Of Serpents and Crustaceans (IKO/Closed)

Hell's kitchen. A run down motel. A rainy night. Basic cable. HBO.

Aiden Anderson, working Hero name Boxer, was working with his police buddy and quasi partner Lincoln Esposito to keep a certain witness safe on that evening. Witness protection was often an easy affair that amounted to baby sitting more than anything. They just needed to make sure this guy didn't skip town or get cold feet before he testified against some Trigger traffickers. It was all routine follow up to the drug bust they performed a few days back. This was the boring sort of legal work that a hero had to do after the public highlight stuff. Paper work, reports, witness protection, testifying. It was all the sort of thing most of the schools trained them for in their classes but it wasn't the kind of thing that was prevalent in their celebrity lives. A lot of the larger hero firms had lawyers and sidekicks to do this sort of work for them but Boxer was on his own. He was more like a sidekick for the police than a pro hero some days.

”Sit the hell down, you're bugging me!” Esposito was a typical looking and talking Italian American from Little Italy. His dad was a cop and his dad was a cop and his dad made hats and came here on a boat. Dressed in civilian attire he didn't much look like a cop with his baby face and pull over hoodie. He didn't much like Boxer as a person but as a partner they had a mutual relationship. They both wanted to ascend and were both willing to risk their lives for that. Don't think them too shallow. They both want to help people but they want to do it from the top. Boxer was busy shadow boxing a mirror. The young boy, so full of vigor and starved for attention. Being trapped in door was no place for a glory hound extravert like him.

”How 'bout you get up and throw some jabs at me instead.” Not even close to the full speed that his quirk allowed, Boxer was still remarkably fast for a normal human. This was what a lifetime of training yielded. Back in the day, before quirks killed the sport, the boy would've been called a prodigy. People that hand out that label often ignore the years of tutelage kids go through to get there.

”Like hell I would. I'm tryna watch the movie.” Some B rated action flick from ten years ago was playing for the third time that day and tenth time that week.

”Stay on your ass officer. Get fat. Meld with your desk and let the real heroes do the work.” The hero jabbed with his words hard enough to sock the officer right in the pride.

”Oh is that what you want!” He hopped of the mattress and squared up to the hero. Boxer kept his hands up with a smile behind them. ”I'll have you know I was a golden glove before the force.”

”Yeah every hard kid around here says that.” Esposito's jabs and crosses were easily deflected and snaked through while Boxer through light open hand punches in return. The two acted like the kids they were at heart until there was a knock at the door. In one swift movement, the cop reached to the small of his back for his gun while Boxer moved to the door with his fists raised. It was a hero's duty to protect and take the hits first. Besides that, Boxer hit a lot harder than that gun did.

”Pizza!” Came the voice from the otherside and both relaxed their guard. Esposito still moved to a corner out of view while Aiden answered the door. Sure enough, the pizza guy. Aiden tipped the guy a ten and took the extra large and two liter inside. The two sat down together to eat and finish watching the Schwarzenegger film, again.

WC: 664
GP: 13

Davey leant on a pizza delivery car in front of the motel in his hand he held a soggy piece of paper. The ink ran from the moist sheet and dripped to the ground. The contents on the page didn’t matter anymore, he had the address and the target. He crumpled the wet page into a ball and tossed it onto the ground.

The benefactors had freed Davey as a child to be an assassin. His power was useful, effective and bloody. All the calling cards for any potential recruit for a criminal organisation. The terms were simple, they kept him free and he kept doing their jobs. He didn’t even know the identities of the organisation, but hey, if he was allowed to keep living and keep walking the streets of society . . . well . . . Davey was no fool.

Sometimes he got dossiers, sometimes he got messengers and this particular time he got a single piece of paper slide under his door. An address. A room. A target. Nothing else. In truth, Davey deeply hated when they did this to him. A lack of information could mean him dead, but maybe they were just use to how effective he was?

He watched the pizza man leave the hotel and walk towards his car. The man was obviously disgruntled by the stranger. Davey just smiled, knowingly, lazily, he’d seen that expression before. Didn’t understand it personally, it was rude that people wouldn’t let a debonair gentleman like himself lean on their fine motor vehicles.

“Oi, get off my car, I have another delivery to make”

“?.?”

The man was ignoring him, pulling out a key and unlocking the door of the car. Apparently he didn’t want to speak. Well that was insulting, this pizza man was really checking all the boxes to end up in his bad books, Davey had even giving him the best questioning expression he could muster.

