"Keep watching."
Nick Fury's one good eye didn't blink as the footage played on. Maria Hill stood beside him, remote in hand, fast-forwarding the grainy surveillance feed of the Harlem incident.
The screen showed the Savage Serpents' boss—angry, shouting. Opposite him stood the same youth from earlier, calm and cocky. Lucian Black.
Hill didn't need to interpret the exact words. Fury could guess: "What the hell did you do?!"
Lucian's lips moved slightly.
"Illusion."
Just one word, but it changed everything.
Fury straightened in his chair. "Did he just say 'illusion'?"
Hill nodded. "That's what I got too."
Fury's face was unreadable, but his breathing had changed—slower, deeper, calculating. "That's not possible. You can fool a person's eyes, sure. But cameras? Digital sensors?"
Hill crossed her arms. "That's the problem. Either he's bluffing, or we're facing something entirely new—something that breaks every rule we know about perception and data capture."
The video kept playing. Lucian didn't move, but one by one, Savage Serpent gangsters dropped their weapons. One even dropped to his knees. No visible threat. No gunfire.
Just fear.
"Three possibilities," Hill began, keeping her voice steady. "One: Lucian lied—this isn't an illusion. Two: the illusion doesn't affect cameras but directly manipulates the viewer's perception. Three…"
She hesitated.
Fury finished for her, voice low: "Three, his illusion affects reality so deeply, even machines see it."
Hill gave a short nod. "If he's our enemy, long-range elimination might be our only shot."
Fury's eyes narrowed. "I want a psych profile. Micro-expressions, eye movements, hand gestures—build me a behavioral map. And give me everything you have on the rest of them."
Hill hesitated. "That's the other thing. There's nothing. No names. No records. It's like they don't exist. Same with Lucian. Same with Tsunayoshi Sawada."
"No way," Fury muttered. "Even ghosts leave footprints."
"Not this time. Not even a fingerprint. It's like they dropped into existence yesterday."
Fury leaned back in his chair, lips pressed tight. "We've seen this before. The ghosts. No history, no data trail."
Hill raised an eyebrow. "You think it's connected?"
"It has to be. I've already got people probing that angle. For now, we keep our eyes open. Let's see what else they can do."
The footage continued.
The Savage Serpents had been tamed, but the Vongola didn't stop there. A full hour later, another gang appeared—six hundred strong. Guns, vehicles, body armor.
Fury leaned in.
A silver-haired youth in a tailored suit stepped forward from the Vongola ranks. One of Tsuna's core guardians. The footage had no audio, but it was clear—he was ready to fight.
But then, unexpectedly, a different figure emerged from the Vongola ranks. Third row. Mid-forties, grizzled, eyes like a war dog. Dual pistols at his hips.
"Not one of the frontliners," Fury murmured. "Is he a wild card?"
The man—unnamed in their files—grinned, ignored the silver-haired youth's words, and stepped forward. Slowly. Casually.
"Third row defying second row. No reaction from the boss. They're not held together by rank or fear," Hill noted. "There's loyalty. Brotherhood."
Then came the moment that changed everything.
Lucian Black stepped forward, trident in hand, his right eye glowing with an ethereal violet flame. In that instant, numbers flickered across his iris—6, then 1.
All the Vongola members, except the grizzled gunman, faded into mist.
"That's not a hologram," Fury said. "That's something else."
"He's using something… ancient," Hill whispered. "Or alien."
The opposing gang froze. Their numbers, their firepower—it all meant nothing when the enemy became ghosts.
Then, chaos.
The gunman roared with laughter, raised his twin pistols—each burning with orange flame—and opened fire. The bullets weren't bullets. They were fire incarnate, streaking like comets, exploding on contact.
"That's a flamethrower in a handgun," Fury muttered. "No—worse."
"Pyrokinetic ammunition? A fusion of tech and supernatural fire?"
"That's military-grade suppression… coming from one man."
As enemies fell and the Vongola stood untouched, Fury made his call.
"We're not dealing with a gang. We're dealing with a new class of threat. A paramilitary syndicate with supernatural assets. Get me every available analyst. Start building countermeasures."
Hill saluted and turned to leave.
Behind her, Fury stared at the screen—the laughing gunman, the trident wielder, and at the center of it all, the calm young boss.
"What the hell are you, Vongola...?"