Crossover Earth '98

Toe to Toe

by Paul Cocker

 

The secret rules of engagement
Are hard to endorse
When the appearance of conflict
Meets the appearance of force

The Tragically Hip

 

Omega Corp. looked dark and abandoned, which was not too surprising considering the hour. Dr. Freund enjoyed working through the night, burning the midnight oil, a work habit that many of his lab technicians couldn't get used to. But once a month he'd let his assistants leave at an earlier hour. He read a sociology text book that said employers should try to encourage lives and interests outside of work. Fulfilling social and family lives made for happy, healthy, productive workers. It also cut down on the overtime, he mused.

Dr. Freund sauntered down the dim-lit parking lot beside the main laboratory. The grounds appeared deserted, the large facility and all its outbuildings silent and shut down for the night. Since he worked for the vanguard industry in research and development, security at the New York compound was on the sly inconspicuous. Major science rivals would not be slowed down by a chain-link fence or a series of concealed cameras, so the facility had not contended with such conventional defenses. The grounds itself was simple, but a complex array surveillance systems, ultraviolet sensors, and automated sentries monitored the interior of the lab and its surrounding posts. The ingenuity within Omega Corp., Central Division was next generation and hyper-advanced, and all the experiments, therefore, required constant watch. Freund admired the complexities of engineering, his area of interest being in the engineering of life, but he had faith in the inventiveness of all scientists here. Even the security was designed here, making it far more reliable than any retired ex-cop.

Freund reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his car keys. An abrupt beep-beep pealed as he deactivated the alarm to his Acura Integra. There were a few other cars in the lot, but he was alone as he walked the expansive parking area.

Or so he thought he was alone.

"Hey, Pops," said a heavy, masculine voice.

Freund wheeled around on his feet to face a silhouette crouching by the rear of his car. "Uh, who are you?" The scientist constricted his throat muscles so that the words wouldn't come out as a croak.

"Ah, shucks," the darkened figure replied. When he rose out of his crouch, Freund nearly became cataleptic with shock. The man just seemed to keep climbing, up and up, towering well over six feet. Plus there was more than just the simple matter of his height to consider: There was his width as well, which appeared to the casual viewer roughly equal to that of a bull. "Ya can't even recognize the voice of your own son?"

Freund moved back a few paces; just enough to imply that he had no intention of bolting through the lot. It wouldn't help matters if he antagonized his surprise guest. "Is that you, Jakob?" the doctor asked, canting his head up towards the figure.

"Well, heh heh, that's the name ya gave me." The imposing figure stepped out of the shadows, oblong bands of light revealing a massively, powerfully built man in exotic leather attire. He was a biker's nightmare.

"But I hear you're using your pseudonym Mastiff." Freund tried to force an honest smile, but there was nothing honest in his eyes. He couldn't hide from the man before him. He just said the man went by the name Mastiff. Odd name, but perhaps it was fitting because it had been said that dogs can smell fear. And that's exactly what the man knew Freund was trying to hide.

The man known as Mastiff returned a smile to the doctor. "Suits me more, don't ya think?"

"Indeed it does."

A new confidence poured through Freund, but seconds later he felt it drain out of him in one big gasp as Mastiff grabbed him by the throat. Like the jaws of a vise, strong fingers close around the doctor's scrawny neck. Freund didn't even try to struggle to fight himself free. He knew, that even with a sledgehammer, he couldn't break himself from the Mastiff’s monstrous grip. So h-hand, choking.

"I've been sitting around at home the past few months wondering why the heck ya lab nerds haven't been spying on me," Mastiff said. Behind his scant leather mask, stone-hard eyes narrow on the doctor.

"Buh...whuh -- ghackh!"

"I'm beginning to think I'm unwanted or something."

"Agh!..."

"So, I'm gonna let ya go. An' you're gonna tell me what the hell's goin' on."

Mastiff dropped Dr. Freund, his body collapsing to the pavement in a fit of coughing and gagging. The scientist raised his eyebrows to look at Mastiff. He seemed to loom over him, and the way Freund craned his neck may have been seen as a gesture of mockery if one didn't see the large man's stature. Mastiff had a gripping, disturbing presence, made all the worse by his leather costume. And his eyes, colored ocher during the dead of night, shot out from behind his mask with a steel-hard stare.

"M-my w-word," said Freund quietly, his voice sounding raw and sore. "I almost forgot how powerful you are. I mean, look at you. A statuesque man of distending veins and sinew."

