[i]You a'ight[/i], she said.

No, Alex wasn't about to say he was 'a'ight'.

He very likely had a concussion, possibly fractured (and certainly bruised) ribs, and a gunshot wound to his left bicep. None of that said 'a'ight', but more importantly the guy who killed his brother happened to be right the fuck there and still breathing. That, more than the pain that was beginning to make his arm go slack or the throbbing that threatened to crush his skull from the inside like the world's biggest grape, kept him from being anything resembling a[i]lr[/i]ight. What it did make him was furious, and he was lucky that it did--without that laser-focus ferocity in him, God knows he might have passed out or something equally pussy-rific in front of the big boys.

Not that Dante would have noticed at the moment. He was a little busy turning Knuckles' trick back around on him.

Wherever those hornet had come from, they were certainly doing a number. It might have comforted the thug to know that he wasn't dealing with some little bumble bee--the Japanese giant hornet has a sting that is surpassed by an alarmingly small number of insects on the Schmidt Pain Index. Though not specifically mentioned, it is responsible for between thirty and forty deaths a year due to the sheer amount of its painful toxin that tends to be injected at any given time and thus was an appropriately badass animal to have him howling like a stuck pig. The rests of the hornets might be, but honestly it was about that point that Dante's big black foot hit him in the chest and sent him cartwheeling backwards. Whatever it was that gave him his strength must have reinforced him a bit as well, but a hit like that still left him winded, gasping, and in blinding pain from the swelling sting. As Dante advanced on him, cracking his knuckles with the cordite pops of splitting stone, he was about to have a very, very bad day.

Or would have been, had time not been up.

Not the flare so much as Dante's juice. He'd always burned through it faster than most--probably something to do with converting an entire body into what was normally an inorganic substance and moving it around like something out of Dungeons and Dragons--but now it seemed he was having some significant issues. Mid-step he halted and shuddered and fell to one knee, massive shoulders rolling as the back of him began to crack and split. Dusky brown skin began to thread through the black stone like magma flumes, stretching from his spine and cracking away the rock as if it had been no thicker than a Nestles chocolate shell. K-Ton might have been telling them to go, the clock ticking down, but Dante cracking crust or no Dante had a score to settle. He struggled to his feet at about the same time Knuckles managed to get to his, still howling in pain and beating his chest like some kind of gladiator, but both were thrown backwards by Trigger's sudden entrance.

The van burst through the bay doors and skidded to a halt, Ramsay and the ladies still inside, but the bay door it carried on top of it kept going. It smashed into Dante head on, knocking him to the ground mid-transformation, and very nearly took out Knuckles with a corner that he barely managed to dodge. Barely was enough, though, and as he made his way forward it was clear enough he had murder on his mind. His eyes might have been streaming, every vein in his body clenched tight and visible against his skin, but by God was he about to--

No. Really. [i]Every[/i] vein.

It wasn't that Alex had ignored Cass or K-Ton or KillRoy--far from it. He'd even managed to hold up a single finger, and not the rude one. Universal for 'gimme a minute', he'd spent the time collecting getting his shit together for just such an occasion. While he wouldn't have minded if Dante were the one to put Knuckles down for good--probably--he sure as hell wasn't about to let it be the other way around. And since big boy had missed his shot, Alex was more than happy to take it from him. To see Knuckles stop in his tracks, he might as well have had a heart attack. His eyes suddenly bugged out, his arms halting mid draw-back. He stumbled, barely able to keep his feet, and the dark veins and bright arteries beneath his skin began to bead and run. They bulged and crawled like worms, struggling to keep up with the demands of Alex' imagination, which was bringing it all together in one place.

Up until now it had just been tricks with blood pressure, popping heads like champagne corks. Maybe a bit of rerouting internally, a little autonomous safety function. Now, though, there was intent. Now, though he wanted more than little tricks of anatomy. He wanted [i]blood[/i], figuratively and literally, and he wanted it all in the middle of that stupid benches-240 chest, because if he was ready to put a hole in David's then he had best be prepared for the consequences.

