Back in the conference room, Beto and Joker circled each other.
Joker launched another wind blade. Beto dodged and countered with a blast of flame.
The fire washed over Joker's black covering harmlessly. The material—whatever it was—seemed completely impervious to heat.
"Interesting matchup, isn't it?" Joker observed, launching three more wind blades simultaneously. "Your fire can't penetrate my defense. My attacks can injure you, but you simply regenerate. We could fight forever and achieve nothing."
He was right, and Beto knew it.
Each wind blade that connected carved through Beto's flesh, but his regeneration sealed the wounds almost instantly. Each punch Beto landed, each flame that struck Joker's body, did absolutely nothing to the black metallic substance protecting him.
They fought anyway.
Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. The room was destroyed around them—furniture shattered, walls carved apart by wind blades, scorch marks covering every surface.
Beto's flames grew hotter.
This was his technique's terrible secret. He didn't create fire from nothing—he converted his own vital energy directly into flame. And since vital energy existed within his body, the fire originated from inside him, burning his own skin even as it burned his enemies.
Most people couldn't use this technique because they'd incinerate themselves. But Beto's regeneration meant he could sustain it, could keep fighting even as his own power consumed him.
The trade-off was pain. Endless, excruciating pain that never stopped as long as the flames burned.
And the hotter the flames got, the more damage they did to his own body.
Beto pushed harder, pouring more vital energy into the flames, making them hotter and hotter.
His skin began to char. His regeneration, which had been keeping pace with the damage, started to fall behind. He was burning faster than he could heal.
But the heat was having an effect on Joker.
The black metallic substance covering his body began to change. At first, it was subtle—a slight shimmering, a barely visible distortion.
Then the material started to expand.
Metal, when heated, expands. It's basic physics. And while Joker's substance was incredibly resistant to heat, it wasn't immune to the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.
As Beto's flames grew hotter—hot enough that the air itself was warping around him—the black covering expanded microscopically. And in expanding, it created stress points.
Cracks appeared.
Tiny at first, hairline fractures that Joker tried to repair by creating more material to seal them.
But the heat kept increasing, and the expansion continued, and the cracks spread.
Beto screamed—not in battle fury, but in genuine agony as his skin burned faster than his cells could regenerate. But he didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
The cracks in Joker's armor widened.
And then Beto struck.
His fist, wreathed in flames hot enough to melt steel, punched through the fractured section of Joker's defense and connected with flesh beneath.
Joker's scream joined Beto's.
The black covering shattered completely as Joker lost concentration. The man beneath—Mr. Z, Greed, one of the seven sins—collapsed to his knees, his chest seared where Beto's fist had connected.
"Impossible," he gasped. "That material was designed to withstand nuclear temperatures—"
"Nothing withstands everything," Beto replied, his voice hoarse from screaming, his body a mass of burns that were slowly, painfully healing. "Everything has a breaking point. I just had to be willing to burn long enough to find yours."
He walked toward Joker, ready to finish what he'd started.
In The Doctor's office, Itachi remained on his knees, hands pressed to his ears, the sound device's frequency piercing through his skull like hot needles.
The Doctor stood over him, smiling that pleasant, terrible smile, the red button device held casually in one hand.
"I really should thank you for escaping," The Doctor said conversationally. "Your development outside my supervision has been fascinating. The things you've learned to do with your enhancement ability—I never would have thought to apply it to inanimate objects. Creating cards and threads from vital energy? Brilliant innovation."
He walked closer, examining Itachi like a specimen. "I'm curious about the upper limits of your current capabilities. How much can you enhance before reaching critical failure? What happens if you enhance contradictory properties simultaneously? These are questions we'll explore together once I've taken you back to my new laboratory."
Then something impossible happened.
A figure materialized behind The Doctor—human-sized but flat, two-dimensional, like a playing card given form and motion. It wore no face, had no features, just a humanoid shape made of paper-thin material.
The card-man struck The Doctor from behind with surprising force, knocking him forward.
The red button device flew from his hand, skittering across the floor.
Itachi dove for it, his enhanced reflexes allowing him to move despite the pain. His fingers closed around the device, and he crushed it with desperate strength.
The sound stopped.
Itachi stood, breathing hard, as the card-man dissolved back into nothing.
