Akashic Records
patreon
Quirky Row Chapter 36: The Power of Belief
🕑 Added 2025-03-10 16:02:01 +0000 UTCChapter 36: The Power of Belief
(Monday, December 13th, 2123)
“Where the hell is he?” Playa couldn’t help but grumble, glaring at a map of Stilwater. Mr. Sunshine, the second-in-command of the Sons of Samedi, had gone to ground, hiding from the kill teams the Saints had been searching the city with.
The Saints weren’t the only ones trying to find the man. The heroes were hunting him down too. Stampede’s death had galvanized them into try to locate his murderer, but it was as if Mr. Sunshine had straight up disappeared off the face of the Earth!
‘Yet despite his ability to hide like a rat, he’s still able to coordinate the Sons in some manner,’ Playa thought in annoyance. How, he didn’t know, but orders were still coming from Mr. Sunshine and the General, and the Sons were on the defensive.
Trying to dislodge the Sons of Samedi wasn’t easy at the best of times, but with them hunkering down, it was even harder!
‘The General has always been a slippery fellow, and it seems Mr. Sunshine is just as rat-like as his boss,’ Playa grumbled.
His musings were interrupted by his phone ringing, and he raised an eyebrow when he saw the number on it.
“Yo, Simon, what do you want?” Playa asked, answering the phone. ‘Why are you calling?’ went unsaid, but was heavily implied.
“Do you have any information on Mr. Sunshine’s location?” Stilwater’s Number Two hero inquired.
“You’re looking for him, too?” Playa asked.
“Yes.”
“Alright,” the leader of the Saints said slowly. “But unfortunately, he’s evading the Saints right now as well. Why are you calling me, anyways?”
“Because Cow Lady is coming,” Simon replied.
“Oh,” Playa muttered. “She’s coming for revenge?”
“Why else? Mr. Sunshine murdered her cousin. Cow Lady is out for blood,” Simon said, sighing heavily.
“So, you want to find Mr. Sunshine before she gets to Stilwater to remove the reason for her to be there in the first place?” Playa asked, which earned him an “Obviously!” from the hero.
“Mr. Sunshine is not the sort of person to spare a heroine if they attack him. Cow Lady will die if she tries to fight,” Simon said sharply. "Or he'll do worse to her and her daughter."
“You’re not wrong,” Playa muttered.
Cow Lady was a popular hero in the U.S. She was in the Top 100 and the Number 1 Heroine of Texas, not to mention well-liked in the areas she worked in, predominantly Texas, New Mexico, and California. Her Quirk was not at all suited to fighting a villain like Mr. Sunshine, however. She could transform into a cow-like hybrid, and that was it. She had increased strength and speed in that form, but against lasers? She’d be turned into charbroiled steaks just like Stampede.
“Fine, I get the idea,” Playa sighed after a moment. “Having another hero die in Stilwater would be bad for the Saints as well. I’ll step up the search. When is Cow Lady supposed to arrive?”
“Two days,” Simon warned, and Playa groaned at that.
“Okay, I’ll do what I can…” he was cut off when Shaundi burst into his office, panting heavily as if she’d just run a marathon.
“Boss! Boss!” she cried out.
“I’m on the phone!” he scolded her, huffing a bit. “Rude!”
“Sorry, but it’s about Mr. Sunshine! I think I found him!”
“Speak of the devil,” Playa grunted. “Simon? Hold on a sec, putting you on speaker.”
He then laid his phone down onto the table and gave Shaundi a sharp look. “Tell me what you found.”
“Well, boss, I was going over the places the Sons control, thinking one of them had to be where Mr. Sunshine was hiding,” Shaundi began. “Most of them have been raided by us or the heroes, though. But then I remembered something! Mr. Sunshine practices Voodoo, yeah? Not a lot of places that do that. So I looked into that side of things. And I discovered an occult forum online that was talking about a Voodoo practitioner visiting Stilwater a few weeks ago!”
“Well, that’s interesting, but what does that have to do with Mr. Sunshine’s location?” Playa queried.
