"Now then." He got up to his right knee, and pulled out the two guns strapped to his legs. "Let the real hunt begin."
The masked men followed in pursuit, leaping one after another through the shattered windows, but by the time their bootns struck the ground and they looked around, Damien was nowhere to be found.
"Where did he go!?" One of the men shouted, and his gun followed his eyes.
"Hm." Jason walked over to his car and looked closely at the dent on its roof. "No man can disappear in three seconds, especially not after a fall like that."
He turned around his men with a smile. "He couldn't have gotten far, search everywhere, every tight spaces. Proceed with caution, this is the world's best bounty hunter we are dealing with."
"Yes sir!" They spread out, holding their guns firmly, their fingers tense and ready to fire at the slightest sound.
The men moved carefully through the dark alleyway, their eyes sharp and their guns raised. One of them turned to search a corner, but before he could react, Jason slipped out of the shadows and pulled him down, and struck the side of his neck without a sound.
And he fell unconscious.
"One down."
Another man walked past a stack of crates, and Jason dropped down from above, driving both knees into his head and knocking him out cold.
One by one, as they searched and called to each other, Jason picked them off quietly, until the alley fell silent.
Jason remained by the car, holding a cigarette in his hand. He took a slow drag, then blew out a puff of smoke from his mouth as he leaned back against the car.
As he smoked calmly, he caught the faint, muffled sounds of his men being taken down one after another. When the alley finally grew silent, he let out a heavy sigh, already knowing Jason had taken them out.
"I guess bounting hunting skills isn't the only thing you picked up from me, you also picked up by bad habits." Jason lifted his head towards the balcony of the alley, and he locked eyes with Damien, who stood with a cigarette of his own between his fingers.
"What can I say? I learned from the best. But if you really wanted to kill me, you wouldn't have brought amateurs to fight me. Underestimate me that much?" He grinned.
"Are you stupid? Those men were ranked from the 15-20th place on the top 20 bounty hunters. But you took them out like it was nothing. Well whatever, we both knew it'd come down to this." He threw his cigarette to the ground.
"Yeah..."
Almost at once, they both raised their guns at each other and pulled the trigger. Jason rushed forward on the ground, firing several shots his way, while Damien leapt from one balcony to another, emptying his magazine as he moved.
By the time their bullets were gone, neither of them had been hit. Damien dropped lightly to the ground with a grin, and both men drew a knife from their back pockets.
"Let's see what you've got." Jason and Damien circled each other, with their knives tight in their hands.
Jason lunged at him and slashed first, but Damien blocked with his, and struck back. Jasin smiled and sidestepped, evading his blade and swung at him again, and Damien responded in kind.
Their blades clashed again and again, fast and sharp. Jason went low, Damien went high, each move read by the other. They moved quickly, every attack blocked, every dodge smooth, like two fighters who knew exactly what they were doing.
With their final strikes, the clash sent both knives flying out of their hands.
"You're pretty good, no wonder you're ranked number 1." Jason spoke as he looked down at his palm, thinking he had deflected the blade. But he was wrong—blood trickled from his hand. Somehow, Damien had managed to cut him at the last second.
"Why is there a bounty on my head? And why are you trying to claim it?" He felt betrayed. His teacher who shaped him into what he was today, has now decided to become the man who would kill him.
"Why did I accept a bounty for the head of the top hunter? Money?" He chuckled, then stared at him with a mischievous grin. "Damien, do you remember that night? The night where it all started?"
"What about it?"
Jason turned his back. "October 21 2005, in this same alleyway, a young boy watched his parents die a brutal death in the hands of several Mafia members. Years later he became a bounty hunter and tracked down the mafia. Revenge completed... Or was it?"
Damien's eyes twitched for a moment, then he maintained his composure. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Did you really think you caught the man who killed your parents Damien?"
His eyes went wide, and of course he didn't believe it. "That's absurd, the bastard died in a car accident years ago, I might not have killed him with my own hands, but he got what was coming!"
"I see." Jason turned around, then glanced at Damien with a cold gaze. "If you say your parents killer died in an accident, then what do you call the man standing in front of you?"
His eyes widened, and for a moment, it sounded as if Jason was suggesting that he was the one that killed his parents.
"What are you talking about?" He laughed nervously, refusing to believe. "How much smoke did you inhale?"
"You mean you haven't figured it out? Surely your not that dumb to put two and two together are you Damien?" Jason unsheated a blade he kept in his shirt.
"I killed your parents that night they defied the mafia. Nothing personal, I was just following orders just like I'm doing now." Jason spoke, then turned the knife in his right hand, adjusting his grip.
"It's been a good run for you Damien, at least you and your parents have something in common." He gripped the knife's handle in a reverse hold and pressed his right foot firmly against the ground.
"You were all killed by the best of the best."
BOOM!
He lunged forward at Damien, and the force of his step shattered the ground beneath him, leaving a crater nearly two meters wide.
