Nexus: Heroes Will Rise

by tmb1112

Universal borders have been erased and beings from thousands of universes now live on the same world: Nexus. In the first Saga of Nexus, Awul was saved, but the mysteries of Nexus remain. Now our heroes sail across the sea to Aebrith to search for lost loved ones and save the world. MCs from DBZ, KH, Soul Eater, FT, Blue Exorcist, Bleach, 7DS, OP, Ben 10, SAO, HxH, and many more!

124. Nexus HWR 18-5 Killer

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the many many sources that I got characters from. This story combines elements of every work of fiction I've ever read, watched, or played. Support the official releases!

Nexus HWR 18.5 Killer:

"FIRE DRAGON'S IRON FIST!" Natsu punched his right fist at Sylar's face after shooting down the hallway like a rocket.

"Time to get serious then," Sylar said with a chuckle. He stepped to the right and smirked while turning his head to follow Natsu's face as the fist passed in front of him.

He's fast! Natsu thought, and fire shot out of the backs of his calves, flipping him in mid-punch and sending him sideways at the man who dodged him. Natsu was not on a perfect angle to slam his fist into Sylar, so instead Natsu took the side of his right forearm, and he slammed as hard as he could with it into Sylar's left side. This time though, Sylar did not try to dodge. His skin turned into steel around where Natsu's arm was about to collide, and Natsu clenched his teeth in pain at how hard the man's body was. Despite the pain though, Natsu screamed, "Take this!" Out of the side of his forearm pressing into Sylar's metal side, a cone of flames shot out of his skin and enveloped the entire body of the man next to him.

A bubble of green pulsed out of Sylar's body a second after the flames hit him. It pressed into Natsu's body and sent the Dragon Slayer flying off of him and into the wall across the hall. Natsu saw the wall approaching though and turned so his feet slammed against it first. He bent his knees to cushion how fast he was thrown from Sylar, and he darted his eyes down to his pained right arm where that barrier slammed against him. That's no ordinary forcefield. He frowned and heated up his feet more, imbedding himself into the wall a few inches and then bending forward and digging the fingers of his left hand into the wall between his legs to keep himself on it. He was originally planning and pushing right back off at the enemy in front of him, but that green barrier was still surrounding the man inside it.

He knew not to attack me like this, Sylar thought, and he frowned. Sylar rose his right hand and Natsu felt an invisible grip on his neck. Natsu clenched his teeth, and he ground them together while the muscles in his neck tensed up. Sylar grimaced deeper, then he flicked his wrist to the right. Natsu's neck was too strong for him to snap like a twig, but he was able to telekinetically rip Natsu's legs and hand out of the wall and throw the Dragon Slayer back down the hallway towards where he initially came from.

Natsu hit the floor and flipped backwards, dodging a spike of ice flying at his head. He smacked a hand down on it as it was passing him, and the entire ice spike melted in an instant. Natsu landed, and he yelled, "Lightning Fire Dragon Mode!" Natsu yelled, and lightning sparked out of his body in all directions. His feet did not kick off the ground this time, but he shot forward so fast that Sylar had to jump backwards to dodge the fist coming down at him. Natsu missed and hit the floor beneath where Sylar's feet just were. His fist shattered the floor around it, and it made the entire hallway ripple out in every direction. The white ground on every side of his fist lifted up like waves, and the waves that shot towards the walls on his sides exploded upwards when they hit the walls still with so much force pushing into them.

Sylar landed right as one of the waves rippling through the floor was hitting beneath him, and his landing was wobbly because of it. Natsu saw his moment and his entire body flashed white for a second. Sylar shut his eyes from that blinding light, and then a fist slammed into his gut so hard that his eyes bulged back open. Natsu punched so hard that his fist was visible on Sylar's back, and then the flames shot out of Sylar's back all the way to the end of the hall before blasting straight through the wall and into the blacked-out bar on the other side. Sylar almost got thrown from Natsu's fist, but Natsu pushed so hard that the fist visible on his back tore the rest of the way forward through Sylar's burnt outsides and insides.

A bloody fist flew out of Sylar's back. Natsu and Sylar stopped moving in the middle of a hallway full of flames. The aura around Natsu's body got smaller and vanished while the man inside it kept the dark look on his face. Natsu was panting, tired from jumping into Supernova Mode for a split second to reach Sylar in the instant he saw Sylar was off balance. Adding Sylar's off-balancedness with the temporary blindness from Natsu's flash of white light, he got the moment he needed to land one good hit on his enemy. "You killed good people," Natsu said. His head was facing the opposite direction as Sylar's, towards the new hole at the end of the hallway and into the now flaming bar. Sylar's head was right next to his, facing the other way towards the dead bodies of the people Natsu was talking about. "I can't forgive someone for-"

"Haha, hahaha," Sylar started laughing in a low, taunting way. Natsu froze with his mouth wide open, and he turned his head to the right while Sylar did the same to look him in the eyes. "Are you starting a speech now? In the middle of a fight?" Sylar rose his right hand and pointed his index and middle fingers out at Natsu's forehead like it was a gun, then he pressed his thumb down and said, "Bang."

Natsu's head snapped back and a hole ripped through his forehead. He reeled backwards but Sylar grabbed Natsu's impaling arm with his other hand before it had pulled out of his body completely. Sylar winced as he stopped Natsu's arm, preventing his body from healing itself yet, but instead he just pulled Natsu's arm back into him and leaned his head forward while Natsu snapped his own head back up. Natsu had blood drenching down his face from the hole in his forehead, but Sylar knew from how strong the man's neck was earlier that that attack was not going to pierce through Natsu's head far enough. Natsu looked enraged as he snapped his head back up, but Sylar was still just grinning as he brought his face up close to Natsu's. "You killed the Fire Lord. That's pretty impressive. Your power seems pretty similar to his, but I already know how fire benders work. I've seen how they, tick." His head flinched to the side as he said 'tick,' and Natsu felt like he was looking at a maniac while the man spoke.

Then, Natsu felt his right arm feel very cold, and he tore back fast as he lost feeling in it in the next second. Natsu covered his blood-soaked arm in fire and thawed out his limb that had just froze in a second. Natsu stumbled back a few steps, then he hopped away and gained some more distance between him and his multi-powered enemy. He kept panting, but now he stared over at Sylar's stomach and watched with wide eyes as Sylar's stomach started sealing up. His organs and muscles, then his skin covering it all back up. This guy, Natsu thought. He's got so many abilities. Fire, ice, healing, that weird gun thing, and he can move shit with his mind. Healing though, that's gotta be the worst one. Natsu shook his head then grinned in a bloodthirsty, furious way. "Bet if I turn you to ash, you don't regenerate from that."

"I wonder about that," Sylar replied, a grin still spread on his face much different from Natsu's. As Natsu looked at the man, he felt a strange sensation that the man did not have the same bloodlust he did. In fact, Sylar just looked, happy.

"Before I tear you apart," Natsu snarled. "Why are you doing this?" He asked.

"You're the first person to ask me 'why' today," Sylar said, almost as if in a congratulatory tone. "Then again, you're the first person I haven't been able to kill with ease," he added with a small laugh.

"How can you laugh at that?!" Natsu shouted at his enemy. Sylar stopped laughing and Natsu stomped towards him. "What's wrong with you? Were you sent here to kill everyone in the base?"

"How do you know I was sent here?" Sylar questioned. Natsu's eyebrows furrowed inwards and his teeth clenched harder. "You're right," Sylar assured him, "but I could have just come here on my own, if I had felt like it."

"Why are you here?" Natsu snarled.

Sylar chuckled, then answered, "Someone wanted the commander of this base dead. I was willing to take the job."

The answer made Natsu's furious look disappear. Confusion replaced it, filling his entire face. "If, you're only here to kill Gaara, then, then…" Natsu shook his head around. He was too confused, and he clenched his teeth then shouted, "Why did you kill all of them? Why Spanner? Why Mike and Lincoln?!" The night of drinking with Zeta Squad had Natsu taking this personally on top of his natural disgust with the senseless murders.

Sylar sighed and rolled his neck around before slouching his head and looking over into Natsu's eyes. "What do you want? Should I tell you that it was to make Gaara sloppy? I could say that I killed them all to make him so angry that he won't think straight when I face him, but you'll know it isn't true, I'll know it isn't true." He shook his head and then grinned at the mage. "Why did I kill them? It's simple really." Sylar grinned and said, "I like it. Killing. I enjoy it." He took in a deep, euphoric breath. Then, Sylar focused his eyes in on Natsu's, and Natsu felt a strong sense that he was not looking into the eyes of a man anymore. "I'm a killer," Sylar breathed at Natsu, and then he vanished.

Natsu snapped his head right, left, he looked behind him, then he pointed his head back forward. "Hey, HEY!" Natsu started sprinting forward, and he lifted his head and sniffed a few times. He stopped sprinting after a few steps and spun to the right looking furious again. "There you are!" He punched, but an invisible Sylar sprinted fast around Natsu's back. He turned his right fist into steel and punched into the back of Natsu's head while Natsu's fist was passing through where he thought Sylar was standing. Natsu's momentum and Sylar's punch to the back of his head sent him flying into the wall in front of him.

Sylar frowned as the punch meant to destroy Natsu's head did not even crack his skull. Sylar glared through the hole in the wall, and lightning sparked off his hands as he lifted them up, then he lowered those hands back down to his sides. He turned his head right as the lightning stopped sparking, and Sylar watched as four people came running around the corner with the dead bodies clustered in it. Those guards had on helmets with visors, and an invisible Sylar did not like how all of them pointed their weapons straight at him like their visors allowed them to see him. Sylar rose his right hand towards them, and all of their weapons flew out of their hands and towards him.

"Over here!" Sylar heard a shout from his other side, and he spun his head to see eight more people running out from around a different corner. One of those running around the corner, was Sylar's target himself.

A flame ignited through the wall Natsu just smashed through. Sand lifted out of Gaara's gourd. All the guards who still had their sights on Sylar and weapons in hand fired them, while the guards who lost their guns reached down for sidearms or melee weapons. Sylar turned the direction of the fewer men drawing new weapons, and he sprinted towards them faster than they could track. The men who fired at him from the other side of the hallway found that their bullets and beams traveled slower than he did, but not slower than the men Sylar ran between to escape the hall.

Screams rang out through the hall, and Gaara shouted, "Stop firing!" He did not have on a helmet like the others, but he felt the presence in the hallway run away as soon as he looked towards it. He's fast, too fast, Gaara got a dark look in his eyes. "Get them help," he snapped to the soldiers around him who looked horrified that they just accidentally lit up their fellow guards. They all ran off to help out the injured men and women down the hall, while Gaara ran forward towards a hole in the wall where a large flame was coming out of.

