Wade got to Scotty at the same time the wingin tried to take the dryad, leaping with superhuman strength towards their friend.

  Scotty was in his arms, legs twining around his waist in a way that looked ridiculous, but left him stable enough to keep firing.

  The wingin slammed Shilloh to the ground, and she started thrashing.

  Wade didn't spare her a second glance.

  Training and experience guided him. He relocated his glass cannon (Scotty), started hurling boulders, and unsheathed Walker so he could take up a defensive position guarding their ranged combatant.

  Before he had gotten so far as touching his first boulder, Jasque started his advance through the field.

  He moved the way Wade wished he could. The man's face went from blank focus to rictus glare and a smile that lit up his eyes with all the joy a crematorium must feel when being fed an overweight, well-loved uncle.

  Speed and precision carried Jasque forward. First, he was a drunken master, falling effortlessly between killing blows. Then, he was a machine, arms a perfectly calibrated piston and feet shuffling in engineer-perfect arcs. Sometimes, it seemed like the breezes nudged him just enough that he avoided death, so perfectly calibrated to every twist of soil under his foot, it was as if he were changing the world to help his cuts in a million minute ways.

  Still, fast and smooth as he was, Shilloh was faster. Probably because Jasque had accounted for the outcome and decided it was more optimal not to rush.

  The possession failed. Obviously. Wade had known that Jasque wouldn't leave them to the mercy of a hijacked dryad capable of putting her fist through their ribs. If that had been possible, Jasque would have stopped it. It hadn't been stopped, so it had never been a threat: Simple as that.

  She clawed the parasite off, ripped a wing into pieces like she was deboning a rotisserie chicken, and stared around her, shocked to see their arrival.

  "Shilloh!" Scotty yelled, tossing a net launcher so it fell part of the way towards a cluster of smaller Wingins.

  By the angle of his attacks and small shifts in prioritization, Wade could tell that Jasque had noticed and accounted for the change in everyone's statuses.

  When Shilloh sprinted towards the net launcher, a baseball bat covered in barbed wire and bruise-colored magic appeared in his hand. He ran towards a red-armored crypto that looked like a human-sized lemur with all its limbs replaced by tooth-edged tails.

  A stutter step let one of those limbs pass a breath from his face before Jasque stepped in deep, head dropping under another thrashing tentacle so he could flick his wrist and gently tap the bottom of the crypto with his weapon.

  It launched into the air, and years of training let Wade respond without needing to aim. His eyes flicked, his foot scooted forward with the perfect balance and low clearance his first sensei would have loved.

  Boots hissed across the fallen leaves, his heels never touching the ground, and his feet, knees, and hips all pivoted in perfect synch. Walker moved through a slash, water-like in its perfect strike. The massive slashing crescent of magic flew from it. Wade turned into the slice without overturning and never stopped scanning for threats to Scotty.

  There weren't many opponents left. Scotty hadn't taken out the truly big guns—nothing would be alive if he had ever needed to escalate. Even just between Wade and Jasque, threats of this level were almost disconcertingly easy compared to what they trained for.

  Off to a side was a huddle of three adolescent Wingin hosts. All moved with the characteristic lethargy and confusion that Wade associated with psychic damage caused by Scotty's disorienting rounds. Not the air rifle ones, but something he must have fired in between clearing out the other threats.

  There was even a lingering smoke around the cryptos that might have been the medium of some other chemical attack from his best friend. Hard to say, and it didn't really matter.

  Those were Shilloh's targets. One of them was going to be her familiar, bringing her to a new level of lethality. And, more importantly, it would bring her to a new level of safety.

  In one of his mad dervish spins, Jasque noted Scotty's impending freedom from engagement. Effortlessly, the Slayer adjusted his zone of coverage, taking into account their relative positions and Wade's diminished status outside his marked territory.

  With another contemptuously elegant waltz across the field, Jasque launched the final creature covered in red plating into the air.

  At the same time, Shilloh stumbled forward, took the net launcher up, and barely managed to point the right side forward and trigger its mechanism.

  The red-plated crypto should have tumbled harmlessly through the air and been as easy as skeet shooting for Wade or Scotty to handle.

  The Whompf of the net gun caught the tumbling thing's attention. Jasque, the forward-thinking professional he was, had carefully smashed one of its parasitic wings with his hit to stop it flying away. But he underestimated the host and parasite's combined capability.

