The gutterperk:

A handmade, Barbadian slingshot once loved by little boys. What better name for a sniper? He could think of several billion. At least they’d shortened it. Mr. Brusque called him Mr. Gutter. Officially, his designation was Mr. Perk. Well, as ‘officially’ as things got in the cesspool of an organisation known as The Landlords.

They weren’t comfortable with Mr. Perk either. He never quite clicked with the landlord ‘work ethic’. Before The Night Shift, he was a soldier: ‘one of those old-fashioned types’, as they put it. He was also one of Sargasa’s best shots too. Give him a gun and he could get the job done. His colleagues knew he’d happily show them the business end of his talents if he could get away with it. The guy was a ticking time bomb. John Crow saw to it that he was in more ways than one.

The dim bomb attached to his back itched. He’d learnt to ignore it. Instead, he focused on peppering Mr. Brusque’s titanic avatar with hypersonic bullets. It was one guilty pleasure of the task at hand.

Another was the monster he commandeered.

The nyctal seemed akin to some crustacean crossed with an arachnid. It clung to the side of the building with sprawling legs like a spider crab, peering around the corner for cover when firing. He didn’t fully understand how the building didn’t collapse as it carried dozens of tons of ammo. It had something to do with an ‘electron amplification web’ that extended from the beast’s feet, reinforcing the molecular bonds in the structure. Alright, maybe he did understand it at least a bit. What he didn’t understand was how John Crow got ahold of this kind of stuff. That guy even had a cute name for them.

‘Clingshots’.

Such an innocuous little title downplayed their capabilities. Mr. Perk wouldn’t be surprised if a single clingshot could clear a battlefield ten tanks strong. They moved faster and hit harder than any ground-based weapon he had ever seen. It was perhaps the closest thing to piloting a mech that he’d would ever experience. A small part of Mr. Perk felt a boyish thrill every time he got to use them. He hated himself all the more for that.

With the help of graspers like a basket, the same field fixed the ammo to its underbelly. His bullets were cars, compacted into spheres by its tail and rear limbs as casually as a kid would roll a snowball. Terrifying strength. Then they were coated in a smooth, rubbery secretion, like a spider webbing its prey. Realistically, these were more like cannon balls than bullets. When he needed them, they travelled along electromagnetic paths on the clingshot’s body to perch atop the four lesser pincers like golf balls on tees. Then the clubs struck. In this case, the clubs were the raptorial appendages, like those of a mantis shrimp.

He brought them to lightly touch the two bullets.

First shot: appendage one accelerated to thousands of miles per hour. The projectile didn’t simply break the sonic barrier. It obliterated it. The atmosphere screamed. The building shuddered. Windows shattered to sparkling dust.

Second shot: there was no glass left to shatter. The atmosphere could no longer scream. It choked out a whine, spread too thin by the first shot to do much more. If not for his protective helmet and suit, he would have lost his eardrum, among other things.

The Mr. Brusque’s new A.M.E. atmosphere was vast. He wondered how Amy had fit so much of it into her house, or where she’d put it during daylight. However, the clingshot had had more than enough range to reach it from a relatively safe distance. Both bullets tore through Mr. Brusque’s titan and kept going like it hadn’t even been there. Who knew where they would land? They’d probably hit the quarantine dome, but it wouldn’t fall. He’d already tried to blast the thing down. The bullets exploded into plasma, which raised more questions.

Since when did humanity have the tech to quarantine a city under a forcefield, experimental or not?

Once, he would have would have believed the clingshot was among the most powerful weapons on Sargasa. It could rip through most peeping buildings before they raised a tentacle. However, he doubted that John Crow would just give them something like this if he didn’t have better. Even so, if Beatrice Barton could just pull out a citywide forcefield? John Crow was a joke compared to her.

Mr. Perk fired the last two bullets. The building was beginning to crack. Such was the power of the clingshot’s recoil, even with the electron web. The deed was done, though. Mr. Brusque’s titan was collapsing. He reloaded. Soon, he’d have to find another firing position, but if his snipers kept the pressure on, the titan wouldn’t recover.

Wait a minute …

What were those things pouring out of the titan? They darted through the air with uncanny agility, blazing red … like Amy. Was this her doing? Maybe Mr. Brusque had never taken control in the first place. Perhaps she’d used his titan to build them in secret. They reminded him of drones.

No … clarions … he knew their name? How did he know their name?

He’d think about that later. Mr. Perk focused his scope. He had a hard time figuring out its structure, but he didn’t have to. All he needed was a good shot.

It looked back at him.

He fired.

It was gone.

