Vermilion City was no stranger to chaos.

On average, there was at least 2 larger than life battles that would draw the eyeballs of the world.

So used was the citizens to such madness that it became a sporting event of sorts.

Bets were being thrown around, failing main stream media would receive a sudden spike of viewership, and the enthusiasm akin to gladiatorial combat would grip the city for a few short yet intense hours.

Normally, the action was caught from a distance via powerful cameras and/or a bystander's phone. It was messy and often required at least a week of video editing to piece everything together.

From there, extensive analysis of the videos would plague the news and internet for a few days.

It was akin to that of those overpaid analysts in modern sports, except it was much more exiting with a body count to match.

However, the spectacle that erupted at 1:15 AM in Vermilion City was very different.

For one, the action was being streamed live via head cam of the perpetrator himself.

It was unsure who the perpetrator was since the camera could only capture his arms and guns.

On his left was a sawed off shotgun of unknown make. It looked heavy and it had a grappling claw just beneath the barrel.

On his right was an ARX160 machine gun with double drum magazine.

Based on the arms holding said guns, it was clear that the man was wearing an old scout-type power armor.

You'd think that this was a dead giveaway, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

While top of the line power armors were both expensive and rare, those of older makes could easily be found on the black market.

A lot of the non super powered criminals that was worth a damn had outdated power armors such as the one in the video.

And no power armor was as widely available as the Z49 Scout Armor which has been in service since 10 years ago.

While its functions were as basic as power armor could get, it was relatively easy to maintain, it's spare parts were widely available and its simple design allowed high degrees of modifications.

As such, the power armor aficionados were not particularly surprised when the perpetrator used a flame thrower hidden on his arm to turned what seemed to be a triad member into charcoal.

It wasn't the first time such a mod was added to the Z49 and it wont be the last.

Based on the video feed, the perpetrator was in front of a fairly old building in an area just outside the decent part of town. It was where a fair number of legitimate businesses were actually fronts for the international crime syndicates.

This area was filled to the brim with law abiding criminals, corrupt police force, filthy politicians, and most importantly, it did not have the excellent SWAT team of the business district.

It was the perfect place for a psychopath to test his skills at murdering as many people as possible before the superheroes come and beat his ass into the ground.

The perpetrator was in a building that belonged to Wuhui Investment Holdings. It was a typical loan shark organization that preyed on the desperate.

Naturally it had ties to Triads.

As such, there were scary looking Imps coming down the stairs at the perpetrator boldly walked through the front door.

This was a big mistake.

As expected of the shittier place in town, the building was of low quality that occupied a very small area.

The stairs had enough space for 2 people to walk side by side. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The first 5 got a lethal dose of lead before they knew what hit them.

Realizing their mistake, those behind attempted to run back up the stairs. However, a single bullet from the unknown shotgun popped 3 men like tomatoes.

The second shot obliterated 4 because they were so bunched up.

For some reason, the perpetrator sheathed the shotgun behind his back before proceeding carefully towards the stairs.

Suddenly, a man wielding a one hand straight sword rushed at the perpetrator at breakneck speeds.

The gunman open fired but the swordsman skillfully deflected all the bullets coming his way.

Once in melee range, the swordsman went for the perpetrator's neck.

The perpetrator jumped in the same direction as the slash and used his left arm to block the sword.

The perpetrator was sent through a wall, 2 desks and slammed into a concrete pillar.

Without being able to catch his breath, he duct under a sword swing that cleaved the pillar in half.

The swordsman capitalized on the opportunity and swung down at the gunman, to which the later caught the sword with his left hand.

This caught the swordsman by surprise.

His blade was enchanted and could easily slice through steel. And even though the gunman had power armor, it did not offer enough protection to stop his blade.

Even more surprising was the fact that the blade began to crack as the gunman tighten his grip.

The swordsman tried to pull the sword away, but the gunman's grip was as unflinching as steel.

With no other choice, the swordsman let go of his sword and tried to create some distance.

