"Fuck me, man," Jerry started as he caught himself just before he scratched at that new tattoo on his arm without thinking about it. Fucker was itchy, and he needed a distraction or something. That was all. "Hookwolf is a creepy motherfucker, ain't he?"

That he had something to think about other than the dozens of beady, glass eyes following him all around the room while he was on patrol was just a bonus. He wasn't scared. Fuck you. Just a little jumpy was all.

"Jerry. Dude. You need to watch your mouth." Billy, Jerry's partner, had no idea how just close he'd come to getting his head blown off right then, if only because he was looking at the ceiling for some reason. Billy had always been a weird one. "You keep talking like that and someone—"

"Fucking snitch," Jerry muttered instinctively.

"—might decide that Hookwolf needs to hear it." Billy shrugged. "Not saying it'd be me. Just saying that you probably wouldn't do too good if you got in the ring with the guy."

"Fuck you."

"... Whatever, man. It's your skin." Billy gave Jerry another shrug before wandering off to the other end of the room to look at a different half of Hookwolf's collection of creepy shit, forcing Jerry to shake his head at his back.

How someone that laid back and easy going had made it into the Empire he would never know. Fuck, he wasn't even sure if the guy hated the Jews and the Spics or not, and had just joined the Empire because he'd walked into one of the meetings by accident.

Fucking weird.

After thinking on whether or not he'd ever heard Billy say even a harsh word about anyone, ever, Jerry gave it up and started doing his job. Peering into every shadow, nook, and hidey-hole as he worked his way through the trophy room...and when he meant every shadow, he meant every shadow.

Hookwolf could afford to bring in all these exotic animals for him to fight and kill in the ring but, apparently, it was too damn much to replace the fucking lights in here. They could still see with the table lamps and shit that Joe had brought in, but that still left far too many blind spots for anyone's liking.

His eyes glanced around. Probably more than was normal, but fuck it. He really didn't like blind spots. Especially after some of the higher-ups decided to try and disappear that newest subhuman. The green one… In public. While fucking Glory Girl was nearby. He had been jumping at his own shadow since, just waiting to be put into the fucking hospital by Collateral Damage Barbie.

Of course, no one had told him that was a thing he had to worry about until he'd already got the fucking ink. He had a cousin that Glory Girl had cornered once. The stories he told about her and that fucking healer bitch that followed her around gave a man chills… Having your legs spin around and back into place after they'd been broken was some sick shit.

He started to round the corner when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something. Something that didn't belong and had him pivoting on his heels as he lifted his rifle.

A box. A fucking box. He knew for a goddamn fact that there wasn't a goddamn fridge box just sitting there in the corner the last time he'd looked. Especially one that was perfectly upright with holes to see out of, and a trail of disturbed dust behind it.

He'd played video games before. He knew how this shit worked. No walking around in circles and following the footprints here, no sir.

He slowly and carefully stepped towards it, keeping a bead trained on the box the entire time. He could almost pretend that his hands weren't shaking when, after some waving, Billy saw him and hefted his gun as well. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, the blood rushing in his ears. That rush that came with every fight he'd ever got into, but tenfold.

Once he was close enough, he stopped. Gave Billy a nod and, after checking his footing and the chances he might shoot himself by accident, finding them good, he kicked the box with a shout, flipping the whole thing over as he got his gun back up...and the box collapsed. Into pieces, sharp and clean that he could, even in the dim light, tell had been done by a box cutter, even as he gave the mess a nudge with his foot...and remembered what day it was.

"Scared the shit out of me, Jerry." Billy exhaled loudly while the other male gave him the finger. "Fucking shit, dude."

The box had been just a box. They'd replaced one of the fridges today. The one in the security room, which really wasn't all that far from the trophy room. Someone probably took the fridge box out of the way to cut it up before the shifts changed and didn't get the chance to finish. That made perfect sense.

Jerry couldn't help but chuckle at that as he flipped the safety back on. This room was getting to him, all the fucking tigers and wolves and bears and shit. That was all. Shit man, if he'd actually shot that box, the chewing out he would have got would have been fucking legendary.

Then, with a loud klonk and a thud, all that tension came racing back.

"Billy! The fuck are you doing!?" He yelled out with actual anger in his voice as he made towards where his partner had gone. For all that talk about not snitching on him for what he said, if Billy somehow damaged one of Hookwolf's trophies or something, Jerry would rat him out in a goddamn second. "You fucking jackass!"

