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Chapter 7

Xolotl didn't trip backwards into John's chest. He was flung back, as a bean-bag round from a ten gauge shotgun smacked into his gut with bone-jarring force and a gut-emptying THWAP. He'd had just enough warning, thanks to Xolotl's yell, to hunch his shoulders and cover his eyes with both paws before the flash-crash had gone off. With instinct that came from long training in the hard-knocks school of life, John twisted his body, ablating the force of the impact as the black-clad jaguar slid off him and landed flat on the floor gasping like a landed fish.

Kolter hit the deck a second later, though John couldn't hear the sound of knees painfully cracking into cement over the squealing shriek in his ears. His eyes were spotty too, and he took a dizzy step back, before spitting out blood from having bitten his lip. The Wolf in Black, effectively alone for the moment, knew what would come next - Flash bang, then a rush of aggression from the enemy as they tried to tie the fight up before it got started.

As a spike-haired, tactical-armored wolf with a shimmering katana came barreling out of the door where the flash-bang had come from, John Silverstone grinned, head down to hide it, as he reeled back. The swords-wolf's motions screamed of formal training, and possible super-strength. The second fur, the one with the shotgun who was covered in head-to-toe tac gear, burst from his hiding place down the hall in a blur of super-powered speed, blitzing past his companion without a moment's hesitation.

John knew he could never out-run or out-speed the charging vulpine, and knew he had to delay these two long enough for Xolotl and Kolter to get their senses back. Things were going to get rough. So he threw himself forward, arms up and in to guard his face and throat in a boxer's high guard pose, then twisted and slammed his right shoulder forward into the speedy vulpine's blurring path.

The hit was palpable, the fox's velocity effectively multiplying the power of his impact several times over. John jolted backward as if he'd been hit by a small car, curling himself in and hardening his muscles as he smacked sideways into the wall with a thunderous crunch he could hear even over the ringing in his ears, sending plaster dust blasting into the air. His opponent, surprised by the sudden attack, bounced and rolled uncontrollably past him down the hallway in a painful-looking flail of limbs. The only reason John's ribs weren't snapped like toothpicks was that Dr. Theorem had slapped a few protective spells on his coat the last time they'd seen each other.

He made a note to thank the Doc later, as his second opponent leapt over Kolter's still-kneeling and wobbling form and came down with his katana in an arcing strike that would probably have split anyone it hit from forehead to crotch.

John knew how to fight in a way people with just advanced training and a little experience never could. He'd grown up on the dirty, violent streets, fighting for his life against furs who liked knives and broken beer bottles for weapons. He'd nearly lost an eye at age ten to a homeless kid with a rusty switch blade, and broken more knuckles on other furs' faces than he cared to think about. Swords, super-strength, and a wannabe samurai didn't scare him in the least.

Especially not when one of his very few good friends was struggling blindly against a half-stunned mercenary who'd tumbled and smashed into him, sending them both sprawling in a tangle of limbs on the filthy rust-strewn floor. The tac-suited superspeed still had his shotgun, and was trying to bring its butt down on Xolotl's black-on-black face.

The spiky-haired wolf with the mad eyes landed and sliced, his blade neatly crunching straight through the plaster wall and diagonally through a solid joist. Knowing he'd missed his target, as the Wolf in Black bobbing to the side and ducked low, the sword-wielding lupine spun and slashed, sword slicing the air with a whistle-crack of velocity as he went for the neck in utter lack of care for his orders. Finding an opponent worth killing hadn't happened in a while now, and he was hungry for blood.

John had crouched down, gathering his strength like a coiling spring. When the sword whistled over his head, so close he felt the wind of its passing, he rose like the tide. His foot launched upward from the floor, and planted itself firmly between the screaming sword-wolf's legs, instantly choking his roar of battle into a surprised yelp of pain as his body hunched instinctively forward to protect his smashed balls. John's knee came straight up into his face, smashing the wolf's muzzle with a sick crunch that had him up off his feet before slamming back down to the concrete in a spray of teeth and bloody spit.

