Greg VS Raid 9-18

The first rule of fighting monster dogs, especially ones that looked like someone tried to make a Kaiju out of spare parts and bad vibes, was simple.

Don’t get eaten.

Seems obvious, right? Like, rule number one of basic survival.

But when you’ve got four of the things trying to turn you into a chew toy and their owner screaming bloody murder like you personally canceled her favorite TV show, the basics tend to get a little complicated.

And complicated was not what he needed right now.

With a grunt, Hardkour flared with light for a split second as he drew on the gold energy sitting in his gut and just waiting for some action. Both hands swung their way free with a spray of blood and shattered dog teeth as Hardkour dropped to his feet and jumped back.

“Alright…” He pointed one mauled arm Bitch’s way. “Not cool.”

It hurt.

Like, actually hurt, a sharp, biting sting that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Red numbers dripped away like a leaky faucet—minus thirty here, minus forty there—not critical, not yet, but annoying.

Super annoying.

Even with his body healing up in front of his eyes.

The air smelled like wet fur and ozone; that sharp, electric tang that happened right before a storm broke or right after a transformer blew, mixed with the heavy, cloying scent of burning garbage from two streets over.

Bitch screamed again.

Not words.

Just noise; raw and ragged and wet, a sound that scraped against the inside of his skull like a rusty spoon.

“KILL HIM! KILLHIMKILLHIM!”

She was pointing at him, finger shaking, eyes wide and white-rimmed in the gloom of the alleyway.

Not just angry.

Wrong.

Greg knew angry, he lived with the buzzing under his skin every day since Leviathan, since the power settled in his bones, but this was… different.

Like the mechanic. Like the rioters.

Like someone had reached into her brain and turned the ‘Rage’ dial past ten, past eleven, and just snapped the knob off entirely.

The dogs lunged.

The bulldozer—the one with the jowls that looked like melted candle wax—came in low, a meat-tank on four legs, tearing up the asphalt with claws the size of railroad spikes.

Wesley stepped in, the big man moving faster than anyone his size had a right to.

“Not today, you ugly sack of—”

The hammer swung, a blur of black metal in the streetlights.

CRACK.

It hit the dog’s shoulder with a sound like a car crash but that didn’t even stop it.

It didn’t even slow it down.

Hell, the thing didn’t even flinch.

It just plowed into Wesley, momentum carrying them both backward as the hammer flew from his grip. A split second later, they slammed into a parked sedan.

Glass shattered, metal screamed, and the car groaned as it crumpled under the weight of man and beast.

“Wes!”

“I’m good!” Wesley wheezed through clearly overworked lungs, voice strained “Just… heavy. Very heavy.”

He was grappling with it, holding the snapping jaws back with forearms that looked like tree trunks, but the dog was winning.

After all, it had leverage and mass on its side.

And probably a good chunk of super-strength too.

Seo, on the other hand, was dancing with the speed-dog; the sleek one that Bitch had apparenly given extra lessons in puppy parkour.

Claws flashed, white sparks in the dark as Seo’s claws skittered off bone plating. He was fast, sure, but the dog was a guided missile.

On top of that, Bitch’s dogs were getting stronger, still growing, the plates on their backs shifting and expanding with every breath; almost like they were fueling themselves in her rage.

“Boss!” Seo shouted, dodging a snap that would have taken his arm off at the shoulder. “We can’t keep holding!”

“I know!” Greg yelled back as he kicked off a wall, flames trailing from his boots like jet exhaust as he flipped over the roided Rottie. “I’m working on it!”

“Work faster, boss!”

Bitch was still screaming her own half-nonsense sentences, riding her own van-sized monster in circles; her voice cracking, breaking and bleeding into the cacophony of barks and growls.

“YOU TOOK THEM! YOU TOOK EVERYTHING!”

“I didn’t take anything!” Greg landed in a crouch, palms glowing hot orange. “I don’t even know who you are! I mean, I do, you’re Bitch, but personally? We haven’t been introduced!”

He pulled his arm back and let it fly; a sphere of compressed heat — tight, dense and thrown with a pitcher’s windup.

