FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter XII - Psychosis

Ever since Canada had become the United States’ 51st State shortly after the Apocalypse, many of Canada’s cities had taken a more ‘eco-friendly’ approach. Nicknamed the ‘Wild State’, Canada had taken the approach of allowing nature to reclaim much of what had once been civilisation. Limited to only major cities, Canadians opted to build upwards instead of outward. The few cities that existed with the vast wilderness towered over anything that existed in the traditional United States. Glimmering silver cities speared the highest clouds with winding sky bridges and ‘sky plazas’ forming breaks from the network of structures that could be easily seen from miles away. Anyone beyond city limits was designated national park lands with very little human interference or presence beyond old agricultural facilities and remote lodgings solely for the rich and opulent. By 3030, there was a goal to have reduced all man-made structures in Canada by 80%, limiting most if not all of Canada’s infrastructure to within the city limits. There was a plan that by 3050, they would have developed and launched the world’s first ever geosynchronous habitation platform; basically a huge floating island that kept position around Calgary. It was a collaborative effort from some of the world’s greatest scientists and the ecologically minded with the goal of keeping Canada as the world’s biggest national park and with its wilderness mostly untouched. In fact, all imports and exports in and out of most Canadian cities were made completely via portals. Roads were seldom used.

This also made navigating the Cornucopia incredibly difficult because there was a lot of air traffic as most public transportation used hover technology. The carrier-class starship had to remained a fair distance away from Toronto itself or it could collide with some wayward bus. No matter how invisible to the naked eye it may be, the ship was enormous and took up a lot of space. It made monitoring the situation that much more difficult.

Nate Rage wished he could sent AEGIS in to help subdue the rogue members of Arsenal but if the Cornucopia was ever revealed, it would spark an international crisis. The nations of the world had all signed an arms agreement around the size of their fleets with the USA and UK having the largest on Earth. Mars naturally had its own fleet. Technically, the largest class in terms of firepower was the Dreadnought class and nations were severely limited to how many Dreadnoughts they could have in active service simply because if one were ever destroyed, the fallout - both in terms of national power and radioactive - would be catastrophic. Carriers were technically a way around the limitation since in terms of sheer size they were larger but they didn’t have as many weapons mounted on the ship. The caveat was that because of all the smaller ships they carried, the carrier had their own weapons that could outclassed the Dreadnought. Problem was, because of all the power requirements, carriers tended to need very large reactors and their destruction could be disastrous. One of the reasons why carriers were limited to extraterrestrial activities.

To have a carrier like the Cornucopia hovering near a major metropolitan city would immediately brand AEGIS criminals.

Which, in all honesty, Nate was fine with. Of course things could not be so simple. AEGIS was a paramilitary spy agency unaffiliated with any country and that meant any association with it would automatically give the likes of General Vernon Washington or any Arsenal/Assault detractors ammo. Thus the reason he was watching his transports stealthily weave through the towers of Toronto to drop off Assault at their given locations.

“Sir,” one of the officers on the horseshoe-shaped bridge announced. “Striker 1 is approaching Mayberry Sky Plaza.”

The Gene Stealers were clever in their deployment of their troops and captives. There were two squads of mutated, well-trained caribou henchmen in Toronto, spread across six locations. Forty soldiers in all. Theoretically, that would mean six or seven people per location. Alongside the maddened members of Arsenal and two Elemental Alliance veterans, that put the entire city under siege from not only different directions but different altitudes as well.

Luis ‘Madman’ Sanchez was deployed around midway up Toronto at Mayberry Sky Plaza. The large, irregularly shaped platform hovered almost thirty storeys off ground level and connected multiple buildings. Since it was still early morning, the green, aerial walkway was densely populated with the bleary-eyed white-collar workers on their way to their jobs. Blade Babe AKA Mary Brightwood was located on the rooftop of the TriByte Building, a monolithic building that looked like three structures buildings merged into one. Brendan the immortal superspy was positioned inside a building currently being constructed. Where he was exactly was a mystery but the structure was no more than a ten storeys tall so that at least limited the his vertical movement. Rhiannon the Hound of Destruction was positioned highest of the entire group, nearly 100 storeys off the ground. That meant that Leon would have to compete not only with her illusions but also the lack of oxygen. Lars alongside his parents was placed at ground where their powers would have the most devastation. Fire, lightning and flash floods could do a lot of structural damage and if the foundation of the towers crumbled, the rest of the tower would crumble alongside it. Lastly, Benjamin Connors also known as Blood Wolf was placed in the mostly highly populated area, the Toronto Highmont Convention Centre where thousands of people had gathered.

“Okay guys, how’re we doing?” Caleb Hale asked.

Nate had managed to send transports to pick up the members of Assault so that they could get to Toronto and their targets much quicker. It would only take fifteen minutes to get from Migraine’s secluded base to the major city but that was still fifteen minutes of damage maddened supers could do.

“Almost there,” announced Elliot. “Just a few more minutes.”

“Good. Now switch.”

Nate jerked back in surprise. “What?” he demanded.

As it stood Caleb was targeting Ben while Samson was heading for Bren. David would fight Lars while Leon faced off against Rhiannon. Lance and Migraine would fight Mary while Elliot would counter Madman. On paper, it seemed to make sense.

“We made our plans while Spider Queen was still spying on us inside Migraine’s base,” Caleb answered. “Then there’s been fifteen minutes between then and now. That means that those Psychos waiting for us probably had time to prepare. We’re going to partially switch targets.”

“That’s genius!” David exclaimed. “I’m so proud of you son!”

“Don’t thank me just yet, dad. Samson, I want you to go after Mary. Elliot, head over to Rhia. Leon, you go up against Bren. Lance and Migraine, I’m leaving Madman to you.”

“And you’re still going after Ben?” asked Leon dubiously.

“Yep. Just to throw them off. Think you can handle that?”

Nate found himself impressed. From what he heard, Caleb’s original assessment had this configuration of opponents somewhat in the same vicinity. However, this last minute change up would certainly throw off Spider Queen’s troops. Some of them would realise they were using the ‘first’ arrangement and others would think they were sticking to the plan. Then there was this new match-up which would certainly throw a wrench into the works. The more he thought about it, the more Nate likened this to one of Caleb’s football matches. The pup was scrambling who the opponent was sending their players against to confuse them.

“You heard the man,” said the Director of AEGIS. “Pilots, get to your new positions. Now.”

As he straightened he felt the familiar presence of a No One beside him.

“You’re not going to join them?”

Jacob Reaper shrugged. “I just gave Athena a huge spiel about having faith in people. I’d be a hypocrite if I jumped in now.”

“I’m honestly surprised that your meeting with them finished so soon. I thought you’d be stuck there until we got back to West California Island.”

Reaper shrugged absently. “Just because I can’t see all the possibilities of reality right now doesn’t mean I can’t make plans. Nor does it mean I’ve lost my knowledge of what I’ve seen before I came in here.”

Rage lifted an eyebrow at the No One. “Really? Does that mean you know what’ll happen?”

The blonde-haired wolf grinned and thrust his paws into his pocket. “Absolutely not. Mortal fate shall and always be in mortal hands. Even if a person has a 99.99% probability of going right, there’s still that 0.01% chance that they will go left. It’s what makes being mortal so much fun.”

“Uh-huh. Small comfort given your friends are off about to face up against their own teammates and a band of highly trained henchmen mostly on their own.”

“Have faith, Nate. They’ll win this. I’m sure of it.” Reaper suddenly brought up what appeared to be a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “Want some of this?”

Nathan Rage gave him a sour look. “You know I don’t like alcohol on the ship.”

“Yeah but I think I’m going to have a glass… or ten.”

The Director’s features darkened. “That bad, huh?”

“Whatever you’re thinking, its much worse.”

******

Soaring through the skies of Toronto was like weaving through the very same towering trees of the Canadian wilderness. Perhaps that was what the architects and city planners had intended. Lance found himself constantly surrounded by these towering, metallic ‘trees’ that blocked out the sun. Though streams of golden light would peek through, there was an overwhelming sense of darkness that made him feel like he was just a small insect flying amongst giants. Even as he approached the Mayberry Sky Plaza in the inconspicuous AEGIS dropship. Interference was being thrown up by AEGIS. It was what Rage called ‘virtual’ invisibility. Radars and communications were scrambled preventing anyone from really ‘reporting’ on their presence. Though people could still see the big black helicopter-like dropship, authorities wouldn’t be able to act on it.

Yet.

“How much time do we have?” he asked.

“About thirty minutes, sir,” answered Director Rage from his ear piece. “After that, people are going to physically see the damage and there’s only so much our agents on the ground will be able to do. We can still delay the local supers and authorities from getting to you but I wouldn’t count more than fifteen minutes of breathing room before they actually get there.”

“What if we make our presence known on all locations?” asked Samson. “People tend to panic when they are faces with attacks from multiple sources. A few minutes of disorientation makes a whole lot of difference.”

“You can’t seriously be suggesting about endangering people’s lives just to buy us a few more minutes!” David barked.

No matter how much his dad had changed, his rivalry with Samson had not changed. Though Lance had to admit that he was somewhat perturbed the revelation that David saw Jacob as a rival ‘alpha’. Caleb had managed to stop the clash between the two but how much damage could an all-out fight between an experience werewolf-super and an interdimensional entity do? He imagined the towering monoliths of Toronto crumbling all around him as Jacob and David clashed. Probably a good thing that the former was absent from this fight.

“It’s a good idea,” Caleb said suddenly. “But we’re not endangering people’s lives. We’ll just make enough noise that any responders will have to choose between multiple locations. Even experienced supers will need to rethink their strategy.”

And Caleb… Boy had he grown up. David may be an alpha in sheer strength but Caleb was developing this… air of authority about him. As an Outsider, he didn’t have the Aura that supers exuded that subtly altered the mentality of those around them so Lance could only concluded that his little brother was just becoming more and more confident in his role as a hero. That David had no protests spoke of Caleb’s authority in the matter.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Nathan Rage warned. “Still, not a bad idea. Might get you back the time you wasted redeploying after you decided to change things up.” The AEGIS Director was still clearly irked that Caleb had switched up the plan at the last minute.

“I’m not hearing you say that it’s a bad idea,” Caleb said cockily. “Stay safe everyone.”

Lance nodded and pushed open the side of the dropship. Before him was the enormous Mayberry Sky Plaza.

As it’s name may have suggested, this was a huge, horizontal, concrete platform suspended about three hundred feet in the air. Powerful suspension cables and concrete supports bound the Sky Plaza to the flanks of nearby buildings. With the almost irregular positioning and structures of the towers, the Plaza was surprisingly symmetrical in shape - a half-circle with the curved section facing northeast. A roundabout sat at the very centre of the plaza, decorated with a glistening green garden with tulips providing some colour against the red brick rim. The black asphalt road curved gently around the circular road feature which eventually led casually into the towers which had tunnels carved into their structures or ramps leading into their parking lots. The rims of the Plaza were naturally warded off with chain-link fences but just before them were bright gardens and carefully maintained, small trees. There was a small parking lot - perhaps enough to fit fifty vehicles - positioned at the heart of the curved section of the Plaza. A food truck was placed there seemingly offering comfort Canadian food. There was no line, however.

