Wow! You can use formulas," Dante said, a smile on his face.
"And you're quite fast, aren't you," replied the killer.
"Yeah, something like that, what else can you do, huh?" Asked Dante as he circled around him.
He never slowed down for people unless he needed to find out something. A killer who can use formulas was a dangerous one. You can never know what they can do next.
"Come here and find out," said the killer, his voice now more calm and steady. His right arm was shattered from Kínitos's last attack. Bones shattered and bent in places that shouldn't be possible. Pain was driving him crazy, but he had to remain calm. It would take way too long for him to do it. It was simply too much math for him—that fireball cost a lot of energy.
"Sure, why not? Let's dance," said Dante as he stopped circling, getting into a running stance.
"I have to focus on reflex. I'm too slow for him, just need to see him," the killer thought.
Then, in an instant, he disappeared in front of him.
As energy flowed into his head, Dante was fast, yes but now he could see his blur and that was enough. Raising his left hand, he pointed behind him as he shot out fire from his hand once again. The fire burned the grass instantly as it turned to ash.
Dante was surprised he was able to turn around that fast, fast enough to shoot it, but it mattered not. The fire grew close towards him, quickly stopping him in his tracks. The fire moved in slow motion—running around once more, he saw it.
His eyes were tracking him. It's been a while since someone was able to track him.
The last creature was a cheetah; it was an abnormal, a fast one at that. 0 to 200 in 5.4 seconds.
But this was different.
The killer wasn't just fast—he was calculating, predicting movement patterns. Dante could see the micro-adjustments in the killer's stance, the way his helmet tilted to follow trajectories that hadn't even happened yet.
"Mathematical precognition," Dante muttered under his breath, impressed despite himself. "You're not just tracking me, you're solving for where I'll be."
The killer said nothing, but Dante could see small numbers flickering in the air around the armored figure—velocity calculations, trajectory equations, probability matrices. This guy was turning combat into a math problem.
"Time to make the math a little more complicated." Dante grinned and kicked into overdrive, not just running in circles now but creating a complex pattern—figure eights, spirals, sudden direction changes that defied momentum. "Let's see you're computer calculate this."
The killer kept adjusting his calculations, firing bursts of flame at precise points where the equations told him Dante would be. But every shot hit empty air. Dante's chaotic movement pattern was too unpredictable, too human. You couldn't solve for pure instinct and spontaneity.
WHOOSH - fire scorched the ground three feet behind where Dante had been a millisecond ago.
WHOOSH - another blast incinerated a patch of concrete, but Dante was already gone.
"Getting frustrated?" Dante called out, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere as he blurred around the killer.
Then the hit-and-run tactics began.
CRACK - A lightning-fast punch to the side of the killer's helmet, rattling his head inside the armor.
THUD - An elbow strike to the small of his back, right where the armor plates connected.
SNAP - A devastating kick to the back of his left knee, nearly buckling the joint.
Each hit lasted less than a tenth of a second before Dante was gone again, leaving the killer spinning and trying to track movement that seemed to violate the laws of physics.
The shattered right arm made it even worse—he could only fire with his left hand, cutting his effective range in half.
But then, as Dante came in for another strike at the killer's face, something changed.
The killer stopped trying to predict where Dante would be. Instead, he waited until the speedster was right there, inches away, committed to the attack.
And at that exact moment, when Dante couldn't change direction, the killer erupted with a point-blank explosion of flame from his left palm.
The fire caught Dante full in the chest, sending him tumbling across the parking lot like a rag doll, smoke rising from his tactical suit.
"Got you," the killer rasped, breathing heavily from the effort and pain.
The killer turned, expecting to see Dante still down from the blast, but his blood ran cold. Dante was already behind him, smoke still rising from his charred tactical suit, but very much conscious and moving.
Using his broken right arm despite the agony, the killer reached across his chest and pressed a small device embedded in his armor's chest plate. The device began to glow with a soft blue light, energy slowly building and humming with increasing intensity. Whatever this was, it was going to take time to charge.
Dante pushed himself to his feet, wincing as he brushed ash and debris from his smoking clothes. His chest ached from the direct hit, but he'd taken worse. The killer's desperate move with the device didn't go unnoticed.
"Hell no," Dante said, his voice carrying a dangerous edge. "You're not getting away!."
Just then, voices echoed from behind them. A metal door in the side of a nearby building swung open with a loud clang, and three figures emerged into the smoky parking lot.
Axe stepped out first, followed closely by Jade with his multiple devices and monitoring equipment, and Jes bringing up the rear with her tactical gear.
But Dante was already in motion. The device on the killer's chest was glowing brighter now, the humming getting louder. Whatever escape plan this maniac had, Dante wasn't going to let it happen.
He broke into a sprint, pushing his speed beyond what he'd used in the fight so far. The killer saw him coming and raised his left hand, preparing for one final desperate attack.
The killer saw Dante closing the distance fast, too fast for him to aim properly with his injured arm. The device on his chest was still charging, the blue glow intensifying but not ready yet. He needed more time.
The killer took a deep breath, his voice cutting through the chaos with deadly precision despite the mechanical distortion of his helmet.
"If this statement is true," the killer declared, his words carrying an unnatural weight that seemed to ripple through the air itself, "then all solid matter in a fifty-foot radius around me dissolves into sand."
Energy erupted from the killer's body like a translucent shockwave, rippling outward in a perfect sphere. The blast wasn't visible to normal eyes, but Dante's enhanced reflexes kicked in, slowing his perception of time to a crawl.
As he ran, Dante could see the energy wave expanding like ripples in a pond. A butterfly that had been fluttering nearby suddenly froze mid-flight as the energy touched it, its delicate wings crumbling into fine particles that scattered in the wind.
A metal street pole twenty feet away began to flake apart from bottom to top, the steel turning to gray sand that poured like an hourglass. Even the air seemed to shimmer where the energy passed through.
"Oh hell no," Dante muttered, immediately recognizing the danger. He planted his feet and reversed direction, pushing his speed to its absolute limit as he sprinted away from the expanding dissolution field.
Behind him, everything was turning to sand. The asphalt, concrete barriers, scattered debris—all of it crumbling into uniform gray particles. He could feel the edge of the effect nipping at his heels, and suddenly the back of his tactical suit began to disintegrate, the fabric turning to sand that blew away in his wake.
Dante pushed harder, his legs burning as he finally cleared the fifty-foot radius just as the energy wave reached its limit and stopped.
The high-pitched whine from the killer's device suddenly cut off, leaving an eerie silence. When Dante turned around, he saw a perfect circle of sand where solid ground had been moments before. The killer stood at the center, completely unharmed, the device on his chest now glowing pure white.
The killer's helmet turned toward where Sarah and Kínitos were still crouched behind their barrier, then swept over Jade, Jes, and Axe.
"I'll be back," the killer said, his distorted voice carrying clearly across the devastated area.
Then boom, a bright flash a light and the man was gone m.