Some of Alec's earliest memories were of being helpless, begging and pleading for the mercy that he had once believed in. Once.
In his moments of clarity, when the shift gave him back his heart and yet he was not overwhelmed, Alec reflected on what he had done and how much of it had been driven by a quest for power. To not feel helpless again.
Probably not nearly as much as it had been driven by naïve hedonism and shitty parenting. Still...
As he picked up what felt like a muscled skinhead in each hand and gently bashed them together, Regent realised that he'd lost his train of thought. Something about being helpless? 'Eh, whatever.' A stray bullet stung his thigh and he tossed the limp pair to the ground before turning and groping towards the prick with the gun.
Another bullet scored his cheek and he howled fury and pain and vengeance and remembered that the darkness did piss all to block smells. Scorched propellant and hot metal, easy scents to remember and ones he'd had plenty of opportunities to learn in the last few weeks, both coming from a spot a few degrees to the left or where he'd been going.
Gunfire kept coming, stinging and slicing like a fucked up bee. Regent didn't slow down and he didn't turn away. Instead he sunk his claws into matchstick floorboards and snapped his teeth at the twig bones waiting somewhere in the dark. Jaws slammed together on nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and hot copper and metal and raw meat and shattered bone.
It tasted fucking awful, but a bit of spitting took care of that problem. Meanwhile he got a hand around the fucker's waist and hoisted him up. Pathetic flailing and the stench of piss and shit, of tears and blood. A squeeze and he'd be crushed, another hand and he could be pulled apart, heck even tossing him away hard enough would end a man that should have been able to beat the living shit out a skinny teenage boy. Who was the weak one now?
"Look at him Jean-Paul! Look at him cry like a little bitch!" Screaming and sobbing from the girl spasming on the ground, but the bodybuilder's tears were silent. "You think you're better than me!? You think those muscles mean a shitting thing?!" A handle entered his view, he followed it up to a knife's blade, then further, to a familiar hand. "Even my stupid little brother is enough to cut you up."
Bile rose and he had to fight it down. Drowning in vomit inside a flesh suit was what he deserved -not even close- but there was a job to do and his team were here. Rachel with her hugs and awkward punches, Lisa with her arrogant fumbling attempts at therapy, Brian and his dumb sense of honour and loyalty and family, Taylor...who'd saved him from a hell he'd never known he was in, and a peace he could never know again.
Pawing at his victim's body reassured Regent that he'd just broken the Nazi's arm badly, not bitten it off. Then he put him down and fought, for the thousandth time since he'd first been transformed, to get some control over himself.
How everyone else dealt with feeling so much all the goddamn time was a complete mystery to him.
Leaping blindly towards a smell of sweat and fear, Regent got back to work.
This time he was kinder with his blind attacks. He just broke their legs a little.
As he did it, despite knowing only Grue would hear his growls, Regent sang, "Come here little shitheads. Come heeeere."
A warm thump against his leg proved that coincidences can get weird as fuck sometimes, shortly before Regent scooped up his latest victim and slammed him -no, wait, her- against the floor until she stopped trying to move and settled for just groaning in agony. Which was pathetic, even Regent could keep going with a few cracked ribs. The quality of scummy henchmen was really going to hell these days.
Sniffing for another target, Regent idly pondered how Lacey would do in their place. He was certain she'd be a better henchman...henchwoman? Henchperson? Wait, wasn't man originally the gender neutral form? He remembered something like that from one of those fucking lectures by the bookish library slave that had sometimes patted him on the head after a lesson.
Snatching up another helpless prick and carefully breaking him, Regent wondered if that one had been his mother. He'd never been able to figure out for sure, but she'd been one of the more likely candidates.
Of course she'd also gotten her head blown off during an attack on the compound, so it was weird how much he was crying as he remembered her. What had he been thinking of again? Lacey beating up Nazis? Yeah, that was a fun thought. Lacey would have been a great mom.
'Woah. Where did that come from?'