"A puppet," The Doctor said, understanding immediately. "You created it and had it waiting, hidden somewhere I wouldn't notice. Clever. Very clever."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something that gleamed in the office lighting—a metallic claw glove that fit over his right hand, each finger ending in a wicked, curved blade.
"But you've only delayed the inevitable," The Doctor continued. "Without the sound device, we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way."
Itachi didn't respond with words. Instead, more card-men appeared—three, then five, then a dozen, materializing from corners and shadows where Itachi had apparently been placing them throughout the confrontation.
They attacked in coordination, their movements synchronized through threads so fine they were nearly invisible.
The Doctor moved through them like a dancer, his clawed hand slicing through the puppet constructs with surgical precision. Each one collapsed into paper fragments the moment the claws connected, their vital energy disrupted by whatever property the weapon possessed.
"You're making a fundamental error," The Doctor called out as he destroyed the seventh puppet. "Puppet masters aren't close-combat fighters. You should be controlling from a distance, not—"
Itachi appeared directly in front of him, a card in each hand, moving with speed that suggested he'd been enhancing his own muscles the entire time.
The Doctor barely blocked the first strike, but the second card sliced across his cheek, drawing blood.
"Assumption was your mistake," Itachi said coldly. "I learned to fight in many ways. Puppets are just one tool."
What followed was a battle of intelligence more than raw power.
The Doctor had experience, training, and a weapon that could disrupt Itachi's creations. Itachi had versatility, speed, and the ability to enhance his cards to have properties that shouldn't be possible—making them harder, sharper, more durable.
They circled each other, each attack carefully calculated, each defense precisely measured. The Doctor would aim for vital points. Itachi would create barriers of enhanced cards to block. Itachi would attempt complex combinations. The Doctor would counter with unpredictable movements.
For someone watching, it would look almost like a chess match played at superhuman speed—each move countered, each strategy anticipated.
After minutes of this deadly dance, The Doctor's claw finally made solid contact.
It was a small wound—barely a scratch across Itachi's left arm. But the moment the blades touched skin, Itachi's entire body locked up.
He collapsed to one knee, his muscles refusing to respond to his commands.
"Ah, there it is," The Doctor said, studying Itachi with clinical interest. "The poison. Did you think the claw was my only creation? No, no. The blades are coated with a neurotoxin I've been developing for years. Instant paralysis leading to respiratory failure within thirty seconds. Even with your enhancement abilities, you can't—"
Itachi stood up.
The Doctor's smile faltered. "What?"
"The poison," Itachi said, his voice strained but functional, "attempted to shut down my nervous system. So I enhanced my heart. Increased its quality and function until it could process and neutralize the toxin faster than it could spread."
He moved forward, his body still fighting the effects but operational enough to continue the fight.
The Doctor backed up, reassessing. "Interesting adaptation. But you're not fully recovered. Your movement is compromised. And I can keep cutting you until the poison accumulates faster than you can process it."
He lunged forward with the claw, and Itachi barely dodged.
But as the fight continued, something strange happened. The Doctor's movements became increasingly restricted, as if something was impeding his motion.
The Doctor tried to strike again and found his arm wouldn't move properly. He looked down.
Threads.
Hundreds of them, so fine they'd been invisible, wrapped around his limbs, his torso, even his neck. He hadn't noticed them being placed because Itachi had been changing their properties—making them not just invisible, but intangible, able to pass through matter until Itachi willed them solid again.
"When?" The Doctor asked, genuinely impressed despite his predicament.
"Since the moment you destroyed the remote," Itachi replied. "Every puppet you killed, every card you blocked—I was using them as distractions while placing threads. You were looking for puppets, so you missed what was really happening."
The threads tightened, binding The Doctor completely. He couldn't move his arms, couldn't reach for any other weapons or devices he might have hidden.
Then the threads began to spark.
Electrical current flowed through them—not natural electricity, but vital energy converted and channeled through enhanced threads that conducted it perfectly.
The Doctor's body convulsed as the electricity coursed through him, his muscles spasming, his enhanced cognition unable to function as his neural pathways were overloaded.
After several seconds, the current stopped, and The Doctor collapsed, unconscious but alive.
