Christmas Eve, 2010, 11:52 PM.
Those fucking idiots, thought Brad.
The warehouse was cold. Decrepit, falling apart and abandoned for years. Despite that, the lights were on inside, a noisy gas generator giving the place power, and, more importantly, drowning out the perpetual whining and keening of the dogs. They sat in cages along the wall, some chewing on the bars, others slumped over in the throes of a painful hunger. The more lively ones stared hatefully through the bars of their cages at Brad as he finished carving up the emaciated corpses of the dogs that didn't make it.
"Fucking morons," he muttered. Honestly. He looked down at the skinny lumps of dog meat coming apart beneath his knife-clad fingertips. Some of these dogs had been fighting for years, fan favorites with the scars to prove it. And now they were dead because some fresh-faced dipshits thought you could take Christmas break off from feeding a living thing. Like they would just wait for you to get back, their stomachs and hungers put on hold while you went out 'drinking with the boys'.
He retracted all the knives in his right hand and began packing up the leftover pieces. The freshest bits would be fed to the other starving dogs, giving them a taste for it and keeping them sated while he tried to find several dozen pounds of dog food on Christmas Eve. He glanced over at his watch, sitting on the corner of his impromptu butcher's table. Through it's slightly bloodstained face, Brad saw the minute hand edge closer and closer to midnight. Hell, it was almost Christmas morning at this point. With a grunt, he got up and began to distribute the choice cuts to the remaining dogs.
One dog in particular began to snap at him, gnashing it's teeth together where its thin muzzle poked through the bars. Its eyes were blank and unfocused, possessing nothing more than unintelligent, angry bloodlust. Brad slapped it in the face with a big of loose thigh meat and continued along. As he finished feeding the others, that one dog continued to gnaw and bark. It's protests had grown louder, deranged even.
Stepping in front of its cage, he brought himself eye to eye with the yappy little thing. The pug stared back at him, brown eyes sunken into its squat little face. The growling continued, reaching a fever pitch as drool coated the cage bars between its stubby, useless teeth.
"Quiet," he said sternly. You had to be firm with these things. He smacked the dog right in the nose and it backed away to the corner of the cage, all quiet and obedient-like. The way these little malformed dogs thought themselves to be hot shit honestly confused the hell out of Brad. Making threats didn't do shit if you couldn't back them up. Even that little dog's peanut sized brain should have been able to see the obvious conclusion of any fight between them. It barely came up to his knee.
Pecking order established, he went back to finish packing up the rest of the dog remains. A quick visit to the docks later tonight would see them turn from evidence to fish food. He probably wouldn't even be the only one tossing of unsavory garbage into the ocean tonight.
Suddenly, Brad felt a tingle go down the back of his neck. He looked back at the dogs. All of them had stopped eating. They all stood at attention, hackles raised, muscles taut, all staring in one direction. Brad slowly, cautiously, turned his head to follow their gaze and saw the glow of car headlights from below the bottom of the sliding warehouse doors, age and warping preventing them closing all the way. He tensed up. When had that arrived? Nobody but his most trusted lieutenants in the Empire should even know he was here.
Everything was quiet except the purring of the gas generator. Then, like a dam breaking, they all began barking at once. It was not the angry, desperate barking of before hungry beasts chomping at the bit. This was panic. This was warning.
Brad grit his teeth. Bringing down a steel-clad fist onto the top of the nearest cage, he yelled out. "Quiet!". The dogs continued to snarl and howl at the door, some of the smaller dogs, including the angry little pug, trying to back as far into the corner of their cages as possible.
"QUIET!" He bellowed again. But the dogs were only growing louder. At this rate someone would call the cops, and then Brad would have to start disposing of evidence. And that would mean getting rid of a lot more dead dogs before the night was through.
He began moving towards the cages now, gripping a long steel machete that had grown from his right palm. He breathed in to scream at them once more but didn't get a chance. All at once, they went deathly quiet. A split second later, the doors to the warehouse, large enough to fit entire trailers through them, shook as someone or something banged on them from the outside.
"Hookwolf!" Shouted someone from outside. The voice was low. A Man's. Breathing heavily, not with exertion, but some deranged excitement. "I know you're in there! I can hear it!"
