Looking back, I shouldn’t have acted so hastily.

It felt like a couple minutes had passed before I started to run through the rest of the complex, shouting at Charlie. I asked her for directions, not like she could have given them at the time, she’d only been here for little over a day, that, and she was unresponsive.

My first thought, which came from my fixation on this super powered world was that her ears had been blown out by the deafening blasts from the stars, but I neglected, (and would continue to neglect), that she was not a fighter.

She told me that she hated this world, that she was trying to escape it, if, via the roundabout manner of using her supernatural abilities to make a fortune and then live her life in peace.

And here I had her slung, over my back, and all that I was thinking about was whether or not I could make it down to the battle in time. I was wondering if I could smash one of those streaks crashing through the sky or if it would disintegrate me.

I was thinking about the internationals’ guys down there, what powers they had, I wondered if I'd be able to counter their powers if used by ‘the channeler’. And I was dying to find out what the sixth power he had stored was.

The open mouth smile was torn off my face by another meteor tearing straight through the building, just a leap in front of me.

I pulled Charlie's legs to my chest as I fell on my ass.

I was knocked off a peg, as a splinter of the bad guy's power burned through floors of reinforced steel, or whatever this city is constructed from.

I’m definitely a super hero, sure. Sure.

I remembered my place.

“Ok... Charlie, ok. Here’s what we’re going to do- we're uhm, we’re going to find Bob, and Clover, and Hunter, then- then we’re going to go down to the street level, get on a- a flying-thing and get out of here.”

I still don’t know what those flying machines are called, and it didn’t matter in the end, because she wasn’t listening to me. It’s not like I said anything ground breaking anyway, that was the plan from the start.

There was no way Charlie was going to regain her composure, not while her life was literally falling down around her. Well, I’ve been there.

That was in the back of my mind, it always is. The Gator.

It wasn’t actually him down their right now, but it was the Gator’s powers. If I can beat him- if I can destroy his Gator-

Then I could have stopped him from killing those people.

I dipped into the only available corridor; I would have preferred the other one, but I didn’t want to chance it, not with the floor falling through at the edge of the star’s scar.

I was running as fast as I could, I didn’t pace myself for Charlie’s sake, I did it so I'd have time to look around the tens of rooms I was sprinting through. I was looking for anyone and everyone, there were no workers as far as I could see, though there hadn’t been many when I first came to this floor.

My mind suddenly lept to the room full of people in the command centre.

I had three choices then, to get my group down and out, to go back up, or to fight.

Before I could decide on my own, I saw Hunter turn the corner, and face me for a split second, before another tremor hit.

He screamed “Shit!” and I dashed over to him, ready to scoop him up.

We shouted in union, “What’s the status?”

I stayed quiet, wondering why he was asking me that. “Is Parker injured,” he groaned under the rumbling.

I zapped back to reality, “No, but she’s catatonic.”

He glared for a second.

“Give me directions to the elevator, and I'll carry you-” Half-way through my meek words, he managed a laugh, his face twisting in a half-mocking, half-honest smirk, “Like hell. Ever heard of the scorpion and the fox? I do that and you’ll have no use for me, I’ll lead the way, but you’re handing over the VIPU.”

Even though I myself was focused on things other than our immediate danger, I realised that this was not the time or place for politics.

And it wasn’t the time for arguing either.

I handed Charlie over to him; she was as light as a balloon.

He took a second to adjust his posture, and it was then that I realised his pistol was half raised. From the look of it, it was definitely some kind of sci-fi gun, rectangle barrel, parts seemingly leading to nowhere, the usually pony show.

Hunter’s smile had faded to a grimace, his eyes hadn’t changed from when I first met him.

There was a moment between rumbles that stretched time.

And he finally said, looking down the corridor he’d just ran through, “Don’t fall behind, ass-” He cut himself off before starting to run again.

It was slower, a snail's crawl in comparison to my preferred pace, but after a hundred rumbles and another blast through the wall, we got back to the elevators.

