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Legion of Pain

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Chapter 2: Boned

Caleb had made it back in time for class and he was more than ecstatic that he would not get a severe beating from Gwen for neglecting his studies. The rest of the day had gone by without issue and he had received some much-needed space from his friends after how he had stormed out. Mostly Mary’s doing, he suspected. When the final bell rang to signal the end of school, he bounded to the gym with his sports bag. Football season was extended due to multiple supervillain attacks and would kick up next week. The weather manipulators were still peppering the island with snow and that made for very difficult conditions for the game. It meant that the grounds were much more slippery and visibility could get impaired. Normally, football season would have ended before the snow got too bad. The problem was, since there was no mayor to sign off on when the manipulators should be shut off, they were currently in limbo. That didn’t mean that Caleb - or the coaches - would let any of them slack off.

The field was off limits for the moment but that meant he had to head to the gym where weight training had become their priority. He was one of the first in the gym with the rest of the team piling in. The coaches assigned them to their workout routines with David Hale - as an assistant coach - ordering Caleb and Lars to hit the treadmills. At one point, Caleb would have been aggravated that his father was interfering with his life but now, he was glad that David was around to help keep his secret as an Outsider. He could also make excuses for Lars given his supernatural strength and durability.

“Did you hear that the Tibia guy you busted over the weekend escaped?” Lars said, cranking up his treadmill to a steady run.

Not to be outdone, Caleb did the same. “Yeah. All over the news. He apparently escaped with six others. Twins called Pins and Needles who apparently have the power to give you that stupid feeling all over your body if your leg falls asleep. Some big-headed guy called Migraine. A villainous vigilante called the Scalpel.” He tilted his head to the side, trying to conjure up the image of the news report he had received on his tablet in the middle of class. Such brief alerts often came in whenever there were supervillain attacks or movements to make sure everyone was aware. “I think there was a leather-themed one…”

“The Gimp,” Lars responded, increasing the speed again. Caleb naturally matched him. “The guy was on the EA’s radar for a while back since he can apparently absorb all pain and damage dealt to those around him. They thought about getting him to join sort of like as a damage sponge but that never worked out.”

He remembered the image of the Gimp and shuddered. “Yeah… Him. Do you remember the other guy?”

“The Traumatiser. Illusionist. Uses arcane arts to mess with your head.”

“Why did they have that metal box on his head?”

“Apparently an arcane dampener and it prevents anyone from staring into his ‘third eye’ or something.” Lars shrugged as he upped the speed again, the machine warning him that such a speed was dangerous. Caleb had to admit when he was defeated and only increased his a little. His boyfriend was still a super and had baseline powers, after all.

David tapped the machine’s dashboards with his clipboard, adjusting his hat emblazoned with the word ‘coach’ on it. “Come on boys. Focus. Ten more minutes on the treadmill then weights.”

“Yes, coach,” both answered in unison before David moved on to help and monitor other students.

“How’s your dad dealing with the whole werewolf thing?” Lars whispered softly.

“Seems pretty normal for the most part. Though I think the increased aggression isn’t helping with Leon. Both of them are proud hotheads. Leon would never be caught dead admitting it but he looks up to dad. Being a super probably brought him closer to being like him but now that dad is also a werewolf… well…”

“That goal just got father away. That sucks. I always dreamed of being like my parents when I was younger. Thought when I joined the Alliance it’d be easy. But my mom and dad are in a league of their own.”

“When I was growing up, I dreamed of being superhero,” Caleb admitted. “All that nerdy crap kind of poisoned my mind.”

Lars gave him a gently punch to his shoulder. “Come on. It isn’t so bad, right?”

A gentle laugh was his reply. A few minutes later, it was time to move on to the next set of exercises and they went through the routine of working out. The monotonous, repetitive movements forced him to focus on his form and the strain in his muscles. No superheroes, no Gene Stealers or Genesians. Just simple movements and the burning in his muscles. Though he hated to admit it, all the blood was being drained out of his brain and into the rest of his body leaving it with less resources to stress over his problems at home and in his work as an Outsider. It was with a groan that five o’clock hit and he had to pack up, take a shower and wait for his dad to drive him back home. Lars went off in his own truck, leaving Caleb waiting outside the gym while David finished up his paperwork.

His phone beeped at him while he was waiting. A message from Ben.

‘Hey. You finished working out yet?’

Puzzled, Caleb replied that he was.

‘Don’t be mad but I’m at your house right now. Dad and mom are there.’

He frowned deeply and glanced around, making sure no one was spying upon him. ‘What the hell are the heads of the Alpha Pack doings at my house?’

‘They wanted to talk to your dad about… well… about him joining.’

‘I thought he was already in.’

‘Becoming a werewolf is more than just being bitten by one and certainly more for a member of the Alpha Pack. There are three things…’

He didn’t get to finish as David emerged from the gym and grinned at him. His dad was drenched in sweat and as he drew closer, Caleb could smell the musk from him. It was pretty clear that David had taken his time with the ‘paperwork’ because he was furiously masturbating. David’s thick, woollen gym pants were still slightly tented from his erection.

“Sorry that took so long, son. Lots of things to do and get ready, you know.”

“I’ll bet,” Caleb grumbled. He flashed his phone towards David. “We’ve got visitors at home.”

David regarded the screen and frowned. “I see… Alright. Brace for the worst.”

“As long as they don’t pull that satantic shit like they did at Christmas, I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine.”

Despite his attempt to inject humour into the situation, David was dead serious as they drove back home. Thankfully, the Pack had opted to take more inconspicuous means when parking in front of the Hale household. No long limousines or armed guards at the door. Just a cute little, sky-blue family van. Caleb breathed a little easier as they padded up to the garage and entered the house. He was afraid that his mother would be sitting in the lounge trying not to blink for fear of the werewolves there with her but she was chatting happily with the long-haired, lithe Martha Connors like two women having a catch-up. The enormous, intimidating Samson Connors was sitting on the couch away from the two women, looking bored and absently browsing on his phone. When the two wolves entered, Samson rose to greet them.

“David. It has been too long,” rumbled the werewolf and Ben’s father. Ben himself was parked a short distance away, admiring some of the trophies in the cabinets.

“I suppose it has,” David answered stiffly. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

Samson gestured at David’s recliner - the seat dedicated to dad. It was a faint sleight. Why would Samson - the guest - be offering David a seat when it was his house. David took it well and just took up his position as king of his castle. “By now you may have been experiencing some of the effects of your transformation into a werewolf.”

“I’m pretty sure a full moon has passed,” David responded. “Don’t tell me that’s bullshit too.”

Ben shuffled closer to Caleb, the two of them standing in the periphery of the room.

“Quite. We can naturally transform whenever we wish and the full moon does play a part,” answered Samson curtly. “But not until the third ritual.”

“Great. If you expect me to bite the head off a chicken…”

“Nothing so crude. You see, normally werewolves perform a ritual on the full moon to enter their alternate forms for the first time. It ‘activates the blood’ within you, so to speak. A simple bite is not enough. This ritual must be performed. After all, something cannot be made from nothing and the transformation invokes magical powers to allow the beast within to surface.”

Caleb leaned down towards Ben, blocking his muzzle in the direction of the two fathers with a paw. “I thought you guys transforming was all genetic. Magic is involved?”

“Lycanthropy is sort of a curse,” answered Ben. “I mean, where do you think all that mass comes from? It’s magic.”

Back between David and Samson, Feral Steel said, “And I’ve got to do this ritual at the next full moon? Is that it?”

Samson gave him a curt nod. “Not necessarily but the sooner the better. The longer you delay, the wilder your feral side will become. It is in everyone’s best interests that we expedite the process.” The Leader of the Alpha Pack hooked one finger against his chiselled chin. “If you were an ordinary werewolf, it would involve your pack performing the ritual with you. However, since you are a member of the Alpha Pack, something else must be done.” The leader of the Pack lifted that very same finger. “First, you must shatter the ties that bind you to your former life. When you become part of the Alpha Pack, only the Pack matters. Now I understand this is a very special circumstance and we are more than accommodating towards the fact that you love your family dearly. That is perfectly fine. When your family dies of natural causes -”

“Wait, what?” David demanded, leaning forward. His claws were digging into the leather of his couch. “What do you mean by that exactly?”

“The Alpha Pack are graced with supernaturally long lives. One could even argue we are ageless. I’m several centuries old, in fact. Some of our members even existed from the 50’s.”

“The 2950? That’s not so long ago.”

“The 1550’s. They survived the apocalypse and the coming of the furs.”

Caleb’s jaw dropped and he turned towards Ben in surprise.

“They’re Catastrophe and Raging Hound,” answered the werewolf. “The only other two humans in the Pack. They survived because Catastrophe’s power was to cause and sense disasters and since he could sense the incoming dangers, they managed to survive.”

To think that there were members of the Alpha Pack that had not only existed before the Apocalypse that effectively reset most of the world but continued to live and look so well as they did blew his mind. He remembered meeting Catastrophe and Raging Hound briefly and they looked spectacular - especially given how they were millennia old. Then again, Jacob must be way older than them and he looked like he was in his early twenties.

“So you’re telling me that I’m going to still be alive well after the rest of my family dies of old age?” David demanded.

“Yes. It’s part of the gift of being a super and a werewolf. ‘Old age’ really is caused by your cells being incapable of restoring themselves as quickly as they deteriorate leading to organ failure and a myriad of other complications. As a super, you already have an unusually long lifespan with your natural regeneration. Coupled with that of a werewolf, your cells will remain perpetually healthy.”

David looked towards Lillian who shared the same look of horror with him. No doubt the gravity of his choice to join the Alpha Pack was just now dawning on him.

“We’ll deal with that later,” he growled. “What else needs to be done?”

“The second part of the ritual to join the Alpha Pack is, as we mentioned before, to dominate a pack.”

“I thought you said I already dominated a pack when I made my declaration at your party.”

“You did. In theory. But this part of the ritual is more physical. You must find an unclaimed Pack and claim dominion over them. We’ve already compiled a list. I’m sure they will meet your standards as some of these are actually rather uncivilised werewolves.”

Caleb had the image of rough, uncouth werewolves living in caves without a grasp of language in his head.

“Explain,” David demanded. Samson reached into his meticulously pressed, black suit and handed him a sheet of paper. As David perused it, the Hale patriarch’s eyebrows rose and he turned his gaze back to the werewolf king. “You’re fucking kidding me. These packs are in Texas! Montana! Fucking Georgia! You’re sending me to claim redneck werewolf packs!?”

That made Caleb wince. Everyone in the room glanced towards him, as if realising for the first time that he was still there. He swiftly ignored as they turned back towards David.

“These Packs are unaffiliated with others and tend to live out on their own in rather deplorable living conditions,” answered Samson curtly. “It would be a service to society if they were… educated and brought into the fold.”

“You’re using me to fucking reel these wildcards in just because you can’t stand the fact that they’re outside of your control!” David roared.

“Perhaps,” answered Samson. If only the head of the Alpha Pack tented his fingers there, then he would have played the part of the evil mastermind very well.

David growled, crushing the sheet of paper in his paw. “You know what? I’ll deal with that later. The first part was ‘severing my bonds’, right? I’m not giving up my family.”

“We would never ask that of you,” came the curt, cool answer. “We in the Alpha Pack are a family as well. Many of us underwent the same trial and we certainly cannot wait for your family to expire before you take on the Connors name. A simple ritual was developed by one of the early members of the Pack for such an occasion.”

David slouched into his seat, growling menacingly. “And what’s this ritual?”

“You must fuck a family member. Dominate them. Use them. Care for them as you would any family member but ultimately understand that they are merely a tool for you to use.”

A sickening feeling developed in Caleb’s stomach.

“Hell. No!” David shouted, slamming a fist into the couch’s armrest. The leather buckled beneath his blow. “You said it yourself! If I try to plough my wife, I could split her in half!”

“Exactly why you cannot use your wife. This needs to be session outside of the norm. One that you would not do as part of your show of affection.” Samson lifted a fist, showing it to David. “It must be an acknowledgement on your part that you are superior to them. That they are beneath you and that you are their protector but that you can ultimately move on should they perish.”

“That’s not happening!”

“It is something you eventually will need to do,” Martha Connors said sorrowfully. “You will outlive them all, David. The sooner you come to terms to that, the sooner you will understand.”

“Then I’ll just turn them all into werewolves of the Alpha Pack!”

Ben stepped forward apologetically. “Sorry Mr. Hale. Two things about being part of the Alpha Pack. You need to be a super and werewolf.” He glanced towards Lillian. “Half your family may be supers but the other half aren’t. You bite them, they just turn into ordinary werewolves. Yeah they’ll probably live a little longer but…” He then turned his gaze towards Caleb. “They’ll all eventually die.”

Caleb realised that his friend had done this more than once. It also dawned on him that being an Outsider, he would eventually die as well but Ben would always be as he remembered now. Eternity must be lonely. Little wonder that the Alpha Pack sought out others of their kind. Though there was another eternal that he knew. Sure Jacob had his own family of immortals but how did he manage to cope with the constant knowledge that were he to get close to anyone, they would eventually move on past him?

“That’s…” David snarled and cut himself off. “What if I choose not to do these rituals?”

“Then your inner beast is going to keep raging and you’re going to snap,” Samson said gravely. “These rituals are not just some way for us to induct you into the Alpha Pack. They’re necessary to not only give you the werewolf form but so you can control it. The werewolf venom is a poison, David Hale, a virus. If not properly controlled, you will go rabid and we will have no choice but you kill you.”

“Then I’d rather die than -”

Lillian cut him off with a steely gaze. “You are not going to put us through that, David!” David froze, staring at his wife with wide, surprised eyes. “When you chose to keep fighting as Feral Steel, I had to face the reality that one day, I may get a call from someone telling me how brave and noble and how your sacrifice was for the good of the world! I’ve come to terms with that. You have to come to terms with becoming a werewolf because I am not going to have any of my children or your family kill you because of your stupid pride!”

There was something in the conviction of Lillian’s words, the fierce stare she gave and the pleading twisted in her muzzle that soothed David’s anger. Feral Steel sank into his chair.

“Yes dear,” he whispered softly, a smile on his lips. His eyes met Samson’s once more. “What… What do I need to do?”

“We can prepare you for what is to come,” Martha answered tenderly. “There is a certain mentality that you need to be in when taking on the first trial. It may go against your every fibre as a superhero.” A sardonic smile touched her lips. “Little wonder we are considered ‘villains’. But you must also choose who it is that you will… couple with.”

David’s eyes lifted first to meet Lillian’s… and then slowly drifted to the right… towards Caleb. If only there had been some screen or pillar that the young wolf could have hidden behind.

“Not Caleb,” Samson said sharply. “You would likely kill him in the effort. No. The safest bet would be someone with superpowers.”

David ran a paw through his hair. “Well, Leon is hardly cordial with me and Lance…” His eyes widened. “Oh fuck… it has to be Lance, doesn’t it?”

