Just a slight warning. This is a very violent and bloody chapter. Claire got a little crazy. XD

-1939-

Ladd Russo relished the moment he stepped into the light of the alley. He could see Chane, his skilled adversary that was interrupted by the red-headed fool now standing at the mouth of the narrow alcove.

"Long time, no see," he said, opening his arms, as if to give Felix a familiar welcome. "Remember me?"

"Yeah, you're the yutz that jumped off the train. Aren't you supposed to be in Alcatraz?"

"I'm off for good behavior."

"Somehow, I feel like that's an overstatement."

"I've wanted to kill you since that day, you know. I've wanted to squeeze you out, like paste, and make you wish that you were dead. Make you eat yourself alive just to end the suffering."

"My, you're a direct man, aren't you? You're really holding a grudge."

"You bet I am. And this is going to be the highlight of my day, honestly. To kill someone who professes a lifestyle of never dying is too delicious to even imagine! Listen to me, getting all excited about it. You have the honor of being the finest murder I've ever committed."

"Lucky me," Felix said. His sarcasm was there, just undetected due to the lack of satirical tone. "As much as I'd love to make your fantasy come true, Russo, I have no intention of fighting you. I'd like my wife back, and then I'd be glad to just go on my merry way."

"Too bad." Ladd lunged for Felix, who turned and ran to the brick wall of the alley. Without even removing his hands from his pockets, he ran up the wall and back-flipped behind Ladd. Felix admitted to himself, dodging another manic blow from Ladd, that the man was pretty good. He didn't have the agility or the willpower however, to ever come close to Felix's level of combat. It went one for whole minutes. Ladd would strike, Felix would flip and doge. Ladd would lunge, Felix would twist, stick a landing, and remain untouched. Ladd on the offensive, Claire on the defensive. It was constant, and it was infuriating Ladd to the point of utter insanity.

"Hold still and fight, coward! Of course you won't die, because no one can get his hands on you!" Ladd screamed. His words were weak against Felix, but his metal arm had strength as he attempted to nail his opponent in the face. Felix ducked and did a one handed cartwheel to the left, smoothing back his hair with a grin. He was very near close to Chane. He could turn, reach out and touch her. The men with the guns were literally a hair's length from him, guns trained on Felix's wife.

"If I were to shoot you, you would die! Your guts would be scattered in this alley, and you would be crying for me to stop, and I would crush your head, and squeeze the juice out of your brain while you begged. It would be beautiful."

"Guns can't touch me. Nothing can. Nothing will ever kill me because I don't want it to. Don't you remember what I told you?"

"Shut up! Fight me! Stop jumping around and fight me!"

"I'm sorry, but I just don't feel like it."

Ladd's smile hardened and his eyes sifted Graham out of the crowd. Graham was avidly involved with the action; he had been following Ladd's movements every step of the way. It frustrated him, just as it frustrated Ladd, that Vino refused to hold still. It was disgraceful. He was a disgrace to the art of combat. Graham's hands twitched, holding tightly to his wrench. He wanted so badly to intervene, so badly to hurt Vino over and over, for Ladd. But Ladd wouldn't want that. He had been waiting for years to kill Vino himself, and he would kill Graham before letting him get in the way of it. But then again, Ladd was staring at him, like he wanted something. Graham didn't know what Ladd could have wanted, as his boss stood there, his breathing deep, his fists poised to strike. But then, reaching into his pocket, Ladd pulled out a handgun. Chane made a sudden flinch for her husband, and was thrown back against the wall with a gun.

"Hey!" It was the first time that Felix had shouted at them or sounded at all annoyed, for that matter. His eyes fell to Chane, staring firmly, assessing that she was all right. The alley was nearly quiet, save for the heavy breathing of a few nervous gunmen. "None of you are involved in this fight. Touch her again, and I'll be sure to include you."

Ladd was clicking off the safety, training the gun at Felix. No matter how invulnerable he believed he was, no matter how untouchable his world was, Chane could not force herself to believe that a gunshot to the back would not bleed. That he would live after a shot to the brain. She could not scream to warn him. Ladd's grin was a product of a deranged mind.