Black smoke began to wisp off Davey’s body. Was it just him or was his skin tightening? Oh yeah, definitely just a him thing he thought as he raised a hand and flexed it in the rain. Definitely. Just. A. Him. Thing. His fingers dripped water, the tips leaking with tendrils of smoke.

By now the Pizza Driver was sitting in his car an annoyed expression across his face. Davey didn’t blame him, maybe the expression would’ve been different if he’d seen the smoke. Perhaps not.

Either way.

His skin did not fit.

He raised his hand . . . and snapped his own neck.

. . .

The driver stared into the night stunned, had he just watched somebody commit suicide? Shaken, he slowly opened the car door and looked down at where the man should’ve fallen . . . but there was nobody there.
A voice rasped on the back of his neck.

“How many in the building?”

“T-t-two” he stuttered, not daring to turn around.

“What did they look like?”

“C-c-cops” he spat again, anxiously looking at the large shadow creeping passed his legs.

The voice was silent for some time before speaking again.

“Go. I’m not that hungry”

Terrified and without turning around, he slowly got into the car and drove off.


Moments later Iko the monster stood alone in the rain. Two cops protecting the target. Two dead men. Now the question was how to deal with them? He had no idea where the target was, passing through the room using the usual means wouldn’t work, he’d be seen . . .

Unless . . .

Iko passed into the hotel room adjacent to the target. A half naked man lay on the bed asleep. The creature walked up to the new victim and tore off his leg, an almost guttural shriek escaped his mouth as he bolted upright staring at the creature who had just violently wounded him.

“Wakey wakey” and he punctured the man’s chest with his claw.

The alarm had been raised. One of the cops would go and check. He entered the bathroom behind and stepped through the wall with his ghost step. As he suspected the bathrooms of both rooms were adjacent.

A monster in the bathroom.

A monster on the hunt.

684

”Why do you always have to get weird shit on your pizza?” Esposito quizzed his hero friend. The rainbow haired boy took a bite out of his seafood topped dinner. The saltiness of the cheese and the astringous bite of the tomato took the shrimp and krab in the completely wrong direction for anyone with a pallet even close to normal. Still he consumed it with vigor while still removing his phone from his pocket.

”Hello? Oh hey pot, how’s it going?” Esposito’s brow lowered to unamused as Boxer imagined himself more clever than he actually was. “Hey kettle, it’s pot. He says there’s pineapple on your pizza.” With a careless toss the hero threw his phone over his shoulder and onto the bed. It was true though. Aiden’s half had seafood and the officer’s featured pineapple, red onions, and olives.

”Ha ha.” He said through a bite while wagging the half eaten slice like a pointer. ”Seriously though, you always do this and it makes me sick that half of my half is sharing a border with your disgusting country.”

”You dare, sir! Sling insults at me all you like but do not turn your fork tongue against my country men less you aim for war!” The hero took full hold of the garlic sauce container and held it above the pizza. Like a mad god he threatened the lives of everyone on that pizza. Escalation was all that was to come. The end of this pizza world was at hand. At least, it would have been for not the blood curdling scream that came from next door. Esposito grabbed his gun while Boxer all but tackled through the door. They came to the room where the scream came from only to find the door was locked. Other guests were coming out of their rooms at this point.

”NYPD! Back in your rooms now!” The officer flashed his badge while the hero made the call to shoulder check the door open. It was dark, the man had gone to bed, but it didn’t stop Boxer’s enhanced shrimp eyes from seeing every detail. The torn leg was where the scream came from. His destroyed chest was what ended it. The hero boy dropped to his knees and lost the pizza he had consumed all over the carpet. Esposito had to turn and leave the room to avoid the same fate. His human eyes spared him the finer details but he understood well enough what he was looking at.

”Boxer, talk to me man.” The officer called out between gags. ”Are you ok in there?” The boy attempted to collect himself. They knew something was going to happen tonight but this? This was extreme. This was unforgivable.

”I’m… I’m pulling it together.” The hero wiped his mouth on his sleeve before he stood and tried to investigate. The site was so horrid that he actually had to remove his goggles to desensitize himself to it all. Unhindered, his senses were able to take in a much greater breath of the visual spectrum which changed all the colors and shapes of world. His two three part eyes moved in separate directions as he scanned the room. ”I don’t see a weapon or a point of entry disturbed since the door was locked. The wounds suggest brute strength but the entry method suggests subtlety.”