“Because one of the places that Voodoo-dude visited while here? An old butcher’s and meat processing plant! And looking into it, that building is a front for the Sons!” Shaundi exclaimed excitedly.
“Now that is interesting,” Playa hummed. “It’s a bit of a longshot, but we have no other leads.”
He looked down at his phone. “You got all that, Steel Sponge?”
“Sure did, Skunk,” the hero said, causing Shaundi to let out a cute “Eep!” of surprise when she realized her boss hadn’t hung up and instead kept the call going.
“I-I’ll send you the address,” Shaundi stammered, trying to recover from her moment of embarrassment.
“Wonderful. Steel Sponge, would you object to having a supervillain come along?” Playa inquired.
“Not at all,” Simon chuckled. “Sending you the deets soon.”
He then hung up, and glanced at Shaundi with a smirk. “Didn’t know your voice could go so high,” he teased.
“Boss!” Shaundi whined, face red with embarrassment.
“Heh. Alright, alright, I’ll stop. Send me the address to the meat plant,” he ordered.
A moment later, his phone buzzed as Shaundi texted him the information. He then sent it on to Simon, and got up and headed for the costume room. It was time for Skunk to take to the streets once more.
111 &&&&& 111
“Skunk.”
“Steel Sponge.”
Hero and villain looked at each other, staring and taking in each other’s appearance as the stood in a parking lot. Their costumes were the same, but had a few upgrades here and there. For Skunk, it was his gun and modifications to his gauntlets. The Number Two hero had added a small, fire extinguisher-sized water tank to the back of his wetsuit which would allow him to add water to his body so his Quirk could absorb it as needed. He was also wearing a diver’s mask with a modified snorkel that acted as a high-tech air filter.
After a moment, the two former friends turned their gaze towards the meat packing plant up the hill from the spot they were in. The building was in Sons of Samedi controlled territory, so the moment they began the assault, the gang would know. To that end, the two of them had set up contingencies.
A minute later, Skunk’s phone buzzed, and he took it out, reading the text message he’d received.
“It’s time,” Skunk said as he put his phone away. “The Saints are attacking one of the Sons’ hideouts. All eyes are on them.”
Steel Sponge’s phone chimed as well, and he checked it. “Yeah, I just got the memo. Seems like Spincycle is on his way to handle it, along with Reversa.”
“Hmm, won’t have much time, then,” Skunk muttered. “Alright, let’s go.”
Steel Sponge nodded, and the two of them headed up the hill towards the meat packing plant. It looked deserted, but appearances were deceiving. Sons of Samedi tags and graffiti told Skunk that this was their turf, but the empty beer cans and bottles with crumpled up fast food wrappers littering the ground was proof that somebody had been here recently.
The third sign of the building being occupied were the lights. It was hard to tell, as blackout sheets had been put up over most of the windows, but in some places, trickles of soft light came through bullet holes in the walls and doors.
As we walked around the perimeter, Skunk and Steel Sponge discovered that the front door was unlocked. Suspecting a trap, they didn’t bother with it, instead investigating a side entrance that had been boarded up.
Prying the boards off and then breaking it down would take too long, and make far too much noise, so that option was also out of the question. None of the window were a good choice, either, as they were either too far off the ground, or would make a ton of racket to break through.
‘But we just might have to risk it,’ Skunk thought. They were wasting precious time trying to find a way in without alerting the Sons.
“We’re going to have to make a scene,” Steel Sponge whispered to the villain, echoing Skunk’s own thoughts.
“Yeah. Where, though?”
“Over there, by the loading bay,” the hero suggested, and Skunk nodded after a moment.
“Works for me.” The two walked over to area where, in the past, trucks would have pulled up to load and unload crates and cargo. Then, Skunk pulled out his revolver.
“Let me do something,” he requested, and curious to see what he wanted to do, Steel Sponge nodded.
Skunk proceeded to shoot three modified rounds through one of the bay doors, the thin metal easily punctured. From within, the two were able to hear shouts and screams of horror ring out, and the hero looked over at the villain.
“Stink bullets,” Skunk said with a smug smirk, waving his gun a bit. The bullets had been designed to unleash some truly terrible smells when they exploded, and the area behind the bay doors.
