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---

I watched as the rays of the sun welcomed the dawn of a new day, painting the sky a beautiful orange red. With those rays came the awakening of the planet, plants became greener, birds chirped their songs, and dogs barked their rousing to the world.

As the first rays passed over me I felt them recharge my waning energy levels and give me a moment of inner peace I haven't felt, ever. It's in moments like this when experiencing something this beautiful that I really appreciate how lucky I am to be reborn in another world after my untimely demise,

Enough of me waxing poetry, it's time to get back to training. It will take another few hours for the first of the Hellions to wake up by themselves, and I wasn't about to waste that time.

Super speed may seem like an unbeatable power to have but if you get attacked from behind without any sound or warning beforehand you won't even know you are being attacked until the attack is already touching you, and by then 9 out of 10 times it's already too late.

If I didn't have my manashield last night that sniper bullet would have blown my brains out, superspeed or not.

Looking over at my opponent who was the reason we stopped to watch the sunrise in the first place, I held back a smile. Seraphina floated in front of me, almost worshipfully watching as the fiery ball of fire came up from beyond the horizon.

"Are you done praising the sun?" I teased her out loud instead of using the link between us which I had temporarily closed to stop the two of us from knowing each others intention in advance and thus defeat the purpose of the training exercise

Seraphina turned her attention away from the sun after a moment, a bit of leftover veneration still on her face as she gave the sun one last glance and nodded that she was ready to continue.

A spike of earth suddenly grew from where I was standing. Having learned my lesson after the first time she got me by surprise, I had started moving the moment I felt the tiniest of tremors under my feet as the ground rearranged itself to Seraphina's will.

I ducked just in time to make the whip of fire coming out of Seraphina's hand, who had correctly anticipated where I was dodging to, miss me by mere inches. Another step has my feet plunging in a pocket of soft ground, rather than waiting for my own weight to make me sink in, which wouldn't happen with my speed, the ground had taken hold of my feet and pulled me in.

Being an elemental made out of fire and earth Seraphina didn't have pesky things like muscles and a brain to limit her like humans have. And thus could increase her speed by burning energy. I was still faster than her when using my super speed but it wasn't by much, hell it was barely enough to keep me ahead of her.

I could have easily gotten out of this trap using soul-energy but then I wouldn't be really training in how to fight with my speed and strength. The whole point of this exercise was to teach me how to handle unexpected tricks and attacks like this. So I did the next best thing and hit the ground hard enough to crater it and get my feet out of the ground.

I had my feet out of the ground just in time to see a black wall made of earth get raised between me and Seraphina.

The conditions to win this training exercise are simple. I had to touch Seraphina to win and she had to stop me from doing so without floating out of range and prove that she could have killed me with an attack, without actually doing so of course.

Which meant that I needed to get to her before she surrounds herself in barriers and becomes virtually untouchable.

I ran up to the wall and hit it with all my strength already knowing that any less will do nothing to her black walls, to my surprise even that isn't enough and only a little crack forms on the wall. Either Seraphina has become a lot stronger since our previous match or she found a way to improve her constructs.

As I watch, the cracks on the wall, the only evidence that it just stopped my punch, starts to shrink before vanishing entirely.

Seraphina had found a way to reinforce her constructs to withstand and then heal from my hits in the span of a night of fighting, her speed of improvement was honestly kind of scary.

Instead of going around the wall and letting Seraphina guide me wherever she wanted me to go as she so obviously wanted, or going over it and leaving myself vulnerable to any traps, I went with the overwhelming strength route.

A rapid succession of strikes with all my strength put behind each and every punch hits the wall in the span of a second. The force of all those strikes impact the wall almost at the same exact time and it begins to crumble.

The speed I hit the wall with added to my already impressive strength had produced too much force for even Seraphina's enhanced wall to handle.

