47

Weaver didn't know what the hell had even happened. One moment, she was getting ready to leap over the table and turn that pointy-nosed doofus into paste, and the next moment, she was plopped onto one of the empty streets in the blink of an eye. Then, before she could even regain her bearings, people started pouring out of the woodwork and filing into the once-empty street to surround her.

As the sight of their angry, determined faces forced the reality of her situation to set in, a tired huff from a storefront beside her drew her attention, and she looked to see a short, skinny man with cropped, bright orange hair leaning against the wall beside a bloody handprint.

"I knew teleporting seven people at once would take a lot of energy, but I didn't think it would be THAT much," he wheezed.

That's when Weaver looked down and saw that she was standing atop a glowing pattern that quickly dimmed back into a bloody smear on the pavement. Immediately registering him as the reason for her sudden travel and ostensibly the greatest threat present, she lunged at him with every intent to splatter him along the wall he was leaning on, but she was immediately tackled out of the air and pinned to the ground.

"For liberation!" a man with grey, rocky skin shouted as he raised his hands above his head to clobber her.

Unfortunately for him, Weaver brought her legs up and kicked him off of her, launching him high into the air. She kipped up and jumped away from the converging masses, covering a considerable distance before she turned and shot webbing out of her mouth at a nearby street light to yank herself up to it like a zip-line.

Now that she had an overhead view of the street, she took stock of the scores of goons that were converging on the area. The odds weren't great; it was at least 40 to 1 at that moment, but gazing at the quirks that she could see, none of them were especially noteworthy. There wasn't anyone in the crowd who looked to be as strong as any notable pro heroes (or even any notable villains for that matter). She might actually be able to handle herself just fine…

As she had that thought, she ducked a cinderblock that sailed through the air where her head had been far faster than any cinderblock should've been thrown. There was no time to think, however, as even more cinderblocks were jettisoned at her, eventually forcing her to jump off of the street light and stick to a nearby building.

Gotta love her spider physiology.

Zeroing in on where the cinderblocks were coming from, she saw a man literally regurgitating them into the bucket of a catapult, where another guy would smack the cinderblock before it was launched at her. Watching one such projectile be fired at her this way, she fired more webbing at the cinderblock to intercept it, and with it now stuck to her webbing, she jumped off of the wall and swung the cinderblock around before launching it back at them. The block, to her surprise, flew even faster than it had when it was coming for her, leaving those in its path with no time to escape the concrete block of death that plowed through several heads on its way back to its starting point.

The cinderblock slammed into the catapult, tipping it over onto the woman manning the ripcord and crushing her to death. Startled, the man who regurgitated the blocks stumbled backward, but right as he took that step, the last thing he saw was a fist speeding toward his face after Weaver launched off the wall and punched right through his skull, caving his face in and rocketing him into the nearest building. The frenzy was back on as soldier upon soldier pounced to attack her, but she bounced around them all like a woman possessed, throwing devastating punches straight through as many chests as possible along the way.

Soon, she caught sight of the guy who was slapping the cinderblocks smacking a mole-man with a drill for a nose on the back before another hulking man launched him at her like a lawn dart. Dodging out of the way of such a straightforward attack and allowing him to skewer his comrades behind her was child's play, but now she had a new target. The guy who was smacking things that were to be thrown at her was either amping their acceleration or possibly removing air resistance on the objects. Either way, it didn't matter; he would die next.

With her target acquired, she pivoted and dashed straight for him, breaking a few necks along the way before she reached him and grabbed him by the face. Squeezing his head in her grasp, she winded up as hard as she could and slammed his head into the street, creating a small impact crater that was covered in blood and brain matter.

Unfortunately, she was starting to get tired and she didn't know how long the adrenaline would keep pumping, but it was taken out of her hands regardless when someone capitalized on her position by ensnaring her in octopus tentacles that were shooting out of his sleeves. She wasn't bound so tightly that she couldn't power her way out of it, but the converging horde taking advantage of the situation was making matters much worse than they otherwise would've been.

Thinking fast and gritting through the onslaught of projectiles, lasers, and chain chomps attacking her, she planted her feet and started spinning in place, quickly picking up enough speed to yank the man holding her off of his feet. With him airborne, she twirled even faster, using him as a weapon to batter everyone in a two-meter radius before flexing out of his grasp entirely. The horde still was not thinning, however, and she knew she couldn't keep this up, so it was time for drastic measures.

Snatching a vial from her pocket, she stabbed a shot of zoo trigger into her neck without hesitation. The effects were immediate; her four pupils dilated, her muscles bulged and ripped under her skin, and four long spider-like appendages shot out of her back and curled around her. To top it off, fangs grew out of her frothing mouth before she unleashed a freakish roar and leaped for the closest collection of people.

The man who initiated this whole ordeal by teleporting her here got to watch in absolute horror from the sidelines as the trigger-fueled Weaver literally tore through the army of his comrades like tissue paper. He watched her shrug off all sorts of attacks as if they were nothing, skewer people on her monstrous appendages like kebabs, toss grown men into the sky like children, literally bifurcate someone by their ankles, and then catch someone attempting to escape before biting them, injecting some sort of fast-acting, corrosive venom into them like the feral monstrosity she was.

If the Grand Commander planned to capture them alive to execute them in front of their group's leader, he didn't know how the hell he was going to manage this. He didn't even know if the industrial-strength horse tranquilizer he carried with him for the battle was going to do the trick, but he retrieved it from his pocket nonetheless. Still, his breath hitched when he noticed that she had slaughtered everyone in the area except for him, and now her gaze was squarely on him. In the blink of an eye (or four), she was in front of him and snatched him into her grasp by the throat, launching him into the nearest store like a discarded beanie baby.

He smashed through the window and skidded across the floor, picking up a ton of glass shards in his back and leaving a trail of his blood along the way. He was, fortunately, able to hold onto the super ketamine, but the monster that once was Weaver was inside the store and in front of him in moments, snatching him off the ground and holding him by his throat in front of her. Thinking quickly, he palmed her face with his still-bloody hand, smearing his blood all over it before he activated his quirk. The bloody smear on her face glowed, as did the bloody glass shards on the ground, and in an instant, shards of glass teleported into her face and pierced her two right eyes.

A hellish shriek unleashed itself from her throat before she dropped him to the ground and clutched her face. Then, he capitalized on the moment by stabbing the tranquilizer into her and filling her with every drop of super ketamine he had. Within seconds, she collapsed to the ground with a loud thud, finally ending the nightmarish battle.

"Fucking hell," he muttered, wiping some sweat from his brow as he came down from his adrenaline high. "I better get a promotion after this…"

He watched as the four spider legs shriveled up and retreated into her back, and her fangs shrank back into her mouth. Whatever effects she experienced from the trigger shot were already fading away, likely as a result of the ketamine. He needed to look into that after this was all over, but that could be handled later. For now, he needed to bind her and take her to the grand stage of the Revival Party.

Mirage quickly shook off the haze of being plopped from one point in space to another and took stock of her situation. She was on a street somewhere in the city with her pistol still in hand, and her ears were open and picking up anything and everything that might be trying to sneak up on her (she was glad her fox mutation was actually good for something). That close attention soon paid off when the hurried scuffing of boots on the pavement alerted her of an impending approach behind her, and she dodged out of the way of a stream of fire that blasted right into the spot she had just been kneeling.

