As I slammed into the creature that was using the surrounding pillars to haul itself around on land easier, I was struck with the thought that we were Kaiju about to wreck Tokyo. I couldn’t help letting out an eldritch giggle as I started trying to remove the damn Kraken’s limbs, either from the pillars or from the body didn’t really matter.

  It of course did not like that one bit. The problem for it was that it had bone tipped tentacles to pierce and cut, but I’m an amorphous blob of nanites with nothing that can actually be stabbed or cut. This was going to be one sided, I hoped.

  Drag-On, being smart, had their dragon breath the poison breath at us. It wouldn’t hurt me but would absolutely help damage the mutated Thirteen. Which was much tougher than I’d like to admit.

  Murder ribbons weren’t doing much, grinding mouths were even less effective at this point. Even with the weapon catalog enhancements. It was almost as if it were a class two armor somehow, but clearly not in the usual ways. There were no hard plates, it was still ropey and spongy. Yet fractal monofilament trees were more like saw blades on metal than a hot knife through butter.

  If it was going that route, strength would have to do the trick. So I started peeling at one of the tentacles, trying to get it off the pillar that it was using to haul itself in the direction of the meat people behind me.

  This was something I wasn’t having. I guess both of us were upset with the situation.

  The poison mist started to eat away at it, but it was too slow. We had both begun focusing on the one pillar and while it didn’t have suckers on its limbs it could grip rather strongly. The noises the pillar was making were concerning.

  One of my sub-minds made the bulk of us aware that there was something happening near the shore of the lake a half kilometer away. Models in the teens were clambering out of the water, they were all Aquatic variants but that wasn’t stopping them. I trumpeted a loud noise and used a thin pseudopod to point at them even as I doubled down on getting this damn limb off the pillar.

  Shifting enough mass around the root of the tentacles that were around that particular pillar was a little tough, but getting enough to craft a chainsaw of teeth and ribbons was a herculean effort. It was not going very well because they damn things kept being defended by the other smaller limbs.

  I did notice two things about the smaller bone tipped tentacles. First, they weren’t very fast. The second was that they weren’t any sharper than a normal Thirteen. Almost as if it doubled down on number and toughness but not damage capability. Even the larger tentacles weren’t that much bigger than normal. There were just a shit load of them and they were tougher than they should be.

  I ignored the Big Picture mind as I focused on cutting legs, which didn’t start well but quickly shifted to resounding success. I had finally sheared off the grouping I had been focused on when the Big Picture me jerked control from Close Quarters Combat me that most of me were focused on.

  It wasn’t soon enough. The other pillar the damn thing had been hauling on had spiderwebbed cracks much deeper than the one I had been concerned about before. As I shifted focus to that side it buckled and the pillar shattered under the pressure. A horde of Teens was descending on the others so I couldn’t get help at this point. One of my sub minds had even extended several plasma guns to help with direct fire.

  But all that didn’t matter if the ceiling collapsed on us. I’d be fine but nobody else would. The ceiling was already buckling, the pillars spaced to the utmost maximum distance they could be and still do the job. Fucking cheap assed corpo project.

  I didn’t have time to debate a decision. That roof needs support and this damn Kraken needed to die before it could join the fight. I would have to split, and risk losing connection thanks to the passive biological ECM.

  Shifting exactly enough mass from my combat form to the pillar I pushed, splitting that part of me off. It would act as a support and add some plasma fire where it could. The bulk of me turned to the Mutant Model Thirteen and started shoving in earnest to get it away.

  Less mass made that much harder. Especially when it wasn’t my only goal. This whole fight I had small tendrils of me seeking an opening, a cut or mouth I could use to enter its body. Now I had a cluster of arms that were all cut off. Plenty of a hole to enter from.

  The pushing match degraded into the damn thing flailing about and stabbing itself as a quarter mass of myself infiltrated its body and began to devour it from the inside out thanks to it being much more vulnerable inside than out. So much so that its core section was rife with biomass to convert to nanites and excrement. The other side of that was, I was now cut into thirds effectively. Even as I struggled with the exterior the interior was cut off due to that thrice damned jamming.

  But as my other self ate away at its core its strength decreased. Pushing it back became easier and easier. To the point where I could tell it died. Not from the ever present point counter in my perception going up but because it completely stopped fighting back and drooped limply in my grip.

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  The Jamming was still up and too strong for a proper data link for backups. But we could now communicate between ourselves. The me eating the Thirteen declared victory and said it’d take care of the rest. The me holding up the ceiling declared it needed help “Right fucking now, goddamnit!”

