Chum

Neighbors peek through blinds, and then snap them shut. I see people out on the sidewalks, but all of them know well enough to steer clear. It's impossible to miss when a superhero fight is about to happen. There's just something in the air.

"Can we have a minute to prepare?" I ask, trying to run out the clock.

Mr. T-Rex's face starts as a scowl, but quickly turns itself into a smile, the corners of his lips dragging upwards grotesquely against his cheeks. It stretches his face in a rictus expression that's more like an orangutan grimacing than an actual grin. His clothes today are a little different, with nearly the same shades of green, but I think he's wearing a gatorskin vest this time, or something like it. "No."

"You know what? She looks familiar," the woman says, which surprises me, because I've never seen her before in my life.

"Jordan, I need you to trust me," I say, taking a step back into the house. Just quiet enough to not be overheard.

"Yeah? Where from? I mean, besides the security footage, obviously," Mr. T-Rex says, just loud enough to be overheard. Likely on purpose, I'd wager.

"What's up?" Jordan pants, out of breath from the exertion of keeping my parents safe, and swatting away a bunch of monstrous bird-dogs with a broom.

"I mean, about five foot six, long, curly brown hair, petite frame… You don't remember, Mr. T?" The woman asks.

Air swirls around me. It's sweaty, uncomfortable, and uncharacteristically muggy for an October weekend like this. "I need you to go upstairs, and go under my bed. It has a mask and all my money. Take my money and my laptop and shove as much as you can into your backpack. Give me the mask. Then get out of here."

"Are you fucking insane?" Jordan stage-whispers back.

"You're going to need to be more specific, Z," Mr. T-Rex says, cracking his knuckles and rolling his neck. "Plus, you're giving them time to scheme. They just asked for a minute. Why are you giving them a minute?"

"Yes. But I have a feeling my family might need it soon. Just… Trust me. Please. Please," I beg, reaching out to squeeze Jordan's wrist. "I can heal. You can't. We're outside. You're not going to be able to use your powers. Just run, run and get help. Or something."

"It's Bloodhound, you dunce. The one that fucked up P and N. And I'd bet good money that the goth kid is their unnamed partner," Mrs. Z reminds him, gently rapping her knuckles across his skull like it's empty.

"…" Jordan's silence is deafening. Two heartbeats pass. "Fine. But if you die, it's not my fucking fault," they growl, and vanish back into the house.

"Oh, you know what, you're probably right. Anyway, let's get this over with. Z?" Mr. T-Rex growls, his grin growing even wider, as if that was somehow possible. His face is monstrous in its depravity, boring into me.

She cracks her knuckles too, and then twists her head side to side, doing a little stretch. "Give me a sec, T."

"Come on, what if they're going to go get a gun or something?" Mr. T-Rex whines, grinding his dress shoes into the asphalt. The air gets faster, warmer, more humid. I can feel it thickening, like sludge, like soup, and I look up.

The clouds are heavy. They were white earlier today, when the sun was big and high in the sky, and sparse. But now they're gathering overhead, almost in recognition of what's coming, thickening and swelling and darkening. Black, heavy, and pendulous. Jordan slaps me on the shoulder to get my attention, making me jump, and presses my mask into my hands.

"Are you really telling me that the living dinosaur jawn with skin thicker than tank armor is afraid of, what, a Glock? Get real, man," Mrs. Z says, shaking her head. "Besides, you should know by now it takes me a hot minute to get this shit up to speed. Calm your tits."

"Yes, ma'am," He says, deferentially.

Jordan looks at me for a second, and I look back, before strapping my mask over my face. "You sure you know what you're doing?" they ask, squeezing my wrist.

"No. Obviously," I reply.

Jordan cracks a weary smile. "I'll be back for your corpse."

I look them in the eye from behind my newest mask - now with lenses, a thin, visible orange, but otherwise the same as the prior models. "Be back for theirs."

Jordan looks at me, nostrils flaring. Then, they turn around, adjust their backpack, and jump off the front steps of my rowhouse, before bolting down the road.

Mr. T-Rex immediately lurches forward, but Mrs. Z grabs him by the shoulder. "Whaddya doing, Z? She's getting away!"

"That just makes it two-on-one, dummy. Think. Don't let them split us up. That's how those three lost a three-on-two. And, for that matter, that's how y'all lost a three-on-two, plus security," Mrs. Z instructs, pulling Mr. T-Rex back by his shoulder. The air continues to thicken, and the wind jostles my hair. I grab a hair tie from my pocket and put it back into a ponytail, so it doesn't get in the way.

