Spoiler: show
"DOWN!" Three figures dropped to the ground as a fourth shot upwards over a wash of black flames. "I hate this bastard so damn much," a red-haired man growled, even as his form stretched and grew, hair and skin bleaching, before black stripes emerged, growing out into fur. His head warped, leaving a feline snarl in place of the grimace he'd just worn. The entire transformation was over and done in half a second, leaving a tiger-man dressed in combat fatigue pants and vest kneeling behind some shattered stonework. Snarling, he drew a pistol from a holster at his back, popping up and getting off six shots before another wash of flame answered him.
"Freaking armor-plated bastard," he snarled, reloading the gun.
"Hey Tigerpaw, anymore brilliant ideas? Maybe next time you should throw a pillow at him, see if that has any more affect?" This came from a young black man who was draped in a gray and white camouflage trenchcoat, a gray wool watch cap pulled down low over his forehead and goggles pulled over his eyes. He was fiddling with a handful of silver spheres.
"I didn't see those glue-bombs of yours doing any good either Boneyard," Tigerpaw growled at the younger man.
"Hey, they're a work in progress! I didn't take the different supernatural properties of his flame into account when I used them on him!" Even as he snapped at his co-worker, Boneyard was injecting something into the spheres through a tiny rubber nub. "Let's try this again." So saying, he tossed the spheres overhand, arcing them even as he spread their path. A moment later there was a muffled *SQUELCH* and an even more muffled roar of anger.
"Oh, nice. Now he's even more mad," snarked a tall, broad-shouldered Hispanic man. He was dressed in black sweatpants, and bare chested. Clutched in both hands was a warhammer, the head and haft seeming to be all of one piece, a near flawless chunk of quartz granite that seemed to have been sculpted more by time and the elements than by any human hand.
"Then DO something about it Rampage. He's down, so HIT HIM!" Boneyard snapped. Rampage grunted, before vaulting over the barricade he and the others had thrown themselves behind.
Hefting the warhammer, Rampage charged their enemy, a monstrous form nearly seven feet tall with black, rock-like skin, spurts of black-shot green flame spurting from the cracks in its mineral hide. Its eyes were pits of blazing purple energy, visible even through the viscous blue goo that coated its body and held it in place. "YOU THINK THIS WILL HOLD ME DEMON SPAWN? I WILL CLEANSE THIS CITY OF YOUR WICKEDNESS!!!" it screamed.
Rampage let out a guttural roar as he charged, bare feet pounding the pavement. And as he charged, he began to shift. His stride lengthened, feet putting craters into the asphalt, before first one foot, then the next, crashed down as hooves. His face extended into a bovine muzzle, horns sprouting from his temples, curving forward and dipping into sharp, deadly points. Brown hair sprouted over his body, with longer tufts of black painting lines down his chest and spine. Muscles bulged and flexed as the minotaur reared back, spinning on one hoof for a full 360 degree rotation as he closed within a half-step of the target.
*KA-RUNCH*
There was a visible shock wave as the hammerhead made contact with the creature's chest, its eyes widening in pain even as it was lifted clear off the pavement and launched nearly fifty feet down the road, landing in a heap of limbs, goo, and car parts from the truck it'd crushed. Rampage winced as he shouldered his hammer. "Hope that guy had insurance." One bovine ear twitched as a high whistling noise pierced the air. Looking up, he saw a multicolored meteorite falling from the heavens. "S'bout damn time. Lazy gringo letting us do all the work..." There was no heat to his words though. A clattering sound had his attention back on his foe. It was climbing out of the wreckage, most of the goo that'd been caked on his body haivng either peeled off due to flames erupting from within, or due to the shock wave of the hammer strike knocking it off. "HEY BRIMSTONE!" The creature turned to snarl at Rampage, "HEADS UP ASSHOLE!"
"Huh?" was all Brimstone was able to croak out, before the "meteorite" hit him, driving him up to his neck into the asphalt and knocking the beast unconscious. The projectile shook his fist to getthe feeling back into it, before hopping off of his target and letting out a cackling laugh.
"Damn but that always feels good!" He was sharply dressed, black trenchcoat with red and orange flames licking the bottom edge over a solid gray shirt and bluejeans, black fedora with a red hatband, and black combat boots capped with steel that glinted in the hazy sunlight. Around him wove seven fox tails, three blood red, the others each a varying hue running the gamut from dark brown to a sea-green.
"Nice entrance Tempest, but you were cutting it a little close there," Rampage grumbled.
