Author's note: ALL ART COMMISSION OFFERS FOR THIS STORY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY DECLINED
...
Toad hopped with Old Loki through the ruins of the Triskelion, seeing dead people in unfamiliar, garish costumes strewn about the crumbling facility.
"I dunno if you know this but I'm Mortimer. Mortimer Toynbee. Most people just call me-" he began to say.
"Toad. Yes. I know who you are. I met my version of you," Old Loki spoke up.
"Oh. Is...is he still alive?"
"No," Old Loki answered.
"Did he die badly?" Toad asked in a quiet voice.
"My Toad probably bought it the most mercifully of any of the Mutants. He died in his sleep of old age, long before this occurred, in a retirement home," Old Loki answered.
"What the heck happened here?" Toad asked.
"The same thing that almost always happens, Mortimer..." Old Loki said, the elderly woman in her green robe clutching her spear a bit tighter as she led him to an open viewport where he saw a ruined, burning, crumbling, yet futuristic city.
Toad winced, seeing thousands of burned-out skeletons in the destroyed streets below...and hundreds of giant forty-foot robots of a mostly purple color scheme with crimson mechanical limbs and humanoid seeming faces, many smashed open or blown apart, and an even more giant example of the same robots with a taller, more elaborate head structure, sitting in a giant seat, a gigantic, burning sword buried deep in its torso. It was slumped in the seat, mostly on fire.
"I had a long time to contemplate how we got to this point," Old Loki said quietly as she stared at the horrifying scene. "But bear with me, most of my observations come from a place of Bias, so take what I say with a grain of salt..."
Loki was silent a moment as she stared out into the ruins.
When she finally began to speak again, her voice was filled with a considerable melancholy.
"Humanity's problem with Mutants I think, was always a symptom of a much larger issue..." Loki began, eyes watering at the sight. "A problem with Superhumans in general. Of the future being superhuman. I think a wide swath of humanity always secretly thought most of these government sponsored super teams were just walking nukes their respective governments were flaunting. Think about it: Willfully weaponizing people with extraordinary abilities, instead of using what you can learn from their abilities to better all Mankind..." Old Loki said with a frown gesturing for him to follow her.
"Constant widespread destruction when they fight one another, with what research you do gain from it leading to new weapons. new viruses, new defenses. But never really good for anything but war. Or at least, anyone with the skill and money to conduct the research willing to use it for anything but war and murder. It's bad enough when you got a sizable collection of one offs or freak accidents...what do you do when men who can bench press a school bus become a regular occurrence in the general populace? Worse, this is happening in a society that was already close to being overwhelmed by the burden of emotional and financial costs from the destruction that ensued from what handfuls of superhumans existed beforehand? Not to mention appearing in a way that didn't match any known rules of evolution at all?"
"Are you saying Mutants are engineered?" Toad asked, frowning as he hopped after her.
"In some Universes, they really are a naturally occurring evolution of Humanity..." Old Loki said, stopping to examine a dead flower, wondering whether this was the first or billionth time she was seeing this dead flower. "In most, they are not. The Celestials worked their will on countless versions of the Human Species across the Multiverse, seeking to evolve it for their own ends. They appointed overseers to their projects to forcibly speed up the process."
"Does that mean my universe's version of Mutants are engineered the same?" Toad asked.
"It's possible, yes. But does it matter? What matters is, if YOU are taking the possibility seriously, that Mutants are the result of potentially malicious engineering on the human genome by a potentially hostile alien force, why wouldn't humanity assume the exact same thing in a lot of instances? Why wouldn't Humanity get anxious about being possibly conquered by a genetic booby trap hidden in their very blood, triggered upon hitting puberty, and potentially killing everyone nearby?" Old Loki asked.
"Humanity would totally freak out at the idea that Mutants are possible evidence of genetic tampering going back millions of years..." Toad breathed in realization. "They'd look at each and every last one as potential Trojan Horse from a hostile presence. And eventually, they'd get suspicious of ANYONE with superhuman powers, never mind just Mutants!"
Old Loki nodded. "So it was with this reality. Like many others, this version of Humanity decided the planet was no longer big enough for Humans and Mutants, or rather, Humans and Humans with Superpowers. In a really dark way, its rather ironic..."
"How?" Toad pondered.