A sixth sense I had developed after a night of having my ass kicked, has me dodging away from the wall just in time to dodge a beam of fire so hot that it melts through the crumbling wall like it isn't even there before continuing to melt the ground behind it.

I glance at the little pool of lava next to me and shudder, since when does she have a fucking death ray?!

Jumping back, I wait for more of those rays to come shooting at me, but none do. The top part of the wall finishes crumbling, giving me an unobstructed view of Seraphina with dozens of strings of condensed fire coming out of her fingers, a smirk of glee on her face.

"O shit!"

I could feel the heat that those strings were pouring out all the way from where I was standing, almost like they would scorch me by just looking at them.

It really wasn't a good idea to give her my memories of some of the earth and fire users I know of from fiction.

Like the day before my perception of the world crawls to a halt except for Seraphina who is still moving to wipe her fire strings at me, although a little slower than before. Forcing myself to move faster than I had ever before, I shove my hands under the 4 feet piece of wall that hadn't crumbled and heave it straight at Seraphina.

I was putting everything on the hope that controlling that much condensed fire took all her concentration and didn't leave her with enough will to just swipe the block of rock out the air with her powers.

I watch in slow motion as the dozens of fire strings dance through the air making a dense net of destruction in front of Seraphina. Cutting and burning through the piece of reinforced rock that had barely cracked after being hit with 10 tons worth of strength, like a hot knife through butter. Crushing the wall in fine pieces of rock sand and more importantly buying me an extra second.

A cloud of dust lifts off the ground and mixes with the grounded pieces of rock to make a makeshift smokescreen as I hit the ground, hiding my profile from Seraphina's sight.

I dodge deeper into the smokescreen in the nick of time as the fire strings strike my previous location leaving dozens of burning cuts into the ground. Knowing that I don't have long, I raced to where I last saw Seraphina and where all the fire strings were originating from, taking extra care to approach from her blindside.

My fingers are inches from touching Seraphina's back when I stop and look behind me at the string of fire that a moment ago was scorching the back of my neck, burning right through my tough skin. The string was coming out of the ground just behind me, inspecting the strings on Seraphina's fingers I saw that one was inserted into the ground.

I lost.

"I give up," I said, raising my hands in surrender.

Seraphina releases her fire strings and gives a soundless cheer before starting a victory dance she may or may not have learned from my memories.

"How?" I ask her, reestablishing our link to get an answer.

With a smug smile she sent me images of me moving through the smokescreen and how that smokescreen was made out of dust and fine crushed rock.

"You could feel me moving through the smokescreen?" I ask shocked, getting the gist of what she was trying to say, "that is so not fair!"

Seraphina shrugged in response and went back to doing her little victory dance.

"Again and this time I am going to win!"

Seraphina gives me a look full of doubt before patting me on the head while sending me feelings of comfort.

Cheeky little thing.

---

It was almost 10 when Nina came outside to tell me that breakfast was ready. I finished my latest match with Seraphina, managing to seize the win by the skin of my teeth, giving me two well deserved wins.

A thought has my mana shield activate and surround me again, now that I was done training.

"What is that?" Nina asked discreetly pointing her head in the direction of the dozing Seraphina on my shoulder, who had dropped on my shoulder the moment I called it quits. She had used up a lot of energy to keep training with me all through the night and unlike me she can't just refresh her stamina whenever she wanted to.

Well she can but it takes time to absorb earth and fire energy, the last time she recharged was when the sun came up and she got a big dose of concentrated fire energy and kicked my ass using it.

Another thought has Seraphina revert to a ruby ring on my finger, my order burrowing into her half asleep mind.

"That was a she named Seraphina, and she is an Elemental I made to help me with acquiring precious minerals and fighting, she can control both fire and earth," I explained to Nina as we walked to the cafeteria.

"You can make life?!"

I was about to dispel her of that notion and tell her that it wasn't as simple as that but paused when I really thought about it.

