M105- Beginning!

Maria tilted her head. “So what’s the play?”

Nero leaned forward, elbows on the table. "We die."

A brief silence fell. Even though they trusted Nero, the words hung in the air like a final sentence. Diego’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. No one wanted to be the first to argue the idea—yet.

Diego got up. "Hold on a minute, Nero. What do you mean we die?"

Sofia pressed him back down onto the sofa with one hand. "He means illusions. Calm down, will you?"

She crossed her legs and tapped her heel rhythmically, a sure sign she was calculating two steps ahead. "It wouldn't work. Our opponents are the world. People like Doom, Xavier, and Richards can feel if we truly died or not."

Sofia’s lips twitched. "Then are we really dying?"

He adjusted the ring on his finger, voice casual as if he was discussing a business pitch rather than life and death. "I believe Capo wouldn’t die like this. It’s cloning and consciousness transfer, right? We’ll steal our enemies’ tech against them."

Nero shook his head. "That wouldn’t work either. Death isn’t just a heart stopping. You can call it quantum fuckery, the soul leaving the body, or whatever helps you sleep at night, but death isn’t a basic concept in this world. There’s even an entity that oversees it."

The room went quiet for a beat. Not because they doubted him—if anything, they had all seen enough to know he wasn’t talking out of his ass—but because it meant their usual tricks wouldn’t cut it.

Donald exhaled. "You’re saying we need to die for real?"

Maria tilted her head slightly. "Not permanently."

Anthony crossed his arms. "Then how?"

"Simple," Nero said. "We use their game against them."

He ran a hand through his hair, the faint smirk on his lips betraying equal parts excitement and anxiety.. "Elaborate, Mr. Simple."

Nero took a deep breath. “We already established their play. They’ll use civilians against us. Friends will turn foes, heroes will become hunters, governments will close in the longer we hide. So, we die. But before that, we make sure the world never forgets. Those bastards in Shitstein said people forget? We make damn sure they don’t.”

Diego raised an eyebrow. “Alright, great speech, but you gonna explain how we’re faking our own deaths when we’ve got half the world’s smartest pricks watching?”

Maria tapped her fingers against her knee. “We can’t just disappear. If we do, they’ll spin it as a coward’s retreat. It has to be public, and it has to mean something.”

Sofia flicked through data on her laptop. “They have psychics, energy readers, tech that can track molecular signatures. If we just pull some illusion bullshit, they’ll see through it.”

Nero nodded. “Exactly. That’s why it has to be real.”

Donald exhaled. “You’re actually serious about dying?”

Nero snorted. “Of course not. I told you when we formed this gang—I’m not a bad man, but I’m not a hero either. I won’t die for people I don’t know, and I sure as hell won’t sacrifice the ones closest to me. I’ll help when I can, but if there’s nothing left to do? We leave. There are other planets.”

No one argued. They all knew it was true. If they wanted, they could disappear completely. Asgard was an option. Other dimensions, even. There was always a way out.

But that wasn’t what they wanted.

Maria kicked her feet up onto the table. “Running’s too easy. Feels like losing.”

Diego smirked. “And we’re not losers.”

Anthony exhaled. “So, we do what? Let them think they won?”

Nero leaned forward. “Exactly. We make them believe we’re dead. And not just a ‘oh no, they vanished’ kind of dead. I mean real death. The kind that leaves no doubt, no questions. The kind that makes even the smartest bastards in the world feel it.”

Nero added, “That said, we won’t die. But we’ll make sure they believe we did. It has to be so convincing that even when they can’t find a strand of our DNA, they still can’t refute it. Lucky for us, that won’t be difficult.”

He tapped his fingers against the table. “Xavier and Richards have already spoken to me in person. They’ll know if the person who ‘died’ was really me. We’ll fight the Cabal for a while before the final event. By then, they’ll have learned our energy signatures, our patterns. Even they won’t be able to deny it when we go down.”

They didn't ask further questions. They trusted him—that was enough.

The fights began.

But when it came to fighting, it was Nero alone who stood in the open. The others had their own assignments.

Maria vanished first, her path set toward the bio-labs where the Cabal kept their genetic experiments. If there was a way to track the cloning process, to see how deep it ran, she’d find it. The security there wouldn’t be a problem—what worried her was how many of those experiments were still alive. She intended to grab samples of their DNA splicing technology—perfect for forging “remains” that would fool any scanner if necessary.

Donald took another route, heading straight for one of their most fortified safe houses. Not for the leaders, not for their funds, but for their medical storage. If anyone had developed a way to store and transfer consciousness outside the body, it would be there. He wasn’t just looking for tech—he was looking for proof. If the Cabal was playing god, he wanted to see it firsthand. If a consciousness could be stored, it could also be replicated—just enough to convince telepaths that the “dying mind” was real.

