It started as a tingle in his fingertips.

John soared through the air, each beat of his Dragon Wings thunderous, and watched through Eagle Eye as five figures circled a lone martial artist in white robes. The distance was maybe a kilometre now, far enough that he couldn't make out faces, but close enough to see the way they moved. The way they struck. The way they pulled back, laughing, before striking again.

The tingle spread up his arms.

He'd seen this before. Playground instead of car park. School uniforms instead of leather and tattoos. Luke Farnell's broccoli haircut. Tyrone's cruel grin. Lewis's bark of laughter as John tried to cover his head, tried to make himself smaller, tried to disappear into the ground while their fists found every soft place on his body.

Woody the Woodpecker.

It was so fucking juvenile. So stupid. Why had it even annoyed him so much?

The memory overlaid itself across the scene before him. Sam stumbling backward. John stumbling backward. Sam raising his hands in a defensive stance. John raising his hands and getting them slapped aside. Sam taking a hit to the ribs. John taking a knee to the stomach that drove all the air from his lungs while the others cheered.

The tingle reached his shoulders, his neck, his scalp.

Then another image forced its way forward, shoving the playground memory aside. The community centre. Jade on the floor. The red spreading across the dance studio's hardwood in a widening pool. Her grey eyes looking up at him, wide and accepting and relieved, and there had been so much blood, more blood than he'd thought a human body could possibly contain, and her hand had been so cold.

John's vision went white at the edges.

The images wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. They cycled faster now, one bleeding into the next. Alissa sprawled on the ground, her throat opened in a ragged line, her red locks matted with gore. The boy in the blue onesie, small and broken, limbs bent wrong. The girl in pink, her vacant eyes staring at nothing.

None of it was real. None of it was part of a scene he'd witnessed.

But it could happen. It was a possibility. He already knew there were bastards out there capable of killing kids and justifying it to themselves. These guys didn't look like they needed justification.

His entire body tingled now, every nerve ending firing at once. His muscles ached with tension. His vision narrowed to a tunnel, everything outside that central point going dark and irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was Sam, outnumbered and outmatched, and the five figures that were playing with him.

Accelerate flooded his perception before he'd consciously decided to activate it. The world slowed to a crawl, bits of dust hanging suspended in the air, the distant sounds of the enemy's laughter stretching into a distorted drawl.

His wings pumped behind him, each beat eating up metres of ground, and even in the dilated timescape of the Skill he could feel how fast he was moving, how much force was transferring through his body with each thrash of his mighty wings. It wasn't enough.

He triggered Flash Step by kicking his legs like he was swimming breast stroke. The world blurred around him as he crossed another thirty metres in an instant.

The disorientation barely registered. There was no room for anything except the forward momentum, the need to close the distance, the imperative to reach them before the unthinkable happened.

When he judged he was close enough, a snapshot of his surroundings flooded his mind. Every detail within a hundred-metre radius crystallised in perfect clarity. John picked his destination in the single heartbeat the Spell allowed him.

He materialised three feet from a man in dark leather, his appearance registering in John's enhanced perception with the clarity of a high-definition photograph.

A bald head covered in swirling tattoos that looked like they'd been drawn by someone mid-seizure, tribal designs and what might have been text in a language John didn't recognize, all layered over each other in a riot of colour that hurt to look at. Not a single hair anywhere on the exposed skin of his scalp, face, neck. Even his eyebrows were gone, leaving his face looking alien and wrong.

His eyes were bloodshot, the whites barely visible around dilated pupils that swallowed the iris whole. His lips were pulled back in a rictus grin that exposed yellowed teeth, several of them missing, the gaps dark and wet. The grin was manic, disconnected from anything resembling human emotion. It was the expression of someone who'd broken something fundamental in their psyche and kept right on going.

He was mid-laugh when John appeared. The man's eyes started to widen as he registered the newcomer.

John's fist was already in motion.

The problem was simple: John had dozens of Spells that could end this fight in seconds. He could turn the entire street into a crater with Supernova. Could incinerate them all with Draconic Inferno.

But Sam was right there, barely able to move and halfway to collapsing. If Alissa and the kids were hiding nearby, any wide-area attack risked catching them too.

