Mr. Chen's gaze passed over Ron's shoulder, looking towards the end of the street.
Nothing.
Only a pulled-down shutter, broken neon lights, and scorch marks still smoldering on the asphalt.
Mr. Chen's lips moved slightly. His chapped lips squeezed out a few indistinct Chinese syllables.
Lin Xiaowei.
Ron understood.
"She's safe." Mr. Chen's chest heaved once, and his eyes closed. He passed out.
Frank pulled a first-aid kit from the van and pressed gauze against the largest burn on Mr. Chen's chest. The gauze was soaked through with oozing tissue fluid within three seconds.
"He needs to get to the hospital. This isn't a normal burn—the tissue is continuing to die."
Frank's vertical pupils contracted slightly.
Ron dialed the communicator.
"Jessica, contact the burn unit at Ren'ai Hospital, using identity number three."
"Roger." Jack drove over. Frank lifted Mr. Chen into the back seat, the door slammed shut, and the tires screeched as they disappeared around the corner.
Mott Street fell silent again.
The blinds on the second-floor windows closed one by one.
Ron stood in the middle of the intersection.
The hem of his white cloak was stained with black residue from the melting asphalt.
Bucky stood to his right and slightly behind, his silver-white metal left arm hanging at his side.
"That Parker Robbins you mentioned."
Bucky's Adam's apple bobbed.
"How many of those puppets does he have?"
"Twenty to twenty-five."
Bucky didn't ask further. He glanced down at his right palm. Dark gray gravitational fluctuations flickered between the lines.
Less than six hours after consuming the Heavy Fruit.
With each step he took, his boots left half-inch-deep dents in the asphalt, requiring him to consciously control the gravity on his feet.
Ron turned.
"Not going back tonight."
Bucky looked up.
"Let's head downtown first. Parker has a medium-sized outpost in Lower Manhattan. The abandoned movie theater." Ron tapped his communicator with his right index finger.
"Frank, Chinatown is your responsibility. Jack, come back and provide backup after you've delivered the goods."
"Roger." Ron looked at Bucky.
"Your first real combat." Bucky stretched the shoulder joint of his metal left arm, the servo motor humming deeply.
"Seventy years. Plenty of real combat experience."
"What's lacking is fighting with the weapon of your own choosing." Bucky paused for a moment.
Then he followed Ron.
— Lower Manhattan. Three blocks south of Houston Street.
The abandoned "Silver Star Movie Theater" crouched between two apartment buildings.
Half of the neon tube on the sign was broken, the remaining letters unable to spell out the complete name.
The main entrance was welded shut with iron plates. Two industrial-grade padlocks secured the side fire escape.
Ron and Bucky stood on the roof of the opposite building.
Ron closed his eyes.
Observation Haki silently enveloped the entire building.
Six life signs.
Extremely weak. A breathing rate of four times per minute, heartbeats so faint they were almost undetectable.
Frank was right—somewhere between alive and dead.
Interference signals continuously emanated from inside the movie theater. Every three seconds, a sulfurous pulse exploded, reducing the accuracy of the Observation Haki to below 40%.
At least two of the six signals were false.
Ron opened his eyes.
"Six puppets. Observation Haki is being interfered with, half real and half fake." Buggy crouched on the edge of the rooftop, holding up three fingers.
Three questions.
"The puppets' attack method?"
"Fiendish fire. Anything burned disintegrates at the molecular level. Frank's Armament Haki barely blocked one."
One finger lowered.
"Weakness?"
"They heal themselves if physically penetrated. But the mental driving core is unknown. Tonight's goal is to figure that out."
The second finger lowered.
"My mission?"
"Gravity field. Nail them to the ground. I'll burn them." All three fingers retracted.
Bucky stood up.
Ron jumped from the rooftop.
His boots landed silently on the metal plate of the fire escape. Armament Haki enveloped his entire body, absorbing all the impact.
Bucky followed closely behind.
His metal left arm gripped the crossbar of the fire escape, and he slid down the metal frame to the ground floor.
Ron's right palm pressed against the welded metal plate of the side door.