The Wolf in Black kicked the downed lupine hard, once, across the face, snapping his head back against the ground hard enough he was pretty sure the swords-fur wouldn't be getting back up anytime soon. Then he turned, in time to watch the fox wrestling with Xolotl fly straight up off the jaguar on top of a column of sizzling electricity, slamming into the ceiling hard enough to push him through it and up into the next floor before he was out of sight.

The black jaguar, still blinking and rubbing at his eyes as electricity zipped from metal to metal on the surface of his suit, rolled forward onto his knees and vomited hard. By the time John was at his side, reaching down to help him up, he was shaking off the last of the stun grenade's effects.

"Sonovabitch..." John heard him get out. Then the sigils on his jacket, left there by Dr. Theorem to anchor his defensive spells, lit up like the sun, literally bursting into flame. The next thing John knew, he was sailing down the hall, smashing into a concrete wall, the world shattered from the force of whatever had hit him and its effects on his brain.

Xolotl had hit the floor dazed, confused, blind and deaf, the wind blown out of him by the blow to his gut, muzzle and snout full of vomit and unable to breathe. He tried to scream, tried to force the choking panic out of his body with a gust of breath that could knock the slime from his snout and clear his airway, but his body just refused to move except to choke soundlessly and curl in on itself.

Then something had slammed into him again, this time feeling more like a flailing person rather than a massive bullet. Uncertain if he was dying, bleeding gouts of gore from a blown-open gut, Xolotl lashed out, grabbing onto whatever had hit him, bringing his forehead against another fur's face with a crunch he felt but couldn't hear. Something smacked into the carbon fiber hood he wore, knocking his head to the side dizzyingly as he rolled around, struggling with whoever had swooped in to finish him off.

Cursing savagely despite his own inability to hear it, he managed to wrap a paw around something hard, far harder than the flesh of another fur, and yanked on it as hard as he could while slamming his head forward in the hopes of hitting something, anything, that would make this unseeable person get off of him.

His forehead connected, and in the flash strobe of concussion that surged across his vision, Xolotl made out a mask, staring down at him with bright blue eyes wide with adrenaline and fury. They weren't bloodshot like the last set he'd seen that way were, the ones he'd noticed right before the horrifying nightmares had started back at St. Mary's, but they were close enough to make his thundering heart feel like it was about to explode.

With a roar of effort, he threw every ounce of his anger and terror into the tac-suited fur, and felt the lightning leave his body in a terrible wave of juice that transfixed the fox like an insect on a pin, and threw him up and away. Falling debris clattered down around him, as John rolled over and felt his gut revolt, spewing more acrid disgusting vomit up through his bruised and bleeding snout.

Choking, coughing, gasping in air full of dust so thick it nearly choked him again, he spat out blood, puke, and a word.

"Sonovabitch!"

A shadow made him look up, and take note that though his vision was blurry and wobbling, he could see again. John's all too welcome dark coat was crumpling down, as the wolf knelt to help him up.

Then a much taller, darker shape loomed behind him. Xolotl tried to yell out a warning, but all that came from his lungs was another hacking cough.

Behind the Wolf in Black, standing so tall his rounded feline ears nearly touched the low ceiling of the cheap apartment block, was a gold and black-furred cougar wearing a half face mask constructed of interlocking steel stained in red lacquer, done up in the visage of a leering, one-horned demon. His right paw was extended, pointed at John's back with two fingers jabbing at him as if they were a knife.

A glowing halo of power, red and purple light that seared Xolotl's already-flared eyes, expended itself with a shockwave that hurt the jaguar's bloodied ears and felt like a punch to his gut. Weird circles and lines on John's black coat lit up and exploded, as a lance of purple and red energy exploded from the Void Gauntlet of Obliterator, one of the most feared villains on the continent.

Xolotl almost laughed, knowing John was flat immune to that sort of blasting attack. The wolf had just enough time to half turn, before Obliterator hit him with a boulder of debris flung effortlessly from his left fist, lifting him off the ground like a bit of trash blown in a tornado, and sent him sailing down the hall in a graceless flailing arc. The horrid behemoth kept coming, aggression written into his scowling face as he came, his fist glowing red and then purple again as he powered up.