"Shut up, Pops," Mastiff said, his words clipped, making it clear he was not playing here. "I know ya clowns have plans for me."

"Plans for you?"

"C'mon," Mastiff's voice was hard, "you designed me, I fled, an' I know ya want me back to study further."

"Well, of course. Studying you would be most beneficial to the eugenics division. Designed with phenomenal strength, size, speed, you possess the traits of a one-man army. Combine that with the survival instincts of an animal and the free will of a man, you're a walking encyclopedia of study. But tell me, Jakob, why did you breakout?"

"You're supposed to be the genius, Pops. Ya tell me."

"It doesn't require genius to see that you have problems that need tackling..."

"Damn straight. An' it takes a friggin' schmuck to think they're small enough for eggheads like you to handle. There's tons of problems in the world. An' what's going down in this world, ya have no idea."

Freund exhaled, realizing that he'd been holding his breath. "I think I'm as well-informed as anyone. Provided they're handled correctly, none of the world's problems are insurmountable. All that is required is a little organization."

Mastiff laughed to himself. "Which ya got in spades, right?"

"Well," the doctor extended, "let's look at you. There's no question that you suffer from extremely abnormal behavior. Mass murdering, destroying property, you've lapsed into criminal conducts."

Mastiff rolled his eyes while shaking his head. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right," he said. His words were like crushed ice. " Eight innocent people. Killed 'em real good. Cars an' buildings. Oops, guess they got in my way. An' y'know what? Ya watched me."

"You're not inferring..."

Mastiff stepped back and crossed his arms. "I'm gonna say this once, so listen carefully," Before Freund could react, his body was slammed against the side of his Acura. He felt bent metal and shards of shattered glass dig into his back as Mastiff pressed him against the car. "Who do ya have on my tail? An' know this: If ya lie to me, I'm gonna make a bowtie outta your esophagus."

A cool breeze had just picked up. The large man's nostrils began to flare as the scent of gun oil and after-shave suddenly wafted in his direction. Someone else was present, and he was behind a nearby copse of shrubs. A sneer etched across Mastiff's psychotic features as he turned to greet the spy.

"Well, well," said Mastiff, dropping Freund more one time to the ground. "I guess I'm about to find out."

Mastiff stared at the bushes expectantly. The leaves and branches began to rustle as a figure started to step out of the verdant coverage. It was a man, a man holding a fancy steel riot gun. Or is it a shotgun? thought Mastiff.

There was an array of buttons and switches converging on the lone gunman's weapon. The gun looked quite heavy, constructed of a stainless steel alloy, but the man handled it easily enough. Granted, the man was impressively built, his size like that of a linebacker. Beyond impressively built, actually. His muscles were compacted around a frame that just dwarfed the six feet mark and sculpted into anatomical excellence. Taut bulges flexed and pulsed about his body, his rippling muscularity personifying symmetry.

It was easy enough to get a view of his physique, for the man was wearing a simple white tank-top shirt and worn denim pants. His blond hair was short, but not clipped or brushed into any style; it just sat there on his head. His blue eyes sat underneath a furrowed brow, his jaw quite angular.

His smile was unnerving.

"Rent-a-cop, huh?" Mastiff asked the man.

The man was silent, unmoving.

Mastiff reacted without hesitation as he saw the man raise his shotgun at him. He immediately killed the trunk of Freund's Acura as a clawed hand latched into its hood and ripped it off in one fluid movement. And with great precision, he hurled the large metal square at the gunman, tearing his weapon cleanly from his hands.

"Ya gonna have to be faster than that, son," laughed Mastiff. "Unhh!"

Just then, a force slammed into Mastiff's blind side, passing a terrible jolt of concussion through his body. He shook with backlash, writhing in pain as his body went numb for several moments. Mastiff finally shook off the surprise, jarring attack. He sized the man, disbelief and amusement warring with white-hot fury within him. He was on the verge of snapping, and tried to rein it in.

Mastiff strained to grin. "I guess that means you’re not a rent-a-cop."

A series of opaque silver-white bolts sliced through the air and Mastiff sidestepped them. The bolts curved, making a new course towards Mastiff. He dodged the volley again, despite their speed, then dove behind a nearby Volkswagen Beetle for cover. The bolts apparently disappeared. And judging by the look on the man's face, Mastiff guessed it was his doing.

