Yellow Jacket

The house shook.

It was a full breach.

The blast hit like judgment,concussive, blinding, final. What had been a secure outer wall was now a gap-toothed wound spilling smoke and noise into the once-sealed house. Dust sprayed through the hallways. Old piping groaned under the shifting weight. A structural support cracked somewhere in the northeast corridor, and a ceiling tile hit the ground hard enough to shatter.

Turrets had gone silent minutes ago. No return fire. No diagnostics. No Florence. No control.

The system had failed.

Cats scattered in every direction. Flickers of motion ducked through torn couches, under broken grates, into the belly of the walls. Pawpads slapped wood, metal, fabric. Hisses rang from air vents. One hissed loud enough to rattle the glass in the pantry.

All except Bastard.

He didn't run. He didn't flinch. He sat like a sentinel at Warren's feet, ears flattened, tail wrapped tight to avoid stepping. His body was still but quivering, the kind of stillness that meant violence was waiting. His eyes never left the hallway.

The power dimmed. Not a full outage, just the flicker before a crash. Somewhere, a battery failed its test cycle. The lights strobed once and steadied.

Car moved with intent. He didn't sprint,just crossed to the east entrance with long, deliberate strides. His boots were loud in the silence. He yanked the locking bar down on the reinforced shutter and threw the blast latch into place. Then he checked Betty.

The chamber clicked open. Loaded. Primed. One glance told him enough. She was ready. Car slapped the chamber shut and turned, his face unreadable. Not angry. Not panicked. Just focused.

Grix was already crouched behind a tipped bookshelf, her entire posture coiled. She wasn't hiding,just waiting for the chaos to reach her. Her hands flexed like claws before a pounce. Her knees bounced. Every few seconds, her lips parted like she might start laughing.

Her pupils were huge.

The floor vibrated again. Lighter this time. Distant footfalls. Many.

"They're in," Car muttered. He didn't raise his voice.

"Obviously," Grix replied, low and sharp. "Question is how many. And how long they take to die."

She rolled her neck. The bones cracked.

Warren hadn't spoken yet. He stood near the central stairwell, eyes half-shadowed by the flickering lights. One hand rested on the truncheon at his side. His breathing was measured. Controlled. He didn't ask where Florence was. He didn't need to. If the turrets were down, she was out of reach,or worse.

He looked down once. Bastard was still there.

The cat looked up, as if awaiting permission.

Warren gave a single nod.

A crash sounded from the back hallway. Not explosive,impact. Wood snapped. Metal screamed. They were inside.

Car moved again, this time to a choke point by the west hall. His stance shifted subtly, distributing weight. The kind of stance you held when recoil was going to matter. Betty rested on his hip like it had always belonged there.

Grix bared her teeth and whispered, "Any bets?"

Warren still didn't answer. His grip tightened.

A second impact came. Closer. Louder. The east-side doors buckled inward. Hinges cracked. The deadbolt frame snapped in two.

Then the door exploded.

It didn't blow outward in one clean blast. It shattered. A shaped charge sent the top half inward first, cutting through the air with a screech of warping wood and fragmented steel. The bottom section followed half a beat later, blown apart at a lower angle to clear debris.

A body came through with it.

Not dead. Alive. Armed. A mercenary in full breach gear, sliding through the smoke with a lance already raised.

The first shot rang out.

And the house was at war.

The mercs came fast: clean gear, heavy boots, too much confidence. They thought they were storming a ruin. Instead, they found a warpath.

They entered in formation,tacticians more than raiders. Tight comms, short signals, clipped movements. Their boots struck in sync, like they were used to storming more than shelters. One scanned high, another low. One had the sensor pack flicking red in the mist, eyes locked on corners.

But they underestimated the silence. The stillness.

Styll broke it.

She dropped from the shelf like a vengeful streak, smoke and fury, all fangs and speed. The first merc didn't have time to react. Her teeth found soft meat between the glove and the lance grip. She latched on and twisted. He screamed, not from the pain, but the shock,the sheer audacity of the attack.

The scream was still echoing when Warren moved.

He didn't shout. Didn't warn. Just closed distance with the truncheon low and tight, shoulders angled. A straight-line charge that looked slow until it was too late. He didn't aim for armor,he struck joints. Motion points.

