The lizardfolk lunged again.
Bob grunted. "Ow."
"That's it?" Gabe called. "Just 'ow'?"
Bob shrugged. "I'll get him back."
And he did. Bob ripped a tire from the wreckage and hurled it with his left hand like a discus. It smacked straight into the lizardfolk's face, sending it flipping backward into the fog.
"Nice throw!" Gabe called. "Now duck!"
Bob dropped low just as Gabe swooped in, his talons tearing into another lizardfolk trying to flank Iris. With a heavy beat of his wings, Gabe lifted the creature into the air and dropped it onto a jagged section of an old fence. The spikes punched through its body like butter.
"That one's done," Gabe muttered.
But there was no time to rest. Two more lizardfolk leapt at Bob from behind, their jaws snapping. Bob elbowed the first square in the face, but the second clamped its teeth into Bob's arm. Bob shook it off and slammed it into the pavement hard enough to leave a crater, but blood dripped down his forearm from shallow bite marks.
"Seriously?" Bob muttered, shaking his arm. "Now I'm just getting annoyed."
Iris was a blur beside him, locked in her own elegant dance of steel and fog. One lizardfolk came at her with a jagged blade. Iris blocked, twisted, and drove her spear through its gut before spinning to disarm another. Every move was precise, a one-on-one duel where she never wasted a single motion.
"Focus right!" Gabe shouted from above. "They're pushing the flank!"
Bob responded by grabbing a crumbled section of wall from a collapsed building and hurling it like a massive brick. It smashed into the advancing lizardfolk, flattening two of them in an explosion of dust and scales.
"Showoff," Gabe muttered as he flew higher.
More came from above, crawling over a wrecked car. Gabe spotted them first. "Incoming!" he warned. He dove down, yanked a twisted metal gate from the ground, and flung it like a net over the climbing lizardfolk. With a quick swoop, he slammed the whole mess back onto the ground.
"Bob!" Gabe shouted. "Finish it!"
Bob obliged, stomping over and crushing the pile with one massive foot. The pavement cracked beneath the force.
Another hiss. Another lizardfolk charged at Bob from the side. Bob spun, grabbed it midair, and used it as a living club to knock back two more.
"Resourceful," Iris muttered, impressed.
Gabe swooped again, sending a whirlwind of debris into the faces of another group, blinding them just long enough for Bob to pick up a rusted car door and frisbee it into the fog, knocking two more down.
By the time the dust settled, the street was littered with broken bodies and shattered scales.
Bob rolled his shoulder, blood trickling down his arm from the earlier bite. "Think that's all of 'em?"
Iris wiped her spear clean. "For now."
Gabe landed beside them, glancing at Bob's wounds. "You good?"
"Scratches. I've had worse falling out of bed."
Iris shook her head, half in awe, half in disbelief. "You're insane."
Bob grinned. "Nah, just hungry."
And just like that, the cart creaked forward again, the trio pressing deeper into the fog as if a dozen dead lizardfolk was just a warm-up.
---
They pressed on until they neared the next Safe Zone. That's when Gabe spotted it from the sky.
From time to time, Gabe unlatched himself from the cart's harness, stretching his wings wide before launching into the air. It had become part of their routine—while Bob guarded the cart and Iris scouted ahead on foot, Gabe would take to the skies to survey the path ahead. He made sure they weren't walking straight into a horde of creatures or getting boxed in by collapsing buildings.
After each pass, he'd swoop back down, reconnect himself to the cart with a grumble, and keep pulling like the world's most reluctant draft animal. It wasn't glamorous, but it worked—and someone had to keep the supplies moving.
"Guys... we've got a problem."
Gabe's voice was low, serious. He glided down from above, landing softly beside Bob and Iris as they followed his gaze toward a narrow alley ahead.
The moment they approached, the stench hit them first—stale fog thickening in the cramped space, mixed with rust, old smoke, and something sour. The alley was half-choked with rubble and broken glass, like the fog itself had swept in and torn the place apart before leaving it to rot.
