It didn't take long before the floor was covered in bodies.
Even the lucky ones had multiple broken bones. Several others weren't lucky at all.
Drex Valen stepped over the wreckage and approached the stunned cashier like this was all perfectly routine.
"I'll take your best barbecue platter," he said calmly. "And an ice-cold Coke. Biggest glass you've got. Make sure it's freezing."
No one argued.
No one was suicidal enough to.
Drex swept his gaze across the restaurant and quickly noticed that every available table was filthy, coated in grease, beer stains, and the lingering residue of criminal occupancy.
Mildly annoyed, he crouched down and casually looted the unconscious gang mbers.
A few hundred dollars.
Several credit cards.
Pathetic.
He discarded most of it without interest.
"A whole gang of troublemakers, and they're broke."
The restaurant owner nearly had a spiritual crisis watching him.
He imdiately ordered his staff to clean the best table in the building, scrubbing away years of grease and filth with industrial cleaner. Normally, they barely bothered. Every ti they cleaned, gangs just trashed the place again.
But tonight?
Tonight was different.
Drex sat down and proceeded to absolutely devastate their inventory.
Texas barbecue was solid. Not life-changing, but respectable.
The real spectacle was his appetite.
He consud over two hundred pounds of smoked at by himself.
Brisket.
Ribs.
Sausage.
Pulled pork.
Anything remotely edible.
By the ti he finished, nearly one-third of the restaurant's total stock was gone.
He also drank five gallons of ice-cold Coca-Cola.
The owner looked at the final bill like reality itself had betrayed him.
Drex, anwhile, found his own hunger mildly fascinating.
Kryptonians technically didn't need food on this scale. Solar energy should have covered most biological requirents. Unless his stomach secretly functioned like so impossible matter-to-energy reactor, this level of consumption shouldn't have been necessary.
Still, Earth food had advantages.
Flavor, for one.
After finishing, Drex leaned back and began gathering information.
That was when he learned the gang he had just crippled belonged to the infamous Scorpion Gang.
The na itself was uninspired, but their reputation was not.
The Scorpion Gang held serious power across Texas and xico, controlling drug trafficking, extortion, kidnappings, human trafficking, and even large-scale organ harvesting operations that had drawn national attention.
Their only real rival in the region was the Skull Gang, another brutal criminal empire rumored to have backing from none other than Wilson Fisk himself.
That caught Drex's interest.
Now that was useful information.
The Scorpions primarily trafficked narcotics, th, and fentanyl.
The Skull Gang specialized in weapons distribution.
One moved poison.
The other moved war.
Together, they helped keep the borderlands drenched in blood and profit.
Still, Drex wasn't so righteous crusader.
He had no desire to storm cartel headquarters simply because evil existed. He wasn't so self-sacrificing comic book idealist or delusional chosen hero.
Unless soone threatened him directly, their operations weren't his problem.
At least for now.
After eating, Drex spent the afternoon wandering through town.
anwhile, the surviving Scorpion Gang mbers had already reported back.
A simple beating might have been tolerated.
Mass casualties?
That was humiliation.
And criminal organizations survived on fear.
So retaliation ca swiftly.
Over fifty ard enforcers were dispatched to eliminate the man who had publicly embarrassed the gang.
Their local informants tracked Drex easily enough.
Before long, he found himself blocked on a dusty Texas street.
Police, naturally, were nowhere useful.
Most local officers were either bribed by the Scorpions, the Skull Gang, or both. As long as public chaos stayed below a certain threshold, they had little interest in interfering.
Drex glanced around, mildly surprised.
This was efficient.
"Die!"
Gunn raised their weapons.
To ordinary humans, the next few seconds would have been instantaneous.
To Drex?
Everything slowed.
His superhuman reflexes processed their movents effortlessly. He tracked barrel alignnt, calculated ballistic trajectories, and adjusted his body before fingers fully tightened on triggers.
Then the bullets ca.
And missed.
What followed looked less like combat and more like a nightmare.
Drex moved through gunfire with impossible precision, weaving between rounds as if the laws of physics had politely stepped aside for him.
"Jesus Christ!"
"What the fuck?!"
The gunn panicked.
But panic couldn't overco biological inferiority.
Their bodies were too slow.
Their reactions too sluggish.
Their bullets too predictable.
Drex closed the distance.
His fist slamd into the apparent leader with catastrophic force.
The impact launched the man backward into several others, creating a human domino effect that sent bodies crashing through the street in waves.
The first victim's chest cratered inward so deeply it looked like an encyclopedia could fit inside.
The rest collapsed in chain-reaction devastation.
Poor formation.
Poor discipline.
Classic gang behavior.
Once Drex entered close quarters, it beca slaughter.
Gunn trying to adjust their aim often ended up shooting their own allies instead.
Others had their weapons forcibly redirected.
So fired wildly.
So scread.
Most broke.
Within minutes, the street was a graveyard of broken bodies, blood, and shattered bravado.
The survivors had only one emotion left.
Fear.
Drex planted his boot on one groaning thug's chest.
"Take to your boss."
His tone was calm.
Cold.
Final.
If they wanted to co after him, then he would return the favor properly.
"Police!"
At that exact mont, law enforcent finally arrived.
How convenient.
Corrupt officers poured onto the scene, not to uphold justice, but to preserve their own inco streams. If the Scorpion Gang suffered too much damage under their watch, their bribery pipeline would dry up.
Drex gave them one glance.
Annoying.
Killing cartel soldiers was one thing.
Killing cops, even dirty ones, created unnecessary complications.
So he vanished.
Instead, he chose the smarter route.
Follow the chain.
Whether the wounded went to a hospital or were retrieved by gang leadership, soone higher up would eventually surface.
And Drex would be waiting.
As expected, corrupt police alerted the Scorpion Gang, and gang representatives soon arrived to assess the damage.
Drex shadowed one of them discreetly.
That trail led him straight to one of the Scorpion Gang's largest border operations:
A factory.
Not an ordinary one.
This facility was one of the gang's most critical production centers, manufacturing over thirty tons annually of thamphetamine, narcotics, and fentanyl for distribution across Texas and the broader United States.
This wasn't just a drug lab.
It was a golden artery.
A machine that generated the majority of the Scorpion Gang's wealth.
And now...
Drex knew exactly where to strike.
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