When Henry was a small boy, he was signed up for a children’s Judo class with his sister. It never was his thing, he had never been much of a fighter and he only lasted for a few sessions before losing interest. All he really remembers was being thrown, hard by the instructor.

He remembered that the world spun in that way that was impossible to keep up with, and he remembers his stomach lurching as he was twisted through the air. He doesn’t remember hitting the ground.

This felt like that, although it was much more alien since there was almost no force on earth that could move him if he didn’t want to go somewhere. He remembers hitting the ground this time, but the dull ache of his massive body hitting the ground was very quickly drowned out by a sharp, stabbing pain in his back. He heaved, coughing up a mouthful of blood, and did his best to roll over, instantly regretting it when the pain intensified. He looked to his scattered glass and was very happy that he had, well, armor for skin. That would have been terrible to land on otherwise.

Henry managed to force himself up onto his elbows, which was accompanied by a sharp snap and something shifting very uncomfortably back into place into his body. It felt like a rib? He couldn’t really tell, but the pain was a dull throb now rather than a crippling stab. Progress?

He managed to get up and briefly surveyed his surroundings- there was a golem outside that was easily as tall as a two story building. Right. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than an earthquake. He had also taken out a couple comic book stands on his way down. He briefly thought about how his boss was going to fucking kill him, but then he remembered, oh right, there’s a god damn rock monster outside and it probably was not here to buy comics.

He was trapped between a rock and a hard place, because the only way out was blocked by what threw him in, but it didn’t seem to have legs, so it probably couldn’t chase him. He had to fight, at least until he had enough space to get away, so he steeled hims nerves, tried to ignore his pounding heart, and forced himself to stand. It was wielding a light post now, and as soon as he stepped back into the sidewalk, it turned on its stalk and swung for him. It swung low, and Henry just managed to lift his foot up and out of the way to avoid the head of the light post as it cratered space on the street where his foot had been less that a moment before.

It was big, but because it was big it was slow. It had a lot of mass behind it’s body, and so Henry was able to regain his footing and recover before it could follow up fully with another attack. Unfortunately, he was also big, and it was halfway through a back swing now, and all Henry could do was circle outwards to the left and cross his arms over his torso and head to defend against the incoming blow. It came hard, and fast, but the light post was hollow and metal. Its collision with the street had bent it slightly, and as soon as it met Henry’s forearms and weight it buckled and bent, unable to sustain the forces it was subject to, into a horribly contorted piece of scrap. Fortunately, also unusable as a weapon. Henry bit back a cry as it impacted- but remained unmoved, and was thankful that the light pole had been destroyed. He wasn’t sure how much more he could do that.

He lowered his arms and looked at his assailant, only for his eyes to widen and raise his arms again. The golem discarded the light pole, dropping it as it raised its arms high in the air to slam Henry. They came down relatively slowly, the golem was no blitz fighter, but it had so much mass behind its strikes that as soon as they impacted Henry he was immediately forced down to a knee.

But he was. Not. Smashed.

He breathed, ragged and heavy as the golem attempted to bear its entire weight on him. It started off as a low rumble in his chest that escalated into a roar as he forced his legs to work. He slowly and shakily rose back to a standing position, forcing the golem up and back despite its strength and weight. He heard Evelyn yell something about metal, and he momentarily tried to focus enough on his tail to grab the ruined light pole, but almost instantly lost ground against the herculean weight he was sustaining. “I’m-“ Henry snarled with exertion, “BUSY. HELP.” He couldn’t stop- if he did he’d be crushed.

Fortunately he didn’t have to.

It sounded almost like a buzzing sound, but as it got closer and louder, it was actually feet against pavement. Dexter weaved through the street faster than most people could even react, and basically materialized beside Henry and the behemoth he was contesting, skidding to a stop almost right underneath them. Dexter grabbed the light pole and pulled. For most people it would have been quite a weight to drag and it still was even if Dexter was stronger than the average person, but he managed to pull it out of the line of fire and after a few initial labored steps managed to pick up some decent speed as he dragged a spark trail across the street to where Evelyn was taking cover.

“Ifeltthevibrationsandcamerunning-“ Dexter said, speaking far too fast since his body was working overtime. He gasped, taking a deep breath, trying to force himself to slow down for just a moment. “Iheardme-. I heard you say metal. Before he started roaring.” He explained, throwing his thumb over his shoulder to Henry who was still sustaining the golem, but barely. “What else do you need? I’ll get it.”

Chaos unfolded as the tremendous concrete monster’s rampage continued. Smoke began to rise from one of the cars in the pileup, the beginnings of an engine fire. People trapped inside their vehicles struggled with seatbelts and twisted metal, desperately trying to free themselves. The monster bore down on Henry with both of its massive arms, each fist as large as the already titanic lizard’s torso. The creature released a dull, guttural groan like a piece of machinery. Its featureless face cast a malevolent shadow over Henry. A dull buzz came from the creature, like the crackling of a radio. It was low and barely-perceptible to the average person, especially over all of the chaos nearby. As the buzz came, the creature seemed to straighten up and stopped pressing its weight onto Henry.

It turned away from Henry and towards the other side of the street, where several businesses sat: a bar, a boutique, and a Verizon store. As it stared, the sidewalk around it began to wobble. An entire sidewalk tile lifted up out of the ground, suspended by a long tendril of concrete. It whipped back and launched the tile across the street, where it crashed through the front of the Verizon store effortlessly, taking out a whole row of iPhone 3s. The creature turned back towards the building directly behind it, Saturday Comics, and, twisting entirely around, drove its fist into the top of the facade. A cloud of dust blew into the air as the bricks shattered and crumbled to the ground. Inside, the rotating stand of Venom comics tipped over and fell, turning to a disorganized mess.

The block to the right of the first one the golem had launched lifted into the air on a tendril. This one was directly in front of the alley Evelyn and Dexter had run down. It whipped back as if to throw the block across the street, aiming for the boutique.

---

---

The light post smashed through the front doors of Mooncash like a javelin. The doors exploded into a cloud of glass as the butt-end of the post rendered metal tables and chairs to rubble. It crashed into the front of the bar, shaking the entire building and crushing the wood and marble facade. Coffee beans erupted into the air like volcanic lava as the espresso machines went flying. The force of the impact shook glass canisters of tea and freeze-dried fruits off of the wall, where they fell like shrapnel bombs. The cash drawer lurched off of the countertop and smashed into the floor, opening up and sending coins flying across the back of the bar. The crashing and banging of innumerable more objects could be heard all around, from dishes in the back room to carts of pastries sent reeling by the impact. Nobody stayed on their feet.

The air inside Mooncash was a haze of coffee grounds and dust. A siren blared from the intercoms and a red light on the wall flashed, a security system a little late to its job. Helen lay on her back, eyes looking up at the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling. Her face was whiter than usual, a mask of fear and shock, and her hair splayed out around her head, soaked through from the black tea that had smashed onto the floor. She took a deep breath. Inside, her mind was a blank slate. She had no thought of what to do or of what had happened.

Helen lifted her head and looked to her right. The light pole had crashed through the espresso bar and embedded itself in the cabinets against the back wall. It had missed her by maybe five feet. On the other end of the bar, several of her co-workers lay in a heap, having apparently stumbled over each other to avoid being hit. Billy, the manager, lay between them and Helen. As he lifted his head, blood poured from a sizable gash in the right side of his face, made by the falling glass. He put a hand up to his face and screamed.

Slowly, what had happened dawned on Helen. Her store had been attacked. People were hurt. In the distance, Helen thought she heard someone calling her name, but she wasn’t sure if it was real or just her imagination. She wanted to see if she was hurt, but her whole body was numb with adrenaline. She looked down to see Willow wrapped around her torso. It looked like Willow had tackled her out of the way of the oncoming pole.

“Willow,” she said, voice empty of emotion. There was a long pause, and then “...what do we do?”

1%

Chris felt the tension in his blood simmer down when he plugged his beloved cellphone into the outlet. The frothy coffee drink in his gullet left an uncertain aftertaste, like some combination of freshly chewed fingernails and dollar bills.

2%

Should he message Letitia? He should probably at least say something, he thought. Or maybe that'd seem a bit desperate. He felt his stomach rumble. Maybe he should've gotten something to eat.

3%

A quick press of the power button brought his phone online and, like that he was off to the races. He fired up his KaZaA collection and blamo, he and his earbuds had a nice little minute to themselves. His stomach rumbled again. But he couldn't really be that hungry, could he?

"Oh," he realized. He wasn't hungry or anything. Someone outside just had their bass cranked up unreasonably high. Their prerogative, he thought before turning up his own volume.

2%

The outlet wasn't feeding him juice fast enough. Fretting with the cable, he tried unplugging it and plugging it back in. The dollar store cables couldn't really be that low quality. Could they?