Sofia was already moving before Nero even finished speaking, her fingers working through dozens of systems, rerouting satellites, cutting off surveillance feeds, and setting up digital traps. Her destination was a server farm, one that wasn’t supposed to exist. The Cabal didn’t just keep secrets—they erased them. And Sofia was about to bring them all back. The digital illusions had to be seamless. Forged logs, camera feeds, and energy readouts would all help sell the final trick.

Nigel had a simpler task—find the people funding this from the shadows, the ones who never showed their faces but still pulled every string. He wasn’t looking for names. He was looking for the money trails, the offshore accounts that made wars happen and buried every scandal. For their plan to work, they’d need hush money, insider documents that proved the authenticity of “their remains,” and resource management.

Diego had been grinning when he left. His target wasn’t a lab, a database, or a safe house—it was the lie itself. The illusion of control the Cabal had built, the underground channels that kept their influence untouchable. If the Cabal believed the group was dead, rumors had to be squashed or fanned out in the right places, something Diego knew how to handle well.

Anthony took the quietest route, slipping through a city where half the population didn’t even realize they were part of an experiment. The Cabal had been building something, and if anyone had been test subjects in their bid for evolution, they wouldn’t even know it. His job wasn’t just to find them. It was to make sure they woke up. He would spread the truth among those oblivious to being test subjects, ensuring that while the Cabal was busy searching for the group, the seeds of resistance would keep growing.

Nero stayed behind to fight. He knew they needed time, and he intended to buy it with blood—just not his own.

Standing atop a skyscraper, he surveyed the city sprawled beneath him. Sirens wailed in the distance, carried by winds that cut across the rooftops. His mask’s eyes glowed with a fierce purple as Cloud Flames crackled around him. Then, with a steady exhale, his body split into seven separate figures.

Each one radiated a distinct energy, yet they were all undeniably Nero. The original stood in the center, eyes tinted indigo as Mist Flames coiled around him. The other six inhaled in unison, their life signatures shifting—a neat trick: they weren’t mere illusions, but variations. Different enough to fool any expert scanning for unique energy signals, similar enough to make them doubt what they were seeing.

“I showed barely a fraction of my strength, and now they think they can walk all over me.”He flexed his fingers, letting tiny flames flicker between them. “If the world wants the Seven Masked Vigilantes dead, then that’s exactly what I’ll give them. Time to show them what Sky Flames can really do.”

He stood in the heart of the city, each clone poised on surrounding rooftops, every one wreathed in a different flame. Below, the streets crawled with eager hunters from HYDRA, mercenaries—anyone chasing the bounty. They came expecting a frantic last stand.

They had no idea.

The central figure glowed with Orange Sky Flames, sending pulses of energy that bound the clones together. To the outside observer, there were seven distinct threats. And in a sense, there were.

The first attack came from above—sleek combat drones, heavily armed and quick on the approach. Lightning Clone lifted a hand, sparks dancing across his knuckles before leaping outward in a brutal arc. Circuits fried. Drones spun wildly as black smoke poured from their hulls, and chunks of flaming debris hurtled down onto the soldiers below.

Even before the remains clattered to the asphalt, an elite squad of enhanced operatives charged in. Their armor gleamed with advanced tech, limbs replaced by cutting-edge augments, weapons radiating experimental energies. Each soldier represented someone’s fortune poured into lethal science.

They didn’t last long.

Storm Clone took one smooth step, and a subtle ripple coursed through the air. The nearest soldier’s rifle—pristine and custom-built—went from polished steel to crumbling rust in seconds. Another man lunged, but the instant his foot touched the pavement, the ground disintegrated beneath him, swallowing him whole. Panic flared in the others’ eyes. They’d been briefed on power, on potential counters—but what they faced now was something else entirely.

A sniper shot rang out, dead-center on the Nero. Mist Clone flickered like a fading hologram, letting the bullet pass through an empty space. The rooftop the sniper thought he was lying on suddenly wasn’t real. He plunged to the streets with a startled shout.

Rain Clone advanced next, turning the air bitterly cold. Ice formed on rifles and boots alike, and the sudden chill locked joints in place. One soldier managed to angle his weapon, eyes wild behind his visor—until Rain Clone clenched a fist. A heavy calm washed over the squad, draining their aggression, leaving them dazed. Some dropped to their knees, others simply stood there, minds numbed.

Then came the Sun Clone, bounding forward, punching with raw, glowing force. The ground actually cracked beneath each step. A single strike launched an armored soldier into a nearby building; the next melted a kinetic blade on contact. The unstoppable heat carried a promise: anything that touched him would burn.

