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---

The busy nightlife of Macau was already on a roll as Nina and I finally walked out of Pandora's Box. It took a lot more work than I made it sound previously to legally take over a business, especially one that moved as much merchandise and money around as Pandora's Box did. Just thinking about it threatened to give me a headache.

Bing Jing had closed the business for the day and told everyone to go to the meeting room for an emergency meeting, under the orders of Bao Lan. After that I waltzed in and introduced myself as their new leader, it took the security shooting at me, some broken bones, and a few threats before everyone understood the new pecking order with me at the top and with Xue Yu just under me.

Done proving my point I conjured 15 contracts, one for each employee including Bing Jing, the contracts were like the ones I made Xue Yu and Hei Jiang sign, asking only for energy and loyalty instead of souls. Everyone who signed the contracts would be unable to tell anyone about me without my permission or betray me in any way, shape, or form.

There was a commotion about signing unknown contracts but after I explained how they could either sign the contracts or follow their former boss to the afterlife, they calmed down real fast.

Without the whole sell your soul bit, it was a lot easier to make people sign my contracts especially when I was threatening to kill them if they don't. Of course there are always tough guys in any given group of people that won't cooperate, in this group it was one of the six security guards who refused to get in line, so I had to make an example of him to show everyone I meant business.

After seeing me brutally kill someone and make his body disappear everyone signed up real quick, making me 14 half souls richer which was worth 7 normal ones. Not wanting a Mindscape full of artificial souls only having half the soul-energy of a normal soul I fused those 14 half souls and Xue Yu's and Hei Jiang's ones together into 8 normal souls.

I left the room with a reminder for them all to act normal and listen to Xue Yu.

With Bao Lan's knowledge Xue Yu knew exactly what needed to be done to legally take over Pandora's Box, starting with calling Bao Lan's Lawyer and making him come to meet 'Bao Lan' at his office. A little mind control and some conjured legal papers written in Bao Lan's handwriting later and Xue Yu was the sole inheritor of Bao Lan's estate.

The legal papers themselves wouldn't normally be enough but with Bao Lan's lawyer on our side and with all the passwords and other things Xue Yu knew it was easy to make it all seem real without anyone suspecting that there was foul play involved.

It was easy to make it appear like Xue Yu was one of Bao Lan's mistresses, and because he had no wife or any other family, only a long stream of mistresses it wouldn't be too strange for him to leave everything to his favorite one. The best thing is that there was no one to contest otherwise and a lot of people who now work for me to authenticate the story.

Done with all the paperwork, there was just one more thing I needed to do, make Bao Lan's death seem natural. I did that by restoring his body, putting him in his car and making it crash in a busy intersection to make his death seem like a car accident, with tons of witnesses.

A little magic changed every security camera recording to what I wanted to corroborate my staged scene.

Xue Yu talked to the police when they arrived as Bao Lan's second in command and lover, she told them some bogus story of him closing the store early and leaving in a rush all the while crying crocodile tears that looked so genuine that even I was almost persuaded to believe that she really loved him.

I need to keep an eye on that one, no one that isn't a movie star should be able to act that convincingly.

Just in case I also compelled the cops to follow all the bread crumbs I left out for them and to accept it as an unfortunate car accident of a man that was in a rush and to leave it at that.

I promised Hei to come get him when it was time to take revenge against the people that killed his parents, kidnapped ,and experimented on him but for now I needed him in a position to protect Xue Yu, so I temporarily left him inside her shadow. I may have taken care of the dangers in the light but the dangers in the dark wouldn't care if Bao Lan death was an accident or that he left everything to Xue Yu, they would either threaten her for everything or just kill her and figure it out afterwards.

If anything the two of them couldn't handle themselves came up, Xue Yu had Nina's number.

I left my merchandise with Xue Yu and made her get some cash from Bao Lan's safe - of course it was hidden behind a painting in his office - for us to use until everything with the inheritance was done with and she could use Bao Lan's accounts without suspicion.