Hookwolf might actually skin and stuff the person who did that as a replacement trophy. Jerry didn't doubt that at all. There was probably a person in here somewhere, if he looked around long enough. Not that he would.

That glass eye shit was disturbing as a motherfucker on an animal. On a person...that was a thought to keep him up at night.

"Billy!" he shouted again, starting to get worried as he power walked over, stepping around trophy after trophy in the same way someone would step around a landmine. "The fuck are you, Billy! This shit isn't funny, you dumb motherfucker! If I find out you're playing with me, I'm going to kick your ass until you get brain—"

With the sound of broken plastic and the feel of something sharp under his boots, Jerry looked down, and felt his heart drop into his stomach. Underneath his boot was Billy's radio, broken. The one assigned to the pair of them, all yellow and shit with sparkles.

Once again, Billy was fucking weird.

He didn't think about it then. It wasn't even a conscious thought on his part. One moment he was looking at the radio, the other he was bolting for the nearest door and fumbling for his radio. A radio he dropped, and didn't go back for as he cleared the room and started working at the doorknob as his gun in hand...and then he was done.

A giant, furry mitt had slapped down onto his shoulder, grasping him in an iron vice. A hold that broke his bones as easily as his foot had broken the radio as another hand slapped across his mouth and he was turned around...and he realized something. Had one, last thought as he started to grey out from the pain that was his other shoulder getting ground into powder as he looked at the hill of fur that had him.

Hookwolf had a stuffed Black bear. He had a stuffed Grizzly bear. He had a Stuffed Polar bear. He even had a stuffed Honey bear, and damn if he wasn't proud of that one...but he didn't have a stuffed Panda bear.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

I have no idea how I'd pulled that off. Like… Holy fuck. I'd literally followed these two assholes around for, at least, the last ten minutes and they hadn't noticed a thing before I'd broken all their joints. I could understand that it might have just been a case of 'missing the forest for the trees'...but I didn't even look all that good. I'd just found an ill-fitting giant panda outfit and put it on before standing with the rest of the animals, just to see if it would work.

At this point, I was just wearing this thing as a bad attempt at plausible deniability...and a good attempt at laughs... I was easily amused. That was all.

After making sure that my current victim wasn't going anywhere, both because he was unconscious and because he didn't have working kneecaps or shoulders, I broke his radio. Stood up to my full height, or as far as I could go without tearing the suit...and slipped into a nearby closet as soon as I heard footsteps… It was only after I'd already done that that I considered that maybe, just maybe, I should have brought him with me. He was kinda obvious, all out in the open like that.

Look. I was new to this stealth thing. I was so big that I had, literally, been mistaken for a stuffed bear just now. I was doing a lot better than I should have been, alright...? Anyway, as soon as I heard that walking stop, then turn into a run, I knew what I had to do.

I forced the closet door open, just as they started to run by me...and I wasn't gentle about it. Neither were they, seeing how the door just about shattered on impact, leading to whoever it was (not that I actually cared or anything) ending up sprawled out on the floor on their back. Surrounded by shards of wood and with a with most likely broken nose before I was upon them. Both shoulders, both knees. A karate chop or a squeeze to each part and a trio of bodies being forced into a closet later, and I was off into the main part of the building, ready to see how far I could milk this before someone figured I wasn't what I seemed to be.

Personally, I expected it to take a while. But, what did I know? It wasn't like the levels of perceptiveness and caution that I'd seen so far had been wanting or anything—

Seeing no closets nearby the second time I heard footsteps, I just froze. Opened the costume's mouth as far as it could go, hunched over, and held my arms up high in a threatening manner. You know, like you'd expect a taxidermied bear to do...and another pair of skinheads, a lot more grizzled looking than the last two, walked right past me without even blinking an eye.

—but you'd think that a central depot in 88 territory would be better taken care of. Once again though, what did I know? I was just the guy knocking the place over, not the head of security.

After putting the two of them down without even a scream, at most a grunt when I dropped a fist on the top of their heads… I started dragging them along. Either to find a closet or to use them as bait, whichever came first… Which sounded really disturbing, once I thought about it. I'd probably played a little too much 'Manhunt' when I was younger or something… Nah. Crazy talk.

I was just pissed off and dealing with some serious shit at the moment. Not a psychotic, even if the whole cosplay thing was a little...off. So far, from what I could tell, I hadn't killed anyone here. Just made it so that they'd never play sports again or go through a rainy day without complaining about their aching bones...less than they deserved, considering that whole genocide thing...but anything worse was more than I was willing to do when it wasn't in the heat of the moment or in self-defense.

