"Don't you dare ignore me!"
Gwen's voice rang out across the street, fierce with protective fury. Watching Asher surrounded by those deadly laser lances, their energy tips converging on him from every angle, something inside her snapped. A terrible anger surged through her chest, hot and consuming.
They're not allowed to hurt him!
The Charm of Luck blazed to life around her neck, pulsing with brilliant light.
Though the six Forever Knights didn't float completely off the ground, the sudden gravitational shift yanked them sideways, throwing off their coordinated assault. Weapons clattered against armor as they stumbled, their perfect formation dissolving into chaos.
They recovered almost immediately, trained professionals adapting to unexpected circumstances, and grabbed their laser lances to resume their attack.
But it was already too late.
Flash!
A dazzling emerald light erupted beside Gwen, particle energy cascading through the air like scattered stars.
A steady, powerful hand pressed against her back, preventing the magical backlash from throwing her off balance.
Standing beside her was a terrifying beast.
Orange fur covered a muscular quadrupedal body. No eyes marred the fearsome face, only a head full of razor-sharp teeth and three gill-like nostrils on either side of its neck. The creature radiated primal menace, every inch of it built for hunting and killing.
Wildmutt.
"Asher!" Relief flooded Gwen's pale features. The excessive magic use had drained her completely, leaving her voice barely above a whisper. "Thank god you transformed in time. And you picked Wildmutt instead of something useless against armored targets."
"Grrrrowl! Gwen, leave everything to me now! It's my turn to protect you!"
Gwen couldn't understand Wildmutt's growling speech, but she recognized the protective concern in that rumbling voice. The tension in her shoulders eased slightly.
Now that Asher had transformed into an alien hero, she could trust him to handle the rest.
With a grateful nod, she leaned against the nearby wall to recover her strength.
"What, what is this thing?!" One of the Forever Knights stumbled backward. "How did he transform into a completely different alien?!"
"Beast-form," another knight announced, his training kicking in despite his surprise. "Quadrupedal movement, claws and teeth are the primary attack vectors. Everyone note those gill-like structures on its neck, no visible eyes means it likely relies on some form of enhanced sensory perception!"
"It's just an animal!" The lead knight raised his lance. "Maintain formation! We've hunted more dangerous prey than this!"
The six warriors fell into a practiced hunting pattern, weapons angled to cover each other's blind spots. They moved like a wolf pack preparing to bring down a tiger, coordinated, lethal, professional.
Unfortunately for them, the tiger had senses they couldn't begin to comprehend.
Thrust! Thrust! Thrust!
Six laser lances stabbed toward Wildmutt's body from different angles, fast, precise, each strike aimed at joints and vulnerable points that claws couldn't easily defend. They'd calculated their attacks perfectly, targeting gaps in the beast's natural defenses.
Any normal creature would have been skewered.
But Wildmutt was anything but normal.
His spider-sense activated the instant their muscles tensed, feeding him a complete three-dimensional map of every incoming attack. Danger signals flared in his enhanced mind like warning beacons, painting trajectories and timing with perfect clarity.
His body responded before conscious thought could form.
Whoosh!
Wildmutt launched himself upward with explosive force, his powerful legs catapulting him into an impossible aerial spin. He twisted through the converging lance points like water flowing around stones, his trajectory weaving through gaps that seemed far too small for a creature his size.
Every blade missed by inches.
The knights' weapons gouged deep furrows in the pavement where he'd been standing a heartbeat before.
"Impossible!" One knight gaped behind his visor.
They adjusted instantly, reversing their grips to thrust upward at the airborne beast. Six energy-tipped points converged on his descending form.
Wildmutt simply folded backward in midair, his spine bending at an angle that defied normal anatomy. The lances passed harmlessly beneath him as he completed the flip and landed on all fours.
"He dodged again!"
"How is he doing that?!"
Over and over, the Forever Knights attacked with brutal precision, lunges, sweeps, coordinated pincer movements designed to corner prey with no escape routes.
And over and over, Wildmutt flowed around their attacks like smoke.
His spider-sense screamed warnings before each strike landed, giving him precious microseconds to react. Combined with Wildmutt's natural agility and enhanced reflexes, those microseconds became an insurmountable advantage.
"What's going on with this creature?!" The lead knight's voice cracked with frustration. "He's just a child, he shouldn't have combat experience like this!"
