He's still sitting as the first two rounds of the night hit him. Simple as. No more burning buildings for him. No more book burnings. No more human or mutant trafficking. Should have been a wrap. Should have brought a higher caliber or kept shooting. Won't make that mistake again. Sometimes overkill is less aesthetically pleasing but it is an awful lot safer.
Little camera implant in my head is recording it all for JANUS. Hardy as fuck. Vibranium. Expensive. Gotta put on a show. Means I don't miss it when guy comes back. People are weird that way. Mutants too. Sometimes they get shot once in the leg, pass out, and peacefully die. Sometimes you shoot them over and over again and they just keep kicking. Old boy here took two center mass and it wasn't quite enough. Turned out to be a good thing for me. My time to shine.
Pyro Mutie looks confused for a second. Eyes flutter until he settles them baby blues on me and I can see the recognition pass over his face. Yep. I shot ya. Straight through the can. You're sitting in that chair again. Slumped. That is most certainly your blood. There is quite a lot of it. You probably aren't making it out of this one homie. There it is.
"There it is," I smile, voicing my thoughts a little. I always like to see it. "There's that fire."
He doesn't quite get it. I don't mean literal fire. He hasn't sparked up yet. I see that old fire in his eyes. The spark before the spark.
"You wanna see some fire old man?"
He has a difficult time standing up from his gaming chair, but he manages it and a surprisingly steady posture here.
"You got it."
I do want it. I really do. I'm happy to see it coming. Shoulder's tensing. Veins on his neck bulging. Jaw set. Eyes pinching tight in hate, or maybe effort, probably a little of both. Heat shimmer passes from his head to his toes, singes the carpet around him. I see the computer chair he was sitting in a moment ago start smoking up and then a second shimmer shoots out from his center and we're both bathed in heat.
"Goddam." Fury says.
Bergeron has just been watching Camera 1. Doesn't plan on watching anything else.
It's a great job. It's an important role. He believes in JANUS. But goddam these things can be hard to watch. It's one thing to see it happen once, in person, and from a distance. Or to just show up after it has all happened as a clean-up team. It's one thing to look at a crime scene and try to work it backwards. Figure out who was where when they were hit. Wonder at what they might have been thinking, or why they were in such a strange position. It's another thing to watch it over and over.
Him, Bushwacker, and now Fury. They were gonna be the only three to see that expression on that Pyro's face. At least the only three to see it and live. An up-close view of a pyrokinetic mutant, one with a shaky grip on his powers, absolutely letting loose. First-hand. Eye Witness footage. At least until that eye evaporates away.
It does of course, and Cameras 3 and 4 go out. Bergeron just stares at the black screen and his own haggard sleep deprived reflection as the footage continues on the other screens.
Feels like a steam bath. Like stepping into a sauna. It's not though. That's the skin smoking away, the nerves dancing for an instant before they join the skin. Eyes whistle, sputter, and then pop as the gooey liquid inside sprays out in a thin shein. Tongue crisps up like a cracklin. I can feel that little Vibranium gadget fall from my ocular cavity and down onto my tongue and jaw. It's probably hot too but who knows at this point. Somewhere around here my brain boils up.
He's panting, lying on the floor, surrounded by ashes, when enough of me comes back that I notice him. He's mumbling. Pale. Still bleeding. Not long for this world. I can hear his friends in the stairwell. They're all talking at once. Telling him to press against the wound. Debating if what remains of the floor will hold their weight. Some warning against it. No use breaking the floor apart trying to get to him. Might drop the whole floor if they don't think it through. He needs to put pressure on the wound. Holy shit did he really do all this?
Barely notice me slumped in the corner.
One of them poked me with his boot earlier. Jackboots. Wonder which version of jackboots this one likes and which one he hates. I looked a lot worse than their buddy then. Hell I'm still smoking. Looking a good bit better now, but I'm still down and still smoking. And I don't mean Pall Malls.
Two of them start out to meet the Pyro Mutie. They're trying opposite sides of the room. One headed to the left, around the nightstand, the closet, and past the bed to his side. Well where those things were. They're just slag now. The other headed to the right, past me, past the gaping hole that used to be a window, and through the smoldering pile that was his computer and desk. Even his little Iron Man Bobblehead chotskie. Iron Man Bobblehead wasn't very flame resistant.
By the time they're halfway my skin is back. I'm smooth and halfway translucent like a gecko, or a jellyfish. I'm a strange sight for sure, but I have sight, and my muscles are functioning. I'm dangerous again. Real dangerous.
