The damn thing beached itself, disgorging the riders, then opened its armored flanks and started spewing more. A couple hundred beasts swarmed across the concrete at the others, the big fucker came right at me.

  [Y’know, the day I graced your hole in the dirt was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.] I extended a hedgehog’s worth of murder ribbons, each with purple edging that took us a month to work out and make lethal. To which I displayed on the Model Twelve Variant, rending it into small pieces in short order. [Yay! A hundred points for me!]

  The others were just finishing cleaning up the rest as I turned fully to them. Apparently everybody had upgraded a bit, or at least Drag-On in an enclosed space is a nightmare for organics. Poison mist didn’t bother me, but the only reason the other two were fine was their shields.

  [That was a quote from somewhere, it feels like a quote.] Bombermans cyberdog strolled through the melting beasts and ankle deep fog without a fuck to give.

  [It was paraphrased.] I turned and slid into the water. [More are coming.]

  [Do you consider yourself a villain Oggy?] Drag-On seemed curious, but not offended or upset.

  [That would mean I had an ethos compatible with you. While I remember being human, who I was before. It’s in pieces and as if I were someone else. That one was a villain. I just am. I will do what I must to accomplish my goals. Which right now is the destruction of this hive.] Comms had been getting fuzzier and fuzzier the further into the water I went. [Which has a stronger ECM than I’m used to. Hurry if you wish to keep communicating.]

  [Why are you diving in?] Gravitas seemed panicked as she lunged forward.

  [Battle is about capturing the tempo. Letting them dictate the battles will leave us on the back foot. Better to drive it forward and hope the cavalry shows up in time rather than get pressed back and maybe have part of the city dropped on us!]

  They all quickly moved to catch up, entering the water in their own idiom. Drag-On gliding in, armor from the dragon moving up to cover them from the water. Gravitas simply floating in, changing mediums not really affecting her more than making her shield more active and visible. Bomberman, on the other hand, activated his shield and plunged in, sinking straight to the bottom. His dog mount unable to swim, but more than capable of trotting through the muck at the bottom.

  [Don’t dodge the subject sweety. Avoiding the question with non answers isn’t going to stop me.] Drag-On pulled up next to me on their ride, the pair of us taking up a lot of horizontal real estate.

  [No. I’m not a villain. But I’m not a hero either. Those are childish terms. I am what I need to be to accomplish my goals. Something you should focus on more. What are the goals of the individual, not how they see themselves. Nobody sees themselves as the bad guy. Not even bad guy’s. Being serious this long hurts my brain, can we stop?]

  That got laughter from everyone, some of it strained.

  Something big moved under the silt near one of the huge pillars that held up the plate above us. All attention turned to it. Recon in force tended to cause reactions from the enemy, as I had previously already cued up the hive and then tripped its attack pattern when the others arrived. I expected something big. Hopefully we can hold out until the big guy gets here.

  [The fuck was that?] Bomberman was understandably the most nervous, being the only one on the silt floor.

  I reached down and hauled him and his robot dog up out of reach just in time to avoid a tentacle lashing out to grab at him. The Thirteen it was attached to surged out after him. That was the tripwire that got everybody moving.

  Drag-On surprised me by having their mount breath actual plasma instead of poison. The water around the beam flash boiling into steam as it reached out and touched the thirteen. The water wasn’t the only thing that boiled. I had to wonder what level catalog they got that one from.

  Bomberman released torpedoes out of the mortar launchers on the dog’s back between its shoulder blades. It was all he could do considering he was currently in my grip. I would let him go in due time, after I had finished mounting a small hover engine to the dog's ass, even temporary work would do so long as he could control it.

  Sufficient Gravitas unleashed a horde of miniature space fighters, each one with its own set of maneuvering pylons each with an underslung pair of light lasers and micro missiles. Meanwhile her turrets were firing lasers that were less effective in the water, attenuating from and losing power just on boiling the water. She quickly switched to firing wrist sized torpedo/rocket things.

  We were all being attacked by a dozen plus Model Thirteens that had surged up out of the muck, along with a quartet of plesiosaur looking things that had to be a modified Twenty Three just based on its gargantuan head full of thorn teeth.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The almost forgotten torpedoes missed every Thirteen in their way, finding spots in the middle of the grouping. When they went off I was a little surprised at how effective they were. They started to warp space around them, drawing in water and antithesis rapidly. The rest of us were even moved, sucked closer, as the density of the space increased. Gravity tech of some sort. It hit a point where it stopped for the briefest of moments then everything within twenty meters sucked in rapidly, catching some of the muck and even part of a pillar that stretched under the water. A forcefield keeping the rest out. Chunking out portions of everything that got caught in its event horizon.

  Those of us with decent sensors got to watch as a micro black hole evaporated for lack of fuel or sustainability before water rushed back in.

