It had been 5 years since his mom died in prison.
Her and his dad had been through a rough patch and were on the verge of being homeless, but she kept him going by telling him one thing over and over: "Only the strong survive, while the weak wither and die."
After a year of hardship, she had enough and joined a gang. She worked hard. Not by mugging and territorial disputes, but robbing banks as well. Thanks to her efforts, for a while, she got them money. All the while, his dad criticized and belittled her efforts. That's when he realized his mom was strong, but his dad was weak.
After a few months, his mom got into a firefight, and once the cops showed up, she ended up behind bars. She spent one month there before she got stabbed to death for stealing a tampon.
But he still thought she was strong.
His dad didn't take all this well and went into depression. He attempted suicide soon after his depression set in.
Pathetic.
Eventually, he realized he needed help and got to know a friend in the police. He got closer to this friend, and after his mom died, he began to move on with this friend. A year later, he got a new stepmother.
A damn cop.
From then on, he hated his father. His mom was willing to take what she wanted, when she wanted. She didn't try her best, but did her best, and he loved her for that.
She was strong.
All his dad ever did was roll over at the sight of any problem, and when he actually tried to die, he couldn't even manage that. When he was at his lowest, he'd just leech on others for help. He leeched on his mom, and she ended up joining a gang to support them.
She died how she lived, taking what she thought was hers, even if it was as ridiculous as stealing a tampon.
While his dad was still living how he always did. Leeching off others for his own pathetic gain.
He was weak.
And his son hated him for it.
A year later, he followed in his mother's footsteps and joined the same gang she was in. He wasn't the strongest or fastest, but he was resilient, and it earned him a good standing, second only to the boss's right-hand man.
But they weren't the strongest gang in the city. They had many rivals, the most prevalent of which being the Dragon Clan from the Eastern Commonwealth. Many gang wars broke out between the two gangs, almost all ending in a brutal and bloody stalemate.
That is, until the stranger appeared.
He had some kind of drug. One that turned people into Mumans temporarily. Snek was the first to test it out, and it was astounding. He gained abilities he had only dreamed of. He never met Mumans, but respected them greatly for having this kind of power.
And the more he used it, the more he resented humanity. His mom said the strong survive and the weak wither and die, but how did that turn out? She was strong but ended up dead, while his dad was weak but still alive, leeching off others.
The human race, in all its weakness, ruled the world while the Mumans, with all their power, cowered in fear and hid from them like pests.
The more he thought about it, the more he resented the world he lived in.
So when the stranger promised to change this world for the better, he jumped at the chance. Especially after sharing that he and his gang would get to inherit it in the end.
He was given a mission to steal an important piece of technology the stranger needed to complete his plan. With Luther by his side, he went on the mission.
And failed.
Stopped by a group of supers, no less. He thought they were all out of the city due to an urgent mission, so this was a setback he wasn't expecting. He did his best, even injecting more of the drug and turning into a giant monster just so he could buy Luther some time to escape.
He worked, and Luther had enough sense to leave at the last moment, and although he was captured, Luther got the tech to the stranger. Well, at least he thought. Luckily, his thoughts were confirmed when the stranger appeared in his prison cell and broke him out.
Before this, however, his stepmother came to his cell to try to talk some sense into him. He didn't give a damn, though. He was already too far gone.
And once he broke out, there was no going back.
In his absence, his gang took the stranger's newest drug, the Mutoxin, and gained even more power at the expense of their sanity. They soon became mindless beasts obsessed with murder and carnage.
But the stranger took interest in him above the rest, even his boss, and gave him something special. A small capsule filled with a blood-like fluid. The stranger said it was the remains of one of his experiments that tried to escape.
He called it the Meat.
After injecting it into himself, not only did he gain obscene new power, but his hatred of humanity grew. His hatred of the weak grew.
And his fears died out.
That is, until he met this woman.
This woman who made his master's fearless army of monsters run away in fear, resulting in him having to eat his entire gang.
For the first time in a long time, Snek was terrified. And that terror made him furious.
He lashed out at the woman with intense ferocity, turning his arm into a giant battle axe made of rock-hard flesh and bone, thanks to his Mutoxin enhancements.
As he got closer, he realized she was trying to hold herself back, trying to retract the futuristic guns she wielded back into her skin so she wouldn't hurt him. She thought she was weak.
He loathed her immediately.
Just as he got within an inch of his target to deliver a finishing blow, his instincts went into overdrive, urging him to turn around.
He obeyed promptly and was surprised at the sight.
Behind him was a grey-skinned woman with a fish tail, pouncing at him at full speed with something small and green in her grasp.
That's when he realized she was one of the supers who stopped his rampage earlier. Who stopped him from killing his stepmother as the monster he was supposed to be. He turned his bone battle axe at her and redirected the killing blow in her direction.
Just as she got in range of his attack, she threw something green at him. The small green particle began to grow in size, and he realized it wasn't a particle but rather, a person.
