Tim feels the energy course though his body and loses himself in the renewal of his power. He hasn’t felt nearly this good since the mark took effect, since he fought Ray. The power to part the sky itself concentrates into his fist, and it ignites like a brilliant atomic star shining against the night. He can do this now, he can win, but he hesitates in letting loose the full power punch.

  As the flames collect around his fist, he feels the power leaving him, he can sense the pool inside him evaporating. Lance’s assumptions are right, this isn’t a fix, it's a band-aid, and if he rips it off, uses all the energy up, who knows what could happen to him. Plus he can feel that it’d kill a lot of people, Darik included.

  The hesitation gives Chimera an opening, as he quickly brings his club tail into PK. It catches him off guard and collides with PK's arm, the force breaking it and sending pain shooting into his shoulder then the rest of his body. Chimera nearly launches him away but PK is able to dig his feet into the ground, and uses his other hand to grab the tail before it retracts.

  His other arm repairs itself and he digs his fingers in and begins to spin Chimera by the tail, his massive body leaving 20 feet deep gashes in the ground as he collides with the hillside. PK goes to throw him away, farther from the house. As he lets go, spinal cords erupt from the red void and plunge into Chimera’s chest, before sprouting from his back and growing huge snake skulls. Their jaws open wider and shoot into the ground, anchoring Chimera and preventing him from flying off. The cords grow blood vessels and muscle as they flex and pull Chimera back to the earth, smashing into PK and sending a shockwave through the hill.

  Plants and tendons creep out of Chimera’s feet and start to entangle PK, squeezing his arms and body as they wrap around him. He transforms into a diplodocus, the bindings instantly splitting and the sudden mass throwing Chimera up, PK quickly capitalizing and using his whip-like tail to crack the sound barrier and send Chimera deep into the hill. PK goes human, and finds himself midair as his mass retracts towards his feet. He twists in the air to face the crater, only to be met by a red energy beam.

  At first PK thinks it might be a boon, it feels like his power, like it should belong to him, but as he tries to drink it in to add to the Amp’s pool it doesn’t obey him, the beam pushing him into the sky until it sputters out and fades away. PK brings up his arms to guard, expecting a follow up, but instead sees Chimera sprout his wings and fly off.

  “Fuck.”

  Chimera must’ve gotten the scent or something because he’s heading straight for the house now, and that means there isn’t much time to stop him.

  PK turns his senses inward to try and gauge how much power he’s used as he dives after Darik from high in the sky. Transforming into the diplodocus ate up a noticeable chunk. Is that because of how large it is? How much mass he puts on? Or is transforming in general that taxing and he just never realized? He’ll find out soon enough.

  PK cuts through the air and lands on Chimera’s writhing back as they pass over a street that runs along a steep drop off, an old, rusting guard rail running alongside it. PK raises his fist and slams it down into Chimera, making him plummet towards the ground before his wings beat faster and faster, catching him before he collides with the asphalt.

  PK raises up his heel to axe kick him into the ground as they follow the road, before a snake head spouts and strikes at him, forcing him to shift his weight and instead do a cartwheel across Chimera’s back as other serpent heads pop up like weeds to lash out at him. Chimera’s tail swivels and swipes at PK as he dodges a cobra head, catching him in the back and cracking bone. The amps energy fills the breaks quickly and PK wraps his legs around the tail to hang on as it whips to try and fling him off. PK waits till it whips forward and lets go, shooting over Chimera’s back until he reaches Dark’s head and grabs the bull by its horns as they turn a corner leading into a winding, canyon-like street with high walls of earth on each side.

  PK lets the momentum carry him into a kick into Chimera’s hulking neck, forcing him into an upwards posture as they fly through the air and collide into the canyon walls. PK bashes his face with right hook after right hook as his back repeatedly meets stone and dirt, until bright lights set upon them. A car enters through the opposite entrance, and as PK collides with another wall, a massive boulder dislodges itself and begins to fall.

