Hiro rushed forward and used {Bounce} to jump above the horned tigers. One of the beasts attempted to swipe him out of the air, but he was already on the nearest rooftop by this point, away from the monsters and the mist they were releasing from their tails..

He landed, grabbed his things, and moved south from there, hopping from building to building.

Since when did the tigers release poison from their tails?

Hiro cursed under his breath as he transitioned higher and higher. He reached the top of a building easily thirty floors up and looked back at the parking garage, where he saw his beacon, the blue line visible even when he closed his eyes.

Good. Hiro had no intention of leaving the poisonous oni tigers alive, but he would need to wait several hours for {Lupine Shift} to reset. There was no telling what he would encounter in that time, yet it would give him a chance to improve his katana usage, look for other survivors, gain a level or two, and learn new skills.

A breeze picked up and Hiro took in a deep breath.

There was much more of the city across the East River, Brooklyn, Queens, all of it. And the Hudson to the west had New Jersey, Hoboken, Jersey City, and North Bergen. It was an endless expanse, and it didn’t surprise him that there were nine hundred thousand Survivors yet he had only encountered Valeria.

Hiro briefly checked his followers to see they had ticked up. Over five hundred now. He took one of the Survivor Tenders out of his backpack and ate it, his hand grazing across the teddy bear.

“Why do you want me to keep this thing?” he asked his phone as he examined the bear.

The text appeared almost instantly:

“From who?”

“What do they sell?”

“Mark me?”

“What’s stopping me from just killing as many as I can before the gate opens?”

“Good to know.” Hiro adjusted his katana around his waist and fixed the straps on his backpack. He didn’t know where to go, and he figured bouncing around would draw more attention than he wanted. What about the food bank?

****

There was a food bank closer toward the East River run by a former team of charitable supers who were able to create nutrients out of thin air. The team used their gate-given abilities to help those who were reluctant to approach the gates. Like anyone else with the power, they were dead now because of the Doom System, but Hiro figured there would still be people there.

With this in mind, he started toward the food bank. The city scaled up in the same way it scaled down, Hiro now moving across old apartment buildings joined in long rows with parking lots below.

It was here that he noticed a commotion in a basketball court.

A muscled man swung a baseball bat at a pair of wolven beasts with backsides covered in mangled antlers. Bioluminescent patches trailed from the beasts’ tails toward their head, which had featured snouts more like a crocodile than that of a wolf.

Hiro moved closer to see the man protecting another guy, whose legs was injured, his body set in a pool of blood.

Here’s my chance.

He used {Bounce} to land in the basketball court. Hiro did this by jumping toward it, which sprang him upward and ultimately placed him directly behind the two wolven beasts.

Swinging into the fray with this katana, he cut into the first beast as the other turned to him and roared.

The man with the baseball bat struck the monster across the head. The other wolven beast whipped around, and was just preparing to lunge at Hiro when it choked. It’s tongue fell out of its mouth and a wicked grin spread across its face.

It snorted with laughter.

The first monster, who had just been clocked by a baseball bat, turned to its counterpart and then looked back at Hiro.

The monster also began to laugh, or at least Hiro interpreted the way it heaved up and down as laughter. Using this to his advantage, he rushed forward and sent his katana into the first beast.

The man with the baseball back struck the other, and Hiro used both hands to drive his blade into its stomach. He twisted his blade, pulled it back a few inches, and drew his weapon.

Soul Essence poured into Hiro as he got the followers prompt.

You have new followers!

He turned to the two men. The one with the baseball bat, who had a shaved head, dozens of tattoos, and a thick beard, stood in front of the other man like he planned to protect him. The second man was smaller than the first, also covered in tattoos.

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“What the fuck do you want?” Baseball Bat seemed poised to strike, but he was also panting a bit. “And what’s with the weird fucking mask, man?”

Hiro kept the mask on and his blade at the ready. “I’m not the main character.”

“I’m sure as shit not the main character,” the man gruffed. He cautiously lowered his bat. “I’m Juan. This is my brother, Marcello, also not the main character.”

Marcello laughed and then cringed at pain. “It hurts!”

“Then stop laughing, bro,” Juan told him.

“I can’t, that mask…!”

Hiro lowered his katana and motioned to Marcello. “Will he be okay?”

“A fucking wolf creature with antlers attacked me, no, I’m not going to be okay,” Marcello said. “But our sister, Carmen, she can help. She got a cool Roulette-whatever.”

“I’ll go back and get her now. She’s barricaded in there.” Juan gestured to a building. “You were supposed to bring the gauze.”

“I thought you were supposed to bring it,” Marcello said.

“What’s going on exactly?” Hiro asked Juan.

“Our little sister, Carmen. She’s in the basement of our shelter.” He pointed to a building with his bat. “The place was overrun with these bat-winged fuckers wielding swords.”

“Do what, now?”

Juan huffed. “They sort of look like bats, if bats were the size of swans, and they have swords gripped in their claws. Their wings are razor-sharp as well. We were out when they ran up on the place, but Carmen is safe. She’s barricaded.”

