Garren appeared out of the wire, electricity flying all around him, zapping through the young man who was laying down the wire. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

He fell on the ground, dead, with his eyes wide and wisps of smoke trickling out of his mouth.

Garren barely gave him a glance. His own situation was much more harrowing. "Dammit! DAMMIT!" he shouted out loud, frightening the people around him. He didn’t notice that they were running away toward the outside of the city.

Those that could on foot anyway. The sky was packed with cars flying, and it was causing a jam.

Garren was lost in his own thought to notice any of this. He felt dazed, dehydrated, and every other thing a man could feel to keep him barely walking.

His torso hurt on the right where three bullets had gone through him when he arrived at the underground parking lot. He had only realized he was shot after he felt the pain.

He didn’t remember what he did next. Just that he threw lightning at the person that shot him. As much as he could afford to at least. The explosion had caused him to use up most of his Soul Energy, and he didn’t have any remaining.

Shooting that last lightning bolt and traveling through the wire had taken out most of his energy. He was starting to feel the aftereffects of being low on Soul Energy. It wasn’t usual for a Nova to feel this.

He trotted along, dragging his right foot more than walking with it so as to not put pressure on the right side of his body. The wound in his stomach wouldn’t heal with the Soul Energy he had and he didn’t want to hurt himself too badly right now.

He turned around to look back just once. How far had he come? Was he far enough away from the explosion?

The explosion was supposed to take out a few blocks from the plaza. Surely the kid had pulled the wire far enough, right? He had set the bomb to go off in 5 minutes after he had left.

Had 5 minutes passed? Had the bomb been stopped? He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell. He continued dragging his body away from the explosion radius.

Garren had long since ignored the buzzing sounds around him, the sounds of people crying, the sounds of a thousand different cars overhead, layered one on top of another, looking to escape.

So, when he heard the long droning sound come closer and closer, it wasn’t until it was barely close enough to him that he noticed it.

On instinct, Garren activated his power, using the last bits of his energy to enhance his senses and his speed. His head jerked back around to see what was making the sound, but it was slow. He could feel his head turning around, seeing people trying to run past him seem nearly frozen by his perspective.

The last bits of his energy hadn’t been enough to give him a speed boost and only improved his senses.

When he finally managed to turn around, he could see from the corner of his eyes what was making the sound.

Stanley was already right next to him with his fist pointing directly into Garren’s head.

Garren saw the fist moving very slowly, carrying with it a ripple in the air by either shockwave or parting air. He tried to move away but again, he had no speed.

Unfortunately for him, he did have his vision and senses. So, when the punch finally landed on his face, he sensed every single instance of it.

The punch landed right below his cheekbones, the fist laying flat on his teeth. He felt his cheek being touched, then pushed, the squished against his skull, and the punch continued.

Garren’s jaw felt the hit next, then it transferred to his teeth. At this point, pain enveloped his cheek, the speed of its arrival amplified by his technique. He wanted to let go, but he had no energy to stop it.

Sound finally flowed into Garren’s ears, a booming sound that broke his eardrums before he could hear anything else. Pain filled his ear at the same moment as well.

Crunching sounds flowed through his head next, and he could tell it was his skull cracking from the blow. Each crack came slowly, the sound filling his head. His jaw broke, and his teeth were next.

Garren could feel the individual tooth breaking apart from their root, each detachment sending a million sensations of pain that made him want to fall down and weep in pain.

He was in anguish, and the only thing he could do was feel it all. Feel all the pain.

Garren’s head turned sideways from the force. The shockwave of the attack on the face was finally reaching his eyes. The force passed through his left eye and it jerked so hard that it tore itself from the optic nerve.

He went blind in his left eye, followed by a sensation of pain that made him feel as though someone was stabbing a knife through his eyes. With so many different painful sensations, he struggled with it for what felt like hours.

The punch struck through his cheek, his jaw, his teeth, and his skull, and continued through on the other side like a metal bullet piercing a human skull.

Garren felt every single one of the sensations, each hit bringing tons and tons of pain back, making him wish it was over. In fact, he begged for it to be over. And yet it wasn’t over.

He had activated the skill with the last of his powers, and it would only end when the energy was all used up. By the time that happened, Stanley’s fist was already coming out from the side side of his face, blood, and teeth breaking off in front of the fist.

The last thing Garren saw was pieces of his face coming out from the other side while pain filled his entire being. And the relief only came when the shock of the attack reached his brain and it all went silent.

His mind went void and his death was there.