  The driver doesn’t have the reaction time to hit the brakes soon enough to stop, that much is clear, as Chimera knows it too. His wings beat and he repositions in the air as the rock makes its way to flatten the car, practically pointing PK at it. PK kicks off Chimera and transforms into an ankylosaurus, tackling the boulder and shattering it into smaller chunks that fly towards his initial entrance.

  The stones bounce across the ground and smash through the old, rusty guardrail and plummet down, and PK can hear the ground groaning as a small landslide begins to form.

  “Fuck.” PK glances behind him as Chimera flies away, and he leaps in the opposite direction. Shooting out into the night air, he watches as the tumble of stone collects more and more sharp shards and kicks up more and more dirt, all joining together in a wave of dirt that is quickly making its way down towards multiple smaller properties.

  “Fuck.” He repeats. How does he deal with something like this? How can his power set possibly stop a landslide? He should’ve thought about bashing into the boulder more, he should’ve either have just pushed it out of the way or turned into something bigger to pulverize it into dust.

  Maybe he could use one of his larger forms to block it off? At 130 feet his Argentinosaurus has to be longer than this small landslide, he just has to get ahead of it and hunker down, right? No way the dirt wave could pass his 24 foot shoulder height, right?

  Getting ahead of it should be easy, landslides come up in paleontology, they’re great at catching living things off guard and covering them up so that no pesky scavenges can’t pick at them, making their victims prime candidates for fossilization if the conditions are right. Thanks to that, Tim knows landslides move, at most, around 35 miles an hour, and he’s much, much faster than that.

  He watches the landslide and picks a spot far ahead of it, then twists his body to face away from it, pulls back his arm and punches the air. The force rockets him forward and he smashes into the ground. He then launches himself towards the dirt, his body instantaneously gaining over a hundred tons as it flies across the ground. Sauropod and dirt collide, PK’s improvised flesh and muscle dam working as the dirt collects against his side, until the wave sprays over his tail. In his haste to think of a solution, he didn’t even consider the fact that not all of his body would reach the same height as the rest. Rocks and dirt rush over him and continue down the hill, getting closer and closer to the first home, and with the dirt building against Tim’s side there’s nothing he can do without the avalanche starting all over again.

  He cranes his stories long neck to watch as the boulder barrels down towards the first house, the rolling rocks making the entire property rattle. The windows shake and threaten to break, the two cars in the driveway alarms blare, and metal trash cans by the front door fall over and spill their contents of bags, watermelon husks, and... something fluffy and yellow.

  Tim isn’t sure if this counts as him making a miracle or not, but if not he’ll take it as some sort of cosmic reward for freeing the little Creature from Arch. He shrinks down and kicks away from the growing wall of debris, allowing it to fall once more. He twists and kicks the closest rocks away from the house for good measure, lands, and scoops up the little Yellow red panda up into his arms.

  “Look at you! You perfect little Deus Ex Machina.” PK says as he skips off towards the growing natural disaster, Creature greeting him by putting his paws up, then gently slapping his face. PK tosses him into the air and catches him so that the little friend is facing it.

  “Mind helping me with this?” PK asks Creature, who looks up at him and gives a loud chirp.

  “That probably means yes.” PK shrugs and grabs hold of Creature like he did at Arch, pulling back one of his paws and firing off the little buddy’s hand like a slingshot. Creature seems to get the memo and expands his arm, angling it so it passes behind the landslide, while extending his other arm to touch paws. His whole body then stretches and wraps around the incoming dirt, catching it all inside of himself like a water balloon. The momentum doesn’t stop however and begin forcing Creature back, with PK bracing himself against Creature as they smash and splinter the properties white picket fence. PK doesn’t have a choice but to transform to add to his strength, finally stopping his disaster before he and Creature hit the wall of the home.

  “Ok,” PK shifts human and quickly walks around to the front of his friend, “I'm sorry to leave you like this but it's life and death, can you haul that dirt away by yourself?”

