258 Winged Tiger of Hope [Griffin/Nicole]
258 Winged Tiger of Hope [Griffin/Nicole]
The launch platform trembled beneath distant evacuation traffic.
Below me, GDF personnel moved in tight formations, their voices lower than usual, but not panicked. They knew better than to show fear in front of the cameras still broadcasting hope to the world.
A young logistics officer approached with a tablet clutched to her chest. “Ma’am, airspace corridors have been cleared for the next forty minutes. After that, we’re redirecting civilian transports east.”
I nodded. “Good. Keep the lanes clean.”
She hesitated before adding, “When this is over, the cafeteria’s reopening the good pantry. The one Command keeps locked. You should come eat with us.”
Another technician chimed in from behind a stack of crates. “Yeah, Commander. We’ve got bets running on how long it’ll take you to swat that rock.”
A third voice followed, deliberately casual. “Don’t forget you promised to try my sister’s cooking next time you’re in North District.”
They were trying.
In their own small, human ways, they were trying to anchor me to something normal.
“I’ll hold you to that,” I replied evenly. “Make sure the pantry survives.”
A few nervous laughs followed. It was enough.
I stepped away from the cluster of personnel and powered my phone down entirely. Messages had been flooding in from GDF capes across every division.
“Don’t you dare hog all the glory.”
“Dinner’s on me when this is over.”
“Get back in one piece, Amelia.”
I did not trust my voice enough to answer any of them.
Guesswork stood several meters away near a mobile projection array, tie already loosened, eyes fixed on cascading orbital simulations.
He glanced up as I approached.
“The asteroid’s mass has been doubly confirmed,” he said. “Fourteen kilometers. Dense composition. Enough kinetic energy to reset civilization.”
“I’ve seen the numbers,” I replied.
He adjusted the projection, isolating a corridor through the upper atmosphere.
“This is your window. The perfect intercept point. Thin atmosphere, minimal debris interference. If you take off from here at maximum velocity, you’ll meet it before atmospheric compression destabilizes the outer layers.”
“The perfect place to leave,” I said.
He studied me for a moment. “You know what to do, right?”
I nodded. “Alter its trajectory and guide it toward Eclipse.”
Nick was waiting in the Devil’s Triangle. The deepest recorded trench lay there, approximately eleven kilometers down. If he phased the meteor and forced it beneath the crust, that depth might mitigate some of the collateral catastrophe.
If.
Guesswork folded his arms. “Theoretically, Eclipse can phase the entire object at his current rating. My concern is what happens after he dephases it. We can’t rely on portal displacement at that scale. The infrastructure won’t handle it. Even with redirection, we’re looking at atmospheric upheaval, tsunamis, volcanic chains reacting. Casualties will be unavoidable.”
“I know,” I said.
“If this were a few days further out,” he continued, “you might have shifted it entirely. Redirected to lunar impact or deep space.”
“But we don’t have a few days.”
He gave a thin smile. “No. We don’t.”
The projection zoomed outward, showing Earth dwarfing the approaching mass.
“I’m sure it’s not just me,” Guesswork added quietly, “but this is rather big, isn’t it?”
“One mistake,” I replied, “and we end.”
I felt the Chimera Source stir within me.
It was not a single power but a convergence, an inheritance of myth and apex instinct layered over human will. I had rarely pushed it to its limits.
“This is a good measure,” I said calmly. “I don’t actually know how far I can go.”
I reached for the clasps on my body armor.
One by one, they unlatched and fell away. Metal and reinforced composites struck the platform with dull clanks. Fabric followed. Gear would only become debris at the velocities required. Even the earpiece would combust from friction and pressure.
My blood began to boil.
Not metaphorically.
Heat rippled beneath my skin as the Chimera Source surged. Veins glowed faintly crimson. My heartbeat deepened, slower but heavier, as if each pulse carried tectonic force.
Guesswork stepped back instinctively.
“See you when I see you,” he said.
My spine arched.