Which left him with close combat. He found he didn't mind that. He really wanted to punch a few of these fuckers in the face. Weapons and Spells just weren't going to cut it, with the fury he was feeling.

The punch connected with the underside of the man's jaw with a sound like a sickening crunch. Bone shattered. Teeth exploded in a spray of enamel fragments and blood.

The man's head snapped back at an angle that would have been comical if it weren't so utterly grotesque, his neck bending far past what any spine should allow. His body followed a moment later, lifted off his feet by the force of the blow and sent flying backwards in slow motion.

+1000 Aura

John barely registered the notification. Accelerated ended, and he turned to face his next enemies, trembling with rage and adrenaline.

One of the other attackers—a woman with a shaved head and the same dizzying tattoo coverage, wearing what looked like motorcycle leathers that had been cut and modified into something approximating studded armour—spun toward him, a crude machete already rising. Her eyes had the same bloodshot, dilated quality as the first man's. Her grin was just as manic, stretched so wide it looked like her face might split.

"Fresh meat!" she howled, and the words came out wet and distorted, like she was gargling acid.

The others were turning now too. A second woman, this one wielding a length of chain wrapped around both fists, the links crusted with what looked like dried blood. Another man with a club made from what might have been a human femur, metal studs driven through the bone at irregular intervals. A fourth attacker with dual knives, the blades jagged and crude, like they'd been snapped from larger pieces of metal and sharpened by hand against concrete.

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All of them had those same wide, manic grins. All of them had those same bloodshot eyes. All of them were laughing, a jarring chorus that made John's skin crawl even through the rage that was consuming him.

Sam was on the ground now, having collapsed fully. His white robes were torn and stained with blood from dozens of shallow cuts. His face was swollen, one eye completely shut. But he was still conscious, still trying to push himself up with his good arm.

The woman with the machete lunged at John, her blade coming in a wild overhead chop that had no technique behind it, just raw force and reckless commitment. John stepped inside her guard, caught her wrist, and twisted.

The snap of her forearm breaking was loud even with the four madmen hollering like jackals. The machete fell from her limp fingers. She didn't scream. She giggled, high-pitched and childlike in a way that set John's teeth on edge.

"More! More! More!" she chanted, reaching for him with her broken arm like the injury was a mere inconvenience.

John drove his knee into her stomach. The impact folded her around his leg. He felt ribs crack under the blow. She dropped, gasping, but still grinning, still trying to reach for him with her non-functioning hand.

Then the others were on him. The chain-wielder's weapon came whipping through the air, the links singing as they cut through the space where John's head had been a moment before. He ducked, felt the breeze of the chain's passage, came up inside her reach.

A palm strike to her solar plexus. Her eyes bulged. Blood sprayed from her mouth. She staggered back but didn't fall, didn't stop grinning.

"Pretty boy wants to dance!" she crowed.

The club came at him from the side. John caught it one-handed, the studded bone impacting his palm with enough force to send a spike of pain up his arm. His Striker Skill guided him through the next motion: a sharp twist that tore the club from the attacker's grip, followed by a spinning backhand that drove the weapon into the man's skull.

The studs punched through skin and bone. The man went down, but even as he fell, he was laughing, reaching up to touch the blood pouring down his face like it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.

The knife wielder tried to take advantage of John's distraction, both blades stabbing forward with a double strike that had more enthusiasm than skill. John summoned his katana and blocked, his enhanced Agility letting him track each blade's path. Metal scraped against metal, and his far heavier weapon won. The madman staggered back.

Ninja, Striker, and Duellist rose to Level 5 with a thought. A steep expenditure, but worth every point.

Knowledge flooded his mind, muscle memory that he'd never earned layering itself over his existing combat experience. His body moved with new efficiency, new precision, like someone had upgraded the firmware running his motor control. Every movement became faster, more economical.

The dual-knife wielder came at him again. This time John redirected, using the momentum of the attacker's lunge to spin him around and drive him face-first into the pavement. The knives clattered away. The man tried to push himself up. John stamped on his knee, felt it bend the wrong way, felt it give with a satisfying crunch.

But the man laughed.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" John snarled.

The chain-wielder answered by trying to wrap her weapon around his neck. John caught the chain before it could tighten, yanked hard, and pulled her off balance. She stumbled forward. His fist met her face halfway. Her nose exploded in a spray of blood and cartilage. She went down hard, still grinning through the ruin of her face.