Spoiler: The Build
Brad swore under his breath. He wasn't wearing his mask. How the fuck did he know it was him, specifically? Nobody had tailed him, not that he saw. There wasn't any other cars on the road in this part of town, especially not on Christmas Eve. None of the other gangs had any Strangers that could have followed him, but then again, any Stranger he knew about would have been a shitty Stranger, right?
Whoever they were, they weren't a cop. Obviously not a cop. Brad retracted the machete back into his flesh and let it warp and distort into a thin wire inside his body, feeling it weave itself back around his muscles where it rejoined the protective shell of metal just beneath his skin. He centered himself. Took stock. He needed more information.
"Who's asking?" he called out. His "core", the only truly vulnerable part of him, pulsed. The metal in his body began to shift and pulse as it changed from a formless wiry mass beneath his skin and began taking more discreet shapes. Blades, hooks, wires and chains seethed just below the surface. One large chunk of metal emerged from his core and traveled all the way up through his neck to his face, where it emerged in the form of a thin sheet of vaguely wolf-shaped metal. His mask.
Hookwolf waited on the other side of the door. There was a pause, and the sound of cloth shifting outside. Was this guy wearing an actual cape?
"My name is Vice! And I... am a Supervillain!"
Inside his body, Hookwolf felt a piece of chain get caught on a stray hook and the internal ballet of liquid metal seized up for a split second.
"Are-" He choked on his own spit. "Are you serious?"
"Oh yes. God yes." The voice on the other side, Vice, sounded almost relived. Like he was getting some great weight of his chest.
"Well, buddy, I'm afraid the Empire ain't recruiting right now. Maybe come back after Christmas break?"
Hookwolf just wanted to go home honestly, and now this wannabe was outside trying to get in with the empire after almost giving the dogs a heart attack. He slapped the final lid on the buckets of spare dog parts and began to plan his daring escape. Hopefully he could get this guy to fuck off long enough that he wouldn't have to deal with him.
In his time, Hookwolf had met many, many capes, even before he got powers himself. "Villains" especially, as those in power like to describe them, those people who used their powers on the wrong side of the law. He had never, ever met any capes who would describe themselves as supervillains except as a joke. Many had described themselves as heroes, despite how many innocents they murdered or homes they destroyed. Calling yourself a supervillain was straight comic-book shit.
This guy was obviously off his rocker. He could go be someone else's problem, at some other time. But then, as if to just drive home his first impression even more, the wackjob began to laugh maniacally.
"Hah! No no no no no, Hookwolf. Not happening. I Ain't here for any apprenticeship of evil. I'm here to fight you." He Paused. "To the death, if necessary."
Hookwolf stopped halfway though opening up the back door so he could climb into his truck and leave this moron to his delusions. He turned back towards the front, where the car headlights still shone through the crack at the bottom where the old rusted door didn't close all the way. He took a deep breath in, and walked over to it. The metal inside him began to itch, tiny little knives growing up and down his back like scales. He reached down, unlatched the door, and slid it up. And then he saw Vice for the first time.
He was about the exact same height as Hookwolf, which made fairly tall. He had a lanky yet firm build that wouldn't be out of place on a gymnast or dancer, but did look out of place trying to look threatening, as this clown was attempting to be. Golden blonde hair that shined under the warehouse lights was curled up in a sort of stunted pompadour. His clothes were strange, not in the way that cape outfits tended to be strange, but instead in that he was wearing the most eclectic bunch of bargain-bin, goodwill-type, thrift-shop clothes one could find. Jeans that flared out at the bottom. A pale pink tank top. A Corduroy jacket at least 5 sizes too large, draped off his back like a impromptu cape. No shoes. A fashion disaster even when it wasn't late December, with flakes of snow drifting down.
And then there was the mask. Hookwolf didn't even get a good look at it to begin with, as the moment he opened to door, Vice's face had swung around in every direction, snapping to every point of interest in the warehouse in a blur and before settling to look at the Cape in front of him. The bone-white mask covered his entire face, and it reminded Hookwolf of an arrowhead turned upside down, tapering to a shallow point below his chin and widening towards the top of his head where it extended past in two peaks to form a subtle "V" shape. The only features on the mask were an eyehole on the right side, and three upwards-arching notches on the left side, one mirroring the eye hole, and two directly below that one. The notches gave the impression of eyes that were shut completely. A set of 3 bizarre looking black plastic straps attached the mask to his head.
