“Incoming!”

  Times Square was already a disaster area, so coming in hot with Earthbound Impact and creating a crater really wasn’t at the top of my list of things to worry about. Right as I was about to strike the ground, I noticed the Hercules buff that came with Swansong’s Song of Hercules was added to my status bar.

  I landed hard right in between two of the three Level 14 Clockwork Grizzlies that had been tearing their way across the tourist trap. We had thought even the dumbest of tourists would have been smart enough not to come out into the city during a veritable war, but with the night seeming to quiet, apparently the most daring of them had decided to let their curiosity get the better of them.

  Swansong’s Song of the Peaceful Mind had calmed them and gotten the, much larger than I had expected, crowd to move off to the side of the street, leaving the three elite Clockwork Grizzlies to wreak havoc.

  The two bears that had been in range of my impact took the full force of the attack but their shields managed to absorb the entirety of the blow. Even with the buff from Swansong aiding my strike, my entry only took out about a third of the defensive bars. Both of the bears turned their snarling metallic maws toward me and I decided to use their approach to my advantage. While I might not have wanted to blow through all of my abilities in a single flurry, I didn’t want to find out just what these bears had been designed to do either.

  I quickly activated Center of the Universe maxing the pull’s strength before I activated Launchpad and went rocketing back up and into the sky. Like a yo-yo, thanks to the secondary effect of Launchpad, I activated Earthbound Impact once more and dropped back to the street.

  The bears had deployed their claws the moment I had started yanking them with my gravitational pull, something that had become commonplace in all of the droids we had fought so far. Unfortunately for them, that meant they were anchored in place as I crashed back down, and with the second repeated blow, I was able to bring both of the bear’s shields down to near empty.

  I jumped at the opportunity before the bears could move to recover and moved to get in close to the closer of my ursine enemies. I landed three quick blows on the bear I had rushed before his claw detached from the ground and smacked up and into me with a viscous amount of force that sent my health bar plummeting and me careening backwards into the other bear. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see that the second bear was standing up on its hind legs, ready with large, dangerous looking claws to grasp me when I rewound time.

  As I recovered from landing with Earthbound Impact this time, I rushed in, practically the exact same way. But this time I struck it quickly with a 25% Gravity Punch to its center of mass. With all four claws still in the ground, the knockback only rippled through the bear’s stationary body, seeming to stun it due to the collision of internal components.

  Before it could recover and swing at me, I spun on my heel and activated Echo Step. I quickly teleported and appeared on the backside of the second bear just as it started to stand up and onto its hind legs. I dropped down low to the ground as the droid’s body swayed back and forth, apparently searching for where I had gone before I punched it in the back of one of its knees as hard as I could in four rapid blows that stacked the Target debuff. Then the moment it had dropped back off cooldown, on my fifth punch, I threw a 25% Gravity Punch.

  Generally speaking, when I used the ability, I was striking my enemies in their center of mass, causing the knockback effect to send their entire body flying. But I had learned over the last few hours that if I was careful with where I threw my strikes, I could actually use the knockback effect in a myriad of different ways to control just how I knocked my enemies backward, especially when those enemies had multiple different points that they would use to anchor themselves against my power.

  With the force of the blow isolated on the joint of the droid and one part of its leg still anchored down and to the ground, my strike rippled through metal shielding on the bear’s leg before the blow, as my ability deemed it to do, knocked the leg backwards, ripping the joint from the foot still attached to the ground. The bear was sent spinning in place with its shield bar completely wiped out and a decent chunk of its health bar gone as well.

  Losing one foot didn’t seem to bother the bear though and it quickly recovered, dropping its front paws back down the ground with a metallic, grating snarl. It was a bit hard to remember sometimes given just how the droids looked and some of the ways I had seen them act, but at the end of the day they were just droids and while an animal might have panicked or just collapsed from losing an entire foot, that wasn’t going to be enough to put these metallic counterparts down for the count.

  “Well these guys can certainly take a beating,” Jon said as I moved out of the way of the three-legged droid as he charged toward me. I toggled Center of the Universe back on, forcing the droids to activate their claws yet again.

  While the upgrade to the droids certainly stopped me from dragging them around however I wanted to, the fact that they seemed to deploy them the moment that I began trying to pull them toward me spoke to a reactionary setting that I was more than happy to exploit to keep them frozen in place. I had been expecting this particular technique that I had been using to get fixed with each new droid we had faced, but to our best guess, it seemed like any upgrades to the droids had to be done before they were deployed.

  I kept the skill activated as I scanned the area, searching for the third bear when I felt my gut drop.

  “Guys, it’s not just bears,” I called out and heard Jon curse.

  “Swansong, there’s at least three gorillas, maybe four incoming, can you highlight them and get their levels?”

  “On it Codex!” She called out without ever breaking her song and I saw the flutter of her white cape as she darted toward the gorillas. Following her path caused me to catch just as the third bear came charging toward me. The moment he broke through the edge of my zone and felt my gravitational pull, its claws extended, proving my theory about the defense being reactionary.

