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Chapter 43 - Setting An Example (I)

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The phone on Fisk's desk rang and the Kingpin didn't hesitate to answer the call hoping for good news but expecting the worst, "What is it?" 

"The strike team you sent to investigate the abandoned subway just reported back...they found no signs of anyone having lived there or of the sinister six." 

Fisk's first clenched around the phone which immediately began to creak, stressing underneath the immense strength of the crime lord, "Well they didn't just disappear into thin air, have the team sweep through the entire subway system and they better come back with some better news." 

Fisk slammed the phone back down and resisted the urge to throw his desk across the office. Frost's warning had been echoing in his mind ever since she had paid him a visit. The mysterious warning about bigger players paying attention to something brewing in his city did not excite the Kingpin one bit. While there was always some plot being put into motion by the various players in the criminal underworld, Fisk could only think of one that could warrant such a warning. Rumors of a healing god and his followers living in a kingdom of paradise had spread like wildfire through the borough,s especially after their white-robed members were caught on camera mysteriously appearing at one of Scourge's massacres. 

Whether or not there was any truth behind the rumors, Fisk couldn't ignore a growing cultish following, so he took decisive action. However, he had wrongly assumed that the combined might of the sinister six, comprised of the city's most infamous villains, would be enough to handle a group of altruistic mole people. 

Fisk pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a frustrated sigh, "Hmmm....how the mighty have fallen." 

In an instant, Fisk stood up from his desk as a disembodied voice reverberated through his office. Looking around the Kingpin tried to pinpoint the source only to find he was completely alone. 

"Whoever you are, I promise you...you'll live to regret this," Fisk growled as his eyes continued to sweep across his office. 

The voice chuckled a deep sultry sound with all the subtlety of a smoldering inferno, "Oh you poor little man, you have no idea what awaits you." 

Then in the center of the room, the air shimmered and Fisk watched as a familiar visage emerged, her skin and outfit regaining its original color and texture.

"What, surprised to see me?" Elektra asked as she stared at Fisk with her violet-colored eyes, "You seem so tense." 

Staring at the assassin Fisk took in her startling change in appearance, "I assumed you were dead, after all, it's been a month since we last negotiated business." 

"Oh, and so much has changed for both of us since then," Elektra cheered with a smile her serrated teeth shining with their pearly whites, "And I must thank you, you've given me the greatest opportunity I could ever ask for." 

Fisk kept his eyes trained on Elektra as he reached underneath his desk pushed in a hidden button and held it down, "Oh, and what opportunity would that be?" 

Elektra spread out her arms as her smile turned predatory, "To demonstrate my loyalty and to set an example for those who dare, raise their hand against my god." 

"Quiet ironic isn't it," Fisk mused clearly not impressed with Elektra's theatrics. "You come to me looking to escape a cult, only for you to wind up doing the bidding of another. But tell me...does this one have the ability to bring you back from the dead?" 

There was a soft click as the button beneath Fisk's desk fully depressed.

In an instant, the floor trembled.

A thick sheet of bulletproof glass dropped from the ceiling like a guillotine, sealing Fisk off from the rest of the office with a hiss of pressure locks. At the same time, twin compartments opened in the ceiling behind Elektra, and two sleek, matte-black auto-turrets descended like executioners. Their internal motors spun to life with a high-pitched mechanical whirl as laser sights locked onto her spine.

Then came the thunder.

The turrets roared to life, unleashing a savage hail of gunfire, bullets slicing the air with sonic shrieks, tearing through drywall and splintering hardwood.

But Elektra was already moving.

Before the first round reached her, she dropped low into a crouch, her body blurring as the initial salvo screamed overhead. The floor cracked beneath her as she launched to the side, a blur of crimson and violet light. The lasers chased her like hungry hounds, but she was too fast, darting through the storm, twisting her body in impossible arcs between bursts of death.

One round grazed her thigh, but she didn't slow. Instead, she accelerated.

She reached the far wall and, without hesitation, ran straight up it.

Her feet pounded the vertical surface as if it were solid ground, leaving behind a shredded trail of bullet impacts and sparking ricochets. Plaster exploded behind her like shrapnel. With a final burst of motion, she pushed off the wall, flipping backward into open air.

At the apex of her jump, Elektra extended her left hand.

From beneath her wrist, a long, sinuous chain of bone erupted with a sickening snap. The links weren't metal they were fused vertebrae, jagged and serrated, like the spine of some infernal predator. The chain twisted in the air like a living serpent.