Natsu leapt out of the hole in the wall, shaking his head around after that hit to the back of his skull boggled him for a few seconds. He spun both directions and snarled at the sight of only allies around him. "Where did he-"

"Listen to me, Natsu," Gaara said. He came to a stop right in front of the man with pink hair. Natsu did not look very injured other than some blood dripping down from his forehead, and his right fist that was drenched in blood which was another good sign to the base commander. Gaara looked into Natsu's eyes and continued, "You are the strongest person at this base right now."

Natsu did not get what Gaara was trying to say with that. "If you're asking me to stay back and protect-"

"I'm not," Gaara said. Natsu lifted his eyebrows, and Gaara said in a serious tone, "Go kill him. Do it, Natsu. Find him and kill him quickly. We're finding bodies all over the base. I'm going to order an immediate evacuation."

Natsu started nodding his head. After seeing what the enemy could do, Natsu did not like the idea of the man roaming the base with so many people inside it. Natsu's expression grew darker as he was about to run off. He stopped himself for a few seconds, deciding that it was important to let Gaara know a few things. "He was sent here to kill you," Natsu began. Gaara did not look surprised, but it was good information that he nodded at Natsu to show gratitude for giving. Natsu was not done though, "This guy," he hissed. "He called himself a killer. He's, killing everyone for no reason," Natsu shook his head, a frustrated and enraged look on his face. "He's a sadistic, crazy, fucker who can't be…" Natsu clenched his teeth hard, then he continued, "I punched a hole straight through him, and in seconds he had regenerated. I'm going to burn him to dust," Natsu said, assuring the man in front of him who got a nervous and uneasy expression after hearing about Sylar's regeneration ability.

"What else can he do?" Gaara asked.

Natsu wanted to charge right off, but he had a feeling that sooner or later today, Gaara was going to meet up with Sylar. Unless I find him first, Natsu thought, but he was not going to bank the base commander's life on it. "He froze my arm, burned Linc, he put a hole in my head by making a gun with his fingers, and I felt his hand around my neck when he was ten feet away."

"All that, invisibility, and super speed," Gaara said, not liking their chances with such a powerful opponent. Natsu said he punched a hole through him though, which indicates he can be harmed. His body itself must not be very strong, or at least not strong enough not to be damaged by Natsu. I should be able to-

"Oh yeah," Natsu muttered. "He can turn his body into some hard metal too, and," he continued with an annoyed look as he remembered something else. "He made this strange green barrier, forcefield thing that hurt my arm when I touched it." Natsu turned and started jogging away, adding in a low voice, "Good luck."

"You too," Gaara replied, feeling less confident now about his idea to send Natsu after their powerful assassin.

Natsu sped up from a jog into a run, into a sprint that he only slowed a little at the end of the hall to cut around the people gathered at the injured and dead bodies. He jumped between bodies and then turned right at the next corner, only to stop as he saw Mick Rory and Snart running his way with some other guards. Mick opened his mouth to shout, 'Fire Guy' but one look at Natsu's face had him stopping short. Natsu looked at Mick's face and shook his head, his teeth clenching in anger and regret because of a man Mick looked so much like. "I'm sorry," Natsu muttered at them, glancing once to his side back at two other members of Zeta Squad lying dead on the floor behind him.

Snart and Mick did not like the sound of that one bit and sprinted the rest of the way to see what Natsu was looking at. Snart's bottom lip dropped and his face filled with sadness as he looked down at Michael Scofield's body. Mick looked around after seeing Mike, and he felt relieved that he did not see his good friend and drinking buddy who was up late with him and Natsu the night before. Then he saw the body that looked the worst of all of them, and he recognized the shape of Linc's burnt corpse at least. "RAAAAA!" Natsu charged off, but he still heard Mick's roar behind him and his fingernails cut into his palms.

Sylar, I'm, I'm going to, A dark black color mixed into Natsu's bright orange aura, and the corners of Natsu's lips went from pointed straight down on either side to curving up at the corners. TEAR YOU APART!

---

"Alright, understood," Sara Lance said, and she removed her hand from the comms' link on her head. The blonde woman rubbed her forehead and clenched her eyes shut for a few seconds, then she spun to the large squad of guards behind her. "This is a code red, people. Evacuation orders have been sent down. We are getting out of here!" She turned and started running back through the group of people who were behind her, and she yelled as she did, "We're heading to the cafeteria to help get the civi's out."

"What happened?" someone called to Sara's back as they chased after her. "Did they find the-"

"Two of Zeta squad were just murdered by Sylar, along with all of Team 4," Sara said without looking back at the guards behind her. "Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows were good men," she called out. "Let's make it so their deaths weren't in vain and save as many people here as we can." Mike, Linc, I'm sorry. I didn't see this coming, but as your leader I let you down. Sara's fists clenched at her sides, and she started running faster for the cafeteria.

Two men towards the back of the pack chasing Sara, as they were two who were right behind her when she was heading the other way, turned to each other with nervous looks at what she just shouted. Usopp stared into Charlie's eyes to see if the base guard was as scared as he was, and he was at least a little reassured that he was not the only one freaking out. The two of them looked back forward and saw everyone in their squad darting their gazes around and rubbing sweat off their faces, their hands tightening around the weapons they were carrying.

At any moment they figured their enemy could appear out of nowhere. The feeling had them scared senseless, up until they rounded the corner to reach the hallway the cafeteria doors were in. There were twenty guards gathered outside those doors, and the sight of so many allies calmed down the squad who hoped their intruder would not risk attacking them there.

Sara ran straight ahead while the guards in her path moved to the sides. The doors of the cafeteria opened and some of the other guards in the hall rushed into the giant room, and then Sara ran in after them with many more guards following after her. "Listen up, everyone!" Sara called out. The room was packed beyond its capacity with people. There were hundreds of them gathered in the room, more than it looked like the base could house. Then again, they did get a large increase in their numbers the day before. "We are going to start an orderly evacuation of the base. We will split you up into groups and take one at a time to the garage so as to keep order-"

"I knew it!" one of the recently freed slaves shouted, falling to her knees and putting her face in her hands. She started sobbing and yelled, "Nowhere's safe! They're coming to get us back!"

"You said we were safe here!"

"Is that what the enemies want? They just want their slaves back?!" Someone else in a different part of the room shouted. This got an angry response from many of the slaves and the other residents of the base, but some people agreed with the sentiment that man was hinting at. People started yelling at each other. The fear they felt was making them paranoid, angry, and they all wanted someone they could blame. It did not help that people were packed practically shoulder-to-shoulder, or that many of them had brought bags with them which crowded the place even more.

A baby started crying to add to all the chaos, and Sara started barking out orders to the guards around her to get everyone under control. A pirate who was inside the room acting as a guard already ran over to Sara and asked what he could do to help her, and Sara told Sanji to just keep protecting this room as per Gaara's orders. When the baby started crying however, one of the guards behind Sara ran off. Usopp watched the man who he had become friends with start running away, and he followed after Charlie with an interested look on his face.

Usopp walked up towards Charlie's back as the man stopped running next to a table. The tables were the first things filled up in the room when people gathered in it, but the woman in front of Charlie was offered the seat by an elderly man who now stood in front of her to Charlie's left. The blonde woman with long curly hair had a baby in her arms that she was rocking to try and get him to be quiet, while another little boy a few years older was tugging on her right leg like he had a question for her. "Here, I'll hold him," Charlie offered, reaching his arms down while the large cannon-like rifle he had been holding was slung over his back again. The woman in front of Charlie handed him the baby, then she picked up the small boy at her feet and put him in her lap.

"What is it, Aaron?" The woman asked. "I need you to keep still, okay? Mommy needs you to be patient." She smiled at the boy who stopped rambling about the sirens he was hearing, and he nodded back at her with a confused look on his face. She looked past the boy and the man in front of her who was leaning back and forth as he rocked the baby in his arms, which was actually quieting down the younger boy he was holding. "Charlie," she began, and Charlie looked at her and then looked back to see who she was looking at.

"Oh Usopp," Charlie said as he noticed the man not far behind him for the first time. "Come here, meet the family," Charlie said with a laugh.

He, has a family? Usopp thought, then he remembered how Charlie had briefly brought it up before. He doesn't look scared anymore. Is he just laughing and smiling so they'll think everything is okay?

"Oh so you're Usopp? Charlie told me about you, I'm Claire," the blonde woman sitting at the table introduced. Claire stared at Usopp's long nose for a few seconds, trying not to laugh as she had not believed Charlie when he described it to her the night before. She then bumped the little guy on her lap up with a knee and added, "This is Aaron."

"And this little guy, is Jack," Charlie said before Usopp could greet Claire back, while lifting up his arms that were carefully holding the youngest member of their family. Charlie looked back to Claire as Usopp faced the baby who just stopped crying at the sight of his funny face. "We're going to head out of here. You ready?" Charlie asked.

Claire moved Aaron over so she could stand up, then she began in a soft voice, "Charlie, what's happening? We haven't been told-"

"It's nothing big," Charlie said with another laugh. "It's just one intruder, but we need to get you all out anyway. Just to be safe."

The way most people in the room were panicking and treating this incident made it seem to Claire that he was bluffing, but she nodded at him as she saw despite his smile how scared his eyes really were. "You're coming with us, right?" She asked while grabbing Aaron's hand and holding it tightly.

"Of course," Charlie said. "Me and Usopp will stick right-"

"Hey you two," Sara called out, and the two who felt that voice was directed at them turned their heads. "We're going out to patrol the halls around the evac route. Let's move it!"

Usopp sweatdropped and pulled back out his slingshot that he had put on his back when he felt relatively safe. Usopp drawing his weapon made Claire spin back to Charlie in worry, and the former rockstar scratched the back of his head while turning back to her. "Well, we'll be right behind you," Charlie said. Claire reached out, and Charlie put his baby back in his wife's arms. He looked to be hesitant to let go, but he flashed Claire a smile and turned away as she opened her mouth to say something. "Right behind you," Charlie repeated loudly.

Claire paused with her mouth open, then she pursed her lips and looked after her husband and his new friend. "Be careful," she called after them.

Usopp glanced back over his shoulder as they jogged off, but so many people were rushing around and organizing the evacuation that he lost sight of the mother and her kids in a few seconds. "You sure, you don't want to stay back with them?" Usopp asked, turning to Charlie who looked his way in surprise. Although the pirate did not want to think about worst case scenarios, Usopp's negativity hit him hard with thoughts of possible futures. Usopp thought about how he grew up without his own father, how those kids might have to do the same, and as much as he tried shaking the thoughts out of his head, they crept right back in.

"I do," Charlie replied, but he did not slow down his jog. "But I'm a guard here. If we start panicking and disobeying orders now, at a time like this, this place would get real chaotic real quick."

