Project ROWDY 2-28 (Patreon)

SIX YEARS AGO

NEW YORK OUTSKIRTS

Thirteen years old and he had the smallest kit in the van. 

That was always the funniest part about it — at least top three — because he just didn’t really need like seventy-five percent of it. A belt full of washers, screws, ball bearings and a couple roll of quarters were usually all he needed for a job — quarters were the best bet though; thick and big enough not to need more than a little touch to set a good-sized charge and small enough to hold six at once.

Zero sat up on the bench, boots up on an ammo crate as he stared around the back of the transport. The whole place was thick with the sweat of grown men — fresh and stale — with a lot of gun oil on top of that and also the plastic stink of fresh floor mats. The four grown men in the back with him didn’t even look at him, quiet as they checked their own kits; mags, straps, and pouches.

Especially pouches.

One of them kept touching the same one on his chest over and over like it was on the move or something. Bet he counts it again in thirty seconds.It only took like twenty.Rex fought down a snort as he looked down, biting down on his bottom lip to keep the laugh from leaving him. He had to at least look like he was taking this seriously. Considering he was in all black, like usual, he was halfway there. Black bodysuit, black gloves, black boots; everything a teenage secret agent needed to defend the country.

“Petrov. Ruslan Petrov.” The one running the brief at the front aimed his attention toward Rex like he didn’t already know this. “Our target is an enhanced runner, wanted for selling stolen high-grade tech; weapons, compounds, and prototypes that shouldn’t see the light of day. As of last Tuesday, arrest is off the table.”“Cool.” Rex nodded.

“At last count, Petrov had a couple dozen bodyguards and at least two of them hardened like he is.” The agent shook his head. “Small arms won’t cut it for a clean kill.”

Yeah… A red eyebrow went up. Why do you think I’m here, genius?

“Objective is simple.” Three fingers went up. “Enter. Eliminate. Erase.”

So, normal Tuesday then. The lead looked over at him one more time, an older face with gray coming into the beard staring down with a look that said he’d probably told a lot of kids what to do for a long time before this particular kid. “Stay on mission, kid.”Zero’s other eyebrow went up. Okay, gramps.As if he was the one who needed that lesson. Probably killed more baddies than you. Just looking at him, Rex could guess that he’d probably taken out no more than fifty, maybe sixty people if he’d had a really busy decade.Rex knew he’d done at least three times that already and he’d only been at this for a year. He stopped asking for the number after his last birthday. 

"Yeah.” Still, he didn’t say any of that as he pulled the mask down over his face with a scoff, red goggles snapping over his eyes and the world went a sharp bloody red. “Stay on mission. Got it."

—————————————————————

Three floors of poured concrete and corrugated steel doors didn’t stop Zero from finding a window to jump through. If you were gonna give him a fire escape and a ladder, he was gonna get in eventually.A washer took out the first guard’s head at eleven feet, brain and bone painting the wall, ceiling and part of the floor in a shock of kinetically-charged plasma. It was quick at least, and probably painless, but Rex didn’t really care about all that.“Breach! We’ve got a breach on two-side!”

Nah, he had a job to do.“Repeat!” The voice screamed out down the hall. “Two-side is ope-!”Zero came off the wall.Off the wall, one boot launching him high and sideways through the air by the time the second guy rounded the corner. The gun wasn’t even aimed right, not that he’d get a chance to shoot as a kick landed square on an open jaw screaming into a radio. He went down with the guy, a hard elbow forcing his mouth open before a glowing ball bearing dropped down his throat.Rex was already gone before the bomb went off, in motion as three gold quarters left his hands in a tight spread.

“HEADS OR TAILS!” The joke was out of him before the hallway lit up, Rex already cackling as the third guy went off in about four different directions.

The stairs were no different, eight or nine guys coming to pieces as he bounced off the stairwell and flipped over heads and bodies that came apart in bursts of gold and sprays of red. He was laughing, the sound spilling out of him in a low chuckle as coins, screws, and shell casings flew from his fingers and did all the work for him. Half these guys were probably ex-military like his real dad — they at least had the tattoos and muscles for it — and they couldn’t even stop a kid. They had guns and body armor and training and this is how they went? Sad.“C’mon? Not gonna make me work for it?”One of them actually swung a shotgun, hands shaking too hard to even get a bead. 

Zero wasn’t gonna give him a chance anyway. Not even breaking his stride, Rex slid across the slick landing — a clean sweep kick catching the man behind his knee. 

