Southern California, November 2056
The F-22 Raptor hit super cruise speed.
The fighter pilot, Captain Skylar Cruz, was an old man.
He had barely a hundred hours in the cockpit back when the spires ruined the world.
The Air Force vanished, folded into the Combined Armed Forces by necessity.
They dragged him out one last time.
One last mission… Quest.
He never did get used to the image of the notification. The way it sometimes looked like floating text only he could see when it wasn’t a picture in his head.
A Skill helped him turn back the clock on his body. He couldn’t handle the stress otherwise.
The alchemy they pumped into him helped, but this time was different.
They had to put so much into him that even if he completed the Quest successfully— well, it didn’t matter, not to him.
The Raptor was just like him.
It would’ve long been scrapped without the Skills of the maintenance guys.
In the old days airframes only had so many sorties in them.
The price of high speeds and higher G’s.
Still, all their hard work was for nothing because some flying asshole had spent the last year or so destroying what little remained of their already paltry force no matter what they did to try to hide them.
“Captain Cruz. Maintain speed. Do not deviate course. Portal opening in two clicks.”
“Copy that.”
They kept getting younger.
He saw the demigod’s portal open like a huge golden eye in the night sky.
It looked beautiful at first.
But then it turned ugly.
As if reality took offense.
The light ripped a jagged-edge opening in front of his fighter.
Then he was through in a flash of gold.
From the east to the west, bypassing the heartland.
The thought brought a pang to his shriveled old heart.
Surprising.
He thought he had buried those days long ago. Brief thoughts of growing up. His family. Football. Cookouts in the backyard. Sneaking beers behind the high school in the dark. Sneaking other things.
The Quest snapped him back to the present.
Time was a premium.
Time on his Skill.
Time on the random shit they had pumped into him.
At his fighter’s speeds time was a premium.
Miles eaten up in seconds.
Even less to detect threats and lock on before they did him.
“Made it through.”
“Copy, Freedom 1. We are in position.”
He couldn’t see the B-2 bomber on his radar.
Knew, trusted, that they were somewhere behind him and at a higher altitude.
Another relic of the country’s glory days.
When they reigned like unchallenged gods in the sky above everyone else.
He could see the irony in how the roles had been reversed so utterly.
“Beginning attack run. Don’t know how long we old dogs can last, but we’ll give you time. Good luck, Liberty 1. See you on the other side.”
“Don’t kill ‘em all before we get our shots in, Mad Dog!”
That made him smile as he hit the afterburners.
His stealth wasn’t worth much these days, even with his Skills. The traitors didn’t play fair with their alien tech and the demigod hadn’t given them enough to level the playing field despite the promises.
He had magic lasers with unlimited ammo instead of the old Vulcan, but it didn’t matter when up against a skyship as big as a destroyer with better armor, weapons and bullshit shields.
Radar pinged the target.
A huge blob beyond visual range.
He launched his missiles.
Hypersonic.
Small, like a Sidewinder, but packing the same punch as pre-spires anti-capital ship missiles.
The Quest was simple.
Clear the way for the B-2.
“Missiles away. Moving—”
Captain Skylar ‘Mad Dog’ Cruz didn’t see the thin streak of light that pierced right through his cockpit.
The skyfury zipped past the falling fireball that was an ancient American fighter jet.
One down.
One to go.
The big, flying wing in the distance would be easier to take out before it could drop its payload.
It was a little fucked up that they were planning to drop a nuke.
…
Staff Sergeant Sean Miller.
Twin Axe Soldier of Rage.
Berserker Company.
Approximately, one hundred of the hardest, angriest and deadliest special operations soldiers in the whole Combined Armed Forces.
Cabal-trained and leveled.
They were the mad dog’s unleashed when somethings or someones just needed killing.
It was rare for the entire company to be gathered for a single operation.
That many rage-based fighters posed risks of friendly fire despite all the tricks they used to keep them aimed at their targets.