"In so many of these dimensions, Humanity goes out of their way to fight and bring down their version of The Red Skull whenever he first shows. Then, when they create those giant robots you saw outside, the Sentinels, and send them to wipe out almost all the Mutants and later, anybody who could give birth to Mutants and anybody who had any superpowers at all..."
Toad watched Old Loki struggle to hold back tears. Yet her voice never shook once.
"After that, anybody who had the potential to get superpowers, then anybody who dared to criticize them for doing all this, and then finally, even the Sentinels themselves when THEY grew horrified by the slaughter that they had enabled...when so many versions of Humanity do that..."
Old Loki glanced at the dusty skeleton of Susan Storm, still in the tattered remains of her blue jumpsuit.
"They tacitly admit, even if they never outright say it, that they've come to accept The Red Skull's way of viewing the world. That they ought to have not bothered slaying him at all."
They came across a hole in the building. Toad gaped as he saw the moon shattered in orbit above, and the seabed drained completely, with millions of dead sea creatures as far as the eye could see.
"Fittingly, in so many universes where they successfully wipe out the mutants, and everyone who reminds them of one...there is no one left to protect them from the Celestials when they show up to judge Humanity for advancement...and find Humanity completely unworthy of anything but annihilation. Exactly like what happened here...a Celestial showed just as the last remaining eighty million humans were patting themselves on the back atop their ash piles, even as they were FINALLY starting to question if it was worth it...
"What happened to them?" Toad asked in a whisper.
"The Celestial that judged this version of your Earth found this version of Humanity to be especially heinous and despicable..." Old Loki trailed staring sadly at the sight. "So, he cursed them with sterility, molecular immortality, and eventual de-evolution. They shall be forced to wander the earth to the end of its sun, each year they age, lowering their mental faculties, and removing their human features more and more, until they are nothing but beasts, lower than even apes, and finally cursed with only one single, remaining, cognizant thought...that they absolutely deserve this..."
Old Loki sighed. "But even then, that will not be the end of their suffering. Remember when I said they had been given molecular immortality?"
Toad gulped. "Yeah."
Old Loki turned to him. "When the sun finally goes Nova, their bodies will be destroyed...but not their molecules. Their consciousness shall be bound to each one as it is dispersed across the universe, screaming forever in what's left of their minds, but with no one to hear."
"Man, these Celestial fellas like to lay it on thick, don't they?" Toad noted, blood running cold at her answer.
"The Celestials don't operate by our standards of punishment. But even I can't help but admire some of the artfulness of their sentences. In this case, as much as it pains me to admit it...Humanity TOTALLY had it coming. I mean, this reality? They went even crazier than usual trying to wipe out everybody with funny genes. Completely immune to reason. They even scared The Symbiotes of Klyntar away out of sheer disgust. Do you know how difficult it is to make the Symbiotes of Klyntar turn away from an entire race out of disgust?"
"Errrr...no?" Toad answered innocently.
Old Loki huffed. "Trust me, it's pretty difficult. I wouldn't feel sorry for any of the humans you encounter here. All the genuinely decent and good ones are dead," Old Loki concluded. "All that's left here are the worst of the worst, reaping the fruits of their long labor."
She glanced out at the large hole outside, on the sea of dead sea life, the smell of which was mercifully blocked from entry by Old Loki's magic.
"Not that there's much left to reap but suffering..."
"Why am I here? Can it be fixed?" Toad asked sincerely. "Maybe there's some way to at least get you out of here. I mean, I wouldn't even leave Essex to suffer in a place like this."
Old Loki shook her head. "It's kind of you to offer, but I am eternally bound here by necessity."
She continued walking and he followed. They came across skeletons in costumes, and one of the giant Sentinel fingers having crashed through one section.
"This reality was doomed long ago and was never doomed. It exists and does not. It will always exist and never exist at all," she explained. "All that can be done now is to commit to the plan."
"Well, what's the plan? Why am I here?" Toad asked.
"You are here because I need you to steal the Skull of a man named Nate Grey..." Loki said. "I have need of it. It's in the hands of one who must not discover its significance..."
"Who?"
"One of your kind's most vile and hated enemies..." Old Loki said. "A man named William Stryker. Formerly a Television Evangelist."
Toad's eyebrows went up. "How could a Television Evangelist be one of Mutantkind's most deadly enemies?" he questioned, noting the undisguised loathing in her voice at even saying his name, how she spat it out like a curse, fists clenching.
