ZFighter18

Water snapped from the barrel as the muzzle jumped, elbows flexing as the pistol grip punched backward hard enough to sting. A hard little push against his face and chest, like someone had slammed a door right in front of him, pressing through the cold wetness of his shirt. His forearms shook agains

The Mossberg 590 Cruiser. A pump-gun with a pistol-grip instead of a shoulder stock, Hughie had heard the far-too-recognizable chk-chk of it more times than the weapon had gauges. The thing was apparently supe-tough, at least compared to normal guns, considering the amount of times he’d seen it get

Rain came down in heavy droplets, thick enough to plaster her extensions to the sides of her neck. Starlight didn’t pay much attention to that, blinking water out of her eyes as she stared at the one woman she’d looked up to since the moment her powers came in. The rest of the world might have been

queens corona hrry No capitals. No punctuation. And a misspelled word. Starlight had almost dropped her phone when she got those three texts from Hughie because the man punctuated everything. He texted like an old man that way, periods and all on single-word texts as if he was forty and grew up back

“These motherfuck-” Nubia bit down a curse as she cut a path through the air, leaving behind the fifth waste of her time in the last three hours. Somehow, it had been the most annoying of them all. Stormfront ‘sighting’ after Stormfront ‘sighting’, each one of them another nothingburger occupying he

“They’re not…” Hughie swallowed a mouthful of drywall dust and thick smoke before he got out the sentence. “They’re not here for us.” “Quoi?” "Frenchie…” The young man hissed under his breath as he looked into the street as the Rojos stood across Stormfront and her group, powers readied and weapons

Some days you floated through life like a dream. Not like things were great or unbelievably amazing or anything like that. No, sometimes you just felt like time wasn’t real and you weren’t sure what day it was and you couldn’t really remember things right. Hughie had been feeling like that for a whi

As weird as they were, powers had their own relation to the laws of nature; physics, biology, chemistry, all that good shit. Not on the same line and not a parallel one either but something like a tangent… Say you could clone yourself or something, odds were good that instead of another you just pop

“Bro, are you s…” The words stumbled out slower than he himself moved, Reggie skidding backward until the treated rubber of his cleats chewed a smoking divot through the Bronx asphalt. “...bro?” One hand left his pocket and went up high, a busted smartphone cracking and hissing against his palm; lit

I’ve been putting together an in-universe Vought website built around the idea that you’re accessing Stan Edgar’s private executive archive. It opens with an animated Vought splash screen, leads into a folder-based dashboard, and lets you browse full internal files on current and former members of T

“—ive from the Vought Town Hall, where Stormfront, one of the newest and most popular members of the Seven—” The anchor's voice was reedy. High-pitched and absolutely pathetic, it practically vibrated from the television mounted in the corner of the room, the woman on-screen sick with the too-real h

“Pasito a pasito, suave suavecito…” A speaker zip-tied to the leg of a folding table was doing its absolute best with a song clearly in need of a much bigger sound system, the bass rattling tinny against the community center’s cinderblock walls. “Nos vamos pegando poquito a poquito…” Regardless, it

The Escalade was described as seating seven — eight if you counted the optional second row bench seat, which Hughie did — but for the last hour or so since they left Harriman Park long behind, Hughie Campbell was forced to accept that the original advertising was undeniably accurate. When the manufa

How It’s Made was the type of show that you watched when there was nothing else on, the sort of edutainment people put on when they wanted to learn things that would never be useful in their lives ever. It was like TikTok but longform, with the added benefit of dropping actual facts into your brain

His legs took him to the spot. Pretty much his only choice, without risking an uber. The Honda was a no-go at this point, as much as he missed the car. The old thing just couldn’t fit him right anymore, seat bent back in a way he couldn’t really fix at this point. He wasn’t gonna complain, his own f

“—fallout from last night’s town hall is unprecedented as Vought faces pressure to address Stormfront’s rumored ties to th—” Eyes ragged with orange snapped open, TV volume clawing him out of sleep as Tito snapped himself upright. He blinked hard, breath coming heavy only to realize it was just some

“Talk to me.” Eight days. It only took about eight days. That was the magic number, the exact stretch of time it took for the stretching itch across his ribs to finally quit clawing at him from the inside out. Only a week and some change for his body to stop feeling like a peeling sunburn, and all t

