I bellowed from out of the rubble where my body had been encased. “Now that was fucking rude!” On top of the black char encrusting me and the loss of my weakest point, the face, there was a spear driven straight through my chest. Pushing my way out, though, I could still perceive a blurry image of the world. The backup eyes on my torso had kicked in. Much smaller and denser than the two which adorned my head, but clear enough to make out who was who.

I was sad to think I would no longer have my beautiful mug, but I supposed that the negotiations were over now anyway, and looking human didn’t serve much of a purpose. Regardless, it was the wrong way to think about life that everything had to be obviously and mechanically efficient. Some things were just beautiful, and nobody knew why.

And so, I was like a wounded bird, leaping from the rubble and trying to dust myself off. Attempting to recapture my dignity.

Hickory was up ahead standing in the road where I had previously been with him. He was nicely blackened from the fire as well, but his Power had allowed him to remain standing. Daniel, however, was nowhere to be found, obviously cast aside like me, except in the opposite direction. Somewhere in the woods.

“Is that the best you boys got?” Hickory asked from across the distance, spreading his arms in a dare.

The three heroes were still standing where I’d seen them before, in front of a burning building just barely in throwing distance. Now that they’d turned, I could make out that one of them was indeed holding a spear, while they all were in a row, hand in hand.

That one in the middle has got to be administering some kind of support Power by touch. That’s the only reason they’d be holding hands, I quickly reasoned. That left the spearman as an obviously offensive Hero, whether or not he accounted for the explosion. And finally, there was just one more mystery character in play.

“Alrighty,” I groaned to myself, yanking out the spear with a mind-numbing surge of pain. The bleeding naturally stopped, as were the wonders of Creep’s engineering, but he’d left me with the pain. It was important to him, I knew. Almost spiritual. "Let's not linger here too long..."

Another spear came flying, this time set for Hickory, and he batted it out of the air before it could land. An explosion followed, but it only managed to get my ears ringing. It did not damage our old, sturdy Southerner. No more than last time, anyway.

After getting back to him in the middle of the street, I looked around for Daniel while informing Hickory of my game plan. “They’ve got an exploding Spearman, a support Hero, and probably one more close to medium range Power. You run straight while I flank, I guess.” I’d never really had to come up with a strategy before, but he seemed to be happy I was taking the initiative. Hopefully, I wouldn’t catch another spear to the gut for my troubles.

We were just lucky the explosion had been on the outside and not the inside, or I’d be long gone by now. I'd be a little bit of everywhere, actually.

Once my spider legs had extended once again, I took off over the rubble to our left while Hickory barreled straight forward. I liked to imagine Daniel picked up on our little plan and was heading up from the rightward forest, to boot.

I lost my line of sight when I had to duck down to avoid getting skewered. The spike zoomed past my head and embedded in the other side of the alley, letting off a healthy bang just before sending a wave of fire to wash over me. Nothing like a little searing heat to wake you up.

With the gap beginning to disappear, I took a turn back towards the main street and prepared myself for whatever I would see.

The last thing I expected, though, was Hickory laid out on the road in a pool of his own blood.

“Shit!” I swore as another lance came flying at me with robotic accuracy.

It clipped my side, but it did no serious damage. I was more concerned with losing my ally at the moment. I didn’t want to be left alone for the rest of this fight while the night sky above glowed with hellfire and brimstone. After all, the worst place to be alone was the apocalypse.

I needed to think up another plan. If I just poked my head out, I could get a good look faster than they could kill me.

Doing that, I noticed a few things before I had to dodge again.

First, Hickory was alive. He had sat up and was talking angrily with the Heroes, who seemed strangely unable to hurt him. Second, I saw Daniel hiding in the tree line, ready to shoot a blast of pure green energy from his hands.

Seeing Hickory covered in blood on the ground while three men loomed over him laughing had to be one of the more unsettling sights of my life. If not for what it currently was, but for what it promised was about to happen.