1%

"Motherfucker," he hissed as he bit into his tongue when a searing wave of salt crashed on his back, coinciding with the alien bass drop. Ripping out his earbuds, he spun around to take a look at whatever klutz had spilled their little snack attack on his back. No klutz at all. That was on purpose!

Chris had barely sorted his earbuds back into his pocket when he saw Henry Olin, a bona fide leviathan, going head to head with a giant rock monster, just like the book of Revelation had foretold, except the feet weren't made of clay and, for that matter, didn't seem to have any feet in the first place, and it didn't have much of anything to do with anything in the book of Revelation.

Dumbfounded, he looked around at everyone hiding under the tables, considering doing so himself, amazed at his own lack of situational awareness. It might be best to just sneak out the back and continue walking home. He didn't have his leopard hunting gear on him, not that he thought it'd do much good, and he didn't really have the sort of strength or durability that Olin did. The last thing he needed was to be interrogated by the ASA for shit he had nothing to do with.

There was, after all, a much more obvious course for him to take, after all. But if he did coat the thing in his blazing hot brimstream, it seemed extremely risky that everyone else might be caught in the


But standing around while Henry was casually murdered by a rock monster didn't quite sit right with him. He had to do something. Even if it was something stupid. Diving over the Mooncash counter and into the kitchen, he found himself a bag of sugar, unsleeving a stack of cups, and made a thick mess with his brimstream in a process that took an uncomfortably long minute but, after stirring the concoction together, he had fashioned several round bricks full of highly sticky, flammable material. Maybe capable of slowing the stone beast down. Probably not. But accidentally immolating Henry was probably better than watching him die.

Sneaking through Mooncash's shattered front door, Chris crept into the street behind the sluggish melee, as Henry grunted "BUSY. HELP." However, by the time Chris actually made it outside, the beast had made its way towards Saturday Comics, which it disrespected more thoroughly than the people whose regular patronage had kept it afloat. In an attempt to see what would happen, Chris rolled his sugar mix and cast the incendiary cocktail at its feet, igniting it and creating a repugnantly saccharine smokescreen with a fire at its heart, melting asphalt onto the beast's base.

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“What do we do?”

What could they do? Certainly not fight that stone-skin monstrosity. Henry, Dexter, and Christopher were the ones out there doing the fighting, from what Willow could see as she stood up and peered out the shattered window.

The golem’s attention lies elsewhere at the moment. Everyone inside Mooncash is safe from its immediate wrath, but still reeling from the destruction of its ranged assault. Willow, Helen, and Elle - their occasionally-invisible friend - are all inside, amidst a group of injured civilians.

Willow decides on a course of action.

“We should help.”

She mantles over the ruined counter and rushes to the aid of a man lying on the floor, dazed and confused. She helps prop him up against an overturned table, and wipes some blood from his forehead with the sleeve of her coat. He waves her off after that, saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine, go- go on…” rather insincerely. Willow does as the man bids. She stands up and turns to scan the interior, and she catches sight of her sketchbook. It’s been flung across the floor from the impact of the light post, opened and page-down in the rubble. Some pages have been messily folded from the position they landed in.

Not too bad.

Willow picks up her sketchbook and disregards its damaged state. That’s not what’s important right now. She looks for someone else to help, when her phone rings. She almost doesn’t hear it at all. She takes it out of her coat pocket and looks at the caller ID.

It’s her father. She answers the call.

“Dad?”

“Willow! Honey!”

Far away from the rampaging and destruction, Lloyd Dendry stands atop the roof of the Rustic Palace - his and his daughter’s occasional relaxation spot - and observes the scene playing out with a pair of binoculars in one of his hands, and his phone in the other.

“Where are you? What’s going on, what is that thing?”

His words are fast and frantic.

“A golem,” Willow replies with remarkable calm, “I’m at the cafe with Helen. Elle is here too. We’re all alive.”

“Okay, okay, honey- you need to take your friends and get away from there, okay? As fast as you can! Just get somewhere safe! Then call me, tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you! Okay?”

She wants to say no. She wants to say she’s going to help the injured and, perhaps through some unconventional and miraculous series of events, find a way to help destroy the golem, or banish it back to the depths from whence it came. She wants to say she’s going to do something heroic.

Instead…

“Okay.”

“Okay! Please be safe! I love you, honey!”

The call ends. Willow lowers her phone and looks at it for a moment, before turning her head towards Helen and Elle.

Will she listen? Listen to her father and run to safety?

She wasn’t sure. She’d rather follow someone else’s lead.

Evelyn

The rock thing turned around and Evelyn spat out a curse. "Oh, it has no eyes?" she whined, blinking as the seasonally uncharacteristic sunshine danced along all the glinting steel strewn across the street. Evelyn cocked her head to the side, curiosity replacing her pants-shitting terror for a moment. How does it get around? It can't smell or anything but it's been aiming at stuff the whole time. Then it stopped killing the lizard and turned to the opposite side of the street. Man even the rocks won't hang out with that guy for long.

As it moved, best Evelyn could see, the sidewalk started wobbling just where it was looking. "What the fuck," Evelyn muttered, peering out from behind a garbage can she would later insist she had never hidden behind - ew - and watching it for a moment. The robins and bluejays swirling above her head continued to chirp and shriek as loud as they could, even as she absentmindedly waved a hand at them to shut up. God they're worse than Becky.

Evelyn's eyes went as wide as Kelly B.'s unfortunately leaked pepperoni nips and she scrambled as far back down the alley as she could go, turning around the corner of the building and covering her head with the trash can lid as the sidewalk exploded up and smashed back down. The noise was louder than anything she had ever heard, and her parents had taken her to see the Killers no less than three times. She couldn't breathe. Her chest felt like the thing had wrapped its rebar claws around her and just kept tightening, her skull felt too small and she could hear her blood pumping everywhere, her eyes growing wet and her throat dry.

Then the impact hit. The force of it knocked Evelyn over into a discarded mess of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. Disgust briefly flickered into her mind before the fear took back over. Evelyn stayed down for a moment, trying to push herself back up off the broken glass and crinkled aluminum. As best she could tell, it wasn't looking at her. "Of course not," Evelyn said. "It doesn't have any fucking eyes."

Evelyn pressed herself back up against the wall, peeking out. She wasn't able to run any farther - there was a flat brick wall at the end of the alley, and the fire escape on the building across from her had been knocked onto the roof of the one she stood behind. Evelyn took a deep breath, forcing herself to look back out further. It can't see you, Evelyn snapped at herself. Why even fucking hide? She felt like it was her first fucking sleepover all over again, and she'd been picked three times over for seven minutes in heaven, and she didn't know why, like everyone else knew but she didn't, just small and dumb and out of the loop.

Evelyn stared. It has no eyes. And it has no ears. Or nose. So it's not, like, seeing or smelling any shit. And it's so loud that even if it could hear it had to be as deaf as the rest of them. That made no sense. No it does, Evelyn heard herself say. She was talking to herself like she was the Becky of this situation, and no one treated her like Becky. Not even herself. "It's a rock whatever," she said. "It probably, like, sees the way moles do, or whatever." Maybe it felt vibrations or something. Was that why it hit the Verizon store?

"Literally don't be a dumbass," she told herself again, trying to think. That felt right though. It had to have some kind of, like, vision. Just no eyes. Or ears. And it was a rock thing. Like bats used echo-whatever.

At the moment, as best she could even tell, it was "turned" away from her. It was focusing on the store maybe a dozen yards to her left and a few doors over. If it turned back her way, it was going to smash all the bricks between her and it and kill her, and she was going to die surrounded by PBRs and the most unfuckable student to ever come through Jack Kirby High School, and then he'd probably lay eggs on her corpse or whatever lizards did.

Before she had time to talk herself out of it, Evelyn sprinted down the alleyway. She darted over the piles of bricks and rubble as easily as those hurdles in soccer practice - which, by the way, still bullshit she couldn't play varsity, because -

As soon as she started, she stopped, because as if God chose that moment to humble Evelyn's sense of athleticism, Dexter materialized in front of her, talking as fast as he ran and presumably, fu -

All the glass windows shattered in the building to her left and Evelyn screamed, pissed at herself for making noise, then remembering that the thing couldn't hear her, then remembering that everyone else still could, and that she would just blame it on Letitia or some shit if anyone mentioned it after. If they lived. If she lived.

Evelyn blinked, trying to process everything through a brain that was at the moment expending most of its energy trying to convince her she would be better suited to just curl up in a ball on the ground. She forced that thought away. "Dexter," she huffed, noting somewhere in the back of her mind that if any rumors of her freaking out when this happened spread, he was the rat. Of course he comes to the end of the world dressed like a Mormon. "I - my other idea sucked, listen - " she huffed for air, her throat too tight to breathe right. "It has no eyes, right, so like - it has to - like - forget the metal thing, that was dumb - " he said vibrations. Evelyn was about as sure of this hunch as she had been the sunlight, but it's not like the National Guard was rolling up the street anytime soon. "I think - it sees through the ground or some shit, so we gotta stop that." As she talked, her legs went from running water to frozen ice. More and more, the fear started changing to annoyance. This thing tried to kill her. On a Friday. "Try to find any cars you can and crank the bass way up or rumble the engine or something. It's all I got." She paused, thinking. "Oh - and if there's people in the cars we should probably get them, too." The golem twisted and raised a hunk of rock that could've doubled as the foundation for Evelyn's house. Well, maybe not her house. Maybe the pool house. Regardless, Evelyn decided she'd been standing still for too long. "Run!"