What citizenry were present were standing well away from the huge, black box placed at the centre of the parking lot and the eight Psychos armed with their ethereal purple weapons. Many were already on their phones and taking pictures but none of them would be able to send anything thanks to AEGIS. The caribous were reinforcing their position. With a wave of one massive hand, a car was lifted off the ground, tipped on its side and positioned right in front of the line of henchmen. Metal groaned and twisted, morphed by the powerful psychic powers of the men. They were forming a barricade around themselves and the black box where Madman was no doubt positioned.

One of them saw the arrival of the dropship and immediately shouted a warning towards the others. The citizens noticed as well and started taking videos or pictures.

“Anything we should know about your guys?” Lance asked.

“They were never my ‘guys’,” Migraine said with more than just a hint of irritation. “They may be from my strain and have copied my powers but they take no orders from me.” The former-supervillain lifted a hand, purple flames wreathing his fingertips. “That said, we need to be extra careful around any projectiles. Just because they fly past you, it doesn’t mean that it can’t come flying back. These energies are an extension of their mind not just bullets that they shoot.”

“Noted.” Lance pushed open the door of the dropship and stood on the edge. He glanced over to Migraine with a grin. “Ready for your first ever superhero entrance?”

The caribou let out a soft snort. “I’ve always wanted to do that, to be honest. But I’ve always been on the other end of that entrance.”

“No time like the present!”

He turned and leapt right out of the dropship. All the lessons from his classes came flooding back as the ground came rushing rapidly towards him. The key about the superhero entrance was the illusion that the hero landed on one knee. That was, of course, just part of the theatrics. The idea was to land on both feet but then collapse one leg in a controlled manner to absorb some of the shock and catch yourself with a fist to the ground. Out of the rest of his friends back at the Elemental Tower, this was one of the things he really excelled at. His physique and above average - even for a super - strength ensured that the moment he slammed into the concrete with a boom, he could withstand the impact. He executed the move perfectly, a hush falling upon the onlookers and even the Psychos.

Beside him, there was a similar boom only a ring of crackling purple energies spread out from the impact.

“Neat effect,” he commented.

“I’m not nearly as well-built as you,” Migraine answered with a lopsided smile. “I have to use some of my powers to cushion the impact. We did just jump fifty feet from the air, after all.”

Both furs rose to their feet in unison, their Aura synchronising them perfectly as they squared off against the Psychos. One of the leading caribou stepped forward from his makeshift barrier. The two cars that were positioned in front of him groaned loudly as they were lifted into the air and twisted on a pivot like double doors opening for their lord.

“So you really have thrown your lot with them,” the henchman sighed. “You really are a disappointment, Mattias.”

Purple flames wreathed the caribou’s arms from the tips of his fingers to his shoulders. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard those words.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be.” The henchman flicked his wrist and thin, almost needle-like purple extensions erupted from his fingertips like three foot-long claws made of psionic energies. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” He lifted his other hand and made a gesture.

Another two of the caribous immediately seized the sides of the big black box they were guarding and yanked it open. Lance’s heart leapt to his throat when he saw the colossal caribou with tan fur decorated by black spots take one step forward. His audience visibly cowed as Madman emerged ominously from the container, purple eyes shimmering.

“He looks a lot bigger now,” Lance admitted softly, fighting the urge for his tail to slink between his legs.

The mutated member of Arsenal took stock of his surroundings and then placed his gaze directly at Lance.

Then he winked.

Before Lance could process the gesture, Madman let out a tremendous, ear-shattering roar and both his massive hands lashed out. He seized the stunned caribous by his side, lifting them easily into the air. The main Psycho that had addressed therm turned in surprise at the screams of his own men only to have those very same men hurled straight at him. Madman, vaulted over them, using his powerful legs to leap into the air and come crashing to the ground just in front of Lance and Migraine. The caribou spun around, arms held out defensively against both Migraine and Lance’s chest.

“What…?” Migraine breathed. “How…?”

Lance watched Madman’s features bubble and shift, his features shifting back into the familiar hyena’s. The large antlers that sprung from his head shrank back into his temples and the rounded features of a caribou sharpened into the square muzzle of a hyena. “You’re… You’re in control?”

Madman gave him a cocky grin. “It’s my superpower.” He bared his reformed fangs at the recovering Psychos. “Just like the others, every time I get infected, my power evolves. It lets me do this.” He grimaced as black goo began poring out of every pore. Lance took a step back in surprise. The familiar smell of leather - a scent he would not soon forget after facing the Gimp - filled the air. The liquid leather swept all over Madman’s body, wrapping around his body and hiding his nudity before solidifying into a solid, one-piece leather suit with short sleeves and ended halfway down his thighs. The trick took some effort as Madman was starting to sweat but he still maintained that cocky smirk as the Psychos realised the tables had turned.

“So when I infected you…” Migraine began.

“Seems like you reinforced my sanity.”

“You were acting the whole time! Asked the former villain. “When I had you transformed, you were wild and… erm…” He glanced over his shoulder at the audience before dropping his voice. “… sexually charged.”

“I didn’t get this way straight off the bat, boss. Took me an hour or two to regain control but yeah. Most of what you saw was just me acting. I was trying to come to grips with my new powers.” Madman cracked his neck loudly. “That beating Gwen gave me actually helped a lot. I’ve got to thank her.” He brought up his huge fists. “So what do you guys say that we beat these bastards and get back home? I’ve seen my share of jail cells thanks.”

Lance beamed brightly and turned towards the shaken Psychos. Though their military training was already starting to kick in, Caleb’s last minute switch and now Madman’s revelation had caught them severely off guard. They had to press their advantage.

He cracked his knuckles - all four of them - ominously.

******

On paper, Samson assumed that he had been sent against Bren because it would be the most uneven match-up of the entire selection. That would mean he could easily deal with the respawning superspy before moving on to reinforce whomever was was in need of assistance. But now he was to fight Mary Brightwood. From Ben’s reports, Mary had been a thorn in the Alpha Pack’s side to recruit both Weapons Master and Flare Blue for a long while. Not only was she an empath but her powers had been revealed to be of divine origin. Though an Outsider by origin, her infection had given her some degree of baseline superpowers. In many ways, she was now on par with one of the more experienced supers simply because of all the enhancements she had undergone.

Striker 2 was approaching the TriByte building. Few knew that TriByte was actually a shell company for the Alpha Pack so he wasn’t too concerned about collateral damage. He remembered he and his family got a chuckle out of the pun over ‘TriByte’ because it was phonetically the same ‘Tri-Bite’ which represented the three members of the Alpha Pack who had formed the company. Naturally, everything about the facility was centred around the number three which included its architecture. On the outside, it looked like three towers curling around one another in a spiralling pattern. The inspiration came from the old idea that werewolves developed a sort of ‘triple helix’ DNA structure which was how they could transform at will. This was, of course, debunked a long time ago but it was just a joke that he and the Alpha Pack often referred to.

“Now that I think of it,” he mumbled to himself, “it wouldn’t take that much for people to realise what TriByte really is.”

“You mean just a shell company for your Alpha Pack’s activities in Canada?” Nathan Rage asked. “Trust me. On a scale of one to ten in terms of difficulty, that was a two.”

“I’m impressed.”

Striker 2 rose higher, nearly coming to the limits of the clouds. The three octagonal edges of the rooftops arrayed before him, only a single heliport on the southern one while the penthouse was positioned on the northwestern one. The northern roof was populated with rooftop machinery such as air conditioning vents and power generators. Predictably, the Psychos had barricaded themselves in the penthouse. It seemed that they were still in the midst of propping up the furniture around the floor-to-ceiling windows. Little did they know that he knew everything about the penthouse.

Including the secret back door.

“Pilot,” he commanded, “get me to the second to the last floor. South side.”

“Sir!” saluted the woman and she expertly kept them low and below the sight of the Psychos. They had likely seen the black dropship as it circled around so they were now on alert but they would never expect that there was a secret set of stairs behind a janitor’s closet on the 109th floor. All his years of playing the hero and villain had taught him that there was the obvious escape route and then there was the not-so-obvious one. Escape pods were fine but they were noisy and very obvious. When a super could fly at the speed of sound, no matter how fast you could escape on an rocket-propelled capsule, said super was going to catch up with you. With military surveillance as well, it would be impossible to escape. That was why he had made a point of ensuring the escape pods were just decoys.

The dropship hovered in front of one of the many glass windows of the TriByte tower. Samson pushed open the doors of the dropship and launched himself boldly through the window. Glass shattered and sprayed all around him, his powers immediately absorbing the shock of the impact even though his kinetic barrier took a bit of a hit from the blow. He had to hand it to Reaper for creating personalised kinetic barriers. It would save him and the Alpha Pack a lot of grief. He wondered if he could convince the wolf to give him the technology. Part of him knew that the ‘hero’ would immediately say ‘no’ to that but he got a distinct ‘Chaotic Neutral’ vibe from the No One and there was a faint hope that Reaper would hand him the specs just for kicks.

With a grin, he charged immediately through the empty cubicles and offices of the tower until he came to the janitor’s closet. He grinned as he pulled it open, squeezed through the shelves of cleaning supplies and then pushed the hidden panel at the far back. There was a quiet hiss and the rear wall pulled aside to reveal a flight of stairs leading up towards the penthouse. Stealth was never really his forte and he was not about to start today. With a cocky swagger, he marched up the steps and entered the secret escape pod. The circular miniature-craft was especially designed to launch from the side of the building but his ‘super-secret’ escape route was specifically built into it as well so that if heroes were close on his tail, they would see him enter the pod and automatically assume he had taken it even if he was just casually strolling down a flight of stairs.

He pushed open the door tot he pod and -

WHAM!

A powerful force collided with the side of his head and sent him crashing to the ground. A hoofed foot pressed down on his neck, squeezing the air from his lungs. Above him towers a tall, statuesque female caribou. Her antlers were curled around her temples like a tiara and a purple gem gleamed against her forehead. Her tawny fur hung closely to her body while her long, blonde hair ran down her back like a golden waterfall. Even through the purple eyes, there was no doubt that this was Mary Brightwood.

“Thought you could sneak past us, did you Samson?” laughed one of the Psychos. “Brightwood here is basically a omniscient hunting hound. She can sense where you are even if she can’t see you.”

Mary’s powers had evolved to gain a sort of ‘bone sense’ when she had been transformed by Tibia. There was no telling how those powers had become further enhanced after both the Gimp and Migraine had gotten their claws in her. But judging by the fact that the Psychos were just starting to enter the wide hallway where the pod was located, she was not fully under their thrall.

“We were honestly expecting the four-armed freak and the traitor to come after us,” scoffed the leading caribou. “But you’ll just have to do. Shark Tamer was very interested in seeing how the transformations would work on an ancient werewolf like yourself. Blood Wolf was supposedly a little ‘too young’ for him.”

Samson gagged, unable to reply as Mary pressed down on his throat.

“Stop her before she kills him!” barked another of the caribous.

The leading Psycho flicked out a remote of some sort and pressed a button in the direction of Brightwood. The only female caribou screamed as visible bolts of electricity rocketed out from a silver collar around her neck. She toppled to the ground, whimpering in pain and releasing Samson from beneath her heel.

“Don’t get any bright ideas, Samson,” warned the man holding the remote. “That thing’s an explosive as well. If a shock isn’t administered to her every five minutes, it will detonate. It was the Gimp’s idea. Pain is a great way to control people, after all.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” he growled. He thrust his hand in the direction of the Psychos. A powerful blast of kinetic energies erupted from his fingertips and immediately crashed into the unprepared caribous. They were hurled back with enough force to shoot through the entire penthouse, smash through the nearby windows and crash into the open air.