The briefing had been quick and hurried to prevent leaks.
The enemy had an infuriating edge when it came to operational security.
It was like they had multiple spies embedded in every layer.
The plan was simple.
Two stage portal travel.
The first to take them to the edge of the traitors’ interference.
The second to put them into the sky for a HALO drop right into the heart of their territory.
From there it was just a matter of killing chaos to draw enemy fighters away from leadership and other HVT’s.
Softhearted fools wouldn’t be able to resist the dying of their civilians.
The word made Miller sneer.
As far as he was concerned there were no civilians in Southern California.
They were all traitors and they had chosen their side, sealing their fates at the edge of his axes.
It wasn’t quite a hop, skip and a jump.
The first golden portal made his guts twist, but he just harnessed the discomfort, adding it to his simmering anger toward the filthy traitors. The magic drugs they had pumped into him helped too.
A quick recalculation by their magic users and he, along with the hundred loyal soldiers of Berserker Company, roared into the second set of golden portals.
Freezing air punched Miller in the face like his daddy used to when the old soldier, may he rot, drank more than his two bottle bourbon minimum.
The night sky was alive with flashes of light and explosions.
Harpies flapped, diving like eagles as they traded spell fire with a skyship that loomed like a fucking giant flying whale.
What he thought were kids in flying power armor zipped by with their humming thrusters, firing force blasts and tiny missiles.
A small squad broke off from the harpies and strafed the falling Berserker Company.
They weren’t deep into their rage yet.
The pot was simmering, but not boiling over.
They returned fire with automatic weapons and spells.
Needless to say, they didn’t have an advantage.
Flying beat falling, after all.
Donaldson took a force blast to the face that had him spinning away like a one-winged jet.
Miller flicked a throwing axe at the kid-sized figure.
He knew that the alien armor was impenetrable to him, but he had a Skill to make the axe stick anyways.
A second Skill pulled him to the axe, pulled the little power-armored freak.
They met in the middle.
It was like fighting a kid.
“Fuck you, alien bitch!” he snarled, spraying spittle into the dark faceplate.
He hacked with a hatchet, but that plain gray armor wouldn’t give him anything.
A dark nimbus suddenly surrounded the tiny alien and began to creep up his arms.
“Shit!” He kicked off the alien’s chest and flipped over.
He didn’t want to miss the spell sucking the life force out of the freak.
Truth be told there wasn’t much to see.
The alien just stopped moving and fell like a dead rock.
“You owe me!” Jones leered as she fell alongside him.
That alien metal was practically invulnerable, but the sorcerer of corruption had just the spells to bypass it.
“Thanks. Fuck you!” he snapped.
No one wanted to owe a magic user like her anything.
They could, literally, take anything.
Blood, skin, and his precious man juice were just some of the things they traded in.
“I’ll give you physical shit, but I ain’t trading none of my soul. You hear me, Jones? I ain’t fucking with you on this! Jesus ain’t gonna be cool with that.”
“What the fuck, Miller? Just watch my back tonight and I’ll call us square, yeah?”
“No promises, but I’ll try.”
She shrugged.
“Guess you won’t really notice shit once we get the party started.”
They passed what must’ve been the traitors’ aerial engagement zone since the fuckers peeled away and left them alone.
Anti-air fire had been pretty light too, the dumbasses probably didn’t want to risk friendly fire.
What was left of Berserker Company hit the ground with a light touch thanks to featherfall and slowfall spells or they were simply tough enough to land on their own.
The plan wasn’t quite so set, owing to the issues with opsec.
They had general potential targets, which were to be decided upon landing.
It was all a bit too random for Miller, but only to the non-berserk side of him, which was about to fall away as the simmering rage was turned up to eleven by the magic users.
Triggering spells cast.
Berserk Company in their randomly scattered squads went after their targets.
Civilians on the street, in their homes or in emergency centers.
It was a target rich environment.