Seraphina didn't really count, she was different from other sentient lifeforms. I already checked and she doesn't have a soul. her consciousness was connected and got all the energy she needed from the Fire and Earth realms, I guess? I have no idea what those places are called.

But it wouldn't be all that difficult to make a functional body and give it an artificial soul or even a real one from my collection, after that I would have a whole new person with the mind of a newborn that I could influence as I liked. Heck it doesn't even have to be a human.

"Huh, I guess I can," I answered after a bit of thought.

"I don't know how I should feel about this information," Nina said struggling between whether she should be impressed or scared, "I may not be religious but I still think that only a god should be able to do some things."

"That is an easy fix, just think of me as a god from now on," I half-joked. After seeing that faith was real, I was curious to see how worship would affect me.

Nina looked like she was really considering it. No doubt thinking back to all the impossible things I could do but then she noticed that I was skipping along to keep up with her long legs and let out a snort of mirth, I stuck my tongue out at her in response.

Everyone was already awake and eating as we got to the cafeteria, my mojo must have worked because they all looked a lot better than last night now that they had a few hours of uninterrupted magic sleep and better yet no one was crying or moping in the corner from trauma, which is a win if I ever saw one.

I shoveled some breakfast on my own plate and joined Nina at the table where she was eating her own breakfast. On my way to the table I got more than a few thanks and pats on the back, Ai even gave me a flustered hug and kiss on the cheek as thanks for saving her life.

Sitting down I ate my breakfast and listened to the conversations going on around me. Here and there I could hear people talk about the night before but as if it had happened weeks ago and they had already come to grips with everything, instead of it having happened the day before.

After a few nice minutes of uninterrupted enjoyment of my breakfast Nina stood up and called for everyone's attention, "as a lot of you probably already know two nights ago Rui, Kai, and Mili got in an altercation with some of Faizul's men."

She went on to explain my heroic deeds of saving the maiden and the other two, maybe not with those exact words but I was sure everyone could hear the hidden subtext. Before telling everyone what I told her last night 'that the men who had attacked the base were sent by Faizul and that he won't stop until he kills us all'.

"Which is why I decided to make Alexander the new leader of the gang," Nina remarked like it was her choice.

I would like to think that I won a little trust from the gang after saving their lives. But Nina and I both knew that telling the rest of the gang that I demanded leadership in exchange for saving them would make my job as the new leader all that more difficult, having saved everyone's lives or not.

There were some whispers of surprise from the unexpected change but no one was outright disagreeing with the decision to make me the new Hellions leader.

Standing up, I thanked Nina, "if I am going to be your new leader, I think it is time that I tell everyone what my power is," the gang leaned in, their curiosity having only grown after seeing everything I did yesterday with their own two eyes rather than hearing it from stories even if they only saw me heal Ai and 'revive' Bojing.

Which is honestly plenty.

"I have the power to make deals with people for the energy their souls generate, and I can then use that energy to do anything I want."

Again I left out the part where I could also deal for the whole soul, we could talk about that when I already had a deal with them. Some people can get so hysterical when they think you're trying to 'steal' their eternal soul.

It was like my words disturbed a bee hive because as soon as I was done talking, everyone started buzzing about souls being real, wondering if I really could do anything I wanted, and what I give in return if it's a deal.

Ignoring their questions for now I continued, "by now Faizul must know that his men are most likely dead and he isn't going to take that laying down. Before he attacks again we will go on the offence and take him out."

"How will we do that?" Rui said, asking the question everyone was thinking, "you are the only one who can do anything, the rest of us stand no chance against Faizul's men."

"To answer that, we return to the deals I can make," I grinned, "I am going to make a deal with every one of you for superpowers."

Stunned silence followed my remark, no one knew what to say to that, the silence only lasted a brief moment however as Kai jumped out of his chair and started cheering followed by the rest of the gang.

"However the superpower I can give you can only be as strong as how much energy your soul generates," I interrupted fast before people started asking for omnipotent powers.

