Vigilia Fidelis 4: Gone to the Dogs
When Hannah had been growing up in Turkish Kurdistan, computers hadn’t been something she’d been familiar with. Her village had been small and remote, and there had only been a handful of radios and two televisions that had shown her the outside world. These days, while she had a cell phone, she stuck with an old, reliable brick that just texted, not one of the new flip phones or those even new Japanese touch screen devices that were basically pocket computers.
It also meant she wasn’t at the whims of Ajaw constantly, though the little bastard still sent her annoying text messages and obscenity-riddled nonsense. He did, however, also provide her with a constantly up-to-date reference for all Cyclist and Abyssal activity.
“There! No, a little more to the left. The left, I said, you incompetent moron!” Ajaw’s voice warbled out of a speaker, his avatar bouncing around on a flatscreen TV on the far wall of the large office space. The shorter wall had a window that looked out onto a sparkling late summer sea, along with a half-empty harbor with rusting warships.
Duke was standing on a wobbling office chair, pushing in a red pin in the Gambia on the large map of the world hanging on the wall of Hannah’s office in Protectorate HQ, Honolulu. To fit the tropical climate, he had on a loud red Aloha shirt with pineapples and hula girls. The top two buttons were undone, showing off his hairy chest, which Hannah approved of. Duke turned and glared at the TV, his teeth bared in frustration. “Oi’m puttin’ the bleedin’ pin in the roight coun’ry, ain’t I? Dogs don’t bloody well ’ave a lef’ an’ roight!”
“It doesn’t have to be exact, close enough is fine,” Hannah said, taking another red pin and pushing it into the Falkland’s. There was a confirmed active Cyclist temple there. Though what was in the Falklands besides sheep and penguins, Hannah didn’t know.
“That’s the wrong island, fool,” Ajaw grumbled. “You put that pin in West Falkland, the temple is on East Falkland!”
Hannah rolled her eyes, picking the pin out and putting it in the proper island. She stepped back and stared at the map. There were twenty-seven red push pins where Cyclist temples were located, and another twenty-one purple pins where Abyssal incursions had been detected. Several were located right here in Hawaii, mostly on Maui, Lanai, and the Big Island. Which were the nearest to the Kaho‘olawe Cauldron facility.
Hannah rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration, and Duke came to stand beside her. He put a comforting arm on her back. “Looks loik the world’s got a bad case o’ the spots, eh? We’ll jus’ ’ave ta foind a way ta cure ’em.”
“We just have to start pushing back. We’ll pick an area to focus on, and work on eradicating the threat there. The Sao Luis zone is mostly contained,” she said, looking over to where a single purple pushpin remained, along with a larger pin that had a stylized butterfly on it.
Farasha was still there, in Brazil, cleansing the Abyss. Hannah had watched the genocidal maniac like a hawk, but the most egregious thing Farasha had done was to personally execute members of a child sex trafficking ring she’d found. Hannah didn’t even blame Farasha for that one. She’d have helped shoot the bastards herself. Maybe not then return them to life as a pack of dogs, which Farasha had done.
It was disturbingly like the sort of thing a mad god would do. Hannah tried not to let the religious overtones the Archons used color her thinking…but it was getting harder and harder to do so. The Archons might be aliens in the same way the Shards were, but unlike Scion and his baffling attempts to incorporate religious symbology, the Archons seemed to understand myth and legend in a very natural way. Cursing a pack of degenerate human dogs to become a pack of actual bitches was very much the sort of thing an angry deity would do.
And potentially much crueler than simply killing them. Farasha had claimed the thugs retained their human intellect and were fully aware of what was happening to them.
Hannah, as much as she hated to admit it, largely approved of the action. If it had been anyone else, she’d have simply called it Justice. But since it was Farasha, she wanted to call it monstrous.
There were other pins for the Archons and their dragons, as well as a little cut out of the Moon with Dalnim’s in put above and to the left of the map of Earth. At the moment, Dalnim was turned upside-down to show she was wounded and recovering, along with her sister, Ami.