Tempest shrugged. "Sorry. He's been getting tougher, so I figured I'd need some extra height as compared to last time."
Rampage nudged Brimstone's head with the butt of his warhammer. "Well, looks like it worked at least." He turned to where his compatriots were emerging from their cover. "Oi, Boneyard, prep the restraints while me and Mr Showboat here pull this turnip and put a patch on this mess."
Boneyard didn't even glance up from where he was prepping what looked like a harness of cables as thick as his arm. "Already on it."
Rampage nodded, before leaning on the butt of the handle of his hammer as if it were a cane, the head making a slight indent into the soft asphalt as he put pressure on it. Closing his eyes, a faint brown glow surrounded him, running down his arms, through his hammer, and into the street itself. Tempest was surrounded by a similar glow, as he knelt on the ground, one hand pressed palm-down to the road, though there were flickers of red running through the aura as well.
A shudder ran through the earth, before Brimstone's unconscious body slowly pushed up and out, like a gigantic blackhead in the ground, before popping free and falling to one side, the crater that he'd made bulging upwards until it was level ground once more. "Try to keep it level this time TK, we had some complaints about potholes over on Main and Sixth the last time we patched the road up."
Tempest snorted. "There's always been complaints about potholes on Main and Sixth, even before we started operating in this town." The broken pieces of pavement were starting to steam now, before flowing together seamlessly, the steam cutting off as a dusting of frost appeared over the now rapidly cooling asphalt. Tempest nodded as he got to his feet, dusting his knees off with his hat. "There we go. Just need the road crews to do a re-paint and you'll never know that there was a meta-human battle here. Again."
Tigerpaw snorted as he came up beside them, rolling Brimstone onto his chest and beginning to attach parts of the harness that he'd been given by Boneyard. "I think Brimmy here is starting to get predictable. This is the same church that he tried to level last month for being "heretical demon lovers"."
"That's because it's the church with the greatest number of active metahumans as attending parishioners in the city," Rampage snorted. "I oughta know..." Carlos Santana's "Into the Night" begin to play tinnily in the night air, "One sec guys, that's Eliza." Rampage removed a cellphone from an armored pouch at his back. "Hey beautiful, what's up?" A pause. "Wait, that was tonight!? Oh jeeze 'Liza, I'm sorry. We got called out, Brimstone decided that tonight was a night for his usual brand of holy wrath. Look, I've still got," he checked the watch that Tempest had bared and shoved in his face without a word, "Twenty minutes till our reservations come up. I'll meet you right outside, promise. Love you too, and I'll tell em. Bye." The minotaur snapped his phone shut. "Sorry guys, but I've gotta run now! Oh, Eliza says hey, and Tigerpaw, your wife called her about us watching your kids next Tuesday."
"Get goin' hoofhead, we can haul Brimmy's near-worthless carcass down to the station on our own. And thanks in advance for watching the girls." Tigerpaw waved one hand as he continued to concentrate on restraining Brimestone. Rampage nodded, before looking around to orient himself, and bounding off to the south. Tigerpaw looked over at Tempest. "How long do you think before he works up the guts to pop the question?" The foxtailed mn shrugged.
"Who knows Brian? Between his issues with his dad in general, still looking after his sisters, and Eliza still trying to come to terms with her alternate form even after all this time, could be a long while yet." Tempest conjured up a globe of orange flame, using it to give Tigerpaw, or Brian, better lighting. Boneyard wandered over and began to hook up the various cables to junction boxes, which pulled the harness tight. "How about you Dylan? Out of the four of us you seem to be the only one without company. I mean, Brian's already got three different girls driving him up the wall-"
"And loving every day of it," Tigerpaw interjected.
"-Benny is still seeing Eliza, and all I have to do to get some female companionship is circle the block until some lady decides she wants to see how soft these tails of mine really are," Tempest smirked. Boneyard looked up from where he was attaching one last component, and Tempest winced. He could feel the glare, even through the polorized lenses of Boneyard's goggles.
"My love life is of little to no concern of yours." The teen shook his head. "Shoulda called you "Horn Dog" instead of "Tempest Kitsune". I swear you're worse that some of those insane girls..." The two older men shared a smirk.
"Ah yeah, heard about your little fanclub and that incident outside the Electro Hut. Surprised you made it out of there with your goggles on, let alone the rest of your clothes." Tempest started snickering.