The thing had darted off before he could get a good look, let alone get out a shot. He gave chase with the scope. It was hovering again. He could see it at the edge of his-

“KEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

The sonic blast struck like lightning. He felt it ripping through him, skin to bone and out again. The screech’s pitch jumped and dipped. It briefly touched a frequency that tore at his nerves like a million needles. His mind blurred.

He realised he was falling.

Mr. Perk didn’t recall when he released the clingshot. That sonic blast must have blacked him out. He watched as the clingshot grew further above while gravity greedily dragged him down.

The scream’s pitch shifted again.

A sickening cracking sound racked the air. Shards of shell fell from the clingshot. Its exoskeleton had shattered. Stunned, it detached from the wall, gravity-bound towards him.

Mr. Perk hit the ground back-first. The clingshot’s shadow descended upon him. He rolled clear. It crashed down where he’d been, cratering the street. He’d missed it by inches.

Scrambling to his feet, Mr. Perk gathered his wits. What … what had hit him? Some kind of sonic cannon … that made the most sense, but it even wrecked his clingshot’s exoskeleton! How was that possible?

He remembered watching a video about resonance, back when he was normal. Every substance vibrated best at a certain frequency. Hit the right frequency with a sound loud enough, and it would break.

The clingshot twitched as he stared at it in a daze. Amy must have figured out its resonating frequency. If that was true, then when the soundwaves tore into him … was that the resonating frequency of his flesh, or an aspect of his flesh? If she’d lingered on that frequency a bit longer …

He shuddered at the thought.

At the edge of his vision, a red blur whirred in. Blasts of air pressed down upon him as it hovered above. The sound it made … his mind made the shaky comparison to a helicopter, but there was nothing quite like it: organic, alien, like an engine, but not. Since when could Amy’s constructs could leave her atmosphere?

He looked up.

The clarion’s kaleidoscopically cycloptic eye gazed back, assuming that was even an eye. Sheets of crimson pulsed down its frame in Bezier curves. They disintegrated into the mini atmosphere around it before repeating the process at the top. This cycle generated thrust like a jellyfish’s bell, but far more quickly and elaborately. He saw it happen countless times a second. How? He was just built like that. After becoming a nyctal, his eyesight had only improved.

Concaved petals framed its ‘eye’. Complex concentric circles swirled around the centre. It did not speak, but its name blared loud and deep into his psyche.

( (~ C L A R I O N ~) )

It held his gaze like a moth to the flame. How could he tear his eyes away from something so beauti-?

“KEEEEE!”

Consciousness fled him.

~

John Crow leant forward, eyes wild with fascination as they drank up the scene. Locked in a desperate battle of sound vs. bullets, the snipers had forgotten about covering him … not that he cared much. Amy’s clarions were marvelous weapons. He wanted them. More than that, she’d named them in the language that all humans knew, even if these half-baked excuses for humans could barely comprehend it. Had she designed the clarions, or were they built into her A.M.E.? Maybe both.

The Dread A.M.E. he wore had some generative intelligence. Once it knew what its master wanted, it could do a lot of legwork figuring out how to get it done. Some of its constructs were primarily instinctive. Others were products of his mind. Most of them lay somewhere in between. That meant that Amy probably had a decent idea of what she was doing. She’d never deployed the clarions before. The most likely scenario? This was a newborn brainchild of hers.

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Oh, how he longed to crack open her mind and feast upon that juicy genius.

He idly glanced at the street where she’d dropped Mr. Brusque’s severed tentacle.

It was gone.

John Crow frowned and set his sensory suite to scan the area.

A signature popped up.

The eyescraper’s omnidirectional vision zeroed in on it. Floating half a block away was a battle avatar. Its massive four forelimbs were shaped like a mantis’. They easily dwarfed her body. Arms elegantly arched like two pairs of wings, it hung in the air like a portent of doom.

John Crow scoffed. What a lopsided design. Sure, it was cool to look at, but that form didn’t look very battle-practical. Maybe he’d been wrong about her … or maybe underestimating her at this stage was a mistake. Despite its relatively high mass, the avatar had manifested faster than any of the others.

It shot towards him at over 600mph and accelerating: shockingly fast for any avatar.

His eyescraper’s tentacle moved faster, lashing up to meet her.

The avatar disintegrated a split-second before impact. Its thick vapour flowed away and sideways so fast that it hissed. Then it came back together in an instant, reforming the battle avatar. It was like some form of sympathetic teleportation.

Again, the avatar blazed towards him.

John Crow felt an interesting way about this. It was like slapping at a roach, only to realise it dodged the slipper and was buzzing in for revenge. He tried to remain calm.

This time, his accelerated mind allowed him to spot the source of her speed. Those mantis arms of hers had a propulsion system, leaving behind gaseous trails that told the tail.

Fine. He had propulsion of his own.

He sent her another tentacle. It’s dim bomb blasts zigzagged it after her evading avatar. It herded her into another tentacle. The two collided in a devastating detonation.