Evelyn came out onto the street, where the reek of sewage and spilling gasoline hit her before the cloud of spring sunshine caught up to her and whisked it away. Gasoline? Oh, great. Lovely. Now she'd die surrounded by melted PBRs. Evelyn took half a second to glance left and right. She was maybe fifteen feet from the thing. It was big. It was really big.

Move, fatass, Evelyn's inner Evelyn told herself. She remembered her plan. The sunshine hadn't worked. Whatever. Not her fault. She ran to the nearest car, going right past Henry without checking on if he was okay. He was either dead or not at this point, and the thing had moved on. A small part of her felt her stomach roll - it felt cold, nauseous, like she should stop and check, but it was accurate. He couldn't kill it and it wasn't like she could drag his ass away. There were people stuck in cars that couldn't bench press a school bus. Not that she was particularly concerned with the people, at that moment. It was the cars.

Evelyn went to the nearest car, an SUV that looked like a Hot Wheel that had gone through a garbage disposal and then the Vietnam war. A mom was screaming into her airbag trying to get out. Evelyn grabbed a brick off the ground and smashed out the window. She was pretty sure you were supposed to hit the windows away from the person stuck inside, but she was in a hurry, and this was a beggars and choosers type situation.

"Help, help - "

"Shut up, dear God," Evelyn muttered. She handed the lady a piece of glass, noticing absently there was blood on her hands. She'd cut her hands. Oh I better not scar. She moved over and smashed the backdoor glass out, reaching over and inside to the latch to open the car door, which she had to wedge open with both her legs and a sizable grunt. Fortunately, Evelyn's irritatingly in-shape quads calves and glutes were not for show. She was able to pry it open enough to wedge inside and yank the baby or whatever out the back. It was crying too.

"Ugh, you too?" she muttered. The mom, essentially a menopausal Becky, just a vague cloud of annoyance at the edge of her mind. A large part of her wanted to turn and run and run and run and just go, but some part of her wasn't. She wasn't sure why. There was a corner of her brain that just saw this as when her dumbass U12 team was down by like 6 at halftime and she wasn't going to lose the -0 on her scorecard. The lady fumbled out and fell face-first on the ground, clearly dizzy. Evelyn figured she probably should've stopped that from happening, but again, there were bigger issues. The longer Evelyn fumbled with the car, though, the lady seemed to regain her balance, the gloss melting from her eyes and the airbag burns on her face and arms dulling a bit. Evelyn half-handed, half-threw the baby at her and then gave them both a shove down the street away from the thing. I have to do everything around here, she thought, sparing a moment to look at the ground for the right sized brick she needed. There was another world-breaking smash and Evelyn jumped up, gulping down a yelp before yanking a ten or fifteen pound chunk of concrete off the ground with both her hands. She clambered into the front seat and grabbed at the dials, needing a minute to sift through the panic to remember the numbers. It took three seconds, then four, then it came. 104.8. The most hated channel by the Pennsylvania Quaker community. Evelyn's #3 preset on her car.

"-no good bloodsucker, fat motherfucker now look who's in -

Evelyn stretched as far as she could to reach the other dial, punching the button for settings, then bass, then turning it as far up as it would go along with the volume.

It occurred to Evelyn in that moment she probably should've planned this a bit better.

Immediately the subwoofers blared and the car, tilted at a 45 degree angle on the rubble. Evelyn thought her eardrums committed suicide. The ground started shaking beneath her. Everything started shaking. Evelyn glanced at the PRNDL, eyeballed the beast and twisted the wheel to match. Then she yanked it into drive and dropped the rock on the gas pedal. The car lurched and Evelyn was this time unable to suppress the yelp as she fell out on her ass, rolling on bits of historic downtown Leesburgh until she stopped. It stung pretty bad and sent a shooting pain down her legs, and peppered the rest of her like hornet stings. Though she did not notice, the songbirds were clutching her shirt with their tiny claws and flapping desperately to pull her away, their screaming song lost in the blasting rap music.

I need another car, Evelyn thought, the music and the screams and the crashing sounds so loud she could barely think. There has to be a fuckin' lowrider here somewhere, she thought.

There was a whoof and Evelyn blinked. Someone had lit the rock on fire. "There's gasoline everywhere, dipshit!" Evelyn tried to scream, but her Escalade-turned-bass-thumper drowned her out. Ugh. It occurred to her that she was still sitting on the ground, and she scrambled up on her feet before she had the chance to see if her plan worked. The lizard was somewhere to her left, forgotten, and that other 2/10 was throwing stuff at the golem from across the street.

Evelyn realized if it did work, this thing was going to be turning toward her, and probably be on fire, and probably kill her. She glanced to her right, where the alleyway was obliterated by a mountain of bricks. Just her luck. Ahead the lady and her stupid baby were stumbling along. She turned left, feeling the concrete shaking under her feet as the SUV screeched at the thing, smashing two other cars in the process. Evelyn whirled left and started clambering over the wreckage. There were too many cars piled up here, but maybe another one on the other side.

Do I go up or under? Evelyn thought, clenching as hard as she could to keep from pissing herself as the golem let out another scream. There was a mountain of broken cars and concrete and what looked like that statue of some important dude from a hundred years ago all dogpiled in the middle of the road. Or around?

She glanced back at the rock beast and then started climbing.

A sidewalk block sailed through the air like an artillery shell. It smashed through the front windows of the boutique, sending up a cloud of dust, glass shards, and early fall fashion that was probably already too last season for Evelyn. The ground shook with the force of the impact. Screams erupted from the boutique as the people hiding inside vanished into haze. In the distance, sirens began to wail, signaling that the police and fire department were scrambling. The golem surveyed the surrounding area. It turned towards the next undamaged store, a Subway. Inside, a crowd of people fled towards the back as the golem turned its focus onto them. Yet another sidewalk block rose from the ground, suspended by a dark grey tendril. It cocked back to launch another projectile.

""-no good bloodsucker, fat motherfucker now look who's in -"

The golem recoiled as a T-boned SUV rocketed forwards and plowed into its base. The car's hood crumpled like tinfoil as it smashed into the golem, but it did seem to stumble, its entire body wobbling as the car smashed into it like a sunflower stalk in wind. The golem looked down at the car. The sidewalk block sunk back into the ground. The golem seemed irritated, hunching its shoulders and holding up its hands. It drove a fist into the windshield of the car and as it did so unleashed yet another crunching groan. It didn't seem to notice the fire welling up at its base as Chris tested his homemade napalm.

---

---

Willow sprung into action, leaving Helen lying on the floor in shock. Helen looked up to see Elle land on the floor next to her. Helen blinked. Elle's words seemed to wash over her like seawater, but took their time sinking in. Slowly, Helen pushed herself up onto her elbows. She was still numb over most of her body, but she could feel heat and pressure in her ankle. She tried to stand up clumsily, and as she did dust fell from her apron and shirt. The ankle was tender, but she could put weight on it. That was probably a good sign.

Helen began to hobble along the back of the coffee bar. Her other coworkers had begun to move now, though most of them were as dazed as she was. Sophia, a fellow coworker, came out of the back with the first aid kit. She knelt down in front of Billy and began to dab his head wound with alcohol wipes.

"No, I don't nee-" he began.

"Shut up," Sophia replied. "Let me help you." Thoroughly disarmed, he leaned his head back and she proceeded to clean. Willow was talking on the phone but Helen couldn't focus enough to tell what she was saying. Everything was hazy except for what was right in front of her, like she was in a tunnel. One of the other baristas walked over to the door to the trash room and opened it. The others began to move towards them.

"That way leads out behind the building," Helen said to no one in particular. "We should be safe there." She began to wander forwards towards the door, bumping into people as she went. Everything but her ankle was radio static.

"Try to find any cars you can and crank the bass way up or rumble the engine or something. It's all I got. Oh - and if there's people in the cars we should probably get them, too. Run!"

Dexter nodded wordlessly, twisted on his heel, and was gone as soon as Evelyn turned around. The idea that it had a tremorsense was unsubstantiated but as good of an idea as any. Dexter covered ground with ease compared to the rest- the smell of sewage and gasoline being a fart in the wind at his speed and simply moving around any obstacles as he came upon them. Was was a second to most people felt like ten to him, far more time to react accordingly. He skidded to a stop by Henry, who had taken a knee where he was. Thankfully the golem had let up and seemed disinterested in hurting people and far more inclined to damage structures more than a few dozen feet away at this point. The giant heaved, obviously catching his breath from exertion, but seemed relatively okay. "YougoodHenry?"