”But this guy isn’t the witness.” Esposito chimed in on how pointless the murder but complex the scene was. ”He’s just…”

”A distraction!” Boxer threw his goggles back on and dashed into the hallway. His arms were already raised to fight.

WC: 629
GP: 12
TGP: 25

Acid?

The acrid scent entered his heightened nostrils, no. no. There were hints of cheese and bacon in that, oh and dough. Mmm that wasn’t acid, that was vomit, yeah definitely vomit. The creature took a mental note that police officers had weaker stomachs than what he expected them to have, or maybe these folks hadn’t seen a murder before.

The grin that painted his face grew wider as he took mental note that these small fry had no idea what they were getting into. Clearly this was some sort of witness protection deal, but Iko was often sent in without being told why he was doing the killing. You would think that a monster of his caliber would be into guns blazing and rampant carnage but in fact it was quite the opposite, he found that when people discovered who was actually causing the terror, not a hatchet but a scalpel; that made it all the more terrifying.

He found the target cowering in the bedroom, it wasn’t difficult, the officers had left all the doors open so that they could keep an eye on their witness. It was smart, but ultimately neither of them (he smelt two distinct traces of person in this room) had actually stayed to check on their witness.

Taking some mental notes, like how one of the targets smelt like the ocean and how the front door had literally been thrown open. The creature figured it only had at most a few seconds before the officers realized they’d been fooled. Clever lads.

His gleaming white mask was caught by the light of a lamp as rainwater trailed off the surface of his body and dripped to the floor. He barely fit through the door, his enlarged frame more akin to a great ape than a man. The target was female, sniveling in a corner and consequently his favorite snack.

“Did you see how easy it was for me to get inside?”

It was a strange question to ask somebody he was about to kill but hey, he liked seeing woman squirm, he was a man of character after all. A true gentleman. His jaw began to crack open, a second set of joints hidden in his jawbone enlarging and stretching open the maw. She managed a small nod registering that she’d heard what he’s said.

His claw then reached out to grab her, his muscles flexing to swipe this lamb off the mortal coil, it wasn’t cruel, it was efficient, just like everything he did.

“Please”

The lamb’s cry was far too late and far too quiet. Iko was impressed that she’d managed to say anything at all, usually they just stared - wide eyed and terrified.

“I need a hero”

458

”.22 CALIBER OVERHAND!” A powerful punch used when boxers are fighting opponents are larger than them. Boy was Boxer ever fighting something bigger than him. The attack connected right into the apparent monster's jaw with a bone cracking thud. The hero felt it the impact reverberate all the way down his spine. This was truly the heaviest thing he had ever made contact with. Still, he powered through and sent the monster through the building's external wall.

”What the hell was that?” Esposito called out from the doorway, gun pointed at the hole to the night. Boxer grabbed the witness from the bed and practically threw her at the cop.

”It's just a transformation quirk. Get her back to the station!” With that said Boxer jumped out the hole. With a hard splash the hero came down into the alley way where he smacked the beast like man. Though he chastised Esposito for being surprised, the image of the quirk was still burned into his mind. A towering hunk of muscle bound flesh over eight feet tall. Grossly purple flesh pulled thin across his body. Terribly long claw like fingers. The white mask and the rows of fang like teeth. Was there such a quirk like that in this world. It made what was under Boxer's skin look humble by comparison.

Still, Heroes defeat villains; regardless of what powers they have.

”Alright guy.” It was important that Boxer referred to this thing as being human. It loved fear and the boy could let it know that he was afraid. ”I know why you're here but too bad for you that you ran into me tonight. Give yourself up or you'll get a lot more than that last punch!”

HA! He laughed at himself. Was there more than he could give than a sneak attack straight to the jaw? The hero mentally chastised himself in the same breath. Don't let those thoughts in. You've got a lot more to give! Beat him down with brute force and show this murderer that there's no place left for him in this world. The hero took on a Slugger's boxing stance. His arms and feet were further apart and his stance was more rooted. It offered less mobility but increased the possible rotation of his hips and torso. As he told himself mentally, he needed to fight with power this time. Every hit was going to be one hundred percent this time around.

WC: 409
GP: 8
TGP: 33

The punch slammed into his head and sent it snapping backwards. A jab like that, a punch like that had been so surprising that Iko was not only lifted by force, but by sheer astonishment. Perhaps he put too many eggs in the “these guys are officers” basket, or perhaps he had just grown so use to people just rolling over and showing him their bellies. Either way, whether by luck or strength, the creature was sent crashing through the wall and out into the alleyway beyond.