Miller saw red.
He struggled to avoid lashing out indiscriminately at his fellow soldiers.
Just about the only thing that stopped him and the others from turning on each other was training and the good ole stars and stripes.
The flag was on everyone’s body armor. Front, back and shoulders. Or in the case of Dawson, the blood-bathed soldier, tattooed on his skin.
They loped through the darkened city streets like rabid dogs.
In Haley’s case it was literal. The werewolf had already fully transformed into his battle form. He was even less under control than the rest of the non-shifters. Which was why Anderson, a fully cabal-trained wrath mage, had to ride him like a horse. No amount of training and conditioning could keep Haley from savaging anything that moved when going all out.
An emergency shelter loomed in the distance.
The large building was squat and wide like a giant bunker.
Tracers lit up the night as the traitors fired at the monsters the demigod’s forces had managed to insert past the walls.
“No friendlies in the vicinity.”
Miller thought that was Jones, but it was hard to tell through the bloody rivers rushing in his ears.
“Unleash the hounds!” another mage he couldn’t recognize at the moment cackled.
Bloody battle rushed like a river overflowing its banks with him at its head like a surfer riding the wave.
Meat bags split open under his axes as they reached the emergency shelter.
Normally, they didn’t have the personal power to simply breach the protections.
But the demigod delivered.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A special, very expensive and rare device.
Some said it was literally one in a million.
And Berserker Company had been given five.
Miller impatiently hacked at the wall as one of the magic users pressed the fist-sized head into the shelter’s front blast doors.
Traitor fire rained down, but their magic shields would hold long enough.
A thousand babies cried as the small head vibrated against the thick steel doors.
And then the ownership protections were rendered null.
It wouldn’t last long, but the American Berserkers never took their time.
Haley ripped the steel open with his claws under Anderson’s rough direction.
And then they were inside.
Miller ran frothing at the mouth on the werewolf’s heels.
If he could smell the thick fear in the air then Haley must’ve been in heaven.
Weak fleshy bags of meat and blood everywhere Miller looked.
Big ones, medium ones and small ones.
Fighting ones. Running ones.
Fire sprayed over him.
Magic charm flickered and kept him safe for only a second, but that was enough.
Armed and armored, didn’t matter.
Meat bag was a meat bag in the end.
Axes slashed wildly.
Sword parried.
One, two, three.
Jones stabbed the meat bag in the throat with a writhing spear of black smoke.
Miller snarled at her.
“Relax, bitch! Plenty to go around for everyone.” She sneered at the fleeing meat bags. “This is what traitors get! Let’s go, boys and girls! Show them that this is America! Love it or die!”
The big furry monster on his side, he knew that vaguely, plowed through a doorway much too small for him after a bunch of meat bags.
Screaming, squelching, shitting.
The sounds and smells turned up the heat under Miller’s boiling pot.
He wanted that.
More of it.
Wanted to do it.
To make the meat bags make those sounds.
A different doorway to his left.
Medium meat bag running, dragging a small one by its soft, squishy hand, cradling a tiny one in her other arm.
An activated a Skill with a deranged thought.
Rage Art: Kill Cascade.
He leapt on the three meat bags.
Axes fell thrice.
Once to split the small one right down from its soft, dark head to its taint. Twice to separate the medium one’s head from its neck and the last to slice the tiny one in half before it even hit the crimson-slicked floor.
The blood spray rained on him.
Pleasant, but not nearly as pleasant as it was for Dawson, who shouldered past him to grab the medium meat bag to use as a blood shower.
Dawson was half-naked, wearing just a pair of shorts.
Wounds healed visibly as his skin absorbed the meat bag’s blood like a sponge.
Blood fueled him.
Made him stronger.
Muscles began to grow and bulge like those old supersoldiers from the early years.
Miller left him to his bath.
The Skill pulled him to another meat bag trying to escape its just fate.
Traitors died.
No mercy.
They had had their chance.
