5 DC-PHD-CH5

A Few Days Later, Cain quietly sat with his luggage at one of the seats towards the backend of an intercity bus. His luggage consisted of a tightly packed waterproof duffel bag, which contained all the cash he had looted from various criminals he had defeated, and a medium-sized rucksack full of his clothes and other emergency items.

He was currently on the intercity bus that went from Gotham City to Seattle. He had thought a lot about where and how to make the debut of his singing career, now that he already had enough money to pay for recording sessions and various good quality musical instruments, and had finally decided on this beautiful seaport city that didn't report that many supervillain problems.

The reason he was temporarily shelving his superhero career was because of something that happened on his last vigilante night out in Gotham.

-x-x-x-

"Well, last night was a mistake I would never try again … at least until I have better control over my abilities," Cain muttered to himself as he walked down the streets of Gotham, the next evening after the self-explosion incident in the Pocket Hunting Dimension.

The incident had apparently strained his mind and soul beyond their usual limits, causing him to suffer through large amounts of phantom pains even after being "resurrected" in the real world. He barely had the strength to get up and walk around after half a day of lying around.

He remembered that when he first received the connection to the Pocket Hunting Dimension, he had gained knowledge about the effects of straining the soul.

Cain sighed again as he thought about his reckless actions. It had seemed like such a great idea at that time. Combining the Boost from Kaio-Ken with the Speed Enhancement of Moon Rabbit's Quick Steps. What could go wrong?

As it turned out, everything could go wrong. Kaio-ken was a total boost that affected all parts of the physique by basically making his energy unstable and, for lack of a better word, explosive. Moon Rabbit's Quick Steps on the other hand was more orderly and stable.

What happens when you mix the specifically channeled energies used for techniques that are based on two opposite concepts? KABOOM!!

He had underestimated the power of these abilities just because he had somehow managed to invent Kaio-Ken by luck. He had forgotten that it was a distillation of his combat experience combined with the enhanced comprehension ability provided by the purple orb.

As a result, he died in one of the most gruesome ways possible in the Pocket Hunting Dimension. Now he realized that if he wanted to make the fusion of the two techniques possible at the current time, he was facing a paradox.

Without consuming a purple orb and gaining its temporarily enhanced comprehension abilities, he was not smart enough in his base state to be able to fuse the techniques. In the Pocket Hunting Dimension, he could not consume the orbs, while in Real World he didn't have the safety of being able to resurrect after death.

Therefore, until he manages to improve his attributes by a lot and gain better control over his bio-energy, he would not be trying that stunt again.

On the plus side, however, it turns out that his reckless actions had a plus side. His last suicide bombing attack had taken out dozens of rabbits that had gathered to watch him make a fool of himself, granting him a plethora of orbs to use. He currently had around 65 Red Orbs, 6 Purple Orbs, and 1 Rabbit Shadow Orb.

This would grant him a large power-up once he manages to digest them all. Cain however was holding off on doing that as he first wanted to recover his soul damage so that he could be at his optimum state before starting to digest the orbs.

Currently, he was going on one last vigilante run. He had gained enough money to start his music career now, which he planned to do after moving to a new city as soon as he was done with digesting the orbs he had stocked up on. He even prepared some songs from his previous world whose artists didn't exist in this world.

He felt slightly ashamed about plagiarising their work like this. However, he felt it was balanced out by the fact that their music would be introduced to this new world without their legacy dying out.

As he was thinking about all this, his attention was suddenly diverted by a sudden commotion some distance away from him. As he reached the source of the commotion, he found that he had reached the location of a gang fight in progress.

Instead of intervening immediately, he decided to wait for a moment and see under which gang they operated. After a few moments of observation, he finally managed to recognize both groups.

The two groups that were fighting belonged to Penguin and Two-Face respectively. They were two of the major criminal powerhouses in Gotham. Currently, it seemed that Two-Face wanted to take over a chunk of Penguin's Turf, causing the current gang war.

'Well, if it was up to me, I would have just got a large tub of buttery popcorn and some cola to watch the show of these good-for-nothings kill themselves.'

'However, they are scaring the public and causing damage to a lot of public property, which means I have to intervene.' Cain thought as he leaped from the top of a roof, which was his current vantage point and fell towards the location where the fight was the most intense.

"Kaio-Ken!!" Cain yelled as a bright translucent flame-like aura surrounded him, boosting his power greatly. He landed on top of one of the bulletproof vehicles of Two-Face's henchmen, shattering the hood of the car and throwing the henchmen from the vehicle in the process.