Samson got to his feet and immediately scrambled away from Mary. The shock from the collar would keep her subdued for a little while until an order was given but that also meant that the timer had just started. Five minutes. Five minutes to defeat ten caribous who could manifest telekinetic energies as purple weaponry. This was not going to be easy. There was no room to pull any punches. With every step, he unbound the mental restraints he kept on his own body. Fur sprang up from his skin, his features stretched forward and every fibre in his body twisted and expanded. A sense of freedom and relief washed over him he shed his human features and unleashed the werewolf within. A tremendous roar erupted from his lips; one part a cry of triumph and another a threatening battle cry. His huge paws cracked the floor where he stepped and with one powerful step, he launched into the air, crashing through the roof of his own penthouse. The impact fuelled his powers all the power even though his kinetic barrier was significantly weakened.

The henchmen below were just getting over their disorientation when they spotted him plummeting towards them. He angled straight towards one of the closest ones. Shaping his body into a downward facing bullet, he thrust his stored kinetic energies out of his fists. The blast acted like a powerful burst of air, immediately shooting him downward and into the struggling caribou. They collided just as the henchman was rising to his feet. The powerful impact sent them both crashing into the ground and more. They both smashed through threw floors, the Psycho taking the brunt of the damage as the smashed through concrete, pipes and steel. With the blows cushioned, his kinetic barrier recharged slightly back into the blue while he absorbed more kinetic energy to fuel his powers. To the man’s credit, even when the smashed into the tiled floor of the 108th floor, the Psycho remained conscious. The burst of blood from his muzzle indicated something had ruptured but he was still very much conscious. Samson quickly fixed that with a bone-crushing blow to the face. Nothing fatal but the guy would wake up with one hell of a headache.

Every second counted so Samson quickly vaulted back up, smashing through more floors at a different angle and erupting back to the rooftops just behind two of the caribous. They were dangerous in groups as he had seen back in Migraine’s cabin so it was essential to separate them. He grabbed both of them by their collars and using his supernatural strength - even for a super - he hurled their huge 350 pound bodies through the air and over to the north-facing rooftop. They smashed through A/C units and even a radio tower.

That would occupy them for a moment.

He quickly bolted up to another Psycho who was just bringing up his hands. A purple field sprang up in front of him, a barrier of some sort. Samson roared and sent his fist crashing into the shield. His knuckles vibrated from the impact but it was the eruption of kinetic energy that did the most damage. The caribou was hurled boldly off his feet and sent crashing back into the penthouse. The werewolf king raced right after him. That barrier dropped as the poor henchman was desperately flailed through the air. They may have all been trained to accept their newfound powers but none of them had the experience Samson had with their abilities. The werewolf had centuries to think at the speed that his lycanthropy and superhero status gave him. Even before the henchman hit the ground, he had seized the caribou by the horns and was hurtling him straight into the ground with enough force that not only did his antler shatter from the impact but the man was sent crashing down five floors through solid concrete and steel.

A faint sizzling as wall the warning Samson needed to duck. Another Psycho, eyes wide in desperation flung a long blade of psychic energies at his head but missed the much faster werewolf king. Samson seized the man by the throat. There was no classical moment where he choked the life out of the guy. There was simply no time. Instead, he just turned and threw the guy back down the hallway where the escape pod rested. He charged after him, pulling up a potted plant as he did so. Just as the henchman hit the ground, he smashed the pot into the man’s face. It wasn’t meant to knock him out. Not yet. The dirt was what he was aiming for. With the soil in the Psycho’s eyes, he was further disoriented. So much so that Samson was able to seize his antlers and fling him around like a flail. The flying caribou smashed into the other Psycho trying to sneak up to Samson and he hurled both of them into the escape pod. As they were stunned, he quickly tapped a few buttons on the console before smashing it in.

He barely had enough time to duck out of the pod before the reinforced steel doors shut tight.

Samson quickly grabbed Mary Brightwood off the ground and darted out of the hallway. Fire and smoke erupted from the hallway a second later as the pod was launched off the side off the TriByte tower and was sent careening off towards the Pacific Ocean. The fire at his back and Brightwood over his shoulder, Samson immediately dove to the right as the flames erupted from the hallway and straight into the faces of the three Psychos who had been dumb enough to stand in front of the hallway. The screamed while the smell of singed fur filled the air. He gently rested Mary against the wall and reached for her collar. Lightning-fast, he broke its binds and before the device could erupt, he hurled it straight the three panicking henchmen.

BOOM!

All three men were immediately sent flying back out of the penthouse, bodies scorched even as their supernatural regeneration began repairing the damage.

Mary began to murmur.

“Stay down, little one,” Samson said gently. “I’ll be back shortly.”

He grabbed a chair and another potted plant on his way to the three men. He smashed the chair right into the face of one and the second got the pot in their face. Like the first caribou he had introduced to his taste in indoor plants, the Psycho was left conscious. Grabbing the caribou by his hair, he dragged the screaming man towards the third and flung him over his shoulder like a rag doll. There was a sickening crack as he smashed the second caribou against the third…

SMACK! CRACK! CRACK!

… a good three times.

They were not going to get up again.

Seven down.

Three to go.

His eyes fell on the two men he had thrown into the rooftop infrastructure. They were out of the debris and charging at him. Their hands were flicking forward. One was hurling sizzling purple shuriken while the other was flicking daggers. Even if they were of psychic energies, they still flew through the air like normal projectiles. As Migraine said, the weapons were extensions of their users minds. No matter how good they were, Samson was still faster. He dodged and bolted between the flying weaponry, arms by his sides and claws out, fangs bared. He let out one more roar, shaking the trained men that they were unable to dodge his double-lariat, catching both men by their necks against the crook of his elbows. He kept running, smashing right through a power unit…

BAM!

… an A/C unit…

CRASH!

… the base of an antenna…

BOOM!

… and through some rooftop water tanks.

His shield was now dangerously in the red and he was at the edge of the tower with two caribou against his arms. With a snarl, he seized their faces and smashed their skulls against the low walls ringing the tower. They fell limp in his paws. Just to make sure they were out for good, he gave them both a punch, burying their heads well into the floor of the tower.

A sizzle was his warning but when he turned around, he found the purple blade levelled straight at his eyes.

It was the leading Psycho again.

“You’re a monster, Samson Connors,” snarled the man. “I don’t care what Shark Tamer says. I’m killing you here and now!”

Samson smirked. “I don’t think so.”

“You think I won’t do it!?” He thrust the katana-like weapon at him, forcing him to back off and his feet to teeter at the edge of the building. “I will! I swear I will!”

“I don’t doubt would do it. I’m saying you can’t.”

A flash of confusion crossed the Psycho’s features. “Why not?”

“Because of her.”

SMASH!

A potted plant crashed against the caribou’s head, enough to stun him and to drop the weapon from Samson’s face. The werewolf immediately unleashed an uppercut, sending the caribou sailing about three feet into the air. Then a broad, hoofed foot came crashing down against the Psycho’s chest a second later, sending him crashing into the ground, the air and some blood knocked out of his lungs. Samson knelt down, cupping his paws together as Mary Brightwood plated another foot against his joined fingers. He launched her mightily into the air, sending her sailing a good twenty feet into the air. She spread her arms wide, arched her back and elegantly twisted in the air like a swan in flight. Then, she angled both her feet at the Psycho beneath her.

BAM!

And sent him crashing down two floors. Samson immediately caught her wrist before she could plummet too far down.

Panting, she looked up at him, her blue eyes shining with clarity.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

Samson gave her a soft smile. “Anytime, little one.”

“Do me a favour?” she asked.

“I’ll pull you up.”

“That and… can you get me some clothes? I’m not used to running around in nothing but fur.”

******

_ _

The Gene Stealers could not have picked a worse place to deploy Ben. For someone whose powers revolved entirely around blood, being in the middle of a convention was the best place to be. Apart from the fact that there were what appeared to be a lot of sweaty men and women of different shapes and sizes in costume, pushing and shoving against one another, Ben had a lot ammunition for his powers. Add to the fact that few people were focused on their phones, it meant that the Psychos and Ben were able to blend in with the crowd. Meanwhile, Calb was ironically stuck in line fighting for tickets to get into the ‘iVIL’ convention… whatever that was.

“Jesus Wolf Christ…” Caleb muttered, running a paw down his face. “What the fuck is this place anyway?”

The man standing in front of him; a rotund human wearing what appeared to be a costume with green pipes running through his features, turned around in a huff. “Excuse me? Do you even know what you’re in line for?”

“No but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” Caleb muttered. “Judging by the ‘I’ in front of the name, is it some sort of Apple convention?”

The man’s unshaven cheeks puffed out and looked honestly ready to blow in fury. “Ingrate! This is the 57th Annual International Villains, Insurgents and Lowlife’s Convention! It’s the premiere convention for all of us who understand that all who choose to walk the path of darkness are an essential part of society!”

He couldn’t believe his ears. “Wait… what?” Then he squinted his eyes at the man. “Hang on… are… are you meant to be Scourge? As in the guy that broke Nightfox’s back and can pump some sort of supersteroid through his body and grow huge?”

“And who are you meant to be?” asked the villain fan.

“Weapons Master.”

The man rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated breath. “There’s always one guy. One guy that goes as a hero because it’s edgy. Of course you had to pick the most obscure hero out there. Not even a full super. An Outsider. Not to mention your costume is just so easy to make. How much did you spend on that? Two, three hundred?” The man waved at hid dismissively. “Weak.”

Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to take a breath. “Okay… barring the fact that I really am Weapons Master, could you tell me exactly how villains are an ‘essential part of society’?”

“Spoken like a true mediocre attention hog.” The man placed his hands on his hips. Caleb could feel a nerd-rant coming along. He had been a nerd at one point too and had been tempted to burst into such tirades especially under the anonymity of the internet. “We are in a perpetual war economy. Just like how the body constantly destroys and regenerates cells, villains challenges society’s norms so that it can grow bigger and better. Every villain holds up a mirror against our civilisations and forces us to take a good hard look at ourselves. Not only that, but they create jobs and opportunity to rebuild. People aren’t forced to look at the same ugly buildings over and over again. They have to rebuild which offers jobs to construction workers and the like.”

“But what about the people whose lives are ruined because of villainy?” Caleb protested, remembering Felix’s arguments. “What about the people who lose their lives? Jobs? Loved ones? Those that get caught in the crossfire?”

“Then that’s as much as the heroes’ fault as it is the villains. If the heroes were better at their jobs, no one would have died.”

“You’re kidding me!” Caleb exclaimed, throwing his paws up into the air. “You’re telling me that it’s a heroes’ responsibility to anticipate every villain’s move and evacuate people before they strike without taking measures to stop the attack from ever happening? That’s just irresponsible!”

“No, it’s part of the cycle,” answered the man smugly. “Villain attacks, hero stops them. Those caught in the crossfire either become bitter and turn to villainy or get inspired and become heroes. Then the cycle starts all over again. It’s just how things are done in these modern times. In the meantime, our scientists and governments draw inspiration from the attack and think of ways to defend themselves. They make new technologies, create new opportunities and we go from there. If you think about it, how would anyone ever have created anti-super fields if they hadn’t thought they needed to suppress superpowers in the first place?”

