CH 21: Catching a Vamp

(A/N: A pic of MUSHA mark II Armor, the one, Barnes wore for the HYDRA base raid.)

...

Marcus kept his distance and followed the Vamp from the rooftops, his specially designed Armor masking the sound of his footsteps.

The eye sockets of his DOSE Armour started glowing red as the infrared camera was booted up.

Marcus had been following the Vamp for 5 minutes, waiting for him to try and feed on the girl to get a drop on him when suddenly, the Vamp caught the girl by her neck and pinned her to the wall using his left hand.

The nails on his right hand grew larger and pointier, which rested on the girl's neck, ready to take her life at any moment.

"Whoever you are, come here right now! Otherwise, the girl dies."

Marcus saw that the Vampire was looking directly at him while he uttered his declaration. 'Hmm, looks like I am still a novice at things like following people. Should I learn some stealth techniques? Well, I should learn it, If I want to keep doing this Vamp Hunting business. But, the perception of this creature is still astonishing, it was able to sense me from almost 70ft, Interesting."

"I do not care about the girl. Why would you even think that in the first place? Instead-"

Marcus' body plummeted down as he jumped down from the five-story building and the clothes attached to his Armor fluttered in the wind as he fell straight down.

*Thud*

Marcus did a superhero landing directly in front of the Vamp, his durable exo-suit providing him minor protection from the fall, but his Extremis enhanced physiology could easily take it.

Instead, it was the concrete pavement around him that was damaged as web-like cracks started to spread around the area where Marcus' body had impacted the ground.

"- I am more interested in you."

Seeing his enemy so close to him, the Vamp flung the girl towards Marcus for distraction and backed away to create a distance between himself and the armored assailant.

Marcus caught the unconscious girl and put her down, when the Vamp spoke, "Are you the one they call 'Daywalker'?"

"You are sorely mistaken, I am not one of your kind."

"Then who are you?"

"Me…I am someone who will introduce you to the fear you did to your victims. I am your Bane. I am…Asura."

'Damn! That was a chunni intro, but whatever, I will run with it until I find a better one.'

The Vamp didn't speak any further after Marcus' introduction, instead, he attacked directly.

He closed the distance instantly and tried swiping toward Marcus' neck using his claws.

As for Marcus, as soon as he had dropped down, he had activated his Observation haki, so despite the speed of the Vamp being far faster than his own, Marcus could predict the attack's direction and dodge it easily.

By the time he stepped back to dodge the first attack, his haki predicted another one coming from the opposite direction and Marcus had to dodge it too.

The attacks of the Vamp kept Marcus at bay mainly because he didn't want his new exo-suit to get scratched and that coupled with the Vamp's high agility made sure Marcus couldn't counterattack successfully…for the time being.

After Marcus dodged the fourth attack, his haki predicted that the next attack was going to come from above.

'And, here is the perfect opportunity.'

The Vamp leaped high and raised his right leg to deliver an ax kick that was directed at Marcus' head. And that much time was enough for Marcus to put up his guard.

Marcus crossed his hands above his head, his palms facing upwards as the kick hit his arms directly and with enough force to maim a normal human easily.

But, even though the speed of the Vamp was higher than that of Marcus, his strength was still far below him.

The kick wasn't even able to shake Marcus' arms but it did let Marcus get ahold of the Vamp's leg.

Marcus smirked inside his metallic mask, and a deep, modified voice came out of it, "Got you".

Before the Vamp could even react, Marcus swung around, holding his leg, and bashed him into the nearby wall.

" kuhuk!"

The heavy impact rattled the Vamp and nearly made him unconscious. But that was just the start…

Marcus still didn't let go of his leg and proceeded to pull a hulk on him. He repeatedly bashed him onto the ground for some time.

But Marcus decided to stop after the Vamp was half dead and half-clothed because of the rough beating he took.

The Vamp was also unconscious after the severe beating he took from Marcus.

