“Those total fucktards.”

Even the Beetle and the Fixer had hard looks on their faces as they looked at the holo of this with me.

I doubted this was hitting States media, but the rest of the world was definitely getting an eyeful of it.

Footage was coming from drones. The scene was a Tribal town north of Lake Superior, maybe forty kliks from the border with Canada.

The place was a scene of devastation, with both fires blazing and looking like several demolition teams had had a field day, or a couple tornadoes had danced over everything.

The sub-captions were over three hundred civilian dead in the attack and rising... but they’d caught the raiding team.

Those stupid, arrogant fucktards.

Sasquatch’s head was sitting there impaled on a Spear. I happened to recognize the Spear, since the owner had once been head of security for the Tribal Consulate in New York here, and rode with Frank Castle... and had taught Danny Rand.

The head was still moving, still trying to growl, even smeared with blood and its body burning on a vivic-infused pyre of corpses behind it.

There were a whole lot of other heads on pikes there. A lot of them were bestial, frozen in werewolf form. A bunch more were in tactical gear that had no flags or identifying marks attached, obviously human.

There was the head of a guy with curly red hair stuck on one. Sitting behind him was a matte-black, high-tech robot, shredded by multiple close-cut slashes that didn’t hide the guns, missile launchers, and other stuff mounted on it.

Another blond guy with an oversized helmet was impaled right next to him, the body below him also in a tech-suit. Next to him was a guy in a black-and-white outfit, with fourteen identical fellows in reversed white-and-black outfits impaled behind him, none of them looking too happy about their sudden deaths. A wiry and long-limbed but short fellow with an animalistic face and clawed hands had been cut into several pieces, with the residual paleness of Blooding on the wounds making sure he stayed dead. A brown-haired woman in a diamond-patterned suit whose body looked to have been literally pounded into a meatbag holding liquified organs and bones finished the squad.

“That’s a Box robot,” Norbert muttered, eyes on the tech, not the dead. “And that guy’s set up in a tactical rig, sensor and coms focus, for intelligence gathering and command functions.”

“That’s Roger Bochs and... Alec Thorne, I think?” Jenkins managed, pointing at the redhead and the blond. “Bochs is one of the leading names in robotics tech, especially prosthetics. They ain’t showing the rest of him, but he’s a quadriplegic. Thorne is, eh, someone smart. Liked to broadcast his chess skills.”

“He’s not as good as he thinks. Thought. His rank on the Scroll was forty-two,” I reported. Which was still pretty good, but there were two dozen Shielders above him, at least.

“Why is Sasquatch’s head still moving?” Jenkins asked quietly, a little freaked.

“Because the Sasquatch is a Great Beast, one of the great evils of the Tribal Pantheon. He’s effectively a god, and just killing the body of his host won’t kill him.”

“Alpha Flight was using a demon god for their Brick?” Even the Fixer thought that was nuts.

“It hates the Tribes marginally more than the rest of humanity. Oh, look at that. Take a gander, gentlemen. You might not see this for a while. That’s the Wolverine right there.”

They leaned in to look at the rather short Tribesman with rather stiffly erect hair, currently stripped to his waist and showing a bunch of colorful Tats as he gave orders here and there, sending the Braves around him running back and forth. Half-healed wounds were visible all over him, and as we watched, another white-furred body, its head and extremities all cut off and a dozen Weapons impaling it, was hauled into sight before the vivic fire that was burning it away obscured it.

“Cousin to the Sasquatch?” Fixer guessed.

“That’s the Wendigo, another Great Beast. Springs forth when Man eats Man in the northern woods.” They both promptly recoiled. “Control leash on it, somehow, probably tied to Sasquatch.”

I didn’t draw attention to it, but Danny Rand and Luke Cage were both visible on the edges of the screen, and looked like they’d been in a fight.

“That’s a lot of Powered Braves,” Jenkins noted somberly, noticing the many Schools and Tribes represented there by their different attire.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“The Wolverine is there. He teaches the central School for the Braves. Every Powered fighting soul in the Tribes goes through his training if they can possibly help it. If the Headmaster is going somewhere, you think his students are going to be far behind?” I slid my finger over to the shredded Box robot. “Who do you think did that, and cut off the heads of the two Great Beasts with his golden claws?”

They both winced. The Wolverine had been bedeviling the States and Canada along the border for a good century, and had even been seen overseas. Supposedly him and the Murim had a relationship that could be described as adversarial at best, and downright homicidal at worst.

He didn’t have the incredible infamy behind him that the Golden Hag did, but in certain circles, he was acknowledged as a true terror, the best at what he did.

What he did best was now very much on display for a whole lot of people to see.

“What were they goddamn thinking,” I muttered, putting my hands to my temples. “Those are all Canadian Powered, with vampire and werewolf backup from Detroit.”