And there, pinned against a shattered wall, was a young boy. Skinny. Tired. Out of breath. He looked barely old enough to be out here alone. His wide eyes darted between the four figures closing in on him, each one looming, transformed just enough to be dangerous—scaled arms, yellow glowing eyes, claws glinting under the weak light.
They weren't mindless creatures—just the opposite. Still sane, fully aware, and using the chaos of the Pink Fog to hunt one of their own. In some ways, that made them worse than the monsters.
And these weren't just any transformed thugs either.
The tallest of the group stood at the front, a Minotaur—or something close to one. Thick, bull-like horns curled from his forehead, his skin a leathery gray, muscles bulging through torn clothes. Heavy hooves crushed the debris underfoot as he flexed, gripping a rusted stop sign bent into a makeshift axe. The way he snorted and stomped made it clear he was eager for a fight.
To his left lurked a Werecat, lean and wiry with golden eyes that never stopped twitching from side to side. Her body was covered in sleek, spotted fur, and curved claws tapped against the wall as she crouched low, clearly ready to pounce. Every subtle movement screamed speed and precision, a predator waiting for the perfect opening.
Behind her, half-hidden in the shadows, was something even uglier—a Bog Troll. Skin a slimy green and covered in patches of moss, with arms long enough to drag on the ground. He reeked like a swamp that hadn't seen fresh water in a decade. His thick fingers clutched a broken steel beam, and his wide, toothy grin suggested he already thought this fight was won.
And last, standing near the boy and blocking his only escape, was a Ghoul, pale and gaunt, skin stretched too tight over sharp bones. Faint wisps of fog clung to his shoulders like a cloak, and his long fingers twitched eagerly around a thin, curved dagger. The Ghoul looked the most human of the bunch, but his hollow black eyes made it clear there wasn't much left inside.
Four different creatures. Four very real threats.
And all of them too busy sneering at their cornered prey to notice Bob, Iris, and Gabe approaching.
"Guess we're crashing the party," Gabe muttered, his eyes narrowing on the Minotaur.
Iris didn't even respond. Her gaze was locked on the boy. A human. Untransformed. Alone. And clearly seconds away from being ripped apart.
Bob cracked his knuckles.
"Hey," he called out, voice echoing down the alley. "Pick on someone your own size."
The Minotaur turned first, snorting through his nose like an angry bull. "Oh? And who exactly are you supposed to be?"
"The cleanup crew," Gabe said from above, already flapping his wings to take higher ground.
The Minotaur laughed—a deep, heavy sound that made the ground feel like it shook. "You three don't know what you're stepping into. We're with the Red Hands."
Iris raised an eyebrow. "And we're supposed to care?"
The Ghoul sneered. "Back off, or we'll make you regret it."
Bob shrugged. "Okay."
Then he picked up a broken car door from the wreckage beside him and hurled it straight into the Minotaur's face.
The car door slammed into the Minotaur's face with a metallic clang, knocking him back two staggering steps. But instead of falling, he roared, shaking his head as if waking up from a nap.
"Well, well," he bellowed, flexing his thick neck as he ripped the dented door from his horns and flung it aside. "Looks like we've got ourselves some heroes."
The Werecat hissed, crouching low with a grin that showed too many sharp teeth. "Three of you? Against us? You should've kept walking."
"Yeah," the Bog Troll added with a lazy swing of his steel beam. "One warning. Just this once."
Bob didn't answer. He was already charging.
The Minotaur met him head-on, hooves pounding the ground like thunder. Bob ducked the first wild swing of the stop-sign axe and slammed his shoulder into the beast's gut, sending the Minotaur skidding backward across the rubble.
"Gabe! Sky!" Iris called out as she darted toward the Ghoul.
"On it!" Gabe launched upward, his griffin wings snapping wide as he rose above the alley, scanning for the Werecat, who was already blurring between shadows, darting left and right, looking for an opening.
The fight exploded.
The Werecat lunged first, too fast for a normal eye to track, aiming for Iris's exposed side with claws outstretched.