The juxtaposition between the awful outfit and strangely intricate mask was throwing Hookwolf for a loop. Was the mask a part of his power, somehow? Did Vice use his power to make it, the same way Hookwolf did? If so, why just the mask?
"Why, exactly, do you want to fight me?"
Vice scoffed and struck a pose. "Because I want to. A supervillain does not need to justify himself, Brad Meadows."
In that moment, Hookwolf knew he was going to enjoy tearing this poseur prick limb from limb. The fact he somehow knew his civilian ID barely registered.
"Alright then. A Fight." He backed away form the door and moved towards the large empty space towards the wall opposite the dog cages. He shoved away some loose garbage, leavings from the homeless who had squatted here before the empire forcefully persuaded them to take their leave. He looked back to try to get a read on this "Vice" cape. Most likely some form of Brute rating, given he seemed completely unbothered by the cold despite having no shoes and not wearing his coat properly. Perhaps a Thinker as well, given how he somehow found Hookwolf despite the fact that not even he knew he was going to be here tonight, not until his shithead lackeys called him saying they had forgotten to feed the dogs for the past 3 days. They, too, would be getting thrown off the docks in little pieces if he had anything to say about it.
Out of the blank expanse of Vice's mask, a single brown eye rolled around hungrily. He wrung his hands in anticipation and began pacing the perimeter of the ad-hoc arena like a shark with the scent of blood. He refused to stand still for even a second, pacing or jittering or shuffling along. Hookwolf could emphasize. Already he could feel his core thrumming, metal extruding outwards until it was just below the surface of his skin. Wolf claws built themselves inside his hands, chains and hooks formed a set of tails just below his spine, ready to burst forth. He was having a shitty fucking holiday, and this prick wanders up, flaunting the unwritten rules, chasing him down, and then asking to get his ass kicked? He couldn't think of a better Christmas present.
Abruptly, he turned to point at Hookwolf. "Before we begin. We must set the stakes."
"The stakes?" Said Hookwolf. He clamped down on his power, feeling the hooks and knives of his wolf form eager to emerge. "If you wanna make a bet out of this, I'm game."
"Excellent. We shall fight until submission. If you win, Brad, what would you want from me? What would you want to do to me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you win, will you kill me? Steal from me? Lock me up? Truss me up and deliver me to your head honcho, Kaiser?"
There was a moment of consideration. "I figure I would just kill you, unless you've got some major powers under the hood."
"Very well."
Vice then stopped pacing and gestured dramatically, like a conductor getting ready to signal the beginning of the first movement.
"Brad Meadows, if I overcome you in single combat, then I am going to make you my slave. Your will shall be mine. Your body shall be mine. Your power shall be mine. Now and forever." He clenched both his fists and swung down to punctuate his proclamation, before bringing them back up in some approximation of a fighting stance.
There was no control over his center of gravity, no attempt to keep his guard up. Perpetually unbalancing and having to correct himself. It was obviously an attempt at some sort of martial arts form, but the end result just looked like he was dancing in place with his fists clenched.
Hookwolf just stared at him. He must have some serious power if he thought he was going to get anywhere posed like that. Although, as he considered his opponent's previous behavior, there was the distinct possibility that he was just an unhinged idiot.
In Light of that awful stance, his comment about press-ganging Hookwolf into slavery almost passed him by. Did he have a Master power of some kind to enforce that or was he banking on, like, the honor system? "Yeah. Alright buddy. I'm just gonna kill you, then."
"Then let's beg-"
Vice didn't even get to finish his sentence before Hookwolf shot forward, his legs already being overcome by a tide of shifting spikes and blades. He brought his right hand up, the machete from earlier forming and growing more until it was a wedge of metal almost as tall as Hookwolf's human body. The distance was closed with a shriek of steel, and he brought down his blade in a singular overhead slice.
Vice, to his credit, had exemplary reflexes. The problem was not the speed of his reaction. The problem was what he decided to do with his reaction.
In the split second between being swung at and getting cleft in half, Vice, instead of doing something sensible like dodging, brought both his hands up above himself, palms open. Just before impact, and clapped them together over the approaching sword. Hookwolf tensed in excitement. He had seen this move in countless a kung-fu action flick. Was he really going to pull it off?
