Hunting a tiger.

I watched Star enter the building where the Nine were holed up and jumped down from the sky, disengaging my jetpack, landing gently onto the street, raising a small cloud of dust.

"That was quite a ride.

Say, isn't my boy awesome? You see how he zipped through them all?

Well, keep watching. It's only going to get better!

But from here on out though, I might need to tone down the commentary. This is enemy territory now, after all.

So shush." I said, raising a finger to my lips playfully.

"Let's go!" I whispered.

Following Star in, I saw him looking around confused for a bit, before he clutched his head.

Something blurred past him, thumping across his forcefield before crashing into the grocery aisle on the other side of the store.

Star flinched, as he chased after the figure, a redheaded scarred girl, with pallid yellow eyes and plunged his lightsaber into her chest.

Her eyes seemed thankful, as she turned on her side, tears flowing down her cheeks.

Finally, I could make out who it was.

Cherish.

But...it looked, she looked mutated. Like some Frankenstein creation.

The top right half of her face extending into a hairless bulb of flesh, pink and throbbing.

Her body too looked like it had been patched through with another body, stitched and sutured, and ...healed. Forcefully.

The costume, I recognised.

Velocity. A local speedster who ran by creating a time bubble around him the made his time faster, instead of actually being fast.

This cronenberged mess of Cherish and Velocity looked to be the handiwork of Bonesaw.

Looks like the Slaughterhouse Nine or rather Jack, took my mockery a bit too seriously, and decided to give Cherish a few improvements.

And they did such a rush order on her too.

I'm surprised she didn't just die of shock or a variety of other minor medical complications.

And more than anything, I felt glad.

If she can merge powers and people so expertly, perhaps she truly can help me revive Offee.

I looked back up, just in time to see Star get blown away, his forcefield shattering like a mirror, while he crashed into a wall, scattering a batch of wooden pallets to the floor.

Where he had stood just moments before, stood a girl in her late teens, naked and striped like a monochrome tiger, a sadistic smirk adorning on her lips.

The Siberian!

She looked on, as if waiting for something, curiously, like a cat playing with her prey.

The pallets shifted by the wall in the meantime and Star staggered back to his feet.

He leveled a fearful glare at the tiger woman, and ground his teeth, hissing in pain.

For a moment he considered running away.

I could see the gears turning in his head.

Running away would be what I would have had him do. Especially now that the Siberian had torn through his forcefield like butter.

And yet, he stood there, watching, waiting.

The Siberian, amused at his actions, lunged at him in a physics defying movement, without leverage or footing, her claw like fingers outstretched.

Star smiled slyly, and raised his hand, a torrent of force accumulating in it silently.

The moment the Siberian was airborne, he swung his arm out, turning the torrent towards her and let it loose.

The Siberian's eyes went wide in surprise and excitement as she was flung away, crashing through a wall and out of the building.

Star muttered a small 'yosh!' and pumped his fists.

So cute!

But also naive.

The Siberian would be back. Nothing can hold her long enough.

Perhaps it's time I intervened.

But just as I thought that, claps echoed through the aisles, and the tip tapping of steps followed.

I looked back at Star, and saw him stumble, clutching his stomach.

He spat out blood and parted his robes, revealing a bloody gash on his stomach, and began to fumble with his forcefield generator hoping to reactivate it.

"Ah, so that's why Hatchetface's Power Nullification didn't work. It wasn't your power, but a forcefield generator.

Well, either way I'm sure Riley can patch him right up, can't you?"

"Yes. Just need a little bit of time."

"Good job though. You cut through seven of us to reach the castle. Face the big koopa himself.

But unfortunately for you, little Star, your princess is in another castle!" Jack laughed as the source of the voice finally revealed itself.

A short ..... woman? Rat?

A creature is best how I could describe it.

It had a snout, surgically implanted, with rows of canines lining it, tattered mickey mouse ears on it's head, and it was stitched up in the same vein as Cherish, with a man, taller and uneven, in the mass of flesh.

It's beady little eyes, almost buried beneath flaps of pockmarked and festering skin, held a light that seemed almost human.

The computer dutifully identified its costume as belonging to a campy hero called Mouse Protector, a parahuman with the ability to teleport short distances. She had gone missing at the hands of the nine months prior if news reports were anything to go by.

It was only then that I realized who it was.

It was the abomination that Bonesaw had created from Mouse Protector and her nemesis, Ravager, a parahuman with the power to inflict festering wounds on his victims.

Murder Rat!

She was carrying a speaker slung around her neck, her long clawed hands bloody.

With Star's blood.

I looked at Star and saw his stomach still bleeding, bubbling, wisps of smoke lifting up from it.

Her power was stopping the CodeRed from working!

My vision went red, and a murderous rage boiled over me.

I won't wait and watch any longer.

