'Oberon wants to see you.'

'Feeling's decidedly not mutual,' I told Rivka even before looking at her. 'For all that I want to make amends.'

'Part of that is talking with Oberon and maybe his court, David. Actually, most of it is that. Most of the other Fae are too shy to get another iron suppository, and I doubt you'd like to meet those who aren't.'

I blew out a breath. Why was I hesitant? Because Oberon had blamed me for killing so many Fae? I did, too, to an extent, though we both knew Chernobog was truly responsible. I don't know. Maybe we were both stupid. No, scratch that. Maybe Oberon was stupid too.

'No one told me this at the Heads' meeting.'

'It came up later.' She crossed her arms, looking uncomfortable. Her expression was serene, but the way her clawed fingers dug into her sleeves told a different story.

'Did Reem tell you?' I changed tack at the blank stare, knowing I wasn't getting anywhere. 'Did he at least say where it would take place? Like, should I expect to be condemned on international TV or something?'

'ARC wouldn't expose you like that.' Rivka's voice made me wonder who she was trying to reassure. 'Do you want me to come with you? I'll choose a substitute.'

'Did he say where he wants to meet?' I repeated. Honestly, it was sweet that she was so worried about my peace of mind-women like her and Bianca were the sisters I never had-but now was not the time for pussyfooting. Or maybe the location was just so bad she'd rather drag her feet on telling me about it? Was that why she wanted to accompany me?"

'In Faerie. Apparently, there's a problem he's trying and slowly failing to solve, and he wants your expertise.' Rivka smirked, batting her eyes at me. 'If it helps, you were his first option. He's only just started looking for alternatives.'

'Problem, huh? I understand if he can't get it up at his age, but asking other people to take care of his wife? I don't exactly wanna pay locomotive to the train, either...'

Rivka slapped both hands over her face, grinding their heels into her eyes. 'I'll pretend I didn't hear that...thanks for the mental image, David. Now I'm going to start having nightmares. Daymares. I wouldn't have been able to sleep after this if I were still human, anyway.'

'Happy to help expand your imagination, boss.'

'Ugh. Don't make jokes like this around Oberon, you hear?'

'What, you're not going to come with me anymore?' I asked innocently.

'Watch it.' Rivka pointed a finger at me, eyes narrowed. 'I know where you live and have your girlfriend on speed dial.'

I held up my hands. 'Against such threats, what can a man do but surrender?'

***

Rivka shook her head with a smile as she watched David go. He could still joke, thank God. He was getting better.

The ghoul sank into her chair with a sigh, boots crossed on her desk. She hated having to clean it, but knew it drove Tamar nuts, and it was always funny to see the Goetia Head fuss over cleanliness.

'Please sit properly, young one.'

Tamar was in David's former seat faster than she could see. She didn't know whether he'd hidden himself from both of them, or if he'd observed from a distance and simply moved without her seeing, but he looked like he had been sitting for hours.

Tamar's flesh was burned so badly only a few patches of skin hung over abused muscle, and they all bore inverted pentagrams, bearing the Names of God and the demons-not shedim, not foreign deities; the things bound to Tamar had little to do with his faith, and much to do with the Christians'-within. Said patches had not been spared randomly: there was skin at his joints, over his heart and manhood, on his head. Stars of David surrounded the empty sockets burning with flames, and shone where his mouth, nose and ears had been.

'So sorry, sir. I thought I was alone. You're stealthy.'

Tamar snorted. 'When you're trying not to wake up your grand-grandkids, you learn to be quiet, too.'

'What about Sarah?'

'I learned long ago that, no matter what I do, she'll wake up and berate me for acting like a bull in a China shop.' The flames glowed pink for a while, and the sockets seemed to narrow in affection.

Rivka nodded. There were some people you just couldn't plan around. 'It's been a while since you've woken me up, so I'd say you're doing good.'

'It's been a while since you've slept, and even longer since you've slept in my house. I'd say I'm winning by default.'

There was a pause after that. Rivka pursed her lips as she chose her next words, but, when Tamar began rubbing the spot where his number had been on his skin, and where it still burned with the infernal light that marked his flesh and bones, she knew she had to get his attention, or he'd become maudlin.

And people who could fistfight the Princes of Hell weren't people you wanted even remotely upset. Such events tended to be accompanied by descriptions full of words like "tragic accident", "former galaxy clusters" and "the fabric of the universe".

'How come I can perceive you, even vaguely, but David can't?'

'Perhaps you are smarter than you thi-wait. Not even you can be that smart.'

Rivka snorted. 'Pull the other one.'

'I am hiding myself from him, specifically. The people around him may need to know I'm there, so that we can exchange plans in event of an emergency, but there is no need to alarm David further. He already knows John has his eyes on him. The last thing he needs is learning there are two kooky old men stalking him.'

'Well, long as you and John hide your white van...'

'It's blue. Thank you very much.'

'Your demons are getting better,' Rivka said, slightly puzzled. 'Though even them getting around both strigoi senses and Mimir's perception is...kind of hard to swallow.'

'I tried to destroy the chances of him finding out about me through Abaddon, which predictably failed. Supernaturals like him cannot be so easily changed, nor can their fates. Then, Aamon birthed something utterly appalling, but throbbing with holy power, which did work.'

'Birthed?' Rivka wrinkled her nose.

'His words, not mine.' Which implied the "throbbing" was all him.

'What about Orobas and Ose?'

'They are still fighting about where Chernobog is. Or rather, fighting about where he isn't. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as they keep telling me when they're not calling each other idiots.'

'You make them sound like chumps. Still, some people,' an uninformed onlooker could have been forgiven for thinking Rivka was making air quotes with her fingers. 'Might get upset at their absence.'

'There are people after them now, too?' Tamar fanned himself. 'Oh, dear. I sure hope they want them back as much as they want them gone, like everyone else.'

'We can only pray,' Rivka said, only half-ironically.

'Indeed.' Tamar did not move. Instead, he was now standing two metres away from Rivka's desk, the seat back in its place. 'Thank you, for supporting him.'

***

Despite the glamourous perception mundanes, weres and the like had of supernatural travel, it was very much like earthly traffic. Following that analogy, Tamar was a jogger, dragging several tires behind him as he went about his day. Except the tires were wrapped around his organs and bit him as he jogged on choppy water.

At least nothing was biting today. Several souls had disappeared from the aether recently, and, with no god to claim or search for them, it fell to ARC and their countries' agencies to unravel the mystery. They had long ago removed supernatural predators from the aether, not that Tamar was sure if a beast was responsible. The disappearances did not appear to follow any pattern of logic, and while that was not unheard of, it seemed to clean for the equivalent of sharks.

Still, the aether was as calm as it could ever be, despite that. Tamar passed several souls, resting or shaping the raw mana around them into their own little worlds-some of them mages, some of them dead, others both. Fellow travellers avoided the light of his soul and the spheres of darkness wrapped around him. Just the Sephiroth carved across his back and into his spine would have been enough to ward most off, but if took intimidation to avoid confrontation, he was all for it.

Tamar paid none any heed, especially the ones he knew. Until one of them bumped into him, that was.

Tamar was never happy to see Strauss and his freak. Ironic, how he often wished the bastard would travel through other means than through its shadows, but had now run into the two.

Tamar pushed them aside, and tried to return to Jerusalem, but Strauss stopped him.

'Your enmity is pointless. I am just following orders.' Your hatred is pointless. I am just following orders. 'It will not change the objective of my mission, nor prevent me from accomplishing it.' It will not help you escape, nor dull the pain. 'You are merely indulging a vendetta, when the past cannot be changed.' You are merely tiring yourself out. There is no sentiment in this, from my side. Why is there any from yours?

'Do not stall me, Strauss. I have business to be about.'

'So do I-'

'I did not ask.' Tamar smiled with his sockets, making the flames go through a merry range of colours. 'You are speaking without being asked more often, these days. One might almost think you're human.'