Wave after wave of reinforcements poured in, brandishing suppression fields, anti-flame devices, energy dampeners. None of it mattered. Cloud Clone expanded his presence, bending reality with each surge of violet flame. Bullets that should have landed dead-center froze in midair, then reversed course, multiplied, and mowed down the very shooters who fired them.

Chaos engulfed the streets. The clones tore through the onslaught with efficiency sharpened by an almost single-minded rage. Nero was no longer interested in holding back.

HYDRA’s elite units arrived next, laden with experimental shields meant to counter flame-based attacks. Lightning Clone jammed their comms, bombarding them with electromagnetic interference until weapons and suits malfunctioned. Soldiers tried to swing batons or back away in formation, but Mist Clone toyed with their senses, flickering illusions through their lines. A soldier lunged at empty air, only to feel a solid blade of intangible deception slice right through him.

Explosions rocked the block as missiles streaked in, but Cloud Clone multiplied in an instant, each duplicate catching or redirecting the warheads. The mercenaries on the ground had expected illusions. They never guessed reality itself would twist against them.

Another group—cybernetically tweaked or lugging cutting-edge gear—rushed Rain Clone. Their reflexes were amped, but the moment they got close, the temperature bottomed out. Their fancy tech froze in place, metal and flesh alike turning brittle under the creeping ice. Anyone who managed to raise a weapon found themselves lulled into near-catatonia by Rain Clone’s quietly crushing aura. One man simply dropped his weapon and stared, the fight drained out of him.

Sun Clone, meanwhile, hammered through lines of defenders with molten fists. Riot shields melted, advanced clubs fused into slag.

Nero watched from the center, and a low anger boiled in his chest. They thought they could slap a bounty on him? That they could bury him under waves of supers, mercenaries, and black-ops freaks? He was done playing nice.

With a raised hand, he twisted the ambient moisture in the air, turning it volatile. One soldier—decked out in gleaming augments that probably cost more than entire nations’ budgets—erupted from the inside. He ignited in a horrifying instant, still alive as he fell to burning pieces. Two more burst into flames a heartbeat later. Their screams caught in their throats as the heat consumed them from within.

That was enough for some. They ran. Others froze in place, unsure if retreat would get them killed faster than attacking. A few charged anyway, last-ditch bravado fueling their suicidal rush.

Nero exhaled sharply. Cloud Flames surged, warping everything in reach. The broken buildings around them rippled, duplicating and twisting into a labyrinth that defied reason. The screams cut short as the ground swallowed the smoldering bodies, leaving only ash drifting in the warped air.

It was like that from the start: from the first night, black ops, rogue mutants, mercenaries—dozens of factions tried to claim the bounty. Nero cut them down. Over days, the hunt spread worldwide. Cities became battlegrounds. Supposed safe zones turned into ambush sites. No matter how many came, they all burned.

The lure of the bounty brought every unhinged killer out of hiding: from washed-up assassins chasing one last payday to superpowered lunatics with far too much confidence. Nero made examples of them at every turn.

They tried cornering him in Hong Kong, deploying advanced barriers designed to nullify energy abilities. He strolled right through their line of snipers and suppression fields, illusions dancing around their frantic triggers. The streets ran red with a single blink of Mist Flames. In Paris, specialists who thought they’d studied his tactics quickly found themselves trapped in an infinite labyrinth conjured by Cloud Flames, panicking as the ground disintegrated under them.

Real trouble arrived when actual governments stepped in—Enhanced Spetsnaz with prototype augments, the squads of adaptive AIs, a super-team of mutants and advanced weaponry. It changed nothing. In Berlin, the AI-driven soldiers locked onto him with pinpoint accuracy until he blinded them with Sun Flames and shorted their circuits with Lightning. In Chicago, the Spetsnaz stealth unit never even got to pull a trigger; Rain Flames dulled their reactions, and Nero slipped through their ranks like a wraith.

HYDRA caught on and shifted tactics, opting for precision strike teams. Nero responded by hunting those squads first. He left grim displays in his wake—a warehouse full of bodies arranged into their logo, a helicopter crashed because its pilot fell prey to illusions mid-flight. By the end of the second week, they stopped sending elite troops, relying instead on expendable forces. Survival had replaced victory as their goal.

But the bounty had escalated things too far. Now real heavyweights came out of hiding. HYDRA’s monstrous experiments, the Cabal’s black projects, twisted soldiers who should never have existed. Mister Sinister unleashed clones with near-endless regeneration. Nero rotted them from the inside with Storm Flames, dissolving their very cells before they could rebuild. The High Evolutionary sent human-animal hybrids impervious to normal energy attacks. Nero warped their forms with Cloud Flames, then electrocuted them en masse, leaving them to die confused and screaming.

