"Do we win?" I asked Foci, watching Egregore and Maximal sprint across the street towards us.

"That's not how it works," was all he could say to me. Both he and Paradise took off for the sky again, knowing they wouldn't last long on the streets.

Yet, I thought, they've got more Power than me at this point.

Without the addition of weaponized spider-legs on my back, I was just a plain Class Three coming up against some of the nation's top one-hundred. But I didn't care. This fight was to end it all, and it didn't matter if I lived or died.

"Come here, Puto!" Daniel cried out, blasting off a green cannonball in the Heroes' direction.

Egregore reached out and, with some unknown Power, dispersed the energy into a harmless mist. For a moment, they were obscured. And in the heartbeats that followed, I held my breath and waited.

Their attacks came with tremendous force. Hickory lurched forward to try and catch Maximal's hands, and the impact sent out a visible shockwave. Meanwhile, Egregore had taken up a set of pitch-black daggers that left strange distortions in their wake. And she went straight for me.

Daniel did what he could to support, but in all the fighting he was batted aside as an afterthought by Maximal.

I learned very fast what the dagger's dark trails in the air did, as I was forced to step back from a flurry of Egregore's slashes and right into them. She danced around in a full circle, quickly forcing me back into space which she had already colonized.

When my skin came into contact, the trails adhered to it. Like the spider's webs you find floating on the spring breeze, they ensnared me in a near-invisible net. Only, these did not break or stretch. They were a tangle of inescapable wires. In just that one move, then, I fell paralyzed to the ground, and she reared back for the coup de grâce.

I didn't want to turn this fight into the same chaos as the last one, but I had no choice. I was dead if I didn't get some help. Just as I was about to call out, though, another green blast went out, and this time it landed.

It struck Egregore across the face, sending her flying into the distance. And in its fires, the webs which had captured me found their weakness, burning away to nothing.

I was free, and I shouted my gratitude back to Daniel. "God bless you!"

He smiled at the praise, but his face fell. There wasn't any time left for me to turn around. I followed his eyes and I knew, there was a pain-train coming up on me by its vague image, and I could only brace for the impact. It turned out, then, bracing was the worst possible thing I could have done.

Egregore's hand appeared through my chest. It had ghosted there; not breaking through with superstrength, but using a Power to pass immaterially through my body. My reaction at that point came far too late.

I jerked to the side, but before I could get away, her hand solidified, displacing my organs with it. I had only managed to get far enough that my spine was spared, but I lost a solid chunk out of my right side. Along with the impalement I suffered earlier, my midsection was reaching its structural limit now. To top it all off, I'd almost lost too much blood to focus.

Still, I whirled around to face her. I was breathless and terrified, but I was prepared to dodge her second and third attempts at the same exact move. Every time, I moved away before she could re-solidify. The delay was her downfall without the element of surprise.

But Egregore was not the only one I had to worry about.

Daniel had shifted seamlessly to watching the battlefield for us. He was trying to keep back any other eager Hero who might have wanted to tilt the odds in their team's favor, here. But one did manage to slip past him.

It was a girl in a bright pink outfit. She managed to duck around Daniel's blasts, and I saw her approaching through my peripheral vision. As it was, my human eyes were far keener than the smattering of light-receptive cells on my surface. Those cells had not even saved me from Egregore's attack.

The problem here was that I had no idea what I was in for, even as I saw her approaching. Egregore had me on my toes. There was no time to wait and learn what I was up against. I had to shut it down.

"Hickory!" I called.

He barely managed to cut his eyes away from his own fight and see me running up at full speed. There was an unspoken understanding in those split seconds as he saw my feet leave the ground and my hands reach out.

My shell is almost unbreakable. I can take it.

Hickory took advantage of the moment for his own purposes as well. As our hands locked, he took my momentum and multiplied it through his strength. Using centripetal force, my knee came bashing into Maximal's face so hard that I felt the bone there fracture. Just as quickly, then, I was brought full circle and released. The Hero was sent flying.

My legs oriented forward and I fell like a missile through the battlefield. Nobody's aim was perfect, and I missed both Heroes, at least if my aim had been a direct assault. Yet, I had one of them in arm's reach, and that would be enough.

I took hold of the cutesy Hero's neck and ponytail as I flew by, instantly taking both off before skidding to the ground some ways off.

Egregore was battle-hardened. Seeing someone die so closely didn't rattle her when it wasn't her own little brother. And so, I wasn't even up before she came hurtling. She brought down a people's elbow from thirty feet up, and my ribs crackled and my exoskeleton buckled. My back was practically fused to the concrete when she stood again, and I looked up at her in dazed confusion.

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Several Martians, seeing how much trouble I was in, came to my aid. They tried teaming up and wrapping around her to suffocate, but she merely had to summon one of a hundred powers that were in her range. They were riddled with holes from an energy-burst, and it did nothing but buy me a few precious seconds.

Daniel too tried to help me, shooting at Egregore's back. She spawned an enormous wall of diamonds between the two of them to combat this. She was cutting off his line of sight so that it was just me and her now.

I managed to divorce myself from the Earth, but a swift kick sent me right across the last stretch of sidewalk and through the face of the building across the way.

Come on, Creep, I thought. There has to be something else here for me to work with.

My mind was racing, feeling through every part of my body for any last tricks. Anything which I could use to my advantage.

I limped from my crater in the building's front through its open door, just trying to gain any distance possible from Maximal and the source of her invincibility. She could even draw from Hickory, too, making her twice as strong.

The last thing I saw on the battlefield was Egregore fighting off three more Martians while Daniel desperately tried to shoot through a tonne of solid diamond. He was too far away to try anything else.