That was a good point but he still couldn’t believe that there was a convention worshipping villainy like this. “Eye-vil,” he sighed softly. “Fuck me.”

“Excuse me,” sighed the man in that haughty tone of his. “It’s ee-vil. As in evil?”

“Right. Whatever. Listen…”

There was suddenly a scream from past the line and in the convention centre itself.

“Right on cue,” Caleb sighed. He immediately grabbed one of the green tubes on the man’s costume and gave it a tug. Some slick green gel splattered over his costume.

“Hey! This wasn’t cheap to make!” snapped the convention goer.

“Your mom couldn’t say the same about you and here I am trying to save your life.” He channelled his power through the tube, feeling that network of crystals and strings. The tube shimmered in his paw, transforming into a long tube-shaped gun with two vats strapped to his back filled with a churning, greenish slurry.

“Holy shit!” exclaimed the man. “You really are Weapons Master!”

“Yep,” he answered, vaulting over the line barriers. “If you value your life, get the fuck out of here. The real Blood Wolf is in there with a bunch of Psychos from the Gene Stealers. Unless you wanna be turned into a horny, telekinetic caribou, I suggest you get out of here.”

The moment the words left his lips was the same moment he realised he had just said the wrong thing to the wrong crowd. Here was a group of fans who simply adored villainy and justified their existence as a balance to the superheroes’ power and people who stimulated growth in society. If offered the chance to not only obtain superpowers but become part of that niche… well…

“Out of my way!”

“Let him fuck me!”

“I wanna be a telekinetic caribou!”

… they stampeded.

Caleb was shoved forward as the convention goers broke down whatever order there was in the line and charged straight into the convention hall. He was half-carried, half-dragged into the hall with dozens of hands seizing him and lifting him off the ground like maddened cultists looking to sacrifice him to their god. Beyond them, he could see the various stalls that were dedicated to some of the more famous villains. There was a huge monument to Darkrend, the alien overlord of the planet Cataclysm, who once needed supers from all of the continental US to stop his invasion and still made incursions here and there with the only thing really stopping either side from defeating him was the sheer logistics of travelling from Cataclysm to Earth. Then there was one to Thanatos, the mad space-faring tyrant who attempted to obtain the Eternity Orbs to rip open the doors of hell and reunite with his lost wife and child. Of course there had to be one dedicated to Kreid, the villain who turned four of the greatest supers in the world into his Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and nearly brought about a genocide of anyone that wasn’t a super.

It was at the main stage that Ben stood… only he wasn’t exactly what Caleb had expected. In the back of his mind, he imagined a caribou-Blood-Wolf with a blood shawl over his features and attacking people while Psychos stood around him. Instead, Ben - in his werewolf form - was hooked up to some sinister machine that seemed to be draining his blood. That very same blood streamed through the air to the six Psychos around him. Each one was protected three ethereal, bloody ghosts; an elephant, a rhino and a caribou. By the lack of a purple light in Ben’s eyes, he could only guess that his friend had returned to his senses and was not being used to power that sinister engine to empower the Psychos.

“Blood!” he cried, struggling against the screaming and pleading crowd. “Hang on! I’m on my way!”

With Branding Iron’s blade in one paw and the tube-gun in the other, he yanked his arms free of the crowd and dropped to the floor. Glass shards erupted from the ground around him, careful to avoid hurting anyone. Those same shards quickly spread out in a wide circle around him, pushing the crowd back. All the while, they reshaped themselves into the image of six, powerfully built glass minotaurs. Taking aim at the Psychos, he pulled the trigger of his gun. Large, spherical blobs of green goo shot out of the tube with the sound of an air gun being fired. The Psychos immediately moved into attack formation with two of them standing ahead of the others and lifting their hands to erect a faint, transparent, telekinetic barrier. The blob struck the barrier. The caribous then dropped the barrier and charged forward. They made the mistake of stepping in the green goo that fell to the floor.

Suddenly, they were stuck.

“Glue gun,” Caleb chuckled. “Perfect.”

He charged forward, firing globs both at the villains and behind him to prevent any of the fanatics from chasing him onto the stage. His glass minotaurs flanked him, offering not only their shields but also their bodies against the onslaught of psychic arrows. As they drew closer, the blood constructs of the Psychos moved into action. They were like automatic turrets, lashing out with their arms, tusks, horns or antlers in defence of their host. He wasn’t fighting six Psychos, he was facing six Psychos and the eighteen crimson golems that they had guarding them. Two of his minotaurs charged ahead of him and lifted their shields. Two blood rhinos charged forward and slammed against the shields, pushing back the glass constructs a good three feet back. Caleb scrambled between their legs and vaulted onto the stage.

His goal was Ben. If he could free Blood Wolf, then he could end this!

“Not so fast, Weapons Master!” roared one of the caribous.

All of the blood constructs suddenly slammed into him, lifting him clear off the stage and about a quarter of the way across the hall and right into that display of Thanatos. His ears rang and his back was afire with the pain but he was otherwise uninjured. Grimacing and dripping with blood, he gingerly rose to his feet. Dripping with blood… His paws were coated in the crimson liquid. From the stage, the Psychos continued to barrage the glass minotaurs with their psychic blasts but none of them were using the blood constructs like they had just to repel him.

Distance.

They didn’t have the same kind of control Ben had over his powers and distance was their enemy. Now that he was so far away, those blood shadows couldn’t manifest fully and were just puddles at his feet.

That was how he would win.

He glanced over at the massive status of Thanatos and scrambled up the huge, black-and-gold glad man. He grabbed the Eternity Belt where all six Eternity Orbs were embedded or at least a really good replica of it. He dropped his goo gun and channelled his power through the belt. Eyes closed, he rapidly navigated through the network of choices before him. A spear, a shield, a gauntlet… no. He needed a ranged weapon. Time was running out and his choices were burning away. He settled on the shuriken and opened his eyes, sealing the decision. The ethereal white feathers fluttered away as the belt morphed into a brilliant, six-bladed shuriken about the size of his head. Each blade of the throwing star was coloured after one of the Eternity Orbs while they were held together by a golden clasp.

Caleb jumped off the statue and turned towards the Psychos. At this point, it occurred to the bystanders that these villains were not about to convert them and they began to back away, fearing for their own lives. Caleb’s minotaurs moved to form a physical barrier separating them from the caribous. With all their attention on the glass constructs, Caleb was free to hurl the shuriken at the stage. Even though he was many feet away from them, the projectile few true with a faint screeching noise. One of the caribou’s blood constructs immediately saw the projectile and shot itself towards the throwing star to block it.

Click.

The shuriken abruptly splintered off into six different, small daggers much to the surprise of the construct and the host Psycho. All six daggers immediately angled themselves towards the henchman before being engulfed in brilliant, black flames - supposedly the ‘flames of death’ that Thanatos had attempted to conquer. The daggers jammed themselves into the henchman faster than he could react and his body was immediately engulfed in the fire. Kicking and screaming, his blood constructs were immediately consumed trying to protect their host. Their sacrifice left the Psycho barely breathing but unconscious and out of the fight.

The henchmen spent a whole ten seconds staring at their fallen comrade before turning back towards their real threat - Weapons Master.

That was ten seconds too late.

Caleb had already pressed his paws up against the statue of Darkrend and converted the entire statue into a single gun with a sizzling, red barrel. He pulled the trigger, firing a constant beam of red light at the Psychos. The same henchman that had once defended against his goo, lifted his shield to defend against the beam. Only for that very same beam to abruptly jerk to the ceiling, zipping in abrupt angles left and right before striking the man from behind. The Psycho screamed as his entire body was wreathed in scintillating red light before he dropped to the floor - unconscious but still alive.

More beams came shooting towards the Psychos, the lasers seemingly having a mind of their own and snaking through the air in a dizzying dance to try and strike the henchmen where they stood. As could be expected from such well-trained troops, however, the Psychos adapted to the beam’s modus operandi. They encased themselves in full-body telekinetic shields that the beams could not penetrate.

That was fine because Caleb had a whole hall filled with replicas of the world’s most notorious villains.

He found a small booth dedicated to Halcyon; one of his dad’s villains. The man apparently had the power to calm an entire room into submissiveness and nonaggression just by walking into it. Just touching the booth itself gave him a long, silvery spear; maybe a bit of Halcyon and a bit of Feral Steel in the design. He hurled the weapon through the air and let it land with a quiver beside one of the Psychos. Waves of shimmering white energies gently radiated out of the weapon and the henchman’s eyes grew glazed and his jaw grew slack.

“Fuck!” shouted one of the three remaining villains. “We got to get out of here! Weapons Master isn’t using his fucking sword! He’s -”

Wrong.

The glass minotaurs suddenly stormed the stage and the Psycho was immediately swept off his feet. Even with that full-body shield, he couldn’t do anything against two of glass golems lifting him into the air and then slamming him right back down. The impact was enough to daze him, more so when both minotaurs leapt into the air and elbow-slammed him right th rough the stage and into the ground. The entire crowd winced.

And then there was two.

Caleb walked calmly through the crowd, mostly invisible thanks to the magic around his costume scrambling his features. The Psychos couldn’t see him especially since their eyes were directed at any of the exhibits that showed any sign of his powers activating. No need to make more weapons; he had everything he needed. With a shrug, he shucked off the backpack filled with goo and tossed the entire pack into the air, sending it sailing right over the Psychos. Those days training as a quarterback for the team were paying off. He lifted the gun he had made from Darkrend and fired three quick shots at the Psychos and one last one towards the pack. The henchmen instantly saw the beams and lifted their defences, crossing their arms over their heads to defend themselves from the beam. Naturally, the homing lasers struck their barriers, dissipating in the process.

But the fourth one struck his goo pack.

Splat!

The pack erupted and splattered them both in a shower of the sticky, green goo. The look in their eyes revealed that they knew they had been beaten. If they let down their shields, the goo would drop off and pin them to the ground. Moving was not an option either. They were pinned and surrounded.

“It’s over,” Caleb concluded ominous. He leapt back onto the stage and moved straight towards Ben. There was some complicated machinery with buttons and blinking lights but he neither had the time nor the patience to figure out how to deactivate it. He swung his blade through the machine, sending sparks and shrapnel to the side. The remaining blood constructs dropped to the ground, no longer controlled by the machine. Ben sighed in relief and the massive blood-coloured werewolf mumbled some thanks. Caleb undid the werewolf’s restraints, letting the werewolf drop to the ground.

“You’re a lifesaver, Weapons Master,” sighed the werewolf.

“It’s what I do,” Caleb replied with a grin.

Then the crowd broke out into a cheer.

“Huh,” he laughed softly. “Guess saving a villain earned me some brownie points.”

Ben rested a paw on his shoulder and used him to prop himself up to his feet. “Trust me, you’ve earned more than that from the Alpha Pack.” He smiled weakly down at his friend. “Thank you.”

Caleb grinned and gently slapped Ben’s powerful chest with the back of his paw.

“Any time.”

_ _

******

_ _

BANG!

“Son of a bitch!” Leon snarled.

“You okay, bro?” Lance asked through his ear piece.

