When a monster attacked, there was rarely ever any rhyme or reason to what they were planning. There was a reason that kids in Lower Olympus had stricter curfews than normal. There was a reason that we were taught the Kaiju song in middle school, even performed it for our parents. We were told they were animals, pure and savage, but so much more than pure breeds of what an animal could ever hope to be. Most were thoroughbred murderers higher on the food chain than the average human. They hunted and stalked, preyed on the unsuspecting and ate them alive.

I could go on and on about the woodlands Lucas had sent me into, hunting down stray packs of them notorious for killing hikers, and the Europeans and how quick they were to propose a task force to the DPIA to hunt them down. It got turned down. Some Kaiju weren’t killers, and some had even made it to smaller offices in the government, but people saw those as the exception. The good ones. The tame ones. The world might me split about superhumans and what should happen with the likes of us, but it didn’t take much to tick off a Kaiju willing to eat you alive.

So when a row of glinting white teeth appeared above Bianca, saliva flung through the air by its serrated jowls, my first instinct was to smash my fist into its skull and through its brain.

But Victoria beat me to it. She raised one arm, pulled back the other, and threads of light wove around her fingers and hands, weaving into a bow and arrow she launched straight into its muzzle. The arrow snapped its head backward, sending it flying. It came out clean through the other side of his head, dissipating into a burst of sparks. The wolf-man Kaiju slammed into the concrete, blood gushing from his throat. He was half naked, muscular, scarred up and sweaty.

The stench coming from him was familiar, a lot like… Wraith, he smelt like Wraith. Sickly sweet, sour, and yet so ripe that smelling him for longer than a few seconds began to hurt my nose.

The crowd surrounding us exploded into panicked screams. More Kaiju shrieked and bellowed and barked. Children screamed from the tops of their lungs, crying for their parents as they got trampled in the chaos. I got spun around by a tide of bodies shoving and pushing against me. I didn’t let go of Bianca, stuck to her shouting for Harper and Victoria. Most were sprinting toward the closed safety of the shopping complex, a terribly large building made of glass and beige concrete. Get her out of here. Get her to safety. Shit, shit, shit, too many people to start flying. I had to get Bianca out of here, then I’d deal with the Kaiju, figure out what the fuck they were doing.

I pulled her along, using only a little bit of my strength to make my way forward. She’d grabbed onto Harper. Em was beside me, and Victoria had given up shooting bolts of golden light at a Kaiju with large black wings sweeping over the crowd, yanking people by the shoulders and taking them up, up, up so high that when he eventually let go of them, there wasn’t much to see when they smashed into the pavement or other people. It made me stumble, sick to my stomach as I lurched to the side, saving at least a few dozen people from getting smashed to bits by a body.

But the more we ran, the more people screamed, the more Kaiju seemed to appear around us. That’s when I saw the shadows around the stalls, in the alleys from distant streets and even our own shadows trying to catch up to us as we ran and ran and fucking ran. They were bubbling, simmering, reeking of sulfur and something foul and rotten. I stumbled to a brief stop, staring at the overturned churro stall, at the shadow it cast onto the ground. A hand appeared from it, clawed and reptilian, followed by a dozen similar ones. Their skin was scaled, gray and black, some red, others green. It didn’t matter. Their eyes were slits, yellow and inhuman. Shit. It’s Wraith. It has to be.

Was he here? Fuck, I couldn’t tell. He could be anywhere. In the high rise offices. Underground. Too many people shoving and shouting. Not enough time to stop and check. Why today?! Bianca shouted my name, panic in her voice. She pulled me along, and I fell in place beside her, not out of breath, but breathing hard, trying to find a break, someplace I could vanish into and make Olympia appear out of thin air. I looked at Em, shouted at her. Pointed to the sky, my chest, and she got the message, but then her eyes widened as we reached the complex's entrance. My head snapped up, hearing a shriek so loud that pain spiked right through my head.

Sweeping black wings spread a shadow over the crowd—and us—trying to force their way through the tiny entrances of the shopping complex. Some people were beating on the glass. It cracked. Splintered. Then shattered. Bodies spilled onto it, scrambled onto their feet and kept running deeper into safety where the mall guards were shouting at people to go. But we were still too far away from getting in. Trapped in a prison of human bars and fleshy walls of sweat and tears and hot, greasy blood. At least, Bianca was. So was Harper. Victoria’s bow melted from her hands, turning into a sword she dug into a half-lizard woman writhing and frothing as she clamped her jaws on a man’s arm. Its body went limp. So did the man’s. He was spasming, shaking from pain or shock or blood loss. Nothing I could do to help. The man with black wings swooped low again, sharpened fingernails raking over a fat man’s back. Through cloth and flesh, deep into muscle, his claws spilled blood and exposed the bones of his ribcage. He fell face first onto the ground, dead.

The birdman flew up again, then swooped low, wet talons extended toward us.

“Rylee!” Bianca shrieked, hand finding mine, but I shoved her away and into the complex.