  Creature’s jumbo paws go up in the air, which Tim doesn’t have much choice but to interpret as a yes with what’s at stake at the moment.

  “I’ll find you as soon as I can.” He tells Creature as he leaps away and towards Lance’s house.

  As it turns out, the size of the transformations do matter. Transforming into the largest confirmed land animal ever carved out a decent chunk of power from PK, while becoming his Meganeura wasn’t nearly as taxing. Healing, big transformations, and energy punches are what he needs to avoid in the coming fight, if that is even going to end up being possible.

  It's looking like it wasn’t going to be, as by the time Tim finally catches up. Chimera’s clearly been busy. Crimson red fire licks at the grass on each side of the long, winding path to the home, huge gashes now separating it into chunks. Shattered arrow heads lie all over the ground. Half of Edwad’s motorcycle lies tangled in a burning tree, the other half nowhere to be seen.

  That is far from the worst of it though, as the Hunter family’s house lay in ruins, burning, with the basement fully exposed. Chimera hunches over, scraping away what floorboards are left behind and looks down to a calm Lance, drone hovering by him.

  The two boys speak to each other, but Tim doesn’t listen. Darik’s too close to Cristine, and that wasn’t Tim’s main concern. Lance is right there, in danger, that’s what really matters. He puts on a few pounds as he transforms from his Meganeura into his Compsagnathus and drops down to the remains of the first floor. He positions himself behind Darik and in an instant becomes one of the most dangerous predators of all time.

  There is a lot of reasons why Tyrannosaurus Rex has that title—It's big, fast, and intelligent, especially for the time. Its sense of vision and smell were, are suburb, its thick with muscles and a scaly hide. More than anything though, is its bite force. At eight thousand pounds per square inch, its bite on contact causes bones to explode, and Tim is far, far more powerful than just a normal T’Rex.

  Different spots in Chimera’s body have different levels of durability, some are far below Tim’s human form, some far greater, none of it matters.

  Blood vessels pop and snakes go into shock, muscles tear and bones shatter before twelve inch teeth even touch them. It isn’t until PK purposely slows his bite that it stops tearing through Chimera’s shoulder and firmly roots itself into highly condensed muscle.

  PK lifts Chimera up, pivots, then smashes him into the ground. He flexes his legs and begins to drag Chimera through the dirt, but Darik extends an arm back to the basement. His claw digs into the floor and the Void begins to absorb pieces of his body back into itself while blade tipped tendrils sever more parts, separating his head and part of his torso from the rest of his body and PK’s jaws.

  Tim lifts and spats the quickly rotting body away and digs his feet and tail into the ground to turn and pursue. He snaps at Chimera as his arm retracts and pulls him back into the basement. The void expels sinew and bone, rebuilding his legs and feet nearly as fast as PK transforms, planting them into the ground as barbed, bone tipped tendrils of muscle shoot out of them and anchor into the ground.

  PK looms over Chimera and goes to bury his teeth into him once again, when a head explodes out of Chimera’s back. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of the most deadly predators to ever live, with one of the most powerful bites in all of nature. Tim is far more powerful than any Tyrannosaurus ever was, and Darik, twisted as they are, has his powers. PK’s T’Rex form is far more durable than his human form, with a scaly hide and thick layers of muscle, and none of it matters. Chimera’s twelve inch teeth shatter the bones in PK’s snout before they even make it through the flesh, filling his sinuses with blood. The pressure makes blood spew from his nostrils, slicing through concrete like the highest pressure water hose. The barely alive, perversion of a dinosaur begins to twist like a crocodile, and Tim’s snout joins it.

  The roof of his mouth snaps and twists, his upper teeth burst from their roots and lodge themselves into his tongue. As Chimera continues to twist, the connecting tissue between Tim’s snout and the rest of his head look like bloody spaghetti twirled around a fork, until it finally rips and showers the area with more blood. Tim roars in pain as he falls over, the pain itself nearly sending him unconscious, nearly killing him, until his instincts take over and he becomes human. His body heals, his face pristine, like nothing has even happened, but the pain lingers. His brain struggles to possess that it's not there anymore as he rolls around, holding his face and writhing in pain.