The room became filled with dropped jaws, horrified stares and a chilling air of foreboding. Caleb was really glad Lance wasn’t in the same room to listen to this partially because he was fairly sure that his older brother would be totally into it and the other part knew that Lance would willingly sacrifice his ass for the sake of their father’s sanity.

Thankfully, the tension was mercifully broken by the familiar tune of ‘Waiting for You’ playing from Caleb’s pocket. He snatched his phone out and flipped it open, pressing it against his ear. “Please tell me it’s Gene Stealers, Bren.”

“Not… exactly,” answered the feline. “But you might want to get in on this.”

******

Where do you go from robbing a convenience store? A speciality store? A bank? Walmart?

No, Tibia had other plans.

He was going to rob a megamall.

The Callista Heights Mall wasn’t exactly the ritziest group of shops on West California Island and it certainly wasn’t one of the most well-known but the moderately sized, two-storey collection of shops had its own cinema was one of the places that Tibia frequented when he was younger. It often represented the height of luxury for the young Salazar Shin. Being with both parents working for minimum wage, the soon-to-be-supervillain had often walked down the open walkways of Callista Heights in the hopes of one day being able to afford to buy something from its shelves. He had hung out with his friends, lounging about before being told to leave by mall security. It was only fitting that he return as the all-powerful Tibia complete with his own personal army.

At first, he had been dubious about what the Society had to offer, especially Spider Queen. But the Gene Stealer had been rather accommodating with her requests. She touted some drivel about villains needing to look after one another but admitting that they were all self-serving. In exchange for participating in some experiments, Tibia would be given his own hideout, his own army of henchmen and all the funds he needed to make it into the A-list of villains. Of course, the experiments initially involved messing with his genes.

But Tibia was not up for that and neither were the others. Spider Queen seemed understanding and instead asked them to try out some experimental power suits apparently tailored to their individual abilities. Migraine, for instance, was not very strong so his power suit was built to enhance his strength. Gimp loved to take damage and pain but had his own limits so his suit had a self-contained healing unit built into it, ensuring that even as he took more damage, he would continuously get healed. Each of their henchmen were likewise equipped with similar themed suits. As Tibia marched off the Shinbone - what he decided to call his personal dropship - he could not help but feel a sense of pride at the black and bone-white clad men that came marching out in orderly lines wielding experimental weapons that were all part of Spider Queen’s experiments. It was a surprise to him that these men were all human or regular furs. He expected some heavily muscle-bound hyena, bull or horse running around given the recent Gene Stealer attacks.

He placed the large, thick, white helmet onto his head. It was a little ungainly given the two large horns sticking out of its temples and then the two huge tusks arching forward. The faceplate shaped like a human skull hid his features though he didn’t really know why he needed it. Everyone had to know the name of Tibia. Even if the government or whomever brought up his records, it wouldn’t matter. He had finally made it into the top villains list with his own base, henchmen and themed vehicles! This was the dream!

Striding forward, his spread his arms. “Kneel in front of the mighty Tibia!” he bellowed.

Ever since Callista Heights itself had become a little more urbanised, the megamall had an increase of foot traffic so even now, late into the day, there was a lot of people to witness his arrival.

“Surrender all your valuables! I will not ask again!” He spread his arm towards the startled crowd, his heavy, white gauntlet armed with sharp claw-like bones jutting from his wrists lifted. “Retrieve everything, my skeleton warriors! Leave no penny un-pinched!”

It was lucky for him that his helmet had a very intuitive display that wrote his lines for him because he would never have thought up such an awesome line on his own. It had been insulting when Spider Queen had told him his failing was his intelligence but she compensated him with the helmet. It heightened his awareness, connected directly to the Society’s intelligence network and synchronised him directly with the rest of his henchmen - his skeleton warriors. Thus far, it had not led him astray. Some faces amongst the crowd were recognised as those that had been registered with superpowers or even classified as an Outsider but likely decided to live a ‘normal life’. None of them were willing to attack. Appearances were everything and right now, Tibia appeared to be a villain with enough money and power to have a miniature army of costumed soldiers.

Hell, he didn’t appear to be one. He was one!

All thanks to the Society.

His warriors were already plundering when his helmet began blaring an alarm in his ears.

Arsenal was coming.

His archenemy was on his way to stop him.

“Men -” he began but the skeleton warriors were already moving. They were so well-trained that they knew exactly what they had to do. Already, they were forcing the civilians to their knees and taking up positions around the mall. Group Alpha was poised to appear as the main group that was taking the hostages. Group Beta was hiding in the upper parts of the mall, ready to snipe at a moment’s notice. Delta was sitting in the reserves of the Shinbone while Gamma was hiding a short distance away in trucks, ready to reinforce and offer escape by ground should it be necessary.

He was practically giddy with excitement.

News copters and drones were already starting to swarm in. It was an easy trip for them given how Callista Heights was near one of the central metropolitan areas of West California Island. However, it still took an entire fifteen minutes before any hero showed up and it wasn’t the one he was expecting. Though it was in the middle of winter, rain began falling down around them. Thunder boomed and lightning crackled. From the skies, two figures descended, perfectly in synch and looking like palette-swapped versions of one another. The superhero duo Shockstorm and Siren, parents of Flare Blue and members of the Elemental Alliance.

“When I heard that there was a high-ranking villain attacking our island, I had expected it to be an old nemesis,” boomed the male doberman, Shockstorm. “Maybe Doctor Disaster or even Halcyon. Not some newbie pretending to be something he’s not.”

“Don’t you dare underestimate me, Shockstorm!” Tibia bellowed. “I am Tibia!”

“All you are is a bored rich kind trying to find his next thrill,” sighed Siren. “We have to deal with one of your kind every month or so. Why don’t you make it easier for yourself and -”

Thwack!

Siren suddenly jolted in the air. She gazed down at her stomach. There was a hole there… one that was quickly filling with blood.

“Get them while they’re monologuing, boss,” said someone from Group Beta through their communicator. “It’s where they’re most vulnerable.”

“Siren!” Shockstorm exclaimed, catching his wife as she stumbled forward. “Bastard! I’ll -”

Thwack!

The doberman was thrown back as a bullet slammed into his leg. A shower of blood exploded from the wound.

“Femoral artery,” muttered another from Group Beta. “Would be fatal amongst normal people but to supers, it’s just a minor inconvenience. He’ll be down for a little bit though.”

“Bullets…?” grimaced Siren. “How can bullets pierce our armour…?”

Tibia grinned savagely as he read the words being printed on his visor. “You really think I would’ve come here and attacked this - insert location of current heist - in the middle of Alliance territory without having come prepared?” He spread his arms, throwing his head back in the process and laughing. “We came prepared! Even your specially built armour cannot stand up against our hypervelocity bullets!”

The duo of dobermans gave him a confused look. Tibia realised he had meant to substitute in Callista Heights Mall in his speech. A slight burn fell on his cheeks but he was far too elated to give it much attention. The wounds of these heroes were healing rapidly as to be expected amongst supers.

“Switching to burn rounds.”

“Already there.”

Suddenly, both superheroes were knocked out of the air, two precise bullets striking their shoulders and sending them crashing to the ground. Both writhed in pain and the civilians cried out in horror as their guardians toppled to the ground.

“How do you like our special corrosive bullets?” laughed Tibia, striding over, his hands still on his hips. “They’re equipped with a special toxin that won’t cause any actual damage to your system but they’ll burn like hell. It’s why we call them ‘burn rounds’. Painful. Isn’t it?” Reading was fun and he did enjoy gloating over the two most established supers on the island but he decided to go off script. “Just as painful as this!”

He thrust his hands forward. The power suit enhanced his existing abilities, allowing him to broadcast the ability to a wider audience for a lesser effect or focus it like a laser. Bright, white beams came shooting from his palms, engulfing both Shockstorm and Siren. Both superheroes howled in agony, clutching their shins and trying to rub them in a desperate attempt to ease the pain.

“Yes! Kneel before the great Tibia!”

Alarms flared up in his helmet again. They were warning him of a bright blue fireball hurtling towards him.

He turned just as someone from Group Alpha said, “I gotcha boss.”

One of his black and white-clad henchmen jumped in front of him, pressing both his forearms together. The white ‘bones’ that were placed there jumped from his wrists and quickly formed the outline of a square in front of him. Shimmering, blue light filled the face of the square and as the fireball struck the barrier, the flames dissipated without even so much as harming either of them. The henchman dropped the shield and quickly flicked up his customised rifle. Hovering in the sky was none other than Flare Blue dressed in his fireman-themed outfit with the exception of the viking helmet he wore. The doberman and son of Shockstorm and Siren was held up by twin jets of blue flame erupting from his feet.

“Get away from them, you prick!” shouted the super, gathering a ball of blue flames in his paws.

“I got him, boss.”

Tibia could only grin. Perhaps he could get the entire set of these dobermans. It would certainly make the headlines. ‘Tibia kills Elemental Dog Trio’. The media would go into a frenzy and his notoriety would skyrocket.

Suddenly, Flare Blue jerked off to the left and hurled his fireball not at Tibia but in the direction of one of the skeleton warriors. There was a burst of flame and a small explosion but enough for Tibia’s confidence to waver. Thankfully, the henchman reported that he was fine and was moving to find another position. The rest of Group Beta provided cover and began taking aim at the airborne Flare Blue. That is until…

“Fuck! Blade Babe is here! Men, switch to close-quarters-combat!”

There went his ranged support.

He didn’t even need to give orders as Group Alpha flicked up with rifles and began filling the skies with lead. Flare Blue was forced to dodge, soaring through the air quickly. He was unable to retaliate as his men had positioned themselves in such a way that if Blue missed, he would strike one of the civilians. Certainly part of their plan. Tibia grinned. This could still be a victory for him. However, he still had a few members of Arsenal to think of. A loud howl cut through the night and that heralded the approach of Blood Wolf, perhaps one of the most dangerous members of Arsenal. Tibia lowered his hands, ceasing his torment of Shockstorm and Siren for the moment. He would need everything he had to defeat a member of the Alpha Pack.

“Don’t worry about the werewolf, boss. We got him. Just keep those two down.”

Tibia frowned. Was he taking orders from his henchmen? No. That wasn’t it. His henchmen were looking after him. Letting him have the easy job as was expected. They were here to make his life easier after all.

Members of Group Delta began marching out of the Shinbone just as Blood Wolf came vaulting over one of the mall buildings. The huge, blood-red werewolf launched himself up to the very top of the cinema building - the tallest building in the mall - and threw his head back. A blood-curdling howl echoed throughout the mall and even Tibia was forced to quake a little. Rumours about Blood Wolf’s ferocity and his mercilessness was enough to have lesser villains surrender on the spot. But he was no lesser villain. He was Tibia!

“Go - ” he began but Group Delta were already forming a firing line in front of him and pulling the triggers on their rifles. Blood Wolf was arrogant enough to take a few shots but the burn rounds quickly took their toll and he was forced to retreat. Some of the men grimaced as the super-powered werewolf afflicted them with his painful powers but as they went down, one man pulled the injured away and another took their place to keep a ceaseless barrage of fire. The skeleton warriors were extremely well trained.

Pity he hadn’t be the one to train them.

Gunshots began erupting from the upper floors of the mall. Group Beta had engaged Blade Babe. Group Alpha was constantly moving, keeping Flare Blue in the air and preventing him from picking off anyone from the skies. Delta kept Blood Wolf back with their defensive line. The skeleton warriors were really well-organised. However, Tibia knew that Arsenal had more than just three members and the most challenging foes - at least in his opinion - were still to come.

A loud screech came from behind him and as he turned towards the parking lot, a black, heavily armoured truck came running in accompanied by a black and gold motorcycle. The driver-side door to the van sprang open and an athletically built tiger dressed in a jet-black suit jumped out wielding a rather futuristic rifle complete with glowing blue lights and blinking, holographic targeting. The back doors to the van burst open to reveal a huge, hulking hyena dressed in combat armour and wielding an enormous heavy machine gun of the same design as the tiger.

Bren the immortal spy and Madman the former Gene Stealer-turned-hero.

“Sup bitches?” Madman hollered. “The big guns have arrived!”

He hoisted the huge cannon and pulled the trigger. Instead of bullets, a stream of blue-green lasers spewed out of the rotating muzzle, spraying all over the battlefield. Tibia immediately abandoned his attempt to keep Shockstorm and Siren down and ducked behind one of the many miniature gardens sporting a palm tree. The beams barely struck anything or anyone but the warriors that were unfortunate enough to be hit suddenly had the limb or body part encased in a shimmering blue sphere about the size of a tennis ball, leaving them paralysed and unable to move.

“What the fuck are those!?” Tibia exclaimed.

“Weapons are unidentified,” someone said. “Appears to be some sort of… stasis weapon. Keeps us paralysed in time and space. Don’t let it hit any vital organs. Could be still be fatal if you’re hit in the head.”

“What? Why?”

There was a momentary pause on the other end and he was sure his henchmen were sighing at him. “Only the body part hit will go into stasis. If your brain is frozen, it will remain alive but the rest of your body won’t have the capacity to run itself without it. Your entire body dies but your brain remains alive.”

“Oh…”

A far thicker beam shot past his head and he immediately ducked, covering his head and quaking. Cowering was unbecoming of an A-list villain so he mustered his courage and peered over the garden. The beam had come from Bren. The tiger was having more success than Madman if only just. The beam struck a henchman on the chest but instead of encasing just the one body part, the skeleton warrior was wrapped in a thin film of the shimmering energies, frozen in midstep.

“Looks like Madman is more the covering fire. He’s not really aiming and is scattering us. The tiger is the one that’s picking us off. Group Beta, take aim at the bastard and take him down.”

“Beta Four here. I’ve got him in my sights.”

Tibia grinned to himself from ear to ear. This was going to be fun and he wanted to see Arsenal’s hopes and dreams falling to pieces the moment Bren was shot dead. He rose from his hiding spot. Bren immediately saw him and took aim. Spreading his arms tauntingly, he welcomed the superspy to hit him with all he had. Then a wall of bone erupted in front of Bren, each one shaped like a huge fang. A bullet slammed into the wall, cracking one of the teeth but not breaching it. Tibia lowered his arms and scowled. As the wall retreated, a wolf dressed in figure-hugging, black armour and a contrasting spotted, hyena-fur cape complete with hyena-skull shoulder-pads stood beside Bren. Weapons Master wielding one of his mighty weapons - Funny Bone. Ironic considering who he was up against.

“At last, all of Arsenal is here,” Tibia exclaimed. His helmet was warning him to stay down but he was in no mood to be ordered about. He removed the faceplate, tossing it aside and grinning savagely at the Outsider. “Remember me?”

The wolf looked stunned, a fitting response. “It really is you. Salazar Shin… Tibia.”

“Yes!” laughed the villain. “Look at me now! Feel that? That’s the fear in your bones!”

“You went from goofy wannabe-villain robbing a convenience store by ripping an ATM from the wall and trying to get away with it in your car to this? All in a couple of days!? What the hell!?”

“Get down, boss. Their focus is on you now. You’re in danger.”

He was not going to be ordered around by his own henchmen. They worked for him not the other way around.

