Felix holstered his gun, noticing the slight tremble in his hand. He clenched it tightly into a fist, forcing the shaking to stop as he stood up.

He glanced back to the three other corpses in the room. He moved to the door and flipped the light switch so that he could investigate.

Clink.

A sharp metallic sound echoed.

His eyes widened as the wall sizzled.

In half a second, the wires inside lit up, and he instinctively leap out the door — A blinding flash and a deafening roar erupted behind him.

As he tumbled over the ground, a searing wave of heat washed over his back. His mask clattered to the floor, while the hairs in his neck standing up as the loud boom reverberated across the hall.

He sat up, watching the simmering flames inside the burning room. He wiped his face with a sigh, “Of course it was rigged…”

Still on the ground, he looked up and saw a figure standing on the other side of the hall.

A civilian? No, who is he?

His eyebrows curled curiously. He picked up his mask and slowly got back up.

Drawing his white weapon, before cautiously walking check, where he found a young man, and noticed a glint from behind the standing figure. His mask reflected on the small camera of a drone hovering in the hall.

With a loud whir, it began to fire at him.

“Damn it!” Felix swung his white gun like a baseball bat, fending off against the hail of projectiles. The impact sending him skidding backwards. His feet scraped further back on the floor, until his back was pinned against the bright peach-colored walls.

Many of the bullets slipped by him and struck him straight in the chest and arms and legs. His coat prevented his death, but most of the impact bruised and beat him from within.

The drone paused to reload, giving the agent a moment to collapse to his knees.

His blood dripped from under his white metal mask. His white metal mask — a metal harder than titanium — had shown scratches.

“Whoa, you agents are something else.” The figure whistled and took a step closer, “How are you still alive?”

Disoriented, the agent lifted his head up to look at the figure. Through blurred vision, Felix saw a young man with bright orange hair and a black star tattooed underneath his left eye. His face was vaguely reminiscent to that of a performer, while he wore a brown, fur-lined jacket.

“Are you… who are you—?”

“Answer my question first.” The orange-haired jester interrupted, seeking to exchange information.

The agent chuckled through the pain, “Bullet-proof coat.”

“Oh, oh really? So, then, if I do this, then it won’t kill you?” He clicked on a button, and the floating machine once again struck Felix with a volley of lead.

A sadistic grin formed on his face, torturing the agent for his amusement.

“GRAAAGH!!” Felix shouted as his body was pummeled with bullets.

Through the loud rattle of the machine gun drone, the jester mused, “You know, it’s strange how not a single one of my drone’s bullets hit you where your coat is very clearly open…” Pointing towards the clearly open section of Felix’s coat.

He then pressed on a button that made the drone stop its attack, “Since you answered my question, it’s only fair that I answer yours. I am the new Joker, Moritz Wulfe.” His small braid dangled down as he introduced himself with a performative bow.

“Moritz…?” Felix echoed weakly, “Were you… the one who did that to those people…?”

“Did the holes in their bodies not make it obvious enough, or do I need to turn them into Swiss cheese?”

“Why?”

“They got too close, so I thought I’d have some fun with them. Run a few tests. Now tell me who you are.” The young jester, Moritz, said as he pulled off Felix’s mask and threw it to the side.

Felix took a thin inhale to answer, and glared at Moritz, “Blue Phantom.”

“That’s pretty edgy. Is it because your eye glows? How did you even do that? Is it illusion tech?” He shot out several questions with a mocking grin.

“It’s because… you’re gonna be black and blue by the time I’m done with you.” The agent forced out a strained laughter, a facade of composure, as he slowly pushed himself back up against the wall.

“Hah, that’s funny. But I’m a little busy with a business transaction, so let’s make this quick. You said it was because of your bullet-proof coat that you’re alive, so what happens when I do this?” He mused as he pulled up the black, bullet-proof coat and slipped a pistol close to his chest.

Felix winced. His heart pounded harshly, the muzzle just a few inches away from his heart. He closed his eyes, and a voice echoed from his thought, ‘what it means… to be… an esper.’

A vision quickly flooded his mind — A memory of a burning, golden star forming right in front of him.

The air started to crackle, and a faint blue haze outlined his body.

A vicious scowl formed on his face as he glared at the jester, yet both of his eyes shined with a radiant blue this time.

“Do you feel that, Felix?” The voice of Luna echoed in his mind during the middle of this battle.

Felix’s body began to grow hot, and the veins around his arms and neck became visible as his body began to glow from inside. The outline crackled, and slowly transforming into transparent, crystal-patterned flames that enveloped him.

Moritz’s soulless black eyes widened, he took a step back at the sight of the burning blue man in front of him, but his eyebrows furrowed and he steeled his resolve.