I didn’t know how, but those men were about to die. Just the set of Hickory's shoulders promised doom. I knew him too well to think otherwise.

The moment Daniel stepped out of cover to make his attack, everything went crazy, then.

All at once, I saw the green light wash over the three of them and I heard Daniel cry out in pain. His own body glowed with electricity and he hit his knees, seemingly overcome by his Power turned against him. Likewise, as the chaos settled the three Heroes were unscathed, yet Hickory was not.

I was sure at that point what was going on. Their support Hero was somehow redirecting any damage done to them back at the origin of the attack. That was why Hickory was safe as soon as he sat still. He’d figured it out. But he hadn’t been expecting to catch crossfire, and despite the fact that his face was now missing just like mine, I could tell he was pissed.

Now was as good a time as any to charge, I decided.

While they were distracted with Daniel, I jumped over the roof and landed on my eight legs in the street, skittering forward with one idea in mind. To charge straight through their mass and break them up, severing the Support Type from the rest.

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There was just one problem with my plan. The spearman seemed to have instantaneous reflexes. He only had to sweep his arm back in preparation to throw and another long piece of metal manifested from out of nowhere in his grip. Except, Hickory, seeing as he had nothing better to with his strength, stepped in front of the man. He simply grabbed their arm and held it in place, making the path clear for me to approach.

“Die!” I screamed, suddenly feeling all my pent up anger pour out.

My body crashed into Hickory’s along with the rest of them and I lost track of everything, tumbling forward into the burning rubble of the nearby building. As I began to sort myself out, then, Daniel came running from cover, looking a little worse for wear.

He stared straight past me to the fires and asked, “Where the hell are they?”

“Huh?” I quickly turned back and joined him in searching for their corpses. Somehow they'd gotten lost in the fight.

Hickory had barely been made to stumble by my impact, and the blow hadn’t nearly caused him to lose track of his enemies. Yet, he didn’t know where they’d gone either. “I saw them fall forward and then the fires stirred and… they were gone.”

Just then, it all clicked.

“They’re so far from the front line,” I said, thinking aloud. “How did they get here?”

“Fuck!” Hickory was quick on the draw and he figured out the implication.

Seraph was smart. They were pairing their Heroes incredibly well. In this case a healer, a heavy hitter, and someone for mobility. That was right, they’d used a teleporter. That was the only explanation for how they’d gotten so far behind the main fight.

I thought their leaving might have been the end of it, but not by a long shot.

Just as soon as the dust had settled and we started looking for where we would go next, the Heroes reappeared. Only this time, there were three more with them.

Here we go again.

Two women and one inhuman figure whose gender I couldn’t make out had joined the same Heroes from before. All together, they cut a mean profile, and they started straight into their attack without delay.

Damn quick reinforcements, I lamented.

But there wasn’t any time to think. I had to leap back before the familiar spear struck where I’d been hovering. What followed was a rush of bodies as one of the Heroes spilled forth a veritable wave of ghostlike copies. Each one was semi-translucent, identical to the Hero, but I could tell by the way they broke over the rubble and the street that they were physical. Meant to overwhelm us.

“Fire!” I called to Daniel, starting my own rabid swinging at the same time. "Don't hold back!"

My spiderlike legs flew forward and my real feet stamped the ground to brace me. The ends of my long legs were deadly sharp and as they pierced through one of the images, it simply faded into thin air. I kept stabbing through them with eight spears of my own and quickly wracked up a dozen kills, but they began to gather around me and if I did not back up, they would take hold of my legs and start to pull. That'd likely be game over for me.

So, our entire group went on the move, striking while we fell back. Hickory was at the front, of course, tearing through ethereal guts like it was nothing.

For a moment I realized that these images were as strong as normal humans were, and if not for the changes I had undergone, I was sure the sight of so many people being torn to shreds would have gotten to me.

By now, though, I was used to the Power levels we were dealing with and the necessity of bloodshed. This was simply my lot.