“You’d be surprised just how far you can get with the right sponsor,” laughed the villain. “Now feel the might of Tibia!”

He thrust his palms forward, unleashing a full wave of his powers straight at the three members of Arsenal. Despite their reaction speeds, they could not dodge the wide-spread wave of pain he had unleashed. The scintillating white light bathed all three members. Madman let out a yelp and dropped his massive weapon. Even Bren was forced to kneel. Weapons Master though…

“Yeeeeeeah,” sighed the wolf. “Still used to this kind of shit, dude. Even with all your upgrades, your powers are still pretty crappy. Also… you forgot about Shockstorm and Siren.”

Tibia’s face fell and he glanced downward at where the two supers he had subdued should be. Both were gone.

“What -?”

Before he could finish, a black paw seized the side of his head and a thick, muscular arm wrapped around his neck.

Shockstorm.

“This is for shooting at my family.”

Thousands of volts of electricity came arcing from the doberman’s paw. No matter how thick his armour or how insulated it was, he was in no way prepared from that blast.

His scream echoed throughout Callista Heights Mall.

******

One would think that right after defeating the main villain, the henchmen would easily fall into place. Not so with Tibia’s goons. Even when Tibia was electrocuted into unconsciousness by Lars’ father, the black and white-clad warriors continued to fight with a ferocity and skill that was really unbecoming of henchmen. Rhiannon immediately warned them of snipers and he had to summon a wall of bone to bar them all from being killed. At least Bren and Madman were recovering from being affected by Tibia’s powers.

“What the fuck is up with these assholes!?” Blood Wolf shouted through their mental connection.

“I know, right?” answered Mary, the nerve centre of their psychic network. “These guys are… they’re good! Coordinated. Skilled. Why don’t they just give up already? We took down Tibia!”

“Competent henchmen.” Rhiannon almost sounded impressed. “More competent than even the villain they’re theming themselves over. That’s new.” Then a sense of alarm erupted from her. “Crap. They’re aiming at Shockstorm and Siren. Boys! They’re making a break for it!”

“Hey! I’m a girl here!”

“Not from what I can see, butch.”

Caleb dared to lower one of the fangs that made his barrier, letting it sink into the ground so that he could spy what was happening outside. Shockstorm was shot three times in the back and toppled forward. Siren screamed for her husband and was crippled by bullets to her calves. Lars immediately went to help his parents, distracting him. That would have been an excellent opportunity to strike but the henchmen immediately abandoned their targets and rushed towards Tibia. They seized the downed villain and rushed towards their aircraft.

“Oh no you don’t!” Caleb hollered, lowering his barrier entirely. At his command, ghostly, feral hyenas erupted from the ground and charged at the fleeing henchmen.

“Barrier up, Caleb! Barrier up!”

He had little time to react. Bren was suddenly standing to his left, arms spread wide -

Thwack!

Synthetic blood splattered against his face along with some artificial grey matter. Bren toppled to the ground, about a quarter of his face torn clean off by the bullet. Caleb immediately summoned his barrier, protecting him and Madman from further attack.

“Shit! They’re fucking coordinated!” Ben exclaimed. “One team is carrying and covering Tibia to the dropship. The ground team. The snipers are giving them cover and are retreating…” Surprise and rage erupted from Ben. “What the hell!?”

“What?” Caleb demanded. “What?”

“There’s a fourth team coming down the road!” announced Rhiannon. “At the back of the mall! They’re offering the snipers a way out! Mary, do not engage_. I repeat,_ do not engage_.”_

Even from where he stood, he could feel Mary seethe. The roar of the dropship engines was the only indication that Tibia had made his retreat and even then, Caleb waited a few seconds before lowering his barrier. Madman roared like a ferocious beast, hefting his huge gun and firing it in the direction of the retreating craft. Sadly, his weapon was not meant for long-ranged attacks and he only sprayed stasis beams into the air. Caleb did not want to be defeated by someone like Tibia. He glanced at Funny Bone. The mace had no aerial capabilities that could catch up to a speeding dropship. Glancing back at Ballistic, he considered his other weapons. Branding Iron wouldn’t be any use and then there was Live Wire. He flinched at the thought of donning the cowboy attire and whip. The last time he had put it on, a Gene Stealer had controlled him. Though AEGIS had assured him all forms of control were gone, the memory was still fresh in his mind.

No, he had to do something else.

His eyes went to the lone palm tree sitting at the centre of the courtyard. Desperate and perhaps a little crazy, he broke cover and bolted straight towards the tree. Bullets hailed down from above. Tibia’s henchmen, even while retreating, were taking as many advantages as they could. Thankfully, football practice came into play as he weaved from side to side, his legs pumping. A moving target was hard enough but one with an unpredictable pattern was even harder. Every second counted so when he launched himself at the palm tree, he didn’t even think about what he was going to turn it into. He just immediately channelled his will through it, twisting it and immediately encasing it in a bright, ethereal blue-white light. Ghostly feathers danced from the tree even as it rapidly shrunk, wrapping itself around Caleb’s arm like a long, brown snake that ended int a gauntlet curled around his fingers.

On instincts alone, Caleb thrust his paw at the retreating dropship. The brown, scaly length launched from his fingertips, shooting upwards and lengthening, widening until it was the size of at least two buses. An enormous, brown metal arm stretched far above Callista Heights Mall, blocking out the sun for some and catching the attention of those many blocks away. The huge hand seized the fleeing dropship, curling around one of its tails and preventing it from getting any further. No one was going to escape. But there was also one problem. Caleb was now a sitting duck. He could feel the laser sights of a sniper getting a bead on his head.

This was not a smart move.

“No you don’t!”

Madman was suddenly standing beside him. His stasis cannon was rattling off piercing beams, providing suppression fire that forced the snipers to immediately find cover lest they be mauled by the withering, near-infinite beams. Perhaps they realised that they could not escape like this because Caleb saw them scampering away without providing any further resistance.

“I’ve got this one!” Lars shouted at them mentally and Flare Blue rocketed up to the dropship. Twin bursts of blue fire erupted from his paws like two lasers. The airborne super rocketed right past the left wing of the dropship, slicing it clean in half and dropping two of its engines. Caleb’s heart leapt for joy as the strain of holding up the dropship faded. Now there definitely was no escape. There must be panic within Tibia’s ranks. Though some of his henchmen would escape, the villain was captured and would not escape him again.

“Uh… guys,” Rhiannon warned. “Now there’s a wing and a plane carrying explosive jet fuel dropping into a highly populated area.”

By the screams of the citizens around him, he realised that she was right. He quickly swung his extending, mechanical arm, snapping up the rapidly descending wing before it could crash into the buildings around them. His sigh of relief was echoed by those around him.

“Heh,” Madman snorted, careful not to go into a full-blown laugh. “Palm tree. I get it.”

Caleb smirked at him and began to retract his weapon, pulling the dropship and its contents back towards them. Police had already started pouring in, riot shields ready and anti-super fields rapidly being erected. The men and women in blue were already ushering the traumatised civilians away while making a hasty circular barrier, a clear sign of where they wanted Caleb to drop Tibia. The young wolf wished dearly Leon was not here but he doubted that he would be able to stop his brother given how Leon’s powers prevented him from being noticed should he decide to remain inconspicuous. Careful given the jet fuel leaking between his enormous, metallic fingertips, he lowered the dropship within the circle and then withdrew his arm.

Arsenal - minus Bren - gathered and stood in front of the plane’s rear doors, the police right behind them with weapons drawn.

“Come out with your hands up, Tibia!” Lars bellowed. “You’re surrounded and outgunned! There’s no getting out of this!”

No response came from within the wreckage.

Madman cracked his knuckles ominously and on some unspoken command, he stormed forward. Seizing the massive doors with his paws alone, the huge hyena tore the metal clean off its hinges. Civilians around them gawked at the amazing show of strength. But they all froze at the sight of an empty airship.

“What the…?” Madman began, sticking his muzzle into the cavernous plane. “Where the fuck did he go!?” His voice echoed within the dark hull.

Ben snarled, digging into his right arm with a paw and plucking out a bullet. Without so much as a grunt, he flicked the ball of metal away. “Teleportation too? Just who the hell is this Tibia guy and how the hell did he get a team of Navy SEALs to work for him!?”

That was no exaggeration. It felt like they were going up a crack team of professional warriors. Caleb’s mind immediately went to the one source of military hardware, personnel and training that he knew was openly against Arsenal and was secretly funding the Genesians: General Vernon Washington. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, however, that warned him there was more to this than just Washington funding D-list villains to occupy Arsenal or even make them look bad.

Much more.

******

It was cliched but Salazar Shin was abruptly awoken when a freezing bucket of water had been dumped on him. He bolted upright, gasping for breath, disoriented and grimacing at the searing white light that flared down upon him. His tongue felt fuzzy and there was a bounding headache that made it hard to remember anything past the electrocution at Shockstorm’s paws. Apart from the numbing feeling in his face, his other senses felt muted. A trickle of sensations quickly started coming in. It was warm despite the chill to his face. With his eyes adjusting, he realised that the blinding light came from an enormous screen. Sounds began to register; words… chatter. The air smelled of the sickly sweet perfume that was both strangely possessed a herbal quality but burned his nostrils as if it was acidic. That was a scent that could only come from one person.

Spider Queen.

“What happened…?” he began.

He could hear the slicing motion she made with her long, thin fingers. “Hush now. I’m watching the news.”

Tibia focused his gaze on the enormous screen that had to be at least a hundred inches in size.

“… calling himself ‘Tibia’ attacked Callista Heights Mall for no other reason than to rob it,” the anchorwoman said. “Police estimate that he made off with at least ten thousand dollars in stolen goods including cash. Insurance agencies are already working with the victims to ensure they are compensated while high praise is being given to Arsenal who managed to save the shoppers but also renowned superheroes Shockstorm and Siren.”

The image flashed to Weapons Master in front of the crashed Shinbone.

“Tibia is certainly a slippery one and I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of him. However, what’s important is that there were no fatalities. His boneheads may have managed to make off with some cash but you can’t put a price on someone’s life.”

“Urgh,” Spider Queen sighed, waving a hand. The image winked out of existence, disappearing into the blackness of the screen. “He has become such a boy scout ever since his run-ins with Guinness. Admirable in many ways that he’s watching what he says or does to the media but he is just so boring now.” She turned elegantly, soundlessly towards him. It took him a second to realise that he was on some sort of examination table. Unrestrained but still lying on a cold, metal plate like he was about to be dissected. “So let us turn to more interesting matters.”

If he wasn’t cold from the rude wake up, he was now chilled to the bone.

Spider Queen lifted a long finger, catching the edge of her rosy bottom lip in one sharp fingernail painted dark green. “Why don’t you tell me how after I equipped you with state-of-the-art armour, weapons and a unique dropship as well as eighty of my highly trained soldiers, you still managed to lose to an admittedly spunky group of teenagers, hmmm?”

“That’s not what happened!” Tibia exploded immediately.

“Oh, of course. A spunky group of teenagers, a former-middle-aged factory worker turned into Hyena Hulk and an endlessly respawning tiger super spy.” She tiled her left ear towards him. “Still waiting for that explanation, my dear.”

“Look, we were just caught off guard! Next time - ”

“Next time?” Spider Queen repeated incredulously. “No, no, little one. There won’t be a next time.” She swept one of her arms in a broad gesture. “I gave you all this because I saw great potential in you. In fact, while you were away, I was going to surprise you with this place! It was going to be your hideout! Complete with traps, training grounds, a luxurious master bed room for yourself and a cloaking field to hide you from your enemies. It even has a manufacturing plant to ensure that you can keep your men well-armed.” She placed her hands on her hips and shook her head. “But I see my trust is misplaced.”

“No!” Tibia bellowed. “That’s not true! I can do better! I swear! Just give me another chance!”

She clucked her tongue and leaned forward towards him, coming uncomfortably close. “There are no second chances in life, my dear. You blew it.”

“No I haven’t!” He balled his hands into fists. “I’ll show you! I can beat Arsenal!”

A look of pity crossed her features. “Is that what you think this is? You think that I gave you all this to defeat Arsenal?”

Why else would Spider Queen, one of the Gene Stealers that had been terrorising West California Island for more than a year, equip him with so much power if not to defeat her archenemy? “Well… Yeah…?”

She reached forward, gently cupping his chin in her bony fingers. “I never gave you orders to attack Arsenal or even return to West California Island. I just asked that you busy yourself a little while as I attended to some business. Business that would have seen you with quite an amazing hideout.” A sigh left her dark lips and she forcefully twisted his head away, her sharp nails cutting into his flesh. “But I see now that my efforts were wasted.”

“They were not!”

Wham!

Tibia jumped, nearly leaping right into Spider Queen’s arms. A big, black mace slammed into the table right where his leg had been. It had struck the metal with such force that it had caused an enormous dent. The wielder of that mace was a big, black dragon - none other than the ominous Dragon Knight.

“You will watch your tone when addressing the Lady,” warned the reptile in a curt yet menacing tone.

He could only nod in submission. One Gene Stealer was enough to have him quaking in his shoes but two was enough to see him piss himself if he wasn’t careful.

“Do you want to know what your greatest failing is?” Spider Queen asked, turning her side to him while absently playing with a curl of her raven locks. “Focus. You are incapable of focusing on your objective and become distracted far too easily. It took you months to plan a simple ATM heist because you kept getting distracted over the latest movie, some other target or lack of motivation. Even when armed with my trained army, you couldn’t keep track of Shockstorm and Siren and immediately lost track of them the moment Arsenal stepped in. They weren’t even your archenemies and yet you began prioritising them instead of doing the sensible thing of realising your time was up and it was time to escape.” With a long finger, she tapper her forehead. “You lack the fine analytical thinking that would elevate you from gimmicky nuisance in some D-list heroes’ rogues gallery to a true fiendish mastermind worthy of the title ‘supervillain’.”

Salazar was about to protest. A loud, fleshy thwack to his right like a thick whip being cracked stopped him dead in his tracks. A glance at Dragon Knight and he could only guess it was the flying reptile’s long tail.

“There was no tactical bearing to your attack on Callista Heights megamall save for your own petty grievances,” Spider Queen continued. “In fact, not even that. You didn’t have a bad experience there. One could even say that you had fun loitering about and being told to leave by mall security. As a stage, it was a poor choice to make your debut into the world of supervillainy and for a motivation, it was flimsy at best.”

“Okay, okay!” he admitted, lowering his head. “I’m not a fucking super-genius. So what? I can still kick ass!”

“If I wanted a brute to be part of my Legion of Pain, I would have turned to the Gimp.”

This was the first time she had heard of this ‘Legion’. Was it somehow related to Legion the superhero that had made fun of him back when he first got caught? “Your what?”

She turned to him, emerald eyes shining. “My Legion of Pain. A pet project of mine. You see, the Society is an amazing means to empower villains or would-be-villains in the United States. They say that the poor and downtrodden are often unrepresented especially those that turn to a life of crime such as you. However, in this world of supers, Outsiders, masked vigilantes, secret government agencies and rogue mercenary groups, there are countless others out there who are incapable of defending themselves and are deprived of the choice to stand on the pedestal beside those that would hoard all the fame and glory to themselves.” She spread her arms wide, turning around in time for the monitor to spring back to life once more and a map of the world to appear.