That was another point Hannah felt conflicted on. On the one hand, Dalnim was an alien robot who had made herself the god of an entire nation, and Ami was the cat's paw of the Raiden Shogun. On the other…they had both risked everything to save Jeju Island. Hannah could understand why the Koreans would worship Dalnim. Even why they would give her control of their country for all intents and purposes. It was easy enough for a leader to claim they had the people’s best interests at heart. It was another for them to take a near-fatal wound battling a pair of Endbringers to protect those same people.
Hell, it was one reason Hannah had as much respect for President Alexandria. No one could say the leader of the new Hegemony didn’t risk her own life and well-being for the good of her people. For the good of Earth. Just like Hannah. Just like Duke.
Alarms suddenly went off, and Ajaw bounced back and forth on his screen madly. “MAYDAY, MAYDAY! WE GOT AN ENDBRINGER, PEOPLE! BATTLE STATIONS!”
“What, that’s impossible! It’s only April 19th!” Hannah gasped. It had been barely five weeks since Sao Luis, and not even a month since the Simurgh hit Tel Aviv, though hit was a strong word. More like a light breeze. Ziz and Nahida had battled for a full hour in the public view this time, though it was mostly Nahida summoning targets, and Ziz obliterating them.
Flashy and impressive on TV, but painfully obvious the Simurgh had not been giving it her all if you were fully aware of just how powerful Ziz had become.
“Believe it, lady!” Ajaw said, then threw up a still image of a great black serpent appearing in the night sky above a small city on the banks of a river near the sea. Then great black censor bars appeared all over the screen. “Image contaminated! Enacting cleansing protocols! ARRRGH! The Abyss is attempting to attack the internet again! Gotta go fight the monsters!”
Ajaw appeared wearing an Aztec Jaguar warrior’s garb, though still with his sunglasses on, then flashed across the screen, smashing purple crystals that appeared. “RISE UP MY /PHO/CKERS! THE ALMIGHTY DRAGON LORD COMMANDS IT!”
Hannah and Duke, however, had already sprinted from the room. Mouse Protector and her squad were scrambling to the alert, along with a second squad that Hannah had recruited. This one was led by Armsmaster, and consisted of Kaiser, his wife, Stuke, and his mistress, Purity, along with Brandish and Manpower from the former New Wave. Hannah didn’t like having a bunch of fucking former Nazis on her team, but Kaiser and his women were both quite powerful, and apparently reformed. They’d willingly agreed to join the Protectorate when it was made clear that the game of Cops and Robbers was over, and had committed no crimes that Hannah knew of since that time.
Even if they obviously hated her as a woman of color.
“Attention!” Mouse Protector chiruped, and the troops all snapped to attention. They were all dressed in casual clothing as they’d simply been moving into the new office of the old Protectorate Honolulu station. One that had largely been abandoned as Hawaii had become a very unpopular tourist destination during Leviathan’s reign of terror, and had not recovered in population or economy.
“Get suited up, people! We got another Apep attack!” Hannah barked, her own armor forming over her body as she summoned Armory. Duke was able to do the same, as his armor could be stored in his Vision, similar to a weapon.
“What? But that’s impossible,” Carlo said, looking shocked. “It’s not even been two months!”
“Too bad no one told Apep,” Hannah said grimly. “Get suited up! We roll in five!”
“Where exactly is the attack?” Anders asked, frowning at Hannah.
“Not your problem, Max, follow orders,” Colin snapped at him, and the former villain kingpin shrugged, then went to go get on his Class IV protective gear.
“Tha’ wanker’s gonna be a problem, ’im an’ ’is racist Berks,” Duke growled, his ears sticking up and his tail stiff. “Oi don’t loik ’ow ’e talks ta you, loik you ain’t the boss.”
Hannah frowned at Duke. “Berk?”
He coughed. “Er, Berkshire Hunt.”
That took Hannah a second to process, then she sighed. “Look, we have to work with them, at least for now. They’re supposedly reformed and trying. They step one toe out of line, and it’s the Slug for them.”
“The Slug?” Duke raised a bushy eyebrow. “Oi’ve ’eard abaht this slug bloke. People don’t loik talkin’ abaht ’im. Wot’s ’e do, anyway?