… I tried not to think too hard about what I'd done to Stormtiger and Victor, personally, just like I preferred not to think of lots of things. I had no idea if they were dead or not, but I wouldn't be all that surprised after what I'd done to them or all that sad about it. Was going to have to talk to the girls though and see how they were holding up, of course, but I thought I was doing fine as I was on that point. Traumatic or not. Probably part of being an Orc. Probably. Couldn't say.

What was getting to me right then though, more than the possibility of accidental manslaughter, was that I'd had sex with both of the Dallon sisters...and the very thought of how it had come to be had me breaking out in a cold sweat in my ultra-thick padded suit.

I was a nice guy, yeah, but I wasn't perfect. I'd never thought I was, and nothing had changed on that point. I was big, green, and muscly, but I was still the same guy...and, even if I had done okay for myself before (ignoring Melinda), I knew that there was something off. I wasn't the sort of guy that all the girls wanted to have, let alone the sort of guy that fucked a pair of sisters within minutes of each other while they were in the same room and got away with it...and god if that didn't make me sound like an asshole.

After stuffing the pair of Empire goons into a random bathroom stall, girls only, I continued on with my normal way of doing things. Hugging the wall, tip-toeing, and half-heartedly listening for boots on the tile while I got all introspective.

Anyway, there was some seriously whacky shit going on with me...and I was starting to consider my options here. Like, fuck. Was I mastering these girls into having sex with me? Was there something in the way I looked, how I smelled, how I did my hair? Was it a universal Worm rule that orcs were the sexiest fucking thing on the block? I didn't fucking know...and the thought that the girls didn't like me for me hit me somewhere real fucking tender.

I had feelings and stuff. Enough of them to fill a bucket even, instead of the standard issue spoon...and damn if that didn't hurt right now… Oh, well. Time to bury all that stuff under man/orckind's favorite pastime, violence, until I couldn't ignore it anymore. In a couple of hours. In private. Like a man. Yep.

I sighed and started working my fingers under the suit, almost content when I found myself in front of another door. Not wood. Not even plywood. Metal and, possibly, as thick as one of my nails from the top to the bottom. The sort of door you'd expect to see on a vault. The sort of door that you just knew had all the best kinds of stuff inside. Things like...like drugs. Drugs, money, and Nazi gold. All the things, except the drugs, that a girl liked to get, just before I asked them some really hard questions.

Just before I put my fist through it or, at least, tried to, I was forced to pause as soon as I heard something. The voice of the man that had been haunting my every waking moment, since I'd seen Lisa bleeding out on the carpet of our house.

"The Empire is in need of manpower, Johnson," Max Anders stated loudly, pretty much yelling actually, leading to his voice coming through amazingly clearly through the vents as he did so. "Has she been receptive to our advances so far?"

The only thing that kept me from punching my way into the room was the obviously tinny sound of his voice. He wasn't here. Probably a video conference… I'd just have to wait for another time. Until then though, it was time to gather intelligence.

"No, sir. Not at all, sir," Another man, assumedly Johnson, answered. "When some of the men came around to give her a talk-"

"A talk?" Max snapped.

"Yes, sir," Johnson continued without even missing a beat. "The normal recruitment pitch. Not the hard sell, as per your orders. She still threw them out on their asses. Didn't even let them get to the benefits package, sir."

If anything sounded ominous, that was it…and damn if the pronoun game wasn't just as annoying in real life as it was in the movies. Who was 'her'...? Another thing to ask Lisa when I got back, I supposed.

"... I see." Max said after a long pause. "Next time you try, I'll make sure that Cricket and Hookwolf are there to help you roll out the carpet for them…" Another pause. "Why do I hear an echo while I'm talking to you?"

"... You're on speakerphone, sir."

This time, the pause stretched for what felt like forever. Long enough that even I was starting to feel awkward, and I wasn't even the one that had fucked up.

"Are you telling me that, for the last ten minutes, you've been letting me broadcast actual business to anyone who could hear us...and that it never occurred to you that I might have wanted you to show some discretion?"

"Well, sir… I've heard that, if you hold a cell phone up to your head for too long, you can get brain cancer, and-"

"I'll be seeing you soon, Johnson. Don't you fucking move." Was the last thing Max said before, with the slamming noise of a phone being put down way too goddamn hard, he quit the conversation.

"Oh, fuck me with a rake… I'm so screwed."

… Well. If that wasn't an invitation to do something extremely painful and possibly violating to his person, I didn't know what was.

