[hider=whatever the fuck Dexter and Henry put on the radio][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Waqn0jBG58[/youtube][/hider]

The golem was struggling. Not only was it now behaving as though it were [i]severely[/i] hampered by the sound of a dozen bass drops at max volume, but both of its arms were being held tight by enormous muscly men. Not much more damage had come to it since being hit in the face with a truck, but the music was getting louder and it seemed agitated as its head twitched around wildly. Seeing that the creature was in a bad way, Titus squatted, lowering his center of mass, and pulled even harder on the golem's arm. Henry did the same, acting on instinct. As they did, the golem turned and bore down on them. They both found their hands sinking into the golem's skin as it suddenly turned very dark and wet. The golem's body shrank as its arms grew, globing over their arms up to the shoulder, devouring them. Titus pulled as hard as he could (which was about hard enough to lift a semi-truck) but the wet concrete just stretched and morphed around him like killer putty, sticking to his skin. As the concrete reached his chest, it seemed like our dear friend Titus was about to be absorbed. 

The sound of a dozen trashy dubstep remixes boomed over the rolling of wheels to a halt and the blaring of sirens. From behind Henry and Titus, a megaphone sounded: 

"THIS IS THE ASA, CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY," The golem did not cease. One of the policemen, clad in riot gear, ran around the black ASA squad car carrying a large rifle. 

"L.I. L.I.," he called out, the code for a Lead Iodide round. He fired a round and hit the golem in the shoulder, splattering yellow paint across the creature. As the round connected, the golem looked up, having just realized that the ASA had arrived. In an instant, the wet concrete prisons Titus and Henry had been cocooned in evaporated, sinking back into the golem. The golem sailed backwards like a stalk of corn in the wind. The whole creature shuddered as the stalk of the golem widened and the creature's chest collapsed in a sickening motion, like an animal laying an egg. Then, in an instant, the whole golem turned solid and dry as a sidewalk block. There was a crunching noise, and the golem careened onto its side, landing in the street and shattering. Its head rolled through the carnage of cars and landed just at the base of the pile of wreckage Evelyn had climbed, looking up at her with a blank, unblemished face. 

The street was an absolute mess. Four storefronts lay in disarray and dozens of cars had been smashed to pieces in the rubble. A light pole stuck through the front doors of Mooncash and several small fires burned across the street. The dubstep boomed over it all still, making the empty scene nowhere near silent or tranquil. At various intersections along the street, emergency vehicles rushed in, from ambulances to fire trucks to police cars. ASA agents flooded the street nearest where the golem fell, armed with rifles and searching for signs of trouble or a second attack. All of their rifles were equipped with yellow magazines loaded with lead iodide rounds. As they searched, a voice came over the megaphone. 

"THIS IS THE ASA. WE ARE SEARCHING THE AREA FOR SIGNS OF HOSTILITY AND WILL LET YOU KNOW WHEN THE COAST IS CLEAR. IF YOU ARE IN HIDING, REMAIN THERE UNTIL WE HAVE CLEARED THE AREA. IF YOU ARE EXPOSED OR IN NEED OF MEDICAL ATTENTION, COME TO OUR PERIMETER AND WE WILL PROVIDE ASSISTANCE. AND SOMEBODY PLEASE TURN OFF THAT RACKET I'M GETTING A HEADACHE." The megaphone sounded from a man standing atop a car, clad in all black. All that emerged from his armor was a perfectly-formed cleft chin, but this was enough to identify him as Agent Bernard Hopkins. 

Helen walked over to the shattered window of Mooncash, seeing the golem vanish and the police arrive. As she stood there, watching and looking for something to do, a hand touched her ankle. She looked down to see a teenaged boy, maybe fourteen, clutching an ankle that was clearly broken. Several ceiling tiles had crashed down and covered him in a shallow, but obscuring, layer of debris. Tears filled his eyes and his face was covered in dust. 

"Help..." he stammered. Helen jumped like she'd been bit by a snake. She quickly reached down and began to clear the boy off, removing the debris and brushing some of the dust off him. She grabbed him by the arm and together, the two of them staggered to their feet, the boy keeping pressure off his injured leg. 

"Uh, let's get you...over there, I guess," Helen said, moving towards the door awkwardly. Two ambulances reversed up next to where the ASA had parked their cars and several more now sat along intersections on blocks further down the street. 

[hr] 

The ground beneath Main Street shifts and groaned, but nobody could see or hear it. Pipes shifted, dirt crumbled. A shape moved slowly through the dark. It was round and dark and slithered down along the tendril leading from what had once been the concrete golem to the concrete casing of the city's main sewer pipes. The ball contacted the pipes and the concrete all around it turned wet. The ball was about three feet in diameter- if you were a small person, maybe you could fit inside. The ball fused with the pipe, sunk as deep into it as it could go, and then zoomed off along the pipe, traveling west quite quickly. 

Of course, no one above could see any of this happen, but from the dark of a crawlspace just above the main sewer pipe, Willow Dendry's pale eyes were illuminated by the glow of a flashlight. She saw it all.