CW: Brief mention of blood and body fluids. Several women are going into labor.

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Giuseppe drew his arm across his forehead and then shook off the drops of sweat that clung to his sleeve. The amount of sweat pooled within the crevices of Giuseppe’s suit alone could fill a whole water bottle, and he yearned for the relief of his multi-jet shower back in his apartment. He was supposed to have the day off since it was his birthday, for crying out loud, but of course they called him in to take care of a “Kaiju-level” threat.

He only hoped the giant lizard lying on the ground in front of him was the last of it.

“Okay, Carlito!” Giuseppe cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted over the lizard’s body. “I’m gonna take off now! He’s clearly out-of-commission, so get the clean up crew to tie him up. Bye!”

“Rage, are you fucking serious right now?” Carlito screamed, his voice cracking from the strain. “What if he wakes up?!”

“Then you can use your storms to subdue him, can you not?” Giuseppe rolled his eyes behind his mask and turned to face the distant buildings. He had to gauge the right level of anger-power needed to propel him high enough, and far enough, to touch down on top of the closest one. He just had to focus his energy for the initial leap, and then it would be smooth-sailing hops across the other buildings until he reached his apartment building in the heart of the city.

“Dude!” Carlito shouted, and he sounded like he was rising up onto one of his “Car-nadoes.” Giuseppe would back-hand him if he tried to stop him. “If I could’ve handled him on my own, they wouldn’t have called you to begin with. Just wait until he’s restrained, at least!”

“No,” Giuseppe snarled and squatted, preparing for his launch. “It’s my birthday and I’m not spending another second of it covered in monster blood. Now you deal with it!”

And then he was off into the sky high above Carlito’s tornado. As it turned out, Carlito’s persistence was all the “rage fuel” Giuseppe needed to be able to make the jump. He only had to reach about twenty percent of his power, anyway.

“Catch ya next time, Carlitooooo!” Giuseppe called over the rushing winds and laughed. He reached the closest building in a matter of ten seconds and bent his knees before the impact, fist brought forward for a true “superhero landing,” as the average lay person would put it.

“Sucker!” Giuseppe grinned as he bolted across the rooftop. People often thought he and Carlito were brothers since they shared similar features and were often paired together but in truth, Giuseppe was nothing like the stormcaller and he often dreaded having to team up with him. The hero was a loose cannon who still lacked discipline, and Giuseppe had no patience for idiocy.

But he also dreaded teaming up in general. He worked best by himself.

Menthol’s number one hopped the city’s rooftops like he was jumping hurdles at a high school track meet, and there were only a few buildings left before his destination when his momentum was broken by a series of pained cries.

“Oh, for the love of…” Giuseppe sighed and skidded to a halt. “This better not be another giant.”

The hair tie he always wore had loosened during his flight, so he split his ponytail and pulled it tight as he crossed over to the office building’s ledge. The building’s height was average for the city—about two hundred feet—so Giuseppe didn’t have too much trouble seeing Menthol’s ground floor far below. But while there were no shady characters in sight to suspect, quite a few women were doubled over on the walkways, and a couple cars were parked haphazardly.

The scattered victims shared one thing in common: they were all females curled up into balls. At the moment, Giuseppe wondered why the streets seemed to be so empty, and also why the few pedestrians were all women.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Giuseppe asked the wind. He stepped back to get a good running leap over the edge, where he performed several aerial somersaults during his descent.

Once he’d landed, Giuseppe was able to see that the three women closest to where he now stood were clutching at enlarged stomachs. They were sweating buckets and moaning intermittently, giving Giuseppe the distinct feeling that perhaps they hadn’t been attacked, but rather were all mysteriously synced up to the same due date.

They’re all pregnant? Giuseppe furrowed his brows and looked out ahead. 

The crooked car he’d seen? The door was wide open, and some lady was panting in the driver’s seat, holding her large stomach.

“Help me!” A woman screamed, stealing Giuseppe’s immediate attention. 

This woman was to his far right and in the middle of the street, literally crawling over to where Giuseppe stood on the sidewalk. Another woman paced back-and-forth some ten-odd feet behind her, one hand on her large stomach and the other holding her head.

