I peeled away and looked at the new monsters as I drifted, gathering my strength. I had discovered that gliding allowed my muscles a chance to rest, and start regenerating, after a hard fight. My energy expenditures were about even with my regeneration, so I was doing pretty well, but there was no place to land in the horde beneath without instantly getting surrounded and attacked from all sides.

After a moment, a figure drifted up next to me, surveying the three lumbering creatures as they stepped, smashing their own troops freely as they moved away from the gate. “Who are you?” Commander Freedom asked.

“I am Alchemyst.” I said, sighing, “Or rather Louis, but I don’t expect you to remember who I am in a few minutes.” I dropped one of my gas grenades on a thick cluster of creatures beneath me. Hundreds, possibly thousands, started shrieking and dying… at least those worked.

“Oh! The guy that has the DMA freaking out. Yeah, Jessie told me Sif was going to drag you into this. You were the one that had that big… thing. The one that used Totem for batting practice, right?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I was thinking of him as a nunchuck at the time.” I pulled out another acid grenade. They were more effective than the gas grenades but had a lot smaller area. I figured the more I killed here, the fewer the heroes on the outskirts would have to deal with. The grenade successfully melted hundreds of the abominations.

He laughed a little, revealing a grin. “Yeah! I don’t know if you are supposed to be a hero or a villain, but thanks. Each time the portals open it’s from a different chaos realm, and this one was fire. Makes it a stone-cold bitch, especially for the second line. There are going to be some grieving widows tonight. Out here though, hero and villain don’t matter. We are all fighting for our world. You got amnesty if you need it till you go home. There are way way too many purples on this field, and I am having trouble getting through that shit that covers them. Wanna help me grab some more?”

I nodded and we peeled off towards one. They were moving extremely fast outwards, and we had to kill them quickly before they hit the hero line or before. There were some great warriors out here, but even Sif’s spear would be like poking these things with a needle.

I pulled up sharply and then dived. I was getting an insane amount of practice flying and thought I was doing pretty well. I sliced right through another horde of the snakeling bats, and slashed my way entirely down the front flank of the second Kaiju, cutting off a leg and sending worm parts flying as I opened up its defenses. I couldn’t do a whole lot, but the Commander could. He smashed his way into this one, like the last, and apparently, there was enough room inside the shell for him to smash out of its back end from the inside, sending carapace and shell pieces flying as it staggered and flopped over.

Number three was more of a challenge, it kept diving to the side, choosing to lose limbs instead of getting chopped open, but once all five legs on one side were gone, it flopped over. I hammered down as hard as I could onto the giant head. Putting all of my force into it, and was surprised when my aura smashed it into the ground so hard that the entire mantis-style head shattered across the ground.

“Holy shit! We have to hurry! The last one is almost to the camp!” Commander Freedom cried.

No. No no no no no… I pushed as hard as I could, but commander Freedom was faster, but even he couldn’t make it in time, as the gigantic creature smashed through some of the stone walls and stepped over others, worms falling from its sides as it began smashing things inside.

No… Gods no. Please let her get out in time. She was a porter. She could get a portal up in seconds. I had to believe she was okay. The frenzied rage, which built inside of me when I was captured by the Oni, was building to a crescendo. I didn’t stop it, I didn’t even try to control it. She had to be okay! I sped up faster and faster until I was almost moving as fast as the Commander, and then tucked my wings around myself, a shiny cocoon of primaries surrounding me leading to the incredibly sharp tips.

With a wrench, I stopped, bathed in gore, and realized I was inside the beast. With a scream, I opened my wings and my arms and legs and beat savagely, shredding the internals in a last-ditch effort to kill the thing, every once of my strength ripping it apart from the inside. I could feel the thing coming apart, giant chunks spewing as I was exposed again to the outside air, my wings slowly flapping at full extension as a shower of parts rained down around the Commander and me.

I gathered Lauren’s body against my chest, silent tears streaming down my face. She was partially crushed, one of the creature’s feet had torn right through the tent while she was holding a portal open. As always, she would have been the last to go through, and she didn’t make it.

My potions wouldn’t, or couldn’t help. She was gone. Toby was an orphan again.

Why the fuck had I taken a moment to stop and joke with Commander Freedom? Why hadn’t we gone after the one that was farthest away first? I held her in my arms. I could have held her when she was alive.

A pair of taps behind me, and I heard the Commander’s voice. “I’m sorry man. I didn’t know.”