  “I can handle these guys but its not going to be quick unless I want to burn through my Stamina, I really kind of wish we had some help right now but if we are gonna do this on our own, Swansong can you lead the gorillas into my-”

  I saw a literal wave of fire rip across the street, bathing the gorillas in orange and red flames that quite literally dropped the lead charging gorilla to the ground in a heap of melted slag. This was followed by a crack of thunder and flash of lightning as electricity surged into the second gorilla and dropped it to the ground.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers I guess,” I muttered to myself as I saw the yellow and red clad clones of Hydramental delivering repeated bursts of their respective elements to several more Gorillas that were pouring out of the destroyed wall of a nearby building.

  “They’re level 16 but not elite,” Swansong said and I scrunched my brow in confusion. If Swansong had been the one to highlight them, then they should have been, at a maximum, level 15. At least, that had been our experience so far and for as confident as I had felt about figuring out the droid’s gravity anchors, I was unsure if we had correctly figured out exactly how the level equalizing worked, even with Angie’s explanation and Jon’s continued research.

  I could hear a roar from one of the bears that broke me from my thoughts and I almost deactivated my skill in surprise. I only managed to hold onto it knowing that the skill that theoretically should have been pulling the bears closer to me was the only thing keeping them from charging in and ganging up like I was an unguarded picnic basket in a Yogi Bear cartoon.

  “Does anyone even know who Yogi Bear is any more?” Angie asked.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  “My grandma loved those cartoons, sue me, aren’t you not supposed to be commenting on my inner thoughts any more?” I asked and she laughed.

  “Hey don’t look at me, ever since you turned off your Acceptance Matrix I’ve come to accept that if I’m able to talk that means you’re letting me.”

  I was about to wonder what exactly she meant by that when the ground seemed to quite literally shake beneath my feet. The third Clockwork Grizzly anchored at the very edge of my zone began to shake like an overloaded washing machine before several large boulders came rocketing up from the ground. The bear’s body was pelted and crushed by the repeated blows and I searched around in confusion.

  While I had expected to see another Augment that I just hadn’t recognized, I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to find a Hydramental clone clad in an earthy brown version of his normal shirt and gear.

  “Hydramental got a new element,” I called out as I turned my attention to the two bears I had already done considerable damage to. I quickly materialized and utilized one of the last few Superior Stamina Injectors I had to max my stamina out before I rushed in on the bear with three legs.

  His jaw lunged out, trying to strike me while holding itself in place, making it easy to dodge around. With the bear’s shield gone, my strikes, still being enhanced by Swansong’s singing, quickly ramped up in power. But being an elite meant he had a plenty large health bar to deal with. After I had raised the droids Target debuff to 100%, I slammed a 25% Gravity Punch into its side, wiping out the last of the bears health as it crumbled downward.

  I spun on my heel and moved away from the bear and toward the second one, ready to repeat my assault when another surge of electricity cut across the space and slammed into the bear. The bolt didn’t just strike and dissipate either, it surged in power, growing brighter until the bear was left a melted and charred heap of slag.

  “Ummm… when did Hydramental hit level 17?” Swansong asked timidly and I found myself searching the area, settling on the four clones, each wearing a different color. The one in blue seemed to stand just a bit back from the other three.

  All of the droids that had been in the area had been handled in a flash and my confusion was once again raising as I toggled off my Center of the Universe. I heard the whir of energy start to come from the various droid bodies and had I let the momentary lapse in focus last any longer than I had, I might have found myself caught in the aftermath of the explosion. Instead I jumped into the air and flew above them as each of the destroyed droids blew up in rapid succession, leaving noticeable damage to the streets and square.

  I looked over at Hydramental again. Now that he was close enough, I was able to highlight him and confirm that he had in fact raised his level all the way up to 17. My mind began to race as I considered the options, especially given that I had just seen him the day before sitting at level 12. I knew we were leveling faster, but that sort of jump should have only been possible if he had…

  “Do you guys think he had something to do with Grand Strike’s death?” I asked tentatively and Swansong looked at me out of the corner of her eye as she floated over and next to me.

  We were hovering there in the air at the center of the square as the four separate clones all shimmered, dissolving into light one by one and returning into the blue clone that had sat at the back. The lone Hydramental crossed his arms over his chest as he stared up at us.

  “Because of the level jump?” Jon asked and I resisted the urge to physically nod.

  “It’s the same kind of jump that happened when I took out SnakeBite… it would make sense,” I said.

  “Didn’t you say Grand Strike died on each reset a different way though?” Swansong asked.

  “I… well yeah but if that’s the case and Hydramental did kill him… I mean that would mean I put him in place… he couldn’t have gotten those levels just from taking out higher level droids with them, remember we didn’t get big jumps from taking down the pterodactyl with Pinneedle…”

  “Are you two just gonna float up there like a couple of assholes silently debating what you’re going to do or are you going to come down here and fucking talk?” Hydramental called up, clearly annoyed.

