Discovering the real world

I must warn you that starting with this chapter you may come across some characters you know from other movies but I assure they're not exactly the same. Yes, they may look the same and have the same names but in my story they are totally different persons (if you didn't understand too much from my explanation, feel free to e-mail me and ask me whatever you want).

PART 8: "Doing one's duty"

The following night, Bullseye arrived on his new motorcycle (the one he stole from the military compound in order to get away) at the address Fisk had given him. It was almost midnight and the neighborhood he was in seemed to be deserted. He stopped in front of a side alley and continued on foot. After passing through some narrow pathways between the blocks he finally reached the place that matched the description he had been given.

A simple black metal door with a strange red neon sign above it indicated the entrance to what seemed to be an ordinary nightclub. Stepping inside, Bullseye was almost deafened by the loud techno beets and almost blinded by the strong spotlights. He looked around but couldn't see anything except a huge crowd of people dancing frenetically.

Trying to make his way through the crowd he noticed that people were looking at him strangely and then exchanging glances and devilish smiles between them. In fact, they had been starring at him ever since he opened the door. It was like every one of them sensed his presence and disapproved his invading their personal space.

Walking on, and constantly looking to his left and right he noticed in a distant corner of the club a woman looking at him. This arose his curiosity because she wasn't like the others; she had a serious expression on her face and looked like she was supervising him. Suddenly, he was distracted for a moment by some people that bumped into him while dancing. When he looked back, the woman was no longer there. He hardly managed to reach the other end of the club, the people acting as if they wanted to pull him in their circle.

He stood there, examining the place, hoping to spot his target, some Chinese drug dealer Fisk wanted dead. Suddenly, his eyes fixed upon a metal staircase that probably led to an upper floor. He approached it, walking alongside the wall as not to mingle with the dancing crowd again and saw that there was a tall, massive guy guarding it and stopping people from going up.

Bullseye glanced at him from time to time, from where he was standing, planning his move. Finally, seeing the man making a few steps away from the staircase and turning his head in another direction, Bullseye sprang from his place and started running alongside the wall, towards the staircase. In his way there was a table -that nobody was sitting at- and Bullseye jumped on it and from there he made a big leap towards the staircase. Unfortunately, the guard heard him, but Bullseye was prepared for him. Just as he was about to land he turned in mid air and took with his left hand a shuriken from his belt, which he threw at the man's neck.

He landed half way up the staircase and kept his left arm stretched out for a couple of seconds, waiting, with his usual sadistic expression and mocking smirk, to see his victory. But the big man didn't collapse; the impact of the shuriken impaling into his neck only made him take a few steps back and slightly lean his head backwards. To Bullseye's confusion, the man fixed him with his gaze and with an angry growl he removed the shuriken from his neck and simply broke it in two between two fingers of his right hand. Overwhelmed by fury, Bullseye wanted to throw more shurikens at him but some of the people who were dancing began looking strangely at him. Not wanting to attract too much attention on him, he quickly turned and ran up the stairs, then along the corridor that led from the staircase.

Upstairs, Bullseye encountered two more guards in front of an office door. They heard him approach, but Bullseye was too fast for them. Barely had they turned and pointed their guns at him when four shurikens impaled in their forehead and neck (two for each guard -one in the forehead, one in the neck). Unfortunately, Bullseye's weapons had the same effect on them as they had on the guard downstairs; but still, it distracted their attention for a short while and also made them drop their guns.

Bullseye acted with light-speed, as always, and before the guards could realize what had hit them, he took from the floor the gun of one of the guards and shot several bullets directly into their hearts. He had had a hunch ever since he saw that his shuriken had no effect on that big guard and his supposition was confirmed when the flesh and skeletons of the two guards turned into ashes before his eyes -they were vampires. Right after he finished off the second guard, Bullseye turned and shot the big guard from downstairs, that had followed him. Hr turned into dust as well.

Hearing voices from behind the door of the office in front of which the two bodyguards had been standing, Bullseye flipped to his right, grabbed the second gun from the floor, turned rapidly and shot the four men that came out. Their bodies instantly turned into dust. He rushed immediately into the office and fired the last bullets of the two guns he acquired towards a man who was just preparing to get out through one of the windows behind his desk. Bullseye recognized the man to be Li Sang, the person he had been hired to eliminate. Unfortunately, the man moved too quickly and only some bullets hit him in the stomach and in his right leg.