Coming around from the side, the second woman brandished a gun and let out a deafening hail of bullets. They felt exactly like airsoft pellets, which I remembered from my youth. That is to say, they hurt like hell. But not so much that I wasn’t happy to take the target I was now afforded.

Standing up at the highest extension of my legs, I could navigate quickly over the ghosts at their thinnest extent and come straight onto the Hero with her gun.

She activated her Power as I got close, showing me just what else she was capable of. In a split second, her gun morphed from its original form into a nondescript blob and then re-solidified into a different weapon entirely.

This was a bazooka.

My only option was to go limp and fall straight for the pavement, letting my legs give out as she pulled the trigger and sent a rocket flying inches past my nose. The exhaust singed my newly reforming eyes, and I heard the detonation behind me, ecstatic that I was still alive. My heart was heavy in my ears when I took the momentary confusion to stab out with one of my legs from the ground. Straight for center mass.

She was too far away for me to get in deep, but my attack did barely pierce her stomach. Through her panicked call for help, I heard genuine fear and agony, and I knew we could win in the next few moves.

Hickory had found his even match as the beastly Hero launched itself above the crowd of ghosts to attack him.

Blow for blow, they sent each other flying back and spitting blood. I saw teeth skitter over the asphalt, and I wished the bastard luck. The most I could do for him now was to sweep the back line.

There was no help that could arrive fast enough to keep me from launching forward and taking the kill. My legs had propped up behind me and, with spring-loaded fire, closed the gap in an instant. This time I plunged deep with two of my spears, finishing the gunner Hero for good. 

"Ashley!" I heard a scream from behind me, and suddenly all of the hordes turned their focus.

They dogpiled me by the dozen and their weight quickly stacked up as a crushing force. I had no more room to maneuver my legs and so I was seemingly immobilized. But as I had noted before, this suit was not without a few tricks of its own.

Along the length of the appendages, spines could be summoned forth like many blades, sliding forward and outward into whatever was over the leg. They were enough to dispel the ghosts, which only needed one good slice to be sent fading away. And with these weapons at my disposal, I no longer had to stab, only rake over their mass. From there, it was easy to rip and tear the horde to shreds, making substantial headway.

I moved so fast at that point that that I was within stabbing reach of the Hero before she knew it. I only had to take the pained sacrifice of cutting down on her hands to sever them from the circle of protection. Then a swift stab through the chest finished the job.

Immediately, the teleporter called out to the beastly Hero. "Lioness! We have to go!"

But it was too late. Hickory sensed the fight's turn and switched from defense to offense, fighting solely to slow the beast down. Meanwhile, I had merely to repeat the pattern I had used before. Once. Twice.

I severed the hands on both sides, stabbing the teleporter and the spearmen before they could think to run or abandon their ally. At the end, my hands were ruined wrecks, but I was hardly using them now anyway. There was just the cowering healer left alive, and Hickory told me to finish it through his struggles.

"No hard feelings," I told him. This was my mantra by now, honestly. 

"Fuck you!"

Oh well.

With a swift kick, I sent him straight into the fires. I was sure that an environmental hazard wouldn't come back to bite me, and I watched him scream and flail for a moment before indeed succumbing.

After that, I came up from behind and stabbed the beastly Hero eight times in the back, seemingly doing the trick.

She fell limp on top of Hickory and he threw her off without thanking me, instead turning to Daniel where he was standing uselessly at the forest's edge. "Why the hell didn't you shoot her, boy?!"

"I can't! I'm still fucked up from that guy's blowback Power, man."

"You'll get them next time," I assured, quickly breaking up the fight before it started. It was true, I'd told him to let loose, but I hadn't considered that he was still recovering. Hopefully, he'd be back to his normal self before the next fight.

I expected it to come without warning or wait. We were headed straight for the center of conflict, now. And, if we made it that far, we'd even take the fight to Seraph himself.

Wherever he was, now was his time to show himself.

The King of all Kings.