His arrival caused a momentary lull in the fight as neither side knew which side Cain supported. In the meantime, Cain took advantage of this lull to begin his assault.

Clenching his Kaio-Ken-coated fists, he rapidly flitted amongst the henchmen of both gangs, striking them at their vital areas, breaking bones and rupturing muscles. Before both gangs could completely realize that he was against both of them, Cain had already taken care of a dozen criminals, leaving them gasping and groaning on the ground.

"Shoot Him First!!!" Group Leaders of this turf wat from both gangs yelled together. As if their previous fight was a dream, henchmen from both sides cooperated to fire a hail of bullets at Cain from all sides.

"Hahaha!! I have long outgrown the vulnerability to regular bullets in my base form, let alone one empowered by Kaio-Ken!!!" Cain grinned and said as simply charged through the hail of bullets, just covering critical areas like eyes as he continued to fight.

Currently, these bullets only did as much damage to him as a rubber bullet would to a regular person. It stung and was painful, but it posed no permanent threat to his life. That would be different however if it was a critical area like his eyes, as he was not yet at Superman level, who could survive a point-blank bullet shot at his eyes.

"Shit!! What kind of a monstrous freak is this??" One of the henchmen from Penguin's gang yelled as he saw that he was out of bullets and quickly started to find a new magazine to load into his gun.

"I think he is that new vigilante, Black Hood, who has been causing so much chaos on the streets of Gotham, shaking up our status quo." Surprisingly a member of two face's gang yelled in reply while unloading the bullets at Cain.

"Is this a fucking tea party where you ladies are chatting up events of the day??" Baille, leader of the Two-Face group yelled at everyone, "Shut your mouths and shoot!!!"

Following that, the henchmen from both sides understood the gravity of the situation and became even more desperate in the attacks. But, their attacks could only do so much.

Cain, who was finally getting hurt by the quantity of the accumulated attacks decided to speed things up. If things went on like this, even if he would not be fatally hurt, his body would be sore and would have bruises that would hurt like hell in the morning.

Pumping even more energy into Kaio-Ken to increase the boost slightly, Cain became Asura incarnate. His speed increased by another level as he flitted between the henchmen surrounding him, his rapid attacks making it seem like he was a shuttle cork that was rapidly moving from one player to another.

Haunting sounds of bones being shattered echoed in the area, making the legs of the remaining henchman shake with terror upon hearing every new victim of Cain's assault. Some even snapped mentally and started shooting their own comrades just to get it over with quickly.

Finally, the battlefield went silent except for the groans and muffled cries of the crippled gangsters. Just as Cain was going to deem a job well done and leave for home, there was suddenly a small crashing sound as something struck one of the destroyed cars and burst into copious amounts of smoke, quickly covering the battlefield.

Cain immediately grew cautious as he rekindled the dying Kaio-Ken, worried about his diminishing energy reserves, he frowned slightly as he judged how long he could keep it up. If this turned out to be an intense fight and if he had to continue maintaining Kaio-Ken at this intensity, then his reserves would last for another 15 mins max.

Fortunately, it seemed that his opponent was not going to make him wait. While he was waiting for the attack, a swishing sound was heard as a blur swung through the smoke, attacking Cain with a double kick to the chest. Cain backed up three steps before he managed to disperse the force behind the attack, surprising him at the occurrence.

One has to know that his base stats were well over an average trained fighter at this point. Moreover, after being boosted by Kaio-Ken, he was still pushed back a few steps. Whomever the attacker was, either they were a meta, or they were extremely talented in combat and well-trained.

He could see a silhouette of the attacker through the smoke, who landed after kicking Cain and retracted the grappling device that he had used to swing and attack. Immediately after, the attacker threw a high kick with a running start and a spinning high jump, making very efficient and powerful use of the momentum.

Cain easily blocked that kick with a simple palm deflection, that to his boosted reflexes and strength. However, the attacker immediately followed that up with a set of throwing knives-like weapons, that exploded as soon as Cain deflected them with a backhand strike with his other arm.

As the blast threw them both back and cleared up the smoke a little, the attacker once again threw some sort of pellet on the ground, spreading the smoke once more. As the smoke spread, so did the attacker continue his chain of attacks, combining kicks, punches, and even flips and somersaults in a continuous flow.

