"Some word of warning would have been appreciated," Petre said. The world still spun in circles around him after his erstwhile flight.

Manya did not even offer him a snort. She had feasted and feasted, and when she had eaten her full, she had feasted some more. Petre might have been repulsed, but with each mouthful a delightful warmth had tickled his toes and the ends of his fingers.

He sat in the middle of the rooftop, away from where Manya had ripped and torn. He could still hear shouts from below, a dull white noise interrupted by the occasional gust of wind.

He had been afraid at first. They would shoot him on sight, thinking him an irradiated mutant. And they had shot him on sight, but for other reasons. But their bullets had merely tickled his skin, and while his ragged clothes were strewn with red, he felt no pain.

"Which is not very h-human," Petre said.

He wanted to meditate. He wanted to find the small peace he had claimed almost daily in recent weeks. To sit, to listen, to disappear. To send his thoughts elsewhere, away from the constant hunger, away from his children's black ichor.

The rooftop filled with a rusted cry. He turned in time to see a pair of eyes disappear from the stairwell door. It had been closed earlier.

"Manya?" Petre felt a lance of unease as he recalled the many rifles and pistols he had seen on the streets below. "Are you... awake?"

His cuz offered no answer from within his right eye. She had gorged herself, burped, and then retreated into his right eye (As if she owned the place!) without another word.

Petre rose and eyed the door with an inward groan. Because while he had been shot and survived, Manya had dispatched their assailants. Petre himself had done little more than close his eyes and wait.

"H-hello?" he called out towards the open door. "I don't want no t-trouble."

Which was a stupid thing to say when the rooftop looked like the kitchen of a psychotic butcher. A shame that the butcher in question seemed to have fallen asleep. He was not sure what he could do on his own.

"Easy there!" Petre said as a bent-over figure appeared at the doorway. "I'm... strong!"

"F-friendly!" the bent-over figure said, and she peaked her head out. "I'm with RxTV. I was hoping f-for an inter... view...?"

It took a moment for the young woman's words to reach Petre. Then his jaw fell open.

"Whaaat?"

The furtive head disappeared behind the door, and Petre stomped towards the stairwell, his curiosity a small salve to his fears.

He peaked his head into the dimly lit stairwell (There were massive windows on each floor's landing) and found the woman, her small almond face fitted with a pair of enormous glasses. She crouched on the topmost stair, seemingly unable to move.

"Who are you?" Petre said, and for some reason the sight of her filled him with frustration.

The young woman yelped, and her crouched body began to shiver violently.

"Pleasedon'teatme, pleasedon'teatme, pleasedon'teatme," she said as both her eyes and words filled with wet tears. Petre could scarcely understand her. "Idon'tevenhaveanychildrenyet, andIwantlotsandlotsofchildrenbeforeIdie, sopleasedon'teatmeeee!"'

"What are you even saying?" Petre looked down at the wretched woman and could almost forget about the violence that surrounded them. "E-eat you? I'm not going to eat you!"

The young woman sniffed loudly, and looked up from her shrunken crouch. Her eyes seemed to magnify behind her enormous glasses. Petre noticed some sort of chain hung from her neck. It looked kind of familiar.

"Y-you're not? Y-you're all... full then?"

"No!" Petre shouted, and the young woman returned to her trembling. "I mean, I didn't eat anyone. I didn't, a-anyways. But who are you? What interview?"

Slowly, as if she had to remember how, the young woman rose to her feet. She stole furtive glances at Petre's face, but always looked back down at her shoes.

"I-I am with RxTV. Sarku Dani. You... may have heard of me?"

"No, I haven't," Petre said immediately, though the name did sound familiar. He did not understand the frustration that filled him, but the young woman put him in a foul mood. "So? You're here to report on... on all that's happening?"

Sarku Dani offered a small laugh.

"Yes and... and no." She glanced up at him before she continued. "You're Petre Predav, no?"

Petre blinked, but she did not give him the chance to answer.

"There were videos. Of you. Of... of that thing. They're gone now. The videos. Not just here, but in other countries, too. You can't find the videos anywhere, and we're not even allowed to talk about them. On the news."

Sarku's words filled Petre with equal parts interest and horror. Because in the many weeks after the blast, he had wondered how the world would react. The trail of destruction left behind by Blurb on the streets of Solca would have been captured in a hundred of different videos.