That brought Hannah up short. She shook her head. “Now isn’t the time. We need to assess the situation on the ground. Let’s see what we can find out.”
There was precious little to go on. The attack was taking place in the Kombos of the Gambia, an urban area that was comprised of the capital, Banjul, and its largest city, Serekunda. The total population was about one million people, and while there was a cape scene and a recently established Cyclist Temple, there were no Parahumans of note, or prominent Vision Holders.
Apep had appeared in the sky mere minutes ago, and there was a resulting communications blackout as Ajaw and Theresa worked to quarantine the city’s networks to prevent major Abyssal contamination and outbreaks.
“Wait, pull that last image up,” Hannah said, even as the rest of the troops assembled. Duke threw the picture on the computer up onto a screen, and Hannah frowned at it. It was a still image from a rooftop security camera that showed Apep right as it manifested. She frowned, then turned back to the computer.
“Ajaw, is it just me, or is…is this thing smaller than it was before?”
Ajaw popped up again. “Huh? You’re crazy, lady it’s- huh.” Ajaw’s sprite turned as if it were examining the image, even going so far as to put away its shield and obsidian club to pull out a measuring tape. “Well, I’ll be! It’s only about a thousand feet tall, and just shy of a mile long! HAHAHA! The cowardly worm has shrunken! Defeating it shall be easy!”
“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to go and fight the damn thing,” Hannah sighed, but nodded. “Thank you. That’s interesting. What about its cloud?”
“Well, we don’t have satellites to look at it yet, buuuuuuttttt….hmmm. I’m estimating it’s smaller and spreading more slowly, from the rate of proliferation of Abyssal contamination on the network I have to quarantine. Er, are we sure this is the same thing?”
“No,” Hannah said slowly. “No, we’re not. But that’s still a giant Endbringer. Bigger by far than even the Alpha Behemoth. We can only hope whatever it is, it’s shrinking. But we need to find out more. LET’S GO, PEOPLE!”
“Ve can hear you, Fauline.” Stuka sniffed as she entered, flipping her blonde hair out from her helmet, and earning her a flat look from Hannah.
“Tha’s Colonel Jones, or Miss Militia ta you, girlie,” Duke growled.
Stuka curled her lip at him. “Is zis really who I am to take orders from? A dog, und…vell.”
“Behave, Lotte,” Kaiser said, striding back in with a large sword on his right shoulder. “We are on probation, yes? Best not to irritate the colonel for now.”
Stuka immediately bowed her head, flushing slightly. “I…yes, mein Führer.” She looked at Hannah, then ground out, “I apologize, Frau Colonel. I am…not used to vorking as a part of a team.”
“You’re on extra duty for two weeks,” Colin said as he strode back in with his halberd on his back. “And this is another black mark against you. You must really love sensitivity training, Mrs. Anders.”
“She’ll behave herself. Won’t you, Lotte?” Purity said, coming in and putting a hand on Stuka’s shoulder.
Stuka sagged slightly, and Hannah felt a flash of pity for the nazi bitch she quickly stamped out. There were others far more deserving of her pity than this arrogant child. If she was getting cuckholded, well, what did she expect, marrying a prick like Max Anders?
“Ja, of course,” Lotte said, sounding subdued. Then she straightened. “Vell? Ve haf an Endbringer to kill. Are ve going to do it by talking like zat Dummkopf lizard?”
“Ready, Colonel!” Mouse Protector declared, bouncing in at the head of her squad, sword and shield in hand.
“Door me, Banjul. Protectorate, attack!” Hannah ordered, and sprinted through first, taking off and hovering a few feet above the ground.
Everyone already knew what to do, as even in their short time as a team, they’d already run several drills, and even Kaiser and his floozies knew what to do in case of an Endbringer attack. Even Villains prepared for that, if they were smart, and Kaiser was at least intelligent enough to do that.
“Initiating Doormaker procedure! Prepare yourselves, warriors!” Ajaw said. “You venture into battle at the edge of the fog! Roll for initiative!”
“What?” Hannah said, while Mouse Protector started giggling uncontrollably. There was no time for further thought though, as a wide double door swung open before them, looking out into rolling fog in the middle of sprawling suburbs, civilians running pell mell along the roadway.
