Task Force Void Nova Hammer
Most of the guards I knew were just dying to see them in action. I was the odd one out in that regard.
Well, they were here now, and those guards were too dead to see them.
I’m sorry, that really was a distasteful joke. I guess Adrian’s presence has rubbed off on me just a tiny bit.
Speaking of Adrian, he was feverishly fumbling around in his pockets while keeping his eyes glued on the monitor. After a few moments, he tossed a bag of white powder onto the table.
“Astro-Coke?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nah, just the regular stuff. The show’s not at its climax yet. Gotta pace myself.”
He snorted the whole mound in about half a minute.
“YO!” he grunted, wiping his nose off. “You fellas want to hear a secret?”
I don’t think we had a choice.
“Task force… Void Nova… whatever… how do you think the members get recruited?”
I shrugged. “Dunno… some kind of test, I guess.”
He guffawed. “Nah! They’re Voids as well!”
My mouth dropped.
As he went on to explain, TFVNH was a constantly rotating team comprised of Voids (save for a few exceptions) who were a reasonable balance of both powerful and sane. In fact, different countries occasionally lent their own Voids to one another to use for their respective forces. In exchange for their service, the members would be allowed to live freely amongst society, although they were monitored heavily while doing so.
“You sure know a lot of confidential stuff,” Sandhu said to Adrian. “Just who the hell are you?”
Adrian sat back in the seat. “Ahh… nobody. Just a dabbler. A jack of all trades, master of a good handful.”
He sure was insufferable. In any case, I put my sights back on the monitor. As Bella struggled against the seemingly insurmountable foe, she tried blasting him with a blade-spray. But before she could even raise her hand, it was broken with a single, firm grasp.
“Fils de pute!” She spat, the life draining from her breath with every word.
As Adrian would go onto tell us, this particular TFVNH member was:
Kentay, “The Guillotine” Sanders - 6’6 (197 cm), 287 lbs (130 kg).
Supposedly, he was a real hardass. An abnormally powerful man with an incredibly skewed (and strict) sense of justice. To him, the word ‘nuance’ meant nothing. Rehabilitation was a joke. Second chances were an alien concept. He was a man whose worldview was utterly black-and-white.
To him, the laws that landed himself in prison didnt constitute legitimate justice. His ideals were the only ones that mattered. Cross his sensibilities and you were a criminal in desperate need of execution.
“He’s got a pretty notorious reputation in these parts,” Adrian continued. “He’s captured at least 7 of the Voids in here himself. Nearly killed all of them as well. Honestly, I’m not rooting for him to win. Gonna be too hard to wrangle in afterwards.”
Just as Bella looked about ready to pass out, Kentay was blindsided by a sudden rush from Luze.
Well… I guess blindsided wasn’t really the right term. Kentay blocked his strike with relative ease.
“There’s revenge customer numero uno,” Adrian said. “The big guy wiped out Luze’s entire village before dragging him into this place. No wonder he’s pissed!”
For the first time, Luze had a fierce expression on his face. He let out a rage-laden shriek, before digging both of his hands into the only exposed part of Kentay’s body – his neck, lighting up the area – and his face, with sparks.
“Oh boy, that ain’t gonna work.” Adrian muttered, grinning.
Kentay grunted, seemingly taking the full brunt of the excessive shock without going down, before grabbing both of Luze’s arms and slamming him into the floor. He dropped Bella in the process, who immediately ran off with her life.
“Tch,” Adrian clicked his tongue in disdain. “She’s not even helping him out. Guess that’s women for ya.”
Sandhu and I kind of just glanced at each other awkwardly following the comment.
Unfortunately, Luze’s rage just wasn’t enough for him to fulfill his revenge. While still on the ground, Kentay stomped on his head, crushing it like a watermelon. Quite the gruesome sight to behold.
Afterwards, he set his sights on Wu, who’d been observing the whole exchange.
“Finally,” Adrian said. “The strong are going at it.”
For a moment, Wu and Kentay both seemed to acknowledge each other’s power, hesitating for just a moment. And then - in a flash, they rushed each other simultaneously.