"Shut. Up. Jason. Or so help me I'll have TALOS wipe out your entire music collection," Dylan snapped, his dark complextion and the hue of the light from the fire hiding his blush. Tempest, or Jason, raised his hands in a mock surrender motion.
"Alright, alright, you win. Still don't know how you got the AI that was a copy of my brain on your side, but you win."
"Freaking armor-plated bastard," he snarled, reloading the gun.
"Hey Tigerpaw, anymore brilliant ideas? Maybe next time you should throw a pillow at him, see if that has any more affect?" This came from a young black man who was draped in a gray and white camouflage trenchcoat, a gray wool watch cap pulled down low over his forehead and goggles pulled over his eyes. He was fiddling with a handful of silver spheres.
"I didn't see those glue-bombs of yours doing any good either Boneyard," Tigerpaw growled at the younger man.
"Hey, they're a work in progress! I didn't take the different supernatural properties of his flame into account when I used them on him!" Even as he snapped at his co-worker, Boneyard was injecting something into the spheres through a tiny rubber nub. "Let's try this again." So saying, he tossed the spheres overhand, arcing them even as he spread their path. A moment later there was a muffled *SQUELCH* and an even more muffled roar of anger.
"Oh, nice. Now he's even more mad," snarked a tall, broad-shouldered Hispanic man. He was dressed in black sweatpants, and bare chested. Clutched in both hands was a warhammer, the head and haft seeming to be all of one piece, a near flawless chunk of quartz granite that seemed to have been sculpted more by time and the elements than by any human hand.
"Then DO something about it Rampage. He's down, so HIT HIM!" Boneyard snapped. Rampage grunted, before vaulting over the barricade he and the others had thrown themselves behind.
Hefting the warhammer, Rampage charged their enemy, a monstrous form nearly seven feet tall with black, rock-like skin, spurts of black-shot green flame spurting from the cracks in its mineral hide. Its eyes were pits of blazing purple energy, visible even through the viscous blue goo that coated its body and held it in place. "YOU THINK THIS WILL HOLD ME DEMON SPAWN? I WILL CLEANSE THIS CITY OF YOUR WICKEDNESS!!!" it screamed.
Rampage let out a guttural roar as he charged, bare feet pounding the pavement. And as he charged, he began to shift. His stride lengthened, feet putting craters into the asphalt, before first one foot, then the next, crashed down as hooves. His face extended into a bovine muzzle, horns sprouting from his temples, curving forward and dipping into sharp, deadly points. Brown hair sprouted over his body, with longer tufts of black painting lines down his chest and spine. Muscles bulged and flexed as the minotaur reared back, spinning on one hoof for a full 360 degree rotation as he closed within a half-step of the target.
*KA-RUNCH*
There was a visible shock wave as the hammerhead made contact with the creature's chest, its eyes widening in pain even as it was lifted clear off the pavement and launched nearly fifty feet down the road, landing in a heap of limbs, goo, and car parts from the truck it'd crushed. Rampage winced as he shouldered his hammer. "Hope that guy had insurance." One bovine ear twitched as a high whistling noise pierced the air. Looking up, he saw a multicolored meteorite falling from the heavens. "S'bout damn time. Lazy gringo letting us do all the work..." There was no heat to his words though. A clattering sound had his attention back on his foe. It was climbing out of the wreckage, most of the goo that'd been caked on his body haivng either peeled off due to flames erupting from within, or due to the shock wave of the hammer strike knocking it off. "HEY BRIMSTONE!" The creature turned to snarl at Rampage, "HEADS UP ASSHOLE!"
"Huh?" was all Brimstone was able to croak out, before the "meteorite" hit him, driving him up to his neck into the asphalt and knocking the beast unconscious. The projectile shook his fist to getthe feeling back into it, before hopping off of his target and letting out a cackling laugh.
"Damn but that always feels good!" He was sharply dressed, black trenchcoat with red and orange flames licking the bottom edge over a solid gray shirt and bluejeans, black fedora with a red hatband, and black combat boots capped with steel that glinted in the hazy sunlight. Around him wove seven fox tails, three blood red, the others each a varying hue running the gamut from dark brown to a sea-green.
"Nice entrance Tempest, but you were cutting it a little close there," Rampage grumbled.
Tempest shrugged. "Sorry. He's been getting tougher, so I figured I'd need some extra height as compared to last time."
Rampage nudged Brimstone's head with the butt of his warhammer. "Well, looks like it worked at least." He turned to where his compatriots were emerging from their cover. "Oi, Boneyard, prep the restraints while me and Mr Showboat here pull this turnip and put a patch on this mess."
