"It'll be alright."

As the creatures of hell descended down upon them, the prisoners did one of two things: run or fight.

For him, it was simple. Marquis roared as he did something he had never done before in his life. All of the hidden techniques that he didn't use on Brockton Bay Brigade or Allfather were unleashed in this moment of hell.

He went all out.

Bones erupted from the ground and himself. Desperation drove him as they skrewed the Nightmares. Nightmares dodged and weaved. Many were caught by the bone screws. Those that dodged were met with phalange bone bullets fired from the tips of his fingers.

When they got too close to him, he allowed the bones to erupt out of him in all directions in a shell of deadly bone spikes.

But throughout all this, his danger sense clung to him to avoid one particular Nightmare.

It stood on the other end of the prison wing, watching his struggle against its monster brethrens. It scrutized him as if to discover something about him.

Then suddenly all of the monsters stopping attacking him, the biggest threat to them in this prison wing, when the creature his danger sense kept screaming at him about raised its hand. The monsters all looked to it, and it did something.

Marquis wanted to throw up when he heard blood gurling and popping from the creature.

In an instant, the brief reprieve was over.

The monsters attacked once more.

He raised his bones to protect himself and one other prisoner.

The monsters ignored them both and attacked the others.

Those that lived were dragged away.

Those that didn't were ... eaten on spot.

Marquis stood there, watching in horror beneath his net of bones.

"Miss Canary, are you alright?" he asked the prisoner he protected.

She nodded frantically.

He swallowed.

Canary and he had become good friends as wards of Birdcage. Well, it was close to him being just the usual gentlemen that he was, and she sought his protection in this lawless concrete jungle. Her jokes were good though, and they bound together over the injustice of what had been done to them.

She had triggered and used her power without even knowing to commit a crime, which -if she knew her power- she would not have.

He had made his city better. He was building up a good future for Brocktom Bay so that his daughter could live in it without having to worry about being gunned down simply by walking across a street. Instead, some bitch with a grudge against him went far as to break the unwritten rule to make a citizen's arrest.

Last he heard, Brockton Bay was in worst shape than how he left it.

Inside Birdcage, Canary didn't use her power because of her trauma, but he did.

"Canary... I know I'm asking a lot, but are you willing to try?"

He didn't need to explain; she knew what he was asking. Being surrounded by demons kind of took out a need for explanation when her power involved command.

She nodded hesitantly.

But before he could rip out the gag, the Monster was in front of him. It had teleported inside the cage that he had created.

He scrambled back, pushing Canary behind him. "Stay back!" he hissed as he pulled out a bone sword and armored himself with bone plates.

It looked over him once.

"Weak," it spoke with the voice of a grizzled old man. "This is the human that created me?"

Marquis stilled as he stared at it, confused. "What?"

It spat on the ground.

"Call me Warlord, Marquis," it growled. "I was born from you."

"Y-You are not making any sense. I only had one c-"

"You're getting your shit wrong, you son of a bitch. I was born from you not birthed by you."

"...Then would you correct me?"

Warlord laughed. "Gentlement even in battle, eh?" it asked. "Very well." It gave him a mock bow. "My name is Warlord, the second Shard-born of the Queen Mother of the Nightmare Realms."

"Your name and title have no meanings to me witho-"

"Then shut the fuck up and listen!" Warlord roared.

Marquis snapped his jaw shut.

Canary shook behind him in fear.

Warlord paused before it growled again.

"Queen Mother creates my kind from the negative ethereal concepts derived from nocturnal dreams of others. Nightmares born from the minds of other people, if you will," it continued, not minding the blood flowing around the cage and the prison. "And you see, our Queen Mother must have met you at some point, because she looked into your dreams and pulled me out."

Marquis didn't reply for a second. "But how...?"

"It's how her power works. She calls it the Demon Shaping." It chuckled. "And we are exactly that: demons."

The noise of the fighting around them died down, and the other monsters were all staring at the duo.

"Tell me, Marquis. What is your biggest fear?"

The man tightened the grip on his bone sword. "Don't you da-!"

"Hurt Amelia? Dear gods, no. That's not the nightmare the plagued you for a long time. Let me tell you this, dear Marquis. As much as nightmares change, the influence of the nightmares past, present, and future are different." It waved its arms around. "Every single Nightmares here were born from the longest dread shaped by our creators. Now, I ask again. What is your biggest nightmare?"

"... Becoming something worse than Allfather."

Warlord clapped. "Close, close."

"...Worse than a thug."

"There we go! And ... That's exactly what I am, father. I didn't choose to be called Warlord on a whim," it cackled. "These Nightmares here are all my soldiers, graciously given to me by Queen Mother! And I am here to spread chaos! To devoir human flesh! To eat! To Eat!"

"FOOD!" the Nightmares chanted around them loudly. They banged their hooves and fists. "FOOD!"

"And the scums of the earth are our food."

"FOOD!"

"We held back because our mother requested. But all of a sudden, that command was rescinded."

"FOOD!"

Marquis drew into himself as he shivered, but even as he did so, he kept his bones protectively around him and Canary.

Warlord spun around from the other side of the bone cage with its arms wide open. "And Birdcage is the biggest fight there is! Biggest chaos we can unleash!"

"FOOD!"