Interested in this experienced fighting style, Cain decided to lift the self-ban he had temporarily placed on the use of orbs. Dodging another flurry of punches by the smoky silhouette, Cain secretly brought out a purple orb directly inside his mouth and ingested it.

Immediately, the world seemed to clear up for him, as if there were no more secrets hidden from Cain in the tapestry woven by God. His boosted perception from the combination of Purple Orb and Kaio-Ken made the world slow down, as he calmly observed and countered the attacker's moves.

With each attack exchange, Cain improved his expertise in his self-made fighting style, along with improving it further by integrating the fighting style of his opponent. At the same time, he allocated a part of his mind to improving Kaio-Ken further.

As the fight continued, the attacker seemed to feel more and more pressure as the balance in the fight shifted from Cain being on the Defensive to Cain being on the Offensive.

However, while Cain was dominating the fight now, he also felt the drain on his energy. His improved combat prowess due to Purple Orb was also consuming his energy reserves faster.

Deciding to end it, since he barely had enough to continue another few minutes at most, Cain made a flurry of deflecting palm strikes, forcibly opening up a flaw in his opponent's guard, and attacked with a strong punch.

Unexpectedly, something happened at that very moment that surpassed even Cain's enhanced perception and predictions. Just as he was about to punch the silhouette, his Kaio-Ken improvement made a leap forward to x4 times the boost, due to constant improvement in combat.

As a result of this, he subconsciously used his Kaio-Ken at the maximum x4 times boost before his fist connected with the opponent's body. This made his opponent fly backward with a sickening crunch sound of multiple ribs being broken, along with multiple fractures on the two arms that were used to defend.

Due to the momentum of the figure that flew back, the smoke was cleared finally, and Cain saw the identity of the one who attacked him.

Turns out, it was one of the night guardians of Gotham, Robin, the Boy Wonder, and sidekick of Batman himself. "Crap!!", Cain exclaimed in panic.

Seeing Robin's critically injured situation, Cain looked around in panic, thinking about what to do to prevent the cocky overconfident sidekick of one of the most dangerous men in Gotham from dying.

He immediately knelt down in front of various knocked-out criminals around him, searching for a mobile phone. Once he got it, he immediately called the emergency medical services. After a short call about the situation with Robin, while not telling who he himself was, Cain cut the call and threw the phone away to a corner.

Still worried that the medical professionals won't make it in time, he went to kneel next to Robin and searched his body. He found a tracker/beacon-like object in his tool belt and turned it on. He also pressed various options on Robin's wrist computer that seemed related to communication to alert Batman.

However, despite all this, Cain was still not satisfied. Robin was completely knocked out due to his severe injuries and his breathing was growing shallower and fainter each moment.

Just as he was almost at the end of his rope with panic, Cain suddenly remembered the effect of the red orb. When his leg was broken, the red orb fixed it and it had hardly taken a few moments. Although, It took two red orbs to completely fix his broken leg along with strengthening himself noticeably.

Therefore, by his estimate, a single red orb should be more than enough to pull Robin back from the jaws of death. He would have not put his cheats to be on risk of being discovered if there was any other option, but right now this was his best idea as per the circumstances.

Summoning the tiniest red orb he had, so as to make the chances of being discovered as less as possible, Cain pried open Robin's mouth and stuffed the orb inside. The orb immediately melted into a stream of energy as soon as it was inside Robin's mouth, quickly seeping into his body.

Under Cain's observation, Robin's crumpled chest seemed to pop out and fix itself swiftly, like a sponge reverting back after being compressed. As Robin's breathing started to grow a bit more hurried and stronger, due to the painful refining effects of the orb, Cain decided it was time to go.

"Even though I injured you, it was a fight and you sneak attacked me. Therefore my retaliation was natural. Now that I have saved your life despite that, you owe me one, Boy Wonder." Cain said as if justifying himself.

He then gave the recovering black oily sludge-covered Robin another look before activating Moon Rabbit's Quick Steps, which he had further improved in the meantime while treating Robin, with the leftover energy of the Purple Orb.

With the Faux Speedster Mode activated, Cain blitzed away from the scene, deciding in his mind that his adventures in Gotham had come to an end.

-x-x-x-

As he finished his flashback of the last vigilante in Gotham, Cain was pulled back to the present by the mechanical voice of the bus's computer system announcing that they had reached their destination: Seattle.

Grabbing his duffel bag and a rucksack, Cain stepped down from the bus, eager to see what new adventures this city contained for him.