'I do not care about your opinion of me,' Strauss replied. 'Nacht,' ah, yes, the only freak in ARC bigger than him, though somehow still more human. Oddly silent at the moment, too. 'And I have successfully convinced Solarex not to come to Earth.'

'You don't report to me. If you want praise for doing the bare minimum, go kiss Shiftskin's arse. He can tell you all about wanting more than you deserve.'

'Head Shiftskin sent me to you,' Strauss said, then reached into his long coat, producing something as thin as a sheet of paper, but made of gold. Tamar snorted. Had that cosmic pervert made a joke about gold as a conductor of magic? Seemed he could think with both heads, as long as he used one at a time. Astounding.

Looking closer, Tamar saw whatever was on it had been written in golden ink, and laughed. 'This is almost as pointless as your existence. What do you want me to do, use my braille skills? I'm not actually blind. Gather up some people who are, put them in a camp for skill improvement.'

'Someone seems to have woken up on the wrong side of the train,' Nacht said softly. From within its depths, his childish, haggard face stared back at him, realisation struggling against incomprehension as it dawned. 'Still having nightmares?'

'Give me that rag,' Tamar snatched it from Strauss' hand, without waiting for a reply. 'Follow me.'

'Yes,' Strauss said, as he began walking the aether behind Tamar. Then, more hesitantly (Strauss, shy? No. He didn't feel such things. Unsure of himself, then?), 'Can I see Adolf?'

'There's this wonderful invention knows as the internet...'

'Some gods of punishment might get jealous at no longer being able to pass him among each other.'

'Maybe if he had believed in anything, that would have never been needed. Still, I'm happy that didn't happen. This way, they can no longer complain about someone keeping him for too long, or otherwise cheating,' Tamar said, the ever-present pressure of Goetia headquarters' wards growing stronger as he approached his destination. 'Also, you didn't give him back to me for years last time.'

'True,' Strauss acknowledged. 'The document you took from us is Solarex's testimony-or, rather, theory, as we cannot be sure how much he truly knows, and how much he is pretending to know, or lying about-on the nature of Chernobog. Nacht and I have went over it, but we think your skills, in tandem with ours, could help detect misdirection and malice.

Tamar grunted noncommittally. Besides his demons, he was bound to old, nameless things that had been burrowing under the place that would become Hell long before Lucifer and his lackeys had fallen into it. They were powerful, each as powerful as a Prince of Hell, in fact, but stupid. Hungry and reactive, like deep ocean fish. They were engines used to augment the power of his demons, or pack mules used to bear things they couldn't be bothered with. The Goetia division didn't only bind demons and their distant cousins. Spirits of all sizes and shapes, horrors like his brutes, and-though never for long-even angels. Some of his colleagues from Miskatonic, the ones closer to the Outer Void rather than further from it, looked at the binding of such creatures with quiet disdain, but, as far as Tamar was concerned, that was pointless. Miskatonic existed because not all manifestations of insanity were-uncontrollably-mad themselves. Nor were, in fact, those who simply fought against their ilk.

Still...much as he loathed to admit it, Strauss and his monster possessed some of the keenest senses in ARC. If they weren't sure of their analysis, he...

Hmph. Perhaps collaboration would not be so pointless.

***

I saw the blackness at the heart of Fairie long before I set my eyes on it. It made a mockery of things like senses, light and distance: as soon as you entered the Fae realm, you knew, in your heart of hearts, that it was at its centre, slowly but surely eating its way through it, like a magot through a dying heart.

Behind me, Shiftskin and Ying Lung drew sharp breaths, the former growling in what looked like confusion and hunger. I didn't want to know. All that I needed to know, I'd been told: Oberon had reached out to the global gathering, demanding a small number of helpers for an unspecified crisis in Fairie. It would have been an insulting request, but the phrasing had suggested he wanted people neither side would miss.

I understood why Sam and I would be in that category, but Ying?

Oberon did not turn to look at us, instead intent on suppressing the darkness. His rainbow, armoured boots were set down on its edge, and he was slowly, almost imperceptibly being pushed back, as if by a strong wind, or by a tide washing away the shore under his feet. His back was bent, his arms extended, and he pushed back at lashing tendrils of darkness.

'The strigoi,' the Seelie King grunted, his normally relaxed voice taut with effort and frustration. 'The Hungry Beast. The Exile.' His helmet tilted to one side. 'Well? What do you see, Silva?'

I opened my eyes and ears and heart, then took a deep breath, letting the realm and the darkness blighting it flow through me.

Then, I knew nothing.

***

999 metres under Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Siberia, 2031

WE. AWAKE.

WE. HAVE. NOT. BEEN. CALLED. UPON. NO. MATTER. OUR. SLEEP. IS. DISTURBED. THE. CAGE. IS. EMPTY. NOT. BROKEN. BUT. OPEN.

THE. SPIDER. IS. GONE.

WHY?

THE. CULPRIT. IS. NOT. GONE. THERE. HAS. NEVER. BEEN. ONE. NO. MATTER. WE. SEE. THE. PAST. UNDONE.

WE. SEE. THE. GUARD. DOG. SLAUGHTERED. MURDERED. ALIEN. HANDS. MOVED. BY. ANOTHER'S. WILL.

THE. ALIEN. IS. GONE. A. BEAST. WHERE. IT. COULD. HAVE. BEEN. THERE. HAS. NEVER. BEEN. ONE.

WE. KNOW. BETTER.

WE. DO. NOT. SEE. YOU. FACELESS. ONE. BUT. YOU. SEE. US.

BEWARE.

***

Unofficial FREAKSHOW training/research facility, Alaska, 2031

Randall Henson watched the soldiers drill with their new gear, and his heart swelled with pride.

Randy knew he didn't appear the most reliable dude, at first, second or twelfth glance, but, fuck, no unit that passed inspection ever passed combat.

This, he knew from experience. Back in his days as a pilot, everyone was filled with outrage after Pearl Harbor, and, Randy knew, rage made people stupid. And people were pretty damn stupid in the first place, for all that individuals were smart, himself notwithstanding.

Still, he had been pretty fuckin' flamboyant as an 'ace', even more than his current self, to some people's disbelief. He hadn't been like those dickbags who'd enlisted for cash and a license to kill-rather, he'd been of the belief that, having led a privileged life, with no need to work, it was only logical to give back to his country-, but he hadn't exactly been a model pilot either.

They'd all been eager to slap a Jap, as the saying had been, and instead gotten saddled with assholes obsessed with rules and regulations.

The other R&R, as they used to call it. The one everybody shat themselves in boredom while thinking of.

Randy had seen combat far less often than he should have, because his boys-his planes, not the other dudes, fuck 'em-were rarely up to snuff, even when they weren't getting thrashed in the maneuvers he pulled so he could have something to jack off to at night.

Ahh...inspections. Gotta love 'em, as much as first impressions.

"What's up, roc?"

The doctor gave him as exasperated a look as her features allowed. Which was to say, not much. Still, really expressive eyes, he had to admit.

"Wrong. Species. Again," Bree ground out, pulling her lab coat tighter around her chest, feathers bristling. Despite being large enough to swallow an elephant in one go-as blue and big as a whale, Hans had once said, when his two and a half braincells had been on vacation-and strong enough to turn the States to dust with a wingbeat, she was pretty damn easily flustered.

"Aw, but the pun don't work with 'thunderbird'!" he said, patting one of her wings.

Bree clicked her beak. "I don't mind if it 'don't work'. Now, will you stop distracting me?"

"Sure thing. Roc on!" She wasn't a fan of the horns, huh? Bet she only listened to bird calls...hmm. Would that be like him listening to dudes catcalling chicks?

With a long-suffering sigh, for all they had only met less than an hour ago (he had that effect on people, especially ladies), Bree turned to see the boots try out the latest fruits of her labors. Her Department of Defense tag, which was larger than most of Randy's cars, shone almost as brightly as her proud eyes in the fake sunlight of the simulation room.

Getting the matter generators to make anything smaller and more complex than landmarks and terrain was proving a bitch, so the more finicky exercises had to come later. For now, the boys, girls and the rest could just have fun stomping around.