"Yeah. Yeah I'm alright." the reptile just about coughed out. "Need something? You should run."

"Alreadyon- On it." Dexter said, slowing himself down. "Evelyn thinks it might see through tremorsense."

"Like DnD?"

"What?"

"Nevermind."

"Just- what's the worst radio station you can think of?"

Henry looked at Dexter strangely, trying to understand what the hell Dexter was getting at, but was distracted by the golem's screech and the sound of more breaking glass. Then the godawful sound of 104.9 came on, with their shrieky show host and their horrid guests. They were bad, but the music they played was flat. It didn't have punch to it most of the time, and they took far many commercial breaks. If this was Evelyn's idea the execution was terrible, which was probably to be expected- Evelyn probably only listened to the top 100 and probably thought that radio tuning was some sort of algebra. No- you had to have good taste to know where to find bad music.

"Dexter, tune every radio to AM radio. Station 96.7. We need something thumpy." Henry instructed, "But keep the volume down. Go to the car settings if they have them and pump the bass up, and then try to turn them all up at around the same time." The boy nodded, and was a blur again. Henry groaned, because this was going to be a bad time for a lot of reasons. He shoved his hands into his pockets and pulled out his trusty earplugs, and roughly shoved them into his ear holes. At least he wasn't going to deafen himself in the process. He turned his attention to the vehicle that had been sent into the golem, which was crumpled at the front and with a smashed windshield... but still in one piece. It had long since lost interest in the scrap heap and turned its attention elsewhere to the local Subway, so Henry got to work. With a mighty swing, he dug his claws into the trunk of the car and pulled it backwards and closer to him. With his other enormous hand, his talons punched into the side wall, puncturing the doors and the floor of the vehicle as he flipped it over. Henry breathed a few times, and readying his body for more exertion, and then grabbed the vehicle by its front and rear axles. He heaved, and stifled a roar in exertion as he dead lifted the car high above his head.

The position in which the car had hit the golem previously was too low to the ground, but basic physics told him that applying that amount of mass with about the same amount of speed at a higher point meant that the base, which was in this was was a brittle and inflexible substance, would experience significantly more torque the higher up on the golem's body that it impacted. While this thing was big, Henry could definitely impact the chest if he threw it right.

Meanwhile, Dexter was racing through the street. Most of the vehicles had been abandoned at this point, and those that weren't had windows that were easily dealt with using a rock and some ludicrous acceleration. He tuned various cars to Henry's instructed frequency, adjusted the bass in the few vehicles he could figure it out on, and cranked the volume low. Dexter was no music whiz, but he knew what Henry was getting at. Bass was high energy, low frequency sound that one could feel from a distance if it was powerful enough. He had been to enough concerts to know this first hand. With enough cars playing it at once, it would no doubt register on the Richter scale. He with his speed, Dexter had managed to cover enough ground to set up fourteen cars. He heard a roar and turned in time to see Henry dead lift an SUV, and figured that was as good of a signal as any.

Dexter knelt down into a sprinters crouch, and bolted. He skidded to a halt fourteen times and returned to speed just as often, and by the time he came to a stop he could feel how hot his shoes were. And how much he needed to sit down. He heaved for air and managed to muster just enough to dash away from the vehicles and to the sidewalk to rest as the radio host began talking. It was obnoxiously loud since he had cranked the volume.



Music began playing out of the vehicles. It was loud, but not nearly what Henry had suggested it would be. Unbeknownst to Dexter, Garage radio was a locally produced AM radio station that was technically facilitated by the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. it changed what genre it played every three hours as it cycled hosts, and right now it was Dubstep with self described DJ Driftwood.

All at once the drop came, and if Dexter could hear his own thoughts over the cacophony, they would have been an eloquent 'oh.' Music exploded from the vehicles, with the cranked bass in each car it was nothing if not vibrating as the whole street was suddenly introduced to an unholy church of reverb in some sort of sacrilegious affront to music. Dexter covered his ears in pain. Henry roared.

The car was thrown.

As the golem's fist smashed the front of the SUV, the radio snapped off. Satisfied, it went back to work, lifting a concrete block with a tendril and preparing to fire at the Subway. Many of the people inside had taken the chance to run back into the kitchen and, hopefully, out the back door of the establishment, emptying it before any damage could be dealt. In the air, a small sound could be heard, a quiet "waaaaaaah" that the golem hardly noticed. There was chatter and shouting all around it, but none of that mattered- it was laser-focused on its target. The tendril arced backwards, preparing to throw the sidewalk block. In the distance, the sirens grew louder as the authorities approached. Then, all at once...

"WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH BUH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WHA BUH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WHA BUH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WHA BUH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WHA"

The golem froze as suddenly every car on the street erupted in a synchronized base blast. The ground shook. What undamaged glass remained on the street rattled in their panes. A small girl hiding inside of a store was pushed off of her feet by the blast. The golem seemed to gyrate and a crunching, grinding moan escaped from it. Arms down and mind seemingly frozen, the creature was not at all prepared for an SUV to smash into the side of its head. The car struck the golem engine-first. The force of the impact broke a gas line inside of the car and the heat from the engine ignited it, causing the car to erupt into a fireball. Shards of glass and aluminum flew every which way like shrapnel. The mangled remains of the car fell down onto the golem's shoulder, then crashed to the ground a scant foot from the nearby Chris.

The golem looked down. Cracks had formed at the base of its stalk. The golem wheeled its head around like the lights had been turned off. Still all around, the dubstep blared. It unleashed another moan, then arced its body in the only direction it could keep track of- the direction from which the car had been thrown. An enormous concrete fist plummeted downwards like a piledriver. Henry caught it as it descended, sending a loud "BOOM!" through the nearby area. The gigantic lizard strained under the force of the fist. The concrete beneath him cracked and then, oddly, seemed to turn dark and liquify. Before he knew it, he was being forced down into the ground, concrete welling around his feet, then ankles. The golem, bearing its full strength down upon him, raised its second fist and brought it down full force upon the first, prepared to crush Henry into the ground.



The boom of the dubstep masked enormous footfalls as someone huge ran up behind the golem. Just as the fist was about to collide with Henry, a blur of red streaked past. The golem's fist was shoved off-course and impacted the concrete, shaking the ground and obliterating a piece of the sidewalk. When the dust cleared, the fist was wrapped in a bear hug by an enormous man with fire-red hair. He sat down in a crouching squat, lowering his center of mass to make himself harder to lift.

"Looked like you could use a hand!" Titus MacArthur shouted to Henry. Then, with all his strength, he began to pull on the golem's fist. The golem and Titus became locked in a vicious tug-of-war.

---

---

Helen stood frozen in the middle of Mooncash, torn between Elle and the crowd moving towards the back exit. She hadn't even realized Henry was out there, not in the least fighting the giant monster! She looked back and forth, to the crowd fleeing and to the shattered windows, through which the battle raged. Helen was scrawny and unathletic- she had never lifted anything heavier than a couple gallons of milk for the coffee shop. Maybe she could- no that was stupid. If she went out there she'd get hit with a rock and die. Henry was a giant killing machine capable of lifting a car. She was just...somebody normal. Well, maybe not normal, but not useful either.

Helen looked around at what remained of her store. The telephone pole had obliterated the front doors and pierced the espresso bar, destroying a fridge on the way. fluorescent lights hung from their fixtures like tangled marionettes. Glass shards covered the floor. The damaged espresso machine had begun to smoke, and would burst into flames at any moment. She looked back at Billy, who was being carried out of the back with a crowd of terrified people. She looked at Willow, her best friend in the world who saved Helen's life when she couldn't save her own.

She took Elle's hand.

"Let's do something to help," Helen said.

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

All of Elle’s words were met with what might have looked like a blank stare on Willow’s part, but was truly just the face of intense listening. She covered a lot of ground there. And she made a good point of what Willow should do next. One of them was, at least.

The golem had come up from the underground. As Willow had no real way of combating it directly like the others outside were doing, finding out what’s going on where the golem was rooted seemed like a job she was somewhat uniquely qualified for.

But that would mean leaving Helen on her own.

Willow makes her way over to her friend. “Hey,” she says, “I’m gonna do what she said.”

“Do what?” Helen replies.

“I’m gonna go down and see what’s under it,” Willow elaborates. “I can’t- I can’t fight it, but I can find out more about it. That helps, right?” She then grabs both of Helen’s hands and holds them up, gripping them firmly. She’s never done this gesture before - she’s seen it in shows and films. All the danger in the air is making her copycat a bit. It just seems like the right thing to do as she asks Helen, “Will you be okay if I leave you alone? I promise I’ll come back.”

Helen is silent for a moment, before nodding her head affirmatively. “Yeah,” she says, “I’ll be fine. Go do it.”

