OSSIS
ADAM
Derek and Akane were waiting for Adam when he got out of class. They both looked somber, which was surprising. All things considered, he had always found it interesting how well they handled their responsibilities.
“Who died?” Adam asked jokingly, and immediately regretted it. In this city, that was a very real possibility.
But Derek smiled a little. “Nobody. It's just...” he hesitated. “Nothing. Don't worry about it.”
Wonderful. Now they were keeping secrets.
Well, he wasn't really concerned. They'd tell him or they wouldn't, and nothing he said would change their minds.
“You ready to go?” he asked. He already had his guns with him, so he didn't need anything else.
Derek nodded. “Yeah, we are. And the gargant is just a block south of school, so we can walk.”
They started in that direction. “Is anyone else coming?”
Derek shook his head. “The retinue is a little busy, and I don't really want to deal with Ling right now. Besides, it's a brick-plated gargant. They're tough, but slow and not very dangerous.”
Adam adjusted his backpack over his shoulder. “I thought you said all gargants were dangerous.”
“Not very dangerous for a gargant,” he amended. “Keep your guard up and we'll be fine.”
Adam shrugged. Seemed simple enough.
They caught the creature's trail easily. Derek was right, it wasn't really doing very much damage. A lot of smashed shop windows, a few pummeled cars, but no bodies. People knew to stay out of the way, and that was enough to keep them safe. Of course, property damage wasn't cheap, which was why somebody had hired Derek for this job in the first place.
This was giant territory, if Adam remembered right, but it was only barely within their domain. They could probably get help if they called, but Derek didn't think they needed it. Besides, they'd lose most of the bounty that way. There wasn't anyone around, and it would be too much of a hassle to find someone who hadn't run for their lives. No, they had to do this themselves, and that was that.
They followed the trail through a couple of alleys that reminded Adam uncomfortably of the crawler gargants without the slime, eventually coming out in a small square with a fountain and four small trees at the corners. Although the place looked nice, it had probably been abandoned even before monsters moved in. The surrounding buildings were too tall and blocked most of the sunlight, while at the same time letting enough in that vampires would find it uncomfortable.
The gargants, however, seemed to love the place. They were happily slurping up water from the fountain, and a couple of the trees were missing branches, presumably where the monsters had taken a nibble.
And it was monsters, plural. Only three, sure, but that was still two more than they were expecting, and with gargants that was something to be worried about. Adam was beginning to wonder if the stupid mission briefing was ever right.
Brick-plated gargants, as the name implied, were covered in chunks of brick and stone, which made them look like mobile buildings. They secreted some weird chemical from their skin that acted as glue, but only for porous, brick-like materials.
Unlike the steel-plated gargant of last week, these were a more sane size, more like very large dogs or wolves than the monstrosities Adam had been expecting. They were broader than dogs, but other than that the comparison was an apt one. They even panted, their mouths open and their tongues rolling slobber over the bricks of their heads. He didn't see any eye holes. Did they hunt by sound, or something else?
Still, even with their stout forms and blindness, these things were almost taller than Adam and about half that wide, so they could be dangerous if by nothing other than pure luck. They'd need to be careful. He started loading up the armor-piercing slugs into Saint George as quietly as he could.
Derek glanced at him sideways. “Those the god slayers I've been hearing so much about?”
“No, just armor-piercing,” Adam said. “Wasn't there only supposed to be one gargant?”
Akane answered with a shrug. “Poster only saw one. It happens.”
“We'll get paid appropriately,” Derek promised.
Adam raised an eyebrow. “With or without threatening our employer?”
He smiled a little. “Without, hopefully.”
Adam shrugged. “More's the pity.” He finished loading his shotgun with a mechanical click. “You two ready? We can go grab some giants if we need help.”
“This is Thor territory,” Derek said, a frustrated look on his face. “They don't really feel like playing nice right now.”