  For many moments too long, there’s nothing left of Tim but the worst pain he’s ever felt in his life. Even as his body finally realizes there's nothing wrong anymore, he freezes up, scared, terrified of experiencing it again, until there’s an eruption of pink flame and two bodies burst into the sky and fall like meteors nearby him.

  As Tim’s eyes set on Cristine’s flaming pink sword sticking through Darik’s skull, eyes ablaze with red energy, Tim forces himself back up to his feet. As PK’s calves tense and launch him forward, Cristine’s nine tails sprout like flaming geysers and snakes jut up from Darik’s shoulders like weeds, fangs coated in red energy.

  Tim’s fist coats itself in green, and the tri-color of energies collide, shaking the ground as the coalesce into a tornado that super heats the ground around them as it carries the three kids up and up and up into the sky. They’re thrown out of the energy spire and PK holds out his hands, recollecting the energy back into his hand and absorbing what’s left of it back into his pool. He turns and sees Cristine and Darik already back at each other's throats.

  PK kicks his leg and the shockwave sends him towards the two as more snakes try to sink their fangs into Cristine. Paper bursts from her hair and wraps around each snake head, popping them like grapes as the rest of the Yokai emerges. PK tilts his head out of the way of snake brain and eyes flying past him and then collides with Chimera, who sprouts his wings and begins to carry PK and Tamamo both off.

  The mummy-like Yokai wraps around Chimera’s skull as Tamamo pulls her sword back to start stabbing him, until PK tears loose grass from Chimera’s back and uses it to swing around the hulk, kicking the sword from Cristine’s hand. She summons it back to her as PK wraps the plant rope around her arm, and kicks her. As the grass goes taught he can hear her arm pop out of its socket, while above him a laser fires. Chimera launches eye beams from his bull skull that rip and tear at the paper Yokai, and create a shockwave that slams PK loose of his body and sends him careening towards the ground.

  He quickly recovers and with another punch sends himself back up to the aerial battle, but as he passes Cristine, one of her tails wraps around his ankle and she uses him to carry herself up and onto Chimera's back. Tim yanks his foot free as Cristine forces the arm back into its joint with a loud pop. She summons her katana and goes to sink it into Darik’s back as a Boomslang erupts from behind her midstrike, fangs going to enter the back of her leg. PK dashes along Darik’s back and then shoves his hand into a mass of grass and tendons, using it to anchor a leg sweep that splatters through the Boomslang’s head and then collides with Cristine’s leg, snapping her shin.

  She falters, drops her sword, and loses her footing, beginning to fly off into the night, before an enormous clawed hand snatches her from the air. Its feathery, leathery, scaly skin writhing before serpents explode from it, like maggots bursting from a rotting corpse. PK digs his fingers in and tries to launch himself at the enormous hand, but the spot where he sunk his foot into holds him tight, and begins to suck him in. His vision is swallowed by darkness and Darik brings him into the belly of the beast, balls of muscles growing by his back and sternum, forcing out his breath and preventing him from bringing a new one in.

  Panic takes him for just a moment as he can’t draw his next breath, but then transforms. His six foot long claws rip through Darik’s shoulder and his long neck plows through his back, PK’s favorite Therizinosaurus letting out a rumbling roar. He shoves one of his hands through Chimera’s chest as he turns to look at Cristine, who’s summoned flame with so much force it blasted the now dying snake heads back. The claw she’s in is now flying off and rotting away, and with a tiny fit of struggle she breaks its grip and kicks off of it, another fox-like ear sprouting from her head as the rest of her face transforms.