"Your race does have its perks, after all, being able to take such a beating without dying that's quite a good perk."

The next thing Marcus did was tie up the Vamp with a strong Nylon wire and check up on the unconscious girl.

He scanned the surroundings and found her purse with her phone inside it. Marcus browsed through the contacts and the recent calls where he saw several missed call notifications from the contacts saved as Dad and Mom respectively.

Marcus messaged the contacts the address of the nearest street and a prompt for them to come and pick her up because she was drunk and alone. He consciously mistyped many words to give an impression that the message was written by a barely conscious person.

After that, he used his telepathy to scour through her memories to see if he could find more about the vampire, like whether he had relations with her before or he just found her in the bar.

It turned out to be the latter, "So, the bar will be my hunting ground for the future."

Then Marcus brought out a clove of garlic, one of the few pieces of equipment he had on him for the Vampire hunt, which he crushed and put inside the girl's purse. He proceeded to hang the purse on her neck.

After that, he carried the girl along with the Vamp and dropped her on a roadside bench near the given address. He was about to go back to his base before he thought, 'The garlic will only protect her against the Vamps but there is still a risk. After all, Man is the cruelest animal.'

Marcus carried the Vamp up the nearby building and sat there, waiting for the girl's parents to come and pick her up.

He didn't have to wait long for that to happen, five minutes later, a car drove over and a woman came out of the passenger seat, she sighed and mumbled about how she had told the girl not to party till late at night, etc.

Marcus disappeared from the rooftop after making sure that the girl was safe.

It took him half an hour to reach his hidden base with his speed. Jude and others were out on a mission they had undertaken, which was just a regular assassination mission.

Due to that, Marcus had the base all for himself.

He entered his lab and laid down the Vamp on the dissection table. The table was specially made out of Nickel-Titanium alloy to hold down even Superhumans, although it still had its limit.

Marcus took off the Vamp's clothes and strapped his hands and legs with the nitinol alloy after which his body looked like an X on the dissection table.

'Hmm…should I anesthetize him or leave him be? Will it even work on him? Instead of that, let's do this…'

Marcus also strapped the Vamp's forehead, Mouth, and Hip, effectively stopping his every possible move as the nitinol alloy couldn't be broken by a Vamp's little strength.

After the preparations were complete, Marcus put on his surgeon's garb and picked up a sterilized scalpel from the plate in which a plethora of tools were laid out.

He made an incision going from just under his neck to the umbilicus (belly button)...

After the dissection was done, the Vamp was laid out like an opened-up frog specimen with his different organs marked with different labels.

Marcus had extracted his blood, his canines, and cells from different parts of his body including his brains.

"Experiment log #1: Interestingly enough, they are pretty similar to the comics I read in my past life. They don't have blood, instead, they have green Ichor flowing in their veins. Their canines have two tube-like openings inside them, one used to suck blood, the other for injecting the Ichor inside the victims. The Ichor also has the property to divide itself out of nothing and I am pretty sure once it starts to flow in your body, you will become a Vampire.

Experiment log #2: Other organs have turned vestigial and are only there due to it being a human before, except for the heart and brain, which are needed for its survival.

Experiment log #3: The sucked blood directly enters its bloodstream and excites the Ichor which provides energy, sustenance, and regeneration.

Experiment log #4: As for the regeneration, I tested it and the limit is that as long as the body parts are not separated from the body, they can be regenerated. I haven't tried touching his heart or brain but now that other experiments are nearly complete, I am going to try to check for its weaknesses.

Experiment log #5: Anything made out of silver burns its skin and could kill him if used to make lethal strikes. I couldn't find any reason for such weakness except that it might be due to the magical origin of these creatures. Another weakness is the religious symbol of the religion, the Vamp followed before his turning, in this case, a star of David because the Vamp was a Jew.

Experiment log #6: A wooden stake to the heart is lethal and once it dies, the body turns into ashes. The ashes don't have any signs of biological leftovers. The experiment is over…for now."