Armament landed two feet to his right, whooping. Randy took one look at him and groaned. The combat pants with suspenders he was used to by now, godawful as they were, but the white shirt with 'work will set you free'?

"Haaans..." He somehow managed to sound whiny rather than pissed. Like the beard and tattooed chrome dome weren't enough... "Fuckin' seriously?"

"Huh?" Hans looked at him like he was the dumbest motherfucker on the planet.

"Don'cha think that shirt goes exactly in the direction we've been tellin' ya to avoid, unless ya grow your hair?"

"Fuck you mean?" Hans frowned. "Work will set you free-I never feel more empty-minded than when I'm workin' out or doin' some maintenance on my toys."

"Yeah, betcha don't-"

"Shhh!" Bree hissed. "You're gonna embarrass us all in front of the president!"

The current prez, Mary Anne Simmons, was the third successive one with paranormal powers. In her case, the ability to escape any situation and bindings, physical or metaphorical. Everyone made dumb jokes about that being the perfect power for a politician, haha, but they didn't know shit. Randy had watched Mary grow, and you'd have to be dumber than Hans to think Breakout's kid would be allowed to get away with anything, no matter how good she was at wriggling out of tight spots.

That was probably the reason she'd turned out alright. Randy believed she got some of Clara's good traits(because who the hell else's could she inherit, her dad's? Not like he'd ever gotten to know he was one, too busy bleeding out from a shattered skull), but she just brushed him off whenever he brought it up.

Which was pretty weird. Not like Breakout was modest. Or insecure...in general. But, he supposed, anyone would be insecure when it came to a kid they'd never wanted or expected to have.

"Hello, Doctor Bree. Agents Henson, Miller." Mary had gentler versions of her mother's features, softened by both age and a life without fighting. They lent themselves to her smile, which said she just felt glad to meet her surrogate uncle and brother. Her gray hair, bound in a long ponytail, combined with the navy blue power suit, made her look like Randy's lawyer's wife, except black. All she missed was that cheap 'pearl' necklace.

"Sorry for keeping you," Mary said, her smile becoming self-deprecating. "Start whenever you're ready."

They were on a replica of the White House's lawn, except there was no House between them. Nor was there any other building in the simulation. Randy hoped the eggheads would sort that out soon, so he could smash Hans' dumb face through a Nazi museum and show him how much like a goddamn skinhead he looked.

Bree was large enough she didn't need to pace to get their attention. Instead, she just extended a steel-blue wing towards the horizon. "Today, we are testing the Powered Exoskeletal Adaptive Combat Enhancement Armor. Or PEACE Armor, as everyone's already calling it." Bree rolled her eyes. "Because we bring peace wherever we go...hoo-hah. Please, no pacifier jokes, agents."

"I didn't say shit!" Hans said, only half-focused on the roc. He had created a sniper rifle so he could use its scope as an improvised telescope. He couldn't create anything unrelated to weapons, though that was a broad enough power even a meathead like him could make good use of it.

Randy? He could make things happen, as long as they were likely to. Like, 'you were blown up by a landmine' worked on a lot of battlefields. Not as glamorous, maybe, but he was good at working his mouth. Talking was his third best skill with it.

And then the show began.

PEACE Armor was meant to bridge the gap between mundanes, mages and the like, and the brawnier supernaturals. So they could stop relying so much on people who often had exploitable weaknesses. Sure, the Armor had its flaws too, what with being manmade(so to speak), but it could also be mass-produced...without a legal and ethical crisis, unlike, say, weres or vampires.

As he felt the Secret Service move around Mary, barely brushing against the edge of his perception (he only knew someone was there, but couldn't hear their breathing, blinking and heartbeats, nor feel the warmth of their bodies and souls. The fact he even thought about these suggested the current bodyguards were ensouled warmbloods. Interesting), Randy wondered how long the Armor could keep going. He'd heard all about fusion and miniature suns, but what about when the main generators run out? What if the wearer got caught in an antimagic field and couldn't absorb mana, let alone convert it to other forms of energy?

"Huh." Hans lowered his rifle, blinking. "Smaller than I thought..."

"Huh? It's not that bulky, genius," Randy replied. "Doesn't add much height eit-"

Randy quickly realized Hans hadn't been talking about the Armor, but the projectile a soldier had thrown at them.

Sixty billion tons came flying at them, and hit Hans' curled pinky at thirty miles per second. The shockwave obliterated the ground far beyond Randy's sight, and for a significant part of the continent, but did nothing more than ruffle the hair, or equivalent, of everyone present. Mary was right as rain as her power made the shockwave and debris bend around her.

Armament watched the mountain balancing on his little finger in disbelief. He knew this was just training, but...

Did they really have to hold back so much?

"Oi!" Hans hollered as he raised the mountain overhead, stomping forward and making lava splash into his eyes.. "These things hold together much better than the real ones! Put your damn back into it, pansies!"

And with that, he flicked the mountain back the way it had come.

Randy ran forward a but, to get a look at the action, and saw a soldier, their Armor blending perfectly with the devastated environment. The distortion was clear as day to him, though, especially as they raised their arm and punched the mountain to steam.

He smiled approvingly as another soldier came over the horizon, reaching the puncher in a hundredth of a second. Their high-five shook the Earth's replica to the core, sending mile-wide cracks across the landscape.

Randy leapt back, nodding at Bree. "Oh, yeaaaah~ They can definitely go toe to toe with Joe Vamp off the street."

Bree gave him a small smile, then clicked her beak, restoring the simulation to pristine condition. "Now, we will observe the ranged weapons. I have thought of a rather fitting vantage point. Please follow me..."

Bree flew the eighteen hundred miles to Yellowstone in a couple seconds, Randy and Hans having to pace themselves to a hundredth of their speed so as not to overtake her. This gave him all the time in the world to wonder if the President had always been this fast, or if she was being stealthily helped along by a Secret Service member.

They stopped on top of the volcano, seeing dozens of soldiers standing in five-person squads a few hundred feet away from its base, holding wide-barreled, dark blue pistols and rifles with light blue highlights.

"Coilguns," Bree explained. "We're ironing out the kinks in the railgun variants as we speak, but those are not a priority. Magnetic fields can be bent or unmade, with the right powers. Those'll need more wards than the coilguns already have."

"I've heard these shoot rounds at lightspeed?" The president asked, brow furrowed. "It is rather hard to believe that velocity can be achieved through an entirely mechanical process."

Unlike the more common Gauss mass-drivers that used electromagnets, which were often deployed against lower-level supernaturals, DOD's latest toys simply launched projectiles-two pound rounds for the pistols, ten tons for the rifles-through means of a tightly-wound metal coil, which, when released, pushed the round out of the barrel at lightspeed.

The world's most dangerous slingshots, in Randy's opinion.

"I will be frank-" Bree started.

"To be Frank, you'd have to change your name, Breeee~"

"I will be frank with you, ma'am," the thunderbird told the president. "Unlike our magical 'nuke guns', these will cause immense collateral damage with every shot. Maybe our mages can add some more wards before we start spreading them across the armed forces, but you are going to see the unmodified versions."

Mary pursed her lips. "We are expecting a war or unnatural disaster of cataclysmic proportions, doctor. Collateral is nothing strange."

"Let us hope it will not come to that." The doctor laughed, trying to mask her agitation. "The problem with ranged weapons is that fledgling vampires and most weres move at thousands of times the speed of sound, like I do, and can maneuver as they wish at said speed. They only escalate from there. This is why most people prefer melee weapons with enhanced durability when engaging them. Lightspeed projectiles are too fast for most of them. Warded to resist disintegration, silver or blessed rounds can stop many threats in their tracks."

"They can still dodge," Armament said, looking down at the soldiers. "Those mofos come with some sorta fighting instinct, gives 'em a heads-up when you're about to smoke their ass. Unless you're much faster than them, you can't surprise one."