Of course, what works in the movies doesn't always quite work out in reality. Vice did clap both hands over the sword in mid swing. But Hookwolf had far too much mass and far too much strength to let that stop him. The blade didn't even hitch as it tore the skin off Vice's palms on the way through, and then kept going down towards his head. The sword, in single cut, buried itself in Vice down to his collarbone, splitting the skull and neck.
Hookwolf couldn't contain his disappointment as the self-proclaimed supervillain's body slid of the end of his blade and began slumping towards the floor, still twitching with the random firing of neurons, violently disconnected.
Was that really it? It wouldn't be the first time Hookwolf taken some rookie Cape that thought he was hot shit and torn them to pieces, but generally he had gotten some idea of what they were capable of. The thought struck Hookwolf that maybe this guy wasn't even a Cape at all, but just some powerless lunatic with a death wish.
Hookwolf felt himself slump as the cool realization that the fight was over settled on him. His metal shuddered, stilled, and began to sink back into his flesh. He shook the blood off his blade and retracted it. God damn, he manged to get himself worked up over absolutely nothing. Vice, whoever he was, never stood a chance. Just like so many others Hookwolf had put down over the years. Easy, pointless victories. No back and forth, no exchange of blows, no real testing each other's limits until one eventually broke. Not for the first time, he longed for the lights of the fighting pits. Back before he had powers, before everything stopped being able to hurt him. The sensation of cool air on his bloodied knuckles, of two bodies taking each other apart, the crowd yelling for more, more, more. Of seconds turning into eternity as the the two fighters made eye contact just outside of arm's length. This dead moron had never known anything like that, if his fighting prowess was anything to go by.
Another body for the bay, he supposed. What a waste. He bent down to pick the corpse up, its legs still twitching.
Like a snare trap, the right arm of Vice's corpse whipped upwards and snagged onto Hookwolf's neck, just below the mask. Almost immediately, the skin he was touching began to tingle unpleasantly.
Spoiler: The Build
Instinct took over. Hookwolf reeled back, knives and hooks exploding out of his neck to tear the offending limb to shreds. The tingling on his neck had transitioned into a cold burning and a shortness of breath.
"Ah, god damn that hurt, you steely bastard! Lucky for me, I don't keep anything important in there!" Vice stood back up, as the wound running up his head began to close like a jacket being zipped up. He knocked on his own forehead, and sure enough, a hollow thump rang out.
For Hookwolf, it was getting hard to breathe. Pins and needles, and not actual ones like his power could make, were beginning to spread from the where Vice had struck him.
"You cheating bitch. What the fuck did you do to me?" He Growled between deep, struggling breaths.
Vice seemed to have been knocked out his earlier delusions of grandeur when his head got split open, as he dropped any pretense of sophistication or dignity. "Well, you gun-jumping dipshit," he explained, "I don't actually know what I did to you. I only got a split second to mess around, so I kinda..." He waved his hand in a 'so-so' motion. "...I kinda just sort twisted everything up. Normally I imagine it would just be kind of annoying, but the neck's a pretty important bit. It's like the Wu-Tang Clan says, you gotta Protect your neck."
He wandered over to Hookwolf's prone form and squatted down next to him. "Let me break it down for you," he began. "I want to-"
Hookwolf breathed in deep. This moron was talking shit instead of finishing the job, and now he was going to pay the price. There was a sensation of being pulled inside out, and Hookwolf retracted his human arm into his core, replacing it with a massive canine foreleg of iron and steel and swung it backhand right into Vice's upper body.
Vice managed to bring his arms up just in time to block, sacrificing them to avoid his midsection getting reduced to pulp. This didn't stop him from being flung backwards towards the far wall, sailing through the air with his arms flailing behind him like two long tubes of broken, boneless meat, shedding blood in a helical arc as he rolled through the air. The dog cages toppled over in yelps and barks as his body stuck dead center into the whole stack.
