In the back on the raised platform, Jimmy and Fred had become stone statues. Although they knew the young man was dangerous, they never suspected him to be this deadly. But then they both realized that they had never seen his powers. Jimmy had been gathering all the information he could since he knew he would have to deal with Fred one day so he understood a few things. Most of the current information was complete bulls.h.i.+t, but that didn't mean there weren't a few bits of truth sprinkled in. One such bit of fact that Jimmy felt was true was that those who were infected could grow stronger. Although there was no way for a normal person to measure it and it seemed like even the infected themselves didn't really understand, there were signs that pointed to the fact that their strength could grow. Seeing Laz handle those three as if it were nothing allowed Jimmy to understand just how much stronger he was than Fred. In fact, Fred was probably going to end up being the most useless one here tonight.

Having lived on the edge for most of his life, Jimmy was the first to react.

"USE THA G.o.d d.a.m.nED GUN YOU f.u.c.k NUTS!" Jimmy screamed out while walking over to a locked cabinet.

His men quickly reacted, grabbing their own pieces or whatever was near them and opened fire at Laz. Laz couldn't help but smile as he watched them fire. Had Laz stood in place, he was pretty sure that no one would have hit him except by accident. Laz wasn't going to stay still however. As soon as the grunts leveled the guns in his direction, he braced himself and flew forward, leaving cracks on the cement floor.

The entire warehouse was organized into a giant figure eight set up. The first circle surrounded the fighting ring while the second one was populated by tables and chairs for whatever use the guys wanted it. After the two circles, there were chairs surrounding the raised area were Jimmy was seated. Farther off to the sides were other various things, crates of liquor, merchandise to sell, weapons and anything else the gang had collected. It was easy to tell that any form of organization was not present here.

Due to this, Laz didn't have to go far before he encountered his first target, a middle aged, overweight man with a big beard. Since all of the shots had been aimed at where Laz was standing, none of them even managed to come close to hitting him. In just the time it takes to blink, Laz was standing before the man, almost as if he had appeared out of thin air. The man had pulled a gun and took a few shots as well. Thinking that Laz was dead, he was caught totally by surprise when he saw his target appear right in front of him. Before the man could even take aim, Laz reached over and grabbed the man's neck, lifting him up into the air while the man struggled to free himself. The other's had stopped firing since Laz was near one of their own and they were afraid they were going to hit him, but that all came to an end quickly.

"KILL HIM BEFORE HE KILLS ALL OF US!" Fred yelled, seeing the situation turn dire. Gritting their teeth, the members of the gang opened fire again, spraying a hail of bullets towards Laz and his captive. Laz just sneered and brought the struggling big man in front of him as a human meat s.h.i.+eld. Although most of the shots missed, several of them hit the large man on the back and ripped through his insides, killing him in mere moments. Since he was so big and most of the guns being used were small caliber, the bullets failed to come out the other side, leaving Laz completely safe.

Laz quickly responded to this new change, grabbing the man's discarded gun and returned fire, aiming for those who seemed to be the most accurate. As such, several of the surrounding attackers fell over dead with a bullets between their eyes before someone screamed take cover. Once the men started jumping behind couches and knocking over tables and chairs for cover, Laz once again started moving.

Despite carrying the large man with him, Laz moved like lightning to his next target while occasionally firing back until the clip was empty. As soon as he got close to his next target who was stuck trying to change his clip, Laz immediately broke his neck as easily as snapping a toothpick and continued on his run, using the new body as a s.h.i.+eld while using his discarded gun.

After the fourth time of this happening, the dwindling number of gang members looked around to the many corpses strewn across the floor and became hesitant. So far, nothing was working and they were all dying. Looking up towards where their boss normally sat, they found his seat empty while it looked like Fred had run off at some point. This made all the guys want to run away themselves before this masked disaster hit them next.

Just when they thought to start running towards an exit, Jimmy appeared out of nowhere, carrying with him a grenade launcher.

"Mother f.u.c.ker..." Laz swore, watching Jimmy take aim at him.

"Back the f.u.c.k away, all of you," Jimmy yelled out. The men quickly complied, running away from Laz and towards their boss. Many of there faces showed signs of relief at knowing that their boss hadn't abandoned them.

Just as the crowd was running for Jimmy, forgetting to even bothering firing at Laz, Laz noticed that there were still several people around him, laying on the ground. As it turned out, the girls who had been servicing the gang, be it willingly or unwillingly, had all decided to stay as low as possible and not move. Due to this and where Laz was standing, if Jimmy ended up firing at him, many of them would be hit as well. Without even thinking of the fact that he had originally planned on silencing all of them anyway, Laz came up with a rather evil plan.