The Maker tried to slip in nanotech trackers through disguised drones. Nero let them in close just to feed them nonsense, spinning elaborate illusions of entire cities turning into war zones. It proved pointless; The Maker cut his losses. At last, Doom arrived in person.Osborn in his Iron Patriot suit, Apocalypse lurking behind them. Mister Sinister. Taskmaster. The High Evolutionary again, itching for round two. No more flunkies. They came themselves.

Nero waited in the shattered remains of a city he’d effectively turned into his domain. Osborn sneered from behind his armor.

“Had your fun, hero? This ends now.”

Nero rolled his shoulders.

“No. It’s just beginning.”

And the world caught fire.

Smoke and dust billowed across miles of wreckage. Nero stood alone against the gathered titans, each responsible for horrors in their own right. Doom struck first, folding space around Nero, trying to crush him in a bubble of warped physics. Cloud Flames unraveled that instantly, dispersing the crushing force into an endless plane. Apocalypse blitzed forward with a punch that might as well have been the wrath of a god, but Nero caught it, siphoning the kinetic energy with Sun Flames until Apocalypse’s blow collapsed into nothing.

An explosive projectile collided with Nero from behind, courtesy of Osborn’s Iron Patriot. Nero crashed through a half-standing skyscraper, but Rain Flames shimmered over him, washing away the damage. Osborn’s smug grin faded when he realized the man simply refused to be hurt.

Doom recalibrated, rewriting the battlefield to prevent any fire or energy from forming—only for Nero to snap it back with a pulse of Sky Flames that reasserted control. Sinister lunged, morphing his body into a stabbing blade. He struck only illusions, then hissed as a real knife bit into his side. He regenerated in seconds, smirking, fascinated by the challenge.

The High Evolutionary tried a subtler approach, forcibly accelerating Nero’s cells into a horrific mutation. Nero clenched his jaw, letting Rain Flames cool his raging biology, then flicked a burst of Lightning through the Evolutionary’s nervous system. With that window, he wrenched the twisted mutation from himself and threw it back, subjecting the Evolutionary to his own monstrous experiment. The self-proclaimed perfect being collapsed, body convulsing in uncontrollable evolutions.

But these enemies wouldn’t stay down easily. Apocalypse’s next blow broke Nero’s ribs. Doom compressed the air around him again while Osborn fired more missiles. Sinister found an opening to strike. The Maker stood behind them all, eyes glowing with calculations.

Nero slammed into the ground, genuinely rattled for the first time in weeks. Blood trailed from his lips, and his vision blurred for half a breath. Then six more forms appeared beside him, each one identical, each breathing hard, each wounded. Only one was real, but from the outside, that was impossible to tell.

Doom leveled his gauntlet a final time.

“You can’t win.”

Apocalypse’s knuckles cracked.

“At least you fought well.”

Osborn’s grin returned.

“Go on, make a speech.”

Nero spat blood, then laughed hoarsely. He lifted a single trembling hand, Storm Flames dancing around his fingertips.

“Fuck your speeches.”

All at once, Nero and his clones ignited in a brilliant surge of flame. Seven figures burned in synchronized fury...then turned to ash.

When the flames died, there was nothing left—no bodies, no DNA, no trace. Just a swirl of cinders, drifting over a broken battlefield. The city lay silent, and Nero was gone.

As Doom and the others left, they failed to notice the sleight of hand their opponents had pulled just before "dying."

A few minutes earlier, the battlefield had been painted in fire and blood, the supposed final stand of the Seven. But the ones burning alive at that moment weren’t Nero and his people.

They were the clones of the very men who had mocked him on Shitstein Island.

Billy Gaggs.

Hick Clinton.

Price Andy.

Elton Muskrat.

Larry Page.

Jenf Hozos.

Alan DeGenerous.

Each of them had been dragged from the shadows where they hid, their bodies modified just enough to mimic the Seven’s presence, their consciousness kept intact so they could feel every moment of their own "sacrifice."

They had screamed, but the flames swallowed their voices.

Deep underground, in a hidden chamber beneath layers of stolen technology and security measures, Sofia leaned back in her chair, watching data flood the screens. "And just like that, the world thinks we’re dead."

Donald cracked his neck, still wiping blood off his hands. "Took a month of hell, but it worked."

Maria glanced at the screen. "Not the first time we let the world bury us. Probably won’t be the last."

Anthony exhaled. "And the clones?"

Sofia smirked. "Consciousness extraction was clean.” Sofia tapped a console, revealing the last recorded vitals of their unwilling stand-ins. “DNA splices intact, energy readings synced to ours. They must have felt everything.”"

The Seven were gone.

Nero stepped away from the console and raised a small comm device to his ear.

“I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… afraid of us. You’re afraid of change.

I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end.

I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.

I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see.

I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries.

A world where anything is possible.

Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.” 

War had just begun.