South Gotham — Minor Falcone Gambling Den — Early Morning
The door slammed open with a violent kick.
Maroni soldiers poured into the small gambling den before the manager could fully rise from his stool behind the counter. He managed to say they were closed, which were the first and last words he would ever speak again. The soldier closest to him raised his weapon and shot him through the face at close range.
Screams erupted from the back as more staff members rushed out, drawn by the noise. They froze at the sight of the manager's body on the floor and the Maroni soldiers moved through the room with raised weapons, pointing them at the terrified attendants pressed against the walls.
Three Falcone guards burst out from the rear office after hearing the commotion. The fight lasted barely eight seconds as the guards were cut down in a hail of bullets before they could properly register the situation or return fire.
The lead Maroni soldier looked around the room with satisfaction, surveying the staff members huddled against the walls with their hands raised.
"This property is now under the authority of the great Salvatore Maro—"
Their car parked outside detonated with a thunderous boom.
The blast wave shattered the front windows and sent ceiling lights swinging wildly. Several staff members dropped flat to the floor by pure reflex while the Maroni soldiers stumbled and turned toward the entrance, weapons raised.
A bald man stood in the shattered doorway.
Wearing combat pants and boots but now chest armour they saw that his skin on his chest, forearms, neck, and the backs of his hands was covered in hundreds of tally marks. These were not tattoos though each mark was a deep scar.
Victor Zsasz stepped inside.
He raised his pistols and fired four precise shots in under two seconds. The first Maroni soldier took a bullet through the forehead, the second through the throat, and the third through the eyes. All three dropped instantly, the final soldier tried to take cover behind furniture, but Zsasz walked forward calmly and put a single round through the table, dropping him as well.
Zsasz crouched beside the nearest wall, picked up a sharp shard of glass from the shattered window, and cut four fresh tally marks into a clear section of his left forearm. Once done he examined the new marks for a moment with quiet satisfaction.
A slight sound came from behind the bar.
A Falcone guard who had been hiding pressed against the lower shelving slowly emerged. He recognized the bald man immediately.
Victor Zsasz.
"I… I was securing the safe in the back," the guard said quickly, his voice unsteady.
Zsasz looked at him in silence for a long moment.
"The city is in open war," Zsasz said calmly and he gestured toward the remaining staff members still pressed against the walls. "This location and everyone in it must be defended no matter how little the importance, we will not lose."
The guard swallowed hard, his eyes flicking to the bodies scattered across the floor and nodded.
"Yes, sir."
Zsasz gave a single small nod, turned, and walked out through the destroyed entrance into the early morning streets.
Hamilton Hill — Main Intersection — Morning
The intersection had been a busy transit corridor just forty minutes earlier.
Now it was a full-scale kill zone.
Roughly eighty Falcone soldiers had invaded and occupied the buildings on the north and east sides, using upper floors as elevated firing positions. Fifty Maroni soldiers held the south and west. Between the two forces, the open pavement was littered with burning vehicles and constant gunfire. Bullets, rockets, and Quirk-powered projectiles flew in both directions through the air.
Inside a corner restaurant, 2 Maroni soldiers had been using shattered booths for cover for the past eleven minutes. He had a strong angle on the Falcone positions across the street and reached for a fresh magazine, glanced up and a sharpened metal rod tore through the glass and impaled him through the chest and into the wall.
His partner looked up in shock and saw a Falcone soldier across the street with a metal-manipulation Quirk already forming the next spear from metal he had ripped out of nearby cars.
An eighteen-wheeler came barreling through the intersection from the west but no driver was visible to aim at as the truck moved at reckless speed, clearly under remote control Quirk. It smashed through Falcone barricade vehicles, a cab flying forward before the trailer jackknifed violently and swept across the corner. The Falcone soldier with the metal Quirk managed to throw up a reinforced barrier, but it wasn't enough and the truck destroyed the position in a fiery explosion.
Further down the street, another building came apart on its the third floor in a massive explosion.
A Falcone soldier with a magnetic adhesion, Quirk had been scaling the exterior walls of Maroni-aligned businesses. He moved like a spider, his Quirk letting him stick to and run across vertical surfaces without falling, he had already planted and detonated four charges in coordinated sequence. As he reached for the fifth charge from his bag, a shot from the church bell tower struck the explosive on his back. The blast took him and a large portion of the building with him.
In the bell tower, the Maroni sniper adjusted his position and looked down at the rising smoke.
A heavy flatbed truck came roaring in from the east and a Falcone soldier ripped the driver out of the passenger window then grabbed the rear undercarriage with a powerful strength Quirk, and hurled the entire vehicle in a spinning arc. The truck smashed into the church tower and the bell came crashing down first, then the tower collapsed. The truck then exploded in the debris, and the entire front of the church exploded in a towering column of dust and smoke that temporarily blinded the intersection.