---

Watching Nina walk down the small steps in front of the store I asked her something I had been wondering since this morning, "what is the deal with you and Faizul?"

Turning to me Nina pursed her lips,"can't you just...I don't know, use your powers to know?"

"Yes, but it would be a waste of energy when I can just ask you."

For a moment she looked like she wasn't going to say anything, her face was scrunched up in thought, after a second she started walking away, "let's go get something to eat, I will tell you on the way."

Nodding I walked beside her, waiting for her to start her story.

"There isn't really much to tell, my father was always disappointed that I turned out to be a girl instead of a boy who could take over after him," Nina started, "to make things worse there were some complications with my birth, luckily the doctors were able to save me and my mother but she couldn't get pregnant anymore afterwards."

She pauses when she starts talking about her mom, there is a strange look in her eyes, like she was thousands of miles away.

"I tried everything to get my father's approval when I was small, I learned business from his second in command, hell I even tried to learn more about the gang side of things trying to please him, I was so naive back then," Nina said hatefully.

"Without me noticing my parents' relationship started going southwards because of my mother's inability to give Faizul another child. One day he brought a new woman home, of course he had more women on the side but that was all they were women on the side, this one however was different he acted like he really cared for her. And knowing this, it didn't take long before the bitch started exercising her new powers until one day she slapped me when I wouldn't listen to her."

We walked a few more paces in silence before the suspense became too much for me.

"What happened after that?!"

"My mom killed her for it," Nina said casually.

"What?" I asked shocked, thinking that I may have misheard her.

Nina giggled at my shocked look, "what, you didn't think a normal woman would have a child with a gang boss like Faizul, did you?"

"My mom was a certified badass," she said proudly but that proud look changed into one of sadness when she remembered the next part, her voice catching, she continued, "in revenge for killing the woman he was starting to fall in love with, Faizul killed my mom."

A tear started to fall from her eye before she wiped it away angrily,"anyway after that I fled and lived on the streets until I met Rui and the others and started the Hellions."

Sensing that Nina didn't want to talk about her past anymore, I changed the subject, "let's eat here," I said, noticing a restaurant that looked decent enough and was still open at this time of night.

Nina nodded her approval of the place and we walked inside. Inside we were greeted by an average girl in her twenties with honey-brown hair, "Welcome to the Little Flower Palace, are you here for take out or would you like a table?"

"We would like a table," I answered.

To my dismay, the hostess looked at Nina for confirmation before telling us to follow her to a table when Nina nodded.

Sitting down, I glared at the hostess's retreating back, she had the gall to ask Nina if I needed a kid's menu and to add insult to injury Nina had said yes.

"Stop glaring at her, she is just doing her job," Nina admonished me, not looking up from her menu.

I pouted, I'm not a kid damnit!

We ordered our respective meals and handed our menus to the waiter.

"Okay, I will join you," Nina said suddenly.

"Why the sudden change of heart," I asked surprised, looking up from where I was playing with my napkin.

"We are already doing whatever you want, there is no difference if I put a name to our relationship or not."

"I knew you would come around when you saw how amazing working for me is," I said smiling. It is awesome when a scheme comes together.

"It also doesn't hurt that you are the only thing that can stop Faizul from killing me and all my friends." Nina added as an afterthought.

"Flattering." I replied drily.

"So what is the plan?" Nina asked before playfully adding, "boss."

Boss, I like the sound of that.

"Someone is experimenting on kids, giving them powers and selling them to the highest bidder. We are going to take over every gang in Macau before every gang boss with delusions of grandeur can get their hand on one," I explained nonchalantly like taking over a city was no big deal.

Nina's face changed from a blank look to shock to finally disbelief in the span of a second.

"Are you crazy, how are we going to do that?!" She whisper-screamed across the table, making more than a few people look our way.

"First thing tomorrow I am going to make a deal with every person in the Hellions for superpowers," I said leaning forward so that the people who were still looking at us couldn't overhear us.