"Remember how I told you I felt most of Humanity instinctively looked at Mutants and other Superhumans as evidence of malicious interference in human DNA? Well, cross that suspicion with intense and sincere faith and you have a man telling millions upon millions worldwide that Mutants are the literal spawn of Satan. You can guess what happened next. His rhetoric was co-opted by each country's own equivalent of Stryker, and the Pogrom was on after that. The Celestial gave him an especially harsh punishment, but one that will not be in your favor," Old Loki answered.
"So, I just gotta nab this Skull and I come back here? Why don't you do it?" Toad asked.
"The Nature of the Celestial's punishment of Stryker means I cannot directly act against him. The second reason is that much of my powers have been diverted to another purpose in this fallen realm. The purpose that enabled you to come here at all. You are not bound by that judgement. Since almost all Mutants are dead in this reality, no one will anticipate your arrival. Also-and I beg your pardon for having to be blunt-since you are so relatively low on the superhuman food chain, anyone out there left who is a legitimate threat will underestimate you," Old Loki explained.
"Combine that with the fact that most of them aren't exactly sane now, haven't had a real genuine fight in years, are suffering various stages of de-evolution, and, perhaps most importantly of all, you have absolutely no history with any of them, which means you won't be frozen by their reputation, what little is left of it. They'll just be another silly jerk in garish rags that were once calling cards and statements of intent."
Old Loki flicked her hand, and a shimmering golden map of what Toad realized was New York City appeared in thin air.
"Getting to Stryker won't be easy. The area between where you are and where he is nothing less than a disaster area. He's in what's left of Avengers Tower...defiling it..." she said as a glowing marker showed at the north end of the shimmering map.
"What's the most immediate danger?" Toad wondered, just trying to focus on what he needed to do to survive, shutting off his Brain at how insane this all was, how insane he was for even attempting it.
"SOMEONE has released hundreds and hundreds of Life Model Decoys of an Assassin named Elektra into the streets for some reason that eludes me. Even I could not tell you from whence they came," Old Loki answered. "There are the natural hazards of course. Collapsed streets, Fires, undetonated munitions. It's not Hell, certainly, but it's quite the primer."
"I'm supposed to just go it alone?" Toad asked.
"Oh, bloody Hela, of course not..." Old Loki scoffed. "You'll have at least some escort a part of the way. And a guide..."
...
Old Loki led him into the remains of the Triskelion's security center, a vast complex of smashed apart yet futuristic looking computers and workstations.
"The world's fate once turned in this place..." Old Loki said. "It will again."
Toad spotted others, an old, bare-chested and bald man wearing the lower half of digital camo pattern fatigues with tattered boots, a crude Bullseye carved into his chest. He had a long, ratty goatee, and gray stubble on his scalp, with an eerie, leering grin that chilled Toad to the bone when he saw it. He was playing with a throwing knife. Next to him was a cannister, with the disconnected head of a purple skinned man with a strange chin that had ridges on it and glowing green eyes.
"This?" The purple head sneered in a baritone that struck Toad almost like that of a bookish academic. "THIS is who you summoned, Loki? A creature of the swamp?"
"I gotta admit, I had my guesses as to who you would bring. Rogers, Parker...perhaps even, if you were feeling adventurous, Murdoch. Oh, that would have been peak irony..." the scarred man said with an oily undertone that screamed sociopath to Toad.
"But this? This is even better..." the old man said, his grin Toad now instinctively recognized as that of an evil man.
"Because now I know, once and for all, that the Multiverse itself has a sense of humor as messed up as mine is..." he chuckled.
"Are you certain, Loki, that the fall of your beloved Avengers has not started to erode your mind? We are to reset our destiny with him?!" the Head in the cannister spat in disbelief. "I'd have been less surprised if you had summoned Stilt-Man. Even Hypno-Hustler, I wouldn't blink at. But Toynbee?"
"You were once skeptical that anyone could take your head, Thanos. How'd that work out for you?" Old Loki questioned.
"I wouldn't be too quick to take credit for the work done by Mister Wagner," Thanos replied clinically.
"Who do you think put him in range of you to make your body go Auf Wiedersehen?" Old Loki asked in just as clinical a tone.
"At the cost of his own life," Thanos replied quietly, coldly.
Old Loki only had this in reply to say; "Anytime you want out, Thanos, just tell me. I'm sure I can find a good place for you on my shelf, by the books, where there is a window to look outside."