"How much is that?" Mili asked. I could already see a few people try to keep their hopes up that they could still have a cool superpower.

"Well if you choose super strength you will be able to lift 2-5 tons easily or if you choose super speed you will be able to run 500 miles an hour," I give them a few more examples of powers they could choose that weren't so powerful that they would only be able to use it for a second a day.

"What about becoming Superman," One of the twins, Lee I think, asked. Making more than a few ears perk up around the room. Everyone knew that Superman was the strongest Hero around.

"Sure," he opened his mouth, no doubt to ask for just that when I crushed his dreams, "you will be able to lift ten times what you can now, you will be thrice as fast, your lasers will give someone a bad sunburn, your super breath will be able to blow away a paper airplane, and you will be able to fly for 20 seconds a day, still want it?"

I, of course could just get a sample of Superman's DNA(god knows everybody seems to have one) and turn him into a real kryptonian but who knows what would happen if it came out that I could just make kryptonians, nothing good; that I can assure you. And on a smaller extent I just didn't want to be weaker than my own henchman.

Having swept all the wind out of Lee's imaginary cape, I continued, "Think about which power you want and talk about it amongst yourselves, remember to keep it realistic. In two hours I will make the deals with you, which leaves you a few hours to train with your powers before we assault Faizul's base!"

With that, I left them to decide their powers amongst themselves.

---

(2 hours later)

I was sitting on a couch in the so-called entertainment room, a room that I was seeing for the first time. It was located on the second floor next to Nina's office, the room had a couch, beanbags, a tv, a computer, and even a Lex Cube.

Yes you heard me right, Lex Cube. The cube looked and worked just like a standard Game Cube, only a 100 times better, the graphics and games were both years more advanced than they should be.

I spent the last 2 hours waiting for the gang to decide their powers, playing street fighter and other games that were both the same yet different from how I remembered them. It was weird how this universe could be so different from my previous one but still have the same games.

Instead of wallowing on something I couldn't explain I turned my attention to the fidgeting Hellions members standing in front of me.

"How are we doing this?" Nina asked, she was trying not to show it and be brave for the rest of the gang but she was clearly nervous. Even now she was trying to comfort the rest of the gang, once a leader always a leader I guess.

"One by one you will come up to me and tell me which power you want and I will make a deal with you."

Hearing no further questions I clapped my hands together, making more than a few members jump from how tense they were before finally relaxing after their little scare.

"So who is first?" I asked unnecessary, I already knew that Nina wouldn't let any of her family go before her. I didn't blame her, even though we have gone through a lot together we barely knew each other for 2 days, until we know each other for a lot longer there will always be a little part of her mind that will be suspicious of me.

As I had predicted, Nina took a step forward before anyone else could, "I will go first."

"Great, which power do you want?"

"I want the power to move things with my mind," Nina said determinedly, looking me into my eyes.

"Hmm, Telekinesis," I thought about it for a second. Telekinesis was one of the strongest powers around. I had been thinking of giving it to myself but I was waiting until I had more souls to make it more useful. With the amount of souls I have now it will be, not useless persee but it just won't bring anything new to the table I wouldn't be able to do cheaper without making a whole soul unavailable.

I nodded, "I can give you telekinesis but there will be some limits, you can only move at most 1 ton at a time, you will have a range of 50 feet to all sides, and your control will be kind of shitty so no manipulating really small things."

Done explaining the limits of her power, I waited for Nina to make a decision. She grimaced when she heard that she will have shitty control but in the end nodded in acceptment.

A moment of using my powers has me knowing that a human needs 10 percent of their soul-energy to function how they normally do and another 10 percent for times of heightened emotion, desire, and creativity. To be safe I will leave 25 percent untouched, I don't want mentally challenged henchmen afterall.

Which leaves me with 75 percent of soul-energy to work with, 50 percent for the ability and 25 percent to me for all the 'hard work' I was doing.