The pack of five collapsed toward him.

One went low, sweeping with a reinforced baton aimed at Warren's legs. Warren planted hard, shifted weight, and used the downward momentum to slam his truncheon straight into the attacker's exposed knee. The bone cracked. The scream was immediate.

Another came from the high angle, serrated blade whistling through the air in a sloppy arc. Warren ducked under it, didn't even waste a parry. He let the blade pass overhead and stepped forward,into the third.

Shield man.

Riot-style, thick polymer and steel edges. He came in trying to bash and pin. Warren rammed him. Not with the truncheon,just his shoulder. All weight. All precision. The impact knocked the man sideways into the wall.

The fourth circled right.

A hand lance raised, already charging. The targeting node blinked red. Warren had no cover.

The fifth flanked left, drawing a short blade and angling to box him in.

Warren didn't retreat.

He pivoted, exposing his back to one to clear line on the other. It was suicide if they were smart. They weren't. They were trained, not ready.

The fourth took the shot.

Warren didn't hesitate. The moment the shot hit, he turned into the fifth attacker.

Blade raised. Too close.

Warren caught the wrist, twisted, elbowed the man in the throat. When the merc staggered, Warren hooked his ankle and dropped him, then drove the truncheon down in a full-body follow-through.

One. Two. Crack.

Styll leapt from one body to another, clawing toward a throat. A merc raised his arm to shield himself, and she latched on like a feral halo.

The man screamed and slammed her against the wall. She didn't let go.

Grix hit next. Not subtle. Not clean. A flash of claws and scream-laughter, her Rattle Lance bucking like a beast in her arms.

Buckshot tore through the merc pinning Styll. The round took half his arm and all of his balance. He went down screaming. She went down with him, teeth still in.

The room was chaos. Blood. Gunfire. The sound of bones hitting tile.

And Warren never stopped moving.

He was in the middle of five trained killers.

Now only two were still standing.

Three more pushed in. One had his lance already aimed at Warren's head.

Then Bastard hit him.

A blur of fur and fury, barely the size of a shoebox, Bastard launched from the side, all claws and teeth and spite. He moved like someone had insulted his mother and his bloodline at the same time. His jaws locked with pinpoint rage right between the merc's legs.

The crunch that followed wasn't bone,it was worse. The man didn't scream at first. He collapsed with a gurgled gasp, eyes wide, mouth open in silent agony. The shot went wide, tearing into plaster. Bastard held on like a demon, teeth buried in the softest target he could reach.

He was small. But he didn't fight like it.

The merc flailed, boots scraping tile, body jerking side to side in blind panic. Bastard stayed locked on, teeth vibrating with force. The man's lance clattered to the ground.

Another tried to grab the cat by the scruff. Bastard twisted like smoke, claws raking the reaching hand. Blood streaked the gauntlet. The merc backed off, swearing.

Bastard launched again, claws outstretched. He hit a shin, latched onto a knee, climbed up the man's leg like a living buzzsaw. The merc slammed backward into the wall, trying to shake him. It didn't work.

Bastard bit into the side of his neck.

A scream cracked the air.

He dropped again, tail whipping, vanished under a table, then reappeared from the far side. A third merc tracked him,too slow. Bastard darted between legs, circled, and leapt straight up at the groin from behind.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The scream was worse this time. It wasn't even human.

A boot lashed out and caught him mid-air. He hit a chair, rolled, coughed.

Then he got back up.

Blood soaked his side. One leg dragged slightly behind him. His ears were pinned flat, body low. Growling.

A merc aimed low this time. Bastard moved high. He hit a chest, raked down. The armor tore from sheer momentum. He vanished behind an overturned couch.

They tried to flank. One tripped over his own man. Another turned and fired at a blur too fast to follow.

Bastard came up behind him. Climbed up the back of his armor like a ladder.

Claws found neck. Teeth found earlobe.

The merc screamed and fell backward.

Bastard leapt free, landed hard. He limped this time. Slower. One eye squinting.

Still, he growled.

He turned. Faced the last one standing.

The merc looked down at him, shaking, breathing hard. Raised his lance.

Bastard bared his teeth, blood slicked across his mouth.

The lance fired.

Bastard dropped.

Hard.

No twitch. No sound.