The jaguar spat, heart lurching in terror as he surged to his feet despite legs still wobbling from disorientation and shock. They were all in trouble, and he had to act fast. Like most young meta-furs, he'd read up on Obliterator 's powers. The cougar was possessed of vast store of supernormal strength, toughness, reaction times that were off the charts, and a blast attack from his enchanted gauntlet that disintegrated whatever it touched. Worse, he was a tactician, and never fought unless he had a plan, and rarely without backup at that.

Stumbling backwards, he barely heard the booming bass of Obliterator's voice, even as he was forced to duck a piece of flung debris the other big cat dug straight out of the wall.

"Surrender and I will not hurt you, little child. You can't hope to beat me."

"The way you...Hngh...Didn't hurt Winter Song...In 2004?"

Xolotl ducked, narrowly avoiding the fist that blurred over him in a whoosh of force and brutal intent. The jaguar dove forward into a roll, just like he'd been taught, and took off at a dead-out sprint that had him zipping back up the hall in the direction Obliterator had come from. Kolter, shaking off the last of the flash grenade's effects, opened fire, putting shots in an accurate staccato past Xolotl at the chasing supervillain.

Striding forward as though the bullets were no more than mosquitoes as they bounced off an invisible field around his body, Obliterator simply ignored Detective Kolter, who dove out of the way at the last instant. Xolotl tried a door, slamming his shoulder into it, knowing he had to get out of Obliterator's line of sight to avoid being disintegrated, and to draw him away from John and Kolter long enough for the two to run.

It didn't so much as budge.

"You just delay the inevitable. Surrender now and save yourself some suffering, boy."

More shots rang out, bullets disintegrating with harsh hisses as they struck the field surrounding Obliterator. Xolotl backed off, trying to swallow his panic, as the red-purple glow around the Void Gauntlet reached the same hue it had just before John was blasted halfway across the building.

As his back thudded into the crumbly concrete wall that ended his ability to back up, he saw John. Through the smoky, dust-clouded hallway, he saw the black-clothed wolf twitch, and curl up defensively amid a pile of rubble his impact with the wall had caused to fall around him. He was bleeding like a stuck pig, headfur matted down with the stuff, shaking like he was having a seizure.

Then Xolotl's eyes went to the approaching doom, Obliterator, a villain worth the presence of any top-tier hero team. He knew he didn't stand a chance against a Class One. Nonetheless, he had to try. His eyes picked up a few details, in the seconds he had while waiting for his advancing opponent to get close enough.

First, he deduced that the enemy intended to take them alive. Otherwise, he would already have been disintegrated by the fully-charged Void Gauntlet. Second, the force field protecting Obliterator had to be new - It wasn't in any of the action reports he'd read concerning major super-villain's tactics and engagements. Lastly, he noticed a strange thrumming from the walls, and realized he'd been noticing it without paying attention ever since they'd entered the building.

It happened sometimes, when he was stressed or hadn't slept for a few days during finals. His body would start to emit electricity at a voltage low enough that there wasn't much arcing. Instead, he left a powerful static charge in the air wherever he went, that would usually start grounding itself through outlets and exposed piping that fed through the walls of wherever he was at the time. He'd hear it, or rather sense it, as a thrum that only he seemed able to hear.

It was all too real, he knew, because he'd tested it. When he heard the thrumming, detection equipment would show a heightened current in the walls, as the cast-off energy from his endless generator of a body worked its way toward the ground. For a while, he'd taken to wearing non-rubber shoes, just to give his poor ear drums a break from the tuning-fork-like effect.

Now, it gave him an idea.

First, he raised his right paw, pointing its palm towards the advancing cougar. Obliterator didn't even slow down, though Xolotl imagined he saw the one exposed eye shift as if trying to evaluate the motion's intent. Then, the jaguar focused inward, grabbing onto the painful, gut-wrenching memories of his mother sliding up that wall, on a pillar of lightning that had cooked her to death in instants.

