Anya had been eight the first time she had seen one of them. It had been outside a used-car dealership, and she, Annie, and her mother had pulled to a stop at the intersection. Anya hadn’t seen the appeal.

The inflatable, flailing figure had moved erratically as though in a seizure. It had been neon green, with crude cartoon eyes and a wide smile that displayed any emotion but happiness. The flailing figure’s motion were propelled by the air vent, or hose, or whatever it was attached to, so it made an ominous whooshing noise that Anya could hear even through the window of her mother’s car. Anya had asked her mother about the eerie flailing thing, and her mother had said they were called “Tall boys,” or sometimes “Tube men.”

Anya had a nightmare about being chased by the Tube Men that night.

She stopped being scared of them not long after, when she just started to think of them as annoying, then stupid. She hadn’t really thought about them since.

Until a tube man over seventy stories tall exploded out of the stadium like a nightmare jack-in-the-box. It was made of skin, and it glowed reddish orange and highlighted the enormous veins that wrapped around it as the sun shone from behind. Its eyes were real eyes, each one bigger than a house. Its teeth were real too, enormous, but in the same wide rictus Anya remembered.

Its movements were the same as well: despite the tube man’s size, it waved and bobbed around with disturbing speed, and its long, thin arms lashed the air around it. The stadium with its crustacean legs and claws, now topped by the flailing tube man made of skin, was a surreal centaur as it continued to march forward.

“Mother fucker,” Anya said as she stared up at the flailing tube man. She hovered in the air, and a chill ran down her as the tube alien focused its titanic eyes on her. It straightened up, opened its mouth, and Anya saw light building there. It swelled and glowed a deep red with streak of white.

Anya suddenly realized her position: she was in the air, yes, but the city was behind and below her. If that thing fired, hit or miss, it would vaporize a chunk of Honolulu with it.

There was no heat coming from it, so Anya encased herself in light and flew straight up. She glanced down into the tube’s throat, saw the red light grow within, and then burst outward. Anya yanked herself to the side with a powerful shift of gravity. The beam missed her by centimeters, but even then, the edge of it was enough to destroy her light shield and disintegrate some of the material off her armor on her leg. Her leg itself was slammed up by the energy blast and Anya grunted as it was popped out of its socket, then immediately pulled back in by regeneration.

It was some kind of concussive force blast. It had more than enough power to blow right through her kinetic absorption threshold and cause her damage. If that hit the city, it would turn a city block or more into a crater.

More light glowed from below her, but this had heat. The tube man’s eyes burned orange and lasers shot up from them. Anya took it head on, laughed, and flew down. Her fiery swords whirled around her and she extended her forearm blades as she struck the side of the tube man’s face. She was like a fly attacking a bull.

Her weapons cut, burned, seared the thing’s flesh, but its flesh was deep. The cuts she made started to heal as soon as she finished making them.

“It regenerates too!” Anya said again into the comms. A flurry of aetheric arrows flew at the tube’s eye, bursting it open. The tube moaned in a basso tone that Anya felt in her bones, but the wounded eye repaired itself within seconds.

“Get back!” Galtero said. “I’m gonna orbital lance it!”

Galtero’s mecha soared up, aiming a truly massive cannon that extended from its arms down toward the tube man and the empty ocean behind it. Anya, and Samaira atop Chandrali, darted away from the gigantic alien just as Galtero fired a thin white beam from the cannon. It pierced the tube man through and burst out the other side, then burst apart at the point of impact. The tube man bellowed again as its right flank was blown open, blood and chunks of flesh exploding out of the wound and splashing into the water and sand below.

Samaira grunted with effort as she transformed a huge swathe of the water around the stadium into enchanted ice and deadly spikes several stories tall. They shattered against the stadium walls and the huge crab legs and claws, but stopped its forward movement. The claws swung down to smash at the ice while the tube man continued to flail and spray blood in a massive gout that arced over the beach and splashed across a luxury hotel.

