The moment dozens of soldiers exited the encircling black vehicles, Tyrone leaped into immediate action…

Terror gripped his heart as he moved, but Tyrone had long learned to live with the fear in his heart…

Tyrone’s first instinct was to cut the head of the snake, but Pierce didn’t strike him as someone easy to behead, so he decided to use his mutant ability to his advantage…

Well, not exactly his mutant ability, but the side-effect of the curse tattooed into his hands…

Tyrone rolled onto the ground, dodging some uncoordinated attacks from the nearby soldiers…

It was obvious at a glance – they had underestimated him…

Maybe they had not underestimated him at all…

By all means, he could not last against a single soldier, but a cornered man was a dangerous man…

Still, Tyrone didn’t have time to doubt his luck…

He would take all blessings, and apparently, even curses…

As he hopped to his feet, Tyrone clutched several small rocks in his palm, and just like he expected, the rocks were already beginning to erode with black smoke…

Anything he considered a weapon would not last in his hands, but until the moment the rocks broke down, the solids would become more lethal than any weapon he could hope for…

While he didn’t understand the nature of his mutant ability, at least not as well as he would have liked, Tyrone would make full use of the ability nonetheless…

Still, this could only work once…

Tyrone knew the moment a soldier died, the remaining soldiers would begin to use the guns clutched firmly in their arms…

The chances of him making it out of this alive were near nil…

But so were the chances of jumping to a Universe where Mutants had all but gone extinct…

The silver lining - right now, they wanted him alive to probably find Sprite and Laura, but if things got too serious, his value would not be worth the risk…

Yet, death was a preferred alternative to capture and torture…

Tyrone exhaled and calmed his mind, focusing fully on the battle ahead…

Honestly, he was hoping for a miraculous escape, but of all the times he had teleported, none of them was when he truly wanted to go somewhere…

Using the small rocks in his hands, and with pinpoint accuracy he didn’t know he possessed, Tyrone flicked two rocks from his palms into two encircling vehicles…

---BANG---

Sadly, he was tackled onto the ground before he could see if his rocks would really erode the vehicles with black smoke…

“Don’t kill the kid…” Pierce shout came from within the largest vehicle, but that decision didn’t last long when he noticed two of the soldiers holding Tyrone became deadly pale…

A couple of seconds passed in silence as the soldiers turned from pale to incredibly sickly with black veins running under their skin…

It was as if Tyrone was infecting them… and that he was…

Of course, the soldiers later dropped dead…

Even Tyrone was a bit stunned by the suffering the soldiers endured before they died… he could feel their pain crawling under his skin, and it felt a bit sweet to his taste buds…

‘A very disturbing mutant ability…’

Back in the forest where he and Sprite met Laura, at that time, Tyrone managed to kill the soldiers who had attacked him near instantaneously…

One hit with his corroded wooden stick and the soldiers would burst into black smoke, but now, it was more like a virus…

And honestly, the phenomenon disturbed Tyrone more than it disturbed Pierce…

Following the death of two elite soldiers, the inside of two vehicles became saturated with black smoke, and the next moment, the frame of the vehicles were all that remained…

“KILL HIM!” Pierce yelled fanatically, and the soldiers were more than happy to oblige…

After all, when dealing with unknowns, it was best to kill first and ask questions later…  

The soldiers were caught surprised because mutants were supposed to be extinct outside of certain government facilities, so finding one like Tyrone was highly unexpected…

But now that they knew, he would not catch them off-guard again…

The soldiers snapped their heads from left to right, searching for Tyrone high and low, but nobody could lay eyes on the terrifying mutant…

It was as if he had evaporated from the world, but based on the eerie sensation in the air, they all knew he was still nearby…

“Fuck…” Pierce cursed, hopping outside his car to also look around “Form a perimeter, I don’t believe the kid could have run far… kill him on sight, we don’t know the extent of his abilities.”

