Renegade darted forward, catching all the criminals by surprise with his sudden move and speed, and he broke the necks of two of them with two violent punches while his right leg shot to the side, sweeping away another of them. He ducked, dodging several simultaneous punches, grabbed the last fallen man with a grunt, and threw his body towards a group of criminals, sending them all to the ground in a messy heap.
The assassin whirled around, blocked a punch and turned his head enough to dodge a blow. He pulled the arm of the man who had tried to hit him hard towards himself, broke his neck with a fluid movement and threw his body, hitting three other men. The youngest stepped back to dodge some blows and his left hand shot back, blocking a punch aimed at his back without ever even turning around. He ignored the curses and surprised exclamations and in one fluid move broke the wrist of the criminal who had attempted to hit him and spun around with a violent roundhouse kick to the head that sent him crashing into two more criminals.
Some criminals rushed towards him and he ducked just in time so that they flew over his head and crashed into other inmates behind him. Dick rose with a ferocious uppercut to a man's jaw and turned, blocking two more punches with both hands and retaliating with violent, swift kicks that knocked them to the ground. Seeing another punch aimed at his face he dropped to the ground and as soon as his hands made contact with the floor Dick gave himself the momentum to catapult himself over a man's shoulders, knocking him to the ground with all his weight while he launched himself forward in a double somersault, landing perfectly on the ground.
In this way he had emerged from the point where the thirty or so prisoners had surrounded him and it was very important since he would have had more free space to move.
The acrobat suddenly turned and saw them running towards him. He stepped back as he parried as many blows as possible and then counterattacked with quick but brutal movements that either killed them or left them aching on the ground. His movements in both attack and defense were instinctive and fluid, his body moving automatically and he knew when it was time to defend himself, take a few hits in such a way that it would leave the opponents' defenses exposed and counterattack with lethal and brutal moves.
For a moment it seemed as if Dick had the advantage as the horde of inmates who had attacked him had greatly diminished after the brawl began. However, this was proven wrong when, after knocking out three more men, he heard movement behind him and turned.
Only to find another forty inmates ready to participate in the mega brawl against Renegade.
For heaven's sake-
Dick glanced at the guards but to his dismay and indignation he saw them all enjoying the show. They were even talking so loudly that Dick could hear that they were betting on how long he would last before the crowd of inmates overwhelmed him.
Sons of bitches! Would they really let hundreds of inmates rape a 17-year-old? I swear these guards are just as depraved and bastards as the fucking inmates themselves!
Renegade's body moved automatically and before he could understand what had happened he had thrown himself into the crowd of inmates, killing five in less than three seconds. Driven by a strong rush of adrenaline and fury that flowed throughout his body Renegade continued to fight incessantly, taking many hits but retaliating with many others far more lethal and fatal than those inexperienced criminals.
However, a particularly hard blow to the head stunned him and Dick staggered to the side, managing to block another punch but grunted when a kick to the back of his left leg forced him to fall to his knees. He raised both arms to defend himself from the blows aimed at his head but could do nothing against the strong kick to the stomach that made him fall backwards.
The mercenary felt the air being forced out of his lungs and grunted painfully as an obese inmate slammed his full weight into his chest, feeling some of his ribs crack in protest.
Six inmates promptly pinned his hands behind his head and not even Dick could do anything to free himself from them, not with the physical strength equal to that of a normal human being.
A wave of panic began to consume him from the inside as the obese man began to caress his bare chest under his prison uniform with his slimy, disgusting hands and with a ferocious growl Renegade raised his legs, wrapped his head of the obese man with them and crashed it with all his strength to the ground, breaking his skull.
The move -one of his default and favorite ones as it required immense elasticity and skill that only he and a few other people had in the whole world- shocked the men who held his hands immobilized and their grip on them lessened enough for Dick to strike with an elbow to one of them followed by a violent backwards headbutt that injured yet another.
Freeing himself from their grip, the antihero launched himself into the air in a double somersault. Unfortunately during his acrobatic move an inmate managed to grab his leg and threw him away. Dick's back hit painfully against the hard surface of a table and he slipped on it for a while, knocking several trays of food to the floor.
The seventeen-year-old stood up on the table with a backflip, ignoring the pain he felt throughout his body. The inmates laughed as he grabbed two plastic forks. "What do you want to do with those? Stick them up your ass?" one of them scoffed.