Anya didn’t wait for Galtero to ready another shot or the stadium to free itself. She summoned as much fire and light and condensed it all with immense gravitational pressure into her hands. Her whole body shook from wielding so much potential energy and keeping it caged up while she piled more onto it. The heat flowed from her heart, the light from her crown, and the gravity from her hands into a miniature sun that she formed. It was bright enough to cause Anya to wince, probably bright enough to match the sun itself, and she started to sweat as she struggled with it, then finally let it go.

It split the air as it shot down and into the tube man’s other flank. Anya gasped at the raw power of it, the radiance of the golden fire igniting the air. A boom radiated from the blast, shattering most of the windows along the beach front and causing Samaira and Galtero to be pushed back from the overwhelming force. The tube man exploded, caught fire, its fleshy sides running like tallow, truck-sized chunks of its charred body flying through the air.

It bellowed as it deflated, sliding down into the stadium.

The dome closed over it before Anya could ready another attack, just as its claws shattered the last of Samaira’s icy barricade and it continued to walk forward. Galtero hit it again with his orbital lance, but the beam struck the hard side of the stadium and didn’t even leave a scorch mark.

“It’s regenerating in there!” Anya said over the comms.

“We’re a bit busy with the small fry, if you can call them that!” Chell said.

“I’m protecting people but this is really scary!” Pan added.

“Nowicki, it’s really going to hell down here!” Riley said over Pan’s shoulder. Anya caught a glimpse of him firing Gary’s pistol at some monstrosity.

“Felix how many alien signals are down there, not counting Big Al?” Anya asked.

“Just ten!” Felix said.

"I got here a few minutes ago and am busy with the wounded!" Immonen said. "Pan and agent Riley are keeping me safe, though!"

“I’ve killed the strongest ones with Mona,” Renn said. “But there are a lot of weaklings and keeping them off civilians isn’t easy. We need to decide who is going to fight what. I’m adept at either large groups of lesser enemies or a single big target.”

“I’m summoning as many lesser undead as I can to fight off the cannon fodder but this is getting taxing,” Mona said. “Harrison needs to get his ass here already and pick up the slack!”

“Renn’s right. Me, Sam, Galtero, Brody, and Renn will keep Big Al busy. Pan, Chell, Kemuel, Mona, and Cooper get rid of the smaller ones as best you can along with the robots for back-up. If you get injured head for the doctor with any wounded civilians you can carry. Li Qiu, how far out are you and the others?”

“Five minutes,” Li Qiu said. “Should I prepare my Mori Cannon?”

That was the huge gun she had used to nuke the last group of aliens. If she fired that thing close to a major city, she might wipe out everything and everyone in it.

“Not unless you can guarantee it’ll all be focused on Big Al,” Anya said.

“There may be some fallout,” Li Qiu said.

“Then its a last resort,” Anya said. She flew down as one of Big Al’s plane-sized crab claws swung out at a hotel. She knew from her heat sense that the building was far from empty. She flew in front of the claw and pushed with all her strength and with all the gravitational force she could muster. Her whirling fire swords clanged uselessly against the hard carapace, and she tried forming them into blunt warhammers instead. That had a little more success, but every injury healed as soon as she made it.

She focused a number of the warhammers on a single spot and cracked it wide open. Heat and flame and light poured into the opening and boiled the flesh inside the armor even after it had begun to seal back up. Anya knew it wouldn’t be enough to put the monstrosity out of commission, but was pleased when it reared the huge claw back in pain and surprise.

“This bastard not a fan of fire?” Brody asked as he flew nearby. “Gimme a light!”

“What?” Anya asked. This wasn’t like the fight they’d shared in Beijing where all they had had to worry about were some cheap robots. Anya had playfully lit Brody’s joint mid-fight back then, but she couldn’t bother with that now.

“Not me joint! Me! Light me on fire! I can take it and adapt to it and make it mine!” Brody said. Anya didn’t know what the shark was talking about, but did as he asked: she sent a small ray of light-enhanced flames at Brody, and the shark grunted as it hit his chest, burned him, and then enveloped his body.

