Two Hours Later

They arrived at headquarters, after having stopped for fuel. They met no issues after escorting the truck back. Michael unfastened the girl's harness and walked her down to the medical ward in the building. Lani went downstairs to the loading dock to ensure that their weapons weren’t misplaced.

Tom met Michael in the med-bay. “What happened out there Mike?”

Michael shrugged. “Got teleported,” he said softly, “got fucked up, and tore some shit up.”

“You started at a hospital down the block,” Tom said with what appeared to be confusion in his tone, “you end up on the internet squeezing a man's neck till his head pops off, then run into a hospital that spontaneously burns down as you start shooting in it.”

Michael nodded, “this girl had power she no longer has,” he started explaining, “Bernard is dead twice,”

“Twice?” Tom interrupted, “the fuck you mean twice?”

“Little girl here took me to some place where he was alive still,” Michael said, though disbelief was in his own voice, “and I learned of some really nasty shit. And smashed his fuckin head.”

“Hell,” the girl finally spoke up, “I brought him to a dimension in hell where my mother was trapped, He killed both of my fathers and mom took the powers away and she let me feel.” She paused, then opened her mouth to say something but couldn’t. She started sobbing suddenly for what appeared outwardly to be no reason.

“She’s been doing this,” Michael said as he held her upright, “apparently she’d been sensory deprived her entire life and something unblocked her emotions and now she’s feeling them all and can’t figure out how to handle them.”

“We’re gonna have to get her some help with that,” Tom said with a nod.

“Fire doesn’t punish evil as good as his hands!” the girl screamed out loudly, “His hands are more destructive than flames!” She pointed her hand at Michael while glaring her eyes at him. “You take so much delight in the death you cause, you motherfucker!”

Tom waved his hand at the girl and bellowed at her, “that’s enough of this!” Medical staff immediately took her into the behavioral health ward. “Michael,” he said as he turned toward him, “you care to explain where all that came from?”

Michael stood still, staring off with half a smirk on his face. “She’s right,” he said softly, “there’s a couple times I really fuckin liked it.” He started to chuckle a little bit as he thought back to a time years ago.

Venezuela, a bunch of years ago;

Marcus knelt down and held the hand of a small boy who sat against the destroyed house. The kid was hurt badly, his leg broken and his finger twisted around from having been trapped under the fallen structure. Marcus and his men had freed the boy but the family was enraged. Their home was destroyed, and the government would not be sympathetic toward them.

The corpsman in the team quickly made his way to the kid and began bandaging and splinting his leg back together. There wasn’t much conversation, the mother and father just glared at the marines while they worked. Marcus looked to the father and extended his hand to attempt to give some sort of comfort or respect to them. “I know this isn’t easy for you,” he said calmly before the father put his hand up.

“Save your spanish,” the father said before jumping to english, “you being here will bring hardships to us no matter your language.”

“Once he’s done helping your son,” Marcus replied with a tone still maintaining respect, “we’re outta here and you shouldn’t see us again.”

“We better not,” the man said with a snide voice, “they’d kill me if they thought I was helping you.”

Marcus walked away, and stepped over to Michael. The marines with him wore an off-brand set of multicam pants with brown jackets, since this was not a regular team but a MARSOC team. These were the only people who could be sent to support Michael with enough security clearance to catch any glimpse of his work. During this time, Michael was still a well kept secret.

“Yo, sergeant,” Marcus said quietly as he leaned in to talk to Michael, “helping this kid ain’t gonna upset any plans is it?”

Michael shook his head, “the kid’s hurt and we’re here,” he said calmly, “if we do nothing, we’re no better than the garbage that’s chaining these people.” He looked around, glancing at the man and observing his look. Somethings wrong with this guy, he thought to himself. He made his way toward some trees and began slowly walking out of sight of people.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Marcus checked on the corpsman as he worked. “Just about done,” the corpsman said as he finished securing the splint.

“Good,” Marcus said as he gestured to his men to start following Michael.

The Corpsman helped the boy to his feet and started backing away. The rest of the men started gradually walking into a wedge formation off of Marcus. As the men began making their way into a nearby woodline, Michael noticed the man usher his family into the undestroyed part of the house.

After about twenty minutes of walking carefully through the wooded area, a pair of trucks rolled down a path. Michael recognized the sound. Venezuelan Army he thought to himself, search party. He dropped to the ground, the others in the group doing the same.