"You don't know anything about suffering," he whispered, gutturally. He didn't notice the lightning that crackled around his lips as he forced those words out. He most certainly did notice when a bolt of lightning nearly as wide as the hall exploded from his paw.

Obliterator was known to the meta-powered community as a confident villain. He was also known for not being stupid. The cougar saw what was coming a second before it released from Xolotl's paw, and threw himself to the side, slamming through a weakened wall and into the room beyond as a bolt of energy and amperage seared the air, shattering every pane of glass in the nearby rooms with the sheer force of it tearing past the sound barrier. Xolotl knew his attack would be dodged, though, and with a titanic heave of effort grabbed hold of the massive surge of exiting energy and flung it into the piping on either side of him.

As Obliterator smashed through the wall not two feet to Xolotl's left, the jaguar's footpaws lifted up off the ground. The pipes heated so quickly, arcing so much voltage, that the drywall and plaster had exploded away, exposing them directly to air that suddenly reeked of ozone and hot rust. In combination with the magnets and electrical equipment in his suit, the emitted electricity flung him backwards down the hall, using his body as the armature of a jury-rigged rail gun, far faster than even Obliterator's famous reflexes could account for, as the cougar swung the scarlet-glowing Void Gauntlet through the air Xolotl had just occupied.

Laughing with sudden euphoria, Xolotl expended another blast of his power, forcing Obliterator to cross his arms over his chest, such that when the coruscating blast hit him, his force field's dual wrist-bound generators could take the brunt and shove him back through a wall rather than splinter his ribs as it overloaded in a brilliant flash. Xolotl then hurled his power upward, letting lightning seek the sky as he blew a hole in the ceiling above him, and used his makeshift mag-lev connection with the building's piping to rise up through it.

He didn't forget to yell, as John looked up toward his flying form.

"Get Kolter and get outta here! I'll slow them down!"

Blasting upwards through the building felt glorious, the sheer level of discharge blowing away anything he'd ever allowed before. He'd never truly tested the limit of his ability to generate energy, and the sudden realization that, under the right circumstances, he could fly, was almost enough to let him forget what was really happening here.

Luckily for Xolotl, the electrical engineer in him realized several monkey-wrenches in that idea before he could smash himself to death on the roof.

First, he had very little directional control, since the magnets in his suit weren't really aligned for the rapid rhythmic cycle required by magnetic levitation. Also, slowing down meant cutting his rate of energy release, and he only managed to do so just in time to avoid braining himself on a metal utility box that stuck out over the massive hole he'd blasted. Second, his flight wasn't terribly efficient, since the metal in the walls wasn't exactly regular or a true track like a maglev train required.

Third, he still had an unknown number of enemies inside the structure he'd rocketed through, rising five floors through the dilapidated, already-condemned structure. He realized just how much trouble he was still in when he came to a stop, and saw a gleaming fish-eye camera the size of a small shirt button stuck to the wall not five feet from his face. Then another, five feet farther down. A third was affixed at the end of the hallway, and he was sure there were more. Enough of them to easily triangulate the position of a meta-fur emitting electricity like a Tesla coil.

"...Shit."

Ruby light lanced up through the floor, turning plaster and concrete and building joists to so much atomic ash. With a yelp, expecting a sudden and terrible death, Xolotl ducked, covering his head with both arms, as that red-purple light zipped around him with a terrible air-cracking roar.

A second of silence fell over him, and the jaguar wondered if he was already dead, before opening his eyes to look around.

The realization that he'd been outmaneuvered was immediate. He was standing on top of a piece of floor maybe two feet across, held precariously atop the remains of a single upright girder. The floor, walls, and piping of the moaning apartment structure had been blasted away, and were now shaking like they were caught in an earthquake. The nearest bit of piping was at least twenty feet away, too far for his little maglev trick.

Then, rising out of the now-collapsing building's structure, he saw a red panda male, long tail flicking in the breeze, rising up atop a levitating disc of metal. Half his body was covered in electronic gear that seemed grafted to his flesh, and his right paw was covered in a long articulated gauntlet that looked like something off a video game cover more than anything Jeff Castillas had ever seen in real use.

