Tonight, New York seemed especially chaotic. The disturbance had begun on 121st Street and Broadway in Harlem, erupting with deafening noise and explosions.
The streets were a torrent of panicked civilians, all sprinting desperately away from the epicenter. Sobs and screams filled the air. Fires raged everywhere, and occasionally, a car would be sent flying, smashing into the side of a tall building.
While the crowd surged outward, a single, small figure moved against the current, emerging from a side street and walking straight toward the center of the blast.
"This is more dangerous than usual," the boy thought. "Let's see... it's only 2007. What catastrophe is this?"
He was a young Asian boy with dark hair and dark eyes. He pulled out a metal mask and fastened it to his face. "No matter. I'll just deal with it quickly. Maybe I can still get back in time to catch the train."
He hadn't taken more than a few steps when a mangled body fell from the sky and smashed onto the pavement right in front of him, Ellen white. Viscera of every color, mixed with bright red blood, drenched his upper body in an instant, splattering his clothes with gore.
The intensely gruesome scene made Ellen white's excited expression falter. The confidence in his eyes wavered, growing distant as he stared at the unrecognizable pile of flesh and blood.
"'Guh—!" He vomited, bracing himself with one hand against a nearby shop wall.
He dry-heaved a few more times, but nothing came up. Ellen's stomach never held onto food; anything that entered it would rapidly vanish, its energy diverted directly to his mind.
Trembling, he took off his jacket and used it to cover the remains on the ground. His steps then sharpened, and he broke into a sprint.
As he rounded the corner onto the main street, a car door came whirling through the air like a giant, deadly shuriken, aimed directly at him. In the next second, it would have cut him in half.
Reacting instantly, Ellen's fingers twitched. The rapidly spinning door froze mid-air, stopping abruptly just fifty centimeters from his face. It hung there, motionless, a few drops of blood still clinging to its jagged edge—a grim testament to how many people it had already cut down before reaching him.
Ellen's attention, however, was seized by the colossal figure in the distance, and he froze. "Abomination?"
The creature stood a massive four meters tall, its muscles and bones grotesquely intertwined. A row of sharp bone spurs protruded from its spine, with more jutting from its elbows and shoulders. Its powerful muscles were clearly defined, and its mutated form seemed to have granted it dozens of extra bones for protection. Completely naked, the shit-yellow, bald giant was tearing a car apart and hurling the pieces into the crowd, causing massive explosions.
Two military trucks were on the scene. An RPG shot out from one of them, rocketing towards the Abomination at 300 meters per second. The creature simply caught the rocket and let it explode in its grasp. The detonation was violent, flames blooming outward.
In the blink of an eye, the Abomination emerged from the fire completely unscathed. Its attention was now firmly on the truck.
It grinned ferociously, blasted a car aside, and began striding quickly toward Ellen's position.
On the chaotic street, no one noticed the boy with a car door suspended in front of him. Ellen watched the tyrannical figure charging toward him and couldn't help but take two steps back. The floating car door clattered to the ground.
The Gatling gun on the truck never stopped firing, but the vehicle itself began to reverse frantically, trying to escape. Ellen, meanwhile, quietly ducked into the shadows.
The Abomination took massive strides, throwing aside anything that blocked its path. It covered two hundred meters in seconds, catching up to the fleeing truck. With a single punch, it smashed the vehicle in two. It lifted one half of the wreck high and roared at the camera on the other military truck. "Come on!"
*'Boom!'* It slammed the wreckage down, instantly turning the three soldiers inside into a bloody pulp.
The Abomination was about to leave when the wreckage of the two cars suddenly sprang to life, climbing over its body and locking together. Suddenly, Abominitation couldn't move.
From a corner a hundred meters away, Ellen sat cross-legged on his now-suspended car door. His hands were clasped, facing the Abomination. The veins on his right hand bulged as he pressed down violently.
The steel wreckage tightened around the Abomination's legs, and parts of it began to crawl up its rock-like body. In less than a second, the metal had enveloped its head.
Simultaneously, a military helicopter sped toward them from the distance.
As the Abomination screamed and tore at the metal on its face, Ellen's delicate features contorted with strain.
"I can't believe it's the fight against the Abomination," he muttered through gritted teeth. "I thought I had five years before I'd be exposed to the main plot. This is a real accident!"
The car door beneath Ellen dropped to the ground, landing upright. He took a few steps forward, the blue veins on his forehead now prominent. Despite his thin frame, he possessed immense strength. He splayed his hands open, then clenched them as if physically restraining the struggling beast.
Three other cars nearby lifted into the air and shot toward the Abomination with tremendous force, slamming into it and knocking it to the ground.
At the same time, a huge billboard was wrenched from its high perch and crashed down, pinning the Abomination beneath it and the three cars.
Instantly, the steel frames of the cars twisted and deformed with ear-splitting shrieks, as if pressed by an invisible, immense force. The ground cracked, and the steel supports were driven deep into the pavement.
Trickles of blood seeped from Ellen's eyes. "Dammit!" he hissed, gritting his teeth. "Why did it have to be today? Just three more days, and my control would have broken past the 50-point threshold. My ability would have been so much stronger!"
The Abomination was suppressed for less than a minute before a massive fist burst through the pile of metal, sending fragments flying. However, the pieces flew less than twenty centimeters before reversing course and reattaching themselves to the fist, pressing down even harder.
It was futile. Another fist punched its way out, and the resulting shockwave shattered every remaining pane of glass on the street.
The Abomination's hideous fists tore the upper part of the metal prison apart, and its large, bald head emerged, ignoring the fine metal still clinging to it. It scanned its surroundings and bellowed, "Who's there?! Come out and fight!"
The surrounding metal rushed at it again, only to be thrown off with a sweep of its arms. A few powerful kicks sent the heavy blocks of steel flying, where they smashed through the walls of several buildings.
"These little tricks are useless!" it roared. "Face me!"
Ellen lowered his hands, his gaze fixed on the towering figure in the distance. With a flip of his wrists, he produced two sharp, silver throwing knives.
"Damn it," he cursed under his breath. "Ordinary metal can't pierce the Abomination's defense. It's a shame to use the few titanium alloy blades I managed to get from the military. I'm really not willing to waste them here!"
The shit-yellow Abomination in the distance began rampaging again, demolishing buildings to demonstrate its power. At that moment, a small figure appeared on the helicopter hovering above.