Movement to one side drew his attention, and he boggled as he found the first man was getting back up. His jaw hung at an impossible angle, held to his skull only by strips of torn flesh. Blood poured from his mouth in a torrent. He shouldn't have been able to stand. Shouldn't have been able to do anything except bleed out.

But he was standing. And he couldn't grin, couldn't speak with his tongue flopping around with the lower half of his jaw, but there was still a keening sound coming from his chest. A giggle, childlike, almost innocent in its joy.

John's rage, which had been a controlled burn during the fight, flared white-hot again. They were enjoying this.

The woman with the broken arm had recovered enough to grab her machete with her good hand. She came at him in a wild charge, the blade held out in front of her like a lance. John sidestepped, grabbed her by the back of her head, and slammed her face into the side of a parked car. The window shattered. Her head bounced off the metal with a hollow thunk. She slumped to the ground.

The man with the club had pulled the weapon out of his own skull and was shambling toward John like a zombie, blood sheeting down his face and chest, but still grinning, still giggling in that awful wet way.

He activated Accelerate again, and the world slowed down.

The club-wielder was mid-swing. John ducked under it, came up inside the man's guard, and delivered a series of precise strikes: solar plexus, floating ribs, kidney, base of the skull. Each blow landed with surgical precision, exactly where it needed to for maximum damage. The man folded like a ragdoll.

The chain-wielder had recovered and was trying to get behind him. John spun, caught the chain mid-swing, and used it to pull her off balance. She stumbled forward. His elbow met her temple. She dropped.

The dual-knife man was crawling toward his weapons, his ruined knee dragging behind him. John walked over, picked up both knives, and threw them into a nearby storm drain. Then he grabbed the man by his collar and threw him after them.

John spun, scanning the street. Where was the man with the shattered jaw?

He saw movement behind Sam. The man was shambling toward Sam's prone form. His ruined jaw dripped blood with every laboured breath, creating a trail across the pavement. In one hand he clutched a jagged piece of broken glass, the edges catching the red light of the burning sky. He raised it over Sam's back.

John started forward, mentally triggering Teleport, but Sam moved first. Both of Sam's hands shot up, faster than John would have thought possible for someone as injured as he was, especially considering he was still under the effects of Accelerate. They clamped around the attacker's skull, one on each side of his head.

When Sam squeezed, the sound was like a watermelon hitting pavement from a third-story window. A wet crunch followed by a splash. The man's skull collapsed inward under the pressure, bone fragmenting, grey matter and red viscera erupting outward in a spray that painted Sam's robes an even deeper crimson.

The body dropped. Sam's arms dropped with it, his hands still locked in their crushing grip for a heartbeat longer before falling away.

Then Sam collapsed forward onto the pavement, face-down in the spreading pool.

Accelerate ended. John rushed over, his boots splashing through blood—too much blood, far too much to have come from one person. Sam's white robes were soaked through, the fabric clinging to his body, and John couldn't tell where the martial artist's injuries ended and the dead man's remains began.

He knelt beside Sam, checking for a pulse. Still there. Weak, but steady.

"Sam," John said, keeping his voice level through sheer force of will. The raging roar he wanted to let out wouldn't have helped anyone.

The eye that wasn't swollen completely shut cracked open. Recognition flickered across what little of his face wasn't covered in blood and bruising.

"Level up," John said. "Do it now."

Sam's head moved. A tiny shake. Barely perceptible.

"What does that mean?" John leaned closer. "You don't have one, or you won't use it?"

Sam's hand lifted from the pavement, trembling with the effort. One finger extended.

"That means option one? You don't have one?"

Sam nodded.

John stared at that single raised finger, his mind racing. Sam had been part of Doug's original group. They'd killed monsters, he knew that for a fact. Even taking time off to look after the kids, he should have accumulated levels. Should have had something in reserve.

John's gaze swept across the street. The blood. There was so much of it, pooled and splattered and smeared across the pavement, in quantities that made his earlier assessment seem inadequate. One person couldn't have bled this much.

And he understood. They'd made him heal. Made him level up and repair the damage so they could keep hurting him. Over and over. Until he had nothing left.

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