“So…” “So…” The smell of floor cleaner was not enough to win the war it was fighting, the air in the dive bar putting up a battle for the ages with years of spilled Yuengling and far too much vomit on its side. All those bad decisions couldn’t be easily wiped away, no matter how much Pine-Sol you th

Reggie wasn’t sure where his wall was supposed to be. Not really. The old him — A-Train — had a top speed brushing Mach 10 if he properly pushed it in a dead sprint. As long as he picked up enough speed over time, at least. Instant acceleration had been nowhere near that high, a little over a tenth

“K-Kimikoooooo!” Frenchie’s voice hit his ear from behind, as loud as Hughie’s but wetter as Kimiko’s name rattled in his throat. Neither scream did a single thing to drown out the shotgun-crack of Noir’s palm meeting her chest. It was like watching hydraulic equipment at work, Hughie’s jaw falling

“Take the right side!” He’d been through a lot in just one year. More than he was pretty sure most people had ever gone through their whole lives. From getting covered in blood and guts, literally exploding a founding member of Earth’s Most Mighty, getting covered in blood and guts again, to stealin

“-ot out here out here. Man, Reggie was — listen, I’m not sayin’ he was in nothin’. Not sayin’ he shot nobody. Don’t put that on me. I ain’t saying that.” The man on the stoop leaned back as the mic was pressed forward, one of his Timbs planted on the second step. “Like, he wasn’t no church boy. He

"I still can't believe people don't recognize us with a hat on and some regular clothes." Gold-painted fingernails yanked down the brim of a brand-new Dodgers cap, the blue fabric doing almost nothing to hide a pair of stormy gray eyes that scanned a crowd of exhausted parents and screaming toddlers

“So, so, so, Nubia, just a heads-up…” Reggie held himself still against the edge of the craft services table as Ashley Barrett Ashley-ed her way through her job again, words just flying out like the redhead was getting paid by the syllable. The buzz of so much machinery and people milling around bea

The air over Maspeth tasted like scorched pennies and a busted car battery. Reggie dipped his left shoulder, cleats scraping harsh against the pavement as he slipped a hissing wall of pressure-packed air from the barrel-chested woman’s arm. The punch had enough force behind it to cave in the side of

The fight immediately spilled out into the street. Reggie had all of a heartbeat before he had to dodge a burnt-out sedan from El Asfalte, the tar-man with the shitty name already having decided the best way to start a fight was by throwing shit. “Bruh, could you chill!?” The answer to that was a bi

Click. "Cameron, this is unbelievable.” The woman on the panel was as severe in the face as she was with her haircut, almost staring daggers at the camera. “The fallout here on Capitol Hill would be something we haven’t seen since Watergate. We are looking at a potential subpoena for the highest lev

Shit! The wheel shook under his palms, Rastro’s fingers halfway to fucking numb as the heavy leather fought him. Shit! The suspension was bottoming out every half-minute and he knew it was a miracle they weren’t already trailing sparks out the ass already. Shitshitshit! The New Jersey Turnpike at mi

Shit! The wheel shook under his palms, Rastro’s fingers halfway to fucking numb as the heavy leather fought him. Shit! The suspension was bottoming out every half-minute and he knew it was a miracle they weren’t already trailing sparks out the ass already. Shitshitshit! The New Jersey Turnpike at mi

We not… we not doing this. Reginald Franklin was a patient man. Maybe not in this life, but definitely in the last. After all, you didn’t become a doctor without the ability to keep your head down, on straight, and focused forward through all the bullshit in your way. While he kept the powers and bo

He opened his eyes, one lens of his bright blue glasses shattered to all hell, as the percussive boom slapped hard against his chest. The speedster grunted, mouth full of smoke and dirt as he fought to keep from stumbling, the world nothing but explosions in the hellscape he found himself in. Son of

The eighty-second floor of Vought Tower was thick with the scent of money. Well, that and the expensive air freshener pumped in through the vents. Abstract art, soulless as the people that bought it to prove they had whatever passed as taste for the rich, littered the hallway Reggie found himself wa

Spaces revolved around their need and those who used them. That was one of those self-evident things that probably sounded more profound than they actually were. As a person, A-Train had been a newly rich, fame-hungry, drug-using, hip-hop culture loving superhero enjoying the hell out of his twentie