Raising my hand I extended my forcefield to Star and pulled out my explosion gun.

"You dare hurt my son?!" I growled, leveling the gun at her, "Die!"

She turned to look at me, my voice alerting her, only too late.

The explosion ripped into her, blowing her apart, her innards spalttering all over mine and Star's forcefields.

"Pa..pa." Star asked weakly, as I ran up to him and knelt beside him.

With Murder Rat's death, his wounds finally began to heal, and his stomach pulled itself together.

I cradled Star's head and rubbed his back gently

"Shush...Papa is here. It's going to be fine." I consoled him.

"Papa....did I do good?" He asked, his voice slowly regaining strength.

"Yes Star. You did very good. You did very good." I said, kissing his forehead, and gave him another dose of CodeRed, just in case.

A cackle broke out behind me, the laughter a mix between a beast and girl's.

I turned back to see the Siberian had returned, a sadistic mirth in her eyes.

I put Star down by the wall, gently.

"Stay here, Star. Papa will take care of this." I said, patting his head.

I stood back up and faced down The Siberian, and now that I was face to face with her, I noticed she was short. Shorter than me.

I almost wondered why she seemed so scary to everyone, before she slammed her fists into my forcefield.

It flickered a bit at the point of impact, bit ultimately didn't so much as budge.

A shocked looked spread on her face, except it wasn't mixed with the excitement she had previously held.

I smiled.

"My forcefield is far stronger than my son's, Manton. It can withstand the force of Jupiter collapsing in on itself. Your punches? They feel like buzzing flies compared to that."

Her eyes trembled with fear for a moment as a cold look flashed in them.

"Oh yes. I know. I know that the Siberian isn't an actual person. You are a projection created by William Manton. You are a dream, you little shit. And I'm your wake up call." I said, taking a step forward.

The floor beneath my feet cracked, denting and Siberian took a step back, afraid.

She let out a flurry of punches onto my forcefield, leaving nary a crack, her face warping with terror woth each unsuccessful attempt.

"You done? Then it's my turn now." I said, wrapping the forcefield around her, forming a seamless cage.

She clawed and hewed at it to no avail, as I concentrated another bit of the field around my fist, bring the full force of my new bodysuit to bear.

Rearing my fist, I slammed it into her stomach as surprise colored her face.

Her eyes looked up at me as of to ask 'How?'

"You're the invulnerable, unbeatable Siberian. The unstoppable force and immovable object. Hits slip past you, gravity and friction don't affect your movements, you don't need leverage to bring out ungodly amounts of force.

That's your whole shtick, isn't it? Defiance of the laws of physics?

But you know what I realized when you attacked Star?

If you really could bypass all the laws of physics, you wouldn't have needed to break his forcefield to get to him.

You can't or subconsciously won't bypass certain laws. And things that meddle with the reality of things can affect you. Things like my forcefield that prevents forced teleportation.

It conflicts with your own power's field.

You know what that means?" I asked, pummeling her into the ground with another punch, causing her to gasp and croak, flickering like a glitch.

"It means this. I am a hard counter to you and your reality warping bullshit.

But that's not all!" I smiled sadistically.

"Originally, I was just going to keep throwing you into a looped portal till Star dealt with the rest of the Nine.

You guys were supposed to be a nice little training excercise for my son.

And to help me prove a point.

But you didn't know your place. No. You just had to hurt him.

My baby boy.

And now you will pay the price."

"Computer, target William Manton."

Hearing her creator's name, The Siberian's head cocked to me, her eyes pleading as she thrashed about in my forcefield, trying to escape.

"Oh no no. My dear Siberian. You can't teleport back to your maker.

Can't have you saving him, now can we?" I said wagging my finger at her.

I opened a holoscreen and a feed played on it displaying a non descript van on a street a block from us.

"I want you to watch, helpless, as I destroy you, once and for all!"

"Computer. Prep the matter annihilation cannon. Activate bounding field around the van to prevent any collateral damage." I added, and looked deep into the Siberian's terrified eyes, as I uttered the final command.

"Fire."

A yellow orange beam rained down from the sky, piercing through the purple red mist, and slammed into the van, just as a green halo engulfed the van.

The van began to burn away, it's matter dematerializing before everyone's eyes, as the Siberian let out a horrified scream, monochrome tears flowing from her eyes as she clutched her hair.

She looked at me pleadingly, as of to beg for her life.

"You want me to spare you, William Manton? Did you spare those countless innocents who begged you to do the same? Did you spare Hero? Or the case 53s?

No. Now, you get to have a taste of your own medicine. And you can't complain that it's bitter."

The van was almost gone now, the burning embers disintegrating at the edges of the bounded field, before extinguishing.

Slowly, she started to flicker too, her tiger striped body chipping away into the void until with one final silent scream, she disappeared from the world for good.