The Wild Beasts of Anthony Mannis
Chapter 12

All Special Service Invokers squadrons are under the command of an Elite Spectre Officer - for example, at the time of this writing Elite Spectre Officer Typhon is in command of the SSI squad known as the Nosferat. Command over SSI is assigned by Wardens, and temporary commands may be ordered depending on circumstance. An up-to-date list of SSI squads is located in the back of this pamphlet.

- Information Available to Borges Citizens, Pamphlet VI

Hayley, her back to the CDF officers, had no idea that they had seen her. She was engrossed in a riveting conversation with Jory about her eyes.

“Hey,” said Philip, crouched covertly by Anthony’s chair.

Anthony jumped in his seat. “Geez man, what are you doing down there? I almost invoked an monster by accident.”

“Sorry, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’ve got problems,” Philip dipped his head at the Spectre Squadron, who were talking amongst themselves and casting glances at Hayley. Raffick was staring directly at her, “they haven’t seen either of us, we can get out of here.”

Anthony turned on him angrily, “And leave Hayley behind? Some friend you are.”

Philip sighed, stood up to stretch his legs, and began a well-rehearsed apology. “Anthony, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. It’s wrong of me to try to order someone around with your capabilities, I don’t fully understand what you can do nor what invoking does to you, and because of that my advice may be a step behind. You must understand— ”

“Hey, you can’t sit with us!” Stubbs interrupted, grabbing Philip by the collar. He had to reach up to do it. “Who’s this guy? He messin’ with you, Anthony?”

Anthony laughed thinly, “Ah leave him alone, Stubbs, he’s a fr—…I know him.”

Hurt, Philip fumbled over his words. “I’m not entirely sure what’s happening right now, but I do know that we need to move.”

“You’re right about that,” Anthony said, “but we’re not leaving without Hayley.”

“Well you better hurry up and think of something,” Philip said, pushing away Stubbs’ hand.

He pointed to the Spectre Squadron, who were adjusting their gear and checking their guns. Raffick was sliding on his cracked helmet. People around them decided that now was a good time to stop eating and go run those errands they had been meaning to do all morning.

An idea began to form in Anthony’s head. “You guys aren’t homeless, are you?”

“No,” said Tim, looking at him oddly, “why would you think that?”

“No reason. I got a plan—Stubbs, you wanted to be an invoker, right?”

#

Raffick clicked a switch hidden on his body armor and a HUD blinked to life on his face mask. The right side of it was made of displays portraying suit integrity, GPS, vital statistics, ammo count, and railgun composition. The left side of the HUD however—where it had been damaged—was a mess of unreadable digital errors. At first, Raffick had been so busy chasing Anthony around he had no time to swap out helmets—Spectre Man armor was specific for each, so replacing a part was a lengthy process—but now he somewhat enjoyed the handicap. The left side of the HUD previously had an annoying stream of real-time updates from Peace Dispatchers and Wardens; it was nice to have a sort of freedom from them.

He waved to his team, and they stood up to begin approaching the straw-jacketed girl. A direct approach will not work, he knew. The girl has incredible speed and excellent training. They must cast a large net, then close it.

His team began to spread out. To the casual observer, it would like they were just walking to a regulated guard posting, but in reality they were encircling the table at which the girl was sitting. Soon she would have nowhere to run, no weak point that she could break. Then, questioning on the whereabouts of that invoker. Then the arrests, and the accolades…Warden Tan will finally respect me.

His team in position, he moved forward. Bystanders parted before him, fearful. The girl appeared to be in the middle of an intimate conversation with a farm boy. She has no idea.

“Hey Officer!” a plucky voice rang out. Raffick turned to look—against his better judgment—at a short kid with ginger hair standing on a table. The straw-jacketed girl, his officers, and many bystanders turned to look as well.

“Your crack is showing,” said Stubbs, grinning broadly and pointing to Raffick’s face-mask, “Let me fix it.”

