Gunfire erupted suddenly, splitting the quiet air with violence. The Mexicans charging up the stairs and into the building saw the monstrous creature, panicked, and opened fire, while the Jamaicans took up positions near a hallway and began firing at everyone.
“No! No, you fools! Don’t shoot the giant rat!” One of the Mexican gang members began yelling at his followers.
Deacon threw his arm over his face for protection and felt the little stinging bullets bouncing off his skin. He made a leap to cover Nate and Ava with his own body. It then turned into a chaotic gang war, with both sides diving for cover and shooting at each other. The front doors had already been thrown off their hinges thanks to the large were creature, but the rest of the front of the building, much of it glass, was now likewise blown out and destroyed by the crossfire. A glimmering shower of glass rained down from the entranceway as Deacon began moving further inside to escape the bullets.
The large black were creature managed to cover the two humans while moving further into the building. There turned out to be two hallways leading from the lobby, one in which the Jamaicans were ducking out from to shoot at the other gang, and the one in which Deacon led the other two through. They passed by some elevators and a few smaller offices, before coming up towards a small maze of cross sections.
Deacon took a moment to utilize his new shape and abilities, turning his ears and nose towards the corridors stretching out before them. This form was at the same time unfamiliar and intuitive like wearing an old glove. He was unsure of all the abilities that were now under his possession, but the young Southsider also felt a strange new animal nature within him, whispering and guiding him.
“This way.” The were Tasmanian Devil growled, before taking off down one of the corridors, following his instincts. His nose, now acute and alive with sensations, guided him outside a doorway where he stopped and listened. He could smell the enchanting perfume of the gorgeous young model coming from within. It was unmistakable and burned into his memory.
“What is it?” Nate asked.
Deacon did not answer, for his keen ears had heard voices coming from the other side of the thick wooden door. He heaved back and with a mighty effort, kicked the door inwards. The door did not simply open under the tremendous force, but exploded inwards, splintering to pieces. The terrified screams of several people sounded, and the animal ears he now spouted at the top of his head heard Zoe’s voice among them.
Deacon came snorting and scowling into the room first, ready for any opposition that might have been waiting for them. Surprisingly, he found none. What he did find was more than a dozen now terrified office workers pressed against the back wall in fear for their lives from the monster that had newly emerged, scowling into the conference room. But among those frightened people, Zoe alone came forward and threw her arms around the mighty creature, tears welling in her eyes.
“Cabbie! You came for me!” She buried her face in the smoky leather jacket hanging from the furry body.
“Of course, I did.” The oversized maw of the Tasmanian Devil spread a wide toothy smile back down at her. “That’s what you paid me for, right?”
Ava came rushing in, hearing her friend's voice coming from inside the room.
“Zoe!” Ava cried breathlessly.
“Ava! Thank God you’re okay!” Zoe returned the same relieved energy. The tension from their stressful encounter over the past week lifted upon seeing each other. The two women threw their arms around each other and embraced happily. Being reunited once again, after such an emotional ordeal was too much to handle, and both women were overcome with emotion. Tears began to flow from both young women, lost in their embrace.
”Think we better get the hell outta here guys.” Nate said from the doorway. The sounds of gunfire had not stopped, and instead seemed to have intensified and came echoing down through the hallways of the building.
“Thank you, cabbie. You did it. You found her.” Zoe looked up once more to the looming monster, while wiping tears from her eyes.
“If you want to thank me…” Deacon returned, for once wishing for his normal human voice. “You can call me something other than cabbie.”
“Alright…” Zoe smiled. It was the prettiest smile that Deacon had ever seen, even managing to melt his streetwise heart. “…asshole.”
“Ha!” Nate laughed from the doorway. “Asshole! Take that! She called you an asshole man! Now you got it, girl.” He reached out to exchange a high-five with the girl.
“Fuck!” An overweight middle-aged man who had been rounded up earlier along with the rest cried out. “That thing talks!”
“What is it?” A woman who, after witnessing the creature stand calmly by as the two young women embraced tearfully and seeming more confident it was not about to immediately maul them asked. “Some kind of giant rat?”
“It looks like a wombat.” A black woman in reading glasses replied knowingly.
“No.” Zoe turned back to address the crowd of office workers; their fears somewhat lessened by now. “He’s the Tas…the Chicago Devil.”
“Fuck yeah, that sounds cool.” Nate replied. “Can any of you dear, sweet office dudes show us to the backdoor?”
By now, even from their position deeper within the building, the shrill sounds of emergency sirens wailing outside were plain. Deacon had heard them first, but now they could all hear them, assembling towards the front of the building. The police were coming, and he knew that they needed to be somewhere else now.