Knowing he wasn't mobile enough to continue running, Xolotl let fly with another flesh-roasting blast of electrical might, pouring his anger and all of his focus into dumping out as much voltage as he possibly could. The bolt zapped through the air, frying and repelling debris that still fell from the disintegrating building in a stream of solar corona-level heat.

Gyro didn't even have to raise a paw, as his force field appeared from nowhere, turning once-transparent air into a shield of silvery blue liquid. Xolotl's electrical blast struck it, and flowed around the metal, then zipped to the ground, where it blew a smoking hole in the crumbling building as it grounded. Then the shield was down.

The jaguar almost laughed at the anticlimax of it when his red panda opponent raised a simple-looking black plastic rifle and fired it, twice, hitting him in the upper chest and left leg. His bullet-resistant uniform had trauma plates, and the hit to his chest was too soft and well-absorbed to even feel. Then he realized something was wrong, and looked down at where the second bullet had struck him.

Red fletching. Bullets aren't fletched, he thought. Then he registered a sudden dizziness, and dropped to a knee. The circle of debris under his feet was wobbling, writhing, like it was made of snakes. Then it wasn't doing anything, because his eyes were seeing only the blackness of powerful sedation.

Detective Kolter could barely see. The flash bang had well and truly flared his retinas, and the sonic blast had scrambled his ears so badly he could only hear the tolling of bells. Rationally, he knew it was because the grenade had gone off too close. Close enough, in fact, that his left footpaw was bleeding like a sieve from where a piece of the device's outer shell had turned to shrapnel and pierced right through his loafer.

Not that it mattered. He had a burly arm around John Silverstone and was dragging him out of a building that had lit up like Christmas had a baby with the Fourth of July. His fur was standing up, and far less from adrenaline rushed fear than from the static cling of Hell. They had to get their asses back to his car, and hope it was still functional enough for his radio to work.

His vision was already filled with spots, so he didn't realize the blotches he was seeing on the front of his car were splatters of oil until he leaned Silverstone against its side to dig for his keys, and put one paw to the sticky, goopy hood. Raising it to his face, he sniffed it, sensitive leopard snout telling him the bad news before his eyes needed to look.

There was a hole in his hood about the diameter of a silver dollar, and his left loafer was standing on a spreading stain of oil and engine fluids that told a story he was used to seeing in the pooling of spreading blood. Then he heard a shushing of leather and cloth, and looked to his right to see that the Wolf in Black had slid down the side of the car and landed on his ass, where he was now sitting and holding his head.

Despite that, though, he'd pulled out a cell phone and was blearily stabbing numbers with his thumb. Kolter grabbed him by the collar, yanked him upright as the wolf mumbled and struggled to help with weakly-kicking legs, then pushed his shoulder into the wolf's gut until he bent forward. Lifting him in a fireman's carry from that point was easy enough for the former track and field star.

Whoever had sniped his car couldn't be far off. The fact that they weren't both already dead meant they had either abandoned their perch or were toying with the two. He intended to make them regret not taking the shot when it presented itself.

Then the building they had just exited started to rumble and shake, as a lance of ruby and fuchsia energy zipped upward and out of its roof at a diagonal angle. Kolter turned his head away, wincing at the blindingly white line it left burned into his already-strobed eyes. A trash-filled alleyway ahead of him yawned like an open mouth full of crumpled and broken teeth. He lurched towards it, growling low in his chest as the wolf over his shoulder started mumbling like a concussed fur into his clutched phone.

"Mf...Codesvn...Need...Hlpf..."

When the phone clattered to the pavement from nerveless paws, Kolter had a sudden, strange instinct to leave the wolf and get himself out of there. His chances of survival and escape were far better if he left the meta and booked it, but the thought itself was so alien to the veteran detective that he scowled and forced it out of his head. Leaving someone defenseless and alone when there were criminals out for blood just went against everything he believed in.