When the duo opened up the door, and Steel recoiled with a look of disgust as the stench smacked him in the face. “Ugh, I can smell it through my mask!”
“Yeah, it’s a new recipe,” Skunk chuckled. “Now, let’s grab those goons.”
Sure enough, several Sons of Samedi were busy retching on the ground, whining and weeping as the hero began to ziptie their arms and legs while also confiscating their weapons.
By now, the Sons had realized something was wrong by the smell and the gunshots, and Spong and Skunk ran into a group of six as they left the loading bay.
High pressure bursts of water knocked the gangbangers over, hurling them back and while waterlogged, Sponge pounced, placing plastic slips over their wrists and ankles with fast and precise movements.
“You’re pretty good at that,” Skunk noted, and the hero chuckled.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he admitted. “Now come on, let’s keep going!”
Conserving water and ammo, the two began to punch, kick, and body slam their way through the Sons of Samedi grunts, taking them out with little issue.
“This is pathetic,” Sponge spat out as he hogtied another group of Sons. “They’re all either drunk or high!”
“That’s the Sons for ya,” Skunk shrugged.
“How did they manage to take over a fourth of the city like this?” Steel Sponge wondered with a shake of his head.
“Because they weren’t drunk or high at the time,” Skunk replied. “And a lot of the Sons’ power comes from their drugs. They took over chunks of the city through poisoning the populations, making them addicted to their merchandise. If the people of a neighborhood like Shivington are all on some sort of illegal substance or make money off of it, then they wouldn’t try and oppose the Sons when they come strolling in, already having won the ‘hearts’ of the inhabitants.”
“Disgusting,” Sponge uttered.
“Agreed. Los Carnales ruled the streets five years ago through violence and fear, and forbid their own members from dipping into the gang’s drugs for personal use. The Sons aren’t kind by any stretch, but they ensure loyalty by letting the foot soldiers indulge as much as they want,” Skunk informed him.
“Ah, but you cannot argue against the results, can you?” an accented voice called out, and Skunk and Steel Sponge looked up to see the man they’d come to find standing on a balcony overlooking the ground floor of the plant. Mr. Sunshine was flanked by a dozen heavily armed Sons, and Skunk recognized them as lieutenants.
“I agree, though probably for different reasons,” Skunk replied with a scoff. “After all, it’s clear that the ‘results’ of letting your minions do whatever they want has led to us coming in and fucking their shit up.”
“Gutterchurls like them have their uses. Their purpose was never to be anything more than foot soldiers for the General’s army,” Mr. Sunshine retorted. He then tilted his head. “Though I must say, I am surprised to see a hero and a villain working together. How quaint.”
“We both want you gone, and we both stumbled across your base at the same time. We decided to team up to take you down,” Steel Sponge stated, pointing his palm at the supervillain. “Now, are you going to surrender? Or will we have to do this the hard way?”
In response, Mr. Sunshine pointed his skull-topped cane down at the pair, and the Sons opened fire. Skunk and Steel Sponge leapt away, hiding behind machinery and conveyor belts as Quirks and bullets started to rip apart the area. Acidic slime splattered the concrete alongside fireballs, spears of ice, and of course lasers, while buckshot and hollow point rounds tried to rend the duo apart.
Unwilling to let their insulting attack stand, Skunk fired the rest of his stink bullets at the ceiling above the gunmen, the aerosolized liquids with the rounds turning into mist that fell upon them, causing the Sons to gag and choke.
‘Seems they weren’t expecting me to show up, otherwise they’d have had the General remove their sense of smell,’ Skunk thought with a chuckle. That served his purpose, and assured him that there weren’t any Sons of Samedi moles in the Saints’ upper echelons.
Steel Sponge wasn’t one to waste an opportunity, and he sent jets of water up towards the Sons, knocking several away. But they just got back onto their feet, shouting and chanting for their death.
“They’re not giving up,” Skunk growled as he reloaded his revolver. He then took aim and fired at one of the lieutenants who’d pulled out a grenade launcher after his machine gun ran dry. Blood erupted as a regular bullet tore through his torso, killing him instantly.