It hit the van-dog in the chest, exploding in a wash of flame and force.

The dog stumbled back and shook its head, bone plating blackened but unbroken. Charging forward again, it barked back with a sound that vibrated in Greg’s chest cavity.

Okay. Fire bad. He frowned. Or, fire not good enough.

Greg looked at Wesley, his musclehead struggling under the bulldozer. He glanced over at Seo, his number two breathing hard with sweat slicking his hair to his face over his mask.

His eyes slid back to Bitch; tears streaming down the girl’s face and mixing with the grime.

He didn’t need a second look to make sure of what he already knew. She’s not driving. The thought hit him hard, a cold bucket of water over the adrenaline. She’s the car. 

And someone else was clearly pressing the gas.

Emotions. Rage. Panic. Whatever or whoever was behind it.

They were playing her, using the cape in front of him like a loaded gun and pointing her at his crew.

And if he didn’t stop it, if he didn’t end this right now, Wesley was going to get crushed, Seo was going to get eaten, and he…

Well, Greg Veder was going to have to kill a bitch.

“Sorry,” he whispered to nothing and no one but himself, the word lost in the noise.

He closed his eyes for a split-second, finding that dial in his head.

The one labeled ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency.’

He twisted it to a gentle two.

Reinforcement flooded him a second time tonight as golden light came to life on his body in a glow that was too soft and gentle for what was about to happen. He felt the tension in his muscles, just under the skin as the world slowed down.

The rain of debris from the fire became a suspended drift of glitter as the growl of the dogs dropped an octave, getting even lower and more distorted.

Blue eyes opened, Greg feeling the sting that told him they had shifted into a slit.

“Seo. Wes.” His voice came out a growl almost as loud as the dogs. “Clear out.”

“Boss?” Wesley grunted as he shoved the bulldozer’s head aside.

“I said go. Now.”

There was no room for argument; ‘move or be moved.’

Seo didn’t hesitate. He kicked the speed-dog in the snout, a precise strike that sent him vaulting backward. In the same move, the acrobatic Ronin grabbed Wesley by the collar of his vest and dragged him away from the melee.

Good. Now it’s just us. Hardkour turned to the van-dog, to Bitch.

“FUCKER!”

“Yeah,” Greg said, suddenly not feeling like joking anymore. “Sure.”

He moved.

The pavement exploded where he stood, a crater of spiderwebbed cracks left behind as he launched himself forward.

He hit the van-dog’s front right leg.

A shoulder check, full force, with a reinforced body meeting calcified bone.

CRACK.

The sound was sickening, wet and loud as the leg buckled; the thing bent the wrong way, and shattered all at once.

The dog howled, sound pitching up into a shriek of pain as it collapsed. Bitch, her hold shaken free, was thrown from her perch and sent tumbling through the air.

Greg didn’t stop as momentum carried him through, his body bounding off the asphalt even as the Rottweiler-thing lunged his way.

Greg lunged back at it and caught its jaws, hands gripping the upper and lower mandible.

With a grunt, he pushed.

Not apart.

Back.

Roaring into the thing’s open mouth, Hardkour drove the dog into the street; the throw slamming its head into the street with enough force to make the ground jump.

Another snap.

Another howl.

Another leg broken, another dog out of the fight.

Two down.

The skinniest dog tried to sneak him from behind, the thing fast.

But not fast enough.

He pivoted, snapping out with his leg in a roundhouse kick that carried the weight of a wrecking ball.

It caught the dog mid-air, right in the ribs.

With a yelp, the beast folded around his shin, breath exploding out of it in a huff of steam. The thing whimpered and yelped as it flew, launched fully sideways into a dumpster that crumpled on impact.

Three.

The bulldozer—the one Wesley had fought—roared and charged right at him.

Dumb. Loyal. Suicidal.

All of them true as Hardkour took one step forward.

The impact was its own explosion, the ground giving way beneath his feet as he gripped the bone plates on the thing’s giant chest; fingers digging in as he refused to give a single bit of ground.

