Lanskahov's eyes were still wide open when he hit the floor, frozen in an expression of disbelief and bitter resentment. Even in death, he couldn't fathom why Marion had flipped so suddenly—or how the man's aim could be so impossibly precise, punching through a thick tabletop to nail him in the back of the skull. He died without answers.
Bootleg Wolverine Owlsley took one look at the mess of red and white oozing from Lanskahov's shattered skull and flipped the entire table over with a roar. "F\*CK! Waste him—avenge your boss!"
The words barely left his mouth before a bone-deep chill shot up his spine. Pure instinct—he whipped his steel claws up to guard his face. Clink-clink! Several bullets sparked off the metal and ricocheted away.
Owlsley threw himself into a series of combat rolls, finally slamming behind the corner of the bar counter. He looked down to find half a bullet embedded in his chest and felt a cold wave of terror wash over him.
Thank God I wore the vest today. Another inch and that round would've gone straight through my heart. How the hell is Marion this insane?!
Lanskahov's crew was clearly a cut above Marion's boys. When Owlsley peeked out from cover, he saw that despite just losing their boss, the Slavs had reacted with terrifying speed.
While Marion's guys were still standing there slack-jawed, Lanskahov's men were already drawing weapons without bothering to take cover—charging forward with suicidal bravery, hammering Marion's side with a barrage that had them screaming and diving for their lives.
Watching Marion's crew scatter like headless chickens, Owlsley nodded to himself. This one's in the bag.
Then he looked at Marion—the man everyone was concentrating fire on—and his jaw dropped.
"What in the ever-loving—"
So what exactly did the knockoff Wolverine see?
Well, if a certain movie had been released a few years later, Mr. Owlsley—who would absolutely insist, "I'm NOT a superhero and I've never even met Wolverine!"—would have described it like this: "I saw God. I saw the Messiah. I saw Neo."
And honestly? That wasn't far off.
Marion stood in the open, facing a concentrated hail of gunfire—and his body simply flowed. Twisting left, bending right, each dodge impossibly fluid. The footwork was slick as hell. The body movements were absurdly exaggerated. His eyes had a half-drunk, dreamy glaze. And the wall behind him? Riddled with bullet holes so dense it looked like Swiss cheese.
Everything about the scene screamed that this man stood out like a firefly against the pitch-black night—so vivid, so conspicuous, so utterly impossible to ignore.
The instant the Slavs' magazines ran dry, Marion dropped into a roll. Mid-tumble, he scooped two rifles off the floor—didn't even bother aiming—and fired upward at an angle while still rolling. Every round found its mark. Every magazine emptied into flesh.
As if he hadn't even noticed the dozen-plus thugs who'd just taken bullets to the forehead and crumpled to the ground, Marion hooked his foot under a Colt 1911 lying nearby and flicked it into the air. He tossed the Beretta from his right hand, caught the Colt in the same smooth motion, and—still without turning around—extended his right arm past his left ribs.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang—
Nine rounds in two seconds. Nine men dropped with bullets between their eyes.
With both magazines empty, Marion still didn't look back. He simply sucked in his gut and arched his waist to let a stray round whistle past his spine.
Owlsley couldn't take it anymore. In less than ten seconds, their side had lost their boss and over twenty-five men—all headshots, all courtesy of this demon wearing Marion's skin.
Only one of their guys was still breathing. Owlsley had to make his move now, or once he was the last man standing, he'd have zero chance of taking Marion down.
The red-haired "Wolverine" was just about to creep up behind Marion for a sneak claw-strike when he witnessed something that froze his blood solid.
Marion, having fired his last bullet, sprinted toward the far wall of the bar. Before Owlsley's stunned eyes, Marion ran up the wall—three, four steps defying gravity—then coiled his legs and launched himself off the surface.
Like a shark breaching the ocean, Marion rocketed across a gap of over ten meters (roughly 33 feet) and tackled a hulking thug to the ground. Before the remaining seventeen men could even process what was happening, Marion ripped a combat knife from the downed man's belt.
What followed was a spinning, ducking, weaving blur—Marion bent at the waist, whirling through the crowd like a human top. One by one, seventeen men clutched at their left sides, screaming in agony as they collapsed, writhing briefly before going still.
A chill flooded Owlsley's entire body. Every last shred of fighting spirit drained out of him. He knew exactly what Marion had done. The knife had slipped between the second and third ribs on each man, piercing straight into the heart. Owlsley could pull off a single strike like that.
But this little time, this much chaos, this many targets? He couldn't do it. And he couldn't imagine anyone who could.
When it was over, Marion stood in the center of a carpet of corpses. Head bowed. Hair hanging over his eyes. Blood dripped from the knife's edge—tick… tick… tick…—onto the concrete.
The bar had gone deathly silent, as if the thunderstorm of gunfire had never happened. Marion's surviving crew lay flat on the ground, trembling so badly they didn't even have the courage to cheer for their boss.
In his corner, the red-haired "Wolverine" Owlsley was gasping for air, clutching his head, shaking like a leaf.
Thunk.
The combat knife shot across the room and buried itself in the wall an inch from Owlsley's ear.
"AAAHH!" Owlsley shrieked—not an ounce of Wolverine's composure anywhere in sight.
"Mr. Owlsley." Marion's voice was low, cold, utterly devoid of emotion. "Leave. You look like someone I used to know. I won't kill you. Now get out."
Owlsley's face burned with humiliation. He wanted to fire back, to say something tough—but then he remembered Marion slaughtering those men like sheep, and his whole body seized up. He didn't dare utter a single threat. He just scrambled to his feet and bolted out the door.
A long moment passed. Then Marion's body went slack, and he collapsed onto the floor.
That finally snapped his boys out of their trance. They rushed to his side, shouting over each other.
"Boss! Boss! You're my old man now! Boss Marion!"
"Boss Marion, could you maybe give us a heads-up before you go nuclear?! Let the boys get mentally prepared!"
"Waaah, Boss Marion, you were so cool, so dreamy, so hot just now! That thing you asked me about before—fine, I'll say yes, okay?!"
"Boss, you're incredible! You know what? That whole bit where you pretended to drink yourself into despair to lull those thugs into a false sense of security? That was Oscar-worthy acting! The Academy owes you a golden statue!"
"Boss Marion, you're this strong and you were trying to recruit high schoolers? You just solo'd fifty-something armed gangsters! You're a one-man army!"
"Boss Marion, I think you're not just gonna rule 39th Street—you're gonna be a big shot like Frank Gades!"
"Screw that! Boss Marion isn't gonna end up like that washed-up has-been Frank! Boss Marion is gonna be the next Kingpin!"
"KINGPIN! KINGPIN! KINGPIN!"
"KINGPIN!"
"KINGPIN!"
The chant rose in unison, growing louder and louder until it echoed down the street outside the bar.
Marion, jolted awake by the noise, blinked in confusion. "Wh-where am I? What happened? My head… it hurts so bad! AAAH—why is there so much blood on the floor?! AAAH—why are there so many bodies?! AAAH—why are all these guys dead?! This is terrifying—"
The chanting died mid-syllable.