Thanos was silent a few seconds. "I'm in. But I question your objectivity and decision making. Severely."
"As is your right. And as is my right to ignore your questioning," Old Loki replied. "You're going to be his advisor. Poindexter will take you to the first part of your journey, Mortimer."
"I thought you said all the humans were De-volving..." Toad said, looking at the eerie scarred man.
"Benjamin Poindexter is not human," Old Loki answered.
"As your advisor, Mister Toynbee, take my advice..." the head of Thanos said acidly. "When it comes to Poindexter, that phrase is true on multiple levels."
"He has an X-Gene. One of the last Human Mutants on Earth," Old Loki said with a touch of distaste as she looked at him.
"It's amazing no one ever put it together until the Sentinels started hunting him years and years after they had already gotten almost everyone else. Guess whatever he was using to block the X-Gene from getting detected stopped working. Not that he's ever graced us with the secret," Old Loki added idly.
"In retrospect, it really should have been obvious," Thanos mused. "I'm ashamed I, myself, didn't catch on to it until it was pointed out. Being able to throw nearly any handheld object with near perfect accuracy and lethal velocity? How could someone like the infamous Bullseye NOT be a Mutant or at least a Mutate?"
"The one target I made sure people didn't know about for decades. Ah hell, I suppose it couldn't last forever," Bullseye lamented. "Though at least I finally brought down Murdoch before I was discovered."
Then he stared at Loki and grinned. "Which reminds me...you ARE going to keep our deal, right?"
"Yes, Poindexter. I'll keep it. I never break my word..." Old Loki assured.
She turned back to Toad. "There is one additional complication. A giant metal barrier surrounds Avengers tower blocking all the entrances. And it's been electrified. So, you'll need to make a stop to someone's...hovel, before you can go to the tower proper. He's the only one who can get you past it."
"Who am I picking up?" Toad asked.
"The last human Mutant on Earth besides Poindexter..." Old Loki answered. "Be constantly on your guard. Even the journey towards him shall be dangerous. You also need something to protect you..."
Old Loki led Toad to a man-sized Cylinder that had a strange green jumpsuit contained inside it.
"The last of Doctor Richard's Unstable Molecule Suits," Old Loki said. "More than enough to help you face what's out there."
She opened up the container with an emergency hatch and removed it off its stand, handing it to him, along with a special gas mask.
"The air outside is polluted," she added. "If you haven't been here a while, it can reduce you to coughing fits."
Toad nodded and went to find somewhere private to change. A few minutes later, he came out dressed in the strange, yet flexible armor.
"Amazing, even at the end of the world you still look like a damn frog..." Thanos sneered.
"At least he don't look like a head in a jar," Bullseye joked cruelly.
"Better a head in a Jar than a Mutant with no one left to actually enjoy taking the life of," Thanos mocked right back.
"Say, Thanos, your girlfriend must be having a field day! Think she'll finally reply to your texts? Heck, maybe we'll actually run into her out here!" Bullseye quipped, though the joke was lost on Mortimer. Old Loki seemed to cover her mouth a bit, too polite to burst into laughter.
"I'd crush your skull, Bullseye, but I don't have any arms," Thanos replied in a snarl.
"Oh, that's okay, mate..." Bullseye joked, pulling out an ace of spades playing card from his pants pocket.
"I got arms a plenty for both of us..."
"Enough," Old Loki commanded, tired of their posturing. "We're wasting valuable time. The time to be at each other's throats has passed. Remember what you stand to gain."
Bullseye looked at Old Loki and smiled.
"Whatever you say, Hot Stuff," he replied with a leering grin that made her actively recoil in disgust.
Thanos made a face like he wanted to puke.
Old Loki turned to Toad. "You'd better get going, Mortimer."
...
Toad carried the living head of Thanos in a crude belt attached to his green, unstable molecule jumpsuit, Bullseye following close behind in the Triskelion Garage section, partly collapsed in on itself from what looked like missile strikes. Bullseye carried a crude bag full of unfamiliar looking gadgets and directed Toad to a shattered gate, wearing his gas mask.
"So, what's your story, Thanos?" Toad asked as he hopped out of the large exit ramp.
"I'm what happens when someone takes your advice to go for the head the first time," Thanos answered grimly.
"Heh heh, poor ol' Thanos..." Bullseye mocked the living head cruelly as he followed Toad. "He never thought anybody would actually do it."
