The three of us were headed straight for the front line now. The smaller buildings on the outskirts of town quickly gave way to taller apartment complexes and, before I knew it, forest had become city. The skyline rose up to encase us in our very own concrete coffin, and the eerie loneliness of the land outside the fight subsided. We had arrived in the beating heart.

In a war where one side could bend space almost at will, there was no singular front to comfort ourselves with. Death could come from anywhere and in a million different ways.

All around me, Martians were scurrying by, either naked or in machinery, rushing to the fight wherever they could find it. Above ground, below ground, at every turn. It was savage.

Hickory, Daniel, and I had to keep our heads down on the move. We could find our way into the city, but moving through it was a different matter entirely. Seraph had been dropping small robots on practically every block corner and it was anyone's guess what they could do.

I saw a Martian bounding on ahead of us when one of the devices popped off a small rocket that leaped forward and exploded into blackness. It opened a small warp which did not consume but instead deformed the Martian. It stretched her out until she was nothing but translucent spaghetti on the street. Completely dead.

"We need to be careful," I said, stating the obvious over a cacophony of distant explosions. My mind was racing.

Heavy footsteps plodded on around us and we did not know whether they were friend or foe. Huge giants were moving through the dark of the night sky, and I could only make them out by the flashes of lightning.

Hickory pointed deeper into the fight and stuck by his maxim. "Shut up and keep moving!"

Six Heroes carrying rifles strode out into the street at the exact same moment and, because we were standing out of cover, leveled their guns straight at us. Daniel didn't hesitate to send out a wild green blast, turning half the men into a fine mist. But the other half quickly let out a spray of fire as they ran for cover.

Seeing no other choice, I stepped behind Hickory to avoid the hail of glowing blue bullets. As they struck him, I saw his body visibly rock back to confirm my suspicion. These weren't regular guns. They were strange, high-tech devices.

"Shit," he groaned. "Those would have torn straight through either of y'all." He couldn't hide the fact that he was in pain. He could only try to laugh it off.

"Yeah, but they're not too tough themselves." Daniel had joined me in standing behind the tough old stump. But it wasn't a sustainable solution.

"Your turn to come up with a plan," I told Hickory, passing the buck.

He seemed to be frozen. "Fuck it. Just as soon as my stiffness calms down. Those Seraph guns hit hard. Ironbolt used to shoot me with shit like that. Back in the good old days."

I couldn't believe that after all this time I still hadn't asked Hickory exactly how his Power worked. I'd just assumed it was generic toughness. "You get stronger the more you're hit?" I asked.

"Stronger and slower," he coughed, struggling to expand his chest and start moving sideways. The Seraph fighters were still occasionally shooting from out of their cover, but Daniel successfully suppressed them. "Goddamn. A spray of those rifles hits worse than one of Maximal's elbows."

Soon enough, Hickory recovered and ushered us out of the street and into one of the nearby storefronts, walking straight through its locked doors.

"They're pulling out all the stops," I realized, speaking to blank stares. Seeing that neither of my allies understood what I meant, I went on. "It's the tech. Usually they refuse to mass-produce anything which could empower normal people too much if it fell into their hands. Gotta keep the Superhero schtick running, even when Technicists have no right to be on the field. They dress them in power armor and they keep the best stuff behind lock and key and copyright because that's what sells personnas. But that's out the window now. The game is over."

Daniel peaked an eyebrow. "Are you some kind of nerd, boss? Because I don't feel like this is important to know right now."

I shot back. "No, Daniel, it's very important. Because, just like we saw with the drones, they're not holding anything back. Forget Heroes. Most of them are low-class losers. We have to keep an eye out for anything high-tech that we see if we want to survive."

"You mean like that?" Hickory was the first to notice the rolling robot that was looking for us.

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It came up to the broken down doorway but couldn't get over the step-up at the threshold. Seeing as it was as close as it was going to get, it started to let out a low hum. Clearly a bad sign.

"Get back!" I yelled.

The spider legs attached to me moved to shield everyone while one lone appendage aimed forward. It was an expensive move, but I decided that right now, we couldn't take any chances. With one loud pop, then, the leg I had stuck out exploded from its joint like a javelin, impaling the robot and sending it flying back. This bought us the precious space we needed, as the device spewed forth a wave of pale acid on detonation.

I recognized the material as it burned through concrete and glass and metal with equal efficiency. It came from a Hero named Micron.

Daniel was right. I could recognize a lesser-known nanite technology at a glance. I always hated to admit it, but even through all my cynicism, I'd always been a Hero nerd.

A few specks of the stuff had managed to get on me, and they ate into my carapace without a problem.