"You can give people powers just like that?"

"Yea, but the power can only be as strong as how much soul-energy your soul generates, otherwise I would be losing energy myself however with you working for me I will be able to make them stronger over time as I myself get stronger."

"And after we are done with your crazy plan of taking over every gang in Macau what then?" Nina asked, trying to hide her giddiness of getting her very own superpower, she always wanted one, ever since she was a little girl and her mother used to tell her bedtime stories of people with powers.

"After that I am going to make my own empire with blackjack and hookers."

Nina looks at me strangely.

I guess that saying isn't out yet.

"I'm just joking, about the blackjack and hookers that is, the rest I'm serious about." Wait this is a city full of casinos and brothels. After I take it over I really will have my own empire with blackjack and hookers, Nice.

As I was contemplating that, our food arrived and we ate in silence. Me because I was enjoying my meal and had nothing more to say and Nina because she was thinking about the insane ambitions I have dragged her into.

We finished our meals in record time not having eaten anything since lunch and left after paying. When we arrived back at the base most of the kids were already asleep with only Kai and Rui patrolling and waiting on us.

"How did it go," Rui asked Nina as he unlocked the chain-link fence for us.

"We will have a meeting tomorrow to talk about it and a few other changes. let's go sleep for now it is going to be an early day tomorrow," Nina answered tiredly after everything that happened today she just wanted to lie down and sleep the rest of the week away.

After saying our goodnights everyone went into their respective rooms to sleep.

---

It seems like only a few seconds ago that I had dropped my head down on my supernatural comfy pillows, made so with a good helping of magic, when I'm awake again.

Something had woken me up but being still half asleep it takes me a minute to realise that the something was ringing in my head and another to figure out what the fuck it was and why it was disturbing my sleep.

The alarm that I put up to warn and wake me up if someone with hostile intent came within 100 feet of me, was going off. Sitting up I shake my grogginess away - I should change the alarm to remove my grogginess as well as wake me up - and listen for any sounds in the darkness I hear nothing that could have pinged off my danger sense.

I don't think that Nina would be dumb enough to attack me, not after just agreeing to work for me and certainly not after seeing what I was capable of for herself. So it was probably an attack from the outside, but to be sure I used some soul-energy to figure out where the hostile intent was coming from, I got 8 pings back from outside the warehouse just from behind the chain-link fence.

Opening the divider between my room and the room next to mine, I see the sleeping forms of the twins. Walking up to the closest one I softly shake him awake with my foot before doing the same to the other twin.

They both look around drowsy however when they see me standing over them in the dark they jump up ready to defend themselves.

Having gotten their attention I motion for them to stay quiet and listen.

"We are being attacked," I tell them, before they could start making a commotion or god forbid become hysterical, I start giving out orders, "one of you go wake up Nina and send her my way, the other one will wake up everyone else and take them to the cafeteria, and tell them to stay there."

Outside of Nina's office on the second floor the cafeteria was the only real room with a door in the base, and thus the best place to hide and hunker down until I take care of the attackers.

The twins stand there a second still half asleep and not totally over the part where I said we were being attacked.

"Now!" I yell when they don't move fast enough, making them rush out.

It takes only a minute for Nina to come running to my room, "what is going on?"

"We are being attacked, I am guessing Faizul is here for revenge for killing his goons."

"How do you know we are being attack-," she must still be coming to grips with the whole 'my powers allow me to do anything I want' because she pauses when she remembers and lets out a self deprecating sight, "-nevermind."

"What are we going to do, how many of them are there?" Nina continued.

"Don't worry about it, leave it to me. Go join the rest of the gang in the cafeteria, I will call you when it's done."

Nina looks like she is about to argue about leaving me to do all the work of protecting her and her friends but in the end she accepts that there is nothing she can do except get in my way and become a damsel in distress.

"You will have more than enough power to protect yourself after tomorrow," I said, trying to cheer her up a little.