Above the chaos, a Maroni helicopter flew over north-south corridor, its crew calling out targets and positions to ground forces.
Two men dropped from the helicopter.
The first fell four stories and hit the pavement hard, then stood up without issue. His kinetic energy Quirk had been absorbing every impact and round fired at him for the last twenty minutes, storing the energy. He walked straight into the center of the intersection, took three rounds to the chest that only pushed him back half a step, then punched the ground with devastating force.
The street collapsed and a six-meter-wide sinkhole opened straight down to the sewer level. Two Falcone vehicles slid sideways into the gap as the hole began expanding rapidly.
His partner landed right behind him and raised both arms, his energy projection Quirk flaring brightly. A sustained blast ripped down the Falcone firing line, turning three vehicles into twisted scrap in a single push. He then covered his legs in energy and kicked destroyed cars toward the enemy lines with immense force and they flew through the buildings as more trucks carrying Maroni men arrived and joined the assult.
At the outer edge of the intersection, a fleet of GCPD vehicles held a squared-off area. Fifty officers behind armored barricades were doing their best to manage the situation. They funneled families, the injured, people who had been trapped in nearby buildings into the protected square. The officers were equipped for riots and emergencies, not open urban warfare between two powerful crime families and not prepared to fight back if they became targets.
A stray missile, intended for a Falcone position on a building north of them, streaked overhead and struck the building directly behind the GCPD. Then collapsed onto the barricade line and debris was approaching fast.
People panicked and ran in multiple directions and officers tried to maintain order but the commander on the radio received no useful guidance from headquarters. Every island was reporting the same chaos, and central command had run out of meaningful orders long ago.
The war had begun in earnest and all he could do was pray while trying to help the defenseless.
The Narrows — Street Level — Same Time
The Crimson Aces and Blue Steel had divided the neighborhood into alternating blocks for twenty years. The Crimson Aces, with their deep Maroni connections, while The Blue Steel were loyal to the Falcones, the fragile balance existed only because neither side could fully destroy the other and because the mob didn't want them to grow too strong but now the war removed those restraints.
By eight in the morning, the streets had become a battlefield.
A massive bronze giant stomped through the center of the block. A Crimson Aces enforcer with a gigantification Quirk had grown to four stories tall, his body transformed into dense, metallic bronze-like material. He roared as he charged forward, smashing through buildings like they were cardboard.
His counterpart met him head-on.
The obsidian giant, a Blue Steel legend whose Quirk produced sharp-edged crystalline black growth, collided with him in the middle of the street. The impact sent a shockwave through the entire block, windows shattered for three streets in every direction, chunks of concrete and rebar rained down as the two titans grappled, destroying everything around them.
Below the giants, the street war raged without mercy.
Cars sped down the narrow roads at dangerous velocities, men leaning out windows and firing wildly. Bodies already littered the sidewalks and intersections, on one of these streets a Red Crimson woman with a bone projection Quirk perched on a fire escape and unleashed a barrage of razor-sharp bones into a van full of Blue Steel. The projectiles punched through metal and flesh with lethal precision.
Then something massive slithered around the corner.
A man used his quirk to turn into a twelve-meter snake with dark green-black scales moved with a predatory glint in its large eyes. A blue band tied just behind its head marked its affiliation. It locked onto the woman on the fire escape as she fired four bones in rapid succession, but they deflected harmlessly off its armored scales.
The snake struck her and Its jaws closed around her head and ripped it clean off in one violent motion. The body fell limply from the fire escape as the snake continued down the alley, devouring Blue Steel members who tried to flee.
From a nearby stairwell, another Crimson Aces woman with curved horns stepped out. She raised both arms, her summoning Quirk activating. Shadowy knights materialized from the darkness — solid, armed figures formed from pure shadow mass. Eight appeared, then twelve, then twenty and charged the giant snake with blades drawn.
The snake turned to face them and thhe first three knights dissolved on contact, but the rest managed to slow the beast down long enough for more to form.
A Maroni truck barreled down the side street.
A man in a sharp suit stood in the truck bed holding an RPG with casual confidence. He aimed and fired, the rocket streaked forward and detonated against the snake's midsection. The explosion tore the creature apart, sending guts, scales, and remains of its victims splattering across the street in a thirty-meter radius. The shadowy knights dissolved instantly as the woman made her way to their ally.
More Maroni trucks arrived behind the first. Men in Crimson Aces colours surrounded them as fresh assault rifles were tossed from the backs of the trucks, the Maroni supply network was working at full capacity, arming every red-affiliated fighter on the street.