I had to word my contract with the Hellions a little different than my other contracts because I wanted their own soul-energy to power their powers instead of first coming to me and then me powering their powers.

You never know if one of my future bullshit cosmic enemies will find a way to sever my connection to them or whatever, better be on the safe side and make them power themselves.

Having figured out the wording I conjure a contract and float it up to Nina. Having seen me do this before Nina snatched the contract out the air and read it out loud without further prompting from me.

"I will give Alexander complete access to the energy my soul generates and I am not allowed to betray him in any way," Nina looked at me doubtfully when that was it, "shouldn't it say what you will give in exchange?"

"Normally it should," I agreed, already some of the other kids' eyes had started narrowing suspiciously, "but if I do that I will have to use my own energy to power your superpowers and you will be dependent on me, instead I want to make it so your own soul powers your superpower."

After listening to my explanation, Nina nodded slowly, she also didn't want to depend on me to make her ability work. What I wasn't about to tell her was that with total control of their soul-energy, I can turn their ability off whenever I want, not that I would do so but having an extra security measure is always better than having none.

taking a pen out her pocket - looks like someone came prepared - Nina signs her name at the bottom of the contract. Having completed its task the contract burns up in thin air.

At once I could feel Nina's soul calling to me like a beacon in the dark, telling me I could do anything I wanted with her soul-energy. Reaching for it I mimicked what my power does naturally and somehow made her soul send me 25 percent of her soul-energy without there being a link between her soul and my Mindscape whatsoever. It was both strange and appreciated, I didn't want a link between us that could be followed or severed.

I had tried to do the same when powering things but so far I have had no luck. Maybe after I study how it is being done for a little longer I could figure it out but until then I'm not making any deals that require me to power something indefinitely

Done with that, I reach for Nina's soul again but this time with the intent of taking the whole soul for myself. Like all the other times I tried to do so without permission, I get the feeling that the whole universe has turned its attention on my mind, threatening to pop it like a balloon.

I quickly turn my intent away from taking Nina's soul and just as fast as the feeling has arrived it leaves again. The only evidence it was ever there to begin with being the cracks in my Mindscape that were slowly healing themselves.

Not even full control over a soul's energy is enough to let me bypass the universe's rules it seems.

Noticing that everyone was waiting for me to do something, I turn my attention back to Nina. Already having a hold of her soul, I imagine using 50 percent of her soul-energy to give her the ability of telekinesis before connecting the ability to her soul.

After that I use some of my own soul-energy to transmit how to use the new found ability in Nina's head. Unlike me she won't instinctively know how to use it.

Nina's eyes go blank for a second as her mind incorporates the new information before returning to normal. Looking at the pen in her hand Nina's face takes the visage of extreme concentration, after a few seconds the pen wiggles a little before slowly lifting into the air.

The amazed sounds of the group break Nina's concententration and the pen falls back down, leaving her panting in exhaustion.

"That was difficult," Nina remarks after she has her panting under control but the smile on her face was unmistakable.

"Well, you did choose a focus intensief power," I told her, "don't worry a few hours of training will have you throwing grown men around like nothing."

"Who is next?" I asked.

With there being no doubt anymore that they could really get superpowers after Nina's demonstration. The group forgot all about their previous apprehensions and rushed to be the first to get an ability after Nina.

It took some time and a rock, paper, scissor tournament to determine the order but in the end everyone got an ability and I got almost 3 new souls.

Unsurprisingly some people picked common powers like superstrength and speed but there were also unique powers thrown in that I didn't even think of getting for myself, like intangibility and future sight.

"Now that everyone has their power, it is time to train until you can't anymore and then continue anyway!"

---

Standing across the street from the Red Dragon Hotel and Casino which according to Nina is the headquarters of the Six Dragons gang, I scrutinized the building before turning to the rest of the Hellions.

Everyone except for me, Xiao Long, Ai, and Bojing were wearing the gear that we looted from the men who attacked us the night before after I had magically resized them to fit everyone.