I skidded to a stop, not even acknowledging the fact that Clover was safe and sound, I was thinking about whether it was a good idea to even use the elevators.

I must have mumbled my thoughts aloud, because she shouted, “Hover-tech, dumbass!”

I was getting sick of people insulting me; looking down on me. Before I could say anything, Hunter picked up on something a hero would have noticed.

“Where’s the cleaner?”

I thought about it for a second before realising that Bob was gone.

I turned heel and asked, “Which hall? If he was looking for Charlie, then he’d have gone down.”

“Shit...” Hunter growled to himself.

Clover shouted at me again, “We don’t have time for that! We’re out of luck, remember!?”

“Right, this hall should loop in that direction,” I got ready to kick forward when Hunter chimed in, “Queen bitch here is right, our best bet is to get onto street level, Agent Parker will do the same once he loops back here.”

For some reason that stopped me. Not because I put any thought into that statement however.

“He won’t stop looking. He wouldn’t stop if it was a random kid he just met, and he certainly won’t stop for his own sister.”

Hunter snarled, “Listen, I- You're a Unit, our collective best chance for survival is sticking together!” He thought about it for a second, “You’re not going to leave me with her, are you? A hot head like me, with a defenceless enemy leader-”

I cut him off, “If you ‘let her die’ I’ll break your legs.”

'Oops', was the thought that poped into my head during the silence that followed.

It just sort of slipped out. I wasn’t being serious; it was figurative more than anything. I didn’t think he was going to try anything, though he’d been an ass. Clover was shouting at me, and this was the first high stakes event I'd been in since Valentines.

“I’m going. You don’t like it, come with me.” I imagine myself remaining expressionless, while Clover was mortified, and this guy was glaring.

I darted off, finally. Though I said they could come with me, there was no chance of them catching up with me.

The rattling and creaking of the building continued and grew. I was far more reckless with my jumps; I skipped over pits that shot deep into the lower floors of the building.

And eventually, I stumbled upon a person.

Well, between the fraction of a second I passed it by, the few seconds of milase I spent calling out, I thought it was a person.

It was the oinking that made me think otherwise.

Then it was the fact that it was translucent.

There was a short humanoid figure, it was hunched over, balanced on its good leg.

I had been starring at its back, until it somehow knew I was there.

Its head turned to face me, oinking as bubbles poped around its gelatinous head. At first it looked half human, half pig. It had an unmissable snout, and the floppy ears perking up out of the top of its head.

Shit, (I thought), first monster. Hopefully this thing isn’t acidic.

As it rose, I squared off. And then I noticed a group of bubbles build up in the throat, at the same time I understood what the frame letting this thing stand up was.

The bubbles boiled out at the surface, but instead of that oinking, it said, “Is there anyone there? Where is everyone? So... damp...”

Underneath that pinkish jelly was a person.

My teeth chattered before I could say Bob.

I stood in shocked horror as it limped forward. Suddenly the limping shot to mind.

I steeled myself. Whatever that stuff was, I just had to tear it off with my hands. Whether it’s corrosive or not.

As I was about to pounce, a metal panel frisbeed down the corridor, a corner sticking deep into the things back, causing it to fall forward onto its bad foot.

I looked at the thrower, and shouted out in surprise.

Bob pointed at the pig-thing, “Zombie! Don’t touch!” His words forced out, hardly audibly over the chaos, the distance, and Bob’s overly laboured breathe.

“It was speaking,” I argued.

“Mimicry! Slip past it and run, kid!”

“Is it a monster?” I asked, put at least a little bit at ease by the fact that he knew what it was, that it wasn’t from Jack.

“Yeah, a weak one- just run!”

I nodded.

I put an arm out to the wall, tearing a panel from it. If Bob’s poor throw could lodge one in the pig’s back, then...

It was a flic of the wrist, for a second, I thought back on art class. Not long ago I’d have used that same motion for a messy stroke on a page.