He launched himself towards the group of fleeing thugs, attacking them as he blended into their ranks. Seeing Laz come at them, the men got smart and started firing, hoping to pin Laz down and get him far enough away where Jimmy could fire at him. Since Laz had to be fast, he didn't bother taking a meat s.h.i.+eld with him. Although he was able to dodge many of the bullets coming his way, he had to focus on moving and not defending himself. Because of this and despite his best efforts, Laz was. .h.i.t several times.

One shot glazed his cheek.

Another took a chunk of flesh out of his knee.

Another shot hit him dead on in his left arm, causing him to almost stop running forward.

The final shot hit him in the right thigh, causing him to fall over. Although he had gotten up quickly, he was now a ways away from the group of thugs and was more that clear to be shot at by Jimmy. In fact, as he looked forward, he saw Jimmy taking aim.

Jimmy was incredibly p.i.s.sed at this point. As he looked out over his little kingdom, he noticed that 26 of his people were dead. That was almost half of his gang. And on top of that, the person who came to kill him was the same one that he had sent people to kill tonight at the request of Fred who had already ran off. He swore that after he killed this invader, he would find Fred, cut off his legs and his arms and using him as a personal punching bag for the rest of his short life.

Taking aim at Laz, Jimmy was about to pull the trigger when he saw Laz reach around and pull a gun out from the back of his pants. As it turned out, Laz had grabbed the gun earlier and wanted to shoot Jimmy as soon as possible, but with Jimmy having run off to get the launcher combined with the poor quality of the guns the gang owned, he knew he wasn't going to make the shot in the large warehouse unless he got closer. He had ran forward to use the retreating guys as cover, but they seemed to get really lucky with their shots at this point. Apparently running away while firing blindly behind them with their arms shaking led them to be far more accurate than when they actually tried to hit him.

Seeing as how Jimmy was about to try to blow him up, Laz decided he was close enough and pulled out the piece, taking aim. The scene around everyone literally froze up at this time as both men prepared to pull the trigger.

Aiming down the sight, Laz brought Jimmy into his sight while Jimmy tried to figure out how to aim the grenade launcher. Seeing that Laz at him in sight, Jimmy suddenly felt the cold breath of death on his neck and decided to just pull the trigger at the same moment that Laz pulled his.

Bang

Whoosh ... BOOM

Both shots rang out as Jimmy fell backwards at the same time the grenade managed to find Laz general area. The flash and loud noise caused Laz to fall backwards at the same time that Jimmy did, the fate of both men unknown.

The group of gang members all fell down while covering their ears. It was already hard enough to listen to the gun shots echo around in the steel building, but adding in the sound of the explosion was enough to cause several of them to start bleeding from the ears.

Laz was in even worse condition. Although the shot had missed and his body was much more durable than a regular person due to his powers and the painful bath he had taken, he was still badly hurt. Had he been a normal person, he would have already been killed. The grenade had impacted the concrete floor a dozen feet away from him. The resulting explosion had not only blinded him and deafen him, it also sent shards of stone flying at his direction. As he lay on the ground, he could barely lift his head. But when he did, his eyes still shone, scaring the h.e.l.l out of the gang members.

They didn't know that he was gradually losing consciousness.

Just before he blacked out, a soft voice suddenly slipped into his ears.

"You've been a very bad toy..."

Suddenly, warm streams of energy flowed into him from his chest. Shards of concrete were forced out of his body along with bullets that had ripped into him before. His rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng life force was suddenly filled back up to brim after it's container was repaired. Laz even had the impression that he was far stronger than he was before since the energy he was infused with was so vigorous. His body had once again been cleansed by this abundant and pure energy, bringing him infinity close to making whatever break through came next.

"But I don't mind this kind of reckless killing. Show me more, far more. Burn bright like a star and explode out like a supernova. Only then can you be of use to me. I will see you real soon. And remember, I'm always watching..."

The voice in Laz's head faded with her final words.

As Laz had stopped moving, all of the gang members let go of the breath that they had been holding, knowing the horror was over. They then quickly looked over to find that Jimmy had gotten up from where he had fallen. Although he had been hit by Laz's shot, it was actually that combined with the recoil from the grenade launcher that caused him to fall back. He had put on body armor when he had ran earlier, knowing that something like this might happen once he saw Laz's was skilled with a gun.

As he slowly walked back to his spot on the platform, he looked over at Laz's body and couldn't help but ask,

"Is it over?" Just when he was about to breath a sigh of relief, his entire body started shaking as his jaw hung loose. The gang members who had been staring at him were confused, but then followed his gaze over to Laz, only to see his once battered body start to glow with a golden light. As it dimmed down, Laz stood up as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The eyes on his

now battered face mask once again shown a blinding, blood red light as Laz felt his blood practically burn inside of him.

"Twenty six..."