Axe fell.
Another meat bag.
Then another and another and another.
The Skill carried him deeper into the emergency shelter from one dead meat bag to the next without conscious thought.
He blurred through the air, moving faster than he could run or leap even under the physical boosts provided by the pure rage coursing through every cell in his body.
How many meat bags?
He didn’t know.
Didn’t care.
The next thing he knew was the blast of cold air in the face as the panicked meat bags next in his cascade fled the false safety of the shelter for the unknown hope of the outside.
Idiots.
There were monsters everywhere.
Something big with thorny tentacles caught a few meat bags.
They screamed and squealed like desperate pigs at the slaughterhouse as the tentacles squeezed and penetrated them in all their holes or made new ones.
Miller leap with a roar.
Monsters? Meat bags?
They were all the same in that they needed to be split open by his axes to feed the roaring engine in his chest and to satisfy the roaring river of voices rushing past his ears.
He hacked and slashed, ignoring the pain returned.
Beautiful, happy gore covered him in the dying innards of the large monster.
Meat bags screamed behind him.
More trying to escape the shelter.
Only a few larger ones.
Lots of small ones.
He leered at them.
Saw their redness, pulsing, beating, begging to be let out in that last exultant scream that they deserved.
The meat bags tried to run.
They ran alongside the dark building like rats too scared to bolt for open space.
He chased.
Small meat bag, left behind.
Small meat bag, crying as he left it behind without its arm.
“Here, please! My baby!”
“What— no! I don’t—”
A medium meat bag thrust a tiny one into the arms of much taller one before turning and swinging wildly with a rounded metal club.
He let the blow clang against the side of his helmet before sneering down at her and splitting her open from groin to neck. He slapped her dying cries out of his way.
The mewling tiny meat bag wriggled in the tall meat bag’s arms.
“Fuck…” she muttered.
He lunged with a wild swing.
She leapt over him.
Huh?
A moment’s confusion.
Heavy impact on the back of his helmet.
Face full of asphalt.
He turned in rage.
The meat bag was different.
Her legs were all wrong.
He hadn’t noticed in the red and the darkness.
Fur-covered.
Paws.
Not feet.
Like a human-sized rabbit.
Freak.
Coherent thoughts were vague in his state.
Hybrid soldiers.
There were a couple in Berserker Company.
Just under the shifters when it came to that rabid animal ferocity.
But this meat bag was part rabbit.
Natural prey.
She loped away, covering great distance.
But, he could leap too.
Leap slash.
She gave a satisfying scream as his axe blade cut a diagonal line across her back.
No armor, natural or otherwise, just clothing.
A light sweater.
Not even enchanted.
She deserved her meat bag fate for being unprepared. Soft failure. Had to be hard to survive hard times. Like him.
The next slash just missed the back of one furry ankle.
The chase filled him with sweet, sweet rage.
Just him and his prey and the mewling meat bag in her arms.
He savored both their cries for help that wasn’t coming.
They were in the slaughterhouse and he was the butcher.
The doors were shut.
The chains locked.
“Please!” she mewled like the pathetic rabbit that she was. “Just leave us alone!”
Axes rose and fell, just missing her as she cut sharply around the corner into another street.
“Jump, high!”
Another voice, another meat bag—
Sudden pain in his face.
Something hard and sharp, with twisted ridges.
Just under his eyes.
Through the meat of his cheek.
One skid off the bone and slid into his mouth, piercing his tongue.
“Get him off! Get him off!”
He saw red.
Axes slashed wildly at the large, but slim body stuck to him.
The screaming meat bag thrashed, tearing more out of his face, but driving horns deeper.
“Relax, Candys!” another meat bag said. “He can’t get through your armor. Just hold him! And I’ll— there! Got this fucker!”
Piercing pain in the back of his next.
Like a puppet with cut strings his limbs fell dead, but that only lasted an instant.
“What the fuck!” the meat bag with her horns in his face shrieked.
