Regeneration was painful. The feeling of regrowing all of your body parts, your flesh melding and being stitched back together without your permission was far from comfortable. Arnold was still dumbfounded by the mere existence of the crumpled bullets on the white tiled floor of the dining room, flecks of dried blood and spilt wine underneath it. They were still hot to the touch, cooling rapidly as they hit the ground. 

Arnold had never been in a proper fight before. Back on the streets of Nevada, schoolyard scraps and playground poundings unfortunately made up a large part of his childhood. The Diablos Pequenos taught him how to punch without injuring himself, how to brawl and how to hurt. Never kill, though. That privilege was exclusively reserved for the adult members of the gang. 

It was all instinctual, the primordial inclination of human beings  towards violence that guided him. No matter what powers he had, experience overcame power. The armed mercenaries kept on firing at him unabated, merely adapting to the situation, no matter how unnatural it was. Arnold grunted in annoyance as the hail of bullets peppered off his skin and ripped the fabric of his jacket. The group of hostages screamed as Arnold kept taking the fire, making sure to not move towards the hostages.  

He reached the first mercenary nearest to him, the hand reaching out towards him. The man then pulled out a wicked looking combat knife, glinting eerily in the dining room, with his cybernetic arm, knees bent in a combat stance. He swung out a haymaker. Telegraphed. Easy for a person with military experience to counter. The mercenary side-stepped to the right, turning his body and then, jabbing his knife directly towards his face. He lurched backwards, a yelp of pain as a black curtain came over half of his vision. The mercenary began to wedged the knife further into his mutilated pupil, pushing the back of the pommel while the hydraulic actuators of his prosthetic whined loudly.  Every nerve in his head felt like it was being slowly crushed by a hydraulic clamp. He stumbled, grabbing onto the nearest chair for support whilst pulling the knife out his socket unsteadily, his eye hurriedly growing back in layers like an onion whilst the salvo of gunfire returned once more to keep him off-balance.

“ Look out!”

He paused, Killian’s voice distracting him for the mere moment, before the mercenary came at him again, charging at him with another knife that he had procured out of his - How many knives did this guy have? - and stabbed it into his other eye, rendering him blind. The man was now straddled on top of him, his cybernetic arm keeping him flat on his back to the ground like an anvil. He could hear the click of something; a pin perhaps, as something was shoved into his mouth. The taunting words of the mercenary came out slowly, as he waved his arms at the man uselessly, only seeing a void of darkness.

“ Nothing personal between me and you. Although, me and the boys are betting whether or not you can heal from a grenade in your mouth, freak.”