Then I was in the air, kicking wildly. His hands were strong, clamped tightly around my shoulders. Bianca shouted my name, an echo that wrung loud in my ears. Em grabbed her, all of them, shouted at them to follow her into the complex. They vanished from view, lost in a heaving stream of humans, so many of them they blurred. I bucked and kicked, swore at him to let go of me. He said something foul, saying something about being below him, beneath him. A human in a food chain that was moving on without them. A new world is coming and you’re not going to be part of it. He smiled down at me, his face made blinding by the glare of the sun behind him, making it painful to look directly at his sharpened canines and the splatter of blood on his face.

Before he could let go, I swung my feet upward, using my flight to make it violent and sudden. The heels of my sneakers slammed into his chest as I flipped upward. He screamed, a wet gurgling sound as his chest caved in and blood flooded his lungs and throat and gushed from his wide, crying mouth. He let go of me suddenly, clasping his throat as he spiraled. I fell with him, pinning my arms to my sides as I fell. The wind was wild in my ears, screaming as loud as the crowd far below us as I grabbed him by the wings. I slammed into his back, crouched, and tore them out. They came free with bone and ligament, and he was long dead before he hit the ground.

By then, I had already landed on a low rooftop and was already ripping off my clothes.

I sprinted to the edge of the rooftop, then leaped off of it, spinning to build momentum and not wasting a single second to slam into the pavement, taking two lizard people with me. Their bodies sprayed open, painting the splintered stone red and green. I stood, grabbed a stunned couple painted with fright, and forced them onto their feet and yelled at them to move, fucking move, before another half-naked woman covered in slick black fur, bearing large black teeth, bounded through the crowd. I was on her in seconds, a fist into her snout. Her face crumpled, my knuckles going halfway through her skull before she fell. I shook her off, shouted at the humans to run.

Because the shadows were still bubbling and spewing more Kaiju. And now the sun was arcing through the sky, casting larger patches of darkness around 12th Avenue. A clawed hand grabbed a kid, ripping through his jeans. He shrieked, high pitched and terrified. His friends stumbled, reared backward, grabbed onto his shoulders and tried pulling him free. I shot toward the shadow, slamming my foot onto the half-birthed Kaiju. It let go of the kid, and I swept him up into my arms, told his friends to hold onto me as I flew as quickly as I could to the entrance of the complex. I wasn’t a taxi, I knew that, but I could only keep killing all the Kaiju if the humans weren’t there running around in front of me. I handed him to a man pulling kids into the building.

Then I heard a bellow so loud it made the ground underneath me shudder. Glass already not broken splintered, cracked, and rubble skittered against my boots. I snapped around to look at the sound, just like so many other people did around me. And right there at the end of the avenue, beside the now broken fountain gushing water freely onto the street, was a beast of a man rising from the shadows vomiting him onto the avenue. He was a hulking mass of thick gray plates on his forearms and shoulders, covering his back and chest and damn near his entire muscular body. His eyes were a deep luminous yellow, and the stench coming off him was the strongest I’d smelt yet.

The white horn sprouting from his forehead was easily as large as my head.

And then he hunkered down into a crouch, roared, and charged forward.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Looking at the stream of people still flooding into the complex; fewer, but not all in yet. They needed another few minutes at least. A handful more that I had to give them.

I flew up into the sky, then darted low, skimming over the rubble, blowing away chairs and toppled tables and forgotten food stalls in the blast of wind I left behind me. I raised a fist, bracing myself, closer and closer to the man charging forward, tramping over everything in his warpath. He was gaining speed, getting faster and faster, heavier, smashing apart the concrete he stepped on.

Then we met, and he swiped his forearm through the air and sent me flying.

I cartwheeled freely, winded, slightly dazed as I tried to get my bearings. Then I was through a window, through several mannequins and clothes racks. A girl screamed and lunged out of the way as I slid to a stop on my side. Clothes were strewn over me, now filthy with blood and grit. The employees in the store stared at me, then at the door, terrified that their chained shut entrance was now blown wide open. I groaned, got onto my elbow and pulled the bras and shawls and t-shirts off my body. What the hell? My head rang, and I shook it out, getting onto my feet.

He wasn’t at the complex yet, and he wasn’t going to reach it, his strength be damned. I exploded out of the store, spun in the air, and slammed my feet against his knee. He buckled, only stumbled, and kept charging, as if I was barely a gnat to him. I rolled, continuing my momentum, and was on him in the next second, wrapping my arms around his thick, tree-trunk-like waist as I tackled him into a short statue of Cleopatra with her sword raised to the sky. Concrete dust rushed down my throat as I inhaled, gasping when we hit the ground. I rolled off him, and he shoved me away. I slammed my fist into his jaw, and all I got for my effort was a crack in his gray plating.

“What the hell are you?” I whispered, hovering backward as he rose to his full height.

He answered me by grabbing my arm and slamming me into the pavement. My head whacked against the stone, shocking my body numb. He lifted me into the air, threw me.

Onto my feet, off the pavement. I shook my head, spat blood from my mouth.

I dug my fingernails into my palms, forcing more electricity to wrap around my arms and legs and torso. The cement underneath me bubbled, melted. The water spilling from the fountain hissed and steamed. It hurt, it hurt like I was trying to rip apart my muscles. Like I said, I had to temper myself most times, and that was always more than enough to kill a supervillain, but there was always a little more in the tank, a little more that I kept in the reserves, and I let it flow, let it burn all over me, evaporating the blood—green and red—off me as my body heated and heated.

