Any two plasma beams interacting didn’t combine within fifty meters. Instead they bounced. The documentation would have you believe that would be because of interacting magnetic containment fields. I think it’s just magnet magic. But It gave me the most curious idea. And as a good little homicidal maniac I didn’t ask permission.

  I quickly reformatted my array of Burninators in such a way as to focus them into a single point, then forced the magnetic waldos to merge the beams instead of bouncing them.

  [Uh Oh…. My bad.] I stared down the hole in everything in front of me. The plasma beam had been short-lived before it self-destructed. A sphere approximately five meters in diameter was just gone. The temperature in the whole area went up a lot and there was a foot wide melty line through the concrete floor all the way to the lake that was slowly slagging itself. Some of it was melty, some had just turned to dust. The lake itself was boiling and steaming along the line of the shot which my furthest drones could see had melted a hole in the far wall.

  [Is it me, or did you set part of the lake on fire?]

  [Fuck. Extinguish it!!!] Bomberman quickly shifted gears, ordering up something to put out the fire with his catalogs. They were apparently bombs, go figure. He quickly loaded them into his mech dog’s mortar tubes and fired them as fast as he could.

  They exploded in a ripple across the spreading fire, blowing it out with high pressure blastwaves before it could get too far. A second wave of explosives popped and released some sort of foam over the water in a wave after the initial explosives. Leaving a huge foam floaty on the lake surface.

  [Please, sweety. Oggy my dear. Don’t do that again.] Drag-On turned a relieved, but haunted face at me. [That could have been much worse. Try not to ignite the lake. IT’s polluted and kind of flammable.]

  [Got it.] Every one of my forms slumped a little, properly showing my contrition. [My bad.]

  A scratchy deep voice came from about knee level next to Gravitas. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Shut up you blatant ripoff. Rejoin the collective jackass.” The nearest me, prime, reached out and snagged at the loose version, but ultimately left it where it stood.

  [Now now sweety. Be nice to yourself.] Drag-On tut-tutted me.

  [Sorry mom.] The honest contrite nature of the response got everyone there to give me an incredulous look, including other me’s. Drag-On just blushed and smiled at me weirdly.

  As the subject of the comment they seemed to be quite pleased. [Good girl. Now can you tell me what’s going on out there?]

  [Uhhh… Fuck. Change of plans. Ignore the original objective. Leave nothing alive.] All of me, every single one in the region, extended as many plasma weapons as possible. Aiming at the water and firing with the intent to boil it. Somewhere in the depths of my mind a very angry sounding guitar solo had started. [I have no Idea what that thing is but it’s not happy!]

  <>It seems to be a variant? Perhaps a Model Thirteen, considering if you isolate any given section it certainly seems to be a portion of one. I’m afraid I have no record of ever having encountered one of these before. The sensor views showed what looked to be a dozen thirteens all fused together at one central point, making a giant ball of hate and tentacles. But it didn’t seem to be coming at us. Instead it was mucking about on the bottom of the now steaming lake.

  [Uh… is it stuck in the water?] Bomberman seemed quite put out as nothing had happened. We had all slowly stopped firing as it wasn’t doing any good at this point.

  [I can feel the ECM from here…. It’s going to be annoying.] I sighed out of about a hundred different mouths.

  [Why’s that?] The tilt to Gravitas head just accentuated her apparent curiosity.

  [I have one memory pile. Basically every version of me is the same me, just different fingers of the same hand. Yes, I goof off and let them do odd things on occasion.] I eyeballed the one that was still standing next to her. [That said, we do that by data transfer. ECM will make that impossible. So coordination is difficult. Unless I go at it in one big mass so that we can retain continuity via direct link.]

  [So wait, is she fully a part of you, or just a finger? Why did you do that?] Gravitas stomped on the ground and puffed out her cheeks. I had to wonder if she was doing it because, or if she was doing it to help me understand.

  [I like messing with people?] I extruded my face and tried an innocent look on it.

  I received a collection of amused but annoyed looks in return from all of them, including my sub self standing next to Gravitas.

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  [Could you all please pay attention to the water?] Drag-On was decidedly keeping a cheerful attitude. It was obvious enough, even to me, that it was a mask. [We are here for a reason.]

  [And right now we’re stalling?] Bomberman shrugged in Drag-On’s general direction even as he poked at something on his mobile mortar platform dog. [Hey Oggy, can I get some mass for explosives?]

  [Sure.] One of the forward me’s gooped back to him and extruded a few bricks next to him. [That said, should we really just wait here, boil the water or maybe probe at it?]

  [Depth Charge should be here soon. Stall?] Gravitas leaned around the edge of her barrier to get a better look.