He slammed into the ground, immediately bolting upright with a thick black smoke ebbing from his dislocated jaw. Bloody hell, that hurt. He was ninety nine percent sure now that this wasn’t just some run of the mill hero or officer, this was a big fish, smelled like one too. Iko’s jaw burned, his muscles and bones cracking to attempt to realign the muscle but to no avail, unfortunately his abilities to warp his body didn’t reach into the realms of self-healing.

Hell. First that stupid hero in sunglasses, then that godforsaken magical weeaboo and now this guy. The almighty better be laughing at him because this’d be the only sort of dumb, idiotic luck that would hit a villain who had turned on the wrong side of a god.

but am i not a god?

He lifted a claw, black sludge oozing from where the skin melted back and drifted into a mist that clung to the flesh that it could, revealing a human hand. Just a transformation quirk? he thought as his hand gripped his jaw and yanked it back into line. The mists coalesced forming fleshy tissue that gripped to the broken jaw, but it was in no way sitting like it had before.  

His smile was ruined.

His smile was ruined.

His smile. Was. Ruined.

Oh. You poor lamb. You poor sweet sheep. What sweet hell have you stirred? He was a primal evil, a creature who had forsaken his innocence to Ouroboros. He. Was. Iko.

Laughter echoed through the rain as mortar and brick crumbled downward into the alley below. He would’ve just been happy with the girl, slit her throat, gobbled her up and gone home to watch Homeland on his telly. But this hero had done the one thing you never did to Iko.

He had ruined a perfect grin.

“Tell you what hero” the last word was said with clear vitriol. The word made Iko sick, what was wrong with him? What was wrong with them. They couldn’t save lives, they could barely save themselves. They didn’t save him!

“A smile for a smile, I’ll be having yours for having mine and I’ll let the girl go”

His muscles crawled and tensed, his form becoming slender and less ape-like. Sometimes to be a killer you had to look a little more like one . . . less like a monster and more like a human. That was how you killed men, you became them, thought like them, wore them. . . . that’d come later.

“I am a fair man after all, born gentleman I am”

“Ghost Waltz” he hissed into the night air his form evaporating and dropping into the ground below.

Rule 1: Ghost Waltz allows the user to become incorporeal.

He vanished into the stone, the rules he’d hammered into his brain began screaming in his ears as they always did.

Rule 2: All or Nothing. If your body’s in a surface you stay incorporeal

Iko exploded from the floor behind the Hero becoming solid and swung his right arm, his claw looking to swipe through the Hero’s flesh and draw his sweet, sweet blood.

Rule 3: No touching while you’re a ghost

643

No, it could never be as easy as a villain just getting punched and giving up. Each and every one of them was as conceited, if not more so, than Boxer himself. This one though, this one was in a league of his own. To boot, his quirk was downright terrifying. Black smoke and ooze turned into monstrously abundant flesh. What more so was that he was able to reduce the size of his transformation. From gargantuan ape to slender man and then he did the worst thing of all. The killer became incorporeal and drifted down into the solid street. Boxer went wide eyed as it happened. Like a deer in the headlights. Like a stupid girl in a horror film.

”God dammit.” The boy breathed to himself as he stood there in the rain. He kept his stance but there was literally no way for him to tell what was going to come next. A giant ape monster from above? Probable. A knife through his foot? Sure. Why not? The one thing he could be grateful for was that if this guy was so fixated on tit-for-tat, he wouldn't be chasing down Esposito and the witness.

A solid figure behind him! Boxer was warned but just a bit too late. Raking claws carved down the boy's back. There was no holding back behind the attack either. IKO dug in as far as he could but the killer would find that it wasn't all that deep back there. His claws scratch on something that made a sound like stone. Flesh torn and superficial blood spilled, it was revealed that Boxer had a sub dermal layer of crustacean armor. Made from the minerals part of his every day diet, this armor served to absorb the impact made from his incredible punches. Consequently, it was strong enough to make the boy resistant to low caliber bullets.

”.22 Caliber Hook!” IKO clawed from right to left so that was the way Boxer spun out of instinct. His left arms took a wide arc as he sought to even up that jaw injury. This shouldn't be mistaken for a rip or something that was going to check the jaw and pull back. Boxer's right arm was still secure against his jaw as a guard and his rotation came from the left foot stepping as well as his torso moving. Boxer had the intention of plowing through the monster's jaw so hard that his head would spin.