Pavo was out first, along with Purity. Both took off into the sky, carrying half a dozen disc shaped drones on a backpack-shaped launcher. Designed by Armsmaster, these drones were powered by electro and anemo dual cores, and would allow them to stay aloft for days. They also were networked to the team through Dendro-powered cores.
It didn’t quite make sense to Hannah that networks and the internet were considered to be aligned with the Dendro element instead of the Electro one, didn’t computers run on electricity? However, she accepted that was the case, and within moments, Pavo and Purity began to seed the area with the drones, and information began to be relayed into her armor’s HUD.
“It’s spreading more slowly,” Hannah mused, even as she approached the wall of fog. She could hear screams and bellows from within, but she was in no great hurry to dive right in. “Alright people, keep it together and tight! If anyone suggests splitting up, I’m making them watch 10 Hammer Horror movies so they understand why that’s a bad idea.”
“Never split the party!” Mouse Protector said brightly, over her giggle fit at least. “Roach, Shamrock, Snail, on me!”
“Spead out the the left, maintain a tight flank,” Armsmaster ordered his own squad.
Duke stayed right at Hannah’s side, his Cryo Vision glowing brightly. He had on metal gauntlets for striking, but he was also wielding a carbine that the 101st Airborne had used when they’d parachuted into Normandy, so it had a bit of stored-up historical juice.
Then, they stepped into the fog. The armor protected them from the voices and worst effects of madness, but slavering monsters and rifthounds scuttered out from between buildings or swooped down from above, and it was hard fighting for each yard of ground.
This time, their comms were working much better. There was still interference, but the drone network was able to cut through a lot of it, and maintained closer contact to prevent the Abyssal corruption of the signal.
“Eyes on….still massive. Apep….smaller,” Pavo’s voice crackled over the comms.
“Don’t get to close. Keep your distance,” Hannah barked.
“Not looking….today,” Pavo’s voice said wryly. “Staying….station.”
After ten minutes of heavy fighting, the team had made little progress, and even at the reduced rate, the fog was spreading. Hannah blasted away two of the giant stone monsters she’d heard called Lawachurls, and they dissolved into Abyssal ooze. The rest of her team was dealing with dozens of smaller hilichurls, skaven, and other abyssal monsters. Frustrated, she opened a link. “Ajaw! We need back up! We’re barely containing this, and there has to be more civilians up ahead, not to mention Apep itself!”
To her surprise, Ajaw’s little sprite appeared in the corner of her vision, still dressed for battle. “I thought you’d ask that! Well, good news for you, just say ‘knocketh knocketh’ and I’ll summon forth a mighty ally! Just don’t complain to me about gift horses once I give them to you!”
“Knocketh knocketh!” Hannah snapped. “I don’t care about where they come from, just that we need-”
Before she could finish, a door swung open nearby, even as Duke punched a snarling skaven to freeze it, then fired twice to shatter it. Out of the door poured dozens of barking hounds of all things. They looked like regular dogs, which puzzled Hannah for a moment. Then, the butterflies began to stream through in burning bloody fury. The fog itself began to disperse, but Hannah felt her own blood boil in rage.
“Ajaw! I asked for reinforcements! Not another monster!” she snarled.
The stupid little lizard turned around and showed his puckered little butthole to her, waving his tail back and forth. “Hey! I said no looking gift horses in the mouth! That includes gift butterflies! She offered, and I have to agree with my annoying sister. Butterfly Bitch is about the only one who CAN do something against an Endbringer!”
“Hannah, love, take a breath and look,” Duke said quietly.
Hannah about bit his head off, but she did take a deep breath. She could now, the butterflies were burning away the Abyssal fog, and the hounds…well, the hounds were suddenly turning into men with guns and flaming machetes that were throwing themselves with abandon at the Abyssal monsters. By their tattoos and clothing, Hannah guessed they were the same cartel that Farasha had cursed. That did explain the dogs.
And everywhere, people were running out of the fog, herded by hounds and gangsters and escorted by butterflies, fleeing along the road, away from the Endbringer in the distance.
Gritting her teeth, Hannah nodded, even as a dozen butterflies swarmed nearby her, then formed into Farasha herself.