Boneyard didn't even glance up from where he was prepping what looked like a harness of cables as thick as his arm. "Already on it."
Rampage nodded, before leaning on the butt of the handle of his hammer as if it were a cane, the head making a slight indent into the soft asphalt as he put pressure on it. Closing his eyes, a faint brown glow surrounded him, running down his arms, through his hammer, and into the street itself. Tempest was surrounded by a similar glow, as he knelt on the ground, one hand pressed palm-down to the road, though there were flickers of red running through the aura as well.
A shudder ran through the earth, before Brimstone's unconscious body slowly pushed up and out, like a gigantic blackhead in the ground, before popping free and falling to one side, the crater that he'd made bulging upwards until it was level ground once more. "Try to keep it level this time TK, we had some complaints about potholes over on Main and Sixth the last time we patched the road up."
Tempest snorted. "There's always been complaints about potholes on Main and Sixth, even before we started operating in this town." The broken pieces of pavement were starting to steam now, before flowing together seamlessly, the steam cutting off as a dusting of frost appeared over the now rapidly cooling asphalt. Tempest nodded as he got to his feet, dusting his knees off with his hat. "There we go. Just need the road crews to do a re-paint and you'll never know that there was a meta-human battle here. Again."
Tigerpaw snorted as he came up beside them, rolling Brimstone onto his chest and beginning to attach parts of the harness that he'd been given by Boneyard. "I think Brimmy here is starting to get predictable. This is the same church that he tried to level last month for being "heretical demon lovers"."
"That's because it's the church with the greatest number of active metahumans as attending parishioners in the city," Rampage snorted. "I oughta know..." Carlos Santana's "Into the Night" begin to play tinnily in the night air, "One sec guys, that's Eliza." Rampage removed a cellphone from an armored pouch at his back. "Hey beautiful, what's up?" A pause. "Wait, that was tonight!? Oh jeeze 'Liza, I'm sorry. We got called out, Brimstone decided that tonight was a night for his usual brand of holy wrath. Look, I've still got," he checked the watch that Tempest had bared and shoved in his face without a word, "Twenty minutes till our reservations come up. I'll meet you right outside, promise. Love you too, and I'll tell em. Bye." The minotaur snapped his phone shut. "Sorry guys, but I've gotta run now! Oh, Eliza says hey, and Tigerpaw, your wife called her about us watching your kids next Tuesday."
"Get goin' hoofhead, we can haul Brimmy's near-worthless carcass down to the station on our own. And thanks in advance for watching the girls." Tigerpaw waved one hand as he continued to concentrate on restraining Brimestone. Rampage nodded, before looking around to orient himself, and bounding off to the south. Tigerpaw looked over at Tempest. "How long do you think before he works up the guts to pop the question?" The foxtailed mn shrugged.
"Who knows Brian? Between his issues with his dad in general, still looking after his sisters, and Eliza still trying to come to terms with her alternate form even after all this time, could be a long while yet." Tempest conjured up a globe of orange flame, using it to give Tigerpaw, or Brian, better lighting. Boneyard wandered over and began to hook up the various cables to junction boxes, which pulled the harness tight. "How about you Dylan? Out of the four of us you seem to be the only one without company. I mean, Brian's already got three different girls driving him up the wall-"
"And loving every day of it," Tigerpaw interjected.
"-Benny is still seeing Eliza, and all I have to do to get some female companionship is circle the block until some lady decides she wants to see how soft these tails of mine really are," Tempest smirked. Boneyard looked up from where he was attaching one last component, and Tempest winced. He could feel the glare, even through the polorized lenses of Boneyard's goggles.
"My love life is of little to no concern of yours." The teen shook his head. "Shoulda called you "Horn Dog" instead of "Tempest Kitsune". I swear you're worse that some of those insane girls..." The two older men shared a smirk.
"Ah yeah, heard about your little fanclub and that incident outside the Electro Hut. Surprised you made it out of there with your goggles on, let alone the rest of your clothes." Tempest started snickering.
"Shut. Up. Jason. Or so help me I'll have TALOS wipe out your entire music collection," Dylan snapped, his dark complextion and the hue of the light from the fire hiding his blush. Tempest, or Jason, raised his hands in a mock surrender motion.
"Alright, alright, you win. Still don't know how you got the AI that was a copy of my brain on your side, but you win."