A split second before I launched myself forward, the ground splintered, then I was rocketing toward him. He didn’t have the time to react as I dug my fingertips underneath his gray plating. Through tough flesh and tougher muscle, I felt his heart pulsating against my hand—and I went right through it, barreling into him with such force that most of his body simply popped open like a bloody, fleshy zit. I slid on him, now splayed onto his back and leaving a streak of red on the concrete. My body still burned, charring the flesh I had to pull my hand out of. I shook my hand out, wriggled my fingers. Spat meat out of my mouth and wiped sweat and blood off my brow.

Then another baritone of a bellow shook the avenue, and this time, it came right before another one of him crashed into several of the support pillars in front of the complex’s entrance.

The steel and concrete buckled as the man went straight through them, stumbling to a stop inside of the complex, stepping on people barely half his size. He shook his head, looked back.

And found my fist buried into his jaw. Large molars thicker than my fingers flew from his mouth and skittered away. He collapsed, skidding away. I spun on my heels as the first chunk of concrete fell. The people still at the entrance screamed, pleading to get away from the Kaiju still hunting them outside. The SDU were getting close, their blaring sirens shrieking through the city. Didn’t matter. I ran, flew, and caught the first part of the entrance that began slumping low. I swore loudly several times as stone jammed against my collar bone, pushing me to the ground in seconds.

I had lifted cars and trucks, helped right a sinking aircraft carrier with some help, but this kind of weight was different. People were underneath me, scampering underneath my legs, around me, giving up on the other entrances and focusing on the one still a fraction open. I groaned in pain, effort, my arms shaking as I was forced onto a knee by the weight on my shoulder. My fingers dug into the reinforced cement. Panels of glass fell from above, smashing into the ground, showering me and the civilians in shards of glass. My body ached. Burned. Wanted to buckle and quit and fold under the weight. A Kaiju with antlers charged toward me. I shouted for people to move, get out of the way, before she could impale anyone. Then she slammed right into me.

Air vanished from my lungs, and I gasped, bared my teeth, and looked down at her. She pushed forward, making me slide backward. More rubble fell, smashing into an old man’s skull.

Then a girl shoved through the crowd, lifted a metal bat, and swung as hard as she could, smashing it right in the side of the antler woman’s head. She slumped to the ground. The few civilians still trying to get in crawled past, limping, wet with blood, crying and shivering and shaking with tears and hushed thank yous to me as the mall guards hurried them away to safety.

Bianca said, “That’s all of them. Can’t see any others.” She didn’t let go of the bat in her hand as she backed up to give me some space, but not before shoving the antler woman away.

Still trying to save someone after smashing in their skull, I thought, flying back.

The entrance collapsed, throwing dust and rubble into my face as I shielded Bianca. I coughed, wiped spit from the corner of my mouth. I pushed a hand through my hair, exhausted, looking around and finally at the unconscious body of the half-rhino clone asleep on the filthy shiny tiles. I stepped toward him, but thought better of it, because Bianca was still here with me.

“Thanks,” I said, knuckling blood off of my nose. “You should get out of here.”

“My friend,” she said, nearing me. “Rylee. I didn’t see her. She might still be—”

“The blonde girl, right?” I asked. “She ran off after I saved her from the bird guy.”

Relief washed over her, but her white-knuckled grip on the bat didn’t loosen.

“Olympia!” a guard shouted, waving me over. I hovered toward him, Bianca in tow because it was just how she always reacted to situations like these. The guard’s radio called in another Kaiju deeper in the shopping complex, and now that I was inside of it, the spiraling floors above me were a festering hive just waiting for more of them to attack. “There’s more of them. Bigger than usual.” He pointed. “There’s an exit at the end of the complex, out back at the in door parking. Damage Control and the fire department are coming, but I don’t think there’s time to—”

The lights in the complex winked out, leaving the liquified and pale sunlight pouring through the windows as our main source. Emergency lights flicked on, flooding hallways with red.

“Shit,” I muttered. “They must’ve somehow gotten to the power of this place.”

They had planned this all out, attacked from the outside and forced their prey into a cage of cement and steel and glass. Now we were all in the dark with the Kaiju, running right for them.

“That means they’re out back, too,” the guard said. “We keep the industrial generators back there, but they still haven’t kicked on yet. Fuck. Fuck! We just need to get people out of here.”

“Get your guys together,” I said to him. “You deal with the civilians, get them to the right places for Damage Control and the N.O.F.D to get them out of here as soon as possible.” I hovered a little higher, now feeling the sourness of Wraith’s powers in the air. “I’ll deal with all the Kaiju.”

“I’m coming with you,” Bianca said quickly. “I can hel—”

“No,” I said dryly. She stepped back a little, and I eased my tone. “Go with him. Help if you can, and make sure your friends get out of here as quickly as you can. Get home safe, alright?”

Bianca looked reluctant to leave, but she nodded, bat in hand, and followed the guard.

The shopping complex was a labyrinth in the darkness. A mess of winding corridors and staircases and elevators stuck open on different floors, their emergency power on to make sure the doors remained open. Flashing scarlet emergency lights illuminated the hallways and stores I checked through as I tried to find the Kaiju I could smell lurking in the corridors. Several times, I found a group of teenagers huddled in stores, scared out of their minds, and nearly jumping out of their skin when I was suddenly hovering above them. Kids, too. Moms and dads. People wandering around, stolen baseball bats from the sports stores held high in their hands as they looked for a way out.