The soldiers nodded, and just as Pierce was about to join them, a sixth sense warned him of incoming danger…

Pierce was an elite soldier long before he became a lackey for Transigen, so a smidge of his battle instincts remained intact despite all the years of laziness…

Pierce dodged to the side, avoiding a small, smoky rock aimed at the back of his head…

Without the need to glance around, Pierce mapped the trajectory of the rock as he rolled to avoid any other attacks Tyrone had prepared…

“Under the vehicle…” Pierce yelled, and the soldiers leaped into action…

Previously, Tyrone hid under the nearby vehicle, but now, there was nowhere else to hide…

Tyrone desperately rolled from under the vehicle just in time to avoid nearly five grenades that landed at his previous location…

He didn’t roll very far; rather, he could not…

Rolling too far from the vehicle would leave him exposed to gunshots….

But even when he avoided the grenades, Tyrone knew that he was still fucked…

Luckily, everyone was fucked as well…

The soldiers, in their haste to get rid of him, tossed enough grenades to put everyone in the blast radius…

---BBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM---

A small explosion rocked the desert sands…

The explosion was not particularly powerful but the shrapnel and shockwave from the combined might of five grenades made up for power with deadliness…

Tyrone closed his eyes, expecting the shockwave to churn his insides as the searing heat burnt his flesh, but the sensations never came…

After a couple seconds of doing nothing, Tyrone opened his eyes very carefully and immediately saw a cloud of smoke about three miles away…

The explosion rang in his ears, and some fairly strong winds brushed against his skin but compared to what he should have experienced, this was nothing in comparison…

“Guess my power isn’t all that bad…” Tyrone smirked, looking at the faint wisps of black smoke that lingered on his arms…

 He was slightly appreciative of his ability…

But such appreciation didn’t last long…

Tyrone noticed the black smoke that lingered on his arms weren’t disappearing…

Adversely, it was becoming thicker, and covering his body a bit at a time…

In a moment of panic, Tyrone rolled on the ground trying to extinguish the smoke, but all that did was fuel the ability to cover him faster…

In hindsight, he should have calmed down instead of fuelling his ability with unstable emotions…

A burning pain stung his hands, and Tyrone noticed the tattoo on the back of his hand shimmering slightly…

That was definitely a bad premonition…

Then like a commandment to determine his fate, a statement echoed from the depths of his mind - I curse you to always have your power just out of reach… in the moments you need it most, your power will never do as you wish of it…

Before Tyrone could digest the phrase or its implications, dark smoke wrapped around his body, and the next moment, he felt the environment turn absurdly hot…

Dark smoke faded from his body, and he was instantly caressed by a different kind of smoke – the kind that suffocates instead of teleports…

It was hard to see through the smoke, but Tyrone knew he was back at the site of the previous explosion…

The worse had passed, but if he couldn’t find his way to fresh air in a couple of minutes, the results would be the same – death…

On his way to find an exit, Tyrone could hear the whimpers of injured soldiers who had survived the initial explosion…

Tyrone knew the situation was dire…

---POP---

---POP---

---POP---

The sound of gunshots came after the fact… as it always did…

It was the nature of sound, after all…

Mechanically, Tyrone turned around and met eye to eye with Pierce…

He always thought it a bit silly how characters died in movies, but now that he was experiencing the same thing, he could see the logic…

Even after he turned around, Tyrone didn’t feel the bullets that tore through his body, or the bullet shrapnel lodged in his spine and guts…

No…

All he felt was sleepiness…

Eye to eye with the man who held the gun that had just shot him, Tyrone couldn’t feel an ounce of hate…

And then he fell…

Pierce looked at Tyrone’s body for a couple of seconds, even walking over to give it a few kicks, ensuring the mutant was dead…

Pulling a radio from his burnt pants, Pierce relayed a series of orders “Tell Headquarters that we’ll need backup to recover X-23… the people she is traveling with are dangerous… we need elite reavers with enhancements…” he paused and looked down at Tyrone’s corpse “Tell Dr. Rice I found something new he could poke and prod… the subject will remain viable if he hurries…”

-------------------

TWO DAYS LATER

Sprite and Laura made their twelfth stop of the day, inspecting everywhere for a clue about what happened to Tyrone after the battle…