Leaving her with those words, I went to the front door to wait on our uninvited visitors.

---

(Park Wu)

Two black SUV's quietly stopped in front of a chain-link fence and 8 men in tactical full body armor stepped out in military precision.

Wu examined the warehouse they were supposed to raid, looking for any inconsistencies or information left out from the intelligence Faizul had given him and his team. Being ex-military he and his squad knew how fast bad intel could fuck the whole mission up.

Not noticing anything he sighted, when Faizul had ordered him to take his whole squad to raid the base of a small time gang, he had been offended, 4 of his men were more than enough to take care of a few street kids and a Super, as long as the Super wasn't bulletproof that is.

And while he knew Supers were dangerous, he didn't believe that one Super alone would be able to survive a surprise attack from his whole squad, even without all these fancy body armors, with them it was just overkill.

"San, report!" He barked. turning to one of his men who was just getting off the phone.

"Team 2 is in position, Sir!" San reported giving him a salute.

He may find it overkill to have his whole squad here but he was glad to finally work with professionals again and that this assignment didn't require him to work with those amateur 'gangsters' Faizul had in his employ, like he unfortunately had to do several times since starting to work for the man.

Wu gestures for Er to cut the padlock keeping the chain-link fence closed and for everyone to stream in. As they get closer to the warehouse he immediately sees the lookouts as reported and signals for his men to stay out of sight, even if he didn't think anyone was looking through them at the moment.

It was almost 3 am and all the lights in the warehouse were out, either every

one of the kids was asleep or most of them were.

Before Wu could tell Er to start picking the lock of the steel warehouse door, the door starts to open by itself. Signaling for his men to spread out and surround the door, he takes the center position of the half circle and waits.

Out walks, no swaggers, a little kid no older than 8, before closing the door behind him. The kid looks at them standing there surrounding and pointing rifles at him with absolute no surprise or fear on his face.

'He is far too calm, he knew we were here.'

How?

Did we miss some sort of sensor somewhere, or is this the Super, and he has more powers than just shooting projectiles like reported?

The kid opens his mouth, to talk or use his powers Wu doesn't know but he wasn't about to wait to figure it out.

"Fire!" Wu orders his team while he himself refrains from doing so, studying the kid's reaction.

His men open fire, the kid blurs and is suddenly standing 20 feet to the right from where he was standing a second ago, making all the bullets miss him and hit where he was standing before.

"He is a speedster, fan out your bullets, try to flank him from behind!" Wu yells at his dazed men. He was the only one shooting at the kid's new location, "don't give him time to rush us!"

Fucking Faizul, 'it's unlikely that the Super is bulletproof' he says, he doesn't need to be bulletproof if he can just dodge the fucking bullets before they hit him. Seeing that his men had gotten out of their stupors and were shooting at the Super again Wu slowly retreats to stand next to Ba.

"Take out your grenade," He whispers to Ba, "throw it to his right when I say so."

He signals to his men to slowly make some distance between them and the Super.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the kid wasn't going to get hit by anything but a really lucky hit if they keep shooting at him like this. He had to time this just right, if he was even just a second off it probably wouldn't work with someone this fast.

What was strange is that although the kid was dodging around the bullets being shot at him, he wasn't trying to advance to attack or fire one of his still unknown projectiles at them, which he should have had all the time in the world for.

It was almost like the kid was...playing with them, a little kid was playing around with an elite squad of soldiers who have seen and survived battlefields that would make normal people tremble in fear.

Fucking Supers!

The moment Wu had been waiting for comes when the kid is focused on gaining some distance between himself and the gunmen on his left, a subtle signal has Ba's grenade in the air and flying at the kid in a gentle arc before anyone knows what happened.

The rest of the men watch the grenade slowly make its way to the kid in surprise, whoever just threw it wasted a perfectly good grenade, the kid would be long gone before the grenade even went off. And that would have been the case if Wu didn't take that moment to shoot the grenade in midair, making it explode prematurely in midair throwing the kid and most of his men a few feet back.

