The River King 8

The River King 8

Taylor Hebert

Hookwolf’s dogfighting ring was easy to find once I put my mind to it. By process of elimination, there were only so many places he could be: The downtown area had too much traffic and I doubted Kaiser wanted that kind of savagery in his carefully cultivated backyard. The Boardwalk was heavily patrolled by the heroes. Similar situation near the New Wave neighborhood. And of course, I could rule out ABB turf.

That left the trainyard, a certain portion of the docks, and a part of the city most people called Oldtown. Based on their proximity to the rest of Empire territory, I was able to discount the trainyard and docks.

Oldtown was exactly what the name implied. It was the oldest neighborhood in the city that still had its original buildings. It was only predated by some of the most dated parts of the university. Actually, now that I thought about it, I could remember mom saying the university still used to be a seminary like Harvard back then.

That mattered. Not because I cared about history particularly, but because the construction tended to be a lot more robust. Nowadays, houses were made of wood and plaster. The insulation was actually quite good, but Oldtown’s brick-walled buildings were much better at keeping sound contained, another reason this place was my first guess.

Businesses here tended to be pretty unimpressive. Rather than attempt to scale up, most people here were content to keep things in the close family range. Other than a handful of chain fast food restaurants that moved in, the most affluent tended to be private practice lawyers and dentists and the like.

I found Hookwolf’s dogfighting ring within days. There weren’t many buildings with the space and thick walls to hide so many cramped cages and barking dogs. I wondered how many of the neighbors knew. The answer was a tossup between ignorance and the general apathy of Brockton Bay residents.

Hookwolf had settled in what used to be a cannery. They used to receive fruit from nearby, canned it, and sent the cans off to the docks to join the canned fishes or whatever else the city exported in the old days.

The interior had been converted to house a row of cages along one wall. A large hose had been hooked up to keep the dogs behaving and sleuce the blood and shit off the floor.

There was an “arena” in the center of the cannery, a circle made from chain link fencing roughly seven yards in diameter and braced with piles of cinderblocks on the outside so bigger dogs couldn’t knock it over. Cramped, but that was probably the point; it forced the dogs together so the audience wouldn't have to wait long to get to the action.

The Empire thugs who manned this place were the worst of the worst. They beat and starved the dogs to “keep ‘em mean.” They also liked to kick the cages to rile the dogs up for fun when guard duty became boring. As for food, I saw everything from kibbles to a dead rat get tossed in.

My original plan was to stake this place out in between school and my regular patrols for a week or two like I’d done with Cricket’s club. I wanted to know the guard shifts, when the dogs would be fed, when the next dogfight would be held, and a full list of everyone who needed their legs broken.

Being thorough was the best thing I could do for these dogs. The more information I had going in, the more information I could leave with. Patience was a virtue. Minimal risk, maximum impact; that was my motto.

That’s what I told myself.

I swallowed the urge to storm the place and watched.

It made my already unbearable weekdays worse. I went to school, dealt with Emma’s bullshit, then came back to watch Nazis literally kick puppies, as if these fuckers were checking off a cartoonishly evil to-do list.

I already felt like shit. I didn’t tell Tahm, but intentionally crippling small animals, gagging them, then dragging them to him didn’t sit easy on my mind. It was necessary, and I hated myself a little bit every time I gathered Tahm’s meals.

The “guards” switched rotations every six hours or so. It was almost like a real job, but even more soul-sucking. The shift began with feeding the dogs. Most picked a few to rile up, just because.

Seemingly at random, they’d wait for Hookwolf to show up and start a dogfight where people got to betting on the survivors. That made them tricky. I couldn't predict their schedules if they didn't know what they were doing either.

Sometimes, the dogfights would be followed by fights between the Empire. Those were nice; watching Nazis beating up other Nazis was weirdly cathartic. Hookwolf seemed to run his slice of the Empire like an ancient warlord. His men fought to settle disputes, initiate a rookie into the gang, or simply because their boss demanded it.

I didn’t last four days. It was after school and the new shift was made up mostly of high school seniors. I recognized two of them from Winslow.

One of the skinheads came in for his guard duty. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a Maltese. It was small and white, about as large as his forearm, definitely someone’s pet. He called his buddies over and kicked open the door of one of the larger pitbulls. A “private show,” he called it. They were supposed to be feeding the dogs anyway, right?