"What about you?" Toad asked Bullseye.
"Assassin. Enjoyed it too much for my own good, it turns out, heh heh heh..." Bullseye chuckled in a way that made Toad's skin crawl.
"Not that I got any regrets, mind you..." Bullseye added as he twirled an old forty-four magnum pistol.
"Huh," Toad muttered, putting on his gas mask. "So why are you helping Loki? No offense, Mister Bullseye sir, but you sound like one of the people responsible...for all this..."
"None taken! And I am!" Bullseye laughed cruelly as they moved through shattered, death filled streets with skeletons.
"But see, well...the tumors aren't getting any better, and I WILL be dead in a month. So, I found the old bat and I said, 'Let's make a deal!'" Bullseye explained jovially.
"Well, as it turns out, Loki wasn't stupid enough to bring Poindexter back to full health," Thanos added with a cold sneer in Bullseye's direction. "And she certainly wasn't stupid enough to bring ME back to full health either. She proposed an alternative..."
"We get recreated in the reality you come from..." Bullseye chimed in, head darting around for strange sounds.
The more Toad stared at the hellish landscape, the more horrified he grew by the evidence of absolute carnage taking place. He imagined if he took off his mask he would barf. Heck, even WITH the mask, he wanted to barf.
The most unsettling thing was how quiet it was. It would have scared him less had he heard the occasional gunshot, or the sound of artillery. But no. Just...stillness. Dead air. Dead land.
It's what made the presence of an actual sound terrifying. A whistle flew past his head, and he jumped back as a jet of some strange gas exited a fissure that soon caught fire. Whatever it was, it was flammable. He saw meteorites falling from the red sky occasionally.
"Try not to do too much backflipping. I get dizzy," the head of Thanos complained.
"I love this place!" Bullseye chuckled. "Been a friggin' Metal Album Cover the last decade or so!"
Toad was MUCH more cautious than he otherwise would have been as he kept hopping forward, now jittery for more unexpected surprises, hopping past mountains of dead skeletons with mutated birds flying over them.
A glint of red caught his eye, and he hopped over to a crater filled with a absolutely gargantuan pile of those shattered giant robots he kept seeing everywhere, crashed into buildings, now surrounding a corpse that had a large deep hole just off the center of the crater. The same glint of red on the corpse's skull drew his attention, and he hopped into the crater, going to the center and came across a skeleton in a shredded dark blue costume of some kind. But the visor it wore looked only slightly scratched and scuffed. The lens array looked completely intact. He delicately took the visor off and examined it.
"This visor..." Toad trailed, stomach twisting as he realized who it belonged to. "It's Cyclops, isn't it?"
"The one and only..." Thanos confirmed. "He wasn't the last one standing, mind you. But he was the last one fighting. Long after the others had completely given up. After even Spider-Man had given up."
"Took over a hundred Sentinels to bring him down...what a lad!" Bullseye gushed, with a sweeping gesture to the devastation around him.
"But not before he messed up the planet by firing his eye beams right into the Earth's core as a final spite to Humanity. Why do you think the atmosphere is like this? Why do you think all the sea life is dead?" Bullseye asked.
He spat on the now visorless skull.
"Killed more people in one day with a single shot than I have in my whole career. Downright jealous of him..." Bullseye admitted ruefully.
Toad pocketed the slim visor after inspecting it, growing quietly more horrified with this nightmare world he had entered.
They continued on their journey soon after.
"This guy we're going to get. Who is he?" Toad asked.
"Erik Lensherr," Thanos answered, like it was supposed to mean something to Toad. It didn't.
"Who?" Toad asked.
"You haven't met him yet on your end? Shoot. Spoiler alert!" Bullseye quipped, leaping over a large fissure in the broken street.
A disturbing, ape like roar caught Toad's ear as he cleared the fissure, and Toad's head snapped in the direction of a bunch of horrible, unnatural, chimpanzee like monsters with bulging, incorrect proportions in shredded civilian, or military clothes bounding over a hill of skulls and shattered robots.
There were hundreds of them, half crazed, some muttering unintelligible gibberish or animal snarls as they came in the hundreds.
"Run," Thanos said to them all.
Toad and Bullseye ran and jumped for their lives, Bullseye occasionally flinging playing cards into the skulls of the abominations that managed to get closer than he liked. Toad was in a blind terror as he ran and jumped for his life, the ape creatures keeping pace with both of them.
