Juno skimmed incoming feeds on his wrist terminal. A message flashed from Morty. He stared at it for a beat longer than he intended, then typed back: busy.
Good enough to say that we're still alive.
He wouldn't be texting if it was urgent.
The air reeked of ozone and rot. Rain fell like needles, sharp and fast, making him feel cold and drenched. They had been at this for hours. The “simple” drug raid had gone pear-shaped fast.
Juno crouched low behind the rusted carcass of a freight hauler, breath locked in his chest. The firelight from a burning dumpster licked the side of his face, Big blood splatter on the ground and fighting marks on the mud; homeless tents were torn, some occupants now just… gone.
Shots cracked in staccato bursts across the lot. He didn’t flinch. Not anymore. Two decades ago, maybe. When he was a 5'6" half-starved dropout getting dragged out of a collapsed tunnel by a lion that stood a full eight feet tall, all muscle, heat, and silent fury.
He remembered the strong hand pulling him out and shaking him, the huge maw yelling inches from his face to make sure if he was alive. Back then, Leo had seemed a demigod to him, terrifying and amazing in equal parts. He had seen predators in the alleys he grew up in. The bad ones. The ones that lurked in the dark and snatched people when they were alone. The lion carrying himself with that effortless control Juno had mistaken for arrogance wasn’t one of those. He knew better now.
He slid to the next heap of cover and dropped in beside the lion. Leo was bigger than ever. Tail twitching in the grime. Muscles like steel cables under rain-slick fur. Face tight with intent, lip curled, carbine welded to his shoulder.
Leo was furious.
Because Varro was here.
And Varro wasn’t alone.
Juno checked the sync pulse on his HUD: three blips. Three seconds of surprise. That was all.
He swallowed and ran a thumb along the trigger tab of his underarm burst-gun. Loaded. Primed.
No jamming. Please, no jamming.
Leo’s voice came low, but hard enough to cut glass.
“Now.”
They moved.
Juno darted first, legs pumping, wind slicing across his short fur. Leo followed a second later, massive frame launching from a low crouch into full sprint. Ahead of them, the warehouse lot was chaos — three drug-runners behind a van, a human, a dino, and a short-stack bull who already had a submachine gun pointed at their heads.
But Leo was a monster in motion.
He hit the bull mid-turn, cracking ribs with a single shoulder slam; the sound was wet plywood snapping. Pink mist flew from the bull nostrils as he had his breath blown away. The guy’s weapon skittered into the gutter, and Leo used the momentum to spin and launch a fist into the human’s face. The man folded around it like a paper doll, blood arcing.
Juno didn’t stop. He rolled under the van, came up on the other side, and emptied his burst-gun into the legs of a speeder type predator who was trying to flank them. The speeder was a long limbed dino, he didn’t know the kind, and his whole body was fuming, too hot from the intense heat produced by the accelerated metabolism. He howled, hit the ground hard, and convulsed as the blood-burn turned inward.
Speeders burn through their stored calories and life-force to move at impossible speeds.
The air stank of ketone-acrid breath. Satan’s breath, as Ava from the base called it. The smell of protein breakdown, of bodies cannibalizing their own muscles to survive. He wondered if the pred knew what that scent was.
This hyper-metabolism overheats their blood and tissues. More than one died from pushing too far and stroking. Any predator had a base line regeneration factor. Their bodies trying to stitch themselves back together even when they couldn’t. This guy was running on fumes, and the shots he just took with an overworked system made him destroy himself as his body tried to consume whatever energy to try to heal, messing up the temperature control.
Blood-burn death. Muscle fibers seizing, blood cells boiling in the capillaries, nerves shorting out. It’s painful, damaging. Juno smiled.
“Left side!” Leo roared. “Don’t fucking stand still!”
Just as he spoke, he could feel the ground shake under heavy steps, antlers blotted the world.
And there was Varro.
Leo was ten feet tall nowadays. Slow growth across the years. Yet, he was biggest enforcer in the borough. Varro was 4 feet taller. Juno felt his legs falter, so he bit his tongue for focus.
Each of Varro’s antlers was as wide as a doorway. Hide dark, soaked in rain, rippling like a nightmare with every twitch. The moose's eyes glowed with a predator's fire and something deeper, a primal hunger. The kind that wasn’t just about food. The kind that never ends. He was wearing what looked like a gas mask on his snout and other than that. a ballistic vest and gauntlets.
“Leo!” Juno shouted, voice rising.
The lion didn’t hesitate. Didn’t wait. He charged.
And Varro met him with a roar that shook the street.
Claws slashed. Leo ducked the first swing but was caught by the second, Varro’s gauntlet raking across his shoulder, tearing through armor plates like tin. He roared, pain blooming in his chest, but it didn’t stop him. He got in close and slammed a fist into Varro’s ribs, then another, then a headbutt that cracked teeth.
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Varro laughed. And Léo felt dread bloom.
The massive moose grabbed Leo by the vest, like a kid picking up a toy, and hurled him backward. The lion hit the van so hard that it tipped over with a huge dent on its side.
Juno screamed. That would’ve killed a regular person.
The hyena fired again, but Varro had already moved, speed belying his size. Something hit hard against Juno's side, blowing the air out of his lungs. He rolled, hitting trash bags and a wall, lungs folding in on themselves, chunks of mortar falling from where he cracked the wall with impact.
The speeder had a brother.
This one had a crazy expression on his face. Almost as if he was high on something, but Juno knew it was just a speeder pushing hard on all that their body could do. Blood leaking from his nose, face twitching from the burn high. His body was skeletal-thin, bones creaking under the strain of his speed boost, but his eyes were on fire.
“You think you can take us?!” he howled.
Juno barely dodged the next punch. It cracked the pavement where his head had been.