I lost it. That Maltese was the straw that broke my back.

The cannery flooded with four days worth of insects. It was as though the walls themselves came alive with creepy crawlies.

The gangsters, just three who probably got on someone’s shitlist to get this shift, reacted like all the rest. They screamed. They pulled their guns. There wasn’t anything they could do though. You couldn’t shoot yourself out of a swarm.

I didn’t hold back. I shoveled several cockroaches into their throats. Perhaps they’d enjoy some of the shit they’d been feeding the dogs. I typically avoided using cockroaches like this, if only because I wanted to avoid accusations of intentionally poisoning someone, but I couldn’t find it in me to care.

At the same time, I formed a bug clone to their side and made sure they saw it. They turned and fired, hitting nothing. More importantly, they faced away from the dogs now and wouldn’t accidentally shoot one.

Seconds later, I emerged from the River, right next to one gangster. I kicked low, slamming the heel of my boot into the side of his knee. It popped like a chicken bone. Pivoting with the kick, I brought my elbow into a sharp cross against his chin. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

I continued forward. The second barely turned my way before the toe of my boots found his crotch. I felt something pop and his pelvis crack against my toes. As he stooped forward in pain, I reached out and grabbed him by his hair before tossing him towards his buddy.

The two collapsed in a tangle of limbs. I didn’t give them the chance to get up. I stomped down onto their hands, breaking fingers and disabling the guns. When they tried to raise their hands, a sharp kick to the collarbones made that hard, too. A few extra kicks to the floating ribs made sure they wouldn’t get up again. Fighting was a lot harder when you could barely breathe.

When I first started, this much raw violence would have made me wince, or swallow some bile crawling up my throat. I’d had plenty of time to get used to it though. The violence was just part of the backdrop now, no different than the blinking of traffic lights. I only paid enough attention to it to get to where I was going.

I tied up the three idiots and called emergency services. The cops were told to bring three ambulances for the mooks. I had to ask them for the number of the local animal control. There were sixteen dogs total, some more beaten down than others.

I called the River. It swirled beneath my feet. Just before I took the plunge, I paused. If I left now, was I really saving the dogs? That was the whole reason I started looking into Hookwolf’s dogfighting ring in the first place.

Animal control had to sedate the dogs, get them to a vet, and give them the care they needed. Some of these dogs were feral, just about rabid in how they lashed out at everyone and everything. And… As rough as it was to say, the worst of them would probably be euthanized.

I stepped back from the water. Like with the car accident, I wanted to see it through to the end. I wanted to know that I’d done all I could. I couldn’t move this many dogs through the River; I didn’t even know where the puppy ER was, if there was such a thing. So the least I could do would be to wait until the professionals had them.

Eventually, the cops came, and so did the ambulances and animal control. I was approached by one of the cops as the paramedics loaded the three men into the ambulances.

“Monarch, right?” he began. He bucked the fat cop stereotype somewhat. Too old to be called athletic maybe, but he had broad shoulders and a build that looked like he might know what he was doing. “You did a number on these guys.”

“I know. I just… They were about to feed someone’s pet to a pitbull. A private show, you know?” I spat bitterly. “I’m not sorry.”

“I don’t blame you, kid. You don’t normally stick around.”

“I wanted to see animal control take all the dogs away. Is that weird? I know it sounds like I care more about the dogs than the other people I saved.”

“I get it. People can think for themselves. They can call for help or get themselves to safety. Dogs can’t really do that.”

“Yeah…” The animal handlers were mostly done loading the dogs. The paramedics had left already. Then, at the edge of my range, I noticed a car approaching fast. A blonde, shirtless man wearing an iron mask drove it. “We need to leave.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hookwolf is coming. Three blocks and closing.”

“Fuck!” he swore. He hollered for the handlers to hurry. They stopped trying to calm down the dogs and picked up the cages directly. His partner got their cruiser started. “We take what we can, Monarch. Dogs aren’t worth our lives.”

I couldn’t blame them. Hookwolf was one of the few capes who wouldn’t hesitate to kill a cop. Hell, fighting him hadn’t exactly been part of my plan, either. I just underestimated how quickly he’d arrive.