Still no Kaijus, I thought, silent as I flew through the empty food court. Food had been spilled and left behind. Oil still frothed behind counters, now burning forgotten fries. I turned them off, because searching this place when it was up in flames wasn’t something I was planning on doing. I snagged some food on my way, fueling up as I continued my search through the complex.

I wondered what they were planning by attacking 12th Avenue, if this really was the Kaiju Society behind all of this chaos. If they wanted a ransom, then they would have taken people hostage. Blocked off the entrances properly. But the last time I checked, nobody was directly in charge of any of their attacks. The Society itself was just a loosely put together organization of what people thought were some of the stronger, smarter, more well-put together monsters they had in their ranks. It didn’t matter, though. An attack like this was going to leave a scar on the city. Whatever they were planning, I’d have to stop it before any more people got hurt in the process.

And for that to happen, I had to find the Kaiju still creeping around in the dark.

Like clockwork several minutes later, I picked up the meaty stench of death in the air. Then came the spattering of blood on the walls and on the floor. It gleamed in the flashing emergency lights, caught my eye as it shined on the glass of storefronts. Mannequins lay in pieces across the floor, covered in blood. Cellphones, handbags, watches, everything left behind in a terrified rush. Footprints vanishing around corners. Handprints of red pressed against pillars and walls and doors.

And then came the sounds of chewing, of bones being broken and meat being torn. My gut lurched as the sour smell of loosened bowels stewed together with mauled intestines. The stuffy heat in the shopping complex didn’t make it any better. It heightened it, ripened it. I knew that smell because I’d had to get pretty used to it over the past few years, but this was different. More of Wraith’s shadows were still simmering in corners, spewing that sulfurous odor, and now the entire hallway reeked of death, bile, and this curdled amalgamation of corrosion that made my eyes water. I put a hand to my mouth, trying not to puke. I swallowed, forcing it down my dry throat.

I turned the corner, and couldn’t help but swear loud enough for it to echo as I froze.

A large brown hide shuddered over the stiff corpse of two people, pulling guts out of stomach cavities by digging its muzzle directly into them. I nearly puked, put a fist to my mouth to stop myself. The large man—a bear, I figured—stopped, froze, its ears twitching, and turned to look at me. He was crouched low, but when he turned, I saw that his entire chest was slathered in red, his saliva dripping scarlet. I swallowed bile again as he lumbered to his feet, a gleam in his black eyes. He was more animal than man. I almost figured that he wasn’t a human being to begin with. His gut was fat, undoubtedly more than full. He grinned, showing rows of large white teeth tipped with shiny silver metal. Some kind of canine implants to make them sharper, more deadly.

Then I heard a tiny cry come from the store to my right, where one of the corpses was slumped against the door, keeping it open. The bear’s eyes flicked toward the sound. I did too. Someone was still alive in there, hiding. A child, maybe, judging by the sounds they were making. Too scared to move. Too devastated to cry out for help. The kid must have been deep inside the electronics store, cowering because his mom and dad told him to hide, be quiet, not make a sound until it was safe to come out. I balled my hands into fists, my grip tight, anger deep in my gut. I turned back to look at the bear-man, watched as his muzzle pulled back as he eyed the dark store.

He snarled, roared, then lunged toward the noise. I slammed into him with my shoulder, sending him crashing through the glass storefront of the electronics store. He shuddered, shook the glass from his fur and let cables slip off his body. I hovered, getting distance between us, trying to find where the kid was hiding. The kid was crying now, shrieking. I smelt urine in the air, but the bear was already lumbering onto his feet, then turning toward me. His shoulder was broken, I could see the bones sitting awkwardly underneath his skin, but they reset themselves, snapping back into place. Before I could question what I’d seen, he charged at me, swinging his paws.

I flew backward, dodged low. His large claws gouged open a flatscreen, before he picked it up and threw it at me. I caught it, and that was my mistake—he barreled into me, clamping his jaw onto my forearm. Then pain shot up my arm, hot and searing. His teeth tore right through my gear and into my skin. I swore, shouted in angered agony as he shook his head furiously, turning and twisting, digging metal into my flesh, until I slammed my free forearm into his snout with enough force to crack it. He let go. I dropped into a crouch, then split the tiles when I lunged upward, slamming my fist into his jaw and through his mouth and out of the top of his head. He sagged onto me, dozens of pounds worth of dead weight. I stumbled, sliding him off of my free arm.

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I stumbled back a few steps, panting, waiting to see if he’d somehow pull himself back together again. You couldn’t blame me for being cautious, not after the last few days of my life.

“Fuck,” I hissed, clasping my arm. The cuts weren’t deep, but you wouldn’t know that by the amount of blood flowing down my arm. My sleeve was shredded, torn to bits by his teeth. I flexed my arm, watched as the cuts in my skin began slowly healing again as I tested out my hand.

I heard footsteps behind me, crunching on broken glass. I spun around, and watched as a boy—thirteen, maybe fourteen—creeped out from deeper inside of the store. He stared at me, his eyes both wide and empty, then at the bear corps at my feet. He stood with his hands limp by his sides, a wet patch around his crotch. Eyes bloodshot, not wet anymore. He must’ve stopped crying when his parents stopped screaming, then he’d sat there in silence, stiff, waiting for the bear to finish eating what was left of what he’d known his entire life and then come for him right after.