"They're trying to corral us!" Bullseye yelled, pointing to the remains of a triangular building that had the faded, rusted sign that read DAILY BUGLE in bronze.
"We're dead if we stay in the open! GET INSIDE!" Bullseye snapped as he ran for it.
Toad hopped after him, the roars of the ape creatures that had clearly once been human beings distressingly close.
They barely got passed the entrance before Toad slammed the door shut, ripped off his mask, and fired a large glop of mucus at the door in a sort of "emergency weld".
"That won't hold them for long. Follow me, up the elevator shaft!" Bullseye yelled running for a damaged elevator that was open but clearly out of alignment with its shaft. He immediately opened the service hatch and climbed up it, with Toad following soon after.
"The wheel grease!" Bullseye hissed as Toad closed the hatch on the out of alignment shaft, firing another gob of mucus as an emergency seal.
"There's still some on here. Quick, rub yourself in it! It'll disguise your scent!" Bullseye hissed.
Toad frantically took what little oil still remained from one of the drive mechanisms and rubbed it on his arms and chest like Bullseye showed him. He went deathly quiet as he heard the front entrance violently broken open, followed by the roars of the ape creatures as they got close to the elevator. Bullseye leveled his gun at the mucus covered hatch as he heard one pounding around in the elevator cabin. Thanos had a look of pure terror on his face that matched Toad's.
After a minute, they heard the creatures start to disperse. But they weren't stupid. The creatures were not fleeing, merely spreading out through the building to conduct the search.
"We can't stay here forever. Eventually, one's of those beasts will get wise and check here..." Thanos whispered.
"We can't go back down. The Mucus covering that hatch is like quick drying industrial glue!" Toad whispered.
"We go up then, Toynbee," Bullseye replied. You go first. You're young..."
As they climbed a service ladder in the shaft, Toad heard Bullseye start coughing violently.
"Dude, we DO NOT need that right now!" Toad snapped, albeit in a hiss.
"Can't exactly help it, Swampy," Bullseye coughed. "It's the air...plays havoc with the tumors in my lungs..."
"Heh..." Thanos chuckled.
"You got something you wanna say, Cranium?!" Bullseye seethed.
"Oh, nothing. It's just gonna be funny if this is how you die, gasping for air," Thanos replied. "Best shot in the world...as long as you don't make him run too fast. Or climb stairs."
"At least I can still do both. You can't even clap," Bullseye shot back. "Never mind snapping your fingers."
"Even you once ran at the sight of me, Bullseye. When it was just me. No Infinity Gems," Thanos rejoined quietly. "As long as you have left to live, never forget that."
"At least I won't die ignored after snapping half the universe away. All that bloodshed, and she STILL didn't pay attention to you..." Bullseye taunted.
"You're making too much noise!" Toad protested quietly in a panic as he climbed the shaft to an open elevator door on the third level, and he crawled into a dusty level of office cubicles, the floor strewn with skeletons. Far off, he heard the roar of an Ape Creature as Bullseye got out of the elevator shaft.
"Keep your head down..." Bullseye ordered as he moved between the cubicles. "Kick up dust if they get close. Noses are sensitive. Devolves into fits of sneezing."
"Where are we going?" Toad asked as he followed Bullseye.
"To the only safe place in this whole building..." Bullseye whispered back. "Set it up here a while back. Not much, but it will by us some breathing room until these things go away..."
Bullseye led Toad into an office with the name of its former owner emblazoned on the plaque next to the armored-up door: J. JONAH JAMESON, CHIEF EDITOR.
The slipped quietly inside, and Toad saw armored shutters over all the windows.
"Been out this way a couple of times before. Daily Bugle is one of the only landmarks I still recognize..." Bullseye explained as he set his gun on the empty, scratched up desk. Toad quietly put Thanos on the desk as well...
"Thank you. Another moment of jangling like keys and I would have gone crazy..." Thanos said.
Bullseye went quiet as they heard roars outside the office. They all did."
"Will that door hold?" Toad whispered
"Long enough for me to funnel them in if they break it..." Bullseye answered, pulling out a primitive, double barrel break action sawn off shotgun from underneath Jonah's desk, inspecting it, before loading ammo into it.
There was sudden, violent pounding on the door, and Toad jumped back.
The pounding from the ape creatures outside steadily grew worse...