But there was one more thing I spotted, in all the chaos. And that was Hickory's eyes.

He was a gang leader, I remembered. All those years while I was in college or dreaming about freedom, this man was leading people through hell. He was at the forefront of constant fights for survival. And, because of that, he was a master at battlefield awareness.

In those milliseconds, he figured out exactly what I needed. All without a word.

Hickory set himself up by stepping around Maximal, putting the Hero between us. After which, he made himself wide open for a kick. It came with a solid crack that could be heard across the battlefield, and the damnable southerner was knocked far away, up the street. And more importantly, dragging Maximal the furthest away he'd ever been in pursuit.

I'm not gonna get a better opportunity.

I was inside the building now with Egregore hot on my tail.

She chucked a fireball through the mold-ridden living room we were in, igniting a couch and sending me careening off course into the open kitchen. With no more time to think, I picked up a rusted knife there and turned around to fight. I could see how tired she was becoming, burning through her Power on rage and hate. She was nearing her limit.

Every Power has one.

Summoning Telekinesis from her endless pool, however, Egregore promptly snatched the knife out of my hand. She launched it back at me, but it simply glanced off my cheek. I was strong, after all. Just not as strong as the best.

She closed the gap next, going for a grabble. I jumped to the side, pulling out a cabinet and bashing her over the head. Dust flew everywhere, but I saw the surprised look in her eyes. She was momentarily shocked to have felt the pain. I had to act fast before she figured out what was about to happen, now.

With a lunge, I drove my body into hers and sent us both back into the heavy steel fridge. The kind of behemoth appliance that existed back in this city's heyday.

We were on the ground wrestling after that, and at last, my full strength was equal to hers. Just not my training.

She pulled me into an arm lock, twisting too fast for me to know what was happening until everything was solidly in place. My right arm was firmly in her grip, and my shoulder and head were locked between her legs. She kept on pulling, and I could feel my ligaments straining to their breaking point.

Only two liters of blood left, my cells told me. Do you wish to activate the contingency? they whispered.

Through my strain, I saw what they meant. It was the hail mary I had been looking for.

Before Egregore knew what was happening, a cascade of cells went to work in my shoulder. They shut off blood vessels and primed their chemical suicide. And with a slick pop, my arm pulled cleanly off in her hands.

I was up and scrambling back even faster as she tried to recover. Her own strength had brought the arm slamming into her face. Finally, with one mighty push, I hooked my remaining hand around the back of the fridge and heaved, bringing it down on Egregore's body.

My eyes darted over the kitchen floor then, and I found what I was looking for.

She squeezed out from the fridge and at the same moment, she created a sword in her hand. Its edges shined red, and as it plunged towards my heart, I frantically grabbed the knife from off the ground, turning and stabbing. There was a scream, and I felt icy pain far greater than my mind could block.

When it was all over, both of us fell to the floor. The knife was in her throat, and the sword was in my chest. Clear and red blood mixed on the floor and death hung in the air.

But I was still alive.

I pulled myself up on the counter and looked down at her as she lost consciousness, and I knew I was the winner.

"Jesus Christ, this hurts..." I groaned.

The pain blockers were barely working at this point, and there was a full machete's worth of blade stuck inside me. Still, I'd gone over to my backup cardio-system, slow as it was, and I was on my feet. I had a tenth of the strength and stamina, and I knew I was nearing the end of my life.

As I stepped out through the building's front, I saw Daniel was caught up in fighting another ranged Hero. They appeared evenly matched, but in this fight, it didn't matter. He was gutted by an opportunistic Martian, and that was that.

Hickory was dragging Maximal through the street. The Hero wasn't dead, but the fight had gone out of him. Hickory wasn't looking too good either, for that matter, but he'd come out on top all the same.

The three of us met up as the fight was seeming to die off. As I searched for Heroes, I saw only a handful down the streets and in the skies still going at it. The overwhelming presence on the field was Martian. And the countless dead, of course.

"Is she dead?" Hickory asked, pointing at the building.

"Yeah," I said. "What about him?" Maximal was clearly still breathing.

Hickory pulled him up and sat on his chest, exhausted. "I don't know. He ain't movin' no more, but I can't seem to snap his neck or anything. He's just... asleep."

"He can't be killed?" Daniel asked.

Hickory spat. "Fuck if I know. I only ever knocked him out like this once before. Ironbolt kicked my ass after that and took him off for fixin'."

I joined Hickory in sitting down, though I was on the curb. It was nice to take a moment to talk. Before I met Seraph, I thought I had lost them. And maybe I had only found them again with his help, anyway, but I was too wary of the sudden quiet to get my mind off it and wonder. Even the distant explosions had stopped for some reason. So I thought aloud to get the others' opinions. "Maybe they're retreating to a different position? We're better at urban warfare. So, they could be pushing back towards the Iron Keep."

Hickory caught my drift. "I reckon you could be right. I don't know."

It seemed a little premature, though. The fight had only been going on for a couple of hours.

Could they really just cede the city? If they let themselves be routed, the casualties would be enormous.

"I hope you enjoyed your victory," a familiar voice said.

I looked, but I couldn't find the source. Worse, Hickory and Daniel acted as though they'd heard nothing.

"Hello?" I asked, drawing a strange look from them.

It was Seraph who went on. "There is a time for everything, Walter... But now? Now you get to see the work of my greatest son."

I stood up and stared. "Hickory. Daniel. Look."

Once called to their attention, both of them followed me in standing, and we stared on in horror at the sight around us. "He can't do this," I said. "Who will follow him after this?"

But he had done it, and the lie was broken. Everyone in the world would know the truth now, he simply didn't care.

All around us, the screams and the lights erupted, and one by one, the dead began to rise.