I didn’t know what to do, I’ll be honest. I was the kind of superhero who left kids like this to be dealt with by the SDU or Damage Control. But we were alone now, and nobody else was going to talk to him, to make him listen as I tried telling him we’ve got to get out of here soon.

I crouched in front of him, getting on one knee. My arm hurt like hell as I lifted it to put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” I said, shaking him gently. Nothing. He was staring right past me.

I glanced over my shoulder to see what he was looking at, then pursed my lips. It was his mother, at least what was left of her, reflecting in his eyes. I obscured what he saw by shifting around, then almost put my hand on his face to make him look at me before I realized they were covered in blood. I tried to wipe it off on my thighs, but it was too slick, too much to get rid of.

“Listen,” I said, finally. “There’s a way out, but you’re gonna have to leave right now.”

The kid blinked once, then looked at me. “Right now?” he whispered.

I nodded. “Yeah, right now. There are people waiting for you to get safe.”

He pointed at his parents. “But they were supposed to be waiting, too.”

“I know,” I whispered as softly as I could. “But we’ve got to go. There are still Kaiju somewhere around here, and you’ve got to trust me. Can you do that? Can you trust me a little?”

He stared at me for several seconds, his black hair disheveled. Then he nodded once, and reached for my hand despite the blood. He clutched onto me like he never wanted to let go. I was reluctant to squeeze back, with a silent voice in the back of my head repulsed that I was being touched in the first place, but instead, I held him firm, walking him out of the store. His sneakers squelched in the blood, slapping against slick tiles. He bent and slid a necklace out from underneath a serrated chunk of meat. I almost told him to drop it, but he stared at it, at the jewel dangling from it, and clutched onto it with his free hand until blood trickled right off his knuckles.

He didn’t move, not one bit, and I doubted even my super strength would have made him budge. “C’mon,” I said softly, trying to be gentle as I pulled him away from his parents. It stung, I knew, because mom did the same exact thing with me years ago when I kept rewatching the final few moments the entire world had watched Zeus still be a hero. She’d gotten rid of recordings. Banned certain search words. We didn’t talk about it on the dinner table, still hadn't until now, but hell, who gave a shit about that when I was walking down some dark hallway covered in blood with a kid squeezing the life out of my fingers? I wanted to be angry, to feel like I should act on my impulses and hunt the Kaiju down, but for once… Gods, I hated to admit it, but sticking it out with this random kid until he got to safety felt that little bit more important at this moment in time.

“What’s your name?” I asked. We hadn’t said anything in minutes, at least, I hadn’t.

Nothing, not until I offered to carry him on my back, and even then it took several minutes for him to stop fiddling with the dull necklace and say something. “Alex,” he whispered hoarsely.

“I’m Olympia,” I said. I flew back through the food court, over a railing and through a cavernous hallway. “It’s really great that I met you. You’re the first person I’ve seen in ages.”

Alex said nothing, and I realized that probably wasn’t something I should have said.

I tried to come up with something, anything. “Do you have a favorite superhero, Alex?”

He nodded, his wet cheek pressed against my neck. I felt him suppress a cry, shuddering and shaking against my back. Where the hell is the exit? “A-Ares,” he forced into my ear.

I smiled, glancing over my shoulder. “You know, I’ve met him. He’s awesome, right?”

Alex began crying, and the sickness in my gut began to grow as he nodded. His fingers dug into the necklace, and his arms wrapped tighter around my neck, as if he was afraid that I’d let go of him and leave him to fend for himself in the hallways. I hurried, trying to find an escape.

“He’s strong,” he said, still crying the way that kids did—loud, pained, right from their stomachs to their chests and right out of their mouths. “I-I shook his hand. He smiled at me, too.”

“He never shook my hand,” I said. “All he did was try and hit me with his giant shield.”

That got a little bit of an odd, strangled giggle from him. “Wh-Why did he do that?”

I shrugged. “Well, I kinda broke into his house. But it was totally by accident.”

Alex took a moment to respond, and by then, I started hearing noises up ahead—guards telling people to keep it moving. Good. He leaned his head against my shoulder, looking at me sidelong. “Are you scared, too?” he asked quietly. “Doesn’t your mom get worried about you?”

That question went right for my chest, catching my breath a little. Ronnie must have been watching on the news, either from the lab or at home. Knowing her, she must be worried sick, trying to call my phone and getting nothing, and then trying to call Dennie to see what he knew.

I tensed my jaw a little, then nodded, feeling a lump in my throat. “Yeah, she does worry.”

“Then why do you make her scared so many times?” he said, wiping snot on his arm.

We reached a group of people hustling their way down a corridor, with several guards down the end of the hallway. The exit must be near, thank the gods. I slowed, stopped, and gently set us on the ground so I was back kneeling in front of him. I smiled, meeting his eyes. “Because if I stopped doing what I do, then a lot of people are gonna get hurt, so she’s just gotta trust that I’ll be fine. And hell, it hurts sometimes, like that big dumb bear I put down, but that’s just how it is.”