“This world has over seven billion people on it but there are only about seven million of those possess any form of registered superpowers.”

“That’s a fucking lot…”

“No it is not. That is a mere 0.1% of the population.” The spindly Gene Stealer turned back towards him. “Often people complain about the 1% having all the money and riches in the world. In reality, only zero-point-one percent of the world’s population has the true power and they are those with superpowers. Often times, people look upon that and accept it as fact. You must be in some sort of chemical accident, maybe chosen by divine purpose, tragic past, train for years or be born with it.” She leaned forward, resting her hands on the sides of the table. “That is hardly fair, don’t you think?”

He was growing uncomfortable. “Uh… I suppose…”

“Exactly. Worse yet, of those seven million that have superpowers, only about ten thousand of them are in any positions of power or well known. Why? Because the rest have what some would consider ‘weak’ abilities. Such as yours.”

Tibia scowled. “Hey, my powers are -”

Thwack.

There was that whip-like sound again and he immediately reeled himself back in.

“We Gene Stealers merely want to empower the rest of the population,” Spider Queen said, straightening and glaring down upon Tibia with a look a disappointment mother would cast a petulant child. “Give them the powers they need to evolve from mere statistics in the wars between supers to participants and - yes - even heroes. Naturally, they must have the bodies to match.”

“What does this have to do with me?” He threw a glance at Dragon Knight just to make sure he wasn’t overstepping his bounds. The black-scaled reptile did not move.

“You were meant to be a beacon. Thanks to Arsenal and the Elemental Alliance, the name of the Gene Stealers has been marred.” She sighed, cupping her forehead lightly. “We did not even name ourselves ‘Gene Stealers’ at first. It was simply a name the FBI tagged us with. But we chose to adopt it as it struck fear into those that would seek to undo Chimera’s vision. Now, their machinations corrupt the truth. So we must seek other means to spread out word. The Legion of Pain was meant to be that as was the Society. We were meant to show those who had been wronged because of how the system works that there was someone out there that would fight for them and who would support them.” With a huff, she placed her hands on her hips. “Do you know that if you use your powers to defend yourself against any sort of assault, regardless of if it involves powers or not, you are considered guilty of ‘unlawful use of abilities’ unless you are registered with some superhero group? If a serial killer were to target you and you shot a fireball into their face, they could sue you and you would be branded as a ‘villain’. It is a broken system!”

Spider Queen turned back towards the monitor showing the world. “The Society was built to take care of those who had been branded as villains for situations outside of their control. Those who become ‘villains’ do so because of a choice they made and there is always a reason behind that choice. They must be represented. If the world were to see them as crooks and corrupt, we would make sure they made the best of the opportunity while empowering as with the ethos of Gene Stealers.”

Then she whirled around, pointing an accusing finger at Tibia. “You and those like you were meant to be the face of the Society. A shining example to the world that there is no need to fear the Society and the Gene Stealers. That anyone could become an A-list supervillain with our support! And yet you’ve squandered that opportunity.”

Tibia grimaced, lowering his head and unable to meet her gaze.

“Ah, but it is my fault,” sighed the dark-haired Gene Stealer. “I should have told you my expectations right off the bat. But I wanted you to grow accustomed to your new equipment and team first before I started laying the weight of responsibility on your shoulders.”

She gave him a dismissive wave. Dragon Knight moved aside and a big, black oval with a shimmering blue border appeared beside him. A portal.

“Go,” Spider Queen said dramatically. “Leave. Go back to your life as a petty criminal.”

Go back to life as a nobody who stole an ATM and didn’t even get away with it? No! He had tasted true power and he would not let it go without a fight. If he had to attack these Gene Stealers, he would, just as long as people would stop laughing at him.

“But -”

BAM!

Dragon Knight’s mace slammed into the metal table just inches from his crotch. “Consider yourself lucky that you’re being allowed to leave alive,” growled the dragon. “Were it up to me, I would open a portal into the sun and throw you in. That would likely be the closest you ever be to becoming a star.”

“Please!” Tibia pleaded. “Give me another chance! I’ll do anything.”

Spider Queen sighed, gazing up into the distant and dark ceiling as if invoking a higher power. “What could I possibly do to an idiot child too dense to wield all the gifts that I have lavished on him and too stupid to walk on his own two feet?”

Desperate, Tibia did the only thing he could think of: offer himself to her. “Make me a Gene Stealer!” Just but the pause from both of the existing Gene Stealers, he knew he had their attention. “Inject me with that formula or some shit you guys use. Turn me into one of you. I promise I’ll make it work! I’ll follow orders! I’ll do what you say! Just please, please!” He reached forward, seizing Dragon Knight’s mace by the haft. “Don’t take this away from me!”

The chilling smile on Spider Queen’s lips froze him in place. Her slow, deliberate movements took her gliding towards him, her lithe fingers gently caressing his cheek and gliding down his neck. “Oh my dear,” she cooed. “I never wanted you to follow orders. You were always free to do as you please.”

There was a painful prick on the side of his neck - had she nicked him with one of her nails?

“All I wanted was for you to realise your potential.”

Then she pulled her hand away, her fingers sliding up the length of the syringe that she had jammed into his jugular. Tibia’s eyes widened as she pushed the plunger and the fluid contained within poured into his system. It felt hot in his veins and with his rapid heartbeat, it was being carried through his blood at a breakneck pace. Fire burned through his cells, setting his blood aflame and pushing tears from the corners of his eyes. He fell back against the metal table, kicking wildly with his legs. His left hand seized the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white, a desperate attempt to maintain some sense of stability as his physical form was rapidly thrown into flux. His other hand seized the syringe from his neck and yanked it free. Tears were blurring his vision but he still held up the syringe to his eyes, trying to see exactly what was contained within the glass case.

A big grey spot obscured his view of the label just at the bottom of his field of vision. A confused noise rose from his pained throat but it came out muffled and distorted like his nasal passages were blocked. A dull throbbing emerged from his nose akin to that awful sensation of a pimple protruding from his nose only this was a hundred times worse. Salazar squeezed his eyes shut, fighting through the strange mix of pleasure and pain. With each pounding throb, the bulge grew bigger and bigger but at the same time, there was an odd sense of relief that came from the extending bulbous mound like something was being freed deep inside of him. Another noise rose from his throat but it was a moan of pleasure instead of a pained cry. Part of his brain was telling him this was wrong, that he shouldn’t be feeling so aroused but there was no denying how his body was reacting. The more his nose throbbed, the more powerful and sexy he felt.

He pushed opened his eyes and flared his nostrils. That grey blob had grown bigger, pushing out from his face. He realised that it was his nose. Tossing the syringe aside, he seized the bulge, feeling leathery skin beneath his fingers. It moved and writhed, fiery blood filling it as it extended further and further. Despite himself, he could feel another length filling out and he moaned a second time, involuntarily bucking his hips to the rhythm of the throbbing of his nose. He could feel the broad, thick length start to droop downward and when he gasped, he could feel his breath against his nostrils. The base of his nose grew broader, pushing his features out. Once again, he was forced to shut his eyes while his skull reshaped itself. The feeling of bones cracking beneath his skin and then healing rapidly sent jolts of pain. His infected brain began released endorphins, quickly dulling the pain but quickly filling him with a high that he had never experienced before.

A powerful force pulled at his cheeks, compelling his lips open into a bizarre, toothy smile. Blood pumped into his ears, beating an escalating rhythm that blocked out all other noise save for his own lustful cries and long moans. The curls and ridges of his ears faded as the flesh was pulled taut like someone was pulling the skin back so that it could tan and dry. True to the metaphor, the expanded flesh began to harden, grow crusty and become a dark, grey colour. The heat from his changing form drenched him in sweat and these very same ears flapped back and forth, fanning him to keep him cool. It did little help but it filled him with a little more confidence with his growing form.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!” he cried.

The weight of his continuously expanding nose began to weigh down on his face. It dragged his features down, seemingly pulling his skull down in a gentle slope. Fear of his face hitting the floor were allayed when a pressure began forming just at the base of his nose. His eyelids fluttered as the pressure grew stronger and stronger, bubbling beneath the surface of his thickening skin and forming four mounds just beside his mutating trunk; two on each side. If there was any sensation to compare it to, it was that blissful feeling of his prostate being massaged; something he was well experienced in. Salazar Shin bit his lower lip, holding back a cry of ecstasy while the pressure continued to build. The higher intelligence of his mind set up dams to keep the flood from breaking loose but the primal beast within him shattered it in an instant; he didn’t want to keep the inevitable climax back any longer.

He fell back against the table, his crotch arched upwards into the air. A long, lustful cry ripped from his throat. His skin parted, no blood erupting from the breach, and four ivory tusks came shooting out of the mounds. Each one was as thick as his fist and glossy like alabaster. One pair followed an almost perfectly circular arc while the other jutted forward. The weight of the tusks was too much for him and he could barely keep his head up. In that moment when the back of his head slammed against the metal plate and he got to see the pink end of his trunk twisting between the tusks, he realised what he was become. There was a moment of lucidity like the serum was giving him a moment to run his trunk and the sensitive edges up and down his newly formed tusks. They were so smooth, perfect and strong. A sense of pride welled up in his chest.

“Elephant!” he cried. “You’re turning me into an elephant!”

That was the starting gun to the rest of his transformation.

His neck bulged out and he instinctively grasped it with both hands. The muscles beneath his fingers tensed and grew. Already thick in its own right, his neck tripled in size to accommodate the weight of not only his much bigger head but also tusks. Veins travelled down from the site of the injection and crawled down towards his torso. Having spent time working out, Shin had been proud of his physique and had pushed himself to what he had thought was physical perfection but as his muscles expanded, he realised just how naive he had been. His pectorals rose up like two enormous, square mountains, pushing up at his feeble suit and tearing it right down the middle. Instead of capping the top of those mountains like twin peaks, his bright, pink nipples were forced to point directly downward as his torso just become increasingly large. The veins that ran down from his neck did not fade into the thick, grey flesh that hardened all over his body; all his body fat was sucked out leaving him hardened, lean and with the striations of his muscles visible.

The muscles beneath his shoulder twitched into newly strengthened fibre. The scalloped muscles capped his long, muscled arms like natural shoulder pads decorated by thick, branching veins. A desire to clench his muscles followed and he lifted both his arms over his head, seizing the ends of his longest tusks and gripping them tightly as if to test their strength. He roared, sweat dripping down his strained features. Biceps rippled and expanded into enormous watermelon-shaped mounds in the span of a second, each one decorated by a lattice of veins. Burning heat blasted out of his triceps like the pump right after a workout. The muscles exploded into a new, monstrous size to support his massive upper arm. A clear divide cut down his forearms, separating the two major muscle groups there and leaving a valley that stretched his skin taut and led to the well in the crook of his arm. An electric shock of sensations rocketed through his palms and he was forced to release his grip on his tusks for a brief moment, his fingers forming claws in the air. Bones expanded, stretching muscles and stimulating them to rapidly grow out. He seized his tusks again, this time a whole six inches further down from when he last seized them. Then that shock returned, this time met with a rush of ecstasy. The grey, armour-like skin over his body hardened over his fingers and when he grabbed his tusks again, he was another six inches down. A last eruption of growth caused his nails to turn into a thick, hardened white and his palms to harden into a crusty, pallid grey while his enormous arms had stretched long enough to just graze the tip of his longest tusks.

Though his entire body was still afire, the inferno seemed to cascaded down to his abdomen. This impressive V-shape the human possessed was further expanded, his delts and traps broadening until he was damned to never be able to press his arms against his flanks ever again. He didn’t mind, however, because with his newly formed arms, he had the length to reach up and wrap his meaty fingers around the erect, pink points of his nipples. The stimulus was piddling compared to the rest of his body adjusting to his new form but it added to his pleasure and made his cock rock hard. His deepened voice joined the choir of stretching boned, groaning muscles and crackling of leathery skin. It was so deep, manly and even the slightest noise caused his cavernous chest to rumble like he had stored thunder within his lungs.

His guts twisted with the sensation of being bloated. A low moan rose from his throat and he eagerly ran his fingers down the walls of his abs. He could feel them growing bigger and bigger, hardening like armour. He could even grab one of them and squeeze the solid, unmoving muscle. With every breath, the plate-like armour stretched and relaxed, guiding his fingers lower and lower until he found himself brushing his fingertips against a familiar, hairy brush and a throbbing, hot rod dripping with precum.

The moment of disappointment of his dick not having grown faded when a sensation like his cock growing hard all over again struck him like a truck. A thunderous blast rocketed up the base of his balls and shot up his six-inch member. He could feel his length thickening widening. It slipped past his fingertips, raining down clear-white precum over his grey skin like it was watering the garden. His toes curled in ecstasy even as they were pushed further and further away from him with his expanding legs. Salazar thrust his hips into the air, seizing the edges of the table once more with both his enormous hands. His fingers bent the metal beneath him, the sound of screaming steel lost in his throes of lust.

Another burst of growth rocketed up his length and he could feel the lengthening member dripping seed past his crotch and directly into his belly button. An ear-splitting scream ripped from his throat, no longer human but with the trumpeting undertones of an elephant. His tusk even curled back with the cry. He could feel the starting of a third burst bubbling in his already orange-sized balls and he instinctively curled his legs. For a moment, he was able to marvel at the huge, thighs before him, each one eclipsing the lights that had blinded him earlier. The definition was second to none like he his legs had been chiselled by the gods themselves. Even though he could not feel them, when he curled his toes, he could feel the hard, white caps at the ends of his toes scraping against the metal.

Then the blast hit and he arched his crotch into the air once more. His cock blasted upwards, twitching with a life of its own like it was a firehouse that was out of control. It sprayed increasingly thickening precum all over his chest even if it was just halfway up his abdominal column. Tibia managed to peer past his trunk just long enough to see his dick had lost its mushroom-like glands and become flat dome-like with an enormous slit staring straight at him; it was like a third leg complete with a darker grey colour with a faint, pink, mottled base. The member squirted excitedly of its own accord and shot precum straight into his eye with enough force to have him recoil. His entire body tensed and with it, his hands ripped large chunks of the metal table beneath him clear off. With his supports gone, he slammed back into the table. The poor piece of furniture could barely hold his weight as is and when he hit it with most of his new mass, its supports shattered and he was sent hurtling towards the floor.

Stars flashed in front of his eyes and in his dazed state, instincts took over. His long, flexible tusk curled towards, meeting his throbbing member. The smell of his own musk travelled up the length of his trunk, soothing the pain from the impact and causing his eyelids to flutter for a second time. A long, low moan rose from his throat; deprived thoughts filling his mind. He curled his own trunk around his member even as the lower length throbbed for a fourth time and grew even longer, the tip just kissing the base of his pectorals. By bending forward a little, it was easier for him as he was able to run his trunk over more of his dick, tugging at it and begging for its to unleash the payload that was resting within his huge, melon-sized balls. Should he want, he could easily suck his own dick. Propping himself up on one, thick, muscled arm, Salazar Shin was able to run his serpentine trunk all the way down to the base of his dick and slide it up and down the monstrous length while simultaneously angling it towards his open mouth. He knew what would happen the moment he came and he openly welcomed it. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened his mouth.