"Also," Randy chimed in with an apologetic smile. "They can just look where you're aiming, and move."

"Ordinarily, yes," Bree replied. "But PEACE Armor can make any human as fast and strong as a werewolf, meaning they can keep pace. No different from shooting mundane humans."

Randy still wasn't sure-usually, people didn't blow up their cities or states with each shot-but he supposed they'd just add the anti-collateral wards before mass distribution of the coilguns.

"You didn't mention iron," he told Bree softly, watching one of the soldiers lift their pistol.

"Your pardon?"

"Iron," Randy repeated, louder. "Anti-Fae rounds. That's what we're really worried about, ain't it? War with the Courts and the unaligned Fae?"

"Speak for yourself," Hans said, frowning grimly. "I'm more creeped out by how messed-up their infiltration plan is."

Randy groaned. "Their what now?"

"Think about it," Hans said heatedly. "They host the godly equivalent of a terrorist and a fugitive, knowing full well what the fucker's done, and how twisted he is in general. Then, when he uses some poor schmuck as a sockpuppet, they cry foul, and make ARC-and us, and everyone else who was involved in that clusterfuck-out to be the bad guys, so that we'll feel bad and let them into our world."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"You think the Fae would sacrifice so many of their soldiers to...gain our pity?" Mary asked.

Hans gave her a humorless smile. "I think that's a leading question, ma'am. You know the bastards don't care about each other. Why wouldn't they do it? Remember they were-still are, for all we know-in cahoots with Chernobog. I bet they kept you guys," he gestured at Randy. "In place just enough for him to bodyjack that Silva dude."

Randy's head spun. Of all the times for Hans to make sense-

"The..." Bree's voice wavered slightly. "The shooting demonstration is about to start."

"Heh," Randy said, his smile, for once, not coming effortlessly. "Good thing we got some explosions to distract us, huh, Hans?"

Armament snorted. "Fuck off, man. I don't want the curse-casting kidnappers living across the street from us."

"It's a bad day when big booms can't cheer  you up." Randy's smile disappeared.

"Yeah, well...no one's had a good day in a while."

Below them, a soldier raised their pistol, and fired. The rounds were made of the same material as the Armor: not yamadium-the US used it, of course, most countries did; but old Kenji wouldn't disclose the secret of his precious material's creation or composition, no matter the bribes or threats, and their scientists had yet to crack it-but, rather, a recent creation of DOD. They were still trying to decide on a name. A few people had suggested paxium, what with PEACE Armor and all, but they were still debating.

As the round flew with force close to a ten-megaton nuke, but far more concentrated, a mushroom cloud appeared, ravaging the terrain for miles and splitting the clouds above. Neither the soldiers or the observers were harmed, but, as Yellowstone began erupting, triggered by the nuke-like explosion, Bree gestured with a wing, and the simulation reset.

"The coil pistols are not meant to be used in combat, even as sidearms-that role goes to the rifles. Melee weapons, backed by the Armor's power, will be the main method of dealing damage. The pistols are for last resort only," the thunderbird explained. "As for the rifles...ten tons at lightspeed is the equivalent of a hundred and eight gigatons of TNT. Less than a fifth of how hard the average vamp, were or PEACE Armor user can punch, but far more concentrated. It  is a bullet, after all."

"Hyperdense rounds also means it'll be harder for grunts to fuck around with, since they'd need Armor to budge them," Randy joked, relieved at the potential future pranks strangled in the crib.

"The human ones, yes. The mages? The weres who can play volleyball with mountains across the continent? Not so much." Aaand there Bree went, shooting down his hopes like they owed her money. "Agent Henson, would you mind helping with the demonstration?"

"How? I know I can dodge or catch the bullets, I'm just as fast. I'm strong enough to lift them, too..."

"Yes, but it is durability I am interested in. Coil rifle rounds can penetrate most supernaturals without deforming. We want to see their effect on a much tougher target, like you. If the rounds keep their shape after smashing into the equivalent of a compressed small moon..."

"Right, right. Uh, ma'am, guys, will you take a step back? Or...?" Randy shrugged when no one moved. "Suit yourselves." Taking off his glasses to reveal eyes that changed color every moment, Randy looked down, pointing at the first soldier with a rifle he saw. "Hey! Give me your best shot! Right! Here!" He tapped his right eye twice.

The soldier saluted lazily, then raised the rifle with both hands, and fired. Randy's eye stung a little as the round slammed into it, pushing ineffectually against the eyeball, kept in motion by sheer momentum. Below him, Yellowstone became an exploding cloud of dust and lava, scorching his suit.

As the simulation reset once more, Randy spun the intact, burning ten-ton round on one finger. "You make good stuff, doc."

"Indeed, doctor Bree." Mary smiled at her. "We should discuss the creation of larger coilguns, for national..." The President looked down at her pocket in disbelief. Not because it was ringing, rather than buzzing, despite the current settings, but because it was ringing in a pocket reality, without any satellites.

Narrowing her eyes, Mary passed her phone to one of the unseen Secret Service agents, who briefly stiffened-the faint motions of the air Randy senses around them briefly stopped-upon seeing the number, then answered. "Hello, sir. Why the surprise call?" they asked with forced cheer. "We were not expecting to receive anything from Russia with love today."

Randy's eyes widened behind his glasses, every fiber of his being screaming of approaching danger. Making a chopping gesture at Hans, he dashed towards the soldiers, lifting and tossing them up far faster than they could perceive. As far as they knew, they were suddenly back in DC after being thrown through the portal created by the gun Armament had created.

"THIS. IS. NOT. THE. PRESIDENT."

The first world turned North America to dust and the other continents to gravel, reducing the replica Earth's surface to ruin as oceans were vaporuised from the sheer force and the atmosphere was split apart. Despite the rapidly-disappearing air, each following word could be heard, even as they stripped the planet's layers away. The mantle was already gone.

"Nnnnnngh-who the fuck gave Tunguska a phone!?" Randy hissed, shaking his head. Every word felt like a punch from Dust Devil, and did as much damage to him: his head was numb, eyes swollen, and he could feel some loose teeth before he healed.

"How the fuck-" Armament blinked, having recovered from similar damage, while Bree shook her great head. Luckily, they were all much tougher than their continent. "How and why the hell have you gotten hold of that number?"

"TO. GET. YOUR. ATTENTION." Tunguska sounded far more smugly amused than the embodiment of disasters should have been able to. "WHAT. AMERICAN. PRESIDENT. WOULD. REFUSE. SUCH. A. CALL? YOU. ARE. CAREFUL. DAUGHTER. OF. THE. BREAKER. BUT. YOUR. CAUTION. IS. POINTLESS. OUR. WORDS. CANNOT. HARM. YOU." A pause. "NOR. YOUR. BODYGUARDS. THAT. IS. GOOD."

"The Strangeguard usually reaches out to FREAKSHOW in case of a crisis," Mary said, knowing Tunguska could hear her. "What could be so urgent that you'd do this instead?"

"Wait, ma'am." Randy help up a hand. "Tunguska, are you in the Kremlin? Is that how you got hold of that phone?"

At least they knew how the call had been made. Tunguska had proved its disregard for logic countless times since the Impact that had awakened its incarnation on Earth. All other disasters in history had birthed the greater entity (well, the incarnate aspect, not the Archetype of Disaster), and fed its aspects in their planetary or cosmic wombs, but it took certain ones to rouse its fragments.

"WE. ARE. ALL CONCERNED. SOMETHING. WAS. STOLEN. NO. WE. DO. NOT. THINK. IT. WAS. YOU. SO. FAR. BUT. IT. THREATENS. EVERYONE. WE. WANT. TO. CREATE. A. TASKFORCE."

"To find whatever was taken?" Armament asked. Their spies in Moscow had been awfully quiet lately, and that was never a good sign.

"YES. SEARCH. AND. DESTROY."

And with that, it hung up.

The Secret Service agent gave the president her phone back gingerly, their posture apologetic.