“Practically pterodactyls,” Marcello added. “The bat fuckers.”

Juan grunted. “Too many of them to fight our way in. So we came out looking for help, and those wolves attacked.” He motioned to the wolven beasts, which were starting to disintegrate. In doing so, Hiro noticed an old Puerto Rican flag tattoo on Juan’s inner bicep. “Maybe it is stupid to look for help. But we have helped others before, and you never know. You never know what you’ll encounter when you come out here.”

“I can help.”

Juan’s eyebrow rose at Hiro’s offer. “You really don’t mind?”

“You came out here looking for help, didn’t you?”

“How did you jump down here, anyway?”

“One of my skills.” Hiro gestured to Marcello. “What about him?”

“Fuck, you guys, I don’t want to be left alone. Please don’t—” Marcello started to laugh and put his hands over his mouth.

“We can get you to a rooftop or something,” Hiro told the injured man.

“What if you don’t come back? Then my injured ass is stuck up there.”

“Better there than here, out in the open just begging one of these fuckers to come at you,” Juan told Marcello. “And why do you keep laughing?”

“I don’t know, bro, but I wish it would stop because it hurts to laugh!”

“It’s my mask,” Hiro said. “It can trigger laughter.”

“Huh. Weird. But all of this is weird and loco. How do we get him to a rooftop?” Juan asked.

“Piggyback ride. I can put him up there.” Hiro pointed to the nearest rooftop, which was a four-story building. “How far away is your sister?”

“Just a block, in the basement of an office building. She’s barricaded, like I said, and Carmen can heal Marcello. But we’ll have to fight our way in. It’s likely swarmed with those fuckers. Goblin-faced bat-winged demon things. Están cabrón de feos.”

“I’ll get Marcello to a rooftop, and we can go from there. Does that work?” Hiro asked Juan.

“Works for me. Marcello?” Juan turned to his brother.

“Fine, let’s do this.”

****

Hiro and Juan approached the office building once Marcello was safe on a nearby rooftop. There were bodies strewn about, all victims of the laser incident that saw anyone with a superpower headshotted from the sky.

“Shit was loco, man,” Juan said, the big man with his baseball bat resting against his shoulder. “They found us.”

“They?”

“You remember them supers forcing others to take powers? They found us in our basement shelter, and they were closing in. We were so fucked. And then zap. Lasers from heaven, from the Doom System. Killed the ones that were inside too. Metaphorical shit. Or metaphysical. Yeah, metaphysical.”

While Juan told him this, Hiro secretly set a {Beacon} on the building. If it truly was their hideout, and they made it out alive, it might be a place he would need to remember.

“I appreciate you helping me. I don’t know why you’re doing it, but I’m beyond asking at this point. My baby sister is in there. Not a baby no more, but she’s my sister.” Juan touched his chest. “Mi hermana. I’ll owe you. If we make it out, I’ll owe you.”

“Did you already get the message about finding three others?”

“I did.”

“I need more people for my gate,” Hiro said.

“Same here.”

“I don’t know if the actual gate you go to matters.”

“I don’t think it does.” Juan looked up at the building. “But if we make it out and get to Carmen, like I said, I’ll owe you. But let’s get to her first. I don’t know how many of the bat fuckers are in there, but we saw several fly in, and a big one.”

“With swords?” Hiro asked.

Juan took a step forward. “With swords. Shit took me off guard. We would have rushed in had we not been attacked from behind by those wolf things.”

“Understood. One last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“You have a baseball bat,” Hiro said. “What’s Marcello got?”

“A knife. Sick one, too.”

“And Carmen?”

“Heh. Don’t worry about her.” Juan squinted at him. “What about your Roulette Skill? What you got? Might as well tell me, man.”

“{Lupine Shift.}”

“What’s a lupine?”

“I can turn into a werewolf.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Not yet. And you wouldn’t want me too with other people around. It’s hard to control. You?”

“My skin. It can become hard like armor. It looks like metal, but it’s more like clay. I can’t explain it. Sort of like Colossus from X-Men, but different. Puerto Rican Colossus.” Juan nodded. “Marcello called me that.”

“Hell yeah.” Hiro drew his katana. “Lead the way.”

Rather than take the front entrance, Juan moved around to the side of the building, where he used a dumpster to climb through a broken window.

Hiro followed, and dropped down into a room lit by gray light from outside.

Juan brought a finger to his lips.

Hiro nodded, but he knew it wouldn’t matter if they were quiet or not. Juan and Marcello had both said the monsters ahead were bat-like, which meant they would likely use echolocation.

Even if they were quiet, they were still screwed.

Juan reached a door, looked to Hiro again, and flashed the number two. He pointed downward, which Hiro interpreted to mean two floors to reach the basement.

Juan opened the door and it creaked.

This was followed by a terrifying shriek, one that caused the hairs on the back of Hiro’s neck to stand. The sound of flapping wings filled the hall as the first bat monster reached them, a sword gripped tightly in its talons.

The monster spiraled toward Juan and Hiro with its sword at the ready, the beast hellbent on cutting them down.