Pondering his mommy issues shot to the back of Regent's mind as the darkness abruptly vanished. In an instant they were out of the endless void of silence and scent, and back to the shitty overgrown boxing arena full of pitiable moans from shitty people.
Grue growled the all clear.
Rolling the tension out of his shoulders, Regent stood to his full height and took a look around. His team were scattered around the dog fighting ring (now occupied by two very scared dogs, with a huge werewolf stomping down to comfort them with three huge monster dogs trailing her) and surrounded by the injured. Grue was the furthest away, but then he'd probably focused on those that the rest of them were unlikely to reach with scent alone, so it made sense.
Stepping carefully around the broken weapons and almost as broken people, Regent made his way over to Runt. As ever, her height made him chuckle appreciatively. Between their focus on the Empire Eighty Eight, and constant use of Grue's power, it still didn't seem like anyone in the PRT had figured out what was going on. At least the news had yet to announce anything.
Someday though, someday everyone would be able to appreciate the irony of calling someone Runt when Regent had to look up at her while in the form of a werewolf sized for tossing cars at people. Also they'd get to enjoy trying to point a camera at her with the weird fur that had him looking over her shoulder before he'd even realised.
"Growwwwl." Translation: 'How many of 'em did you get?'
"Confusion."
"Bark bark!" Translation: 'We need to improve this code.'
"Confusion."
"Bark woof." Translation: 'Hah, I can call you a dumbass and you can't understand me.'
"Confusion."
Regent kept messing with her, watching out the corner of his eye as Tattletale wandered her eye covered self over to where he was guessing they kept all the money. Grue had hopped down into the fighting pit and was helping Bitch with the dogs. Meanwhile all the Nazis were down and either unconscious or wearing a blanket of darkness. All in all, another easy job.
Even as Tatt's warning howl blended with the hollow boom of splintering wood and the snicksnak of blade against blades, Regent took a moment to curse his big mouth to the lowest pits of the worst hell he'd ever read about. New Jersey.
Lightning sparked along his fur and set his nerves to singing. He focused on the blur of metal that had exploded out of the fighting pit's floor and pinned Grue to the ground. With how much his power had been boosted, he knew instantly that it was useless. Hookwolf had no nerves for him to feel, let alone pump with power until the Nazi had a fit.
Set aback by his failure, Regent was still standing in place when Bitch howled pain and fury and rushed Hookwolf. Dimly he realised that there were a pair of dogs spitted on some of the gladiator's blades, then Bitch hit him with her own dogs right behind her. Or at least, she tried to.
Grace was a strange thing to see in a two storey tall monster made of knives, but there was no other word for how he flowed around and beside her without ever losing his hold on Grue. The floor became kindling, the dog corpses became shredded mince, and Bitch found herself facing empty space and with one of the Bay's most dangerous capes at her back.
Runt hurled herself towards them, but it was Bitch's dogs that saved her. Charging close behind her, they now threatened to take Hookwolf's back and he didn't have the time to seriously wound Bitch. Instead he grabbed a pair of the bone spires sticking out of her back, an awful screech of metal edges on bone filled the arena, and swept her into the air.
She became a club for him to sweep through all three of her dogs before letting go. They tumbled off to the side and he turned his attention to Runt. Which was when Regent realised that he was really really fucking angry.
Everything blurred but the gleaming piece of shit that was standing on his friend. The tunnel vision suited Alec just fine, because he had nothing else worth paying attention to. His leap forward continued the shredding of the floor, craters marking every step as he pushed for more and more speed. A body that weighed several tons accelerated to highway speeds, and leapt.
Not to slam into Hookwolf like Taylor had just tried to do, because Alec knew that he'd just get thrown like she was and like Rachel had been before her. No, he aimed to just barely clear Hookwolf's bulk. So of course the bastard stuck up an arm made of blades to grab him.
'Just as planned motherfucker!'
Alec grabbed the limb with all of his, even wrapping his tail around it. Immediately he began to roar in pain as his flesh was scored and sliced and carved everywhere they touched...but he was still big and heavy and moving very fast. Which meant that Hookwolf found himself yanked off balance before he could retract the limb into his amorphous body.
