My hand slapped Sierra on the back as the two of us dropped like stones toward the hard cement below. In the instant before we hit, I painted orange on both of us so we wouldn’t break anything from the several-story drop. Well, to be fair Sierra’s body was enhanced so it was possible she could take a drop like that. I wasn’t sure how far that extended, how strong she actually was. But either way, a bit of orange paint would make certain of it. And she wouldn’t be too stunned from the landing to act quickly.
All of that flashed through my mind in the roughly two seconds it took for us to hit the ground. We each landed in a crouch, but Sierra launched herself out of it instantly. It was like her body had barely touched pavement before she was abruptly airborne once more. Only this time, she was hurtling forward instead of down. As the shadowy figure hunched over the prone Roald and Murphy, Sierra crashed into him. He started to fall forward, but she caught his shoulder and arm, pivoting to throw the man over into the wall of the building a good eight or nine feet away. He crashed into it upside down with enough force to make several of the bricks crack slightly under the impact. And yet, he didn’t seem too stunned by it, dropping back to the ground and rising to his full standing position with a literal growl, like he was some sort of animal. His face was still mostly hidden in shadow, though I could see enough to recognize that it was definitely Luciano. But he was covered in what at a glance to be a mixture of dirt and dried blood. It functioned almost like a mask itself, working together with the shadows to make it even harder to pick out his individual features. Until he smiled. His teeth were gleaming white, and almost too perfect. They literally seemed to glow. While most of his face and body appeared to radiate shadows, his teeth projected soft light. It drew all attention to his mouth, almost making it seem like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, when he would make only his wide grin appear. Oh, and he smelled like a sewer. Or like the pile of garbage he had apparently been lying in. Which was just fantastic really, it added so much to the experience.
A series of quick thoughts flew through my mind in that moment, as Sierra and I both faced off against him. First, something was absolutely and definitely wrong with this guy. This wasn’t the same guy I had seen before, back at his laundromat. This was… this was something wrong, something bad. I had no idea what happened to him, but he was different now. And not in a good way.
We had to deal with this, and we had to do it quickly and quietly before we attracted too much attention. And I couldn’t use my actual powers too openly, or anyone who did happen to look out their window while it was going on would be able to connect this identity to Paintball. Or Luciano himself would realize and say something. Which would tell my parents–well, not everything, but still entirely too much. We had to deal with this, and we had to do it without exposing too much.
While I was in the midst of those thoughts, Murphy and Roald clambered to their feet. As soon as she was up, Murphy started to lunge at Luciano, but Roald stopped her, grabbing his friend by the shoulders. “No, wait!”
My own hands quickly grabbed both of them as well, trying to stop the two from going anywhere near that thing. I was going to tell them to stay back, but before I could say anything, something… interrupted.
“No, wait!” The echo came from Luciano himself, sounding like a mixture of Roald’s own voice and a cackling monster. Roald’s voice had been a cry of alarm, this was mocking, more laughter than scream. Then it came again. “No, wait!” He took a step closer, emerging a bit from the shadow of the building. “No, wait!” Each repetition sounded more and more like Roald. The first had been half his voice and half something else, but each time the words came, they sounded even more like a perfect copy. Which was somehow even worse.
And speaking of worse, finally, we could see the man’s face fully. As I’d thought, it was caked in dirt and blood. Then there was the bullethole. Yeah, a single bullethole centered in the middle of his forehead. It wasn’t makeup. It wasn’t artificial. It was a bullet hole, and we could literally see through it to the wall behind him. The bullet had gone all the way through his head and out the other side. The man in front of us was dead. Or he should have been. Or… or…
“Oh my God.” That was Murphy, her eyes wide as she stared that way with her own face still covered by the mask. “What the fuck?”
It was clear that the man had intentionally allowed us to see his face like that. As we reacted, he opened his mouth in another broad smile. His teeth were definitely glowing, and I could actually feel a wave of heat coming off them now that he was closer. They weren’t just giving off light, there was actual power there. I could literally see his lips starting to burn a bit from it, like a marshmallow left in the fire too long. They healed within seconds, before burning up again. It was a cycle of his lips and the surrounding skin being burned by his teeth and then regenerating somehow. Which made another thought flash through my mind. If his lips were being affected like that, what was happening to the inside of his mouth and throat? Was it going through the same cycle of being burned and healing? And could he feel all of it? What–what–
In the next moment, there was movement beside me, and something went flying through the air. Abruptly, the handle of a knife was sticking out of Luciano’s forehead, directly next to the bullethole. The blade itself was deeply embedded in his skull. Sierra. Sierra had thrown the knife.
Before I could even think about how to react to that, the man reached up and yanked the knife out. It came with a sickening squelching sound, like… like cutting into a cantaloupe. Finally, it was free, and the man held the four-inch blade up, seeming to examine it briefly. Then his eyes rose to stare at us, while he bit into the weapon. The blade melted under his teeth, snapping apart and coming free from the handle. It was like a man eating taffy.
“Well,” Sierra muttered, “it was worth a shot.” And with that, she took two quick steps before throwing herself that way, diving under his suddenly-swinging hand to roll past him before snapping her leg out to kick the back of his knees. He barely stumbled, already reaching down to grab the back of her head.
