"I want to know what you are planning to do with this planet." Himry told the katzen that had just appeared in front of him. He knew from his previous experiences with the hunds that Gershwin wasn't really here, what he was seeing was a projection, a form of telepresence. Only those connected to the hund network could see him.

"Oh, we're not going to change much. Ivten is a major manufacturing and distribution center. We'll have to take some time rebuilding but there should be minimal disruption to commerce." Gershwin's golden eyes twinkled with mischief. "I'm sure we could find a place for someone with your skills, your human of course would be welcome as well."

"There's just the problem of the giant plant currently destroying everything." Himry thought back for a second. Something was nagging at him. Something didn't feel right. "Who will you sell it to?"

"Oh, we will be keeping the planet for ourselves. The hunds have Neue Heimatwelt, we believe that this place could serve a similar purpose for us. Also, you can never have too many hard assets." Gershwin cocked his head to the side. "You don't want it to change, I can see it in your eyes."

"I don't want to see this world destroyed. I like it here." Himry replied.

"You're swimming in debt and risking your life on a daily basis for almost no pay. You have no savings, no chance to build something for the future, and you want this to continue?" Gershwin asked.

"No. I suppose I don't." Himry frowned. Gershwin had a point. What was he really hoping to achieve here?

"But you want to save Joan." Gershwin said, getting to the heart of the matter. "I'll tell you what, you're already becoming part of the collective, even if you died here they wouldn't let you go. So why not come work for me and I'll have the both of you transported to safety?"

"Why would you do that?" Himry asked.

"There are old debts that must be paid. Also, I like Joan."

"How the fuck do you know Joan?" Himry demanded, louder than he had intended to.

"Oh, she hasn't told you?" Gershwin taunted. "Her grandmother is very dear to us. You could even say she's family."

"How is that possible?" Himry heard footsteps approaching. Joan had heard him talking and no doubt would have questions. He had to wrap this up now.

"Ask her about the fall of Haven if you want to know the details." Gershwin suggested. "But if you don't decide to take my offer, your next best option is to find Sophia. We've been unable to locate her, but maybe you might have better luck. I hear she can kill anything."

Joan burst through the bathroom door and to Himry's surprise she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at Gershwin. She could see him. How could she see him?

"Oops." Gershwin waved goodbye as he started to fade away until only his smile remained. "You caught me. Give your abuela my best!" Then he was gone as if he had never been there, which he hadn't.

Joan screamed in frustration. "You summoned fucking GERSHWIN?!"

Himry didn't know what to say. So he said the wrong thing. He was apparently good at that. "He said you were family?"

Joan gave Himry a look like she wanted to rip off his face. "Yes. He and I are distantly fucking related, something which I've gone to great lengths to keep a secret." She screamed and punched the wall. "Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!"

"Hey! Stop that!" Himry wrapped his arms around her. "You'll hurt yourself!"

She tried to wriggle free but Himry held her tight. "Whatever this is, we'll figure it out." He promised. "We don't need them, I've got a plan to make everything good again."

Joan turned to face him. "How could you possibly fix this? The world is ending. Literally ending!"

"There's a human in Holbrooke who can kill the plant." Himry said, his mind racing. "I've got her address. She's OSR, they can kill anything."

To her credit Joan didn't dismiss his idea immediately. "An OSR operative is here on Ivten?" She asked.

"Yeah, I was tracking her down. That's why I was in human territory. She does something in entertainment, her name is Sophia Danika Lee and she lives in Holbrooke." Himry held Joan tight. "I'll fix this. I promise."

"Fine. We'll go see this plant killer." Joan said, "But we need to have a talk first. There are some things you need to know."

*-----

So Joan sat Himry down and did her best to explain about the two Braverhunds, the pact in the graveyard, and the fall of Haven.

"There once was a father and son. Their names were Kerner and Gershwin Braverhund. They were hunds from a place called Döbi, which doesn't exist anymore. When Kerner was killed in a horrible accident his father went insane and vowed to get back what was taken from him at any cost. And he did."

"It cost millions of lives and untold suffering, but he was able to bring his son back. When Gershwin was executed for his crimes they thought the madness had stopped, but it was just lurking, waiting for the opportunity to return. Because Gershwin had made copies of his mind and implanted them in his young katzen victims. Now he functions as a kind of sin eater for the katzen, doing the dirty deeds they can't or won't."

"But he said you were family." Himry asked. "If he's a hund… in the body of a Katzen… who's dead…." He stopped, this whole thing made his brain hurt.

"I'm getting to that." Joan patted Himry on the head. "Don't worry, it gets so much worse. See, Kerner was very much like his father in that he was willing to do whatever it took to reach his goals. So he used the technology Gershwin had made to copy himself into the wetware of thousands of other hunds, essentially taking over the world before anyone else could notice. It was a silent coup d'etat."

"But there was a problem. He could not escape the prison that the humans had built to keep his people contained. His children and grandchildren would never live to see the stars. You see, there was only one star in the pocket dimension where they were trapped and the night sky was inky black except for the moon and the orbital station called Haven."

