I Am Legion: Chapter 60

We're on the home stretch now - or all downhill from here, depending on how you look at it. It's an interesting challenge for me to write characters that are not exceptionally clever people. Noodles in particular is... well. Let's face it. He's a four-legged himbo. He's not terribly bright, but things work out somehow.

----------------------------------------

Angel and I found the berms easily enough - big ramps that flanked the city gates to either side. The soldiers Kaban left to hold the fort were mostly on the ground and in watch posts. They patrolled the walls, but they weren't manning the big defense weapons. Those required teams of eight, and they just didn't have the manpower. Half of them were watching the smoke rising to the east, from the mines, and not paying attention to a single girl - dressed in her best Centurions Elite armor - as she deftly laid packed jelly explosives in and around the catapults and tipping vats of oil that loomed over the southern gate complex. Lulu and I weren't up there with her. We had to wait and seethe, because if we were spotted, the alarm would go up. But I worried. It was dark up on the wall. And Angel couldn't hear if someone came up behind her.

Nearly fifteen minutes passed before a small, slim figure jogged down the ramp, her armor clacking on every step. She paused to a halt and saluted as a patrol of four elites rolled on by, staying there until they passed. Then she swung away from the gates and into the shadows, running with nervous speed back toward us.

"All good?" The tension in my gut didn't stop until she was back with the pair of us.

"I think so. I set a five-minute timer to give us a head start. I don't know... maybe that was too long." Angel jogged over to me and vaulted up onto the saddle. "But I figured-"

BOOOOMMM.

The ground bucked as an explosion rocked the gate, sending shrapnel in all directions. The darkened walkway lit up with a blinding flash, fire roaring out toward the road. Cries of alarm filled the air, along with smoke. Lots of it.

"Wha- no! I was sure I set all the timers!" Angel clung to me as I whirled and broke out of the nest of crates, barrels, and junk I'd been hiding behind.

"It's fine. We'll just have to book it."

I didn't bother wasting the energy to cloak us as I sprinted through the city. Other than the Anzu and maybe a Whiphorse, I was the fastest thing on four legs in Malae. We passed platoons of elites and what looked like city militia, so fast they didn't have time to process the greyish blur and its pale rider as we streaked by. A grim sense of determination grew in my chest as I bolted for the center of town, ignoring cries and even the occasional pot-shot taken at us from behind.

"I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get that EXP now," I thought to Angel. "If we get bogged down by multiple Legions..."

She couldn't reply, but Lulu groaned agreement as we broke out into the Temple Plaza and saw the line of Centurions Elites still holding their posts. Maybe two dozen of them had responded, heading for the East Gate as the sound of explosions continued to rock through the city. The others had formed a shifting, nervous line in front of the entry to the temple. There were at least half a dozen brutes: even another Tondrothaw. I veered to the side like a motorcycle, heading for the garden terraces. Soldiers spotted us as I shot toward the retaining wall and bounded up, up... over the heads of several men, and almost into the door of the temple itself. Which was closed.

"How do we open it?!" I yelped and scrambled to avoid crashing right into the towering bronze double doors. They didn’t open, and when I pushed on them, they didn’t budge.

"I... I don't know!" Angel leaned out to push on them as well. Centurions elites, barking at each other in Russian, pelted up the stairs toward us. "Grrr... open, dammit!"

"Coowoos!" Lulu  squeaked.

"Coowoos?" I turned on the incoming guards and roared, plunging my tentacles down. They shot out in all directions from the floor, impaling the first soldiers who closed in on us and making the others halt and withdraw to firing range. "What the fuck is a... oh, shit."

There was a glyph emblazoned on the door that looked similar to the alchemical triangle each legion had on their character information tab, except instead of elemental symbols, it had a human skull at the top, a sun within a circle to the right, and a moon within a circle to the left. The circles had little locks on them, to drive the point that they were collars. To get into the temple, you needed to be a human with a full collared team. Or at least a gladiator.

"Fuck! I can't take Lulu's collar off without killing her!" Of all the stupid fucking mechanics they could have picked... "I can put on Angel's collar, but..."

A thought occurred to me. A thought that I immediately dismissed.

Angel pulled both her guns and hit her Gunsaint duel-wield as I ran around the corner of the temple, drifted the corner to the internal Eurobeat track pounding between my ears, and led the Centurions on a merry race underneath the columned porch of the temple. Angel twisted back to fire, but not even she could get a whole lot of accuracy while we were having to dodge and weave.

"Noodles!" She called out aloud. "Take your collar off and try to equip it on me! It's our only way into the temple!"

Oh. She'd had the same thought.

"Uhh-" my mind did a blank as a soldier bounced up over the edge of the nearest terrace, aiming a rifle at us. I slapped him away with a tentacle. "UMM."

"Just do it! Unequip it and pass it to me!"

It felt more than a little surreal to unequip my collar and hand it over, in a manner of speaking. I pulled it into my inventory and set up a trade while we dodged bullets and a fireball spat at us from the Pyromaw. The collar left my inventory and went into Angel's. Without a word, she pulled it out and locked it around her own neck.

[Well. This is... well.]

[This has never actually happened before, outside of certain consensual adult scenarios. By the rules, a bonded team must consist of a human, a greater legion, and a lesser legion.]

[Gladiator His Radiance M.T Noodles the 4th, PhD has claimed an... umm... Angel.]

[You have gained a new achievement: The Trinity Formed. You have attained a full Legion team. Somehow. You gain 250 EXP.]

[You are Level 24. Lulu is Level 24.]

[You gain a new achievement: This is Definitely Not a Pet-Play Kink.]

Angel groaned. And even though I couldn't see her, I could somehow FEEL her blushing as the empathic link to her surged.

"Hey, at least you gain the benefits of the mandalas like this!" We were close to lapping around the building. I threw my ass around another corner to drift it, claws screeching on marble. A firing line of soldiers had formed ahead, standing their ground as they aimed at us. NOW I used Shadow Cloak, obscuring us in a sphere of darkness as I leveled my head at them and sent a screeching pulse of white noise ahead of us. Together, it threw off their aim. A bullet clipped Angel's thigh, and she gasped as we thundered past. Whipping tentacles found purchase around a man's neck and tore his head off on the way past. Chorus remained silent, for once.

"I'm too high a level to get experience from these assholes." I snarled aloud with frustration. But just as I resolved to sacrifice the extra time and maybe some heals to fight the pair of legions pursuing me, the Pyro, Tondro, and every single Centurion at the temple suddenly turned tail and ran.

"Hah! Yeah! Run away!" Confused, panting, but victorious, I blinked a couple of times. Then I turned to the big bronze doors. As I reached out with a foreclaw and touched them, the sigil glowed. The doors cracked down the middle and swung inward. 

"Wait. Why are they all running?" Angel was just as bewildered, panting, her guns braced against her thighs. “Wait, Noodles. To the south. That light… that can’t be just from my booms going off.”

The southern horizon was lit up with a baleful red glow. Fires burning in the plantations. And in the distance… screams. Screams, ululations, then a distant warhorn. A broad, toothy grin split my muzzle.

"It's the goddamned Hell Pigs."