Just stillness.

Warren saw red.

The shot that dropped Bastard was still echoing when he moved. Not ran. Not charged. Moved,like inevitability wearing boots. His hand lance was already up, his truncheon still slick with blood.

The merc closest to Bastard barely saw him before the shot took him full in the chest. He crumpled backwards into a crate that splintered under the impact.

Another turned too slow. Warren's next shot slammed into his ribs, dropping him without ceremony.

Styll screamed. Like something feral and righteous. She launched from Warren's shoulder and vanished into a blur of flailing limbs.

She landed on a merc mid-turn, claws catching helmet strap and eye socket. He stumbled back and crashed into a rack of shelving, bringing it all down with him.

Warren stepped into the next target, ducked a swing, cracked the truncheon into the man's collarbone. The snap was loud. The merc dropped his lance and screamed.

Warren silenced him with the butt of his weapon.

He turned. Another merc tried to flank. The man slipped on a puddle of blood, one arm windmilling. Warren shot him mid-fall.

Someone shouted a warning. Another came in through the ruined door.

Warren pivoted and fired without pause. The round struck just under the chin, jerking the body back like a puppet with snapped strings.

No rhythm. No tactics. Just targets and reflex.

The next merc tried to bring up a riot shield. Warren didn't aim for the shield. He went low, slipped on a streak of gore, and used the fall to slam into the merc's knee. As the man dropped, Warren rammed the truncheon into his throat.

A shot rang out. It missed. The shooter was adjusting, lining up another,until Styll launched from a tabletop, clamped onto his face, and dragged him down.

Another merc slipped on spent shells, knocked over a broken chair, and fell hard. Warren was on him in a blink. He didn't shoot. He stomped.

Two rushed in at once, panicked, shoulder to shoulder.

Warren dropped his truncheon, grabbed the nearest by the vest, and slammed him into the second. As they tumbled, he fired a round into the space where their heads collided.

The one behind them paused. Too long.

Styll came from under a table, bloodied and wheezing, and tore into his ankle. He screamed and tried to shake her. Warren closed the distance and put a shot into his gut.

The merc dropped. Screaming stopped.

The floor was streaked with wet boot prints and darker trails. Shell casings clinked as Warren moved. He stepped over a twitching body without looking down.

The room was quiet.

Not still. But quiet.

Warren turned and walked to Bastard.

The cat was a mess,fur matted, blood sticky, one paw curled tight and trembling. But he was breathing.

Warren dropped to one knee, pressed his forehead to Bastard's side for a moment, then gently gathered him up.

He wrapped the little body in part of his coat and settled him across his shoulder, resting one hand to keep him steady.

He stood, slow. Surveyed the carnage.

He didn't flinch.

"Thank the gods for this glorious bastard," Warren whispered.

Then he walked out.

Grix laughed, short, sharp, feral.

She moved like a predator in fast-forward: low one second, airborne the next, feet on a merc's thigh before vaulting to his shoulder. Her claws raked down his chest, scoring sparks and pain. He tried to scream, but she was already behind him.

No one could follow her path. Not her enemies. Not her allies.

She ducked a lance sweep by rolling into a slide, then sprang up inside the guard of the next merc. Her Rattle Lance pressed directly under his chin. She fired.

The top of his skull vaporized.

The blast painted the man behind him from forehead to boots in hot red. He staggered, blinded, mouth opening to scream.

But Grix was already there, claws extended.

She punched both through his eye sockets like she was peeling fruit, dragged him forward into the dirt, then kicked off his spine to launch into the next.

A merc raised his weapon too late, she slapped the barrel down and bit his cheek clean off. He shrieked, stumbled, and she ripped his leg out from under him with a sweep of her boot.

Before he could land, she was on his chest, clawing across his faceplate until it buckled. Her fangs went through the gap and something inside cracked.

She spun off him in a flurry of limbs and fluid, caught a lance in one hand, and used it to vault into a high kick that folded another man in half at the ribs.

When she landed, she was smiling.

One came from the left. She threw her Rattle Lance like a spear, it caught him in the hip, misfired, and blew his leg apart. He dropped howling, blood spraying in uneven arcs.

Grix cartwheeled through it and came out laughing.

