Among all the Martians in my company, I was treated like venerable royalty. Even though I was inferior to most of them in simple battle prowess, they knew me as a kind of demigod; as the primordial being from which their great creator spawned. It was something I could get used to, honestly. But it did not change how any of us acted in battle, as far as I could tell. We lived and we died the same.

Now, it was a game of sheer numbers. The line pushed forward and back like the tide as reinforcements waxed and waned for both sides, coming from different areas of the fight. Hundreds of people became thousands as we burst into the center of it all, betraying the hidden millions in total that made up the conflict.

I was keeping my head down while my legs were drawn up on my back to stay low as I looked on at the total insanity ahead. We’d left the black rock behind now, along with Hickory and Daniel, making me the only true humanoid present among my forces. This undoubtedly singled me out, I knew, but there was nothing I could do about it. I doubted Creep expected me to last this long. We had come as negotiators, after all, not as fighters.

Yet, my mind was focused solely on the task at hand. Not survival. No. I was focused on killing.

There was no more time to think or strategize now. No more clever battle tactics or groups holding the line. As soon as my small contingent came out into the next intersection, we were greeted by a fight in progress whose edges were undefined. All the fights on every street, I realized, blended into one large mass. There were no more areas of rest or places to run to. No unoccupied space.

Immediately I was confronted by a Hero trying to kill me out of the midst. He was beset by Martians on all sides, just as the Martians were beset by his allies. And so, everyone attacked wherever they looked, and he just happened to see me amongst the crowd as an ideal target, coming up. He leaped forward with a superman punch, his arm transforming into a jagged, glassy spike, as he did. Ready to impale me.

My reaction time was just enough then to sidestep and counter with my own jab from below, driven under his ribs and into the heart. In the same instant he died, somebody bashed me over the head with a sword. I imagined that it was meant to cleave my head straight in two, but it only managed a deep gash. I barely bothered looking at him before I punched two holes in him, one through the leg and the other through his left eye once he stumbled forward.

I never even figured out what his Power was. Just some idiot waving a sword in the middle of a war…

The carnage progressed and I saw a Hero riding his jetpack over the fray. In his arms was a menacing looking rifle that let out some kind of intelligent projectile. I could watch as they swirled about through the air on a blue trail of light, fired blindly into the crowd yet only hitting Martians.

I couldn’t think of anything else to do but sacrifice another of my legs to kill him, bringing me down to six. Although there were others on my side with projectile weapons, including those mounted on one spiderlike suit similar to the one I had retrofitted, there was no time to confer with them. In a battle like this, you didn’t strategize. You just killed what you could.

Creep had given me excellent spacial awareness, and I never missed my sacrificial spear. I brought him down in a burning spin to crash into his own teammates, rupturing the fuel tanks on his jetpack and sending them all up in flame. It was a drop in the bucket.

To my left a hulking Hero and a heavily armored Martian went tearing through the front of a building, both trying not to step on their allies in the center of the fight. I saw the Martian’s suit spray out some kind of acid to no effect on the brute before my attention was turned away once again.

This time a woman had wrapped an entire forest of vines around my throat, and they went straight for my eyes and mouth, attempting to pierce through my head. There were redundant valves and protections Creep had put in, but I couldn’t save my newly reformed eyes from being torn out again. By this point, the pain was thoroughly numbed, but I could still feel it screaming through the noise, drowning out the chaos.

Attack after attack, my mind burned. This is never going to let up.

In my own fury, I swept up my spider-legs, deploying the razors along the surface and severing the vines. Without my primary eyes, the resolution was lowered on the world around me, and I could hardly locate the source of my attacker amongst the crush of bodies. Martians were rushing past me to push the offensive, bumping into me and causing the world to spin.

It was just as well, as no second onslaught of vines came. She’d simply tried once and left me once she saw I wasn’t an easy kill.

I marched forward looking for people after that, stabbing whoever I could get close to. It worked three times in a row before my leg not only glanced off of its target but shattered as a result. His skin was brittle and grey, and anything which touched it became riddled with crackles just the same. I couldn’t make out his face then, but I knew that I’d drawn his attention.

Fuck it, I thought, this time aiming directly for his chest and driving forward with the strength of my entire body.

He wasn’t so tough that he could stop my attack directly, and I felt his shielding give way. Inevitably, my arm was ruined, bringing me down to just four remaining in a matter of minutes. But he was dead nonetheless, and I roared along with the flashes of war-chants around me.

All the while, the Martians had been chanting with their hypnotic lights. There was much yelling and screaming and explosions, but my comrades were completely silent in the end. They were alien through and through, by that. And I knew it rattled the Heroes, fighting such eerily quiet demons.