He didn't realize that halfway across the city, a black cat sitting on a fencepost and watching events unfold through his eyes was snarling in annoyance that his favorite new tool was finally resisting his influence.

Kolter was far more interested in the fact that a spiky-haired wolf with a sword and a bloody muzzle was now standing at the end of the alleyway, grinning like a loon.

"Drop the wuff, piglet," the lupine smirked out, while testing his katana with the pad of his thumb. "Drop him and I let you walk. We're not here for your fat old ass."

The snow leopard hoped Silverstone's call had gone through. His meta-powered escort were down for the count or otherwise occupied, and Kolter's gun had predictably proved singularly worthless against this team of armored, powered psychopaths. Still, he had pride in his badge if nothing else, and no punk-haired little shitbag was going to get away with calling the brotherhood of cops 'pigs.'

Playing off the young male's obvious love for dramatics, Kolter took his time for a few seconds, sliding John off his back and down to lie flat on the ground. The wolf looked like shit, his eyes swollen shut from impacting and going straight through a load-bearing wall. How he'd survived that kind of hit at all was a mystery, but the cop had no time to waste on asking an unconscious wolf. As he straightened up, he flexed paws thick with calluses from hard work and a decade of working the street.

"You want him, punk? You try to take him."

The wolf grinned, more of a leer than anything, and tipped his head forward. Blood flowed from his muzzle, over teeth Kolter could have sworn he saw knocked clear out of the bastard's face just minutes ago.

"I was hopin' you'd say that."

Maric woke up feeling like he'd been set on fire and put out with a bucket of hot piss. He was wet, sticky, his skin flaring with the strange sharp yet dull and tingling pain of a burn severe enough to have fried out nerve endings. For a moment, he thought perhaps he was dying. Then the silver fox recalled he'd been struck by lightning, and that if he was going to die it would have been near-instantaneous. The nerve tingles, so intense they made him almost want to cry out, weren't from dead or dying nerves, it was because his body was still going through the aftershocks of an electrically-induced grand mal seizure.

The gloopy sound of something slapping against his skin caused him to struggle upward against the welcoming relief of unconsciousness, long enough to open one eye. The voice that admonished him was electronic, raspy and artificial, yet somehow managed to sound scolding.

"Please keep your eye closed, Maric. The nano-treatment will sting badly if it gets in your eyes."

Businesslike as always, Gyro floated on his levitating disc, slopping treatment gel onto the fox, as the sounds of crumbling concrete echoed around them. The sound was muted, and knowing Gyro's tech as he did, Maric knew that meant they were inside a force field of some sort.

Also, he could surmise that a third fur was with them, someone other than Obliterator, based upon very soft breathing and a strange scent that his burnt snout hairs had trouble discerning.

A four-fur team until quite recently, the Black Angels knew each other so well they barely had to talk in order to communicate. Gyro knew the always-detached vulpine wanted more information, to help him make certain they were in control of the situation.

"Silverstone broke three of your ribs and shattered Ender's jaw, then the new meta with electrical powers nearly fried you to death. Both of your shoulder blades are broken from breaking through building structure. Your skull and spinal column are damaged but repairable. Obliterator blasted the Wolf in Black to reduce the magical glyphs on his coat to uselessness, then neutralized him with a flung chunk of debris. He and I teamed up to take down the electrical generator. The building is a casualty. He is in here with us, heavily sedated."

Maric didn't nod, knowing it could hurt an already-injured neck. Instead he raised a finger, waggling it in military paw-sign to indicate he understood. Then he crooked it, their personal signal to ask for more information.

Gyro continued treating his burns, as he spoke.

"The unnamed meta is quite potent. Obliterator is hoping to recruit him, if he is pliable to persuasion. If not, he will be turned over to our principal. Wolf in Black was carried out by the police detective, and is being pursued by Ender and Spotter. We have been given orders to wait for them to return with Silverstone, then return to base. Obliterator is on his way to help Ender and Spotter."

Maric gave the finger-nod again, then passed out, having gotten the information he needed to feel that they had won.

