When Luke arrived at Seth’s facility, he certainly hadn’t been expecting to see it reduced to ashes. Nor had he expected to find Seth’s corpse, burnt to a crisp and sliced in two pieces.
“What the fuck…?” he mumbled, staring down at the dead body.
He was shaken from his trance as one of his men jogged up beside him. “We found a survivor.”
Luke spun around, and found himself face-to-face with Ghoul. The mercenary was limping, and half of his body had been torn up and badly burned. The gatling gun arm had been half-melted, rendering it a completely useless lump of metal, though even with all of those wounds, the merc’s arrogant smirk was still clearly visible.
In the blink of an eye, Luke’s hand was around Ghoul’s throat – and not only that, his forearm had transformed into the monstrous claw of his demon form, allowing an even stronger grip.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Luke asked, nodding towards Seth’s corpse. “You do this shit?”
Ghoul shook his head ever so slightly so as not to push his throat into the jagged claws of Luke’s demon hand. “No. Wouldn’t dream of it. He hired me, after all.”
“Seth hired you? Tch. Fat load of good you did him, huh?”
The mercenary held his hands – er, hand – up. “I’ll admit, this fight didn’t go the way I expected it to.”
“What the fuck happened then?” said Luke, clenching his jaw. He was finding it incredibly difficult to not fully complete his demon form and tear Ghoul to shreds, but his desire for answers regarding the responsibility of Seth’s death was enough to keep that urge repressed, if only for a few more moments.
“Your friend there had a FORMA card. Everyone knows that once you have one in your possession, you make a lot of enemies.”
Luke glanced down at Seth’s body again, thinking back to the conversation he’d had with him right before this fight went down. While he’d been dismissive of the FORMA and its supposed power before, the fact that it had seemingly caused this had certainly begun changing his perception of these things… “Like who? Get to the fuckin’ point, you ugly bastard.”
Ghoul’s grin widened, and blood began to leak out from between his lips. “You ever heard of GLYPH?”
A suit-clad member of Gunmetal raced up the steel steps to the top floor of the office building, hurrying over to the back room. Before he was allowed to, he was stopped by two security guards, and looked over with some kind of strange portable scanner. When he was cleared, he was allowed into the office belonging to Flint.
The officer was sitting at his desk, with the back of his chair facing the door. He didn’t turn it around even when his subordinate entered the office and called out, “Boss. We picked up a sighting on that masked guy.”
In Flint’s hand was another FORMA card, one he’d hurriedly acquired to make up for the one Ace had taken from him. He tucked it into his suit, and asked simply: “Where?”
“A restaurant called the Derring-Do Diner. A customer was there and spotted him a few hours ago.”
“You know it’s him for sure?”
The subordinate nodded, reaching into his suit to retrieve his phone to provide the photographic evidence, though Flint still didn’t spin his chair around to face him, rendering the act ultimately useless. “Yes. He was wearing the mask, and the description the witness gave matches the one you and Danny gave us.”
“Keep an eye on that place. Wait for him to come back.” Finally, Flint spun his office chair around. “And when he does, light the whole fucking block up.”
“Friggin’ stupid buttmunchin’ superhero stupidhead…!” Flare grumbled as he stomped his way down the alleyway late into the night. His body ached from his fight with HYPER HAWK, but he was more so pained by the humiliation at having been completely outclassed by the superhero, and the knowledge that a chewing-out was awaiting him when he returned to base.
The Pyro Punks’ base was an old firehouse that had been repurposed by the gang, and while he’d been lectured repeatedly to use the entrance at the front, he never listened. He preferred approaching from the alley out back, and blasting open the door with a flaming punch to let off some physical, emotional, and literal steam when returning.
As the door burst open, he shuffled in, his gaze still glued to the ground. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t properly see where he was going – his eyes weren’t really working anyway. Flare was in his own mind, running images of his “battle” with HYPER HAWK back over and over, consumed with imaginary scenes of him altering the outcome of the fight. He pictured himself snatching the annoying hero out of the sky, punching holes through the visor of his stupid helmet, kicking him in the nads over and over again, and burning him to a freakin’ crisp right in front of all those stupid news cameras so the whole city could see.
In the midst of his daydreaming, he ended up stumbling into a strong, firm body, and almost tripping over himself onto his butt.
