Chương 157: 70 - THE BERZERKER

Hobbs whipped out his razor wire, reacting to Cannon's sudden charge. It sliced off pieces of him, even got a finger, but whenever it attacked a vital part, it was like an invisible force pushed the wires away. Cannon leaped to the space just in front of Hobbs, shattering the ground beneath him. He began wildly swinging. Hobbs attempted to hold his ground, using whatever close combat techniques he had learned over his years of militia experience. But none of them prepared him for fighting a wild animal.

Cannon managed to barely graze his stomach, but even that keeled the man over like he had been hit by a car. Hobbs could see the damage being returned to the man under his ripped shirt, but Cannon moved as if that pain didn't exist. Because to that mind, it didn't. Hobbs quickly healed, retreating back into a wall. Cannon launched himself, punching the wall into a thousand pieces as Hobbs barely managed to duck out of his way.

But not only did the man destroy the wall, but it was like the entire house had been eviscerated. The force of the punch launched it over the city wall and miles into the ocean. And still the man seethed. Hobbs panicked, quickly finding a pane of shattered glass on the ground. He wanted to end this quickly. He brought it to his own throat. But that beast had already caught him by the wrist, crushing it as the blood from his neck barely trickled on the tip of the glass.

Cannon threw his entire body by the wrist as if it weighed the same as a paperclip. It felt like his entire arm was pulled out of its socket. That's because it was. When he crashed into a metal dumpster, his left arm went stiffly into it, breaking every bone inside. Cannon's arm reacted, as if something was actively twisting and making the bones pop. The arm limped over, clearly no longer usable by his body, but that didn't stop the attack. Hobbs' arm twisted itself back into place.

"The hell's the matter with you!? You're just killing yourself!" This strength he wasn't prepared to deal with. This beast he wasn't prepared to deal with. Despite their confidence, men always had a breaking point when it came to pain. But it seemed that once they reached it, no amount of pain would matter to them ever again. Cannon jumped to Hobbs, charging a punch that seemed to suck in the air around his fist. The rupture of the ground when he landed left the man no room to try to dodge.

The strength of the punch left him no room to block. Cannon screamed and drove his multiplied strength right through Hobbs' chest. It went in the front and out the back as the old man's eyes went wide and his breath left him, not instantly. He had just enough time to witness the soulless white eyes of the demon that took him. Rage looted Cannon Valkyr, seethed in anger, blood covering his face and arms, and his chest bursting from the hole he had put in it. But that pain didn't matter to him either. His strength.

His rage. It kept him alive longer than it would for any normal man. Though the hole was still there, so was the beast. He tossed Hobbs' body aside and continued to scream.

"Cannon? Cannon? The fight is over. Calm yourself!" German's words went unheard, even in the deep annals of the wrestler's mind. He continued thrashing at everything around him, destroying everything he could set his hands on. Dr. Sharon continued to heal Vienna, who had regained a steady breathing pace.

"Dr. Sharon. You need to get out of there now!" German shouted.

"Why? It looked like he won."

"He's not in his right mind. Take Vienna and go!" Dr. Sharon tried, but Cannon's errant attack on a nearby building sent a rain of debris and shrapnel right at the young doctor. A solid brick hit the doctor on the head, knocking him out cold. Vienna slowly came to at the sounds of rumbling and anger. Her wounds had disappeared, except for her missing trigger finger, and she saw the doctor on the ground. Hobbs was dead.

She worked quickly to figure out what was causing the threat and was shocked to her feet to see Cannon staring angrily at her. She could clearly see that there was no recognition in his face.

"What's happened to you?" If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He launched at her. She used her shadow loot to slip underneath him and out of his range of sight. She retreated behind the remains of a wall he destroyed. She found her gun in her pocket and made sure it was loaded, holding it awkwardly with her left hand.

"German?"

"I can't reach him. He's under the spell of rage loot."

"Why in the hell would he equip something that does that to him?"

"Hobbs is dead. You're alive. That's why." She paused.

"He… actually managed to do it?"

"But now we have to deal with this before he destroys this whole island."