Another merc froze, caught between backing away and raising his rifle. She ran at him full tilt, leapt, and landed on his shoulders, knees around his neck.

He tried to shake her.

She leaned forward, snapped his head sideways with both hands, and rode him to the floor.

Then rolled and vanished into shadow again.

She came back with blood on her knees, a plate in one hand, a shattered helm in the other.

She didn't roar. She laughed, light, delighted, as if each death was a game she was winning.

And no one knew what she'd kill with next.

Car was a wall. He didn't dodge. He didn't retreat. He stepped into the fire and fired back from the hip.

The recoil knocked mercs off their feet. One shot shattered a skull. Another tore clean through armor. He reloaded without looking, crushed a helmet underfoot, and roared.

A merc lunged from the side. Car grabbed him by the throat and spun, using the man like a battering ram to smash into another charging from behind. The two bodies crumpled together with a dull thud.

Another raised a blade. Car kicked it sideways, caught the weapon mid-fall, and drove it into the man's ribs until the hilt hit armor.

Two more came at once. Car roared again, not out of rage, but dominance,and grabbed the first by the vest. He turned and hurled the man full-force into his partner, their helmets cracking on contact.

Someone tried to flank. Car reached without looking and yanked the man in by the wrist. He ripped the merc's own dagger from his belt and buried it in his neck before dropping him like trash.

They came in waves. Car broke them.

A merc fired at close range. The round ricocheted off Car's armor and he closed the gap in two steps. Betty came up. The blast took the shooter's leg off at the hip.

Car kept walking.

A lance swung low. He stomped on it mid-arc, breaking the barrel, then elbowed the wielder in the mouth hard enough to knock teeth through the back of his helmet.

Mercs screamed. They didn't die in lines. They died in heaps around him.

Car didn't duck. He didn't dodge. He advanced like a god of impact, dragging ruin in his wake.

It was working. Even outnumbered, they were tearing through the wave.

But then the numbers shifted.

More mercs flooded in through breached windows, broken doors, vents. Dozens. Then more. A tide of bodies and steel, weapons raised, boots thundering across the tile.

The house groaned under the pressure.

They were being pushed back. Slowly. Relentlessly.

Warren fought like a machine, truncheon snapping bones, hand lance punching holes through armored chests, but even he couldn't hold every line.

Grix spun through bodies like a saw blade, claws flashing, laugh growing sharper with every kill,but for every merc that fell, two more took his place.

Car reloaded Betty with one hand, firing with the other, turning helmets into mist, but his roar had become a breathless growl. Blood streaked his arms, his boots, his beard.

They backed toward one another, step by bloody step, surrounded by ruin but not surrender.

The hallway narrowed. Too many bodies. Too many lances.

Every time they dropped someone, more came. From the vents. From the stairwell. From the floor above, rappelling down.

Warren's shoulder hit Car's. Grix slid in beside them, panting, blood-matted, still smiling like a lunatic.

They didn't speak.

They didn't need to.

The wave was rising.

And they were standing in its path.

Car grunted,shoulder bleeding, knuckles split, breathing like a piston about to crack. He crushed another merc into the stair rail and threw the corpse at two more. They tumbled. But more kept coming. He was down to fists, blood, and pure force.

Grix skidded beside him, panting. Her claws were red to the wrist. She still smiled, but it was tighter now. Her eyes flicked between walls, doors, shadows. Too many. Too fast. Even she couldn't dance through all of them.

"I'm out," she rasped. "And I'm tired of counting."

They both turned to Warren.

Warren dropped a body, turned,too late. A blade grazed his coat. Another came down,

,and stopped. Mid-swing. Held.

He should've died. He knew it.

The merc in front of him blinked, confused by the sudden pause. So did Warren.

Then a low hum thrummed through the wall.

A crack hissed down the panel behind him,straight, vertical, mechanical. It wasn't a structural failure.

It was a door.

And it opened.

Light spilled out,clean, sharp, surgical white. And from the misted edge of that impossible seam stepped a figure.

The hidden door opened.

Florence stepped out first, silent as death. Her steps were steady. Deliberate. She didn't run. She walked,like she belonged to the space, like she had been waiting to be summoned. The white light behind her framed her in silhouette, sharp and unreal.

Her arms extended.

And then her Skill activated.