  [You’re not the only one who knows how to commit war crimes Oggy!] Bomberman seemed quite smug as I drew him up to my ‘face’ region and eyeballed him with about two dozen eyeballs.

  [A competition is it?] I let him go suddenly, turning to the leftovers. [Let’s see what I can do….]

  <>Please tell me you’re not contemplating war crimes again? I thought we discussed this?

  {Just a little one?}

  <>No. You need to fix that pillar before you risk more damage

  [Fiiiiinnneeee… Naylle says I can’t. I’mma fix the pillar.] I shot off that direction as three more of me entered the water from the shore.

  The other three surged over to the dead and dying thirteens, snagging them up as resources. The one they had been interacting with shot over and started using muck and local materials to fix the pillar before it collapsed.

  [Wait, we’re all out here for real and you’re sending drones?] Bomberman sounded kinda pissed, I guess I couldn’t blame him for that.

  [No. All of us are real. Each is a copy of the original. Number five is currently engaged above water with a small swarm of single digits. It was eating what you left behind earlier to create more of us. As the others are doing. Within the next ten minutes there should be at least a dozen lesser shoggoth available as ablative armor.]

  [Ablative armor? They’re copies of you!] Gravitas managed to sound shocked and appalled even as she was struggling with one of the Twenty Threes. The leftover Thirteens too busy with Drag-On.

  [They are?] I had a “Your point” tone to my voice over comms.

  [You’d just… let them die?] I may have overdone the inflection based on her Response.

  [They’re replaceable and we’re gestalt as long as we’re within comms. It’s not like any of me lose anything from it.] One of the me’s on the bottom eating a thirteen surged up, grabbing another thirteen that was chasing after Bomberman, dragging the thing down into a grapple it was not equipped to win anymore. [Fuck. Last time I saw these fuckers they ate me alive. Revenge is sweet! It’s also cold. Does that make it ice cream? I miss ice cream.]

  [And there’s the crazy we love. I was getting scared Oggy was being too serious there.] Bomberman laughed as he directed his dog to back off a bit and get range to launch more torpedoes.

  [Ha. Ha. Bee, I like it when she sounds sane.] Gravitas was still kiting that same damn Twenty Three in circles. Nothing else seemed to be paying attention to her.

  [Oh come on hon, she’s certainly more fun this way.] Bomberman launched at two of the Twenty Three’s that were trying to overwhelm Drag-On.

  [MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!]

  [Please don’t scream on comms Oggy dearest. It hurts my ears.] Drag-On didn’t seem all that pressured even though They had the bulk of what was being dangerous attacking them.

  [Sorry Dee. Though these aquatic variations taste kind of like seaweed. I need soy sauce!] One of the Twenty Threes broke off from Drag-On and darted down for one of the me’s eating, even as it performed mitosis and split off from another. [Nessie is cuter!!!]

  The new me lunged forward, stuffing itself down the Plesiosaur wanna be. The idiot ate it without hesitation. All the chewing did was disrupt some of the nanites, only crushing a few between teeth, allowing the whole thing to enter into its body. Where it began to form a murder ball and rotate to shred its way out. Rings around the central ball rotating, dragging cones with drill blades on them, each spinning independently, the whole thing rotating around on a third axis rapidly every few seconds. The beast wasn’t dead, but it was wishing it was at that point.

  [Oh god that was…. Did you just burst out of its chest? Did that kill it?] Bomberman sounded more amused than disgusted. He probably enjoyed the show.

  [No. Gimme a sec.] The whole murder ball deactivated, turning much of its mass into murder ribbons which lashed out and wrapped around the things long neck. Half a second after getting a grip they all glowed purple and pulled out in every conceivable direction from the neck. The head went one way and the body was caught as a snack. [Now it’s dead.]

  [Do it again please!] Drag-On sounded a little strained that time. They were hiding it well but I was coming to believe they were in trouble.

  [As you wish!] I made sure to go over the top goofy with my voice as three of my newly budded selves attacked two of the other Twenty Three’s. One on Drag on and the other Gravitas had fairly well killed already.

  One on the mostly dead one, it didn’t even have to try. Doing a repeat of the head removal trick. The other two had to go a little harder. Remembering the way I took out the twenty two variant, I grabbed it around the core and kept its front fins from maneuvering. From there they lashed up with murder ribbons and guillotined its head before squeezing the core down a bit and starting to eat it.

  [Damn, you really got good.] Bomberman was a little stunned. Watching the ones that had been eating, finished eating what was there and lunged up at the thirteens that were left.

  [When given time to consume enough mass I can produce more of myself. Given the quality of mass I can produce tier two capable variations.] It took seconds to finish them off, leaving me with more mass to consume. [You let me Cook and I can make a ten course meal.]