The night air over Carmine City crackled with tension as Penelope and Frost faced off in the middle of a wide, secluded commercial street. The towering, dark corporate buildings on either side formed a concrete canyon, their neon signs reflecting off the damp, rain-slicked asphalt.

Frost stood with her hands in her jacket pockets, her breath forming thick, white clouds in the sudden, unnatural chill she was radiating. She looked across the street at the elegant, aristocratic woman in the black trench coat, a cold sneer twisting her features.

"You know, I used to look up to you and your sister once," Frost called out, her voice echoing off the glass facades, "The legendary Isley sisters. Powerful and untouchable. You were the reason I wanted to join the Nova force."

Penelope didn't even shift her stance. She simply tilted her head, looking down her nose with regal, condescending grace. "Oh, really? What changed?"

"I grew up," Frost spat. Then she pulled her hands from her pockets, her eyes flashing with a blinding, icy blue light. The moisture in the atmosphere instantly crystallized around her forearms, forming massive, jagged, hyper-dense gauntlets of solid ice.

She slammed her fists together, generating a shockwave of freezing air, and charged.

Penelope didn't flinch. A terrifying, predatory smirk curled on her lips. "It's been far too long since I've had a proper battle," she murmured under her breath, her eyes igniting like twin suns. "I am going to enjoy this."

She raised her hands, and the air around her instantly warped from the sheer, blistering heat. Flames erupted around her fists, turning the asphalt beneath her heels to bubbling slag.

Penelope charged to meet Frost.

They collided in the center of the street. The impact of the blazing, sun-hot fist against the absolute-zero ice gauntlet triggered a catastrophic thermodynamic explosion.

Crack—BOOM!!

A massive, blinding shockwave of violently expanding steam, frost, and embers blasted outward, shattering every window on the block and turning the street into a blinding vortex of fire and ice.

Meanwhile,

A few blocks away, inside the claustrophobic, brick-lined alley, thirty-one armed Red Skull gangsters charged at Jayden with a unified, bloodthirsty roar. Plasma machetes buzzed, and spiked bats swung through the air.

Jayden wasn't even fazed. He simply smirked behind his mask. He thrust his hands forward, channeling a concentrated burst of telekinetic force. Then he released it in both sides of the alley.

BOOM.

The burst went outward in both directions, the invisible force slamming into the vanguard at both ends of the alley simultaneously. The front row of men was violently ripped off their feet, flying backward into the ranks behind them. Bodies crashed together in a tangled mess of leather and steel, clearing a thirty-foot radius around Jayden in an instant.

But none of them were unconscious yet. Just mildly injured.

Jayden let out a deep breath. He needed to end the fight quickly and get to Penelope and help her take down Frost.

He dropped his center of gravity into a sprinter's stance and tapped into his speed.

The world instantly slowed to a halt.

The shouts of the men stretched into deep, distorted, slow-motion groans. A thrown plasma blade crawled through the air like a lethargic insect. The rain dripping from a fire escape froze mid-fall.

Jayden waltzed casually through the frozen, suspended rain, moving into the crowd. He had massacred twenty D-Rank Earth Smashers in seconds… a gang of weak, Level 20 humans was child's play.

Now he wasn't aiming to kill, but he wasn't going to be gentle, either.

He sidestepped a man swinging a bat. With casual precision, Jayden delivered a palm strike to the man's chin, the sheer kinetic force snapping his head back and rendering him instantly unconscious.

He blurred to the next two men. One was mid-lunge with a knife. Jayden grabbed the man's wrist, twisted it painfully until the bone cracked, and used the man's own arm to clothesline his buddy. Before the first man could even register the pain, Jayden drove a perfectly aimed elbow into his solar plexus, collapsing his lungs.

Just then, one of the men raised a gun and began firing it. Jayden registered and evaded the shots flawlessly. At the speed he was moving, the man's targeting was academic, the shots going into the alley wall at the position he'd occupied a third of a second ago.

Jayden appeared at the man's side, took the wrist of the gun hand and applied enough pressure to open the man's grip and let the weapon clatter to the ground. Then he delivered a knee to the man's ribs followed by an elbow that connected with the back of his neck. The man went down without a sound.

Jayden vanished again, appearing directly behind a massive thug winding up a punch. A sharp, horizontal chop to the vagus nerve in the man's neck dropped him like a sack of bricks.

Jayden didn't stop there. He became a phantom. He weaved through the tight cluster of bodies, delivering a ruthless, surgical flurry of high-speed strikes. Jab to the floating ribs. Sweep the knee. Uppercut to the jaw. He struck pressure points and joints with devastating accuracy. Bones cracked, jaws dislocated, and ribs splintered. To Jayden, it was a methodical, unhurried dance. To the gangsters, it was invisible, inescapable agony. He didn't even need his intangibility. His raw strength combined with his supersonic agility was an insurmountable force of nature.

For two full, agonizing minutes, the alley became a meat grinder.

When Jayden finally stopped, real-time snapped back into existence.

The alley was suddenly filled with the sickening chorus of groans, whimpers, and the thud of thirty unconscious or severely crippled men hitting the pavement simultaneously.

At the far end of the alley, the burly leader stood completely alone. His jaw hung open, his eyes wide with absolute, paralyzed horror as he looked at his entire crew lying broken on the wet asphalt.

Jayden stood calmly in the center of the carnage. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck, the joints popping loudly. He looked at the leader, his golden eyes glowing through the mask.

"Ready when you are," Jayden taunted. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

The shock on the leader's face melted into pure, desperate rage. "You're gonna pay for this, you freak!" he roared.

Then he slammed his bare hands into the brick walls of the alley. His ability flared to life. The brick, concrete, and earth splintered and peeled away, magnetically coating his forearms and fists until he wore massive, jagged gauntlets of solid rock.

But before the man could charge…

BOOOOOM!!

A deafening explosion ripped through the night air a few streets over, followed by a towering pillar of orange flame illuminating the skyline.

It was Penelope and Frost.

Jayden frowned. The fight was escalating.

"Come on," he beckoned impatiently to the burly man. "Let's wrap this up."