  The wingin flared its humanoid host's arms wide, caught the air like a sky diver, and twisted its host. The crypto's ribs cracked open along a vertical seam, revealing a wet maw of mottled grey and pink, stabbing lamprey eel teeth, and a chameleon tongue that hit the ground and hauled in straight down in front of Shilloh, trying to block her from reaching the juveniles she had just fired on.

  The host took the hit with the ground; its chest, mouth, and teeth shattered. The wingin thrashed and flapped out its version of a tortured scream when it felt the second-hand pain.

  Wade relaxed. The thing's mobility was destroyed, internal damage assured, and Shilloh had already shown resistance to possession. Everything was done except the cleanup.

  No one had told Shilloh that, though.

  She screamed and sprinted straight at the dying monster.

  "What the fu—"

  He realized what was happening about the time her hands began to be tinted almost imperceptibly green. The monster had landed between her and what she thought might be her familiar. Her fingers pierced through crypto flesh like it was pudding, and wrapped around the bones of an openable rib cage.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The red-scaled crypto closed what was left of its chest teeth on her.

  They shattered.

  Bloody gums marked her ripped-up shirt, and Shilloh kept running forward, not able or willing to stop. With each step, she hauled in with her arms and threw her head forward to slam it against the armored cranium of the being that came between her and her familiar.

  "Not!" Her head shattered the natural armor like shale under a hammer.

  "One!" claws flashed, but her indestructible skin went deeper green, and the talons skittered off her as she head-butted it again.

  "Of!" Its legs went limp, and its arms listless.

  "MINE!" Shilloh stumbled, but her grip held true, and she followed the monster down. Scrambling on top of its horrifying chest, boot's inside its defanged 'mouth.' She threw her head forward again and again in savage strikes until the thing's shattered skull was just as concave as the dent she had made in the ground beneath its pulped face.

  "Son of a sucubus," Wade whispered, looking at the panting woman.

  Hearing him, she looked up Her hair was matted into stringy ropes by the blood of her prey. Her eyes were a shocking white under the carmine sludge dripping down her face.

  Behind her, the three juvenile creatures were turning over with lethargic confusion beneath the reinforced capture net.

  They had no defense when a spear flew from Jasque's hand and bounced off the shell of a tortoise with obsidian armor and a green snake for a tail.

  Instantly, Scotty was sprinting forward, calling out an order to cease as quickly as anyone could have. But, Jasque was not anyone. He was a slayer and a god of war, even among those frenetic people whose souls had been weaponized for the sake of humanity's defense.

  Before Scotty could order him down, a quick clatter of low-caliber bullets clacked from a rifle that appeared in Jasque's hands. Wingins thrashed. A rusty machete appeared in his grip and—

  Fuck fuck fuck!

  A snarling Shilloh Methuselah put herself in front of Jasque.

  "Not one of mine," she growled at him. Blood and pulped brain dripped down either side of her nose, and her fingers twitched like they were excited to wrap themselves around his ribs, too.

  Jasque just sighed and waved her aside with a twitch of his weapon, "Pruning a threat early on is important. Did you think I was going to allow any of them to live after your tranquilizer and capture training? Use your head, and just move aside."

  Wade, who had been stuck in place, heard the echo of an older man's still-familiar voice echo up from a deep part of his mind.

  Just walk away.

  Scotty was still running over, no longer wasting his breath yelling. Wade found himself stalking over to Jasque, too, his body trying to shift forms. His teeth itched, his fingers flexed, and his lingering emotions went into a dull, opaque corner where the only proof of their existence was the way his hand twitched towards the large caliber gun that he wished he had been wearing on his hips way back then.

  Shilloh spoke. "Back off." The Slayer didn't move. With lip-twitching effort, the dryad covered her barred teeth and gritted out the word, "Please."

  Jasque's hand flicked out. A bolo wrapped around her body in a blink.

  She ripped out of the binding, her arms spreading wide to snap the cord. But Jasque was close enough to lay a hand on her spread arms. For someone like him, that was all it took. The fight was over; checkmate had been achieved, even if a few token moves remained.

  Shilloh reached forward to crush him.

  Jasque breathed past her. Subtle nudges to her elbows redirected her arms effortlessly, and a lingering leg tripped her.

  "Stop!" Wade yelled.

  "No," the Slayer said, absently, hand moving to the side as he prepared to summon a weapon.