“Right.” Deacon spoke when none of the hostages stepped forward to volunteer. “That’s the sound of the police, and they don’t take well to Southsiders.”
This drew a laugh from the black woman, and her alone. The fact that the monstrous talking creature was more worried about the police discriminating against him from being a Southsider and not a monstrous talking creature was amusing.
“You’re Southside?” She asked after her chortle.
The big creature nodded.
“Me too. Woodlawn.” She announced proudly. She then got up and walked cautiously towards the dangerous-looking monster. “C’mon. I’ll show you another way out.”
As the black woman passed by to the doorway, for the first time upon entering the room, Butch stood up and spoke.
“Ava, you’re just gonna go with this freak?” He asked in an angry voice.
Ava had not noticed him before and had been thoroughly focused on her best friend, while he had been hunched down in the back, hidden among the other hostages. Upon hearing his voice though, she now turned her attention towards him. Deacon also recognized the false tough guy and his maw curled into a fierce snarl, but Ava passed by him before he could react.
“Butch! I can’t believe you! This was all your fault! You had me believing you were in some kind of trouble and here this whole time you kidnapped me because of some deal you made with those people?”
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“She meant Jamaicans. Not ‘those people, people’.” Nate whispered to the black woman, who raised an eyebrow.
“Baby, wait! It’s not like that. They…they tricked me! I would never do anything to hurt you. You know I love you.”
“Ava, I heard him.” Zoe spoke next. “He did this whole thing…he contacted that Mr. Saturday character because he thought he could grant wishes. He did all of this just to try to get the Jamaicans to off his father and give him control over the company.”
“Wait a minute. You’re the Verdun kid?” One of the other employees gazed at Butch.
“I am Richard Butch Verdun the Second, and this whole place should be mine.” He returned to the lowly office worker indignantly. “I made this deal for us! So that we could be together…so that we’d never have to worry about being poor.”
Deacon and Nate both could feel the disgust and disdain dripping from that final word, and it left a bad taste in both their mouths. Neither one of the Southsiders could imagine being in a position where being rich was so important and integral to anyone’s self-worth that they’d go to such extremes to avoid being poor. But there were such people in the world it seemed, such people that for them, being poor was akin to a death sentence.
“You didn’t do this for us.” Ava shouted back at the spoiled rich kid. “You did this for you. And you deserve whatever fate this monster decides to give you.”
Ava turned her back and strode out of the room by Zoe’s side. Deacon smiled down at the young man, who gazed up into those sharp teeth and wide smile in terror.
“Wait! Wait!” Butch held his hands out to create distance between himself and the literal monster that took a step towards him then. “You gotta help me. They tricked me, they’re gonna steal the prototype. It’s worth a fortune, you can’t let them have it. You have to stop them!”
“Not so tough now are you, Jordan?” Deacon sneered callously. “You got yourself into this mess, you can deal with it yourself…step by step.”
Deacon backhanded the little creep, careful to try to pull his punch, but still sent the rich boy spinning through the air, crashing into the wall.
“Fuck him and this company.” Nate held up a fist and Deacon bumped it with his own on their way out. Surprisingly, the portly man held up a fist in agreement.
The group followed the female employee through the back hallways, the gunfire had mostly stopped in the front of the building now, but the voices of police issuing commands over a bullhorn could be heard echoing through the corridors. The lady showed them to a side exit, used her employee badge to beep a mechanism next to the door, which unlocked with a click.
“Thank you.” Deacon expressed his gratitude.
“Yeah, thanks babe, you’re the best.” Nate agreed, followed by the two young women following behind.
The group came out the side exit into a small employee garden area, a place where the workers could catch a quick smoke break or perhaps eat their lunch. The greenery was all dead this time of year but was probably a somewhat relaxing place during the spring and summer months. Their way was now clear to escape into the city beyond the garden area.
“Dude, my car!” Deacon thought about their situation suddenly.
“You left it in front.” Ava smacked her hand against her forehead. “You lunkhead.”
“The cops are all up there.” Deacon returned with a sigh. “What do we do now?”
Nate was about to take the situation under control. He was about to suggest that they could catch a cab to the El train, and ride it back to the ‘Yards, though that might prove difficult to do without causing mass panic, with Deacon still transformed like that. He did not get the chance to begin speaking though, as soon as he opened his mouth, he was cut off by a deafening explosion.
Ears still ringing, Deacon turned them towards the sound. It had come from the front of the building, where the police were gathered. A loud whine erupted next, something spooling up, and the group pressed against the side of the building and made their way up to take a peak, despite the two girls’ protest to do just the opposite.
Deacon peaked around the corner, and saw that the loud whine was a chaingun like they mounted on helicopters firing out the front of the building, sending the terrified police force running for their lives and diving for cover. The tracer rounds ripped through a few police cars and one caught fire. Then Deacon saw where the mysterious gunfire was coming from.