What, ten minutes until help arrives? All I need to do is survive ten minutes. I've done harder things.

"Ugh. Fine! You got your minute and then some," Mr. T-Rex growls angrily from across the street, while I watch Jordan disappear down a corner out of the corner of my eye. "Can we get this started now… Bloodhound?"

I tilt the jaw of my mask down, and lock it into place, so my mouth is exposed. "I'm what you're here for, then? Sure. Let's hit it."

"Ideally, we'd get the two of you, but, augh, fuck off!" Mr. T-Rex roars, shoving Mrs. Z away and stepping out into the middle of the road. He glances left. He glances right. He looks at a car approaching from an intersection, and I watch the driver immediately get the memo, putting their car in reverse and scooting out of the way. "Gonna have a lot of fun ripping this dirty-ass slum house down. Gonna have fun. Gonna have fun. Gonna have fffffffuuuuuuRRRRRAAAUGH--"

I try not to stumble as his skin turns bright, angry red. No, not like blushing, like the exaggerated sort of lobster red you see in a cartoon. Steam pours out from anywhere his skin is exposed - his wrists, his face, his neck, and that's about it. There's a loud sound like wet towels being ripped apart, and his skin bulges and bubbles outward, swallowing his clothes. I try to resist the urge to vomit.

There's a burst of steam so large that it immediately obscures my view of him. On instinct, I duck out of the way and roll down onto the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding a colossal tail smashing into the front steps of my house, destroying the iron railing and cracking the concrete. The steam soaks into the air like a stain, collecting into a thick, dense fog, as the clouds above begin to spit rain on me, a light, inconvenient drizzle.

"And what do you do?" I shout across the street, waiting for the steam to clear.

She smiles at me. "I make it rain on these hoes," she quips, walking around to the front of the black car in front of her. She gets inside and it revs to live, and before I can try to dash past the steam cloud to reach her, or really do anything about it, she's speeding off, her job here done.

What did she even do?

I look up at the collecting clouds as the rain gets heavier and heavier, quickly intensifying into a sudden storm that was absolutely not on the forecast. The ground isn't ready for it, causing the rain to start filling up puddles and potholes, and I--

WHAM!

I'm too distracted to notice the t-rex tail swishing out of the steam cloud, swiping it clear, twisting it away, and catching me with its tip. It's not a full-on hit, but it's enough to send me into a nearby car, my shoulder ramming into the door hard enough to dent it. It hurts, but nothing's broken, so I shove myself aside and take a couple of steps back to make distance while I gaze upon…

A fucking Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Whatever Mr. T-Rex has become, it's nothing like what I've seen in Jurassic Park outside of a general similarity in shape. His body is almost pudgy, not shrink-wrapped around the bones, more like a whale that's developed legs, and the whole assemblage is covered in a fine layer of downy fuzz like a kiwi bird. Two tiny, stubby arms hang uselessly near its neck, while a bright orange frill sits atop the skull, reaching out to the flaring nostrils and wrapping over top the beady eyes. Its teeth, wrapped beneath scaly lips, were like curved daggers, a whole mouth of them, the size of chef's knives.

He snorts, blowing hot, greasy air my way, creating swirls in the steam and fog that's appeared. The rain gets heavier and heavier, forming puddles in potholes, weighing down my clothes. He takes a step forward, his massive feet slamming against the asphalt with each step. As a t-rex, he's easily more than twice my height, his entire length stretching down the road, tail swishing back and forth along the ground, scraping up pebbles.

I see someone calling someone else on the phone through their window. They look panicked. Probably 911.

Good. Get those phone lines tied up. Get them to me faster, because G-d knows, there is no way in hell I can fight a fucking T-Rex. He glances sideways, and then takes a step back when he notices that Mrs. Z has left the building, his nostrils flaring and eyes narrowing.

He lets his mouth hang open and he roars, so much louder than any noise I've ever heard in my life.

I put a hand out and curl it, fingers towards me. "You want me? Come and get me."

Mr. T-Rex charges forward, each footfall thunderous, an artillery cannon against the ground. My senses sing, my blood pumps and throbs and twitches in my body, the adrenaline beginning to flow. I dodge sideways, easily able to maneuver around the lumbering creature he's become. Sure, I have my doubts about whether or not I can do any damage to a fucking t-rex, but I don't need to do damage - I just need to not die for nine more minutes. I can do that.