"I missed .. again." Bullseye muttered angrily just as the man jumped out of the window. His first and only reaction was to dispose of the empty guns and go after the man, but when almost reaching the desk, he heard a noise behind him. Hardly had he turned when a vampire woman threw herself at him, like a mad animal, with her eyes of a bloody red color and her mouth wide opened, revealing her two long, sharp canines. But Bullseye acted quickly. First of all, he grabbed her by the neck with his left hand, preventing her from sinking her teeth into his neck and used his right one to punch her hard in the face, making her dizzy for a moment. Secondly, he kicked her in the stomach, smashing her onto the floor, after which he grabbed three pencils he had seen on the desk and threw all of them at the same time, making them impale into her heart like a stake. The trick worked and the vampire turned into dust. Without loosing anymore time, Bullseye rushed through the window after his target. Vampires or no vampires, his mission was to eliminate him.

After Bullseye left, out of a dark corner of the office emerged a small, dark figure. It was a woman of about 30 years and no more than 5.3 ft. tall. Her skin was of a light brown color and her raven hair was gathered in several small loops tighten with thin red strings. She wore a pair of dark sunglasses, a pair of leather pants and a long leather coat of a reddish-brown color with the pattern of a snake's skin. She also wore a pair of boots and gloves of the same color.

She was the same woman Bullseye spotted earlier among the crowd and again she seemed to be supervissing his every move. She stepped out of the shadow and walked to the window. She took out a cell phone and dialed a number.

"It's me," she said when her call was answered.

"Something wrong?" a woman's voice asked from the other side.

"So far everything seems to go very well, although there occurred some things we did not planned. But .. "

All that was heard afterwards was the sound of someone being strangulated.

"Niobe? .. Niobe?" the woman at the other end asked preoccupied.

"What's wrong Lara?"

"Something happened to Niobe," Lara informed Chris Mahin, the man with whom she had been sharing a table for about two hours at a club in town. He was also a colonel in the WLA organization and they had been good friends for years.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked seeing Lara gathering all her things in a hurry.

"No. you stay here and take advantage of your night off. I can manage."

"But this was suppose to be your night off as well."

"You know I never get to enjoy them Chris. So you enjoy yourself for me too, OK?" she shouted as she barely made her way through the crowd, to the exit.

15 minutes later, after driving at maximum speed through the city, Lara reached the place where Bullseye had parked his motorcycle. As soon as she got out of the car she saw Niobe approaching.

"Are you allright? What happened?"

"The ussual; vampire trouble. Don't worry, I'm fine but I think your friend isn't. He went after Li Sang and the damn bastard probably lured him in that abandoned warehouse near the port."

"But that's one of the biggest vampire 'nests' in this part of the city."

"Exactly."

"Get in. We must get there as soon as possible."

"No, I'll take the moto. You never know when it may come in handy."

Saying this, Niobe hopped on Bullseye's stollen motorcycle and followed Lara's car.

Meanwhile, Bullseye had followed Li Sang to the warehouse, just like Niobe suspected. However, he was not as stupid as the vampire thought he was so he didn't hury to enter the building through the same door he saw Sang entering. Instead, he went first to look around for things he could use as weapons to fight the vampires he knew he would find inside (He remebered some of the instructions from his trip to the WLA headquarters: where you see one vampire there are probably a lot of vampires). Fortunate for him, he found a lot of small, sharp metal or wooden bars that he could use as stakes to kill the vampires.

After getting the necessary suplies, Bullseye climbed up an old rusty ladder and got to the first floor of the wearhouse through a window whose glass had been broken. He entered a room that probably used to be an office but bow most of the furniture was destoyed and dust, as well as spider webs covered every inch of the place.

Bullseye walked carefully -as not to make any noise- to the door that was half opened and slid out through the opening, struggling not to touch it. All this time , he was paying full attention to every detail and sound as not to be taken by surprise by any vampire. Exiting the office he found himself in some sort of balcony that stretched from one end to the other of that side of the warehouse.

He approached the banister and looked down. There he saw a group of vampires waiting in front of the door Sang had used to get in. Most of them had fire arms while the others were holding craw bars or clubs. At first Bullseye wanted to jump down in front of them to kill the ones who had guns with the weapons he had acquired and then easily deal with the remaining ones. But just then, he noticed that in the opposite side of the wearhouse there was a small cabin, with big glass windows -probably a control room- and inside as well as around it there was another large number of armed vampires. If he were to jump, down he would have found himself surrounded my more than a hundred vampires and his weapons and perfect aim wouldn't really do him any good. Bullseye thought that he needed some sort of diversion; if only there was a way to take out at once all the vampires from the control cabin.

