Even as acid and venom were sprayed down on us by the kizmets; as the many claws and teeth fell in to strike, Hickory was a strong lead to follow. More than through just our surprise attack and his tenacity, there had been given to us a momentary upper hand by one simple fact.

Daniel had blown the Master of Many into a cloud of bloody chunks.

And so, as the three of us charged forward, the warped animals became confused. One enormous cat-like Kizmet even turned and attacked its allies, completely lost without its master. Only, I knew that this state wouldn’t last long.

We managed to duck into the hotel lobby just as I heard the explosion behind us.

It was well known that Nemesis was in possession of one of the best support Types in the world. I caught sight of his handiwork as I was slashing back at an ankle-biting creature, and I saw her arise from the flames. The Master of Many had completely re-spawned from her own immolated corpse.

Totally unkillable.

“You’ve got to give me a break,” Daniel complained. “You guys saw me kill her, right?”

I nodded, hastily chain-stabbing a ten-foot snake as we kept moving. “The good news is, she has a finite amount of Kizmets under her control. I’m sure if we give it a little while the Martians will whittle them down.”

“It sure would be nice to know how the battle is going, boss,” Daniel asked me, looking for some encouragement.

“Fuck that!” Hickory spat, taking his own turn to rend through an enormous, six-tusked boar with his bare hands. “That has got fuck-all to do with how we conduct ourselves! Keep moving!”

There was no time to argue, and frankly I agreed. We needed to be fighting just as hard, no matter the hope or the odds.

Once we’d moved from the hotel lobby and into its back-room Hickory promptly made a hole through the wall to let us into the alley. We only lost a little momentum, but the bigger Kizmets were simply waiting for us on the other side, perched above. They were salivating at their meal already.

The maw which swept down to scoop me up came on a plume of rancid breath. I barely stopped the wall of teeth by stabbing for its eyes with my added appendages, but there were more beasts quickly approaching behind us. We would be swamped by sheer numbers in seconds.

Hickory was getting winded, I could tell, but he still managed to make one last hole for us to escape by. We came out then into the storage room of some kind of clothing shop, filled with mannequins and moldy apparel.

Before I could even react, then, a Martian sprung out from one of the piles and wrapped himself around my head and torso, quickly giving me a wrench that, if not for my superior biology, would have torn my head clean off. His grapple strength was terrifying.

I used the lights on my chest to shout at him. “Friendly!” He quickly realized his error, jumping off me, and getting a good look at us by standing upright. They could do it if they needed to, but it was a strange sight. Hickory just held the backline while I told this soldier the situation. “There’s an unkillable beast master sending her pets after us. We run and fight at the same time. That's our strategy. You can join us if you like.”

“I would be honored,” he replied in a flash. "All my comrades are dead."

In the heat of battle we said nothing more. We simply fell into formation, sprinting through the shop looking for more routes to confound them by. After all, the Master of Many did not have perfect control, and her pets were still animals. Many lacked intelligence and would not stay focused on us with so much prey around on the field.

I was constantly catching glimpses of secondary fights going on in the corner of my eyes. Through the main lobby of the shop, I could see out the glass front dozens of Martians brutally dissembling one of the larger Kizmets. Some were intentionally getting swallowed so that they could tear their way out from the inside.

It was beautiful. I wanted to join them, but we weren’t out of the woods yet. There came a groaning from the structure and, while we ran, we veered right to avoid what came down through the paneling.

An enormous otter-like Kizmet with glowing red eyes had used its weight to break through the ceiling and land in front of us. Its peculiar cunning was obvious as it jumped to block our exit, staring us down with an unnatural hiss. The eyes began to glow brighter next, and I ducked to the side to draw its attention off Daniel for what I knew was about to come.

From its gaze came a white-hot beam of energy that cut through everything in its path. Clothes combusted behind us and mannequins were sent melting to the floor, all while we scrambled for cover. Thankfully, the thing missed by a mile.

Too bright to see, I thought, letting out a mangled smile. It was a drawback I’d heard of before with laser-vision. If it wasn’t also paired with a kind of super-sight, there was nothing it could do but guess at where to blast once the light became blinding.

Unfortunately for us, though, it had a relatively short cooldown time.

As soon as the laser had ended, the Kizmet looked around for us again, and immediately its eyes lit up for a second strike. There was just a second between the first hint of a glow and the devastating beam that came next, barely enough for me to escape. But I had to get creative. It expected a dive for the ground. Instead, I used my seven remaining spider-legs to launch myself straight upward and into the ceiling. There, I could move above the paneling.

Déjà vu, I laughed.