A large robotic, walking tank smashed through the little bit of the front of the building that was not already an open-air hole.
“The prototype.” Deacon sighed. He watched as the chaingun mounted atop what amounted to the robot’s shoulder opened fire again, pinning several officers behind their patrol cars. The streaking, glowing rounds punched straight through the cars and most everything else in a wide arc as though they were made of paper, leaving flaming red holes behind. A few officers returned fire, but their service pistols pinged harmlessly off the tough armored hull of the war machine as it began moving down the stairs.
“Shit man, I can’t…” Deacon looked helplessly towards the others, who were all watching the scene in fear and awe. “I gotta go. I gotta…take the girls and get them out of here.”
Deacon left them then, emerged from the side of the building, and charged the metal monster. The robotic tank had its targeting systems trained ahead at the dozens of officers running and diving for cover and did not sense the impending black monster until it was too late.
Deacon used his new strength to bound his body into the air, leaping the distance between them and landing on the machine’s back. His keen ears caught the stunned responses from the officers looking on at the scene. They had responded to a call for a gang fight and had not expected a giant robot to come out of the building and attack them. And they certainly had not expected a raging were Tasmanian Devil to leap into the fray.
A stubby mechanical arm reached up to try and smash the creature from its body, but Deacon managed to shift his weight and stay ahead of the arm. He decided the most dangerous thing at that moment was the chain gun spooling for another burst at the defenseless police officers and reached out both hands to grab ahold. With a roar and a mighty heave, the were creature tore the gun from the shoulder mount, leaving a few sparking wires dangling uselessly.
Deacon then began smashing the gun down onto the top of the machine, hoping to destroy something vital to its function. He managed to dent the hull but found that although heavy, the chaingun was not actually meant to be used as a battering instrument, and bent and smashed apart before the machine did.
It was then that he discovered that the machine was able to twist three-hundred and sixty degrees and began whirling him about like a strange carnival ride at a high speed. All the while the stubby arm was still grabbing for him, and disoriented by the spinning motion, it eventually found purchase. The strength from the mechanical pistons driving the arm was tremendous and without proper leverage, Deacon lost the momentary struggle. He was ripped from the machine’s back and thrown with enough force to crack the pavement in front of the building.
The machine was still moving and did not allow its monstrous opponent a moment to regain its composure. It began to step forward in an attempt to simply step on its downed enemy, crushing him beneath probably fifty tons of tank armor. Deacon managed to get his large, clawed hands up to catch the falling appendage. He knew he was much more powerful in this form than he was as a human but had no idea how strong he actually was now. The robotic leg kept descending upon him, despite his strong resistance and he shifted strategy to slide out from underneath it instead.
Barely escaping the curb stomp, which landed with a heavy thud that could be felt like a tiny tremor, Deacon managed to slide away and lept back to his feet. That’s when he noticed several more machine guns mounted within the main body of the metal war machine begin opening fire in his direction. The were creature might not have been strong enough to quite lift the full weight of the machine, but he was incredibly fast in his new body, and simply began running circles around it.
The body of the machine could spin fully around, but it was slower than the Southsider in his animal form, the stream of bullets trailed his supernaturally quick form hitting the parking lot harmlessly. Deacon managed to get a look at the legs of the tank-like robot and saw that the ball joint type knee did not seem to offer any give to the sides…much like a regular human knee.
Deacon howled and stopped running circles, instead ducking through the pair of mechanical legs. As he passed underneath, he threw his hands out to both sides and heaved with all of his rage. The knee joints of the robot sparked and pushed outwards in a way they were not meant to. This prototype looked to have been designed to fight soldiers on a battlefield, not supernatural Chicago Devils. The robot tried to remain in locomotion, but failed without the use of the knee joints. Whirling noises of failing systems erupted as the machine fell onto its back.
Deacon pounced. Using an entire life’s worth of hopelessness and rage, he began pummeling the hard tank armor of the body of the machine. Crumpled and dented the machine began failing even more. Using his deadly claws, Deacon slashed at any weak point he perceived. Within a few minutes, the Tasmanian Devil stepped off of a sparking, smoking wreck.
The young Southsider found a new problem ahead of him then. With the sounds of broken servos and motors behind him whirling and trying to move a smashed frame, the entire police force was beginning to rise from the cover. They stared at the raging monster in disbelief. But then, several of them began clapping and cheering. They were not sure what to think of the monster in front of them, but they knew that it had just saved them from the war machine.
Deacon did not stay for long to accept the accolades. Assisted by his powerful frame, the leather jacketed were Tasmanian Devil turned to flee the scene and was gone before any of the police could properly process what they had just witnessed.