A fork zeroed in on about ten meters of distance in less than a second and stuck with perfect aim into the right eye of the criminal who had just spoken. The man screamed in pain and began to curse loudly as a copious amount of blood began to pour out of his injured eye, the fork violently impaled still in it.
"More like making you blind in that eye." Dick joked, grabbing another plastic fork and jumping into the fray.
For the next few minutes the only audible sounds were the agonizing screams of pain of the inmates being mercilessly speared into their eyes so that their blindness would be permanent. It was not uncommon to see Renegade literally gouge the eyes out of some criminals and, when their mouths were open in screams of agony and shock, the mercenary threw their own eyes into their mouths which went askew, forcing them to swallow their own eyes, in some cases even strangling them.
Unfortunately for Renegade other criminals joined in the brawl and he cursed silently.
When the hell is it time to go back to the cells? I swear it looks like the guards are purposely delaying the moment, those motherfuckers!
The young assassin cursed again when, a short time later, he lost his grip on his improvised weapons.
A criminal laughed arrogantly at this fact. "It seems like now-"
Dick didn't let him finish in time to finish his sentence before he grabbed his head and slammed it brutally into the wall, crushing his skull and ignoring the blood and brain matter that splattered onto his orange jumpsuit. Dick let out a small grunt of pain as he took a hard knee to the chest, fracturing more ribs, and his head snapped back painfully from a forceful punch to the face.
The acrobat felt his own nose break from the force of the punch and blood quickly began to flow like a river from it. He staggered backwards in a daze and let out an involuntary cry of pain as another hard punch hit him in the temple. He fell dazed to the ground, spitting out a worrying amount of blood that had long since begun to accumulate in his mouth.
A wry, hysterical giggle escaped his lips as, despite his blurred vision, he glimpsed his own red blood.
If I had my Talon skills I would have easily dispatched all of them in a few minutes, even without my Renegade gear. Only with Talon abilities.
Dick was abruptly brought out of his own thoughts as he was pinned to the ground by several criminals while other inmates held both his hands and legs pinned down.
"This time you won't free yourself like before, slut!" one of them chuckled evilly.
The mercenary's every attempt to escape from that situation was dictated by absolute panic, disgust and shock but unfortunately they were all useless. A desperate sob escaped his throat as he saw some criminals pulling down their pants followed by dirty giggles that only made his nausea, panic and terror rise.
"Don't worry: we'll make you sing like a little whore in heat, you fucking slut! We will fuck your mouth and ass so hard that every inch of your body will be covered in our cum!"
Renegade recognized that he was having a panic attack that he hadn't had in about a year and almost didn't notice the shift of air that sent his hair back slightly.
Almost.
He shifted his gaze and watched as two kitchen cleavers emerged from the heads of two of the criminals who had pinned his hands, blood quickly pooling around the lethal wound as the two corpses fell limply to the ground.
"What the fuck?"
Dick instinctively exploited the surprise of all the inmates and his arms slipped from their loose grip. His hands quickly grasped the handles of the cleavers and with a single cross-swing he simultaneously decapitated the criminals who previously had his arms immobilized. As several heads clattered along with the rest of their bodies to the ground and rolled away, the momentary former Talon swung his weapons in front of him, slashing the necks and chests of the men poised to rape him. Immediately afterwards he also got rid of those who kept his legs immobilized who didn't even have time to understand what the hell was happening.
Renegade leapt to his feet with a forward somersault, grunting slightly from all his injuries. Without any hesitation he brought a cleaver across his neck just below the inhibitor collar, ignoring the small trickle of blood that formed. He swung the cleaver up with all his strength, breaking the inhibitor collar and it fell to the ground with a clatter.
Immediately every fiber of Renegade's body was fully overwhelmed by renewed superhuman energy. In less than five seconds he felt every wound healed completely and, unbeknownst to anyone, his eyes glowed an unnatural gold behind his mask as he smiled with a cold, deadly and dangerous smile at the more than 250 inmates remained alive in the mess.
All of them had terrified and panicked looks and many of them swallowed heavily.
"Oh shit."
Renegade's eerie cackle echoed loudly throughout the room, sending shivers of fear through all the inmates. His smirk grew even colder and more sinister as he menacingly clashed the cleaver blades together.
"It's showtime."
A few minutes later Renegade observed with satisfaction the carnage carried out in the mess hall, covered with hundreds of liters of blood, torn limbs, hearts, decapitated heads, bodies torn in half, limbs, guts, brain matter and remains of human flesh.
He himself was covered from top to bottom in blood, remains of human flesh and brain matter but he didn't care.