The young wolf, hugging his stasis rifle against his chest, pressed his back against one of the bare metal columns in the as-of-yet-unnamed tower. Construction of these titanic towers naturally had to be done differently to how one would normally construct other skyscrapers. The first step was the construction of what one would consider a spiralling roadway. This very same roadway formed the core of the tower and allowed trucks and construction workers to get to the site. When the spiralling ‘spine’ of the tower was built, the tower itself was built outward from the centre. The central pillar that the roads spiralled around was usually used for the essential infrastructure of the building like plumping, wiring and lifts. Shops, offices or whatever else the structure was built for would spread out from the centre. That allowed the architects and construction workers to follow a unique method to their building approach. Where most people would build a skyscraper one floor at a time, Canadians tented to build the entirety of the central pillar first and then progressive construct the rest of the floors one at a time from the ground up around the centre.

Even half-finished, the tower that Leon occupied towered above anything in West California Island. Just being on the 30th floor that was completed meant he had about another twenty more floors above him to go while the central pillar stretched up another hundred. The empty shop fronts and partially finished floors were draped in wispy plastic sheets while bare walls hung around him without the usual colours of a shopping mall. The escalators were already placed and so were the glass-bottom lifts but there were few placed to hide. With ten of Migraine’s rogue henchmen against him and Bren, he was quickly noticing the vulnerabilities that his powers afforded him. Sure he could slip by unnoticed but that didn’t extend to anything he hit or emitted. His footfalls echoed in the tremendous, empty expanse and that quickly attracted the Psychos. To make matters worse, said Psychos could erect telekinetic barrier around them that blocked the shots from his stasis rifle. He could shoot them and catch their barrier in a stasis field but they could just as easily collapse the barrier and the field without any harm to themselves.

He pressed his back up against a wall, secluded in a corner that seemed like it would be a storefront one day. Shelves and what appeared to be dressing rooms were already in position as well as the front counter. All that was missing was the merchandise. Right past the shutters, he could see two of the Psychos stalking the floor, both armed with sizzling purple weaponry; both had tall tower shields and one another unique weapon. One held a bo staff and the other a spear. It seemed they were gearing up for a defensive mid-range battle. The perfect counter to his long-ranged hit-and-run tactics; block with one hand and close in for the kill with the other.

But they were not his greatest concern.

That was Bren.

It was funny. In the past, he had always pegged Bren more as a tactical adviser and perhaps more as a running gag; the padding that allowed Arsenal to seem a fuller, richer team. Now, however, he was witnessing the full might of Bren the superspy.

Click.

Leon’s hackles rose.

“Oh fuck me…”

He immediately dashed out of from the corner just as the slim, athletically built caribou dropped out from a vent above him. There wasn’t enough time to out of reach of the mutated superspy’s reach and Bren’s foot collided with his back in a painfully powerful kick. There was no ‘snap’ of his spine shattering but he could feel it on the brink as he dropped to the ground in agony. Bren, now standing at an intimidating eight feet tall with an extra foot for his antlers, turned to him, strangely glazed eyes glowing an eerie purple. Some form of cruel helmet had been strapped onto his skull with diodes placed against his temples. Leon had seen them before; Neural Virtual Reality or NVR as they were called. Just a short century ago, VR headsets were bulky and unwieldy, looking like huge goggles strapped onto people’s heads. NVR was lighter, more compact and was incredibly illegal. Where VR displayed sounds and sights into one’s sensory organs, NVR blocked all other senses from reaching the brain and immediately transmitted its own. Regardless of what one saw in front of them, they would see something else. The technology was highly advanced since a virtual intelligence could filter what the senses were actually receiving and selectively pick and choose what it wanted while placing its own to manipulate the wearer. There were fears of the VI obtaining sentience and controlling people but at the same time, it started the Neural Dive Massive Multiplayer Online Video Game craze with much tamer versions of the NVRs called the Synaptic Neural Dive (SND) which copied input from the user’s brain and translated that into a virtual world. The SNDs didn’t overwrite input or senses and there was no intelligence controlling sensory data.

Leon could only surmise that the Gene Stealers were using the NVR to feed Bren information to turn him hostile. His natural instinct was to destroy the device but when dealing with a superspy, that was easier said than done.

With a grunt, he jumped to his feet and bolted towards the store front.

Click.

He never even saw the mine hidden behind the counter but he heard its trigger.

“When the fuck…?” he began.

BOOM!

The explosives rocked the entire store. His kinetic shields took the brunt of the force but it immediately shattered as the shockwave from the explosion hit it; draining the power from the bright blue straight to the red before it shattered like glass. The blow threw him completely off his feet and hurtling straight towards the shutters. There was barely enough time to curl himself up into a ball before he collided with the only thing separating him from the two Psychos.

SMASH!

Leon, with all his 300 pound lupine muscle, smashed through the shutters and came crashing to the ground. The two Psychos managed to dodge out of the way in time, leaving him incredibly vulnerable. Without his shield to render him invisible, he was exposed.

“Well what do we have here,” snickered one of the caribou. “That striped bastard is a fucking demon.”

There was no arguing with that statement. In the short twenty or so minutes it took for him to get from Migraine’s cabin to here, Bren had somehow managed to lay traps all over the partially constructed mall! It didn’t matter how stealthy or invisible he was, if he triggered those traps, the Psychos would swarm him. He would have to seriously reconsider Bren’s value to the team.

“There’s more than one demon in this mall,” Leon grunted. He rolled onto his back and immediately flung his gun into the air. As expected, both Psychos diverted their attention to the weapon. A second of distraction was all he needed to activate his powers and immediately vanish from sight. They realised their mistake almost immediately and tried to turn their attention back to him but it was useless. Even if he lay there, they could not see him.

“Fuck!” barked the other caribou. “Where the hell is he!?”

Leon scrambled to his feet even as his gun clattered to the floor next to him. As tempted as he was to grab it, he knew that if he did they would have a good guess as to where he was. What he needed was another distraction. A quick tap on his forearm-mounted console was all he needed. Zeus came diving in with a screech. The mechanical eagle dove for the eyes of the caribous and their attention was immediately turned towards the bird. Leon snatched the gun from the ground and -

Crack!

He bit back a scream as Bren’s hoofed foot pressed against his wrist. There were precious few seconds before more Psychos would bear down on him and there was only so long that Zeus could keep those already around him distracted. Avoiding the cliche of trying to rip Bren’s foot off his wrist, Leon instead twisted his leg and slammed his own foot against the back of Bren’s knee. The limb immediately collapsed enough for for Bren to catch his weight on his other leg and away from Leon’s wrist. Leon snatched his gun from under Bren and immediately fired it wildly at the striped caribou. The superspy was lightning reflexes, however, and bent his body back away from the shimmering blue beam just a second before it hit him.

Even if he missed, that was a second when Bren’s gaze was diverted from him and Leon was effectively invisible again.

Except Bren had a counter for that as well.

The caribou immediately lunged for one of the Psychos and yanked what appeared to be a grenade from his waist. He pulled the pin. A hissing erupted from the explosive followed by a plume of bright, orange gas; tear gas.

“Shit!” Leon gasped as the gas immediately began spreading across the floor. His eyes began to burn and he was forced to cough and splutter. While he could remain effectively invisible to people, that did not say anything about how he affected his environment. Even the slightest movement in the cloud exposed him but at the same time, he could not remain or his eyes would burn a hole through his eye sockets. Gritting his teeth, Leon charged at where he knew the edge of the floor was. He collided with the railings and plummeted towards the ground. Instincts took over and he immediately positioned himself right side up, feet primed and one paw clenched. He hit the ground and immediately bent his left knee to catch his weight while punching the ground at the same time. The perfect superhero landing.

“Ouch!” he gasped as pain erupted from his knees and knuckles. As a super, the impact wouldn’t have been as bad if he didn’t have baseline powers but it still hurt. “That’s a fucking impractical way to land!”

“There he is!” came a cry.

Some of his kinetic barrier had recovered so when the spears of sizzling purple energies came launching at him, they were deflected, his barrier flashing a warning red. He leapt to his feet and immediately triggered his shield’s cloaking field, dropping from sight. He ducked behind a pillar, gasping for air and with his heart racing.

“Fuck…” he whispered to himself. “I can’t keep this up.” He bashed a fist against his temples. “Come on. Think. Can’t get a second to aim at them and the moment I do, Bren is there. There’s fucking traps everywhere and I’m sure Bren has planted traps wherever there’s a good sniping spot. The only place that’s safe is…”

His eyes went towards the Psychos who were now stalking the same floor as him.

“… is where they are…” he breathed, coming to a realisation. He glanced at his rifle and then back at the Psychos.

“Fuck it…”

He jumped out from behind the pillar and threw his rifle at the closest Psycho. The caribou immediately saw it and instinctively lifted his shield to defend himself. Leon closed the gap between them while the henchman was temporarily blinded. Despite his size, Leon was fast; maybe not as fast as the telekinetic caribou but still fast enough to slip under the man’s guard and reach for the tear gas canisters by his waist. He yanked the pins out of the grenades and immediately ducked. Before the orange smog could reach him, he swept his leg nice and low, sweeping the caribou’s feet out from underneath him. As the man hit the ground, Leon leapt into the air and angled his elbow right into the man’s diaphragm. The old wrestling move was one he had practised often with his dad during simpler times but it was still effective in knocking the air out of a 400 pound moving muscle of caribou meat. As the henchman gasped, the tear gas funnelled down his throat. After going through police training and knowing just how much tear gas hurt when inhaled, Leon could only pity the man.

He bent down and snatched two of the still spurting grenades from the choking man’s waist. One he threw to the right the other, he held and charged into the next closest Psycho. The man immediately held up his shield to defend himself, mace at the ready. Leon swept low and rolled the grenade along the floor, letting it slip between the man’s legs. The caribou was well trained and realised that Leon was trying to distract him but those tower shields of purple energies still blocked his view. Those shields were likely designed to block against Samson’s kinetic energy blasts not against Leon’s stealth tactics. He had to remind himself to thank Caleb for the last-minute switch up.

The caribou was expecting a blow from above despite the cannister of tear gas rolling beneath him. He never expected Leon to slide at him feet first like a baseball players diving for home plate. The Psycho was knocked off his feet and came toppling straight towards Leon where both shield and mace were utterly useless. Leon seized the man by the antlers and slammed their foreheads against one another. The blow dazed him but he was prepared for it. The henchman was not. He could almost see the stars flashing before the Psycho’s eyes. Even though he was on the ground, the momentum of the caribou’s fall allowed him to roll them over so that he was on top. He reared his fist back and -

WHAM!

Delivered a knockout punch that sent the caribou’s eyes rolling into the back of his head.

All those days of hand-to-hand combat training at the police academy were paying off.

Two down. Eight more to go. Plus Bren.

He didn’t want to stay in one place too long and used the cover of the tear gas to immediately turn and scampered away, keeping low so that the presence of the painful cloud could conceal his location. A thick hand suddenly collided with his neck and send him crashing to the ground on his back.

It was Bren.

In terms of hand-to-hand combat, the superspy hand him outgunned. It was only the element of surprise that gave him the advantage and he had lost that.

WHAM!

Stars flashed before his eyes as Bren’s fist collided with his face. He could taste blood.

Leon reached out, seizing Bren’s neck with both paws, trying to push away the mind-controlled tiger-slash-caribou but Bren had him pinned.

WHAM!

Another punch. He was on the verge of losing consciousness. The Psychos were gathering. They were watching him fail.

He refused to fail.