This was it. Normally, this was the point when I’d leave. No matter how fast Hookwolf drove, he could never arrive before the River ferried me away.

Except, I’d leave these people behind. I’d called these men here. Even if we were willing to leave the dogs, my brand of teleportation had a weight limit. There was no way in hell I could take everyone with me. And if they drove off, Hookwolf could easily catch up.

I took a deep breath. On some level, I knew that this whole hero thing was a type of escapism. I needed to matter, to make a positive difference. And, maybe, I needed something that could take me away from the disaster that was my civilian life. I could probably make some shrink’s entire career.

Well, maybe that was the problem. Maybe it was time to stop running. I’d called these men here. I’d asked them to risk their lives. Sure, that wasn’t my intent, but that was the reality. It was only fair that I be willing to do likewise.

I walked towards the exit even as my swarm gathered around me. I’d had four days to build up a truly massive stockpile. Truthfully, I’d never been more powerful than I was now. Maybe I wouldn’t win, but I could buy them time.

“Keep loading,” I called back, almost before I knew I’d formed the words.

“Monarch, it’s not that we don’t want to help–” the officer began.

“I know. Keep loading. I’ll stall him.”

“You? No offense, but you’ve got bugs and water.”

“Yeah? Last I checked, even wolves need to breathe.”

X

Brad Meadows

I crashed the car onto the curb and burst out the front windshield. I felt my body retract into my core as the wolf took over. Metal claws tore into the street, leaving deep gouges and propelling me towards the bug bitch.

Monarch. It had to be her. Victor kept an eye on police chatter. He’d been the one to tell me someone reported a dogfighting ring. I heard about it only seconds after the cops. None of the fuckwits I stationed there called it in, which meant they’d been ambushed.

That was barely four minutes ago. The slippery bitch might have left by now, but maybe not. If she did, I swore I’d fucking gut every one of those dogs and throw their sorry carcasses around her “territory.” I wasn’t fucking Cricket or Alabaster. I wouldn’t let her fuck with my operation without goddamn consequences.

I heard the sound of brakes screeching. A car, some soccer mom’s minivan, slammed into my side. Hooks curled up from my paw and I swiped upward, ripping out most of the fender. A hook caught on the axle and I tossed it aside.

People screamed. No matter, they always screamed. They scattered like frightened rabbits as I stalked towards the cannery, ripping through everything in my way. And as I drew near, I saw what looked like smoke rise from the cannery.

No, that wasn’t smoke. Bugs. The bugs were so dense that they looked like smoke. My steel jaws twisted into a hungry grin. The bug bitch hadn’t left. She was standing her ground for some reason.

The swarm flew towards me like a plague of locusts. They covered the entire block in a thick cloud. It was no wonder none of the grunts could do anything about her. Hell, she’d clearly been pulling her punches. That was good news; maybe I’d get a real fight for a change.

I dove in with a snarl. Bugs died by the hundreds, caught in a whirlwind of metal blades. She was trying to distract me, probably so the cops could haul my boys off to jail. I was inclined to let her. Who gave a fuck about them? What mattered was the fight in front of me.

At the very edge of my vision, a black cluster floated towards me like a ghost. I pounced. My claws made for her throat. But instead of finding resistance, I felt only the air between my claws.

“Hookwolf,” Monarch’s bugs droned out the word with the chirping of a thousand crickets and the wingbeats of thousands more. “You won’t hurt them anymore.”

I growled as I lunged towards another shadowy figure. Yet another clump of insects. “Dumb bitch. Worry about yourself.”

“You won’t hurt me, either.”

“You can’t run forever.”

It was like trying to grab smoke. The ground was littered with squished bugs, but I was no closer to catching her. I lashed out in every direction. The wolf was my favored form, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t make more limbs when I needed them.

Whips of barbed wire formed from my body. They thickened as they stretched, gyrating and grinding against each other as they ripped gouges into everything around me. Keeping track of so many limbs got confusing, but I didn’t need finesse here.

Then, I felt something smash into my eyes. I reeled back with a shout of pain. A beetle made it through, only to get crushed against my eyeball by the metal slats that guarded them. I couldn’t wipe my eyes like this so I kept blinking and shook my head to dislodge the carcass.