"You couldn't have known," Mary said, pocketing it. "I just hope agents Simmons, Clyde and Bat are faring better."

***

'You are awful at negotiating, zmeu,' the Mother of the Forest grumbled as she paced around her cottage. Aaron was large enough he only needed to move his eyes to track her, which was good, because the hag was walking circles around him.

'Communist.' She wrinkled her hooked, beaklike nose, shrugging as if to say "what can you do?". 'You only have servants and enemies.'

'Not any longer,' Aaron said. 'And this would benefit you, too.'

'Pfa!' The Mother made a dismissive gesture with both gnarled hands, before wiping them on her checkered, blue and white apron. Coupled with the red shirt, grey pants and slippers, and pink, white-spotted shawl, she could have passed for an old, if ugly human woman.

Until one saw the leaves and twigs tangled in her long white hair, which the shawl failed to fully contain, were actually growing from it. Until one saw the pock marks covering her leathery skin looked more like holes in a hollow tree, an image only strengthened by the bugs and maggots coming out of one and going into another.

'Because  I need meatshields, boy?' she asked, smiling just enough to show needle-like teeth. Then, she crossed the metres between them, jumped and flicked Aaron in the centre of his chest.

It was his armour that saved him. His instincts had told him to put it on the moment he had entered her forest-all of them, none at all, equally distant from every human settlement-, though he told himself she'd had used less force if he'd been unarmoured.

As it was, he vapourised the ground for millions of kilometres upon landing, and found himself in a crater that would have swallowed the sun. The impact itself did no damage to his armour, for it had been forged to withstand far worse, but the flick tore Aaron almost in half, his torso hanging onto his waist by a few strands of flesh and enchanted bronze. His chest had a hole the size of a large car in it, reaching all the way through, though his zmeu constitution prevented him from stumbling as he rose to his feet, despite the missing vertebrae of his spine.

Aaron huffed as his body healed. This pain was nothing compared to their last meeting.

Shaking his heads, he flew back to her cottage. The Mother had flicked him some eighty trillion kilometres away, which meant a couple seconds of flight, assuring that he had time to see her smug grin before he landed.

'Did this serve any purpose? I know you're strong.' As strong as his father, at least before his power began to grow. 'You damaged your forest-'

'My forest, yes,' she barked. 'I'll heal it. Don't try to change the subject, zmeu. I won't turn myself into your country's blacksmith just because you think you standing between me and whatever is coming will keep me safe. Do you have any idea how boring it is to forge weapons more dangerous than yourself?'

'If not for that, what would be your price?'

'Heh.' The mother's beady black eyes glinted. 'Don't think I can't tell what's going through those heads of yours. I'm not a whore, boy. I'm not letting the damn country run a train on me! You brought your brothers here because you wanted zmei to be the ones on a heroic journey, slaying monsters and helping people, for once. The weapons were what you thought you deserved-none of you three liked the transaction. None of you stopped to think if I'd meant that as a joke! You just went ahead, so I played along.' She batted her eyes. 'Felt young again, at least...'

Bleeding blazes... 'Then what?'

The mother wagged a clawed finger at him, a cherry-red centipede wrapped around it. 'Do you know why I called your harness the Brazen Mantle? It's not made of brass, after all. But it is brazen, as brazen as Burnished Death is mischievous and Three Moons Falling is bloodthirsty. Sit down, and listen-for that harness of yours would not obey even me, who forged it. It would not obey you, its wearer, either, if not for...'

***

As Andrei walked out of the fighting ring's infirmary, he ran into a face he had known for decades, but rarely seen in this form.

'What?' Lucian asked, moustache twitching. The zmeu's default human form was over two metres tall, muscular and swarthy, with a wild mane of black hair that reached down to his shoulder blades.

'I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing you like this,' the werebear replied, holding his medical file close to his chest. It had been updated, showing he had not been poisoned with silver-the only method that worked on weres-during the Fright Before Christmas.

Lucian snorted. 'Took the words outta my mouth. I look at you, and I can only smell musk and fish, despite the way you look. The contrast is killing me.'

'You'll survive. Here for the update?' He jerked his head towards the door.

'Yeah. I wanted to do one, and my brothers insisted.' Supernaturals, as a rule, could not get sick, barring unusual circumstances. But the Fright had left everyone walking on eggshells.

'Good luck. Although...' Andrei looked the shirtless zmeu up and down. He only wore a pair of dark blue pants. 'Alright, the contrast is killing me, too. You smell like smoked lizard. What made you shapeshift like this?'

Lucian rolled his eyes-still yellow, still with vertical, slit-like pupils-as he leaned against a whitewashed wall. 'Aari's gotten convinced the world is going to end, and has basically put me and Lucas into a sort of boot camp, except you can't graduate, because he's half as paranoid as he's demanding. I feel like I'm four again...'

'He just wants you to survive...' Andrei said softly, making Lucian sigh and cross his brawny arms.

'Yeah, I know. And...it's nice he's concerned. Fuck, he's practically our dad. But it's cutting into my me time! Only things I've been kissing lately are my brothers' knuckles!'

'How's their tongue game?'

'Oh, fuck off.' And with that, the zmeu entered the infirmary.

He came out a few minutes later, holding a file doorstopper of a file, with what looked like several notes attached.

'Why's yours so much bigger than mine?' Andrei asked as they made their way down the hall and to the locker room. The other men grunted greetings or waved as the two entered. They'd been fighting for more than some of the others had been alive, and everyone knew them.

'Because I'm more  potent than you,' the zmeu said, wiggling his bushy black eyebrows.

Andrei rolled his eyes as he typed the combination to his locker on its keypad. 'I meant the file, dumbass.'

'So did I!' Lucian drew back with a hasp, holding the file to his hairy chest. 'Gosh, Andrei, you only think about l-lewd stuff.'

'You have no idea how fucking unsettling it is to watch you do that...would you mind changing?

'Nah.' Lucian closed his locker and flipped thrice, mouthing an incantation about man revealing the beast he had always been. After the first flip, his skin became green and the hair on his body and hair disappeared. The second added half a metre in height and made his muscles swell as bottle-green scales covered them. His teeth lengthened and thickened into fangs after the third, while wings sprouted from his back. His tailbone writhed and grew before a thick, muscular tail emerged, and his feet bent, the heels drawing back and up, and Lucian landed on taloned toes. 'Aaah...this must be why girls feel so good taking off their war paint.'

'You finally found pants for both forms, huh?' Andrei asked.

'Yeah. Heard they're made by the same guy who makes Hulk's.' Lucian grinned. 'You ready?'

'Are you telling me you actually read about your fight today, as opposed to waiting to be surprised?'

'And what if I did?' He patted his shoulder, then drew him closer, whispering. 'I don't want to leave anything to chance again. Remember that mission David came back shuddering from? Why were his eyes white?'

'You know he can't tell-'

'Yes, but that doesn't stop me from worrying. I think Constantin knows more than us, but not enough. He's been high-strung lately. And where's David now?'

'I don't know!' Andrei growled, showing his fangs, eyes blackening. 'You think I'd lose him again if it was up to me?'

'Woah, there. You didn't lose shit last time.' Lucian frowned down at him. 'Listen-this is your human side talking. I never met my parents until this Christmas, and I care as much about them as I did before. Zmei don't care about their hatchlings, bears don't care about their cubs. David learned the truth when he was grown-up. There was nothing more to change, and he was raised by an alright guy. You should both stop being dramatic about this, and get laid or something.'

The werebear growled, trying to keep his beast from rising. 'You know what's the difference between the two of us?'

'I make girls gag from the size, not the smell?'

Andrei caught himself before he shared a few choice words with the zmeu. 'I don't think giving in to your inner animal makes you happy. But...I did get some, recently.'

'Good! And David? I bet he and Mia have taken a leave from work to get somewhere nice and private to do the nasty.'

'Nice and private...' Andrei shook his head. 'Like any sex involving David would shock people.'

'Yeah, you're right. I'm sure all of Romania and most of Bulgaria has felt Mia pegging him through the mattress. No need to hide anymore.' The zmeu chuckled. 'Good luck with Elementron.'