He looked up, chuckling at the pale, shocked, terrified, traumatized faces of all the guards who had been frozen in shock throughout the bloodbath. He considered killing them too but was stopped by a female voice.
"What the fuck happened here?"
Dick shifted his gaze and immediately recognized the slender female figure, short and slightly curly dark hair and brown eyes as Sasha Bordeaux, director of A.R.G.U.S. and, apparently, also of this particular prison.
They locked me up in the prison controlled by the director of the A.R.G.U.S. herself. who is one of two people in the entire world to know of the heroes' identities. It will be their biggest mistake of their life which will prove fatal for them.
Bordeaux was flanked by Waller who was staring directly at Renegade with a murderous, hateful look in her eyes. "How the hell did you get rid of the inhibitor collar, Renegade?"
"With these cleavers." he responded easily, raising his weapons which helped carry out such a massacre.
Bordeaux narrowed her gaze, suspicious. "And where the hell did you get them?"
"Probably some criminal managed to steal it from the kitchen." the acrobat stated without hesitation in the slightest, casually shrugging his shoulders. "It was their biggest mistake ever."
Bordeaux ran a hand over her face. "Those fucking idiots!" she growled, easily falling for the young assassin's lie.
"I simply defended myself from them. It was self-defense." he commented casually. "You're welcome for ridding your prison of about 300 places, by the way."
"I am not bothered by their death, in fact it is a blessing." Bordeaux growled in contempt for the lives of over 300 criminals who were the scum of all humanity, slightly surprising the younger one. Her eyes fell on the more still-than-a-statue guards and she growled at them. "Why didn't you intervene at all, you imbeciles?"
"Ehm… y-you see m-ma'am… h-here… w-we-"
"Idiots." the director of the A.R.G.U.S. shook her head with a frustrated sigh. "All of you will clean up the mess until there isn't even a trace of blood. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes ma'am!"
"Well. You, Renegade." she grabbed something from her pocket and threw it towards Renegade who dropped one of the cleavers clattering to the ground to easily catch the object, discovering that it was another inhibitor collar. "Put that on or I'll reveal the identities of the heroes to the whole world and make your head explode. Not even your excellent and famous healing factor will help you if your body has literally exploded into a thousand pieces, do you think?"
Yeah, I don't want to test my healing factor this much.
With a sigh Renegade reluctantly did so and grimaced in pain. "Happy now?" he grunted in discontent, crossing his arms once he put the inhibitor collar around his neck.
The director of the A.R.G.U.S. sent him a cold smirk as he began coughing up blood, a sign of his transition from undead status to normal human. "Very."
"How did you know to come here precisely after the massacre I carried out?"
"It's none of your business." Bordeaux blurted out and she shifted her gaze to the woman beside her. "Your turn now."
Waller smirked back with a dangerous glint in her eyes. "With great pleasure, madam." she walked down the stairs to the bottom floor and nodded to Renegade. "Follow me."
Not being able to do anything else, the acrobat followed her, observing out of the corner of his eye and mentally archiving the direction that Bordeaux took from the upper floor of the canteen, moving away.
No one noticed the slight nod of understanding and deep gratitude that Renegade gave to the chef and which the big black man reciprocated with a slight smile on his lips.
The antihero also memorized the path Waller took him until he reached a room they entered. Once inside the seventeen year old noticed some guards giving him emotionless looks. His masked eyes scanned the room but it was mostly empty, so he turned to the black woman.
"What is this room?"
"I like to call it the "breakdown room"." she replied with a smile that he didn't like at all. "Now you will understand better."
She nodded to a guard who moved and removed the veil covering a long wooden table.
"Huh." was Renegade's flat comment as he observed the countless instruments of torture.
Dick stiffened as Waller grabbed his chin roughly, forcing him to stare into her emotionless brown eyes that were harder than steel itself.
"I will break you, Renegade. I will break you to the point that nothing will be left of you but an empty shell. You will become the favorite tool of the US federal government. You will be our most faithful and loyal dog of all. You will be our best weapon. You will do everything we tell you whenever we tell you. I will break you, Renegade. And I'm going to enjoy every single second of it."
An involuntary growl escaped the mercenary's throat.
Like hell I'll be a fucking weapon again, a tool and an empty shell in the service of others.
Renegade smiled coldly and menacingly back.
"You can't break what's already been broken, Waller. You will fail miserably. I will enjoy every second of your failure. Try to break me, Waller. Try it.
"And show me how you will fail."