"DANTE!" "DANTE!" "DANTE!"
Dante stood in the center of the cage, steam still rising from his cooling skin, looking out at their faces. Some were terrified. Some were hungry. All of them wanted a piece of what they'd just witnessed.
He climbed out through the cage door, wiping blood from his knuckles with a rag someone tossed him. The fabric sizzled slightly when it touched his skin.
Vincent was waiting, arms crossed, looking like a man who'd just watched his nephew discover fire for the first time - and wasn't sure if he should be proud or call the fire department.
"You feel better now?" Vincent asked dryly.
Dante rolled his shoulders, testing the ache in his muscles. "Much."
"Good. Because we've got a problem."
Vincent nodded toward the crowd. In the back, near the exit, a man in an expensive suit was talking rapidly into his phone, eyes fixed on Dante. Another guy - leather jacket, gold teeth - was taking pictures with a camera that looked too professional for a fight fan.
"Word's gonna spread," Vincent said. "About what you just did. What you are."
Dante shrugged. "Let it spread."
"Your father spent thirty years keeping you hidden. Keeping that..." Vincent gestured vaguely at Dante's hands, "...whatever the hell that is, under wraps. You just lit yourself up like a goddamn Christmas tree in front of half the underworld."
"My father's dead," Dante said quietly. "His rules died with him."
Vincent stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head. "You're gonna start a war, kid."
"No," Dante said, pulling on his jacket.
--------------------------------
Moretti Estate - 11:47 PM
Isabella sat in her father's study, a glass of wine in her hand and a phone pressed to her ear. The voice on the other end was excited, breathless.
"-he fucking smashed him into the ground, I swear to God, Isabella. The whole place smelled like blood and-"
"Slow down, Marco," she said. "Start from the beginning."
Marco took a breath. "Your boy Dante showed up at Rico's tonight. Fought Misha Kirov."
Isabella straightened. Misha was a killer. A literal, professional, no-conscience killer who'd once beaten a man to death with his own shoe.
"And?"
"And he turned him into a hamburger. But that's not the crazy part. The crazy part is he's got... powers. Real ones. Fire. Heat. His hands were glowing like fucking coals. And he looked like a freaking psycho, you know what I mean? He liked killing that dude!"
Isabella set down her wine glass with shaking fingers.
"You're sure?"
"Lady, I saw it with my own eyes. Whatever Leon Cavarro was hiding about his son, it ain't human."
The line went dead.
--------------------------------
Fisk's Penthouse - 12:15 AM
Wilson Fisk stood before a wall of monitors, each one showing different camera angles from Rico's underground fight club. The footage was grainy, the lighting poor, but there was no mistaking what he was seeing.
Dante Cavarro, glowing like a furnace, turning a man into paste.
"Rewind it," Fisk said.
Wesley hit a button. The footage played again. Fisk watched Dante's hands ignite, watched the temperature shimmer around him like heat waves off asphalt.
"How many people saw this?"
"Approximately two hundred. Plus, whatever footage is already circulating online."
Fisk was quiet for a long time.
"We're not dealing with a crime family anymore, Wesley. We're dealing with something else entirely."
"What do you want to do?"
Fisk moved to his desk, opened a locked drawer, and pulled out a thick file marked "CLASSIFIED - ENHANCED INDIVIDUALS."
"Get me everything we have on powered individuals in New York. Every rumor, every sighting, every whisper. And get me a meeting with our friends at Oscorp."
"Oscorp, sir?"
"If there are more like young Cavarro out there, we need to know. And if there aren't..." Fisk's massive fingers drummed once against the desk. "We need to make sure it stays that way."
--------------------------------
"Anyone else?" Dante called out, his voice carrying easily over the din.
The chanting faltered. Conversations died mid-sentence. Someone dropped a beer bottle, and the crash echoed like a gunshot.
Vincent pushed through the crowd toward the cage. "Dante, what the hell are you doing?"
"What I should have done years ago," Dante replied, not taking his eyes off the crowd. "Being honest."
Rico, the fight promoter, climbed onto a crate to address the crowd. His face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead despite the underground chill.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, his voice cracking slightly, "I think we've seen enough for one night-"
"No," Dante interrupted. "We haven't."
He stepped over Misha's body and moved to the cage door. The crowd parted like water as he walked through, some people backing away entirely, others pressing closer for a better look.
"Hey! From now on, this club belongs to me, alright?"
"What? You can't do that!" Rico retorted.
"What'd you say?"
"I-I mean," he stammered, trying to save face in front of a rapidly disillusioned crowd, "maybe we could work something out—"
"Rico," Dante said calmly, "you've been skimming off fighters for years. Fixing matches. Selling footage to cops and cartels. You're done."
Rico opened his mouth to protest, but only managed a kind of panicked squeak.
Dante turned to the crowd, arms spread. "Anyone here think Rico should keep running this place?"
Silence.
Then someone near the back muttered, "Hell no."
Another voice added, "Dante's the real deal, man."
A third chimed in, "About time someone cleaned this dump up."
"I won't kill you," Dante said, stepping back. "But you're gonna walk out of here. Right now. And never come back. And if you do..."