Red wings tore free from my back in an explosion of feathers and bone. Not decorative appendages, but vast, muscled structures capable of displacing oceans of air. My skin rippled as tiger striping bled across it. My jaw shifted, teeth lengthening. My ears sharpened, rotating to capture frequencies miles away. The world exploded into scent and vibration.
I crouched.
The platform cracked before I even moved.
With a single bound, the ground beneath me cratered, concrete pulverized outward in a radial shockwave. I beat my wings once.
The air detonated.
I grew as I ascended, mass expanding in defiance of conservation, myth overriding physics. Muscles layered upon muscles. Bones reinforced into something beyond biology. My shadow swallowed the coastline below.
By the time I pierced the upper cloud layer, I was no longer merely Griffin of the GDF.
I was an enormous winged tiger, vast enough that my wings cast darkness across entire countries as I climbed.
Above me, the sky thinned into black.
Ahead, a burning rock fell toward the world.
I bared my fangs and accelerated.
I locked onto Eclipse’s scent.
Not his body.
His power.
It was unmistakable now, glaring across the planet like a beacon. Ever since his evolution, the essence of him had grown sharp and invasive, as though space itself recoiled around his presence. Even from orbit, I could taste it threading upward from the Devil’s Triangle.
I reached the asteroid before it entered the atmosphere.
It was monstrous up close. Fourteen kilometers of ancient stone and iron, scarred by collisions older than civilization. It burned faintly from friction with stray particles as it barreled forward.
I clasped my claws into it.
The impact shuddered through my bones. I dug in, talons sinking deep into mineral layers that had never known life. Then I pushed.
In the vacuum of space, wings alone could not generate lift. There was no air to bite, no medium to displace.
So I created my own.
Blood vessels in my wings ruptured deliberately. Pressure built and expelled in controlled bursts, superheated plasma venting from arterial channels I forced open. Each detonation gave me micro-adjustments in trajectory.
I flapped anyway, not for lift but for vector correction, recalculating constantly.
Within my skull, new neural clusters budded and divided. Additional brains formed in layered lobes, each dedicated to orbital mathematics, mass displacement, gravitational influence, and rotational momentum. I ran simulations in parallel, adjusting angle and force to ensure impact within the Devil’s Triangle.
Just a little more.
The plan was simple.
Ride the meteor like a martyr.
Guide it to Eclipse.
Let the world believe I perished with it.
It would not be a true death, but it would be convincing.
Then I saw it.
Another mass.
At first, it hid in the glare of distant sunlight, masked by the chaos of debris. When my vision adjusted, the scale became apparent.
It was nearly twice the size of the asteroid in my grasp.
You have to be kidding me.
Guesswork had said nothing about a second object.
There was no time to curse him properly.
If I remained with the first asteroid, the second would strike unchecked.
I made the decision instantly.
I released the first meteor and redirected myself toward the larger mass. Eclipse would have to handle the original alone.
As I closed distance, something felt wrong.
Its surface did not reflect like stone. It shimmered irregularly, rippling as though liquid beneath a thin crust.
I reached it.
It moved.
The “asteroid” convulsed and unfolded, its exterior dissolving into shifting gray matter. Shadowy tissue morphed into blood-dark appendages that lashed outward and wrapped around me before I could recoil.
It was alive.
Tentacles constricted around my torso and wings, barbed and lined with razor-like teeth that erupted from slick flesh. They pierced through fur and muscle, burrowing deep, siphoning blood as though it were sustenance.
The SRC had not detected it because it was not inert rock. It was camouflaged, and highly like a power was involved. It clung to me, pulling, chewing, and adapting with every second.
This could end badly for me and for the planet.
I leaned deeper into the Chimera Source.
My wings disintegrated into something else entirely. Feathers liquefied, bones softened, and the entire structure transformed into a writhing construct of blood suspended in the shape of wings. They flapped not by muscle, but by explosive arterial propulsion, torrents of superheated blood ejecting backward in violent streams.
Steam erupted from my body as internal temperatures skyrocketed. My fur began to glow at the edges, heat radiating outward in waves.
I roared and exhaled flame.