I can do that.

He spins around on one heel, surprisingly nimble, claws scraping against the ground. His tail swishes backwards and smacks someone's car out of place, causing it to go skidding onto the sidewalk, the interface of friction rendered that much lesser from the pouring rain. He narrows his eyes, catches me in his field of view, and goes for it again, just charging straight forward with no greater goal in mind.

Another charge, another dodge. I duck out of the way the same way as before, and he stops himself, skidding sideways and flicking his tail around. I am filled with the immense split-second self-loathing of 'just let myself get tricked by a bad guy', but the thought passes when I am sent sailing into another car, this one red, this time my back impacting hard enough to actually break the door, to crack the glass. I recoil off, landing in the water, and cough up blood, suddenly aware of my entire body. I spit it out into the rain.

Mr. T-Rex looms over me. His lips pull back into a snarl, and his nostrils flare, eyes narrowed. His breathing becomes sharp and rhythmic for a moment - he's laughing. He's laughing at me, and he steps over me, crushing the car I just hit underneath one of his feet. He steps onto the sidewalk, which isn't prepared for the weight of a fucking t-rex, and buckles and cracks. He looks at the broken railing in front of my house, where his tail hit a couple of attacks before, and appraises it.

"Fight me!" I roar, getting up, rolling my shoulders until they feel like they've popped back into place. Have I broken anything? Miraculously, not yet, but the soaked clothes weighing me down make everything awful. They grate on my skin. I'm gritting my teeth together, locking them, waiting for Mr. T-Rex to swing around and hit me again.

But the blow never comes. Instead, slowly, deliberately, he presses his snout up against the window of my bedroom. The rhythmic breathing returns, another laugh, and he reels his head back.

I feel my heart stop for a second as I realize what he's doing.

"No!"

He slams his skull into the brick of my house, easily busting it open, exposing my bedroom to the pouring, drenching rain. My bed is immediately soaked through, and I grab onto his ankle, unhinging my jaw as wide as I can to bite down. My teeth penetrate leathery skin and scales easily, and brackish blood floods my mouth, but he pays me no mind, a mosquito at best. I can barely even reach bone from here, there's too much skin and muscle and tendon to bite through.

He reels his head back and brings it down on my home, smashing the front wall open. He lifts a leg up, precariously balanced, and then smashes me into the ground, stepping on my ankle, grinding it into the sidewalk, absolutely annihilating it. I feel my entire left foot smashed into bits, the bone immediately crushed, and I gasp for air, beginning to scream.

He kicks me aside like gum off a shoe. I feel my ankle, my foot, already struggling and straining to pull itself back together - to minimum functionality - but my healing factor just isn't fast enough. The pain is blinding. I can't see past it, physically. I can only hear the noise of him stepping around, 180 degrees, I can only smell his blood, the vast, alien dinosaur vascular system. In my mind's eye, I see him.

He lifts his tail up and brings it back down, swiping through my bedroom, obliterating our living room.

"NO!" I scream, trying to do anything to get him to stop as I stand back up on both feet. Somehow, this hurts more than anything he's physically done to me, even my crushed foot. Even though standing on it makes my vision go white with pain, tears flowing down my face indistinguishable from the rain, him destroying my home hurts worse. It hurts more than any knife in my back. I rip the jawpiece off of my mask and toss it aside.

I live there. I grew up in that bed. I…

I see red. I launch myself at him and his tail swishes sideways, dragging into the neighbor's house with just little enough force to avoid damaging it. I impact his legs and start trying to crawl up, trying to get purchase on his rain-slick scales, grabbing hold of bunches of fuzzy down. I ram my teeth into him like ice picks, holding myself up by my skull. I can tell he notices from the way he's writhing, but nothing I can do seems to deter him from his mission of destroying the place where I live, where I eat, where I sleep.

He turns around, grabbing the television between his teeth. It crunches like bone. He flicks his head sideways, smashing it into the thin wall that separates the stairs from the hallway leading into the kitchen, and that goes too, like tissue paper. I drag myself upwards, alongside his flank. There's just nothing I can do to stop him - I'm about as impotent as a fart in a hurricane.

But I can hurt him. Even if I can't stop him, I can hurt him.

I slam my teeth into his side, mouth gaped open as far as my jaw will let me, clamping down. It aches so much, my jaw not meant to be used like a rock climbing pick, but desperate times call for desperate measures. His head rises from floor level up, and destroys my parent's bedroom. He brings his skull back down and smashes their bed in two as it falls onto the kitchen table.