"Tamamo Okami!" Curious excitedly greeted with an entourage of ten MLA soldiers surrounding her. "It's wonderful to finally meet you in person! Your family's story is so fascinating. Three kids growing up in a hotbed of anti-mutant quirkism, scarred by an abusive upbringing. 'How a high school girl was driven to extremism: her deathbed confessions will leave the world shocked!' I must interview you!"

Curious was only met with a blank stare from Mirage as the girl tried to process having been asked for a fucking interview at a time like this.

Soon, Mirage finally shook her head and got her wits about her. "Fuck off."

Curious's smile did not falter at the refusal. "Not interested in an interview? That's a pity. Fortunately, I threw away all restraint toward my interviewees a long time ago, so you'll bear your soul to me whether you like it or not."

"We'll see about that…" Mirage muttered before she appeared to fade away before the very eyes of the MLA

"Her meta ability allows her to cast illusions on an area around her, but not much else," Curious informed her entourage, unconcerned with her target's disappearance. "So long as you all remain vigilant, she won't be getting the drop on us-"

The ear-piercing bang of gunfire cut her off as one of the men standing beside her fell to the ground, a bullet wound sitting right between his eyes. The others quickly sprang into action, firing their quirks and stampeding the area Mirage had previously been to break the illusion thanks to Curious's intel. The illusion fell, revealing Mirage darting inside a nearby store.

As several of Curious's soldiers dashed in after her, Curious couldn't help herself from gushing at the excitement she was feeling. "You went straight for the jugular with no hesitation! I have to know what horrors you experienced that made you so callous at such a young age!"

Meanwhile, the group of MLA grunts barged into the building, but there was no sight of her anywhere.

"Check every inch of the place," one of them, a man with high-tech support items that resembled blue grenades, commanded to the others. "She's gotta be around here somewhere."

"Little bitch probably put up another illusion, so stay on guard," another, this one with the head of a dragon that blew the earlier stream of fire at her, remarked before he was shot in the temple and fell limply into a nearby table.

The other two men in the room were immediately on guard, but it was for naught, as the man with the grenades was shot point blank in the back of the head and fell facedown in a lifeless heap. The final soldier, a man with feet for hands and hands for feet, grabbed a nearby table with his feet and kicked it over with his hands to act as cover. However, had he been paying attention, he would have seen Mirage fade away again as another illusion was cast over the room.

The inverted man waited for a long moment, and when no gunfire came, he poked his head over the table to see that she was no longer where she had just been. In that same moment, however, Mirage faded back into existence a few meters behind him and rushed him while his back was turned, bashing him in the skull with the butt of the gun.

Back outside, Curious was growing impatient with the search, so she opted to flush her out herself by detonating the many landmines she had already loaded the interior of that building with beforehand. Mirage was blasted out of the building and back onto the street, clutching her abdomen in a pained heap.

"Our forces will show no mercy," Curious informed. "If you want to stay alive longer, you'll have to do the interview."

"Fuck. Off!" Mirage spat through gritted teeth.

"Hard way it is!" Curious cheerfully declared, and her goons rushed at Mirage again, various quirks primed to tear her apart.

Not backing down, Mirage opened her arms to reveal a handful of unpinned grenades she looted from one of the men she killed, and she launched them at the approaching horde. However, they weren't traditional grenades, rather they were exceptionally concussive flash bangs, so when they detonated, they blasted her three attackers away but also sent her rolling raggedly back down the street, as well. With her ears ringing bloody murder and her vision blurred, she struggled to her feet and stumbled into the closest building she could reach.

"And the chase is on!" Curious grinned as she and the remaining goons followed Mirage into the large, vacant building. "You can play hard to get all you want, but we already have quite a bit of information on you thanks to your brother. At age 18, you're the youngest of the Okami family. You ran away from home after your brother was released from jail and killed your parents upon his return."

As they continued their pursuit through a network of unlit hallways, Curious's remaining three goons split up to cover more ground in her hunt, meanwhile, she continued her excited gushing with her tape recorder in hand. "It was a gruesome scene, so gruesome that it even captured the interest of news outlets far and wide. Did you catch the candid interview they did with your sister about it? It was to die for!"

A gunshot echoed through the building, and Curious's smile grew even wider. "You can't hide forever, Okami. I will get my interview."

Heading in the direction of the gunfire, she spoke again. "Your sister didn't paint the most flattering picture about your upbringing, but she was still distraught over the loss of her family. What a shame, that. Have you spoken to her at all? I'm sure she really misses you!"

A second gunshot rang throughout the building, and then a third came shortly afterward. "Oooh, it seems you've successfully run the gauntlet. Such a resourceful girl; no wonder you've made it this far after enduring so much!"

Quickening her pace, she hurried toward the action, soon ending up in a dark, empty room where two corpses lay discarded in the middle of the room. Knowing she was close, she continued her pursuit toward the doorway on the other side, casually stepping over the dead bodies of her goons without a second thought. However, when she entered the room, a kick to the back of her knee brought her down, and the butt of a revolver slammed into her cranium, briefly disorienting her. When she regained her bearings, she found herself on her knees with the barrel of Mirage's gun pressed to the back of her head.

"Game over," Mirage icily declared.

"It doesn't have to be," Curious remarked, her disposition still unfathomably bubbly despite the circumstances. "Your story deserves to be told to the masses: a story of abuse, quirkism, and corruption that will reach the hearts and minds of everyone your group is trying to rally!"

"Are you seriously trying to bargain for your life right now?" Mirage scoffed.

"I don't care about that," Curious dismissed. "What matters is the story to be told; not just yours, but your brother's, as well."

"The hell do you know about my brother?" She growled, really tired of these people prying into her family and using it against her.

"I know that his story is the classic one of suppression of a meta ability coming back to haunt everyone around him," Curious said, and her smile somehow grew when she felt the minute twitch of the gun pressed to her head. "Keeping a meta ability locked tight will only cause it to burst that much stronger when it finally unleashes, and it always does. You already know that because you watch your brother live it every day. The destructive power and uncontrollable ferocity of his ability made him an outcast, a danger to everyone around him, a ticking time bomb that ought to be put down before he blew."

Even despite the gun pressed to her head, Curious turned to gaze at Mirage out of the corner of her eye, flashing her a knowing smirk all the while. "And that's exactly what happened, isn't it? He blew. A self-fulfilling prophecy orchestrated by the very people who cast him out in the first place. And yet, no one wants to take responsibility for the monster that they themselves created. We sweep it under the rug, call it inevitable, and chalk it up to another statistic of the mutant community. Now, doesn't that just piss you off?"

Curious received no verbal response, but she knew that she had won. The gun was trembling in Mirage's grasp, and the girl was doing everything in her power to remain composed to varying degrees of success. It was time for Curious to pounce.

"So, for the sake of getting your stories out there for both my cause and yours, how about that interview?"

Titan slammed his scaly fist into a man wearing a medieval suit of armor, grinning as the breastplate caved in and blood spewed out of the upper bevor. Another one down, however many more to go, and they were dropping like flies. His attackers were pouring out en masse to subdue him with fanatical fervor, but each one fell without fail to his might. No matter what paltry powers they tried to use against him, he cut them down; be it fire, electricity, raining bowling balls, or even the one shmuck that tried to drown him. That one made him smile.