“So…” He went quiet, looked over his shoulder, then back at me. His lower lip was trembling again, and I swear, my eyes weren’t stinging, too. “T-thank you for saving me.”

Then he hugged me, wrapping his arms around my neck. I wanted to tell him that blood was going to stain his t-shirt and shorts, but I stopped myself, didn’t know what to do for a second, and (reluctantly, by the way, not willingly!) put my arms around him as well. Eventually, I had to let him go as a guard spotted us, then began running toward us, shouting my name repeatedly.

“Listen,” I said to him. “If you ever”—I can’t believe I’m doing this—“need anything, a place to stay or, like, someone to talk to about anything, then there’s this coffee place in—”

“I’m not allowed to drink coffee yet,” Alex said. “It’s only for grown ups and Supers.”

I chuckled a little. “You’re keeping it together, Alex, and that means you’re pretty freaking super to me, so we can let it slide just this once. It’s called Coffee ‘n’ Comics. My friend Rylee will be there if you ask the old guy at the front for her. She’s a mess, but she’ll look after you, alright?”

Alex nodded, then shakily stuck out his fist. I bumped him, and the guard was suddenly beside him, checking him over, asking him questions. Alex answered each of them, trying to steel his voice, trying not to cry even if the tears in his voice were threatening to shatter his facade any second now. I watched him get taken away, waved as he looked over his shoulder at me.

“Didn’t take you for the heartfelt type,” Emelia said. She’d been with me for a while, just a little too far out of my hearing to really know where she was running around. She looked ghastly in the hellish light, covered in blood that luckily wasn’t hers. “Looks like you can change, Ry.”

“Stuff it ‘for I put you through a wall, Sparky,” I said, turning around. “Bianca?”

“Outside, I think. The girl wants to save everyone she comes across.”

I began hovering, and she jogged alongside me as I doubled back around. “And what about Victoria?” I asked, and as for Harper, well, would it really be a tragedy if she did kick it?

“She was with B,” Em told me, leaping over a splintered bench. “Her powers, though.”

“I know,” I muttered. “It clocked outside. Exactly like Cleopatra’s. You think she’s—”

Em shook her head. “Never had kids, remember? I doubt she even had sex.”

The chances of having an awakening exactly like someone else were slim to none. Common powers were easier to get, but they’d always be different to some extent. Cleopatra could weave light into damn-near anything, but she mostly focused on weaponry. Victoria pulled that trick out of her bag as if she wasn’t going to be making rounds in the news cycle right alongside this god forsaken Kaiju attack. It was amazing that the Olympiad hadn’t gotten to her yet, or maybe she was a Lower Olympus kid, too far in the muck to even be on their radar. But… No, I’d have to keep an eye out on her, because I was a little bit interested in how she managed to stay off my radar. It also meant that another Olympian had a successor around my age, making us four.

Grant and Michael technically didn’t count, because they weren’t here trying to follow the echoing hiss of monsters coming from the bowels of an increasingly silent shopping complex.

“Figured out what these freaks want yet?” Emelia asked me, getting faster, now blurring the storefronts either side of us. “I fought a few. All a lot more powerful than I last remembered.”

“You last fought them in junior high,” I reminded her. “These guys are a lot tougher. Some even heal themselves. They’re like some kind of new breed of Kaiju. Bigger. More dangerous.”

“I’m a little rusty,” she muttered under her breath. “Try to fill me in if you can, Goldie.”

We didn’t have to go too far before the Kaiju did it for us. I heard the sounds of talk coming from just around a corner, and I slowed, telling Emelia to do the same. I hovered, she hid behind the wall, and we both watched a python as large as a semi hiss and slither out strings of twisted English to a man with large antlers sprouting from his head. They were arguing about something, getting more intense. The snake-man veered a little closer, yellow eyes glowing.

“Not enough time,” he said, hissing, obviously. “Too many people getting away.”

“So what? We take what we can and fuck off,” Antlers said. “That damned brat is flying around here somewhere. She took out Clint, man. Put her hand right through his goddamned chest!” He spat, huffed his wide nose and spewed steam. “This isn’t our game anymore, man.”

“The chancessss she’ss here were supposssed to me ssslim,” Snake said.

“Not none, that’s what the boss said. We deal with her, get her attention, then go.”

“Or we take our chancesss and kill her now.” His head turned in one smooth motion toward us, as if only acknowledging us now. His eyes were golden and mesmerizing. His scales glossy and black, squealing against the tiles underneath him as he shifted his body, turning to us.

We both backed up as he began nearing, opening his jaw wide, wider, as sickly green venom trickled from his fangs. It hissed as it hit concrete, burning tiny holes through it. The plants he passed shriveled, blackened, and the stench was so strong that my tongue nearly did the same.

“Fought one of them before recently?” Emelia asked, purple electricity in her eyes.

I shook my head. “Just shoot to kill. Go for the spine, they don’t live long without them.”

I flew toward Snake before I could hear any hesitation come from her mouth. Emelia didn’t kill supervillains, she just didn’t have it in her, but we weren’t in middle school anymore, fighting some purse snatcher in some back alley in who-knew-where. This was different, and the reality of that set in as soon as Snake darted toward me, faster than I ever expected him to move. I dodged, whipped around to the right, and got slammed into by his tail. I somersaulted through the air, got my bearings as I slid across the ground, then Antlers decided it was a good time to smash into me.