Subtly, he tapped the console on his forearm.

Zeus screeched and dove straight at Bren. The caribou instinctively bucked his head backwards while keeping his hand firmly around Leon’s neck. The poor mechanical bird let out a squawk of alarm as the caribou’s antlers grazed his wings.

“No escape this time, pup,” laughed a Psycho. “Your little bird can’t help you.”

Leon grinned at him. “Who says I want to escape?” Then he winked a Bren.

The striped caribou turned, hand still on his neck and flung him directly at the two closest Psychos. Leon hurtled through the air and immediately lashed out with his claws. Too stunned to react, his claws slashed through the faces of the henchmen, flesh and blood trailing from his fingertips. He crashed to the ground - not his most elegant of landings - but it gave him time to turn around and kick the knees out from under the two guards. Zeus came flying back, dropping his rifle right in his paws which he turned towards the two and immediately fired upon them at point blank range.

Four down. Six to go.

And this time, he had Bren with him.

The superspy reached behind his head towards the damaged helmet and tossed it derisively towards the ground. “Spider Queen knew that we were becoming more and more resistant to their mental conditioning so she had to rely on tricks to keep us under control,” said the tiger gruffly. He rolled his shoulders and levelled his fists at the Psychos, striking an intimidating boxer’s pose. “Suffice to say that I don’t like being used.”

Leon grinned through blood and a slightly loose tooth. “Glad to have you back on our side, Bren.”

“I never left.”

******

One would think that the base of a city surrounded by monolithic skyscrapers would be dark or gloomy but it was actually very well lit and bright. A stark contrast to the Floating City of Sydney back in Australia. David could not help but flash back to his days spent in the massive modern marvel. Australians had a weird fixation with heritage sites and maintaining them. So much so that when it came time to expand Sydney, they opted instead to build on top of the existing city to create a platform akin to West California Island only over the existing city. This kept the Old City in perpetual darkness but at the same time, allowed them to embrace an eternal night show of lights. But here, natural light still streamed through to the base of the city and the foundations were well decorated by lush greenery reminiscent of the wild lands outside of the city limits. It was probably the city planner’s intention to ensure as much natural light could hit the ground despite the towers around them.

Too bad that meant that more foliage meant more kindling for Lars’ flames.

David found himself behind a dome of steel similar to the one he and Caleb had erected back on Tibia’s island. It irked him to remember that it was under Jacob’s instruction but there was another part of him that told him to learn from the other Alpha Male. That was how he would beat him, how he would dominate Reaper. Other Alphas like Samson just butted heads, throwing their weight around and hoping that their accumulated power would be strong enough to beat all other opponents. But that was not the Alpha David wanted to be. No, he was going to be like mercury. Liquid, malleable but dangerous. He would adapt and change, learning from his greatest opponents. That was exactly how Reaper worked. Yes, he had the power to backup his claim as Alpha but his greatest weapon was his cunning and adaptability. David had to be like that.

He could feel the heat building up inside the dome and the metal starting to grow red with the flames Lars hurled at him. The wild, driven doberman was not making this easy. It was a classic scenario. Hero trying to save a mind-controlled ally. Enemy had the advantage because they could unleash everything they had while the hero naturally didn’t want to hurt their former ally. David couldn’t count how many times he had been on both ends of this cliche. The best way to fix this was to find some way to knock some sense into his opponents.

For the moment, however, he had to get out from his self-imposed trap. He waited a little longer, sweating in the heat of the dome until the metal began to glow a bright red.

“Perfect.”

With a snarl, he swept his paws forward and the metal bent and twisted at his whim. A second wall of steel erupted in front of him just as the dome peeled open and flung towards Lars. The big, brawny, black-furred caribou was momentarily surprised when searing hot, molten metal can screaming towards him. His blue flames died in his paws as he lifted his arms to defend himself. He would have been encased in a cocoon of metal if it hadn’t been for a fire hydrant suddenly bursting and intercepting the hot pellets. The metal snapped and shattered with the sudden application of icy cold water. Accompanied by the force of the jet and David’s counterattack was thwarted. Lightning suddenly snapped out and struck David’s barrier, pushing the experienced super back.

And there was the other two problems.

Both Shockstorm and Siren, now caribous like their son, came to land beside Lars. Seeing the three of them standing on the same side reminded him of the proud parents’ vision of when Lars was born… and how it eventually became twisted when fame and fortune got into their heads. All three supers stood tall and strong with predominantly black fur but a nutty brown crest on their chests. Lars was by far the bulkiest of them all followed closely by Shockstorm and Siren brought out her feminine assets especially since they were all naked. They almost looked identical with blazing purple irises and similar fur patterns. Only their stances and horns set them apart. Lars was crouched down and low like he was in a football scrimmage while Siren was his exact opposite, hovering off the ground on a typhoon of water, back straight and staring down her nose at David. Shockstorm was the middle ground between the two; legs bent and arms up while lightning crackling between his fingers. Lars’ antlers were afire with blue flames just like his elephantine form while Shockstrom had consistent bolts of electricity dancing between the prongs. Siren had a sphere of water hovering between hers which traced bubbling streams of liquid towards her fingers.

“You know,” David muttered, back pressed against his makeshift barrier. “I remember a time when you three would talk all about how you’d all team up once Flare Blue is all grown up.”

The ground floor of Toronto looked like a scene straight out of a post apocalyptic movie. Fires burned away, cars were overturned and windows were shattered. The trio of corrupted supers had done their job and it seemed even Migraine’s Psychos had opted to leave the area to flee from the destruction the dogs of fire, storm and sea could unleash. Still, David was all too aware that there would be someone, somewhere recording this entire spectacle and the moment he used their real names was the moment he would destroy their careers as supers. While he may not have always agreed with Siren and he thought of Shockstorm as a spineless pup privy to his wife’s tantrums, he could not do that to them. He was fairly sure Caleb wouldn’t forgive him either.

“The Alliance had high hopes for you three,” he continued. “You were going to be a PR goldmine. The first full super family born into the Alliance. You’ve reached out to that demographic of supers who had started a family and encouraged them into joining us.”

A focused beam high-pressure water slammed into the metal barrier. Even though it was about three inches wide, the pressure was so high that it cut right through the foot-thick barrier with ease.

“Okay! Okay!” David shouted, holding up a paw. “I’m not part of the Alliance anymore. Your family was meant to bring more supers into the Alliance.” He glanced to the ground, catching the reflection of the three elemental caribous in one of the fallen shards of metal. “I’m honestly a little jealous of you guys. You know that old saying? If you can’t handle me at my worst, you can’t handle me at my best?”

Shockstorm lowered his antlers at the barrier, lightning crackling between his prongs. David immediately summoned a platform of steel and launched into the air. One split second later, a concentrated beam of electricity shot right through his barrier. Back when they were working together, such a move would never have been within Shockstorm’s repertoire. The doberman couple always had a symbiotic relationship because they were never really able to sustain generation of their elements for long periods. Siren would use moisture in the air to create a storm and that was followed by Shockstorm using the generated electricity to their advantage. Now, even without a storm, they were fully capable of generating and manipulating their elements. This was likely to accommodate for Lars whose flames would be doused if there was a constant rainstorm.

Speaking of which…

Balls of fire came hurtling towards him and David immediately flung out his paws, generating two disk-shaped shields over his paws. He swatted away the fireballs while simultaneously soaring through the air on his platform.

“Even when you’re all feral and crazed by the Gene Stealers, you’re able to work together,” David shouted. “If this is you at your worst, I’m jealous of how you’re able to work so well together and are considerate of one another’s powers. I can’t help but wonder why you can’t work together like this when you’re sane!”

The three supers suddenly split off into three different directions with Lars going to the left, Shockstorm to the right and Siren remaining still. The only female of them threw her hands forward, generating a crushing torrent of water in a single concentrated beam. David swerved in midair, playfully making a note that it was like he was surfing. From his right, Shockstorm jammed his hands into the side of a building, holding himself still before levelling his antlers at David. Lightning streaked from those prongs, forcing David to immediately lift his shield in defence. The blast struck the disk and sent it hurtling away. From his left, Lars launched off the building, letting out a ferocious roar while his hands were wreathed in blistering blue flames. He swerved away but not before Lars smashed into his other shield and sent it crashing to the ground alongside the mutated doberman. Siren jerked her beam just slightly. There was no avoiding the attack. It was all David could do to spin in the air and use his platform as one last final shield. The beam slammed the metal disk into his muzzle, sending him crashing to the ground, dazed.

They were well-organised. Siren as the long-ranged combatant, Shockstorm as the mid-range and Lars as melee. Was this pack instincts or were they being controlled?

Purely on instinct alone, he summoned a spire of steel that launched him high into the air. Lars crashed into the spire a second later, totally engulfed in flames. The wild caribou hugged the tower, melting the metal with the heat of his fiery body alone. Definitely not mind controlled. They were just defending themselves. Like animals, they were in unfamiliar lands, on the defence and saw David as the only enemy around. Didn’t help that his opening move had been to try and entrap them in a cage of metal.

On some level, he understood their reaction. Maybe the werewolf in him was getting smarter because he realised the only way to bring them out of their psychosis was to rip off the veil of anger and fear to reveal the sentient, thinking being below. Caleb did it when he stepped between himself and Jacob, piercing the haze of primal instincts with his brilliant light. The question was how he could emulate such a light. His son was so important in his life that he could never harm him on any level of consciousness. What was so important to Shockstorm and Siren that their sentient selves would come back to the surface and fight through the haze? It definitely wasn’t Lars. They had fought tooth and nail to ensure that they publicly severed ties with Flare Blue to save their own reputations -

“That’s it!” he exclaimed, eyes wide in realisation.

First was Siren. Her long-ranged attacks were the most dangerous and could catch him unawares.

He jumped off his spire of metal and immediately brought up two, thick, metal shields on either side of him. Hunching down under their protection, he charged forward straight towards Siren. Metal sprang up beneath his feet, rolling forward like a constant wave and carrying him fast across the asphalt. Lars roared and finally cut through the column of metal. Even with the molten steel pouring over his fur, the doberman-turned-caribou picked up the huge fifteen-foot tall spire and swung it at David like one would a baseball bat. But metal was still in David’s realm and with a simple flick of his ear, the entire column shattered into thousands of pieces. The sharpened edges rapidly reconfigured in the air, taking the shape of small birds of prey. In the back of his mind, he was reminded of Zeus, Leon’s pet mechanical bird. Those very same birds lunged at Lars, their sharp claws and wing biting into his fur while tugging at his antlers. It was a momentary distraction, enough for him to slip past and angle towards Shockstorm.

The electrical caribou sent bolt after bolt of lightning at him. Shields lifted, he blocked the blasts until he arrived at the base of the tower that his former colleague was perched upon. He then threw the shield straight upwards, forcing Shockstorm to abandon his perch. What the caribou forgot was that he could control all metal so even though he dodged the elliptical shield, there was nothing stopping David from abruptly changing its trajectory and sending it collided with the airborne caribou. The metal warped and twisted, wrapping around Shockstorm. The added weight sent the super crashing to the ground with a mighty thud.

Last stop, Siren.

