The Legion of Nothing

Remembering the last time we’d fought these things, I couldn’t forget that we’d just sent a few of our heavy hitters away so that they could breathe safely.

That time though we didn’t face the prime clones plus a near-infinite number of mooks. It was just them and we’d all trained together.

Jaclyn shouted, “Use the wall,” and everyone knew what she meant. Everyone who could go hand to hand with them went to the outside. Everyone else went toward the wall with us between the two.

That meant that as the first three took huge leaps, bounding into our space, Izzy flew in, hitting the nearest one, throwing it backward hard enough that it flew in a straight line toward the wall on the far end, cracking the concrete.

It fell to the ground.

At the same time, Jaclyn ran forward, hitting the one next to it at the points where the legs and arms joined the body, severing them.

Not as quick as Jaclyn, I followed her in because in this group, the Rocket suit made me a heavy hitter however fragile I felt underneath. As Alex, Daniel, Kals, and the crowd of Jennys ran toward the wall, I repeated Izzy’s move, punching a prime clone hard enough that he flew 20 feet backward. It wasn’t as far as Izzy, but it wasn’t a contest.

Besides, he didn’t get up again. Amy threw her spear at him and he shriveled into dust. Meanwhile, a barrel formed underneath Katuk's arm that was wider than his arm, but so thick that the open area was maybe as wide as a thumb.

A white-hot ball of something fired out of it, incinerating the chest of the prime clone it hit, burning through the arm of another one, and burning into the wall on the other side of the room. The impact burned everything it hit and threw blackened chunks out of the wall.

I didn’t love the property damage, but if the city wanted to complain, they could take it up with the Xiniti nation.

They might pay. You never know.

Without anyone saying anything, we fell into a loose formation as we continued to move forward next to the wall. Jaclyn and Izzy, as the most mobile and hardest-hitting stayed out the farthest, moving wherever necessary. Amy, Katuk, Tiger, and I, middleweight hitters who could switch off between hand-to-hand and ranged attacks, stayed on the outside of the main group.

A couple of layers of Jenny stood behind us, all but one of which was expendable if we wanted to keep her in the fight. The “original” Jenny was probably in California.

Daniel, Kals, and Alex stood behind all of that—which had its own benefits for all of us.

As we’d formed up, more prime clones and blobbygators bounded up the concrete toward us. A bunch of them jumped toward the front of the group where Tiger had taken point.

I know that sounds weird, but he wasn’t your average dog.

Not all of them reached him. Izzy and Jaclyn took out four while they were still in the air. That meant that the first one that reached him faced the dog alone. The prime-clone reached back, winding up his arm for a punch that would hit the dog directly between the eyes.

Except, of course, the dog didn’t want to be hit and dodged, the punch scraping across the armor on the right side of his helmet’s snout. As part of the same move, he turned his head toward the arm, opened his helmet’s mouth, and bit down, severing the prime-clone’s head, arm, and a chunk of his upper chest and then dropping all of it on the ground.

Then Tiger lunged forward with more agility than you’d think that an animal of his size would have and bit off the next nearest prime-clone’s leg.

As the prime clone hit the ground, he drew his front claw across the back of the fungus creature’s neck severing it.

On the whole, I counted it as a success on two levels—first, we’d taught him to fight alongside us. Second, my suit design worked for his natural fighting style. He wasn’t biting people with his actual mouth. His helmet allowed him to manipulate the helmet’s mouth in the same way the claws on his suit weren’t his claws.

They were a new variant of the same technology in Cassie’s sword. His armor contained a few more options, but I’d tried to design it so that he could fight as naturally as possible.

I, meanwhile, used my laser to cut down one clone and then another, the bright white beam visible against the dust despite being almost the same color. Still worrying that I might use the laser’s dedicated power too soon, I set it aside because we were so close to the end.

All we had to do was take out a few more and we’d be in the room with Haley’s team and our best chance to end this.