Finlay doing his trick with fake armed men again? Never expected that he'd survive my condo’s destruction. I would’ve forgotten about this sketchy asshole were it not for him killing the people my heroic Pino face tried to protect.

The last I’d seen of him and his brother, Calder, was when we had a truce, and they taught me how to mess with Stella’s stupid metal box controller before abandoning her. They were Stella’s enemies, but that didn’t make them my friends. The fact that they were working with Auron meant they didn’t turn on the 2Ms. Just some in-fighting amongst them.

If Finlay was here, his brother might be here too. Finlay was always with his clay men while Calder could use illusions. I should be on guard for bullshit trickery. Too bad I didn’t have my Pino form to see through fakes or illusions.

“GHRROAARWW!” I throatily roared at the assholes. Our truce was no more. Those twins were also on the menu if I caught them!

The Finlay Terracotta Army rushed to form ranks to cover their equipment and, more importantly, Auron. It was just a flimsy wall of plaster or ceramics or whatever shit they were made of. They raised their rifles at me. Before they could shoot, another big piece of concrete already hurtled towards them.

My aim hit right in the center of their lines, blasting two of them into dozens of shards and punching a hole in their formation. Auron hiding behind them had jumped out of harm’s way. They opened fire.

The bullets chiseled away at the edge of the rooftop, chipping off fragments of concrete. The windows of the topmost floor shattered below me.

I didn’t run.

I didn’t hide.

I stood strong and proud in front of these weak attacks, savoring the bullets pelting my body as I held over my head a particularly large slab I broke off the roof. The bullets penetrated, at most, a couple of inches deep into my flesh, if at all. A few pinged right off my skull. My body simply regenerated the wounds almost instantly, pushing the squished pieces of metal out before the holes healed shut. It was almost like a relaxing massage, the hot lead adding to the enjoyable experience.

And with the injuries, laughably minuscule as they were, the power-up began along with the cravings for the insolent puny creature that dared harm me.

This was what I waited for.

Hunger.

My insatiable hunger was directed at the group of phony National Guardsmen. This meant Finlay was somewhere there among his fakes. Even without Pino’s special eyesight that could detect life force, I had my own way of finding my prey.

I threw the slab at the left end of the Guardsmen formation, the place where my instincts told me my prey was located. The slab crushed a few more clay men and punched down through the building. The other fakes scrambled away from the collapsing part of the roof.

“Rwaargh?” The real one wasn’t among them. My cravings redirected to the other end of their formation. What happened? Was I imagining shit?

Auron jostled the terracotta Guardsmen aside, brandishing a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. He fired it, along with yelling curse words at me. This proved that his power, whatever it was, couldn’t reach me.

The missile missed its mark, whooshing into a window of the floor below me.

BOOM!

I wobbled a bit as the building shook. The blast shattered windows, flames flared out followed by billowing black smoke. Part of the roof to my back was pushed up by the explosion like a disgusting growing pimple, the concrete cracking before it deflated and began to crumble into a hole.

So, that’s it?

I kind of wanted to get hit by that. Not sure if that was a good idea, but it would’ve made me hunger for Auron too. Yep, it was a good idea.

One of the clay men handed Auron another loaded rocket launcher before joining his brother in their useless effort of trying to kill me with laughable metal pellets. I could see Auron’s face. He had an arrogant expression, with a dash of condescension and mocking, as he lined up his sights with me.

As a challenge, I opened my arms wide, presenting myself as a big unmoving target. I would’ve painted myself with a bullseye if that’d help him. Hit me this time, you idiot!

His cocky grin turned into an angry scowl and he fired.

BOOOOMM!!

I blanked out. My vision blinded. Only a single white note rang in my ears.

And then everything came back.

The sky above me. My body splayed out in the air. I was flying across the rooftop.

Like a bowling ball, I rolled into the exhaust vents of the building’s air conditioning system. The metal crumpled as I tumbled among them, their blades breaking off when meeting my body. I picked myself up from the wreckage of the ventilation units.