Hookwolf listened to the satisfying crunch of Vice's body slamming the ground. Sure, he realized that this would mean more work for later, but right now he needed that bastard dead. It took a second for him to regain his composure, and when he did he began to retract the rest of his body inside his core. His shell of metal expanded and reformed into his favorite wolf-like form. Finally, sweet relief filled him as his head, neck and shoulders sank inwards and was subsumed. He wasn't exactly sure how he breathed when he was fully inside his own core like this, but apparently the neck wasn't involved. He would need to see Othala after this to fix this bullshit.
From the way Vice had took that hit, Hookwolf was sure that if he had a weak point, it was somewhere in the center of his chest. Just like him. Some sort of "core", or at least a place where he kept the most important organs. He needed to strike that and strike it hard.
At this point, he might need to just burn the whole place down, if the cops weren't coming already, the PRT was going to be called when people start to report sounds of screeching metal and battle that could be heard from blocks away.
He let his eyeballs emerge from within, peering out from within a shifting screen of fast-moving knives that caused his vision to flicker slightly, like the world's most lethal windshield wipers. However, he found he still couldn't see anything. While he was changing, the lights had gone out.
Hookwolf stilled himself, the grinding squeal of his body cutting out. He extruded his ears just a little more, shifting bits of himself out of the way so he could listen.
The hum of the gas generator that had been there a few seconds ago has absent. There was no power in the building.
"Hey, you fucking freak. You trying to run away?" He called out. No response. With a creaking noise that reverberated eerily in the now-silent warehouse, he began shifting and rotating his body to look around. There was only a thin strip of light from where the headlamps outside shone through the open door.
Just then, there was a crunching noise from the direction of the generator.
Hookwolf whirled around. "Alright, you sick bastard, you got your kicks, now take your lumps. You ain't making it out of here alive." He wondered why he was the one talking shit now. He should just charge in and tear him apart. But the fact remained that he still couldn't see anything besides the rough outlines of the warehouse's support beams.
Still no response. No sound whatsoever. No sign of Vice. He listened closer.
The realization came just a second too late. There was no noise from Vice, true. But there was also no noise from the dogs, either.
Suddenly, a massive, fleshy form barreled towards Hookwolf. He got the briefest impression of a hulking, bipedal, furry creature doing a running shoulder tackle towards him, before he was bowled over and slammed into the opposite wall. Bits of steel from his outer layer scattered across the floor. He scrambled around in the dark, his metal collapsing inwards and emerging from his core, reshaped into burs and spikes that dug into his unseen enemy's flesh. He latched on, ripping and tearing as his form went from a wolf to an amorphous blob of sharp objects tore flesh apart and ripped fur from skin.
Vice had apparently added a lot to his height. The only way to tell it was still him was the presence of his one-eyed mask, his entire body seemed to be encased in a quilt of incongruent dogflesh in the rough shape of a 15-foot tall gorilla. Countless yellow, blue, and brown eyes dotted the seams between different patches of fur and skin. He saw dog claws, still in the process of fusing together on the ends of the thing's engorged arms, their keratin blending together into hard spearpoints as large as a man's fist. In an uncommon moment of empathy, Hookwolf wondered if any of the dogs were still alive in there, conscious of what they had become, or if Vice had simply killed them and broke them down for parts the second he touched them.
It was disgusting. And it was strong. For a brief moment, Hookwolf felt his core pulse with the heat of excitement, before horror set in. Only now did he truly understand the stakes Vice had laid out.
If I lose here, that's going to be me.
If he lost here, Vice would remake his flesh into some awful, monstrous servant, as gruesome as any Bonesaw creation.
He couldn't let that happen.
"BRAD!" Vice cried, taking one of his monstrous body's arms and using it to snap one of hookwolf's forelegs off and toss it away towards the door. "I EXPECT MORE FROM YOU!" The lunatic edge in his voice had sharpened again, this time spoken by dozens of warped canine mouths scattered across his upper back.
"The pride of the Empire, Brad! That's what they call you. The unbreakable shield, the shredding sword, the wild hunter." Great, now he was quoting Kaiser's overblown propaganda at him. Hookwolf, as he unattached himself from the wall, wondered if he could conceivably blame Max for this nonsense.
Hookwolf took Vice's form in again. He presumably had some sort of core, but there was no telling how large it was or where it could be in the body. If Vice could actually see out of all the eyes he had absorbed, then he wouldn't have to place his core in any specific place the way Hookwolf did. It could still be in his upper chest, protected by his rib cage and muscle, or he could be hiding it in his right foot for all he knew.