"Then one day when Kerner was old and weary someone brought him a human child to care for. He named her Eden and spent his last few years raising her as his own along with his wife Ani. But before the old hund died he used his power to bind all hunds, katzen, and even the Gravekeeper itself to protect this one human child."

Himry blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Yes, he bound them to Eden, her blood, and her family… for all time. He declared that this bond could never be severed, not even by death. That even should they die their bones would rise up and answer the call. Then he died."

"That's somewhat anticlimactic." Himry observed.

"Yes. I suppose it is. But when the time came to storm Haven, to free the hunds and katzen from their prison, all three fulfilled their obligations. That was how the hunds, katzen, and the Gravekeeper escaped. Eden called, and they answered."

"You see, the old hund knew that his people would never live to see the stars, but if he could bind them to something, to give them a sense of duty and purpose, to give them something to love and fight for, death would hold no sway over them. And how can you defeat an enemy that cannot die?"

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"So you're… one of Eden's descendants?"

"Yes." Joan nodded. "And that's important because if we were all to die, the pact would be broken and the Gravekeeper would be free. Luckily there are a lot of us and it doesn't stipulate that a blood relationship is required to qualify as family so you would have to pretty much wipe out all of humanity to break it. Then there are the hunds and katzen who are also part of the family."

"So now hunds, katzen, and humans are linked forever. Is that what you're saying?" Himry asked.

"Yep." Joan shook her head. "We're all one big dysfunctional family." She looked at Himry, apparently trying to reach a decision. "Tell me, do you think this world is worth saving or should we take Gershwin's deal? I can't be objective about this."

Himry thought about it for a minute. "I don't know. Let's say we manage to kill the plant, what then? The world is still fucked. It's still a disaster zone. If we take up Gershwin's offer to evacuate he'll probably just use some superweapon to destroy everything, the plant included, and rebuild on top of the rubble. Wipe the slate clean."

"So the world is fucked either way, but we might save some people if we can find a way to kill the plant." Joan nodded. "And if we can't, well then what happens happens. You'll be fine either way, you're backed up."

This was true. There was also the matter of the bounty. "We could get paid a lot of money for killing the plant… enough to change both our lives. And we won't be beholden to Gershwin."

Joan nodded. "See if the bounty is still valid, and if it is, we move forward. If it's not, we take Gershwin's offer."

Something was ticking the back of Himry's brain but he couldn't quite put two and two together yet. There was something he was forgetting, something important. But what was it?

"Sure, I'll check." Himry said as he pulled out his phone and checked the bounty board. Sure enough the plant was still number one, and the reward had gone up significantly. But there in the top ten bounties was another familiar name, two of them in fact. The crime was the murder of an undercover police officer.

He held up the phone for Joan to see. "Babe, you never told me that Rizz was a cop."

"Fuck." Joan said as she recognized her own face next to a number that was definitely high enough to get a lethal amount of attention. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She paced back and forth swearing and pulling at her hair. "I wondered why nobody would arrest him, now I know why! My stalker was a fucking cop!"

Himry ran over to grab Rizz's smart pistol. He began copying the logs and footage to his internal storage. It was all there, even Rizz's little pep talk to himself as he saw them approaching.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure him shooting me first with no warning makes it justified." Himry sent the file to Rimma with an explanation of what was going on. She could clear it, eventually. But in the meantime every cop and bounty hunter in the district would be looking for them.

For the first time since this whole mess had kicked off Himry was happy that the plant apocalypse had thrown everything into chaos. Otherwise bounty hunters would already be knocking at Joan's door looking to collect their heads.

He looked over at Joan. She had started removing her piercings. "What are you doing?"

"I'm removing all my jewelry, what does it look like?" Joan had gotten most of them by now but seemed to be having trouble with one of her more intimate piercings. With a groan of annoyance she sat on the kitchen counter, very much still naked, and spread her legs. "The ball is stuck. I need you to unscrew it."

Himry looked at Joan. "Why would you ever get metal put in your… you know." He gestured awkwardly.

She gave him a look of annoyance. "Because I've found that unless I literally mark the spot I like to be touched, men tend to miss it."

Himry didn't know what to say to that. He looked down and suddenly realized that he was very naked. He was also fairly tall and the counter was about the perfect height. And Joan was literally laying there with her legs spread right in front of him.

"Oh." Joan said as she looked down as well then looked up at him. "That's… impressive."

"Yep." Himry said, kneeling to do what had been asked of him. Joan giggled and wriggled a bit as he did his best to unscrew the tiny metal ball that held the piercing in place. The smell of her arousal was overwhelming as he worked. Though he wasn't sure if it was because of him or simply because of the stimulation from the piercing.

When he was done he tossed it into the pile with the other jewelry. "Now what?" He asked, conscious that he was still standing over her.