“Hey! Watch it, buttfa-!” he barked, clenching his fist and looking up at whoever it was that had cut him off of his path. But even he, dumb and hotheaded as he was, had the sense to not finish that sentence as he realized who that human wall was.
It was a woman – the only female member of the Pyro Punks, in fact, and an officer on the same level of power in the organization as Blaze. She was quite tall, standing nearly at a good six feet in height, and was incredibly well built, too, a fact she proudly displayed by cutting the bottom half of her Pyro Punks hoodie off to permanently expose her perfectly-sculpted abs. She had thick, long legs, and even longer blonde hair (far too long considering her constant close proximity to fire, if you ask me) that she kept tied in a thick, braided ponytail. And on her face, as always, were the black sunglasses she was never seen without.
She was Ana “Ember” Rodriguez, and if there was anyone in the Pyro Punks who disliked Flare more than Blaze, it was her.
“Bump into me again and you’re dead,” she spat (almost literally), folding her arms across her chest and noting the clear lack of hostage beside the young Pyro Punk grunt. “Where’s the woman from the hotel?”
Flare winced. “Sh-she got away…”
One of Ember’s brows arched up, poking out over the top of the deep black void of her sunglasses. “Come again?”
“I-it wasn’t my fault!” the young Pyro Punk blurted out. “This stupid dumb idiot superhero showed up a-and fudged the whole thing up!”
“That sounds like an excuse.”
The young boy winced again as he recalled Ember’s notorious distaste for excuses, as well as the accompanying warning about the consequences for daring to spew them into the air she breathed. “Ack! N-no! It ain’t, I swear!”
He nearly clasped his hands together to plead for mercy from her. She didn’t budge at all, continuing to stare down at him disapprovingly from behind her pitch-black sunglasses.
Flare punched a fist into his other palm. “I-I’m gonna get payback on him, I swear! Uh, ma’am! I’m gonna kick his stupid butt and make him sorry he ever messed with the Pyro Punks!”
Still, Ember didn’t respond or move. Hell, Flare couldn’t even see her breathe, she was so statuesque. That only made the room hotter, and the nervous sweat building up around his temple dripped faster.
But eventually, she did move. She turned around and began walking away, waving him away haphazardly. “Last chance, brat. Screw this up and I’ll personally roast and feed you to the boss.”
Flare nodded, relief washing over him as he realized he’d managed to make it out of that situation unscathed. “Y-yes, ma’am! I’m on it!” he hollered, even after Ember shut the door behind her. “I’ll get that darn HYPER HAWK! I’ll burn him to freakin’ smithereens!”
Typhoon was one of the smaller gangs involved in Braver City’s power struggle. Initially, they hadn’t been involved in the fighting at all – they’d begun as nothing more than a little group of local kids playing out fantasies of being heroes in their community. They’d take their little toy swords and water guns and act out pretend battles against imaginary monsters, pick up trash around town, and chip in to buy snacks for any homeless people they came across.
They quickly endeared themselves to their neighborhood, and as time passed, they went more and more legit, expanding until they eventually became a proper organization – one that continued the initial mantra of being heroes in their community. They fought off criminals, gangs, and the actual errant monster here and there, helped repair run-down homes and stores, and raised funds for medical bills, to pay off tuitions, political campaigns, and more.
But over the past few months, Typhoon found themselves taking more and more steps into becoming a proper Braver City “business”. More and more of their members were being recruited for their fighting ability compared to any other skill set, and the gang had begun clashing with other gangs more and more frequently, too. While skirmishes between organizations was an unavoidable occurrence in Braver City, Typhoon’s battles had grown more violent, more hostile, and more purposeless. No longer did the members of Typhoon fight only to defend the innocent – now, they actively ventured into foreign neighborhoods to take control over more and more territory, or to target individuals their own members had grudges against.
And it was in protest of this recent shift in identity that one of Typhoon’s officers, a judo instructor named Joei Sablan, found herself heading to the rec center that served as the gang’s HQ.
She stepped along the side of the giant indoor pool filled with Typhoon members training, until she arrived at a circle of pool chairs, all occupied by members of the gang, though there was one in particular she was searching for. “Oi! Marco! We needa talk!”
Before Joei’s arrival, the circle of Typhoon members had been enjoying a good time with food, drinks, music, and fucking, though when the leader’s name had been barked out so aggressively, the fun came to an abrupt stop. A quick flick of the thumb turned the music down, and everyone else froze, eyes darting over to their leader to gauge his reaction.