I wait until his two buddies are with him. I can't help it. I'm a little theatrical. Doesn't matter there's no one watching from my head anymore. I'll break that gizmo down and use it for something else. Body is already doing it. Maybe a Vibranium bullet. Maybe a tiny little blade. They can't see it, but I can. Same Pyro Mutie. Different look.
I get up. Still smoking. Mostly naked now. Most of my skin back, translucent yeah but it's something. Big shit eating grin.
His friends are looking at him. One is indeed putting pressure on one of his wounds, as best he can. It's too late now. Even if I weren't back up and about ready to turn this up he'd still be done for. Internal bleeding. External bleeding. A good quantity of bleeding all around. His other buddy is stuck in a loop. Checking his blood pressure for some reason and telling him to hold on.
Pyro Mutie, he's just staring at me. That different look I mentioned.
Pyro Mutie, he ain't seen nothing like me before. I bring my hand up again. Good and slow. He's in too much shock to stop me and his buddies are too distracted to notice. Not that they could do shit if they did. This time instead of shooting through my palm I take the time to form my fingers into a barrel, slowly aim down it, and give him a little wave before I splatter his friends with his thinking bits and end his night.
With a bang.
Bergeron had memorized the course of events by now.
In Camera 1 you would be able to see the smoking ruins of the roof. Shingles mostly melted to a waxy resin. Bricks glowing. Surrounding area stained black. Thick black carcinogenic smoke undulating up into the night sky. Members of this little group had mostly headed into the building to grab gear, weapons, and one another. A few milled about outside, armed, waiting to see what had happened upstairs. Was it a test to see if they would stay with the group when things got hot? Was their leader about to declare war on Krakoa? Had a rival cartel made an attempt on his life?
In Camera 2 you would be able to see, barely, Bushwacker in a heap, smoldering. It was a long pause between gunshots. The first two that had preceded the fiery explosion and then the seven that preceded the coming slaughter.
If you watched Camera 2 you would be able to see Bushwacker's body piece itself back together frighteningly quickly. The spark of awareness flicker in his eye. Eventually you'd see him stand slowly, level his hand like a pistol, then wave at someone and blast a bullet through his middle and index fingers. He would then shoot six more times, adjusting his aim ever so slightly left and right.
From there it was a slaughter.
They were scum. Human traffickers. Mutant traffickers. Drug traffickers. Sex traffickers. Kidnappers. Terrorists. Arsonists. Garbage.
It was still difficult to watch him mow through them like a swathe of wheat. More so if you watched again and again. If you realized that he knew where the cameras were as he did it. That he played it up for them. That as much as it looked like he didn't have much control, he did.
Near the end there had been a final trio of cartel members who took cover in the gym. Hiding behind equipment. Heavily armed. In their desperation they seemed more coordinated than the others had been. The scary thing, the thing that kept Bergeron's eyes steeled on his own reflection, was that Camera 1 got a perfect view of it all.
Bushwacker knew where they were and he knew how many. He stepped out of the main house, still mostly naked, his skin now almost entirely reformed and no longer translucent. In Camera 1 you could see that the cartel members saw him and were trying to hide. Hoping he would just walk away.
Bushwacker took several steps away from the house until he was dead center in the view of the camera. The smoking remains of the Compound house, full of bodies, on his left. The garage gym with three cartel members lying in weight to his right. He looked up to Camera 1. He held up three fingers. Ticked his head to the right. Held his hand up as the index and middle fingers bled into one another and formed into a barrel, blew the imaginary smoke from it, and slowly turned around like a man who had walked to his car before realizing he had left his car keys on top of the television.
Bergeron remained silent as Bushwacker eliminated the three remaining cartel members for the cameras. It was a display. He knew where they were and how many. He could have circled around. He could have headed back into the building and came back out through a window. He could have done about anything, but he walked dead on toward the open garage and the resulting hail of gunfire.
"You can watch the rest, but there isn't really much to see. They are all dead. He douses them all, and the buildings, and the cars, and the couches. Everything really."
"But the Pyro." Fury asks. Not finishing his sentence, trusting the implication is clear enough.
"He said the Pyro was in the car. Yeah. Before he lights the Compound up he drags the Pyro's body to the car, sets it up in the driver's seat, then douses that too and lights everything up."
They sit there a bit longer and discuss matters. Whatever was special about the Pyro persisted after his death. When he went up he burned far hotter than he should have. Plenty hot enough to destroy all the teeth and bone. Plenty hot enough to strip the car to metal and strip the metal of any paint. To slag most of the metal.
"Hell of a healing factor."
"Yep. And he knows it."
"Wants us to know it."
"Yep."
"So what's your evaluation Bergeron?"
"Same as your's I suspect."
He was hired.
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