Trust was a funny thing. Alec was left bleeding everywhere and yelping in pain; sprawled on the floor and helpless. Yet he didn't worry about himself at all, as much as he liked being intact and unharmed and even though he felt so much more fear these days. He'd never trusted his family, but he was starting to trust his pack.
There was a crash like a truck full of silverware hitting an ironworks as Brian swept the legs out from under their enemy and sent him rolling across the floor. Taylor was on Hookwolf in a moment, Rachel right beside her as they swiped at him with blows that could tear through concrete like butter.
Soft growling in his ear, then a relatively slender arm pulled him upright without a care for the way his blood matted down her pretty fur. Lisa stood at his side and watched two werewolves and three giant dogs driving Hookwolf back, every one of her eyes focused on them. They couldn't talk to one another, but Alec knew they had the same thought in mind.
'This isn't going to work.'
He was letting them drive him back, but they weren't actually hurting him. It was like hitting a pile of jelly that kept oozing out more jelly to fill in any gaps. A dense lump of blades pulled him back and they accomplished nothing but smashing the trailing edge of him and trimming the fur on their arms.
Hell, the blood that stained his body couldn't belong to him and they weren't crazy enough to push him back over the areas littered with bodies. They were doing more damage to themselves than to him.
"That's enough. Here!" Brian roared the order and, after a few seconds hesitation, Rachel and Taylor broke away. Alec joined them in crowding around their leader, as did Lisa. All the while Hookwolf pulled himself into a metal wolf that came up to Brian's shoulder.
Their leader didn't look at any of them, even as he patted each of them with one of his bone armoured hands. He didn't look at their wounds, or acknowledge the deep gouges dug into his bone plates where Hookwolf had stood on him. He kept his eyes on the Empire cape, blinking carefully and breathing softly. Each breath spread his scent into the air, until it overpowered even the smell of blood with sweat and leather and resolve.
Alec didn't get it. He itched to move...but Brian was in charge, and that was something he could feel even deeper in his bones than the call to battle. Plus, there wasn't a trace of retreat in Brian's eyes. No, in Grue's eyes.
Gently pushing through them, Grue stood at the fore of their group and continued staring Hookwolf down. The Empire's enforcer wasn't intimidated, forming a wolf's smile out of bloody steel.
"Follow. Me."
Then everything went black. Then Regent understood.
Fur brushed against him, massive footsteps shook the floor beneath him, and Regent fixed his mind on the scent of leather. Then he leant into a four legged sprint and followed Grue into the abyss.
There was no sound of impact, nothing to warn him that it was coming. Just a wall of metal and pain that loomed out of nowhere and dug in against the crash of his shoulder. It barely moved a few feet, and that was fine.
Regent rolled out of the way and followed the scent once more, wondering which of his team had been next in line to hit the fucker.
His world became an empty void. Nothing to guide him but a scent increasingly choked by blood. Nothing to mark time but the crunch of blades breaking and tearing at his flesh. Nothing to comfort him but agony and companions he couldn only sense by smell. Nothing to tell him if it was working at all.
He had nothing, but his friends, and the trust he chose to give them.
It might have been the twelfth hit, it might have been the thousandth, it was the first time he felt the blades yield to him. His heart pounded a battle drum and his spine thrummed to keep tearing at their prey. Regent shoved it all down -ignoring the revelation that he could do such a thing- and rolled out of the way.
Three more hits, and the darkness vanished.
Alec slumped to his knees and tried to ignore the river of blood pouring out of his body. Regeneration had been a focus for all of them, so the fact that he was still bleeding and not just covered in tender lines of pink said a lot about how much punishment they'd taken.
The others were in similar states, even Brian's armour sliced through in places, but Hookwolf was worse than any of them.
Heaving himself upright and strolling past Rachel and Taylor, both of them soothing Rachel's equally injured dogs, Alec found himself standing beside Lisa yet again. They stared down at what was left of Hookwolf and shared as best a laugh as their warped throats could manage.
