Doberman

The Doberman Pinscher ability user wasted no words.

He charged in through the iron cage. Before the gate could close behind him, he completed the last stage of his transformation. His canine teeth extended fully from his gums, two above and two below, their sharp tips glinting under the lights.

His target was clear: Jack's right arm. His canine hunting instincts told him that Jack's right fist was the greatest danger. Disable that arm first, and the rest would be easy.

His speed was astonishing. It was not the Lynx's nimble, zigzagging movement, but the explosive burst of a straight-line sprint. Doberman muscle fibers were predominantly fast-twitch, giving him far greater explosive power than a Lynx. Over a short distance, he could accelerate even faster than a feline.

Jack did not dodge.

His right arm hung at his side, with no attempt to defend himself. The Doberman's teeth clamped down on his right forearm. All four fangs, two above and two below, drove into his Hardened Skin from four directions at once.

A piercing screech erupted inside the iron cage.

The fangs scraped against Hardened Skin with a metallic shriek, like nails dragged across a steel plate. It was so sharp that gamblers in the front row covered their ears. The teeth pierced the epidermis, the dermis, then the surface of the Hardened Skin. They met resistance on their way into the muscle.

Jack glanced down. Four fangs were embedded in his right forearm, their tips less than half a centimeter from the bone. Blood seeped from the punctures and ran down his arm, dripping onto the fine sand. The wet sand darkened from pale yellow to deep brown.

The Doberman's bite force ranked among the strongest of Zoan users. After his transformation, his jaw muscles had doubled in size and could exert nearly a ton of pressure. That bite would have snapped an ordinary person's arm in two. Jack's arm held.

Jack raised his left hand, spread his fingers, and pressed his palm against the back of the Doberman's head.

"Had enough?"

His voice was quiet, but the Doberman heard him. His gaze shifted from Jack's arm to his face. In his pupils, a huge, expressionless figure stared back.

Jack's fingers tightened.

His hardened knuckles dug into the Doberman's scalp. Hair tore between his fingers, and the scalp warped under the pressure until the contours of the skull stood out beneath it. His fingers found the suture between the occipital and parietal bones, one of the skull's weakest points.

The Doberman's eyes widened.

The pressure on the back of his head kept mounting. His neck vertebrae began to creak under the strain. Instinct urged his jaws to clamp down harder, but the pain weakened his bite. His fangs withdrew from Jack's arm by a millimeter, then another.

He was afraid.

Canine instinct told him that once someone held the back of his head, he had lost control. He was at their mercy. His limbs thrashed, his claws scoring white streak after white streak across Jack's chest and abdomen, but they no longer struck hard enough to pierce his Hardened Skin.

Jack tightened his grip. He could feel the skull deform beneath his fingers. The suture widened, and the edge of the cranial cavity caved inward. A little more pressure, and the skull would shatter.

A whimper escaped the Doberman's throat.

It was the sound a large canine made in utter terror, squeezed from deep in his throat, trembling and breathless. His fangs had come completely free of Jack's arm. He opened his mouth, trying to let go and flee.

But Jack did not release him.

His left hand stayed pressed against the Doberman's head, his fingers digging in deeper. Anger made him want to crush it. Crushing a skull would be faster, easier, and cleaner than breaking a jaw.

The Doberman began to struggle violently. His hind legs kicked wildly, his claws scraping sparks from the iron floor. Sand and blood mixed and sprayed everywhere. His tail tucked between his hind legs, a canine gesture of surrender. But his master had never taught him to surrender. He had only taught him to bite and die.

Jack pressed harder.

A faint cracking came from the Doberman's skull. The sutures split, bone fragments shifted, and the shape of the cranial cavity changed. His eyes grew bloodshot. Pale red fluid poured from his nostrils, and blood seeped from his ears. His struggles weakened. His hind legs went from kicking hard to barely moving, and the scratches his claws left on the iron grew shallower.

Jack could feel him dying.

His skull was fracturing. Pressure was rising inside it, crushing the brain against the cranial cavity. In a few seconds, he would lose consciousness completely, then die within a minute.

But at the brink of death, the Doberman erupted in one last frenzy.