Batting away another rube with hammers for arms, he felt someone with a sword attempt to cut him down from behind. Smirking, he turned around to see the poor sap as pale as a ghost when he saw that the sword didn't pierce his skin whatsoever. "Nice try."

Snatching him by the throat and wrapping his titanic hand around his neck, he started strangling the life out of him right as another desperate soldier arrived with a wrist-mounted Gatling gun. Titan shifted and held the man in his grasp in front of him as a human shield while the other man fired teeth at him from the device. Titan then threw the would-be swordsman at the teeth shooter, ending his barrage long enough for Titan to swoop in and stomp both of their heads into the pavement, popping them like zits.

There was no rest for the weary, however, as a man-sized chunk of ice slammed into the street beside him. He just barely dodged out of the way, and what awaited him was a shadow haunting a light blue parka.

"Hm, figures I get to deal with the brutes of the group," Geten lamented as ice shot up from the ground, lifting him onto a pillar to have the high ground over Titan.

Titan, to his credit, grinned at the arrival. "Finally, an actual challenge, I hope. Be more entertaining than the rest of the trash you all sent to take me down."

"Oh, rest assured," Geten exhaled. "The others are not quite as based as me. You'll learn soon enough."

"Then show me!" he roared before charging straight into the pillar, slamming right through as he expected and shattering it into pieces.

Geten was moments away from manipulating the ice shards to coalesce into a platform to catch him, but he was snatched out of the air by the hood and brutally yeeted into a wall.

"Don't tell me that's all you got, Frozone!" Titan mockingly cackled. "This won't take long at all."

"You're stronger than I anticipated," Geten mused, willing the ice to scoop him up from the ground and carry him into the air. "No matter; brute strength is all you've got. So one-dimensional."

Then, ice from convenience stores, grocery stores, and even homes flew out of their respective buildings and congregated in the area. That ice mixed and mingled with the ice that was already present, coalescing into a massive, imposing ice dragon that leered dangerously over Titan on the ground.

"Now we're talking," Titan said, his grin becoming earsplitting.

"I've been training my power for as long as I can remember, not even taking time for my studies," Geten informed. "I've trained much longer than any hero or villain for that matter. The Grand Commander helped me push my limits. What you're witnessing are the fruits born from the unending sigma grindset!"

With an icy roar, the dragon slammed into the ground, just barely missing Titan as he dodged and punched the dragon as hard as he could, actually cracking and shattering small portions of it. That was exactly what Geten wanted, though, as the proximity to the water pipes underground allowed him to lower the temperature and freeze them over, adding to his available arsenal. As a result, he was able to blitz Titan with a surprise ice prison from beneath his feet, trapping him from the neck down.

"Like I said, so one-dimensional," Geten chastised.

"You really think this will hold me?" Titan challenged, and just as promised, he powered out of the ice prison with a loud roar, bursting from his icy confines in a heave.

Curiously, though, Geten chuckled. "Fortunately for you, we were unable to track down much information about you or your abilities. Unfortunately for you, I don't need any of that to take you down. Crocodilians are cold-blooded, after all."

Titan didn't respond, instead launching himself at Geten's ice dragon once again, only now he was slower than before. Just as Geten predicted, his crocodilian physiology did not react well to the cold, and it showed in his unsuccessful attempts to dodge the ice dragon's hardest blows. This simply created a feedback loop of Titan getting slower and slower due to the cold, therefore getting hit by more ice attacks that only slowed him down even more. Soon enough, Titan's normally dark grey skin was a pale shade of blue, and he was visibly shivering.

"You're on your last legs," Geten observed.

Titan, however, just smirked. "I don't hear no bell."

In response, another blitz of ice shot from the ground, encasing him from the neck down once again. This time, however, Titan simply did not have the strength to power out of it, and his eyes closed as he slipped into brumation.

As Viper took refuge in a dumpster away from the search party that was hunting him down, he pondered the decisions that led him to this point. As a teenager, he was a delinquent with no future according to everyone around him, his own family included. "Hanzai shonen" was less of a descriptor and more of a lifestyle for him at a certain point. When he inevitably aged out of being a juvenile delinquent into simply a regular delinquent, he found himself in jail once again, this time for a bit longer than before.

He had taken to hypnotizing random passersby with his quirk and lifting their wallets or purses from them while they were entranced. Eventually, he was caught in the act and swiftly apprehended by a pro hero, and it landed him back in jail. It was petty theft all things considered, but because he was using his quirk in the act of committing a crime, he was labeled as a villain, so he received a much harsher punishment than he otherwise would have.

It was in that final stint in lockup that he came across a new guy a few years younger than him with a fox mutation. Some junkie with a ferret quirk was being hassled by a couple of mutant-hating quirkists because he was an easy target, and the fox brat actually stepped in and stood up for him. Of course, this being jail, that resulted in a fight, and the fox beat those two so brutally that he ended up gone for a whole 90 days, most likely sitting in isolation for the whole period.

Needless to say, when he returned, no one dared trifle with the new kid, nor any other mutant when he was around. Mutants tended to look out for each other in there anyway, but having him around was simply an added incentive.

Viper wasn't quite sure how it happened, but they ended up having a few conversations soon afterward, and that grew into a camaraderie as they got to know each other. He went by Kitsune, and he was a pretty interesting guy; violent and opinionated, sure, but he was loyal and charismatic as all hell. He was also a bit of a dreamer, often telling Viper about how their society felt like a tiered pay-to-play system where the bottom rungs were forced to grind all their lives to scrape up just enough to even have a shot at a comparable existence to the upper rungs, but the upper rungs raised the prices just a little bit higher every time you did, so you were effectively always chasing a rabbit that you'd never reach.

The kid always had a thing for elaborate analogies; you get used to it.

In any event, Kitsune wanted to burn that system down and eviscerate the people maintaining it, allowing the downtrodden mutants who had been victimized by that system for generations to seize the power they were owed. It was an idea that only some genocidal lunatic with delusions of grandeur could possibly conjure up, but he was a pretty great conversationalist with interesting perspectives on things, so Viper didn't have much issue entertaining dialogues with him during his bid. There wasn't much else to do, everyone in the joint was some level of insane, so Kitsune wasn't all that unique in that regard.

Then, Kitsune's sentence was up ironically only a few days before his own release date came, and Viper assumed he'd never see Kitsune again unless he landed himself back in lockup, which was likely; Viper wasn't going to kid himself into thinking that he would stay out of trouble. Back in trouble he found himself very soon afterward, as he got caught up in a busted drug deal, and though he managed to evade capture initially, he was eventually cornered by the pro hero that busted the score behind a popular nightclub in a mutant-heavy area. So, who else but fucking Kitsune to be exiting the back door and stumbling on him in his predicament, and who else but Kitsune to tear the pro hero's throat out completely unprompted just for his sake?

It was like fate itself willed it to happen. Kitsune was stepping in to brutalize someone once again, but this time it was to save him. If you ask Kitsune, he didn't even know that it was him who was in trouble; he just saw a normie hero picking on a mutant, and he wasn't going to stand for it. Viper wasn't sure if that made things better or worse given the circumstances, but he didn't particularly care. After disposing of the body, they started catching up, and Kitsune told him about the nightclub that he had recently, erm, "inherited" joint ownership of (Viper didn't ask questions and Kitsune thanked him for that).