  Looking in that direction, it wasn’t wrong. The Teens had given way to twenties. This hive was in full emergence now for sure. Fucking dino plants were swarming and the ceiling was failing even worse than before. Why? Because the fucking anti’s were firing at it with every ranged option they had. Probably because part of me was there. So I split another section to help with the roof while the rest of me re-engaged.

  “You’re back you crazy bastard! Is it dead?” Bomberman shouted at the top of his lungs to be heard over all the outgoing fire as most of me charged past the defense line directly into the wall of angry plants. I had left enough of me to create a miniature, childlike, version of my street form to communicate as the threat seems to have lowered a bit with the huge mutant gone.

  “First, I prefer mentally hilarious. Secondly, Yes. I think. I mean the jamming hasn’t really gone down much. I’m still communicating with myself via direct link and laser communications.” I shrugged at him as the small part of me accepted a plasma caster dropped from the ceiling support assigned version of me, before adding a meager amount to the volume of fire. Raising my voice from simply shouting to be heard by Bomberman I raised it inhumanly so that everyone could hear me. “That said, due to the Jamming, I’m betting there’s something else lurking around here. My sensors keep pinging something incredibly fast using stealth. Besides, the ceiling is not going to hold without more attention. We should fall back.”

  “YES!” The shout from Gravitas was enough to carry even from her natural vocal cords.

  “I’ll hold them, retreat in an orderly fashion providing cover as you go!” My small sized avatar’s voice continued at eldritch levels without change as I gestured for the others to follow the tween sized mini me who promptly turned and started running back to one of the pillars. Where she took position to provide cover fire.

  Next came Gravitas, who seeing the idea did the same, shifting her pontoons out around either edge of her chosen pillar and using the gun cameras to aim. Next Bomberman rolled back, heading even further before taking up position. He just used his dog as a defensive position, since it had a heavy shield that it could fire through and defend him with. That let him set his ass down right between the next further set of pillars with unobstructed sightlines.

  “Go, now!” Pillar me trumpeted at Drag-On who was last in line. Bits of still cracking ceiling were falling all around the region now.

  Pillar support version me simply didn’t have enough mass to hold it up, prevent further damage and repair all at the same time. So as soon as Drag-On was out from under the hundreds of tons of breaking concrete it stopped trying to prevent the collapse but instead tried to control it. That worked much better.

  Sadly I couldn’t regulate the collapse well enough to cut off the incoming models that were still swarming the still growing combat body. Which was not enough to stop them entirely. So a not insignificant portion got through before Pillar me started deliberately collapsing the ceiling. There was no stopping it, so directing it and trying to keep it from taking out more of the pillars was the plan. Retreating from there the Pillar version of me went to the next most broken pillar and shored it up for the collapse, attempting to break the concrete in such a way as to firebreak the cracks from going too far as it rushed oozily across the ceiling.

  Combat me abandoned the fight, surging up to the ceiling to help on the other side. After all things were coming down too fast for much of the currently late teen, early twenties model antithesis to get too far before the whole thing was blocked off in that area. With the ceiling a great amount of city works came crashing down into the spillway. Followed closely by a continuous flow of unsavory semi liquid. We must have been directly under one of the city wastewater plants as black water flowed into the spillway.

  “Oh that’s gross.” My enhanced sensors, even in my mini body, could pick up Gravitas comment as she covered her nose and mouth.

  “They’ll come around! Fall back further!”Mini me turned and ran past where Bomberman and Drag-On had set up their fighting position.

  I didn’t stop, instead falling into a pile of goop I began to use the local concrete to make new pillboxes to fight from. Even as the former Model Thirteen slayer caught up, having finished eating what it could. We re-merged and got the pillboxes done in short order, making sure there was one big enough for Drag-On and their Dragon.

  During that rapid build cycle Combat me and Pillar me linked via laser with the newly combined defensive structure me, it had lost about twelve percent of its mass in the collapse due to miss calculation on the crack pattern. Fully acceptable losses. The forward most iteration of ourselves also sent real time tactical data of the mass of antithesis that were even then fording through the rocks and literal shit to get to us.

  Bomberman wasn’t idle as I worked. Even as the forward placed pair of iterations reinforced the ceiling there he was busy dropping a new minefield, a new option on his huge dog was able to sit down and ‘poop’ out self deploying mines. It was pooping as fast as it could. He summoned a crate of them and quickly proceeded to help drop more.

  Even as Bomberman worked Gravitas rushed back to her pillbox, obviously in conversation with her AI as she all but dove into the protective defensive structure. Drag-On only seconds behind into theirs, obviously doing the same thing.

  I was thankful I didn’t have a heart anymore. Because what happened next may just have given me a heart attack. I don’t like spiders. This thing was so much worse. The fact that it appeared out of fucking nowhere and bit Bombermans dog in half before anybody knew what was going on, just made it worse yet.