"You think so?" Usopp wondered. He looked back again as they neared the doors to the cafeteria where other guards Sara had given orders to were running out into the halls. The blonde woman in a white leather outfit herself was running around behind Usopp, giving out new orders to a few more guards they could spare from organizing the room, though Usopp wondered if even with them all here, they could keep this an orderly evacuation. People were yelling at each other, getting yelled at by guards telling them to leave their bags behind to speed up, and they were pushing to line up and get in groups. Usopp cracked a small smile as one of the disorderly and larger men bumped into a woman, only for everyone around there to calm down quickly as the guy was slammed into the floor by Sanji who appeared from out of nowhere and started yelling at all the men around him to let the ladies go first.

Usopp's small smile disappeared a second later as he spotted someone he remembered from the day before, one of the former POW's who he had helped off the truck himself. The man was crying, and Usopp heard a different voice in that direction scream out in a pained voice, "I thought we were safe now!"

"Come on," Charlie said, and Usopp spun to see Charlie looking back at him as he had slowed down.

Brienne Tarth was just outside the cafeteria doors yelling at the guards running out which ways to go, and she yelled at Charlie and Usopp in a commanding tone to 'move their asses.' The two of them picked up their pace at her scary face when the tall muscular woman yelled it, then Brienne spun and started off a different direction. She reached up and grabbed a hilt from over her shoulder, pulling out a sword that glowed orange on the top half of the blade. It had a hole at the end of it and a trigger on the hilt just above her grip. The two men saw Brienne snarl in fury as she ran off.

In the cafeteria, Sanji was in the middle of yelling at a man when he felt a strong tug on the back of his suit that spun him around. Sara Lance grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him closer to her face, and Sanji's face turned red at how close they were. "Sanji," she said, her voice serious and not in the mood for whatever pervy thought had him blushing. "Get these people out of here." Sanji's swirly eyebrow lifted up and he stared at her in surprise. "I'm going to secure the halls with the others. If any team gets hit, they'll let the guards with you know which direction and hallway he's coming from. If he shows up, it's up to you to protect all these people. He'll slaughter them all if you can't."

Sanji's expression turned from surprised to shocked and his eyes darted back across the cafeteria. Usopp, he thought, as he had just seen the sniper run out there.

"Take control. I'm leaving this to you," she released his suit and spun around. Sara reached to her side and grabbed two small white cylinders that Sanji looked at in confusion, only for his eyes to widen again as both of them extended out three feet into long steel poles that sparked electricity at the ends. She looked back at the man and flashed him a grin which made him drop his jaw. "I'll see you later," she said, her grin looking so seductive that Sanji's nose bled like a faucet. Sara then spun around and her face regained the serious expression to it. "Alright everyone!" She shouted while running forward. "Follow Sanji and proceed with evacuations," she sprinted straight out of the cafeteria, and two guards on the sides of the doors turned and chased her out, leaving the room with very few guards and several hundred civilians still in it.

This is crazy. Sara-swan! Usopp's out there, Franky and Natsu too, but Usopp can't handle- Sara-chwan! No, no I need to focus. Sara-san gave me an order, and I'll- Sanji could not separate his serious and perverted thoughts, and the seductive look on Sara's face reappeared in his mind. Immediately, he started shouting at everyone to listen to every word he said (then added in a sweeter voice that the women could listen if they wanted). And he continued the evacuation, only as the one running it now.

"We're going to die!"

"No you're not," Sanji said, turning to the older man near him who had tears streaming down his face. The malnourished thin man and all the people around him stared at him, as did most in the room who had already been looking to Sanji since he tried calming them all down and giving directives. Their eyes shook at the blond-man's tone when he said that, and he finished in a reassuring voice while flashing them a smile, "None of you will."

---

Sylar leaned his back against a blood-soaked wall on the second floor of the Resistance base. "No, not yet," he said, then he pushed off the wall and started walking down the corridor. He lifted his right hand at his side as he walked, pointing a finger at the wall next to him and aimlessly carving a line through it that curved up and down with the slightest movements of his finger. "Yes, the base is on the surface now, but he won't run. I can hear them, their plans, their heart beats." He smirked as he turned a corner, and he lifted his gaze up and added, "I can hear yours too. You didn't trust I'd finish this? Or you just wanted to watch?"

The killer listened for a few seconds as he kept walking. "No. I'm going to take my time," he responded. Sylar neared the door he was heading towards, where he could hear many people speaking and shouting on the other side. He stopped using his invisibility power, appearing just outside the door in broad view of the round black camera on the ceiling. "If they escape then they escape. I'm not interested in- oh, talk later." The left corner of Sylar's lip curled up while the telepathic voice speaking with him disappeared. He cut off the call, because of the heart rate in the next room that just sped up. He heard the quickening pumping of a heart, followed by the start of a shout, BAM! Sylar punched his right fist into the door in front of him and blasted it from its hinges.

The door flew across the room and slammed into a woman sitting at a chair behind a computer. She had just started turning to the man next to her who had a panicked expression on his face and was screaming something, so she caught a partial view of the door in the second before it squished her through her equipment. The guy who just spotted their intruder on his security monitors, the man who realized which camera angle Sylar appeared on, the one who saw Sylar staring straight into the camera and his eyes, shit his pants as the woman next to him smushed into her broken instruments. He fell backwards off his chair as he lost bowel control, while everyone else shot out of their chairs or spun to the doorway as well.

Near the center of the room, Shira's look was intense and focused without the fear on it that everyone else around him had. "Sen, the Kazekage!" Shira shouted over all the shouts of panic and fear from the others in the comms' room.

Sen spun to her gray-haired comrade with huge eyes, then she spun just as fast to the computer behind her that she reached for. All the screens in the room shattered first before she could contact Gaara. The computer Sen reached for crumpled down like someone wrinkling paper, and then it exploded and threw her backwards, while the black-haired man walking in the room just lifted his left hand with all his fingers curling in. The explosions that went off all around the room at the same time filled it with smoke and flames, and the communications' officers and the ninjas with them started coughing or shouting.

One man stumbling away from his old station and the flames coming out of it bumped right into a figure who he spun to in surprise as he had not seen anyone standing there. The smoke around them pushed away in a pulse of invisible force, while Sylar reached his hand forward and grabbed the man around the face. The smoke pushed out to all sides of the room filled only with the red light of the flames since the rest of the lights had been destroyed. Shira spotted the enemy who reappeared halfway across the room in the second that had passed since he blasted everything. Shira lowered his arm that he covered his mouth with at the sight of one of the others in the room getting grabbed around the face. "Sylar! Don't-"

Sylar's right hand started glowing white with a red veil around the outside of it. Everyone in the room stared over with bulging eyes as the communications' officer screamed in agony, as his body irradiated and started melting away. Sylar snapped his head away from the melting man he was smirking at. As that man's screams cut off, another's began, but the one who started shouting made Sylar look over not because of his voice. Wind blasted off of Shira as an aura surrounded him and he roared. His muscles tensed up and started buffing out, his skin turning red as veins pushed out all over his body, and his gray hair blew above him wildly as the whole room started to shake.

"Seven Heavenly Breaths! Third Activation!" Shira yelled. A golden aura surrounded his red body and his irises disappeared into the pure whites of his eyes.

"Sand shinobi," Sylar said as he watched the man power up. Everyone else was getting blown back and pushed to the edges of the room by his power, but Sylar stood just ten yards in front of him with a grin reemerging on his face. Sylar dropped the body of the man he had just killed, and he rose his left arm while turning it into steel. Shira's left forearm slammed against Sylar's, and Sylar turned his head to the man who moved so fast to him in that moment that all the remaining flames in the room went out. Shira's blazing aura alone lit up the room now, and all the men and women who were terrified a second ago started shouting cheers as he appeared pushing against Sylar.

"Shira!" Yome yelled out, the short girl getting to her feet and looking out towards her boyfriend with worry on her face at the sight of Sylar's sinister smile.

The ninja was fast, spinning off his blocked swipe and kicking around for Sylar's head. Sylar twitched a finger though, and Shira got thrown back away from him. The swipe of his kick in front of Sylar's body slammed a force of wind into the intruder hard enough to dent in the walls behind him, but Sylar started running forwards anyway. "Fourth Activation!" Shira yelled, and his muscles tensed even more to a point that it looked like the slightest movement and they might tear. It's still not enough! "FIFTH!" He roared, only managing to get out a single word as the pain overtook all thoughts in his mind. Even Shira's own comrades got scared of him as his skin ripped in a few places and blood splashed out, while at the same time they were forced back by the pressure exuding off of him.

"Everyone get out!" Sen shouted, seeing that Shira was not going to be able to hold back despite all of their presences in here. "Yome, you too!" She yelled over at her shorter comrade who was one of the only ones still able to stand. Most of the room's occupants started crawling for the door, and Yome turned to see Sen give her a serious look before turning and running to the exit. Yome bit her lower lip while glancing back towards Shira, but she knew Sen was right and started running towards her too. Sen got close to the open doorway and leaned down to help a woman crawling close to it get up, but a bunch of broken debris on the side of the room flew towards the exit to crush them and block it off.

Sen's head started turning to the half ton of debris in panic, then Shira appeared in the air above her with his leg extended into the debris, shattering it into even more pieces and throwing it back in the direction it came from. Sylar lost his grin at the speed of the man whose body was red from more than just the heat of his skin now, with blood coming out of injuries all over his body, more after that kick. Shira's leg was in agony after the kick but he held back from screaming. I won't be able to keep it up for long, but while I can- Shira's pure white eyes darted towards Sylar, then they darted back and forth as the man he was looking at vanished.

There! Shira shot back towards the center of the room, but he missed his invisible target. Recovering fast, he slammed the fist he missed all the way into the floor. The ground cracked and debris shot away from him, while Shira felt his right arm break in two different places from the force of that punch. A chunk of debris that lifted off the ground bumped into something, and Shira's body shot towards that spot so fast that all the other debris pushing away changed directions and followed his path through the air. All that debris slammed into the same wall that Sylar himself smashed into, his invisibility going away to show he was coated in steel. Even with that steel coating though, Sylar had a look of pain on his face and coughed up blood, while Shira pushed an elbow into his solar plexus and far into his body.

Sylar smirked again as the blood splashed out of his mouth, and he clapped his steel hands together fast in front of him on the temples of Shira's head. Shira tried pulling back faster, but his neck muscles clenched up and he could not move in time. His head was rung by the clap of Sylar's hands, but Shira's right arm snapped up and slammed underneath Sylar's chin so hard that his head snapped fully backwards, his hands that were just starting to glow white on Shira's temples getting pushed off of them. Shira felt his already broken arm shatter at the elbow, and he let out a scream of pain mixed with hatred as he brought forward his left knee just as hard as he just punched his right arm.

"SIXTH!" Shira screamed.