With one, final blast, his cock suddenly shot forward, shooting right into his lips and hitting the back of his throat. His eyes widened in surprise, leaving him unprepared for the explosion of cum that came rocketing up his cock. He tightened his trunk’s grip on his dick in a desperate attempt to avoid being drowned by his own seed but, just like the emergence of his tusks, there was no stopping the flood. Hot, white, molten man juices blasted from his titanic cock, shooting directly into his mouth. He choked on the first blast, spluttering it back out. There was no respite. The second torrent came in like a flash flood and he was forced to swallow his own seed while the first blast dripped down his chin. Salazar Shin’s entire body tensed, locked into a position of carnal eroticism. Cum blasted up his length, seemingly an impossible amount even given the enormous size of his testicles. The transformed super was able to find an equilibrium, swallowing huge mouthfuls of his own cum between blasts even if, consciously, he had blacked out; his eyes distant and glazed over in pleasure. This body couldn’t run autonomously for very long as the enormous elephant slumped back to the ground after five long minutes, his cock still spurting and spluttering while cum dripped from the corners of his lips.

Perhaps as a final design to his transformation, his dark-brown hair started draining of colour. From the hair on his head to the strands on his crotch, they turned a stark white from root to tip. The same hairs quickly spread down the back of his neck, spreading over his shoulders like a pelt and down his back in a ‘V-shape’, perhaps in memory of his former figure. The same hairs spread over his pectorals, a lighter dusting but clearly visible over his grey skin. Amusingly, it seemed like his seed was watering the mountains and valleys of his pectorals to give growth to the hairs as it formed a treasure-trail all the way down to his crotch. Strangely, his arms and legs remained free of the hairs.

“You always had a very curious aesthetic, My Lady,” Dragon Knight said curtly.

Spider Queen smiled, playing with one earing using a single finger. “I am not merely making monsters for the purposes of tests, my dear Dragon Knight,” she answered with a smile. “I am making a supervillain.”

******

“You handled the media really well today,” Lars said, striding up the Hale driveway beside his boyfriend.

“It helped that GG Guinness wasn’t there,” Caleb admitted. “Plus I’ve been getting media training from Hank.”

His vulpine friend at GUYS magazine had been rather helpful in tempering his approach towards the typical dance with the media that occurred after every villainous attack. Bland, hopeful messages that focused on facts, did not speculate or attack others was usually the key to getting any hungry reporters or paparazzi to back off and avoid skewering him on the internet. The alternative was having the wits to mentally spar with someone on the spot but he was still fairly green in the public world of superheroes and villains. When he was not so well known and worked in the shadows, he was more at ease, confident with his decisions and knew what each day would bring.

Now… everything was so complicated.

“Did he ever agree to be your agent?” Lars asked.

“Haven’t gotten a response yet.” Caleb glanced at his phone and scrolled through his call log. Hank hadn’t spoken to him since before Christmas. He was starting to worry. That was an issue for another day. His mind was whirling with Tibia’s abrupt growth as a supervillain and his muscles ached not only from football practice but from pushing himself against another bone-themed villain. “I’ll worry about that in the morning,” he sighed, striding up towards the garage door that led into the kitchen. “You didn’t have to escort me home, you know.”

His doberman boyfriend shrugged and gave him a charming half-grin. “I didn’t want you getting blindsided by Tibia. He did get away and there wasn’t any trace of him on that fallen dropship.”

“You just want to bone.” The accusation was made with a cheeky grin, one that Lars returned.

“With your house packed as it is? I don’t think we’ll get any privacy. Seriously, I really wonder how you and Lance fucked without anyone noticing.”

“We were very discrete.” Remembering how he had been caught with his dick halfway up Lance, he added, “Most of the time.”

“Yeah. I remember.” Lars took a step forward and then his body went stiff with awkwardness. As had happened many times before, both he and Caleb were frozen. The protocol for goodbyes hadn’t been clear. It had been so easy to be romantic and affectionate on their holiday to New York City but how they treated one another day-to-day was still poorly defined. Do they go for a handshake? Kiss? Hug? Fist bump? “Ah… anyway,” grunted the Doberman, shoving his paws into his pockets. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Sounds good.” Then, predictably, came the guilt of letting an opportunity to explore having a boyfriend pass. “Hey, you think I could spend the night at your place?” Lars’ ears swivelled forward, his eyes widening like he had just seen a ghost. “I - I - I mean not tonight!” Caleb corrected quickly. He hiked a thumb over his shoulder at the door. “My dad is still dealing with the werewolf thing and Tibia attacked just as we were getting into the meat of things. I probably should be here to report to him about what happened to Tibia.” His boyfriend’s thick, broad chest deflated but it seemed more out of relief than disappointment. “But… maybe this weekend?”

“Uh… yeah,” answered Lars shakily. “I’ve got to clean up the place a little. Plus I don’t really have a big bed. Small one bedroom place, after all.”

No surprise that Lars lived a typical ‘jock’ lifestyle after his emancipation from his parents. The few times Caleb had been to his apartment, there were empty pizza boxes on the floor, clothes scattered everywhere and beer cans. Alcohol didn’t really have any affect on the super given his metabolism but he just liked flaunting the fact that he can actually buy beer because he’s so big and muscular that most store clerks don’t ask for ID. “I know. I’m surprised nothing in there has grown green and legs yet.”

“You’d be surprised.” Lars retreated a step and waved a paw at him. “Well, see ya Cale.”

“Yeah.”

Caleb grasped the doorknob behind him, eyes still locked with Lars and dearly wishing to kiss him but at the same time, hesitant to push things too far. He gave the door a little twist and the faintest of pushes -

“… fuck my brother!?”

The roar jarred both him and Lars, the two of them turning in shock towards the source of the noise. Leon was not in the kitchen but his and David’s voice carried very easily into the rest of the house.

“If there was another way, I’d take it!” erupted David.

“You mean like killing yourself instead!? I thought heroes are meant to take the honourable route instead of doing something totally fucked up like plough his own son!”

Lars shuffled over and both he and Caleb shoved their heads through the door, making sure to keep a low profile so that they could not be seen.

“The way I see it, it’s not your decision to make!”

“So it’s yours, you selfish prick!?”

“It’s Lance’s and he’s already agreed to it!”

“That’s because it’s either he gives up his ass or he loses his dad! What the fuck kind of choice is that!?”

Caleb felt a light jab in his ribs.

“Do you really want to go in there?” Lars asked.

“Hell no,” he rumbled and retreated, shutting the door behind him. With a grimace, he ran a paw down the side of his face. “Now where do I go?”

The doberman gestured in the direction of the house next door. “Mary’s place?”

“With Matriarch Mary and Anal-Ashton there? No thank you.”

Lars crossed his arms behind his head, deep in thought. “I suppose you could go to the Cornucopia. They’ve got bunks there.”

That was a tempting offer but that was also where Madman, Elliot and Rhiannon were staying. The last thing he wanted to do after an exhausting fight was to spend it with Elliot’s snarky comments, Rhiannon’s insanity and Madman’s recent bout of broodiness.

“Nah. I think I’ve had enough business for one day.” He lifted a finger. “And don’t even think about suggesting I stay with Ben. No way.”

“Not gonna,” Lars answered, holding up his paw. “If you don’t mind helping me cleaning up and sleeping on the couch, you can stay with me…”

Caleb shook his head. “It’s alright. I think I’ll go stay at Jake’s. He won’t be back until the morning anyway and I’ve got the keys to his place. He won’t mind.”

His boyfriend’s features went still for a moment and he dearly hoped that Lars wasn’t getting jealous of him spending so much time with Reaper. Jacob was unofficially part of Arsenal now and since Lars had been promoted from best friend to boyfriend, he needed someone to fill the role. The weapon-wielding interdimensional wolf fit the bill really well.

“Jake’s show is on every Wednesday, right?” Lars asked thoughtfully. “He works at the Tower Hospital, his bartending job and does the show on Wednesdays. Wolf Christ, that’s a lot of work…”

A wave of relief washed through him as he realised, like him, he was just worried that Jacob was overworking himself. “Yeah. But I guess because he can’t feel pain, he can’t feel exhausted either. I don’t think it’s good for him but I guess he needs to keep up with rent and whatever else he needs to keep up.”

“You think we can get him to just join us officially so he can take the load off? I mean, I feel kind of bad since I’m basically living off a trust fund and what we rake in from advertising and appearances as Arsenal. He’s working himself to the bone and still has time to go hero with us.”

“Don’t forget he can just use the funds from AEGIS,” Caleb reminded. “But it’s about appearances, remember? Got to be out in the public for a reason.”

The doberman shrugged helplessly. “I suppose. Anyway, I’ll catch you tomorrow, Cale.”

He bid his boyfriend a good night and jumped back on Ballistic. They drove in relatively the same direction for a while before having to part ways when Lars went to his apartment and Caleb headed towards Jacob’s. With key in paw, he was able to make it up to Jacob’s apartment without incident. Naturally, it was empty. The No One would not be back until the early morning. Caleb didn’t want to impose and take up Jacob’s bed so he just slumped on the couch, face first. It had been an exhausting day and this was the second time he was seeking refuge in Jacob’s apartment. If only for a few hours, the problems of the world just seemed to stop at the door and Caleb was alone in silence; the simplicity of silence.

He drifted off to sleep only to be woken up by the growl of his stomach. Extracting himself from the couch, he wearily padded over to the fridge but froze just inches from opening it. This was not his fridge. Not his apartment. It would be stretching his welcome to eat Jacob’s food after all that the blonde-haired wolf had already done for him. Sighing, he decided to endure the hunger at least for one night. What he needed was a distraction to take away from the hunger.

Parking himself back in the couch, he switched on the holovid. The attack on Callista Heights Mall was already on the back end of the news. Likely Shockstrom and Siren’s PR department had done its magic to avoid their humiliating near-defeat at a D-list villain’s hand being fed into the news cycle. There were other major attacks from supervillains. Flock had struck somewhere in Oregon. A demonic ritual was stopped in Maine. Internationally, there was a disturbance in the United African Nations, somewhere in Madagascar apparently. India reported a villain attack in one of their old, decommissioned underground nuclear missile silos. Even peaceful Canada had its fair share of attacks. It was funny how so many disasters that would seem horrific or traumatising to people in the 21st century would seem so mundane in the 31st. A loud rumble came from his stomach and he growled at it in return. That didn’t stop it. With a sigh, he glanced around for a further distraction. His eyes went to the lone, unused second bedroom. Not for the first time, he wondered what was inside but decided that if he wasn’t going to eat Jacob’s food, he was not going to rummage through Jacob’s home.

It was with some relief that the door to the apartment sprang upon and Jacob Reaper entered, flicking on the lights out of reflex. The wolf stopped in midstep upon seeing Caleb.

“Hey…” greeted Caleb. “Sorry. Things at home are a little… crazy right now. Okay if I crash here?”

“Of course,” Jacob replied, worry in his voice. “What’s so insane that you need to come to my place at…” He checked his watch. “Four in the morning on a school night? In fact, why are you still up at four in the morning and not passed out after Tibia hitting you hard?”

It was already four? Caleb must have been more exhausted than he had thought.

“Long story short, dad needs to fuck Lance.”

That brought a grimace from his fellow wolf. “This is going to need some refreshments. Hot chocolate okay with you?”

“Actually…” Caleb’s cheeks began to burn. “… Tibia attacked right after I got home from football practice and I got home pretty late after doing all the clean up and media stuff so…”

“Say no more. Hope you don’t mind leftovers?”

“Man, right now I could eat anything.”

Jacob ears towards Caleb even as he headed towards the fridge and began rummaging through its contents. “Was it really that bad?”

“I pretty much had to jump from Project Werewolf Steel to fighting Tibia and his boneheads like” - he snapped his fingers - “that. Didn’t get much time to rest after weights at school and classes.”

“Sounds like a pretty jam-packed day.” The black wolf retrieved two plastic containers, one containing some strange yellowish mush and the other some form of meat. “I heard about the fight with Tibia on the news. Sorry I couldn’t be there. No one called me.”

“That’s fair. Bren thought it’d be a pretty standard fight against a D-list villain but…” He glanced out the window, wondering. “… Honestly the fight with Tibia’s henchmen was far more challenging than Tibia himself. He had a few upgrades, sure, but he was still an idiot.”

Jacob divided the food into two servings, one with much more for Caleb, then shoved them both in the reactive heater and set it to cook. “But he managed to take down Shockstorm and Siren. Though I suppose the one thing Tibia has going for him is the element of surprise. I’m pretty sure neither of them were expecting a sharp, shooting pain in their shins.” It only took up until he finished talking for the food to be ready.

Caleb could already smell the aromatic meat from where he was sitting and he was already salivating by the time Jacob carried the two plates over, complete with utensils. “Yeah. I’ll admit that when he fired those beams at me, it did hurt a little more but it’s still nothing I couldn’t handle. I mean, it’s pain. It doesn’t actually stop you from moving. I’ve had to fight through cuts and bruises more times than I could count.” He took a bite out of the meat - turns out it was lamb - and gagged. It was very hot. He fought through it, chewed to air out the meat a little and then swallowed. His stomach thanked him for the donation. Jacob just ate the meal without pausing. “Isn’t that hot.”

“Oh it is but I can’t feel pain, remember?”

“Huh… Does that mean you can’t feel how hot it is?”

“Oh I can. It’s just that it never goes above a certain threshold for me. I can tell it’s hot but if I get a burn, I won’t know until I get that awful feeling of burnt taste buds.”

This seemed the best opportunity to ask a burning question that had been gnawing at him. “So… if you can’t feel pain, does that mean you can’t feel tired?”

“Pain and exhaustion are two different things. Right now, I feel like someone ran me over with a school bus and then dragged my corpse across the Pacific Ocean where it was chewed on by Great White Sharks, raped by a Giant Squid and then resurrected by a Japanese Necromancer only so I could be forced to commit seppuku.”

Caleb jerked backwards at the vivid description. “Then how are you still standing?”

He got a gentle smile from the wolf. “When I see someone in need, I’ve just got to help. We’ve only got one life. I aim to make the best of it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he scoffed. “If you get killed here, you just keep going with your life ‘outside time and space’. I bet you’ve got multiple instances of yourself running around doing whatever it is you want anyway.” He cocked an eyebrow at Legion. “How are you not insane through that anyway?”

“It’s actually a lot simpler than you’re making it sound.” Jacob held up a fork, pointing at one of the spokes. “See, standing beyond the time-space continuum means I can jump in to any world at any time. But that doesn’t mean that my time is anything but linear. You might see two of me walking down the street on opposite sides of the road but one of them could be two seconds, two weeks or even two years older than the other in my time.”

“I don’t get it,” Caleb admitted.

