Chapter 1.4: Sunday's Fall

## Summary

The next day, the McDonald family finishes attending church, as Justin suddenly recalls his promise to Neffi telling the rest of his family that they have to make it home before noon. Various obstacles prevent Justin from meeting up with Neffi on time, as he rushes to downtown Montero and finds that the Blood Drive RV was nowhere to be found. Reluctant by the cruel turn of events, Justin had no choice but to return home while listening to music with his headphones. Elsewhere, the three hired hitmen silently await on the top of a skyscraper to carry out their next big hit on the Wilcox Corporation.

The three hitmen swiftly spring from the rooftop and on to the streets below entering the Wilcox Corporation's front lobby. Meanwhile, Wilcox ends his Sunday meeting with the executives as they all hear a sudden sirens go off and lights turn red in the hallway. The trio are then surrounded by police forces, as Mr. Wilcox and his executives appear to the scene only to antagonize their uninvited guests. Suddenly, the biggest of the three, Clouse calls forth countless minions as they all go on a killing spree inside the corporation -using their superpowers and high tech guns. During the chaotic bloodshed, the corporation's secretary managed to make a final (though interrupted) phone call to JSA , just moments before her inevitable demise which immediately caught the Joined Services Agency's attention.

Elsewhere, Clouse and the rest of their group's minions had their strengths increased once they consumed the large amounts of blood from their fallen victims. Meanwhile, Mr.Wilcox runs into his office locking the door, as the rest of his employees knock, begging to be let in, as he casually ignores their cries for help and attempts to go down a secret escape route leading to safety. However, he is then cornered and devoured by Silhouette , as the golden Genesis software Mr.Wilcox was carrying dropped out of his hand, fell out the window stories below and landed in the bushes of a nearby public sidewalk. Justin (completely oblivious to everything that just happened) was heading back home with his headphones on, as he saw the rare software just lying there in plain sight and took it for himself.

Before he could continue on, a swarm of the Mubarak's  minions surround Justin as he makes it to the roof of a parking deck. Justin notes that these strange creatures look vaguely humanoid, have glowing red eyes along with blank black faces, and wore fullbody jumpsuits. Once Justin arrived to the rooftop, he found a small knife on the ground. The minions chased him to the roof, as Justin split one open with the knife when it sprung forth to attack him. Oddly, the minion faded into black and left behind a red shard of some sort, as Justin made a jump to get to the other building.However, Justin unfortunately doesn't make the jump and plummets straight into an open dumpster. He manages to recover from the rough landing, but is then surrounded by the minions in a back alley.

Right when they're all about to attack him, Justin is then saved by the senior JSA member, Isa Sarabillo as she explains to Justin that the creatures attacking him earlier were called "Pseudo." Soon afterwards, Isa and Justin evidently pair up with each other to make their way to the JSA Center, as Silhouette, Clouse and Noelle  watch the two from a distance and summon the Colossal Pseudo into the frey. Right when the pair are cornered by the Mubarak's gigantic pseudo, the rest of Isa's team holds off and defeats them -allowing both Justin and Isa to get further away from the city. By using their superpowers, Isa's team destroys the legion of lesser pseudo effortlessly, as the Mubarak trio appear to the scene intimidating the group.

Just when a fight between JSA and the Mubarak is about to ensue, Silhouette uses his signature skill called "*The Shadow*," which animates the shadows of Silhouette's victims and manipulates them to fight against said victims without Silhouette actually having to do a thing -allowing the three hitmen to skip the big fight with Isa's group and head straight for Justin and Isa herself. The two lay low in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city, as Justin and Isa both get reacquainted with each other, as Isa goes into more detail about the situation at hand. Suddenly, the Mubarak interrupt their small talk and relentlessly pursue the pair from jumping out of a window to cornering them on an overpass.

Just when things weren't looking too great for the pair, Justin remembered that he still had his last red smoke bomb in his pocket and signaled Isa to use her powers to ignite it when the time was right. Right when the Mubarak attempted to fire shots, Justin threw his smoke bomb at the three as Isa ignited their last resort immediately afterwards. The explosion was so great that the blast sent the three hitmen flying back inside the building, severely injured while buying enough time for Justin and Isa to escape into the water beneath the bridge. The two then swim underwater into a nearby reservoir that led out into the woods, as the agent Pacsk B. Law travels to Montero to investigate what's taking Isa group so long to return.

Elsewhere, only Silhouette is able to regenerate from the blast as he continues pursuing both Justin and Isa. Once out of the river, the two find themselves in the middle of the woods, relieved that they've gotten away. However just when they think its finally over, Justin notices the strange, disturbed looked on Isa's face as she tells Justin to make a run for it. Silhouette then appears before the two alone with his arms around both of their shoulders. At that moment, Silhouette throws Isa to the side and blasts Justin away with powerful, dark energy. Right when Isa tries running to Justin's aid, Silhouette binds her shadow and knocks her unconscious as Justin forced to deal with this evil creature by himself.

Before the conflict starts, Silhouette mocks the boy for his questionable strength and makes a deal with him, stating that he'll let Justin keep the software, if he could have Isa for himself. Justin immediately declines the offer and states that Isa is a completely irreplacable person and would rather just give Silhouette the software, if its going to cost him this much trouble. Justin then makes another deal stating that if he could get at least one hit on Silhouette, he and the rest of his partners would go away and leave everyone else alone. The grim reaper accepted his offer and stated that if he couldn't get a single hit on him before he beat Justin to an inch of his life, then the boy and the software were coming with him.

Once the deals were finally established, the brawl against death had finally begun. Silhouette's plummelling to Justin proved that he needed to use his wits against this dark fiend, if he had any chance at winning this thing. Right when Justin was evading Silhouette's swings, the sudden memory of him playing "Nii Sports Boxing" came into fruition, as he used that very same method. After multiple strategies and taking hits long enough, Justin finally saw an opening to Silhouette attack style went straight in for that one, powerful strike. The hit was a success as it cause Silhouette to stumble back, as Justin took the golden opportunity continue hitting Silhouette. Angered by the thought of losing to a mere human, Silhouette unleashed blue aura that knocked the boy unconscious, as he was blasted back towards the boulders.

As Silhouette took a moment to casually dust himself off, he went towards the boy and grabbed the software from Justin's backpack on the ground. Then, Silhouette stands to himself for a moment, pulls out a lighter and a cigarette, and starts smoking. Soon afterwards, Silhouette's two partners show up and see Isa and Justin on the ground unconscious. Right when Noelle's about to mess with the boy, Silhouette tells her to leave him be and explains to his partners that he lost his wager against Justin and now they must go. After the Mubarak leave, the shadows the rest of Isa's team were fighting receded as they each hurried to their leader's location and whisked them away to the JSA Center to get fixed up.

Hours later, Justin awoke in JSA's infirmary, as Pacsk sat and watched him. The agent explains what took place after Justin's run-in with Silhouette and informs him that Isa's still recovering. However, Pacsk then regretfully has to erase Justin's memories of everything that place subsequent to him leaving the house with the snap of his fingers. Immediately afterwards, Justin awoke in his bed oblivious to everything that happened and saw that it was 12:34am. Justin lamented that he missed his reunion with Neffi and turned on the news with the reporters covering the Wilcox Corporation incident. Justin was shocked to see the man that he and Ike met the day before yesterday had been murdered by hitmen. After hearing a bit more of the tragic news, Justin decides to calm down and go back to sleep. Elswhere, Russo returned home and saw the news of Mr. Wilcox's death was on TV and the software was on the foot of his bed.

## Trivia

* Like many other classical heroes, Justin made a wager with death and actually came out on top.