Dauntless and I exited the building from the back door. There were more reporters out there then there were during a White House Press Conference. While, yes, the reporters would swamp us if we ever stopped, it was nice to be able to leave the building without being asked over a hundred questions.
Dauntless turned to me, "Remember the plan."
He handed me a print out of a map of the city. "I marked the spot on the map. You should be able to follow the directions." With those parting words, he shot up into the air.
I looked that the map. It was a little grainy but it would suffice. We were starting our first operation against the E88. Dauntless had the great idea that we would find our first villain by messing with his business. We were after Hookwolf, murderer extreme.
My companion had remembered from our meeting with the villains at Somer's Rock that Hookwolf cared quite a bit about his dog-fighting rings. The plan was simple, we hit one of his rings. Wait for him to show, then get him. Dauntless had told me that before nothing had been down about Hookwolf because he literally turned into a blender and cut anyone that got close to him to ribbons. But in Dauntless' words "you out bruted Lung and an Endbringer, you can take him."
Now I wasn't trying to disagree with him, I just found the thought of a human blender a little strange. So I kept asking about it.
I took a left heading towards the direction Dauntless had laid out for me.
Not ten minutes later I was in the Downtown area. This area and the commercial district were the best-maintained areas in the city. They had not been hit too hard during Leviathan's attack. But as Dauntless told me, even with the clean streets and the pleasant atmosphere if one knew where to look they could find the unsavory side easily.
I stopped before the building indicated on the map to be one of the dogfighting rings.
I didn't look like a hive of crime and villainy. In fact, it looked like a nice place. White-washed walls, tinted windows, and a door that looked quite new.
I raised my hand to chest level and formed the radio that Dauntless had given me. While I could have just kept the radio as it was, it was much easier to just copy it.
I flipped through the channels until I reached channel seven. While not a secure form of communication we weren't too worried about being overheard.
"In position," I spoke into the radio.
Dauntless responded immediately. "Bust the door down in six, meet in the ring."
"Got it. The door is coming down."
I placed my feet firmly against the ground and counted to five before I rushed to the door. I angled my shoulder so that it would hit the door.
The door didn't fly off the hinges, it didn't just break. It was pulverized, my impact turning the door to splinters.
I only had a moment to assess the situation before the guards would recover.
Someone shouted in german. Wasn't that taking the whole Nazi thing a little too far?
There were four guys in the room, and each looked like a bodybuilder. They all had firearms.
It spoke of good training or just itchy trigger fingers that they all opened fire on me at the same time.
I didn't mind the bullets and just tanked them all. They bounced harmlessly against my skin. Courtesy of personal density manipulation.
There was a loud crash from above. Dauntless entering the building. Why did he always go through the roof?
One of the thugs realized that shooting me wasn't working. He tried to run, his eyes wide.
I went for him first.
I sailed through the air after him, he had just reached the door to the other room. My arm reached out, growing unnaturally long. My talon-like fingers wrapped around his neck, he was screaming now. I yanked hard, there was a sickening crack, and I realized that the force had just snapped his spine.
Oops, I thought. Dauntless told me not to kill anyone unless I really had to.
Still holding his limp form I threw the body at one of the other thugs. The body knocked the living thug into the wall.
My other arm extended out, I grabbed another mook by his left ankle and pulled his feet out from under him. He hit the ground with a painful thud.
One guy made it outside and was running down the street screaming things incoherently.
I turned to the last guy. He was huddled up in the corner, his hands covering his eyes. Should I do anything? Nah, not worth my time.
I strode out of the room and into the next.
The next room was empty, a stairwell to the left and shut double doors to the right. Loud shouts could be heard from behind the doors.
I ignored their shouting and sauntered to the doors. I thought about the ways I was going to kill, uh, I mean non-lethally take them out.
The building rocked as Dauntless did something upstairs. Man, that guy, makes it so that I can't have as much fun, then he goes out and destroys buildings.