So, that's how Viper ended up with a job that allowed him plausible deniability while getting wrapped up in a lucrative money laundering scheme-turned domestic terrorism long con. It still honestly confused him to this very day, which was why he was having some difficulty reconciling his position sandwiched between trash bags in a filthy receptacle nestled in a back alley somewhere in a cult city, despite him fully agreeing to coming and fighting to the death alongside his coworkers, comrades, and friends.

He still believed in Kitsune's dream, but why? Sure, mutants had been dealt a raw hand for centuries, and he was definitely behind the idea of them taking societal power, but it came along with the almost sure possibility of a gruesome, unspeakable death at either the hands of heroes or a pack of fanatical anarchists. So, why had he even agreed to go this far?

Was it because he felt indebted to him and was already familiar enough with him? Was it because he wanted to hitch his wagon to an unstoppable powerhouse? Was it simply because he was a coward and couldn't refuse despite knowing the risks?

Was it because Kitsune genuinely believed in him? Was it because he actually saw some worth in him when no one else had? Was it because Viper literally had nothing else to his name and was ultimately worthless, and Kitsune sold him on a dream of something much better than what Viper was or ever could be?

Was it because he trusted and respected Kitsune more than anyone else in the world?

Whatever the reason, he felt like the immense disappointment that everyone always pegged him for the longer he languished in that dumpster. The rest of Fukko was out there fighting for their lives, yet here he sat hiding from the same kind of horde that the others were surely experiencing. Maybe it kept him alive a little longer, but if he was going to remain a coward and hide while his friends died, he didn't deserve to live at all. He'd fight for them. He'd fight for Kitsune. He'd fight for the better world Kitsune wanted to create.

The lid of the dumpster swung open, and Viper leaped out of it, landing beside a pile of maroon bandages while brandishing a knife. The nose alerted a few nearby soldiers, and one of them rushed over to investigate.

"There, down the alley!" the man said, pointing to Viper as a katana grew out of his ribcage.

One of the others rushed over, but when she made it to the entrance of the alley, a knife slammed into her throat from Viper's extended arm. The kill caught the first soldier off guard enough for Viper to slither in at a moment's notice and slash his jugular, pilfering his sword from him as he collapsed to the ground and futilely attempted to stem the bleeding.

Viper emerged onto the street to find the search party pouring in, and their snarls were anything but welcoming. Didn't matter. Viper could give them all nice grins from ear to ear.

Clutching at the sword he stole, he sprang into action at the first signs of an attack, sidestepping the fat man with a rhino horn's charge before lobbing his head off. This wasn't a gauntlet of one-on-one fights, though, and two people charged him next from both sides, one pair of hands crackling with electricity and the other pouring with water. However, Viper shot a wide-eyed glare at the water boy, freezing him in place before he dropped to the ground and allowed the sparky boy to sail over him and collide with his partner, electrocuting him in friendly fire.

Immediately rolling out of the way of a spring-enhanced stomp and back to his feet, Viper clashed his katana with a woman's steel arms, but he disengaged once again, allowing the furious sparky boy to accidentally kill another one of his comrades when he tagged her instead of Viper. Then, Viper kindly put him out of his misery by lobbing his head off, too.

That brought the count up to six, and there were definitely more dickheads to kill than six. Welp, no one said that this would have been easy.

Suddenly, a gust of wind shot at him from behind the crowd, blowing his katana out of his hand. Then, an even stronger gust slammed into him, blasting him down the street and sending him tumbling into a wall. He only barely regained his bearings before they were on him again, and even though his eyes were beginning to burn and his head was starting to hurt, he pushed his quirk as far as he could go and met the gazes of each of his newest attackers at once, actually stopping all but one of them in place. That one tried to grab him by the throat, but Viper chomped down on his hand before swiping a knife from one of his two leg holsters and jamming it into his throat.

He scurried back to his feet right in time for the others to shake off the fog and the rest of the goons to converge on him. Ignoring the pain, Viper unsheathed another knife and held one in each hand, glaring bloody murder at the group with all the defiance he had within him.

Then, something peculiar happened. It was like a jolt shot through his brain, and his eyes nearly illuminated. More than that, however, was everyone advancing toward him: they had all frozen in place. Everyone in his line of sight was as still as a statue as if he had stared into the eyes of each one individually…

"Fuck it, don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Viper told himself before dashing through the maze of mannequins and slashing every single throat he could. Blood poured from each of them as they all limply collapsed to the floor. Even if they didn't die immediately, they couldn't move a muscle to tend to their wounds, so they would eventually just bleed out.

Once the last mark was hit, Viper bent over and unleashed the mother of all sighs. His eyes burned, he could feel a pounding migraine setting in, and the adrenaline was finally wearing off. However, he survived. He fought, and he fucking survived. He fucking won!

His revelry was cut short when maroon bandages absconded him from behind, quickly binding him up tightly from the neck down before the butt of a knife slammed into the back of his head, knocking him into blissful unconsciousness.

"What a truly troublesome power to combat," Mummy mused, still processing the events of the battle he watched from the shadows. He wrapped a bandage around Viper's eyes for good measure, neutralizing him in case he woke up before it was time, and then he began the trek toward the Revival Party's main stage, casually stepping over the corpses along the way.

Komodo darted down an alleyway conjoining two empty streets. His clothes were soaked in blood, and most of it wasn't his. He didn't have any special emitter-type abilities as part of his quirk, but what he did have were claws, strength, scores of sharp teeth, and supremely toxic saliva when he wanted it to be. His lightning-fast reflexes also helped him maneuver around the attacking mob while he culled the numbers down any way he could. It was bloody, brutal, and probably inefficient, but it was working…

…at least until he was kicked through a wall by a blue blur. When he regained his senses, he came face to face with a blue hedgehog wearing nothing but red running shoes and the cockiest of smirks.

The universe truly had to be fucking with him.

It continued doing so when the anthropomorphic hedgehog proceeded to kick his ass up one side of the street and down the other, quipping at him all the while. He was so fast that Komodo could barely get a read on where he was at any given moment until the sole of his shoe was kissing his face, chest, stomach, or back, and that said nothing of the spinning fucking ball attacks that he was battered with.

After the fifth time of being smacked around like he brought cold dinner from the kitchen, Komodo did the smart thing and scuttled away from the scene through the rear exit of the restaurant he was slammed into. There, he attempted to make his escape, skittering through the network of side streets as fast as he could to successfully lose the walking cease and desist letter.

He should have been paying better attention to where he was going, though, as when he looked behind him to ensure that he wasn't being followed, he collided with someone who immediately snatched him into their grasp. Looking up, he saw a…

Was he being restrained by the top half of a skeleton protruding from a man's mouth? Did this man regurgitate half of his fucking skeleton? Was that his quirk? How the fuck did that even work?!

The moment of confusion he suffered was just long enough for the blue blur to arrive at their location, unfortunately, and Komodo nearly yelled in panic. Even more unfortunately, he couldn't break the hold of the skeleton for some reason, almost as if he was permanently locked in place.

"Nice catch," the hedgehog complimented his comrade, and the mouth skeleton replied with an "ok" gesture before the hedgehog snickered at Komodo. "Yeah, you're not getting out of that. Bastard Skelly over there can regurgitate his skeleton up to his vertebral column, and once he does, he can completely fix them in space. There's no moving him unless he says so."