Willow nods. She detaches her hands from Helen’s and steps back. She turns to give the golem one more look, and then shifts into her phantom form.

She sinks into the floor.

---

She starts in the pipeworks below Mooncash. She advances forward, in the direction of the golem. She passes through the wall into solid concrete, and then into dirt, pipes, underground infrastructure. It’s all very dark.

She stops for a moment to ascend back up to the surface, just barely peeking her head out so her eyes can catch sight of the golem’s position. She winces at the intensity of the blaring dubstep music from all the cars (she’s not sure why that’s happening, but it must be for a good reason). She sees Henry and Titus MacArthur - the other monumentally sized boy from school - going toe-to-stalk with the golem. She sees Dexter covering his ears a bit away. She sees Christopher and Evelyn and Elle all outside, in the thick of the action.

And there’s Willow, just a little wispy half-a-head sticking up from out of the asphalt.

She goes back down, nearing where the golem is rooted. In the dark, wet, filth-ridden brickwork sewers of Leesburgh, Willow finds herself momentarily comforted by the fact that none of this grime can get on her. She feels the pounding of the music even down here. She continues forward, until she finds exactly what she’s looking for.

There’s a large… very large concrete pipe along the sewer wall, extending both ways down the tunnel, past where Willow can see. She looks at where the golem is rooted - a large, pulpy mass of dark liquid concrete, extending upwards and breaking through the brickwork. Very thin bits of light eek through the damage, illuminating the disturbance in the pipe.

There’s no sign of any other CLs anywhere down in the sewer. No one is directly controlling the golem, as far as Willow can surmise - it simply sprang up here on its own accord.

She keeps staring at the messy concrete pipe. She doesn’t know what, if anything, she should do next. She just stares.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death amongst all teenagers. Chris hadn't had the easiest life, having spent a recent bit of his time twiddling his thumbs in the slammer, but he knew that that wasn't how he was going to go out. Unfortunately, as a mangled mess of imported oil and metal crashed into the asphalt next to him, he had a hard time deciding if his passing would be ruled as a car accident or a homicide.

As the beast turned from him, he turned tail and hightailed his hide out of harm's way, scurrying around the corner and contenting himself to watch. Turns out the guy had fire resistance. That was on Chris. He should've been aware that hellfire never had left the slightest hint of a harm on ol' brimstone. Somebody with skin, though, that he could be useful for. Skin burns and blisters and scars and nobody likes having that done. It just so happens that this here beastie boy was built different from day one.

As the music played, Chris finally broke free from his petrification and shimmied back to the relative safety of a different direction. The way he saw things, he could try using his brimstream to create pressure and make cars explode but the fact of the matter was that he lacked the forthright precision and majesty of force that his lizard companion had. May as well go be useless someplace else, he thought as he stumbled away from the fray, back to the coffee shop while he waited for a better idea to brew. No sense in burning down the neighborhood. The ASA would just love that.

The golem was struggling. Not only was it now behaving as though it were severely hampered by the sound of a dozen bass drops at max volume, but both of its arms were being held tight by enormous muscly men. Not much more damage had come to it since being hit in the face with a truck, but the music was getting louder and it seemed agitated as its head twitched around wildly. Seeing that the creature was in a bad way, Titus squatted, lowering his center of mass, and pulled even harder on the golem's arm. Henry did the same, acting on instinct. As they did, the golem turned and bore down on them. They both found their hands sinking into the golem's skin as it suddenly turned very dark and wet. The golem's body shrank as its arms grew, globing over their arms up to the shoulder, devouring them. Titus pulled as hard as he could (which was about hard enough to lift a semi-truck) but the wet concrete just stretched and morphed around him like killer putty, sticking to his skin. As the concrete reached his chest, it seemed like our dear friend Titus was about to be absorbed.

The sound of a dozen trashy dubstep remixes boomed over the rolling of wheels to a halt and the blaring of sirens. From behind Henry and Titus, a megaphone sounded:

"THIS IS THE ASA, CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY," The golem did not cease. One of the policemen, clad in riot gear, ran around the black ASA squad car carrying a large rifle.

"L.I. L.I.," he called out, the code for a Lead Iodide round. He fired a round and hit the golem in the shoulder, splattering yellow paint across the creature. As the round connected, the golem looked up, having just realized that the ASA had arrived. In an instant, the wet concrete prisons Titus and Henry had been cocooned in evaporated, sinking back into the golem. The golem sailed backwards like a stalk of corn in the wind. The whole creature shuddered as the stalk of the golem widened and the creature's chest collapsed in a sickening motion, like an animal laying an egg. Then, in an instant, the whole golem turned solid and dry as a sidewalk block. There was a crunching noise, and the golem careened onto its side, landing in the street and shattering. Its head rolled through the carnage of cars and landed just at the base of the pile of wreckage Evelyn had climbed, looking up at her with a blank, unblemished face.

The street was an absolute mess. Four storefronts lay in disarray and dozens of cars had been smashed to pieces in the rubble. A light pole stuck through the front doors of Mooncash and several small fires burned across the street. The dubstep boomed over it all still, making the empty scene nowhere near silent or tranquil. At various intersections along the street, emergency vehicles rushed in, from ambulances to fire trucks to police cars. ASA agents flooded the street nearest where the golem fell, armed with rifles and searching for signs of trouble or a second attack. All of their rifles were equipped with yellow magazines loaded with lead iodide rounds. As they searched, a voice came over the megaphone.

"THIS IS THE ASA. WE ARE SEARCHING THE AREA FOR SIGNS OF HOSTILITY AND WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN THE COAST IS CLEAR. IF YOU ARE IN HIDING, REMAIN THERE UNTIL WE HAVE CLEARED THE AREA. IF YOU ARE EXPOSED OR IN NEED OF MEDICAL ATTENTION, COME TO OUR PERIMETER AND WE WILL PROVIDE ASSISTANCE. AND SOMEBODY PLEASE TURN OFF THAT RACKET I'M GETTING A HEADACHE." The megaphone sounded from a man standing atop a car, clad in all black. All that emerged from his armor was a perfectly-formed cleft chin, but this was enough to identify him as Agent Bernard Hopkins.

Helen walked over to the shattered window of Mooncash, seeing the golem vanish and the police arrive. As she stood there, watching and looking for something to do, a hand touched her ankle. She looked down to see a teenaged boy, maybe fourteen, clutching an ankle that was clearly broken. Several ceiling tiles had crashed down and covered him in a shallow, but obscuring, layer of debris. Tears filled his eyes and his face was covered in dust.

"Help..." he stammered. Helen jumped like she'd been bit by a snake. She quickly reached down and began to clear the boy off, removing the debris and brushing some of the dust off him. She grabbed him by the arm and together, the two of them staggered to their feet, the boy keeping pressure off his injured leg.

"Uh, let's get you...over there, I guess," Helen said, moving towards the door awkwardly. Two ambulances reversed up next to where the ASA had parked their cars and several more now sat along intersections on blocks further down the street.

---

The ground beneath Main Street shifts and groaned, but nobody could see or hear it. Pipes shifted, dirt crumbled. A shape moved slowly through the dark. It was round and dark and slithered down along the tendril leading from what had once been the concrete golem to the concrete casing of the city's main sewer pipes. The ball contacted the pipes and the concrete all around it turned wet. The ball was about three feet in diameter- if you were a small person, maybe you could fit inside. The ball fused with the pipe, sunk as deep into it as it could go, and then zoomed off along the pipe, traveling west quite quickly.

Of course, no one above could see any of this happen, but from the dark of a crawlspace just above the main sewer pipe, Willow Dendry's pale eyes were illuminated by the glow of a flashlight. She saw it all.

Evelyn

It was possible Evelyn had not fully thought through her plan. As she scrambled her way up the pile of rubble, the combined bass-thumping of every car on the street made the rocks rumble beneath her, tripping her up as quickly as she could regain her balance. Wait, Evelyn thought. Music isn't that loud. She threw a glance over her shoulder the exact way you're not supposed to in a life-threatening situation and saw that not only was the lizard grappling it, the world's strongest ginger was as well. They were trying to rip the thing up, and as it convulsed in time with the music, smashing rocks and cars into the ground, her little shrapnel mountain shook with it. She couldn't get her balance. Every impact made something in the mountain shift, and one of those cars or building foundations collapsing on her would kill her just as dead as rock boy would. Evelyn had the unenviable choice of moving slowly across the rubble and letting the golem turn her into a blood paste (still a more popular blood paste than anyone else under twenty tons of concrete, however) or getting crucified by the broken remains of a Subaru.

"I fucking hate this town," Evelyn muttered to herself. Her friends in Seattle never had to deal with this kind of shit. Even in a short time, five or six cars and half of a flower shop had been knocked into the street, and loose stone and metal shifted under her step. "Hurry up," she told herself, reaching the top of the pile. She glanced back again and saw that the thing was starting to eat Titus. She blinked. It was eating him. The rock was sludging up his arms toward his chest.