  [Yes children, we’ll stall here. If it doesn’t do anything aggressive we’ll leave it for now. It may only be a mutant thirteen but it's still larger and more powerful looking than some low end thirties.] Drag-On, ever the voice of reason, waved at us to stand down. [Oggy dear, how long will it take for you to finish cleaning up here?]

  [Uhhh… now? I mean most of it is not so useful for crafting Lesser Shoggoth, I’m just in material denial stages now. Using it to make explosives or other randomness.] I formed a few arms and made a massive series of shrugs.

  <>Now may be a good time to inform you that stage one of your list is complete.

  [Nice! Naylle just informed me that stage one of my list of orders has completed. I can now fully upgrade my lesser shoggoth to the same as my core form!] I pulled all the shoggoth back, dragging the useless materials with them. [I need an upgrade cycle. Give me five minutes.]

  [Wait what?] Drag-On whipped around to look at me from where they had been watching the chaos of so many me’s moving at once.

  [Trust me! I’ll be way stronger when it’s done! My other fingers won’t break up as easily!] I gave a titanic thumbs up before focusing on what I was doing as I congealed into a large pile of roiling goop. I wasn’t worried as all my Crows were still out there, watching. The worst that was happening were a few Fours trying to claw their way through some of the sealed exits on the other end of the lake. I absently sent some Ravens to deal with it.

  The Odd Thirteen had begun a frenzy of whipping up muck on the bottom of the lake, obscuring everything under the water level. It was obvious that it was setting the stage for something. The question was, what? Instead of working the problem by myself, I asked myself for help. Allowing a few of us to control the upgrade the bulk turned our attention to trying to formulate different ideas on the subject.

  Collectively we could only come up with a couple ideas. It was hiding the emergence of something even nastier, or it was expecting us to come in and wanted to be able to use the poor visual conditions to ambush us. Either way was not good, because it would probably work. The only reason we could think that it wasn’t attacking any pylons was that it knew better than to drop a city on itself. That implied intelligence, the question was if it was it’s own or if there was something else down there thinking for it.

  [Done!] I focused my minds back to one task, pushing forward the bulk of my forces. [I was finally able to purchase some blueprints I needed to make all my bodies strong enough to withstand harder fighting.]

  [Finally? Wait, how much did you just spend on blueprints? We made something close to seventy thousand points in the last couple hours.] Bomberman leaned around to look directly at what they all perceived as my primary form.

  [Yes? I spent… how much did we spend?]

  [<>Exactly sixty seven thousand five hundred and twenty points.]

  “WHAT?” I was bombarded by the question from all directions.

  [What precisely did you purchase that cost so much?] Drag-On took less time to compose themself than the others.

  [Had to purchase some class two blueprints. They’re expensive.] The so-called “prime” me shrugged at them. [But now I’m fully armored and able to manufacture at full levels with any of me!]

  [Wait, does that mean they’re all as strong as Prime you?] Gravitas seemed to be annoyed that there wasn’t one of me next to her so she directly addressed it. I split a couple off to have one near each of them just for ease. She turned to the blob next to her. [Is this prime you, or the other one? Are any of them any more?]

  [There is no Prime me. I thought we covered that?] It shrugged at her even as it started extruding muzzles for plasma casters and gravitic rail weapons, aiming down range again. [That said there is one part of me that I still can’t copy yet. It’s going to be expensive as hell….]

  [What’s that?] Bomberman beat everyone to the question.

  [Pocket Dimensions? Soon enough. I need another… what, something like thirty thousand?]

  [<>Based on current point levels you need an additional thirty seven thousand four hundred and twelve.]

  [Right, so once we finish this I’ll be fully able to survive in total so long as one of me makes it.] The water was fully murky and none of my Crows could see through it. But there was no antithesis living above the water line. The thing that was beginning to worry me was that the outflow river had also grown murky. [I think we should be ready for a surprise attack from the river to our right.]

  [Why’s that?] Drag-On was the first to respond.

  I was unable to answer as my current fear was what turned out right. The water of the river surged and a ball of tentacles and hate threw itself up onto the concrete shore. That low thrumming guitar music in the back of my head started going hard right then.

  I bellowed a war cry, a fog horn in an echo chamber sound, and all of me but the furthest one from the creature charged at it. All of us quickly slamming into each other again, creating a mass hundreds of tons in scope. We were still out massed.

  The upside to being a semi liquid was that it could whip at me with its barbs and smack at me with its limbs all it wanted and didn’t really do much damage. To me. The down side was that meant I had to be the one in front to keep it from doing shit tons of damage to everyone else. Thank goodness I can turn my tactile sense off and don’t really feel anything. Because being a drum for an angry octopus kinda thing has got to be painful.