The crush of bodies only grew denser by the second. I was inside this pile, shoving and fighting towards the center, but I couldn’t gain ground. It was a battle of easily over a hundred Martians against no more than twenty Heroes. Chief amongst them, Tulpa, Egregore, and Maximal were the tough ones. But you couldn’t survive in the center if you weren’t at least a Class Three.

Even then, I felt the titanic strength of my carbon fiber bones cracking under the pressure. I cried out in pain, but no one person could change the course of things now. It was a test of endurance, and every Martian was locking tendrils to attempt the final constriction. They had no bones, so this was their strategy. As much respect as they had for me, I was just collateral damage at this point. They had to kill these Heroes.

I could hear Egregore frantically radioing out in panic. She had to yell over the sound of steel bones snapping left and right. “We need a Tech bomb at my location! We need crowd neutralization NOW!”

On cue, a fighter jet roared by overhead without a moment to spare. Whatever it dropped; the device detonated overtop of us before hitting the ground. It washed us in white light and deafening sound.

If Seraph is anything, it’s punctual, I thought.

Suddenly, all the tension went out of my body, right along with everyone else. The entire conflict halted, and all of us went stumbling back from our initial placing as constriction failed. It was like our muscles turned to jelly.

My head was ringing, and my eyes glazed over. I’d completely lost the context of what I was doing, and it was as if I’d just awoken from a deep, groggy sleep.

“What… Where am I?” I said, turning all around.

In all the chaos, I saw a human bumbling towards me. He leaned his weight against me as he caught his breath. “Do I… know you?” he asked.

Seraph was smart, but they weren’t perfect.

I blinked a few times.

They’d bought themselves a reprieve for just a few seconds, but Creep had made my neurons significantly faster to recover than any regular humans’. This was true of all the Martians. And so, it was I who snapped back to reality first, and realized who was before me.

“Tulpa,” I nodded, putting my still-weak hands on his shoulders. “Yeah, we know each other.”

“Your face is kind of fucked, dude.” He chuckled drunkenly, looking around with confusion at the weird starfish creatures that riddled the field. “Oh, shit. Am I a superhero right now?”

My hands migrated to his neck. “You sure are.”

“Jason!” I heard Egregore scream; eyes wide in horror as I did what I did.

Tulpa fell to the ground, dead with a snap, and I looked at her. There were different words that came to mind, but I ultimately decided to say nothing. This was his just deserts for the beach, but I had no desire to bring his sister into it. She was not responsible for her brother and she deserved no more pain than the moment necessitated.

Instead, I simply prepared myself for her forward attack. Only, she didn’t get that far. She was swamped yet again by the hordes of Martians who had since regained their senses. All of us went rightly back to fighting, including the Heroes, as they were wide awake the moment Egregore’s voice wrung out.

For my part, I merely stepped back from the fight. I didn’t want to get caught in the same crush again, and more Heroes were coming now to balance out the numbers. We needed people watching the back, which is what I did.

With one of my four remaining legs, I shot down a flying Hero who was dishing out fireballs from his hands. I did the same for another one of them up in the sky, only I didn’t get a chance to see what his Powers were. I had just two legs now, and I intended to keep them for stabbing purposes.

If I had one critique for Creep, it was that we lacked ranged fighters. Although, I watched as two Martians worked together to fling one of themselves eighty feet in the air, catching a Hero and instantly killing them. So, there was no accounting for resourcefulness. In the end, we were the masters of ground combat, exactly as predicted. There were only a handful of Heroes that could match even one Martian in terms of speed and ferocity.

The fight went on for less than a minute that way before my face was promptly driven into the concrete. I was a little shocked, but I literally had eyes in the back of my head, so I figured out fairly quickly what was up.

This one’s on me, I realized.

I’d under-estimated the Heroes. I had ignored those left at the center of the fight, merely assuming the Martians could handle them. It turned out, they couldn’t. And now Egregore was on top of me, and she was about to rip out my spine.

“Not today!” I bellowed, throwing her off my back with all my strength.

She was still weakened from Seraph’s neural bomb, but she wouldn’t stay that way for long. Her mask had fallen off in the scuffle, and her pretty face was marred with sheer rage.