  The soil and grass rose up and gripped Jasque's foot.

  "One of them may be my familiar!" Shilloh cried out desperately.

  Jasque stopped. Faster than the eye could track, he stopped the gentleman's cane he had summoned from smacking the animated earth and stone holding his foot. The bane's dead eyes turned towards Shilloh, eyebrows lowering in annoyance.

  Wade, who had accelerated into a jog, froze.

  The look was the look of death. Even when it wasn't aimed at him, he reflexively went limp, waiting to see if this was the moment he would die.

  After a moment's pause, Jasque whipped his cane the rest of the way down. It rapped against the animated earth. Shilloh shrieked like she had been tazed, and his foot came free.

  Wade and Scotty both reached her side and held her as she shook out her head.

  "Wade," Jasque said, standing above all of them, his voice low and parental in a way that made him want to shrink.

  His bodyguard tapped his foot with arms crossed, and a glower on his face, "Why haven't I heard about this?"

  Scotty didn't let him answer. "Because it's none of your fucking business," the shorter bane snarled.

  "Oh?" Jasque said, foot tapping at the same steady pace and eyes never leaving Wade as the Were's every wince, breath, and twitch was weighed. "But it absolutely is. Any situation that puts Wade out with cryptos requires my involvement to keep him safe."

  Even though it was hard to raise his eyes, Wade still managed to mumble "We were careful—"

  "No, Wade! This is bullshit," Scotty came to his feet, hands on Shilloh's shoulders as all three of them rose. "You had me here. I am cleared to supervise everything we did. Jasque is, at best, my peer within a few very limited fields. One of which is guarding your safety. We didn't need to tell him shit."

  Jasque glanced at the thin enchanter before blatantly dismissing him from consideration and turning his shark eyes back to their examination of the Were. "Wade, was it your judgment that you didn't need my input or presence?"

  "We were careful and didn't do anything extreme. Plus, the operation would increase Shilloh's knowledge, focus her training, and make her more lethal and safe."

  "According to you and your famous powers of analysis?"

  "No," Shilloh said, eyes burning. "According to the three adults who don't need your weird, overbearing, egocentric, deluded bullshit to tell them if they have the right to make their own choices."

  Jasque didn't move; he held up a single finger. "Dryad," he said, as if gently admonishing her with her full government name. The very picture of a parent trying to be extra patient with their toddler.

  Shilloh's eyes narrowed, and Wade felt something small and young in him curl up and try to put its face into a corner so he was less likely to be noticed. "Guys, can we save this until—"

  "No," both Shilloh and Jasque said at the same time.

  That did the trick. His bodyguard finally reached the end of his examination of Wade's face. He pinched the bridge of his nose, let out a slow breath, and motioned her to speak. Though he still projected the annoyed patience of a parent who just wanted to get to the end of his child's nonsense.

  The ground twitched, and Wade thought Jaque was about to be crushed by a fist of living stone, but Shilloh kept her composure. Barely.

  "Dryad," she said with icy calm, "is not my name. I am a person. You will address me as such. Especially considering the olive branch I offered by playing along with your transparently false personality.

  Furthermore, you are not anyone's supervisor. With your deficiencies in basic decency and human connection, you will probably die without ever being anyone's superior. As such, you do not have the right to kill these non-threats, you do not have the right to speak so offensively. Finally, whatever fucked up ways you've set up Wade to isolate himself is not my business. But if I—"

  "You're right, it's not—"

  Shilloh talked right over him, "If I find out that you're depriving him of sleep and food or water while isolating him, then we'll get someone to deprogram—"

  "Quiet!" Jasque snapped, turning to her with genuine anger on his face. "You know nothing! You have done nothing, and your only value is your unrealized potential. For that slim pathway to helping the actual members of humankind, I have tolerated your," he flapped his hands, "whatever. And make no mistake, I will still guide you to meaningfulness. But I will not tolerate your destruction of actual, realized value the way I have tolerated your ignorance."

  Shilloh narrowed her eyes and shifted her jaw side to side.

  "Thank you for tolerating my ignorance," she whispered.

  Wade shivered even as the tone made Scotty go a shade paler.

  As if that wasn't bad enough, Shilloh smiled and demurely folded her hands in front of her waist. She kept her perfect smile perfectly maintained as her eyes locked onto Jasque's.

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