Evelyn, half crawling to keep her balance on an up-ended Nissan Altima, grime and sweat and blood smudged across her face, stared back. It was eating him. She couldn't look away. It was eating him.

To the casual onlooker, it was not clear if the car shifting under her was from Evelyn springing up to run toward the golem or to run away.

Before she was fully upright, an armored personnel carrier tore straight through the minivan that annoying woman and her annoying baby had been in some five feet from her rubble pile. The shock and the impact tumbled Evelyn off the other side, where a chunk of rebar slashed her between the ribs before she rolled onto the ground. Gunfire thundered out on the other side of the garbage mountain and Evelyn curled into a ball, hands over her head. The motion made the right side of her ribs explode in pain, but no one could hear Evelyn Noblezada scream in the fusillade.

"FUCK!" Evelyn screamed, clutching a hand to her side. It came back scarlet. She blinked. They were eating him. They were eating both of them. My shirt, Evelyn thought. Mom bought this for me. It's ruined now. She blinked. She wasn't going to be able to get another one, her - the stores were all crushed. It was eating him. Her mom would be mad. Her hand was red. It's going to eat you too, fuckface, she heard a voice that sounded an awful lot like herself shout from the back of her skull. It was far away. Her hand was red. Really red. Does it eat you fast, Evelyn wondered. It doesn't have a face. Maybe you just go inside and get crushed to death. Or stuck under the earth until you drown in dirt. Evelyn couldn't breathe right now. Was it like that? Was it like that forever?

Something vibrated along the side of her skin and Evelyn rolled onto her back, the adrenaline numbing her to the broken glass and scattered rocks that dug into her as she did so. She turned her head and saw a small swarm of bumblebees buzzing next to her cut. They were gooey. Her side felt sticky. She was in a lot of pain. She did not think she had ever been in this much pain. Why were there bees?

The head of the golem fell three feet next to her and Evelyn punched it before she had time to think.

This hurt her hand and her side more than she could properly articulate, and Evelyn curled back up as tight as she could. She did not think her heart could've pounded any faster than it did when she was in the alleyway, but it was now. It's going to eat me, Evelyn thought. Everything inside her was shaking. She could feel her entrails slipping out her side, her guts and her bones pulling her heart and her lungs down and out onto the dusty street and they were screaming trying to stay in place. It couldn't eat her, Evelyn thought. It can't eat me. The music was supposed to stop it. It can't eat me. I can still hear the music. It's not fair, it's not -

A moment passed, and another. Evelyn turned. The head was there. The rest of it wasn't. Something had cut its head off. A big axe, Evelyn thought, and in the white haze of pain that had blanketed all her senses, that made complete logical sense.

There was some fucking loser who couldn't pay for college and wound up in the ASA screaming over a loudspeaker but Evelyn didn't listen. To her credit, she wasn't sure if she could. Her brain seized upon things for only half a second before it was just pain again. Evelyn grabbed the piece of rebar that had ripped her side and hoisted herself up to her feet.

Across the street, hidden behind a trash can, a girl named Brianna Roberts saw Evelyn stand up. She could not see Evelyn's pierced side. From her perspective, there had been a tremendous noise, and then she saw Evelyn Noblezada stand next to the severed head of the golem that destroyed Leesburgh. Brianna Roberts had left Evelyn's fifteenth birthday party with a severe hangover and an early-onset eating disorder. As she saw Evelyn stand, unharmed, triumphant, she wept.

Evelyn's legs melted, but her hand dug into the metal so hard the blood from her side mingled with the blood in her palm. You are not going to fucking collapse, she told herself. There was a girl who had collapsed at one of the games she coached because of diabetes or something. They'd all clapped for her, but once the game started up again, Evelyn's team had slaughtered that girl's team in the second half. Evelyn looked down at the head. It ate at least those two. Not me.The music was still blaring, making the pebbles on the ground vibrate across the broken street.

Evelyn felt something she was not sure she had ever truly felt before in her life. She could not have articulated it even if she hadn't been standing at ground zero. I won. The music thump-thumped. The golem head stared at her with stone eyes. If you were worth shit, you'd be made of diamonds.

Evelyn took a step forward, and then another. Each time it felt like someone had grabbed both sides of her wound and ripped in opposite directions like they were trying to open a particularly stubborn ziploc bag. She took a breath that made her ribs scream. Things were not as swimmy when she focused on the pain. The hand pressed to the bloody cut was shaking, but her mind was getting steadier. Her other hand hung limply at her side, the knuckles throbbing to the bone. So help me God, if you fucking fall over on main street. Evelyn chose her steps carefully. One or two at a time, always near something she could lean against if her balance gave way. Bees zoomed to her side, smeared honey, and zoomed away. If it weren't for the fact she was pretty sure it would have made her faint, she would've smacked the shit out of them. As they flew away, they stabbed uselessly at the golem head and fell dead beside it.

One of the APCs had the man whose chin had so deep a divide, rappers from both sides of it put diss tracks out on each other. "Hopkins," Evelyn said. The voice in her chest wasn't hers. It was rougher. My shirt, Evelyn thought. Mom liked that shirt. It's going to eat me. It ate them. It ate them. Evelyn dug her fingers into the wound and the pain drove everything else away. She clenched her legs as tight as she stood and stayed standing. Hopkins was a decent guy. Her dad had sued the shit out of the ASA a few times. He got on CNN for it once. Evelyn hadn't watched. "Get me to an ambulance before anyone sees me or I swear to Christ I'll say one of those bullets grazed me."

"Looked like you could use a hand!"

Henry didn't immediately reply, but managed to cough out a snarl in recognition to his now brother in arms. Between the two of them, Titus definitely had the higher towing power, but Titus weighed far less than both himself and their assailant. Henry could handle one arm on his own, and with his weight and Titus' strength they might have a chance at stalemating the golem. Henry shifted, ducking his shoulder down and into the golem's armpit, allowing the golem to sink towards the ground under their combined weight and Titus' strength. He did his best to ignore the road rash against his scales as they were ground away by the golem's concrete and earthen skin, and with his immense size and the golem's lowered position, pivoted the creature's arm upwards. Against a human, struggling against such a position could lead to a dislocated shoulder. A golem however had no such biological hangups and likely lacked the necessary attributes to feel pain- but it did position the creature's arm like a lever of which Henry could drive.

And then it all went tits up. He managed to shriek in alarm, but with his body quite literally positioned against the golem he was the first to be enveloped. Henry struggled, as anyone in his position would. Outside he heard shouting, followed by the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. He wasn't in much of a position to perceive what exactly was happening, but his concrete prison very quickly crumbled around him. He was unceremoniously dropped, and upon hitting the ground felt the unmistakable and likely audible crunch of all his weight coming down on the metacarpal on the side of his foot. The pain didn't hit him at first- but he fell in a heap on the ground, thankfully not on top of Titus, but certainly did hit him as soon as he moved his leg.

Henry's legs were, for lack of better terminology, built a little bit differently than the regular humans. Well, they weren't, but they did function differently. When his powers manifested one of the (excruciating) changes was the lengthening and repositioning of his feet. When the process was completed and he had been evaluated and xrayed and whatever else'd by the doctors, the scans had revealed that he now walked on his toes for lack of better terminology. At least, that's how the doctor put it. Since then he had fractured bones in his feet before in many odd ways, and he knew the feeling. They healed quick, but because his entire mass was on two points it always hurt like hell for a few days afterwards. He'd be paying for getting physical with the golem in one way or another.

"THIS IS THE ASA. WE ARE SEARCHING THE AREA FOR SIGNS OF HOSTILITY AND WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN THE COAST IS CLEAR. IF YOU ARE IN HIDING, REMAIN THERE UNTIL WE HAVE CLEARED THE AREA. IF YOU ARE EXPOSED OR IN NEED OF MEDICAL ATTENTION, COME TO OUR PERIMETER AND WE WILL PROVIDE ASSISTANCE. AND SOMEBODY PLEASE TURN OFF THAT RACKET I'M GETTING A HEADACHE."

Henry coughed, spitting dust but otherwise okay. He had managed to close his eyes and mouth before getting pulled in. "I did need a hand.", he managed to cough out. "Thank you for the help. I was in over my head." A small part of Henry was amused at his own joke- because he was so tall that he was never in over his- A lightning bolt of pain shot up his leg as he shifted his foot and his mind was swiftly set back on track. "Are you okay, Titus?"

Henry pulled himself into a sitting position but otherwise remained where he was at. Unlike the vast majority of his generation in Leesburg, his relationship with the ASA was... more sensitive to put it lightly. There had been quite a few conversations with his mother and father and sisters on what exactly should happen if something were to go wrong. After visiting his physician and getting their insight compared to other CoL's like himself, a decision was made. His superpower can be temporarily reversed, just like anyone else's. However due to the size and severity of his mutation, it would be a long and extremely painful process that could permanently disfigure or damage his body and brain. As a result, the ASA received a signed and written agreement with his family that Henry himself also consented to when he turned 18 that, in the event that something happens, power nullification is not to be attempted. Lethal force is more humane.