Something happened to Mastiff's face in that fleeting pause. It was not quite a smile, though it did bring a sparkle to his eye and reveal his sharp, gleaming teeth.

"If you've been hired to piss me off, your doin' a bang-up job."

With a vengeful roar, Mastiff launched across the car. His massive body darted at the man with blistering speed, and before the man saw what hit him, Mastiff slammed an elbow into his face. Mastiff stepped back a moment to see the effect his attack had on the man and was stunned to discover that it had none. This only made Mastiff more aggravated.

A field of translucent silver-white energy hardened around Mastiff's groin before he could fulfill his murderous intentions, and he keeled over in pain as the field began to constrict. Slightly stunning Mastiff, the energy then snaked down his legs and congealed around his ankles. As the solidified energy then lifted Mastiff off the ground, it swung him around, and he soon felt its release. His equilibrium was momentarily shot as he sailed across the parking lot and smashed into a distant car with such cacophony that brought jagged shards of broken glass down upon him.

But Mastiff was up so quickly that the entire action might have appeared to be one, fluid, intentional movement. He moved swiftly, as if bouncing about the lot, unhindered by the darkened shroud of the night. The man, on the other hand, had to squint in order to see Mastiff's speedy recover. And even as he noted this, he wasn't sure where exactly Mastiff was.

Not until he felt a solid, knotted fist cracking him in the side of the head.

The man lipped an obscenity as he docked the next punch, only to fall into a driving knee. The windows of nearby cars vibrated in synch with every jarring blow. Mastiff's leather gloves were worn through from hitting the man's face, exposing torn, bruised knuckles. The skin there, like the rest of the man's body, seemed to be reinforced and was as strong as concrete. In a sense, though, that factor was incredibly freeing for Mastiff. He could hit the man as hard as he wanted and knew he could continue to do so.

And he did.

Each time Mastiff delivered a punch or a kick, or an elbow or a knee, the man's body seemed tougher, until it was outlined it that familiar silvery, pellucid energy. The man seemed to have enveloped himself in a force shield of sorts. But Mastiff was suddenly knocked off his assault with a glistening blast of force, clacking his teeth together hard enough that he bit his tongue, but only moved him back a step. A second blast from behind sent him scraping across the pavement until he hit a dumpster twenty yards away.

In Mastiff's mind images raced - needles, cages, guards that hunted him relentlessly, ensuring that he would never have any peace. All of this flickered by in a second. His heart racing, his breath curling in his chest and building up to an ear-splitting howl of wrath as he charged at the man.

"I haven't bent for Omega Corp., so I'm not gonna with a hired goon like you," Mastiff snarled.

The man's frustration grew with each beat of his heart. Mastiff baffled him. His speed, his size, his strength, all if it was rolled into a dangerously resilient package. And the fact that the night didn't obstruct Mastiff's vision in any way made it worse.

Two bounds, three, Mastiff's strong legs propelled him towards his opponent. An aura of glittering translucence flared off the man as crystalline bolts lodged into Mastiff, knocking him back towards the asphalt ground. He seemingly ignored the bearing of the attack, and in an instant was back on his feet, pouncing once more towards the man. This time the piercing bolts didn't even slow him down and he plowed into the man, grabbing him around the waist. For a moment the shimmering force shield managed to resist the pressure of his powerful arms, but only for a moment. Then the glittering aura began to crumble, the man's defenses collapsing, allowing Mastiff's raw strength to dig into his sides.

The man winced in agony as steel-strong hands raked into his torso. He closed his eyes, trying to desperately block out the pain of Mastiff razor-sharp fingernails. And through a momentary haze, the man grabbed Mastiff by the arms, and -- to Mastiff's astonishment -- actually managed to slide behind him to shift his grab into a double-arm lock. Mastiff now struggled furiously in his grasp, unable to achieve any leverage. The two men shuffled across the parking lot in what seemed like an awkward dance. Mastiff's legs coiled, shoved against the man who was wrestling him. The man fought back by broadening his stance, widening his vertical base. With all his strength, Mastiff pistoned his legs, kicked off the pavement hard, and heard the man's ribs crack as they both went crashing into a parked car.

Mastiff recovered from the impact first, springing back to his feet before his assailant. Sinews shifted as his hands dug into what was left of the car. The man looked up to see that Mastiff loomed over him with the ravaged car pressed high over his head. As the man began to sit up, an airy outline of silver-white force radiating off his body, the car slammed down on him, knocked him flat, and rolled over on top of him.