Steel Sponge grimaced, but said nothing, and instead changed his water jets into razor sharp scything blades that severed several limbs, sending bloody water flying all over the area as the crippled Sons screamed.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Skunk darted out of cover and made a beeline for the stairs, running up them two at a time, finally coming face to face with the Sons of Samedi’s second-in-command.
“So, you’ve come to face me?” Mr. Sunshine sneered.
“Sure have. I didn’t forget the way your boss yanked me off the streets last time,” Skunk said, pointing his gun at the man.
There was no more banter from the green-clad villain, only deadly laser beams that melted parts of the stairs behind Skunk as the leader of the Saints dodged.
“Your Quirk is versatile, and you have done well using it like you have, but unfortunately for you, without power behind it, you are a toothless beast,” Mr. Sunshine taunted, sending off scorching rays and charred the concrete walls.
“And your Quirk is bland and derivative,” Skunk shot back. “Seriously? Lasers? That’s so cliché and boring! There’s a bunch of people all over the world with laser-based Quirks.”
He then ducked, avoiding a beam that would have taken his head clean off. “And your aim is atrocious! Doesn’t matter how dangerous it is if you can’t even hit anything!”
Mr. Sunshine growled, and then switched it up, starting to glow like a million-watt lightbulb. Instead of firing off the light he could create as concentrated beams, he’d begun to simply emit light from every pore, greatly weakening the overall power of his light, but making it a lot harder to see.
Worse, Skunk could see wisps of smoke rising from the other villain’s clothing, proving that despite covering his whole body, his Quirk was still capable of generating a lot of heat.
Then, Mr. Sunshine rushed in, wielding his cane like a club, swinging it around, the heat from his body transferring through it, turning the weapon superheated yet somehow remain unmelted.
‘What the hell is that thing made of?!’ Skunk exclaimed, jinking back, feeling and well as smelling his hair burn as the club narrowly missed his head, the intense heat charring it while passing by.
‘Wonder if it’s Artificer-make,’ Skunk mused to himself. ‘And where the hell is Sponge?!’
A glance to the side showed that the hero was being attacked by more grunts who come in and surrounded him.
‘Probably should have cleared the rest of the building before we went after Mr. Sunshine,’ Skunk thought with a grimace behind his gas mask.
There was no time to regret things, however, as the Sons’ second-in-command renewed his assault, forcing Skunk back onto the defensive.
‘And how is he able to see me?!’ Skunk growled as he was forced to avoid getting brained by doo rag wearing villain. Despite emanating a huge amount of light that should have been blinding him, Mr. Sunshine seemed to be able to see through the glare and accurately try and attacks. Maybe his Quirk just didn’t affect his eyes? Or maybe there was something else going on. Whatever the deal was, it was really annoying!
“You shall die, interloper!” Mr. Sunshine declared after Skunk narrowly dodged another attack, which made the gas mask wearing villain scoff.
“You’re the one who ran from All Might and Skunk sneered, causing the other man to stumble. “Yeah, that’s right! I know all about you and the General! You both ran like rats when your gang was overwhelmed the last time, and then you snuck into Stilwater when there wasn’t anybody to oppose you! You’re just vultures! Nothing more!”
“We are the Sons of Samedi!” Mr. Sunshine shouted furiously.
“You’re the sons of shit is what you are!” Skunk retorted. “Now hold still so I can shoot you!”
“Go ahead!” Mr. Sunshine replied, pausing in his frenzied assault and throwing his arms wide open, much to Skunk’s surprise. The leader of the Saints didn’t hesitate, though, and fired a shot at the other man. Unfortunately, the bullet melted before it could even touch him, destroyed by Mr. Sunshine’s laser-heated body. Mr. Sunshine flinched as some droplets of molten metal passed through and touched his skin, but they were too small to do any actual harm, and evaporated almost instantly after reaching his skin.
“Oh,” Skunk muttered, taken aback.
“Do you see the futility of your efforts now?!” Mr. Sunshine laughed.
