First Mission
Reborn knows an invisible Viper is following him closely, probably because wherever the hitman is, the safer. Reborn has the hard drive in his jacket pocket, so at this point they can just leave, mission over.
They round a corner in the underground labyrinth that Checker Face gave the address for and Reborn comes to a stop, raising an eyebrow.
The corridor he's in leads to a huge room, mostly filled with bodies. In the middle is a very bloody Skull with a distressed Lal hovering as she tries to take the pain away. Verde holds up a translucent green shield of hardened Lightning flames as he glares from behind glasses. Fon whirls around outside and puts his extensive knowledge of martial arts to use taking down the enemies streaming in from multiple tunnels that stack along the walls like a beehive.
The bodies littering the cavern have blunt force trauma injuries or look like they're sleeping in awkward positions, clearly Fon's doing, plus horrific bullet wounds seem to be in fashion from Lal's shotgun. Quite a few have chemical burns or blackened skin or even dissolved flesh, curtesy of Verde and his rather terrifying vials.
Spikes and barriers have been raised from the concrete ground to create cover and to injure more attackers. They could have been inbuilt, but it's arranged strangely enough that Reborn thinks it must be Skull and the propagating factor of the stuntman's Cloud flames.
Lal glances up and catches sight of the hitman. "Reborn, what are you doing? Get over here!"
The hitman almost turns around and leaves, just because of that order. He does not respond well to authority and Lal is a COMSUBIN leader who's used to soldiers following her every word.
Reborn does end up walking over to them, because he's kind of curious about these people. Sure, he's met them before, but only for a few moments when he's been trying to kill them and he didn't keep contact after that. The one he's known for the longest amount of time is Viper, simply due to Reborn getting so many hits on the illusionist.
Verde drops the Lightning flame barrier when Reborn gets close, but the scientist is used to working with machines and chemicals, not flames, so he has to take down the entire structure instead of a small portion.
Lal is shot in the back and drops to the floor beside Skull.
A laugh is startled out of Reborn and he saunters up to stand over the woman as Verde scrambles to pull up the barrier again.
"Well," Reborn murmurs, peering down at Lal choking on her own blood. "You all just very clearly proved why I don't work with others."
Fon darts through the Lightning barrier, red Storm flames licking at his skin to disintegrate the shield for a moment. "Why aren't you healing them?"
Reborn blinks at the accusation. "I'm not a doctor. I thought that was Verde's job."
Verde looks over in shock. "I'm not a medical doctor either. You have Sun flames, you can activate their cells for healing."
"I also kill people for a living," Reborn drawls.
A dark look comes over Fon's face as Reborn starts to leave. The Storm user lunges forward and grabs onto the hitman's collar, yanking the man closer and ignoring the gun that presses into his ribs.
"I am not failing the first mission," Fon hisses. "Not because they die and certainly not because you're being a whiny little bitch."
Reborn smirks and leans forward until they're sharing breath. "Then you heal them - oh wait, I forgot; Storm flames are useless for everything except looking pretty."
Fon snarls and bares his teeth like a wild animal.
"Go ahead," Reborn whispers like they're sharing a childish secret.
"Luce is here," Verde interrupts.
Reborn and Fon jerk back from each other, whipping their heads around to find the woman peering into the room from the same tunnel Reborn came through. Said room, which is once more being filled with enemies, except smarter ones, who toss down tear gas and flash bangs and grenades before sniping from a distance.
Reborn scowls and moves before Luce gets the stupid idea to actually walk into the room. "Verde, get her back to the car."
The Lightning user frowns at the order but moves off, taking the shield with him.
Reborn turns to the martial artist next. "Fon, make yourself useful and go kill things." He ignores the glare sent his way because Fon does move off, and instead the hitman takes his wallet out.
Viper appears out of thin air when Reborn holds up three hundred euro, but the hitman pulls the money away when the Mist user reaches for it.
"Hide us," Reborn demands and only after he feels a heavy coating of Mist flames creating an illusion across the entire room does he hand over the money.
It would be so much easier if Mist flames could become real. Just place on an illusion of the body working fine, and it's done. Too bad that technology is at least a decade off if Verde's rambling is to go on.
Reborn turns to the two on the floor, dropping to kneel between them. Lal's wound is easy, just a fishhook bullet that scrapes through the victim and tears everything up with its small spikes that can get stuck and snap off from the main bullet, staying in the wound.
Reborn is obviously being sarcastic here.
