Cicero was a great dog, the best boy. He was born to a litter on a pig farm to a pair of watchdogs who took advantage of the heat of the season. He wasn’t the runt of his litter of six, but not the biggest either. His coat was mostly black with some brown around the eyes and along the belly. Life was simple, until one fateful day the door to the hayloft he was born in opened, and instead of the familiar face his family had known to be the bringer of food, there was more. There was a mom, a dad, with a baby and an older child, a boy named Joey.

Joey was excited by his parents’ promise to get a puppy to complete their nuclear family. When the barn door opened, a pack of puppies were alarmed by their presence, each charming the family with their clumsy antics. Before long, the younglings, both human and canine were playing, with the latter being petted, fed, and scratched where they too fell in love with their counterparts. Since his sister was too young to make the choice, it all came down to Joey for final say on which one of the litter joined them, even though everyone wished they could take them all.

After looking them over, the young man decided to choose the one puppy who was still suspect of them, the one who barked from a strategic spot between two hay bails, from where he could see his brothers and sisters. He was protective, alert, and despite his wariness, still leaned into the play time as best of all the others. Cicero was a name chosen from one of the baby’s mispronounced words the family shared a laugh over once, but from then on it meant something else. It didn’t just come to mean a big dog, but also a good dog, a smart dog, and a loyal dog. Cicero’s hybrid shepherd vigour gave him bright, intelligent eyes, expressive brows, and long pointed ears. A playful demeanour made fast friends of man and beast, but a big bark kept both in check if Cicero sensed something off.

After seven years, Joey was a burly, strapping teenager who could do better at school but also could do much worse. He was fun-loving and preferred to laugh than anything else. At his side on leash-less walks was Cicero, halfway into his life but still at his prime, with only a little grey showing around his muzzle. Together they’d made friends for some longer walks or games of fetch, but also some rivals, one of which culminated in several stitches to both dogs after a harsh tussle. Cicero was left with a scar on his hind leg, a visible reminder that life can change on a dime… although soon enough, there was a much larger reminder no one could ignore.

The day the monsters appeared, This Earth was shaken to its core and back. Joey was at the fair when the flying monster attacked, and like everyone, consumed the media depicting or offering theories as to what was happening. In the weeks that followed, it was good to know that there weren’t just bad things out there, but good ones too. Every monster attack since then was thwarted by an elusive protector who met force with force. Screams of terror turned to triumphant cheers from those watching their protector answer his calling. People online were calling his kind ‘Stewards’, but in Joey’s community, they called him Hellkite.

No one knew who he was, or at least most of the community was oblivious. There were, however, a few that even Joey suspected had a direct line to their local hero. Gossip spread over the few who kept appearing on the outskirts, where Hellkite preferred to fight his foes. One evening while using his fresh driver’s license to speed out to a cornfield where a battle was reported on social media, he encountered his second Cousin Brett, who told him he had to turn back. There was apparently an exercise being conducted by the fire department and it could be dangerous, even for a ‘young man with so much potential’. After blowing off the latest attempt to recruit him, Joey yielded and went home. The fact was, people have been killed already getting too close to the monsters, the big ones at least. For the smaller ones, a shot from even a pellet gun, or even better, Cicero’s booming voice were enough to drive them off.

One day, after having called him several times for their second routine daily walk, Joey had to look for his loyal companion. No one had seen Cicero for a few hours, so, leash in hand, he decided to look for him. Jingling the leash and calling his name kept its allure from the day the dog recognized what it meant, but not this time. He found him at the edge of their lot in a short field that had just been cut for hay. Cicero was looking into the woods, emitting a low whine of concern before his ears turned and he faced his master. Just within reach, he collapsed in Joey’s arms. The boy, stricken by the shock of immediate tragedy heard the last breath of his best friend, and the first breath… of something else.

He scooped the catatonic dog into his arms and began for the house. Joey took a breath to scream when something halted the air in his lungs with a gasp. Cicero moved in his makeshift cradle, but in a way so unnatural it made his oldest instincts recoil. His arms involuntarily dropped the dog when he realized it was not Cicero who moved, but something inside him, and it was not moving… it was swelling. The body contorted in violent convulsion as another deep, sharp breath was drawn in. With a voice from a mouth that was never meant to speak, deep, from the throat, Cicero bade him with his last independent thought, “JJOOoooOeeeeyYYYYYY…” The eyes watching the young man were growing, changing, the head cocked back towards the mid day moon and Cicero howled, “RUUUuuuuNNNnnnNNNNN!!!”