The jester pulled the trigger, but the bullet it shot out suddenly stopped in the space between his gun and Felix’s chest, suspended by the blue light.

A wide space opened up between the two, as Moritz leapt back for his own safety, watching the agent slowly getting up.

Felix tightened his grip on his white gun, Agony.

His mind sunk to its depths, to where he envisioned his sister holding a crimson spear. “Your anger and regret, can you feel it swirling inside you? The storm raging inside your heart… Can you call upon it?” Luna asked.

The azure flames exploded and amplified several fold.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Holy shit!” Moritz exclaimed as a gust of wind push against him.

“I’m not… sure…” The young boy with mismatched eyes answered to his sister’s odd question.

“I thought you had a goal in mind? There’s someone you wanted to see, right?” She asked.

“Oh… right.” He responded meekly.

“If you still have that regret, that anger in yourself, then yer gonna have to make use of it. Let yer anger manifest, materialize it into the real world...”

Felix raised his weapon. His grip was so tight that the weapon in his hand clattered. The glowing blue shroud around his body started to get sucked into the back of the white gun.

“I know but… I can’t.” The young Felix remarked.

“You can’t?” The silver-haired woman, Luna, sighed, “Look… if you ever meet again, will you be able to protect them? Will you able to take their hand if they reach out to you?”

Moritz stood there astounded as he watched the flames spiraling into a single, focused point, “Oh shit—!”

As he pulled the trigger, an azure tornado through the air — Spiraling blue flames whipped and ravaged the halls with burning, tendril-like excess, with the ear-piercing blare of a power drill. And as soon as it met contact with it’s target, Moritz was sent crashing him against wall with tremendous force, and blood and saliva burst out of his mouth.

With heaving breaths, Felix’s hand began to quiver.

After one long inhale, he was no longer able to carry the pale white gun, and it dropped on the torn surface of the floor. He followed not long after, dropping down to one knee as he tried to level his breathing.

He looked around as the glistening haze dissipated with a crackling sound. The floor, walls, ceiling, appeared to have been shredded in a repeating helix-like pattern, like it had been drilled through.

The dark-haired agent looked at his quivering fingers, and felt each rushing heartbeat in his veins. He then looked at his white gun with a dumbfounded expression, amazed at the devastation it had caused.

“...the professor also wanted me to tell you that Agony is special. It’s an improved version of Anastasia’s gun, and that it’s specifically designed to convert and handle as much power you put into it and turn it into ammunition, even while you’re still learning how to control it.”

Were the words that the Chief said to him as he received his new weapons.

Felix excitedly muttered to himself, “It worked…”

He reached for his white gun.

A satisfying outcome that was cut short by the blood that suddenly started pouring out of his nose, like a faucet in full swing, the sharp sting that made him cover up his own face with two hands.

“…Son of a bitch…” A pained voice spoke.

Felix lifted his gaze, the light in his other eye had faded, and were once again black and blue. He was shocked to see the young man still conscious, and even moreso to see him standing, if clinging to the walls.

Moritz gradually lifted himself up and pushed aside the broken drone that protected him from the blast.

“Fucking… fuck. Nobody told me that you’ve… got superpowers.” Moritz’s voice was strained while he worked his jaw.

Still struggling to breathe, Felix picked himself back up and wiped off the blood on his mouth. Small streams of electricity flowed around his wounds, as if they were threads stitching him back together.

Barely able to stand, Moritz picked up the large drone and tore off the broken pieces, “And here I thought the only one I had to worry about was someone called Black Hound.”

The exhausted agent lifted his gun to try and prevent the orange-haired jester from acting. But his hand could barely stay upright.

The jester aimed what had remained of the machine, the gun barrel, at Felix, and manually began to fire it.

With barely any energy left, Felix motioned his hand in a wave, creating a transparent, flickering blue curtain. A rapid, successive barrage of bullets.

The hard-light structure flickered and shattered, but it was enough to soften the impact.

With no bullets remaining, the jester lowered his weapon and weakly grumbled, “Fucking monster…”

Both men were beaten and exhausted and were struggling to even keep upright. An explosion from below shook the hallway and grabbed both of their attention.

“Huh?!” Moritz mumbled as he glanced to the side, where the explosion had come from.

But he stepped to the side as he saw a blue glimmer headed straight towards his head. He narrowly dodged Felix’s coming fist, and pulled out a combat knife from behind.

He aimed for the agent’s throat, to which Felix slipped past the swift slash and skid across the floor.

After escaping the lethal attack, the light around his body flickered away. The last embers of his energy extinguished.

The jester quickly fell back, “Whoa, I don’t want to fight…”

“You tried to kill me.” The agent huffed.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I was fighting you. I was just trying to kill you.”

“That’s—!” Felix suddenly felt his skin opening, and immediately realized that there was a shallow cut on his throat. He covered the newly formed wound on his throat and asked, “How… did…?”