But Iris spun just in time, parrying with the flat of her armguard, then driving her knee into the Werecat's ribs. "Not fast enough," she said coldly.
Overhead, Gabe spotted the Bog Troll raising his steel beam to crush Bob from behind. "Bob! Duck!"
Bob didn't question. He dropped into a roll, just as the beam whooshed over his head and slammed into the pavement with a thunderous crack. Chunks of cement flew.
"Oh, now you've done it," Bob muttered.
Without missing a beat, he grabbed the broken pavement chunk, swung it like a bat, and smashed it into the Troll's stomach, doubling the creature over. Before the Troll could react, Bob hoisted him up by one leg and whipped him into the side of a nearby delivery truck, leaving a dent the size of a crater.
Meanwhile, the Ghoul had circled around, dagger gleaming. It lunged at Iris from behind—but Gabe swooped down, his talons locking around the Ghoul's shoulders, yanking him off his feet like a child's toy.
"Time for a little air," Gabe muttered, flapping higher before releasing the Ghoul mid-flight.
The Ghoul hit the ground with a wet thud and groaned, but was still conscious.
Now, all four were downed, panting and bruised.
And that's when the boasting stopped.
"Okay, okay! Look," the Minotaur said, holding up his hands as Bob approached. "Maybe we got off on the wrong foot."
The Werecat wiped blood from her mouth. "Yeah, no hard feelings, right? You do your thing, we do ours. We'll just be on our way."
"Right," the Bog Troll added, crawling out of the wreckage. "Nothing personal! Just... you know, the fog and all."
Bob tilted his head. "Oh? And the kid?"
"Uh... just a misunderstanding," the Ghoul coughed, sitting up slowly. "We weren't really gonna kill him. Just... uh... teach him a lesson."
Iris crossed her arms. "Funny way of showing it."
Then came the threats.
The Minotaur's face darkened. "Listen. You don't want trouble with us. We're part of the Red Hands. Big group. Real big. You mess with us, you're messing with the whole organization."
"Yeah," the Werecat added. "You let us go, we forget this ever happened. No harm, no foul."
Bob yawned. "No."
"Wait—seriously, don't do this," the Troll begged, dropping his steel beam and raising his hands. "We'll leave the kid. We'll leave the district! You won't see us again."
"Please," the Ghoul added desperately. "Just let us walk. No need for... whatever this is."
Bob scratched his head. "Tie them up."
"Huh?" Gabe blinked midair.
"Tie them up. Drag 'em to the next Safe Zone. Let their people there decide what to do."
Iris nodded. "Agreed."
The Minotaur slumped. "Oh, come on…"
"You're lucky we're feeling generous," Gabe muttered as he landed, using some ripped electrical cables from a nearby wreck to bind their wrists. "Or you'd be fertilizer by now."
As they worked, the young boy who had been cornered watched in disbelief, his wide eyes darting between his would-be murderers and the strange trio who had saved him without even breaking a sweat.
And when the last knot was tied and the ambushers were lined up like grumpy statues against the wall, Bob finally turned to the boy.
"What's your name?"
The kid blinked, clearly not expecting the question. "...Sly."
Late teens, maybe. Thin but wiry, with messy black hair and clothes that looked like they hadn't seen a clean wash in weeks. His face was sharp, eyes constantly darting around like someone used to watching his back—or waiting for someone to stab it. There were old scars on his arms, fresh bruises on his neck, and a look that said he'd been through more than most adults twice his age.
Bob nodded once, like that was all he needed to know. "You coming with us or what?"
Sly just stared. "...What?"
"Yeah," Gabe said with a grin. "He does this. Don't overthink it."
Iris raised an eyebrow but said nothing. There was no point arguing when Bob had already decided.
Sly hesitated, glanced at the tied-up group, then back at the three of them.
"…Fine," he said quietly. "But if those guys come after me... if the Red Hands come looking... you're allowed to ditch me. I don't want to drag anyone down."
Bob shrugged. "Nah."
Sly blinked again. "What do you mean, 'nah'?"
Bob smiled. "We're not ditching anyone."
And just like that, the group grew by one.