A large crocodile-warrior appeared in front of him, banging a short-sword on a buckler and snapping loudly with its jaws.

“Boss,” crackled a voice into Raffick’s ear, “invoker. What do we do?”

“Keep an eye on the girl, Quinn,” Raffick snapped, “I can handle this. This kid ain’t nothing special.”

Raffick turned his attention back towards the ginger-haired boy.

“Kid, get down from that table before you hurt yourself. Summoning a hostile command in a public space is a borderline felony. Where is your summoning patch?”

He drew his revolver and moved towards the ginger-haired kid slowly. The kid is shaking, Raffick noticed, he’s nervous, what is he up to?

Stubbs was indeed nervous, but at a nod from Philip, turned on the bravado.

“Long live the OZM!” he shouted, a fist held high over his head, and dove off the table into the crowd. At the same time, the crocodile-warrior grew immensely. It sprouted another head, the shortsword turned into a claymore and the buckler into a large aspis. What had been human-sized a moment earlier was now the size of a two-story house.

“It’s a colossus! That kid is a master!” crackled another panicked officer into Raffick’s ear.

“No, you fools!” Raffick cried with sudden realization, “it’s the work of The Rogue Invoker. This is all just a set-up! Get the girl! Find the boy!”

Raffick began the charge on his railgun and emptied his sidearm fruitlessly as the colossus knocked his officers around like bowling pins. By the time it was charged a few seconds later, the colossus had abruptly disappeared, as well as everyone he had been looking for. Furious, he turned his railgun on a fruit stand, demolishing it.

#

“Did you see that?” Stubbs said excitedly, “They thought I was a master invoker!” He did a little jig on top of the table.

“No, you fools” he mimicked, “get the girl!”

Tim and Anthony couldn’t help but laugh.

Jory had led them out of the food court, twisted and turned down some alleys and up and down some stairs to their rooftop apartment. Dilapidated as it was, it was an excellent hiding spot with a homey, cluttered feel to it. Far from the reach of the Borges and their lackeys, they were finally able to take a breath. Hayley, bird-like as ever, swooped in on Stubbs and scooped him up in her arms.

“You darling,” she cooed, “you saved my life!”

She pecked him quickly on the cheek.

Stubbs blushed. “Anything for Hayley!”

“I helped too!” Tim nodded eagerly, offering his cheek.

“You sweethearts!” Hayley cried.

Philip watched Jory, who was sitting far away from the rest of the jovial group and dejectedly turning the log in the fireplace with the poker. He moved next to him. “What’s on your mind?”

Jory stared into the fire. “Back in the day, me and the boys coulda given those pigs a run for their money. Run ’em over with commands then disappeared before they could catch us. Now we have nothing. We’re nobodies.”

Philip rolled his eyes. “So I’ve heard. Nothing without your old powers, eh? I was born without powers; I’ve never had the abilities invokers had. How do you think I feel when I see invokers and their powers?”

Jory, taken aback by Philip’s outburst, “Geez man, no offense. I was just sayin’.”

Philip took a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m a little shook up from a…debate I had earlier. Look, you are not the only invokers to lose your powers. You aren’t the first, nor the last. It’s something that happens to every invoker, it’s part of the invoker life cycle. You guys aren’t some special snowflakes that get free passes through life because you coulda won a talent show when you were ten.”

“Well gee, doc,” came the sarcastic answer, “what do you suggest we do then?”

Philip thought back to his younger days. He was nine, helping out around the Mannis household. As he inexpertly swept the floor with a broom larger than him, he stared in awe as Anthony, a toddler, created cronies and sent them scuttling across the floor, brushing dust out the front door.

“I’m helping,” baby Anthony burbled.

“Auntie,” Philip pouted, “that’s not fair that Anthony can do that and I can’t.”

Anthony’s mother, Munroe in her arms, laughed, clear as bells.

“Why is that, Philip?”

“I want to be able to invoke. Then I could invoke something to sweep the floor for me.”