Did he get her?

John Crow noticed another avatar on the opposite side of his building. An innocuously small ball of crimson lightning brewing before its palms. The crackling orb roared to life, swelling to the size of a chattel house and growing. Had she been charging this attack while the mantis avatar distracted him?

His tentacle whipped at her. She vanished in a rush of lightning that reconstituted her body a distance away. Arms extended as though nothing had happened, she regrew the plasma ball even faster.

Now, this avatar … he had some interesting feelings about it too. Somewhere along the lines of realising tiny fires were springing up around the room, but they wouldn’t stay tiny if he didn’t do something about them yesterday.

… He wasn’t panicking …

He was simply acknowledging the scenario for what it was. Sure, the mantis-armed avatar had respawned behind him. Sure, some less-than-manly sounds came out of his mouth as he fought a three-way battle, but real men didn’t worry about such things. They just fought until the very last.

Nonetheless, what little excess mental energy he had in the heat of battle was at a loss. How did Amy get so fast, so powerful? She shouldn’t have been this much of a handful with the brainflies still about. It must have taken everything she had just to operate on this level. In that case, why would she waste time and energy hiding Mr. Brusque’s tentacle?

Come to think of it, what on Earth had she done with it?

~

Amy squeezed the over-sized tentacle through the front door of an abandoned Allmart. It wasn’t quite a front door anymore, though. Not after she put it through that. The tentacle took up quite a lot of space, so she hovered it over the aisles so they wouldn’t be crushed. Her biomass scrutinised the products before settling on some shapes that felt right. She floated them closer just to be sure.

Floodlights. Perfect!

Clustering them together, she angled the lights into the air and cleared her biomass from above them.

Amy fabricated some of the meanest blades she’d ever made, decked along the length of the tentacle. It reminded her of the macuahuitl, a weapon of the Aztec warriors. Its purpose would be similar too. Nodding at her handiwork, Amy carefully channeled currents into the floodlights. Their light falteringly fluxed to life. Her biomass recoiled away from it, emitting something between a growl and a screech.

“Shush,” Amy rebuked as she focused on stabilising the current.

She floated a ‘Kiss the Chef’ apron onto her chest, pausing for a moment to squint at it. In a fraction of a second, her aerosol stained several extra lines into the fabric. Now, it read:

“Kiss the Chef ..."

“… but if you’re not Norman, take a hike.

“Sorry, that was really mean ☹.

“Why am I even writing this?

“Because it’s funny and it keeps you sane.

“Since when was I sane?

“Okay, saner than you could be.

“Don’t even THINK about kissing the chef unless you’re Norman. He had the audacity to peck me on the cheek in public, and I LIKED IT! He has no filter and I does love he BAAAD for it! >///<.”

She smilingly nodded down at the scribbly rant and suspended the tentacle above the floodlights. It was impossible to keep her aerokinesis clear of the light entirely. Crystalline ash fell to the ground as the edges of her atmosphere seared in the radiance.

The tentacle thrashed wildly, flattening over a dozen aisles.

Amy slapped it. “Behave!”

The tentacle stilled.

She resumed the process of hovering it at the edge of the floodlights. The brunt of the light missed the tentacle, but it was enough to singe. She protected it with thin layers of dead, ashy biomass. The more that died, the better the shield.

Most of the floodlight hit the blades running along the tentacles. Red turned to glassy black as the light roasted her blades to perfection. It looked like obsidian, but she was forging something much tougher than fragile volcanic glass. Hopefully, it would be just as sharp as the crystal it resembled.

Of course, cooking herself was more than a little uncomfortable. Amy didn’t care. She whistled a merry little tune, punctuated by small yelps.

“Ow … ow …… ow-ow-ow! … Ouch …”

~

John Crow snarled into the sound casters. Three avatars, wearing him down like a pack of wolves. The air was rich with the stench of dim bombs spammed in desperation. He could barely keep them at bay. It was a miracle that he hadn’t taken any damage.

Hang on … if they were so effective, why hadn’t he taken damage?

John Crow scanned the avatars more closely. Their signatures didn’t quite match the ones he’d faced in the past. Dread’s range was limited, but trace amounts of its aerosol extended far beyond his building. Even those traces had sensory capabilities, like a peripheral net. He checked it for the avatars’ air displacement.

None.

Now it all made sense!

John Crow ceased all attempts at defense. The lightning ball avatars charged their attacks more ferociously. The mantis one sneered, sharpening its blades. It darted towards the control room. He resisted the reflex to block.

It slashed at his flyscreen in a spectacular display of electric melee. He checked the screen’s condition.

No damage.

The lightning ball avatars never released their attacks, because there were none to unleash.

