"We must go and save him!"
The man with the ID "Iron-Fist", a robust former wrestler in reality, slammed his fist onto the table, emotional and agitated.
"It's a trap!"
A relatively rational member warned.
"So what if it's a trap?"
Iron-Fist's eyes were bloodshot.
"Are we just going to watch our companion get tortured? What was the original intention of founding the Awakened Mutual Aid Society? It was so there wouldn't be another 'us'!"
His words stirred the fighting spirit of all the radical members.
They were tired of hiding, tired of fear.
They desperately needed a victory, even if it was just one successful rescue, to prove the value of their existence.
Half an hour later, an "Elite Rescue Team" composed of twelve superpowered individuals had assembled.
They wore worn-out tactical vests and carried various strange weapons.
With expressions mixed with tragic heroism and fanaticism on their faces, they rushed into the night.
The industrial ruins looked like a graveyard for prehistoric behemoths under the moonlight.
The cold wind howled like ghosts as it passed through the hollowed-out factory buildings.
"Iron-Fist" and his team members carefully navigated through this cemetery of steel and concrete.
Their abilities varied; some could temporarily harden their skin, others could throw small fireballs, but at this moment, they had all pushed their perception to the limit.
They had anticipated encountering Vought's security forces, and had expected surveillance and traps everywhere.
But they encountered nothing.
According to intelligence, the center with the strongest energy reaction was the largest abandoned smelting plant.
They broke open the rusted iron gate and rushed in.
Then, everyone froze in their tracks.
There were no cages here, no experimental tables, no wailing victims.
What greeted them was a bizarre and magnificent art exhibition.
Bent steel bars were shaped into painful, kneeling, praying humanoid figures, casting long shadows in the light they brought when they broke in.
"What... what kind of hellish place is this?"
One of the team members' voices was trembling.
The "rescue script" they had in their hearts was not like this.
They continued deeper inside, eventually seeing the center of the temple.
It was a statue of the "Weeping Madonna".
Just as they were stunned into silence by this sight, a figure walked out from the shadows behind the statue.
That person looked gaunt, wearing a tattered trench coat covered in dust.
He looked even more miserable than any "victim" they had imagined.
"Great! We found you!"
Iron-Fist was the first to react; thinking this was the person they were meant to save, he strode forward to meet him.
"Don't be afraid, we're here to save you!"
The man raised his head.
He looked at these heavily armed uninvited guests, whose faces were written with "justice" and "mercy".
The Deconstructionist revealed a pleasant, eerie smile.
"Are you all here to become a part of the artwork, too?"
Artwork?
"Iron-Fist"'s footsteps halted.
He looked at the emaciated man in front of him, who looked like a gust of wind could knock him over, flashes of pity and confusion in his eyes.
He took the other's strange question as the delirious ramblings of someone mentally unhinged after long-term imprisonment and torture.
"Brother, sober up!"
Iron-Fist lowered his voice, trying to soothe him.
"We aren't bad guys, we're from the Awakened Mutual Aid Society, and we're here to save you and take you out of this hellhole!"
As he spoke, he gestured to the team members behind him, signaling them to prepare for offensive maneuvers.
In his view, this pitiful person before him was a sacrificial lamb, a fellow being devastated to the point of being unable to distinguish reality from hallucination.
The Deconstructionist's hollow eyes did not waver in the slightest because of these "well-intentioned" words.
Save me?
He chewed on this word, feeling only that it was incredibly absurd and ridiculous.
These intruders were like a swarm of flies that had broken into a cathedral.
Thinking they were spreading the gospel, yet unaware that they were covered in the filth of the outside world.
They didn't understand.
They didn't understand the significance of this temple, nor the sorrow composed by these steel bars and concrete.
The cheap "sense of justice" and self-righteous "mercy" they carried were the most thorough desecration of his sanctuary.
A fastidious disgust rose from the depths of The Deconstructionist's soul.
He couldn't even be bothered to speak again.
Conversing with ants was, in itself, an act of lowering one's own status.
Since they wanted to become artwork...
Then he would fulfill their wish.
He had a thought.
"Ahhh—!"
A scream came from a team member behind Iron-Fist who had several gold teeth in his mouth.
He suddenly covered his mouth, and blood gushed out from between his fingers.
The next second, several golden rays were forcibly "dragged" out from his mouth, floating in the air stained with blood.
This was just the beginning.
"My gun!"
"My knife!"
All the rescue team members discovered with horror that everything they carried had come "alive".
Those pistols, daggers, gun barrels, and blades were softening at a rate visible to the naked eye and dripping from their hands.
The metal buckles on their tactical vests, the zippers on their pants, the steel nails in their shoes, and even the trace metal wires mixed into their clothing fibers...
Everything was forcibly stripped away and extracted!
Countless streams of metal light of various sizes and shapes were extracted from the bodies of the twelve people.
They converged in the air, forming a metal storm composed of steel, brass, and lead cores.
The twelve "elites" were completely "purified" within just a few seconds.
Like Beasts whose fangs and claws had been pulled out, they collapsed to the ground, empty-handed and disheveled.
Only the most primal dullness and fear remained on their faces.
Iron-Fist knelt on the ground, watching helplessly as the metal storm suspended in mid-air began to slowly deform and coalesce under the horrified gaze of him and his teammates.
The flowing molten metal stretched into a regular rectangular block.
The prototype of a tombstone appeared out of thin air.
Finally, when the last drop of liquid metal merged into it, a tombstone landed heavily in front of them.
The surface of the tombstone was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting their desperate faces one by one.
Immediately after, ripples appeared on the surface of the tombstone.
Some particles emerged from within and rearranged themselves.
—Those who trespass in the sanctuary, rest in peace.
...
The next morning.
When the citizens of New York City woke up from the panic of the "Prologue" and prepared to face the unknown of a new day, an even more sensational piece of news exploded.
The front page of the New York Post published a high-definition photo with a shocking blood-red headline.
The background of the photo was the very same bizarre industrial ruin.
In the foreground was a tombstone, with that line of text circled and accompanied by a translation.
And surrounding the tombstone were a dozen or so figures lying on the ground, disheveled and with dull expressions.
The headline was even more direct and more inflammatory:
"Superpowered Thugs Attack Innocent Artist in the Middle of the Night, Wiped Out by Mysterious Force! — The Out-of-Control 'Heroes', Who Is Their Next Target?"
The report depicted these twelve "rescue team" members as a group of violent criminals attempting to rob and harm a reclusive artist.
And Adrian Dubois was portrayed as a tragic hero who was unarmed but had awakened some kind of "self-defense" ability at a critical moment.
That tombstone became his "monument of justice" in fighting back against the thugs.
That self-righteous "righteous rescue" by the "Awakened Mutual Aid Society" had, overnight, become the most powerful ironclad proof that "out-of-control superpowered individuals are a cancer on society."
People's fear had found a brand-new outlet.
They were no longer afraid of that invisible "Ghost Artist," and instead began to hate and fear the "superpowered individuals" lurking around them who might lose control.
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