Quod Sum Eris

     The bodily damage had dissipated on Victor but he could feel the enclosing heat. It was around this time the Priest had gotten his attention. A shit-eating grin couldn’t help but find it’s way to his lips, only for them to part and reveal salivated incisors and canines grinding aggressively against each other.      “You’re a rather interesting specimen. I wonder how your regenerative capabilities will accommodate you when I rip your head from your body!”      “Stop talkin’ then an’ find out, bub! RrrRRRRrgh–” Ready to pounce, he was interrupted with the fire poker that impaled the head vampire’s… head.

     “Whoah!” The Lupine exclaimed, wiping the blood that abruptly splattered onto his face until they were faint orangey-red smears. “Howzitbout a li’l head’s up next time, darlin’? I don’t mind a mess as much as th’ next guy but–” That was about the time she had told him they needed to go and beyond the crumbling infrastructure and the roar of the voracious flames around them.      “–awright, let’s get outta here.” Instinctively taking her by the hand, he guided them out from the subterranean lair and out to where the store front was. They had less than fifteen minutes to get out of there, run across the pumps outside and get to their car. He made sure the hold he had on her hand was ironclad, confident once they got away from the flames and suffocating heat that she’d regain a majority of her faculties.      She was a Slayer, after all. He thought.

She thought the big man’s concern for her was cute…

     As they were pulling out of the gas station, Victor could see the police approaching the horizon of the road behind them. It was around this time that the reserves Faith had thought about were acquainted with the inferno they set off in that subterranean lair filled with the undead. Just before the cops could put two and two together that the car driving away was involved in the fire ravenging the gas station, said gas station had been engulfed in a spontaneous and encompassing pyro. Multiple pieces of burnt and melted shrapnel are airborne while clouds of thick billowing smoke blanketed the area whilst the two of them had breached it’s perimeter and made it a safe enough distance that they had no one on their tail.      Most of the Lupine’s attention had been on getting away but when she offered him a cigarette, he couldn’t miss the smile on her face.      “Heh.” An infectious smile, he soon learned it to be. 

     Because he was smiling, too.

     “So I says t’ th’ guy: Is that a herniated disc my fingers are feelin’ or are y’jus’ happy t’ see me? Get it?! HahaHAhaHA!” He reaches into the bag in his lap and pulls out a handful of Cheesitums that he successfully stuffs into his face.      Munching down unceremoniously.

     The bodily damage had dissipated on Victor but he could feel the enclosing heat. It was around this time the Priest had gotten his attention. A shit-eating grin couldn’t help but find it’s way to his lips, only for them to part and reveal salivated incisors and canines grinding aggressively against each other.      “You’re a rather interesting specimen. I wonder how your regenerative capabilities will accommodate you when I rip your head from your body!”      “Stop talkin’ then an’ find out, bub! RrrRRRRrgh--” Ready to pounce, he was interrupted with the fire poker that impaled the head vampire’s... head.

     “Only th’ best fer my baby girl.” The phrasing felt weird on his tongue for a moment but he doesn’t dwell on the thought when he walks up behind Del’, resting a hand on the small of her back as he leaned forward to press his lips to her neck. Drawing his attention to his daughter who immediately falls asleep as soon as she’s laid down in the cradle beneath them.      “Look at ‘er.” He whispers, wrapping his arms around the mother of his children’s hips, hips that 24 hours ago had bore his offspring. “We did that.” 

     “So I says t’ th’ guy: Is that a herniated disc my fingers are feelin’ or are y’jus’ happy t’ see me? Get it?! HahaHAhaHA!” He reaches into the bag in his lap and pulls out a handful of Cheesitums that he successfully stuffs into his face.      Munching down unceremoniously.

 A small groan whilst looking at her surroundings only to see she wasn’t in the train station anymore, in the street was more like so seeing him only made her pick up a boulder of a rock and smacked him in the face, only so she could get away from him long enough to get back up on her feet. “I think the pound would be more of a place for you.” Either that, she’ll put the dog down herself  if it led to something like that. 

     “Rgh!” The amount of force behind the toss had sent the behemoth a few steps back, which coincidentally, had been in perfect timing to a pickup truck swerving into him because of the traffic they disrupted with their almost meteoric descent.            (THUMP!)      Rolling across the windshield, splintering it into a cobweb of cracks, Victor had then continued to roll up the roof of the car and finally fall into the back of the carriage. The collision had sent the truck into full helter-skelter, swerving left and right until it finally tipped and launched itself into the air. The momentum gained from Victor’s rolling had him exit the truck’s now open back just before it took off. Leaving him in the street while the pickup truck crashed into a lineup with parked cars with a tremendous ensnarement of crushed metal.      “RrrRRrr...” Frustration eventually gave way to disbelief and amusement, because the mutant was rising to his feet. His wounds from the car crash and their fall already beginning to heal, the streetlight reflecting off what seemed to be silver beneath his skin. Adamantium. His bones and claws had been coated and infused with the extraterrestrial alloy, adding to his weight with an additional hundred pounds. But because of his peak physical prowess and regenerative capabilities, it made carrying the unbreakable metal all the more easier.      “I’ve gotta say, darlin’... y’are one tough cookie.” The taste of copper filled his mouth until he spat it out with a quick jerk of his head. Orange smeared incisors poke from his now grinning lips, using the side of his thumb to wipe away the blood.