“You might want to check what that noise was. But, before I skedaddle, can I ask you something?”

With agonized eyes, Felix looked at him and answered, “No.”

“I heard the twelve organizations had a leaderboard, and that the top ten was supposed to be a cut above the rest... Are you one of them?” He asked his question all the same.

“You’re not leaving here.” Felix pulled out his black gun, but it felt heavy and shaky.

“So you didn’t make the cut?” Moritz twirled his knife, “That’s disappointing.”

The jester waved him goodbye.

As he walked on ahead, Felix pulled the trigger, with a loud bang, the bullet penetrated the wall, leaving a crater on it. Yet the young man continued to walk.

“Huh?” He blurted out.

The agent fired two more times, yet as if completely unfazed, Moritz looked back at him with a large smirk. It was like the jester was skipping the space between Felix’s vision, the man vanished from the bullet’s trajectory.

He then threw his combat knife at Felix’s head.

It spun forward and appeared easy enough to evade. But as Felix shifted his body to avoid it, something pierced the black coat of his shoulder.

“Urgk!” He yelped out as he looked at the combat knife buried into him, “What is this… what’s going on?”

His face contorted with confused, but before he could properly react to it, he noticed that Moritz aimed his pistol at him.

Felix waved again, forming five thread-like lines of light from his fingertips.

But Moritz lowered his weapon, “Killing you is more trouble than it’s worth, specifically in the price of bullets.” He sighed and glanced at his pistol.

The damaged drone whirred in overdrive, it began to fill the area with an acrid smelling smoke.

“Welp, see ya!” The jester smiled.

“Come… back… here!” The wound on Felix’s throat made it difficult for him to even shout.

“You’re not too sharp, are you? I just spared your life, don’t go wasting my charity on you.” Standing on the edge of the corridor, he looked back with a vicious glare.

As the drone’s spinning slowed to a halt, Moritz became different. His body flickered with red, green and blue outlines, distorting like a computer glitch.

His cocky demeanor vanished, replaced with a dark anger and desperation — bloodlust pouring out of him.

The brown jacket wrapped around him was now torn apart and barely holding together, and his face and body were covered in blood and bruises.

The jester distorted even further, until it looked was three of them. Separated by green, blue and red, all staring back at him.

With a crackling snap, the jester shattered into pixelated pieces.

Felix blinked, and Moritz was gone.

As soon as he vanished from the corner, Felix’s shoulders relaxed and he dropped to his knees. Blood sputtered from his nose and mouth. There was an unbearable hot sting from his throat and nostrils.

Okay, so a bullet got to me… maybe a couple of bullets got to me…

I think I have a broken rib, maybe two. And all of my limbs are burning. Nothing to worry about. Just some random brat that wasn’t in the intelligence report humiliated me.

This is fine. No, this is absolutely fantastic.

The agent grimaced. He let out strained, violent coughs through his scorched throat. He collapsed on the ground, shaking and holding himself tight.

Though his coat protected him from the onslaught of lead, his body was still burned with a throbbing pain, caused by each individual impact.

While the price of his own powers took it’s toll, worsening his already labored breathing by clogging his nose with his own blood.

He groaned and grumbled for several seconds, before grabbing the knife in his shoulder. With a tight grip, he let out a hoarse scream as he pulled it out of his bleeding flesh.

His lungs emptied by his own pained shriek and refused to take in any air, and he was rolling in a puddle of his own blood.

Felix looked at his reflection in the stained knife, and quickly remembered the jester’s last words to him:

“Don’t go wasting my charity on you.”

That word invited an unwelcome memory invaded his thoughts. The vision of a hand drenched in blood, reaching upward while trapped in rubble.

He grinned and looked at his own glowing blue eye, “May you be the fruit of all my endeavors… my prosperity, my charity, and my redemption...” He scoffed and agent angrily threw the knife on the floor.

Felix dragged himself toward the wall. As he leaned against it, he pulled out a small, red-marked bottle from his pocket and popped out one of its pills. A pain reliever, which he achingly swallowed through his burning throat.

As he caught his breath, dozens of little zigzags began to form around him, slowly patching his wounds up. An explosion suddenly shook the building.

“Marie!” His worry forced him to reflexively get up, but he was far from fully healing, and he fell face first to the floor.

A string of explosions followed, and the memory of Maria’s bleeding face on top of him flashed in his eyes. “I’m pretty sure… you’re the one supposed to be protecting me… Felix…” Her words echoed.

He picked up his mask. Staying upright had become a harsh endeavor, as a little bit of his blood sputtered out with every step he took. But as he clung to the walls and dragged himself forward, the only thought that drove him forward was to search for his partner. “Marie… please be okay.”

~