It hit her right shoulder blade and shattered the bone, continuing on to wreak havoc with her muscles and getting stopped about halfway through a lung. Reborn sighs in annoyance but takes off his suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves.
He takes out a lock pick set from his jacket and bends the metal into the shapes he needs before digging into her. The lock picks are clean, but it's hardly sanitary enough for field surgery. Reborn keeps going anyway, pouring Sun flames into the wound to learn which parts are damaged.
Reborn has no idea what he's doing because he honestly doesn't know how to heal with Sun flames. Usually, a flame user can simply push the Dying Will flame into a body and the patient's own cells respond and heal automatically with the Sun's activation factor.
Reborn doesn't have that luxury. For him, that uncontrolled, ignorant use is more like closing his eyes and stepping off a cliff, so he actually has to know what he's doing, down to which layer of muscle he should force healing on next.
Now, killing with Sun flames is a lot easier.
He pulls back when he gets the last hook out of Lal's shoulder and then proceeds to cheat by activating Skull's Cloud flames and then transporting them over to Lal for propagation of healthy flesh. The violet fire sinks into the COMSUBIN leader and she goes limp when the pain finally leaves and the injury is fixed.
Reborn keeps the Cloud flames going, just to propagate some bits and pieces to clear the blood still in her lungs. She doesn't wake up, because that would be too easy for Reborn, but the hitman just leaves her face down on the floor and leans over Skull.
Reborn left the stuntman for last because his wound is much lower down, on his abdomen, and Lal had been suffocating. Skull's wound is actually worse, a large hole cut into the left side of his abdomen and there's a lot of blood pooling in the wound, to the point of it over filling and the blood pouring onto the floor like a waterfall.
Definitely nicked the abdominal aorta or, most probably, sliced clean through the entire thing. The only reason Skull hasn't bled out is because of his Cloud flames, which are automatically trying to fix things. Reborn frowns because he can't do anything if he can't see what's damaged.
Reborn rolls the man over, away from the hitman, and waits until most of the blood drains out to lie Skull down again. Not the most dignified of techniques but it works. Reborn sighs when he sees the damage.
Below the stomach and all of the major digestive organs -thank you, whatever sadistic God that's watching- but a lot of intestines got mashed up and the major artery and vein have been compromised.
Skull's flames have been propagating the intestines as well as the blood, so the digestive organ is now several times longer than what it should be and some parts are thicker than others or only have one particular layer of the intestinal wall.
Skull seems to favour the mucosa, the inside layer, so most of his intestines now look like they're made of tiny pink hairs of villi and it's just really furry and creepy looking.
But honestly, Reborn has been through worse.
The hitman doesn't bother with his lock picks because this job is far bigger, and simply reaches inside the gaping injury. He takes out the cut of pieces of intestines, almost dropping several parts because it's so slippery, and puts them to the side with a splat.
He also rips off the ruined sections that the Cloud flames messed up, which is very hard to do because he does not have a good grip of the slimy organs and his nails aren't very long so they don't cut properly.
Then he activates the Cloud flames with his Sun again and coaxes the fire along the intestine. Most of the jejunum is fine, the top part of the small intestine, but Reborn has to make most of the ileum, the lower portion.
He also has to fix the descending colon and the sigmoid flexure, but then he's finally done. With the organs. He also has the peritoneum, which is basically a large covering over most of the abdominal organs. After than he can finally work on muscles and then skin.
Reborn amasses a macrophage army to kill the spilled blood still in the injured area and then sits back with an exhausted sigh after the last injury seals over.
"Holy shit," Lal murmurs in awe.
Reborn glances up, only to find Fon has taken care of the enemies -either chased off or dead, Reborn doesn't care- and Lal is awake, plus Viper decided not to disappear again. They're all standing around and staring at him like idiots.
"Okay," Reborn begins, standing and shaking his hands a bit to try and get most of the blood off. It doesn't work. "There is a definite need for a medic."
"You're the medic," all three deadpan.
Reborn pretends he hasn't heard them and moves back to his discarded jacket, gingerly shuffling it around with messy hands to get to the handkerchief in one pocket. It's not going to do much because he has blood up to his elbows, but Reborn is feeling optimistic after saving two lives by pretty much closing his eyes and poking things.
However, not optimistic enough to lie to himself. He can't handle caring for these people and then watching them die. It's too late to be apathetic towards Luce, she's just too sweet, but Reborn needs to stop now because these people are fun to be around and they're interesting and it's not good for the hitman.