I also put a mana shield on everyone just in case. I could have done this by myself and saved myself all this trouble but if I go around doing everything myself I will burn out sooner or later and there would have been no use in becoming a gang leader in the first place.

This mission will tell me if I can trust the gang to do less crucial missions without me. I sure as hell am not going to take every minor gang over by myself, that is henchmen work. Furthermore there is no better team building exercise than fighting together, having and saving each other's backs.

A normal aura around everyone, has the people walking by us ignoring the strange kids in full tactical gear and a camera interference aura has any security cameras that may have seen us remove us from their footage. Even though I was planning to bribe the police after this is all done - unlike with the Pandora's Box I couldn't just sweep all of this under the rug if I want to take over -, leaving evidence for them to find and use against me would be just stupid.

"Is everyone ready?"

The gang nodded, the air was thick with nervous energy. After an afternoon of training all of them wanted to try out their powers out in non-training conditions.

"Your shields aren't as good as mine, at most they will absorb a dozen shots, so don't just stand there and let the guards shoot at you," I reminded them once more to be sure no one got cocky and got themselves killed.

Turning back the Six Dragons Base, I took it all in, all 36 floors of it. That building held thousands of people that had nothing to do with the Six Dragons gang, that needed to get out of there.

Trying to compel all of them to leave would suck me dry of soul-energy before I even got to a third of them.

So I tried something different, taking a hold of 4 souls, I imagined the building itself becoming enchanted with an aura that subconsciously makes anyone not affiliated with the gang want to leave or return to their rooms and ignore everything happening outside their room. As soon as the enchantment was done, someone that was about to enter the casino paused before turning around and leaving, followed by a group of people from inside.

Another enchantment, this one making the building unassuming and uninteresting, costing only 1 soul made it so that no one outside the building cared about why everyone was leaving or whatever was happening inside the building.

As the migration of people slows down to a trickle, I gestured for the gang to follow me and cross the street before entering the Red Dragon building. The guards were looking around confused and talking in their radios, wondering why everyone suddenly left and whether they should have stopped them.

One of the guards notices us and his eyes glaze over for a second as my normal aura takes effect. The price for keeping the aura up jumping up steeply as the guard notices how much we do not belong, with us being children, wearing tactical gear, and not leaving like everyone else we stood out like a sore thumb.

I release the normal aura from around us. I wasn't planning to keep it up anyway, this wasn't a stealth mission, it was a hostile takeover.

The guards eyes glaze over again and he finally sees us for what we are, an enemy presence invading their base. The moment the guard moves for his sidearm, he is sent flying through the air by Nina, getting the attention of every guard on the first floor.

A tendril of Mili's mind brushes against my psychic shield as she connects with the rest of the gang, her control still not 100 percent. She had surprised me when she chose two powers, the ability to see 3 seconds in the future and the ability to talk mind to mind with telepathy.

They were normally two useless powers because there is no point of seeing 3 seconds in the future if you were too weak to make use of it. But if you add in her rudimentary telepathy, she turned into a pretty scary support character that could warn her team of any danger in advance.

"Remember only kill if absolutely needed and keep the destruction to a minimum please, we

are here to take over not destroy." I say before making myself invisible, it was already decided that they would take care of the goons without my help.

"Roger that, boss," Xiao Long, the youngest after Ai, grins before jumping into the air higher than a child his age should be capable of. At the peak of his jump his body starts to transform, his body enlarges, and scales start growing on his skin until where once was a child of 10 now floated a 15 feet long black-red chinese dragon.

No matter how many times I see it, it still blows my mind that a 65 pounds soaking wet kid could transform into that.

A bullet hits the newly transformed Xiao Long on the snout before harmlessly bouncing off his scales. We all turn to where the bullet came from just in time to see a guard look at the other guards in shock and fear before looking at the gun in his hand, like he didn't believe he really was the one stupid enough to shoot the mythical dragon floating in front of him.