Half the thing's head splattered messily across the wall it had been closest to.

Bob screamed in soprano.

I hopped over the body, and informed Bob that “Charlie’s fine. As fine as she can be I guess, she’s at the elevator we came on, with the others.” His eyes popped back into his head, “Thank god...”

I looked back the way I came, “What was that thing? You said it was a zombie.”

He scratched the back of his head, looking me up and down, “Yeah, there are a couple monsters kept in the city.”

I gave him a look.

“You know,” he continued, “for research. We’ve made a ton of stuff from interesting ones, Int fluid, transcogitate- I'm pretty sure there were three Eighty-ones in command, that thing you just killed was a part of one of them.”

He finished inspecting me, “Just touching that slime is all it takes for it to start the assimilation process, it’d seize motor control in the affected area, start sapping nutrients for propagation, invade your nervous system, link you to its hive mind-”

“Wait, what?”

He thought about it for a second.

“No... I mean, yeah, it knows where we are, that there’s a delicious Unit right here-”

I put a hand up, “Don’t describe me as delicious, but go on.”

He started to walk as fast as he could with that limp, “That one was beaten up pretty badly, it might have come in from anywhere.”

I nodded along.

Bob stopped in his tracks.

“Can you carry me?”

Somehow, I was still surprised by this guy. He stretched his arms out like a kid, “Please?”

I threw him over my shoulder, and our speed tripled.

I smiled to myself, “You know, for a second I thought that thing was you, Bob.”

“It’s pronounced Bob, and what made you think that? That guy was decomposed for a couple weeks.”

I answered his question with a question, “In a world where 5-mile-wide animals exist, why isn’t it possible for a guy to turn into a pig in half an hour?”

He let out a thoughtful grunt, and I continued, “Not to mention, that thing had a limp on the same leg as you.”

He thought about it for a second before shouting out, “Wait really? That’s actually kind of freaky, isn’t it! Kid, you better have not jinxed me.”

I took a U-turn round a corner, “Bringing up the jinxing double jinxes you.”

We came to a particularly large horizontal chasm, and I looked for the best place to leap over from.

“Well, with that logic, you’ve just... what, quadruple jinxed us?”

I shook my head, “It depends if it’s exponential or additive.”

Bob had surprised me with his idiocy earlier, but I was impressed how well he was taking all this, compared to how Charlie handled it, at least.

I guess I’m trapped in this loop of underestimating and overestimating this 30-year-old white-collar worker.

“KYEEEE!” I looked back at the 30-year-old pansy on my shoulder.

“Move, kid!”

Luckily, I positioned myself to move right before a loud oink sounded out.

I not only leapt to the other side of the pit, but to the floor below us. I pried Bob off me with one arm, and formed a fist with the other.

When I whipped my head around, I was looking straight up through the hole, the giant amorphas blob illuminated by the stary sky and dim lights.

The same colouration as the man-shaped one from earlier, but this was more gel than animal, that’s not to say it wasn’t comprised of animals; along with its cohort of sub-monsters roaming free from the blob, there were all sorts of animals in it: cats, sheep, a horse, and people.

A few figures had the distinct tie worn by International agents, most of the ones outside of it wore the same outfit as the helpers assigned to Charlie.

It was a small frail army with a bus sized mastermind; two floors up from us and descending.

The humanoids aimlessly stumbled off the side, falling like droplets, the pig-brain squealed out as it oozed surprisingly efficiently where we had been standing not five seconds ago.

“How do I take it out?”

Bob screamed in my ear, “Just run!”

I ignored him. I looked at the people this thing had swallowed in the few minutes I had spent running in circles.

I let my fist go and ran.

I ran to the exposed wall and pulled at it, looking for a certain part. Bob pulled at me, “Come on kid! That unranked monster kicked your ass! You can’t take this thing on; this is a worse match up then the Pooky!”

“Pooka,” I corrected, “And I’ve got a couple ideas that are better than ‘hit him harder’.” As I tore some panel at the drones that had managed to get onto our level Bob took step back.