Lava seeped from the base of his palm. Orange-red, 1200 degrees Celsius.
The metal plate began to glow red from the center, softened, and curled outwards.
Ten seconds.
A hole the size of a human figure burned out.
Ron ducked inside, Bucky following.
The movie theater's screening room.
The seats had long been removed. Construction debris and moldy popcorn bags were scattered on the concrete floor.
The screen was still hanging, but a two-meter-long tear had appeared in the middle.
The space behind the screen had been altered.
Six figures in black hoodies stood there.
Motionless.
The hoods were pulled down below their brow bones. Hands hung at their sides. Knees didn't bend.
A strong smell of burning sulfur filled the air.
Ron's Observation Haki activated again.
The six signals flickered amidst the interference pulses.
The pulses exploded every three seconds, distorting the signals completely.
"Forty percent accuracy," Ron whispered.
Bucky didn't speak.
He raised his right hand.
A dark gray gravitational wave erupted from his palm, sweeping across the entire screening room along the floor.
Twenty times gravity.
The bodies of the six puppets simultaneously sank thirty centimeters.
Their knees finally bent—not voluntarily, but forcibly bent by twenty times gravity.
The hoodie fabric clung to their bodies, each thread visibly twisted by gravity.
The nearest puppet opened its mouth.
Its jaw dislocated and slid downwards. From its dark cavity, murky green flames surged forth.
The instant the flames erupted, twenty times the force of gravity directly halted their trajectory.
The flames didn't fly straight towards Ron.
They curved downwards, slamming into the ground and burning a shallow, grayish-white crater in the concrete.
The second puppet's mouth opened as well. The third. The fourth.
Four murky green tongues of fire erupted simultaneously—all drawn downwards by gravity, crashing into the ground.
None of them struck Ron or Bucky's heads.
Ron charged in.
Full magma activation. 1200 degrees Celsius. A crimson light engulfed his arms and torso.
His right fist smashed through the first puppet's chest.
A fist pierced through the hoodie's fabric, sinking in.
No blood. No bone.
The fist struck dry, papyrus-like tissue. A hollow shell.
But the shell didn't shatter immediately.
A dark red energy membrane enveloped the puppet's inner walls. A protective layer formed by evil fire. Magma hissed on the surface of the protective membrane, the temperature dropping by two hundred degrees Celsius in the struggle.
Slower than burning a living person.
Ron increased the pressure.
Five hundred degrees Celsius.
The protective membrane cracked under the sustained high temperature. The cracks spread.
Two seconds.
The protective membrane burned through.
The puppet began to carbonize from Ron's fist, spreading to his limbs. Within a second, the entire body turned into a pile of grayish-white powder, collapsing to the ground.
Ron didn't stop.
The second.
The third.
The fourth.
Each puppet required two seconds to burn through the protective membrane and one second to carbonize the body.
Bucky's right hand remained raised.
A stable twenty-fold gravity field covered him.
His breathing began to grow heavy. The veins in his temples bulged.
The fortieth second.
The sixth puppet turned to ash.
Bucky lowered his hand. The gravity field dissipated.
His knees buckled slightly, then straightened again.
His right fingertips trembled.
"What's the limit?" Ron withdrew his magma form and turned to look at him.
Bucky took two breaths.
"Twenty times, one hundred and twenty seconds."
He straightened his right arm and flexed his wrist.
"Ten times, five minutes." The metal left arm picked up a piece of rubble from the ground and unconsciously crushed it.
"Five times, unlimited."
Ron nodded.
He crouched down and shoveled a fragment that wasn't completely burned from the ashes of the third puppet.
A small piece of finger bone.
The surface of the finger bone was covered with a layer of dark red magic runes. The patterns still glowed faintly in the ashes, then went out completely after three seconds.
The system panel popped up.
[Core component of the Evil Fire Puppet—a fragment of the Nisianti Demon Contract.]
[Each puppet requires one fragment to operate. The number of fragments is limited.]
[Estimated number of contract fragments currently held by the boss, Parker Robbins: 20-25.]
[Fragments cannot be recovered after each puppet is destroyed. The boss's "army" is a consumable.] Consumable.