The rage kept him going.
Kept his axes cutting and hacking at armor that wouldn’t give.
Somehow, she pried herself free and pushed him off.
Miller’s vision slowly dimmed.
The red haze leaked out along with the crimson gushing from his ruined face.
They looked down on him.
“Goddamn traitor meat bags…”
Limbs went dead.
Another hybrid.
Some kind of freak with twin, spiraling horns on her head and fancy-looking armor.
“Fuck this asshole!”
The second voice sounded like a boy’s.
He couldn’t see anymore.
“I’ll… see… Hell…”
“Dude, you’re going straight there, killing civilians and babies. The fuck is wrong with you?” the boy snapped.
Miller felt wetness in his right eye.
“That’s what I think of you and your kind. When you get to Hell, tell Satan, Jesus sent you.”
Miller couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
“What, Candys? I know you did most of the work, but it works better if I said it.”
“Nothing needs to be said! We need to get away from here! Now! We have civilians!”
“Wait, please? There’s more of us. They got inside the shelter somehow. I was with a group trying to run. Mostly kids.”
“Alright. It’s alright. Just try to breathe. We know. Reinforcements are on their way.”
“Probably already there cleaning up this trash!”
“Let’s get you two somewhere safer, yeah?”
“Okay… thank you.”
…
Staff Sergeant Donny Johnson was raging.
It was how he was even when he wasn’t in his full battle form.
Nothing worse than an angry old man… well… except an angry, old werebear.
Stronger than the werewolf.
Way stronger than those weak domesticated kinds.
Weredog? Werecat?
Weak bitchass shit.
They belonged in his kitchen, making sandwiches and bending over for the only thing they were good for.
Fuckable holes for his pleasure.
That’s what he lived by.
The law of the wild.
Strong kills what it wants.
Breeds what it wants.
It took two mage-types to keep him somewhat focused on the Quest shit that didn’t matter to him.
Not when he wanted to kill, fuck and both.
Eight feet tall, a thousand pounds of supernatural, class-enhanced muscle and fur.
Stronger than any natural bear.
The only thorn that stuck in his insecure little paw like the words from all the pretty girls ages ago back in high school when he had no strength, no power was the fact that he was a black werebear.
Bullshit! That’s what that was!
He knew his bears.
Did a lot of research after the Combined Armed Forces helped him get more of his human thinking side back.
Black bears were the lowest on the totem pole when it came to North American bears.
He’d rather be a brown bear than a black bear.
Grizzly, then Kodiak.
But, he really wished his was the polar bear.
The great white bear of the north was the biggest and strongest of all bears.
It made sense to Donny.
It was the proper order of things for the white-furred bear to be the greatest.
Hell!
It was the only bear that only ate meat.
All the other bears ate just as much fruit and vegetables like they was some kind of pussy vegan bears or soy bears?
Fuck!
It was hard to think when he was in normal human form.
Even harder when in full werebear form.
Hardest when he was in werebear form and raging.
His mind was a frothing soup of ancient slights from the depths of his subconscious replaying themselves, the outside whispers teasing those to the surface and the red ribbons wriggling through it all like brain worms.
He lead the way into the dark neighborhood.
Huffing, not in fatigue for he could run, fight and fuck all day and night, but in enraged hunger.
Red haze clouded his night vision. Nothing stood out.
No signs of life. No targets to expend and generate that rage.
Just dark, cold houses.
Right turn.
Left at the ‘T’ intersection.
Right at the cross.
Another cross, another right.
The target area.
The plan was simple.
Rayna Cruces wasn’t going to be home, but her neighbors might have.
Thanks to the demigod they knew that the neighborhood was knit tighter than most.
Dating back to the early days of the spires when Rayna was the safest place to be near.
Even back then kids could play in the streets knowing that as long as she was nearby they were safe from the monsters and the bad men.