“Fuck off,” I responded eloquently. I didn’t care if the shit could burn through me with his eyes. Fuck him. Fuck all of them.

I heard a female voice then whispering, “She’s the one that kidnapped him and sold him to Kjootoo, but I think they got over it. She got us to the Oni stronghold before he ripped it apart.” I didn’t recognize the voice, and I didn’t care. I cared about the woman in my arms, not these fucking freaks mutated monsters. Monsters just like me.

Commander Freedom’s voice said, “I found Rainbow. He got killed trying to save a group of class D’s that got jumped by a bunch of elites. We killed them off and closed the portal, but he died a hero.”

I started growling, filled with rage beyond understanding. “He. Died. A. Hero?” I said, my voice harsh through my gritted teeth. I gently placed Lauren’s body back on the floor, straightening out her limbs so she didn’t look as much like she got half-crushed by a giant murderous insect from another dimension. “He died a hero?” I repeated, slowly getting to my feet. “Fuck him. He died a monster. He got lucky and died before I could rip him to pieces. He didn’t die a hero, he died an ignorant, pathetic coward that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He dies too fast to even notice who he was supposedly saving, and if he’d known, he would have run away like the pathetic little bitch he is. He’s done it before, always running away after he kills helpless civilians like my family and starts to lose.”

My vengeance, the reason I started lifting weights to maybe even the odds. The reason I was willing to leave the prison on the chance that I would someday find and kill him. It was gone. I had found a woman I honestly saw myself spending the rest of my life with, and she was gone. Nothing resolved. Nothing good. I pointed at Vectress. “No. She died a hero. She opened a portal and waited for everyone to escape. She died saving the lives of others. She was a hero, not that selfish, goat-fucking, self-absorbed piece of wasted filth.”

I scowled at Galactica and the Commander, still crying, “How many times have you closed the portals? How many times have you defeated the great evil, only for it to show up like clockwork again? How many times have you watched people die, heroes, because you could never fucking figure out what causes them to open? How many times have you put a huge horde of innocents in the ground, because the geniuses at Proteus are trying to clean up the superpowers before there’s too many to control, rather than stopping the rifts?”

I was raging now, and stood up fully, over Lauren’s battered body. “Fuck you. Fuck all of you. I will find a way to close the rifts myself, and to hell with all of you pathetic, useless pieces of shit. Fucking murderers.” I shot my wings open to their full fifty feet, not even caring if anyone was on the other side of the shredded walls, and leaped into the air, flapping heavily enough to push back even the heroes in surprise. The last thing I heard was Galactica's voice, something about a class A evac.

The worst part was, that I knew what Last Hurrah did. Inside of 15 minutes, there was likely to be an orgy down there, as all the survivors celebrated staying alive for one more damned rift breach before the next one ate them all.

The Eaters existed, they just weren’t alien. They were Proteus.

I realized how stupid I was, flying out my grief when the Chinese decided that my not responding to their radio hails was an intentional act of aggression rather than the fact that I just couldn’t hear the radio.

Two of the three missiles were fairly easy to avoid. They were heat-seekers, but I was putting out almost no heat compared to a jet engine. The third missile, a wire-guided antiaircraft job, exploded in a shower of ball bearings over a hundred feet ahead of me.

I tucked my wings in and the bearings chattered off of my primaries as I fell, and then scooped the air. After the night’s flying and the occasional rest by gliding, my regeneration had built my flight muscles to the point where it was barely any effort at all to stay aloft. I couldn’t go home yet, I was not sure I could face Windfall knowing that she had to have known about the chances of Lauren dying, and hadn’t told me. Sure, I jumped down her throat when she started talking about the odds, and that was entirely on me, but she should have told me anyway.

I had made some plans. First I was going to go murder the fucker that had abused Lauren and her sister growing up. Most likely that was going to paint me permanently as a villain, but I didn’t care. Then I would hunt down Cadmium. I had some ideas of how to find his flying fortress, and I figured that I had a decent chance of finding it. In this form, Illusions didn’t seem to affect me as much, so fuck their hot pursuit laws and the legalities that real monsters hide behind. Did they want special laws for superpowers, like special penalties for using powers in committing a crime? I would give them special laws. Two innocent people died because that crazy bastard decided to shoot a building with some kind of plasma torpedo. My special law would be summary judgment.