His jaw muscles clenched again, and his fangs bit into Jack's arm. This bite went deeper than any before. The tips pierced the last layer of muscle and struck the membrane around the bone. The sensation was like a red-hot needle driven into the bone. Jack's right arm jerked.

He did not let go, but in his dying frenzy, the Doberman drove his fangs into the surface of the bone. A muffled crack came from deep within Jack's arm, like a wet branch snapping underfoot.

Jack grunted.

Then he released his left hand.

He stepped back half a pace and pulled his right arm from the Doberman's jaws. The fang tips grated against bone like sandpaper against metal. As his arm came free, a strip of flesh tore away with the teeth. Blood arced through the air and splashed across the cage's wire mesh, running down the strands.

The Doberman's mouth was full of blood. Jack's and his own mixed together, spilling from the corners of his mouth and dripping from his chin onto the iron floor.

He knelt with all four limbs braced against the ground, gasping for breath. Bruises from Jack's fingers showed faintly beneath the fur on the back of his head. The sutures of his skull had not fully closed, and the searing pain blurred his vision. Under the lights, his pupils contracted and dilated over and over, like a lens unable to focus.

Jack looked down at his right arm. Four bloody holes marked it, the deepest exposing bone. A fine crack from a fang ran across the bone's surface. Blood welled from the wounds, flowed down his arm to his fingertips, and dripped onto the floor.

He flexed his fingers. They moved. The bone had not broken.

Jack raised his eyes to the kneeling Doberman.

The Doberman was watching him too. His pupils finally focused on the wound in Jack's right arm. He saw how deep it was, the crack in the bone, and the speed and color of the blood flowing from it. His lips pulled back, exposing blood-smeared fangs, and a garbled laugh rose from his throat.

"Your bone... cracked..."

He spoke in gasps, needing a breath between every word. But satisfaction shone in his eyes: the satisfaction of a wounded beast that had finally bitten its hunter before being killed.

Jack looked at him without a word.

The Doberman pushed himself up. His hind legs still trembled, but his forelegs held steady. He shook his head, flinging blood from his face. Droplets flew from his fangs beneath the lights.

"Next bite," he said, "I'll tear out your throat."

He charged.

This lunge was faster than any before. Adrenaline from his brush with death drove his muscle fibers beyond their limits, boosting his speed by thirty percent and his strength by fifty. The marks his claws left in the floor became deep gouges. Every step stamped a shallow dent into the iron.

His target was Jack's neck.

He leaped from the center of the cage, body stretched out in midair, fangs aimed at Jack's throat. The force of that bite could snap an ordinary person's neck. Even against hardened skin, it could reach the windpipe.

Jack did not dodge. His right arm was still bleeding, his left hand hung at his side, and he stood motionless like a statue. Jack's face filled the Doberman's pupils. There was no expression on it: no fear, no anger, not even the thrill of a fight.

The Doberman hung in midair, mouth open, fangs closing in on Jack's throat. Less than half a meter remained.

Jack moved.

His right hand rose from his side, fingers pressed together and palm turned upward, aimed at the Doberman's open mouth. It drove between his upper and lower jaws like a wedge.

Colossal Consumption.

Fully charged, Colossal Consumption erupted from his palm. The shockwave spread outward from inside Doberman's mouth, exploding from within.

The Doberman user's body froze in midair. Jack's right hand held his jaws apart as the shockwave of Colossal Consumption surged through his mouth, down his throat, into his windpipe and esophagus. His eyes widened to their limit. His pupils shrank to pinpricks, and red veins webbed the whites.

Blood sprayed from his nostrils in two red streams. It poured from his ears too, running down the outer rims and dripping onto his shoulders.

The remaining force of the shockwave spread outward from inside his body. His chest ballooned for an instant, then rapidly collapsed. His limbs splayed in midair, claws pointing outward. His nails snapped off at the roots and flew into the cage's wire mesh. His tail hung limp, like a severed rope.

He flew backward three or four meters and slammed into the cage's wire mesh. His weight and the force of the impact bowed it outward in a huge arc. The wires stretched, the welds snapped, and the entire mesh panel tore free of its frame like a fishing net bursting apart.