Joan shrugged and leaned back on the counter. "I'll need some time for my wetware to come back online. It'll fuck up my tattoos but at least I remembered to remove my piercings… this time." She stroked the outside of his leg with her foot. "Have you ever fucked a human?" She asked.

"No." Himry admitted.

Joan brought her body closer to him. "Would you like to?"

*-----

"That was gr-r-reat!" Joan purred as she smoked her cigarette. Himry watched as the tattoos that graced her smooth white skin slowly faded away. There didn't seem to be any real pattern to it. Her body just broke down the foreign substances bit by bit as her healing factor came online.

"What are you exactly?" Himry asked as he grabbed a beer from the fridge.

"Well, I'm human but just a little bit better. I don't age, I'll never get cancer, and I'm really really hard to kill." She got up and sauntered towards the bathroom. Himry admired the view from behind. She had nice flanks… for a human.

There was a moment when just for a second everything was right in the world. Himry had a beer in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and he had just satisfied a beautiful woman.

Unfortunately, as if the universe had chosen to balance things out in the worst way possible, the moment after that was when the breaching charges on the front door and windows detonated.

Himry was unarmed, naked, alone, and micro-seconds away from being surrounded. But he was also running full warhund wetware and it had some very useful features.

Time did not slow. There were no impressive art house special effects as the door was converted to splinters and the windows shattered. However he instantly knew exactly what to do, how to do it, and did so with zero conscious thought or hesitation.

A normal person was at the mercy of something called an OODA loop. It took time for them to observe what was happening, orient themselves within this new situation, decide what to do about it, then to act. Himry's now largely synthetic brain had condensed that all down to a timeframe which to outside observation was nearly instantaneous.

The standard course of action in Himry's situation was to go for cover, figure out what to do, then counter attack. Instead he realized certain key details about the situation that would have evaded him before. So instead the first thing Himry did was throw his bottle of beer as hard as he could towards the now very open doorway at chest height.

This would do two things. For starters, if someone had planned on storming into the room right after the explosion, as many did, they would probably be crouching. That meant they would catch a beer bottle to the face that had been thrown at a speed fast enough to make Nolan Ryan blush.

If the assailants were taking it slow and cautious, having an unknown container full of liquid smash in front of them might make them hesitant to continue into the room. They wouldn't know that it was just beer. He didn't wait to see what happened because he was already moving on.

The next thing Himry did was grab Joan's coffee table and throw it like a frisbee out the window. By the time he had gotten his hand on the heavy metal and glass table, two humans in tactical gear were already in the process of entering through the window on ropes.

They did not enjoy what happened next as fifty kilos of overpriced furniture met them halfway. It had tasted the sweet blood of many shins, but now it hungered for something more substantial. And oh did it get it.

Unfortunately for the humans they had already disengaged the quick releases on their rappelling gear, choosing instead to hold onto the ropes with their hands. They screamed all the way down as they were forcefully ejected from the building and life itself.

Threat warnings went off in his wetware as Himry detected a laser rangefinder peering in through the window. Someone with a high caliber smart rifle was about to try and shoot him. The weapon would automatically adjust for environmental variables, all the shooter had to do was point and click.

A normal person would have once again run for cover, tried to break line of sight. Instead Himry felt a calculation run in his mind as he figured out the difference in elevation between himself and the shooter. They were about level. Himry sprinted towards the front door, smiling like an idiot. This was going to be good.

While this was going on the team at the front door had just started to make entry. The first one leveled his pistol at Himry as he rounded the ruined door frame. He went to take a shot. But his teammate with the smart rifle was quicker.

The body armor that the team wore could stop most things. It was not proof however against anti-materiel rounds. Those would go through anything. Himry was anything.

He was naked as the day he was born when the designated marksman shot him in the back. The heavy jacketed bullet punched through him and didn't expand or deform, his body just didn't provide enough resistance. That meant it still had most of its energy left over when it hit the man in front of him square in the solar plexus.

The wetware enhanced drekan continued forward on momentum. As he half fell, half flailed Himry noticed the pistol falling from the dying human's hand. He grabbed it and twisted in mid air, taking aim at the man with the smart rifle on the fire escape across the way. They were less than a hundred meters apart, it was an easy shot. He automatically overrode the safety and fired.

Three rounds of hate hit the lightly armored marksman right in the face. Before he could drop Himry was already sliding on his back into the hallway, continuing to use his momentum. It was about then that he regretted throwing that beer bottle. Fragments of wood and glass tore into him as he hit the floor, his blood mixing with the beer like a hellish slip n' slide.

The three remaining men had no chance to react as Himry unloaded. He was aiming for the places that armor didn't cover. The armpit, the throat, and the groin. He handed out lethal wounds like it was candy on Halloween and he had just gotten back from the drekan version of Costco. Which surprisingly enough was actually Costco now that the humans had taken over.

Everyone got a piece and nobody complained. They were all too dead to complain. Himry looked down at the gaping wound where his heart had been.

"Shit." He gurgled as he died… again.