Jacob tapped his cheek thoughtfully. “Think about it like a football game. You know how the clock stops between tries after certain plays.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“But time doesn’t stop for the players, does it? In the terms of the game, time has stopped but for the players, seconds are still ticking by. The players are still getting older but the game is frozen.”

He blinked a couple of times as the analogy began to form a picture in his head. “I… I think I get it. To me it’s like you can be anywhere at anytime. But really, there’s just one of you, experiencing all of this one at a time. It’s just to us, because you can pop in whenever you want, it looks like you’re everywhere.”

“That’s right!” Jacob exclaimed with a grin. “Every story has multiple sides. Even though you could read the same series of events over and over again, experiencing it from different characters perspective changes the tale entirely. Sometimes, the best thing to do is observe.”

“But this isn’t one of those times, is it?” Caleb asked.

“No.” The well-built lupine superhero drummed his fingers against the armrest thoughtfully. “No it is not.”

Having finished with his dinner, Caleb set the plate down on the coffee table and let out a wistful sigh. “Sometimes I wish things were simple again. I was just a normal football jock. My dad was a sports columnist. Leon and Lance were just by two older brothers who happened to be jerks. My mom was just a secretary and Abby was still… well… honestly much hasn’t changed with Abby.”

“If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t change anything.”

He gave Jacob an exasperated stare. “Well yeah. You deal with this kind of stuff all the time.”

“Maybe but I would rather have an eventful conflicted life that’s rich and fulfilling than a boring one that I regret.”

“Can’t I have a boring life that I don’t regret?”

Jacob slapped his shoulder. “Kid, if you live a boring life and loved every second of it, I commend you but ask yourself honestly: whether or not you were involved, would your family’s life really be simpler? Think about it. Abby will still get married. Your father is still Feral Steel. Lance and Leon are still both supers.” His fingers gripped Caleb’s shoulder tightly. “When the world piles on the problems, have the guts to stand up, puff out your chest, take a deep breath…” Jacob demonstrated by inhaling loudly. “… and then taking everything one step at a time. There’s no magic solution that will resolve every issue. This isn’t one of those stories where in the end everything wraps up neatly. There will be unanswered questions, there will be cliffhangers and plot holes. Sometimes, the ending might even be unsatisfying. But that’s what life is.”

“Unsatisfying?” Caleb asked cynically.

“Sometimes, yes. Good people will die for no good reason. The bad people will become rich and powerful. You can’t put faith in some divine karma or ‘balance of the universe’ to settle scores or bring fortune upon those that are less fortunate. If you have time to complain about how ‘complicated’ or ‘stressful’ your life is, you have time to do something about it.”

He snorted derisively. “Easier said than done. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do about anything that’s piling on me.”

“Then how about we take the easiest step first.” Jacob plucked the cleaned dishes from the table. “Let’s get some sleep.”

“That’s your answer?” Caleb demanded. “Sleep?”

“It’s been a long day. You’re tired. Have you got a better solution? Or would you rather sit up all night and give yourself a stomach ulcer worrying about things that you can’t do anything about?”

As much as he hated to admit it, Jacob was right. There was nothing he could do about the many problems bearing down at him from all corners of the world at the moment. But he could solve one problem and that was his weariness.

“I guess you’re right,” he consented. “Thanks, Jake.”

“Jacob,” corrected the black and blonde wolf. “And you’re welcome. Why don’t you take my bed? I’ll get the dishes cleaned up and then hit the couch.”

“You sure?”

He received a bright smile from the wolf. “Hey, I’ve just been working a shift at the hospital and then my bartending job. You’ve had to endure the ever-changing political clime of high school, football practice, your family drama and a supervillain attack. You at least deserve the bed.”

Caleb would have beamed brightly but he was starting to feel the weight of his weariness tugging his eyelids down. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.” He peeled himself from the couch with incredibly effort and shuffled towards the bedroom. At the door, however, he stopped just as Jacob began turning on the faucet to wash the dishes. “Hey Jake… How do you do it?”

“Do what?” asked the wolf without turning back to him.

“Do… this. Offering people advice, going into their worlds and hearing them bitch and moan about their problems. You’ve probably saved more universes than I can count. How can you stand there and be this… this nice without bitch-slapping me and telling me that this is nothing compared to what you’ve had to go through.”

Jacob laughed softly. “Simple.” He glanced over his shoulder with a smile on his lips. “Because I’m not you and you’re not me.”

“Huh?”

“What I went through has no merit or weight whatsoever compared to what you’re going through, Caleb. I might use it as a reference point every now and then but I have no right to feel that just because I went through something I may have felt was much worse than what you’re experiencing, you should suck it up and grow a pair.” He turned back towards the dishes but even though his face was hidden from Caleb, there was a lingering feeling that the smile remained, brightening up the room with a heavenly warmth that gave the impression that everything would be okay. “Every story is different. Every protagonist unique. All I can do is offer my help when it’s asked for.”

“Wow…” Caleb breathed.

“Huh?” asked Jacob, flicking his ear back. “What was that sorry? Couldn’t hear you over the faucet.”

“Just… I just realised what it means to be a hero.”

Jacob turned, slightly alarmed by the statement, but he just caught sight of Caleb’s tail disappearing into his room; the door closing with the softest clicks. With a sigh, he shook his head and turned back to the dishes. “This world already has way too many heroes,” he told the dishes. “I think it needs more people like you, Caleb.”

******

Over time, Caleb Hale had trained himself to respond immediately only to two noises - the sound of his mother shouting ‘Claws’ and the other being ‘Waiting for You’ playing on his phone. When the latter began emanating from the bedside table, he instinctively, reached out, placed the device to his ear and answered with a sleepy, ‘Bren?’

The first few words that came blasting out were indecipherable as he was still reluctantly trying to wake up. The panic in the voice was clear, though and it was certainly female.

“Slow down, Mary,” he chided. “I’m still trying to wake up…”

He rubbed his eyes, trying to take stock of his surroundings. If this was a real emergency, his household would be in a panic. David no longer took pains to hide his superhero activities behind thinly veiled lies to go to villain attacks as a journalist and that usually meant that Leon would be up in arms about police involvement and civilian casualties. So it couldn’t be that bad.

“It’s Elliot, dumbass!”

Surprised, he blinked a couple of times and held out the phone at arm’s length. “Dude… why do you sound like a chick?”

“Because your testosterone-poisoned brain can’t process anything in the mornings apart from your raging boner and interprets everything as ‘please fuck me’,” answered the orca venomously.

That was Elliot alright. The orca and resident super-genius had been given lodgings on the Cornucopia and access to AEGIS’s technologies. For a week or so, he was beside himself with glee and was almost bearable to be around. However, he quickly reverted to being the sarcastic, annoying lord-of-the-geeks that gave everyone nicknames and taunted them all from his comfortable chair in front of enormous monitors while covered in nacho cheese and sticky fluids - not all of which was candy. It became so bad that the main terminal to AEGIS’s supercomputer was designated as Elliot’s little den while everyone else was forced to access it from other locations.

“Why the hell are you calling me this early?” he grumbled, rubbing the side of his face. Taking stock of his surroundings, he realised that he was not in his own bed. The furniture was different, for one. A lot more bookshelves and books. Everything was also rather neat and tidy where he recalled his own bedroom tended to be a mess. He also didn’t have a walk-in closet. As his brain finished booting up, he recalled that he was actually in Jacob’s bedroom.

“We’ve got a problem. Tibia is back.”

He groaned loudly, rolling his eyes. “Can’t the Elemental Alliance handle it this once? The bastard is D-list, maybe C-list at most if we’re considering his henchmen. We don’t really need to get involved, do we?”

“Oh yes we do. Because this time, he’s come back as an elephant.”

That caught his attention and he straightened in surprise. “What now?”

“You heard me the first time or are your ear muscles so thick that they’re actually blocking your hearing!?”

Elliot was clearly stressed because ordinarily, it would be Bren that would be calling him and the orca would only refer to his jock-build once in a string of insults. The lack of creativity was a clear sign that he was in a panic. “What’s going on?”

“Everyone else is already on their way to Callista Heights Mall. Seems like the bonehead has a hard-on for that place.”

“AEGIS isn’t going to send any reinforcements?”

“Can’t. Remember, AEGIS doesn’t officially exist. The most they can do is provide guns and equipment but if the public sees a goddamn starship hovering over their heads, there’s going to be a shitstorm of political fire and fury.”

AEGIS wasn’t an officially sanctioned government body and few people outside of the organisation knew about the disenfranchised men and women, human and fur, who worked under the acronym. They consisted of people - super, Outsider or other - who had grown tired of the dance between superhero and supervillain and decided to do something about the constant threat of attack. Where superheroes were mostly reactive to attacks, AEGIS was more geared towards intelligence gathering and espionage. Given that their technology was also far superior to anything that came with standard government issue and the fact that they flew one of the most hi-tech starships in the world, their sudden interference was likely to cause more than a simple splash in the media.

“Damn. Okay. I’m heading there now. Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back.”

He hung up and jumped out of the bed. Slapping himself awake, he hurried out of the bedroom and bolted for the door.

“Hey, what’s the rush?” Jacob asked. His friend was leaning against the kitchen counter, a mug of hot chocolate in one paw and a tablet in the other.

Given that Jacob had already been so accommodating to him, he didn’t want to put more pressure on the wolf’s plate by dragging him to a Gene Stealer attack. Though it was still an unspoken agreement that Arsenal deals with the Gene Stealers and Jacob and his team take care of the Genesians, Jacob was technically part of Arsenal. Still, if Elliot hadn’t called Legion before now, it meant that this probably wasn’t a crisis that needed the attention of the No One.

“Just some Arsenal stuff,” he answered, not technically lying. “Thanks for everything, Jake. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Jacob,” corrected the well-built, black-furred wolf. “And if you’re going to go doing ‘Arsenal stuff_’_, don’t forget the hero entrance.”

He flicked his ears at his fellow wolf. “The what?”

A cheesy grin came before a reply. “The hero entrance. You know. That thing where superheros fall from a great height, slam into the ground, coming down from a crouch with one knee and hand down. They’re all broody, looking down at where they landed and then they look up in that really serious fashion that tells everyone they mean business?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Right. Okay. Thanks for the advice. Laters!”

Blood was already pumping hard through his veins by the time he was out the door and taking the steps down to the parking lot two at a time. He approached Ballistic and reached into the hidden compartment underneath the seat, retrieving his uniform as Weapons Master. First he made sure that there was no one around then he hurried to a dark corner. Luckily, it was still fairly early in the morning and there were plenty of shadows for him to quickly undress and shove on his enchanted suit. Once he was perfectly disguised, he shoved his gold and blue letterman jacked back into the compartment as well as the jeans and shirt he had been wearing. For a moment, he debated about changing his shoes from his sneakers to his combat boots. First he decided there was no time and jumped on his gold and black motorcycle. Then he thought about it again. If he was going to fight the Gene Stealers, he had to go at it with everything he had even if it was as simple as footwear. As much as he hated his dad’s - often dangerous - lessons, David had instilled within him the idea of not leaving anything half-done.

So he spent the next two minutes quickly changing shoes and then revved up Ballistic. The soft, near-soundless roar of the bike was a familiar sensation and it helped him bring himself to 100% awareness. The streets of West California Island were mostly empty at - he checked his phone for the time - 6:03 in the morning. It made him wonder why Tibia would choose to strike at such an early time in the morning. The mall likely wasn’t open just yet so there would be no civilians there to rob. Caleb planted his phone in the dock on the dashboard of his motorcycle and pushed the black button for ‘Weapon Mode’. The bike immediately morphed, springing two protecting ‘wings’ that wrapped tightly around his flanks and a canopy that wrapped over his head, forcing him to press his body down against the vehicle to lower wind resistance.

With the flick of a button, he dialled for Elliot again.

“About time,” came the snarky reply. “What? Did you squeeze in a quickie before jumping on your two-wheel death machine?”

“Elliot, shut up,” Mary chided. “Weapons Master, you on your way?”

“Yeah,” he answered, fighting a grin. “Morning Mary.”

“Morning. Wish I could say ‘good’ morning but we’ve currently got a potential Gen 4 on our hands.”

A Generation 4 Gene Stealer. Perhaps one of the most problematic Gene Stealers types yet. Generation 1s were the first kinds of Gene Stealers created. Identical to their Originals, Gen 1s were gifted with baseline superpowers but little else. Generation 2s were far exponentially more dangerous as they possessed unique powers on top of their baseline ones basically making them artificial supers. Gen 3s were granted were slightly more powerful than Gen 2s statistically speaking but had the added bonus of being able to infect others and give them copies of their own abilities albeit to a lesser degree. Gen 4s, however, were the next evolutionary step for the Gene Stealers. Previously, all naturally occurring supers were off-limits from Gene Stealer infection as the powers that the Gene Stealers gifted would stack with those of the super and go wildly out of control. Memories of the battle against Zig-Zag Zapper still burned deep in Caleb’s mind.

However, after Lars had been infected by a Gene Stealer of the Ursa strain and then Caleb had returned him to normal thanks to the weapon he had obtained, the fiery Doberman had become the first ever Gen 4. Leon was a Gen 4 too. Those that bore the title were even more powerful normal supers, putting them at the top tier of in terms of strength, speed, endurance and perhaps even intelligence even amongst veteran supers. In theory, they could change forms as well but that was yet to be proven. Generally, their powers also increased dramatically. Lars’ tests and training sessions were evidence of that. There was a theorised fifth Generation Gene Stealer. Gen 4s mastered their physical bodies. Gen 5s, as Caleb believed, was the complete mastery of one’s superpowers - able to adjust and change them at will.

“A Gen 4,” he rumbled. “Looks like the Gene Stealers really are stepping up their game.”

“Yeah. Tibia has got his henchmen around too. They’re elephants now too.”

He glanced briefly at his phone. “How? Gen 4s are not infectious.”

“Your guess is as good as mine. You know Chimera and Shark Tamer are continuously modifying their serums. We need to be careful.”

“Doesn’t AEGIS have any info on it?”

“Just a tactical analysis,” Elliot interrupted. “Obviously Tibia is calling us or the Elemental Alliance out. He’s striking when the mall isn’t even open and there’s barely any staff on site. Worst case, he gets the security team which, at last count, consists of about twenty people. The island has barely woken up so there’s little traffic and honestly… he’s just standing there.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. He’s just standing there out in the open, arms crossed and grinning like an idiot. Though it’s a little hard to tell. The trunk and tusks sort of get in the way.”

Caleb took a left, just barely making the orange light. Not too far on the horizon, he could see the bright orange buildings of the Callista Heights Mall. “I’m almost there. Give me another five minutes.”

“We move in as soon as you’re there,” Mary responded. “The Bitch of Destruction decided that his henchmen are really organised. We should be as well.”