With Mom and Dad with little sis gone to the city for a shopping trip, Joey made for the spare pickup in the yard and threw it into drive as fast as he could. Inhuman whaling could be heard from behind the house, growing in volume until it began to shrink in distance. The last time he looked into the rear-view mirror, his family home was obliterated as something gored through it from the back. Joey floored it out of the driveway; it was a straight drag right into the heart of town. He looked to the mirror again only to find a massive figure pass by, and he realized whatever it was, it cast a shadow well over the entire truck. The passenger wheels jumped the shoulder and hit the gravel hard enough to kick up a swath of dust that further obscured the pursuer. He was waved through the entrance to town by Brett several other townsfolk who were brandishing guns trained on the direction he came from.

Joey parked the truck on main street, where already a blockade three cars deep had been put together last minute. With the military mostly concentrated around urban hotspots, organizational tactics spread like wildfire online and implemented worldwide everywhere else. He found a group of people gathered behind a single figure, dressed from head to toe in a combination of firefighting and combat gear borrowed from the police station. Listening in on the murmuring around him, this was a new hero who’d appeared very recently and was here to help. The route Joey used was eerily quiet. Everyone watched the dust settle from his approach, where something watched from obscurity. When the first of them would see the most minute detail, there was a terrible roar which scattered the dust instantly as well as shattered the windows in the nearest blocks to it.

Far and above, this monster was the most threatening the community had seen to date. It stood at least six meters at the shoulder, and clearly a quadruped, it’s gorilla like stance put the crown two more overall. The blue-grey fur covering its body bristled with the unbridled hatred it stared at the town through eyes literally burning with rage. A deep, baleful grown reverberated across everyone’s skin, from a long muzzle filled with hundreds of teeth both blunt and sharp. Over the canine ears were a set of curved, prominent horns, with several other bony jags lining its spine and down the forelegs. Even though this was not the ordinary monster for everyone, to Joey it was so much more. It was Cicero.

The monster’s attention fixed on the rookie hero, who’d raised their arm to get its attention. In one leap, what was in the distance was just overhead; there wasn’t even time for anyone to react, let alone scatter. Cicero’s overhead swipe slammed into the pavement where the hero once was, creating such an impact that a nearby diner collapsed on top of its shredded foundation. From nine o’clock the counteroffensive came – a swift roundhouse to the snout at the end of a long, aerial arc. The head was batted aside but returned to center almost immediately. The hero was struck hard by a backhanded swipe from the other paw, but before they could be sent hurtling away, Cicero’s quick jaws snatched them out of the air.

It would have been over if the hound from hell hadn’t locked eyes with his old master, his friend. Joey was struck by terror, but also grief. This pandemic of nightmares had finally struck him personally and it didn’t matter, because his story was being told the world over. Once the exchange was over, Cicero would grind the hero in his jaws to a pulp, and that was when Joey caught sight of a speck in the clouds. He looked to the surrogate saviour and realized the truth, “HELLKITE!!” He shouted to the incoming aerial object, “HELP!!” The monster turned to the clouds, but its head turned only halfway. A large stone hurled from above tore clean through its ear and struck it dead on in the temple, knocking the prey from its jaws. Everyone rushed to the hero’s aid as Cicero turned to square off against the real deal.

Hellkite made no hesitations. There was no surveying the threat, or parlay. He slammed into Cicero’s chest and sent him sliding hundred of meters down an adjacent street with a violent haymaker. Every swipe made by the monster was dodged in any direction along the three-dimensional axis, then countered with crippling hits that only came in from blind spots. Cicero bolted behind the treeline at the edge of town, but this did nothing to stop anything. The whole town watched while they could, then listened to the sound of trees snapping by the dozen kept everyone locked in terrified awe. Myth and monster tangled in a maelstrom of violent chaos no one could fathom how awful things would have been had this fight taken place in the town proper. The loudest of impacts paired with a tremor felt by everyone was followed by the stillest silence.

A hush swept over the people as he descended upon them from where no one saw him coming. Even though he looked different ever time, everyone knew it was him. Now, he wore the guise of a dark-skinned young man with frizzy red hair, but what he really looked like, who he really was among them, was still a mystery. Many of the other protectors had their identities revealed, but not Hellkite. Not yet. Brett and his crew rolled in and spoke to him briefly amongst themselves. It was announced that the monster was dead, and everyone began to disburse. Joey approached his cousin, to ask if that invitation to join the fire department was still open, but first, “Hey,” He said after their protector nodded him through the line, “Thank you. Cicero didn’t deserve that.”

“True,” Hellkite agreed, “But what he became definitely did.” He approached the fallen hero, who was coming to, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a word… in private.” With his hand tight around the hero’s collar, he shot straight into the sky, beyond the clouds to the edge of space. To discern between ally or competition, Hellkite would need some leverage, and he couldn’t think of anything more fitting than a fall from the stratosphere. Joey turned towards the devastation left in the wake of the fight, to see if he could find any part of his friend Cicero, to commemorate with burial and the fondest of memories.

Hellkite IV: Doxxed

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