As they all got low, one of the trucks stopped and started unloading troops. They began gathering on opposite sides of the truck, two squads, one moving in each direction away from the truck. They were preparing to search the woods for the marines. The troops had two platoons worth of soldiers on the search, the marines numbered a squad. After a moment or two, one of the troopers walked straight toward the marines and raised his weapon. No chance to be taken, a marine shot him through his chest twice.

The rest of the marines started engaging targets and dropping troopers like flies. In only a moment, the marines had engaged and killed every trooper. Michael stood up and moved toward the body of a downed enemy and grabbed his rifle. Though he had his own M4 with a holographic sight, he had plans to cause some chaos.

“Marcus,” he said firmly as he started pulling the belt from a pouch of the automatic rifleman, “Get your men out, I’ve got some shit to deal with.”

“We need to wait for you?” Marcus asked him nervously.

“Not really,” Michael said with a smirk, “my handlers will understand if you go back without me.” He checked the chamber of his RPK and chuckled as he found it still chambered. “Stay away from roads,” he called out as Marcus began getting away from him.

Marcus and his men began walking a little faster into the thicker forest as they moved to get as far away from Michael as possible. He had been briefed on Michael as being a ‘welcome instability,’ to be given as much reasonable freedom of movement as possible. A few minutes later, they heard that RPK open fire on something. Another truck had arrived, this one Michael would deal with by himself.

After a few moments, the long bursts of fire stopped. A minute later, a pistol let off a single shot. A few seconds later, another single pistol shot could be heard. This pattern repeated itself about fifteen times before the RPK opened up again and began mowing down another small team of men.

“Did he just execute a bunch of dudes?” One marine asked Marcus as they continued to move.

“That is not our problem,” Marcus said quietly, “he’s part of some project that lets him deal with shit his way.”

The other marines didn’t seem satisfied with this answer, but they knew they only barely had the clearance to hear any further.

Meanwhile, Michael continued to fire away with his RPK into the torso of the last man in a search team who had been dispatched to look for American guerillas in the forest. The noise of the firefight that had stayed localized in the area would mean that it was less suspect that a group of people were headed away from where the fighting had broken out. The last audible weapon was also one of theirs.

Michael shoved the front of the weapon into the chest of the body he had picked it up from and made a mad dash into a thicker area of trees and bushes. Once he found a suitable place to hide, he sat down and pulled a thermal lined poncho covering out of his bag and sat under it.

A few hours later

The marines had made it to their extraction safely. Marcus looked back into the woods, hoping that Michael would appear to join them. Then he remembered his words, my handlers will understand if you go back without me. Marcus realized that he meant purposefully for them to leave without him.

Meanwhile, Michael had finally left his hiding spot. The patrols had quit searching, having found absolutely nothing but death in the wake of something terrible. He had made his way back to the house. He had very dark intentions for the family inside.

The father sat in a chair, drinking what was left of his soup as he stared at the television. The news was reporting about the sanctions against Venezuela and blaming the outside superpowers for the difficulties being faced by the people. The TV didn’t get far into the news report before the TV was kicked over. Michael had kicked it halfway across the room before grabbing the foot stool and throwing it at the mother. The corner of it hit her in the face, stumbling her from being able to get up to flee. The son was still splinted from when the corpsman had helped him, sitting in a hospital safe from Michaels rampage.

Before the man could stand up and try to fight, Michael had drawn his knife and dug it behind his kneecap. Before either of them could do much responding, Michael drew his pistol and pressed it against the woman's head. The man tried pleading with Michael. He wasn’t hearing any of it.

“You want your wife to live?” Michael asked the man who nodded with tears in his eyes. “Funny, I want my people to live too,” he said before shooting the wife twice in the head. He holstered his pistol and pressed his knife against the collarbone of the man. “You almost got my people killed,” he snarled as he pressed the knife into his neck, “I can’t have that.”

The man tried to scream, but the shouts went through the hole in his neck. Michael reached his fingers through the slit and grabbed the base of his tongue and yanked it through. He held the man's head, ensuring that he was looking at him in his last moments of life. Choking to death, he finally stopped moving. He threw the tongue on the man's lap and walked out of the house, pouring water over his hands to clean the blood off.