Perhaps, had she let her husband be, keeping him free to choose his course of action, he would have dodged at the last minute. And most likely, in the case of his being shot, Felix would have only been shot in the leg or arm, but Ladd so clearly wanted to make him suffer. But whatever the alternate endings, Chane would never know, for she committed an act out of love and was unable to look back on what would have become of him otherwise.

She outstretched a pale, smooth leg, and swept Felix's feet out from under him. Like any human being, maybe superhuman but still human, he went down. The bullet just skimmed over him as he landed on all fours, hands and feet to the stone street, belly to the air, like an inverted cat. Chane folded in on herself, a burning pain embedding into her arm. Warmth poured from it, down her dress, and down onto the ground. Blood.

Felix, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, was having trouble believing what had just happened. He could see it, the blood, just leaking out of her. She was wilting, like a fragile flower. That's what it looked like to him. And he hated himself, if only for a fleeting moment, because she could have blocked that with her knife had he not been such a chauvinist and told her to not to keep it on hand. It never occurred to him that it could have been him bleeding, him in pain. Not once. He only saw his gorgeous wife in pain at the hands of a man whom he now had an iron hate for. Slowly, Felix rose to his feet.

"Finally," Ladd said, reaching forward and taking Felix's collar into his hands, yanking the red-head's face towards his own. "Are you going to stop running now?"

"You realize," was the quiet reply, devoid of any emotion that would have normally been present, "that I am going to have to kill you now."

Felix made Ladd laugh, his grip tightening around the man's clothing. The shake of his hands, the breathy tone to his voice, manifested the want that Ladd felt. Ladd truly believed he was going to murder the man he had always wanted to.

"Ha! I'd like to see that-"

Felix wasn't feeling very generous, and therefore did not allow Ladd the pleasure of finishing his statement. Felix's hands went to Ladd's, grabbed them, and then shoved back but continued hanging on, as if they were swing dancing. Felix took his legs, ran up Ladd's body, his heavy boots crushing against Ladd's face, grinding his heels into Ladd's forehead and kicking back, flipping his body backwards into the air and taking Ladd with him. With the force behind Ladd's body, manipulating inertia to keep their aerial revolution going, Felix slammed Ladd onto the ground, back to the brick road, Felix ending up standing upon him. It all happened so quickly, in such a smooth motion, that neither Graham nor Ladd hardly knew what had happened until Felix was straddled upon Ladd, his legs pinning down Ladd's arms.

"You just had to do it, didn't you?" Felix said, smiling a ghostly smile. The voice was empty, quiet. It had not changed from his earlier tone. There was little variation to Felix. "You just had to make me want to kill you."

Graham, wrench hanging loosely from his grasp, watched as Felix, instead of punching Ladd, began to dig his fingernails into the skin at Ladd's neck, eventually peeling it back, like a Velcro flap. He began to tear it from the neck to the torso, just a long strip of skin being ripped away. The sound of it was horrifying, it was unnatural. Felix then reached for Ladd's ear, and ripped it off, then ripped off the other. Everywhere there was an appendage to pull away, Felix found it, and Ladd get bloodier and bloodier, more and more distorted. His face hollowed and discolored. How could this happen? How could this be possible? What demon possessed that cursed, red-headed assassin, to make him battle as he did? Unacceptable.

Ladd managed to free his arms, and clench his hands around Felix's wrists to keep him from doing any further damage. His grip was constricting, squeezing at the thin bones there, meaning to snap them, but the bones were strong, thick from years of work, and Felix, in his frenzy, felt no pain at Ladd's attempt. What Felix did feel was the gristly pleasure of yanking his arms back, causing Ladd to bend up into a sitting position, and then using his knees to press against the sides of Ladd's head, compressing him, trying to create such pressure as to rupture blood vessels in the brain. Blood was flicking out from Ladd's eyes every time he blinked.

Graham's hands were shaking, voice having died in his throat. He loved Ladd, felt compassion for his idol, his big brother whom he considered above all others. Graham thought like Ladd, felt like him, had a complex to kill akin to his. He raised his wrench above his head, the metal tool rusty and weighed down with the many deaths it had caused.

