“You’re a lot cooler about this than I thought,” Perry said, eyeing Heather as she packed up some clothes and some water, getting ready to evacuate with the rest of the civilians.

“I mean, I wanna go fight some demon-worshipping giants rampaging through Chicago. That sounds about as metal as it gets. They cut their skin off and fuse metal in its place. Mmm.”

Heather made the ‘Chef’s kiss’ motion.

Heather glanced up at the ceiling and sighed, unconsciously rubbing her stomach. “But…there’s only a month left until the finish line, and I’m not that irresponsible.

“Never said you were,” Perry said as Natalie stood on her tiptoes to put Heather’s wide-brim hat on. “I said you were cooler than I thought.”

“Damn right,” Heather said, drawing her finger along the brim of her sun-hat.

Perry shook his head and waved it off, trying not to laugh. Natalie did let out a giggle at Heather’s antics.

“There’s likely to be plenty more out there by the time you’re good to go again, trolls are notoriously difficult to kill.”

“Better be, and no spoilers on how to beat them. That’s half the fun.” Heather groused as the three of them headed for the door.

“Well, first you gotta disable their- urk!“

Natalie jabbed Perry in the ribs as they squeezed through the door, then got a high-five from Heather.

“Sorry,” Natalie whispered under her breath, nervously petting his side.

Perry tousled her hair as they stepped outside. He was way tougher than a typical human. He’d been hamming it up for their benefit.

Gotta practice my dad jokes sometime.

The streets themselves were flooded with hushed activity and carefully shielded lights as people moved urgently to the east in the fading twilight. Once they got the civilians to the 57, then they could follow the highway all the way northeast, dropping them off nearly at the foot of City Hall, which Perry had worked some heavy defenses into.

It was the last line of defense, though, and something Perry would rather avoid needing.

There was a distant sound of gunfire, followed by a bestial roar, rendered faint from sheer distance.

A terrified murmur spread through the tightly clustered civilians.

“Keep moving!” Perry’s Blue lightning captain whisper-shouted, motioning for the people to keep marching. “Walk.”

Stampedes were to be avoided. At least their average pace was fairly good, as most people unable to keep up the pace had already died of starvation before Perry had arrived in Chicago, so they weren’t going to get trampled or left behind here and now.

Silver linings.

They hadn’t been able to convince everyone that there was an attack coming, but they had done what they could, and the battle area had been largely emptied of civilians.

“I think that’s our cue,” Perry said, turning his head to listen more closely to the sounds of battle rapidly growing in the distance.

“Sounds like it,” Natalie said, nodding. She plucked her helmet off her belt hook and slipped it over her face.

Perry felt minute shifts in the surrounding dimensional energy as the helmet sealed itself to her suit before she flew straight up into the sky.

It wasn’t real flight, more like an invisible lifeline connecting her to boomer, that the mech could use to reel her in at a moment’s notice.

The twenty-foot mech was sititng on top of a nearby building, providing overwatch for them.

Boomer’s cockpit opened just wide enough to allow the tiny tinker to pass through, then slammed shut, sealing Natalie inside the nearly impervious machine.

The bot’s spiderlike maglev limbs bounced once, seemingly out of sheer excitement before the entire machine took flight, heading for the battlefield.

When Perry glanced back down, Heather was standing right in front of him. She engulfed him an an awkward hug, leaning forward so as not to squish her passenger.

“Make sure Nat doesn’t get hurt, alright?” Heather said into his ear.

“Absolutely.” Perry said, squeezing his friend once before she backed away, joining the power-walking crowd marching as fast as they could away from the battlefield.

Heather’s ghost friend phased out of her body as she turned, staying in place while Heather turned. Anya shot Perry a sloppy salute before rejoining Heather, disappearing back inside the redhead.

She really is living up to the ‘Wraith’ name, Perry thought before stepping into his suit and blasting off to join Hardcase.

Perry switched over to Heather’s channel as he arrived beside her, landing atop a six-story building above the mayhem taking place on the street below. Perry’s squads were facing off against several thousand trolls, who had spread across a dozen streets, tearing through the nearby buildings for fresh meat.

Some of them even found some.

A handful of people too stubborn to leave their homes until face to face with a three ton maneater sprinted out from their respective hiding places, invariably snatched up by a nearby troll and bitten in half.

Perry’s eye twitched.

They’ve got the same number of fighters as we do.

“I’ll mark ‘em, you shoot,” Perry said, deciding to whittle them down from the sky. At least at first.

“Roger,” Nat said, Boomer’s eight maglev limbs combining in front of his hovering body to create a massive singular canon that dwarfed any of the mech’s sidearms.

PPP.EXE

The Pernicious Prison shot down and wrapped up a troll, pacifying it. A moment later, a wave of concussive force turned the creature into a smear on the cracked pavement. The sticky black webbing shook off the gristly wreckage of its last victim and searched for its next.

Next.

Next.

Next.

Perry and Nat fell into a rhythm, with him sucking the life out of them before Nat pasted them with the cannon.

At this rate…Perry did the math. it’d take us three hours to clean all of ‘em up.

That was acceptable, since Perry knew something would change long before then. Either they would break and run, and he and Hardcase would go mop them up, or they would make a play that changed the terms of the battle.

Just gotta keep an eye open for this Karth the Great fellow. I’ve got a disintegration crystal for him with Mass Driver’s name on it.