Blood frothed through the gaps of my fangs. Everything was hazy but starting to refocus. I checked my body. Most of the fur on my front side got burned off. Thankfully, my chest and abdomen were a mangled mess of bloody flesh—a weird thing to be grateful for, but it’d be uncannily disgusting and awkward to be stripped of hair as a werewolf, and my injuries hid that.

And for fuck’s sake! I complained in my head as I saw my shredded innards hanging out like it was Saturday night at a bar. My god, again? What was this? The third time I got gutted open on the same day? And in various forms too.

I stomped back to the end of the roof to look for Finlay and Auron, kicking away broken machines in my way. My body was quickly healing. The heavier the damage I received, the faster I became stronger. It was the same when I first turned into a giant werewolf at the docks. Although my food was just weak humans, I rapidly grew because of the heavy weaponry they used to fight me.

The difference was, this time, I had more control over myself.

The place where I had stood was demolished by the explosion. It was like a landslide—or a building slide—occurred there, caving to the floors below from the power of the blast. Something that strong couldn’t even put me down for long. I chuckled. It came out like a wheezing camel.

The pain.

The possibility of dying.

This feels AWESOME!

The terracotta Guardsmen were back to their original number; Finlay must've remade them. They continued tinkering with their sci-fi equipment setup bullshit as Mushroom Buddy lumbered by. They shot something at it with the rocket launcher. It wasn’t with an explosive missile as they did to me, a different kind of drill-looking projectile. It couldn’t hit Mushroom Buddy’s body because the hundreds of pint-sized mushroom gremlins living on it blocked the shots.

The colossal Adumbrae paid Auron’s shenanigans no mind.

It did stop once, directly in front of their building, to release a barrage of its spore pods into the air. Only the flying mushroom thingies came over to harass them. Whatever PCM Leader was planning, it didn’t appear to be going well. He was frantically yelling orders as he punched away a munchkin with leathery wings that landed on their machine.

The audacity to think that they already took care of me. You assholes should’ve taken the opportunity to escape!

One of Finlay’s men noticed I was back. The rest stopped fighting the mushrooms and turned in my direction. They fired, but all of us knew that'd amount to nothing.

A panicked Auron Cohenn chose to scurry back to the helicopter with his tail between his legs.

I resumed catapulting shit at them, smashing the clay men shielding the fleeing PCM leader, destroying them one by one in rapid succession, scaring the shit of the smug asshole who dared gloat at me at the police station. When he reached the helicopter door, I finally threw rubble at him, catching his lower body. I didn’t aim for the helicopter to give him something to hope for. His legs got swept and were folded forward under the helicopter’s body. He spun back to the roof, bounced off once, his back and head slamming down, and laid squirming in agony.

The wide triangular ears high on my head wiggled when his sweet screams of pain reached me. He grabbed his contorted legs and yelled for help from Finlay.

Finlay?

Yeah…where was that guy?

I destroyed all terracotta Guardsmen. He couldn’t be hiding behind illusions because my cravings for him weren’t directed anywhere. Only at the injured Auron. That Finlay asshole just disappeared. Poofed away. He must have a secret ability to escape, and that could be how he survived the destruction of my condo building. Finlay at it again with abandoning his colleagues.

I stared at Mushroom Buddy turning left down Compton Street—this road was narrower and so the giant Adumbrae sort of squeezed itself through, toppling buildings left and right—then back at Auron who was starting to heal but still in immense pain.

His cries drew a stray winged mushroom weirdo over. I knocked it out of the sky. Fucker trying to dirty my food with its spores.

This was pathetic. I thought Auron had more mettle in him since he orchestrated this elaborate plan and manipulated a huge organization that bordered a cult. He had an Adumbrae body and wasn’t used to this kind of baby stuff pain? I doubted he had been through a pinky finger’s worth of what I’ve been.

Speaking of babies, this hunt was as easy as taking candy from a baby, I mused while examining a piece of debris held between my wicked claws. Or throwing rocks at babies—wait, what? I hurled the piece of rubble at Auron, hitting his arm. It exploded like he was hit by a shotgun, almost tearing it off.