He followed after me as I rolled to a stop, got up. I caught his antlers in my hands and buckled under his weight as he steamrolled forward, forcing me against a pillar. He bellowed, raised his fists, and jerked his head suddenly to the right. I let go, then found him barreling toward me, smacking his fist directly into my jaw. His knuckles were tough. The bone thicker. I tasted blood in my mouth, on my lips, as I watched Emelia dodge and run, leap and avoid the venom that Snake was spewing down the corridor. It reeked, burned. Tiny fires began to smolder in clothing stores when it caught the fabrics. Shit, I thought, getting distracted and getting punched again.

I squared my feet, raised my hands. “What the hell are you guys planning to do?”

He huffed again, lowered, ready to pelt forward. “Fuck’s it matter to you?”

“You assholes just killed a bunch of people,” I growled. “So yeah, it matters to me.”

“Just doing my job,” he said. “Sorry if you knew ‘em, but life’s a bitch, hey?”

He charged, and I ducked under his swing. A jab to his side, then to his chin. He huffed, grunted, swung his head around, forcing me to go low and step backward. He didn’t give me a second to breathe, charging right at me, stopping before I could dart away, and catching me with a punch to my gut that I felt through my legs. I gasped, ground my teeth, and slammed my foot into his shin, his side, then doubled up by springing into the air and smashing it against his temples.

He stumbled backward, shaking his head. One of his eyes was bloodshot. A side of his skull split open. He mewled, a low, groaning sound as he got ready to attack me again.

Then Emelia’s shriek tore through my hearing like a knife through flesh. I turned, ignoring Antlers, heart in my throat as I watched Snake smack her hard into the side of a massive pillar, and then the gut-twisting sound of her arm snapping in impact echoed loudly through the silence of the complex. She fell onto her side, gasping, staring at her arm. Panic and pain were in her eyes as she looked up at Snake, at the venom pouring from his mouth. She tried to back up, then fell, sliding on the liquid as it burned through her sneakers. She cried out again as it seared her skin, the smell of flesh loud, her screams vile and desperate. Alarm flooded my brain. I was torn back to the Alps for a moment. I almost froze, almost, but then I was shouting, flying, then slamming into Snake.

I plowed him straight through several storefronts, sending him rolling. I spun around, breathing hard and heavy as Antlers’ eyes grew wide, then narrowed as he charged. I rocketed downward, swept low, then came up with a hook to his jaw. Bone cracked and splintered, blood flinging through the air between us. I grabbed him by the antlers, stepped back, and threw him as hard as I could into Snake as he was beginning to rise again. My body was still burning, still heating. I was breathing harder, harsher, and could hear my heart banging against my temples.

I flew toward Emelia, still on the ground, cradling her arm. “Fuck,” I said, dropping to one knee. “Shit, Em. Okay. Gods, what happened to you? Nevermind. Just get out of here. Go. Now.”

“But—”

Antlers bellowed. I glanced behind me. Snake towered over him as they emerged from the stores. His jaw was resetting, and they both had a murderous gleam in their hollowed out eyes.

“Em,” I said, my voice panicked. “You’ve got to get up and go. Now. Before they can—”

“I can still help!” she shouted, standing, shuddering as her arm swung. “I can still—”

“You’re not a fucking superhero anymore!” I snapped, turning to face them, my back to her. Nothing. She didn’t move. Both of them neared. I looked her dead in the eyes. “Leave. Run!”

Emelia stared at me, her breaths slowing before she looked away and vanished in an explosion of violet electricity. I turned back to look at the two, golden light now streaming off me. I hadn’t felt this kind of heat before. Coming from so deep in my gut that I was sure I was going to catch fire. My fists shook, more with energy than anything, but my jaw was clamped tight, my muscles aching as I worked my mouth open. Gods, I’m going to fucking rip them apart. There was a line that supervillains crossed when they chose their paths in life, but they signed away their will to live the same goddamned second that they so much as looked at anyone I cared about dearly.

And Gods forbid that they hurt them. And then there wouldn’t be hell to pay.

It would simply just be where I’d put them for all eternity.

“What happened to your little friend, the actress?” Antlers called. “Not enough CGI—”

I tore right through him, his body exploding in a viscera of blood. His two halves slumped either side of me, and the blood he washed me with began steaming, simmering, and evaporating off of me as I looked up at Snake. I cried out, getting it out from deep in my gut, and launched up toward him. Both my fists slammed into his lower jaw, snapping his mouth shut. I didn’t stop. I put more speed into the next punch, making sure his fangs went right through his mouth and out the bottom, pinning it shut. He mewled, shrieking and cursing, swiping his tail around in ferocious arcs that smashed apart pillars and walkways and sent debris crashing down around us. I dodged, ducked, got peppered with tiny concrete shrapnel as I landed on top of his head and stood upright.

Then I willed myself to go down, and fast.