A shot had already been fired, and given the ASA's presence here it was already a severe enough situation that itchy trigger fingers were likely present. Henry had received several long talks with his family and knew that any movement in a critical time like this was undue risk. Not that it took all that much convincing- with a fractured foot he wasn't feeling like going anywhere fast right now anyways, but he'd wait until they came to him. Henry turned to survey the damage. His shirt was shredded where his body was against the golem and caked in concrete dust- ruined. Several of his scales were either sanded down or completely gone- revealing the slightly pink and bleeding flesh underneath. He snorted, knowing he'd be right as rain in a couple days but bemused in that he couldn't remember the last time something had actually gotten through his scales. His work was also fucked, which meant his evenings and weekends were going to be very open for the foreseeable future. That wasn't the best thing. But it meant he could go to the party no questions asked this weekend. Little victories.

---

All things considered, Dexter had gotten off light compared to seemingly everyone else. He had positioned himself clear of where the golem had been after setting off the cars and had more than enough time to ensure his safety when the ASA had arrived. He had swatted some debris away from his face as the cars came through. He was hungry as hell now, and had a bit of a runners high, but all things considered it was nothing that an extra dinner and a night's rest wouldn't fix.

He heard a loud 'Fuck!' not too far away from him, and despite direction to either remain where he is or to make it to the perimeter he elected to investigate. Dexter dragged himself to his feet with a huff and soldiered after the voice, turning off some of the car radios as he tailed it. He was fast, but he was walking slow. There was too much potential debris scattered on the road now and he wasn't looking to take a tumble or dig a nail out of his feet. He still needed to get a new tinnitus shot. The owner of the voice was none other than Evelyn, who appeared to have made it to Agent Hopkins safely. "Get me to an ambulance before anyone sees me or I swear to Christ I'll say one of those bullets grazed me."

Dexter's tired mind, normally sharp as a tack, didn't completely process the words or the implications of reacting to them (or making his presence known at all) when his eyes darted down to Evelyn's side. She had a nasty gash that she was trying her best to conceal- but her hand couldn't completely stop the slow oozing of dark red blood down her clothing. "Oh shit, you're bleeding." He said, without fully realizing that he said it. Just like that though, it was real. The world around him seemed to fade slightly as he fixated on Evelyn's wound. He heard the shouting and the wail of the sirens but it was distant now. His eyes darted away from Evelyn to the damage and the destroyed cars and fell upon a Ford Explorer from 2005. The car was mostly fine but Dexter wasn't. His mind was alight and for one searing moment Dexter was in sixth grade and his mother received a call. She didn't tell him yet but he heard it in her responses- close enough to hear the voice on the other end of the phone.

His father was dead, killed in a car crash. He remembered the vacuum pop of the air, the shattering of the windows closest to the door as he ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He knew his father's route by heart- he had been driven home that almost exact same route hundreds of times in his life. He ran until he saw the shattered wreckage of what remained of the two vehicles. Their occupants- his father, had been wheeled away but the crimson stain in the road had yet to be washed away. He remembered someone grabbing him and trying to force him away from the scene- the crime scene. But the damage had been done. Dexter perceived the world a hundred times faster than the normal person. Every inch of that stretch of road had been burnt into his memory.

Then he was back, surrounded by those same sirens, the smell and sight of blood, trashed vehicles... All of that thought and trauma re-experienced faster than a normal person could even think. Dexter paled quickly and took a step back. "Evelyn are you okay? You don't look so good." He said, his voice distant and hollower than usual. His stomach turned but he couldnt take his eyes off the wound. "I dont feel so good." Dexter managed to cough out. His vision tunneled- and then the world went dark.

Dexter fainted.

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

A concrete beast lurks beneath Leesburgh. It roots itself in the pipeworks of the sewers, like a parasite in someone’s veins. Willow is the only one who has seen the golem in its reduced form, as far as she knows. It fled west, and for a brief moment, Willow contemplated giving chase. But doing such a thing on her own, and with no shred of a plan beyond simple observation, she decided against it. At the very least, she has something to tell the others - those who are interested, mind.

She ascends from the ground and recorporealizes in front of the Mooncash. The ASA are now on the scene, pointing and yelling as they are prone to do. Willow watches them cordon off the site where the golem had emerged. She then turns her head, looking for her friends.

As it turns out, Helen and Elle are nearby, tending to a young boy who has suffered some form of injury - or at least, seeing him to the right people who will tend to him. They don’t see Willow right away as she begins to make her way towards them, but then…

“Willow?”

It’s her father’s voice. She turns around. There he is, dressed in a white-and-red patterned sweater that looks more in season for Christmas than anything else. But it is not Christmas today.

“Willow!”

She stands still as he runs to her, and immediately embraces her in a tight, worry-fueled, fatherly hug. She hugs him back, though not quite as visibly emotional about it.

“What happened?!” Lloyd Dendry’s voice is an audible combination of relief and distress. “You were supposed to call me! You were supposed to find somewhere to hide, what happened?”

Willow thinks about telling him all about the golem and the pipe in the sewer tunnel.

“I hid underground.”

She decides against it. For now.

“Oh…” Lloyd is calmed some by his daughter’s dry response. “Right. Makes sense.” He releases his daughter from the super-hug and looks her straight in her freakish black eyes. “Where are your friends? Where’s Helen and Elle?”

“Over there.” She points to the two, nearby.

“Oh thank God…” Lloyd runs his left hand through his hair in a front-to-back maneuver. This is a frequent gesture of his, and the reason his light grey hair is always so messy. He turns to his left, seeing where the ASA are operating.

“What happened here? What was that thing?”

Willow looks on with him. She doesn’t say anything in response.

But she certainly wants to find out.

The scene on Main Street somehow became more chaotic as the ASA and police moved through, bustling from building to building and checking for injured people. Each paramedic and police officer was accompanied by an ASA security officer, yellow rifle in hand. Several firetrucks pushed through the rubble and began fighting various car-becues along the street. A fire had started in Mooncash as one of the espresso machines ignited, but it was small and took mere seconds for the pressurized hoses to extinguish. People were pulled out of damaged vehicles and out from under rubble. A triage was set up and injured folk were shuttled to the Leesburgh General ER for care. Dexter Quinto and Evelyn Noblezada were both amongst those taken to the emergency room. Evelyn, of course, was first and those looking on could swear her ambulance was just a little nicer and the stretcher just a little more padded for extra comfort. All in all, twenty-seven people would be taken to the ER for treatment. Three would stay in the ICU with severe injuries. There were, miraculously, no deaths.

Titus MacArthur laid on the ground for a long time as he saw the lead iodide paintball hit the golem and said golem collapse. He looked up at the sky, once sunny and clear but now clouded by smoke and concrete dust. He coughed, shaking the rubble around him a bit, and looked down at his arms. Titus was a hairy man, but now several patches of bare, red skin dotted his forearms, leftover from the concrete golem attempting to swallow him. As he watched, the redness faded a tad, though it would be a few minutes before it vanished for good. The hair did not regrow- Titus' powers didn't work on hair or nails, much to his chagrin. Slowly, he stood up and surveyed the area around him, watching as paramedics and security officers bustled this way and that. He looked down at Henry, lying wounded next to him. Henry had fought the golem much longer than Titus had, and Henry didn't have the added benefit of being able to heal broken bones in a day. Several paramedics had crowded around Henry, clearly unsure of how to get a lizard the weight of a small car onto a stretcher designed for normal sized humans. Nearby, an ASA security agent looked on, the yellow rifle in his hands lowered, but his finger near the trigger. Just in case.

Titus bent over and grabbed Henry carefully by the back and tail. Effortlessly, he picked Henry up, careful to avoid his visible wounds. He stood up with Henry overflowing from his arms, one hand dangling. The scene looked a bit like if the La Pieta had been remade in the image of Godzilla and King Kong. The paramedics marveling at his incredible strength, Titus began to walk to the ambulance. The entire time, Titus' eyes never left the ASA officer, whose eyes never left Henry and whose finger never left the trigger of his rifle. They reached the ambulance, where Henry was loaded onto a bariatric stretcher and, with assistance, lifted into the ambulance.

While the security officers flitted about with their rifles, several other folks in suits moved about the scene. Each held a clipboard and they milled about the crowd, stopping at various people and taking down their names. Each of our intrepid heroes was approached, with generally the same formula. One such agent came to Helen where she, Elle, and Willow stood in front of the wrecked Mooncash Coffee. She was a short Latina woman with strong cheekbones and shoulder-length hair. She spoke to them the same as the rest of the agents spoke to the rest of the crowd.

"I am Agent Sophia Chavez of the ASA Enforcement Division," she said. "Is anyone in need of medical attention?" Helen wordlessly looked down at the boy next to her, who was crying and hopping on one leg. Sophia shouted back to the crowd of officers and several paramedics approached and began to take the kid off on a stretcher. Sophia continued to speak.