"Shira don't!" Yome shouted towards him. Sen looked back from just inside the doorway where she had reached in the last second after Shira kicked the debris. The taller of the kunoichi on Shira's team stared with as wide eyes as Yome, His body won't be able to take it! He's going to-

Everyone in the room came to sudden stops. Their breath caught in their throats. None of them could move an inch. Sylar parted his lips and let out a breath that hung in the air as steam for a second. "Freeze," Sylar said, his right hand on the elbow that had been moving off of his torso. Shira's left elbow was frozen, as was his left arm up and down from that elbow, as was his left shoulder and the left side of his torso. The ice went all the way down to the top of Shira's thigh where it had really frozen through fast. It froze so fast and thoroughly, that Shira's leg moving far beyond his limits already could not take the strain. Shira's leg flew off his shattering thigh, slamming into a broken screen on the side wall that fell off after getting hit.

Shira's irises reappeared while the last of his golden aura vanished. His eyes were looking down at his thigh that finished swinging in front of him. No blood splashed from it, as it was too frozen for that. Ice crept up his neck but stopped before reaching his face, yet Shira could feel it on the inside of his body on his left side. It was a single instant, and he had completely lost. When Shira's aura faded, so did all the light from the room. All the electrical equipment was destroyed, all the fires put out, and no one in the mostly dark room could say a thing. It was only illuminated because of the light in the hallway outside flooding in. The fight had taken a few seconds, but the hope everyone there felt at Shira powering up had been dashed, replaced by an even more intense fear.

Sen took a step back, or she tried at least. Instead, when her foot came down, it came down in front of where she just lifted it. She planted her feet down hard with a terrified look on her face, but the soles of her feet started sliding over the floor back into the room. Yome was in front of her friend with one hand raised towards Shira that trembled as she watched this in horror. Sylar looked into Shira's eyes while lifting his left hand up to move other things telekinetically. No one in the room could say a word. Shira stared into Sylar's eyes in the near darkness of the room, and he opened his mouth to beg for mercy for his comrades. A strip of the ceiling above Sylar started peeling off with the slow movement of Sylar's hand. He peeled off a panel off of the ceiling, then that rectangular sheet floated across the room and behind Sen and the injured woman with her who had both been pulled farther into the room.

"Oh God."

"I'm sorry, for the kind of person I was. I-I should have been better…"

"P-P-Please, don't-"

Sylar lowered the sheet of ceiling and blocked the hallway, descending the room into pitch blackness. Then he started laughing.

---

BooOOOP BooOOOP… Red lights blinked in the hallway that had its normal lighting back on too. Usopp and Charlie Pace walked side by side on their own in the Resistance Base under attack. They stayed on guard but had not seen anything in any of the halls around the main escape route that they were patrolling close to. Some of the other guard patrols that were larger set out a bit deeper into the base, but the ones close to the main route split up very thin to guard all the adjacent hallways as a closer line of defense.

"Most civilians should be out by now," Charlie said in a low voice while they walked slowly down the hall. He held up a gun across his chest with the barrel pointed to the right side of the hall. Usopp stood on his left and held his slingshot diagonally across his muscular chest too that was exposed under his overalls. The curly-haired pirate had his hands gripped tightly on the long black weapon that stuck out past his left shoulder. His left hand slid higher up the shaft towards the top of the Black Kabuto too so he was closer to the bands if he needed to draw back the pouch on quick notice. "Just need to hear that all-clear and we can get out of here too. Any second now," Charlie glanced towards a P.A. speaker on the wall they were passing. He slowed more and leaned his head towards it, and he heard a static noise under the loud beeping of the base's alarms.

Usopp glanced past Charlie towards that speaker too as they passed it by. "That's probably, just… I don't know," Usopp had nothing to finish that sentence with. He wanted to make up something elaborate for why they had not yet gotten any reports on Sylar's whereabouts. Or why the P.A. system was acting up. Or why it was only the two of them wandering around this base with a serial killer on the loose. He was anxious and sweating badly. But as he looked back from that malfunctioning speaker to the guy with him, he relaxed his look at the sight of Charlie's twitchy fingers on his rifle. "So Claire? Did you meet her here, or before?" Usopp wondered.

Charlie spun quickly to his left. Then he relaxed himself too as he noticed what Usopp was doing. Charlie took in a deep breath and looked back down the hall as they were nearing a right turn. "Before," Charlie told him. They rounded the corner onto another completely empty hallway that ended in a left turn that could lead them back to a main hall. They hoped they would use that hall to leave and that the announcement would come between now and then, so they were in no rush to move quicker and have to patrol the loop again. This white hallway was empty though and the two spoke in calmer voices after pausing for a second as they rounded the bend in fear of what they might see.

"Aaron is actually Claire's from a previous relationship," Charlie added. He figured Usopp might have been asking because Aaron was old enough that it was unlikely he had been born on Nexus like his other son was. "I was there when he was born though," Charlie continued to the man who had nodded at first but now looked back at him in surprise to hear that. Charlie smiled brightly as he thought on it and added, "I helped her raise him. I think of him as my son as much as Jack, who is blood."

Charlie cocked his head left and right trying to crack it, and failing. He had a cockier expression though as he talked about his wife and kids who he was protecting by patrolling like this. "I guess we'll try somewhere else once we get out of here. I think this was a bit too close to the front lines, not that there's anywhere safe on Nexus to be, right?" Charlie joked with a laugh. His confident expression was bright and believable, but Usopp still curled the corners of his lips down farther while tilting his head back in fear of what he was about to say.

"Go. Get out of here," Usopp said. Charlie looked to his comrade in surprise and stopped for a second. Usopp nodded at him seriously though and motioned back behind them. "I'll finish up the patrol and be right behind you." Can't believe he's still in here with that many people relying on him. I can't risk Charlie's life when he's got a family to protect-

"It's my job," Charlie shrugged his shoulders but shook his head back at Usopp in a more serious way denying Usopp's offer. Usopp frowned deeper but kept walking as Charlie continued down the hall. Charlie looked reluctant to deny the suggestion, but he gripped his large rifle tighter and held it out in front of his chest too. "Besides! You know how strong these babies are? More like a cannon than a rifle. Explosive rounds and everything. Won't matter how much of a monster this Sylar turns out to be."

Charlie popped up the end of the barrel a couple of times like he was firing off a few rounds. He lowered it back down and started laughing, and this time Usopp did not think he was doing it just to feign confidence.

Usopp shook his head around with a laugh of his own. "You're a pretty reckless guy," Usopp commented. Coming up here in the first place was pretty reckless I guess. Shouldn't be surprised.

"Always have been," Charlie agreed with a grin. "You can ask Claire. She'll back me up, so you can believe it when I say that I died a very heroic death back on our world." Usopp spun back to his new friend in surprise at the light-hearted way Charlie brought this up. He had not known the other man had died before, but it was not an uncommon occurrence on this world so he got over it quickly. He was interested though and Charlie could see that but shook his head, "I'll tell you later. It's a crazy story, truly heroic, but… I'd rather it not happen again." Charlie added that sheepishly at the end as he was reminiscing on his death too much that it made him recall it in all its scary detail.

Usopp chuckled too and nodded in agreement with that one. "Yeah, though it could be a cool story for the next Nexus we pop up on after we die here," Usopp said. He puffed his chest out and finished in a confident tone, "Because we're all immortal! Apparently."

Charlie laughed with the joke that Usopp laughed himself after cracking. Then they turned the next corner. The lights were off in this hall other than the emergency red ones. It was hard to tell while rounding the bend because of the light from the previous hall bleeding into this one and illuminating the beginning of the hallway just around the corner, so the men did not notice at first. Only once they turned down the hall did they see the darkness ahead of them. The flickering red lights. And they saw the walls and ceiling and floor that should have been white, even if they were illuminated in red light. Just ahead of them though and on the floor partially lit up by the normal lighting of the previous hall, the red on the floor was spreading closer to them.

Neither man could move. They stared down the hallway that was littered in corpses. Blood dripped from the ceiling. There were gashes in the walls with wires sticking out and sparking. Light fixtures had all broken and the glass was scattered on the floor or imbedded in the bodies of some of the dozen corpses in the hallway. Their laughter caught in their throats. Their attempts a few seconds ago to make their nerves go away did an instant one-eighty reversal. Neither could remember what they were just talking about to even note the irony of the joke. They just stared down a hallway of corpses and towards the one moving figure among all the bodies.

Charlie glanced to the right side of the hall ahead of him. He saw Kaidan from Zeta Squad laying on top of a guard captain named Bellamy who he had worked closely with since joining the guards himself. Kaidan's neck was snapped, while bones stuck out of both of Bellamy's arms and his throat had a piece of glass from a broken light jammed through it. Both of their eyes were open as they lay there in a spreading puddle.

Usopp stared past Shepard's bisected body and towards a muscular guard he remembered seeing speaking with Gaara before about going off on his own too like Natsu only to get told to stick with a group. Then he stared past Bellamy's sister Octavia who looked to have been crawling away before her own sword got shoved through her back, telling from the smear of blood trailing behind her corpse. Usopp looked past that girl who was closest to the hunched-over figure other than the stronger guard who Usopp believed had awesome powers. Those powers likely led to the middle of the hallway looking to be in its worse shape as if an actual fight went on there rather than just a slaughter. The hunched-over figure above that powerful guard was bent towards the dead muscular man's head though.

Disgusting sounds squelched down the hallway to the two men who had no idea how they had not heard this going on when blood was still dripping from the ceiling. Charlie took a step back, and he froze as the monster bent over in the middle of the hall turned his head their way. Usopp backed up a step and darted his eyes to the floor closer to him where something not the size of a human body was rolling towards them. He gagged at the sight of Brienne's head rolling over and over in their direction before coming to a stop on her neck, so the face was pointed towards them. Her eyelids snapped open and showed nothing remained in the sockets.

Usopp and Charlie lifted their gazes back up and to the man who stood from the final guard he killed in this hallway. He turned towards them as the red lights flickered on again. His face was illuminated in that moment in red glow. Sylar looked towards them, and the body beneath him had its skull ripped open. Blood covered Sylar's mouth and the entire bottom half of his face.

I've never been more afraid of anything, Usopp thought. And I have seen things. I have been through some shit! I can't move. I can't breathe! His pale face was turning red and now blue as he had yet to take a breath. Am I about to die? No one's here. No one's here to save us! Sylar's going to kill me, easily, like he killed so many others. Luffy, Goku, Timmy- not even Natsu's here to help me. I'm going to… In the corner of Usopp's vision he could see Charlie. Their conversation echoed in his mind. He saw those people in the cafeteria Charlie introduced him to. And he saw a bunch of other faces appear in his head too. His life flashed in front of his eyes.

Usopp's hands gripped his Black Kabuto harder. On the deck of the Thousand Sunny he could see Luffy, Nami, Sanji, Zoro, Chopper, Franky, and Robin. He saw them in his mind and imagined Charlie and his family as well. I have people I need to protect too. People who rely on me! And people rely on him too. I can't just let us die here. I'm, a brave man of the seas. A pirate! I won't just lay down and die! Pieces of steel and debris rose up in the air above the bloodbath and compacted into four distinct sharpened rods.