I heard him smack his face, “Shit... Shit!” Then I heard him struggle to pry a panel free.

I smiled when I found the part I wanted, but frowned when I thought about it affecting the integrity of the roof.

With a cocky shrug, I pulled the support beam from the wall. The roof above creaked, but stood strong without it. They don’t call it a state-of-the-art facility for nothing.

The beam was a little taller than me, maybe 6 feet long, not enough to stab half-way through the Pig-head, but it was enough to swat the drones away.

“Maybe stick to the side that’s structurally sound, alright Bob?” I didn’t wait for a response, (guess I never do), I kicked across the pit, then jumped back over it and up one floor.

With a horizontal swing, I smashed through two goo zombies, bisecting one, and sending both flying. I took a look around the floor, tried to count the number of zombies, gave up at ten, and changed my stance.

I needed to focus on keeping a distance from these things, I tucked the beam under my arm, spearing it out to some success. Their bones were shattered with every push out, leaving a pile on the ground for me to watch out for.

It’s only now, with the glasses of hindsight, that I realise there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t acting like I should have. I had no trouble smashing corpses away, the truth is I wanted to get into a fight.

I hadn’t done anything like this since Irminsul, so somewhere along the line, in one of those worlds, it looks like I lost something.

A thin layer of apprehension.

The main blob was moving now, it had flattened itself against the wall of the pit, the flesh bodies within it gripping to the wall, pulling it across like insect legs.

All except one.

I hadn’t noticed looking at the thing from a low angle, but there was a single large skeleton in the centre of the viscous mass.

It was a skeletal pig- not a pig's skeleton now, it was like a cartoon version. It had a skeletal snout and ears, and it was bigger than a human, bigger than me anyway.

With zero apprehension, I made it my target.

The way I figured, hiveminds have two different systems, at least in fiction. Either they were connected in a network and I'd have to kill them all, or they had a central unit controlling them, the primary monster.

And the way I figured, the easiest thing to do would be to cut the head off the snake.

My best bet would be to hit it while it was close to the wall, because that would give me something to break its skull against.

As I scooted forward, Bob yelled from below me. I couldn’t jump down, or the main blob would simply follow me.

I believed, and still believe, that what i did was the best thing to do.

I speared forward, not missing a beat. I had struck at the pig-head, not the second it was in range, I waited till it was close enough for me to reach, but far enough that it would be a foot away from my hand when I jabbed the beam in.

When I stabbed the goo, it made a watery squeal, before moving it’s bones out of the way.

I muttered, “That’s going to be an issue, isn’t it?”

Although I needed to think of a new plan, it was good to know that particular skeleton was worth moving.

About a tenth of Pig-head's total mass had made its way across the thin piece of ground still intact on this floor, and it was reaching out for me dumbly.

If there was any thought behind its actions, it wasn’t conveyed as anything other than basic instinctual groping.

I threw some ideas at the wall, coincidentally, my first idea was to throw the beam at it, though I didn’t see that one working out any better.

I thought about swatting at it, but that would make a mess. I thought about burning it, but I had no fuel.

Honestly, I wasn’t getting any bright ideas, (I know the creative juices have run dry when I think ‘burn the fucker to hell.’)

The only way I was going to win this one? Taking a step back.

I gave up on hitting the important part of the Pig-head, and decided to start swinging at its feet.

Another assumption I made was that there was a reason it had a horse, a cat, and a couple people stuck in the main body, the conclusion I came to (seeing as they were all standing) was that they provided some sort of physical support.

So I swung for the closest zombie inside of it, smashing it against the wall. It oinked in response and bulged out, ignoring the death of its legs.

I battered at the floating morsels of flesh with precision and urgency, I didn’t want to get gooed, and I didn’t want to waste time while Bob could be getting gooed.

The general structure of the slime didn’t change, it maintained the general shape of a dew drop as the bulk of its mass found its way to my side. Not only had it finished crossing, but more zombies were dropping down from the floor above.