Annoying desperate pleas for his life.

This wasn’t fun.

Better get this over with.

I planned to knock him out with pain, then I’d hop over to eat him to finish this—if I came now, he still might be able to turn me back to Erind. I had to be careful not to go overboard and accidentally kill him; I shouldn’t hit his heart and especially his head. I should also be wary not to get tricked if he feigned fainting. I threw a smaller concrete fragment, injuring his legs again.

My left ear twitched to the side.

Faint noises of movement. A strange smell, the disgusting odor of the parasites.

I turned and spotted a small black blur heading at me. I raised my hand to block it.

The thing shallowly pierced my skin. It burrowed amongst my thick red fur covering my arm—a pulsating black ball with tiny boils all over. It sprouted tentacles from underneath its body and coiled around my arm. With the tightened grip, it continued drilling into my flesh with a beak or some shit, trying to penetrate deep.

I could feel it sucking my blood. No, not just my blood. My energy too.

Boils on its body engorged with each gulp. I reached to grab it, intending to chuck it into my mouth. But as my platter-sized palm closed around it, the fucking thing exploded.

It excavated a bit of my flesh and streaked my hand with superficial cuts. I didn’t hunger for it anymore because it was…already gone. The smoke burned my nostrils though. Pretty foul with my super sense of smell.

“There’s more where that came from!” A mysterious large man had climbed onto the roof from the side of the building and hurled more parasite balls at me.

I dug the front of my right foot into the roof, the sharp claws growing from my hairy toes piercing the concrete. I kicked up, shoveling a large chunk off the roof and flinging it upwards. The parasite balls slammed into the flying piece of concrete. Then, in one fluid motion, I kicked it forward to the newcomer.

The man headbutted the concrete slab without hesitation, breaking it apart. “I’ll take ya on, ya big furball!”

He was very tall, probably more than seven feet and gradually growing, his legs and arms longer than normal human proportions. He wore beach shorts with cartoonish coconut tree art and an open trench coat that fluttered behind him in the wind. The most peculiar thing was the bandages wrapping his body—his entire body, including his whole face, like an Egyptian mummy.

As his muscles enlarged and his limbs lengthened, the bandages unraveled, revealing green scales covering him. His forearms and hands ballooned to cartoonish proportions.

Reptile Man rushed at me. I snarled at him. When he reached me, I was amazed that I was taller than him! He punched my head with his scaly sledgehammer fist. My head turned right but I stood firm. I broke into a wide grin, displaying my fangs.

“Ya think yar tough, huh?” He continued to rain punch after punch, roaring a battle cry while giving it his all. I felt the impact of each blow—he was pushing me backward across the roof, the concrete beneath me cracking—but they didn’t hurt.

I swiped at him, tearing off strips of bandages as well as removing the hardened scales that protected his body. My one attack sent him flying as if he got hit by a rocket launcher.

“Arggh! Fuck!” Reptile Man managed to dig his claws into the ground to stop himself from careening off the building.

“Slinky!” A frail old man climbed out of the hole caused by the first missile. “Are you all right?”

“As dandy as the day I was born, Mister,” was the reply. Reptile Man, who was apparently Slinky, touched the deep gashes on his chest. He felt the blood with his fingers and gazed up at me. I couldn’t tell his expression because of the bandages, but I felt murderous intent. "Just having a great day!"

“The situation is dire. Let me help you.” The old man was really wrinkled, probably looking older than his actual age. His skin was sort of tanned and dried out like he had been working for decades under the sun. He picked one of the large canisters attached to a sling over his shoulder and handed it to Slinky.

Slinky cracked open the canister and out came a small creature, one of those vile parasites like from my condo building based on its smell. It climbed up his arm and moved to somewhere on his back.

KABOOM! BO-BOOM! BOOM!

The shockwaves from massive explosions on Mushroom Buddy reached us, kicking up dust and debris.

Were those BID assault ships?

“Lookie here, furry bitch!” Slinky said. “We're not done yet!”