The trolls who were more on the ball were a bit harder to pin down with the Pernicious Prison, and Perry could only assume that their leader would be very on the ball. From what he’d seen so far, Perry was pretty sure that they didn’t elect their leaders based on their experience and leadership skills. If anything, it was probably the biggest, fastest, meanest troll they had.

And he’s probably pretty smart.

***Karth the Great***

That’s a problem. Karth thought, eyes narrowing under the massive crown of brightly colored feathers as he watched the human artillery make short work of individual trolls in combination with the black life-draining stuff he’d seen them use on Gorblock.

At this rate, they would kill half his army by the time they’d filled their bellies and taken some snacks for the road.

Not that I care about losing half of my warriors. There’s twice that many young trolls eager to make the pact with Gna’kis. It’s the human’s mobility that bothers me. Karth thought, itching the skin around his divine blessing.

With that level of mobility, they can easily follow us and finish the second half off while we’re marching back home, and there’s nothing we ccould do about it. They have no reason to come down and risk combat when they could just keep picking us off from up there indefinitely. They know it, I know it.

Karth eyeballed the pitch-black armor and the egg-shaped artifact visiting death on his minions and then over to a nearby towering building made for the little people.

Even to a giant like him, it was massive, towering far higher than the humans were hovering.

Hmm…

“Kob,”

“Eh?” the warrior nearby him grunted.

“You are Karth the great now. Congratulations. Advance down that path.” He pointed at the path that led past the tower while offering Kob the leader hat.

“’bout time,” Kob said, snatching the hat out of his hand and donning it.

“Remember, down that path.” Karth said, pointing.

“Pfft,” Kob smacked Karth’s hand down. “Kob The Great doesn’t heed the words of-“

Karth brought his divine blessing to bear, and Kob wilted to the ground, his eyes bleeding as the strength left his body.

“What was that?” Karth asked.

“Kob the great…advance that way.”

“Excellent.” Karth said before ducking low and scrambling toward the human’s tower, crawling under and around his warriors to make sure the humans didn’t spot him.

Entering was a bit of a pain, because the doors were about the height of his knee. Once inside, found a main room big enough to stand in, but there was no obvious way to go up.

Laying down on his stomach, Karth checked all the doors until he found one that had a shaft the led straight up, seemingly all the way to the top of the building.

Why would humans climb all the way to the top of the building? I know they’re basically yipping monkey-meat, but you’d think there’d be an easier way. Well, I guess they’re not as smart as I thought.

Karth squeezed himself into the claustrophobic confines of the stone shaft, then began the task of climbing it.

Five tassels says they don’t see this coming.

***Paradox***

Partway through their squishing of individual trolls, Perry spotted a brightly colored headdress that seemed to be made from feathers that’d been dyed in neon colors.

The troll wearing it was seemingly directing the others, shoving other trolls, shouting in their faces, and gesturing emphatically.

The other trolls were doing as they were told. Not quickly or with anything resembling discipline, but they were doing it.

Are you Karth The Great? Perry thought to himself.

He send his spell after the headdress wearer, and the trolls around him intercepted, grabbing the spell and using their insane strength to tear the inky black strands apart. The entire time they did so, they were being drained hard enough to turn a normal human into a mummy, but it didn’t seem to bother them much.

After it’d taken a significant amount of damage, Paradox’s Pernicious Prison disintegrated on its own. The first time it’d ever done that.

Damn.

Perry considered his options. He’d like to kill ‘headdress guy’ without using his Disintegrate spell, in case this was a ruse. Maybe he could switch up the order of operations and have Hardcase fire first to slow down their reaction time.

PPP.EXE

(4/6 remaining)

“You see the one with the feathers?” Paradox asked, assuming control of the new spell.

“Yep,” Hardcase replied.

“Can you set to wide-angle and squish everyone around him?” Perry asked, twisting the Pernicious Prison into a spear.

“Yeah, but it probably won’t kill them.”

“Just need to buy some time,” Perry said.

“Roger.”

The massive cannon levitating in front of Hardcase’s cockpit began to hum with power. Perry could see reality warping slightly around the maglev arms that had combined to form her primary weapon.

Then it fired.

No sound emerged from the cannon itself, but a loud crack emanated from the thirty foot radius circle where the pavement had been compressed six inches deeper. It appeared that some massive hoofed animal had stomped on the Trolls.

“I don’t care how many times you ask me, I am not calling that move ‘Donkey Punch’.” Hardcase said as the cannon began recharging.

“But it’s so fitting!” Perry said, shooting out the Pernicious prison and spearing the potential ‘Karth The Great’ with it before his supporters could regain their footing, reeling him up into the sky where they had the advantage.

“Look ou-“

BOOM!

Perry whipped his head around and spotted Boomer dropping his canon and jetting away from the detached limbs at full speed as a troll rode the cannon towards the ground. The eggshell white of Boomer’s limbs were turning rust-red.

Are we raining trolls now? Perry thought, glancing up at the nearby skyscraper. It had a troll-sized hole in the window where the creature had leapt onto them from above.

Smart or suicidal?

Perry felt a wave of magic wash over him, prompting him to look down just in time to see the troll screaming toward him at the speed of a bullet, the cannon falling away behind it.

It launched itself!? HOW?

Perry didn’t have time to question it, as the troll was already upon him.