She sensed weakness. More and more bugs began to make their way towards my face. I remembered how Cricket said the slippery bitch liked slipping bugs in mouths and ears. 

The joke was on her. My core could move, and so could my eyes. I never ran out of steel and the form I took had nothing to do with where my core was located. I just shifted the core a foot to the left and rearranged the metal to give myself new eyeholes to look from.

I then made two layers of slats out of blades that passed back and forth like the blades of a helicopter, scissoring anything small enough to make it through. It made my vision blurry but fuck the bugs. 

Then, I felt the slightest bit of resistance. In the junctions of my blades, I felt something begin to clog them. Silk, it was supposed to be harder than steel or some shit. Maybe that was true, maybe not, but I wasn’t dumb enough to let her. I just expelled more steel, using the metal nearest to my core to control the whole.

Still, her bugs were annoying as fuck. She was exactly the kind of fighter I hated. A fight was supposed to be raw, not a fucking math problem to be worked around. Once I caught her, I was going to rip off her limbs and make the bitch crawl like one of her bugs before I killed her.

Then I felt something hit my side, something solid. It was a mostly-full dumpster, thrown like a dodgeball. It wasn’t enough to knock me off my feet but it hurt. So did the bus stop bench that came after it. The bug bitch was stronger than I thought.

I growled and shook my head. Pain was an old friend. It sharpened me, ground an edge onto my focus until I could cut through her bullshit. I leapt towards where I thought she was, only to run through a STOP sign. The shrieking sound of tortured metal was my only reward.

This happened several more times. In the end, the worst she could do was knock me around a bit. The moment I got my claws on her, it’d be all over.

I withdrew inward. She wasn’t the first person I fought who thought they were some kind of untouchable phantom. Lung had his pet ninja. The Protectorate had Velocity. Hell, even Cricket fought like this. It didn’t matter whether they teleported or bounced around like coked up rabbits or hid behind a cloud of bugs; the plan was always the same.

Swinging blind wasn’t the way to go. A real fighter knew how to sell the bit, just long enough to draw them in, just enough to make them cocky. So I roared and raved. I cursed and swung at shadows. I even let one bug through my eyeholes before moving my eyes elsewhere.

I saw a motorcycle get thrown towards me. I turned towards it, staring as it sailed in a high arc for my face. And when it connected, I allowed my forelegs to topple, sending me rolling across the street.

I saw it. For a moment, just before the motorcycle really gained some air, I saw a pair of murky, blue-green tentacles that flung it up. That spin was how she’d been getting the force. It was slow, but she could hide her movements behind cars and her swarm.

Now that I knew what to look for, I stopped lashing out at random. I pulled more of my metal inward. It made me look smaller, like I was tiring. Instead of absorbing back the metal, I compacted the blades tightly, forming a dense network of muscles. I barely felt the impacts now and the bugs couldn’t reach me anymore.

I let her hit me a few more times. She was a teleporter, but slow. Through the blur of blades grinding before my eyes, I could see what she was doing. She reached out with tentacles of water, then swung whatever she grabbed like a stone from a sling. 

The water. That swing was where all her strength came from. It was also how she teleported. She couldn’t do both at once.

I grinned. She’d overstayed her welcome.

She grabbed another dumpster and pulled it from the alley. I made a wolf’s head on my back and made it gnash and snarl. I watched as she took the dumpster and began to swing it in slow, heavy arcs.

Then, when she got ready to release, I did the same. The false head broke apart into metal scrap as I lunged from the shell I’d formed around myself. A few of my boys wanted to know why I never tried to get big like the twins or Lung. That was easy: Bigger wasn’t better. There was a point at which it wasn’t worth the effort.

For me, that was about half the size of a school bus. Instead of taking up more volume, I made myself denser. Thicker, stronger muscles. More, sharper blades. I became a whirlwind of blades, strong enough to take no damn near anything and as responsive as my human body.

Monarch’s bugs couldn’t see into my body so she couldn’t react in time, either. I crushed her against a brick wall, only for our combined weight to burst through it. No matter, it ended with me pinning her atop rubble.