  PK goes to backhand her away, but paper wraps around his arm as the Yokai restrains him, wrapping around the rest of the dinosaur’s torso to anchor itself. Cristine’s arm transforms into a fiery claw as she collides with Darik and plunges it into his soul as she manifests her sword. Tim shoves his arm further through Darik, impaling Cristine with it and making her drop the blade again. Cristine spats pink flame and grabs PK’s claw, pulling herself off and on top of it. She goes on all fours and sprints across the short gap back to Darik, baring fangs at his skull as two huge King Cobra emerge from his eyes sockets and bare down on the girl.

  PK tries to intercept both attacks, but a Tyrannosaurus head explodes from between Darik’s shoulder blades and fires a beam, hitting him square in the chest and sending him and the Yokai flying towards a mountaintop. PK tries to use his free claw to launch another shockwave to send his 6 ton body back into the fray, but the Yokai stops him, wrapping around that hand too. It forces him to shrink back down into his human form, and the scroll monster quickly moves to rebind him. Green energy begins to pour from PK’s body like steam as he uses it to enhance all of himself, he throws his arm out and snatches the closest paper tendrils and sends the rest of his body into a spin. He goes so fast that Yokai is sent into a long strand, unable to contend with the force of it, until Tim lets go and sends the ghost into the horizon and out of sight, hoping the distance will free the ghost.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Tim turns his attention to the sounds of the clashing titans, his vision briefly obscured by pink and red flashes as their powers clash, and when he finally spots them his gut drops. They weren’t in the air for long, but all the flying and shockwaves made them move much farther than Tim noticed in the heat of battle. Gone were the sparsely homed and rural area of Alpine, instead its mountains and grassy hills were replaced with buildings, streets, stores and poor apartments, the fight now in the skies of El Cajon. It didn’t look like it was going to stay aerial much longer either, Darik and Cristine were getting lower and lower, Cristine continuously slashing at the Chimera’s enormous wings to cut away his aerial advantage, not realizing the destruction that could come from it.

  If PK got to them fast enough, he could throw them back towards the mountains and keep the destruction to a minimum, but as he nears the others he quickly realizes that that isn't going to happen. Darik fires a huge beam at him, he tries to twist out of the way but it knocks him off course and spinning through the air. He rights himself and transforms into his Meganeura for speed and stability and breaks the sound barrier, only to be intercepted by a tail swipe from Cristine.

  His body heads for the ground faster than the others now, and he turns human to try and kick them back up, but a shockwave from Darik’s thagomizer sends Cristine down and colliding with Tim. PK extends his senses down as he looks behind him, and sees the quickly growing roof of the supermarket whose parking lot was host to him and Lilith defeating Cristine and Passion.

  He uses every iota of enhanced processing power, and even tries augmenting it with Amp pool to figure out just how many people are in the building and where. His life sense tell him no lives are in immediate danger, but the impact might hurt the... 8 or so people currently inside.

  Good, a slow night.

  First things first, slow the descent, he couldn’t use a shockwave to do it, they’re too close to the ground now, so what? He puts his arms and legs out like a star fish and transforms into the Quetzalcoatlus, the giraffe sized Pterosaur having the largest known wingspan in history, besides maybe Hatzegopteryx, juries out on that.

  The outstretched wings catch the air like a parachute and slow the fall, but not enough, especially with how heavy Darik seems to weigh. Tim begins to beat his wings as fast as he can, using his enhanced strength just enough to not fire off any shockwaves, but to slow the fall further and further while keeping his back pressed against the two other combatants. Just before they hit the roof, he shrinks back down to human, and they crash through. Still channeling the amp into his brain, he quickly picks up on where every single thing and person are, and who to get out first.

  As the three of them barrel through the ceiling and begin to flatten shelves, he watches as the shelving to the right of them begin to tip over, and can predict the domino effect will continue down and quickly take two people, judging from the scents and sounds, a mother and child.

  The problem now was how can he get out from under the other two to clamber over there to rescue them in time, without using anything that could end up hurting anyone else? PK thinks through a few options as metal bends and a can of corn explodes against his face, and then he thinks of a new way to his powers. New on purpose at least, thinking back, whenever he transforms it's almost never center mass growing out or retracting in, it's much less focused than that, and much more about what he was trying to do at the time. So, that means he might be able to control the points on his body where the transformations start and end, so in practice...