But I hadn’t exactly been standing there idle. With my hands on Murphy and Roald, I had been taking the time to put some paint over both of them as well as myself. My fingers were tucked just inside the back of their shirts so I could put the paint on the inside where it would be hidden. Then, even as the man went to grab Sierra’s head, I was moving. Activating the green, orange, and purple paint on all three of us, I launched myself that way with a scream. Hopefully it would catch the man’s attention, slow him down even just for an instant.
It worked. Well, sort of. It did stop the man from grabbing Sierra, his attention turning to me instead. On the other hand, his uhh, well, hand lashed out to smack me. It came up faster than I could react, and hit me hard enough to send my body flying sideways to crash into the windshield of a car hard enough to send spiderweb cracks through it. Even with my orange paint, it still hurt. But hey, at least I had his attention, which was a good thing?
Dazed as I was, some part of me still realized that he had already smacked Murphy and Roald away and was lunging in my direction. So I shoved my foot down and managed to kick myself off the hood of the car, falling off the side of it just as he landed against the front and slammed his two fists down right where I had been a second earlier. The blow caved in the hood entirely, and a burst of white-hot flames flew off in either direction, nearly singeing the top of my head as I fell onto the pavement.
Making matters worse (as if they needed any help with that) was the fact that the stuffed bra kept getting in my way. Even just then, as I had been lunging after the man or rolling off the car, it interfered. It made me feel off-balance. It was–fuck. It was just wrong. I couldn’t work properly with this fucking thing in my way. And I was starting to feel like being slowed down or thrown off, even a little bit, was a very bad idea right now.
I was rolling backward to pick myself up as Luciano rose. The two arms he had used to slam into the hood were really fucked up. The skin and most of the muscle had been burnt away, revealing clearly horrifically cracked bones underneath. Bones which stitched themselves together before the muscle and then skin returned in those brief couple of seconds while I was watching. But it didn’t return as normal, fresh skin. The Latino man’s skin was pale and rotting, like a dead man. Even after regenerating, it still made him look like a corpse. Because, as far as I could tell, that’s what he was. But he was a mobile corpse. Like a zombie, or… or…
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Fucked up. That’s what he was. He was severely fucked up.
Refreshing the paint on myself and triggering another set that I had put on Murphy and Roald, I quickly threw myself onto the roof of the car, landing next to the man. Before he could do anything, I caught hold of his hair with one hand and the back of his neck with the other, using all the considerable strength I had in that moment to slam his head as hard as I could into the windshield. If he could regenerate from everything else, including the knife that had been thrown through his head, I wasn’t worried about doing too much damage just then.
Besides, I was still trying to figure out if he was even alive or not. With that bullet hole, and the damage he’d ignored already, it… it wasn’t looking good on that front. But what the hell was the alternative? What the hell had happened to Luciano?
One thing that certainly wasn’t happening to him was any real damage from me slamming his head as hard as I could into the windshield. The window itself cracked under the blow, but he seemed fine. Or as fine as someone who looked like a walking corpse could seem.
Sierra was right there, catching him by his shoulders as he jerked himself free of my grasp. With one foot, I kicked the already-ajar driver’s side door open, so she could slam his head through that window. His arm tried to reach up to grab her, but I grabbed it and yanked the arm through the window and out a bit so it was right where the door needed to go when it closed.
Which Murphy and Roald took advantage of, slamming into the door with their shoulders so the door slammed shut on his arm. It snapped audibly, bending in the wrong direction to the point of nearly falling off entirely. It was disgusting and horrifying to see.
And yet, Luciano gave no real reaction to it. Well, aside from the fact that he shoved himself backward. Murphy and Roald were knocked to the ground and barely managed to roll away from his stomping feet, while Sierra was sent flying over to crash into a different car a few feet away. Meanwhile, his shattered arm still had enough strength in it to send me flying in the opposite direction with a single vicious shake as I was clinging to his wrist.
A moment later, all the damage was undone. All of it we had inflicted anyway. His arm was back to looking like it always had, the exposed bones sealed up once more as it snapped back into the proper direction with an audible pop. His face had a little more fresh blood to go with all the dried bits, but the wounds from being shoved through multiple windows had all been healed. He looked, well, still dead. But nothing we had done stuck at all. Through that whole bit, we hadn’t accomplished anything. I was starting to worry that I would have no choice but to openly use my powers. Which would just complicate everything even more. But what choice did I have? If it came down to that or letting this… guy hurt anyone else, I knew what I had to do.
Luciano was facing me at the moment. Sierra had picked herself up, grabbing a nearby broken pipe from the ground while standing directly behind him. Murphy and Roald were to one side, both barely managing to get up after he had so-casually smacked them down even with the boost I’d given them. They looked like they wanted to jump in but weren’t exactly sure how to accomplish anything. Not after what he had just shrugged off. We had to find some way of keeping him down, but how?