"I will kill in the name of love! You will die for this, die!" His voice was husked out, beaten down and nearly desperate in cadence. Felix, with a bleak countenance upon his features, rolled to the side again and dragged Ladd along with him, just as the wrench descended. With a squirt of blood, a crack, and a then a suckling squelch, the edge of the wrench handle was embedded in the back of Ladd Russo. Graham winced back from his deed; he had possibly paralyzed him. Felix, now under his opponent, watched the alteration in Ladd's face. It was very subtle, nearly nonexistent, but Felix saw it. Utter surprise, then an onslaught of pain. Ladd was still hanging onto Felix's wrist, but the power had dissipated from the grip.

"I just wanted to make you pay," he said softly. "Is that so wrong? You deserve it. You deserve to die for believing you never will."

"You can say whatever you want to me, but it's not going to change the fact that I'm killing you right now, and when you die, you will never be able to touch me," Felix said. The red of his hair, like the blood Ladd was shedding across the alley, hung in his eyes. He looked up towards the darkness of the sky, addressing the gunmen with only his voice, not his attention. "I suggest you drop your guns, unless you want me to assist you in doing so."

The clatter of metal to the ground bounced around the alley. No one dared to hang onto one. In their minds, they all believed that even a thousand bullets wouldn't be enough to stop the Rail Tracer. As soon as the weapons were discarded, Chane went directly for her husband, a moon-lit hand perching upon his shoulder. Felix looked up at her, all his limbs still entangled with a wavering Ladd, who was beginning to feel the devastation of his back injury numb him. Graham had neither the courage nor the realization to dislodge his wrench from his boss's back.

The blood running down her left arm was meager and thin, her body stemming the flow for her. At the moment of the gunshot, Felix had seen an explosion of gore, a slaughtering of his dear wife, but she was perfectly fine. It was just a graze, nothing serious.

Leave him, he felt her say to him. Let us return home. No more killing. They are beaten.

Felix continued to stare at her, his breath catching up with him. He breathed with difficulty not from the rigor of his fight, but from the dry fear that he had not acknowledged before. Chane scared him when she got shot. He thought it meant game over, if only for a short while. Removing his knees from the sides of Ladd's head, he used his feet to heft Ladd off of him and into a crowd of tin garbage cans. If the wrench wasn't firmly entrenched before, it surely was now. Felix had hung on to Ladd's arm, but the force of his throw was great, so the metal limb ripped away, leaving Ladd armless yet again. Chane reached to help him to his feet, but he surfaced effortlessly without her aid. He didn't want her to move her injured arm. Graham's knees gave way and he dropped onto all fours, trembling not from joy or fear, but from intense despair. Felix, as he stood, swiped a discarded gun, dropped Ladd's arm, and proceeded to mow down the gunmen. Bits of them spread everywhere, their skin and fluid coating all sides of the alley. Graham was sheeted in the mess of human bile. Chane pressed her face into Felix's shoulder. She had never seen him so upset.

"That's for touching her," her husband said to the carnage, before tossing the gun at Graham. "I'll let you live, so you can tell this sad story to all your friends. Just remember who had mercy for Ladd Russo, and who lodged a wrench into his back."

Felix swept Chane away, not speaking her her into the night, leaving Graham alone with Ladd and the remains of his following back in the alleyway. Ladd was still alive, Graham knew that. But he was paralyzed, if not permanently. And Graham was the man responsible.

The apartment was not far and Felix escorted Chane to the stoop and up the stairs. He ignored the cowardly brunette who was still trembling among the rabble nearby. Once inside, he sat Chane down in a chair, ripping off a strip of his shirt simultaneously as he held the phone to his ear. Chane was staring at his wrists. There were dark, purple fingerprints upon them. Bruises that Felix didn't seem to notice.

"Yes, hello, officer?" He began wrapping Chane's arm, staving off the steady drip of blood until he could get her a proper bandage. "I may have found someone you've been looking for. Does Ladd Russo ring a bell?"