  PK transforms into the long and slender Coelophysis, just under ten feet long, its long neck reaches the next aisle easily. He holds out his tiny hand and focuses on his outstretched head, the ending point, and shifts back into human. Just like he was hoping, he retracts towards the tip of his snout, and in an instant he’s free of the oncoming crash. What’s more, his arm is already reaching out, and he grabs hold of the falling shelving and vaults over it.

  He soars over the next few and lands next to the mother as the shelf begins to fall, he quickly swats the incoming items away from parent and child and holds his hand up, catching the shelf. He can hear Darik and Cristine readying to match blows again so he pushes the shelf back, scoops up two, puts them in their shopping basket, puts his foot on the front and kicks off.

  “Sorry ma’am, gotta clear out for the clean up on aisle all of them.” PK winks to them as he kicks and makes the cart turn as it exits the aisle.

  As the cart picks up speed his ears pick up more danger and he steps off, then jumps towards the fight. A blond girl that Tim is pretty sure he has a class with stares dumbstruck as Chimera and Tamamo fight, and Chimera’s tail swipes through one of two chains holding up an aisle sign, causing it to begin to swing towards the girl. Tim collides with the sign before it even touches her, his momentum carrying him and the sign up to the ceiling. He kicks off of it while still hanging on the sign and swings towards the girl, scoping her up and letting go of the dangling hazard.

  He flies past the still moving shopping cart and lands on the pressure sensing mat, letting the mechanical doors open up just as the cart comes through. He then sets down the girl and gives her a wink before cartwheeling back into the fray.

  Everyone was heading towards an exit now, but there are a few in danger still, especially as Tim hears Cristine’s tail crackle as she growls, flames beginning to build around her as she brings her arms in, Tim guessing she was about to let an AOE blast. He buries his hand into the ground and tears out a chunk of ever useful rebar, and chucks it at her head.

  The metal makes purchase and sends her head back, the flames failing to gather and dispersing as she fumbles backwards. Chimera goes to capitalize on the opening tendrils burying into the ground and pulling rebar free, snakes coiling around each iron spear so their venomous fangs tip the heads. They raise up and fall towards Cristine, and Tim jumps in the way, back facing the deadly spears, he transforms into an Ankylosaurus and deflects them, his powerful legs smacking into Cristine and sending her into the ground.

  “You both need to stop.” PK says as he shrinks back to human to dodge a clawed swipe from Chimera, finding himself on top of Cristine, reaching into the ground like its putty to grab some rebar to bend over her arms. “There’s too many peo—” He cut off as an ethereal claw phases through his chest, Cristine lifting him up and tossing him to the side, her whole body glowing.

  PK slides across the ground, falling into a roll, flattening boxes of instant mashed potatoes and sending the flakes into the air. He grabs the floor to stop and stands up, takes a step forward, and then his knee buckles.

  He falls to it, his breaths becoming shallow, his heart rate going even faster than it already was. His vision goes in and out of focus, and a hunger pain makes his stomach clench. He falls to the ground, his amp is depleted, and Darik and Cristine are still at each other's throats.

  A boomslang’s fangs finally latch into Cristine’s thigh as her sword goes through Darik’s looming head, causing the both to stumble back from each other. Cristine's eyes start to bleed as the enhanced venom moves through her.

  Blood pours from her mouth, making her cough as she accidentally breathes some in. Trails of red come out of her fox ears like waterfalls, saturating the ground in red, pink wisps nibbling at pools. But she doesn’t go down, instead her body glows brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter, burning the ground around her as she becomes a blazing silhouette.

  Darik adds to his bulk, covering more snakes his layers and layers of flesh and bone, growing their heads and venom glands until they’re as wide as a man’s chest. More fangs and sacks spiral out of the meat dimension and fuse themselves to his knees, his fists, and his thagomizer, becoming a pulsing, sack covered pin cushion, the tips of the fangs spurting venom.