He put on a toothy grin and nodded at me. "Good move, boy."

Hell yeah, I thought.

At last, the Southerner's eyes lit up as he realized where he was. "You said it's my turn to come up with a plan, right?"

"Yeah," I hesitantly agreed.

"Well, watch this, boy."

Hickory took off, barrelling straight through solid concrete into the next building over. He kept his momentum and shouted back for us to follow. Daniel was practically ecstatic as he jumped ahead of me, ready to finish the job.

We burst out into the alley behind the Heroes, then. The look on their faces was one of sheer horror as Hickory simply invited them to shoot while Daniel got in behind him. At that point, there was nothing they could do. The shot was lined up and I just barely managed to witness as the last of the Heroes were vaporized.

Nothing but a red smear over the alley...

We were just about to celebrate when out of the low hanging cloud layer an enormous foot stomped down in the street just beyond. It shook me and Daniel to the ground, followed by more footsteps as the mech above us pivoted and planted its second foot down right in the alley beside us.

That secondary impact knocked even Hickory up as the rest of us were sent flying. Dust leaped from every surface and with just a brush of its calf, the building we were thrown into began to wobble.

"This place is coming down!" Daniel cried.

I could still make out through the hole Hickory had created where the foot was planted. Several brave Martian hurried along there, attempting to crawl straight up the metal beast's leg. But something else was approaching.

Perhaps it was one of ours, but I couldn't tell. I could only hear the wretched screeching of I-beams being contorted as the Mech leaned harder into our building.

The three of us got back on our feet as rapidly as possible, following Hickory where he made another exit way for us. Once we'd found cover behind the shop, we attempted to get away from the enormous battle going on above.

Through the echoes of light, I could finally see what was fighting the mech. It was one of our Scarabs. Its front legs had picked up and begun stabbing at the machine's torso. Yet, in one swift move, I saw the mech's arm raise up and a blade detach from the underside, ready to drive down.

"Move your ass, Walter!" Hickory called for me and to wake me from my daze.

I was seconds from being crushed just as I turned away and the killing blow landed.

As was our luck, our running didn't last long. That in itself was not the problem. We were hunting as much as running. The real problem was who we came up against.

I almost wished that I didn't know exactly who the man was. But I did. And he was a Class One.

The 'left-hand-man' of Nemesis stood in the intersection over a pile of dead Martians. Her name was the Master of Many, and she had yet to lift a finger. Instead, the bodies were being piled up by an assortment of life forms. I might have thought they were my own creations if I hadn't known better. In reality, they were Kizmets.

Already aligning on the surrounding rooftops, her reserve of beasts turned their gaze on us. It was a colorful array of monsters. Each was twice as deadly as those animals which haunted man's dreams in the world before Powers, and that was just to start. They were mammals, insects, lizards, and birds of all sorts. Many were reminiscent still of forms a person might recognize. Tigers. Bears. Eagles. Snakes. Spiders.

All of them were under her perfect command.

She spoke out to us with a thick African accent, seeing as we were different from the rest. "You are not Seraph, are you? Show me your identification."

The strategists at Seraph must have been magic to keep such a woman on tight enough a leash to care about friendly fire. I'd seen videos of her feeding her own men to her pets. 

"Look at us!" I protested. "We're naked! We don't have any ID. But we are with Seraph."

I was faster to talk shit than Hickory. Indeed, he actually managed to follow my lead, putting a little trust in me that I knew what I was doing. Even though it went against his instincts. "Good work though, miss. Nice pile."

Daniel lapsed into a whisper in Spanish. "What the fuck are we doing?"

He was making us look suspicious, so I tried to shut the situation down fast while being transparent in replying, loud enough for her to hear. "We're gonna get moving, stupid. We've got to keep fighting." Then back to the warlord's executioner, I waved. "Thanks! We're gonna go!"

The Master of Many was clad in a mixture of modern military garb and traditional accouterments. She cocked her head to the side as she thought long and hard about what to do with us. Meanwhile, I attempted to take the whole thing in stride by not waiting for her permission to leave. Only, I didn't get two steps before everything went to hell.

And it did so with a simple phone call.

As Kizmet fell in to block our way, I heard her speaking. "Hello, Seraph command? Yes. I have a question."

Time was of the essence now. We would have to take what measure of surprise we could get.

With a mere pat on the shoulder, Hickory got the gist. He charged forward to make our exist while Daniel started blasting. We were dead set on the nearest escape route, which was an old hotel. The aim was not to fight here, and I was glad Hickory had picked up on that. Our long-ranged compadre was not so aware, and I had to grab him by the arm to get him moving.

This was not someone we could beat.

We had to tear our way through.