I climb onto his back and he swishes from side to side, trying to shake me off. I'm undeterred. I grip fistfuls of feathers, rain blinding my vision, rage blinding my heart. I smell him - I smell every hideous inch of dinosaur artery inside of his monstrous form, and I bite down on his back, where his spine is. He lets out a loud, shrill shriek, and before I have an opportunity to clamp down, to tighten my lower jaw and crunch down on something important, he starts shrinking underneath me.

More importantly, he starts releasing steam again. His body twists and cracks and burbles back into a humanoid shape, and the steam scalds my skin as all that extra mass vanishes in a small explosion. My jaw refuses to hold on any tighter. It lets go, and then a fist comes flying into my face, sending me rolling backwards onto the slick sidewalk. The world spins around me. Mr. T-Rex grabs at his ankle, a gash ripped in his clothes, tiny holes cut in his vest from where I jammed my teeth into his dinosaur form.

I feel a little bit of satisfaction at that. I push through the pain.

You're not knocking me out.

"Persistent little cunt. They only told me to demolish your house and the other brat's place, but if you're so eager to die, then let's fucking go!" He roars, somehow louder and more ferocious than the dinosaur's bellowing. My skin tingles where the steam scalded me, but the cool rainwater warded off the worst of the burn injuries I could've had.

My foot is still demolished, just so we're clear. It's not knitting itself together that fast. Gonna take at least a couple hours for that one. Maybe a day.

I get up, bracing myself against the car that we fucked up, spitting out a loose tooth. I put my fist up. "Come get me, pussy."

His grin is otherworldly, more like a horse than anything human. He takes five steps forward and his fist collides with my gut, sending me spitting out blood. I cough and gag, and then I swing back.

There's a loud crak as I break his jaw, or at least fracture it, knuckles colliding with just the right spot, just like I trained. A surge of triumph rips through me, and I lurch forward, lunging in for the bite. Hand on his jaw, he reels, grabbing my ponytail and throwing me sideways onto the sidewalk before I can start ripping and tearing. "God, that fucking hurt. That's it. I'm going to turn you into fucking pink slime," he spits, one of his own teeth coming with it. "Pink slime," he repeats. I hobble backwards on my broken foot, and turn around. I start running.

There's a loud, bellowing hiss as the steam bursts from his body again, and his dinosaur form charges at me full speed. I throw myself sideways, arms up to cover my head as my elbows and forearms crack into the back of a parked car. Anything to get myself out of his direct path, as he goes thundering out of the new cloud of steam and across the sidewalk, leaving huge t-rex footprints in the concrete.

He turns around on a near-dime, grinding his toes into the ground, tail simply batting the car aside into the middle of the road. The rain washes all our blood down into the nearby drains, streets beginning to flood, but he's still actively bleeding, so I can still smell him. I take a step back, trip, and fall on my bad foot.

I'm in the middle of the road, now, trying to haul myself up with nothing close enough to grab onto. I prepare for the worst weeks of regeneration I've had yet.

How long will it take to come back from my entire body being ground into gristle? From every bone being broken, trampled underfoot? Can I even heal from that?

As a foot looms over top of me, I close my eyes and pray to G-d.

I hear the footsteps before I register their cause, their location. I open my eyes at the sound of stone grinding against stone.

Bulwark, wrapped head to toe in his stone plating, struggles against the titanic t-rex foot about to crush me. He looks down at me, smiling warmly, entire body soaked through. Everything but his face is armored up, ready for action, his powers coating him in a thick layer of granite. "It is a good thing you held out as long as you did, young one. Help is here."

I choke out a sob. New layers of stone wrap over his face, masking him entirely, and his muffled grunt rings like a bell in my ears as he shoves Mr. T-Rex's foot back and up into the air, sending the dinosaur sideways on his bad ankle. With only one injured foot to balance on, he collapses, leg buckling, falling helplessly onto his side.

Bulwark reaches down, grabbing my wrists. "You did well, young one. I am proud of you. No more risking yourself for tonight," his muffled voice creaks, whistles through his rock mask. In the distance, I barely hear the sound of wailing sirens, of an ambulance closing in fast, over the noise of the downpour. "Let us rock! Ho ho!"

I cough up some blood, and I get behind Bulwark. He smashes his fists together, and another half-inch of stone plating forms over his skin.