I had heard about Kayfabe. The reason so many villain types committed such wacky and over-the-top crimes with no chance of success, got sent to prison or asylum, and promptly made parole or escaped during a conveniently-timed flat tire for a prison bus they had no reason to need. If they wanted Kayfabe, I would use it to lure in the heroic bastards that hurt people again and again. And then I would kill them. Not in some easily-escapable and overly complex deathtrap, but by the simple expedient of lopping their fool heads off. No last-minute escapes, no miraculous saves, no sympathetic guards or cute villainous girls to seduce.

Okay, maybe cute villainous girls. But a decapitated head was unlikely to be a good seducer.

I landed next to the wire-guided missile station, and with a lash of my wing, cut the whole thing in half. I was careful to avoid the operator, though. He was a little Han guy that looked maybe 22 or 23. I left him alone, he was just doing his job and acting out of fear. He tried to shoot me twice, but I took the gun away from him and tore it into pieces before waggling a finger at him and taking off again.

I saw jets fly by a couple of times, but I wasn’t really worried. Even with my wingspan, shooting something the size of a human with a Chinese fighter-mounted weapon was nearly impossible. They used light automated rounds, and most of them wouldn’t even get through my armor. Apparently, they realized the same thing, because they flew off, and eventually I saw a streak of light flying beside me.

She was kind of cute, in a broad-faced sort of way. She didn’t want to get too close to my wings, because she hung back and tried shouting at me. At that distance I couldn’t hear her, so I put my hands to my ears pointed toward her, shook my head, and shrugged.

She was in typical metahuman shape, which meant good, and was wearing something that looked almost like one of those new, lightweight space suits like the Spacex astronauts wear, the dark grey and white ones with the oxygen packs. It was well-padded and well-armored, and her helmet was clear and similarly armored. She finally started pointing toward the ground. I figured I was flying somewhere in the vicinity of Beijing, and far away I could see the ocean.

I hadn’t started anything and had been very polite about disarming that soldier, so I yelled, “I am flying here!” I think she might have heard me, so she flew up above me. I wasn’t sure how she was flying, exactly, but she started descending towards me clear of the occasional flap of my wings.

“Do you mind?” I asked her, “I am headed to Japan to meet up with a friend of mine. I already hate the fact that I am going to have to turn my phone on again to make my GPS work.”

She shook her head, and answered in surprisingly clear, London-accented English, “I am sorry, but I cannot allow you to do that. You need to land and submit to temporary incarceration. You have passed over restricted airspace, refused landing orders, and violated Sovereign territory. I hate to have to say this, but you are under arrest.”

I smiled a little, letting the sadness in my gaze linger on her. “I just lost my love fighting the monsters in Siberia. Do you see this crap?” I opened my arms, showing off the blood and foul gore from the creatures. “This is the gore from flying through a goddamned monster the size of an aircraft carrier that was busy smashing my woman like a bug. Do you see this blood? This blood was from her smashed body when I picked it up and held it and tried desperately to get her to take one more breath. Just one. Even one more and I could have healed her, she would be with me right now.”

I glared at her. “If you have any humanity at all, you will let me keep flying so I can go get a goddamned cup of Saki with the only other person I know in this part of the world. So I can get drunk and cry over her without being surrounded by Proteus scumbags crowing over how amazing they are for saving the world for one more week, or month, or year, only to have it all start over again.”

“That’s all I want. To sit with my friend and cry. And get a little drunk. Please don’t make me hurt you to do it.”

She was talking into her helmet, probably over a radio of some sort. A few minutes later, she hovered close again, “Is your name Alchemyst?”

I shook my head, “No, it’s Louis McCarthy, but a bunch of dumb fuckers I don’t give a shit about call me Alchemyst. What’s your name?”

I went into a glide again and paid less concentration to my wings. The softer underside, without being reinforced as much, began to slow me slightly, while dropping the actual noise to a hushed whisper.

“Lei Hing.” She said, “If you are Alchemyst, I have permission to escort you to Japan. Where are you going?”

“Kyoto, the southern Oe Mountain, a tunnel just to the southeast of the city,” I said, taking a momentary flap to build up speed.

“Is it true that you cut an antiaircraft missile launcher in half?” She asked.

I nodded, “Yes, but I was careful not to hurt the driver. He was just doing his job. He shot it at me though, and it stung a little, so I wanted to stop him from shooting at me anymore. I know China has at least one class B metahuman, and I didn’t want to get on his shit list.”