Looks like he was going to have to be thorough. The metal closest to his core began to shift as he changed configurations. Outside, there was no noticeable change. Hookwolf began to pace the exterior of the warehouse wall, waiting for Vice to approach. He didn't have to wait long. As if tugged by an invisible wire that snapped taut when Hookwolf was too far away, Vice suddenly lurched forward, this time his arms outstretched and ready to grapple. The obvious intent was grab any protruding metal and tear it off to reduce Hookwolf's size, previous exchanges having already revealed that just hitting him hard wasn't going to do jack shit.
Unfortunately for Vice, as he hurled his unwieldy bulk forward in a stumbling grab, Hookwolf's metal jaws opened wide to reveal a churning vortex of shredding blades. They clamped down on the right hand of the dogflesh construct and tore it to shreds with a ear-piercing wail, sparks and blood flying out across the walls of the warehouse, illuminating and drenching in equal measure.
Vice screamed with almost a dozen mouths. But instead of backing away or trying to get free, he just kept going. He planted his feet and pushed the rest of his arm further in. Hookwolf felt his maw begin to grind and catch as loose tendons and gristle fused themselves back together between the gaps in his many steel teeth, regenerating parts creating a web of obstructive, stringy meat that began to gum everything up. A torrent viscous blood began to overtake the sparks.
In a split second decision, he reshaped his other remaining foreleg into a scythe and swung it through the monster's shoulder. The rest of the arm came free, ceasing to regenerate as it lost contact with the rest of the body. As soon it stopped wriggling around, Hookwolf spun his maw and tore the severed arm to bloody scraps.
There. Now they were even. Vice was obviously taking the loss of his limb worse than he was, as was still screaming in almost incoherent rage. The dozen or so stolen dog eyes were all unfocused and rolling around in their sockets, but the one original brown eye set in his pale, blank mask was firmly set on Hookwolf's two pale blue ones. His screaming went from panicked to determined as he charged forward a final time.
At this point, Hookwolf was more than happy to oblige this moron's death wish. He pulled more metal from his limbs, moved his core downwards, and then split his entire upper body in half until the entire thing was one giant mouth that cloud fit an entire man inside lengthwise.
And Vice just leapt right inside. The mouth clamped down on him, and the blades began to churn, beginning to reduce his body to pulp.
And then, suddenly, the entirety of his Hookwolf's new mouth caught and stalled out after a half-second of spinning. It was a jarring sensation, akin to having your foot not come off the ground when you attempted to take a step forward. He didn't understand. It was just meat and bone, how was it jamming his entire body like this?
Vice's determined screaming suddenly transitioned into a low chuckle. "Someone didn't watch enough national geographic as a kid."
What?
"Haven't you ever heard of the Honey Badger?"
Hookwolf manifested his eyes on the inside of his own mouth to try to look at what the fuck had happened. Inside he saw Vice's form caught in the web of knives, but when he tried to start spinning the whole thing up again, this time in the opposite direction, he saw the patchwork skin of Vice's gigantic body seem to separate from the muscle beneath, like the whole thing was just a shirt he was wearing. It moved a few inches to the right and then the entire thing caught again and Hookwolf felt his maw jerk to a stop.
"You see, the honey badger's skin almost as thick as a buffalo's despite the size disparity, and actually makes up the majority of the badger's volume."
At any other time, Hookwolf might have actually stopped to listen to his impromptu nature documentary. But right now he was desperately trying to figure out how to kill this fucker. He began extending and retracting the blades that made up the interior of his "mouth", turning his entire metal body into a magician's sword box. He stabbed all over his body, but the many blades would simply get stuck in his skin or hit a bone. Those that did manage to strike muscle or organs would pull back out with barely any blood at them at all, the wounds they created already healing.
"This-" Stab. "Ow- makes it impossible-" Stab. "Ow- to get a good grip-" Stab. "Ow- on the badger itself with spears, knives, or teeth." Stab. "Ow."
Hookwolf made eye contact with Vice from the inside of his very own steely mouth, and saw as Vice began wriggling forward towards his core. Strips of his now thick and leathery skin came off of his muscles and began to grope forwards along like tentacles under the influence of his disgusting shapeshifting ability.