“I do,” Skunk replied, this time being the one to surprise the other.
“Sponge! Hit him with as much water as you can! No streams, just a big ol’ wave!” Skunk called out, an idea for how to beat the villain popping into his head after seeing Mr. Sunshine flinch from that speck of molten metal passing through briefly.
“Got it!” the hero said, trusting Skunk’s plan and sending a torrent of water up towards Mr. Sunshine before returning to his beatdown of the remaining Samedi grunts.
As the water hit the aura-like barrier of light surrounding Mr. Sunshine, it was immediately flash-heated into a massive cloud of steam, scalding the man trapped within. He let out a startled scream of pain and then collapsed like a puppet without strings, the light fading to reveal his entire body was covered in severe steam burns. Mr. Sunshine had been immune to the heat of his own Quirk, but not, it seemed, to materials that’d been heated up by said Quirk.
“Huh, it worked,” Skunk muttered. “I wasn’t sure if it would, honestly.”
Pleased that his trick had done the job, Skunk walked over to Mr. Sunshine and knelt beside him, pressing the muzzle of his revolver against the other man’s forehead. He was about to pull the trigger when a gasp of disbelief drew his attention.
“Skunk, what are you doing?!” Sponge exclaimed as he ran up behind the Saint’s leader and spotted what was going on. “You can’t kill him!”
“Why not?” Skunk asked, not daring to remove his gun from the downed villain’s head. “He’s a threat!”
“If you kill him, justice won’t be served!” Sponge argued.
“Justice? In Stilwater?” Skunk snorted. “If I let you arrest him, the General will have him out in a week, tops. Either by bribing the cops or busting him out of jail directly.”
Skunk then waved a hand at the bodies around them. “Besides, I’ve already killed a few. What’s one more?”
“That was different! Those were in self-defense! But now, the battle is over! Mr. Sunshine has to be arrested!” Steel Sponge said sharply.
“Maybe if I was sure he’d get the death penalty,” Skunk replied darkly. “But odds are, he won’t. So, I have to do this. To remove the problem. Permanently!”
“You’ve changed,” Steel Sponge said softly, staring sadly at his old friend.
“Yeah, nearly being killed in a drive-by will do that,” Skunk snarked. “A five-year coma didn’t help, either.”
“Killing Mr. Sunshine won’t help make Stilwater a better place,” Steel Sponge tried again, using a different argument. “He will just be replaced by the General. Making sure he is tried in a court of law for his crimes will bolster people’s faith and restore hope, as well as send a message to the rest of the criminals in the city. That if they surrender to the heroes, they don’t have to die!”
“I’ve done way more good things for Stilwater and its people than any other hero has!” Skunk retorted angrily. “How many villains and gangsters have you arrested since coming to this city that have been released after the fact? How many times was ‘justice’ delayed or outright tossed to the wayside?”
From the way the hero tensed up, the answer was ‘too many.’ Skunk just shook his head in disappointment. “I’ve done my best to be merciful when dealing with the other gangs. Allowed the grunts and new recruits to go free. Made sure the places they used to own are repaired and used for newer, better, things. But the leaders of the gangs? The ones responsible for everything their minions do? They have to be put down like the rabid dogs they are!”
“People aren’t animals!” Sponge shouted.
“YES WE ARE!” Skunk roared back. “We are animals, Simon! We’re filthy, crazy, diseased animals full of stupidity who need to be taught a lesson or else we’ll keep doing terrible things to each other!”
He turned away in frustration and disgust, glaring at the downed supervillain. “Stilwater is dying, Simon! The politicians have betrayed us for a quick buck, the cops and heroes are just as corrupt, and corporations like Ultor are only out for themselves and have no issue with paving over homes and businesses that don’t conform! The gangs?! The crime?! They’re just symptoms of greater issues! And the only way to fix things is to cut away the rot that infests the streets, top to bottom!”
Piece said, Skunk fired a single shot into Mr. Sunshine’s chest, causing Steel Sponge’s jaw to drop in horror and disbelief.
“You…” the hero started to utter in disgust, only for his eyes to widen in shock a second later. “Behind you!”