  I was just about to oblige and float down, knowing if for some reason this was some sort of trap that I still had about three and a half minutes that I could work with, when every single screen in Times Square began to flicker in unison. Then, in a quick wave each screen changed and settled on a man who couldn’t have only looked more like a super villain if he had been stroking an overly fancy cat as he smiled directly into the camera.

  “Greetings denizens of New York,” the man said in a sophisticated, British accent. He had a well groomed beard and his black mask curved around his cheekbones and down, nearly meeting with the beard. His hair was slicked back and he was otherwise dressed in an outfit that looked like an almost armored version of a three-piece suit. “In case some of you are wondering, yes, I am transmitting this to every single screen in the area. There has been more than enough destruction, more than enough chaos for me to have proven my point here tonight and I believe we could end it, right here and now. I want to ensure that each and every one of you across this miserable excuse for a metropolis hears my words, my declaration. New York City belongs to me.”

  “Clockwork Tyrant,” I practically growled as I stared up at the largest of the screens.

  “I don’t want there to be any mistakes in what I am saying either,” Clockwork Tyrant said, raising a hand to examine his nails as he leaned back in a large, leather chair. “The mayor of this city and all police precincts will be given until daybreak to pledge loyalty to me. This city and the surrounding region shall become the seat of my power and you all my lucky subjects.”

  “Who the hell does this guy think he is… the King of England?” Jon asked.

  “And to crush some of those hopes of yours quickly, because I would much rather prefer to not have to destroy any more of my kingdom, before you all think, ‘oh the heroes will save us,’ well…” he trailed off for a minute before snapping his fingers and several of the screens flickered. One changed to a scene of Pinneedle pinned to a wall, his arms stretched up over his head and his body a bloody mess. Directly next to him was a box that couldn’t have been much bigger than a microwave. Like a microwave, it was almost entirely black except for the side facing the camera, where a swirling mist could be seen raging within it through a clear window. Another screen changed to a medical room with Grand Strike’s body laying on a gurney at the center of it. “I have already killed Grand Strike and I have captured both Pinneedle and Miss Mist. I am rather tired of these pathetic games we have been playing for years, fighting back and forth and squabbling when the truth of the matter is simple. We Augments are superior. We Augments should be ruling you lesser beings.”

  “Dude’s a fucking megalomaniac…” Jon muttered and I couldn’t help but agree with him. I risked a look over my shoulder toward the ground where Hydramental had been and discovered he had disappeared the moment we had become distracted.

  “Before you think, ‘oh, maybe the military will respond,’ well… I highly advise you look at the mess this city has turned into and really wonder why they haven’t already unless they were more than aware of just how ineffectual their efforts would be. Those in power have already accepted that we would take power one day, they’ve prepared for it, and there’s nothing you lessers will be able to do to stop it. So I suggest you take my generous offer to live as my subjects. I do not intend to be cruel, in fact, I intend to shape this city into a truly glorious example of just what our rule will do for this world.”

  “What… he can’t be serious… can he?” Swansong asked, her eyes wide.

  “I think it’s safe to assume he is,” I said, my jaw setting. Even if this man was being controlled and directed by Axio, there was actual glee in his expression. Like he had just accomplished one of the greatest tasks of his life.

  “And lastly, before all of those other Augments that have been running around, believing they were ruining my plans decide to try and storm around the city and find me?” Clockwork Tyrant said, the glee changing to malice as his expression hardened and he snapped his fingers again. The screens all flickered again before each one turned to show a different room.

  Each screen had a room filled with dozens, if not hundreds of huddled people, holding each other as groups of human shaped droids held guns in all directions. I felt my stomach sink and I could see Swansong reach up and cover her mouth as her jaw dropped.

  “Not only do I control the infrastructure of this city, something I’ll more than happily prove by sending everything back into darkness, I have the lives of, hmmm last count four hundred and thirty-nine thousand people in the palm of my hand. Give or take a few, it does become rather hard to count when they are all so quickly shoveling themselves into those bunkers like sardines into a can at the sound of a little raid alarm,” Clockwork Tyrant said with a laugh that came out as menacing with the hardened expression on his face. “Now as I said, I don’t want to kill all of these people, I do need subjects after all, and more importantly I need generals in my army. Those of you Augments who wish to be on the right side of history, I will welcome you into my court. Those of you who choose to resist?... Well… do so at the risk of these lessers you have been otherwise so determined to protect. The choice is yours of course. I will give all of you until daybreak to decide, and to sweeten the pot and prove I’m not here to just cause wanton destruction, my droids will no longer attack unless provoked until this truce has ended. You certainly can do what you need to to decide your path, but do remember… Time is ticking.”

  Happy Monday! If you're enjoying the story, don't forget to leave a Rate, Review, or Comment!

  Just as a heads up, we are moving to a 12PM EST release time just to better coincide with my normal daily responsibilities.

  Come on over to my Discord to talk about the story, see advanced news, and just talk nonsense!