Hookwolf shut his eyes, plated them over with metal, and began to extrude from his core a cone of steel with a thin, spiraling groove. A drill.
"Oh shit," said Vice. The Drill still had direct contact with Hookwolf's core, where he could exert the most control over it. It spun, slowly at first and then began to pick up speed until, lacking the noise of any motor, one could heard the hiss of air hitting it's high-speed surface. Slowly, he pushed the drill forward towards where he last saw Vices mask. He felt Vice's bulk begin to pulse and undulated as he struggled to free himself from where the many blades had him pinned by the skin.
Hookwolf felt Vice's body swell for just a second. There was a sound of liquid rushing towards his core. Did one of his blades manage to piece Vice's heart? The Drill inched forwards even more, spinning faster and faster.
The drill brushed past the edge of on of the mouth's interior blades, sending sparks flying.
And then Hookwolf had a mouth full of fire and light. He let out a guttural scream from within his core as the drill, extending directly from his flesh, began to heat up rapidly. He normal sensation of metal moving in and out of his core had been replaced by a feeling of having a hot poker shoved directly into his skin. His dropped Vice's flailing body and began to shed burning bits of metal in desperation.
Hookwolf tried desperately to understand. What just exploded? Why was he on fire? Was this some other kind of biological trickery? His eyes, mouth, and ears swirled around on the spherical surface of his core, and for just a second, he exposed his nose to the outside and breathed deep.
Gasoline. Somehow, Vice had taken the gasoline from the generator he broke, stored in his body somehow, and spat it at him in a last-ditch effort to take him out.
And the worst part is that it was working. Hookwolf tried to reshape his body to snuff out the fire, but the metal closest to his core was already burning hot, leaving scalds on the surface when he tried to retract it inwards.
His eyes scattered along the fleshy surface of his core, desperately searching around the room for solutions. He locked back onto vice, who, now freed Hookwolf's maw, was standing up to his patchwork body's full height. The upper half was on fire, having been hit by the backsplash of his own gasoline trick. Hookwolf took satisfaction in knowing that Vice was going to be hurt a lot more than he was from this little stunt.
Or at least he would have, if Vice didn't simply take his remaining arm, grab the center of his burning skin, and simply tear it off like an old bedsheet, flinging it into a corner where began to collapse into ash and carbonized meat. Beneath the borrowed dogskin sat Vice's own pristine human skin, looking entirely undamaged by the entire fight.
A pit began to grow in the bottom of Hookwolf's absent stomach. All that, and he hadn't even meaningfully damaged him at all. His breath felt short, his eyes began to water as the heat started to get to him. He needed to breathe. Why wasn't he breathing?
As soon as he asked the question, the answer came to him. The fire was eating all of the oxygen in the air. And there was none left for him.
He extended his human upper body out from his core live a diver coming up for air and took a deep gulp from above the flames that were consuming him. His gasps were breath were stopped when whatever biological wound Vice had given him before exploded into pain, like all the nerves in his neck were being pinched. He retreated back into his core, still surrounded by hot metal and fire.
The docks. He had to get to the docks. He momentarily opened the metal surrounding his core again to peer out, ignoring the way his eyes stung from the fumes and smoke of the burning gasoline, found the exit, and burst through.
He ran. He ran and ran and ran, the metal continuing to heat up, his breath still coming up short, he ran, a flaming wolf of steel rampaging through the streets, charging blindly towards the ocean.
But the metal continued to grow hotter, and his breath grew shorter, and as he foolishly opened his eyes one last time to check where he was going, he saw Vice standing directly in front of him on the road, his fist cocked all the way back to deliver a knockout blow directly to his core.
As the clocks struck midnight, and Christmas Eve became Christmas Day, Hookwolf heard the ringing of a church bell as Vice drive his first straight through the hot, thin screen of metal protecting his core and knocked him out for the count.
When Hookwolf came to, the first thing he noticed was that he was entirely flesh. He felt his core stir, but where normally he would have metal weaved around his muscles for protection, there was nothing but soft meat. He had been stripped of all his metal. He felt a painful vulnerability, one that had been absent for years and years. Angry heat rose to his face while a cold feeling settled in his stomach.