If Komodo could, he would have smacked the side of his head to ensure that there wasn't actual fecal matter in his ears fucking with his brain. "The fuck kind of contrived bullshit is that?"

The hedgehog shrugged. "Meta abilities are weird, man. Sometimes, it's like life started throwing shit at the wall and picking what stuck."

Then, a third soldier joined the fray, and the three looked to see a pale man with a dead gaze enter the alley and approach them. He had shoulder-length, white hair, divided down the middle of his head by an atypical zigzag parting, as well as two red dots on his forehead above his vacant, green eyes.

"Dead Bone, come to join the party?" the hedgehog grinned at him before turning back to Komodo.

However, the newly addressed Dead Bone raised his right palm and fired a sharp bone spear out of his hand that shot through the hedgehog's back and out of his chest. Komodo and Bastard Skelly were so taken aback by the sudden betrayal that they simply watched Dead Bone yank the bone spear out of his chest before stabbing it through the hedgehog's head. Then, his vacant gaze landed on Bastard Skelly holding Komodo hostage. Bastard Skelly couldn't process the betrayal from a brother in calcium, so he was left wide open to an attack in the form of hardened finger bones fired like bullets out of Dead Bone's hand. The bullets pierced right through Bastard Skelly's skull and bounced around the interior, shredding his brain in the meanwhile.

With him falling dead, his quirk was deactivated, and Komodo was free from confinement once more. However, he remained vigilant, ready to defend himself should the new wildcard make to attack him, as well. A call from above him proved it to be unnecessary, though, as Komodo looked up to see the piercing, crimson gaze of Hellhound looking down at him from the fire escape of the adjacent building.

"Holy shit, I should've figured it was you," Komodo sighed in relief, happy to see a friendly face. When Hellhound dropped to the ground beside him, Komodo set his sights back on Dead Bone. "Your corpse puppets are really something, man. Macabre as all hell, but they're definitely useful."

Hellhound shrugged. "I can only wield them for fifteen minutes at a time, and I have a limit of three starting 24 hours from the first activation. Not efficient for this kind of battle."

"Still, it's wild that you can use their quirks as if they were still alive," Komodo remarked, watching in fascination as Hellhound dug one of his claws into his other palm before dripping his blood onto the bodies of the blue hedgehog and the skeleton man.

The blood turned pitch black and burned away once it touched the corpses, and within moments, the corpses opened their eyes and rose to their feet. Komodo was entranced as he watched the hedgehog's injuries close up entirely, leaving an unblemished hide.

"Fuck, that's cool," Komodo remarked in awe before turning to the Dead Bone puppet. "How much longer do you have on this one?"

"Five minutes," Hellhound answered before walking deeper into the alley towards the other exit. "Let's go. Find the others."

As Komodo followed in step beside him, they were none the wiser to the surveillance cameras watching their every move from a command center. Sitting on the back of a dull-faced dummy on all fours while another dummy held his laptop for him, Skeptic eyed the two members of Fukko with disdain as they crept down the alley onto another empty street in search of their comrades.

"That's quite the fascinating meta ability he possesses," Skeptic mused. "Quite unfortunate that I am the perfect counter to him in every way. He won't be able to take control of my puppets."

With the press of a button, several ice chests around the city opened, and out of each climbed dozens of puppets from disguised underground storage facilities all making their way toward the duo's location.

Back on the ground, Komodo slunk his skinny neck around the corner to check if the coast was clear. Seeing that it was, he and Hellhound with the three puppets in tow rushed out of the alley and towards the sounds of activity near the tower. High activity likely meant one of their group was present and fighting given that this battle began with a sneak attack.

They were stopped dead in their tracks when a dopey-looking man in a white suit wandered from around a building in their path. The Dead Bone puppet reacted instantly, shooting a bone spear through the man's head, killing him before he even hit the ground. Strangely, once the body was on the ground, it dissolved into a grey sludge, leaving merely a desk in its place.

"The fuck?" Komodo muttered, but Hellhound merely narrowed his eyes.

Then, an identical man stepped around the same building, and then another followed behind, and then another, and another. It wasn't just from behind that building, either. Hundreds of identical men started pouring onto the street from every nook and cranny, quickly surrounding them on all sides with an even larger mob than the ones they encountered initially.

"Oh…" Komodo uttered. "Shit."

"No different than before," Hellhound growled in his gravelly tone, and the puppets each prepared to move. "Kill them all."

"Guess we have no choice," Komodo remarked, cracking his neck while readying himself for another mad rush.

"Soldiers! Do not falter! He is merely one man! He is not invincible!"

An annoyed tsk slipped out of Chimera as he backhanded another attacker. That politician was starting to become really annoying with his megaphone, as he was clearly empowering the masses with it if their increased fervor after every announcement was any indication, most likely through his quirk.

"Humans are not frail beings!" Trumpet continued. "We all have some sort of power! Witness the strength of flesh and blood as we vanquish these miscreants for our Revival Party!"

Chimera huffed in derision. They had been trying to bring him down for who knew how long at that point, and none were successful. No one could match his strength, no one could pierce the shield of feathers on his arms, and no one could get within a meter of him without being bisected by a whip of his tail. That was also to say nothing of the people who burned to ash whenever he expelled his flames.

Trumpet slapped his thumb to his forehead and raised his finger in the army's salute. "It's time! Dismantle our guests of honor! Crush Fukko! Liberate yourselves and use your righteous power to bring forth a new era!"

The remaining crowd promptly forgot all the burgeoning despair they were feeling at the massive number of losses they experienced at the hands of a single man, and they charged him once again with glorious war cries. Chimera had finally reached his limit, and he opened his mouth as wide as he could before charging up his flames for a gargantuan blast. As the horde continued their righteous charge, Chimera pointed his mouth straight ahead and belched an ultra-powerful energy beam made from a ridiculously high concentration of his flames. He incinerated everything in front of him before rotating in a circle, cleaving through and demolishing the surrounding cityscape and scorching everyone unfortunate enough to be in its path on contact. That included Trumpet, who unfortunately could not escape quickly enough to be spared the devastation.

When the beam petered out, Chimera exhaled a massive puff of smoke, content with the destruction he had unleashed. The reprieve was short-lived, though, as he was shot in the back by a veritable storm of crimson needles that blasted him into the ruins of a building. Punching the debris off of him, the first thing he did was inspect his coat, and to his great horror, it was absolutely ruined.

"Hey, asshole!" a feminine voice shouted from down the annihilated road, yanking his darkening rage from the coat and fixing it onto the woman approaching him, who turned out to be the redhead from the warehouse that he decked in the schnoz.

"I owe you some payback for the bruise on my cheek!" Slice growled, and sure enough, there was a pretty nasty shiner on her.

"It was just business," Chimera unapologetically shrugged. "Nothing personal."

"It is now," she spat before pulling out a piece of metallic headgear and slipping it on. Immediately, a purple, staticky aura blasted off of her, kicking up dust and debris that obscured everything other than her eyes glowing violet with murderous intent.

Chimera smirked, taking this as his cue to go all out. With a single flex, his body began to bulk up, the feathers in his arms grew into full-blown wings, the talons that were his hands and feet amped up in ferocity, and his fur became wild and feral. With an earthshaking roar, Chimera blasted forward intent on tearing her apart, and Slice's hair reared into a frenzy of crimson blades that lashed out in pursuit of blood.