  They’re about to kill each other, Tim is about to fail them both again, and he’s going to helplessly watch them die, just like Ophelia. There’s nothing he can do, his body spent, and he doesn’t see anyway to make a miracle through all the blood, dust, and potato flakes in the air.

  Except, that there is potato flakes in the air, everywhere, mixing with the juice from detonated cans of peaches and corn. Almost feels like a miracle, if only he can move. He grits his teeth, his vision blurring as he wills his arm out, wills his hand to squeeze his band, then to rap around something, anything, and pull it to his mouth.

  It tastes so good his eyes almost roll back into his head, it has to be the best thing to ever touch his tongue, and whatever it is, he keeps shoving it into his mouth, until he can launch himself with a flick of his ankle.

  He can’t determine who he collides into, but his powers can tell it avoids a deadly blow. He crashes into another shelf, hears glass shatter, and the smell of tomato and garlic spatter his face. He looks it up, scoops up more, crunches the glass and swallows it along with the sauce. His vision steadily returns, and he scoops more and more spaghetti sauce into his mouth, smashing another jar nearby and continuing to ravenously feed, until his life senses draw his attention again.

  Another deadly blow is about to happen, so he lets life guide his way, and snaps his fingers. He thuds into an enormous snake, drawing Darik’s attention. Cristine jumps onto the hand, and Tim flicks sauce into her eyes, causing her to fall backwards as her flames burn the sauce and obscure her vision more.

  “Just give up!” Darik raises a fist, a hint of the shaking that racks Tim’s own body.

  “No.”

  Tim sniffs the air, then puts a foot on the snake, and kicks away, letting his body collide through the meat section’s display. He quickly starts to shovel all the raw cuts into his mouth, swallowing without chewing, when Darik comes barreling towards him.

  He tries to move, but his legs fail to listen to his commands and he’s snagged from behind the counter. Darik lifts him up, eye beams from within his skull failing to spark, when Cristine jumps onto him. She doesn’t use her sword anymore, instead she feral bites and claws at Darik’s neck, her tails sticking them into the bull skull’s eye sockets and setting it a blaze.

  Tim struggles to force himself from Darik’s grip, only for his life sense to have him look to a spinal cord rising above Cristine, the blood vessel and muscle of a T.rex head growing from it. A half formed mouth pours drool on Cristine, it bubbling and evaporating from her fire as the jaws close in, inch by inch.

  Tim takes a deep breath and transforms to his compy, causing him to pass out for a moment and revert to human form. Now free of Darik grip, he jumps, arm out stretched, and pushes Cristine out of the way of the closing jaws.

  Instead, the steak knife, bone crushing teeth find him.

  Half of his rib cage explodes, green blood splatters up and covers one of his lenses. He can’t feel his right arm anymore, and as he skids across the ground, he realizes it because it isn’t there.

  He comes to a stop by a bottle of ketchup, grabs it and starts to drink, only to feel it do nothing at all. He looks down and realizes why, his guts lay outside his body, the ketchup going down and out through a hole in his stomach. The ketchup leaks its red, far more human color through the puddle, and surrounds Tim’s still beating heart, dangling out of his rib cage and resting on the floor.

  Then, Tim dies, at least he’s pretty sure he does, when he opens his eyes next he can’t even see. Then again, everything outside feels in again, so maybe he instinctually transformed again.

  “Tim-Chan!” Cristine screams, scrambling to him.

  He feels his mouth open as Cristine shoves food in it, his vision returning as calories manage to make their way to his stomach.

  “Fuck, I...” Tim hears Darik say, “Stop! You’re going to make him choke!”

  “You!” Cristine snarls with far more venom than Darik can produce, “You did this.”

  And she attacks again, leaving Tim on the floor.

  He lies there, no strength to continue, listening to the others smash through a wall and take the clash outside. Car alarms blare, asphalt crunches, what windows have been replaced from the last anomalous fight shatter.