Anya was about to snuff it out when Brody’s body changed. He’d been all stout muscle in rough gray and white sharkskin. His body started to glow from within, and flames emitted from him rather than just on him. He gave her a thumbs up, then shot off toward Samaira like a comet. She hit him with an aether arrow and sparkling motes of pale blue energy surrounded him and merged with the fire, turning it turquoise.

Finally Brody leaped off his flying surfboard and plunged right down to the top of Big Al’s dome, right along its seam, and began to wail at it and pry it open. The light-and-aether-infused fire flared up bright, brighter, and the dome started to melt and warp and crack around Brody’s feet.

“I’ll clear out this hotel,” Renn said as he flew beside Anya and started multiplying himself. There were thirty of him in and instant, and sixty in another, all of them flying through the hotel and searching for people to get out. “You go help stop that thing from getting any closer.”

“Got it!” Anya said and soared down toward one of Big Al’s giant armored legs. She focused all of her attacks on the softer, less-armored joint area, and was rewarded with the leg severing and falling to the sandy beach below in a gout of blood.

“Good idea!” Galtero shouted as his mecha shot past her to Big Al’s rear and began attack the legs still submerged in the ocean. Samaira was still doing her best to use every drop of water to freeze Big Al in place. She summoned towering waves that crashed over the back of the stadium and froze it in place when Galtero darted out of the way.

But it was all barely slowing Big Al down. The legs Anya hacked off had already grown back and now sported massive bone thorns that dripped what was clearly some kind of acid. Renn was behind them and clearing out more buildings while the other hosts were protecting the civilians from the hundreds of tiny alien spawn that hadn’t died yet.

Brody cried out as he was thrown off the stadium dome as it shot open and the tube man emerged again, fully healed. He was tossed into the ocean and his body hissed with steam as his temporary flames were snuffed out.

“How many aliens are left besides Big Al?” Anya asked over the comms.

“Just two! We’re getting them!” Mona said.

“One now!” Chell said. “I killed it!”

“Good job! Watch your ass!” Cooper said in the background as he flew past her and shot at something out of sight. Anya looked up at the tube man as light glowed in its mouth once more.

“It’s gonna shoot!” Anya said and soared up in an attempt to distract the alien again. But it seemed to sense their desperation to keep it away from the city, and aimed at its heart.

“No!” Anya said and flew straight down towards the tube man’s mouth. Several of Galtero’s tiny spherical drones came forward and emitted tight white beams that formed interlocking hexagons in front of the mouth. Samaira fired several arrows at the mouth, each of which connected and expanded into wide blue bubbles that encased the alien’s glowing maw. Anya added light enhancement to all of it. Renn and several of his clones merged together and he he made some gesture with his hands and Big Al’s face turned to the side slightly, away from the city and closer to the ocean.

Then it fired.

The huge beam of concussive force met the many shields over its mouth, swelled, waned, then broke through. The weakened beam was still enough to slam into the beach and the first several blocks behind it and turn it all into one huge explosion.

“No!” Anya shouted as two large hotels and multiple buildings behind them were turned into ruin in a second.

“Some of my clones are dead, but they’d already evacuated the area,” Renn said and shook his head as if from pain. Galtero flew up and shot his orbital lance at it again, piercing the tube man’s fleshy exterior, but it just healed again, maybe faster than before. Brody had recovered from his unceremonious extinguishing and was now in the water with Samaira trying to slow Big Al down while Galtero continued to blast Big Al in the face.

“It’s healing faster too,” Anya said.

“An anti-matter bomb and a Mori Cannon blast might do it,” Renn said.

“The city would be ruined,” Anya said. “We need to push it back.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Renn asked. Anya pointed behind her, past the city, past its outskirts, to a large sloping mountain far in the distance.

“I’m gonna hit it with a volcano,” She said.