Two-hundred-and-something pounds of grown muscle man buckled hard onto concrete from a hooked ankle, the last thing he saw a washer glowing a bright gold before he had no more head to see.

“You gotta be kidding...” Rex couldn’t help but goran as he got to his feet, red spray all over his boots. “Come on, man.”

It didn’t take long for one of his own to drop after that, the guy who’d kept touching his pouch downed with most of his head missing, bottleneck the doorway as Rex jumped over him. Zero almost turned back to look but the voice of the lead bounced around in his head again. ‘Stay on mission, kid.’

So he did.He found Petrov pretty quick, most of his men already in pieces or peacing out and for good reason. Clearly, the guy could take care of himself. “...you’re big.”Enhanced big; as in seven feet tall, and muscular in a way that seemed like it was probably gonna give the guy health problems. 

If he lived long enough.Zero was here to help him save on his medical bills.

A thrown screw flew for the big guy’s eyes, Petrov’s hands up to catch it. By the time the bomb went off, Rex was already moving — well aware he’d have to keep distance against a guy that was probably tough enough to chew barbed wire. He vaulted over a desk, changing direction mid-air as a handful of quarters flew out and rocked the guy off balance with each one peppering his chest. Off the filing cabinet with one hand, a kick off the wall with both feet and a hard elbow to the back of the head when he thought he had an easy shot.He was wrong.Nggh! Rex grunted as Petrov got a hand around his vest, a hundred-thirty pounds of teenager sent flying until a bookshelf crashed to pieces behind him. …Nggh.

It hurt a lot.

Despite it all, Zero kept laughing from the floor with blood in his mouth because he couldn’t help it. “You’re tough.”

The crime-boss came in to finish it but the kid was already in motion, sliding forward. Flat on his back, he went straight between the guy’s legs; one hand up on the way through. The belt buckle was steel, after all, and he didn’t need more than a second of contact.By the time Petrov looked down at the glow, Zero was already on his feet behind him; blood dripping from the ceiling and walls a split-second after a flash of yellow.“...not that tough.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

NOW

MILITARY BASE, VIRGINIAKate Cha was not that tough.Physically, at least.Mentally, she was one of the strongest people Rex knew. You had to be when you felt the pain of death a couple hundred times a year. Her powers were magical, as far as she shared what the team. The GDA apparently said there was nothing in her DNA that made her any different from a normal Chinese teenage girl.

The magic gave her a better body and it let her push past normal human limits, but the only person on Teen Team she could beat in an arm wrestle was Eve.

So, no, Kate Cha was not that tough.

And Rex hated that.

“KATE!” Rae’s scream bounced up from somewhere in the hall, the sound spiking into Rex’s head like a nail. “Kate! No!”Komodo was still standing over the bodies, a dozen and more Kates under the sicko’s feet and two missing the tops of their head right in front of him as he swallowed.For a half second, Rex didn’t do anything at all as something inside him opened a door he hadn’t even looked at since he met Eve. He knew the math.

Komodo was a tough bastard, probably around four times stronger than he was now even after all the upgrades the GDA had shoved into him. It didn’t matter to Rex as he ran; cracked and cratered flooring a blur under his feet as he crossed the distance.Komodo saw him coming, big bloody grin spreading wider across that face as he threw out a punch with those big hands. It was the kind of punch that ended almost anything that wasn’t an armored vehicle.

Rex slipped it by a few inches, wind from the whiff moving his hair as he refused to stop. An elbow slammed out, clean into Komodo’s throat with his whole reinforced arm behind it.

The monster’s head snapped back.

Rex wasn’t done, palm up and point-blank in a flare of gold. Yellow plasma charged up with kinetic force vented out from his hand, a bright cone of power erupting directly in the giant’s scaly face.

The explosion ripped through the air as Komodo staggered back, orange mask charred and already gone. It didn’t stop him either, skin a little burned as he drooled black blood, but the guy was still in one piece. Yeah, figured that.

Rex gave ground, backpedaling smoothly as the dark-skinned brute kept charging forward through the wreck of the military base. A jagged piece of steel found its way into Rex’s palm as he dove out of the way of a punch that tore through a wall, gold already bright in his fist as he dumped a charge into it.

Komodo bulldozed right into the throw, steel detonating against his side and tearing through a chunk of his thick padded costume. It still didn’t stop the cannibal.Smoke pouring off him, Komodo Dragon roared something with no words in it and rushed in low at Rex; arms wide in a hug that could’ve cut a bear in half.Rex went over him.Both hands on the shoulders, it was a hop that could clear a fence, and on the way past, Rex dragged his hand over the costume; forcing as much as he could into every split second of contact he had without even worrying about a landing. 

