A dozen well-trained thugs stood frozen, their bravado evaporating like mist.
Their worldview had just shattered—reduced to dust by the clinking heap of spent brass casings at the boy's feet.
Wesley's composure cracked. Behind his glasses, his eyes locked onto the kid—and the empty air around him.
Impossible.
Some kind of absolute defense. No flinch. No shield visible. Just… invincibility.
"Hold on!" Wesley's voice rasped, but he forced steel into it—the last shreds of a commander's dignity. "He's got a force field—but it's got range limits! Close in! Attack at point-blank!"
It was the only conclusion his racing mind could reach. Every defense has a breaking point. Has to.
The order jolted his men from their stupor. Fear gave way to training. Guns hit the floor with dull thuds; tactical knives and batons snapped free from belts.
They roared—a pack of cornered wolves—and surged inward, blades and steel pipes raised.
They'd tear through that invisible barrier with tooth and nail if they had to.
Joren didn't slow.
Yare, yare…
Why do people always think changing how they die changes the fact?
His gaze cut through the chaos, pinning Wesley at the back like a specimen on glass.
Dead eyes. No mercy.
"Star Platinum."
The name boomed—deep, resonant, wrong in this concrete warehouse.
The next second, the lead thug—two meters out, steel pipe raised, face twisted in fury—never saw it coming.
An invisible fist cratered his face.
Crack.
Nasal bone shattered. Teeth sprayed like shrapnel.
He flew backward like a ragdoll launched from a cannon, plowing through two comrades before slamming into the floor—out cold before he stopped moving.
And that was just the overture.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"
A bluish-purple phantom erupted into motion—a storm of fists in human shape.
Star Platinum tore through the warehouse at blinding speed, a blur of kinetic fury. One moment still, the next—gone—leaving only afterimages and broken bodies in its wake.
From Wesley's vantage, the scene twisted into nightmare logic.
His elites—ruthless, battle-hardened, feared—were flung like dolls.
Chests caved in. Limbs snapped backward. One man screamed midair as an unseen force seized his ankle and slammed him spine-first into a shipping container with a sickening crunch.
They weren't losing.
They were being erased.
Another man lunged from behind, dagger raised—
—only to be seized by the throat before the blade could fall. His feet left the ground. An instant later, he was hurled into the air like discarded trash.
There were no screams.
Star Platinum's punches were too fast. Too heavy.
Before pain could register, consciousness was obliterated by raw, brutal force.
Thump!
Crack!
Clang!
The dull impacts of fists, the splintering of bone, and the heavy thuds of bodies hitting concrete wove together in the cavernous warehouse—a symphony of annihilation.
Wesley stood frozen, his mind short-circuiting under the weight of what he was witnessing.
He couldn't see the enemy.
Only his men—reduced to ragdolls, tossed and twisted by an unseen demon. Utterly helpless. Utterly broken.
It was a massacre: one-sided, elegant, and horrifyingly efficient.
Less than ten seconds had passed.
Now, only two figures remained standing in the warehouse—Star Platinum and Wesley.
The rest lay scattered across the floor, motionless, their fates sealed.
Star Platinum strode toward the mountain of U.S. dollars and stopped before Wesley—the only one who hadn't been touched.
"What… what are you?" Wesley whispered.
"A high school student who was just passing by."
They stood less than two meters apart.
The perfect kill zone. Star Platinum's absolute domain.
"Go back and tell your boss I hate trouble," Joren said, voice low and edged with steel. "Bullseye is trouble. You're trouble. I beat him to a pulp, and I just ruined your little operation, too."
He tilted his head slightly, eyes glinting beneath the brim of his hat—icy, piercing, inescapable.
"Don't bother me again."
He paused, then added, voice dropping to a whisper that cut deeper than any blade:
"Next time, I won't bother going to Hell's Kitchen for answers…"
He stepped back.
"…I'll go straight to his office. Rip his desk apart. And crush his skull."
The words hung in the air—final, absolute.
In a blur of motion, Star Platinum vanished from Wesley's sight—then reappeared behind him.
His fist rose.
"Ora!"
One punch.
Just one.
"KRA-KOOOOOM!!!"
The strike exploded outward like a hurricane made flesh, shredding tens of millions in cash into a blizzard of green confetti. Bills disintegrated midair, swirling in chaotic spirals before raining down like funeral petals over the farce.
The shockwave slammed into Wesley, knocking him flat onto his backside.
Above, the skylight creaked open.
A dark red figure dropped silently into the warehouse.
Daredevil took in the carnage—the shredded money, the unconscious thugs, their masks askew, faces slack with shock even in unconsciousness.
He'd expected a fight.
Maybe a chase.
Not… this.
From the moment he'd drawn the guards away, barely three minutes had passed.
"You…" Daredevil stared at the figure in the fedora—Joren, he remembered now—and faltered. "What just happened here?"
Joren didn't answer. Didn't even glance his way.
He simply walked past, boots echoing once, twice, then fading as he vanished into the night beyond the docks.
Yare, yare.
Finally—quiet.
If I hurry home, I might still catch the end of that ocean documentary.
Inside the warehouse, only two remained:
Wesley, staring blankly at the sky of shredded cash…
And Daredevil, silent, shaken, wondering if he'd just glimpsed something far beyond street-level justice.