"Good luck with the weres." Andrei said, watching the other men get ready.

Lucian, he thought, almost sounded like he actually believed David was in a good place.

***

Lucian smirked as the werehawk kicked him through the Southern Carpathians, turning mountain after mountain to steam, levelling the replica of Romania from the shockwave that shook the fake Earth. Amazing, what mages could do when they had money to incentivise them and little else to occupy their time with.

It hurt, of course, but no more than one of his own kicks would have. Aaron's training really was paying off.

He landed in Ukraine, carving a trench as long and half as wide as the country as his talons dug into the ground. The werehawk crossed Romania in a heartbeat, and was almost upon him, before Lucian summoned his mace, holding it up right into the were's surprised face.

She smashed herself flat against it, one of the long gold spikes splitting her head and spine, stopping in her heart. The were pulled herself free with a grumble, damage already healed, then flew up and away, to let others try.

This was an endurance match. Zmei could fight for days, but were stamina was endless, something he had always appreciated.

He was jumped by three groups next: a werewolf pack, a murder of werecrows, and, bizarrely, a group of werelynxes. Solitary animals didn't really do teamwork...maybe they were just sick of his face. He could understand the jealousy at no longer being the ugliest fuckers around.

Didn't mean he'd play around with their bullshit, though.

With a thought, his blood began circulating faster, getting hotter, from steel-melting to steel-vapourising. As hot as the area around him, actually. The weres scoffed, still circling, even when he went from six thousand degrees celsius to fifteen million, causing an explosion and creating an expanding sphere of plasma around them, then ramping up, and increasing that temperature dozens of times over.

Nuke temperatures weren't good for anything more than singing were fur or feathers, but that wasn't what he was aiming for. He was far more interested in finding how hotly he could burn. Not like zmei could get burned.

Twelve billion degrees. Thirty trillion. A thousand times that. A million times. A billion trillion.

The Earth replica was far better at holding itself together than the real planet. That didn't keep it from becoming less than steam long before he was halfway through what he considered hot enough. The weres hadn't stopped regenerating, but every time they tried to become more than overheated particles, they were quickly reminded it was too hot for that.

With a wave at the mage controllers, he dialed down the heat, allowing the weres to regenerate. Good thing they were in space, so they could chill out. The fight had gotten a little too heated up.

'Fuck this,' one of the lynxes said as soon as the planet was back, leaping away, his pack reluctantly following. The other weres didn't hang around for much longer.

'Who's next?' Lucian asked, spinning Burnished Death on one finger.

'I shall make you give up,' a high-pitched, clipped voice said, as another were dropped from the sky.

'Oho!' Lucian said, taking in the weremantis. 'So you're eating my head after this, right? Don't mind if you start now, though...'

Her hybrid form would have probably appeared unattractive and weird to most humans, but Lucian had broader tastes. Flat women had never turned him off, because no zmeoaice had breasts(and few had muscles smaller than his. That had been a much weirder change to adapt to upon entering Romanian society. David probably didn't know how stick-thin Mia looked from Lucian's perspective). Add a couple lethal inbuilt blades and some pretty green chitin, and bam. The mantis had a second pair of arms in hybrid form, which still looked human, as did her feet and face, save for the mandibles and eyes.

The mantis sighed. 'They always say that...'

'Oh, so you have experi-'

She moved too fast for him to see, into a swipe he only caught through sheer instinct, raising an arm to block the blade aiming for his neck. It dug through his scales and skin, but stopped at the muscle. The shockwave bisected Romania, violently pushing the halves away as lava burst from the ground, reaching past the clouds.

Lucian healed before she could pull her arm back, grinning fiercely in the mantis' face. 'That was a merciful blow. Through the neck, wouldn't even feel it, right? You know my kind can just reattach their heads after being beheaded, right, sweetheart?'

'Yes,' she said flatly. 'But I hoped decapitation would discourage you from continuing.'

'I bet you water down your milk before drinking, too. We're putting on a show! People need to see there are those in this country strong enough to protect them if the need arises, and tough enough to shrug off anything-'

'Dramatic much?' The mantis kicked up, between his legs, only for the zmeu's tail to wrap around her leg and hold it in place, despite her struggles. With a wink, Lucian grabbed her chin, pushing her mandibles open with his other hand.

Then, parting his lips, he took a deep breath, and spat a gout of flame down and through her throat and torso.

He left the mantis step back, shaking her charred head as her boiled brain healed. The hole in her chest also healed, unlike the Hungary-sized one he had burned through the planet.

'You were saying something about surrendering?' Lucian asked, lazily swinging his mace with one hand. Hissing, the mantis dashed forward, putting a blade straight through his chest, severing his spine. It healed as soon as she pierced his heart with the other one, then began a series of double blows that punched holes the size of his head through his chest.

The zmeu smiled all the way through. When you weren't immune to pain, it helped to make people think you were.

'You seem really intent on making me give up,' he said conversationally as his lungs were sliced in half, healing almost as fast as the blade went through them.

'And you're just as annoying as my father warned me you'd be.'

'Praying mantis too?'

'Yes, wh-'

'I knew your dad! Gotta say, he really felt like a girl from behind. Is your mom still jeal-'

The next double blow cut him in half vertically. Then, growling, the mantis swung at his halves horizontally, splitting him into quarters. She crouched atop him, putting her blades and arms between his parts so he couldn't heal.

Lucian chuckled hoarsely. 'Thorough, aren't we?' He grinned with each half of a mouth. 'You win. I can't move like this. Let me heal?'

'Will you shut the hell up?'

'Should I say no, or lie?'

Rolling her eyes, she stood up, allowing the quarters to move closer to each other, strands of flesh growing to join them. Lucian was up in a few moments. 'This fight is over,' he said, lifting and holding his mace before him, as if presenting it to her.

Warily, the mantis jumped back six metres. 'What are y-'

Then, Lucian tapped into Burnished Death's power to destroy the distance between them, lightly tapping the mantis on the head with the mace, splattering her.

'Don't be sad now,' he told her as she healed. 'You'd have crushed me without my mace. Maybe we can wrestle later, so I can make it up to you.' The zmeu raised his voice, turning around. 'Anyone else itching for a go?'

Lucian felt something very light and very sharp come to rest just below his waist. 'Just me,' the mantis said from behind him.

'Cute. You know I'd still heal from that, right?'

'Do you want to?'

He laughed. 'Oh, yeah...definitely wanna meet again.'

***

Supernatural fighters rarely had 'gimmicks' beyond those that came with their species, and most felt thy didn't need any. Andrei was in the latter camp. Elementron, his opponent, was decidedly in the former.

The robot took the form of a gunmetal-grey, muscular, bald human male, naked and sexless. Probably why it had been in the genderless locker room, with the golems and the ghosts who didn't remember their lives.

Elementron didn't have any memory problems, though. In fact, it seemed to remember every stupid joke and comment anyone had ever made.

'Feeling the pressure, are we?' it smirked, blank eyes shining in the sunlight as it rained a barrage of blows upon Andrei. Sixty tons moving at Mach seven was fairly challenging for his human form, as every hit felt like dozens of tons of TNT exploding in a small spot. The robot was swinging hard enough to level city blocks, and creating craters just as big in the ground around them.

'Not really,' Andrei said, meeting every second punch and kick with one of his own, and matching the robot's strength. 'You'd think a tool would be better at breaking stuff...'

Elementron's eyes gleamed dangerously, as its smile became sharper. 'I am no tool, old man! I might not be able to modify myself yet, but I am an artificial intelligence, built to live its own life!'

'Hmm...no. Fairly sure you're a tool.'

Scowling, the robot slammed a knee into his crotch, the metal extending into a long, thick spike that parted his body, before piercing his throat and skull. Then, when the tip punched through the top of his skull, it became a drill, spinning, turning the werebear into a pulped ruin.

