PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

“Nana” The girl replied with a trembling voice.

“Ok, Nana, everything will be fine, just hold tight and I’ll take you to your mommy; It’s fine?” With a warm and fatherly voice, Desmond tried to calm Nana.

Still scared, Nana clung with her little hand to Desmond’s coat and nodded her cute little head.

Seeing the girl in his arms a strong protective instinct took hold of Desmond’s mind and without even stopping to think about the consequences of using overload once more, this time the process was slightly different and he focused mainly on his psycho-motor abilities.

The neural synapses within Desmond began to light up and Desmond’s brain began to operate at an abnormal rate receiving, processing, and sending information at unheard-of speed through his nervous system.

Now with his senses, coordination, control, and reflexes amplified, Desmond set out to deal with the panthers in front of him while keeping the girl safe in his arms.

The panthers, seeing Desmond’s defensive posture and the girl in his arms, decided to attack, taking advantage of the apparent disadvantage that Desmond was in.

But Desmond’s next action caught not only the Panthers but also those who watched this happen by surprise, instead of backing off into a defensive posture Desmond went on the offensive against the Panthers.

.....

As soon as they entered close combat range a deadly dance began that no other human could hope to accomplish, not without having an insanely powerful Esper ability at least.

Using the back of his right-hand Desmond struck the side of the face of the first panther to reach him thus deflecting the panther’s jaws to the side, using that same momentum Desmond turned on his axis and kicked just hard enough to the next panther to pounce to also get it out of his way.

As soon as his legs regained their support on the ground, three panthers rushed towards Desmond from different directions, with no other option Desmond used his strength and superhuman speed to jump a couple of meters in the air forward but as soon as his body was in the air Desmond saw that two other panthers had waited for him to leap towards him when he was in the air.

This caught Desmond off guard as he didn′t expect these mutant beasts to use such synchronized tactics to deal with him, with just a fraction of a second to react Desmond used the strength of his left arm and the weight of the girl in it to shift his center of gravity into the air and rotate your body just enough to gather momentum.

Just a fraction of a second later two sources of blood exploded in the air, without enough time to react or support to maneuver Desmond was forced to prioritize dealing only with one of the panthers that had attacked him by digging his right claw into the back of one of the panthers and use the panther’s momentum to get out of the air; unfortunately in the process, the other panther had opened a huge gash on Desmond’s back with his claws.

“Everything is fine, Nana, soon you will see your mommy” Desmond said without even bothering about the wound he had just suffered, he was more focused on the well-being of the little girl in his arms.

Little Nana could only silently nod as her tears ran rampant down her cheeks, as young and naive as the little girl was, she still understood that the kind older brother who held her in his arms had been hurt to protect her.

As if someone put fuel on the fire, Nana’s tears only served to feed Desmond’s protective instincts, it should be mentioned that Desmond was always a person with strong paternal instincts; That had been reflected in the way he had cared for Claire for years and in his concern for the orphanage he used to visit.

Fueled by his instincts Desmond’s demeanor grew more and more brutal by the second, like a wolf trying to protect his cub, Desmond clung to Nana as he tried to use his fangs (Gauntlets) to tear apart his enemies.

And to the surprise of many, Desmond managed to murder two of the panthers while he kept Nana safe, the problem was that while now there were two panthers on the ground bleeding quickly; Desmond’s body was reaching its limits.

The entire confrontation had lasted less than two minutes, but those 120 seconds using overload had caused Desmond’s entire nervous system to feel like it was on fire.

It must be said that fighting with one of his arms restrained from him while protecting someone had caused Desmond’s combat prowess to plummet because under normal circumstances those same one hundred and twenty seconds would have been enough for Desmond to assassinate the eight panthers.

“Sir, are you okay?” Nana said concerned by the exhausted expression on Desmond’s face.

“Yeah, don’t worry, I didn’t come here alone” Desmond replied with a smile.

And as if this statement had been a signal, a powerful telekinetic force forced two panthers to stop as two spikes of ice began to materialize overhead.

The rest of the panthers ignored their companions to head towards Desmond but were greeted by a hail of bullets, having freed themselves from the civilians blocking their field of vision and having taken an advantageous position the rest of Desmond’s squad used assault rifles with armor-piercing bullets to rain death on the remaining panthers.

As the panthers fell dead from the gunfire, the two ice spikes finished forming and impaled the panthers that had been subdued by Claire’s telekinetic ability.

Only one panther managed to dodge the hail of bullets and advance towards Desmond after his companions fell dead, with bloodshot eyes the panther tried to jump towards Desmond trying to kill him before dying but was knocked down by a strange energetic explosion that hit it in the side.

Accompanied by a strange sonic reverberation similar to someone playing bass with the best amp in the world, the crystalline-looking revolver in Morales’s hand continued to shoot a blast of energy at the panther until it stopped moving.

Only when he saw the last panther drop-dead did Desmond dare to relax his guard almost collapsing to the ground from exhaustion and even then he did not let go of little Nana.

“See, I told you everything would be fine, come on I’ll take you to your mother.” With an exhausted smile, Desmond stroked Nana’s brown hair as he walked back to the crowd ignoring his squad that was checking the panther corpses.