"Understood. Aiming to terminate."

"Neutralize if possible. Don't forget he saved your life. Only terminate if there's no other option." She peeked around the corner at the hulking man as he continued to barge over every building in his path. He even started punching the ground, causing their half of the island to shake uncontrollably. She then looked at her gun.

"Saved my life… I suppose that's supposed to mean something." But Tyene had told her to make friends and not targets. And one didn't kill their friends. Cannon was blindly making his way to the center of the city, towards the statue. Vienna ran after him. She commanded her shadows to rise from the ground. They wrapped around his legs, pulling him back. He felt his motion stop and only got angrier. He began to stomp on the shadows like they were bugs.

His strength managed to dissipate them by disrupting the ground they used to travel. When he saw the shadows squirming, he started punching the ground, causing a massive fissure to appear.

"CANNON!" Vienna called. She was pointing her gun at his head.

"STOP THIS NOW, OR I WILL SHOOT!" She didn't know why she thought that would work. Perhaps she felt that somewhere in his mind, he wouldn't want to kill the woman he had just worked so hard to save. But she supposed it was just a pipe dream, a bond deep enough to pull a friend out of a deep trance. He marched towards her, blood furiously dripping down his shirt. She saw the hole in his chest and wondered how he was even still alive.

It was clear he wasn't moving at his full strength, but how much longer could he reasonably keep going how he was?

"Stop!" She continued to aim at his head. When he didn't stop, she quickly aimed down and shot at his foot. A foot could be healed with loot. No long-term damage. It slowed him down but only in the sense that the foot didn't work as well as the other. He was still walking right at her.

"You can't reason with him," German said.

"But I shouldn't kill him either?"

"If there is no other way, no one will hold it against you." She shot his other leg, watching the man seethe and writhe but continue towards her. She sighed, trying to think.

"I'm sorry." Suddenly the man dug his arms into the ground and pulled himself into a lunge right at her. She pulled the trigger, and the bullet went into his shoulder. But his momentum carried him to tackle her to the ground. He mounted her, thrashing at her head. She couldn't turn to shadow again with someone directly touching her. There was no choice. The only weapon she had was her gun. As he prepared to bring her fist down, with a strange terror in her eyes, she aimed her gun point blank at his head.

But for some reason, some force deep inside her chest made her hesitate. And when she did, Cannon stopped. The light returned to his eyes, and his eyes met hers. His nose was shattered, his shirt ripped by wire, gashes all over his body, and a hole in his chest. And the one idea that came to his mind to bring him back from all that rage…

"Hello, gorgeous."

"What?" Before she could process her confusion, Cannon fell over face-first into the ground next to her. She pushed him over to his back as the light quickly faded from his eyes.

"Wait. Hold on, wait. What did you mean by that?" She had had the "boys" talk with Tyene. And she remembered being told that when someone called you beautiful, that meant you were something special to them. She had never been special like that to anyone. Not a single one in her 36 years of life. But the man was only seconds from death. She shook him, prodding him.

"Hey… stop. Tell me what you meant!" She yelled. But there was no voice, just slow, mellowed breathing. She searched around.

"German! Where is Hobbs' body?" She got impatient, running back to the scene of the battle before he could answer.

"Ten paces to your left." She found it, and not long after, she was back at Cannon's body before his final breath could leave him. She put Hobbs regenerator loot on the back of his neck, painstakingly watching him. His body began to show the cracks of a 4th loot overload, but for now, the loot was keeping the man alive. The holes didn't disappear, but the blood stopped flowing, and the man's breathing became steady. Vienna was almost shocked to find the man looking at her, through the blood in his eyes.

"This might be worth a little something, don't you think?" he said weakly.

"Save your breath. The regenerator loot will stop you from overloading. Once we get the loot thief to take out one of your loots, we can heal you properly… then I want to ask you something." He turned his eyes at her.

"What?" She reddened.

"What exactly do you think… makes me gorgeous?" Cannon laughed, even though it pained him. He laughed. Vienna softly patted his head.

"Does this… help?"

"It'll do for now."