There were precious few seconds of recognition and understanding that the man could have had as the blood ran from his brain, his lungs, his muscles. Held up by nothing more than the pooling blood currently crushing his heart, in that second his gasping frog-lips tried their best to work out more than a croak. They might have managed it, too, if Alex hadn't felt every last bit of blood in the man's body and, with a sudden flex of his hand, willed it [i][b]out[/b][/i].

If before the men before were gushers then this was a popped water balloon. This was forceful, [b]angry[/b], a rippling hydrostatic force that burst cell walls tore muscles and carried the ripped shreds of them with it as the man blew himself apart from the inside. It may have lacked the finesse of K-Ton's executions but it sure got the job done, and with it Alex felt the awful satisfaction that only cames from re-fucking-venge.

For a moment, Dante stared. Spattered even from a foot or two away, there aren't many men that can shake off a paint job like that off the cuff. That being said, a van full of kitchen-chemistry cocktails a shitload of gasoline was good for that.

"Fucking hell, [b]move[/b]!"

The world came back up to full speed in that moment, Dante back in smooth, dark skin and stumbling on newly bare feet for the exit--any exit, the window behind Cass and Alex being the prime candidate at the moment. It was moments like this that Dante Black was at his best, unable to do anything but leap before looking. He picked up speed and, with the kind of wide-armed, action-movie, take-down-the-runner football tackle that would have won him MVP at some college bowl somewhere, Dante tackled the pair of them wholesale [b]through[/b] what was left of the crumpled tin wall. It couldn't have been comfortable, but it beat being inside when the explosion went off.

And God, did it ever.

Automotive shops are not the best place for fire at the best of times. The initial explosion was shattering, ripping tin-roof and blowing out windows and walls like they were made of cardboard, but as the cars and fluids and various accouterments of the trade began to catch it was clear enough that [i]nobody[/i] wanted to be anywhere near there for very long. Certainly not Dante, who was currently swearing like a motherfucker--more than a bit of shrapnel had ended up in his broad back, the heat of it practically cauterizing the wounds on impact, but if nothing else he'd saved the two beneath him from a fiery fate. Even if he had managed to smear them with Knuckles-gore in the process.

For Alex, it was almost the final straw. Yet another shake to his head, another impact to his ribs, another scream from his arm as it jostled against the wall. There was no thought of altruism or chivalry, whether or not he was on top of Cass or breaking her fall, but he could smell something sickly sweet and his head was beginning to spin and [i]Christ, could he just pass the fuck...[/i]

"She's dying!"

He managed it as soon as he could speak because he [i]felt[/i] it in a way he hadn't really before. Yes, he'd felt heartbeats, yes, he'd jacked pressures, but this was [i]different[/i] somehow. Like a bird battering its wings against a too-small cage, like someone drowning and struggling for breath, he could [i]feel[/i] Jackie's heart struggling. Stopping. If they'd never been close, if they'd never been friends, he couldn't let that happen. But could he stop it?

His own arm was running freely now, his body battered and bloodied and exhausted. Too exhausted. Even as he worked to shore up the circulatory system, even if the flow of her blood began to divert back into itself, he knew he would lost it. Was already losing it.

"The fuck... man, we gotta [b]go![/b]" Dante was insisting on top of him, pushing himself up with a hiss of his teeth and looking around for the escape route. This had [i]not[/i] been subtle, and that fifteen minutes they'd bought from the cops meant jack shit after an explosion like that.

"Neon." Alex gasped, managing to point his good arm weakly towards where Ramsay and Lana were struggling with Jackie. "I'm out, but I...with Neon...!" He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Couldn't get the words out. Couldn't save her without that boost, without that rush...that power. Looking to Cass, not plaintively but fiercely, he jerked his head towards Jackie to say what he wasn't able to. He couldn't just let her bleed out like that. [i]They[/i] couldn't.

Right?