Feathers as hard as steel met hair as sharp as obsidian in the titanic clash that soon spilled into a vicious brawl. Chimera's meaty fist smashed through the ground that Slice had been standing on mere moments prior, pulverizing it to dust as Slice unleashed another rain shower of hair needles at him. Chimera's wings shielded him for the bulk of it, but even the few that made it through were shrugged off with little care, and he responded in kind by belching another blast of red-hot fire at her.

She only narrowly dodged the indescribably scorching flames, portions of her hair getting singed along the way which only heightened her fury. With an apoplectic howl, she sent a Kraken's worth of hair blades at him, not only stabbing into the ground around him but also directly piercing through his defenses and cutting into his tough hide. Chimera smashed his mighty tail into the ground behind him, unearthing a massive slab of asphalt and stone that he heaved over his head and launched at Slice, but Slice cleaved right through it like butter with her hair.

As it stood, they were stalemating, and it was pissing both of them off to high heaven. Chimera unleashed another flaming roar to the sky while Slice readied her next attempt to carve him up, and the two dashed at each other once again. However, this time, Chimera lifted himself from the ground with his wings before snatching Slice into his grasp. He carried her into the air, getting stabbed in the shoulder, the abdomen, and across the cheek by her hair all the while. Another spike reared to stab him through the skull, but he grabbed it with his talons just before it could and jumpstarted their speedy descent back to the ground. The two were practically a meteorite on a collision course with the ruins of that district, and their impending crash was going to level an even larger portion of the city.

That was, at least, until a massive fortress of ice burst from underground and broke their fall, allowing them to slam into the impromptu crash pad and shatter that instead, sparing the city even more devastation at their hands. Chimera collided with the ice headfirst, carrying all of the momentum of the descent as well as all of the impact of the crash. He was knocked unconscious on impact, carving through a decent portion of the ice bed to nearly reach the ground underneath. Slice, in her infinite resourcefulness, coiled her hair around herself to form a sort of half cocoon to absorb the impact, but she still couldn't escape over a dozen broken bones and a totally smashed Quirk Amplification Device for her troubles.

It was a pretty nasty scene all things considered. Geten was simply glad that he got there in time to prevent an even greater catastrophe. Lowering closer to the ground, he approached the writhing body of Slice and kneeled to inspect her.

"So… much… pain…" Slice groaned.

"That'll do, donkey," Geten assuaged her, patting her cheek which only elicited more pained groaning.

Standing up, he looked at the unconscious, shrinking body of Chimera. When he was back to his typical size, Geten encased him in ice completely for easy transportation.

"Trumpet," Slice called out to Geten and she struggled to sit up. "He… he got Trumpet."

Geten silently stared at her through the shadows cast by the hood of his parka, and then his gaze fell to the ground. "Inevitable losses. Such is war."

For as long as Kitsune could remember, his life was dominated by hatred. This was due in large part to his quirk being powered significantly by his rage, so he was naturally predisposed to negativity. It was just the way things were.

That meant that he had felt and experienced his fair share of anger, malice, and loathing throughout his life, and he was quite familiar with how deeply those feelings could burn in his core. However, despite all of the people in his life that he hated and hated him, despite all of the pain he had endured and inflicted onto others (innocent or not), and despite all of the years he had spent growing and molding his rage to suit his needs, Kitsune had never experienced the quantity of hatred that he felt in this very moment. As he lay planted in a man-sized crater in the asphalt at the base of Re-Destro's tower, he glared up at the apex of the building with more malice than he had ever in his life trudged from the depths of his soul.

The red cloak around him burned a deeper crimson as one tail grew into two, and two became three. In an instant, the crater he was planted in erupted, and a red blur began scaling the tower at frightening speeds.

In the conference room, Re-Destro noticed crescendoing thumps coming from outside, so he turned to the window right as a red rocket blasted back into the room and slammed a brutal fist into his face, breaking his nose and jettisoning him over the remains of the table and through the door of the room entirely. Kitsune, three bubbling tails swaying from the boiling aura of the cloak, glared sinfully at the damage, waiting on pins and needles for his prey to get up and jump back into the fray. He wouldn't have to wait long, as Re-Destro stormed back into the fight with a bleeding nose, black markings covering large portions of his face, and arms as bulked up as they were when he forcefully dismissed Kitsune from the tower. Both ready for blood, they finally locked horns in an initial test of strength to assert dominance out of the gate.

"It seems I've made you angry," Re-Destro observed through gritted teeth, genuinely surprised that he was having so much trouble overpowering someone who was currently a third of his size.

"You haven't seen true anger yet," Kitsune darkly warned before pivoting and yanking Re-Destro off of his feet, launching him out of the window in a measure of payback before blasting off after him. Right as Re-Destro crossed his stressed, meaty arms over his chest to block the coming attack, Kitsune slammed a double hammer fist into him with all his might, rocketing him down to the ground at speeds faster than most could follow.

It was only due to Re-Destro's Stress pumping his body up even more to withstand the impact that he survived the fall relatively unscathed, though he was officially beyond pissed that some upstart welp was daring to challenge him, believing they were on equal ground. This anger drove him to release even more of his stress stockpile, pumping him up so much that he was like a hulking monster filling out his suit to the brim. In fact, his body was so big that his head looked tiny by comparison, the black markings now dominating most of his face entirely.

He looked up to see Kitsune bearing down on him like a heat-seeking missile, and with this power, he met the incoming blow with a gargantuan punch of his own, colliding fists with him and cratering the ground around them. Still, he weaponized his leverage and wrenched Kitsune away, tossing him away from the tower and sending him into a destructive tumble that Kitsune quickly righted himself from. Re-Destro was already airborne, however, and he was coming down with a titanic punch that would have flattened his target had he not evaded. The new crater that was created was even larger than the first, and the impact shook every building in the vicinity.

Kitsune skidded to a stop on all fours after narrowly evading that punch, but his angry, crimson gaze was locked onto Re-Destro and vice versa. They darted for each other once again, locking horns a second time with several orders of magnitude more aggression this time around. The surrounding area bent and buckled under the pressure of their clash as neither man refused to submit to the other.

"Fukko," Re-Destro spat. "What the hell does that even mean in this context?!"

"It's evocative of Fukko Shinto!" Kitsune spat back, heaving, in turn, to keep Re-Destro at bay. "It's the divine restoration of mutant pride!"

"Your name is stupid!" Re-Destro insisted with all his might.

"It's symbolic!" Kitsune fired back, standing his ground and digging his heels into the concrete.

"It's hipster bullshit!" Re-Destro gritted, feeling Stress beginning to near 80% of his stockpile as his body bulked even further and his skin darkened even more.

"You're an ignorant fool!" Kitsune howled, the miasma burning hotter than ever. "I wouldn't expect a fanatical follower of a failed martyr to understand a true purpose!"

"True purpose?!" Re-Destro growled with utter disdain. "You're nothing more than a wounded, hollow man indulging in petty, unfocused destruction because you're lashing out at a world you believe wronged you!"