His skull smashed into the concrete, not breaking bone but smashing through our level. We fell into a brief abyss of stone and metal, pipes of water and wires spitting electricity as we landed hard onto the next floor. We were in total darkness, the lights cut off. I glowed a stunning gold, bright enough to cut through the dark, and just as bright as Snake’s eyes as they opened right in front of me. I darted forward, aiming to go through one eye and out the next, my fist raised, rage coming from my mouth. Then his tail swung around and crashed into my ribs. I smashed through a wall, choked on dust, and willed myself onto my feet, feeling the ground shudder underneath me.

The floor above us was going to collapse, trapping us both here in the dark. Fine.

His tail shot out from the dark, wrapped around me in one sudden motion. It dragged me forward, slammed me through pillar after pillar. He was enraged, animal-like. He ripped open his mouth, showering me with burning venom and sticky saliva that reeked of flesh, blood and hate.

Then he curled around me, tighter and tighter until my arms were pinned to my sides. I tried to move, to buck and kick and even sink my teeth into his scales through desperation.

Nothing. He only squeezed tighter. My head felt light, then heavy. My light blinked out. My lungs were squeezed dry, and I choked on strangled words and saliva flooding into my mouth.

“You’ll die here in this pit with me,” he snarled. I cried out, feeling hot blood rush into my face. “And when the humans clear the rubble and find your corpse dead in my grasp, they will know that the age of humans and superhumans has come to an end. A new age arises. We will be dominant.” He squeezed more, tighter. I felt something give in me, splinter, break. A rib. A sudden sharp pain stabbed into my lung, making me taste blood. “No longer shall we be subhuman.”

“Would—” I swore, gasping for air through the pain. “You—” I bit into the scales, harder this time, more than desperate and furious, partly terrified of the bus-sized chunks of stone smashing all around us, but more than angry that a fucking Kaiju even had the thought that he could kill the likes of me. “Stop. Fucking. Talking. And just freaking keel over already?!”

I yanked my right arm free, and then plunged it deep into the gash I’d opened.

Then something strange happened, and I felt a pulse spread from my gut outward. Snake froze, then began to shake, spasm, as a bolt of electricity ripped free from my hand and surged through his body. It was over in seconds, but his now human scream etched itself into my mind as he was burnt from the inside out. His blood stewed and boiled, bursting right through the scars across his body in tiny sprouts of scarlet. He swelled, his body energized, his muscles fattening until they broke right through his scales and shredded his flesh. He was still alive, trying to kill me, trying to squeeze the life out of me, but he was passed the burning and growing faze. He was charing now. Scorching. His meat sizzled, blackened, and his blood turned a dark gooey black.

He slumped over, a heap of snake skin and bones and blood that stuck to me as I fell onto my chest trying to get away from his smoldering corpse. I gasped, breathed and gasped some more.

I rolled over onto my back, breathing so hard that my chest began to ache.

Rubble still fell from above, but less now. The silence was growing.

I shut my eyes, trying to control my breathing. I was irrationally scared, terrified, because something still felt so terribly wrong. Inside of me. Outside of me. Freaking everything felt so, so wrong to me right that second. I looked at the meaty corpse and the overgrown muscles and tumors and the bones I’d turned into pulpy and ash. Stared at the tendrils of smoke curling off whatever meaty soup oozed out of his body. Gods, that thing was alive just now. And he looked… dead. Dead. More than that, because even dead things were recognizable. Humans. Kaiju. You could get a grip, no matter how scared you were, and could figure out what the heap of flesh was in front of you. But I was sitting upright, staring at the thing I’d left for dead spread out in front of me. Smoke. Sizzle. Burn and stew. Boils of pus and blood spewed open, reeking of hot rot and bile.

And if I hadn’t been the one to kill him, then I wouldn’t have been able to even guess what he had just been. I stared at him, his remains, and watched as the stones from above plunged into his soft tissue and watery muscle, showering me in tides of blood that seeped into my costume.

I was still shaking, then I threw up to my right. I wiped it away, staring at my hand.

Golden sparks spat and vanished from my fingers, the light in my eyes flickering in the blood’s reflection. I shut my hand, tightened my fist. It still shook, trembled, not staying still.

What the fuck was that? I thought, failing to get up. Get away. How did I just do that?

It wasn’t my powers that I was afraid of. No, it was how Snake had cried out for his mother and father and brother before his tongue fattened and his skull split at the seams because he was growing and growing and didn’t stop growing until his orifices ripped open and his guts spilled out, and he was writhing, Gods, he had been shrieking, shaking and shaking his head, slamming it into the floor, desperately trying to kill himself as it continued, but all that happened was more growths appeared on him, blooming like fleshy black and red mushrooms all over his entire body, more flesh grew, more blood gushed, and… oh, my Gods, I felt sick again, thinking about it. I felt my gut fly up my throat, hit the roof of my mouth on the way out. I puked to my side until my stomach was empty. The smell down here was ruining my gut, but so was the fact that he’d still been alive as he was in the process of dying. He felt every single volt of that golden electricity. Felt as it coursed through his entire body. I had never seen dad do that before to anyone.

But it was no wonder, I figured, laying down on my back, listening to the SDU pelt through the complex toward me, because if the humans saw me do it, they’d think I was a monster.

I wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t a monster.

Snake died—had to die—because he was a villain. Yeah, that was right. I did that.

I wanted to laugh, be triumphant, but…

A bright flashlight shone from down above, searched and searched, then found me.

I raised my bloodied hand to shield my face from the light. Gods above, what am I?