"Charlie! Run!" Usopp yelled. He snapped up his Black Kabuto while yelling out in that first breath he took. He pulled back the pouch and flicked up a Pop Green into it that he fired instantly. Charlie was still coming to terms with his own imminent death when Usopp's shout startled him into stumbling backwards and falling on his butt. Usopp's shout registered and he got up to sprint away, because the thought of fighting had abandoned him. He stopped though as the four steel rods Sylar sent flying towards them hit a translucent green bubble sticking out of a plant that appeared in the hallway and blocked Sylar's attacks. "Midori Boshi: Trampoline!" Usopp yelled while already reloading.

Sylar lifted his eyebrows in surprise as that man blocked his attack. "Strange weapon," Sylar started while walking towards them. His voice was creepy. It had no hint of remorse in the tone despite the dozen corpses the villain was walking between. "But you won't-"

"Midori Boshi: Rafflesia!" Sylar frowned in annoyance at being interrupted as Usopp shouted over him. His eyes darted after the small green ball that was not aimed at him, or maybe the shooter just had bad aim and could not hit him due to his fear. He leaned away from where he figured another of those green bubbly things was going to emerge from, though he did start to lean farther than last time. Sylar leaned farther than it would protrude to if it was the same size as last time when he heard the man's shout of his attack change up right as it was hitting the wall.

Sylar's eyes narrowed at the emergence of a new kind of plant that spread on the wall with large orange petals. He glared back at the men down the hall and rose his right hand towards them, and his hand glowed bright white- "Ugh- gah!" Sylar pulled that hand up to his face then winced as it was still glowing when he grabbed his nose to block out the foul stench of the Rafflesia plant. His vision got hazy and he shook his head around fast as the plant's poison gas actually affected him. Accidentally burning his own face did not help with that either.

"Midori Boshi! Midori Boshi! Midori Boshi!" Usopp fired again and again down the hall now that his opponent had clenched his eyes shut. Sylar stumbled back then slipped on spilled blood. He was smacked by a vine and then caught in the sharp jaws of a venus fly trap that bit through skin. It swung its head around and slammed Sylar's bottom half into the wall that cracked even more from gashes in it that he had made himself during his fight with the stronger guard.

"Whoa," Charlie whispered in astonishment at the fight Usopp suddenly put up. I thought he was more like me. This guy's actually strong?! Charlie's revelation made him turn back down that hallway himself and raise up his rifle-cannon. "I'll, help you out," Charlie said, gulping as he did in the fear of actually considering staying to fight. He did not have it in him to run off and leave Usopp here to fight alone though now that he could see there was a good chance of them winning. Charlie put the butt of his rifle up to his right shoulder and stared down the sights of it. He pulled the trigger and leaned back from the jolt as he fired a large round from the barrel and down the hall into the man who just telekinetically ripped in half the venus fly trap trying to swing him around into a wall again.

Sylar spun in midair as the plant ripped in half on either side of him. "HAA!" He yelled out. The poisonous yellow gas around him pushed out to the sides and cleared the air around him. His eyes were still bloodshot and watering though. His enraged glare looked past the approaching bullet and at the men who covered in sweat at that glare. Sylar snapped his right hand up. The shot froze in midair. The large bullet actually covered in ice… BOOM! Charlie's shot exploded anyway and filled the hall with flames.

All the flames and shrapnel paused. It did not freeze in ice, but it froze all the same. It was a crazy sight to see as all the expanding explosion just stopped at once. Then the flames dispersed and the shrapnel pulled together in the air with more debris rising up to form two thick rods with sharpened spikes at the ends of them. Sylar stepped forward through the dispersing flames and held his left hand in front of him with two fingers raised on it that he lightly curled and then extended to make those rods slide forward and back in the air above him.

"Oh shit," Charlie saw the man walking their way smirk, as if all of what Usopp just did had been insignificant to him. "We need help!" Charlie screamed. He pressed a button on the side of his rifle to prime another shot, while Usopp pulled back his slingshot again and fired at the man. Sylar flicked his index finger and sliced the Pop Green in half with one of the rods that kept flying towards Usopp whose eyes bulged. He pulled away to the left early as he imagined his Pop Green getting ripped in half by a spike that would keep going and impale him through the upper right of his chest.

His Observational Haki kicked in just in time for him to only get gashed on the right side of his chest and inside of his right arm just below his armpit. Usopp spun out and Charlie fired again while screaming at the top of his lungs in hopes that someone would hear and run to them. Sylar snapped his right hand up and curled it directly around the projectile this time as it reached him. He stopped the explosion which burst through his fingers that turned to steel and did not get ripped apart. He swung that exploding bullet he caught out to the side while continuing to stare unblinkingly towards Charlie who gawked at that sight, then screamed out in agony as his right arm snapped in half and the gun fell out of his hands before he could fire again.

Charlie fell backwards and dropped on his butt next to Usopp who was struggling on his elbows and knees to get up again. Usopp tilted his head up and dragged his Black Kabuto off the floor to point at Sylar. Sylar flicked his other finger and sent another spike flying at Usopp, who could picture it going through the front of his throat and out the other side in his mind's eye. In panic, he snapped his head back and watched the spike shoot straight over his face. It skimmed the tip of his long nose and sliced through it. Then he felt his hands burning and he screamed, "AHH!" Usopp let go of his weapon that he leaned back forward over to look down at on the floor in front of his knees. The Black Kabuto had been ignited and burned him. He stared down at the flaming weapon that meant a lot to him but was also his only means of fighting back. His eyes darted to the right and at Charlie's dropped weapon as the guard grabbed at his right arm and tried to hold back another scream of agony.

Usopp started reaching towards the rifle. His arm stopped though. His hand just twitched forward in the air without moving at all. The gun was still there, but Usopp's fingers could not reach it. His arm snapped back to his side and pulled tightly to his body. Then his body yanked off the floor but too high that his feet were no longer touching the ground. Thud! Usopp clenched his eyes shut in pain and gasped out, "Oouf." All the breath pushed out of his lungs as he was slammed back-first into the wall on the left side of the hallway.

Squish, squish, squish, squelch, squish… Usopp's eyes squinted open and shifted down towards the sounds of approaching footsteps through puddles of blood. Tears filled his eyes but he still struggled to move his arms forward. His right hand snapped back to his side again, but he actually allowed that to happen easier and just shifted his fingers of his right hand in Sylar's blindspot into a pouch on his waist. My only chance here! He's going to kill me! Usopp's right hand curled around a few Pop Greens, but he could not move that arm back out of the pouch. Sylar froze its movements entirely while stopping in place and tilting his head to the side with a curious smile on it that he looked at Usopp with as if asking if the pirate seriously thought he had not noticed.

"You don't have any powers," Sylar began. He glanced back towards Charlie who had slowly started reaching his un-broken arm towards his cannon. He snapped that hand back though and to his throat as he started getting strangled by some invisible force. Sylar lifted his right hand and opened his palm to show that there was a scratch on it from the explosion despite him turning it into steel. The bloody cut sealed itself though. He regenerated rapidly and just chuckled at their hopeless situation. "You're so weak," he said, feigning amazement in his tone at how weak they were. "I mean, nothing makes you special. On this amazing world, powers are what separate the special from the worthless. Your lack of powers, is disgusting." Sylar stared towards Usopp not far ahead of him now, and he pointed his index and middle fingers out from his right hand towards Usopp's face.

"Ah- Wait! I- ah, I know, about the world! Why we're here! I'm actually a very important man!" Usopp rambled, steadying his voice midway through his pleading shout to sound more reliable about this. I know that Keyblades are important or something. I can't tell- I have to! Sora knows about Gods and stuff! And Fairy Godparents sound way more powerful-

"Your eyes are impressive though," Sylar said. He ignored the insect. Usopp's jaw dropped a little and his eyes shook in terror at Sylar's statement. Whatever he could try saying to convince his enemy not to kill him meant nothing because this psychopath had already decided to kill him and be on with it. Sylar looked into Usopp's eyes, but Usopp felt like the man was not making eye contact with him, just staring at his eyes. Sylar continued, "You must be very proud of them." The fingers Sylar was pointing towards Usopp started to slice a gash into his face on its left side just on the edge of his cheek inside from his earlobe. Sylar stood ten feet away but was cutting through Usopp's skin as if holding a scalpel to him directly.

"Ack- gah-" Charlie rose up his broken arm too to try and grab at his throat with both hands and free himself from the choke-hold Sylar was suffocating him with. His face was blue and his eyes bloodshot. Those eyes were focused towards Usopp but his vision got too hazy and then his eyes started rolling back into his head.

"Ah- AHH! WAIT! Please- I know things! I can help you-" Usopp tried pulling his head away, but he was pressed so hard into the wall and could not move a muscle. His hand could not pull out of the pouch to even toss his Pop Greens by hand at the man. The gash on his face was getting deeper as it cut across his cheek and up towards his left eye that squinted and spilled tears as Usopp imagined it getting sliced through in a second.

"Hey Sylar!" A female voice yelled behind Charlie. The choking man felt the stranglehold leave his throat. Sylar turned his head and Usopp darted his eyes back to the right. A woman in all white clothing snapped down the metal rods in her hands and filled the end of the hall with sparking electricity off the weapons. "You bastard! You'll pay for this bloodbath!" Sara ran past Charlie who gawked at the blonde-haired woman sprinting past him for close-ranged combat with Sylar.

Usopp dropped from the wall and to his butt. He gasped out in shock and disbelief. He snapped his left hand up to his face too and grabbed at his left eye, patting around it to make sure that what he just saw of it being gouged was only Haki and not reality. He winced as his burnt hand touched the actual gash on his cheek, but he lowered his bloody hand back down and then pushed up with it. "Get out of here, you two!" Sara yelled while swinging one of her stun batons at the villain who leaned side to side and avoided her attacks with a mildly confused but amused look on his face. "Go!" She shouted.

Usopp helped Charlie up to his feet, but he looked back towards Sara himself and grit his teeth in frustration that he could not just obey and run. She rose both of the batons up and slammed down in front of her. Sylar did not dodge this time. But the rods stopped swinging down, and then Sara looked to be hit by a huge amount of force as she was thrown backwards off her feet and over Usopp and Charlie who spun towards her. They spun back while Sara rolled over onto one foot and a knee as she skid back into the corner. "Get back," Sara hissed at them. "Sylar! I will stop you!"

A dozen pieces of shrapnel rose up in the air around Sylar. Matter melted together and sharpened at the ends while pointed towards his injured enemies. "Another worthless ant. Dying for nothing." He flicked his left hand forward. Sara swiped both of her arms rapidly in front of her while sprinting between the two who leaned back and winced, only for nothing to hit them.