As she dove forward again, pressing the onslaught, I was able to sidestep and jab at her. My accuracy wasn’t so good, but I caught her with the razors along my appendage’s edge, gashing her arm with my sweep. There was, as usual, no contest between us, and if she got her hands on me again, I was toast.

To make matters worse, Maximal arrived at her side, just as angry as ever.

Both of them were intent on killing me. Only this time, I had no intention of calling for help. If they wanted a fight, they could have one.

I was smarter.

They moved as a team, then. Their charge came with both a kick and a punch, but I parried by swiping them to the side, making just enough room for me to slip through and onto the other side of them. We’d traded placing, nothing more.

They were fast, but I knew from fighting Maximal in the past that his strength was based in raw power, not twitch speed. In that respect, we were effectively matched. With my extra appendages and mastery of space, I could manipulate a hand-to-hand situation in my favor. At least enough to stay alive.

The real problem was Egregore.

She raised up her hands and without the slightest forewarning, she shot out a goddamn spray of bees. These had no effect on me, but I flinched hard because I knew what she could do.

It was all a matter of roulette, now.

Egregore was capable of copying the Powers of anyone around her, with almost no limit on the number of people. Yet, she had diminishing returns as that number rose, just as Tulpa had with his multiplying ghosts.

Since I had absolutely no way of keeping track of which Powers were on the field, I had no idea what she could pull out at any minute. I could only wait in suspense as her eyes twitched rapidly. She was cycling through what she had at her disposal, looking for a good one. Maximal was content to wait in the meantime.

A Hero stumbled in front of me while that was happening, backing away from his Martian combatant, and I stabbed him. “You’re wasting your time with me,” I told the two Heroes. “I can dodge and weave all day. But your people are dying.”

I might not have convinced them to leave me alone, but I did manage to goad Maximal into berserk mode.

He a tank of pure righteous hate. Every single one of his punches came with its own audible blast of air as he tore forward. I had to keep dodging just to survive. I wouldn’t have survived even one of his hits. But the irony was that with his anger, he became even more predictable.

I made a joke of him, weaving around his wild haymakers and reckless kicks. I actually managed to get behind one of them and use his own momentum to throw him to the ground. Not something I could have done under my own power.

Just then, I felt my feet lift off the ground. I was found myself flipping over in the air, completely losing track of gravity.

“What the hell!?” I yelled out and, as I spun helplessly, I could see Egregore with her hands raised behind me.

“Maximal, wait!” she said.

I knew it was coming, but it still hit like an entire fucking freight train.

The old man had attempted to punch straight through my midsection. Something I was sure he had some practice at. But instead, coupled with whatever gravity effect had been applied, he managed to launch me like a bullet of a gun, straight for the stratosphere.

The ground shrunk away from me at lightning speed and my head spun right along with my madly whirling body. I was heaven-bound without any sign of slowing down.

Right up until the effect canceled.

Suddenly, I was hanging limply in the sky, easily a thousand feet above the world.

It was all so small. Well, except for the giant robots, the actual dragon, and numerous other colossal freaks. Besides that, all I saw were angry, explosion-prone ants.

Then, the clouds closed back from the hole I’d made in them, and I began to pick up speed.

I didn’t bother holding my breath for impact. I knew that I would survive. Yet, when the dust cleared and I pulled myself from the asphalt, I did find myself stricken with fear; and not more than a little bit impressed.

I was only one block down from where the original fight had been happening. Maximal had done well to uppercut me, keeping me from being blasted too far away for them to find. He’d sent me in a nicely vertical trajectory, obviously correcting himself in the split-second Egregore called to him.

Now that’s what I call combat reflexes.

Even then, he’d given me enough space that I was seriously considering running. Accounting for the fact that both of them could fly, I still had the chaos of war on my side. As much as I appreciate the poetry of this whole story coming full circle, I was not cut out to fight them. My efforts were being wasted.

Then again, so are theirs.

“Shit,” I swore. “I really need backup for this.” My eyes turned to the sky, and I flashed as hard as I could. “Foci?! Paradise?! Find Hickory and Daniel! Get them here!”

Maximal zoomed up and over the crowd, and I had no choice but to run for cover. Just as I made it into the nearest building, he chucked a car through its window, nearly decking me.

It was a game of cat and mouse, now. I just needed to find my backup. Then, we could bring this whole Saga to an end with Maximal’s death. We could beat him, together.

For me, that almost meant more than killing Seraph.