Kolter let out a harsh gasp as he leapt back, but not quite far enough, the katana slicing across his midsection so quickly that the deep gash just felt like someone had poured hot wax on his skin. His paw came down on a trash lid, which he threw at the laughing wolf's face, only to have it sliced neatly in two with a contemptuous flick of that sword.

The detective was a brawler, though, and followed it straight into the opening left by the unnecessary defense. He slammed a fist into the wolf's face, and tried to use his own greater body mass to force the other fur up against a wall. Unfortunately, there was just nothing he could do against a meta with super strength, and the 40 year old leopard felt ribs crack as he was kicked hard in the chest and send skidding back across the alleyway.

Lying on the ground, unable to breathe, he rolled over and yanked his hold-out pistol from its spot strapped to his lower back. He leveled it and got off two quick shots, as the sword-wielding Ender tried to rush him. The first did nothing, hitting chest plate with insufficient force. The second tripped his attacker up by smashing through the softer armor over his knee and dropping the wolf right onto Kolter's chest.

Then they were rolling, biting, wrestling for control of the grapple. Kolter heard others arriving, though, and knew his fight had been for nothing. Nonetheless, he planted a knee in the crunchy muck of a garbage pile and threw his weight against Ender's slighter build to force his back down against the ground.

"Surrender and we'll takes you alive, detective!" a Chicago-accented female voice belted out. If Ender had heard the offer of mercy given, he made no sign, laughing and snapping his jaw at the leopard, as spotty white paws closed around his throat. The wolf had no fear of strangulation, Kolter saw, though he maintained his double-fisted crushing grip on the other fur's throat.

Detective Kolter snarled, baring fangs yellowed from a decade of too much coffee, too much tobacco, and a wealth of stubbornness about hating dentists, as he yanked Ender up by the throat and smashed the back of his head down against the concrete so hard he felt the crack of breaking skull more than heard it. Then he did it again, remembering from somewhere that he was dealing with a regenerator, someone he couldn't likely kill if he tried.

By the time the butt stroke came, his foe was only moving to twitch. The detective's head, though, snapped back like a dashboard mascot, stars blasting across his vision as the snarling visage of a furious black-eyed jackal filled his vision.

Lying flat on the ground, he smelled gun oil, as something dark, round, and rifled filled his left eye's field of vision.

I'm going to die in the line of duty, he thought sardonically. Fucking peachy.

A booming bass voice spoke, as the female jackal stared down his one visible eye.

"Leave the officer, Spotter. We have what we came for."

Kolter spat out blood, having bitten his lip somewhere along the way. Obliterator, seven and a half feet tall of muscle and felonious intent, had just walked into the alleyway, and was on his way to the unconscious superhero who still laid fetched up against a dumpster.

"The priest. Is he alive?"

Obliterator looked his way, the demon eye of his half-mask flaring and glimmering an orange and scarlet hue for a moment, as the cougar tilted his head. He'd never stopped moving towards John, though, and lifted the long lanky-limbed wolf up with quite a bit more care than Kolter had expected.

"Is he a friend of yours, detective?"

"No. But I'm sworn t'protect him anyway."

Obliterator considered him for a second, with that piercing scarlet eye, then turned his head enough to fix Kolter's vision with a blue one so cold it chilled him more than the demon-mask's piercing magical one could.

"If he behaves, he will survive."

"Yeah," Ender said, as he sat up holding the back of his already-healing skull, "Daimon seems t'like him."

Obliterator raised his paw, the one covered in the Void Gauntlet, and pointed it at a startled-looking spike-haired wolf.

"In your next life, Ender, never reveal the name of your employer, even to an enemy you are about to kill."

"W...Why?! He's gonna be dead!"

Kolter blinked, as the building next door, a small brownstone long-since declared condemned, tore free of the ground with a horrendous shriek of shattering steel and powdering stone. Lifted up as if it were some gigantic toy, hundreds of tons of masonry simply flew away, landing with a thunderous thud that shook the very ground underneath him and sent both still-standing villains reeling.

"Because of that, fool!"