These weren’t avatars. They were illusions! Figments of sound, light and radiation, brought to life by aerosol particles like floating pixels and speakers. Amy had actually figured out a functional substitute for holograms!

Yes. He really needed to pick her mind.

Something else caught his attention: Dread’s periphery was cold. Low temperature was normal for the A.M.E. That meant it was feeding on ambient energy. Dread was a juvenile, so it took every opportunity to absorb heat and light when it could. Hence the dark, icy aura it exuded. However, this was far too cold for Dread’s periphery, which meant Amy herself was drawing in energy. For what? Some super attack?

He noticed her power spiking in an Allmart. It stopped being an Allmart when his dim bombs were done with it.

Amy rose from the billowing clouds of sickly yellow, towing Mr. Brusque’s tentacle like a serpent rearing for the strike. She banked to the side, swinging the massive tentacle in a wide arc that sent it straight towards his control room. She’d decked it with blades of her biomass.

He would have shot it out of the air, but her clarions turned on him. Even through layers of concrete and flesh, he heard them scream at frequencies that stung his nerves, shook his mind and pierced his soul. She must have mixed in infrasound: the power in a tiger’s roar and a peeping building’s cry.

The power to stun prey.

His eyescraper froze up, refusing to take orders. Maybe his commands were too sloppy to register. Likely both.

The clarions ate away at his flyscreen. Brainflies died by the legions. Those that survived swarmed more tightly, seizing the deceased as body shields that messed with her energy, even in death. Such was the swarm’s loyalty to a ‘queen’. Of course, he was no queen, but they didn’t have to know that.

The blades she’d attached to Mr. Brusque’s tentacle would lose integrity the moment they touched the fly screen. Dread’s aerosol would slow down the tentacle from there. It was the perfect defense mechanism against something like her …

…

… But she would know that, wouldn’t she?

John Crow went into red alert.

The blades on the tentacle weren’t red. They were black. He’d seen this before. When an A.M.E. was exposed to dangerous levels of light, its biomass died and formed a dark, crystalline substance.

‘Flash ash’.

It was like scabbing, meant to protect the whole from further damage by blocking the light. Free-floating aerosol became flakes upon death, which could be held in place by surviving aerosol like a shield. However, if the aerosol had already hardened into a construct?

The dead structure became incredibly tough.

She’d killed her own biomass blades to render them immune to his brainflies. There was no mental energy for the brainflies to steal.

How could she do this to herself? For nyctals, light was more than a threat. It was anathema, a pain like no other. Upon exposure, their fight or flight instincts went wild: they’d either head for the hills or do anything to eliminate the source, if it hadn’t crippled them. She’d put herself through that, on purpose, while battling him with pseudo avatars? What was she?

Norman’s words came back to mind: “Tell me, Johnny, what does it take to override your own soul? Have you ever even tried? Amy did. She does it every day.”

It began to make sense. Maybe she was just that strong. Maybe Amy was a true human.

He shook away the thought. Of course she wasn’t. True humans were far more than that. Perhaps she was on the path to becoming one, but if anyone were to be a true human, it would be him. If he couldn’t surpass her, he didn’t deserve to become human. Easier said than done.

Those blades were going to decapitate his eyescraper!

John Crow forced his tentacles into the air. Despite its inferior size, hers cleaved straight through his own. However, the goal wasn’t to block her.

It was to redirect her.

Even if she sliced through his defenses like an oar through water, the flow of the water could push back.

His rapidly rising tentacles struck hers perpendicularly, creating an upward current of sorts that pushed her strike skyward.

He heard the sound of a blade nicking concrete. Her tentacle had clipped off the edge of the top floor as it deflected into the air.

A dim bomb to her face broke her grip and the bladed tentacle hurtled from her claws. He did a double take when it split a building in half.

Amid clouds of faintly glowing dim bomb, he glimpsed her silhouette. The avatar looked to be halfway blown apart. One side appeared mostly humanoid and intact. The other was pulling back together in slithering streams of sinuous tendrils. A multitude of eyes rippling across her body before vanishing fast enough to be imagined. Her atmosphere quavered in a rumbling hum that he felt in his heart more than heard. The world warped to its undulating tones. There was a vague sense that he hadn’t simply damaged her.

He had exposed her for what she truly was.

The hum morphed into Amy’s voice, booming from all directions.

“̶̼͚̪̈̄͋R̶̦̱͠E̷̲͉͈͆̅͝Ḍ̵͈́͜ ̶̨̘̪͑͒Ṱ̴̗̞͕̾͑́I̵͙̠̿̄̕͠D̸͍̤̺̼͆̏̄̍Ę̵̦̘͕̔͒.̷̢̛̗̼̿̇̀”̷͖̾͒̾̾

His sensors went mad.