[Did you just…. Kill all of those Anti by yourself. Like it was easy?] I couldn’t tell if Gravitas was incredulous or upset. Humans are hard.

  [Uhhh… no? Bomberman killed most of the Thirteens?] I owned my confusion. [You guy’s softened them up. I didn’t do much.]

  [Actually I think she was talking about how you just stomped all but one of the Twenty Threes. Single handedly. Well. several of you did it, but… you know what I mean!] Bomberman definitely had amusement in his tone, but his body language indicated exasperation?

  [Oh. I’ve been doing combat sims between psych appointments. Can’t sit with the AI psychologist all day every day. I’d go mad. So we worked out a few counters for stuff like this. I still can’t do much against some of the greater stuff, but I’m decent up to the mid twenties.]

  [Children, the defenders are dealt with. We should retreat before it decides to get more serious.] Drag-On turned and started back for the shore, I joined him without question, dragging my meal with me.

  After a few moments the other two joined us as we retreated onto shore. Two other me’s were there cleaning up the spatter on the concrete. I directed all of me to finish off all the corpses and goop we could while retreating further down river. With the eleven I had made at this point it wasn’t hard. I managed three more for a solid fourteen. We finally stopped half a kilometer away from the lake.

  “So. That was an extreme reaction. Whatevers down there knows we know it’s there. How will it react?” Bomberman poked at the added bubble attached to the butt of his Dog. “Also, did you have to make it so dumb looking?”

  “Make your own” Gravitas snorted in return before turning to Drag-On “How long until Depth Charge arrives? I fully expect that Oggy can manage without us on most of the small stuff. But if it had that kind of tripwire, what kind of actual defenses does it have?”

  “Less than an hour? I sent an update and he responded with a message that he would expedite. He’s… not a man of many words.” Drag-On sighed and shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, so we should be ready here in case they decide to come nosing around.”

  “I have a class one area denial catalog, it’s mostly fortifications.” I raised a tentacle to volunteer.

  “I have area denial with exotic bombs?”

  “We all know you use exotic explosives, Bomberman.” Gravitas rolled her eyes and made an inviting gesture with her hand. “But we can’t blow this place up without risking it coming down on our heads.”

  “I said exotic bombs. Not explosives Gravitas.” He shook his head, the pair acted like they were an old married couple. “I can use stuff that doesn’t explode. In fact most of my stuff doesn't explode.”

  “Thermite?” I asked hopefully. “War crimes? Can we has War Crimes?”

  “Yes we can have war crimes. Just not up here.” Drag-On patted one of my forms lovingly. “The plate uses supports in the lake, we don’t want to bring them down on us. But between them it’s fine.”

  All of my bodies made limbs to wave in the air and all my forms let out a quiet, “yay!”

  “Surprised you didn’t go all out on that one.” Bomberman chuckled and patted one of my forms on the side.

  “Eh. Noise could cause problems. Otherwise I would probably blow your ears out.” All my bodies extruded faces which all grinned broadly. “Imagine a fog horn for a lighthouse, only louder and in my voice. I’m keeping my voice down as it is.”

  “Which we appreciate darling. I love the nuance you’ve added. Very creepy.” Drag-On leaned against the nearest me and stroked the side, obviously showing approval. They seemed to get the idea that I’m kind of, deficient, when it comes to interactions with people right now.

  “I do appreciate everyone's attempt to be obvious with their emotional responses. I was not doing well before, but I am better.”Prime me shifted to a more central position, dispersing the others to begin setting up defensive formations, then camouflage themselves among the pillars. “But right now is not the time to chat is it? As much as it pains me to be serious, I left sensors behind and there are currently a number of double digits on their way. Bomberman, please add some regenerating mines of at least class two.”

  “On it. Nice work with the defensive formations.” He jumped over and started work, spiking mine points down in an offset grid between pillars.

  “Nothing that explodes!” Gravitas shifted to the side to be behind one of the fortifications.

  “Yes mother!” Bomberman flipped her off as he continued placing mine spikes.

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  “Get a room you two.” I chuckled darkly as Prime me settled down behind another of the fortifications, extruding two dozen plasma cannon muzzles. “Thirty seconds.”

  I opened a private channel to Gravitas. {Hey, Alex. You know you can grab more units right? A Naval unit like a battleship would have a fleet with it. Maybe a couple gunships, a missile boat or two. Separate drones that can do submissions, or simply provide extra weapons?}

  She looked over at me thoughtfully for a moment. {Good point, but where did this come from?}

  {You… ah… weren’t doing so well against the twenty three. Lacking firepower.} I took a moment to sort out my thoughts and try and formulate a way to say what I wanted without being insulting. Keeping half my mind on the incoming wave, which was in sight, so I opened fire. {You need to diversify to keep up. Bomberman had the same problem when we first met. He was stuck on the initial concept and… well when it was pointed out that mortars and missiles are technically bombs too he opened up a whole new world of hurt.}

  She was concentrating too much on dealing with the wave to respond. Which was fair since they were pushing through with an ablative armor of single digits like Threes and Fours, arrayed in front of a whole lot of Teens. Not that it mattered as Drag-On had their dragon breathe a green mist into the midst of the enemy, causing way more than I expected to start to melt. Literally melt, like acid, but my own sensors were telling me it was some esoteric defoliant.