“Anyone got any ideas?” I called, trying to stop myself from freaking out too much. I’d seen a lot in the past couple months, but facing off against what I was becoming rapidly convinced was an actual dead guy like this? That was a bit much. And if I was having an issue, I can’t imagine what was going through Murphy’s mind.
Speaking of Murphy, Luciano–or whatever this thing should have been called, spoke up with her voice. Her voice, but my words. “Anyone got any ideas?” Then he spoke in Roald’s voice. “Anyone got any ideas?” That repeated for Sierra’s voice, then mine. He made each of our voices ask if we had any ideas. Then he laughed. Only it didn’t sound much like laughter. It sounded like the grinding noise a garbage truck made. His shoulders shook, and he made that horrible ‘laugh’ while continuing to stare right at me. And then, all at once and with no warning, the laughter stopped. He went completely and utterly silent. He made no sound, and no move. He was as still as a statue. Or a corpse, aside from the fact that he was standing up.
In that moment, Sierra apparently had an idea called ‘hit him in the back with the pipe.’ She was already lunging that way, pipe swinging. Her movement was almost impossibly fast. Even without a boost from me, she was still incredibly quick, the pipe giving a sharp whistle as it swung fast enough through the air to put even the strongest major league baseball hitter to shame. And then… she missed. The pipe went flying out of her hands, sailing right past the man to embed itself deep in the ground. The jaggedly sharp metal end stuck out and up, like a–
Oh. She didn’t miss. That realization came to me just as Sierra dodged his grasping, already-burning hands when he tried to grab for her. Then she flipped herself up and backwards, feet lashing out to kick into the man’s chest in the process. She used that to throw herself further back while propelling him in the opposite direction.
The other two had picked up on things as well, and both leapt to grab his arms, even as I activated another round of paint for the three of us and threw myself that way. Still stumbling from the kick, he made another garbage truck laughter sound as I caught hold of his shoulders. Not that holding on to him was a very good idea, given it felt almost like holding a hot stove. I was pretty sure that if we hadn’t been protected by the orange paint in that second, all three of us would have had our clothes and possibly skin melted right off. Which was just such a lovely thought, really.
There were three of us, all enhanced by some purple paint, and yet we could still barely hold onto him. Murphy had his left arm, Roald his right, and I was grabbing his shoulders. And he was still too strong. Thinking quickly, I put yellow paint on his back. He wouldn’t see it, and neither would anyone who happened to be looking out their window. It slowed him down, made it harder for him to actually exert force. Between that and the three of us with our enhanced strength, we managed to pull him backward one step after another until he was closer to the broken metal pipe that was sticking out of the ground.
Sierra took a running start, giving herself room to build up momentum. From a few feet away, she launched herself at the man. He smiled that bright, literally glowing smile, and I felt the heat from it. His grin was bright enough to light up the parking lot around us, almost blindingly so. In the next instant, Sierra crashed into him. She hit the man full-force in the chest just as I shoved down on his shoulders and the other two did the same with his arms.
He went down hard, impaling himself through the stomach with that pipe. Not that we expected that to last long after everything we had already seen, but at that moment, he was pinned like a butterfly in a collector’s case.
“Dumpster!” Sierra blurted. She was already lunging sideways toward one that was sitting against the nearby wall.
Without even questioning it, given the time constraints I knew we were working under, I followed suit. Murphy and Roald were close enough that I was able to grab hold of them, giving another boost. Then the four of us yanked the dumpster over. It was entirely too heavy for us to pick up, even with four of us using boosted strength. But it was also on wheels, so we pulled it and did manage to tip the thing upside down. An avalanche of trash came falling out, even as we hoisted the thing up and over, covering Luciano. My last glimpse of him was the man grabbing the metal pipe sticking out the front of his stomach and making it melt under his grip. So yeah, something told me this dumpster wasn’t going to last very long. But then, we didn’t have a lot of options here. It would give us a second to regroup at the very least. We had to find some way of keeping him down. But how? I didn’t bring any cuffs, and even if I had, he could just melt through them. Ropes, chains, we had nothing, and anything we might have had would be useless to keep him contained for long. What the hell were we supposed to do? He healed from everything we hit him with, and he could burn through anything we tried to hold him with.
The four of us grouped up once more, and I gave the others, including Sierra this time, a few more shots of paint boosts. Whatever came next, I wanted to be ready. Together, we watched the dumpster, ready to move the instant he showed himself.
And yet, nothing happened. For several long, tense seconds, we stared at that dumpster. My heart was racing, and I felt my stomach twisting itself around in anticipation of the terrible thing that was about to show itself. But… there was nothing. The silence dragged on until Sierra and I glanced at each other. Together, we took a couple of cautious steps that way and tapped the side of the dumpster. There was no response, no nothing. So, the four of us exchanged looks before shrugging. I triggered some of the paint, and we carefully pushed the dumpster over before jumping back.
It was empty. Well, there was trash on the ground, but that was it. There was no sign of Luciano at all. No hole, no… nothing. He was just gone. He had managed to completely vanish into thin air.
While we stood there and stared at the empty spot where he should have been, Fred pulled up with the car. “Hey, we getting out of here or what?” He paused as we turned to stare at him. “What?
“What did I miss?”