Usopp opened his slammed-shut eyes. He stared in between him and Charlie and just in front of them. His watery eyes shook and he reached out his red right hand to put on Sara's back just behind her left shoulder. "Sara," Usopp whispered as he grabbed the unsteady woman.

Charlie's jaw was dropped but he did not step back from the woman between them who had run in front before Sylar's spikes reached them. She focused on a few of the sharpened rods in particular, while ignoring others. A spike was imbedded into her right shoulder, and she could no longer hold up that arm extended out in front of Charlie where she deflected two spikes aimed at his throat. Another spike had grazed her left side under her armpit, and another was stabbed into her right thigh.

Sara Lance held herself up on her legs despite the spike sticking out of her right one. The piece impaling her right shoulder had scraped a bone and slashed tendons. The one in her right leg had luckily missed the artery. All her wounds were bleeding badly though. And her electrified rods had broken while she swiped as fast as she could and intercepted the attacks that would have killed the other two. Sara could see down the hall. She could see the dead bodies of the guards she had sent out here, along with other members of her Zeta Squad who she had failed to protect. No more, she thought darkly with her cold glare shifting back straight onto Sylar's eyes that were definitely looking at her this time.

He shook his head back and forth though. "Futile," he told her. "Your desperation to protect the other two has left you injured, and all you've done is prolong their suffering." Sylar rose up his right hand and created a large fireball that grew larger above his palm.

"Go. You two need to run," Sara hissed again. "My leg. I'll slow you-"

"We're not leaving you," Usopp snapped, stepping forward himself and reaching down for his burnt slingshot.

Charlie shook his head and could not speak, but he reached down and grabbed his rifle too using his left hand. Sylar spoke only to Sara as he made the orange fireball while looking into her eyes, "Just like them, you're a weakling. No powers. Nothing to make you special."

"You think you're special?" Sara wondered. And then she grinned at him. Sylar's eyebrows rose up. She stomped her non-impaled leg towards him, and he tilted his head to the side in an intrigued way at the confidence in her expression that neither of those other two could match as they only stayed to help her since she saved their lives. Sara reached quickly to her waist with her left hand that no longer had a melee weapon in it, and she drew and fired a pistol towards Sylar. Bang Bang-

The bullets froze in midair. The gun pulled out of her hand and flew into the side of Charlie's head, knocking him back down with a bloody gash on the side of his forehead from how hard he was telekinetically pistol-whipped.

"AH-eeEYAAHH!" When Charlie hit the ground he jolted his right arm in a bad way and screamed out in agony from the protruding bone his adrenaline had allowed him to keep fighting through the pain of.

"Pointless," Sylar mocked her. Usopp held a charred slingshot that no longer had bands on it, so it had no function other than a stick in his shaking and badly burnt hands. Blood poured down the left side of his face from the deep gash under his eye that made his eye stay in a squinted and twitchy state. The right side of his chest and his right tricep were even bloodier. He lifted the burnt pole of his slingshot though like a staff, and Sara lifted her empty hands as fists in a fighting stance.

Sylar twisted his right hand in midair, and he turned the two bullets that were just hesitating in front of his chest but still pointed at him until that second. Each bullet pointed at one of the two figures down the hall from him. Sylar aimed at their heads. Usopp could see it in his head again, his Observational Haki showing him his own death another time- only this time the bullet was aimed so perfectly dead-center in the middle of his skull and came flying at him so fast, that he instantly knew there was no way he could dodge it.

Usopp leaned backwards while Sara opened her mouth and screamed, "HAAAA-" Sylar flicked the bullets back at them. Usopp's eyes widened as they flew his way, but the vision he was seeing cut-off early already and made him start darting his gaze down.

A wall of sand shot up out of the floor and stopped the bullets. The ground itself destabilized and the foundation of the floor and walls lost its solid makeup. The bloodied walls and floor lost form and sank into a swirling mass underneath the base that grew larger and rose up in front of the barrier that had appeared between Sylar and the injured guards trying to fight off the psychopath. The swirling mass rose and started to take form as a human being who sand poured off of while his arms rose up in front of him.

The hallway rippled around the furious Kazekage who just came from the communications' room where he had lost contact with his own shinobi. "Run," Gaara ordered those behind him. Sara bent down and picked up a moaning Charlie, stumbling backwards while Usopp stared in amazement at the man in front of him who had turned the walls on their sides into more sand for his attacks.

Past the rising and falling waves of sand, the three who had been facing Sylar saw the villain tilt his head back with an even more bloodthirsty smirk. "There you are," Sylar remarked. A green forcefield pulsed out the front of his body and stopped the first three waves of sand that all crashed down into him. "You're going to die like-" Sylar's eyes darted down to the floor under his feet that just lost form as the sand crept up underneath it and broke it apart to make even more sand for Gaara's use. That sand wrapped up Sylar's legs and lifted him off the ground fast, before whipping him around in the air and flinging him down the hallway.

"Come on," Sara told the men with her. "We did our job." Usopp spun to the woman at his side who he realized in that moment was only trying to stall Sylar when she had been "futilely" attacking him. He nodded back at her and started moving faster too as best as he could, grabbing Charlie from Sara who he nodded ahead at since she was slowed already by the piercing rod sticking out of her thigh. She nodded back at him in thanks and tried speeding up to get out of the hallway and allow Gaara to break apart more of the base to use against Sylar. "Trust Gaara," Sara told the men who looked back over their shoulders before rounding a corner as they fled. "He can handle this. Nnn-" Sara yanked the metal rod out of her leg and winced in pain but held back from screaming to only groan through the agony. Her leg bled worse, but she was able to run better without it being impaled and digging deeper on each step.

Gaara was seething in rage as he glared through the sandstorm he had whipping around between him and Sylar. He could feel every vibration in the air between them. Any force that Sylar tried to create out of thin air would be felt by the ninja who controlled the battlefield with the particles of sand all over the place. "You've killed so many of my people," Gaara hissed. He tried to control himself and forced his breathing to steady, as badly as he wanted to just obliterate his enemy in that moment that he saw Sylar glaring back at him through the thin green veil the villain kept around his own body. "Why, have you been taking your victims' blood?" Gaara demanded to know.

He needed answers before he could dispose of this invader. "I wasn't really into the idea at first," Sylar admitted towards his curious enemy. He continued to smile at the younger man who bit down in even more fury at the apathetic look on Sylar's face. "But I was offered a great power if I succeeded."

"Who? Who sent you?!"

"They knew that you learned about their presence here," Sylar remarked back.

Gaara bit down harder as that confirmed the fear he already had. We only learned about them yesterday. Al-Tharmen didn't want us to make any moves first. I checked the prisoner's room. He's dead. "You, all of you," Gaara's fists curled at his sides but snapped back open into open hands that he yanked up to create a huge wave of sand. "Killing your own people!" Gaara yelled. It was not the first time in the last few days this had happened. The other spies killing themselves. Raids of vampires killing captured ones to prevent more information leaks. And now this time as well. This is why, Gaara thought in frustration. Why so many have started to think like Riku. Because our enemies go so far. Why? Why do they go so far, for this?

"Sylar! You will die for what you've done!"

"One of us is about to," Sylar countered back through the sand, his voice echoing around the new battlefield even while the villain himself started fading away before Gaara's eyes. His voice continued as he turned invisible, "I wonder who it will be?"

---

"YO! Sanji!"

Sanji lifted his head and looked up to the side of the sand-colored Scarab tank speeding away from the Resistance base. The Scarab was running to the west on its four legs, but the cyborg on top had been looking through his zoomed-in eyes back towards the base and the people on foot emerging behind him. Franky ground his teeth and ran towards the back of the tank before leaping up in the air and dropping far down onto the sand behind the vehicle he had helped load up with civilians.

Franky ran back towards the blond-haired chef who was corralling people away from the base behind him. Those running people and the vehicles driving with them swerved around the larger pirate who stormed back the way he came from. "Where's Usopp? I haven't seen him come out yet!"

Sanji grit his teeth and spun back around himself. He could see the other guard patrols out of the building already rushing by his sides were some of the last ones getting out, but he knew that the hope he had that Usopp had fled earlier was misplaced. "Me either," Sanji told his comrade who ran to his side and glared back towards that base with him. "Let's go," Sanji said.

"You're heading back in there? Are you crazy?!" One guard yelled out before just shaking their head and sprinting by them even faster.

"Hey! Wait a minute," the two pirates glared off to their right sides at a couple of men who were also standing on the sand looking back at the base rather than fleeing with the others. Leonard Snart reached up and pulled down the pair of blue goggles on his forehead to match how Mick already had his red ones on. "We're coming too," Snart told the pirates.

"Sara-chan said to protect the civilians," Sanji started back towards that man.

"Yeah, well just like you won't leave your buddy," Snart countered right back. "We aren't leaving the boss." He rose up his cold gun and some steam came off the end of the barrel while his black gloves showed some ice freezing up the fingers. The special gloves prevented his hands from freezing inside and stopped freezing themselves slightly up from the fingertips, but it was impossible for those tips of the gloves not to show at least some of the ice that formed just from him holding onto the super-powerful device.

Sanji and Franky each felt the temperature drop rapidly, though that spike in the chill disappeared a second later as another aura only of heat radiated off of Mick Rory's heat gun too. "Boss lady's gonna chew us out for this one," Mick said with a low laugh. He stopped after laughing only once though before marching back towards the base they had gotten the rest of their guard squad out from.

"The hell is Natsu doing?" Sanji muttered in a low voice as he heard an explosion deep in the base in front of them. He lifted his head as he saw a plume of smoke coming from the opposite side of the building where he knew more of the living quarters were that it seemed like Natsu might be searching for their enemy in based on that last explosion.

"He might be fighting Sylar already," Snart replied while picking up his speed to run back to the open garage doors. The garage was emptied out of vehicles that had carried away civilians or that guards had taken to drive a wider perimeter around the main evacuation route. Fleeing on foot into the wild of Aebrith was a dangerous task and only done as a last resort which they had been pushed to.

"Hey! Get your asses moving already!" Mick yelled angrily at a group of four people who came running out of the garage without any guards around them.

"Damn it," Franky muttered under his breath. "Did not everyone get evacuated-"

"Some people probably hid in their rooms," Snart replied. "And some of the guards who went to go door-to-door..." Snart trailed off and curled his lips down while suggesting that the guards never made it to their rooms to check on them.

"Get going. I'll protect you!" Sanji spun around and called out at the women of the group before spinning the rest of the way and regaining his serious expression as he ran towards the garage just in front of them now.

The four men who were heading back to the base slowed down though as they approached. They did not slow because they were second-guessing going back inside, but because their main reason for coming back here was to find and help two of the three people who came limping out of the garage now. "Sara!" Snart sprinted forward and ran to the woman who Mick was still staring at with his eyes huge at the sight of how messed up she looked.

