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His outfit was burned and there was blood on his forehead, but Poacher had been sure to leave the man alive. He had questions for him. About what he was doing here and why he was helping the Agletarians.

“You fools,” the alien said, “you have no idea the nightmare you’ve called down on yourselves. My people are going to destroy you .”

“Destroy me?” Poacher looked around incredulously, like he assumed the man was speaking to someone else.

“ Me? ” He crouched down next to him. “That kind of threat might scare people on some of the other worlds you’ve been to, where you were the toughest kid on the block…

” he met the man’s gaze, dead on, “but you’re in New Jersey now, motherfucker.

” He pulled out his machete and passed it in front of the man’s face so that it glinted in the light. “And you’re a loooong way from home…”

****

In the engineering room of the Agletarian base, Montgomery casually looked around.

“Higgins?” He called to his employee as the man sat down behind one of the terminals.

On the TV screen, the Thanksgiving parade was breaking out in carnage, with the Agletarians beginning to surround Oz and Multifarious.

“Boot up the master controls for the Agletarians’ suits.

” A sinister smile crossed Monty’s face.

“They want more power? Let’s see how they like it if we give them all of it. ”

Clarice shook her head, her voice becoming shrill.

“You can’t make them explode! You have no way of knowing how many of those suits there are , or where the soldiers might be located right now.

They could be in populated areas, for God’s sake!

They could be all over Agletaria! You’re going to kill innocent people! ”

Monty shot her an odd glance, like she was speaking another language.

“You’re too delicate for this line of work, Clarice.

” He informed her, as if giving needed guidance to a dear friend.

“My advice would be to find another profession before you get someone hurt.” He turned to his underling. “ Do it .”

“No!” Clarice rounded on Higgins, her anger flashing. “Don’t you dare press that…”

Monty’s flunky pressed the button before the woman could finish.

****

Natalie’s count reached two, when the soldiers in the super suits unexpectedly exploded, rocking the pavement around them and knocking everyone else off their feet.

Much like had happened in the hospital, the suits themselves had detonated.

Just what had caused it this time, she wasn’t sure, but it broke every window for two blocks and sent debris crashing into the crowds of parade goers, still trying desperately to get clear.

Half of the cables holding down the huge “Lottie” balloon were instantly cut, and the soldiers who had formally been occupying the space were incinerated outright.

Luckily, all of the civilians were free of the blast zone, but the explosion was so close that it left Natalie’s ears ringing and her brain feeling foggy.

The remaining soldiers regained their footing and immediately opened fire, peppering Mull with bullets and causing her to duck for cover behind the train.

Skrlj took off running, heading towards one of the other floats.

“Go!” Oz gestured at her. “Stop him, I’ll take care of the gunmen!”

“You sure?” She called back.

“Do you have any idea how filthy this city is?” He smiled. “Because they’re about to find out.”

Mull snorted at the threat, jumping over some scorched and burning gingerbread decorations and running after the architect of all of this.

Behind her, the gunfire abruptly stopped as Oz accessed his astonishing powers and had the city’s filth decompose the men away to nothing. He leaned forward, bracing himself on his knees for a moment, breathing hard and trying to recover from that incredible exertion, then trotted after her.

Skrlj reached into one of the floats and pulled something out, then stopped in the middle of the street to confront them.

She skidded to a stop in front of him, Oz backing her up and taking a position to her right.

They had the man boxed in and there was nowhere he could go.

“Again,” Oz told the man calmly, “I’m OCD of the Consortium of Chaos. And this is…” He trailed off, recognizing that he didn’t know her codename today.

“Today…. I am Multifarious .” She informed them both dramatically, meeting Skrlj’s eyes.

“Your people made me to be a killer. And here I am. I have 9,648 different super-powers at my disposal today.” She shrugged.

“Some of them? I don’t even remember what they do.

But I bet I can use most of them to kick the living shit outta you, mister. ”

“Surrender.” Oz snapped. “Your days of torturing people are over.”

Skrlj didn’t move.

She nodded, expecting that. “Okay then… ”

Oz reached into his pocket and put on a pair of plastic safety goggles. “In case of splatter.” He casually explained.

Skrlj pressed the button in his hand and there was a strange mechanical noise.

She glanced at Oz in confusion, wondering if he heard it too.

Skrlj launched himself at her, his movements enhanced by his own alien suit, which was hidden underneath his clothes and didn’t explode like the others had, because it appeared to be of a more complicated design. Sadly, it was just as strong.

He crashed into her, and they both fell to the street.

She flipped him off of her as he went for a ground and pound move, and Oz caught the man’s arm before he could connect with his follow-up punch. He locked his own arm around Skrlj’s elbow, opening the man up to attack.

Mull hit him in the side with Brick House’s strength power, then punched him in the face.

Skrlj staggered to the side and ran straight into Oz’s fist, which just about leveled the man. The General’s power suit might be making the rest of him resistant to damage, but it didn’t cover his face.

Skrlj pulled a knife and tried to stab at her as she moved to block the man’s escape and trap him between herself and Oz, but she accessed Pli-Ape’s agility powers and simply dodged it.

The man turned to run down a side alley, but Oz used his powers to crash construction scaffolding into it, cutting off the exit.

He turned to flee uptown, but Hive Mind’s powers to control bees sealed off the route behind a wall of angry bees, which really didn’t like the cold and were only too happy to take that out on someone.

Skrlj recognized the situation was hopeless.

At this point, it was basically just sharks circling a wounded swimmer.

The only question was whether she or Oz would have the honor of killing this asshole first.