He’d been laid out across one of the chairs, and was in the midst of being ridden by one of the girls. She’d paused halfway up his shaft, but she dismounted him completely when she felt him begin to push himself up from the chair.
He stepped up to confront Joei, and the others watched wordlessly, anxious at how the scene would play out. Marco had over a foot in height over her, with an incredibly muscular body that was on full, naked display. Even more distinct than his size was his face – namely, the splotches of lighter skin around his left eye and mouth from vitiligo, and the cold, empty gaze of his black eyes. But despite how physically intimidating he normally was to everyone in the gang, Joei was the sole exception.
She herself was a physical specimen, nearly as built as he was, and no stranger to battling opponents far larger than her. But more than that, she was possibly the Typhoon member most strongly guided by her ideals and convictions, completely unwavering in her adherence to living by them. And now that those ideals were not being honored by the gang, nothing was going to stop her from addressing that, whether it was the guards outside who had been told to not allow her into the rec center, or the threat of physical retaliation at interrupting Marco’s little party.
The judoka master thrust her hand out, jabbing her finger directly into Marco’s face, though the latter didn’t flinch. “Oi! What’s this I heard about the gang trashin’ some poor old strip mall over on Atlantis Ave, huh?! I talked to a buncha the business owners there and none of ‘em had any idea what we did that for! What’s the big deal?! They do somethin’ I don’t know about?!”
“Nope.”
“Then what the hell’d we do that for then?! We better be helpin’ ‘em get their stores all fixed back up, at least!”
“No. That’s a waste of our time and money.”
“Huh?!”
Marco brought his hand up to Joei’s, and began pushing it down. The girl resisted at first, but as he increased the pressure, she complied, and her hand retracted down and away from the leader’s face. “I don’t know why some of our guys trashed the place, and I don’t care. It was enough to get a few other businesses nearby to make agreements with us so the same doesn’t happen to them. That’s a good enough outcome for me.”
Joei scowled, throwing her arms out wide. “What are ya talkin’ about?! That ain’t the kinda thing we do, Marco!”
“It is now,” Marco replied, cutting her off. “We’re not a buncha little kids doing community service anymore, Joei. If we don’t expand and grow stronger, the other gangs will, and they won’t hesitate to crush us. You wanna end up getting run over by Gunmetal like Tornado did?”
“Gunmetal shouldn’t have any beef with us anyway!” Joei responded, this time jabbing her finger into Marco’s chest – a motion that had more than a few of the nearby Typhoon members twitch in their seats, ready to scatter if a fight broke out. “If we just stick to helpin’ people in need like we’re s’posed to, those guys wouldn’t care! If they’re feelin’ threatened by us all of a sudden it’s only cuz we keep startin’ trouble for no reason!”
“We’re not a fucking charity, Joei. We’re a legitimate business now. We got mouths to feed, bills to pay, and moves to make. Buying a homeless bum a meal isn’t going to make our business any bigger.”
“Yeah? Well what kinda ‘business’ has its members destroyin’ innocent little mom-and-pop shops for no reason?!”
Marco turned away. “A Braver City business. And if you can’t understand that, then leave the city, and go back to your shitty little irrelevant island of wherever-the-fuck and be a nobody.”
Joei flinched at the sudden insult of her home of Saipan. When she’d first moved to Braver City years prior and befriended Marco and the other founding members of Typhoon, they’d enjoyed hearing her stories of the island, and they’d all made plans to eventually fly out and visit there when they had the means. The sudden switch had certainly caught her off guard, but she wasn’t the type to stay off her game for long. “Is that what this is?! You’re just tryna use Typhoon to be some kinda big-shot or somethin’?! We already look up to you, Marco! You’re already the whole neighborhood’s hero!”
The Typhoon leader settled back into his chair, and grabbed hold of the girl who’d been riding him earlier, lifting her up with ease and dropping her back down onto his cock. She kept her eyes darting back and forth between him and Joei at first, unsure whether it really was okay to get back to riding, but she wasn’t about to not follow Marco’s whims, and resumed her bouncing on the leader’s dick. “And I can – and will be – way more than that.”