I could tell by how easily they gave ground and how quick they were to try grouping up. Meanwhile, their opponents were a completely disorganized swarm. At least, that was how it seemed.

Just as the Hero would select his target and think he had the upper hand, a series of lights incomprehensible to him would signal a spontaneous alliance, and he’d find himself grappled from behind. Shortly his neck would be snapped.

I was in on all this spur of the moment planning, just like anyone else. Unlike human on human fights, they couldn't tell where our eyes were pointed, nor when we were calling. There was no universal language of attention or aggression. Just silent struggle.

Thus, when my own hands became momentarily idle and I looked lost in the conflict, a voice shouted out to me.

“Lord! Over here!”

That was all they had to say, for it was enough just to leave the human ignorant to what was being signaled. Giving me plenty of time to run up behind the Hero in question. He was power armor and I wrapped my arms around his metal torso, too wide around for a Martian to manage.

I might not have been anything like Hickory, that was for sure, but my strength was still garnered from what I had learned from the Crystal's designs. And that made me a solid Class Three in strength.

With just a bit of struggle, then, I constricted my arms and hugged the Hero to death, crushing his body in the suit. There was a brief nod of thanks from the Martian and I moved on without another word.

Now, things were about to get really interesting.

Somebody knows me.

I almost didn’t know what I was looking at, seeing the small contingent of identical silhouettes approaching. Seeing them in lockstep, pushing through the crowd, and coming straight for myself, it took me by surprise. But then I saw the barest image through one of them as an explosion went off in the distance, lighting up the white-suited man inside. I saw the familiar face, and I knew who he was.

It was ole Tulpa. He’d figured out just what a human working for Creep meant.

I spread my arms, giving my best bad impression of Hickory’s thick drawl to mock him. “Ya think y'all gonna kill me, boy!?” An evil grin broke out on my face. “Bring it on!”

“That's right! I’m going to enjoy killing you, Walter.” He bellowed over the noise, not taken for a moment by my pretending.

For some reason, my smile only got wider.

I lurched forward into a sprint. Everything which happened next was like a dance, sliding through the movements of combat. I ducked under the first wild punch which his construct threw, knowing immediately that I would be facing another on my way out. That was the way he liked to fight. He used his perfect levels of control to create traps of uncanny teamwork amongst his fighters. But I could be unpredictable. Instead of simply dodging and going for the construct which I knew he was hiding inside, I fell straight to the ground.

Just as I had expected, a kick flew through the air where I would have been if I had merely ducked and come back up looking to attack. Once I knew I had him off-kilter after that, I launched myself up with my remaining four legs like a rocket into the air. There, I twisted in a summersault and stabbed down blindly. In the chaos, I had lost track of which construct Tulpa was hiding inside and so, as I stabbed through the top of one’s head, shattering its image, I met no flesh.

There was a moment of hesitation as I landed on my own two feet and Tulpa realized exactly how close he had come to dying. Just to be safe he brought all of his images back into one. This time he spread his own arms.

“Try that again,” he dared.

But I knew that he was stronger now. I knew that once all together, he was akin to a Class Two, and I had no hope of piercing him with my spears. Nor of poisoning him or anything else. He was completely invulnerable against everything from acid to poison, sealed up in his protective forcefield.

Just like his sister Egregore, he was destined to be one of the best. Always was.

But there's no point in fighting fair, here, I thought.

This time, I let out my own little flash. "I could use some help," it said.

I realized then that I’d been wrong about the Martian’s respect for me not affecting the battle. I knew it as soon as every single nearby fighter turned and came. They came with mad frenzy to try and dogpile Tulpa, ganging up to wrap around him and crush him alive.

They used what weapons they had, including a strange set of organic wires which, once bolted to the ground began to contract, forcing the shadow onto its back. Among his attackers, Tulpa was even treated to one of the Martians in a snaking biomechanical suit, spraying him down with poison. I knew it wouldn’t work, but I was practically beaming at this point.

“Get off of him!” I heard a voice cry.

Suddenly, a Hero came barreling through the mass which had gathered up on Tulpa, sending us all flying like bowling pins. She raggedly howled in anger to protect the one on the ground, and she held her own even as the attacks doubled up.

“Egregore,” I spoke, barely a whisper.

A white blur also flew down from the sky to help, bashing me to the ground as he landed. Our forces were becoming too tightly clumped, I saw, due to my cry for help. The whole battle for blocks around was rapidly condensing to an area the size of a single intersection and I found myself struggling to breathe.

“Get him out!” Maximal said.

“I’m trying!” Egregore replied, fighting off her own throng of clinging Martians.

I moved in, but I couldn’t stab at them without hurting my own people.

The fight was reaching a fever pitch and without thinking, I threw myself into the pile. I was more than ready to see one or all of these bastards, dead for good.

Now was my chance.