There was a flurry of punches. Most of them he couldn’t track with his eyes as the speeder dumped everything on the barrage attack. Juno raised his arms and could feel his bones breaking under the heavy assault.
ACT, ACT OR YOU ARE DEAD!
He kicked off a wall, using the force to spin and put distance between him and the dino, and emptied his sidearm at close range. The speeder’s body twitched, danced, then dropped in a mess of red and steam. The hyena’s right arm was limp. But he could feel the heat and the pull from his chest and body, life energy being rerouted as the injury was slowly healing.
Heart pounding, Juno sprinted back toward Leo.
The lion was up. Bleeding, but standing. One of his ears was no more, and that side of his mane was drenched in dark blood.
Varro turned, that massive head cocked.
“You’re fast for a little one,” he said, voice like gravel and thunder. “Not fast enough.”
Juno stepped between him and Leo.
“You’re not going to touch him again.”
Varro grinned, and that’s when the rest of his goons arrived: two more preds, more dinos, smaller than Leo but bigger than Juno, armed with blades. and a few humans with guns.
Juno’s heart pounded. They were outnumbered. Leo was hurt. And he was so tired.
But then Leo’s paw landed on his shoulder. Tight. Grounding.
“I’ve got your back,” he said.
Juno almost broke.
Because this was the lion who’d saved him from a building ten years ago. The lion who taught him how to punch, how to stand tall, how to live with teeth and not be afraid of them. The lion who’d kissed him under the blackout lights of a precinct during a raid.
Juno squared his stance.
“Let’s do it.”
Then a grenade hit against Varro’s chest and exploded.
Everything went white.
A flash of heat, then chemical sting. Juno coughed hard, eyes burning as the gas flooded his lungs. Leo's weight shifted behind him. There was a grunt. Whether it was pain or rage, he couldn’t tell. Figures moved through the fog like ghosts. Somewhere behind them, he heard their backup also arriving fast.
He fired into the mist where Varro and his goons were meant to be. One of the blade-wielders shrieked as Juno’s rounds tore through him. Another lunged, slashing wildly. Juno caught the blade on his forearm — searing pain punctuating the blow. He countered with a brutal elbow to the throat that dropped the attacker to his knees. A burly human enforcer was next to him in a second and took the blade away from the enemy.
Juno heard a voice begging for his life and turned just in time. Through a break in the fog — just enough to see Varro tilt his head back and swallow. Hands vanished past his teeth. A writhing bulge slid down down his throat to his stomach. There was a second of trashing and the moose flexed his abdominals. Bone crackled wetly. His vest hung in ribbons; chest flayed and burned started knitting itself. Muscles crawled under his hide. Regeneration like nothing Juno had ever seen.
Alpha.
Ice slid down Juno’s spine. He had a hard time trying not to soil himself.
Leo surged past him, bleeding and furious. Some of Varro’s guys were reconsidering their alliance now that the moose had consumed one of his own. Leo stepped up, took the gun from the hands of a scared goon. pointing the muzzle toward Varro and shooting. With the other hand he picked up the gun’s previous owner and used the human as a makeshift club to hit the moose.
Varro raised an arm to protect his head from the gunshot but didn't seem to care about the ones hitting the rest of his body. He moved like gravity bent around him. Bigger than before, or maybe just more real. He closed the gap with terrifying speed, grabbed Leo mid-step, and drove him into the ground.
Juno roared and charged.
Varro turned, too late. Juno fired point-blank into genitals. The monster had nuts the size of a regular person’s head. The bulge on his pants made for a good target. The rounds dug deep, black blood spraying across the alley.
He roared in pain and rage. It wasn’t enough.
Varro backhanded him into the wall. Stars burst behind Juno’s eyes. His vision tilted.
“Should’ve stayed down, prey!” Varro snarled.
Juno coughed, blood bubbling in his throat.
But Leo… Leo was moving again.
With a sound like thunder, he launched himself into Varro’s chest. Fangs bared, claws out, a full-body slam that knocked the giant two steps back. Leo didn’t stop there. He tore into the moose with tooth and claw. Each strike a roar of defiance.
“You don’t touch what’s mine!” he bellowed.
And Varro chuckled. He closed his arms around Leo and started squeezing.
“Shut up, morsel! I will have you for dinner and make him watch. Then it is his turn.”
The sounds of sirens echoed down the block. DAIR backup. The moose hesitated. looked at leo and frowned, then opened his jaws and took the Lion’s head in. Juno screamed and tried to stand. his leg bent in a weird angle and he fell.
Guns blazed next to him. The other enforcers had taken care of the remaining goons and were firing against Varro. The predator had to spit the lion and try to run for cover. A cruiser barreled in from the docks entrance and hit him. Metal screamed as the vehicle shoved him through a storage wall in a shower of brick and glass.
There was only the piercing sounds of the cruiser’s sirens for a few seconds. Then the blasting of guns, and then only the sirens on their rhythmed wails.
Juno sagged. He managed to sit, but his body wasn’t going to bounce back from this one without help. Leo staggered into view, the worst Juno had ever seen him, and still moving. Foot teams swept the lot, guns up, disciplined.
“I thought I’d lose you,” Juno croaked, hauling himself into Leo’s arms.
“Yeah? If he didn’t swallow me, his breath alone might’ve done it,” Leo tried to joke, and Juno saw the fear behind it.
He held on tighter.
Enforcers fanned back. Looking everywhere as if trying to track the moose. Well, maybe they had one with a good scent ability. He didn’t know.
“Report?” Leo barked.
“He ran,” one called. “Smashed the cruiser’s glass and ate the drivers. He’s in the wind.”
Leo’s face hardened. He scooped Juno and slung him over his shoulder like old times. “We’re done here. Circle up. Call medical. Now.”