“We’ll kill you if we have to.” Oz challenged. “But we won’t have to, unless you give us no other option. Surrender.”

To her surprise, the man started laughing. “You think you’ve won!?!” He held up the device in his hand. “I’ll die before I ever see your kind rule my country!”

Behind them, the mechanical noise continued and Mull didn’t even need to turn around to know it wasn’t good news.

Footsteps.

Across from her, Oz was staring at something over her shoulder. Something which was apparently very large.

She shook her head sadly, hating this job.

“Giant robot.” Oz deadpanned. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.” He gestured to it. “Why would anyone build that!?! It’s so impractical!”

Mull turned to look at the alien monster, made up of the machinery hidden inside the train floats.

It towered over the street, a hundred feet of whipping, clanking, mechanical death.

Her mouth fell open in sheer wonder. “…It’s like every dream I’ve ever had came true this morning…

” She whispered, then turned back to look at Oz in excitement.

“A giant robot! A giant robot, Oz! How fucking amazing is that!?!”

Oz made a face. “This is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened.”

Skrlj threw the activation switch at her head, and she dodge to the side to avoid it. He used the distraction to try to grab Oz, but her partner blocked him, then used a martial arts throw to toss the man away.

Skrlj righted himself, feet braced for the final showdown, and the armor under his clothes glowing so brightly with power that his body seemed to be sparking now.

She glanced at Oz, getting a ruling on this.

Oz nodded, agreeing with her that they’d given him a chance and that it was time to end it before someone got hurt.

She used her foot to kick one of the guide wires into her hand, then used Huaso’s cowboy powers to lasso Skrlj’s neck.

Oz used his powers to eat through the dozen remaining weights holding the balloon to the ground, and Skrlj was lifted off his feet by the Lotti the Ocelot balloon, the guide wire tightening around his neck.

He struggled to free himself from the steel towline, trying to use his suit’s enhanced strength to break the cable…

but Mull’s brain was stronger than his suit, and the cable didn’t budge.

Skrlj went limp as the balloon sailed past the rooftops and rose into the clear morning sky.

Oz didn’t even bother to watch the man’s corpse get carried high over the city, instead, he immediately rounded on their next threat. He braced his feet, eyeing up their robotic opponent.

She gazed up at it too, recognizing that if Oz tried to take it down with his powers, he’d probably give himself an aneurysm. It was simply far too big.

The monster began to march uptown, feet leaving behind huge holes in the street as it began to wreck the buildings along the parade route.

It was supposed to provide a distraction for the Agletarians so that they could kidnap more empowered people, but with the Agletarians gone and the students fleeing to safety, the robot was just running amok.

Oz started to race after it. “I’ll keep the debris from hurting any of the civilians,” he pointed at the robot and winked back at her, “but that seems like a job for ‘The Lumberjack.’”

Mull started to run after them, growing larger with each step. Within three steps, she’d overtaken Oz, and within a dozen she’d caught up with the robot. She slammed into it, now equal to its size and weight.

The robot staggered to the side, leaning against one of the buildings for support and causing a large section of wall to collapse towards the street. The bricks disappeared into a cloud of dust before hitting a crowd of people huddled on the sidewalk, thanks to Oz.

His powers were strong, but they took a lot out of him. She wasn’t sure he’d be able to do that again, so she had to end this fight quickly and with as little property damage as possible.

“Quickly and calmly, people!” Oz announced to the crowd, motioning the onlookers to safety. “You’ve all seen giant robots before, and you know what to do!”

Mull hit the robot in the face with The Lumberjack’s huge right fist, sad that she didn’t have the oversized axe which formally accompanied this power set.

And, for that matter, that her outfit today wasn’t really made for growing ninety-five feet taller, and she was forced to do this in her underwear.

Luckily, her old friend Party Line was more than capable of fighting half-dressed. The crazy bitch still hated men… but she loved Oz, so Mull had no objections to her now.

The robot moved to attack her with some kind of hand-mounted weapon, but Oz’s powers dissolved it before it got a chance to fire at her.

She drove her shoulder into the body of the robot, lifting it off its feet, and took it down in a wrestling move. She rolled on top of it, raised both of her hands above her head, then smashed them down onto its head until the blinking lights flickered out and the machine stopped moving.

She stayed atop it for several moments, making sure it was destroyed, then shrunk back to her normal size.

Oz took off his jacket and wrapped it around Natalie’s shoulders, as she started to tremble in the cold.

She looked up at him. “ It’s fucking freezing, Oz.

” She told him, starting to shiver and shifting from bare foot to bare foot on the icy street.

“Why does evil always have to attack when it’s 19 degrees out! ?!”

Oz nodded, pulling her against him and wrapping his arms around her, sharing the warmth of his body. “You were right though,” he said softly, leaning in to kiss her, “I think this really was the best parade ever.”

His lips met hers, and Natalie’s entire crazy life made sense.

His lips were warm enough that she forgot the cold and the death robots and the fact that the corpse of a foreign general was currently dangling from a huge balloon of a cereal mascot over their heads.

Despite the insanity… she felt normal. She felt whole. She felt so loved .

On the street corner, several onlookers began to clap for them, appreciating their efforts.

Natalie and Oz had saved the city. They’d managed to protect innocent people and duke it out with a giant robot.

Roy would have been proud.

She wrapped her arms around Oz, laughing in utter joy as his mouth plundered hers.

“Happy Tanksgiving, Oz.” She told him, that terrible and misspelled handprint turkey drawing from the hospital seeming oddly prophetic, given how the day was turning out.

She kissed Oz again, feeling so safe and happy in his arms. “Happy Tanksgiving.”