“Is the Wolverine usually in that area?” Fixer asked pointedly. “I thought he was further west...”

“The school is in Minnesota...” I sighed. “They lured the fuckers out with a chance at the Wolverine, probably that he was on some secret inspection tour, and killed them all.”

My phone beeped. I picked it up, and lifted an eyebrow.

It was from Dupe Quar. In Mayan, just in case. Northstar and Aurora, too.

I set it down, wiping it, and let the holo come back up.

No speedsters on display there. Quar was in the area...?

Jenkins leaned forward abruptly. “Mr. Hill is there!” He pointed at the overhead view on another screen, now that Ebersol had hurriedly hooked into six different feeds rolling the tape to record it and go over it in more detail. “That circle there... that was his Weight coming down, right?”

I leaned in. “Shit, yes.” I skimmed my finger along it, going offscreen. “He not only had it up, he had it up while he was moving. That meant he was keeping something occupied that could move around inside it.” I eyed the two dead super-strong guys. “Damn. He was wrestling the Wendigo and holding it down so the Tribals could kill it.” I looked between the screens coldly, eyes darting around at the edges, and then I followed back in the direction the Wolverine had walked from.

Ebersol pointed at the same time. “That’s the Mick’s car.” I glanced at him. “I, uh, do some advising on designs for it. He’s got some strange stuff in that thing...”

“The Punisher’s Crew is up there,” Jenkins nodded, leaning forward. “There’s a guy on the ground up there...”

Dealer was kneeling next to him. Mr. Hill must have taken a whole lot of something. I glared at the scene.

The two Alpha Flight speedsters were there...

I dialed up Dealer. She picked up on the second ring. “You’re on speaker with the two grease monkeys here. What the fuck just went on?” I asked her before she could speak.

-------

“Heya, Dyna,” Dealer replied, looking around at Castle’s team, who all had the looks of people who had just won a fight they hadn’t wanted to fight, and had lost anyways. “Was told Master Logan was sending this all out on an open feed.

“This is a total clusterfuck of the highest order. The Murican vamps and werewolves went crazy when they realized they’d stumbled into an ambush, and their Powered went totally berserk.

“The worst were the two speedsters. They started going through the town and slitting the throats of everyone, trying to divert our attention. We’ve got over five hundred civilians dead of all ages.”

Her phone was silent for a long, grim moment. “Anything get away?” Dynamo asked in the distance.

“No. Every vamp was dusted, every werewolf cut down, every Man in Black is in a black box screaming about his life choices, and the guys in hardsuits are all just in pieces.” Her voice dropped. “Every single fucking Powered is out of operation.”

The silence from the other end spun on itself. “The speedsters. Nobody does that kind of slaughter on civilians without enjoying the bloodshed. There is NO chance they haven’t been pulling off the same thing for some time, super-speed murders.”

Dealer just sighed. Laying on the ground in just his ragged trousers, a severely torn-up Mr. Hill, horrible claw wounds around his entire massively defined body, puffed on a cigar. “Fuck,” he offered to the air. “Someone who thinks he’s untouchable is about to die, and a whole lot of bastards with him.”

“What happened to Mr. Hill?” Dynamo asked calmly.

“They equipped the speedsters with adamantium knives, and put adamantium claws on the wendigo. Mr. Hill got sliced up bad holding it down until the Tribals could put enough +VI shit into it to kill it, dismember it, and start burning it. Then that fucking Box robot was releasing Firestorm munitions on family homes as the pilot panicked, and Master Logan had to deal with him...” Dealer trailed off.

“I promised Nova we’d go into space and deliver a goddamn Xandaran starship back to the planet,” Dynamo said flatly.

“Now that is timing. Can’t blame you for shit if you’re not on the planet,” Dealer replied.

There was a beep from the other end. “Sec. Getting a message from Wanda... They want the Avengers to deploy to Mackinaw City.”

“Did Stark tell them to go fuck themselves?” a cold voice interrupted, as Frank Castle, wearing a skull helm for anonymity, knelt down next to Mr. Hill.

“They’re trying to pull rank on the Patriot, but they can’t without a presidential order, and he’s basically telling them that the border defense is useless. What’s coming is going to come in anywhere it wants to, and leave the same way.”

“If the President orders him, that means he signed off on this attempt, and he’s dead,” Mr. Hill huffed, as black, cursed shit bubbled out of wounds starting to mist white. “Godsdamn that itches, girl!”

If it made it to the ground, the dirt bubbled and the grass died. “I would like to inform Mr. Hill that he still has some tactile sensation remaining. Good show, Mr. Hill!” Dealer replied back snarkily.

“Yeah, yeah.” Castle popped a beer, held it over Mr. Hill’s mouth, and poured a quick golden stream in. “Now, see, I got taste buds left too, girl.”