"I will need to take down each of your names and phone numbers," she said. "You aren't in trouble, but after the scene is cleared and some research into this event is done, we would like to speak to each of you individually to take eyewitness accounts." Each of them gave their names and phone numbers, and the agent walked off, commenting "I like your sweater" to Lloyd as she passed.

---

As we leave the wrecked Main Street behind, where much more work has to be done, we notice other people who witnessed the events. From each busted shop front and wrecked car, people look out from their hiding places. They see Henry, Titus, and Chris, who traded blows with the monster head-on, kids who risked their lives to defend the street. They see Evelyn and Dexter, who ran into harm's way to rescue the trapped and deafen the monster with bad dubstep. Both leave the street on stretchers, injured in the line of a duty no one asked them to perform. They see Helen and Elle, who escorted the wounded to safety, though they never engaged the monster directly. They see Willow too, but the onlookers, of course, don't know what Willow has learned.

The minds of each of those onlookers get to thinking- when tragedy struck, they ran for their lives, to protect themselves while others suffered. Yet, these teenagers, none of them old enough to drink a beer, ran to fight a monster they had no chance of defeating, risking everything to protect those who couldn't fight for themselves. In the minds of those onlookers, they don't see a group of teenagers in front of them anymore. They see heroes. No, not just that. Normal heroes are firefighters and paramedics and school teachers and bus drivers. These kids are something altogether different, not just people who can respond to tragedy and save lives, but people who can confront tragedy directly and prevent the brunt of its harm.

For the first time in the history of the world, a group of onlookers watch as superheroes walk off from the battlefield, nursing their wounds from a fight to save the town of Leesburgh.

---

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

8:00 PM



On the edge of Leesburgh, atop a hill in a community of reasonably nice houses, sits the house of the Charles family. It is a monolith of white plaster and glass, geometric and colossal and bizarre to behold even in a neighborhood of large homes. The Charles family are lawyers, and corporate law has been good to them. Richard Charles defended coal companies, primarily, though he also defended Tom & Nuss Horizons Fulfillment Center during several landmark cases in the disassembly of labor rights movement. The money Richard made off of his cases, he poured into his home, making it not just the largest in Leesburgh, but the largest in York County.

It happened that Richard and his wife, Patricia, were spending the Labor Day weekend lying on a private beach in Hawaii, being served drinks by people who made less in a year than Richard Charles did in a day. As such, Chad Charles, only son of his parents, was having a party, and basically all of Leesburgh High was invited for a night of dancing, music, and underage debauchery. Let's go over the floor plan, shall we?

Past the foyer of the house is a spacious open concept living and dining room. A large white-leather sectional sits across from am 85 inch plasma screen TV. The walls are covered with painting and family photos arranged by a professional interior designer, though Chad covered them all up with tarps to prevent damage. A fireplace sits in the family room and a beer pong table has been set up between the couch and TV. Titus MacArthur and Mateo Ramos are playing currently, and Mateo just hit the bitch cup on his first shot and so, naturally, is no longer wearing his pants. In the dining room, the table has been scooted to the side and a DJ has set up. The large white dining room table is laden with all sorts of snacks, from Doritos to salmon and caper crackers. There is a large water fountain, but, curiously, no alcohol.

...until you enter the kitchen. Here, the kitchen island has been buried by a verifiable Christmas tree of alcohol. 60% of that tree is Natural Light, and the other half is split between Bud Lite, Miller Lite, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and, Modelo Especial. Chrissie Wong is standing in one corner, deepthroating a beer bong full of just the most disgraceful alcoholic rubbish imaginable while several girls cheer her on. An orange cooler sits on one of the counters, filled to the brim with jungle juice. Several empty bottles of vodka and rum lay nearby like spent shells left from the alcoholic explosion.

There's a rec room with a pool table, several arcade cabinets, and a dart board. There's a balcony off of the dining room that hangs off of a cliff and overlooks most of the rest of town (several people are, of course, smoking weed on said balcony). There is a garage of classic cars, though the door is locked and everyone attending has been told on no uncertain terms that entering the garage means death. There are several smaller sitting rooms around the house, each just as opulent as the main family room, though with slightly smaller TVs. Upstairs, lines of offices and bedrooms and bathrooms larger than some people's apartments can be found. A jacuzzi sits in one of the bathroom and several people are relaxing in it as the jets massage their worries away. The smell of weed pervades the whole house like a ghost, and the sounds of moaning and shaking bedframes reveal just how many students of Kirby High are desperate to lose their virginity before they graduate.

Above it all, on a widow's walk on the third floor of the mansion, Chad Charles leans against the railing and overlooks his kingdom. He is a tall, athletic, attractive man, and a yellow glow can be seen around his black sunglasses. His perfect blond hair ripples in the wind, and his perfect white smile shines brighter than his eyes. He shouts down as cars pull up to the mansion:

"Hell yeah bro! Welcome to the party!"

"Looking good babe! Come inside! Grab a beer!"

"Brianna! Is that a new haircut? And a new boyfriend?"

And that is how the party of the king of Jack Kirby High began.

𝕎 𝕚 𝕝 𝕝 𝕠 𝕨

“You’re absolutely sure you want to go?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not gonna do anything stupid or dangerous, even if everyone else is doing it, because you know better?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not gonna drink any beer because I know they’ll have beer there, and you still think it tastes awful ever since I gave you a sip of one two years ago?”

“Still awful.”

“And if anything bad does happen, anyone makes you uncomfortable or anything like that, what’ll you do?”

“Ghost up, fly home.”

“Okay then.” Lloyd claps his hands together and gives his daughter a smile. “You are officially allowed to go to the Charles boy’s party.”

Some people would call this ‘bad parenting’. Lloyd Dendry has long stopped pretending that he has any control over his daughter’s desires or actions. She explores condemned buildings and abandoned facilities for fun. Her fear response is almost nonexistent in mundane situations. Trying to ground her is a futile effort.

Lloyd does not want to risk severely harming his relationship with his daughter, for fear that she might fly away and never come back to him. Thus, he lets her do what she wants, to temper her own limits for outings through personal experience. So far, it’s worked out alright. She is familiar with her own limits.

For tonight’s event, Willow has dressed herself in a navy blue turtleneck, slim black pants, small dress shoes intended for young men - she doesn’t like high heels - and to top it all off, one of her many ‘grandmother coats’, long and black and adorned with faded floral patterns, with gray-speckled fur along the collar and cuffs.

She loves coats like this. She currently has 38 in her wardrobe. The collection grows every year.

“Love you, sweetie. Be good.” Lloyd leans over the antique store counter and kisses Willow on her forehead. She closes her eyes and smiles.

She steps and turns away, and in an instant, shifts into her ethereal form, leaps off the floor, and phases through the ceiling, up and out of the Rustic Palace.

Lloyd rapidly taps his fingers on the counter as his anxiety immediately begins to stir once more.

…

She soars as a wisp through the evening air, fast-approaching her destination, the Charles Estate.

Willow has never formally met Chad Charles. The two belong to drastically different social circles, after all. But yet he knows her name, and has even said hello to her once in a very blue moon. Those few pleasant experiences were enough to make the girl feel comfortable attending this soirée.

But besides simple entertainment, Willow had a more direct reason for being present. What she saw during the golem’s attack still rolled around in her brain all weekend. Saturday became a day of reflection for everyone, staying put and ruminating on what they had witnessed. Here was where everyone would be to try and brush the event off by drinking and partying, but Willow wanted more so to talk all about it. What the golem’s origins could be, if it were a being of its own accord or a Leesburgh Child brewing chaos for their own malicious entertainment - getting caught in the action with Helen and Elle, albeit not as directly as others, stoked Willow’s curiosity rather fiercely.

And those who were in the thick of it. The gargantuans Henry and Titus, tackling the monster head-on. Christopher hitting it with his infamous brimstream. Evelyn helping everyone else just by being there, surely. And Dexter - all Willow saw was a blur, but a heroic blur it was.

He was the one who’d asked her to attend this party in the first place. Whether he would still show up or not after the events of two days prior was up in the air, however.

She certainly hopes to see him there, so she can tell him he did a good job.

Willow arrives at the Charles Estate, the building bursting with lights and life, yet still in the party’s adolescence. She’s rarely one of the first people to arrive at a gathering, but tonight she feels very eager, so early she is. She touches down and recorporealizes near the walk to the front door.

“Willow! Hey!” Chad Charles’ voice sounds boisterously from above. “Flyin’ and stylin’, nice! Good to see ya!”

She looks up at him, smiles, and waves. Somehow she always feels a little surprised that he remembers her name. Others arriving mostly just pass by her. Some give vaguely offended stares, wondering what one of the weird girls is doing here - and if it means Helen will be attending as well.

It doesn’t faze her. She just smiles and steps inside.