There was the animosity between Mary and Rhiannon again. He was rather surprised that Rhia had yet to chime in. It must be very serious if she wasn’t making any random comments or pondering disembowelling anyone. But this was Tibia. No matter how souped up he was on Gene Stealer juice, he was still a colossal idiot and his powers were pitiful at best. Gen 4s didn’t get any extra powers, after all. Their existing ones were just enhanced. It might take some effort to beat him down but Caleb was pretty sure he could deal with a rampaging elephant. Glancing across the consoles on the ‘wings’ of his bike, he elbowed the button for his Minos Weapon - Branding Iron. Colourful greenish-blue lights flashed all over his body, equipping him with the gladius and armour of the glass-bearing weapon. It might be stupid to use glass against an elephant but Branding Iron’s constructs were as hard as diamond and it’s major advantage over Funny Bone was it’s ability to summon multiple heavy-hitting bull-golems. Given how he was forced into the defensive when using Funny Bone, he figured the weapon would be more useful against Tibia’s well-trained henchmen.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“I’m coming up to the mall now.”

The parking lot was only occupied by a few cars and it was in the mall’s open courtyard - where they had last clashed - that Tibia stood. The palm tree was still missing from the central garden. About twenty men and women dressed in the beige uniforms of mall security were forced to kneel in two neat rows. About another twenty boneheads stood around them wielding top-quality guns. Each of the boneheads were much bigger, having stacked on at least two hundred pounds of elephantine muscle. A little surprising that they were all men - at least from what he could see from their enormous bulged contained in bone-coloured crotch-plates.

Unlike what they had worn previously, these henchmen were far more scantily clad. Their tree-trunk-like thighs were exposed, revealing the well-defined mounds of their quadriceps and the armour-like grey skin that covered them. A pair of black shorts with the fabric woven into a tessellating triangle pattern barely made it past their crotch. From the hard, bone-white crotch-plate hung several tusks and fangs in a skirt-like pattern. A pair of shin guards that looked like they were crafted from severed skulls of wolves or maybe hyenas was connected to pairs of heavy, metal boots decorated by the lower jawbones of whatever creature had made the shin plates. Their forearms were protected by a ring of tightly-knit femurs while shoulder-plates constructed from three skulls of humans embedded into heavy, metal pauldrons shielded their shoulders. Their torsos were left exposed, revealing their massive pectorals, solid wall of eight-stocky abdominals and the three necklaces decorated by the skulls of feral rats. None of them wore any helmets but each had their elephantine faces painted in white. A bright red symbol of drawn in red paint on their foreheads - the symbol for Alpha.

And amongst them all, there was Tibia.

Salazar Shin certainly had evolved. The biggest of the elephants by far, he towered over them all at a frightening eleven feet tall. Unlike his henchmen, he sported a mutated set of four tusks. The first two appeared like a normal elephant’s tusk, curling jutting out and with a slight curl that hung to about his nipple level. The second pair were much larger, stretching well past his face and all the way out to arm’s length where it then proceeded to curl backwards like some bizarre claw. He also possessed a heavy set of body hair that been turned white. It hung around his shoulders and back like a pelt, connecting with his stark, white hair. It dusted his impressive chest and trailed down the valley of his abdominals to disappear into the thick, armoured, black pants he wore that were similarly decorated as his henchmen. Nothing covered his torso save for his body hair and even his arms were left exposed.

“Nothing tells you that ‘he’s the boss’ than the fact that he’s shirtless,” Caleb muttered, setting Ballistic into park. The wings and canopy of the bike withdrew and he stepped off the vehicle. Right on time, a black truck came screeching in behind him. Bren jumped out of the driver’s seat while Mary emerged from the passenger side. Madman burst out from the rear, carrying his stasis cannon. The hyena and Tibia were comparable in size and it made Caleb a little more confident of their chances with Madman there. A loud howl erupted from just behind Tibia and the elephant turned his head slightly. As with t heir previous engagement, Ben leapt up to the top of the cinema, blood-red fur glimmering in the grey morning sun. Lars descended from the sky opposite to Ben, landing on one of the rooftops with blue flames dancing around his fists.

“You know, I really was hoping you’d be the first to respond,” chuckled Shin. “It was either you or the Alliance.”

“Lucky us,” Caleb snarled, swinging around Branding Iron. “You get only one chance, Shin! Let those people go!”

Tibia shook his head, his large ears flapping around with the gesture. “You think I’m still that weak little human that tried to rob a convenience store?” Shin unfolded his thick arms, giving Caleb a view of his impressive torso. Each movement was met with the noise of leather grinding as his thick flesh moved. “I am the Tibia! I am more than you could ever hope to be!” He lifted a hand, staring at the ivory-like fingernails and broad palm. “Under the Gene Stealers, I have at last reached the level of power that will place me above and beyond the petty crimes that common street thugs peddle in!”

Caleb felt the faint tingle at the back of his mind indicating that Mary had established the mental connection between him and his teammates.

“Is it me, or is this guy a little more… literate than before?” Ben asked.

“That’s weird,” Lars rumbled. “I know that as a Gen 4, a few of my natural talents got enhanced. Did Tibia get smarter because he mutated?”

“Maybe he’s a Gen 5. I mean, it’s not like you got smarter.”

“Hey!”

A wave of uncertainty radiated from Rhiannon who was likely watching from somewhere hidden. “I don’t like this, guys. Something is seriously wrong here.”

“She’s right,” Bren chimed in. “Before, Tibia had four teams of twenty running around. We’ve only got one team right now. Where are the others?”

“That’s just it. There are no other teams that I can detect. It’s just him and these twenty guys. Does he think that with a fourth of the men he had before, he’ll be able to take us all?”

Tibia lifted his arms almost in an embrace towards him. “Coordinated attacks. The way you stand there, staring at me.” He lifted a finger at them. “You’re speaking telepathically to one another aren’t you?”

Caleb froze. No one, not even the Gene Stealers, had figured that out. Did the Gene Stealers tip him off or had his intelligence really spiked to the point where he was able to figure that out all by himself?

“If I were to guess…” Tibia’s finger glided over to Madman. “Either the hyena finally managed to develop some superpowers or…” He turned his finger towards Mary. “… or the more likely scenario is that her powers have developed to the point where she can’t just sense emotions anymore.” The big elephant shrugged, making a helpless gesture. “Considering how Weapon Master’s abilities have likewise evolved, it isn’t so hard to believe that hers developed as well.”

Mary grit her teeth, physically taking a step back from Tibia. “Guys,” she said telepathically, “he’s really confident about his abilities but I feel like there’s a reason behind it. Either he’s got his other henchmen ready to jump in at a moment’s notice or he’s a lot stronger than before.”

“Whenever we’ve dealt with Gene Stealers, we’ve always been on the back foot,” Bren answered, lifting his rifle so that he was peering down the sights. “There’s no reason to believe that this will turn out any different from the last time.”

Caleb nodded to himself. “If you’re trying to psyche us out, you’ll have to try harder because that’s not going to work! We’re going to take you in and this time, you won’t get away!”

Tibia folded his arms again and let out a thunderous laugh. “You are most welcome to try. But first, allow me this little demonstration.” He snapped his fingers.

Spikes of ivory began sliding ominously out of the ground, each one right next to one of the civilians tied up and helpless between them. He barely managed to scream, ‘No’ before the henchmen were opening fire. Waves of horror shock and disbelief erupted from Mary’s psychic link, each one coming from the members of Arsenal. Blood splattered the coppery tiles of the mall courtyard. The bodies of the poor, defenceless civilians toppled over on another. They had just come in to work to secure the mall from break-ins and patrol the grounds. Now…

“You bastard!” Caleb roared. He swung Branding Iron through the air, the morning sun glistening off the blue length of the blade. Glass shards about as big as his paw shot from the flat of the weapon, landing on the ground in front of them. The shards sprouted into huge, muscular glass golems shaped like minotaurs wielding hefty axes. A good ten of them appeared. Caleb swung his blade down, pointing it towards Tibia.

“Atta -”

Mary seized his wrist. “Wait,” she breathed, her blue eyes wide in horror. “Oh no… They’re still alive!”

He jerked back towards the downed security guards, seeing them writhing and twisting in agony. “What…?”

One of the guards suddenly jolted upwards, howling in agony. There was a large, white bone sticking out of his neck. His eyes were distant with agony and his hands formed into claws as his blood-curdling scream cut through the dawn’s grey skies. His features suddenly jut forward as his scream turned from a human’s pained cry into an elephant’s trumpeting call. The nose was the first to change, rocketing outwards and gaining flexibility as it became a long, serpentine trunk. This was quickly followed by the widening of his face and the eruption of his tusks. The muscles beneath his tan suit erupted violently, bursting free of his uniform and exposing thick, leathery skin that was wrapped around a thick, muscled frame beneath. Beside him, an equine woman let out her own cry as her features morphed as well. Her breasts burst from her uniform like two enormous mountains bursting from the ground. Behind her, a man fell on his back as his cock shot out of his pants and his rapidly changing hands clawed at the remaining clothing to rid himself of them.

“Wh - Wh - what’s going on?” Caleb stammered. “H - How are they being turned? Gen 4s aren’t meant to be infectious…”

Through cacophony of blissful cries, Tibia somehow heard him and the elephant just laughed. “You’re so naive. You made your Generation 4s inert. But the Gene Stealers have developed a way to make Generation 4s to their specifications!” He thumped a fist against his chest. “Case in point.” The grin on his features grew broader. “If you were wondering why I would attack you with a severely reduced battalion, now you know.” The gargantuan, hairy elephant pointed a thick finger at Arsenal. “Allow me to finish off where you left off, Weapons Master. Attack!”

The feral, newborn elephants charged, slavering, dripping with sweat and juices and practically bowling over one another to get to them. At the same time, the boneheads began opening firing. Caleb was glad he has summoned his minotaurs as they were able to immediately form a barricade made from their diamond-hard bodies against the onslaught of Gene Stealers. Red flames descended from the sky. Lars swept over the battlefield, bathing the ground in fire to drive back to raging elephants. Gunfire erupted from behind the wall of flame. Tibia’s henchmen were joining the fray.

“That was his plan!” Rhia exclaimed. “Use the civilians as a distraction while he picked us off with his henchmen!”

Madman growled loudly while he hefted his enormous stasis cannon. “He’s smart. He knows we can’t hurt the civilians so we have to be more careful around them.”

A jab of pain erupted from Caleb’s left leg and he glanced down, worried that a bullet had skimmed him. Nothing had punctured his flesh.

“Shit!” Lars shouted. “They winged me!”

That pain came from his boyfriend and the pain had translated through Mary’s powerful psychic network.

“Land, Lars!” Rhia commanded. “You’re a huge target in the air! Mary, reign in your powers. You’re transmitting all sensations across! Caleb, on my command get your bulls to start marching forward. Madman, Bren, fire between the golems!”

Caleb lifted his blade and shield, baring his fangs. “Ready!”

“Now!”

On his silent command, the minotaurs took a synchronised step forward, using their long axes like a moving barricade and pushed the elephants back. Beams of sizzling bluish-green light shot between their crystalline bodies, striking the maddened mutants and catching them in stasis fields, disabling them if only for the moment.

“Ben! Hit the gunmen from behind! Lars, you’ve got the flanks!”

The Hound of Destruction was one hell of a commander and Caleb was really very happy that she was on their side. His golems moved forward, dampening the flames as they advanced. He followed them, shield up while Bren and Madman marched beside him. The constant rat-tat-tat of gunfire could be heard over the roar of the stampeding elephants who seemed to have lost all forms of intelligence and were just desperately charging at the golems and trying to maul them with their tusks. Whips and splashes of blood erupted somewhere past the glass constructs; Ben striking out at the gunmen and keeping them busy alongside Lars.

A loud crack brought his eyes to the golem to his left. A newborn burst past the golem, muscling past it. The golem reached down and seized the rampaging woman by one of her long, flag-like ears. She screamed and flailed against the massive, glass hand. In one of her swings, large bones suddenly erupted from her fist, covering her hand entirely and adding extra force to her blow. She struck the golem’s arm and it shattered. Her eyes widened as she was dropped to the ground. For a moment, the battle paused. Caleb remembered that Gen 3s could bestow weaker versions of their powers onto those that they created. So it only went to reason that Gen 4s were similarly capable.

The woman screamed but it was a cry of triumph and ecstasy. She launched herself to her feet. Slavering with her bone-gauntlet stretched out in front of her and her other hand mindlessly abusing her breasts, she charged straight at Caleb. Instincts took over and Caleb immediately dodged to the woman’s right; the arm that wasn’t covered in bones. He slipped past her and slammed his shield into her face. Stunned, the beast’s maddened cry was cut off but started again when he swung his blade and severed the tendons on her hamstrings.

“Caleb! The wall!”

His golems. There was now breach. Three of the elephants bowled over the wounded golem and as they saw their comrade go down, a myriad of emotions flashed before their eyes. Primal roars erupted from their lips just as bones shot from their bodies. One had a huge bone shaped like a long mace explode from his palm and he immediately grasped it like he was born with it. Another hunched over as bones burst from his back, forming a second pair of skeletal hands.

“Holy shit…” Caleb whispered. “We’re not prepared for this.” Pain shot up his left arm. Again, there was no wound.

“You’re telling me!” Ben gasped. “These guys are really well trained! And they’re not shooting bullets! They’re shooting bones_!”_

There was no time to process those words as Caleb had to lift his shield to block a rapidly descending bone mace headed for his head. The blow was powerful, enough to force him to his knees. The shockwave alone shattered the tiles beneath his feet.

“Fuck!” he cursed.

“They’re evolving rapidly!” Rhia exclaimed. “Somehow, they’re using Tibia’s power and making it their own! These aren’t just clones of Tibia’s power! It’s like… like…”

“Like they’ve taken how Gen 2s develop unique powers and given that to the average Gen 1 only with copies of a Gen 4’s powers,” Caleb grunted.

“I would’ve put it more elegantly but… in essence, yes!”

There was another jab of pain, this time, it came from Caleb’s flank. He glanced over his shoulder where Madman had suffered a blow to his flank from the Gene Stealer with the multiple arms. The massive hyena snarled at the feral newborn, seized the man by the shoulder and tossed him boldly aside.

“We need a fucking plan here, Rhia!” Madman shouted.

“Caleb, you need to grab Live Wire.”

At the mention of the weapon, the grey and white wolf flinched. “Wh - What?”

“We need to stop the crazed civilians. We need something with an area-of-effect. If you can unleash a blast of electricity with enough voltage to shock them all into unconsciousness, we can get straight to Tibia and the rest of his bonehead.”

It was logical. Funny Bone was excellent in one-on-one combat and Branding Iron had the power to summon a lot of reinforcements. Live Wire was the only one of his permanent weapons that could affect a large area. But it also came with the painful memories of having been forced to turn against his friends and family, throwing blows and attacks while being conscious of every action. No matter the assurances he received, Trojan’s voice haunted the depths of his subconscious.

“I… I… I can’t!”

“What?”

A jab of pain erupted from his chest and for a second, his breath was knocked out of him. The elephant in front of him swung down again, smashing Branding Iron’s shield. Luckily, the beast was too dumb to do anything else because he was painfully aware of his vulnerability. A little behind him, Bren was knocked off his feet by a powerful punch from an elephant. The tiger was lifted off his feet and rolled across the ground.

