A tenacious hand gripped Arik's wrist and twisted it, forcing the pistol free through pain alone. In one fell swoop, the gun was kicked away and Arik was being flipped forward onto the ground like an easily overturned turtle. Arik still couldn't even see his assailant, but the yellow light cast from his Desired Armor revealed faint speckles of iridescent waves from where the attacker seemed to be.

Immediately, Rupert was on it. The bear turned to the scuffle, swung its massive club arm at the sparkling light standing above Arik and sent it flying into a wall much like the soldier from before. But this time was different for two reasons.

The first was that as soon as the appendage connected with the iridescent figure, the sparkling exploded outward like weightless glass and instantly revealed the third person in the room. A man, clad in the same militaristic black armor as the other one, but without a helmet, boots or gloves.

In fact, this man's face was more than unfamiliar, it was straight up uncanny. A bizarre distortion adorned his face that had twisted it to look almost canine. Long sharp teeth, a slightly outstretched profile, sandy beige skin, spiky quill-like hair and pin pricked, ravenous red eyes that bedded down in pools of black sclera. They never took their focus off of Arik, even while soaring through the air.

And that brings us to the second peculiarity.

The man didn't simply crash into the wall from Rupert's strike. No. This one flipped his body mid-air and hit the wall feet first in an amazing display of speed and acrobatics. Before gravity pulled him to the floor, he launched himself off the wall and released a furious knee into the bear's singular eye.

Normally, Arik would laugh at the attempt to hurt Rupert with physical damage, but the attack actually seemed to faze the husk, causing it to recoil and reply with an inaccurate flurry in every direction. He had blinded it in a single strike, and in order for the soldier to do that, he would have needed prior knowledge.

'This guy is dangerous,' Arik assured himself while attempting to get up. 'Must be that deathless Gnoll that Cyanide was talking about before he took off.'

Arik looked around for his gun, but his eyes met Cyanide's duffel bag of treasures first. He dashed forward at the bag as the bear and canine soldier fought savagely, the slow yet powerful arms of Rupert just too slow to tag the methodical dance of Gnoll. Arik managed to make it to the bag and began hurriedly searching for a useful weapon to end the fight quickly.

'This should do it,' he told himself as he pulled out a 12 gauge shotgun.

He spun around and aimed it at the soldier, at which point his heart sank to his stomach. The man was just standing there, menacingly smiling at Arik as he wiped at the corner of his pulled back mouth. Rupert was lying behind him, actively melting away into gas as it did when it was deactivated or destroyed. It's disintegration revealed the eaten head of the previous soldier. Rupert had lost.

The man began to laugh wheezily at Arik. "Well, go ahead. Shoot me."

Without skipping a beat, Arik pulled the trigger but the gun clicked and nothing happened. The man let out a boisterous yet hoarse laugh.

Within the flash of a second, he flicked his wrist at his hip, Arik went limp and the shotgun clattered to the floor. Arik's entire body experienced a painful pulse of electricity zipping throughout his muscles like a jackhammer to his nervous system. To put it simply, it felt like the world's worst charley horse. Arik's concentration was no match for such a sensation and his Desired Armor vanished immediately.

"I know Cyanide is a bit of a dullard, but he had to have taught you to take off the safety. What an idiot!" he mused as he approached Arik.

Gnoll slowly picked Arik up by the throat and pinned his limp body to the wall. Arik couldn't move and was in severe pain, but he could still see and hear everything. The man was even more hideous up close. That beige skin of his was actually fur, and he had splotches of black fur accompanying it like warpaint around his eyes and mouth. Now that Arik could see him more clearly, he realized the man more resembled a hyena than a dog, and yet, looked completely alien in nature on account of his hybrid visage.

"I hear you can fly." He raised his other hand up and pointed his fingers at Arik's increasingly rosy face, the tips black and clawed like a true beast. "That's a troublesome echo. Perhaps I'll blind you as well."

A growl began to rumble from Gnoll's chest as Arik began to struggle in equal parts for movement and for air under his grasp. The situation was dire.

Gnoll's growl ceased and his hand dropped a few inches as he began sniffing the air in sudden alarm. Noticing something Arik hadn't, he let go of Arik's throat and spun around, roaring like an enraged animal with a claw already slicing about.

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A metal hand collided with the hyena's own as the second lodged into the soldier's chest like a speeding missile, sending him bouncing off the wall behind, nearly atop Arik. Gnoll let out a revolting gasp as his chest piece dented in from the force of the succinct blow.

Arik never thought he would be so happy to see Cyanide. If he wasn't currently paralyzed on the floor and suffering convulsions he would even crack a smile.

Before Gnoll could even finish bouncing off the stone wall of the building, Cyanide had dashed forward with gruesome intent. Both fists began pummeling the enemy left and right with impossible speed and stamina. Every move of Gnoll's was canceled and laid to rest as a fist nailed him still like a kite in a wind tunnel. The wall behind began to crack and creak as the rest of the building shook and freed itself of all grime. Cyanide looked as though he was shooting lasers from his eyes and flames from his mouth; further accentuated by the bulging veins on his temple and neck.