Rico didn't wait for the rest of the sentence. He jumped off the crate and bolted for the exit, tripping over someone's gym bag on the way.
"You already have enough properties in the city. Why?" Vincent asked.
"It's fun, Vincent," Dante told as he turned to the crowd. "Clean the shit and let's get back to it!"
Vincent rubbed his temples. "Fun, he says," he muttered. "You know what else is fun? Not getting assassinated by five rival syndicates."
"Y'know what's more fun?" Dante asked.
"What?"
"Let's kill the five rival syndicates?" Dante laughed sinisterly before coughing. "Sorry, I'mma need to work on my evil laugh."
Vincent gave Dante a look that fell somewhere between Are you high? and I knew I should've retired to Florida.
Dante stepped up onto the crate, scanning the faces below. "This is ours now," he said. "No more backroom deals. No more rigged fights. No more selling out your brothers for a few pennies. This place is going legit. Breaking bones and giving them a few months in the hospital is okay, but a fight to the death only when both parties agree to it."
"But you just killed Misha!" Someone in the crowd shouted.
"Yeah, because he was trying to kill me, bitch."
Dante, meanwhile, stayed on his soapbox, the cracked wooden crate creaking under his boots.
"This place gon to be different, alright? Not gonna be about who you know or how much money you have. It's gonna be about how much of a man you are."
One of the bouncers—the one with arms the size of small nations—nodded slowly. Then another fighter raised a fist. Someone else clapped. Before long, the room buzzed again, not with fear this time... but with something new.
Loyalty.
"What the fuck?" Vincent muttered.
Dante smirked as he walked around, "Now, clean that nasty motherfucker out of the ring."
Misha's body was dragged unceremoniously out of the ring like last week's garbage, leaving behind only a streak of blood and the lingering scent of cooked flesh.
A few of the newer fighters scrambled to mop the bloodstains with torn shirts, while others started hauling out broken chairs and shattered beer bottles like stagehands at a rock concert no one paid to attend but somehow survived.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked, not even pretending to hide his exasperation anymore. "You're turning an illegal fight club into a—what, a cult?"
Dante stretched, then cracked his neck. Pop. Pop.
"Nah," he said. "More of a club."
Dante turned back to the people sitting. "Oi! Someone go kidnap a nice doctor and get him here. Threaten to kill his family if needed- but don't actually do it. I'm not a monster."
"You and your father, both the same," Vincent smirked.
"Figures, but riddle me this, man. What should be the name of our 'establishment'?"
"What? That's not a riddle, Dante."
"Oh, god! The fuck you mean, Vincent? Tell me a name."
"I don't know."
"Well, I'm thinking of DCFC. Dante Cavarro Fight Club."
"That's terrible."
"No, it's perfect."
"No, it's not."
"Yes, it is, now shut up."
Vincent sighed so hard it echoed.
"Dante. You cannot name an illegal fight club after yourself. That's like robbing a bank and leaving a business card."
"Exactly," Dante said with a smirk. "That way, they know who not to mess with."
"This is a waste of time, Dante."
"SO?"
--------------------------------
The "nice doctor" turned out to be Dr. Sarah Chen, a trauma surgeon who'd been grabbed from St. Vincent's parking garage by two of Dante's newly recruited muscle. She sat in what used to be Rico's office, her hands steady despite the circumstances, stitching up a fighter's split eyebrow.
"You know this is kidnapping, right?" she said without looking up from her work.
"Nah, Doc," said Tommy, one of the fighters. "More like... aggressive recruitment."
Dr. Chen gave him a look that could have frozen hellfire. "And my family?"
Dante leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. The heat shimmer around him had died down, but his skin still looked flushed, like he'd been sitting too close to a fireplace.
"Your family's fine. They don't even know you're gone yet. Vincent made sure of that."
"Vincent?"
"My uncle. He's got a thing about being thorough."
Dr. Chen finished the last stitch and snipped the thread. "There. You'll live, but try not to get punched in that exact spot for the next week."
Tommy grinned, showing off a gold tooth. "Thanks, Doc. You're alright."
As Tommy left, Dr. Chen turned to Dante. "So what now? You keep me here forever?"
"Nah. You work a few nights a week, patch up the fighters, and make sure nobody dies of something stupid like infection. In return, you get paid better than the hospital pays you, and your daughter's college fund gets a nice boost."
Dr. Chen's hands stilled on her medical bag. "How do you know about—"
"Like I said. Vincent's thorough."
Vincent appeared in the doorway as if summoned. "Speaking of thorough, we've got company upstairs."
Dante straightened. "What kind of company?"
"The kind that wears badges and asks uncomfortable questions."
Detective Ray Nadeem stood outside the abandoned warehouse, badge hanging from his neck, flanked by two uniformed officers. The building looked like every other piece of urban decay in Hell's Kitchen—graffitied walls, broken windows, the kind of place decent people crossed the street to avoid.
But Nadeem had gotten a tip. Anonymous caller claiming there was an illegal fight club operating out of the basement. Usually, he'd file that under "not my problem," but the caller had mentioned something about "enhanced individuals."