Skunk spun around, and was immediately knocked onto his ass as a pair of legs swept his own out from underneath him.
Scrambling back, Skunk couldn’t but stare in disbelief and horror as Mr. Sunshine’s body jerkily rose, blood still pouring from the hole in his chest. Said blood then began to move unnaturally across his body, turning into crimson armor.
“Why does he have hemokinesis?!” Skunk exclaimed in bewilderment. “His Quirk is lasers!”
The scorch marks littering the area proved as much.
“The Baron is good to those who are loyal,” Mr. Sunshine said, grinning creepily at the duo.
“The Baron? Not the General?” Skunk uttered.
“The General leads in the light, but the Baron rules from the shadow,” the villain declared ominously, swaying slightly on his feet as all the blood in the room from the dead and injured Sons began to vibrate and get drawn towards his body, levitating into the air around him.
“DODGE!” Steel Sponge shouted as dozens of droplets of blood shot forward at the two. They were fast, and pierced into the floor as Skunk desperately threw himself to the side.
At the same time, a beam of scorching light lanced forward at the hero, forcing him to dodge as well.
“Seriously?! Two Quirks?!” Skunk exclaimed in disbelief. “How is that possible?!”
“Does it matter? We have to stop him!” Sponge shot back, and Skunk nodded grimly in agreement.
Rather than stay bunched up and make easier targets, the hero and villain broke apart, sprinting to opposite sides of the balcony while trying to strike Mr. Sunshine, but blood whips intercepted all of Steel Sponge’s water blasts, and barriers of gore stopped Skunk’s bullets from hitting the man underneath.
Mr. Sunshine didn’t even need to see the attacks coming, either, he just deflected them as soon as they got close!
“Now I know how he was able to see me through all that light of his!” Skunk growled after he realized the villain had raised a wall of blood at the same time he’d raised his own gun and aimed it at the other man. “He was using his blood manipulating Quirk to sense where I was! Or rather, where my blood was!”
“Clever, but it won’t help him forever,” Steel Sponge declared. As he said that, the hero attacked a nearby pipe his a swift kick, breaking it and sending water spraying everywhere.
Steel Sponge then placed a hand onto the rapidly growing puddle on the ground and absorbed the water, growing in size and strength as he did so. With a battlecry on his lips, Steel Sponge charged forward, aiming to tackle the villain.
However, he was struck by several of the vengeful Mr. Sunshine’s blood whips, knocking him off the edge of the balcony. Thanks to his enhanced durability, he survived, but from the groans Skunk could hear, the hero hadn’t enjoyed the fall.
“That was dumb,” Skunk said with a shake of his head. Never charge an enemy unless you have a way to kick his ass! That was Fighting 101!
“It was. And you’re next!” Mr. Sunshine cackled.
“Damn it!” Skunk growled out, rolling aside as several blades of hardened blood ripped into the floor and tearing apart his costume, narrowly missing his own body underneath.
Skunk threw aside his now ruined trench coat with an annoyed grunt, tossing it at the other villain in the hopes it might temporarily blind him, but it was incinerated by a laser blast before it could even reach the Sons of Samedi’s most dangerous fighter.
“Here’s hoping this works!” Skunk said as he reloaded his revolver and fired it at Mr. Sunshine. A ripple of blood surged forward from Mr. Sunshine’s armor to block the bullet, but the projectile exploded upon contact, causing the dark-skinned man to stagger back in surprise.
Three more explosive rounds were fired off, the bullets filled with Nitroglycerin Skunk had made himself with his Quirk, and proved incredibly effective in tearing apart Mr. Sunshine’s blood-armor. Sure, it regenerated quickly as the villain used more blood from downed Sons to repair it, but it was getting noticeably slower each time.
“You will not defeat me! I have the Baron’s blessing!” Mr. Sunshine snarled.
“I am getting sick and tired of you not dying!” Skunk snarled, firing off another two shots in rapid succession.
To Skunk’s surprise, the first explosion knocked away enough armor that the second shot caused a considerable amount of harm, severely burning the man’s left shoulder down to the bone.
