Chapter 126 Keep.

Chapter 126: 126 Keep.

"Boss! No!" she cried, throwing herself in front of the waddling, wart-covered monster. "Don’t hurt Nibbles!"

"Nibbles? What?"

"I totally have him under my control," she said, putting her gloved hand on the monster’s massive, bulbous head and giving him a soothing stroke. "See? He’s a good boy. Aren’t you?" she cooed, squatting beside the horror and scratching it affectionately behind what I assumed were its ears. "Who’s mommy’s favorite abomination? Is it Nibbles? I think it’s Nibbles! Yes, it is. Yes, it is!"

The throgg huffed, a thick, leathery tongue lolling out of its mouth as it wiggled in genuine pleasure under Psyren’s attention.

I’d heard of ugly-cute before, but this thing was violently pushing the absolute limits of that definition.

"I..."

"Pleeeease, boss? Can I keep him?" Psyren batted her glowing pink eyes at me. "You were the one telling me I needed some more muscle for my villainess brand. And what could be better than a horrific mutant monster designed for villains? I promise I’ll take good care of him, clean up after his acid spit, and totally not feed him to anyone! Not even the jerks who cut in front of me in line at Starbucks."

Ughhhh... I looked again at the monster, who was currently panting like an overgrown bulldog.

There was a golden rule in Hollywood that I actively applied to my line of work: never work with animals or children.

Both tended to go completely off-script at the worst possible moments.

Given that my industry involved throwing cars and shooting plasma beams, an unpredictable mutant pet was a recipe for goddamn disaster.

But, well, I supposed Psyren did deserve some kind of bonus for her work tonight.

And to be fair, we weren’t exactly running the risk of someone claiming the thing from the pound, seeing as how its previous owner was currently a twenty-foot-tall puddle of rotting flesh on my front lawn.

I sighed, lowering the jagged sheet of metal. "Fine," I said. "But he stays at the chalet until we’re damn sure he’s not going to go rogue and try to eat the mailman. And he is absolutely not sleeping on my bed!"

Psyren squealed, abandoning the throgg to throw her arms around my neck and kiss me with sheer delight. "Oh, thank you, boss! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

My arm instinctively snaked around her waist, hugging her back as she snuggled in close.

Well, maybe it wasn’t all bad. I cleared my throat, gently easing Psyren back. "Right. Well, any injuries?" I asked, looking between her and Glacia.

"Absolutely fine," Psyren said, giggling as she ran her hands over her kinetic-weave suit. "And looking good, too!"

"I am pleased to report that we have come through largely unscathed, sir," Glacia said, her posture rigidly formal as she drifted down to the grass.

Well, that was true for them, but I still felt like I’d just gotten a deep-tissue massage from a steamroller. Everything ached.

My joints felt like they’d been aggressively torn from their sockets and hastily shoved back in.

Fuuuuck. This was exactly why I hated manipulating that much mass at once. Fusing a kraken-mech together with my powers was incredibly impressive, yeah, but I was going to feel like I’d tried to fistfight a cement truck for the next week.

I rolled my shoulders, wincing as a sharp pop echoed from my collarbone, and surveyed the battlefield.

"Right," I said. "But first things first. Glacia? Do a quick scout around the perimeter. Make sure there aren’t any more monsters hiding in the treeline. Psyren? Can you do the same with your telepathy? Last thing I need is some straggler busting through a window after all this."

"Yes, sir," Glacia said, already rising back into the cold night air.

"Sure thing, bossman," Psyren said with a sharp wink. The pink glow of her eyes grew brighter, and I felt the heavy, tingling wash of her psychic radar sweep over the grounds.

"Uh, Miles?" Rhea’s voice suddenly crackled in my earpiece.

"Yeah?" I answered, tapping my helmet.

"We got something wrong. The manor’s radar is picking up a change in astronomical placement. I think it might be a hero."

I groaned out loud. Ugh. Well, I supposed I shouldn’t be too surprised.

Even though the chalet was nestled well outside the city limits, given the sheer scale of the destruction Delirium and I had just caused, we’d absolutely tripped some federal satellites, not to mention the local seismic monitors.

"Any idea who?" I asked, squinting up at the dark night sky, trying to pick out whichever cape was coming to bust us.

"Not sure. Coming in extremely fast, though. Spiking the sensors with a massive amount of atmosphe—" she stopped as her eyes widened towards the sky.

I turned too to see the night sky rapidly drifting away and being replaced by the cosmos of planets and cluster of stars.

Ah. Khonsu.

Well, it could be worse.

"Psyren? Pick up anything else?" I asked.

"No monsters left. Aside from this cutie," she giggled, affectionately rubbing the throgg’s head. The slavering monster drooled happily, its highly acidic spit sizzling as it hit the frozen grass.

"Uh, yeah. Great. Then headphones back on, please. We’ve got a visitor dropping in," I instructed. "Rhea? Track them, but completely power down the Octoporian’s weapons. We didn’t do anything wrong here."

"If you say so," Rhea muttered, sounding highly dubious about the concept of our innocence.

"It’ll be fine," I reassured her. You never knew how things were going to go with A-list heroes, but ideally, Khonsu would see where I was coming from.

Hopefully.

I made my way toward Delirium’s rotting corpse while I waited, giving the dissolving, mutated skull a firm kick with my armored boot.

Oh yeah. He wasn’t getting up again. Which could only benefit me, really.

Surviving witnesses of this caliber were a massive pain in the ass, and if he had lived, he could have made my life infinitely harder.

I turned away from the steaming puddle of gore and watched as Khonsu’s domain spread closer and closer to the chalet till there was a planet right above my house.

Then he descended down in a gust of wind, darkness and flowing wraps and robes. He then straightened his eight foot mass and unwrapped an arm to reveal Divina.

She held herself stiffly, but the sheer shock was plainly visible on her face. She actually sucked in a sharp, horrified breath when she caught sight of the melting, multi-limbed corpse of Delirium.

"By the gods!" she gasped, her eyes wide.

Khonsu said nothing. He’d undoubtedly seen much the same, and likely far worse, during his tenure.

He silently surveyed the grounds: the icy barricades, the ruined front facade of the chalet, the massive, scrap-metal-plated tentacles of the Octoporian still looming ominously over the ballroom roof, and finally, the colossal, rotting corpse of the cyborg scientist.

"By the Old Gods, Miles. Seems you’ve been busy," Khonsu observed, his voice perfectly level.