Fire tore across the creature’s surface, burning gray matter into bubbling sludge. Portions of it blackened and sloughed away, only to reform elsewhere.
When Dr. Time altered me, when he offered the mutation that fused myth with biology, I had ceased being fully human. I understood that somewhere along the way.
I had simply chosen not to dwell on it.
Pain ripped through me as more vessels burst to sustain propulsion. My blood-wings ignited further, becoming blazing red engines against the void.
I pushed.
The creature resisted, anchoring itself to me, dragging us both along a chaotic descent toward the moon.
I did not spare a thought for the NSD installations scattered across its surface.
We struck.
The impact shattered kilometers of regolith and stone. Debris erupted outward, some fragments hurled into deep space, others flung toward Earth in blazing arcs. I extended blood-like tendrils from my wings and snagged several of the larger chunks mid-flight, holding them in orbit around me as the creature writhed.
It began to change shape.
Gray mass consolidated, stretching and refining until a massive wolf’s head formed from its bulk. Its jaws split wide, rows upon rows of serrated teeth clicking into place.
Even in vacuum, I heard its scream.
A psychic shriek detonated inside my skull. Several of the auxiliary brains I had grown ruptured instantly, bursting under the strain. Neural tissue dissolved, calculations collapsing into static.
I snarled back and lunged, claws ripping into its forming face. I crushed its skull between my talons.
It liquefied and reformed elsewhere.
Another head erupted from its flank, snapping at my neck. I tore that one off too, only for tendrils to weave a third from its spine.
It was regenerative, adaptive, and predatory.
The wolf’s new maw lunged, teeth sinking into my shoulder as more appendages wrapped tighter around my limbs.
I roared again, flames blasting directly into its gaping throat, moonlight reflecting off burning gray matter as we tore at one another in orbit.
The Earth hung distant and fragile behind us.
And the creature kept regenerating.
…
..
.
[POV: Nicole]
The moon lit up.
It wasn’t subtle.
From the windows just outside my office, the lunar surface flashed in brief, violent intervals, as if someone were striking it with a cosmic hammer. The light pulsed again, then again, faint but unmistakable even through the city’s haze.
“Ma’am, we should evacuate,” Two-D said from near the doorway, voice tight despite her attempt at professionalism.
Silver stood to my left, arms crossed. “She’s right. This building isn’t exactly rated for celestial fallout.”
Onyx hovered on my other side, her presence flickering like a dark reflection of my own thoughts. “Bitch, please. You’re scared, aren’t you? Just give it up and go hide in a bunker.”
Silver nodded slightly. “It’s basically your alter-egos telling you to retreat, Nicole. Maybe you should consider listening for once.”
“No,” I said calmly. “I’ve decided. I’m staying.”
I sat behind my desk. The massive screen dominating the far wall showed live footage from Company drones positioned near the lunar perimeter. The image shook occasionally from radiation interference and debris shockwaves, but it was clear enough.
Griffin.
Or what she had become.
An enormous winged tiger of flame and blood, locked in orbit around the moon, tearing at something that should not exist.
The feed cut briefly to a wider planetary view. The first meteor was entering Earth’s upper atmosphere, its surface beginning to glow.
A portal shimmered open behind us.
Guesswork stepped through, adjusting his cuffs as though arriving late to a board meeting rather than the brink of extinction. His secretary followed, impeccably dressed and entirely out of place in this apocalypse. Gloryhole carried a tablet and a stack of documents that would never be read if this failed.
I didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“How did you miss something that big?” I demanded.
Guesswork exhaled slowly. “The Entity knows the SRC too well.”
“So incompetence?”
“Hey,” he replied sharply, “don’t look at me like that. I am plenty capable.”
The drone footage on the screen stabilized. The broadcast was being relayed globally. I had insisted the media handling remain exclusively GDF personnel. No Company branding. No SRC propaganda.
If this became a myth, it would belong to the world.
Onscreen, a news commentator struggled to maintain composure.