A grunt spilled out of his mouth as several tons of monster-dog rose into the air.

Hardkour lifted it over his head like he was Schwarzenegger in a bad 80s movie.

And slammed it down.

Four.

Silence.

Well… kinda. The dogs were whining still, all of them broken heaps of misery on the ground but with all the fight taken out of them, there wasn’t much else for them to do. 

Now, I feel like a dick, man. Greg stood in the center of the carnage, chest heaving as the golden light receded back where it belonged; under his skin and out of sight. He looked up as one of the dogs made a noise.

He hated it.

The whimpering.

It sounded like… like a dog. Just a dog.

“Bitch!” He turned.

The girl cape was trying to stand, swaying with blood on her forehead. Her mask was gone, lost in the fracas of the fall.

Confused.

“My dogs…” she choked out; stumbling toward the bulldozer, hand reaching out for it. “You… you hurt them…”

“They’ll heal,” Greg coughed, voice rough as he scraped his throat. “They’re tough. Like you.”

“We need to get you out of here.” He walked toward her. “Someone’s messing with your head.”

She blinked, eyes unfocused. “Messing…?”

“Yeah. They’re fucking with you, Bitch.” He reached out a hand. “Let me help.”

She looked at his hand.

Looked at her dogs.

Looked back at him.

“H-help…” 

His shoulders drooped, a whole lot of tension bleeding out of him as the actual blood on his arms began to dry up. Okay. Good. We can fix this. We c-

POP.

It wasn’t a powerful sound.

Not like Wes’s hammer, or the breaking bones, or the screams. More like a loud dry crack, the sound you made when you stepped on a dry branch.

Either way, Bitch jerked.

The girl’s head snapped back, a spray of red mist erupting from her temple. It painted the air, painted the ground, painted Greg’s outstretched hand.

All of a sudden, Bitch dropped, a puppet with the strings cut as Hardkour stood there, hand still out. What?

He looked at her.

At the hole in her head.

At the blood pooling on the asphalt, dark and shiny in the streetlights.

Wait…. no.

“Bitch?” He took a step. “H-Hey, get up.”

She didn’t move as she stared at the sky, one eye open and the other eye… gone.

Where? Greg looked up, slit blue eyes scanning the rooftop. 

The windows.

The shadows.  

Who? His mouth fell open with no words on his lips. Why?

“Sniper!” he screamed, the word tearing out of him. “Seo! Sniper!”

Seo wasn’t here to answer back but the sound of an engine did, the noise approaching fast.

Lights swept across the alley, blinding white beams cutting through the smoke.

Blue and red strobes bounced off brickwork, sirens flaring as the black armored vehicle screeched to a halt at the end of the block; tires splattering puddles from a busted hydrant thanks to one of the dogs.

A motorcycle—sleek, blue and high-tech—wove around it, the thing skidding to a stop ten feet away.

Armsmaster jumped off his Armscycle, halberd already out and pointing his way.

And beside him, skidding to a stop in a red blur was the padded red puncher himself; Assault.

Greg looked up at them, standing over the body of a teenage girl; blood on his hands, blood on his boots, blood on his everything.

“Step away from the body!” Armsmaster’s voice boomed; amplified through the speakers in his suit in a commanding order. “Hands where I can see them! Now!”

Greg looked at them.

Looked at Bitch.

Looked at his hands.

Red.

So much red.

“I didn’t…”

The Quest box blinked bright and blue in his vision again, mocking and cheerful text hovering over the corpse.

[Quest Failed: One Angry Bitch

Objective Failed: Stop Bitch’s assault without casualties.

Hidden Objective Failed: Save Rachel Lindt.

Reward: None.

Penalty: Reputation Decrease (Major). Faction Hostility (Travelers/Undersiders). PRT Attention (Hostile).]

“Thanks,” he whispered at the words nobody else could see, a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in his throat, all of it tasting like throw-up. “Thanks a lot.”

He looked at Armsmaster, at the halberd pointed at his chest.

“You guys…” he choked out, eyes burning. “You guys have really bad timing.”