He was lying on a table, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It looked like another warehouse, wooden support beams holding up large roof in disrepair. He became aware of Vice pacing nearby, humming a bass-y melody and occasionally muttering to himself.
Hookwolf tried to move, to get up and show this bastard he could still fight. But he couldn't. His muscles wouldn't respond to his commands. Every limb felt infinitely heavy. He glanced down at himself and saw long, thin pink strands extending from Vice's back into Hookwolf's chest. Shapeshifted to keep contact with him even while Vice continued to pace around.
"Hey, you're up," said Vice. His tone was much more casual than before. Apparently now that Hookwolf was at his Mercy, he didn't feel the need to keep up the self-important supervillain act. He also seemed to have discarded his "dogsuit," seeing as it was lying in a twitching heap on the floor in the opposite corner.He as back to wearing his bizarre thrift-store getup, although now they were all stained red with canine viscera.
"Figured you should be awake for this part," he continued.
"If you're gonna fucking torture me-"
He didn't get to finish before Vice plunged his hand directly into his forehead. Hookwolf was treated to to absolutely indescribable sensation of his skin and skull reshaping themselves to allow Vice's fingers passage, nerves and blood vessels climbing over one another to get out of the way.
This was it. He was reaching into his brain, and he was going to take everything from Brad. His memories. His will. His body. His Power. He would be nothing more than a base for some grotesque Biotinker creation. He felt the fingers sink deeper, and deeper, until suddenly there was resistance, and then-
Spoiler: The Build, part 3
Hookwolf was laying down, looking up at the stars. Vast spires of constantly shifting and folding metal surrounded him, extending as far as he see towards the horizon. The grew from a ground that shimmered like crystal and undulated like flesh.
Far above, Hookwolf saw the moon. It was full and round, and as he watched it travel across the night sky, a pink dot appeared on it's surface. Slowly, gradually, the dot began to grow until the entire sphere was overtaken by glowing, faceted pink crystal.
Skyscraper-sized chains in the shapes of double-helices began to grow from the moon's surface, and they curved and distorted their way through space until they struck the crystalline flesh that hookwolf rested on, their influence spreading from the point of impact until-
Hookwolf came back to reality with a start. Mouth dry, breath heaving.
"What the fuck was that?"
"That was me, taking your will, your power, and your body. Now and forever."
Hookwolf attempted to control his breathing. That hadn't been some kind of hallucination, or even a visual metaphor. What he had seen... it was a alpha strike of incredible scale, a moon-sized ambush predator connecting to and consuming a crystalline organism that stretched from horizon to horizon.
He noticed Vice was walking away from the table towards a desk in the corner with some loose scrap paper and pencils, where it looked like he had been drawing something. He also noticed vice had broken contact with him, as suddenly he regained control of his limbs.
In an instant, Hookwolf was sprinting towards the open door on the other side of the room. He could see a stairwell just past the door frame, all he needed to do was find a burner phone and call Lars and Melody, and they could set a trap, and tear Vice apart.
"Stay."
Hookwolf felt the infinite weight in his limbs return as he involuntarily stood shock still just inches from the door.
No.
"Walk back towards me."
No!
Hookwolf felt his limbs begin to move of their own accord. There was no mechanical quality to his movements the way you sometimes saw in Master victims. His body moved with a smoothness and confidence as if it was his very own decision to walk back.
"You cannot harm me."
He tried with all his will to rake at his eyes, grab a pen and stab him, break his legs, do anything, but it all resulted in no outward action at all. Messages to kill would travel from his brain to his fingers and just disappear on the way.
"You knew the stakes, Hookwolf. Unless you'd like me to just kill you."
Fuck that. He'd find some way to fight this. "Shove it up your ass."
"Didn't think so. Anyway, now that you're officially a member of the team, I should get you into uniform. I, unfortunately, have very particular tastes."
Oh, god, this freak was going to dress him up in some stupid fucking spandex supervillain costume wasn't he?
Taking a set of papers from the desk, he pulled out two pieces in particular, one appearing to be a pencil sketch of a wolf's head with a full moon in the background, the other a printed out copy of the album cover to Rock and Roll Animal by Lou Reed. The man himself was featured on the cover, decked out in a spiked choker, black lipstick, and eyeliner.
"See, I was thinking, Big tiddy werewolf punk-goth GF. Howsabout it?"
What