She shouted something. Water tentacles wrapped around me, trying to tear me off. She couldn't lift me though; I was far heavier than a dumpster now.

I didn’t bother listening. Jaws of the wolf snapped against her shoulder. Her skin was thicker, almost rubbery. Definitely a brute of some kind, but not durable enough. Metallic teeth spun like a chainsaw, ripping into her flesh. 

There was more screaming. The water tentacles finally lost cohesion. When they next reformed, they wrapped around my snout, forcing their way inside. She was trying to drown me.

Dumbass. The wolf head I used had nothing to do with my core. Not that she was doing anything but reacting on instinct now.

I slashed one claw into her stomach. With my concerted weight, I punctured through her rubbery skin with ease. I pinned her torso in place as I slowly ripped her right arm out of its socket.

Her arm came apart with the squelch of gore and the splatter of blood. Finally, I heard her scream. So she wasn’t immune to pain, just really resistant. That was good; it’d be no fun otherwise. 

“Don’t pass out yet, Monarch,” I growled as I forced the wolf’s head into a grin. Turning, I bit down on her other arm. “I promised myself I’d make you crawl like the bug you are. You still have three more to go.”

“F-Fuck you!” She spat. Good, that was more grit than I expected of a coward. The “smart” fighters were usually pussies once I got my hands on them.

Slowly, my teeth began to rotate. I got another scream from her. Even the water fell away, dripping down off my snout now that it obviously wasn’t working.

Then, the murky water mixed with her blood. I saw it begin to swirl. I knew what it meant: She was teleporting away.

“You fucking coward,” I snarled. I reared back and brought my paw down on her chest. I felt her body break. Her ribs snapped like toothpicks and she spat blood, but the portal continued to form. “You think you can run from me?”

I picked her up and flung her away from the portal. If she dove into pools of water, then keeping her from leaving was simple. A trail of blood followed as she skipped across the street.

She was injured, damn near dead. Broken ribs. A hole in her gut. Probably some fucked up organs, too. One arm ripped clear off and another hanging by scraps. Anyone else would have croaked long ago from blood loss if nothing else.

Still, the portal formed beneath where she landed. The water followed her blood, drawn to her like maggots to a corpse. 

I lunged for her again, but I knew I wouldn’t make it in time. My jaws closed where her head used to be, snapping down on empty air. She was gone. Whether to die alone or to lick her wounds, I didn’t know.

If I ever saw her again, I’d make good on that promise. I was Hookwolf. I was a monster, a murderer, a Nazi. Fine, but no one ever called me a liar.

Author’s Note

Many old cities like Boston, New Haven, and Washington have Oldtowns. And yes, the vast majority of old, prestigious universities got their start as Christian seminaries. In fact, of the Ivy League, only Cornell did not start out as a seminary. 

I forgot what Taylor’s range was with her bugs. I’m just going to say three blocks because I’m too lazy to look it up.

Taylor takes her first big L. We also get to see the full extent of Tahm’s “blessing.” She did say she was more a durability brute than a strength brute and this is a big factor here.

To be honest, a part of me considered letting her win, but nah. Hookwolf is one of the strongest brutes in the setting once you exclude the “Triumvirate-tier” anomalies. Between him and Lung, it’s a tossup as to who gets the Worf treatment more.

I think that if fanfic writers took away the plot armor on their MCs, most fics would end with them dying horribly to Hookwolf. Unlike Lung, he isn’t passive. He takes a lot of pride in being a warrior, in the bloodiest way possible in the modern age. He’s not dumb, nor is he inexperienced.

To be fair, I’m guilty of this as well. In A Colorful Life, the MC literally drowns him in like three minutes. The next time they meet, he twists Hookwolf like a balloon animal. It makes sense in context, but I felt like treating Hookwolf like the massive threat he is in at least one of my fics.

Animal Fact: Most of you know what a cookiecutter shark is. What you might not know is that they are bioluminescent. They have shiny undersides that they use to perfectly match the light coming from above. That is, except for a thin band along their neck that sheds no light.

From below, this thin band looks like a small fish (shaded because their body blocks the light from the surface), and so small fish are drawn to it. When the shark isn't making out with a submarine, these little fishes are what it eats, which makes it something of a reverse-anglerfish that baits using darkness rather than light.