     “Hmm… Lemme think on it.” Swirling what was left of his own drink, he let the thoughts come to him at that moment. He wasn’t doing anything, at the moment. His business for the day had been handled and he was simply shooting the shit here. Bringing the glass to his lips he emptied the rest of it’s contents down his esophagus with unflinching ease.      “Awright, let’s go.” Rising to his feet he rummages in his pocket and pulls out a metal clip with a thick wad of cash clenched beneath it. Plucking a couple of bills– all hundreds– he set it down on the bartop with a wicked smile.      “Buy yersel’ somethin’ nice an’ a drink on th’ house fer everyone here.” The bartender grinned when Victor finished his gesture, shaking his hand after the fact and announcing the news to the rest of the patrons.      They cheered accordingly, the drunk bastards. Victor chuckled.

She grins at the crowd of happy drunks, OBLIVIOUS to the danger that walks among them, and leads the way outside the bar. “I can’t jump us directly into the facility,” Haven manages to chirp over the noise of the bar patrons as the pair make their exit. “I’ve tried, they’ve got some kind of magnetic FIELD up to protect their equipment. But I can get us close enough to sneak in the old-fashioned way.”

Outside, they find a narrow little alley way where no one would see her rip open a PORTAL to the compound miles away. She slides her hands apart, there’s a bright light and images of barbed wire fences and armed guards swirling inside it.

     "Much obliged, darlin’.” And like that he’s watching her tear open the fabric in space and time, bridging the gap between where they were at to the facility that she was about to break into. Stepping through the threshold, he felt himself de-atomized and slingshotted through the interdimensional ether. Molecularly composing himself on the other side, standing in the forest enclosing the perimeter of the facility. Blanketing it, Victor and his partner in indiscernible night. Watching the portal close after she stepped through, he turned his attention back to the facility. Tinkering with his wristwatch without even looking at it while he did so, fingering a secret button that activated a molecular field that engulfed him.      “Don’t leave home wit’ out it.” The wristwatch had been spliced inconspicuously with Shi’ar technology and thus had started to destabilize the particles of his clothing on a subatomic level and rearranged it so that he was wearing his yellow & brown in-field uniform instead.      Gloves, boots, fur lined collar, the works.

     “S’ppose we’ll agree t’ disagree this time around.” He turns his head away from the window he was looking out of to flash her that grin of his. Pearly white incisors and canines protruding from behind his stretched lips, moistening said lips with a quick swipe of his tongue before turning his attention to the restaurant/bar they were taken to. Flashy lights and people waiting outside, Victor can’t help but chuckle as he raised an eyebrow.      “Now this is what I’m talkin’ about.” The car stops in front of the place as he opens the door, holding it open for his lady of the night. “After you, madame.”

     He could hear a few hushed voices and the holes being burnt into the back of his head and body when his gargantuan self had stepped out the SUV. It was a feeling he stopped caring about a long time ago but didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t aware of when it was happening to him. Some looked in awe, in curiosity and even in disgust. It was all the same. A man of his stature and physiology, it was inevitable. Even if Vic’ didn’t like scrappin’ and maimin’ so much, he temporarily contemplated, he wouldn’t get by in life lookin’ the way he does without some form of ridicule one way or another. He suppose the prejudices and abuse that traumatized and scarred Victor at an early age left an impression on him that he’d soon apply to the rest of the human world. They were all just hypocritical, judgmental pieces of shit that didn’t deserve the time of day. Though-- that in itself-- was a judgment on Victor’s part if he were to be completely honest but that was neither here nor there.          (I’m thinkin’ too much.)      He just disregarded it. Nothing but smiles was what Jessica was greeted with as he offered a sleeveless arm for her to loop her own around.

     “So I says t’ th’ guy: Is that a herniated disc my fingers are feelin’ or are y’jus’ happy t’ see me? Get it?! HahaHAhaHA!” He reaches into the bag in his lap and pulls out a handful of Cheesitums that he successfully stuffs into his face.      Munching down unceremoniously.

     “Priest, huh?” He was holding the clerk by the hair on his head with his left hand, turning his attention back to him with a look that complimented his piqued curiosity. But he doesn’t pursue it, nah, better to let sleeping dogs lie. It was in that moment-- without any warning-- that he rammed his other hand into the fledgling’s chest, the tips of his fingers elongated with razor sharp claws that broke into the housing of his ribcage and punctured his heart. Blood splattered onto both their faces and shirts as Victor simply watched the light go out in the man’s eyes. Unfazed by the act he had just committed.      “Wouldya look at that? Heh.” With a quick jerk, he tore his hand out the now limp cadaver’s ruptured cavity. Not paying attention as it simply plopped onto the counter in front of it. Victor turned his head to the cheap whiskey on sale built up like a pyramid. Evan Williams. This’ll do, he thinks to himself. This’ll do jus’ fine. Turning back to the counter, he grabs a clump of napkins with his left hand while simultaneously biting off the wrapping on the bottle. Wedging the cap between his right thumb and middle finger, producing enough friction to twist it open. Eventually he’s stuffing said napkin’s into the bottle, all while making a beeline towards the doorway where Faith stood in. It’s when he’s a foot or so from her that he unearths a lighter from his pants’ pocket, flipping it open with a now free left hand and in that same gesture, flicking the switch once or twice to get the fire going.      Presto, Molotov cocktail. The rest to follow was pretty self explanatory.