Bolt

29| Big Boy Business.

Only fools fought Captain Tombstone one on one. Even with half his powers, he was still a formidable opponent. I found out the hard way.

I crashed face-first against a cracked wall and fell on my sore back. I stared thoughtfully at the cloudless sky as it spun, waiting for it to stop before I stood again. Captain Tombstone's fierce face appeared above me. I had merely wounded him as blood flowed down his cheeks from the multiple cuts on his grinning face. His outlandish costume was torn in different places too, but I knew I looked worse. He had landed heavy punches and kicks on me.

The effects of not training and improving my power over the last ten years were showing. While I was drowning in drugs, Captain Tombstone was busy taking down high-caliber villains around the world. He was a seasoned veteran who would have given me a hard time, even without his powers. His skills exceeded mine tenfold.

But that didn't mean I was going to let him kill me.

He tried to stomp on me, but I rolled to the side. If that had caught me, I would have died. He had employed all his strength in that foot with how hard the ground shook.

Getting up, I stood with raised fists, electric energy sparkling around my hands. Captain Tombstone was panting with his brawny hands on his knees, but his fierce eyes focused on me. I naturally assumed he never worked on improving his stamina because of how he comfortably defeated his opponents. As a result, I was counting on that to defeat him.

"I'm surprised you've lasted this long, Trey. I underestimated you." He stood straight and gazed around at the carnage. Multiple buildings had collapsed. Corpses hung from shattered windows, while fallen walls trapped survivors beneath the rubble. They cried for help while the police officers tried their best to rescue them. A lot of dead bodies littered the ground, most of them were from the crowd that came to see my execution.

When I was trying to make Captain Tombstone run out of stamina, I had used them as a shield. At first, he didn't attack them. But as time passed, he became frustrated and started running through people like a bulldozer. The smile on his face while he did it showed he had enjoyed taking their lives. He would either slap someone out of his way and send them colliding against a wall or parked vehicle, or he would snap their neck just because.

His actions seemed to make the peculiar who was emotionally manipulating the crowd stop what he or she was doing. With the crowd members back to their senses, they ran for their lives. They had never seen their beloved superhero act in such a manner.

What had gotten into him?

For a hero so composed all the time, the tiniest of things seemed to irritate him. Surely, I wasn't the cause? There were a lot of things I didn't know or understand about peculiars, and Captain Tombstone's gradual change in attitude scared me.

"It's time I ended this." He spread his arms, faced the sky with closed eyes, and took a deep breath. Then his arms started shaking, blue energy flowing around his body, making his muscles grow three times in size.

This is it.

I had heard stories of this move. He called it Endgame. He would summon his body's energy into his fist, and when unleashed at an opponent, it would disintegrate them and the country or city, depending on how much energy he used.

Tombstone's in trouble.

I was in trouble too. If I didn't do something, I was going to die, along with countless innocent civilians. Who knew what Endgame would do to the dome. It could take it down and kill the people outside it too.

I can't let that happen.

When I had planned phase 3, I wanted to take down the establishments that controlled the city. Not the city itself. What was the point of going through all the pain and heartache of the last ten years if all I ended up doing was demolish Tombstone?