He was barely the size of a mattress, a meagre puddle of blades amidst the scattered pieces of hundreds of them. Shrunken so much, he could barely move and didn't have the volume to hide his core any more. An ornate cage of metal of which only the outer edges were sharpened. Within was the only part of him that could cut nothing. A heart, beating frantically, made entirely of steel.
Lisa caught his arm before he could snatch it up, then shook her head at him in a pretty clear message about what that would do to the helpless cape.
It was super tempting to do it anyway. Like, suuuuper tempting.
He stayed where he was, looking down at the mighty gladiator even as Lisa went back to robbing the place blind. Even when the others started to carry cages out of some backroom, Alec kept looking right at their foe. All that power, reduced to a puddle of metal. Even if he'd probably recover, this was total victory.
After a while Hookwolf managed to form an eye with which to return the glare, so they could have a proper staring contest. Though it was kind of unfair that the Nazi could make his eye blink red like that. Especially since...Hookwolf was made entirely...of metal...
Feeble struggles didn't do a damn thing to stop Alec plucking the lump of grey plastic out of Hookwolf's beaten body. It was painted metallic, blending in almost perfectly, except for the blinking red light at the base of what definitely looked like an antenna.
"Danger!" He howled, followed by, "Escape" Even as he ran for the exit, the others were surging towards him. He held up the beacon and understanding washed over them. Lisa hefted several heavily-stuffed duffel bags onto her shoulders and Brian snatched up the bag of costume parts they'd left against the wall. Not that Alec caught more than a glimpse of either of them as he sprinted out into a long dark corridor and then dashed for the amber light at one end of it.
He burst through rotten doors onto a dimly lit street, jerking his head desperately back and forth until he saw it. A large white van parked in an alley across the street. Already heavy on it's suspension with all the dog cages he knew would have been stuffed into it already. He was beside it in an instant, only to remember that he was still bigger than it was and therefore could not begin the getaway quite yet.
A wave of weakness brought him to his knees, Alec welcomed it. More specifically, he welcomed the way it withered and weakened his giant form until he felt his actual body again and could start to squirm out of the meat-mecha. They'd planned to follow the van for a while before all of them transformed, but vague memories of the planning sessions that he should maybe possibly have paid more attention to told Alec that their response to incoming reinforcements was to shed the big forms and go for subtlety.
Even they couldn't take the entire Empire head on.
By the time he was free of the prison of flesh and bone there were four more lumps of rapidly shrivelling giant werewolf -and three of giant dog meat- in the alley. He was the first one all the way out, and as tempting as it was to laugh at the others being all naked and covered in the fading meat gunk, Alec was cold as balls and that was marginally more important than mockery.
He hurled himself into the van after grabbing his clothes. Then he cranked the heating to full and struggled to dress without getting out of the passenger seat or acknowledging the horde of barking dogs in the back.
In testament to how much quicker it was to change when not stuck in a small space, despite Alec's headstart he'd yet to button up his shirt when the doors opened and the others tumbled in. Lisa was driving and she got the van moving so quickly that Alec didn't even make fun of her for having left the back zip of her costume open. Plus she was sitting on her tail and that usually put her in a snappy mood.
They pulled out of the alley and set off down the street, still no signs of incoming grunts and flying Nazis. Not that any of them let their guard down.
Unlike the chatter before a job, the escape was silent and filled with each of them glaring out through the windows. All of them searching frantically for any sign of pursuit.
It never came.
Not when the streets began to become occupied enough that they had to change into civvies and hide the inhuman parts of their forms.
Not when the inhabited streets became busy ones, marking their crossing over into Downtown.
Not when the buildings became glass and steel instead of old brick structures.
By the time they passed Brockton Savings and Loans, Alec was almost relaxed enough to point out that they all stank of both blood and wet dog at the same time.
Then the fist of a god smacked into the side of their van and the entire world became fire.