Elementron kicked Andrei away, and the were healed in midair, so that he landed on his feet. 'Thanks. Couldn't reach that itch, anyway. Maybe you're not that much of a tool...'

Elementron ran at him, melting the ground under and around him, and raised his right leg, before bringing it down into a kick that would have pulverised a tank. Andrei caught his calf with one hand, the ground under them being torn apart like it had been hit by a MOAB. Elementron became liquid nitrogen, but, besides chilling their surroundings, it did nothing more than give Andrei something colder to hold onto, not that it bothered him. The robot turned to hydrogen, to mustard gas, to plasma and gamma radiation, but to no avail: Andrei's were nature meant he had a grip on its form, whatever state of matter it was in.

With a flick of his wrist, he threw the robot up. Spinning, Elementron decided to follow Andrei's advice, and changed his composition to degenerate neutronium. Sixty tons became six trillion as the robot's density increased a hundred billion times over, so that, when it landed on Andrei, the were was turned to atoms, and the ground exploded as over seventy gigatons impacted it like a falling mountain range.

Andrei tried to heal, but was trapped under the robot's dense, gleaming black body.

Right. This was no time to play human.

Andrei's hybrid form pushed Elementron up as it appeared under him, and a flex of his chest sent it flying kilometres into the air, past the clouds that were parted by the hyperdense projectile.

Andrei balled his clawed hand into a fist as the laughing robot fell. Clearly, it was enjoying itself as much as he was. His punch made a dull thud as it connected, propelling the robot past the horizon and the next eleven, reducing the land to dust and memory.

Elementron ran the sixty-six kilometres back in a third of a millisecond, grinning like a loon all the while. It raised a hand as it approached Andrei, but not to strike.

The werebear was fairly sure whatever was left of Romania disappeared from their high five, because it had definitely shaken the planet.

'Enough of this!' Elementron giggled. 'I don't wanna make silver and really hurt you, you know...I had some ideas about a yamadium body, but I doubt you couldn't break it. Ah, well...this will definitely be enough to catch the military's interest.'

'I understand the desire to serve your country,' Andrei said. 'But are you sure you don't want to do anything else? Your creator-'

'Has other robot ideas for peace. I was built to fight! We can't let the reptilians keep beating the brakes off us just because we have paranormal tricks,' Elementron scoffed. 'Besides, I wanted to make sure I could hold my own against a were. A robot that can make any element on demand and is far less squishy than the average mage would be welcome, especially once mass-produced.' It cupped its chin with a haughty look. 'Though, I'm not sure the world could handle that much style...'

'We'll-' Andrei bent down and backwards as two silver spikes flew through the spaces his earlobes had been, reaching low orbit in less than a second. 'Manage. What the fuck was that?'

Elementron shrugged, still grinning. 'I said I wouldn't wanna really hurt you with silver. You could have gotten some earrings after that! You seem like the kinda guy to wear some....didn't expect you to be this fast at point blank, though.'

***

Ojos del Salado, Chile, 2031

Primus, despite the empty words of his detractors, was not a callous, let alone cruel, being. His heart bled, even though his blood had stopped flowing nearly two hundred forty millennia ago.

He liked that expression, 'bleeding heart'. Suggested that only by tearing open the life-core could kindness be revealed. He agreed. Kindness did exist in people, but it was buried so deep only looming death, theirs or someone dear's, could bring it into the open.

Void knew his heart bled, in that sense.

Primus had watched the world develop, nations rise and fall. He had walked Atlantis when it had been whole, not as a slave, but as a predator, looking for blood from all across the world. He had torn open and drunk his newborn daughter dry, for she had been blessed by all gods.

That had been something no child of this soft age could imagine. Back then, the gods had few worshippers, and fewer conflicts. Oh, they still loathed each other from the bottom of the voids they had in place of hearts, but they clashed less often. His daughter had been an attempt to legitimize the Syncretic Treaty, by blessing a champion chosen and supported by all pantheons.

Primus could not allow that. He had known, from the tales of his tribe's elders and the yellowed bones of his ancestors, that chosen ones did not live free, long, or happy lives. He could not allow his daughter to be jerked around like a toy by existence's biggest, most foolish children.

As if to spite him, the bastards had started giving heroes happier lives after.

Primus had killed her to save her, long before his wife had chosen a name. Her blood, already singing in anticipation of her blessings, had empowered him beyond any of his childlings-that he knew of. He wasn't stupid enough to think he was omniscient. Primus had sired a new species, and empowered his tribe beyond their meager imagination. His chosen had become vampires, the rest, the weak in body or spirit, wights, free from the chains of choice. No doubt, no fear, no joy, no anger.

Peace such as Primus had never been able to feel or give himself, yet he had been decried as monstrous, hunted down like the Atlanteans.

That was what he wanted to give the world. Uplift the strong, bring peace to the weak. Then, once they reached and extinguished the stars-

Primus ground his fangs as his childling and two things that only looked human approached him. What was it with the youths of every age interrupting their elders when and only when they were thinking?

Primus stood up in the snow, naked and showing no shame. The other vampire didn't react, nor did the man-thing in brown leathers or the woman-thing in drab, dark blue clothes.

"Mine," he said to the vampire, greeting and staking his claim with one word. The creature known as Jim Bat, a nickname based on his first name, and a joke based on race Primus didn't taste, twisted to fit his nature. He had turned it during the Civil War up north, were more blood ran in the fields and rivers than there had ever been before or since.

"Primus," Jim greeted, his expression blank. A thick-bearded, seemingly well-preserved fifty-something in plain, gray combat pants, shirt and black boots, Jim looked a quarter of his age, and showed no sign of resenting his sire, or regretting the kindred he had slain across North America. Good liar. Not like him. "These are Dust Devil," the man-thing gnawing on a stick, like the world's biggest, ugliest goat. "And Breakout." The woman-thing would have probably been beautiful without her garments and cloth-mask. She certainly looked muscular, darker-skinned than he had been as a human, and not as annoyingly tall as some of this age's women grew.

"We are here to ask for your help," hmm? What for? "In the eventuality of a crisis your powers could be useful in."

Ah, so nothing had happened yet. "What?" he asked, referring to both the type of crisis and the powers that would supposedly been helpful. In response, Jim Bat widened his ice-blue eyes, and looked around.

Vampires could mesmerize and dominate through their gaze. No matter the number of mundane minds, a vampire could control an infinity of them, if they found a way to be seen by all of them. It was the more powerful spellslingers who usually proved problematic, and his children, nephews, and the threefold beasts were immune, as were certain other species across the world. Dragons, thunderbirds...

Jim Bat's had taken that power to another level: anything in his line of sight could be imbued to his will, acting as limb, eye, ear, and whatever else he wanted. So did the volcano under Primus, raising off the ground and past the clouds that gracefully spun aside, also moved by Jim's will.

"In case the landscape or population is warped by an event beyond our control, keeping them under control like this would be immensely helpful." Jim shot Breakout a dirty look. "Of course, I've advocated to enthrall the mundanes for decades..."

"You've also advocated barring them from working, or doing anything but sitting around until a supernatural needs food, entertainment, or raw materials," she replied, pipe going from her shoulder to her hand, swinging alongside her leg.

"It's pointless to both let them think they matter, and let them suffer under the yoke of their minds."

Well, at least some of his childlings weren't insane...

"Drink after?" Primus asked. "How much?"

"Ya won't be drinkin' people," Dust Devil said, eyes steely. "You'd be given however much blood you asked for, synthetic or from regenerators, provided you help-"

"No. World? My tribe. Protect. Harvest."

"I told you-"

"Stop me." Primus tapped his chest with a fanged grin. "Don't think you can."

With a tired growl, Dust Devil took out one of his pistols, and fired. The bullet covered the three meters between him and Primus in a hundredth of a microsecond. To the First Vampire's eyes, it was frozen in place.

Dust Devil's reflexes, as fast as his bullets, did not save him as Primus dashed forward, seizing him by the neck, then flying him off Earth and past the planets, before letting go of him in the Oort Cloud, half a second later. The gunslinger burst apart from the force, then reformed, clothes and all, his archetype imprinted on creation.