Normally a grenade wouldn't explode when shot but it was another story when shot using the heavy armor piercing rounds he and his men used.

Wu wasn't overly worried about the men that had been caught up at the edges of the explosion, with all the body armor they were wearing they at most had some slight shock to their internal organs.

The kid on the other hand should have some serious damage and that is without mentioning all the shrapnel that should have made a porcupine out of him, the keyword being should. Wu watched in shock as the kid stood up and patted himself off like nothing happened.

It isn't until he hears the sound of his rifle going off and he feels the recoil against his shoulder that he notices the white knuckled finger around his trigger.

"*Gurgle*"

Glancing next to him, Wu sees Ba hold his bleeding throat in surprise before falling down missing half his neck.

He looks back up just in time to see the rest of his squad collapse to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. Looking back at the kid he sees him standing at the same place as before, the only proof that he had indeed moved and killed his squad being his red painted hands dripping blood on the floor.

Wu knew that the kid had been playing with them the whole time, but to think that he had been holding back this much was humbling.

They never even stood a chance.

One moment the kid was standing 20 feet away, the next he was in front of him looking him dead in the eyes. Wu recoils away, those eyes were so different from the playful eyes from just a moment ago, they were as cold as the void and appeared to be looking into his very being.

"I won't talk!" Wu said already knowing why he didn't die alongside his men.

"No need, I already got everything I want."

Wu has exactly one second to realise that he was lying on the ground with his head caved in from a blow that was too fast for him to see before his unpopped eye glazes over in death.

---

(Alexander)

Rubbing my forehead with my magic cleaned hands, I let out a long sigh.

That was a close one if I was a normal speedster without any extra powers, that explosion would have filled me chuck full with shrapnel after giving me severe damage to my internal organs.

I was too cocky, I had been playing with them to train with my superspeed, knowing that if I ever fought with someone on my level they would completely beat my ass because of my lack of experience.

but it backfired on me, I didn't expect the team leader to come up with such a plan, hell I didn't even know that people could shoot grenades out of mid-air, I thought that that only happened in movies.

I am again reminded that this isn't my world and that normal people can do truly absurd things in this universe even without superpowers.

Glancing down at the gruesome corpse at my feet with half its skull caved in and one eye popped out, I almost throw up. I should have hit him somewhere else.

A wave of my hand has all the bodies disappear leaving only their gear, no need to give the younger kids or the older ones for that matter nightmares for the rest of their lives. I bang on the warehouse door and call inside to let the gang know that it is over.

Rui is the first one out the door, scanning the area with the gun we took from Faizul's goons in his hands, "are there any more?"

"Nope," I said shaking my head, the moment the team leader fell down dead, my danger sense had stopped ringing in my head indicating that there were no more people with hostile intent around.

The rest of the gang stream outside and Rui starts giving them orders to take the tactical body armor and all the weapons inside.

Noticing Nina walking my way I meet her in the middle, "it really was Faizul he sent 8 men, he thinks that I'm part of your grou-"

I feel something touch the back of my head, my superspeed kicks in and everything crawls to a halt, I start to turn my head away but it is already too late. My head dips slightly forward from the force of the bullet and my mana shield energy reserves dip a fraction as it takes the armor piercing round for me.

Turning around fully I search for where the bullet originated from, I ignore the bullet heading for Rui and the falling bodies of Ai and Bojing and focus through the rage building in my chest. Even after double checking everywhere I find no one that shouldn't be there and my danger sense still wasn't ringing meaning that the bullets came from outside my danger radius.

I intercept and pluck the bullet heading for Rui out the air and check on Ai and Bojing's conditions. Ai had a bullet hole in her chest right where her heart should be and the back of Bojing's head had been blown wide open in a ghastly display of gore, they had been shot the same time as I was.

Connecting with all my souls at once I demand my power to show me my attackers not caring how it would do it or how much soul-energy it will cost. I get back the image of 4 snipers lying on a building 2000 feet away slowly pulling at their bolt handles to reload and shoot again.