Twin lances of fusion fire lanced down from the sky, vaporizing pavement as they narrowly missed Obliterator, who had leapt clear over Ender's head and into the exposed building foundation left by their cover's destruction. The sword-wielding mad-wolf never had a chance to scream, as coherent light sent him flailing in a cartwheel of burnt, broken bones and seared flesh.

She's fast, Kolter thought muzzily, as Spotter spun and fired, her massive flare-nosed rifle letting off a thudding noise that reminded the snow leopard of what it sounded like to get punched in the ear.

Tokamak, shining silver in the moonlight, took the perfectly-aimed hip shot on his right eye, and was sent spinning, unhurt but unbalanced by the hit.

Floating ten feet to his right in a suit of grey and red, surrounded in a field of debris swirling so quickly it was deflecting a purplish blast of disintegrating rays from Obliterator, was a hero Kolter had been told he'd never see again.

Shockwave, back out of retirement and so angry he was vibrating the air like a hundred-degree heat wave, threw his paw upward in a sweeping motion. Obliterator snarled so loudly that Kolter heard it even over the din of crashing masonry and rifle reports, as John Silverstone was unceremoniously yanked out of the villain's paw by an unseen force, Obliterator's fingers crushed by a cleverly-placed telekinetic blast.

Then the detective felt a lurch, and saw Shockwave's distant eyes turned his way. Even across the gulf of debris-strewn space, he could see the anger there, in eyes wide and glaring. As Tokamak hurled another blast of coherent light, Kolter feebly managed to put an arm over his face to protect him from the glare, and realized he was floating free of the ground and through the air.

"You're in MY back yard, Obliterator! Did you honestly think I wouldn't notice? Wouldn't come looking?!"

Another ruby and violet blast flew up from Obliterator's gauntlet, as the ground-bound supervillain sprinted for more cover. Bobby Shore was so angry that garbage was floating up off the ground seemingly of its own accord for what looked like blocks in every direction, and he was taking advantage of it to send a slicing storm of detritus at the maneuvering villain, slamming into his force field again and again from every conceivable angle.

The detective could see cracks forming in that defense. It was becoming overloaded, shimmering visibly as its emitter surged and sparked on Obliterator's belt. Then he was close enough to Shockwave to float through the field of debris surrounding him. Though he flinched and tried to curl up to protect himself, not a bit of scree or rubble hit him. It was as if the cloud of whirling steel and bricks parted perfectly around him, sliding him in through a space no larger than his balled-up and bleeding body.

"No, Shockwave. I thought you were too busy hiding to try!" the cougar yelled back, his tone biting and sounding strangely offended. Shockwave, not ten feet from Kolter now, with John Silverstone floating motionless next to him, bared his many small, sharp teeth in a snarl of rage as the debris shield started to quiver and shake with an alarming energy.

A modulated, mechanical voice yelled out, loud enough to buffet Kolter's already-ringing ears.

"Shockwave! Incoming low six!"

The long-tailed, lithe cheetah spun around and carried his whole entourage of debris and injured allies up another hundred feet in the span of a few seconds, looking for the warned-of enemies. Tokamak didn't miss a beat, immediately firing off a thundering salvo of energy blasts from his palms to keep Obliterator busy dodging or consuming them with shots of his own disintegration ray.

Kolter squinted, the debris field rotating so swiftly it was nearly transparent, but found he couldn't see any approaching threat. The fact worried him, as he knew full well he was losing blood from the wound in his gut, even though he could barely feel the pain of it. Bobby Shore, on the other paw, seemed to understand.

"Invisibility...Damnit! Toka! I can't target what I can't see!"

Then, Kolter noticed Obliterator simply vanish, as if into thin air. Tokamak lowered his paws, and flew sideways through the air at a controlled rate, using the thrusters in his suit to maintain a perfect attitude and altitude. His voice sounded just as modulated up close as it did from farther away.

"They have teleported away. Gyro and Maric, plus one hostage. They have taken Jeff Castillas."

"Shit," Shockwave spat, as he twisted in the air and met eyes with the detective. "We'll get you to the hospital, officer, just hang on okay?"