Xiao Long lets out a terrifying roar that makes more than a few guards piss and shit their pants in fear, even worse fire starts to form and blaze around his mouth. A hard kick in the side from me reminds him of my orders and the fire dissipates before he sheepishly looks at where he thinks I am, Xiao Long still needed more training to keep his enhanced pride and anger in check when he was in dragon form.

Lee, the twin with superspeed, speeds up to the still distracted guards and knocks them out with a few hard hits to the back of the head. The group stop to relieve the guards of their weapons and tie them up before continuing further in the building, pausing to wave to the camera's and guards no doubt watching the gang through them.

Seeing that the group had everything well in hand, I walked to where I could see the elevators. It is time to take care of the only person we are here to kill, Faizul.

Knowing from Nina's intel that Faizul's would be in the penthouse, I press the button for the top floor...and nothing happens. I press the button to open the elevator doors and again nothing happens.

They shut down the elevator. Pretty smart of them, they first let me get in before shutting down the elevator, trapping me inside.

Do they have a way to see me? Or did they just find an elevator opening by itself suspicious and hoped that the invisible person that they couldn't see was inside when they shut it down.

Whichever it was it doesn't matter, I wasn't planning to stay trapped. Taking hold of the elevator with my power I concentrated on it moving up to my destination like a normal elevator would. The elevator shakes on its cables for a second before smoothly moving upwards.

Seeing no point anymore in staying invisible except for wasting soul-energy, I turn back visible.

The elevator doors open into an empty unassuming hallway with no one waiting to ambush me, like I half suspected. Shrugging I step out the elevator and follow the small hallway to the only room on the whole floor, the penthouse.

Connecting another soul to my manashield to be sure, I reach for the door handle and open the penthouse door...and again no ambush or even anyone for that matter.

What the hell was going on?

Hello! I am here to kill your boss, come and stop me!

Getting tired of this whole charade, I ask my power where Faizul is in this huge penthouse taking up the whole floor and follow it to an office with two guards in front of it. That would have been more like it, if the guards weren't already unconscious.

Motherfucker, someone got here before me!

Pausing, I consider the situation, my power is saying that Faizul's is in the office. The question is, did his attackers get what they came from or are they still inside?

Fuck it, I will know when I get inside.

Opening the door I come face to face with who I assume is Faizul from the description Nina gave me, choking on his own blood as the life leaves his eyes. A little girl wearing a pink dress no older than 8 is standing over him looking in his eyes in shock, her hands shaking.

It is such a strange scene that it takes me a second to realise that there is another person in the room, a man was watching the girl from a few feet away. Unlike the girl he was smirking in triumph.

Neither is looking in my direction or even gave any indication that they even noticed me coming in but I can't shake the feeling that the man knew every movement I was making to the last detail.

Dangerous.

Slowly tears begin to pour out the girl's eyes as she lets out a silent scream of horror. Her body wanted to scream, to express the grief she was feeling, but for some reason no sound made it past her lips. It was a horrible thing to watch.

I wrench my attention away from the crying girl with difficulty, and turn my attention to the man.

"Why did you kill Faizul?" I ask him. Although it was obvious that the girl did the killing, it was even more obvious who the one in charge was.

"I was hired to," the man replied easily, looking away from the girl for the first time since I arrived, a hint of disappointment on his face.

The sense of danger the man was emanating got turned up to eleven the moment he turned his full attention on me. Something was telling me that if I gave him even one chance to get me by surprise, that he will find a way to kill me, powers or no powers.

Frowning at both his answer and the danger I was sensing from what looked like someone without powers, I concentrated on finding out both of their identities. A gamer style box opens in front of me with both their names and backgrounds on it. I pause in shock as my power tells me that I was looking at David and Cassandra Cain, assassin extraordinaire and assassin in training.

Fuck!

---

There you have it peeps the first two named characters have shown up!