The fight was over now, as far as I was concerned. The instant I fell down from above and began serially stabbing into the Kizmet’s back, I knew I had this cinched. It reared back and screamed, pounding me briefly against the ceiling, but I could easily keep myself latched on.

At last when the creature was limp, I made sure Daniel, Hickory, and our Martian friend were okay, and we moved on as fast as possible to avoid the smaller demons pouring out from behind. We went out of the glass front to join the crowd I had seen earlier, then. It was high time we started moving in a pack and this was our chance.

With so many allies, all of us could utilize our strengths more effectively. The Martians proved incredibly capable against the majority of the Kizmets coming over the rooftops and out of the alleys to attack us, but those which they couldn’t handle were our purview, and it was a great help for both of us, as we couldn’t handle the numbers alone.

We were finally no longer running but holding our ground proudly in the street. No doubt it would attract attention soon, but we dealt with our problems one at a time. We kept in a loose formation so as to avoid any area of effect damage.

One such attacker came towering from up the street. A two-story-tall gorilla whose mouth burned with white phosphorous, spewing it at random over the battleground. The Martians were fast to storm it, but it killed them on contact. For sitting on its shoulder was a parasite. An enormous, blood gorged tick that cast an almost imperceptible energy field over the ape. It killed everything it touched.

“Daniel!” I drew his attention. You might think that was unnecessary, but it would be an under-estimation of just how chaotic the battle was becoming. There were giants at every turn. Our focus was stretched to the limit.

Still, he managed to see what I was pointing at and blew the thing back. It did not kill it, but it rendered a nice, bubbling crater into its lower abdomen, doubling the Kizmet over in pain.

While I was distracted, a beetle bit a chunk out of my leg with its searing hot pincers, and I found myself screaming. The sound caught me by surprise, hearing myself in such a panic. I’d been so in control with Creep's help. To feel my foot almost torn off now, I had to shock myself back into fighting, remembering that this body was now who I was.

“Activate your analgesics!” a nearby Martian shouted at me.

I was confused, he could tell by my silence. But he couldn’t explain further. He had to get back to fighting.

I shook my head and felt around for any stranger functions hiding in my body that I was only peripherally aware of. If someone went and told you that you had a hidden ability you’d never heard of, how would you go about finding it?

I tried clenching my mind. I couldn’t explain it, but I immediately felt the effect. Creep had done well to make the action instinctual, like swatting at a fly that came to close to the face. Only once I could ignore the poisoned agony could I regain my ability to fight, then. And I skewered the Beetle.

Daniel had dished out three more shots while I was looking away, bringing my attention back as the titanic ape came crashing down on the ground, less than a block away now. It crawled for a moment before it gave in to death’s embrace, and then I began to notice something.

The Kizmets were thinning out. The big ones were not showing up as often, and it was doubtful with how many thousands of Martians that were in the city that we were the only ones fighting the Master of Many now. She would be running dry.

Just then, my eye caught something concerning. Creep had played havoc with the language centers of my brain, overlapping them with the visual. And so sorting out this novel form of speech was like like pulling an image out of static. Yet, I caught the warning in time.

Foci was still in the battle, and he flashed with all his might in the cloudy, dark sky above. He did it to warn us of what was about to happen, and I blessed the man for living this long.

“Clear the area!” I bellowed. “Major strike coming!”

In all the chaos, I lost sight of Daniel and Hickory. I was swept along with a group of Martians up one of the northward streets, going as fast as we all could. Behind me, I could practically feel the pressure on the air increasing.

I didn’t understand what Seraph had done, but it was another one of their killer drones that destroyed the area, zooming down to kamikaze. All at once, space became solidly black. Like a cloud had fallen over the city.

It did not extend to cover us, stopping just shy behind. But it solidified completely to a hard and black obsidian substance, encasing anyone unlucky enough not to escape inside. There, they would suffocate.

A quiet fell over the battlefield in the wake of the explosion, and I breathed deeply under the cover of an awning where I and the Martians gathered. A choice faced me, I realized. As I looked around, there was one bipedal Martian in a suite, but I was the only thing vaguely resembling a human.

Should I go back to search for them? I don’t even know if they survived, I thought, eyeing the jagged black rock. Do I really want to go this alone?

I shook my head. I wasn't truly alone. I had the Martians.

I had to keep fighting northward, and I could only hope to run across my older friends again. I couldn’t justify leaving my present allies behind just to go and search for Hickory and Daniel, not with how bad the fight was getting. Besides, I was sure they would have their own contingent of Martians, just like me. I was sure they would be alright.

Looks like it's just me and a bunch of aliens against the world.