Somewhere Outside São Paulo, Brazil, 1965
You'd think with my powers, the humidity of South America wouldn't bother me as much as it would have once, but turns out, apparently my mutation doesn't apply to wet heat. Who knew? I wipe the sweat from my forehead, correcting the flag-themed face plate covering the lower half of my face, which feels even more stifling than normal in the tropical heat. Atlest keeping the fucking mosquitos off me is easy, since I can just increase the radiation field around me, incinerating the little bastards before they can even land on me. I can't help but smile as I feel several more reduce to ash as they fly too close.
There's a rustling sound behind me, and I begin to focus energy into my right hand, in case we've been discovered, until I recognize the red and black costume of the man making his way through the trees.
"Easy, Bandera, is just me. You are far too jumpy, my friend. One might think you have something to hide..." Rodriguez gives me that smug fucking grin that keeps making me want to turn him into a charred skeleton throughout this entire mission.
"I told you to stop calling me that, Tarantula! And sorry if going on a manhunt in the armpit of Brazil is making me jumpy, did you get the damn information or not?"
"Ah, but of course, bandera, the Tarantula always gets the job done, the locals were quite informative, once they had been properly... motivated."
"Great, you did the job my government let you do in favor of not sending you back to Delvadia in three separate banana crates! Now spill, already!"
That seems to take a bit of the smug out of him "Such anger, senor. I would not have thought the great United States would send their premier Estrella Arma to perform such a distasteful task as this. Surely there are more... clandestine individuals to recruit for this cause?"
"Don't read the papers much, do you Rodriguez? The silk gloves are officially off, we're done with the chessmaster bullshit, you have someone we want, you can either hand him over, or we'll just come on and take him. And hey, I can't speak for anyone else, but considering who we're after, I don't exactly consider this job all that distasteful. Now, do you know where he is or not?"
He nods, and points down towards a small farmhouse on the outskirts of the village beneath the hill. "He just arrived back yesterday morning, the men I interrogated had no photos, but their description matches that of the German. There shouldn't be anyone else except him and a bodyguard down there."
"Good, better call this in..." I unclip the radio from my belt and turn on the transmitter "This is Nuke, calling The Hunters. Repeat, Nuke, calling The Hunters. Over!"
"This is the Hunters, we're recieving you clearly. Status? Over." A female voice crackles through the reciever.
"We got confirmation on the target. Inform the Mossad to get the extraction ready."
"Confirmed, Nuke, the mission is Go. Over and Out!"
I clip the radio back on, before moving towards the edge of the clearing. Below us, the farmhouse is dark, with the exception of a single window, and there's smoke coming from the chimney. The grounds outside are empty, aside from the cattle in the enclosure at the back of the house, who are wandering around listlessly in the heat. I pull a pair of binoculars out of my backpack, and try to get a good look inside.
"Hows it going?" Rodriguez whisper next to me.
"Great! And you talking is really helping! Wait- There!" A man with greying dark hair and a moustache wanders past the window, carrying a pot of something. "That's gotta be him. I'm going in after him."
"What do you want me to do, bandera?"
"Just stay behind me and don't get in the way, you did do the bare minimum of your job, so I'd almost regret accidentally killing you in the crossfire now. Let's go!"
I don't bother waiting for Rodriguez, as I simply morph into my light form and zoom down the hill towards the hideout. And I don't bother stopping when I reach the door.
A pulse of light reduces the door to ash, and lights up the room as I enter, startling the hell out of the two men sitting at the dinner table near the window. A balding man dressed in a thin black shirt and dress slacks is the first to react, grabbing a gun that's lying next to his plate on the table and whips it towards me.
He doesn't even have it halfway aimed before a blast of energy from my outstretched hand scorches him, his gun melting and his flesh charring to the bone before he even has time to scream, his body falling to the floor.
The other man, the white man I had seen through the window, screams in shock at the fate of his guard, and reaches into his jacket for his own gun, but doesn't have time to pull it out before my eyes begin to glow and twin beams of light shoot out across the room, striking him in the arm and making him drop the weapon. The German screams, falling to his knees and clutching the smouldering skin of his limb.
"Madre the Dios..." I hear Rodriguez behind me, his voice wavering at the sight of the smoking remains of the man on the floor. I ignore him, stomping over to the survivor who's whimpering over his injury, and grab him by the jacket, hauling him up and slamming him against the wall, making him scream in pain.
"Your friend over there was just some hired goon, so he got a quick way out, but I can guarantee you won't be getting the same treatment. On behalf of the Unites States of America, and the Government of Israel, I'm placing you under arrest for crimes against humanity."
Josef Mengele , the long-feared Angel of Death, doesn't answer as he keeps sobbing pathetically over the burns on his arm.494