“Her,” she said. “That’s me. They sent out the big guns. I was up at the rifts, but they were heat-proof, and the only thing I could hurt was the other warriors, so I went home. Proteus calls me Inferno, but here we are prohibited from using code names or specialized costumes. After you ignored the warnings and the missiles, they decided you were too dangerous to send out a lower ranked meta.”

I nodded, “I don’t know why they bothered.”

She sighed, “Because you flew over three restricted airspaces, and refused to comply with radio warnoffs or demands to land.”

I shrugged, losing a little altitude, which I regained with a wingbeat. “I am not wearing a radio. I don’t speak Chinese, and I was kind of in my own little world. Sorry. They could have sent up anyone and I would have at least listened. I mean, I didn’t hurt the missile guy, right? Why should I hurt a meta? Besides, I am only class C.”

“You are not a class C.” she said, “You flew through two Kaiju. Not even Commander Freedom has done that without help. One of them you apparently exploded while you were inside.”

I sighed helplessly. I was sort of following her now, as she angled slightly more to the north. “It was standing on Lauren.”

She nodded, flying on her back. I could feel some warmth along her trail, smell her spicy scent, and realized she probably used compressed heat waves to keep herself aloft. “And so you just blew it up.”

I shook my head, “Actually I diced it up inside a lot first. I mean, technically it blew up, but that was just the seams in its carapace. Most insects, even giant ones from hell, are not designed to have their internal pressure greatly exceed their external, so all I had to do was apply a little pressure after I mulched the insides.”

I sighed, “I don’t want to talk about exploding bugs, especially not the one that killed Lauren.”

she nodded, we were flying over water again. “Were you married?”

I shook my head, “No, she was my slave.”

She looked startled and almost angry, “She was a slave?”

I shook my head, “No, she was MY slave. She kind of loved it. She even started calling me master a couple of days ago. Marriage is temporary, but a slave is forever. I was thinking of adopting her son too, but now I don’t know. I mean, I know I loved her, still do, but I have giant friggin’ wings on my back half the time, people are always trying to use me, how could I possibly be a good father?”

She looked at me in confusion, “I don’t think I understand the word slave. I know what it means, but it doesn’t seem to mean the way you are using it.”

I smiled, “It is how you think of it, but not how it got there. I mean, she had to kidnap me, electrocute me until I puked, and sell me to a drug dealer before she finally got me to make her my slave. She pretended that it was my idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion she planned it from the beginning, or she wouldn’t have sold me to a guy I get along with so well. Hell, I am thinking of bypassing Japan and going straight to the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Why would you do that?” she asked curiously.

“Because only one of my friends is there, and she is surrounded by her family that I am sort of angry with right now. In the mood I am in, I might beat them up, and that would be rude.”

“Maybe you could call her first, have her meet you or something, so you don’t have to deal with her family?” She offered.

I nodded, “That would be a good idea, but I have my phone turned off right now. If I didn’t, I would have a whole bunch of other people calling me and asking stupid things like am I okay. I am not okay, and I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to commiserate with them, I don’t want to tell them I am fine. I just want to get drunk, snuggle with a friend, and not have to explain anything to anybody.”

“Do you have her name or her number? I could call her for you…”

I appreciated her help. “Sure. If you could text 41-221-JPR she uses a special anonymous texting server. Let Akiko know that I am flying in, and would like to meet her in Kyoto. Preferably someplace that serves Saki. Tell her I am… releasing Hyde, I cannot stand him anymore.” I felt the freedom leave me as I let him go and knew that I would never use Hyde again.

She shook her head and started talking into her radio again. After a few minutes, she nodded and said to me, “I got a text back. She said to tell you to go to the Sampan Garden. I can show you, but please do me a favor, call, and file a flight plan the next time you fly across China?”

I smiled slightly, “And miss meeting the beautiful and kind Lei Hing?” I asked curiously.

She nodded, “If you file the flight plan, and tell them to let me know, I will meet and fly with you. There are not too many fliers in China, and it was nice, even if you are sad.”

I nodded as she started dropping towards the ground. I was going to have to fold my wings, they were too big to make a gentle landing in Kyoto streets. I folded them and then made them disappear, sighing at the release of stress across my chest, and rolled into standing, Lei Hing landing next to me. “It was nice to meet you, even under such poor circumstances.”