As he closed the distance between them, Jason swung the blade's tip in a clean arc, aiming to behead Damien, who stood frozen in shock and disbelief.
Dust filled the air from the wind pressure Jason created as he swung his blade. "Mission accompli… What!?" He shouted in disbelief.
As the dust cleared, Jason's eyes shook as he stared at Damien, who had stopped his blade with just his fingers. Blood ran down his hand, yet he didn't flinch. "How!?" He yelled.
Damien's hair fell forward, casting a shadow over his eyes. His face showed no expression, and he had stayed silent the entire time.
"You killed my parents... Why?" Despite the shock and rage in his heart, he wanted to know why the man who thought highly off, the man who taught him everything he knew, murdered his parents in cold blood.
"Why?" He scoffed. "Because I was angry, I was obsessed with becoming the best, but it was stolen from me, so when the Mafia reached out to me for a mission, I needed to clear my head. However, I did not expect that the kid I took in would be a kid of one of my victims."
"Well whatever, you know how it is, orde-" He was cut short when Damien's roundhouse kick slammed into his jaw, sending him flying several meters back. Damien stood tall and steady, with his blade held firmly in his hand.
Jason grunted and rose to his feet, he was annoyed that his own student dared laid his fingers on him. "You bastard, you're going to regret that!" He shouted and rushed straight at him.
SWOOSH!
"Huh?" Jason froze in shock as Damien appeared right before him. Grabbing his forehead, Damien slammed him into the ground, then flung him three meters back.
"W-what?" Jason fought to stand up, unable to believe what he was seeing, his eyes wavered like he'd seen a ghost. "How?" He moved so fast that he appeared like a blur to him. "How are you moving this fast!?"
"You killed my parents because you were angry? Because you wanted to become the best?" His voice grew cold.
"I treated you like the only family I had left, and you were. But it doesn't matter anymore." He raised the blade to his face, and his eyes showed a fierce, bloodthirsty glare. "So I'll use everything."
"I'll kill you." He tightened the grip he had on Jason's blade which caused it to shatter like glass. "Jason!"
"W-what are you.." It was the first time he saw Damien like this, in a state no bounty hunter could reach. His eyes turned white, and the aura he emanated was bone chilling. It was like he abandoned all sense of reasoning, all the voices that guided him in his head. And embraced the instinct to kill.
Then.
His eyes went wide in disbelief, and he realized what this was — It was the true height of bounting hunting he failed to reach all these years.
The Hunter's Instinct.
The Hunter's Instinct was a unique state difficult to achieve by even the most skilled of all hunters.
It abandoned every sense of reasoning, and awakened a dormant instinct within the hunter, sharpening his prowess.
"Impossible..." He refused to believe it. "I taught you everything you know! It's not possible that you attained those instincts before me!" He charged at him, filled with rage, refusing to accept this outcome.
As Jason rushed in, Damien struck first with a powerful uppercut that sent him flying into the air. Without hesitation, Damien leapt up after him, landing quick kicks to his ribs, stomach, and face before spinning and slamming a final heavy kick into his stomach.
The kick sent Jason crashing into the ground, blood spilling from his mouth as his back hit hard. His ribs were broken, his arms fractured, and his jaw as well.
Damien landed next to him and watched with pity as Jason lay helplessly on the ground.
"You were wrong on two occasions. Killing my parents for your own personal satisfaction, and assuming you were the best. You're not the best, I am." He spoke while lifting a shard of the broken sword toward his face. "It's over."
BANG!
Before he could finish him off, his eyes went wide as a sharp pain ripped through his head. For a moment, everything around him spun. He turned his head and saw a young boy with a gun aimed at him, smoke rising from its barrel.
"Master!" The young boy yelled with all his strength and pulled the trigger again and again. He fired several shots at Damien—into his chest, his head, and his lungs—until
"J—Jake?"Damien stammered with a shaky voice, then dropped to the ground full of bullet holes.
The young boy rushed towards Jason. "Master! Are you alright!?" He gently lifted him up to his feet, being careful since Jason's fractured arms were useless.
"I'm alright thanks to you, but are you sure you made the right choice? That was your brother Jake, the only family you had left."
"No." Jake sniffled, trying to hold back a tear. "You were the one who gave us a second chance at life, the one who gave us the opportunity to avenge our parents. You were like a father to us, and he ceased to be my brother the moment he tried to kill you." He stared at the fading body, his golden eyes cold and without any sign of regret.
"Alright, if you see it that way." Jason replied, holding back his grin.
'That kid awakened the hunters instincts... The legendary prowess that all Hunter's seeked throughout their journey, it was the one thing that I couldn't attain, and somehow he did. This prowess can shape the future of bounty hunting as we know it, but I can't allow it in his hands. Not while he knows the truth.' Jason thought, staring at Damien.
"J—Jason... You bastard..." With his last words, Damien lost consciousness, with a drop of tears falling off his eyes. Jason took the lives of the people that mattered most to him, and now. He took away the only one he had left in this world, his brother.
[System Activate.]