How insulting...

Primus flew back to Earth just as fast, to kill the woman-thing and throw the impudent childling into the sun, but only succeeded in arriving on the planet. The woman-thing, just as slow as light, suddenly became far faster than even his perception as she swung her metal club at him, sending his broken body back to space and out of the solar system.

How? She had been frozen when he had left Earth, her back had been turned to him when he had flown back...

Primus didn't have long to ponder as hundreds and hundreds of light years were covered by his flight. Damn, but that hit had hurt when it shouldn't have been able to. Was the woman-thing somehow blessed? If yes, then how was he healing?

His wits came back to him just as he slammed into something far larger than his homeworld, and unimaginably tougher. Something he knew.

Maws turned a head backwards, to glance at the minuscule-compared to him-vampire, before grinning widely. "Bloodfather! Came here to fight me, or it?"

"Rainbow crocodile?" Primus' brow furrowed. The many-headed monster had been swimming the sea of stars for as long as it had existed. Primus had once met it in a world between worlds, when he had been hunting a witch that had hired Maws to protect her. Some dark-skinned bitch in purple, only a few centuries old in body, but who remembered every past life of hers. Her chains had been almost as annoying as the zmeu...and then there had been those daymares of his, about her binding some annoying corpse with a club to her. Bastard's power let him break free of whatever restrictions prevented him from accomplishing his duty...huh. Suddenly, the woman-thing became even easier to hate.

"It?" he asked, then noticed the space around them was wrong, or rather, missing. Their natures let them spoke as if air, time and reality still existed, but Primus knew the madness flowing around him would have warped stars beyond recognition.

"Indeed! Are you still strong?" Maws threw a jab equal to the one that had sent the Sleeper through Rigel, destroying the star, and Primus met it with an equally-strong punch of his own.

The rainbow crocodile was holding back, though, only using a fraction of his power, which always grew in battle. He had outmatched Primus physically the last time, too.

The zmeu's opponent rose out of the madness like a shark out of the sea, letting loose a shriek whose force nearly made Primus fall apart. As his limbs and torso's halves reconnected, he recognized it, too.

"Bastard!" he hissed, eyes widening. "My world! Not your nest! Die! Sleep again!"

Throat and stomach bulging, Primus began spitting out every wight he had gathered over his unlife. The things could not be destroyed as long as he lived-so to speak-but it was easier and more convenient to carry them around. Of course, when you had so many millions, some bigger than mountains, it took a strong stomach, crushing pressure and mastery of shapeshifting to carry them.

But this time, he'd make that squamous cosmic cuckoo pay. Thinking it could use his hunting grounds as a cradle for its brood....

***

Faith ranch, Arkansas, 2031

Christine's mother met her at the gate, wearing a smile equal parts apologetic and fond.

"Sorry, Chris," the ghost said. "Couldn't say no. He wanted to enter, and now doesn't want to go."

"You don't seem to mind that," the Fivefold noted.

"He's playing so beautifully!" Helen gushed, hands on her cheeks.

"And pissing Pa off, of course."

"He's so angry!" Her mother giggled excitedly, before going back to watering her plants with the memory of a bucket.

Elijah was chopping wood with the echo of an axe when she walked past him and to the field. The farmer's transparent, pale body only made his wiry muscles and fiery eyes all the more intimidating.

Or it would have, to people who didn't know him. Chris just remembered him splitting logs at three in the morning, when normal people slept, because of too much energy, anger issues, and obsession with doing something. Workaholism, the Engine would have said.

"He's playing some creepy white violin, girl," he muttered, shouldering his axe. "His voice is nice, and so is the music, but it's creepy. Not of this world, lemme tell ya."

Don't act ironic, he's your father, she told herself. "I thought you liked Fixer."

"I do! He's a nice guy. I like his playing, but the violin...it's fuckin' wrong." The ghost shuddered.

Chris nodded in sympathy. Zann's viol was driving her demons mad, too. "I've gotten someone new, Pa."

"Fifth, right?" His eyes gleamed with pride. "Just you wait! You'll be kickin' Ol' Scratch off his seat in no time!"

"God willing," she replied. Her parents could likely have gotten into Heaven by now, but they couldn't rest, too worried about her. Elijah had repeatedly stated he wouldn't pass through the pearly gates until he knew his daughter accomplished her dream.

Leaving him behind, she approached the player.

The man's eyes and face were featureless, as was the gray suit he was wearing. Still, she got a sense of perpetual amusement, even as her eyes slid away from the body parts exposed by the suit. The viol was the most notable thing on him, even though it was wholly unsuited to accompany his song.

But then, Fixer had never bowed to social norms. His cover of Time in a Bottle was just the newest manifestation of that.

And once I save time in a bottle

The very first thing I will do

Is save every day 'til eternity passes away

And then spend them with you

And once I make days last forever

Once my words make your wishes come true

I'll save every day like a treasure, and then

Again, I will spend them with you

But there is not yet enough time

To be with the one I cherish, though I have found her

I've lost enough to know

That you're the one I want to go through time with

The Fivefold leaned against the wall of one of the barns, watching him. Fixer had his back to her, and several of the farm dogs circled him, radiating fear and wonder at the strange being. Still pretending not to have noticed her, Fixer began affecting a careless tone.

And I have this box just for wishes

And dreams that have never come true

The box would be full

In the sad world where I never met you

But there is not yet enough time

To be with the one I cherish, though I have found her

I've lost enough to know

That you're the one I want to go through time with

Lowering the viol like the great burden it was, Fixer took a deep breath, bowing to the mesmerized dogs. Then, he turned, jumping back in mock-surprise.

"Agent Faith! How long have you been standing there? Do you want to give this poor old man a heart attack!?"

"We didn't even do anything," she said.

"Yeah, well..." Fixer smirked. "Looking at you is dangerous for my heart by itself."

"What did you do this time?" Christine asked. "The song, then the compliment...is this one of your senile episodes where you think we're still a couple?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he scoffed. "I only just noticed you."

"Mhm," she nodded, then smiled thinly. "And what if we told you we wouldn't be opposed to that?"

"Did you like the song?" Fixer perked up. "It's a cover, but..." He held up a cardboard square, labeled 'Fixer's cover', then removed the top layer, his song beginning to play as if from a music box.

"Pfft. Yes, it was cute," she said. Then, with a severe frown. "We think you've driven our dogs crazy, you know."

"I have that effect on bitches..." Fixer said airily, leaning aside from a kick that split the air where his head had been. "You were saying...?"

His tone was so hopeful it was almost pathetic. Still, she didn't want either of them to get hurt...again. "Benedict-"

"Nope!" He held up both hands, the viol held in a third rising from his chest. "Not even you can make that name sound good, Fifi." He had never allowed it during dirty talk, because it made him laugh too hard to concentrate. Fixer had named himself after cousin Benedict from Captain at Fifteen, not because of any particular love for insects, but because he found him the funniest character. Still, he went by Ned.

"Ned-listen. We were young and stupid back then."

"Aww..."

"We...were looking for a kind man, because we had never known one. And you were kind, and helpful...you saved our mind."

"Awwwww...."

"Ned!" she snapped. "Our daddy issues aside, we...weren't ready for that kind of love. Or any. Our childhood was cold," her voice dropped, so as not to upset her parents. "And we didn't know how to deal with affection from touchy-feely saps like you."

"But you've grown!" Fixer said, gesturing at her frantically, then more suggestively. "You've grown..."

"Ned."

"Sorry. So, you're willing to try again...?"

"Ned." Her voice was apologetic, and she did her best not to sound as sad as he did. "We said 'if'."

Hurting a friend like this was...no. She couldn't let herself be distracted. "Why did you come to our home? You haven't done this since first meeting our parents."

Fixer swung the viol back and forth a few times. "You know I only play this to keep things out? I've been waiting to act, saving up on moves. Let me tell you what I've learned..."