A chrome right hand gripped the enemy's forehead, their expression devoid and eyes lifeless. Cyanide grunted as he activated his Redirection echo and violently shoved Gnoll's head into the wall, causing one final crack in it. It reminded Arik much of the beating he took in his own apartment, except this one was amplified to a disturbing killing intent.

Cyanide grabbed Gnoll by his spiky inhuman hair and threw him across the room. To Arik's dismay, Gnoll rolled on the ground briefly before riding the momentum back up and onto his feet. Blood was streaming from his nose and a cut on his eyebrow as the heinous smile returned.

'Impossible!' Arik proclaimed to himself. 'An attack like that would have turned any normal person to mince meat. That head thrust move alone was enough to one shot someone. He must have some crazy echoes activated.' Arik's nerves fleeted as he thought of fighting this man one on one.

Cyanide stomped on the butt of the shotgun lying on the ground and it jumped from the ground into the air. He caught the gun, turned the safety off, pumped it and aimed the barrel at Gnoll as if he had done it 100 times before.

"It's not worth it, Gnoll. Back off," commanded Cyanide.

A smokey laugh pushed through a bloody mouth. "You got the drop on me," Gnoll responded haggardly, his armor either falling off, broke or bent in wild directions. "It won't happen again."

He turned and began to shamble out of the building. Cyanide watched him leave, eyes like a piercing hawk waiting for impending trickery. Before Gnoll broke line of sight, his body disappeared in a flash of glossy iridescence. It then occurred to Arik:

'An invisibility echo.'

Arik tried his hardest to muster authority over his muscles, but all he could manage was slight movement of his head. It was still progress after only about a minute after being what was most likely tasered, but not enough to get him out of harm's way if something happened next.

"Are you okay?" Cyanide asked, turning to face the downed deathless. His body was dotted with bullet holes and scratches, proof of whatever had transpired out in the forest moments ago. Arik was baffled that he was still standing.

"Tasered— I think."

"Good. That's manageable. You'll regain full feeling in a few minutes. In the meantime—" he held his palm flat out to Arik and Rupert began to summon around his nonfunctioning body. "you're going to have to be piloted around by Rupert."

Within seconds, Arik's body was enveloped and lifted from the ground. The sensation of the bear's embrace was unforeseen and awkward, but undeniably comfortable and warm. It was like a heated blanket was hugging every inch of his body while somehow moving his own appendages around for him. Regardless, it still felt more invasive than Arik would have liked; but they didn't really have any other options. Arik didn't want to be a burden in the fight any more than he already had.

Although Arik's head was placed nowhere near the eye of Rupert due to their differing anatomy, he was somehow able to see out of the bear's eye. It was as if they shared the same vision. And along with that, Arik could see the height he was now standing at through the bear. Towering over Cyanide, Rupert must have been around 7 feet tall. It felt powerful.

"Okay, what now?"

"Now we wait," stated Cyanide. "We need to know our enemy's next move before we make our own. Otherwise our next move may be our last."

"But we're immortal. They can't really stop us if we run, right?"

"You already saw first hand that Gnoll harbors the ability to take out my Ru-Bear Soldier husk. And once that happens, the DES has multiple ways to render you unable to fight or unconscious."

"..."

"They've been doing this a long time, kid. They aren't something to scoff at."

"Frederick Lorder and Arik Mitchel," a manly voice shouted from some kind of megaphone a fair distance outside the building. "We have you surrounded. Cease resistance immediately or we will be forced to utilize more hostile means to take you in.

"This doesn't need to get any more messy than it has."

"Shit." Cyanide groaned in discontent and began rummaging through his duffle bag once again.

"Frederick Lorder?" repeated Arik inquisitively.

"Shut up. That's my dead name. You will address me by what you have been and nothing else."

The words from Cyanide were sharp and sour. Arik couldn't quite tell if they were that way because of Cyanide's fervent negative disposition toward the name or because of the time sensitive matter that they had laid out before them. Whichever the case was, Arik decided to not pry.

"Okay. So then what is our plan now? Are we going to stand and fight the rest of them?"

"You have 10 seconds to comply," shouted the voice.

Cyanide began lodging large pill-like rounds into the grenade launcher that he used for training yesterday, each round fitting with a satisfying metal tell before he snapped the cylinder chamber into place. He stood up tall. In one hand he wielded the launcher, in the other he wielded a sheathed matte black katana, and finally his assault rifle was slung around his shoulder.

"No, I am. You're going to run for it and get to the car that is waiting for us that I told you about last night. I'm going to hold them off and buy you time."

"But—"

Arik was cut off by the jingling of hollow metal on the ground next to them. It was spewing a pernicious yellow smoke and Arik instantly knew what was up.

'Gas.'

"Here they come. Run Rupert." shouted Cyanide as he shot a grenade round into the distance.