The matriarch of the McLeod's screamed in fury before thrusting both her fists forward. Huge, watery waves shaped just like her three-fingered fists came charging straight at him. David braced himself, shield up and accelerating his own momentum. He hit the wave, grimacing as he was forced to throw his shoulder against his shield to keep himself from toppling over. It was like fighting the very ocean currents. Siren’s torrent was unending but he was making progress, foot by foot. There was no time to waste on the standoff, however, no matter how amazing it looked. With his free paw, he sent a little boomerang of metal sailing out to his side, curling around the impasse before angling straight towards Siren.

Whack!

It hit Siren’s wrist with enough force to make her cry out in pain and grip the injured appendage thus stopping the torrent. David pounced on the moment and slammed right into Siren. She was still strong however and lowered her antlers at him, catching his shield before it could hit her body completely. That was all he needed.

“Look at yourself, Siren!” he roared loudly. “Look at your reflection!”

The surface of his shield rippled like the very same water that Siren manipulated.

“Is this how you want to be remembered!?” David barked. “Just another statistic? Another notch in the Gene Stealers’ belt? You’re just another victim of their machinations. Someone turned crazy because of what they did to you!” She pushed back against him and he had to throw his weight against the shield to keep his footing. “You have to fight through it! The world is watching, Siren! Will you just be like all those that fell before you or are you going to fight!?”

Siren suddenly bucked her head backwards, throwing David momentarily off balance. She grabbed his neck with one powerful grip.

“Shit!” he cursed.

Then she threw him behind her and -

Zzzap!

… was immediately electrocuted by a torrent of lightning.

“Holy shit…” David breathed. Not too far away, Shockstorm wailed in horror upon realising he had just assaulted his own wife. David scrambled to his feet and caught Siren just as she fell to her knees. Her eyes were back to their usual nutty brown colour even though her form was still alien to her.

“Don’t…” she gasped, her fur sizzling. “… Don’t make me regret this, David…”

Then she slumped into unconsciousness.

“I won’t,” he promised, gently setting her on her side.

Shockstorm, still wrapped up in David’s miniature cocoon, was banging his head hard against the asphalt, wracked by guilt and terror. David immediately went to him, seizing the sides of his head and staring the caribou right in the eye.

“It’s going to be okay,” he reassured him. “She’s still alive. It’s not your fault.”

Slowly, the evil purple glow in Shockstorm’s eyes faded.

“D - David…?”

“I’m here,” he answered with a reassuring smile.

“Oh god… What have I done?” Shockstorm’s eyes went wide in terror. “What have I done!? Wolf Christ! I’m a monster!”

There was no time to deal with this. David held up his paw and sent it smashing into the caribou’s face. Shockstorm mercifully dropped into unconsciousness.

All that was left now…

… was the beast standing just two feet away from David.

Feral Steel was just about to rise when Lars rested a paw on his shoulder.

“I’m… I’m so sorry…” Lars wept. The purple haze was gone from his eyes and in their place was hot tears. Back to normal, of sorts, Flare Blue fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around David, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry.”

Stunned at the sudden turn of events, David gratefully hugged Lars back, sighing in relief. “It’s okay, son. It’s okay. I got you.”

“N - No… You don’t get it… I… I did something… really bad!”

“You weren’t in control. It’s not your fault.”

Lars suddenly pulled away, staring at David with wide, terrified eyes and his fangs grit in anger directed at himself. “I fucked my dad! I’m the one that turned him! He turned my mom! I did this to them!”

As someone who had just had sex with his son to curb his lycanthropic instincts, he could sympathise. He held Lars’ paws tightly. “I understand. I did something just as bad not too long ago.”

“But… But… I liked it.”

“No denying it,” David answered, offering a lopsided smile. “I did too.”

“Not the sex.”

His features fell.

Lars collapsed forward, resting his chin against David’s shoulders and sobbing loudly.

“I liked infecting them. I liked transforming them. I liked changing with them. ”

That… that was different.

All David could say was…

“Oh.”

******

News outlets and local authorities were swarming the sites of the attack. The members of Arsenal were swiftly evacuated by AEGIS and brought back onto the Cornucopia. Caleb was relieved to hear everyone’s stories and even more so that most of the members had managed to fight through the brainwashing of the Gene Stealers. It seemed that their archenemies had to employ some other form of control in order to force the members to comply be it the pack mentality of Lars’ family, physical restraints like with Ben or pain therapy for Mary. But they were now all safe. Elliot, in particular, was rather furious that Rhiannon had managed to smash yet another one of his suits of armour and just after Jacob had given him a new one. From what he heard, the battle had been rather cerebral with Rhiannon trying to break Elliot’s mind using illusion of his worst fears and nightmares or even greatest dreams. The rotund orca would not shut up about how he outsmarted the Hound of Destruction even as they had their debriefing on the bridge.

Caleb was particularly relieved to find Jacob was back with them though there was something… forced about the smile his best friend wore.

The doors to the bridge opened and everyone fell silent. Arsenal slowly made their way in, dressed in the black and blue of AEGIS. Mary was leading them and the moment she saw Caleb, she beamed and rushed to him. She flung her arms around his neck and held her in return.

“Thank you,” she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. “Thank you so much.”

“Hey,” he soothed, rubbing her back with his paw. “I’ll do anything to save you. All of you. Everyone here would.”

She pulled away, beaming brightly. “Wow…”

“What?” he asked, returning a confused gaze even through his smile.

“You seem… bigger. I mean… It’s like you’ve grown up.”

He shrugged in response and looked towards his dad and Jacob, the two standing side by side. “I’ve had to. A lot has happened.”

His heart jumped to his throat as Lars approached him. Mary respectfully broke away as Lars threw his arms around Caleb. The young wolf puckered his lips and angled straight for the restored doberman’s muzzle but was surprised when Lars purposefully veered away and just rested their cheeks against one another. A soft sob left Lars’ lips which only confused him all the more. Then he caught sight of Shockstorm and Siren and decided Lars probably didn’t want to display any affection in the presence of his parents just yet. It was a big bruise to the superhero duo’s ego that they were saved by AEGIS and Assault and it would just be rubbing salt into the wound to have their son openly kissing Weapons Master.

Both members of the Alliance stood a short distance away from Jacob, David and Nathan Rage. The awkward silence between them spread quickly to the rest of the gathered group and even Lars was forced to peel himself away from Caleb - albeit still clutching the wolf’s paw - and stare at the confrontation, waiting for the inevitable sparks to fly.

Shockstorm coughed.

Siren sighed.

Jacob rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let me start off then.” He stared the two right in the eye. “You’re welcome.”

“For what!?” Siren snapped immediately. “For sending us into a trap!? Your information -”

“Was accurate. We pointed you directly to Migraine’s hideout. Perhaps we could’ve done our due diligence and realised that Mattias was not the enemy and that the henchmen were working directly for Spider Queen but I challenge you to claim you could’ve figured that out yourself and if you could, why didn’t you?”

Elliot leaned towards Caleb slightly. “Does Jake sound a little… short-tempered to you?”

“He really does…” he admitted. This would’ve been a prime time for Jacob Reaper to make fun of the supers or make some joke but his black-furred wolf was oddly steely.

“What my wife is trying to say,” Shockstorm said, gripping Siren’s shoulder tightly. “Is that we’re really grateful for what you’ve done. We would’ve liked to know more about Migraine’s organisation but we charged in hot-headed and desperate to find our son. Thank you for coming to save us. It’s really appreciated.”

Siren spat and averted her gaze.

Jacob calmed slightly, the intensity in his eyes easing. “I apologise for my tone as well. It’s been… a trying few days.”

The doors to the bridge abruptly sprang open again and in came four costumed men and women. Caleb recognised them as the four heroes of Toronto; Cannonball, Sharptooth, Maple and Fortuna. Cannonball was their leader and was an armadillo with scales that were supposedly indestructible. The powerfully built male was dressed in his trademark black attire with a red underbelly. His signature move was to curl up into a ball and get hurled around by the strongman of the group and his husband, Sharptooth. A beaver with - predictably - the ability to bite through anything, Sharptooth was even bigger than Cannonball and was only dressed in a pair of tight shorts and a long, coat with a furry collar. Maple and Fortuna were married as well and both women were arguably more powerful than the male duo. Maple was a deer shaman and had been pivotal in restoring a lot of Canada’s natural beauty after a devastating forest fire caused by a battle against their archnemesis, Daemon Reave. She was dressed in a slim black and green attire with a billowing green cloth wrapped around her torso and waist like a toga. Her wife, Crisis, had the power to bring misfortune upon anyone who met her gaze which meant she had a black cloth wrapped around her features. The only human of the group, she held a long staff that helped her walk and she was dressed in billowing red dress more suited for the Oscars than out in battle. Caleb remembered seeing her out there on the field in vids, however, and Fortuna cast an elegant figure when she was moving in that dress.

“Okay,” boomed Cannonball in a voice so deep Caleb was sure his organs had shifted. “Hundred words or less. Why the fuck shouldn’t we arrest you all for flying a fucking carrier-class starship so close to our city!”

It dawned on Caleb that AEGIS and the Cornucopia wasn’t even meant to be here. The exception that the Alliance had filed had been for Shockstorm and Siren. With such a public spectacle out in Toronto, there was no hiding that Assault had somehow come to the city.

“Uh…” Lance began. “… because people needed saving?”

“Not good enough. That’s five words. Better make the next ninety-three count.”

“Actually,” Elliot said, raising a finger, “five minus a hundred is ninety-five…”

Rhiannon elbowed him and the orca squirmed.

“Look,” Nathan Rage began. “The Cornucopia was technically outside the city limits so we weren’t infringing on any territory.”

“You’re still within Canadian airspace,” countered Sharptooth. “Besides, there’s no guaranteeing that someone couldn’t have piloted this behemoth right into the city! Let’s not forget you sent your dropships into the actual city itself! There’s so much firepower on this beast that it’d take half the US army to defeat it!”

Shockstorm suddenly stepped forward. “The documents we filed for a request of activity within your city included the need for backup should the need arise,” said the doberman. “AEGIS is an ally of the Elemental Alliance. They were the backup we requested.”

That Lars’ dad was intervening on behalf of AEGIS was a surprise. Perhaps there was some good that came out of all this after all.

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Shockstorm,” growled Cannonball. “I’m sure on paper that’s legal but you, your wife and your son were out on our streets rampaging! We demand to know what the fuck is going on.”

“That’s a need-to-know basis.”

“We need to know,” countered Maple. “Especially since you were fighting in our city. Just what is happening down on your island?”

“Nothing you haven’t already heard on the news,” David said gruffly. “If you choose to ignore it because you think it’s not important, that’s your problem.”

Fortuna lifted her head at Feral Steel. “But you’re clearly incapable of containing the issue. If it’s starting to spill over to other jurisdictions, perhaps this is a problem that is quickly escalating to the likes of Darkrend or Thanatos.”

“That’s what we’ve been saying!” Leon shouted furiously. “But the assholes at the Alliance keep trying to downplay it!”

“Don’t pin this on us!” Siren yelled back. “The people’s safety is far more important than being right!”

“Shut the fuck up. You’re the one who keeps going on and on about being ‘right’ about us and our efforts!”

“You insolent little -”

Samson stormed forward and held up his paws, placing himself between Leon and Siren. “Let’s all calm down. This is not constructive. Let’s focus on the positives. Arsenal is back. Toronto is safe. We actually have Migraine as an ally. Let’s just shake hands and go our separate ways.”