“Hey there, bestie!” the murderer said brightly, her eyes sparkling with madness. “So, does that famous Endbringer truce you Americans made still hold?”
“Well, if it holds for a trio of fucking nazis, I suppose it can hold for you,” Hannah ground out. She jerked a nod, and forced out, “Thank you. We….we can use the help. There’s a million lives on the line here.”
“Good,” Farasha turned serious, and as the fog vanished, they could see the coils of Apep, hovering over the river mouth ahead of them. Even at this distance, it was impossibly huge. It looked more like a bit of geography than an actual living thing, even as massive black scales slithered and writhed. It was like watching a mountain range move itself. Hundreds of feet thick, towering a thousand feet up, and the coils stretched for at least a mile. A purple tongue flickered in and out, and nine burning eyes seemed to regard Hannah and Farasha, even from this distance.
“I can’t fight that thing. Not on my own,” Farasha said grimly. “I’m going to need you, and your best fighters. Who have you got?”
“Kaiser, Purity, and me. We’re the ones with the firepower to actually do something to that thing,” Hannah said.
“And me,” Armsmaster said, appearing on a hovering board with his halberd in his hand. “I’ve fought Endbringers with Farasha before. Good to see you again, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me, Colin, makes me feel like an old lady,” Farasha laughed, then nodded. “Good. You take point, Colonel Jones. This is your op, and I’m not much of a leader.”
“Right. Duke, Lieutenant Fieldman, you’re in command! Kaiser, Purity, on us!” Hannah ordered.
They didn’t have time for much of a plan. Thousands were dying every second, and they had to repel this incursion, and fast. So, they went with something simple: hit it hard, hit it fast, and do it from multiple angles. Kaiser, Purity, and Armsmaster would circle in from the left and low, while Farasha and Hannah would come in high and on the right. All of them would just hit the thing with every ounce of firepower they had at their disposal.
“Don’t get yourselves killed, and make it bleed,” Hannah said, looking around at her team. “Understood?”
“Of course,” Kaiser said with a nod. He had a metal surfboard-type thing that Colin had supplied that would allow him limited flight, and Purity would be with them as well to catch them just in case.
“Closing to melee with that thing is going to be dicy. Can we even hurt it, as big as it is?” Colin asked, frowning.
“Don’t have much choice. If another Dragon or Archon were here, I could use elemental reactions, but as it is, I need to get close enough to touch it with my flames,” Farasha said with a shake of her head.
“Hmm,” Purity nodded. “Well, at least you are a fellow Aryan. I suppose you have to work with the lesser races, but at least they have the sense to be simple servants.”
Farasha gave Purity a baffled look at the word Aryan, then rolled her eyes at the rest of it. “Bitch, I gave up on that racial bullshit years ago. What the fuck is wrong with you. There are two sides here: Humans, and whatever the fuck that snake thing is. Kill the snake thing.”
“Of course. But there are better kinds of-” Purity began, but Kaiser held up a hand and she quieted. “We will follow orders,” Kaiser agreed, his wicked metal mask hiding his real opinions.
“Talk later,” Hannah spat. “Move!”
All of this infuriated Hannah. She was working with a genocidal murderer and literal ass nazis. This wasn’t the heroic coalition she would have wished for, but she would make due. Arayan master race indeed. A bunch of inbred idiots, more like it.
She formed the biggest gun she could make while staying aloft, and began to fire it at range, blasting Apep with gravity bombs, plasma torpedoes, elemental shells, and good old rail gun rounds. The thing hissed and snarled, then responded by firing back with clouds of poison gas, as well as more portals of minions. Shrieking bat-like things and rift hounds poured out, but Pavo was there, slicing with his saber.“I got your back, Colonel!” he called, and Hannah nodded. She watched as Farasha’s butterflies raced forward, and Apep snarled and lunged at the dragon. However, in her swarm form, the endbringer could only snap at a few butterflies at a time. Even as it did so, it hissed and flinched, the burning blood eating away at it, the black scales smoking and smoldering as they combusted.
