The New York Underground Utility Tunnels.
Sewage carrying motor oil and the putrid stench of dead rats flowed slowly through the darkness.
On its surface, a mass of fragmented black matter struggled to crawl against the current.
Crimson Thorn squeezed through the gaps in a rusted iron grate.
She looked terrible. Her once sleek, streamlined body now resembled a rag chewed up by a dog.
Half the crimson blade on her right shoulder blade had snapped off, and the sunken palm print on her chest refused to fill in. The lingering destructive force of armament haki was like a red-hot nail driven firmly into her core.
"Monster..."
She pressed herself against the moss-covered brick wall, her body convulsing. Several crimson streaks flickered twice like faulty neon tubes, then went completely dark.
He had no symbiote. No exoskeleton. He had not even used an energy weapon.
That human wearing gold-rimmed glasses had shattered her physical structure with a single punch, using nothing but his bare hands. That power had not struck from outside-it had exploded directly between her cells.
Crimson Thorn climbed up a drainage pipe. Ten minutes later, she pushed aside a manhole cover at an abandoned dock and slipped into Warehouse 13.
The warehouse reeked of blood.
Blood Butcher crouched atop a stack of wooden crates, holding half a gangster's corpse. He did not chew. His black fangs parted, and he swallowed a large chunk of tattooed flesh whole.
Skull Crusher sat on a scrapped forklift, snapping another captive's ribs one by one with his fingers and laughing at the screams.
Absolute Slaughter stood beneath a spotlight in the center of the warehouse.
She turned, her narrow white eyes fixing on Crimson Thorn sprawled on the floor.
"You're late."
"I ran into trouble." Crimson Thorn propped herself up, black