“You are a smart boy,” Mrs. Mannis said, “you are too smart to be an invoker. One day, when you are older, you will see that invoking is a handicap more than it is a gift.”

“It sure doesn’t seem like it,” he said impudently.

“Oh, Philip,” Mrs. Mannis leaned down and kissed him on the head, “invokers may have imagination, but you will have something much more valuable: appreciation. Everything is instant gratification for an invoker. They undervalue work, they don’t understand what it is like to learn a skill.”

She then smiled at him strangely, almost sadly. “Philip,” she had said, “promise to take good care of my boys, won’t you? Teach them that their power merits responsibility. They are going to need you…they are going to need someone who knows. Do you promise?”

He remembered nodding. Munroe, waving chubby fingers, summoned a rocking horse.

“Thank you, Philip,” she smiled. “now come here and I’ll tell you all a story. This one is about a sailor of old who had gone on wondrous voyages…”

“Earth to Specs. Earth to Specs. I said, ‘what do you suggest we do then?’”

Philip snapped back to the present to an impatient Jory.

“Hold on a second,” Philip told him, as he rummaged through his backpack. He got out a hefty-sized book and handed it to Jory.

“An Introduction to Mechanical Engineering? What are you trying to pull?” Jory scoffed.

Philip sat down next to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “I learned a long time ago that just because one is not an invoker, it does not make them any less of a person. Everyone has these,” Philip tapped his brain, “and they still work. When you were an invoker you could imagine anything you put your mind to. Well you can still do that, it just takes a little elbow grease.”

Jory started flipping through the tome. Philip stood up, Mrs. Mannis’s voice echoing in his head as he spoke.

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work.”

#

At the other side of the small apartment, Anthony was summoning tiny monsters on the windowsill. He watched languidly as a little tiger-striped landshark tromped across the vast wooden plain of the sill. He heard Philip walk up behind him, but didn’t turn around.

“Ah, you can make them bigger than that,” said Philip.

The landshark disappeared with a small poof and was replaced with a slightly larger replica. It continued to soldier forward towards the great unknown.

“Funny.”

“What do you want?” Anthony scowled.

“To apologize.” Philip pulled up a small stool and sat down next to Anthony. “I forget that we’ve been through a lot. No doubt it’s very stressful for you.”

Anthony snorted.

“Look, I’m sorry. Okay? I shouldn’t have yelled at you back there. I don’t know how it is to invoke, I don’t understand it—”

“Damn right you don’t understand it,” Anthony interrupted. “It’s really hard. Some days I get happy and I want to create something to reflect that. Some days I’m sad, and I want to create something to reflect that as well. Other days I’m angry and I just want to create something that will smash everything, crush everything, tear Cirk Malpy down…”

The landshark reached the end of the windowsill. Confused, it disappeared in an agonized puff.

“Lately I’ve just been angry.”

They were both silent for a few moments, staring out the window at the faraway line where the rolling green of the hills hit the blue sky. A bird called in the distance. They could hear Hayley and Tim and Jory and Stubbs laugh about something.

“But you know what I always remember, Phil?” Anthony turned to face him now, “Power merits responsibility. You taught me that. I think about that every day. And it makes me less angry.”

Philip smiled and pushed up his glasses so he could pick a piece of sleep out of his eye. “You know who taught me that?” he said.

“Who?”

“Your Ma.”

They were both silent again. Anthony tugged at his scarf, which had belonged to Munroe, which had belonged to his father.

“You remember your promise?”

“That we would replace your mother and brother and have your justice?’

“Yea.”

“Of course I remember.”

Anthony whistled and ran a hand through his hair.

“Can I tell you something? Sometimes I forget that we are doing this for them. It’s hard for me to keep a train of thought, my mind is always bouncing around all over the place. Adventures and monsters and running and hiding. But then I think, yea, yea, I’m gonna replace them. I’m gonna save them. Then we’ll all go home.”

He sighed.

“I miss them so much.”