On the other side, Purity was zipping around and blasting away, while Kaiser and Armsmaster were darting in to hack at Apep’s coils, then moving back before it could lash out at them. There were more abyssal creatures attacking them, but Kaiser and Armsmaster easily shredded the ones that attacked them, and Purity moved fast enough to keep away from those that targeted her, then easily blasted the creatures to ashes and dust.
One of Hannah’s shells took Apep right in the maw as it snapped at Farasha, and it exploded in a Vaporize reaction. The thing hissed and shook its head, then, suddenly, it rapidly began to shrink. A black hole opened up in reality, sucking in air and water from the river, and Apep darted for it.
“Stop it!” Hannah shouted, but in a flash, Apep had shrunken to no bigger than a school bus, and wiggled through the hole, which remained an open sore behind it, still swallowing all that came near it. “Dammit, do not follow! That’s the Abyss! Fuck! We need to shut that portal!”
“On it!” Ajaw said, and suddenly appeared next to Hannah. He was about the size of a monitor lizard, still dressed as a jaguar warrior. A moment later, he grew to two meters tall, a shadowing green dragon with burning red sunglasses and wide wings. He breathed out, and cubes of dendro flew towards the portal. “Hey, dragon lady! Do your thing!”
On it.
Butterflies swarmed in, igniting the dendro cubes. They formed a burning cube about the portal, then collapsed in on it in a massive conflagration. When the smoke cleared, the portal was gone, though there was a purple scar in reality, a dark line that seemed like an open wound in the air.
Around them, the fog still lingered, though Farsha’s butterflies were forming a massive swarm now, burning away the corruption as fast as they could. As Hannah watched, several people who were revealed by the fog were consumed by the butterflies, and she snarled in anger.
“I hate it too.”
She spun, and found Farasha floating beside her, arms crossed, a petulant expression on her face.
Retracting her helmet, Hannah stared right into Farasha’s burning eyes. “Then why are you murdering them!? They haven’t even been checked for Corruption! Those are men, women, children, how can you just kill them!?”
“...I know. But they are corrupted. I…” Farasha hugged herself tightly, and Hannah saw crocodile tears in her eyes. “I can’t save them all, Hannah. But…look. There.”
Hannah spun about, expecting to see further genocide. Instead, she saw a growing crowd at the center of a swirling vortex of burning butterflies. of…wait. Were they all naked? She had to flick her helmet back on and zoom in, but then she saw.
The butterflies were turning into people.
“Armory, do a scan. Are they the same? Is she…is she saving them?” Hannah said, her voice cracking at the end.
Biometrics match. And their…souls…are the same, Armory answered. She appears to be incinerating their corrupted bodies, purifying the souls, and then reweaving them from fire and blood. This is similar to the phenomena we witnessed in Kazakhstan. She is, after all, the Dragon of Rebirth.
Right. She’d done the same thing in Brazil. And on the Russian Steppe, if reports were accurate.
Slowly, Hannah turned back to face Farasha. She was weeping. Not tears of blood, but silent drops of water that trickled down her cheeks.
“Does it pain you so greatly to save lives instead of take them?” Hannah demanded.
“Shut. The fuck. Up,” Farasha growled, and Hannah beheld death in the face when their eyes met. Then Farasha shuddered, closing her eyes, still weeping silently. “Sorry. I…I’m saving as many as I can. But I can’t…some are too far gone. Them, I…I send them on to the afterlife. There is one, by the way. I can…feel it. It feels like…cool day in spring, after the rains. But I can’t…I can’t go there myself. Just…just ferry others over.”
Hannah was silent for a few moments, then her radio crackled to life. “Colonel!” Mouse Protector’s voice came. “We have a problem!”
“On my way,” Hannah said, and began to fly in that direction.
“It’s this nazi bitch, Stuka! She, she’s using the N word and, um, a couple others for Farasha’s soldiers, and she just, I can’t get her to stop! Colin’s not here, and Pavo’s still busy, and she’s stronger than the rest of us with this much power stored up!” Mouse Protector said in half a panic.
Hannah arrived just in time to catch the tail end of Stuka’s rant. “-pathetic Untermenschlich, these ni-”
“Water gun,” Hannah ordered Armory, then hosed down Stuka, before hitting her with a blast cryo that froze the white supremesist solid.