Enhanced individuals meant federal attention. Federal attention meant career opportunities.
"You sure about this, Detective?" Officer Martinez asked, eyeing the building's intimidating facade.
"Anonymous tips are usually bullshit," Nadeem admitted, "but we're here, so let's take a look."
They approached the main entrance—a heavy steel door that looked like it could stop a truck. Nadeem knocked.
The door opened to reveal Vincent, wearing a perfectly pressed suit despite the late hour.
"Evening, officers. How can I help you?"
"NYPD," Nadeem said, showing his badge. "We received reports of illegal activity at this location."
Vincent smiled the kind of smile that politicians practiced in mirrors. "Illegal activity? Officer, this is just a private fitness facility. We cater to clients who prefer to work out... after hours."
"We'd like to take a look around."
"Of course. Though I should mention, we require all visitors to sign a liability waiver. Some of our equipment can be... intense."
Dante stood in the center of the now-empty fighting cage, watching the monitors Vincent had installed. Three cops upstairs, one of them asking too many questions.
"What do you want to do?" Vincent's voice crackled through the earpiece.
Dante cracked his knuckles. Small flames danced between his fingers before he consciously suppressed them.
"Bring them down. But carefully."
"You sure that's wise?"
"Vincent, I just announced to half the criminal underworld that I've got superpowers. You think three cops are gonna make things worse?"
Around the basement, fighters and spectators had melted away through exit tunnels Vincent had insisted on during the original construction. The only people left were Dante, Dr. Chen (who was pretending to organize medical supplies), and Big Mike, a bouncer who'd stayed behind because, in his words, "This is about to get interesting."
The elevator dinged softly.
Vincent emerged first, still wearing that politician's smile, followed by three cops who looked like they were regretting their career choices.
"Gentlemen," Vincent announced, "welcome to our facility. This is Dante Cavarro, our... head trainer."
Detective Nadeem's eyes swept the basement. He saw the octagonal cage, the bloodstains on the concrete floor, the lingering smell of violence and sweat.
"Hell of a gym you got here," he said.
"We specialize in full-contact training," Dante replied. "Mixed martial arts, boxing, that sort of thing."
"And the blood?"
"Training can get intense. That's why we have Dr. Chen on staff." Dante nodded toward the doctor, who gave a professional wave.
Nadeem walked to the cage, running his fingers along the chain-link fencing. "This is a fighting cage."
"For training purposes, yes."
"Training for what?"
Dante smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile.
"For when talking doesn't work."
The temperature in the room seemed to rise a few degrees. Officer Martinez loosened his collar.
"Look," Nadeem said, turning back to Dante, "we got reports of illegal fighting. People are getting hurt. Enhanced individuals."
"Enhanced?" Dante raised an eyebrow. "Like what, steroids?"
"Like..." Nadeem struggled for the words. "Like people with unusual abilities."
"You mean mutants?" Big Mike asked from the corner.
Everyone turned to look at him.
"What?" Mike shrugged. "I watch the news. There's all kinds of weird shit happening these days. That spider-guy in Queens, those hand ninjas, that horned freak running around Hell's Kitchen."
"The horned freak saves lives," Dr. Chen said quietly.
"Yeah, well, saving lives and breaking legs ain't mutually exclusive," Mike replied.
Dante stepped closer to Detective Nadeem. Close enough that the cop could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
"You want to know about enhanced individuals, Detective?"
Vincent tensed. Dr. Chen stopped pretending to organize bandages.
"Yeah," Nadeem said, his hand instinctively moving toward his service weapon. "I do."
Dante held up his right hand, palm facing up. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then his palm began to glow.
Not like a flashlight or LED. Like molten metal. Like the heart of a forge. Heat waves shimmered around his fingers, and the air itself seemed to crackle.
Officer Martinez stumbled backward. His partner reached for his radio.
"Jesus Christ," Nadeem whispered.
"Close," Dante said, the flames dancing higher. "But I prefer to think of myself as more of a Prometheus type."
The fire in his palm pulsed brighter.
"Now," Dante continued, "you gentlemen have two choices. You can walk back upstairs, forget what you saw, and go back to arresting purse snatchers and parking violators."
The flames grew hotter.
"Or you can try to arrest me."
Detective Nadeem stared at the fire, at the way it moved like it was alive, like it was listening to Dante's thoughts.
"What's behind door number two?" he asked.
Dante's smile widened.
"You really don't want to find out."
--------------------------------
The three police officers stood on the sidewalk, looking back at the building they'd just exited.
"So," Officer Martinez said, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands, "what do we put in the report?"
Detective Nadeem was quiet for a long moment.
"Anonymous tip was a false alarm. The building's being used as a private gym. Nothing illegal."
"But what about—"
"Nothing illegal," Nadeem repeated firmly.
As they walked back to their patrol cars, none of them noticed the figure watching from a rooftop across the street. A man in a red suit, horns silhouetted against the city lights.
Matt Murdock had heard every word.
He tilted his head slightly, listening to the echoes of footsteps fading down the alley. Nadeem and his men were long gone. But their fear still hung in the air like smoke.
"A firestarter..." Matt muttered as he shook his head.