Both of their opening moves were kicks, catching each other’s respective legs mid-air, causing the walkway beneath them to crack underneath their combined pressure.
On top of possessing overwhelming strength, they were both apparently skilled in martial arts as well. A terrifying combination. But Wu possessed another, more devastating aspect on top of it all:
Actual weapons.
Wu dropped his leg, opting to blast Kentay with a flurry of shotgun rounds instead. It was enough to send him flying backwards, breaking apart the torso section of his suit.
And he didn’t give him a second to breathe.
Wu rushed forward immediately after, grabbing Kentay’s helmet and slamming it down on his knee, shattering it completely. He attempted to decapitate him on the spot with a saw, but Kentay caught the slash before it could land.
He looked up at Wu, his dark eyes twisted with rage. He broke the saw in half, before delivering a powerful-looking right cross to Wu’s stomach that splintered a portion of his suit and sent him crashing into the rails.
He managed to crack the damn thing, I thought, astonished at the fact. That meant at a minimum, Kentay’s punches packed more stopping power than an M203 grenade.
“Ooohhh, he’s getting serious,” Adrian smiled. “You know what they call his striking technique?”
“What?”
“The Pulverizing Fist. He twists his knuckles at the last moment, grinding flesh to a pulp. With his strength, it’s like drilling through wet toilet paper. But that’s only for regular people. Doesn’t work on big boys like Wu.”
The armor covering Kentay’s knuckles had shattered upon the impact. He winced in pain as he cocked it back, preparing to deliver another strike.
“You’re an impediment to justice,” he said through gritted teeth. “Prepare to be executed.”
But before the two could clash again, five more figures jumped down from the hole that Satan-Bot had created, landing in succession around Kentay.
“Looks like the whole gang’s arrived.” Adrian said.
He began giving us a rundown of the other TFVNH members. First off, there was:
Ken, “The Fugitive”, Ryo – 6’2 (188 cm), 165 lbs (75 kg). A Korean-American from Brooklyn. Not a super malicious guy. He kinda just did whatever the hell he wanted. Problem is, a lot of those things happened to be illegal. (And unethical, let’s be honest).
He was nonchalantly chewing tobacco as he leaned on the rails.
His “ability” was rather interesting. Even Adrian had a hard time explaining it. Physically speaking, Ken was more or less average. However, he had the ability to “summon” portals from which obscure-looking but terribly powerful entities would emerge and tear apart his opponents.
But at the end of the day, all that he really wanted to do was escape. He hated being monitored.
Next, there was Nassar, “The Bloody Twister”, El-Rafih - 5’9 (174 cm), 168 lbs (76 kg). He was a loan from the Saudi Arabian government. He possessed the ability to transform into a whirlwind comprised of a glass-like material, moving at speeds upwards of 120 miles/h (193 km/h), along with being able to blast out deadly streams of shards at multiple targets at once. It was quite the gruesome way to go out.
He was also a real weird guy. While nearly every other Void assigned to TFVNH had relatively clear ambitions, his were an absolute mystery. But he probably wasn’t up to anything good.
His eyes were darting wildly around while a gigantic, mischievous-looking grin was plastered across his face.
Next up, there was Callista, “The Beautiful Demon”, Taylor. - 5’11 (181 cm), 121 lbs (55 kg). She was a former fashion model based in Australia. Her career ended at the ripe age of 23, when she ended up suddenly murdering four of her fellow models, along with the police force sent to detain her.
Supposedly, her abilities had been latent from birth, gradually building up to a point where she was unable to keep it in any longer. In her “Demon” mode, her mouth would fall abnormally agape, dark rings would form around her pupils and her body would be engulfed in cold, grey flames.
At that point, she’d become intangible like a ghost and drift into her victim’s bodies, causing them to bleed profusely from every orifice.
But that only worked on humans. For most Voids, she’d have to resort to physical brawling using her razor-like fingers.
Her ambitions were fairly explicit. She just wanted to kill everybody, Void or not. It begged the question as to why they’d even assign her to the force to begin with, given the fact that she was so damn volatile.
Whatever. I’ll never understand these people.
