Third Person POV:
A sudden stillness envelops the area. It was as if time stopped.
Alex was on his knees, blood rapidly pooling around his body. Even with his superhuman body, it couldn't handle the sheer amount of strain Bullseye caused it.
Coins buried in his chest, resembling shotgun shells. Cuts everywhere, heavily bleeding due to all of the serrated blades he either directly took or got grazed by. A dagger buried in his shoulder, and another in his forearm.
He fell to his knees with a thump, head slumping forward.
Then, something changed.
Unaware of this change, Bullseye, brandishing his katana, walked forward to finish the job.
A primal aura started to appear around Alex's body. It was wild. Untamed.
Noticing the shift, Bullseye paused. For him, this was just an interesting game. As long as he had the advantage of the hostages, he would never in a million years lose this fight, even if Iron Man or Captain America came to stop him themselves.
The aura hanging around the air coalesced closer and closer to Alex's body, still sporadic, like moths to a flame.
Until it happened. The aura concentrated into one singular spot, forming a tribal tattoo, starting at his chest and reaching towards the tip of his shoulders, faintly glowing red.
As this happened to Alex, a few other things happened as well. His fangs and claws, originally about an inch long, extended out to 5 inches.
Not the straight claws that grew before, used to slice and incapacitate. Curved claws meant to rip and maim.
This was all within a split second.
Noticing something was off, Bullseye quickly stepped in, confident grin vanishing within an instant. He dashed towards the kneeling Alex, holding out the katana to behead him.
It didn't work out as planned.
Within the few desperate seconds that Bullseye was dashing towards him, a number of events played out.
First, Alex lifted his previously slumped head, and one thing was very different. His usual onyx black eyes were gone. It was replaced by an empty sclera, with a faint red flame, the same colour as the tattoos, glowing in the center.
There were no thoughts in those eyes. Only pure, unbridled will.
Will to protect.
Will to defeat.
And then he moved.
Faster than Bullseye could react, Alex exploded off the ground like an unshackled beast. One moment he was on his knees, the next he was on all fours, claws scraping across the metal floor as he sprinted like a wolf that caught a whiff of blood.
As he was running on all fours, the daggers impaling Alex dug deeper into his skin, ripping flesh. It didn't seem to affect him, however. He couldn't feel pain. The only thing he felt was his unbending will and his primal instincts.
Bullseye couldn't react. Alex, or the beast that once was Alex, he wasn't sure anymore, was just way too fast.
A blur of fur and claws zipped under Bullseye's arm and came up with a brutal uppercut. The only problem was that, instead of a usual uppercut that Alex would resort to, under the frenzied state of the last claw passive, the fist was opened instead of closed.
Not to incapacitate and take down, but to maim and kill.
The upwards slash with his extended claws cut through Bullseye's tactical gear like a knife through butter, blood spraying outwards from 4 bloody red gashes going from his chest to his neck. If it wasn't for Bullseye's insane reaction speed, his face and his brain would be cut into 5 pieces about now.
Bullseye leaped as far back as possible to get out of range, frantically grabbing his opening wounds. Ripping off his shirt, he tied it around the cuts to close them up.
He pulled out a fan of ten blades from his belt and launched them in a wide scatter pattern. All aimed behind Alex. Not at him. At the hostages.
Knowing he can't beat Alex outright, he goes right back to targeting his weakness.
Alex didn't even pause to think. If this were the normal, calculating Alex, he would've paused to think and decided the only way to stop the knives was with self-sacrifice, taking the blades with his body.
However, this is an Alex that was consumed by instinct. He gathered all of his power in his legs and leaped towards the beginning of the fan of blades.
Bullseye, as a former professional pitcher, can throw at over 100 miles per hour.
And Alex, an unrelenting force of nature, slashed away each and every one of the daggers that he threw, not getting hit, or even letting one past him.
An impenetrable wall.
Clink. Clank. Clang.
The daggers clattered to the floor.
Alex's leap didn't stop there, though.
He continued sailing and barreled into Bullseye with the force of a rampaging bear.
Alex collided with Bullseye shoulder-first, luckily for him. If Alex had his claws extended, that would have been the end of his existence, with two gaping arm-sized holes impaling his chest.
The transfer of kinetic energy sent him flying back, ragdoll, until they crashed into one of the empty cargo containers, the metal walls caving in with a sickening crunch.
Alex didn't give him a second to breathe.
Still on all fours, he pounced again.
Bullseye barely managed to roll to the side before Alex's claw cleaved straight through the steel plate behind him like it was paper.
"Hhah- ghkk- what even are you?" Bullseye spat, eyes wide now, not with insanity, but with panic. He fumbled for a smoke grenade on his vest and pulled the pin with his teeth.
A gray smoke exploded between them.
But Alex didn't rely on sight anymore. He wasn't the Alex who thought with his brain, who wasn't able to use his senses to their fullest, having to comprehend everything he was taking in.
This was the Alex that relied solely on instinct. He didn't care about any of the other sounds. The smells. The feelings. He zeroed in on one thing and one thing only.
He tracked Bullseye by the rhythm of his panicked heartbeat. By the shift in air as he moved. By the scent of iron and gun oil and adrenaline pouring off him in waves.
He was running.
From a biologically perfected predator.
Alex closed the distance in seconds, like a relentless beast.
Bullseye ducked behind a container and spun, throwing three blades from behind cover.
All three, deflected by Alex's claws. Even in the smoke, with zero vision.
Bullseye stumbled back, leaving the smoke, visibly shaking. "No. No, no, no. You're just a freakin' rookie vigilante. You're not supposed to-!"
He got to finish the sentence.
Alex was already on him.
Then came the barrage.
A flurry of knuckles and fury. He didn't use his claws this time. Maybe the last claw was nearing its duration. But it didn't mean that the strikes weren't lethal.
Alex kept on striking. Each and every one of his strikes dented Bullseye's armour, and what was underneath it, deeper. Every strike, there was a crack. Whether it was the gear or the bones, it was unknown.
He wasn't laughing anymore.
He wasn't grinning that maniacal grin.
He was knocked out cold.
Pathetic.
Just as Alex was about to continue, he spotted a flash of red at the corner of his vision, rushing towards him.
His instincts screamed at him.
This might be another threat he had to protect the hostages from.
He roared, ready for the next fight, his will strong as ever.
To protect. To defeat.
(a/n explanation: When he hits super low hp, he goes into berserker, with all stats being buffed, not feeling pain, and being fully reliant on instinct. I got this idea after playing Ksante in league. Alex's regular form is like the defensive with blunt attacks and brains, Alex when he's tryna protect is half and half, blunt and slashes, smarts and instinct, and alex when he's super low is full instinct berserk.)