“What the fuck is going on here…” Giuseppe gawked as the sheer amount of pregnant women in distress hit his registar.

He suddenly wished he’d stayed to help Carlito.

“Is that…you, Re…Re-Rage…?” the woman closest to him gasped and struggled to sit upright. “Please…take me to a hospital!”

There was no way in hell he could possibly carry the dozen-or-so women strewn about to the hospital by himself! Giuseppe whipped out his bulky iPhone 20 Pro Max—he had to keep it in the toughest case available as a close-combat hero—and tapped the emergency call button at the same time as he tapped the red “immediate assistance” button on the side of his Hero Corp. watch.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The operator sounded abnormally breathy.

“Yes, hello, this is Hero Rage near the outskirts of Downtown Menthol, Ohio,” Giuseppe deadpanned, his attention now focused on the woman he’d promptly ignored. Evidently, she’d decided to take to crawling like the lady on the street. “There’s a strange situation I’m ill-equipped to handle on my own and require assistance ASAP. I mean, there are at least a dozen women about to give bir—”

“Unfortunately, all of the EMTs in your vicinity are occupied in the Downtown area,” the operator cut him off to say. “There aren’t any left we can dispatch to help.”

“What?” Giuseppe grit his teeth. In the twenty-five years he’d been living, never once had he been denied emergency help. Just who was this operator? “If there are no EMTs, at least send some nurses out here for a tria—”

“We cannot help you, Mr. Rage, and the hospitals are quickly filling, it appears,” the operator cut him off again, and Giuseppe nearly popped a blood vessel. “I suggest you take them to Hero Corp.’s clinic. Good luck.”

And then she hung up on him.

“Son of a bitch!” he cursed and actually threw his phone at the ground. Her attitude didn’t bode well with him, and he’d wished he’d gotten her name. Giuseppe was no Karen, but that nine-one-one operator was downright diabolical and deserved to be reprimanded.

“Help, Rage, help?” He’d let the woman get too close, and now she was grabbing his ankle, then his calf, trying to pull herself up. There was also a trail of blood and some other clear fluid left in her wake, and Giuseppe’s own stomach twisted at the sight and smell.

This was not the type of situation he was trained to deal with, and he certainly knew nothing about how to assist with a natural baby delivery.

Nope! Nope, nope, nope, nope, nooooope! He was not dealing with this. Not there, not now, and especially not on his birthday, when he was supposed to go get dinner with Dark Horse.

Giuseppe bent down, grabbed his phone first, and then hoisted the girl up. At first, he held her bridal-style, but then thought better of it and gently lifted her up over his shoulder so he could go collect the other sane woman. He pocketed his phone after.

The woman in the middle of the road laid flat on her back now, yelling unintelligible words at the cloudless sky above. The sun had to be in her eyes, and yet she glared on as if it was no trouble for her.

“Hey,” Giuseppe said, leaning over the woman once he’d reached her. She stopped her moaning long enough to turn her head toward him. She coughed.

“Oh,” she said, popping her lips. “OH!”

“Ooookay, I’m taking you to the hospital,” Giuseppe sighed. 

He didn’t wait for her to dispute.

With the two semi-alert women hanging off each of his shoulders, groaning with each sway, Giuseppe turned to face the closest building. He was still fuming from the nine-one-one call, so he would have plenty of power to make the distant jump.

“Rrrraaagggeeeee!” The ground shook beneath Giuseppe as a low, feminine cry rang out. 

“Jeeeeesus,” Giuseppe said, the air around him charged with the after-shock of his own ability. He turned to face the screaming banshee, only to see that she was the same woman who had been pacing earlier, now sprinting toward him at breakneck speed. Perhaps she had a running enhancement ability?

“Miss,” Giuseppe shouted and steadied himself, his rising weight causing mini craters to form around his boots. “I will come back for you, but I need to drop these two off first.”

“TAKE ME NOOOOOW!” Her eyes flashed and her voice cracked as she screamed.

“For fuck’s sake!” Giuseppe whisper-shouted when the woman propelled herself up into the air and fell down on him.

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While you wait for the next episode, how about giving these stories a try? Links below (author description)!

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