Nine blade-whips unfurled behind her like wings of wire and bone. They rang like distant bells, shimmered, and danced midair,each moving with its own will, but tethered to her command. They moved like serpents. Like blades dreaming of freedom.

The first lash took a merc's legs out from under him,both of them. He hit the ground screaming.

The second impaled a man through the chest, lifted him off the floor, and flung him into two more.

Another tried to raise a shield. Three blades curved around it and entered through the gaps in his armor. He fell in pieces.

Florence kept walking.

Blood sprayed in arcs behind her, caught in the stark light. She looked untouched by it. Her eyes didn't scan for targets,they simply registered them as they dropped.

A merc screamed and fired. One blade twisted, curved, and sliced the barrel from the hand lance. Another took his arm. A third went through his neck.

Still she walked.

Her blades dragged a fourth man across the floor, bouncing his body off shattered furniture before pinning him to the ceiling like meat on a hook.

The air stank of ozone and panic.

One merc bolted. Didn't even aim. Just turned and ran.

He didn't make it two steps before a blade caught him mid-back, ripped down, and left him twitching.

Florence finally stopped moving.

Not because she had to. Because the room was beginning to quiet.

The mercs didn't see a woman.

They saw a valkyrie stepped out of fable.

And she was not here to save them.

Wren followed.

Stick swung once,turned a man's head to mist.

She didn't pause. Didn't assess. One hand gripped the pipe like it was part of her arm. The other fired again and again, each shot from her hand lance more savage than the last. The sound blurred into percussion. Armor cracked. Flesh gave. Blood hit the walls.

She moved like vengeance given form.

A merc tried to backpedal, stumbled. She didn't even aim,just swung low, and Stick caught the side of his knee. He screamed, dropped, and her boot met his chin before the sound finished leaving his throat.

Another lunged. Wren sidestepped. Elbowed him in the face. Slammed Stick across his temple so hard his visor shattered inward.

She vaulted a table, midair twist, landing knees-first into another target. Her lance punched a hole through his chest as he fell. Stick followed, just to make sure.

She didn't check who was with her. Didn't need to. Florence's blades tore through the air around her like celestial orbit,shimmering lines of death that split the crowd open.

A merc screamed her name. She shot him through the mouth.

Another reached for a grenade. She was already in his space, Stick crushing his wrist, her knee in his ribs. He bent backward. She swung up and broke his jaw with the butt end.

The house shook with the rhythm of collapse.

Wren was in the center of it. Cutting through it. Shaping it.

The mercs began to break.

Not retreat. Not regroup.

Break.

They turned and ran, tripping over each other, over blood, over bodies. Some dropped weapons. Some dropped friends.

They had come to seize a ruin.

They found gods in the rubble.

And the gods were angry.

Smoke filled the halls. The echoes of screams began to fade.

Warren and Wren moved back-to-back, Stick raised, truncheon out. Grix dropped beside them, bloody and grinning, claws twitching like she wanted just one more. Car stomped through debris like the floor owed him answers, Betty still humming from the last shot. Florence stalked between bodies, her blades now coils of wire at her sides, slick and ready.

They didn't speak. Didn't need to.

The few mercs left tried to regroup.

It didn't help.

Grix reached the closest first, flipping over a couch and kicking a man in the face mid-leap. He dropped. She landed on his chest and jammed her claws through his visor. Laughing.

Florence swept in from behind, her wires flicking up like tendrils, catching a merc trying to aim and jerking him backward. He screamed once. Then he came apart.

Car grabbed a lancer by the collar and slammed him into a wall hard enough to make his armor buckle. The man collapsed. Car picked up his hand lance and used it on the next two like he'd built it himself.

Wren moved like fire through dry grass. Every swing of Stick dropped someone. Her hand lance barked in her other hand, rapid, mechanical. A merc dove to escape and got shot twice in the back, then once in the throat.

Styll and Bastard took the last one together.

The man turned. Saw the cat first,small, bloody, limping.

Then Styll came in low, fast, hissing. She jumped onto his shoulder.

Bastard bit the back of his knee.

He screamed, dropped, and Styll tore into his throat. Bastard stayed on the leg, dragging and snarling until the man stopped moving.

None of them spoke.

Together, they advanced.

Not as survivors.

As retribution.