In a corner apartment building, a terrified family huddled against the kitchen wall, away from the windows. The mother shielded her children while her partner stayed by the door. A deafening crash shook the building as a Blue Steel gang member with cracked, fracturing skin burst through the exterior wall and landed in their kitchen.
His protective Quirk had finally reached its limit.
His skin split apart with visible fracture lines. He looked at the family, mouth opening to say something but there was no time. The explosion tore through the kitchen, the adjacent apartments, and the three floors below.
The entire building then collapsed onto the Blue Steel fighters in the street below.
High above the destruction, the bronze giant and the obsidian giant continued their brutal duel. Their massive fists and bodies smashed through rooftops and walls, completely unaware or uncaring of the carnage unfolding at ground level.
The Narrows burned.
Downtown Gotham — Maroni Bank — Morning
The wide stone steps of one of Maroni's main banks were covered in bodies.
The assault on the stronghold had been raging for over thirty minutes, yet the Falcone advance had completely stalled at the thick institutional architecture. Maroni defenders used the heavy columns, reinforced walls, and elevated positions of the grand bank buildings to their full advantage. The Falcone soldiers had pulled back into the open street, where they maintained a brutal, sustained exchange of fire pinning down the Maronis inside.
A Maroni soldier suddenly burst out of the bank's main entrance at a dead sprint. He clutched a compact, cylindrical improvised explosive in one hand, the detonator clearly visible in the other. His reflection Quirk was fully active as the air around his body warped and bent light, creating a visual distortion that made him extremely difficult to target accurately. Dozens of Falcone soldiers opened fire on him, not able to land a direct hit.
He reached the Falcone front line and hurled the device with everything he had.
The explosion was devastating. It took out four vehicles and eight men in a single blast, completely shattering the line the Falcones had been holding. The Maroni forces seized the momentum and began pushing forward once again out of the bank.
Then a GCPD mechanized unit came rolling down the central boulevard.
Fifty officers advanced in full tactical configuration with their armored vehicles leading the way, officers in military grade gear moving in disciplined formation behind them. The commander had been unable to reach headquarters for orders and After surveying the growing piles of bodies of civilians in the area, he made the decision on his own he didnt care about the rules right now he was sick of criminals running this city.
The armored vehicles opened fire with heavy machine guns.
This ripped into the Falcone positions and the Maronis advancing, and anything moving with a weapon. The Falcone line broke under the sudden, overwhelming force and any remaining Maroni soldiers on the steps who did not fall back inside were cut down.
High above the street, a Maroni helicopter swept in from the east.
Inside the aircraft, a Jaina duplicate stood with calm authority beside two Maroni soldiers. Ten compact human drones were strapped into jump seats along the wall, each one heavily packed with explosives.
"Now," Jaina ordered.
The drones walked to the sides and jumped from the helicopter in a calculated spread pattern, falling toward the GCPD position below like living dive bombs. Nine of them struck with devastating accuracy, the explosions tore through armored vehicles and officer clusters in rapid succession, causing the remaining officers to flee with their commander trapped in his command vehicle which then exploded causing a raging fire into the surrounding neighborhood.
"Turn south," Jaina said to the pilot. "Next location."
Downtown Gotham — Construction Tower — Continuous
The tower was a forty-floor skeleton of steel beams and concrete board, completely open to the morning wind. Three Jaina duplicates held defensive positions on the second and third floors, firing down on the Falcone construction crew below.
One duplicate was still squeezing the trigger when a bullet tore through the side of her head.
The second duplicate turned toward the origin of the shot and took a round directly through the chest.
The third had just enough time to register the red helmet before she was dropped.
Red Hood ascended the fire escape with relentless, terrifying speed. The forty floors seemed like little more than a warm-up. He moved through the Maroni men who had followed the duplicates into the lower levels with brutal efficiency, each engagement short, and merciless.
High above, the Maroni helicopter was visible through the open steel frame. Red Hood watched it bank upwards then he watched the final drone drop the woman surrounded by explosives but he was not scared and his rifle was already tracking the falling target.
He fired and hit the drone while it was still in freefall.
The explosion bloomed brightly in the air above the tower. Debris rained down across the open construction floor around him. Red Hood stood motionless for a moment amid the falling fragments, before hearing more men shouting.
Falcone guards came rushing up from the lower floors, eight men in full tactical gear. One of them lowered his weapon slightly and began to say how glad they were to have him on their side.
Red Hood looked at them coldly.
"I'm not," he said.
He went through them without hesitation or mercy.
When the last guard fell, Red Hood stood alone on the open construction floor. The morning wind whipped through the exposed steel beams. Smoke rose in multiple columns across the city skyline. The distant sounds of the war, its gunfire, explosions, collapsing buildings created a constant, chaotic symphony that echoed across Gotham.
He calmly reloaded his rifle, chambered a round, and looked out over the burning city.