Unfortunately for the kungfu imp, he crumbled after his balls was shot off.

As the imp withered in pain, the gunman used the imp's own sword to cleave him in half from the head to his non existent ball sacks.

And since this was all caught in pure HD goodness, quite a few of the viewers vomited in spectacular fashion.

Before the perpetrator could marvel at his work, he ran for the nearest door and belly flopped on the ground.

Chasing after him was a hail of bullets from an M134 Minigun along with about 4 AK47s.

The M134 was an extremely heavy weapon and was normally mounted on helicopters, ships, trucks or the occasional tanks.

At least that was if the metric was that of a normal human's physical strength.

The one carrying the M134 was an extremely rare sight in this world.

It was about 1.5 the size of a normal man and had muscles on top of its muscles.

Physically, it looked like a troll, but based on its relatively smaller size compared to its parent species, this one was probably a half breed.

How does a half troll come to existence?

Let's just say there are some sick bastards out that get their nuts off by watching a troll violate some poor soul.

Where it came from was not important.

What mattered to the perpetrator was that the M134 might not kill him instantly thanks to his Z49 scout armor, every hit from that thing was at least 1 broken bone guaranteed.

And since the M134 could fire at a rate of 2000-6000 rounds per minute, the perpetrator simply did not have enough bones to break.

The perpetrator crawled for dear life.

Fortunately, the triads was too focused on gunning down his last known location.

As such, he was able to sneak down the hall and enter the next room via a literal hole in the wall.

His steps were quick yet silent. A sign that he had military training that focused on stealth.

He reached the end of the room and peaked at his enemies.

As expected, there were 5 of them including the M134 wielding troll.

All of them stopped firing and were slowly advancing to inspect the supposed perpetrator's body.

He sneaked up on the first one and used his left hand's insane grip to squash the man's skull in an instant.

Initially, he supported the corpse in order to prevent it from making any sound as it fell to the ground.

For some god forsaken reason, he abandoned this and violently pushed the recently deceased into the other imp triad.

The sudden nudge made the triad member look back, only to be greeted by a left straight punch that blew his head off.

Naturally, this got the attention of the rest of the group.

As the normal humans began to scramble, the perpetrator grabbed a steel rebar and speared one of the triads straight in the ass and out the dick.

There were many pearls being clutched by the male portion of the viewers.

While many were wondering 'Why not just shoot the bastards?', several analysts that were making commentary correctly assumed that the perpetrator was doing all of these for 2 reasons: Fun and Entertainment.

The analysts theorized that this particular triad cell was targeted at random.

The perpetrator had no ties to it what so ever. He simply wanted to kill anyone and these poor souls just happened to be in his sights.

There was also no reason for him to livestream the entire conflict and risk the ire of the superheroes.

This was done for no other reason that to put up a good show for the audience.

And since no one enjoyed a show that ended too quickly, the perpetrator was resolved to doing it the hard way.

Naturally, his show boating would inevitably bite him in the ass.

The last triad hid behind the half troll, who also noticed the perpetrator and moved to rain lead on him.

The perpetrator quickly drew his sawed off shotgun and fired both rounds, blasting the half troll's gun wielding arm and a decent chunk of its shoulder into smithereens.

While it was already known that the shotgun was abnormally powerful, the viewers was most shocked about was the half troll's regenerative capabilities.

Even if the ma was a half breed, it was horrifying to see his shoulder reforming right before their very eyes.

It was almost as fast as magical based healing.

And most annoying was that this didn't seem to hamper the half troll at all.

The beast took one of his still withering in pain ally and hurled him at the perpetrator.

The gunman ran deeper into the building as rebar stabbed triad got splattered on the wall.

He grabbed 2 bricks and threw both at the other end of the small building. At the same time, he stealthily ran up the stairs.

The bricks bouncing on the floor made a sound similar to that of someone running.

This simple illusion seemed to work as the sound of the M134's unrelenting torrent of bullets ripped through the building.