  They’re still going, barely, but they’re somehow still going, almost putting aside that hate, almost, to stop, but not quite. It's hard to blame Cristine at this moment, Darik did just accidentally bite Tim in half after all. Darik did seem like he was faltering though, so its on Cristine for pushing this fight even further.

  Tim forces himself up, still stuffing his face, but now noticing the food isn’t working anymore. The only thing letting him stand up is sheer stubbornness and willpower, and he’s not sure how much he has left, not to use on this anyways.

  He extends his senses, and finds Jane, after all, his home isn’t far from here. Her heart’s pounding, her skin soaked in sweat, her long, beautiful hair flowing far out behind her. Tim chuckles as he hears her footsteps, so far away, but getting closer and closer.

  Of course she’s headed here, Tim would’ve done the same thing in her position. After all, what is she supposed to do? Just wait to see if he comes home ok again? When there could be something, anything she could do?

  He could go to her, leave and just collapse into her arms. Feel her body heat seep into his bones, put his ear against her chest and let her heart become all consuming. It’d be so nice, and it's so very, very tempting.

  But as Cristine severs a thrown car in half, then leaps and carters Darik, he knows he can’t. He walks out on feeble, shaky legs, as Darik throws a chunk of cement that Cristine exhaustedly deflects into transformer wires. The wires snap and hit the floor, writhing with live electricity.

  His lenses narrow at it, and then he looks at Darik, covered in dinosaur parts spawned from Tim’s own power.

  “Time to make that miracle.” Tim lowers himself to the ground, then rockets off.

  His life sense tingles as he passes over the live wire, and snatches it like he’s catching a venomous snake from behind its head. He sees Cristine and Darik ready final blows that will kill each other, but they hesitate as they see him fly past. The cord pulls taught, and Prehistoric Kid flicks his hand just enough to send him towards Darik. He wraps around the Chimera, once, twice, three times, and on the third journey around, he sticks out a foot and kicks the bloody and bruised Tamamo no Mae, sending her careening into a wall, the grocery store collapsing on top of her.

  A fourth spin, and he lands on Chimera’s back, he lifts the cord up, and plunges the live wire into the hulk’s back. Darik roars in pain as the lightning courses through him, all of his prehistoric parts overloading and bubbling.

  They explode into foul smelling brow rot, spattering trees, cars, and debris with the steaming gore. A rib cage explodes out of Chimera’s side, skidding across the ground as it melts into slime, splashing Prehistoric Kid.

  Tim sighs, bracing himself as he sees the brown sludge attract the charge towards him, and his cells soak them up. He reels back, his body entering that all to familiar cramping state, and the Chimera’s form explodes. It sends Tim flying, skidding across the ground until he comes to rest in some rubble.

  “I did it.” He smiles, the memory of Ophelia’s earring flashing in his mind, right before he passes out.

  ***

  Tim wakes slowly, his eyelids struggling against their weight.

  Get up, he tries to will himself as his eyes open, struggling to adjust until a white ceiling comes into view. He needs to get Cristine and Darik away before Arch or Site 51 show up, he needs to get away. Wait, a ceiling? They were all lying out under the sky before though.

  “Fuck.” He wills himself up, his aching muscles bracing, ready for a fight.

  No one was there, and he’s not strapped down, so, no threat then?

  “Finally.” A door opens and Lance comes in, sighing in relief.

  “Lance?” Tim returns the sigh and his muscles relax. “Where are we?”

  “Hunters, if they can, keep multiple safe houses, you're in one of ours.”

  “What about Cristine and Darik?”

  “Healed and contained.”

  Another sigh of relief from Tim as he collapses backwards in bed.

  “Tim...” Lance says his name, but hesitates to speak.

  “What is it?”

  “I need to let you know what’s been going on.”

  “Going on?” He thinks, then realisation comes to him. “How long was I out?”

  “Two weeks, and a lot has happened.”

  Which of Tim's antagonists has been your favorite so far?