"I want to know the truth," Sarku Dani said, and her earlier furtiveness disappeared. "First VAT-E1. Then the lockdowns. And then the bomb. Its all so suspicious, but we're supposed to believe it was all just the Khavasks. The government is using this war to hide the truth from us, but I will sniff it out!"

So many revelations were dropped into Petre's lap that he did not even know how to react. War with the Khavasks? And he had forgotten all about the VAT-E1 outbreak. This woman seemed to know so much, but some distant part of him did not trust her. And how could he trust anyone after what had happened to him?

As if the universe had been eavesdropping on his thoughts, a head appeared at the bottom of the stairwell.

"He's up here!" an older woman cried out. Petre and Sarku both jumped. "He's with that woman!"

Petre's hand instinctively went to his right eye, but it was not as if he could shake Manya awake.

"And I'm so tired of it," he said to himself.

"What?" Sarku asked, her voice breathless. "I-I'm not with them. T-they found me, and theyweregoing to turnmeover to t-the KSC."

He could hear the stomp of feet rushing up the stairwell, and the same frustration that seemed drawn to this Sarku Dani passed over to the strangers below.

"I'm s-strong," Petre said to himself. He could drag cars across the ground. He had been shot and jumped right back up after.

He pushed past Sarku, his mind decided. Because if Manya roused there would be another bloodbath. She was not human, but Petre, he was still human!

He met the first assailant by mistake. The building was two or three stories, and he had thought the upper floors empty (Never mind that Sarku had been inside or the woman who had seen him). A door swung open on the landing below the roof, and a young man with greasy hair was illuminated by the landing's enormous window.

The two of them simply gawked at one another, but then the young man, his eyes wide with fear, tackled Petre. He tried to wrestle Petre to the floor, but he was not strong enough.

"M-move!" Petre shouted. The words gave him strength, and he grabbed the young man by his flannel jacket.

It was like lifting a small dog off the ground. Petre knew he was strong, and yet.

He threw the young man against the wall, and the force of the blow rang out throughout the building. The child (Because as Petre looked closer, the young man could not have been more than a high schooler) wheezed and struggled for breath.

Petre ducked instinctively as the stairwell filled with the ricochet of gunfire. The massive window beside him shattered in a shower of glass.

He swerved towards the gunfire and found three men in fatigues stomping their way up the stairwell, rifles drawn.

"Kuzma!" one of the gunmen called. "Kuzma, get up!"

Petre stepped back, his human sensibilities urging him to flee. He saw their long rifles and hateful stares, and he did not want to die.

More of the window clattered to the floor behind him, and a blur of black flew towards the three men, and then a second.

One of the gunmen cried out as a distinct steam rose from his face where two black blobs hugged and smothered.

"NoOo hurt, Papa!" Blurt exclaimed.

[ BluuURm proTecCt ]

A moment of relief washed over Petre, the warmth low and cowardly. Because the monsters had arrived once more. As with Blurb and Manya, they would do the devil's work.

But then he saw one of the gunmen point their rifle at his children, at the spawn of his treasure.

"Noo̷͍͆o̵̝̿o!" Petre cried, and he lunged over the stairwell guardrails towards the gunmen.

His aim was poor, however, and he crashed into the opposite guardrails like a human-wrecking ball. Metal creaked and filled the stairwell, as did a chorus of human grunts.

Petre and the guardrail smashed into the gunmen, knocking them off their feet. He shook away his confusion and, the imagine still bright in his mind, tore the closest gunmen's rifle away as if the fatigued soldier were a child.

A horrible crack filled the stairwell, and Petre's vision went red with hate. He smashed the stolen rifle like a hammer over the third gunmen's head. He smashed and he smashed and he smashed until he was sure that none would harm his children.

Petre threw the bent and mangled rifle down the stairwell. He heaved and grunted with a deep tired.

Amidst the pile of bodies in the stairwell, only Blurm and Blurt moved. The two balls of black goo roosted atop the men and filled the air around them with steam. Dimly, Petre realized they were eating, small melted bites for two small gelatinous blobs.

His earlier frustration turned over to exhaustion as the reality around him sank in.

Petre pulled Blurt off of one of the men, and then his sister. The two made confused wet plots, but no words.

He pulled them into a hug, unsure how they were here, but delighted that they were safe.