"This isn't experience!" Another knight's tone edged toward panic. "It's like he can see the future! He knows where we're attacking before we even move!"
"That's absurd! Precognition doesn't exist!"
But the evidence was undeniable. One dodge could be luck. Two might be coincidence. But Wildmutt had avoided every single attack with contemptuous ease, making six elite warriors look like bumbling amateurs.
These weren't ordinary soldiers. They were battle-hardened Forever Knights who'd faced aliens and monsters across the globe. They shouldn't struggle to land a single blow on any creature.
Yet they couldn't even touch his fur.
"GRRRAAAWWW!"
The moment their attacks faltered, Wildmutt struck back.
He opened his massive jaws and released a devastating sonic roar. The sound wasn't merely loud, it was a concentrated blast of acoustic energy that hit the knights like a physical force.
Dust and debris exploded outward from the shockwave. The ultrasonic frequencies scrambled their equilibrium, overwhelming their inner ears and nervous systems.
All six knights froze, their bodies refusing to obey commands. Armor rattled uselessly as they struggled against sudden paralysis, muscles locked in place by the sonic assault.
In that frozen moment, Wildmutt became a blur of orange fur and gleaming claws.
Slash!
He materialized in front of the nearest knight, one massive paw swinging in a casual backhand.
The blow connected with devastating force.
CRACK!
The knight's armor, plate metal enhanced with alien technology, crumpled like aluminum foil. Fractures spiderwebbed across the chest piece before the entire suit simply fell apart, components scattering across the pavement. The man inside flew backward, ragdolling through the air until he crashed to the ground thirty meters away.
One strike. One knight down and unconscious.
"Defensive positions!"
"It's attacking!"
The remaining five knights recovered just enough to raise their lances and stab desperately at the beast among them.
Too late.
Wildmutt was already moving. His jaws clamped around two lance shafts simultaneously, and with a savage wrench of his neck,
SNAP! SNAP!
, both weapons broke like dry twigs. The knights stumbled forward, suddenly holding useless metal sticks instead of deadly energy weapons.
The sheer strength required to break alien-tech laser lances defied belief. These weren't fragile instruments, they were military-grade weapons designed to withstand enormous stress.
Wildmutt had snapped them with his teeth alone.
Terror finally crept into the Forever Knights' eyes.
Without their weapons, without their coordination, without any way to harm this monster,
They were just prey.
Wildmutt's claws flashed again and again, each strike precise and devastating. He tore through armor, shattered weapons, and sent bodies flying with almost contemptuous ease.
But even as he dominated the battle, some part of Asher's consciousness remained in control.
He didn't kill them.
His claws struck to disable, not destroy. His bites crushed armor rather than flesh. Each blow was calculated to incapacitate rather than execute.
These aren't like Vilgax's forces, he reasoned, his spider-sense confirming that no reinforcements lurked nearby. They're not obviously working for Hex either. Someone else is pulling their strings.
If I don't find out who's behind this, we'll be hunted constantly. And I can't protect my family if I don't know where the attacks are coming from.
Are they ever going to sleep? Am I?
"Grrrrowl." Gwen, let's go.
Wildmutt padded over to where Gwen rested against the wall, his earlier ferocity replaced by protective calm.
"I still can't understand Wildmutt-speak," she said with a weak smile, though color had returned to her cheeks. She reached out and patted his furred shoulder. "But I'm guessing you want to regroup at the Rust Bucket?"
Wildmutt nodded his eyeless head, then scratched a message into the pavement with one sharp claw:
"Bring them too. Need to interrogate."
Gwen read the crooked letters and nodded immediately. "Got it. You take the knights to the RV, I'll meet you there."
She pushed off the wall and jogged toward the Rust Bucket's location, her steps still slightly unsteady but growing stronger with each stride.
Wildmutt turned to survey the battlefield. Six armored figures lay scattered across the street in various states of consciousness. Some groaned weakly. Others had gone completely still.
He gathered them efficiently, draping unconscious knights over his back and clamping others in his powerful jaws, careful to grip armor rather than flesh. When he ran out of carrying capacity, he simply wedged the last few under his arms.
It was an undignified way to transport prisoners, but it worked.
Now, Asher thought as he loped toward the rendezvous point, let's find out who sent these tin soldiers after my family.
But before he could take more than a few steps,
The knights did something completely unexpected.
Something that made even Wildmutt's spider-sense recoil in surprise.