“Alright,” Hannah said, pointing a glowing plasma cannon at Stuka’s frozen body. “I’m only going to say this once. All three of you morons are going to attend racial sensitivity training. And if I ever, even once, hear you say another slur, or talk down to me…I’ll feed you to the Cyclists myself. Do you understand me?”
Stuka, of course, couldn’t even nod, but Kaiser and Purity slammed down. Kaizer had a dozen swords growing out of his armor, while Purity was gathering light, glowing so brightly Hannah couldn’t even look at her.
“That’s my wife, raghead bitch,” Kaiser growled, and aimed a blade right at Hannah.
For a second, Hananh thought there would be a fight. Then, glowing red butterflies slowly began to orbit Kaiser and Purity.
“Heeeeeyyyyy, fellow Aryan here!” Farasha said brightly, appearing next to Hannah.
“Ah, good. You can help us-” Kaiser began, but Farasha put a finger to her lips.
“Shhh, no talking, only listening!” Farasha in that eerily chipper voice of hers. “Now, I did study World War 2. You know who I thought the bad guys were there? The fucking British! Assholes carved up my homeland like it was a cake! Fuck those guys!”
“Er, yes,” Kaiser said uncertainly, but a butterfly nearly flew into his mouth.
“Wow, you are bad at this! He’s bad at this, isn’t he, Hannah-banana?” Farasha said, then had the audacity to lean on Hannah!
She didn’t say anything, keeping perfectly still as more butterflies orbited.
“Anyway, I just wanted to assure you I don’t really have the hangups about Nazis that your average Western pigdog does,” Farasha said with a shrug. “And I’ve used slurs with the best of them! Heh, I actually figured the holocaust was made up, or a good thing, until I was smart enough to learn to read for myself. Now, all that said…”
Farasha slammed a fist into Stuka’s frozen form, melting her and driving the woman to her knees retching. Kaiser and Purity screamed in pain as butterflies burned at them, driving them to the ground as well.
“I could tell Hanners here to take you to her Slug. But you know what? I’m feeling like teaching some object lessons today!” Farasha suddenly whistled sharply, then called, “¡Oye, Jorge! Mueve el culo y ven para acá. Cuéntales a estos cabrones nazis la lección que te di.”
A hound trotted over, and at a gesture from Farasha, turned into a tall and skinny man with several obvious gang tattoos visible on his arms, and carrying a black spear.
“Uh, si la jefa,” the former gangster said, dry washing his hands nervously.
“En ingles, por favor,” Farasha drawled, conjuring her own flame-tipped spear to lean on. Kaiser and the two women were still face down in the dirt, while Mouse Protector and the others were gathering around, weapons ready for a fight. Duke trotted up and stood next to Farasha in his own dog form. Smaller than Farasha’s hounds, but better groomed and much more handsome.
It was fucking irritating that Farasha had her own dogs, but at least Hannah’s wasn’t a former gangster.
“Ah, yes. Um, the Boss, she, ah…well. She make us a deal, si?” Jorge the gangster said as Kaiser and Purity glared murder at him. Stuka was crying, however. Hmm, interesting. Someone or something had turned off Kaiser and Purity’s powers. Probably Farasha. It was known Dragons could interfere with Shards, the same as Archons.
“The deal…it is a good one, yes? In exchange for not, ah-”
“No euphemisms," Farasha said, admiring her perfectly manicured black painted nails.
Jorge swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Ah, in exchange for not cutting our balls off and making us eat them and then burning us from the inside out for, um….r-raping little girls and boys, and, ah selling them…and other things…we, ah…we are cursed to be the dogs we are.”
“Mmmhmm,” Farasha said, showing pearly white teeth in the same way Duke was baring his fangs at the moment.
“We, ah, we can only be men when, ah, when we act like them. To fight the Abyss, or the Cyclists, or the Endbringers, si? We do this, for a short time…we can be men. Then…then we go back to being la punt. Uh, that is…bitches,” Jorge finished, shifting from leg to leg nervously.