Ron crushed the finger bone fragment, powder falling from between his fingers.
Six puppets, Parker's inventory is down by six fragments. Fourteen to nineteen fragments remain.
But Parker's own invisibility is the real problem.
In invisibility, vision, thermal imaging, and electromagnetic waves are all ineffective. Observation Haki can locate through life force, but the interference pulses of the Evil Fire reduce the accuracy to below 40%.
Fighting the puppets is a war of attrition. Fighting Parker himself is a decapitation strike.
The communicator vibrated. Frank's channel. "There's a sulfurous smell in the alley on East Third Street in Chinatown. It's not coming from the ruins." Frank's nasal flaring came through the earpiece.
"It's new. Someone just passed by." Ron pressed the communication button.
"Jessica." Jessica's channel connected.
"I'm two hundred meters away. The Soul-Soul Fruit is scanning."
Three seconds.
"Found it." Jessica's voice was low.
"Three soul signals. Two are puppets. The third—a living person. Heart rate 110, adrenaline surging."
She paused for a beat.
"He's right there. Invisible, watching Chinatown. Watching the mess he's made." Parker Robbins.
Ron stood amidst the ashes of the abandoned movie theater, fragments of finger bones still lingering in his right hand.
"Mark the location. Don't alert him."
"I know." Jessica cut off the channel.
Baba stood behind Ron, his silver-white metal arm reflecting the remaining emergency lights in the theater.
"Not going after him?"
"Not going after him." Ron brushed off the powder, took out his phone, and pulled up a map of Manhattan.
"He still has at least three or four strongholds in Manhattan. We only took one down tonight. He'll retreat, he'll move on." Ron put his phone back in his pocket.
"Three days. Find out the locations of all his strongholds." He turned and walked towards the side door of the movie theater.
"Then take them all at once." Bucky followed.
He stopped at the side door.
His right palm flipped over, the dark gray gravitational fluctuations in his palm still pulsating slightly.
Forty seconds. Six puppets.
Bucky withdrew his palm and stepped out of the side door.
In the direction of Chinatown, Frank crouched behind a fire hydrant at the entrance of East Third Street.
His vertical pupils were fixed on the depths of the alley.
The smell of sulfur was fading.
Parker Robbins was gone.
Frank pressed the communicator.
"The smell is dissipating. He's gone." Ron's reply was only two words.
"Write it down." Frank pulled a pencil and a crumpled piece of paper from his tactical vest and drew an arrow on the paper, stretching from East Third Street towards Canal Street.
Escape route.
Three days later, this line will become a noose.
— Midtown Manhattan. Fifth Avenue.
Parker Robbins materialized out of thin air and sat back behind Kingpin's desk.
The lining of his crimson cloak gleamed with a dark purple sheen, a degree brighter than three hours ago.
He picked up the flip phone on the desk.
No missed calls.
Parker tossed the phone back onto the desk.
He tapped twice on the edge of the desk with his right index finger.
The sensory connection between the six puppets at the movie theater—broken.
All of them. Simultaneously.
The feedback signals from the six contract fragments had all disappeared ten minutes ago.
Parker chewed on a match, his light gray eyes fixed on the construction hoardings of the Fisk Building in the distance.
Someone had come knocking.
And it burned even cleaner than he had.
Parker pulled the stack of photographs Vito had taken from the drawer.
The top one—the main entrance to the New York Supreme Court, a man in a dark suit walking down the steps.
Parker pressed his thumb against the man's face in the photograph.
"Your Honor." A match spun between his teeth.
"You struck first." He turned the photograph over and scratched a word on the back with his fingernail.
A very fine scorch mark.
A dark green, malevolent flame flickered in the stroke, then went out.
Parker shoved the photograph back into the drawer, picked up his phone, and dialed a number.
"Ivan. Move all the Brighton Beach shipment to the backup warehouse. Tonight."
"What's wrong?" Parker stood up and walked to the French windows.
His cloak unfurled silently behind him, dark purple energy patterns flowing twice as fast as during the day.
"Someone's counting my teeth."