Mastiff smiled at the sign of wreckage he created. His nostrils twitched as he began to inhale the subtle smell of ozone. That's when the air about his head abruptly fused into an orb of hazy transparence, and an opaque force field fell over his face like a hood.

The car immediately rumbled, the sound of broken glass jangling as a ton of twisted metal began to slide, continuing to grate until the man rolled out of the wreckage. He lipped a few more obscenities as his disheveled body stepped away from the wrought remains of a once fine automobile. His eyes cut through Mastiff, watching him struggle to remove the force field, sapping him of his air supply.

He stood before Mastiff for what seemed like minutes, his frustration melting into patience as he waited for Mastiff to take his last breath within the airtight sphere. He even peppered in some punches and kicks to his sternum and kidneys in an attempt to force Mastiff to cough out his remaining breath. But the body blows had only superficial effects on the struggling madman. And amazingly enough, Mastiff seemed to not be bothered by the lack of oxygen. It was this discovering that placed the man off his guard, and Mastiff took advantage of this with a powerful rake across his face. The airtight force field readily dissipated as the man fell back away from Mastiff, holding his bloody face.

Mastiff tackled the man and the two tumbled about the parking lot. They lashed out at one another; opaque energy flickered into existence all the while clawed hands flailed at it wildly. The man thrust out a palm strike, and nearly connected. Mastiff leaped up and over the attack, bringing his elbow around for a hard blow to the back of his opponent's head.

The man almost stumbled, but did not go down.

The man launched another force blast at Mastiff, but he sprung out its way. Mastiff noticed how the man's body defined the forms of his attacks, allowing for his force field to extend the blows well past the range of his limbs. The man's will gave them the force far beyond his purely physical strength. But this didn't stop Mastiff in any way; it merely beckoned him to continue.

The two were unrelenting. Strength versus force, choler versus resistance. It was interesting how these two strangers had similar ardor and tenacious drive.

Mastiff's battle with the man had moved across the parking lot. His head was ringing from several blows he'd been unable to avoid, but he'd had better luck with his opponent's piercing force attacks. The man had tried half a dozen times already to feint in one direction and stab in the other, and each time he'd received a punch in the throat or face or a tumble to the ground for his troubles.

Force-shielded fists and feet lashed out, with Mastiff evading the man's attacks, yet getting little opportunity to deliver a counter. Finally Mastiff aimed a taut fist at the man's throat. In the moment that his arm flung out, the man ducked and moved forward, jamming a shoulder into Mastiff's solar plexus. Seeing that Mastiff was winded, he then shot for his legs, bringing them out from under him, and slamming him hard onto the asphalt. Mastiff grimaced, trying to free himself as the man twisted one of his legs.

Then an agonized howl wailed out, dampening the wet snap of bone and cartilage.

Pain mixed with rage, and the two seemingly neutralized each other. And it was during this brief moment of clarity that Mastiff found focus. Digging down into the rifts and reservoirs within him, Mastiff mustered a surge of power. Superhuman strength lashed out at the man in a raking hand. Razor-sharp fingernails shattered the silvery aura surrounding the man and dug deep into his chest, tearing into meat and bone. Mastiff ripped his hand away, and with an excruciating bellow, the man to curled onto the ground cradling his thrashed chest. Again and again, Mastiff punched and pummeled the man, blood and spittle spraying out in unholy arcs. Soon the man lay unconscious, his sprawling form bent in an unnatural position.

Kneeling before the body, Mastiff's eyes scanned the lot in search for Dr. Freund; he was nowhere to be seen.

"Friggin' figures..." muttered Mastiff under his breath.

Considering what just had just transpired, Mastiff was more exhausted than angered, and therefore laughed as he painfully lifted himself to his feet. Mastiff looked at the limp, battered man, and then at his own brutally bruised self. He couldn't help but admire his unconscious opponent. He couldn't help but feel just a shred of respect for the guy. He put up an incredible fight, a fight that Mastiff could have easily lost.

The sounds of sirens wailed in the distance. He began to hobble out of the parking lot, leaving Omega Corp. for perhaps another day. Besides, if those sirens were heading in his direction, Mastiff was in no condition for another confrontation, even if it was only the police.

Mastiff slowly limped into the shadows of the night, and regretted ever going to Omega Corp. Not that he regretted what he did. He just regretted the fact that he knew he was going to run into that man again some other time.

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