back into action. Actually, Dan had never seen any Kodak agent use a healing item before.

Kate eventually forced herself back up and walked over to him. She stopped just a few paces away from him while holding her combat knife in her other hand. Her other arm was still limp by her side as she stood bent over looking at Dan.

She took a few ragged breaths. “I have no fucking clue how you became this much of a pest. But this,” she held up her knife, “will put a smile on my face after everything that has happened.”

If Dan was about to die here, he wasn’t going to beg for his life. He would die knowing he pissed off his killer.

Dan flashed his teeth at the traitor. “It would put a smile on my face too, bitch. I take whatever wins I can get. To whoever your new boss is, if they ask you how you got that shoulder wound and why Adam got cooked, tell them you have me to thank.”

In the chaos that was the heavy rain and hail hammering everything around him, the gunfire from Li and Angie holding off the other Kodak agents, as well as the waves of pain coursing throughout his swollen body, Dan almost missed a missile fly past his vision.

A second later, a giant blinding explosion lit up the sky behind Dan. Even he could feel the heat of the explosion wash over him even through the rain. He looked at his would be killer and saw that Kate was no longer looking at him.

“Get back!” Dan heard, knowing the shout came from Li.

Dan wondered what the hell was happening and then had his question answered. A flaming wreck of twisted airborne metal flew above him and skidded off the edge of the landing platform and crashed onto the roof.

Kate had dived out of the way and Dan watches whatever remained of the Kodak forces scatter like headless animals.

He still had no idea how he still drew breath.