“Think of something else!” Caleb demanded. “Anything else! Just don’t make me use Live Wire!”

“This is not the time to be having PTSD, Caleb!” Mary shouted. She ducked a blow from a charging elephant. Lightning fast, he peppered the man’s abdomen with a flurry of blows. Through the psychic link, Caleb could feel how her knuckles felt like they were smashing against hardened steel. Bones suddenly erupted all over the elephant, covering the charging pachyderm in even more armour. Small points began appearing across the smooth, white armour and Mary barely had enough time to leap back before those points shot outward like a hundred, sharp needles. Still, she sustained cuts across her arm.

Despite seeing her in pain, he could not bring himself to pick up that whip. “I just can’t use Live Wire, okay? Rhia, think of something else!”

“I’m already calling in reinforcements. David is on his way.”

“Call Jacob!”

A jolt of pain suddenly erupted from his leg and he glanced down at the same place that Lars had been wounded. Concern over his boyfriend pumped through his veins and just as the blow from the elephant cornering him came back down, he shot up, pressing his shoulder against his shield and colliding with the blow. With their weapons pressed against one another, he pushed his shield to the side, forcing his foe to topple to the side. Control was necessary as he knew that there was an innocent civilian inside the hard, leathery shell of muscle. Though his instincts told him to drive his sword forward and go for the heart, he instead slammed his other shoulder right into the pachyderm’s face. He heard a resounding crack and set his opponent to the back of his mind.

“Blue!” he shouted, charging past the melee of his golems and elephants. It took him a second to realise that the sounds of gunfire had ceased.

“Caleb…”

The boneheads stood in a semicircle with Tibia at the centre. Lars was standing in front of them, clutching his injured right leg and sweat dripping down his canine features. He locked gazes with Caleb, fear in his eyes and… regret.

“I… don’t feel so go…” murmured the doberman.

Then Lars’ leg bulged, bursting out of his uniform in the shape of a huge, bulging, grey-skinned muscled mass. The doberman let out an ear-splitting cry, throwing his head back as his cock burst from his pants and his body erupted, shedding the skin of the doberman that had stolen Weapon Master’s heart. Flames exploded from his muzzle before it was consumed by a long, trunk and bright, white tusks wreathed in bright, blue flames. Lars grabbed his head with his free, unmutated paw but those handsome, canine features twisted and contorted into an unfamiliar shape. Twisted in agony, his muzzle burst forward into a long trunk, his thin, pointed ears fanning out into huge wings and all his fur shedding from his skin to give way to the same grey, leathery skin. Lars’ other paw thrashed wildly from his changed features and Caleb could only watch it changing from shoulder, to bicep, to forearm and finally to the very ends of his fingertips, fur falling away like black, sorrowful snow. Wild, maddened eyes locked straight at Caleb, milky white but still capable of seeing him.

“Did I forget to mention the one thing that separates a perfect Gen 4 from your cheap knockoffs?” taunted Tibia. “The ability to infect others… even supers.”

Caleb’s heart seized him in his chest. Time slowed. All other sounds died out and the colours of the world faded into monochrome save for the twisted features of his friends and teammates. “No…”

Suddenly, a sharp pain erupted in his brain and he glanced behind him. Mary screamed, clutching her temples. Her body shook, grey skin replacing her supple, softer flesh. She was clutching the sides of her head, throwing it back into a pained, agonised cry.

“Caleb! Help!”

Madman fell to his knees, grunting and staring at his hands. “N - N - Not again!” The hyena doubled over, pressing his forehead against the ground. Tusks erupted from his head, forcing him to straighten and shoot Caleb the same, milky-eyed stare that Lars had thrown him.

A howl erupted from behind Tibia but it was quickly turned into an elephant’s trumpeting cry.

Bren, collapsed to the ground, convulsed wildly as a trunk took the place of his muzzle.

“No…” Caleb gasped, staggering back in place. His friends, his boyfriend, all of Arsenal had been transformed into stampeding elephants. Lars stomped forward, cock dripping and his tusks on fire. Behind him, a huge elephant with a thick coat of blood-red fur all over his back leapt into the sky and landed right beside the former Flare Blue. This enormous pachyderm advanced on all fours, his eyes were bathed in blood red but his irises were milky white, just like Lars. Behind him, the biggest of the converted - even bigger than Tibia - shed off his stasis canon and armour, letting out a laugh between his cries. The sun just came out enough to show off his spotted hide. Beside him, another one, appearing much like the others save for his striped hide, stomped on the stasis gun he once held, shattering it. A piercing pain erupted in Caleb’s brain, forcing him to kneel. A female elephant stared directly at him, grinning sadistically while her long, blonde hair waved behind her like a golden banner.

“I’ve done what I came here to do,” Tibia scoffed. “You should never have looked down on me, Weapons Master. You and the rest of the world should never have laughed.”

The Gene Stealer turned and gave a dismissive wave.

Despair gripped his heart. If only he had been stronger. If only he hadn’t been such a coward! None of this would have happened! Now, Lars, Ben, Mary, Madman and Bren… all of them had been turned into maddened, mindless beasts! But there was still hope…

“You’re likely thinking about capturing me to find some way of reverting your friends, aren’t you?” chuckled Tibia. “But I’d like to remind you of one simple fact.” He held up a finger as the air shimmered in front of him. A huge dropship appeared in front of him, bigger than the one that he had before. “Previously, the only way you managed to find the ‘cure’ for the previous strains was because you were given the Original Serum. But rest assured, I have no intention of giving you mine.”

Caleb growled and slowly rose to his feet. “Then I’ll just have to beat it out of you!”

Tibia threw his head back and laughed. As the dropship’s rear doors sprung open, another twenty elephantine henchmen were revealed. They appeared similar to the first group only their warpaint was shaped like the letter Beta. “As I said before, you are most welcome to try. But as you can see, I have not shown you a fraction of my abilities!” Salazar Shin spread his arms wide, turning his gaze towards the skies as if mocking the gods themselves. “And I haven’t even joined the fight! Do you honestly believe you can face me after your own team has been infected by my strain?”

The odds were definitely against him. Lars was already a Gen 4. Now he was infected by a second strain. Did that mean his powers grew even more? Then there was Ben. A super, a werewolf and now mutated by a Gene Stealer. Madman was a Gen 1 previously and now he was infected with a Gen 4 strain, making him a double Gene Stealer. Who could say the impact Bren’s transformation could have on his clone bodies as well. Was that what Tibia wanted? Would there now be thousands of Bren-clones turned into elephants running around? And what about Mary? Would her psychic powers be enhanced with his mutation? He could feel her jabbing at his brain like she was mauling him with her tusks. Each blow brought him closer and closer to his knees.

He shut his eyes, hot tears streaming out from a mix of anger and sorrow.

“Caleb! Move!”

Rhiannon’s voice jarred him from his stupor. The white-furred Hound of Destruction skidded in front of him, seizing his shoulder and dragging him away. The furious elephants roared and charged but they were attacking something off to the left. The Hound’s illusionary powers at work. She immediately dragged him into a nearby store, smashing through the door and unceremoniously dumping him onto the floor. He winced at the pain. She stood over him, panting, red eyes unreadable. Meeting them was impossible. Shame burned deep in his chest.

“I’m sorry…” he whimpered.

“This would be the best time to give you a speech about not being such a pussy and fighting the odds…” Rhiannon twisted a little to the side, revealing a stray bone projectile sticking out of her shoulder. “But as you can see, I’m infected as well.”

His eyes widened in horror. “What…?”

“It’s through the bones,” she explained, closing one eye as she desperately fought the transformation. “Perhaps some sick take on bone marrow transplant or something.” The Hound grimaced, clutching her arm which was already starting to shed her fur to reveal the grey skin below. “Look, you’ve faced tougher odds before. You can make it through it. You can fight this. Just fight, Caleb. Fight for us. Save us.” She offered him a lopsided grin. “My illusions are going to fade soon… I can already feel Mary scratching my consciousness.” She straightened, fighting to keep a smile on her face. “If you needed any extra motivation to stop us, stop me, then think about this… I’m going to get to fuck your boyfriend before you do.”

Caleb’s jaw dropped open but before he could say anything, she was turning around and charging straight into the fray, screaming her head off. “Rhia!”

He shut his eyes but could only do so for a few seconds. The roar of engine brought his attention to Tibia. The Gene Stealer had boarded his dropship and was already making his retreat. Caleb shook… He bit down on his lower lip, drawing blood. Swallowing his pride, he reached for his phone and immediately hit the speed dial.

“Caleb?” came the voice from the other side.

“I need your help!” he bellowed.

There was a pause from the other side.

“I’m on my way,” Jacob said. There was a sound of rushing footsteps. “You’re at Callista Heights Mall, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s about… 2.7 miles to the north-northeast of my place.”

“I… I don’t know! Jake, Lars, Ben… everyone! They’ve been turned!”

“Calm down, Caleb. Just breathe and count to ten.”

Rhia’s illusions faded the moment she transformed. Mary’s powerful mind found Caleb just a second later and the eyes of the stampeding wild mutants turned towards him. He shut his eyes, curling his legs up against his chest for protection.

“One…” he whispered.

2.7 miles away, Jacob Reaper was on the roof of his apartment building, one paw clutching the phone to his ear. His heart was racing and he prayed he would make it in time. Holding out his other paw to his side, he said, “Sturmspalter.”

“…Two…” came Caleb’s shaky voice from the other side.

Bright, yellow bolts of electricity danced between his fingertips. A peel of thunder erupted around him even if stormclouds were absent. The lightning cascaded from his fingertips all the way to the ground where they coalesced. In a bright, golden flash that had the people down on the streets pause, the bolts coalesced into a huge claymore. The blade itself was almost as wide as his leg, a brilliant white with dazzling yellow bolts emblazoned along its entire length. The pommel and grip was shaped like a brilliant, golden dragon with rubies set as its eyes.

“… Three… Please hurry.”

“I’m almost there,” he assured, lifting the blade as if he would a javelin. He angled it towards the sky, exactly north-northeast.

“… Four… shit… they’re coming at me!”

Jacob gripped the hilt of his blade tightly. “Keep counting.” Lightning danced around him, sparking towards his back and exploding outward into a pair of scintillating wings with membranes made out of electricity.

“Five! Hurry!”

A sound like a machine whirring to life filled the air.

“Six!”

Narrowing his eyes, he adjusted his aim just a little to the left.

“Seven! Shit! They’re almost here!”

“Stay calm, Caleb. I won’t abandon you.”

“Eight! What the fuck are you doing!”

Jacob lifted his chin slightly. “Making an entrance,” he answered gravely.

Without a sound, Jacob hurled the sword into the air, lightning exploding from his fingertips as he did so. There was a second of silence. Then his wings erupted and he was sent hurtling through the air right after the blade.

“Nine!”

Just a fraction of a second behind his blade. That was all it took for him to cross the 2.7 miles to get into the airspace above Callista Heights Mall and catch up with his blade, Sturmspalter. He seized the weapon right out of the air, spun vertically before hurling it straight down, sending it along with a blast of lightning.

“Ten!”

Sturmspalter struck the ground, right where the empty garden stood. The instant it struck, there was an ear-splitting boom. All the glass in the Mall shattered and a shockwave erupted from the impact. The elephants that had just been a few feet from Caleb turned and were pushed back. They were forced to shield their eyes from the blinding flash of cascading lightning. Those too close to the impact were immediately electrified with a thousand volts of otherworldly lightning, enough to cut through their skin and knocked them unconscious. The garden itself was completely shattered. In its place was only gravel, exposed soil and the crackling Sturmspalter. Even Tibia was forced to gawked from where he was retreating, peering through the open rear of the dropship at the sight before him. His confidence wavered. Then he was truly shaken when something black and gold shot straight down before him, following the descending blade. It missed his dropship but for the briefest of moments, he was sure he saw a pair of dark-blue eyes staring straight at him, chilling him to the bone.

In a waterfall of lightning, Jacob Reaper descended after his sword. The pillar of scintillating lightning sent out a second wave of electricity. Those that still managed to remain conscious were immediately knocked out by the second blast. Slowly, deliberately - and admittedly still in a pair of shorts and a white singlet - he stepped out from the crashing lightning like he was just passing through the door. The moment he left, the lightning eased, winking out of existence while leaving a lot of his black fur standing on end.

He gripped the handle of Sturmspalter.

“Damn…” he muttered softly. “That would’ve been an awesome chance to make a hero entrance.” He pulled the blade out of the ground. “You never liked that stuff, did you Vraski?”

Caleb’s heart leapt to his throat and tears of joy burst from his eyes. “Jake! Over here!”

Jacob saw him and dissolved into a burst of twisting ribbons of electricity. The streams shot past all the elephants, landing right in front of Caleb and materialising Reaper there and there. The elephants before him jerked back in shock.

“I’d love to make a witty comment related to electricity but I haven’t had a chance to shower yet.”

Legion swung the claymore through the air. A wave of lightning erupted from the swing, sweeping through the stunned elephants and sending them crashing back, stunned and electrified. As Jacob was finishing the one-handed swing, he released the blade from his grip, letting it fall effortlessly into his other paw. Now ready, he swung again using his other paw. This time, orbs of crackling yellow shot from the blade, intelligent dodging past the shattered windows and slamming into the remaining elephants like they were ghostly wisps.

Callista Heights Mall feel deathly silent.

Caleb couldn’t help himself. He hurled himself at Jacob, hugging the admittedly musky-smelling wolf around the waist.

“Hey, hey,” Jacob soothed, gently petting him between his ears. “It’s okay.”

“No it’s not!” Caleb wept, burying his muzzle into Jacob’s flanks. “I couldn’t do it, Jake! I couldn’t pull out Live Wire because I was scared I might be controlled again! It’s because of me that Lars and the others got turned into… into those!”

“Oh… I see.”

He was expecting some comforting words or some wise analogy that would help him deal with the deep, clawing pain in his chest. Not ‘Oh, I see’. Rage burned in him and he bolted to his feet. “Is that all you have to say!?” he demanded. “My friends, my team just got turned into fucking elephants!”

There was that gentle smile on Jacob’s face again, something that just washed away that anger and left him with that encouraging feeling that made him know he would be okay. “Nothing I say will change how you feel, Caleb. But it’s good that you still feel that way. It’s what separates you from assholes like Tibia who do this sort of thing to people.” He reached out and rested a paw on Caleb’s shoulder. “You’re not some boy scout who will just grin and bear every woe that the world throws at him. You’ll cry. You’ll bleed. You’ll make mistakes. That’s what makes you a hero.”

And yet, despite his opening sentence, Caleb already felt better. “Thanks… and thanks for saving me.”

Jacob shrugged. “It’s what I do.” He turned towards the carnage before him. “It’s just a good thing I didn’t use both hands.”

“What would’ve happened if you did?”

The blonde wolf’s eyes narrowed. “How about I tell you while Tibia is on the receiving end of it…” He glanced up and Caleb followed his gaze.

High in the air, Tibia’s dropship disappeared through a shimmering, blue portal.

“… next time.”