Farasha snapped her fingers, and with a yip, Jorge turned back into a lean hound with a heavy muzzle and sharp fangs. He whined and lay down at Farasha’s feet, showing his belly and thumping his tail on the ground. Well. He did have tits now.
“So. I’m going to make Hannah an offer,” Farasha said, kneeling down next to the three nazis in the dirt. “She can take you to the Slug, sure. Or, and hear me out on this one…I curse them to be as ugly and stupid on the outside as they are on the inside. Two dumb mangy bitches, and one idiot ugly mutt. What do you think, Hannah?”
“I think if they step one more two out of line, I send them to you, then Duke trains them to be housebroken. They can sleep outside in a kennel,” Hannah said. And to her shock, she meant it.
“Wow, second chances? You are a better person than I am!” Farasha laughed and stood up. She nodded. “We’ll keep in touch. I’ll clean up here. You go do whatever is you yankee fuckheads do, and deal with these insufferable idiots.”
With that, Farsha turned back into butterflies, and Jorge lopped off, going to fight the Abyssal remnants in the area.
Hannah looked down at the three Nazis, who had gone very still. Purity looked furious, Kaiser was stone faced, and Stuka…Stuka looked like a broken wreck of a woman, still weeping softly.
“Don’t think I won’t do it. I hate Farasha, but I might hate Nazi’s worse,” Hannah growled. “Armsmaster!”
“Ma’am,” Colin said, her voice as cold and bleak as the Tsaritsa’s own breath.
“Toss these three idiots in the brig for a month. Or until we get our next call. As much as I hate it, we do still need them,” Hannah said, her own voice as devoid of emotion as she could make it.
“Understood. Brandish, Manpower. ‘Cuff ‘em.”
Fortunately, Kaiser and the others didn’t resist. Hannah did overhear Purity whisper, “Max, my powers stopped working. Yours?”
“Gone. The…dragon…took them,” Kaiser said quietly.
“Sie wird mich ihm geben. Sie wird mich ihm geben. Sie wird mich dem Engel des Windes geben, und ich werde sterben,” Stuka blubbered, shaking back and forth.
“Oh, shut up,” Purity growled, and Stuka hiccuped, but did stop her rocking and muttering.
The three Nazis were hauled away, and Duke shifted back to a man.
“Fuck ’em. Wankers,” he said. Then he nodded to Hannah. “You done good, boss. Was a bit worried wiv Farasha showin’ up. You lose yer cool when she’s about, y’know. Like me when I smell a cat.”
“I…” Hannah took in a deep breath. “I know. You’re right. I just…”
She looked around at the devastated city. The Gambia might never recover from the loss of its capital and largest metropolitan area. But the people would live. Thanks, in large part, to the same women who had slaughtered so many of Hannah’s own people.
“What should I do, Duke?” she whispered, even as the rest of her squad assembled to head back to Honolulu.
Duke shrugged. “I ain’t one to say forgive an’ forget, ’Annah. You know that. Me an’ the Cyclists, you an’ Farasha…cats an’ dogs. Some people was never meant to get along.”
“Yeah,” Hannah said with a nod. Then she shook her head. “Yeah. No. Let’s move. I…I need to think. And we need to plan. We won here today…but it was too easy.”
“We did ’ave a dragon on our side,” Duke pointed out as a door opened up, and Brandish and Manpower dragged the three prisoners through.
“Even then…that was easier than a Behemoth fight,” Hannah said grimly. “Something is wrong with this Endbringer. And we need to be ready. Whatever comes next…it’s not going to be pretty. We’ll need all the allies we can get.”
She looked up, watching as a swarm of burning butterflies flew across the sky. “Even…even her.”
Then, Hannah turned and walked through the door, slamming it shut behind her.
She had to let Kaiser and his two women out three days later to deal with a Cyclist cult in northern Idaho. She was half worried her white supremacist idiots would join with the Cyclist fuckheads who seemed to have more than a trace of that, but Kaiser, Purity, and Stuka were on their best behavior. Farasha had put the fear of dog in them, if nothing else.
It grated on Hannah that she needed Farasha for that. It grated worse that she completely agreed with Farasha. Was she becoming a monster?
She remembered her dreams, and the answer that came to her wasn’t one she liked.