"YOU DON'T KNOW A GODDAMN THING ABOUT ME!" Kitsune quite literally roared, blasting Re-Destro and nearly everything else in the vicinity away in a destructive whirlwind. Concrete and asphalt were torn off of the ground, buildings began to dent and buckle, and even the tower's foundation started to grow a little shaky. The cloak around Kitsune was slowly becoming opaque as a fourth tail threatened to sprout. He was struggling mightily to keep a lid on his emotions and keep that fourth tail at bay lest he lose control entirely, so he was silently thankful for Re-Destro's dark laughter momentarily distracting him from his rage.

"I know more about you than you know, Okami," Re-Destro mocked, stepping out of the through the billowing cloud of dust and debris with his 80% Liberation Mode in full effect. "And I know that you're holding back. It's despicable, but if this is how you wish to die, then so be it!"

Re-Destro swung his left arm back, focusing his stress into a large, staticky, dark purple ball of raw energy in his palm. "Stress Output Burden!"

He launched the ball straight at Kitsune, but the wily fox practically flickered out of the way, allowing the ball to carve a deep ravine into the ground before it bounced to plow a path straight through the city behind him. Kitsune zoomed ahead, bouncing between large chunks of debris before appearing in front of Re-Destro and swiping at his face, pounding with a scorching paw that smacked him a few meters back.

He was ready for Kitsune's follow-up attack, though, snatching his left arm that was about to stab its claws into his eyes by the wrist and snapping it with all his might. Kitsune choked back the howl of pain that wanted to burst out, instead slamming his fist into Re-Destro's face in an effort to force him to release his hold. Unfortunately, while the punch snapped Re-Destro's head backward, he bounced right back and grabbed Kitsune by the scruff of his neck with his other hand, and he slammed him straight into the ground with a thunderous crash. Then, he pounded Kitsune's body with both fists one good time, forming yet another crater around him. Then, he did it again. And again. And again.

Soon, he had pulverized his opponent into a crater at least a meter deep, but he still was not done. Grabbing a fistful of Kitsune's spiky, blonde hair, he hoisted him up and held his body in front of him. To Re-Destro's amazement, the boy was still conscious, and he was even defiantly trying to pry his grip off of his hair with his cloak slowly disappearing.

"I must give credit where it's due, you've definitely impressed me today," Re-Destro genuinely complimented him, but his expression remained stony. "However, you're still a disappointment."

"Fuck… you," Kitsune gritted out, hacking a bit of blood with each word before spitting some of it in Re-Destro's face.

Re-Destro only chuckled, wiping the blood away with his free hand. "Your defiance and undying tenacity are truly admirable, Okami."

His expression suddenly grew dark. "However, what isn't admirable is your gross cowardice."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kitsune growled, still trying to free himself.

"Your meta power," Re-Destro sneered. "You're afraid of it. You're afraid of its true power because you can't control it. You allowed society to brainwash you into thinking your power was evil, so you didn't even bother training its true potential. You've deluded yourself into believing that your iron will perseveres over all struggles, no matter what insurmountable odds you're faced with, but it isn't a matter of you simply being hardheaded; no, the truth is plain to see."

"Shut the fuck up," Kitsune spat.

"You struggle so fiercely to prove your mettle against what you think are all odds because doing so allows you to keep running from the truth," Re-Destro continued unabated. "You're holding back out of fear of losing control even though you know that your mettle alone won't be enough to survive here without it. You are a coward to your dying whimper."

Kitsune didn't even bother replying, simply continuing his attempts to get free much more violently. The clinical frankness of Re-Destro's assessment cut him deeper than any blade ever could, but he absolutely would not allow him to get into his head. He ignored the white-hot rage erupting within him that made his skin hot. He ignored his cloak slowly returning. He would remain in control.

Seeing that Kitsune was remaining resolute despite the clear fury simmering beneath the surface, Re-Destro sighed. "Well, I suppose we planned for this."

He turned around and faced the city that had seen much better days before the battles that had taken place there that day, and right on schedule, his forces were converging on the main stage of the Revival Party. He grinned, and he held Kitsune out before the growing crowd. "The time has come for the climax of our joyous celebration! Present our guests of honor!"

Kitsune watched in confusion at the gathering army, but that confusion soon bled into horror when he saw what, or rather who, a few in the crowd were carrying. A man with orange hair dumped an unconscious and bound Weaver on the ground before them, and then Geten dropped Titan and Chimera trapped in ice beside her. Mummy deposited a blindfolded Viper bound in bandages next, and then a group of dopey clones in white suits tossed Hellhound and Komodo to the ground, both beaten, bound, and gagged.

"No…" Kitsune shakily exhaled.

"Yes," Re-Destro scathingly gloated. "Their convictions were tested, just as yours was, and just like you, they all failed. So, you get to watch us execute each of your comrades one by one."

"No!" Kitsune screamed, now frantically writhing in Re-Destro's grasp until he was able to jerk himself out of it, his one-tailed cloak forming over him as he made to sprint to his comrades.

It was for naught, ultimately, as Re-Destro was on him in an instant, tackling him and slamming his face to the ground. He was pinned to the ground, forced to watch as the army cheerfully propped the unconscious mutants up onto their knees to be beheaded. Kitsune's vision darkened, and the flame inside of him exploded. The one-tailed cloak sprouted a second, and then a third, and then it darkened into an absolutely chaotic blood-red shroud where a fourth tail emerged. All activity ceased when an enormous pressure set in over the area, and Re-Destro in particular felt the change before he actually saw it since the blood-red shroud literally burned his Stress-hardened skin and forced him away.

Re-Destro was stuck watching in shocked fascination; Kitsune's cloak was now covering him like a second skin, and it was exponentially more wild, powerful, and hateful than before. Kitsune slowly rose to a crouch, opening his eyes to show two white voids that rooted the crowd in place before his head snapped to look back at Re-Destro, and he unleashed one of the most ferocious roars that Re-Destro had ever heard.

Well, if ever Re-Destro needed to unleash 100% of Stress, now was the time.

Raw energy coalesced in each of Re-Destro's hands as he went full throttle, and he launched himself toward the red devil, rearing to slam that energy directly into him. However, if Kitsune was fast before, he was untraceable now, as he was gone before Re-Destro even made it to the spot and slammed his energy into nothing but earth. Then, in a flash, Kitsune barreled into Re-Destro and sent him crashing into his tower. One powerful swipe later, Kitsune's cloak stretched to slash through the first floor of the skyscraper, toppling it entirely and creating a titanic cloud of dust, debris, and ash from the collapse.

If Re-Destro thought that he could hide in the debris, he had another thing coming, and that thing was Kitsune's fist rocking him out of nowhere and jettisoning him through the city like his Stress Output Burden before him, the feral Kitsune hot on his trail. Having had quite enough of being smacked around like a child's plaything, he righted himself and dug in his heels, and then he met Kitsune's advance with a furious right hook accompanying a majestic war cry. The punch landed true and blasted Kitsune into a nearby building, but Re-Destro wasn't going to wait and see if it did any damage. Charging heaps of raw energy into his hands once more, he slammed his palms together to combine the two individual balls into one massive ball of energy before firing it at the building with reckless abandon.

The Super Stress Output Burden annihilated the building as expected, but its momentum waned over time, soon visibly slowing to a crawl until it stopped entirely. Confused, Re-Destro stepped forward to examine what was happening, but what he saw struck genuine fear into his heart:

Kitsune had caught the ball, and not only had he caught it, but he heaved it over his head and winded up before throwing it right back at him. Re-Destro's own ball collided with him, carrying him with it on its journey through another devastating trail through Deika.