It is times like these that I remember that while I may be powerful I have absolute zilch experience with combat. I didn't even consider the possibility that Faizul would be stationing snipers outside my danger sense.

Connecting with Seraphina I ask her for 4 stones that wouldn't break easily, feeling the anger I was trying to hold back Seraphina does so promptly by making 4 almost pitch black stones come out the ground. It takes less than a tenth of a second to enchant them to shoot at the snipers, still looking at them through my real time image I see my makeshift bullets hit the snipers in the forehead before continuing to blow a hole in the back of their heads.

I catch Ai before she can fall down and gently put her down, luckily the bullet exited from the back instead of still being inside her, one thing less I need to be worried about.

The Gang cry out when they see me hold the little girl with blood streaming from her chest,

ignoring them I concentrate and remake her heart and veins to how they were and make the blood she lost go back where it belonged before closing the wound on her chest

I smile in relief as Ai's eyes open and she touches her chest in confusion.

The rest of the group rushes us when they see she is okay.

Now that Ai, the one I knew I could save was okay it was time to check on Bojing, the one I was uncertain about.

Checking I see that although the bullet has absolutely shredded his brain and his vitals were almost non-existent, his soul is still in his body, Good. If his soul had left it would have taken me more power than I currently had to revive him, I would have needed to get him from the afterlife or god forbid out the hands of death, and that seems like a suicidal thing to do no matter how chill she could be.

I use the recollected brain matter splattered all over the floor to repair his brain and imagine the recreated brain going back to how it was a few minutes ago before he was shot, not wanting to deal with the whole amnesia thing.

The Hellions watch in awe as I 'revive' Bojing, in the corner of my eye I notice some kind of energy being made. Looking closer I notice that the energy was coming from Yumi praying, a thought, has my energy senses working in the front of my mind instead of working in my subconscious like normally.

With the healing of Bojing being all but automatic I turn my attention to examining the energy Yumi was making or rather converting, I was looking at faith in all its naked glory

Yumi's mental energy was being converted to faith and slowly flowing towards me, the string of faith energy enters my chest but it leaves out my back just as fast when it finds nothing to keep it there and after a while the string of energy disperses in thin air, interesting.

I alway wondered if gods really got power from the faith of their believers and it appears they truly do.

Bojing gets back to his feet and looks around confused because I made his brain revert to a few minutes ago instead of dealing with the memory loss that would come with having a new brain, he probably doesn't even remember leaving the base.

An explanation and 10 hugs later we had a freaked out Bojing on our hands that just learned that he was shot in the head and couldn't remember it, just great.

It is time to end this long fucking day, "everyone back inside and to bed!"

"What about all the noise that we made?" Nina asked from where she was holding a crying Ai in her arms, "The police will come check it out soon, even if Faizul pulled some strings to give his men time to operate, there is a limit to everything and we passed that limit miles ago when that grenade went off!"

"Don't worry about it before all the fighting started I made sure that no sound would leave the area," I told her concentrating on everyone in the group, "I just used my power to make all you fall asleep in 5 minutes, you will have the best and most restful sleep of your lives without any dreams, so if you don't want to sleep on the floor I would hurry up and get in bed."

What I didn't tell them was that I also put a compulsion on them to make their subconscious deal with the almost death of their friends, they would still be able to remember it but it wouldn't be as fresh and damaging as it should be, the emotions associated with the memories would be dulled.

Noticing that I wasn't following everyone inside Nina turned to me, "aren't you coming?"

I shook my head, "I will keep watch for tonight, go get some sleep because tomorrow we have a gang to take over!"

Nina nodded and went inside.

I wasn't in the mood to sleep anymore, I made more mistakes today than I was comfortable with. It was time to figure out what I was truly capable of and to train the abilities I already had in my possession.

After I was done getting rid of the bodies of the snipers and all the evidence this day ever happened, that is.