The ninety-ninth-floor meeting room of Vought Tower was, as always, a sterile cathedral of corporate power. Statues and murals and all of the finery to keep them pacified, everything expected of upjumped lab experiments playing a pantheon. Recently, however, it was the exact same place where those g

His right hand was still twitching, each finger a half-spasmy mess, and each nail crackling with a burst of blue every other minute or so. It wasn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it was definitely something he couldn’t let go just yet. A whole night before it had been his whole arm, and that ha

They were speaking, Edgar was at least; the old man rattling on and on to everyone else behind him. Homelander simply kept his back to the whole pathetic scene, staring down through bulletproof glass at his city. So many fragile little toy cars crawling through the figurative mud of packed streets o

The yacht cut through the grey, churning water, miles off the Jersey coast where everything looked the same kind of miserable . Hughie stood by the railing, the air cold and thick as the boat drove them deeper and deeper out into the open ocean as they waited for the Feds to show up and take the liv

“-efore anyone can even process what happened.”​​ A dozen news feeds blared in front of his face, each screen a window into the problem currently crawling up his back and making its unpleasant home in the crack of his ass. Homelander watched as A-Train—no, no, it’s Blushift now, Christ, even the nam

The sharp professional graphics of WNY1 News illuminated the studio as an Asian woman with her dark hair in a tight bob adjusted her earpiece, a blue chyron showing the name CHLOE MIKITA right below her. Over her shoulder, the glowing hashtag #BLUSHIFT was suspended in electric blue letters that pul

Thankfully, it wasn’t hard as iron anymore, but the tension in the living room was still thick enough that it’d be hard to get down your throat. Speaking of things in the back of his throat, the copper scent of hastily cleaned blood still hung there, too much like a bad taste that wouldn't go away.

"Whoa." Desean's voice went low and hushed, the little boy staring up at his uncle as Reggie thumbed his nose. Tongue poking out, the supe coughed out a smug laugh worthy of Steve Harvey. "Uncle Reggie, you look ba-" Those big eyes flicked up and right, quickly landing on his mom before shifting bac

“Loss… loss is never easy.” The theater Vought rented out was one of those brand new buildings where you could smell the money in the marble and watch the ego drip off the architecture. Whoever designed this place wanted their name carved into something that would outlast their great-great-grandkids

The 99th floor of Vought Tower was a space reserved for beings the average man spoke about like modern Olympians. Earth's Most Mighty, according to his marketing department's breathless copy. They were so proud of that particular phrase, weren't they? Today the might in question was considerably mor

Good Morning America was high-fructose corn syrup dressed up as reality, all bright primary colors and aggressively upbeat energy that made Reggie's teeth itch. The plush couches were some cheerful blue brighter than his old costume, massive screens behind them displaying a sunny New York skyline th

“Maya Nubian, if you don’t slow down!” Nubia's heels hit the polished linoleum with sharp, impatient clicks that echoed off the walls, announcing her presence to every nurse and orderly who probably already knew who she was anyway. Who the fuck am I kidding? It wasn’t like the white and gold costume

A stream of yellow had just hit the brick wall when the world exploded behind him. Metal screamed against asphalt, something heavy slammed into stone, and the force of it vibrated through the bottom of his sneakers. His bladder clenched as his eyes went wide and before he could stop it, piss splatte

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” Everything was here. “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” The whole world was just a single slice of nothing behind the overturned steel table, and Jesus Christ the noise, the CRACK-CRACK-CRACK of rifle fire wasn't just sound anymore. Gunfire was loud, he knew that enough because he’d heard

Two days in, the throbbing had shifted from a bassline to background noise to something else entirely. Something that felt wrong in the exact opposite way you expected a leg broken like glass to feel. Reggie stood at Nathan's granite counter, full weight on the leg that was supposed to be broken, po

“Thank you, Mr. Campbell.” Reggie palmed the freshly filled mug of cranberry juice and raised it to his lips, the coaster underneath a faded picture of some lighthouse somewhere. Okay. Just another consult. Reggie sat there in his hoodie and a fresh pair of sneakers, across from the old man that loo

Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn sweated under the hazy, late-summer sun. The air was thick with meat smell from a street cart cooking lamb, the exhaust fumes from a city bus groaning past, barely managing to cover the too-sweet scent of a pile of garbage baking on the hot pavement. Life moved at norm