I raised a leg and kicked the doors. I misjudged the force of the kick and only ended up making a foot sized hole.
Someone was screaming on the other side. I grabbed each side of the hole and literally pulled the door to shreds.
"Fuck!" screamed the guy closest to me. He was large, overly large. And might I add dressed very nicely. My arms reached out, grasping hold of his tie. With a yank, I acquainted his head with the floor.
My other hand spread out creating a wall to my right, effectively allow me to deal with the room at my leisure. Someone shot me with a pistol, it hit me in the chest plinking to the ground. I looked at the deformed bullet on the ground and up at the crowd before me.
They all seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for me to act.
I moved and they all moved, Empire members rushed over each other in an effort to escape. None of them would be fast enough.
Everything moved in slow motion, except for me.
I rushed forward, my elbow connected with a man's back. My palm rode its way up to his back and into his head.
I moved onto the next guy, this time I grabbed an arm and tore it out of his socket in one smooth motion and delivered a swift kick to his ribs.
My arm extended out and tripped the woman, her face hit the ground with a crack. I grabbed a toppled chair and threw it. The chair hit a man, causing him to stumble into someone else.
Gunshots rang out and I could feel them hit my head and shoulders. I watched as a few stray bullets ripped through a woman nearby, staining her white top red. Friendly fire was always bad.
My finger elongated into talons. I pulled concrete from the floor and chucked it at the gunman. It hit him in the face, which turned into something that resembled a crushed grape. It seemed to happen a lot. Oops.
Dauntless crashed through the floor, the rest of the floor above us followed him. The building was caving in on itself. Dauntless just raised his shield protecting him from falling debris. I just stood in one place, perhaps growing just a little bit taller.
The gang members weren't so lucky, being just squishy normals. A man was impaled by a piece of steel rebar, a woman was crushed beneath the rubble. So many others too, some escaped some didn't. I was still for a moment before remembering the people I trapped behind a wall of my flesh.
I waited a moment before pulling myself out of the rubble. Dauntless exploded up, he floated above the destroyed building. He cast his head around surveying the damage.
"Shit," He said, sounding quite distressed, "I did not mean for this to happen. I only hit the pillar in the middle… How many were down here?" he seemed to get more agitated, "How many people did I just kill? This is very bad."
I shrugged, "At least it wasn't my fault this time." I sent out a tendril to the wall, I had thrown up earlier. It connected and I pinged the wall. It was mostly crushed, everyone behind it would have been killed. I mentally shrugged, they were gang members.
"Now what?" I asked. "We just wait?"
Dauntless floated back down to the ground, "Eh, yes." he still seemed upset.
We didn't have to wait long before someone came. It was a limo, a black limo decorated with a lot of wolf motifs. There was a wolf head on the grill, on each fender was a snarling wolf face that also appeared on the sill. Not even the roof was left untouched, a howling wolf decorated the roof.
Out stepped good old Hookwolf, in all his hairy glory.
"Hookwolf!" shouted Dauntless. "Surrender and come peacefully." Dauntless and I both knew that wasn't going to happen.
Hookwolf laughed, "You fuckers couldn't even arrest me before! What changed? Finally grew some balls." Hookwolf laughed again. I could see the beginning of his transformation happening. The metal was rising to the surface of his body, blades, and hooks took the place of skin. "Too bad growing some balls is going to be the end of you." His shoulders hunched and his legs bent backward, his hands became clawed paws. He seemed to shrink while at the same time growing. Before my very eyes, he was becoming a wolf, Hookwolf was literally a werewolf.
Moments later he dropped unto all four, his form was that of a massive wolf, made of metal, and at least triple the size of a normal wolf. His hateful eyes were the only thing that remained of his human form.