  {You know the same idea applies to you, right? Your micro scouts are handy, but rather fragile. They also don’t last long. After you left to come down here they had maybe twenty minutes before their batteries died out. Kinda over committing to the plague aspect maybe?} She looked over at me with a smug smile even as two new sub drones appeared. Each about half the size of her pontoons, both covered in missile hatches fit for munitions twice the size of the rockets on her fighters.

  <>She’s got a point. Perhaps adding a larger drone size might be a good place to start?

  {Ravens…. A Plague of ravens.} That comment from me got a hearty chortle from Gravitas, at this point we weren’t really doing much as the antithesis melted away. Switching to a private channel with my AI. {Naylle, is good, yes?}

  <>An intriguing Idea. Ravens would work or perhaps a Murder of Crows? I’ve come up with designs for both?

  {Are they independently useful? Does each have a purpose?}

  <>Yes. They can? Perhaps one for observation, the other as directable explosive suicide drones?

  {Plague for spy, Murder for murder! Blood for the blood god! Skulls for his throne!} If I breathed, I'd be hyperventilating. I took a moment to get myself back under control before slowing back down to normal people's time dilation. Switching back to Gravitas sub channel even as I directed my others to gather what they could of material from the dead. {Yes. That is good. I can put more sensors on something the size of a Raven. Plus I can use Crows as suicide bombers. Good insight. Thank you for reminding me that I am in need of growth too.}

  {Are you okay? You sound… strained?}

  {Almost lost it for a moment there. I’m fine.} forming a hand I waved at her, trying to be placating. {I am still kinda insane. It got much worse when I could pause and sit for a while, then better over time. I still have incidents ‘tho. No big deal. Naylle rides herd on this particular bag of cats.}

  I switched back to general comms. [So micro drones are nice and all, but I’m going to make some bird type scouts and send them in to gather more information.] As I spoke, the me’s eating started producing Ravens and Crows by the dozen.

  [You know Oggy, you’ve been fighting a lot smarter since you came back.] Bomberman kept his voice carefully neutral, almost thoughtful.

  [Eh? Well, I guess? My Therapist says that my berserk rages were the first signs of my incipient insanity. I spent a little time in a padded room so I can’t help but agree. That said, there are a rather lot of me. The one you’re speaking to is just the one assigned to interaction. It's why I can have a conversation, be completely nubbins but still do things calmly and efficiently all at the same time. I’m not exactly plural since we all sync up constantly, having one memory but different jobs. Also, there’s another wave coming. Drag-On would you be a dear and do that acid breath stuff again?]

  [Of course sweety.] They shifted to be ready when the wave arrived. My other selves went back to pillars to enter stealth and hide while defending the pillars. [Have you got your scout network out far?]

  [Micro drones are all over, I just finished covering everything over the water above the lake before we got attacked. Ravens are spreading out for better sensor coverage. As far as I can tell we have the hives undivided attention. I’ll let you know if that changes.] A sub mind split off a mass of myself and shifted into my street form. She then skipped over between cover and made her way to Gravitas. [Aaaannnndddd there goes my self monitoring the drones.]

  “I got bored,” Me 2 said absently. “You can’t blame me for wanting to do something more engaging can we?”

  Weapon emplacement me just focused all of my optics on the new incoming horde instead of pandering to one of my split personalities' childish antics. Regardless of the fact that it was, in fact, me doing it the whole time. At least one of us had to be an adult in this situation. [There are aquatic models coming up this time. Do you have any venom that will work in water Drag-On?]

  [I… do. I even have one that will break down after a while so as to be non toxic!] They raised a finger to punctuate their eagerness before going to work at something built into the riding spot on the dragon's neck.

  [Uhhh… shit. Something fucking huge is stirring the muck. I can’t see it because water and silt everywhere.] All of me visible had stiffened and turned optics of varying degrees down in the direction of the lake. [I think the hive is fully awake now.]

  [That is not good.] Bomberman was interrupted from adding to that as the second wave started charging from where it had beached itself. Offloading from one of those fucked up double decker bus looking bastards I fought before coming down the first time.

  I wasn’t the only one who focused fire on that thing, everyone else leaving the incoming horde for Drag-On’s melty breath. Even the human form me, shifted down to a six armed fucked up teddy bear looking form, blue with antennae and all, extruded four Burninators and added to the fire.

  It was here my dumb brain had a genius idea. Provided, that is, you were insane like me.