**Narrator:** The victory required explanation, both for The Doctor—who had underestimated his former subject—and for those who might wonder how Itachi had overcome poison designed to kill within seconds. When the toxin entered Itachi's bloodstream, he immediately enhanced the quality of his heart. Not its strength or size, but its actual function—its ability to process chemicals, to filter blood, to recognize and neutralize foreign substances. What should have killed him instead caused temporary paralysis, which he countered by creating a puppet with a Vitra-constructed brain and having that puppet control his body like a marionette, hidden from The Doctor's line of sight. This allowed him to keep fighting while his enhanced heart worked to eliminate the poison. As for The Doctor's defeat, it came down to a fundamental difference in their abilities. The Doctor's metallic claw glove was impressive, a weapon that could disrupt Vitra constructs on contact. But that was the limit of his creative ability—he could make the gloves, and that was all. Itachi, on the other hand, had learned to create not just cards and puppets, but threads. And those threads could be enhanced in countless ways: made invisible by altering their light-reflecting properties, made intangible by adjusting their molecular phase, made conductive by changing their atomic structure. The Doctor had lost not because Itachi was smarter—they were likely intellectual equals—but because Itachi's ability offered infinite variations while The Doctor's was fundamentally limited. And there was one more factor: electricity. During their three years in the laboratory, Beto had been tortured with fire while Itachi had been tortured with electricity. This meant both had developed intimate understanding of their respective elements—so deep that they could not only enhance resistance to them, but eventually learned to create them. Beto could generate flame by converting vital energy to heat. Itachi could generate electricity by exciting his vital energy's electromagnetic properties. The Doctor, who had designed those tortures, had somehow never anticipated that his subjects would turn their trauma into weapons. It was, perhaps, the only oversight he'd ever made. And it had cost him this battle.
Beto stood over Joker's unconscious body, his own burns still healing, when Ji-won entered the conference room.
"Itachi?" she asked.
"I'm here," came a voice from the corridor. Itachi stumbled in, supporting himself against the doorframe, looking exhausted and still fighting off the last effects of the poison.
"We need to move," Ji-won said. "This building will be swarming with security soon."
Beto nodded and moved to lift Itachi onto his back. Despite his own injuries, his enhanced strength was more than sufficient.
They made their way through the building, following the escape route Itachi had memorized during his reconnaissance. The chaos caused by the Raccoons' theft had drawn most of the security forces away, but they still had to avoid several patrols.
When they finally emerged onto the streets of La Vendetta, the city was in turmoil. News of the auction heist had spread, and criminals were taking advantage of the confusion to settle old scores and raid rival territories.
In the chaos, three fugitives carrying the vital energy pills and leaving behind seven confirmed kills and one of the seven sins went unnoticed.
Later, when investigations into the auction heist were conducted, several things would confuse the authorities.
The Raccoons had indeed stolen everything from the main auction floor—every item, every artifact, every piece of merchandise. It was the most successful heist in La Vendetta's history.
But here was the strange part: none of the security forces had seen it happen. There was no confrontation, no alarm until it was far too late. It was as if the Raccoons had moved through the building like ghosts.
Security footage would later reveal the truth, though it raised more questions than it answered.
A young man in a green suit, blonde or white hair, a white feather in his hair, had moved through the building methodically. Every guard he encountered, he dispatched so quickly and efficiently that the guard didn't even register they'd been defeated. No broken bones, no serious injuries—just unconscious bodies left carefully positioned to look like they were still on duty.
The young man never ran. Never seemed rushed. He walked casually from room to room, and anyone who might have stopped him simply... didn't.
When he reached the auction storage, he'd done something to the security systems—some technique that made electronics simply stop working—and then took the kitana and left.
The Raccoons claimed credit for the heist publicly, but internally, they were just as confused as everyone else. They'd been planning to hit the auction, but someone had beaten them to it.
All the security were already defeated leading to no protection of the goods, god for them.
No one knew who he was. No one had footage of his face that wasn't blurred or obscured. He'd simply appeared, defeated the guards, stolen stole, and disappeared.
La Vendetta's criminal underworld would be talking about the theft for years.
After the chaotic night of October 31st, Itachi, Beto, and Ji-won decided to remain in La Vendetta for a while.