WC: 413
GP: 8
TGP: 41

Christ all mighty and may he not be in vain, this boy had a shell! Fascinating, absolutely fascinating and to be honest, sort of disgusting. Come to think of it, that hair was pretty fabulous as well, rainbows? Now that he was getting an up close and personal view of the man, his hair was most definitely a rainbow.

Thoughts were crossing his mind at a terrifying pace and he needed to slow down, the beast inside demanded it. Iko needed to embrace his instincts. First heartbeat - his arm moved backwards as the boy began spinning, second heartbeat, the blood was rushing in his ears . . . how distracting but he needed to focus now. He swung his left fist into the palm of his right hand to counteract the momentum, to speed up the movement of his arm to block the punch.

WOOSH.

The third heartbeat, a shockwave rippled through the air as wind was blasted outwards. The fist stopped mere inches from Iko’s head by his own arm. The creature smiled and let himself drop through the ground appearing a few metres away, his limp right arm hanging loosely by his side.

“I’m learning you see”

The blow had dislocated his upper arm from his low arm so that it was hanging at right angles dangling at his side, thick black smoke coiled outwards deflating the flesh and muscles slightly. He felt like he should be able to feel pain but he could not. A side effect of the Quirk? No, it was the adrenaline pumping through his body. It was rare that they sent him against a hero who was so . . . so . . . . competent.

“My quirk use to be boring. Turn into a monster and eat people, but it’s changing. Parts of it that were sleeping are waking up” he absentmindedly grabbed his damaged joint and with an audible snap clicked it back into place, some of the smoke grafting new flesh onto the deflated limb. The creature visibly winced, but that was more a cause of the sound than actual pain.

“Tell me, will I be like you when it finishes? Will there be no more “me” then there was “it””

He tilted his head and breathed in deeply, he could smell them running. Their sweet salty sweat as it ran off their bodies, their hearts he could hear still pounding in their chests, the sound of their footfalls on wet puddles and the familiar buzz of the cell phone this hero’s companion was using to phone reinforcements.

“It was downright rude of you to not let me kill the girl. You really think “they” will let her live if I don’t kill her? I’m the mercy killing”

The benefactors didn’t like it when people got away. Davey knew there were scarier men than him, he’d read the reports. Entire apartment blocks vanishing, men with broken minds and little boys left without a mother or a father. But there was nothing he could do about it, and when he said he was the mercy killing, he was dead serious.

514

Connection! As the hero's fist slammed into the villain there was force enough that a short lived cavity was formed in the rain. There was sickening cracking and popping but this wasn't the hit Boxer was looking for. By the skin of his teeth the villain managed to get his arm in the way of the attack. So, it was blocked but blocking Boxer's attacks came with penalties all of its own. The monster retreated a few feat back to nurse his mangled, limp, limb and monologue. A perfect opportunity.

Hero tip number one: villains love to monologue. If you can, take advantage of this. Advantage has many meaning when fighting against your villain. Surprise attacks might come to mind first but consider your situation. If you're stalling for time, engage your villain in conversation. Get them distracted and focused on the targets of your choosing. If they are openly explaining their Quirk, let them. The more knowledge you have on your opponent's quirk, the more likely you are to defeat them. This was Boxer's advantage.

Look closely, think hard. The enemy has super strength, can phase through solid objects, transforms, and has a bizarre healing component. Though they may seem like a series of random abilities, people only have one Quirk. This remained true with Boxer's Shrimp Quirk. Though it had many components, at its root was a single origin. The same had to be true with this murderer. It was a transformation Quirk that was altering his physical structure. The phasing and the super being were just two ends of the same spectrum of his power. So, if he doesn't fully understand his Quirk yet, then Boxer had one more advantage. The plan came together, the hero knew how to defeat this villain now.

”Mercy? No one is killing that girl! Not you, not Cabberland, and not who ever is pulling his strings! Saving this girl means saving this city! Saving the city means saving this girl! A change is coming and I wont let the villains, gangs, and drug lords stop it! If you think you can stop this then come and try to kill me villain! I'm gonna blow you and this whole storm away with a single punch!”

Like and archer drawing a bow, Boxer gave up on subtlety or hidden ploys. He extended his left arm out and drew his right fist all the way back to his shoulder. His chest grew to maximum extension as he squeezed the muscles in his back together. His feet slid apart into a wide stance while his hip twisted to be in line with the target.

WC: 439
GP: 8
TGP: 49