Staggering back from the blasts, Mr. Sunshine was unable to react when the floor suddenly gave out as a massive torrent of water came rushing up as if fired from a water cannon, rending the flimsy metal and wood that he’d been standing on.
“Why don’t you cool off?!” Steel Sponge quipped, the hero having recovered from his fall earlier. Not only did the attack wash away a lot of the villain’s gooey gore armor, it sent him plummeting to the ground, where he slammed into the hard concrete floor.
Steel Sponge then kept spraying Mr. Sunshine with water, slowly deflating as he did so, but refusing to let up. However, it seemed Mr. Sunshine had had quite enough of it, and began to sizzle with rage – and lasers.
“ENOUGH!” the villain roared, covering his body in hot, bright light once more, wrapping surrounding himself in a skintight suit of energy, the flash of it manifesting around him causing Steel Sponge to flinch back and cut off his Quirk momentarily. It was just long enough for Mr. Sunshine to recover, and then completely cover himself in more of his own blood, hardening it into the intimidating suit of armor from before.
“I am invincible! I am-! I am…” Mr. Sunshine staggered, resting a hand against a nearby conveyor belt before sagging to his knees and collapsing to the ground, completely still. The blood he’d wrapped himself stopped acting like armor and dribbled away as well, leaving behind a sticky red mess that the gangster lay face down in.
For a moment, Steel Sponge and Skunk just stayed where they were for a moment, staring in wary confusion at the collapsed villain. The hero snapped back to his senses first, and hesitantly began to approach.
“Careful! It could be a trap!” Skunk called down to his friend. Steel Sponge just nodded, but continued to approach the fallen body. The hero knelt beside the collapsed villain and pressed a finger against his neck. After a moment, he stood back up, face twisted into a concerned and bewildered expression.
“He… he’s dead,” Steel Sponge muttered in disbelief.
“How?” Skunk wondered, then the answer came to him a moment later. “Did he… did he exsanguinate himself with his Quirk?”
Mr. Sunshine had been throwing around a lot of blood, and he didn’t seem to be able to control blood after he’d already used his Quirk on it once so he couldn’t reuse the liquid after attacking with it a few times. That shouldn’t have been possible, though. A person with a hemokinesis Quirk should have known how much blood they could safely use from their body, or how their Quirk affected them.
‘Unless Mr. Sunshine hasn’t had enough time to figure out the ins and outs of his second Quirk,’ Skunk thought to himself worriedly as he hurried down the stairs, which had survived the fight mostly intact.
He approached the body and kicked it with his boot, but since Mr. Sunshine didn’t rise or react at all, it seemed that the Sons’ second in command truly had killed himself by accident.
Skunk and Steel Sponge exclaimed looks with each other before the former shrugged and the latter rubbed his faced tiredly.
“I suppose this counts as a win,” the hero muttered.
“This place is gonna need a power wash to get all the blood stains out,” Steel Sponge muttered as they walked out of the meat packing plant. Well, Skunk walked. Steel Sponge limped a bit, still sore from the plunge he’d taken earlier.
“I’ll give you a five-minute head start,” Steel Sponge informed Skunk once they left, standing in the afternoon sun which seemed annoying bright after all that time spent inside a dark and dreary building.
“Generous,” Skunk said. “Cheers, then. See ya around.”
“I still don’t approve of your methods, though,” Steel Sponge added as the leader of the Saints headed for his car which was still in the parking lot down the hill from the factory.
“And I’ll keep doing what needs to be done to clean up the city,” Skunk replied, raising a middle finger in salute as he walked off. Nothing else was said after that, and both men had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time that they’d clash on this topic.
When he reached the car, Skunk sent a text message to Johnny and the rest.
‘It’s done.’
With that, he then slipped into the driver’s seat and took off as much of the costume as he could, before pulling away and driving off down the streets back to the Mission. His job was done, and soon his friends would wrap up their own bit of fun they were having.
‘You’re all out of pawns, General,’ Skunk thought to himself, a feeling of dark, vindictive glee flaring up within his mind. ‘And you’re next!’