Just then, both Bullseye's and the vampires' attention was drawn by the sound of a motorcycle engine that, strangely, was coming from somewhere near the ceilling. And suddenly, the motorcycle that caused the noise flew inside through a window situated at about 30 ft. from the ground on the wall opposite to wear the control cabin was. It flew across the warehouse and then fell down and smashed onto the control cabin , causing a big explossion that burned all the vampires inside and most of the ones standing around it.

Niobe, the one who had been riding the motorcycle pushed herself backwards just as it began falling, drew out her two black pistols and fired a couple of shots at the group of vampires standing in front of the door, taking a few of them out. She did this while she was falling upside down, facing the side of the warehouse through which she had come in. When she almost reached the ground she flipped and landed in a crouched possition, this time facing the explosion. But she quickly turned and unloaded the last bullets of her two pistols in some of the vampires behind her.

All this time Bullseye had been watching the whole scene quite intrigued but what he found curious was that the bullets that the vampires were fireing at the girl seemed to pass right through her. What amazed him the most however was that, when her pistols ran out of amunition she started running towards a vampire who was shooting directly at her -this time Bullseye clearly saw how the bullets went through her as if she wasn't even there and hit the vampires that were behind her-. When she was in fron of the vampire she snatched the gun from his hands and simply ran through his body, as well as through the bodies of others behind him -as if they were mere holograms-. When she reached the door, she turned and shot as many vampires as she could, at the same time kicking and punching those who managed to get close to her.

Bullseye just stood there for a while, watching the fight. He understood she was probably a mutant but still this matter was new to him and he found it a little difficult to except these people, especially when each of them seemed to posses a stranger power than the other.

Finnaly, seeing his target all alone in a distant corner, trying to find a way to escape, Bullseye decided to join in. He jumped down from where he had been standing, throwing a couple of stakes at some vampires who had spoted him. He then threw one stake at Sang but the vampire caught it and threw it back. Bullseye caught it full with anger and wanted to throw it again along with two more but he was surrounded by a group af vampires and had to fight them off.

Sang reached an opened door, intending to escape but a hand grabed him by the neck juts as he was about to step out.

"There is no escape for you this time, Sang," Lara told him in his nattive language while lifting him off th ground. During this, she raised her right arm to show him how 5 one foot long adamantium claws came out of each of her fingers. Nontheless, this seemed to amuse Sang.

"So you're the one they call Lady Deathstryke," he rseponded in the same language, the words barely escaping his throat due to her choking grip on his neck. "I doubt you'll deliver any deadly strikes from now on."

A smirk appeared on his face and although he was looking straight into her eyes she felt that a couple of vampires were creeping up behind her. She ignored them, thinking she could move quick enough to stab Sang in the heart with her claws, but the vampires moved faster than she did and one of them manged to take her by surprise. He grabbed her by her right wrist and pulled her backwards, allowing Sang to push aside the hand that was squeezing his neck and escape.

Another 5 one foot long adamantium claws came out of the fingers of her other hand and Lara tried to stab with them the vampire who had grabbed her right hand but another one grabbed her left hand as well. Having both hands immobilized, Lara had only onething left to do: teleport herself behind her two captors. As soon as she was there she stabbed the two of them in the back and then quickly turned to fight the other vampires behind her.

More and more vampires seemed to appear out of nowhere around her and Lara could only use her claws and her teleportation power to fight them off. She could have performed more complex moves and kill all of them faster and easier if only she had had the proper outfit. She didn't thought things would get so complicated and having to go after Niobe took her by surprise so she didn't have time to go to her apartment and put on the outfit she ussually wore when going after vampires. She arrived at the warehouse dressed in a tight blouse and skirt, that didn't quite give her the opportunity to move too much. She also wore a pair of high-heeled boots and an ankle-long coat with a fur collar. All these were made of black leather.

The vampires hovering about her made her dizy, especially because she tried to use her teleporting power to get away from them but everytime she found herself still surrounded by them. Finnaly, after teleporting herself one last time she found herself in front of a vampire that hit her with a wooden club before she could react. The club broke in two when the vampire smashed it into her adamantium skull. Nevertheless, this didn't took her down as Lara was used to such things but it distracted her attention and it also stopped her from using her power long enough for a vampire to grab her by ther shoulders from behind and sank his teeth into her neck. Another one came in front of her, grabbed her by the wrists so she couldn't stab annyone with her claws and bit the left side of her neck. Lara tried to fight or use her power but the vampire bite was like some sort of poison that prevented her from thinking right and that almost made her faint. Seeing this, Bullseye quickly finished off the vampires he was fighting at the moment and went to save her. Niobe joined him as well and shortly afterwards they had destroyed most of the vampires, some of them managing to run away.