"... But alas. I cannot kill all of the inmates or even you."

Marquis snapped his head up. "Why?" he asked immediately.

"Our Queen Mother seeks no death of grays, Marquis," it snarled, clearly unsatisfied of that particular order. "Surprisingly, this exempts 43 of your capes in this shitty prison from being killed by our forces."

Marquis looked at Warlord in shock.

43?

43?

43?!

That was less than 5% of the entire Birdcage population!

Something through the walls, and Marquis felt a bit of hope rising up within him when he saw what it was.

It was one of Dragon's armored suits!

"Bah, lifeless shit," Warlord muttered before swiping from where he stood at Dragon's suit.

It crumpled into itself and disappeared.

Marquis felt horror, and that turned into shock when the suit reappeared mere seconds later as some kind of infested eldritch abomination.

"My specialty, Marquis, is 'infection,'" the Nightmare commented as the suit ran back outside and began to engage other suits. "I can infect anything that can be considered alive by the loosest sense of the any definiton of living. Then I turn them on my enemies." It chuckled. "Of course, I have limits, just like you, and mine happens to be around things that are non-organic in origin, which doesn't quite help me in most situations."

"...Why are you telling me all of this?"

Warlord cackled. "As much as I want to kill you, I am your Nightmare, Marquis. Being a gentlemen and explaining what I do and why I do it is part of being born from you. I can't help it." Then he teleported back out of the bone cage. "Goodbye, father. I hope to never see you again, for your sake."

The Nightmare turned away from Marquis and Canary, and went to slaughter other prisoners.

When they were completely gone from their sight, Canary finally managed out a whimper from behind Marquis. He merely pulled her into a loosely one-arm hug.

It certainly wasn't going to be alright.

/\/\/\/\/\

A week later...

"..What is the world coming to?"

Apparently, after passing out in front of his daughter during her visit, he had fallen into a brief coma lasting for a week or so.

During that time, the world had gone under an upheaval.

A new parahuman by the name of Nightmare Queen rose up shortly after he was hospitalized. He saw the video of her first appearance, which was somehow leaked from PRT servers. Something niggled at the back of his mind when he saw that video.

Then apparently, the Queen moved from a city-bound parahuman to a continental threat comparable to Slaughterhouse 9, and reached that rank by siccing her creations, her "Nightmare Troops," upon the unappreciated members of the populace across estern North America.

The bottom barrel scums, serial rapists, hardcore criminal drug addict, unrepentent murderers, and parahuman villains.

Especially parahuman villains.

He saw the video of Birdcage being struck by the horde of Nightmares.

The death toll was in the hundreds of thousands with a minority of it being cops, military troops, and even some capes trying to defend some of those very people who had once threatened them.

Now, the Nightmare Queen was the Thing that goes Bump in the Night. The unofficial ruler of Northeastern North America.

Something really tickled his mind then.

That was when he realized that something was wrong about him.

Then he realized in horror that he had become a parahuman himself.

...

Shit, what was he going to tell Taylor?

/\/\/\/\/\

Taylor was happy.

Dad was awake!

Without a care in the world (completely ignoring invisible Uriella's telepathic report on the "harvest"), she skipped her way to the hospital, and arrived by her father's bedside in record time.

Then she saw the shard within her father as his nightmare of being outted as a parahuman entered her mind.

...

Shit.

What was she going to tell her father?

/\/\/\/\

Like father like daughter.

/\/\/\/\

Interlude: Purity

Somehow, she had escaped the culling.

She held tightly onto her infant daughter as she rode the bus out of New York.

It was hard for her, honestly. She had been on the road for three days now, trying to escape the Nightmare Queen's clutches.

But she wondered if she was going to really escape the Nightmare Queen.

After all, the parahuman began her career by "modern-artifying" Crusader. And then her very next act was to launch an attack on everyone she deemed "unworthy" across all levels of life. It didn't matter if you were a rich scammer ruining people's lives or you were the lowest of the low, killing for the sake of wanting to kill.

If you were a true villain, you were dead.

'Then why was I spared?' she thought to herself.

She didn't think it was because she was a woman. Nightmare Queen didn't seem like a sexist, and plenty of women had died at the hands, hooves, claws, horns, feet, jaws, and other brutal manners by her Nightmares.

Aster cooed. Kayden looked down at her daughter, and bounced her a bit. She earned herself a heart-wrenchingly cute laughter from her girl.

But she had this feeling that she wasn't off the hook yet.

Just ... delayed.

/\/\/\/\/\

Interlude: Lung and Oni Lee

They had survived ... somehow.

Their gang had not.

ABB was one of the hardest hit by the Nightmare Troops. There was absolutely no mercy for them. It took a hundred Nightmares rampaging across their territory, killing and kidnapping any members wearing ABB colors for the gang to disband.

Oh, Lung tried to fight, but he lost.

He lost.

Oni Lee, his ever loyal lieutenant, had been there to teleport him to safety.

Away from Brockton Bay.

Away from New England.

Away from North east east.

It didn't feel like they had survived, though.

They survived against Leviathan.

They survived against the PRT and Protectorate.

They hadn't survived against the Nightmare Queen.

No, they ran.

And Lung hated himself for it.

He ignored the cooing of a white baby behind him.