Philip had been sweeping the stoop of the Mannis’s porch when a battlewagon pulled up to the front of their home. He had watched as two men wearing the double-breasted dress blues of officers of the Ocean Zone Militia stepped out simultaneously and began to walk up the path. Mrs. Mannis had rushed out the front door, past Philip, and intercepted them. One of the officers who had been wearing a hat took it off and placed it under his arm. The three talked in low voices. Mrs. Mannis had said something and the two officers sheepishly retreated and went back to their battlewagon. She walked brusquely past Philip again,moving proudly, but he noticed her eyes were red and tear-filled. The front door had slammed shut with a bang.

Philip sighed and put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “We will replace them. I miss them too.”

#

The sun had not yet come up when the three quietly left Jory’s apartment. Philip wanted to leave under the cover of night, and Hayley agreed. Less patrols at night, she said. Anthony had wanted to sleep in, but was outvoted two to one. Five to one, if you included the votes of Jory, Tim, and Stubbs; but they would have voted for anything Hayley had wanted regardless.

A light sleep was had, meals for the road were packed, and the farewells were said in whispers in the street. Stubbs pulled Anthony aside while the others were making promises to stay in contact.

“Hey Ant. I know we scared you earlier when we said the powers go away, and you become nothing.”

Anthony nodded.

“When I was a kid, I wasn’t a big dude, believe it or not. I was bullied…a lot.” Stubbs said quietly, “Monsters were my shield. Often literally. But also…they made me feel brave. They were brave for me, and it made me brave. Now they’re gone…and I’m still brave.”

He paused.

“And you will be too.”

Anthony nodded, not sure what to say. Stubbs patted him on the shoulder, and they rejoined the group.

“Good-bye,” said Jory in a hushed tone, staring directly at Hayley.

“Good-bye,” she said.

And they parted. The three walked in silence; Hayley in front as she would be able to spot guards the best. For a time all that was heard were their padded footsteps on the cobblestone.

“You sure like Jory, huh, Haystack?” Anthony blurted. Hayley could hear him grinning.

“What are you talking about? Keep your voice down!” she whispered, but with a playful degree of false urgency.

“You’re blushing aren’t ya?” said Anthony cheekily. Then he remembered to keep his voice down, “You’re blushing, aren’t ya?”

“I am not!” Hayley protested, but she was.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“You can’t change the subject!”

Hayley ripped a notice off the wall they were shadowing and shoved it into Anthony’s face.

“Check it out, fools,” she taunted them, “my own wanted poster.”

“Nice,” Anthony nodded approvingly. Philip frowned, causing her smile to disappear.

“Let’s see here…” she stared at the poster confusedly for a moment before Anthony ripped it out of her hands and read it aloud, skipping over long sections of text.

“Girl With a Straw Jacket blahblahblah..known affiliate of The Rogue Invoker. Blahblahblah…five hundred spikes! Not bad, Haystack.”

“That’s it?!”

“Oh come on, that’s pretty good.” Anthony waved dismissively at her, “Philip is only only one hundred.”

She jabbed a bony finger at Anthony. “Dude, I broke you both out of jail and I’ve assaulted more than two dozen pissos. I should be going for even more than you, Magic Boy!”

“Magic Boy? That’s the best you could come up with? You gangly-lookin’ lovebird!”

Hayley drew herself up, ruffling up her jacket. “I will break your arms, you jaggo little kitten!” she grinned, and dropped into a mock fighting stance.

“Will you now?” Anthony grinned back, full volume, and began to poorly mimic her stance.

Philip huffed. “This is pointless and a waste of time. We should be heading towards the city’s service gate.”

“Relax, would you?” said Hayley gleefully, mussing up Philip hair, “and let’s get out of the road. There’s a patrol coming around the corner in a few seconds. You thought I wasn’t paying attention, huh?”

She and Anthony ducked into a nearby alley, madly trying to stifle their giggles. A grumpy Philip followed them in, and the pair of PSOs passed by without a clue.