Time was running out, I was getting backed into a corner, its movements were speeding, and I was losing faith in Bob holding his own.

I glanced back, seeing a thin corridor.

I found yet another idea.

I back stepped quickly keeping a close eye on the skeleton, It slowed as it compressed its body to follow me, keeping the main body at the back of the probing slime.

With a grin, I took my first shot when it was in a position where it couldn’t dodge.

It was a large skeleton, and although it dodged me while it was on the wall, in this hall there was little space for it to shift about. For me, it was a simple straight throw, I just had to hit something.

I’ve said before, but I don’t have a good throwing arm, so I wasn’t surprised when I hit its pelvis, just disappointed.

Or rather, I was finally freaking out.

It sped up greatly now, and I had already gone past the door on my left, there was only a stubby dead end with cleaning equipment.

I threw away my best weapon, and my avenues for escape were closing up. At the time, I was cocky enough to believe that I’d be able to escape by knocking down a few walls, I stayed as long as I did because with the support beam lodged in its mass, there was less room for the bones to move.

If it was sentient, it could have moved the beam as a cover, the same could have been said for its walking bodies if I hadn’t taken care of most of them; it just oinked furiously and trawled on.

I punched a hole through the reinforced wall and dug around, not finding more than scrap when I pulled my hand out.

I backed up against the wall trying to think.

I tried to think of an idea that wasn’t, ‘punch really hard and really quick’, or ‘suck him into the vacuum by my feet’.

But I could use the mop and brush.

My last idea that didn’t involve running smashed through my mind.

I removed my restraints on one arm hastily, and grabbed the end of the floor brush and the head of the mop.

Both of them reached twice the length of the beam, near the total diameter of the blob. The end of the mop was already in the blob, and the skeleton reacted automatically, minutely.

Speed was the trigger; it wasn’t being cautious with the immobile debris it had already swept up, so if I just waited...

I didn’t even have to move the stick forward, I just had to line it up. Although it wasn’t smart enough to know this motionless stick was a threat, it instinctively moved its skeleton away from it, like you would instinctively hide your head if somebody looked like they were going to hit it.

This thing was good at dodging, but with so little space for it to move, there was little chance of it avoiding me.

I didn’t wait for the last possible minute, if I had screwed up, I would have just thought up a new plan.

It was a flick of the wrist, and the cartoonish snout was pierced by a mop.

I had been aiming at its eye socket, but it didn’t matter as long as I got a hit off on it.

I could barely see what happened, as the goop lost any rigidity and fell away. Now I was acting on instinct, it was like seeing a spider on your bathroom floor, except there was a real threat that this would kill me with its alien touch.

I jumped backwards. Smashing through the wall that was behind me.

I grinned looking at my hand.

I was right in the end. That thing didn’t stand a chance against me.

As the watery goo receded back down the hall, I thought about my current circumstance.

The Internationals had said that there were eighty-one monsters of this calibre, that’s two that I've defeated now. Their supposed to be above me, right? That thing was supposed to be my natural predator? Even when I was new to this, I could beat one of these things with nothing but brute force.

Now I could beat one of them without touching it.

Simply put, I was growing an ego.

I neglected the fact that the monsters I'd fought had all been low ranking ones, that there were four hundred powered Units out there who are stronger and smarter than me, that there are nine Unworldly Beasts that dwarf me in significance.

And of course, there were the so-called Twenty-Seven Gods.

It was when I realised that the skeletal body wasn’t lying broken on the ground, that this fight wasn’t over, that made my head shrink back down.

I kicked myself forward, I cleared the ten plus feet like a bullet, not falling till I was half-way over the pit that the falling star had made.

It was at that moment that I realised that the zombies were still standing. Killing the boss didn’t turn them off?

I was wrong?

That’s when I saw the pig skeleton, the zombies were moving toward it, as it lay on the opposite side of the pit from Bob, the poll still hanging from its nose.