When he came out of the room, his face red and sweat pouring down his face, the first thing he saw, besides the nine-foot-tall panda bear, dotted with blood all along it's front, was the notepad. The notepad that said one thing, and one thing only.

"Did someone ask for a rake?"

"OH FUCK ME, NO!"

That was never going to get old, was it?

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"You know what I just realized, girls?" Lisa asked, her head hanging back over the edge of the couch as she watched TV with her fellow members of...whatever it was they were members of. God damn it. Why was this so hard? "We have sinned. Not just sinned. Super sinned."

"... Is polygamy a sin? Or is it the whole thing where we are all pregnant out of wedlock, or whatever?" Victoria asked seriously. "I don't really go to church, so…"

"No. Well, yes, that last one is, technically, a sin. But no. Worse. In fact, you did it just now," Lisa replied, just as seriously. Seriously enough that Amy, who had been ignoring them so far in a snit after Lisa had choked up a ball of slime all over her plate, looked up from her book and gave Lisa a look. "Girls...we've failed the Bechdel Test."

Victoria blinked. "The what?"

"Lisa is saying that, whenever we get together, we talk about a man. Dean, Moss, whatever. Even if indirectly." Amy snapped her book shut and spoke up before Lisa could, just to spite her, the bitch. Made her drop a cup size, and now this? "And she's right. We're always talking about them. We've failed the gender equality test. Our book sucks, and so does the movie it's based on."

Victoria's brow furrowed as she thought on it...and then her eyes shot open wide as she realized that it was true. Pretty much everything they talked about and did involved a man at some point or another...and how there was something wrong there. "Holy shit."

"Uh-huh. It's a trip, ain't it?" Lisa nodded. "So, who wants to talk about their Non-Moss related hopes and dreams first? Not it."

"Not it," Amy said right after, leaving Victoria holding the bag...and she didn't look happy about it at all.

"You guys suck," Vicky murmured, ignoring their chuckles as she cleared her throat. Then cleared it again, before she looked up at the ceiling and started playing with her hair. "Alright...it's nothing big though. Kind of whatever, actually. Boring, really..."

"Still want to hear it anyway."

"... Honestly? I just want to go to college. All the way. I'm already taking classes as is." Victoria admitted, visibly embarrassed as she did so. "I want to get a degree in something, don't know what, but a degree. A BA at least. I want to graduate, with my family there to cheer me on when I do it." She shrugged listlessly. "I know I'm hot and super strong...but I don't want to be that 'airhead' on PHO forever, you know?"

"Yeah. I get you." Lisa blinked quickly, her voice tight as she caught onto what Victoria hadn't said… Going to college implied that she'd still be alive to go there at all. That everyone would… A lot deeper than she'd been expecting, definitely, but okay. "And that isn't a bad dream at all. Nice."

"Thanks," Victoria acknowledged before she turned on Amy with a speed that caught the brunette visibly off guard. "Your turn, Ames."

Amy, instead of answering promptly, flicked her eyes between her sister and Lisa. Then, with another flicker, she looked down at her hands with a frown. "Don't really have anything I want right now… Nothing solid," she said as she started playing with her fingers, rubbing at a light yellow stain on her right index that just didn't want to come out. "My own house would be a good start. Otherwise, I'm good at the moment."

… Lisa didn't even want to get into that one. She was going to have to though, eventually, and Brandish, Carol or whatever, had a lot to answer for…and why was Lisa the well-adjusted one here?

"And I thought I was boring." Vicky gave her sister a friendly thump on the shoulder with a huff, seemingly oblivious to the undertones of what Amy had just said before she, at last, turned on Lisa. "What about you?"

Lisa, taking a page out of Amy's playbook, paused. Just for suspense, really. She already had her reply ready. "Alright. Now bear with me."

"Bearing," Amy piped up as she reached for her, actual, book again.

"But, when I grow up, all big and strong cuz, you know, I eat my Wheaties... I want to be rich, powerful, and with an army of mercenaries at my beck and call. And a wardrobe made of nothing but shoes. That too. Nothing big. Just what everyone wants."

Amy snorted as Victoria choked on her own spit.

"Which reminds me…" Lisa slowly slid down to the floor, back first. Just because she could. "I know some guys that could use some assimilating. You guys up to a field trip later? For intimidation reasons?"

Amy, after she realized that Lisa might have been serious and stopped laughing, threw her hands up in the air. "I fucking guess."

Victoria, still coughing and getting increasingly redder, just nodded.

"Good talk, guys. I really feel like we're connecting."

"Oh, shut up."

"And there it is!"