Partially because they needed time to recover—Beto's burns took weeks to fully heal, and Itachi needed to ensure the poison was completely eliminated from his system.
But also because La Vendetta was safe in a way nowhere else was. The bounties on their heads meant nothing here. Hunters didn't operate in the city. They could move freely, live normally, and wait for the heat from the Dylan Foster assassination to die down.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.
November passed. December brought cold weather even to La Vendetta's subtropical climate. January 2027 arrived with celebrations that the fugitives observed from their hotel windows.
They trained in secret facilities, refined their techniques, and slowly integrated into the city's underground community. La Vendetta had a strange social structure—everyone knew everyone else was a criminal, but there was an unspoken code of conduct. Don't cause trouble in the city. Don't bring outside law enforcement. And never, ever cooperate with government authorities.
In February, they attended underground fighting tournaments for entertainment. In March, they explored the black market for additional equipment and supplies.
April and May passed in relative peace.
And then, in June, something special happened.
The Super League was the most prestigious football tournament in the world—a competition between the championship teams from every major league on the planet. It happened once every four years, and the final match was always a spectacle that transcended sports.
This year, the final was being held in La Vendetta.
The city had lobbied for years to host it, and the organizers had finally agreed. It brought in massive revenue, tourism, and international attention—though the criminal elements wisely stayed out of sight during the event.
Itachi, Beto, and Ji-won secured tickets through one of their new contacts in the city. They attended wearing civilian clothes, anonymous among thousands of fans.
For a few hours, they forgot they were fugitives. They cheered for incredible plays, groaned at missed opportunities, and celebrated when their preferred team scored.
It was the most normal thing they'd done in months.
When the match ended and the stadium erupted in celebration, they filed out with the crowd, three more faces in the sea of humanity.
"We should head back soon," Itachi said as they walked through the city streets. "Check in with X. See what the next mission is."
"Are you sure you're ready?" Ji-won asked. "Your body is healed, but..."
"I'm fine," Itachi replied.
Beto nodded in agreement. "Let's finish this. The cult still has six sins remaining. And we have pills that can help us fight them."
They returned to their hotel, packed their belongings, and prepared to leave La Vendetta.
When Itachi, Beto, and Ji-won stepped through the portal to Night Wolf's secret base, they found the others already gathered.
X was there, looking no different than when they'd last seen him months ago—still wearing his civilian identity, still maintaining the fiction that he was just a normal guy.
Laurel and Lily were present, looking healthy and rested. Whatever they'd been doing during their time in hiding, it had clearly been less eventful than the La Vendetta crew's experience.
Marvel and Stephanie were there, the sister looking much healthier now that she'd been receiving proper nutrition and wasn't being hunted constantly.
Lee, Luis, and Pablo—the non-fugitive members who'd been providing financial support—stood off to the side.
Even the blonde man was present.
But one person was notably absent.
"Where's Nelson?" Beto asked.
X's expression darkened slightly. "Still searching for his father. We've had sporadic communication, but he's been on the move constantly. Last report was from South America."
X looked around at the assembled team, his gaze lingering on the container of vital energy pills that Itachi had secured at such terrible cost.
"We have four sins remaining," X said. "Pride, Wrath, Sloth, and the Master who leads them all. The pills will help, but they're not enough by themselves. We need strategy. We need intelligence. And we need to understand what we're really fighting against."
She paused, and for a moment, she looked her age—a teenage girl carrying the weight of a war she'd started.
"But before we plan the next operation, I need to know what happened in La Vendetta. All of it. Starting with how you ended up fighting one of the sins and seven of the most powerful people in the criminal and military worlds."
Itachi, Beto, and Ji-won exchanged glances.
Then Itachi began to speak, telling the story of October 31st—the heist, the confrontation with The Doctor, the discovery that Mr. Z was Greed, and the battles that had left seven powerful people dead and one of the seven sins defeated.
The others listened in stunned silence as the tale unfolded, understanding for the first time just how dangerous their mission had become, and how close they'd come to losing three of their strongest members.
When the story concluded, X stood up and looked at each person in the room.
"Then we know what we're dealing with now," she said. "The sins are powerful, but they can be beaten. The question is: are we ready for what comes next?"