It didn’t move, it just bubbled, frothed, and oinked. I was desperate to finish it so I ripped the floor up once I got close to the pig.

I warped the purple steel around my fist like a boxing glove and smashed into its skull.

It, and the ground beneath it, shattered. I twisted my head around the open space, and they were still oinking away.

I was in disbelief.

This wasn’t the jungle beast in the west, nor was it the Channeler, it was just a pig.

Bob screamed out.

And I gave up on fighting that thing.

It was a quick jump back, I called out for him.

As I looked around the half-room filled with paste, I was again afraid that I had made the wrong choice.

Until he poked his head out and screamed, “Where the hell were you!”

I looked down, “I thought I- could handle it.”

Bob limped over to me, “It’s not the sort of thing you can kill with brute force or tactics. That thing is a monster.”

After a couple seconds Bob was slung over my shoulder again.

“I mean, that’s not true for all of them, but if you’d let me explain for a second, I could have told you what we were dealing with.”

“How was I supposed to know that you had info on that thing!” I tried to convince myself, more than him, that my decision to fight had made sense.

“I told you, I’m clean-up. I saw that thing when they brought it in, I was briefed on how it functions.”

He paused, “It’s not something you can kill, because it isn’t alive.”

“Monsters are entities that defy logic, that go beyond any reasoning. That creature was alive, once. You understand that Mind is an archetype, that thing transcended its limits, it grew beyond consciousness. I guess you could say it reset to zero. It’s like a cancer, reproducing through other cells, maximising production.”

Bob’s voice seemed to take on a different tone. “It’s not limited to animals. It’ll infect plants, trees and grass. It’s hypothesised that even the world's plankton could be infected by it.”

I started to sweat a little, “How the hell is that not a threat to the world at large?”

“Simple,” he started, “Because there are people who can solve that problem without brute force or tactics.”

I snickered a little. I’d almost forgotten that this was the real world. Of course, there are people better at problem solving than a comic book fan from Nowhere.

“Hey... Put me down for a second.”

The out-of-place tone had left Bob’s voice.

I did as instructed. Whatever this was it wasn’t going to be good, there was a slight panic in his voice.

He took off the shoe on his good foot, and pealed off the sock with caution.

“Ah.”

It must have been a drop from the ceiling.

He was below me when I was trying to fight the original pig.

The skin of his leg was pulsing, and it looked wet to touch.

He was on the verge of freaking out.

I would have been right behind him.

If a coldness hadn’t seized me.

I had to make this right somehow.

“Lay down,” I ordered.

He was about to scream out, to cry.

“Listen to me,” I commanded.

“I will cut it off.”

I didn’t smile.

He tried to argue, “I- The chance that that will do anything-”

My eyes grew, “So there is a chance.”

I carefully removed my right legs restraint, it was designed for restricting blood flow around the calf, it would definitely stop flow around the thigh.

“Kid-”

I glared at him.

He gritted his teeth.

I tied it.

I knew that I would have to cut it as high as possible, the area that looked infected was around his ankle, in case it was more than that, I decided to cut above the knee.

If it was in his blood, then...

I didn’t think about that. I ignored that possibility.

“It’s going to be alright Bob. I’m going to help you.” He covered his eyes.

It would have been around this time, that the stars stopped falling. Though I was in no position to notice. My heart was shaking every inch of my body.

Except for my hand.

Somehow, from somewhere, I gained the strength of will to do something like this.

I don’t remember, but I think I was looking back on something somebody had once told me. Or maybe it was something I had told myself?

I have a strange feeling it was the latter.

I was doing this with my unrestricted arm, so it was going to be clean at least.

I held my hand out, it would be one chop, then we’d be able to move on, I’d find some rebirthing fluid, we’d find the others, get on the thing, and fly out of here.

We would all be fine. I’d keep them all safe.

And they’d like me.

“This is going to hurt,” I finally said.

There was only a moment's hesitation.