"Sara-chan!" Sanji sprinted forward as well, though he did dart a look at Usopp and look him up and down in an anxious way at the appearance of his crewmate too. "Usopp, you alright?" Sanji asked while getting to them before Snart who was surprised by the pirate's speed. Sanji took Sara off Usopp's hands, as Usopp was struggling already without needing to carry someone else. Charlie had told Usopp to help her rather than himself when he recovered a bit from his head wound, as she had the leg injury that slowed her the most of the three of them. Sanji lifted Sara up and held her bridal style in his arms rather than just putting one arm under her shoulder to help her walk.

Sara's eyes immediately narrowed on the face of the pirate who swept her up before she could say a word in protest. Snart stopped short and rose his eyebrows up, before curling up his lips too at the strange sight of their squad captain being held like a lady. He rose a hand and quickly snapped a picture with the camera function of his goggles. I'll save that for later, he decided, as they had more to worry about right now and it was not yet time for jokes.

"Usopp, what happened to you?" Franky wondered while jogging forward a little more himself closer to his crewmate who bent down and put his hands on his knees now that he was finally outside and with his crew again.

Usopp shook his head back and forth. Sweat covered his face, just like blood did all over the left side at least where Sylar had carved a gash into his cheek and up under his eye. His eye was still squinted from the pain of the open skin just below it. Bending down like that hurt his right side where he also had a bloody wound, and it hurt his burnt hands and bloody right tricep too. "Sy-lar," Usopp gasped out between heavy panting breaths.

Charlie continued staggering farther away from the base. "You're stopping, way too early," Charlie called over his shoulder at the people who he felt really needed to continue running away with him. He did not want to go stumbling through the desert alone when the rest of the evacuated people were making a wider and wider gap away from them, but he also did not want to stay and wait for these people to keep running. Those others behind Charlie looked back to the man who had part of his bone sticking out of his right arm which he was grabbing with his left hand in agony that he somehow continued to keep running in spite of. He had red marks all over his neck, and his forehead on his right side was still bleeding badly from getting pistol-whipped before the fight had ended.

Sanji looked down at the woman he continued to hold in his arms even after she protested at first. "You shouldn't be standing," Sanji countered Sara while looking down from her face and to her bloody costume almost more red than white at this point. Her right shoulder still had a sharpened rod of some material sticking out of it, while the left side of her torso and her right thigh were soaked in blood too. "You three fought Sylar?" Sanji wondered while looking back up to Sara's face then to his side at Usopp who just shook his head back and forth at the question.

"More like he toyed with us," Usopp retorted. He stood back up straight though and then glanced back at the building behind them. "Though Charlie's wrong, we don't need to run. I'm sure… I'm sure Gaara has this handled."

Sara nodded her head and relaxed despite the compromising position she was laying in. She panted exhaustedly, I've lost a lot of blood. Sanji's right. I know he might be using it as an excuse, but he is right. "Let's get going. You all need to help, guard the civilians."

"Gaara's fighting Sylar back there?" Franky wondered after turning back around himself. He looked over his shoulder and frowned hesitantly before looking ahead towards the convoy that Sara wanted them to catch back up to. "They definitely need us up there, but doesn't he need us more?" Franky wondered, lowering his voice while thinking of the bloody scene he had witnessed inside.

"He'll be right behind us," Sara said. She called it out confidently so that no one would argue with her orders.

Snart and Mick glanced at each other but started backing away and nodded at Sara's commands. Usopp jogged forward and caught up to Charlie who was turned sideways looking back at him and waiting for Usopp before continuing any farther from the group. Usopp gulped after reaching Charlie and then looked down in a guilty way. Usopp lifted his burnt Black Kabuto in his right hand and stared frustratedly at it while thinking on how he just described their fight inside. "Mate, you put up a hell of a fight," the Australian former rockstar countered his friend who lifted his gaze when Charlie said that to him.

"We should- Nn- OW! Fuhhck-" Charlie clenched his eyes shut and bowed his head, gripping his right arm above the protruding bone even harder with his left hand. "We should, trust Gaara. Like you said," Charlie said quickly while nodding his head up and down.

Usopp nodded too. He wanted to ask Charlie how his arm was, but that felt like a stupid question. Boo- Ba-BSH! CRSH!

They could hear explosions and loud crashing noises coming from behind them back in the base. Usopp glanced over his shoulder again, looking past some others behind him who were also looking back in that moment. He and Charlie were slow, and those others who looked back continued forward after a second which made Usopp try speeding up himself so as not to get passed by everyone. He failed. Mick and Snart jogged right past him. Usopp shook his head while panting hard and stopping for another second while Charlie slowly struggled up at his side. "Wish I could get carried," Charlie muttered while looking ahead towards Sanji who was farthest forward with Sara in his arms.

"Can Gaara really…" Usopp whispered next to him at the Resistance member who was the only one actually a part of this base unlike the Zeta Squad or his own friends. "I mean, you saw that guy-"

"Don't worry," Charlie countered. A confident look formed on his face and he told Usopp assuredly, "Gaara's the strongest person at our base, and he's also the Kazekage of the Hidden Sand Village. Runs this entire country. His power works best in the desert too," Charlie added before motioning his head around in a circular motion to get Usopp to look around them. In every direction was nothing but sand, and Usopp cocked his head to the side and nodded it a few times as that made a lot of sense to him.

Plus Natsu's back in there as well, Usopp reminded himself. Hopefully he joins in and helps out Gaara.

"…You ask me," Charlie continued. He started to relax a little more now that they were farther from the base. He looked back towards it though and finished, "We should, nn- just stop pulling back now."

"You just don't wanna run anymore," Usopp muttered back at him. "Come on," Usopp took in another deep breath and started jogging himself. "We have to keep-"

"No look," Charlie pointed back behind them. Usopp rolled his eyes and turned but then spun back completely as Charlie was not just messing with him to get him to stop so that they could catch their breath for longer. Usopp smiled wide and Charlie cheered out, "No way- Woo! Holy crap," Charlie let go of his right arm to put his left hand up through his hair in amazed disbelief.

The wall on the front of the Resistance base was breaking apart. The sturdy wall appeared more like the sand that it matched the color of as it started dissolving and raining down as sand particles. The others just past Usopp and Charlie turned back when they heard Charlie's cheers. "He beat him already?" Usopp whispered in awe. Forget about Natsu! Gaara's the best…

Everyone stared through the sand that fell around the hole in the wall. Sand rained on top of the silhouette walking forward and out of the building. The slim figure with dark hair had another man grabbed in his left hand, dragging him out of the building and leaving a trail of blood behind them. Usopp and Charlie stumbled backwards, and Charlie spun and started running as fast as he could while tears poured out of his eyes. "Oh we're fucked… AHHHH!" Charlie screamed in terror.

Sylar stood in the hole in the wall. Blood covered the bottom half of his face around his mouth while the top half was just shadowed over. Drips of blood fell from his chin to his feet, dripping past the opened skull of the man he dragged out on his left side. Sylar lifted up the body of the man whose skull was opened and exposed now with no red hair or gourd. He held up and showed off that young man with the distinguishable tattoo on his forehead that was only mostly covered in blood. It was obvious who the body belonged to.

"H-He was after Gaara," Usopp stuttered. "M-M-Maybe he'll, s-stop- OH MY GOD!" Usopp turned and ran as Sylar floated off the ground while dropping Gaara's body. He emerged from the shadows completely to show his eyes still so full of murderous intention that had not faded at all despite killing the one he had been sent here for. Usopp clenched his eyes shut as two men ran by his sides in the opposite direction while screaming out in rage. "No no- NATSUUU!" Usopp screamed in fear.

BOOOM!

"YAH!" The ground under Usopp's feet blew up and he went flying into the air.

"Look back there!"

"It's HIM!"

"Ahhhh!"

"Flee! FLEE!" The somewhat orderly evacuation turned into sheer panic when the fleeing people looked behind them.

Sanji's flaming leg slammed into the green bubble barrier that pulsed out of Sylar's body. The chef's pant leg ripped into shreds, but he bared his teeth while his leg turned pitch black inside the flames with his Armament Haki. Sanji twisted his body and kicked back down at the ground. The bubble with Sylar still inside it slammed into the desert and blew apart a crater in the sand.

Wind whipped up in the air as Sanji started dive-bombing towards the man. He had to squint his eyes then close them completely while the wind picked up even harder. A tornado grew in size and pushed the cook back up higher into the air before it spun off and away from the area.

"Weapons Left!" Franky yelled while standing between where Sanji lay Sara down and where the monster stepped out of his crater.

Bullets froze in midair in front of the villain who they all fired towards with great precision. Then all those bullets flew back twice as fast into Franky's chest. CLANK! Franky skid backwards on the sand. He grit his teeth and then popped open his left wrist entirely. "Alright, then take-" The cannon started to fire a cannonball out of the thick blue forearm, but Franky's arm swung inwards and bent at the elbow to point his own cannon at his chest. "Uh-" BOOOM!

Franky blasted himself off his feet from point blank and flew through the air away from the villain who turned his head to the left at a pair of men who aimed their guns at him and fired together.

Sylar's right side was hit by the blue beam while his left side was hit by the flames. Huge red and blue auras surrounded the two men in specially-designed costumes to protect them from their own super-powered guns. They fired and Sylar did not or could not block them as he got hit by the beams on either side.

Usopp coughed up sand while lifting his head and dragging himself onto his hands and knees again. He heard screaming behind him and glanced back to see Charlie hunched over too and grabbing at his right arm in agony. Did the blast hit… Usopp had no more time to focus on him. He looked up from Charlie and towards the fleeing people running from the base, as well as the other guards who had turned back and were coming this direction to try and either help them or just give more time for the rest of the civilians to escape.

Usopp looked towards where he felt a frigid cold and intense heat beating down on him from. The sniper squinted his eyes and stared in amazement for a second at the power of the Zeta Squad members' weapons. His amazement got overshadowed after a second though. If Gaara wasn't strong enough. Usopp gulped and he tried pushing down harder to get himself up. "A-ah," Usopp groaned in pain he felt all over his body. He felt woozy. Get up!

His right hand curled around the broken weapon he had managed to keep with him even after Sylar blew up the sand he was running on. Usopp pushed down on the burnt Kabuto and lifted onto his right knee, then he froze while staring between Snart and Mick who cut off their beams to see what effect they had had on their enemy. The red and blue glows on Sylar's body faded slower than the beams between him and the Resistance fighters. When those glows on his body faded though, the two who just blasted him with everything they had stared in shock towards the man who appeared unaffected by it.