“—as you can see, celebrated hero Griffin has engaged the primary object beyond lunar orbit,” he said, voice wavering. “According to official sources, the plan currently underway involves redirecting the meteor toward a designated impact zone in the Briana's Trench, where the individual known as Eclipse will attempt a containment maneuver.”
He swallowed audibly.
“This unprecedented cooperation between former adversaries marks a historic moment. Heroes and villains alike are standing together against a calamity that threatens our entire existence.”
The words sounded rehearsed.
The fear did not.
Guesswork glanced at me. “I hope you don’t mind. I gave them the green light to reveal the Entity’s existence. They’re explaining what Griffin’s fighting.”
“I don’t mind,” I replied quietly. “It’s not like I have the sole right to decide what the world deserves to know.”
Onscreen, the commentator pressed a hand to his earpiece.
“We have an update,” he said rapidly. “Officials have confirmed that the second object engaged by Griffin is not a natural asteroid. It is believed to be a construct or biological extension of a dimensional threat designated Entity-AE1.”
The camera zoomed in.
Griffin bit down.
Her jaws clamped onto the monstrous wolf-shaped mass and tore its head clean off, splitting it in half with a surge of superheated blood. Gray matter scattered across lunar orbit like diseased snowfall.
Silver leaned forward unconsciously.
Onyx whispered, “That’s our girl.”
The commentator continued, voice breaking. “Meanwhile, the original meteor has officially entered Earth’s atmosphere. We are detecting significant thermal buildup—”
He never finished.
On the screen, Griffin convulsed.
Then she exploded.
A detonation of superheated blood erupted outward in a crimson bloom that swallowed the feed in white noise. For a split second, through the office windows, the moon itself flashed red.
The entire room went silent.
The commentator’s voice returned, shattered.
“W-we have lost visualconfirmation of Griffin,” he stammered. “This… this may not mean— not all hope is lost. Eclipse remains in position. This could be… this could be the beginning of a miracle.”
Two-D whispered, “Ma’am…”
I did not move.
I kept my eyes on the monitor.
Static crackled across the screen before switching to a wide atmospheric shot of the primary meteor blazing toward the Devil’s Triangle.
Two-D stepped closer. “Ma’am… with all due respect, we can’t confirm structural integrity if debris starts falling at scale. We need to move.”
Silver’s voice was gentler now, stripped of earlier sarcasm. “Nicole. If Eclipse fails, this building won’t matter. None of this will. You staying here doesn’t help him.”
Onyx crossed her arms, though her usual bite had dulled. “You proved your point. You stayed. You watched. Now don’t be stupid.”
I kept my gaze on the screen for a few seconds longer.
“Fine,” I said evenly, aware how my more loyal employees had insisted in staying, because I decided to stay. “We evacuate. But we do it in order. The executive floor first, then staggered descent to the lower portal hubs.”
Two-D exhaled in relief. “Yes, ma’am.”
Guesswork nodded once. “A wise decision. Symbolism is powerful, but survival is more so.”
I shot him a look. “Don’t mistake this for surrender. I’m not running away. I’m repositioning.”
“Of course,” he replied smoothly. “In that case, you should come with us. The SRC’s central gate network has broader multiversal reach than the Company’s local hubs. If things deteriorate, you’ll want maximum options.”
Silver frowned slightly. “You’re asking us to trust the SRC’s infrastructure during an extinction event?”
Guesswork adjusted his tie. “I’m suggesting that consolidating leadership increases humanity’s odds. Fragmentation helps the Entity.”
Onyx muttered, “He’s annoyingly right.”
Gloryhole stepped forward without being prompted.
The air distorted around her fingers as she traced a slow, deliberate arc. Reality thinned, peeled back, and unfolded into a vast, luminous aperture suspended in midair. It was not merely a doorway across distance but a corridor that cut cleanly through layered dimensions, its interior shimmering with shifting constellations and impossible geometries.
The portal stabilized with a low, resonant hum that seemed to vibrate through bone rather than air.
She glanced at Guesswork. “Destination confirmed. Multiversal anchor secured.”
Then she looked at me.
“After you, Ms. Nicole.”