“So, who exactly are we looking for?” I asked as soon as Skyler and I slipped into her car.

  {Arty: Two fairly new samurai, Pen-Gwen and Woofer. They were eliminating a group of antithesis which had broken away from the main horde.}

  “Pen-Gwen and Woofer? Seriously?” Skyler scoffed as she smoothly maneuvered her car out of the garage. As soon as we were clear of the doors, she accelerated hard towards the eastern walls of the city.

  {Athy: Unfortunate monikers, but apt. Pen-Gwen has a backpack which creates self-propelled, antithesis-seeking explosives, and Woofer has several robotic canines.}

  “And are Gwen’s bombs in the shape of penguins?” I asked suspiciously.

  {Arty: Indeed. It is actually a highly effective shape. They have a wheel in the stomach to propel them around on land, and flippers to propel them through the water.}

  “Still seems like a strange choice to me,” I muttered.

  Skyler smacked me on the shoulder. “Hey, some samurai love their gimmicks! Don’t judge. They were chosen the same way we were, so they deserve our respect!”

  I threw up my hands in surrender. “Alright, point made. Still, I wonder how they got those names? Not exactly the most flattering.”

  “Probably the same way we did, receiving them from an established samurai,” Skyler replied.

  “Then remind me to thank Grey for taking the time to think about ours,” I muttered before pulling up the map.

  It didn’t look like the situation had changed much in the last five minutes, so I pulled up the location of the SOS. From the default view, I’d thought they’d been pretty close to the main horde, but upon zooming in, I realized they were still several kilometers away. That certainly brought things into perspective… The main group of antithesis must have extended dozens of kilometers in every direction, slowly devouring everything in their way, as they slowly moved closer to the city.

  The area where the pair disappeared had a couple antithesis signatures, but not that many. With a little luck, Skyler and I could blitz our way in, search the area, and find the missing pair before something happened to them.

  As long as we didn’t run into anything like the Twenty-One in the area, and the horde didn’t decide to migrate south before we were done. Simple.

  I guess I had been quiet for quite a while, examining the map, because Skyler bumped me with her elbow. “Something on your mind?”

  “I was just examining the area,” I explained. “I don’t think we’ll have any issues getting in, but we’ll be awfully close to the main antithesis forces if something goes wrong. We need to move fast.”

  “Were you able to identify anywhere the pair might be hiding?”

  I shook my head, “There were some buildings around their last known location, but I couldn’t make anything out.”

  As we started closing in on the location, I noticed a mobile command center surrounded by a ton of heavy artillery. Even at cruising altitude, I swear I could feel the vibrations in the air every time one of those emplacements fired. “Those are some pretty impressive guns,” I muttered.

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  “Yeah, but I don’t think they’re going to be enough,” Skyler replied quietly.

  Confused, I glanced up and followed her gaze. For a second, I thought that she was just looking at a forest, or a mass of scrub brush, but then I realized it was moving. It was all antithesis.

  We were just skirting the southern side of the mob, so we couldn’t even see the entire swarm. It filled the area, stretching out to the horizon. It looked like they were trying to move west, but the frontline was constantly getting ripped apart by the constant artillery bombardment. Enough to slow them down, but not to stop them.

  “We should probably hurry,” I said quietly.

  “No shit,” Skyler replied, turning the car slightly further to the south. We skimmed the trees for another minute or so until we spotted a small hamlet, half hidden by the surrounding hills and forests.

  I had to double-check the map. “They’re in there somewhere, but so are the antithesis. Let’s be careful.” I muttered.

  Skyler nodded and maneuvered the car towards the tiny main street. Even before we landed, the antithesis started flooding into the street to meet us.

  I unclipped my belt and jumped from the still floating car, drawing Rending Wave and bringing it through a Model Three that was mid-jump before I even hit the ground. I ducked under a Model Four’s tentacle before severing the offending limb and sprinting towards the rest of the horde.

  Coming in low, I brought my blade straight through the Four’s body, sweeping the blade wide to catch the Three next to it. As soon as my blade reached the apex of its swing, I spun back in the opposite direction, bringing it back around and extending the reach and ripping through the handful of Threes I’d missed with the first strike.

  My shield flashed, completely negating an attack for possibly the first time. Glancing back, I saw a small group of fives sitting just inside a small corner store across the street, just pepering me with quills. Skyler's drones fired before I could sprint away to deal with them.

  The hologram-topped drones absolutely shredded the storefront with their machine guns, ripping apart antithesis and display shelves until there was nothing left. Lala’s hologram yawned at the victory before curling up on top of her ride.

  I didn’t have time to celebrate the victory as another group, this one led by a Six burst out of the house closest to me. The creature probably thought that the element of surprise would be enough to carry the day. It was dead wrong.

  I twirled, whipping my blade around and beheading the beast before it could strike. Stepping past its corpse, I entered the hole it had ripped in the building taking the fight to the antithesis beyond. The small group of Threes and Fours beyond didn’t last long after that.

  When I re-emerged from the hole a couple seconds later, the street was already quiet. Skyler’s scout drones were scattering into the surrounding buildings, and Skyler herself was climbing out of the car. “Clear?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I replied as I made my way back towards her.

  Now that I wasn't fighting for my life, I took a moment to glance around. The tiny village had seen better days. Most of the buildings were a little run down, and the sign over the corner store was so faded I could barely make it out; Everson Market.

  Based upon the number of foundations and rundown buildings in the area, this had once been a decent sized town, but like smaller settlements, it was slowly abandoned after the antithesis started appearing. The population dwindled until all that was left were a dozen or so stubborn holdouts defending their homesteads. They were probably still here right up until the global incursion hit.

  Hopefully they did the smart thing and left when the alarms started going off, instead of making a last stand.

  “Any sign of our missing samurai?” I asked quietly as I stepped up next to Skyler. She was already concentrating, directing her drones around, and I didn’t want to disturb her too much.

  “There are clear signs of combat. Dead antithesis and blast craters spread around the area, but they’re over quite a wide area. Those explosives must be quite mobile; some of the explosions appear to be fairly deep in the woods. That being said, I don’t see any sign of…” Skyler paused. “No wait, I found something.”

  “Our samurai?”

  “No… A metal dog,” Skyler muttered before blinking rapidly, disconnecting from her drones, and looking my way. “It’s inactive, but not that far away. Shall we take a look?”

  “Absolutely, lead the way,” I replied.

  Skyler nodded. Hefting her rifle, and with her combat drones hovering around her like ducklings, she started jogging further into town.

  After fifty meters, the road turned and headed down towards a river. The bridge was in bad shape, it obviously hadn’t been maintained in years, but it was still serviceable. Halfway between us and the bridge, sitting in the brush on the left side of the road, was a giant metal dog.

  And I mean giant. It had to stand close to five feet at the shoulder, covered in armor plating with a gun turret mounted to its back. Despite its intimidating appearance, the huge metal dog looked at us and wagged its metal tail so quickly that it bounced the dog’s back end back and forth and barked happily. ‘Woof!’

  I leaned closer to Skyler. “Is it safe?” I whispered.

  “How am I supposed to know that? All I did was find the thing. It hasn’t attacked us, or my drones, so that’s something,” she muttered before standing up straight and raising her voice. “Hey boy, can you take us back to your master?”

  The robot dog cocked its head to the left for a moment, like it was thinking, then took off back into the brush, rushing back towards another part of the village.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes.”

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