There were several ways I could approach this. I could attack as I was, a formless black monstrous nine-foot-tall giant. I could even grow in size and punt him across the bay, but where is the fun in that? No, I would match him, beast to beast. And if my amnesic memory served me correctly, there was one natural predator of the wolf besides humans. Amur Tigers, more commonly known as Siberian Tigers.
The Siberian Tiger is known to not even let wolves exist in their territory. They will go out of their way to make sure there aren't wolves where they live. And so that was what I called upon when I faced the wolf of the empire.
I didn't have the plan in my mental library like that of the human. For this, I just shaped my form to be that of the tiger, scaled up. My hands became paws, massive paws at least a foot across. I dropped to all fours, my face became that of what I wished. Being on all fours felt the same as being on two legs. I didn't feel clumsy or unfamiliar. Like all my forms it felt natural.
Something changed in Hookwolf, I realized, this is what he wants. To meet another, to fight on what he thinks are equal terms.
With a deep roar that I hoped sounded like that of a tiger, I launched my self at the metal wolf.
Hookwolf rose up to meet me. He went for my throat, I went for his body with a swipe of my paw.
The metal wolf's jaws slammed shut around my throat. One of my paws hit him across the body, even with the amount of force in the hit, his jaws remained shut around my throat. I pushed my body against the ground crushing him under me. I felt his jaws loosen so I pulled back, my entire throat and belly area were shreds but I hardly noticed as my regeneration fixed the damage.
Hookwolf moved to get up, but I pounced on him, my mouth clamped shut around his head. Viscously I swung his body around, his legs moved erratically in the air.
The blades and hook in my mouth, cut and shredded my inside but I didn't care, everything I felt was almost superficial. I let go of the metal wolf letting him fly through the air. His body slammed into a building before I could move. He was already moving. He was a silver streak against the dark colors of the pavement.
I moved my paws pulverizing the ground beneath me. My jaws opened wide, ready to snap shut. But Hookwolf was not to be underestimated. He weaved beneath my open jaws and dodged the swipes of my claws. Before I knew it he was on my back, his teeth tearing into my back. I reared up attempting to throw him off, I caught sight of Dauntless. He floated in the air, he seemed to be confused, stuck trying to figure out if he should act or not.
Hookwolf lost his grip on my back, he slid down landing on the ground. I turned quickly, catching him in my jaws. I smashed him into the ground, I did this over and over again. I threw him up into the air and let go. He landed with a thud, spinning around before he leaped for me. He reared back onto my hind legs, a swipe of my paw sent him sprawling into the ground. I moved my other paw, pushing him into the ground. My massive jaws clamped shut around his body. I braced his body against the ground and squeezed.
Even while the wolf squirmed under me, it was silent, save for the squeal of metal as it was crushed in between my jaws.
Finally, after a couple of seconds, I felt a pop, and there was a massive crunch. Liquid pooled out of the wolf's broken body. I let my tendril of inky darkness to spread from my body. They entered the wolf's body, searching. I found it, and mashed pulp of what could only be Hookwolf's body. I went through, copying it, taking it in. I found his brain, and I tried something, I consumed his brain, taking it in as a whole. After a second I felt something being added to my mental library. It was Hookwolf, his body, his power, and his mind. All his thoughts, all his memories were now mine. Every fight he had ever been in, every conversation, and every name and face he ever saw. Dauntless had told me about the unwritten rules, one of them was to never reveal the identity of another cape. But now I knew the identity of every empire cape.
I realized what I was, I was the perfect killing machine. Need to brute force an enemy? Yeah, I could do that. Leviathan was an unbeatable force. I killed him. Need to infiltrate something? I could do that, kill someone, and take their form, I would know what they would say, or do. I knew their thought process. At that moment I could have become a perfect copy of Hookwolf or in his real name Brad Meadows. I could have taken over his life. No one would know… only I would, and Dauntless. That was only because he was there, able to see me.
I let my tendrils slip back into me. My form returned to the shapeless giant form I had been using before becoming a tiger.
'Shit." I swore. This was so messed up.