Based on the amount of bullets flying all over the place, it was clear that the half troll's main arm was still in the process of regenerating.

He walked softly until he was approximately directly above the sound of the gatling gun.

He reloaded his shotgun, aimed it at the floor and fired 2 rounds in quick succession.

The first round was meant to blow a hole in the floor. And since this building was made by a company affiliated with the Jade Empire, the powerful shotgun punched through it like hot knife through butter.

The second shot went straight between the half troll's eyes and made his head explode.

All supernatural healing was controlled by the brain.

This was especially true when it came to passive regeneration which operated in the same way as breathing. As long as there was a brain, this function was performed automatically.

Remove this vital control mechanism and the result was quite disturbing.

The half troll's regeneration did not stop, but it turned its head into a mess of tentacles, eyes, mouths, bones and spikes.

Words could not describe its appearance.

Eventually it did stop when the regeneration burned through the half troll's entire mana and life force.

The end result was something out of a horror film and was best left to everyone's imagination.

The perpetrator jumped down the small hole and spotted the last survivor of the triad group.

The poor man could not stop his knees from shaking as the perpetrator walked towards him.

Overcame by fear, the man dropped his weapons and began begging for his life.

Sadly, the vast majority of the viewers could not understand what he was saying because he was using the Imperial Tongue, the official language of the Jade Empire.

"Do you not speak Commons?" asked the perpetrator with a voice of an cute girl around the age of 8-13.

Clearly the man was using a voice synthesizer, but it did catch the viewers by surprise.

It seemed that the perpetrator had a sick sense of humor.

FYI: Commons is a slang for 'Common Tongue', the language used by most of the western world.

"No Common! No Common!" replied the the triad member as he made an X with his hands.

"~I see~"

With a sweet and lovable voice, the perpetrator used his left hand to choke the poor man. The grip was strong enough to partially inhibit the man's breathing, but not strong enough to snap his neck.

"~Hello my beloved Oni-chans of the internet!~ How are you guys doing this fine early morning? Are you enjoying the show? If you are, that's great! If you're not, I'll do my best to make you happy! ~Kyuuuun~!"

The amount of cringe flowing from the video feeds was borderline lethal.

There was nothing more pathetic than a man pretending to be a cute little girl.

Nevertheless, it was clear that the perpetrator was finally going to reveal his motives.

As such, the audience forced themselves to sit through his utterly repulsive mannerisms.

"Now I'm sure that everyone of you are wondering why am I doing this live show. Obviously, I'm going to tell everyone! It's because NOTICE ME SENPAI! Senpai's name is the superhero Arsenal and he's being a meanie!"

The name drop had an instantaneous effect.

The searches for Arsenal, his credentials, accomplishments and failures skyrocketed.

Known as one of the Commonwealth's many attack dogs, Arsenal possessed the same power armor as Mechanicus with some additional weapons such as guns.... lots of guns.

But more importantly, Arsenal was looked down upon by the general public because unlike Mechanicus, he was tied to the whims of many worthless politicians through the chain of command and could not do what was right when he wanted to.

From the looks of things, this was one of those times.

"I know you're watching this stream Arsenal Senpai! I already slaughtered that 25 man team you sent my way, Shadow and Wraith have already lost a few limbs, I pulled the guts of 28 dirty cops from their assholes and now these poor innocent triads are about to get wiped out! Will you not come to save this last survivor? Pweeetttyyy Pwease?"

With his left hand, the perpetrator lifted the triad off the ground and began choking him to death.

As the poor guy was about to expire, the front of the building exploded as an unstoppable bulk of steel bashed through the concrete.

Standing in front of the perpetrator was the man he was waiting for.

Arsenal pointed every weapon he had on the perpetrator.

"That's enough Theodore Lorne." said Arsenal with a voice seething with rage.

The perpetrator, now known as Theodore Lorne, crushed the triad's neck before facing Arsenal.

Changing from a cutesy voice to that of a menacing heavily scrambled one, Theo spoke.

"About damn time."