None of the cultures were feeling particularly sociable after the debacle at Bombed Alley, but the hellions and Aesir were definitely the worst. If the rumors on the internet were anything to go by—and Laura assured Adam they were—all the gangs were falling back to their homes and fortifying their defenses. They smelled a war coming.
Back to the gargants. They hadn't noticed the monster slayers yet, or didn't care. Derek gave a few quick motions with his hand. Adam was still having trouble learning all the slayer signals, despite Mohamed doing his best to teach him, but this one was easy. He went left, while Akane took the right flank and Derek came right up the middle.
The beasts grunted, sniffing the air, and the slayers all froze. The gargants edged towards the group a little, perhaps noticing the change in the wind, but soon returned to the fountain and continued drinking.
Adam glanced at Derek. What should they do? But he was frowning, indecisive. From what Adam had seen of his fighting style, he knew he normally waited for the opponent to strike, and then took advantage of any openings in their defense. He didn't like attacking first.
If the gargants knew they were there, they definitely didn't care. Because they stopped drinking and started mating.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
That was an unnecessarily crude way to describe it. It was actually pathetic to watch. These things were never designed to mate with each other. Their sex organs—if they even still had them—weren't anywhere they could use them because they were buried beneath the bricks.
Not that it would have mattered if they had been able to manage it. Laura had explained that each gargant was unique, handcrafted by the fey. There were set patterns, of course, but each beast was different. Some of those changes were genetic, but not many. Even if one gargant managed to get another pregnant, at best the resulting baby would just be a mildly altered animal.
Still, it didn't really seem like a good idea to intrude. Animals got angry when interrupted, and they'd have enough trouble even if they were relatively docile.
Derek seemed to feel otherwise. “Silver and gold, we don't have time for this. Akane.”
She nodded and blurred forward. The gargant she was aiming at turned curiously, ignoring its mate, but wasn't able to stop her as she bounded atop its head and plunged her sword through the top of its skull.
The beast howled in pain like a massive dog and thrashed, trying to shake her loose. But Akane's blade appeared to be stuck, and she wasn't in any mood to let go.
The other two monsters would make that decision for her any second now. They broke off their futile attempts to mate and barreled forward.
Derek had been waiting for this. Before they could get close enough to Akane to be dangerous, he ran straight up to the leading gargant, grabbed its lolling tongue, and ripped it to the side.
Adam half expected the thing to get completely torn out, but Derek wasn't that strong. Besides, that wasn't his goal. The tongue was a vulnerable muscle, and if something grabbed it, you pretty much had to go where they wanted.
So Derek was able to crash both brick-plated gargants into each other very easily.
They collided with a sound like... well, like a bag of bricks tumbling to the ground. They howled in pain, wrestling with each other, and Adam turned his attention back to Akane's beast.
It tried to slam her into the ground, but couldn't turn its head enough to manage it. She did finally get her sword free, though, and backflipped off as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
They needed to be quick, before it recovered. Adam already had his shotgun ready, so he took careful aim at its brick-plated skull and fired.
The slugs didn't have the same ridiculous power as the god slayer, but they were hardly something to sneeze at. In fact, the real issue with them was overpenetration. On most targets, they'd just go straight through without dealing major damage.
A gargant was not like most targets. It was a massive lump of flesh and bone, with little chance of the bullet punching all the way through. As long as it was a direct hit and breached the armor, any weapon would mess up the insides quite a bit. The first problem was breaching the armor, but he had that covered.
The second problem was that it was a massive lump of flesh and bone. No matter what he hit it with, it was going to take more than one shot to take it down.
The beast screamed in pain as his slug buried itself right between its eyes. It was badly injured, no question, and he might have even hit the brain, but it was still very dangerous. It shook itself, bellowed its rage, and charged forward, its maw open to take as big a bite out of him as it could.
He dodged to the left at the last second and the gargant slammed into the skyscraper behind him, sending up a massive cloud of vaporized sheetrock. The creature moaned in pain, and he nearly felt sorry for it.