He waved her off with one hand. “Now get out of here. I’m done with you. Typhoon’s done with you. If I see you again, and you still got a problem with how I’m running things, then I’m sending you back to your island in a coffin.”
GLYPH was no stranger to butting heads with other “businesses”, but of all the many “businesses” of Braver City, there was one in particular they found themselves clashing with time and time again.
CIPHER.
The two organizations were rivals that were fated from the beginning to battle one another, as CIPHER had been formed explicitly to oppose GLYPH and its mission of securing FORMA and shutting down BUBBLES. The founders of CIPHER believed that the FORMA should not be kept within any one organization’s possession, and should instead go to whomever was strong enough to acquire them.
CIPHER had been a bit quiet for some time, however, following a fairly serious battle that had taken place over a year ago between the two organizations. But in that quiet, they had not gone inactive. Instead, they’d been preparing their biggest initiative yet – one that was on the cusp of readiness.
CIPHER’s headquarters were located underground, hidden away in the tunnels of the city’s subway system, impossible to locate and enter without inputting numerous passcodes,fighting through security bots, and solving complex puzzles along the way.
Inside the CIPHER HQ was a meeting room not dissimilar to the one found at GLYPH HQ, complete with a table that went largely unoccupied due to the relatively small amount of field agents available and under CIPHER’s employ.
Despite there being plenty of open seats, Twin was off to the side, leaning up against one of the walls, with her trusty tote bag planted on the floor beside her. It was her favored spot. Partly due to keeping her back safe from any potential threats, partly due to the fact that the one time she’d seen her crush actually attend a CIPHER meeting he’d also leaned up against the wall and she wanted to mirror him, and partly because she just felt cooler doing it. She was a tall, lithe woman who kept nearly her entire body wrapped in her (black) ninja uniform – everything except her long (black) hair, and the (black) glasses she wore over her (black) eyes. Glasses that she did not need, but had begun to wear after she’d heard a rumor that her crush liked women who wore glasses. She’d never actually been able to verify that rumor, but she would take any potential increase in her chance of scoring with him as she could get.
The blonde-haired, oversized-red-trench-coat-wearing Trey was also there, to his personal dismay. He was slumped in his chair like a bratty child, arms hanging limp, knuckles on the floor, legs extended out in front of him. From the perspective of anyone sitting on the opposite side of him, they would just barely manage to see his eyes poking up over the table.
There were two “anyones” sitting on the opposite side of him, a few chairs down. First was Dual, her dark-skinned, suit-clad muscular frame seated with perfect posture, waiting patiently. Her set of blue-and-green heterochromia eyes weren’t focused on Trey, however, but rather, on her neighbor, her husband, Sven.
Sven was watching a video on his phone. If you were to ask 90% of people who’d ever met him, they would tell you that they genuinely believed they’d never seen him do anything other than that. He was visually the stark opposite of his wife – while she was tall, dark, and well-kept, he was small, pale, and, frankly, a mess. His red hair was a shaggy tangle, his eyes were perpetually baggy and bloodshot, and his clothes were wrinkled and none of the pieces matched. He was slangin’ meat, though.
Eventually, the front door opened, and in stepped Zero, flanked by his secretary Safira, who waved lasciviously at everyone in the room.
Zero stood out quite a bit in that CIPHER meeting room, what with his bright white hair and skin, his almost-bright-white-blue eyes, and, uh, his complete lack of a shirt, proudly leaving his thin, bright white torso on full display. By his side was Safira, standing comfortably over six feet in height, dwarfing everyone else in the room, with long, flowing locks of azure hair and crimson eyes, her painfully plump body covered in a black bodysuit stitched together by zippers.
“Good morning, everyone,” Zero said as he made his way to the farthest end of the meeting table, brushing his silky, bright white hair as he took a seat.
“It’s nine PM, jackass,” Trey spat.
Zero giggled rather girlishly at the response, seemingly unperturbed by it. “It really is good to see you all again. It’s been too long.”
“Not long enough,” Trey mumbled.
“Now then,” Zero continued, clapping his hands together. “Who’s ready to get back to playing with our dear friends over at GLYPH~?”
Safira retrieved a black folder from the stack she carried in her arms, tossing it onto the center of the meeting table, prompting the CIPHER field agents to all turn their attentions to the name printed in bold, white letters on the front:
“PROJECT CAGE CRISIS”
BRAVE BANGERS ARC I END