Nothing had changed in the decades since then besides the rise of a new generation as those kids started having their own kids.
“Detect Life.” Some pussy mage whispered.
The seconds felt like an eternity to the black werebear.
He wanted to kill and fuck already.
Meat bags needed opening.
“Nothing.”
“Next target then.”
“Stop right there.”
A giant holographic woman appeared overhead, looming like a stuck up bitch.
The bitch was pretty in the way of all the Stacys back in Donny’s old high school.
Black hair, light brown skin.
Symmetrical face.
Fuck her!
The way the slut looked down her nose on him.
What a bitch!
All sluts were bitches.
He knew that.
Or was it all bitches were sluts?
He also knew that.
Although, it was hard to think through the red urge to claw the smug smirk off that superior slut bitch’s pretty face, to bend her over and show her that she shouldn’t have laughed at him or acted like he was being a creep when he was just trying to get her number.
Stuck up slut!
Fucking, fuck, fuc—
The magical leash around his neck tightened.
He almost forgot about the slut witch keeping him in check until it was time to kill.
Was she a slut?
He vaguely knew she was also Berserker Company.
Couldn’t quite remember exactly who she was at the moment, but did that matter?
One of the truths he knew was that all bitches were sluts and a witch was a bitch, therefore… slut… or something like that.
He thought about bending her over—
Sudden pain around his neck focused his attention back on where it belonged.
The slut witch sighed.
“You’re the worst, Johnson. Your head is one of the foulest I’ve ever had the displeasure of being linked to and I was in the Cabal for almost five years.”
The holographic bitch sneered down at him in silence for what felt like a long time.
“American soldiers. Why am I not surprised? You’d attack a neighborhood of innocent people to get at me. And I’m not even here. Why would I be at home when there’s a battle, huh? But you knew that didn’t you? The same way you knew that you are all too weak to face me straight up. So, in typical American military tactics you decide to kill civilians to quote-unquote send a message or whatever rationalization you tell yourselves to convince your withered souls that they aren’t going straight to Hell when you die. Which… is shortly. That’s right! We knew you knew were coming. Maybe not the specifics. Good job on that, although I’d credit the demigod for that. You, Americans, are lacking compared to them. Not that they don’t suck as much, because they do. I guess that’s why you make natural allies. Colonizing imperialists stick together? Get things done? Or something like that. Right, whatever, I don’t care about you, specifically. In the old days I would’ve personally turned each of you into perfect little spheres of blood, meat and bone. But, I’ve left that early spires edge lord days way behind me.” The giant holographic woman sighed. “Rant’s over. Die and go to what you deserve.”
The bitch slut Stacy’s smug grin boiled Donny’s pot over.
He broke the magical leash and charged, roaring with unresolved rage dating back decades to before the spires had even emerged.
Light flashed.
He didn’t realize that he had gone blind because his eyes had been seared into empty, scorched sockets.
Didn’t realize that he was already dead.
The Rayna’s Rangers hidden in a few of the surrounding homes breathed a sigh of relief.
The dozen or so American soldiers had been reading really dangerous in their danger senses and appraisals.
Dangerous enough to kill them all even though they had the numbers and the ambush set.
Thank Rayna that the special weapons hidden in the lawns and even the street had worked.
Even bigger thanks to the intel that had them installing all those weapons just a few days ago.
…
Berserker Company.
About a hundred fell out of the night skies over Southern California.
About eighty made to the ground in one piece.
None saw the dawn.
But not before they had murdered hundreds, mostly innocent people seeking safety inside that one emergency shelter.
Rayna decided she didn’t care what her brother said about giving people choice.
America chose to send a war crimes company to do war crimes on her people.
She’d wait for the fallout to clear.
The dust to settle and be swept away.
For the funerals and the mourning.
And then?
Once she was done there would be no more America.
But for now, she’d do as her brother had planned.
She only hoped that the worst of the tragedy was over.
But, first!
She had a demigod to kill.