“This is not something that can be brushed under the rug, Alpha Drive,” snarled Sharptooth. “We’re all well aware of you and Blood Wolf’s past as villains so you’d have to do a lot of convincing force us not to turn you in.”

Samson gave the beaver a dark, ominous stare. “You’re most welcome to try but you’ll find that nothing will ever hold up in the court of law.”

“Since we’re all acting outside of the law, what’s to stop me from just beating the shit out of you right here and right now!?”

“As I said, you’re most welcome to try.”

“Is that a threat!?” Cannonball stormed forward, holding up a fist in fury. “Did you just threaten my husband!?”

“It’s a response to your threat.”

Shockstorm sighed and moved towards Lars. He grabbed his son’s shoulder and pulled him towards the door. “Come on, son. Let’s go.”

“No,” Lars said, shrugging off his father’s grip. “I’m going to stay. With Arsenal.”

The patriarchal doberman sighed. “I know you’ve made your choice but Arsenal is the victim here. Assault and AEGIS could be seen as terrorists. Let’s leave and -”

“And what!?” Lars snapped hotly, pushing his father away. “Throw the very same people who just saved us under the bus!? What the fuck kind of hero are you!?”

“There are more things about being a hero than you know, Lars. There’s the politics of it…”

“That’s all you ever think about!” shouted Caleb’s boyfriend, throwing his paws up into the air. “Politics! Feral Steel was right! You turned our family into a fucking ad campaign! That’s not a family! That’s a fucking sideshow!”

Shockstorm’s features broke and turned to sorrow. “It’s not like that…”

“Yes it is! You’ve just automatically assumed that I wanted to be a superhero! You shoved your lifestyle onto me because that’s what you thought was best for me! Well, guess what, dad? I’m not like you!”

The bridge was quickly devolving into their own separate arguments and Caleb found himself caught in the middle of it all. But there was one voice that was oddly silent… and he felt a sense of dread building the more it was absent. His eyes went straight to Jacob. His friend’s paws were closed into fists, hackles raised and face twisted into a snarl. He had never seen Jake angry before and the visage before him was utterly terrifying. Rhia seized his shoulder… and immediately hid behind him.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Hiding from the Writer of Reality,” muttered the Hound of Destruction. “This… this is going to be scary.”

Sure enough, it was.

“ENOUGH!”

Jacob’s voice carried throughout the entire bridge, shaking the entirety of the Cornucopia. Chains unfurled from beneath Jacob’s coat and spread into a pair of huge, skeletal wings with razor-sharp edges. All the light and warmth fled from the room to the point where Caleb’s breath condensed in front of his muzzle. The lights on the bridge flickered and even though there was a full display of the sunny afternoon in front of them, the bridge dimmed like an eclipse had just consumed the sun. What terrified him the most was Jacob’s eyes. The blue irises were cut by his pupils which were now shaped like eight-pointed stars.

“Oh shit…” Rhiannon whimpered.

Everyone in the room jerked back in shock.

Then Cannonball regained his composure. “I don’t know who you think you are, Legion but -”

“On your knees!” Jacob commanded.

The armadillo slammed into his knees so hard that Caleb could almost hear the bones there shattering at it impacted the metal floor and made a dent.

“Babe!” Sharptooth cried. Then he turned towards Jacob. “You -”

“You too! Hell, eat the fucking ground!”

Sharptooth suddenly slammed head first into the floor, his big buck teeth biting hard into the steel and leaving him murmuring and whimpering.

That cut all arguments and drained all bravery from the room.

This was the power of the Writer of Reality.

“Now listen to me, all of you,” Jacob snarled, the gravity in his voice easing lightly. “Anyone familiar with the old adage, ‘You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain’?” Samson raised his hand meekly. “The first step to that damnation is the fucking bureaucracy that is eating this world apart from its heart! Who the fuck cares if the right paperwork was filed? People’s lives were saved! If an asteroid was crashing towards the Earth and some rogue punched the president to launch all the nukes at it thus saving the world, would you execute him? The truth is you would because he violated some unspoken law over not punching the fucking president. You see where that’s absolutely, insanely stupid?”

“It’s true…” Rhiannon began, peeking out from behind Caleb. “I mean, throughout history.”

Jacob stared daggers at her and with Caleb as her meat shield, he felt the full brunt of that icy stare. “Shut up and stop kissing ass.” Then he turned back towards the Canadian heroes. “You’re just pissed that you weren’t told about what was happening. I can look into all realities and all possibilities and trust me when I say that if we had spent the time to actually talk to you about our approach, you’d be sitting in the fucking corner crying over the fact that Arsenal was against spirited away right between your fingers but you wouldn’t make a peep over the fact that we drove a carrier-class starship ten fucking miles away from your city. So swallow your pride, get over yourselves and realise that we did what we had to do to save our friends and families. You would’ve done exactly the same had the Gene Stealers taken your loved ones and imprisoned them in West California Island but I guarantee, you would’ve done it without going through the proper channels.”

“We -” began Fortuna.

“All realities and possibilities, remember?” Jacob interrupted, tapping his temple. “You would have. There isn’t one reality that you would’ve gone through the trouble of filing the proper paperwork. I suppose that says a lot about your dedication to your partner and the singular timeline this universe is subject to.” Reaper sighed and his chain-wings folded slightly. “You can get up know.”

Both Cannonball and Sharptooth sighed in relief as they removed themselves from the floor of the Cornucopia.

What the fuck was that!?” exclaimed the latter.

Jacob sighed and ran a paw down his features. He turned his back and gazed out into the beauty of Toronto. The warmth and lights returned to the bridge.

“My name is Jacob Reaper. I’m the Writer of Reality, here on assignment…” He made a dismissive wave through the air. “Yadda-yadda. Someone else can fill you in on the details. Suffice to say that some restrictions were lifted on my abilities after a meeting with the deities of this universe. Much to my chagrin, not without it’s own limitations. Sorry I blew up…” He glanced over his shoulder at them. “… but I just couldn’t stand the idea that you assholes are actually trying to mar a successful rescue operation, the reunification of loved ones and family and the salvation of kids who were tortured and put through terrible physical and mental torture with goddamn paperwork. I’m not saying not to care about order but seriously, people. You aren’t machines that must follow every line of your programming without fail. You have a heart. A soul. Fucking use it.”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

Jacob sighed, his shoulder slumping. Then he lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “The mortal soul is an amazing thing. There are laws around realities, concrete rules that cannot be broken. Call it physics. Call it the will of the gods. Doesn’t matter. On paper, they can’t be circumvented. Yet time and time again, I have seen people break the mold, shatter their bonds and write their own stories because of the power they have within. This transcends the laws of reality, gods and existence itself. Why shackle yourselves with your own laws and stain your souls when you could be using it for something better like celebrating that a family was reunited on some primal level…” He gestured toward Shockstorm and Lars. Then he nodded towards Migraine who was standing not too far away. “… a troubled soul was redeemed…” Then he turned towards Caleb with a soft smile on his muzzle. “… or that we all grew a little from the experience?”

He then fully turned to them. “Again, I’m not saying sweep everything under the rug. People will need explanations but let’s work together on this. You all understand that we did what we had to do. So how about in exchange for your help in helping the dust settle, I’ll give you a tour of the Cornucopia?”

“That doesn’t seem like a fair exchange…” Maple muttered.

Caleb mentally winced and expected Jacob to blow up again. Thankfully, his friend had cooled down somewhat.

“Alright. How about I get you a bottle of artesian maple sauce? You like the one that has a bit of cedar and cinnamon taste in it right? I can even give you a recipe for that really expensive sundae that they serve at Tableau’s.”

Maple went rigid in shock. “Wait… How’d you know I like that? Can you read minds?”

Jacob tapped the side of his head and turned towards Fortuna. “And you, Fortuna, have you ever considered speaking to Professor Zander? You know he heads up a school for ‘the gifted’ and he’s got someone there who shoots laser out of his eyes. He wears these special glasses that keeps him for scorching anyone he looks at.”

“That would not work on my abilities,” sighed the blind woman sorrowfully. “I cast misfortune upon anyone I stare upon.”

“Have you ever considered just his gorilla-like supergenius to create a miniaturised anti-super field specifically geared towards your powers and mounting it on a pair of glasses so that your powers won’t activate and you can see? You can even coat the lenses in a thin layer of lucium so that even if the field were to fail, you won’t make someone lose all their money or something.”

Fortuna went rigid. “How did you know my powers don’t activate in the presence of lucium.”

“Given that you can’t see what I’m doing, just imagine me tapping the side of my head.” Jacob then turned towards Cannonball and Sharptooth. “It’s not HPV.”

Cannonball suddenly jerked towards his partner. “Is that what you’ve been hung up about all this time!?”

The beaver threw his paws into the air in defence. “I lost my memory and I didn’t know who I was sleeping with! I just knew I liked cock and I didn’t get that guy’s number! I was afraid!”

“Is that why you wouldn’t touch me?” pleaded Cannonball. “Come on! You know I love you, STD or no.”

Sharptooth visibly melted and he held his partner tightly. “Sorry to make your worry, babe…”

Jacob visibly took a deep breath and his chain-wings receded back into his back. “Glad to have that all settled. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few things I need to sort out. Why don’t you guys all go out to dinner in Toronto. Just relax. And just because I know you’ll all inevitably get into an argument over where to go, just hit up iHop. Everyone likes pancakes and it’s sufficiently Canadian-like that the locals won’t tell you it’s a waste.”

The Writer of Reality left the bridge with more questions than answered. Even as the rest of the members began agreeing to what they wanted to have at iHop, Caleb rushed after his friend and quickly grabbed Jacob’s paw.

“Jake… What happened with the gods? Why are you suddenly able to do all this?”

Jacob’s shoulder sagged again. “The gods are getting angsty about my continued presence here. They’re afraid that the longer I’m here, the more I’ll divert worship from them and start my own ‘Cult of R3’ or something. Plus, the more I’m here the more I disrupt their plans.”

“What… what did you do?”

Reaper shut his eyes, unable to meet Caleb’s gaze. “I’m on a time limit, Caleb. In exchange for some of my abilities being unlocked, once certain conditions are met, I have to leave. It’s soon.”

His eyes widened and he immediately let go of Jake’s paw. “When…?”

“I can’t say.”

That was because he said certain conditions had to be met. Not a date. Conditions.

“Then… It’s the prophecy, isn’t it?” Caleb concluded. “You really are going to try and be the one that dies!”

Jacob kept his eyes shut, pursing his lips but was unable to answer.

“You are not going to die!” Caleb cried, holding his friend by the shoulders. “I won’t let it happen! I don’t care what Martha Connors said. People can backstab me all they want. Break my heart over and over again! You are not going to die!”

“Caleb…”

“No!” cried the young wolf, hot tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m going to go to every person and be a fucking angel to them so they won’t ever think of betraying me! I’ll… I’ll make everyone love me! Hell, I’ll get my mom to push through legislation making polygamy legal so I can legally marry everyone! I’ll marry you! Just don’t die!”

Jacob suddenly slapped Caleb’s paws away and too a step back, his fiery eyes piercing him. “Has it ever occurred to you that the very same three people who are supposed to betray you, break your heart and die could be the same person?”

…

Caleb’s heart shattered.

“What…?” he whimpered.

Reaper turned his back and began walking away.

“All I’m saying, Caleb, is that my name is R3 the Writer of Reality. I have a thing for threes.”