Meanwhile, an ice dragon pounced onto Kitsune from above, as did a myriad of emitter quirks ranging from green fire, stone showers, sludge, mini tornadoes, and even a kitchen sink. The result was a fiery explosion of concentrated rage that annihilated half of the dragon and neutralized the offending quirks, followed by four flicks of his tails that fired a gust of wind to blast Geten away before he dashed forward to tear the other unlucky saps limb from limb.

It was at this point that many of Fukko began to come to in all the excitement, and while they were confused, disoriented, and in pain at first (and high off her ass in Weaver's case), much of that cleared away when they saw the red monstrosity butchering a gaggle of MLA fighters with ease, the red monstrosity that they knew was their leader.

Simultaneously, another pair of new arrivals emerged to join the fray. Out from around one of the few remaining buildings still in decent standing was Curious with a bright, satisfied smile on her face, and behind her was Mirage pressing her revolver to the back of her head. The rumbling and vibrations from the battle were impossible to miss for both women, but the familiarity of the pressure, distinct roaring, and unmistakable crimson miasma raised alarm bells for Mirage from all the way across the city, and she hurried over as quickly as she could while still maintaining her hostage.

Arriving on the scene just in time for her brother to literally punch a man's kidney out of his colon, she knew she had to act immediately. "Inari, stop! You have to calm down!"

Miraculously, her voice actually reached him, and he froze in place. Whether it was out of familiarity or a newly acquired target remained to be seen, but she was going to press on either way.

At least, that was the plan until an MLA soldier tackled her and smacked the gun out of her hand, rescuing Curious from her hostage situation and retrieving the gun for himself. Curious, strangely, didn't really react, but the man aimed directly for Mirage's skull and pulled the trigger.

And again.

And again…

Each time, nothing happened, and before the man could assume the gun was a dud, Mirage's derisive snort captured his attention.

"It's a six-shooter, and I already fired all six bullets," she informed with a shit-eating smile.

The man didn't get the opportunity to be angry before Kitsune was behind him, and his right to bear arms was revoked when Kitsune tore both of his arms from his shoulders and batted his body away. Then, the white voids that were his eyes locked onto the fearful blue gaze below him. Steam billowed out of his mouth as he inspected her more closely, whether or not Kitsune was still even of sound mind still up in the air.

Even so, the fear pouring off of her would not stop her. Mirage sprang up and wrapped her brother into a tight hug, burns received from his cloak be damned. She pulled him into the tightest hug she could possibly muster, doing her level best to choke back her frazzled, fearful tears.

"Please, Inari, you have to calm down," she pleaded. "I'm here. I'm right here, and so are you. You're not lost, and you never will be. Not as long as I'm here with you."

Kitsune remained as still as a statue. No one dared utter a word; both the remaining MLA forces and the awakened Fukko watched with bated breath. Everyone was waiting on pins and needles to see exactly what would happen next that would determine everyone's next moves.

Then, Kitsune slowly brought his arms up to wrap around his sister, and the deep darkness of the four-tailed cloak started to dissipate. The fourth tail dissolved, and only three remained when the cloak grew translucent again. One by one, the tails dissolved and the cloak receded alongside it, leaving a trembling Kitsune in its wake nestled in his sister's grasp.

"I…" was all he managed before his sister shushed him, deepening the embrace.

"You're not back there anymore," she insisted, rubbing his back. "You're right here in the here and now."

Her soothing ministrations were successful, allowing Kitsune to free himself from that state of mind. There he remained in the comforting hands of the closest family he had, and because of his own actions, likely the only family he would ever have left.

"Such humanity…"

The voice wrenched Kitsune's attention out of the embrace and toward a shirtless, bloody Re-Destro limping toward them with what felt like reverence dressing his expression. Kitsune got to his feet and ushered Mirage behind him despite the fact that he, too, felt like his body was going to give out at any moment.

"We seek freedom from suppression," Re-Destro spoke, slowly limping over to Kitsune. "We believe that using meta abilities is a natural human right. And that's just it: the most important part of 'metahuman' is 'human,' and this man is both the most meta and the most human of us all!"

"Do you have any idea what the fuck he's going on about?" Mirage whispered to her brother in abject confusion.

"Not a clue," he shrugged.

"You finally disregarded your shackles and unleashed the beast inside of you," Re-Destro continued. "You allowed your true power to surface in all its glory without worry for repercussions. You refused to be suppressed. You refused to be stepped on. YOU are the epitome of Liberation!"

"I am so confused…" Mirage muttered to Kitsune, and he merely nodded in agreement, positive that Re-Destro was suffering from a concussion from that last attack. Mirage glanced over to Curious, and she was flashing her the "ok" signal with her signature smile. That woman was impossible to read.

"Inari Okami," Re-Destro said, finally reaching within a few meters of the sibling duo. "No… Kitsune…"

Re-Destro slowly raised his right arm, extending his hand to Kitsune in a shocking gesture to everyone watching. "Join us."

Of all the things that Kitsune was anticipating, this was nowhere on the list. He eyed the offered hand in muted shock, whereas Mirage's shock (as well as the incredulity of nearly everyone else in attendance) was far more apparent. Still, Kitsune did not sense a hint of malice or deception in the gesture.

"You are a shining beacon for what it means to be truly liberated," Re-Destro continued. "Our goals are far more congruent than you believe. We seek liberation, you seek retribution. With our powers and resources combined, together, we can tear down this oppressive society in short order and usher in a new era. We will liberate the oppressed, the spat upon, the downtrodden, and the forgotten. We will liberate meta humans worldwide!"

Kitsune gazed at the offered hand without saying a word. In fact, no one in the area said a word. The breaths of many were hitched in both shock and anticipation at the proposal and the impending decision. The MLA watched their Grand Commander with bated breath, while all of Fukko, bound or not, watched the interaction with a strange combination of intrigue, hope, and indigestion.

Then, Kitsune looked up and met Re-Destro's gaze, taking the offered hand and shaking it.

"Fukko accepts."

Kusari's gaze was unashamedly glued to the TV from his place behind the couch as his target watched her (and his) favorite soap opera. The dashing protagonist had finally regained the trust of his eldest daughter, not through any grand, bombastic, or elaborate gesture, but by simply being there for her when she truly needed it after being absent for so long. The embrace between him and his daughter brought a tear to both Kusari and Kuzunoha's eyes as one of Kusari's chains covertly swiped some popcorn from Kuzunoha's bowl.

Then, Kusari's phone vibrated, and his gaze flickered down to check his next order from the Grand Commander. Opening the message, it simply read:

She lives.

Nodding, Kusari deposited his phone back into his pocket before turning back to the TV, only to find Kuzunoha blankly looking down at him in his spot behind the couch. Her ears had twitched, indicating that she heard the subtle vibration and was alerted to his presence. Kusari looked back at her, blankly meeting her gaze in a lengthy moment of awkward silence. He did not make a move, nor did the giant woman, both remaining as still as statues while the TV broadcasted their favorite show in the background.

"…Can we finish this episode before we both agree that I was never here?" Kusari eventually broke the silence.

In response, Kuzunoha simply raised the bowl to offer him some of her popcorn, and Kusari gladly obliged.