She was staring intently at Nassar, but without any real emotion behind her gaze. It kind of just looked like she wanted to kill him for the sake of it.
Continuing on, there was Clint, “The Normal Guy” Rockwell - 6’1 (185 cm), 180 lbs (82 kg). Like Nassar, he was also a mystery. Supposedly, he’d never been a Void at all. No otherworldly powers/abilities. Just a regular - albeit capable, guy.
Adrian didn’t know much about him. Only that he was a “special case”, granted access to confidential information and a spot on TFVNH due to a “recommendation” from an unnamed higher-up. In order to compensate for his lack of physical abilities, he was granted an oversized power-suit dubbed “The Behemoth”, along with the “God-Slaying Cannon” – a heavy duty automatic rifle that fired explosive rounds at 600 rpm.
He stood still with a rather determined expression on his face, as if he had his mind set on a singular, concrete objective.
Rounding out the bunch was the de-facto leader of the force – Jack, “The All-American”, Barnes - 6’0 (183 cm), 200 lbs (91 kg).
Like Clint, he wasn’t a Void either. Born in Oklahoma and belonging to a prolific family, he was an inexhaustibly skilled soldier-turned-Government agent that managed to work his way up to the top (with the help of some nepotism). Eventually, he was chosen as the inaugural subject of a project dubbed “The Paragon Trials”, in which government scientists would attempt to genetically engineer superhumans.
Well, he wasn’t actually the first, but that’s what he was told (for peace of mind). In any case, his trials ended up working out in the end. I guess the 8th time really was the charm.
As a result, he was basically Superman, save for the flight. (Genetic engineering hasn’t advanced that far yet.)
“Man, look at those blonde curls,” Adrian commented. “How the fuck does he get his hair like that?”
He had an arrogant grin on his face as he strolled to the front of the pack. It only took me 5 seconds of looking at him to reach the conclusion that he was probably a giant asshole.
“What’s the rush, Kentay? Let’s not get too excited here,” Jack said. “Remember who’s giving the orders, yeah?”
“Your arbitrary orders mean nothing to me,” Kentay responded, still staring vehemently at Wu. “The only thing that matters is justice..”
I could see a large vein bulge out on Jack’s forehead from the opposition.
“Okay…” he muttered, before seemingly composing himself. “Let’s finish the task at hand,” he directed his gaze towards Wu. “C’mon, big guy. You lost your chance at a fair fight when you decided to become a robot psycho.”
While Wu may have been a match for Kentay by himself, taking on the entirety of TFVNH at once was a rather tall order. I guess he knew this himself, as he jumped over the rails, landing on a lower floor.
“I’m going after him,” Jack said, stepping forward. “The rest of you take out the riff-raff. They want the Voids alive, but I’m gonna be sorely disappointed if you don’t bring me back some fuckin’ minced-meat.”
That was one thing him and Kentay could agree on.
“And remember,” he said, turning back. His expression was suddenly teeming with fury. “You’re all scum-fuck piece-of-shit Voids as well. You try to escape… try to fuck with me… and you’re gonna be begging for me to end your pathetic fucking lives.”
He pointed at Ken. “You stay here. Make sure nobody tries escaping through the roof.”
Instead of acknowledging the order, Ken just spat his tobacco into a plastic bottle.
“Hey! You listening to me you fucking Jap? Remember when we beat you in the fucking war?”
“Isn’t he Korean?” Clint muttered.
Ken just raised an eyebrow at the remark. “Dude, I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“Look, whatever, just fucking listen to me, alright!” Jack screamed.
Ken grinned sarcastically and made a defensive gesture.
“Okay boss.”
Jack’s forehead vein bulged out even more. It was really starting to look pretty gross.
“Alright, let’s fucking go then!”
After finishing his motivational speech, he jumped down, presumably going after Wu.
Save for Ken, the rest of TFVNH followed suit, scattering throughout the Chasm in search of the remaining Voids.
The strong were finally about to converge on one, bloody path.
As dark, weird and gruesome as the whole situation was… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit excited to see what was about to transpire.
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Credits
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