With a flick of her wrist, it cracked through the air and wrapped around the first turret. The bone spurs bit into the chassis with a sickening crunch, grinding against steel and piercing through the plating like paper.

Elektra landed hard, one knee down, boots skidding across the floor then yanked.

The turret shrieked as metal groaned and wires snapped. The hundred-pound death machine was torn from the ceiling in a shower of sparks and shredded cable, crashing to the floor like a corpse thrown from a rooftop.

Behind the glass, Fisk sucked his teeth and snatched up the phone. "Send a strike team to my office," he barked. "There's a pest that needs dealing with."

As he barked commands, Elektra stood tall, expression unreadable, eyes glowing violet. Her breathing was steady. Too steady.

Another bone chain unraveled from her other wrist, identical to the firs and with a crack surging bio-electric energy, lightning dancing along both serrated surfaces. The arcs leaped between the segments in bursts of lethal current, illuminating her face with flashes of molten light.

She spun.

Like a dancer, she whirled in a precise, controlled circle chains extended outward in both hands. Her momentum built, and with a final twist of her hips, she launched both chains toward the second turret.

They didn't wrap. 

They sliced.

The electrified bone-links carved straight through the gunmetal body in a spray of molten steel. The turret sputtered, sparked, and then exploded, sending glowing shrapnel and liquefied metal raining across the office floor. Smoke rolled outward, curling like black fog.

"Do you understand now?" Elektra asked, her voice echoing with a resonant distortion that seemed to vibrate through the glass, through the walls, through Fisk's chest. "The powers my new god has bestowed upon me?"

She turned fully to face him, and for a moment, it was like the room itself bent with her movement. The flickering lights above dimmed unnaturally. The air thickened. The veil between flesh and something other seemed to stretch.

Fisk stared through the wall of reinforced bulletproof glass. But Elektra looked through it as if it were nothing more than smoke. Her violet eyes glowed like distant stars, and her smile had grown impossibly wide, splitting past the corners of her mouth with an unsettling elasticity. It wasn't human. Not anymore.

Then, slowly, a deep, wet sound broke the silence.

A gash formed at the center of her forehead, long and deliberate, parting like a sacrificial wound.

The skin peeled back, retracting like petals, revealing something impossible: a third eye, massive and glistening, its iris swirling with luminous violet and obsidian. The sclera pulsed like a heartbeat. As it opened fully, the air around her shimmered, warping with violent waves of psionic energy that shook picture frames from the walls and cracked the reinforced glass with a shriek of strain.

Fisk backed up.

Not from fear, but from something older than that. From the primal recognition of divine madness.

"I have no need for resurrection," Elektra intoned, her voice layered now, hers, and something beneath it, deeper, darker. "Because I was not revived."

Her arms extended slowly, reverently.

"I was remade. In his image. A vessel born of blood and purpose."

She took a step forward, and the glass hissed again under the pressure of raw psychic heat.

"My god," she whispered, "has looked into the festering depths of the world, the endless, rotting sprawl of unchecked life. He has embraced it. He has become it. And in that taint, he found truth."

The third eye burned brighter now, the pulses of psionic energy syncing with her heartbeat.

"Life and Corruption are one and the same. Two faces of the same terrible coin. Every breath, every birth, every evolution requires something weaker to be devoured."

Her voice grew more fervent more exalted.

"The cycle never ends. The frail suffer, crawl, and cling to illusions of purpose while the strong feast, conquer, and ascend."

Fisk's fists clenched, but he said nothing. Could say nothing.

"Only when life reaches its final form, its true apex, the pinnacle of evolution will the wheel stop turning. Only then will corruption cease... because there will be nothing left to corrupt."

She pressed her palm to the glass. A faint hiss bloomed as the surface warped and bowed outward under the heat of her psionic energy.

"His vision," Elektra whispered, the third eye pulsing with violent grace, "is the greatest power he has given me. Not flame, not fang, not flesh but certainty."

She stepped closer, voice low but resonant, like prophecy spoken from a place beyond time.

"The certainty that one day, this world... this galaxy... this universe will know his name. Will tremble at his presence. Will break beneath his gaze. And when the final veil is torn, when the illusion of freedom dies screaming, every soul will bow before him."

Her lips curled into a smile that dripped with reverence and hunger.

"Scourge, the Great Unifier. He who brings the end of weakness... and the beginning of perfection."

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