When the fight was over, Bullseye went to see Lara, who was lying on the floor where Niobe had put her. As he approached, she slowly began to stand up, keeping her head slightly bent forward, her hair falling down over her face, and rubbing her forehead with her right hand, as if she had a terrible headache. He put his arm around her back and helped her get up.

"You all right baby? He asked concerned -probably for the first time in his life.

She didn't answer. She was still rubbing her forehead, still dizzy. He tried to lighten the mood a bit.

"Some friend ya got there; running off, leaving you like this."

"You should thank her. She is doing what you were not capable of doing," she responded on an irritated tone, pushing his hand aside.

"What?'

"Your mission was to eliminate Li Sang but once again you failed. It seems you are developing a real habit out of it."

Her ironical answer filled him with anger and made him grab her left arm tightly and pull her roughly towards him.

"Now you listen here . sweetheart, I didn't fail because I chose to give up on my money and screw up my reputation, something that I would have never done before, just to save your ass. So you should be a little grateful, don't ya think?"

"Does it look to you like I need to be saved? Lara lifted her chin and slightly shook her head so that her hair would fall on her back and reveal her neck, on which there were absolutely no signs of vampire bites. Sensing that his grip on her arm loosened a bit she jerked away from him.

"This whole vampire phenomenon is like a virus, like AIDS for example, and my body can cure it as well as it can cure any other disease. Unfortunately, for ordinary people there is no cure."

She started to walk towards the door Sang used to escape.

"But do not worry about your money or your reputation; all this was only a test."

"A test"? Bullseye asked while following her.

"Yes. I told Fisk to give you this assignment so I can see how well you can manage yourself."

"And what the bloody hell made you think that just because they're vampires I can't kill them as easy as I kill anyone else?"

"I do not have to discuss my decisions with you."

Before Bullseye could think of a good response they were already outside, where Niobe was waiting.

"Sang got away again, didn't he?"

"Unfortunately. I called a team to take care of the remaining vampires inside. You should go home and rest. It's almost two o'clock in the morning."

"Yes, I guess I will do that. By the way, Bullseye, this is Captain Niobe."

"You did some impressive moves back there," he said while the two of them were shaking hands.

"Thanks. Being a mutant helps a lot. Well, I better go inside and wait for the guys. I'll see you tomorrow Lara."

"Bye Niobe," said Lara before starting to walk away with Bullseye following her.

"Hold on," he suddenly stopped and turned to Niobe. "You're the girl who was watching me in that club."

Niobe just smiled at him after which she went inside the warehouse and Lara grabbed Bullseye's right arm and dragged him after her.

"I told her to keep an eye on you so that you do not screw things up."

Before Bullseye could get in one of his usual states of anger, Lara came extremely close to him, their bodies almost touching and pressed her forefinger on his lips, her left hand still holding his right upper arm.

"But if it makes you feel better, I must admit you surprised me. You did a very good job .. "

She let her finger slid from his lips to his chin and bent her head forward.

" .. for a beginner."

Her lips were very close to his and she slightly tilted her head to the right as if she wanted to kiss him. Then she raised her eyelids slowly, looking him directly into his eyes in a dreamy way."

"Good night."

When he wanted to bend his head and kiss her there was nothing more in front of him than some black smoke that vanished as well. Lara teleported herself to a place near the entrance gate to the warehouse, not far from where her car was parked. When finally reaching it she searched for the keys in her coat's pockets, opened the car door and was about to enter when someone grabbed her right arm from behind, pulled her backwards and slammed the car door shut.

"How did you get here so fast?"

"Doesn't really matter," Bullseye answered pushing her against the car, grabbing her by the waist and bringing his body very close to hers. "What matters is that we have some unfinished business to take care of. Did I tell you how incredibly sexy you look dressed like this; and especially with this curly hair you now have."

He traced the fingers of his right hand through her hair and then grabbed her left cheek into his palm, rubbing his thumb against her lower lip. He moved closer, his mouth inches away from hers.

"You toyed with me for too long baby and I'm not a very patient man."

With a violent movement he pulled her head towards him and began kissing her wildly. Their kiss wasn't a short one but it didn't last too long either. Lara struggled to push him away and finally she managed to grab his arms and free herself. She lifted her left hand intending to slap him but he caught it.

"C'mon baby, this is not your style."

She smiled and relaxed her body, letting her left arm fall down gently.

"You are right. It is not."

She looked him in the eyes for a moment with a joyful expression on her face, Bullseye gazing at her in the same way when all of a sudden a hard punch in the face threw him to the ground.

"Now this is my style."

Laughing, she got in her car ..

"Good night love."

.. and drove away.