A person whose fist grew faster than anything else. In less than a second, a mighty blow greeted his chest with enough power to send him flying across the white corridor into one of the beast's cells.
Said blow caused him to scream and writhe in pain. Thanks to his Meat abilities, which allowed him to manipulate his body any way he wanted, right down to his bones and tissues, he healed from the attack fairly quickly. But his pride was still broken. He approached the three from the cell but stopped in his tracks to watch what they were doing.
Whether it was his instincts that told him to do this or his better judgment, he didn't know, but he did it anyway.
The cyborg woman ran to the man in green and hugged him tightly; her giant dual pistols disappeared immediately after doing this.
"I'm sorry, Zack, I... I lost control of my urges and... and they activated. I nearly killed you all."
"Don't worry, Paulina, everything is okay. Stacya and I are here now. We'll stop this guy. You won't have to lose control again," the man called Zack said as he hugged her back, stroking her hair gently which seemed to calm her down.
"But Zack, I do not understand. Paulina's cybernetic abilities are an asset if we want to get out of here and stop Mr. E from whatever he's planning. Why hold them back?" the grey-skinned woman, Stacya, said with her head tilted in confusion.
"Look, Stacya, those abilities are powerful, but they're dangerous. Don't you remember that day, long ago, during training?"
"Of course I remember. She lost control of herself and nearly killed me. I remember those days, where she nearly killed you too. But she was still our friend and a member of the Danger Squad. Holding her abilities back instead of trying to help her control her urges will only damage her, my friend Zack."
"Stacya!"
"No, Zack. She's right. After Ace... Ace killed my team... no... my friends, I lost control and killed him, ripping him in half like a mere piece of paper and relishing every second of it. I wasn't afraid because I killed him, but because of how much I loved an excuse to kill someone."
"No, baby. That's not true. Ace turned on you and it was your only choice. You know how much I hate killing, so me defending you means something. Doesn't it?"
"Please, Zack, don't defend what I did. That's not like you. Listen. I realized then and there, if Ace hadn't turned on us, I would've. That's why I deactivated my implants. I hoped I wouldn't need to use them again and live a normal life. A life free of the need for constant bloodshed. But now I realized that's the coward's way out."
"Paulina? What are you saying?"
"I... I think I'm gonna use my abilities again. To stop Mr. E, because his plans will spell the end of the world as we all know it, and we'll need all the help we can get to end them. Plus, maybe, just maybe, I can learn to control them. If my time with the Danger Squad couldn't get me to do that, maybe my time with you will."
Zack hugged her even more tightly as she burst into tears. Stacya came closer and hugged them both.
All Snek did was watch in silence.
This girl, Paulina, was strong but tried to hide her strength. That's why he hated her. He needed to kill them all, but he wasn't a fool. If he engaged them in combat, he'd be able to kill at least one of them, but he would die in the process. He realized he had no other choice. If he was to save Mr. E's plans and the world of the strong he wanted to make, he needed to free it.
He ran out of the cell and with incredible speed, he left the corridor and found a secret room below the Animal Farm. The room where it was being held. He took a while to think about what he was doing but realized it was the right thing to do.
To preserve the world of the strong he wanted, it had to be free. A being not only filled with dangerous amounts of Mutoxin, a fitting punishment for it trying to escape, but also possessed Shadow abilities as well.
He heard it was Mr. E's assistant who was turned into a guinea pig but escaped soon after and joined the Lost Light.
The Light gave him a mission to release one of their Shadow deities, but failed. As punishment, they gave him back to Mr. E who mutated him beyond recognition. Now a mindless beast, he was Snek's last resort.
This beast was known as Maximum.
Snek turned his battle axe into an even bigger mallet and burst through the prison door that kept the monster at bay.
It gave a low growl with drops of saliva falling so loudly it drove Snek's flight response into overdrive.
"H...hey, listen, we have intruders. Get out there and deal with them," Snek said, trying to sound as intimidating as possible, but to no avail. The beast merely looked at him with hunger in its glowing red eyes.
All it did was flinch, and that was enough to send Snek running away faster than he arrived. He ran and ran, hoping to escape the death awaiting him.
He turned toward the cell only to gasp in horror at what he saw.
In the brief second he turned away to run, the creature had already left. Where did it go, you ask? Well, it was right in front of him.
Snek crashed into the creature with a loud thud. He felt as if he had hit a brick wall. He looked up to see a horrifying amalgamation of flesh and darkness. A creature of pure, uncontrollable evil staring back at him with a sinister grin on its deformed face.
It raised its grotesque, darkened arm to strike at him, forcing Snek to try and run away, but he couldn't. Stuck in place due to the immeasurable fear that consumed him, he could only watch as the gigantic arm inched closer to him. A single thought flooded his mind like some kind of sick joke.
Is this how the weak feel?
That was the last thing Snek thought as he was consumed by the beast.
He was now a victim of the Maximum.
And he won't be the last.
To be continued.