I nodded to her, “You too. I hope we meet again.”

She smiled slightly, dropped her face plate, and jetted into the sky, much faster than she was flying with me, a watery heat wave behind her as she disappeared.

It took a bit of searching, but I finally found the Sampan Garden. It was a bit more of a restaurant than a bar, but when I got inside I saw Akiko sitting at a chair looking at me sadly. I walked over to her, “You know already?”

She nodded, a hint of tears in her eyes. “Yes. She messaged me before she left, and then I found out the wave was over, and then she didn’t message me again. I am so sorry.”

I nodded and sat down next to her, and she wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “Did she die bravely?”

I nodded, “She did. She was rescuing others, getting them out of danger, and didn’t make it through her portal herself before the monsters killed her.”

She nodded, “She was scared all the time, but brave nonetheless.”

I nodded, “yeah, she had a weird kind of bravery. I didn’t know her for very long, but I started having plans in my head for her as family. I kind of don’t know what to do now. I am done playing hero. I think… I am not sure, but I think that Proteus is using the warps to clean up inconvenient heroes. There are a few that always go, and they almost always come back, after the monster that...took Lauren, it was only a few minutes later that Commander Freedom showed up. Apparently, he flew into the rift, stopped the invasion somehow, and then came back. And I have too many questions. How did he stop it?”

“If it only took a few minutes, why did he wait till after the big monster hit the camp to do it? And most importantly, I am a class C. He outweighs me by two whole categories. He knew the monsters were resistant to heat, why was he flying around burning them? Why was I able to kill them so quickly while he took forever? He can lift supertankers, for god’s sake. The Kaiju are scary, sure, but they are nowhere near as dangerous as I heard… why didn’t he just punch his way into its head and drop it quickly?”

I shook my head, “I know it’s guilt speaking, but the whole time I was there it felt like casualties were being maximized. I was using controls, giant area effect glue patches, that were holding all the monsters in place fairly easily. And yet every single time I fired it off, someone immediately came and killed everything instead of destroying the ones that were still free.”

I sighed. “It’s just too many things all stacked together. The Kaiju headed in all directions, and yet we were attacking the ones that were heading towards nothing and took the one that was heading towards the camp last. Why would they put all the noncombatants in the same location? The air attackers were pathetic, why didn’t we have helicopters or even air support of any sort? And most importantly, why was almost everyone there a class D? I was using the same bombs I have had since I was Class E, and they were wiping the monsters off the Earth with ease.”

She nodded and got me a bowl of warm sake. “Probably because they were trying to kill off class Ds and Cs? How many class C’s were there?”

“As far as I know, it was me, Rainbow Warrior, Antonia, who just turned Class C, and Explosive Joe. Both Antonia and Joe were unexpected arrivals, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Joe managed to clean up half the invasion all by himself. There might have been one or two others, but if so, they probably died or took off before we arrived.”

Akiko smiled as I took another drink of my sake, finishing the bowl and starting on another. I didn’t intend to drink anymore after this, but I needed it to clear my head. I was not a drinker, but I needed it.

After starting on the third bowl, I looked at Akiko, “I am not going to get drunk on this, am I?” I asked her.

She shook her head, “Not even the slightest chance. With your regeneration? We have half of that and it would take us half a barrel of the strongest Sake to even get a buzz.”

“I was able to get drunk when I had Hyde.”

She smiled, “No, you activate Hyde when you started drinking. That wasn’t getting drunk, that was the chemical effect of having Hyde’s brain instead of your own. When he drank more, you activate the chemical again.”

“How do you know so much?” I asked her, finishing the bowl and wrapping my arm around her.

“Perfect Memory.” She said, shrugging a little, “I am the historian for my clan. I even have a pretty good idea of what you are, although it’s so steeped in mystery and tradition and lore that it will be pretty hard to explain.”

“So explain then?” I asked her curiously. I was still messed up about Lauren, but I sort of felt like I needed to know.

She shook her head, “Not here. Too many ears. But I am going to take you to a hotel, we are going to get into bed, curl up together like we did the night before last, and then I will tell you. And then you will lie down and take a nap, and wake up with a new resolve, forgive Windfall, and kick some ass.”

“Can you at least give me a clue as to what you think I am?” I asked her curiously.

She nodded, “I can tell you flat out, but you won’t understand it.”

“Oh hell.”

She nodded, “Exactly, you are human.”