Komodo froze as his arms closed in on nothing, snakey eyes narrowed as he looked over his shoulder to where Rex fell to the floor — a blinding yellow glow lighting up the back half of the monster’s body. 

Rex looked up at him from the floor. “Still hungry?”Those white eyes widened and the suit went.The whole top of Komod Dragon went with it, a blast that tore up the ground and everything too close to it — Rex included, throwing him a good twenty feet before he came down on something soft and wet.

Several somethings.

Oh. 

Rex gasped for air, hands already under himself as he found himself gripping a bloody shoulder that wasn’t attached to anything surrounded by so many other similar pieces of someone very familiar. Arms, legs and vacant faces stared up at the flashing emergency lights, all of them covered in red.

Chest heaving, Rex jumped off the pile fast, barely able to look at what — who — he’d landed on.He didn’t even get a chance to force his breathing back to normal.

Not as the far wall came apart.Rex barely looked over his shoulder as a big pale body tore through — “Monit-! — and an oversized foot met his chest. 

Something cracked.

Several somethings that Rex was sure were his new reinforced ribs, loud in his ears as they gave way. The hit was as hard as it felt, his body skipping across the ground until Rex slammed back-first into a pillar.

He slid to the ground and tried to breathe again.

Unfortunately, all the blood in his mouth was making that hard.

“REX!”Tired eyes blinked up to see Monitor — that pale giant with dark scales — with his hand up in the air, something caught in it. No bigger than a Barbie, it was wriggling for freedom.

And failing.“RAE!”Rex got a finger up and fired.The yellow plasma bolt struck Monitor’s shoulder and did all of nothing, a little black mark left behind that the big monster barely even noticed. Tipping his head back, Monitor unhinged those heavy jaws and dropped Rae in his mouth and swallowed; the world stopping again as Rex found it hard to breathe for another reason again.

He lay there against the pillar, no air in him, until he saw that big throat working and fighting for all it was worth; an odd look on the Lizard Leaguer’s face as a smile grew on Rex’s. “...she doesn’t stay small, you dumb fuck.”An oversized hand went to that thick pale neck with a gag, a bulge under those scales moving down and getting bigger as it went. The mutant froze, yellow eyes widening as his chest expanded out in a way chests didn’t and shouldn’t. 

The thing about this guy — and Rex remembered this well — was that he was definitely stronger than Komodo, at least by double, but it had only taken one charged up punch to put Monitor through a wall.

And it took him minutes to get back up. 

One.Komodo had eaten a lot more than that and kept on trucking. The dead cannibal was slower and smaller but, without a doubt, he was definitely tougher.

The torso split open from the inside out, Rae growing past the limits of what his chest could hope to hold. Everything inside Monitor went out all across the floor and the ceiling, Shrinking Rae falling out of the middle as she hit the deck.

Alive.Rex got there first, sliding the last few feet in a mess of blood by the time Monitor tipped back and fell. “Rae!” She was a mess all over, arms and hips broken and several parts of her in the wrong place, but she was still moving.Still breathing.“Okay, hey, hey…” Rex swallowed a mouthful of his own blood. “Rae. Ra-”Rex’s head snapped sideways, the sound echoing out a split-second later as Rex was on his knees before he even realized he’d gone down.“I— I got you!” Someone stepped out from a smoking doorway, pale green skin managing to stand out under the spinning red light. Blood splattered his blond bob as King Lizard waved his gun around. “You— do you even know what you just did? Komodo was with me since… He was like my uncle! Over twenty years and you just… y-you— Now, you’re just dead, you’re dead and tha—”Rex raised his head, the bullet coming loose from the spot over his eyebrow with a small spurt of blood. It hit the floor and rolled to Rex’s feet by the time he stood up again.“Oh.”King Lizard’s mouth froze like that, even as the gun came up again.

Rex ducked the second, the shot going wild and making the ringing in his head worse as he started running. He caught Lizard’s wrist as the third went off, the cult leader’s shoulders hitting the wall.

Rex felt the hit, his shoulder stinging from the point-blank shot. It didn’t stop him from raising a fist.

King Lizard flinched hard, gun falling as both hands went up.Rex froze, fist an inch from his face. 

His finger came out and flicked the man right on the mask, a little glow spreading across the green. “Wai-”One more body dropped to the floor, another head missing as Rex stood there. Blood ran down his eye, ears still going like a fire alarm.He turned around, stuck in a room filled with bodies and screaming alarms.“...fuck.”