“Derek!” Adam heard Akane call.
He turned back just in time to see one of the other two beasts slam into Derek full force, grinding him down into the concrete of the small square. Adam was surprised he hadn't used his powers, until he saw the reason: The other gargant was harassing Akane, and he was projecting a glowing blue barrier around her, rather than himself. Heroic to the end.
As the beast bellowed again and ground its bricks against Derek, Adam assumed the shield would flicker and die. It didn't. It stayed strong, as though this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Not having a power himself, he wasn't really sure how hard that actually was, but it certainly looked impressive.
No time for lollygagging. He had to save Derek.
He raised his shotgun again, but he heard a sound behind him as his gargant shook itself out of the building it had crashed into. He wheeled around and fired, but he only hit its flank. It didn't charge, just eyed him warily, but it would if he let his guard down.
He backed up until he was close enough that he could see Derek while keeping one eye on Adam's gargant. Derek was actually doing surprisingly well, considering most of his blood was on the concrete instead of inside him. The gargant was trying to bite him, but he had its jaws clamped tightly shut, as if in a vise. Jaws were harder to open than to close, but it was still impressive. Not to mention he still had his barrier going. Why wasn't Akane doing anything?
When Adam glanced over at her, he noticed her blur out from behind the shield for a moment, strike at the gargant's leg, and then blur back before it could retaliate.
Well, at least she wasn't just sitting there, but they still had a serious problem on their hands. Adam was beginning to wish he had brought a couple god slayers after all.
Right when he decided to risk taking a couple shots at the beast pinning Derek to the ground, the gargant watching him began to... crumple.
It was a horrifying sight really, as the beast folded inward like a wet paper bag. Akane noticed what was going on and got as far away from the gargants as she could, blurring back to the alley they had come from. Derek, seeing this, dropped the shield that had been protecting her and remade it around himself.
Just in time, too, as the creature that had been harassing him began crumpling just like Adam's. Only it was closer this time, and he could hear the sound of bones turning to mush, like the sound of boots squishing through a swamp. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the same thing happening to the third beast.
It only took a few minutes, but they moaned dejectedly the entire time. Eventually, the weight of their bodies—not to mention the bricks—crushed the brick-plated gargants to death.
Eventually.
It was a terrible way to die.
Adam waited until he was absolutely sure they were dead before swallowing and speaking. “What... was that?”
Derek stepped forward and gingerly nudged the corpse with his toe, peeling back a few bricks with his shoe. “I think that was a calciophage.”
Adam frowned. “Calcium eater?”
He nodded. “A new poison Clarke's been cooking up. See there?” He pointed to a patch of goo that had once been the creature's flank. A small feathered dart was poking out of it. “Someone shot them with a calciophage, and it ate their skeletons.”
Adam shivered a little, imagining what that would feel like. “Who would do that?”
“Save us or use something like that?” Derek asked with a smile.
Adam grinned back at his small joke. “Mostly, who would know we were here.”
He frowned. “I'm not sure. And I'm not sure we can get the bounty now, either. I need to find whoever—”
“Derek,” Akane said in a firm tone.
They turned to see that she was looking at one of the nearby rooftops. They followed her gaze and saw... a silhouette, standing on the edge.
It was impossible to tell exactly who it was, but it was clearly a woman, with long hair that flowed in the wind and caught the light majestically. The woman nodded once, then stepped off the ledge and...
Flew away.
She didn't sprout wings, or reveal ones she already had. She didn't use a jetpack or a wingpack or another of a dozen improbable devices Adam could think of that might be able to pull that off. She just flew, apparently completely under her own power, into the sun and out of sight.
A power user. One clearly still in control of her mind. There was only one girl like that Adam knew of. He turned to Derek. Judging from the shocked look on his face, he had come to the same conclusion.
“Lizzy?”