"Weapons weapons weapons. None of you are truly special," Sylar rose up his right hand. The sand around him shook. It trembled and then lifted into the air in pockets of sand clusters that swirled and made shapes in front of him. All those shapes of sand started to glow red, then flashed even brighter red and even white. Sylar superheated the sand, and he created glass. Sylar turned the sharp glass shards over in the air by twisting his wrist back and forth.

"Mick! Dodge!" Snart yelled for his partner, right before Sylar flicked out his fingers and sent half the glass shards flying at Snart and the other half at Mick. Leonard Snart pressed a button on the side of his gun and grit his teeth getting ready for some pain. "Absolute Zero," Snart hissed, right before his gun pulsed out a cold field around him that slowed the projectiles flying towards him that were literally freezing in midair.

Mick rose his gun quickly and used it to block three of the glass shards heading for his upper chest and his face. Other shards slashed up his arms and his stomach and legs though. Blocking the ones aimed for his most vital areas did not save him either, as the heat gun got torn up and blew up in his face, sending him flying backwards. Snart spun towards the hurling body of his best friend, "Mick-" His yell got cut off and all the wind got knocked out of him as he was launched a few hundred feet into the air.

Usopp's eyes bulged and shot up after Snart who finally started screaming once he flew up high enough. "Did you think stalling me would save you all?" Sylar wondered, staring over towards Sara who had crawled up onto her hands and knees and was now glaring furiously at Sylar. "You'll die here. And then I'll hunt down and kill every last person who was at this base."

Sanji has her, Usopp looked away from his comrade who flew out of a tornado and shot out of the sky to protect Sara. Which means he doesn't have Snart. Usopp reached down into his pouch. I'll only have one shot. His other hand reached up, and he unclasped the straps of his overalls that had some level of elasticity to them. It doesn't match up to the Kabuto's old bands. But it'll have to do.

Usopp loaded up one Pop Green and aimed as best he could despite the blood loss and pain he was in. "Trampoline," Usopp whispered, and he fired the Pop Green into the exact spot that Snart arced down towards after getting launched into the sky by Sylar.

"Sanji! Alright, now you've done it!" Franky shouted in anger as he watched his friend go flying. His paint job was messed-up and his right eye glowed red.

"You really want to try again, robot man?" Sylar mocked towards the cyborg who cupped his hands together in front of his body.

Franky planted his legs hard in the sand under him. He locked up his elbows. His eyes narrowed and he taunted right back, "If you don't think you can regenerate from my next attack, why don't you just say so?" Take the bait, asshole. A white light glowed between Franky's hands. His hands did not get pushed by Sylar's telekinetic powers this time, as Franky had mocked his regenerative abilities and kept his enemy standing still in preparation to tank the blow.

I'm not "special." Just hitting you with weapons. You don't even have to take me seriously, right?! Franky grinned at the foolish enemy who gave him an easy target. "Franky… RADICALLLL- BEAAAAMMM!" A flash of white light went off between Franky's giant pink hands. A beam fired out from them and straight in front of Sylar whose eyes shot open huge at the last second when he felt the intensity of the beam that only he was fast enough to actually watch approaching.

A steel coating started to surround Sylar's body while a green bubble only just began to form… BooOOOOOOM!

Sara leaned backwards and rose her functional left arm up over her face to shield her eyes from that blinding light. The heat from the explosion also hit her and made her lean away from how much force just came out of that dome of light. "Oof- huh?" Sara got hit by something and was suddenly moving too quickly that she was confused as to what was going on. She turned her head and looked at the man who had just scooped her back up and was sprinting away so fast that Sanji ran into the air and just kept kicking off it to fly away faster. "What are you-"

"He's not dead yet," Sanji told the woman he did not even look down at this time while responding to. "But you need a doctor. And we might have a second there," Sanji darted an anxious look back as he was not too sure about that. But Sylar's definitely targeting her. Usopp also stalled him though. I can't leave him back there! Franky, hit him again!

"Ah hahh, ah- charging a second beam. Larger this time!" Franky warned the others. He immediately started burning up as much cola as he could.

"You sure you need to…" Snart stopped himself from finishing the dumb question. He got up off the sand next to the Trampoline and staggered towards where he saw Mick groaning on the ground covered in some deep gashes, though the explosion of his gun blowing up had not burned him much in his specialized costume meant to protect him from heat.

"Get up, Usopp!" Franky yelled out while a new white light formed between his arms.

"I think, one laser is enough. I've made my point clear."

Franky spun his head left and right as he did not see this enemy speaking to him. He looked back into the smoke lingering from the massive explosion, but there was no silhouette of a person inside it. Sylar's voice made it clear that he had not just disintegrated the enemy completely though. "Hey psycho, if you don't think you can take another-"

"You aren't as clever as you think." Chhh- ch ch- Czzchhh! Sparks flickered in Franky's eyes in the left corner of his vision. He turned his head and looked behind the sparking fingers as two arms emerged out of thin air, and then the invisible man behind those arms became visible too. "I wonder what kind of metal you're made out of? Hope it's an insulator." CHH! Sylar fired the electricity out from his fingers and into the robot in mid-turn towards him.

"YOOOOOWWWWW!"

"Guess it wasn't," Sylar laughed. He pointed his hands down at the robot who collapsed to the ground, and he fired out again, and again.

"Stop that!" Usopp yelled back at the psychopath laughing at his friend's pain. "STOP!"

Brrrrmmm… brrrrchh- Bu- boof- boo- DA-BRAKOOOOOOOM!

Sylar spun his head to the side and looked back and up above the desert fortress. Huge chunks of the roof were flying out in every direction. Those pieces of building were flaming and fell out of the sky like meteorites around the desert. The shaking ground trembled even worse while the fireball rising up out of the desert base turned and spiraled down towards the front of the building where the man inside had heard an explosion coming from.

Sylar's eyes widened even more while darting back to his side and at the cyborg next to him. Franky lifted up his sparking head and smirked at the evil villain who thought that Franky only wanted to use his Radical Beam because the pirate really thought he could obliterate Sylar with it. Franky really hoped that would be the case. The second purpose that Franky had though was as a signal though, just in case it didn't work.

The loud noise of Franky's attack brought the last person still searching the Resistance Base out of it. Natsu Dragneel glared down towards his enemy who stepped away from Franky who he would finish off in a second, once he had proved that even the beam's secondary purpose was also for naught. "Stealth is out the window this time, Natsu!" Sylar yelled up towards his incoming opponent. "So you won't mind if I go all out, will you?!"

"SYYLAAAAAARRRRR!"

Black wisps came off of Natsu's body swirling in his orangish-red flames. Lightning bolts sparked away from him while he flew out of the air in a raging fiery aura straight towards the villain who flew up off the ground while laughing at his next opponent.

"What's, up with Natsu?" Usopp staggered towards Franky but was looking up in the air himself closer now. He had grinned for a moment there, but the sound of Natsu's roar gave him chills for some reason. I've never seen him look like that. His flames are darker. Almost like…

"Damn it, don't tell me I've got to carry you too?" Sanji snapped at the cyborg he landed down next to.

Usopp spun towards Sanji and then looked a little farther back towards Snart. Snart was carrying Mick away but just nodded back in Usopp's direction showing he was fine without help. Sanji grimaced while lifting his head and watching Natsu slam into Sylar who held out his arms and caught both of Natsu's fists. A huge shockwave blew away from the two of them and hit the pirates down below. Sweat covered Sanji's face only partly because of the heat from that shockwave.

"I'm, good," Franky's body jolted in its movements that came slow and staggered. He pushed up to his knees and slowly back to one foot. He did not look very good, and he was panting even worse than Usopp now, though Sanji really did not like the look of how pale Usopp's usually-tanned skin was getting. "Could really use, some Cure magic though," Franky muttered.

Usopp's eyes shook as he stared at the side of Franky's head. They snapped back up in the air towards Sylar, then back at the base and a body left just outside the hole in the wall that Sylar had made. Guilt flooded his expression in a moment of horror that caused his gaze to drop to the floor under his feet.

Sanji glared at the back of Usopp's head for a second but shook his own back and forth a second later. There's no time for this. Damn it, I wish he was here too though. "We need Riku to come back," Sanji whispered. Usopp bowed his head more but Sanji was looking up towards Natsu instead who just got kicked in the side and was soaring through the air with blood splashing out of his mouth. "We need him."

Sanji gulped at the sound of Sylar's laughter echoing all the way down to them. Riku, where did you go?

---

A/N Thanks for reading. Sylar's rampage continues this chapter with a lot more murders. We see more of his powers in his fights against Natsu, Shira, Usopp and Charlie, Sara, Gaara, Sanji and Franky, Snart and Mick... and now Natsu again. A dark power seeps into Natsu's aura, but maybe not the same kind of dark power that Riku could have brought to the fight had he still been around. Where did Riku go? Will he get back here in time to save them? Or will even more people have to die before Sylar can be stopped? Gaara, is down. Sylar isn't satisfied. We found out who sent him, Al-Tharmen, but Sylar is a self-proclaimed "Killer" and hasn't had enough yet. What's going to happen next?! Who knows? I do. I have the next chapter written already. But, no spoilers. XD Hope you enjoyed the chapter, and sorry about Gaara- he is my favorite Naruto character after all, so it stunk killing him. But that's Nexus for you. Never know who might die next... Well, 'til next time!

robofrest chapter 122 . Jan 3

I am so glad this fanfic is back

Thanks! Glad to be back!

Guest chapter 122 . Jan 3

have you seen demon slayer will they appear

Have seen a little bit of the show... but I haven't watched it all the way through yet. So maybe. Sometime. In the future. The Demon Slayer manga didn't even start until after Nexus had begun, and the first episode hadn't aired before I went on hiatus. So I didn't have any plans to add them. Once I watch a show or hear/learn about characters though, I usually do look for a good place to add them in. So again, we'll see! Thanks for reviewing!

Limit-Breaking chapter 123 . Jan 3

Damn the dude is brutal and dangerous that's for sure. I hope natsu kicks his ass hard. The dude is horrible for doing that.
And I legit thought when Gaara walked in and said sylar I thought he was killed and sylar took control of his body or something lol. I legit thought you killed Gaara, I was like damn that's brutal.

Yeah, killing Gaara? That would have been brutal... 0_o, oh, sorry. Well, Natsu did pretty well there at the start of the chapter. Sylar's regeneration ability is super OP though. If you watch Heroes, the recovery with his kind of regeneration is nearly unstoppable. There was one fatal flaw to the regeneration power, but in the later seasons when Sylar obtained the shape-shifting power, he was able to move around the weakness in his body and hide where it was so, honestly, he made an OP healing ability into something even crazier. It's definitely a lot to take on. Sylar was a real psycho in Heroes, insanely brutal, and I think this chapter gets it through even more than the last just how much. Natsu's up against him for round 2 though. And now outside of the base, he doesn't have to hold back... though with Sylar throwing away any attempt at stealth too, neither does he. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter (despite the brutality), and thank you for your review! XD