For Laura, it was surprising to see a disheveled Sprite…

Sprite parked the car, and pushed Laura out the door…

The mileage on the car had probably reached the thousands, but surprisingly, Sprite and Laura haven’t even left the desert as yet…

Merely ten hours after she had left Tyrone on his lonesome, Sprite felt a certain disturbance in her power…

The pain was sharp, and it stunned her for nearly an hour before she came back to her senses…

It was as if her soul was warning her of trouble…

But, of course, Sprite being as she is, directly ignored the warning…

When the feeling became so intense that she could no longer ignore it, Sprite drove until she saw a bar, and there, she and Laura drank their worries away until the following morning…

At first, Sprite didn’t want to give Laura any liquor, but seeing she also had the appearance of a child, Sprite judged it would be hypocritical to rob Laura of the experience…

Morning came and the feeling had become tangible, and finally, Sprite could no longer ignore it…

As if a flip had been switched, Sprite dragged Laura along and started driving up and down the highway in hopes of finding Tyrone…

Usually, Sprite would always remain aware of Tyrone’s location even if he was dozens of miles away, but the connection was severed unexpectedly…

Sprite would like to think that she had just noticed, but if she was being honest with herself, she noticed what happened the moment it occurred…

The sinking feeling in her gut at that time was hidden behind a smile – a smile so smooth she even managed to trick herself for a couple of days…

This wasn’t the first time she had lost someone in her long life, and Sprite had learned the strategy to cope with it a long time ago – ignore it, and eventually, you’ll forget it…

Any therapist would scream bullshit at that coping strategy, but when you were basically immortal, you would definitely forget at some point…

Two days later, Sprite had taken every backroad, shortcut, and even drove over the desert sands, itself, to find Tyrone, but no matter how desperately she searched, Tyrone was long gone…

It was as if he evaporated from the desert, which was not surprising considering his mutant ability – mostly teleportation…

Mostly because she could not tell what Tyrone’s ability actually was…

Laura may not have been as desperate as Sprite at first, but that quickly changed when she caught a familiar scent – the scent of destruction…

The thick smell of blood, gunpowder, and metal had not faded from the desert even two days later…

Of course, Laura shared this information with Sprite, and it wasn’t long after they found the scene of the crime…

Still, like Tyrone, there was nothing to find…

Someone had obviously cleaned the location so well even Sprite’s power could not glean anything other than a fight had taken place…

A bit of scorched Earth here and there…

The only comfort in Sprite’s heart was the fact that, more than anything else, Tyrone could survive a fight…

In an absolutely life-threatening situation, Sprite was sure Tyrone’s power would whisk him away…

After all, she mind-programmed his subconscious to react in such a way…

۞۞۞

After hours of searching and finding nothing, Laura was tired and irritated…

“I can tell a struggle happened, but I can’t be sure how it concluded…” Sprite whispered, squinting her eyes at Laura…

“Grrrr…” Laura growled, sliding back into the car instead of answering Sprite…

“If you could smell something then we wouldn’t be stuck here!” Sprite shouted, fully aware she was taking out her frustration on the animalistic child…

Now, she kinda understood Tyrone and why he always seemed on edge…

“Puta!” Laura cursed under her breath, but Sprite was all too aware of what was said…

However, out of character, Sprite said and did nothing, only a small smirk playing on the corner of her lips…

A sinking feeling assaulted Laura’s gut and she closed her eyes, trying to sense what was amiss but she couldn’t find anything…

Until…

---VOOOOOOM---

There was the rumble of an engine, and Laura’s eyes snapped open, greeted by Sprite sitting in the driver’s seat of the car…

Looking at herself, Laura realized she was sitting on the desert sands…

Obviously, Sprite had used her illusions to disguise the vehicle, and trick Laura’s senses…

“I will come back when you find something…” Sprite yelled over the sounds of the rumbling engine “Give me a clue and I will come back for you… STAY SAFE!”

“AAARGGHHHH…” Laura growled angrily, leaping to her feet, but Sprite was one step ahead…

---VOOOOOM---

The vehicle was two hundred meters away before Laura could make it ten feet…