The Legion of Nothing

With the Rocket suit's speed and the short distance, I might as well have teleported.

If he were anything like the Xiniti I'd fought, he would have still been able to avoid me anyway, but instead, he stumbled sideways, still faster than a scooter, but not faster than I flew.

I punched him and he hit the ground, turning and pointing his arms at me as if to fire his weapons. Except the weapons didn't fire. There wasn't even a spark.

My implant offered a choice: "What is your priority? Disable weaponry or continued disorientation."

"Disable weaponry," I thought back, noticing the implication. It might not be able to do both.

Rook rolled backward, landing on his feet and I wondered if I should have gone for disorientation. His back leg landed partially on a chunk of concrete, which turned to dust under the pressure.

That was both interesting and worrisome.

Rook pointed his arms at me again. They didn't fire. He screamed, "What did you do?"

I fired my laser at him, more out of curiosity than anything else. He wore only scraps of his armor now, but whatever his blue skin was, it had taken the heat of the explosions well enough. The laser had a more intense focus, but that was the major difference.

The laser hit him in the middle of his chest. It didn't puncture his skin, but the spot blackened, and he yelped, darted sideways, running toward the shelves where Jody and Dayton had been fighting.

I say "had been" because the moment Rook yelped, Jody disappeared from there and stood between Rook and me. I didn't even have time to aim my laser before Jody started to punch me.

Whatever Rook told the Abominator implant to do to Jody it had solved one of Jody's core weaknesses—hand-to-hand combat.

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Normally, I wouldn't have been able to feel them through the suit, but today his punches knocked me back. They still didn't go through the armor, but I struggled to stand up under the rain of blows.

Meanwhile, my blows didn't stand a chance. I threw one after another, missing each time, even when I tried using the laser.

It might have been less frustrating if he hadn't been smiling and laughing with each miss, saying things like, "Oh, nice try," and "So close," followed by more laughter.

As he stepped back to laugh again, something interesting happened: Amy's spear flew through the air. If he'd been a normal person, it would have passed through his armor and sucked out his life force, but that's not what happened.

He dodged, but as he did it, he stopped smiling and his eyes widened. Even as a brain-addled fanatic, he must have remembered what Amy could do.

He turned around, watching as the Bloodspear flew back to Amy, likely with the intention of finding her invisible form.

I fired off two goobots, knowing I couldn't punch him, but hoping their exploding goo might catch him.

That's when a few things happened at once.

For one, Dayton caught up to Rook, clobbering him in the side of the head. Rook didn't go down, but he wasn't watching Jody fight me anymore. He stumbled sideways, struggling to maintain balance, but then let loose a series of punches at Dayton, any one of which would have killed a normal person.

Dayton dodged all of them. Even if none of his additional blows did much, Rook couldn't ignore him.

I don't know if it mattered, but if Rook had been watching, he might have told Jody to start paying attention to his surroundings. As it was, Jody paid attention to where the Bloodspear was going, but then must have noticed my goobots out of the corner of his eye.

Knowing what they were, he blurred, moving away from them as they exploded into gooey spheres of white strands. He jumped over the wave of goo exploding outward from one bot and ducked under the goo from the other.

To do it, he had to watch both waves and couldn't dart around without being hit as they expanded.

I'd set a single killbot to drill through Jody's knees or ankles if it had the chance, and though I didn't target Jody with that fact in mind, the bot made its calculations and shot forward, cutting through both of Jody's Achilles tendons before running out of power.

Jody fell.

It would have been nice to feel satisfaction, but I felt only relief. All of it had taken place at a speed I couldn't match, only observe. I gave the rockets fuel, flying over Jody toward Rook and Dayton.

That might have been stupid if it weren't for the other thing I'd noticed, Amy's Bloodspear dropping down toward Jody as he began to crawl forward.

The spear would have felt like overkill, but his eyes had begun to glow as he pointed his head toward Dayton.