“The fight has reset, if I build up enough punches, I can probably delete that spaceship from the sky,” I said confidently.

  Panda shook his head. “Your Urchin Ring is still on cooldown, so you’d need several hundred punches to deal enough damage, I think. Bee is also out of Mana.”

  “And when my Ring is ready?”

  “75 punches will let you deal a million damage if you have all your buffs ready,” Bee calculated off the top of her head like a Math Savant.

  “All I need to know. We’re running until it’s back up then.”

  “You need 6 more minutes,” Panda said.

  I brought out the longboard and Bee lifted into the air using her wings, before grabbing onto my shoulders as I kicked off. Lordie was staying in his Cage, no doubt knowing that the coast wasn’t clear yet.

  A sound like thunder came from above, as black pods of sizes ranging from pick-up-truck to rich-guy-yacht started falling towards us from the enormous CPS Hive ship in the sky.

  The massive spotlight was glued to us, as I rolled the board in the direction of the Mall and its Safe Zone. I wasn’t so much worried for my own sake, since I had the Respawn Death rule still active, but Bee just barely surviving the Red Pawn trap had made me want to put us in a position where I knew she’d be safe, even if something happened to me.

  [KHAOTIC!] said the mouth at the front of my longboard, after I performed an ollie into a rail-grind along a guardrail that I skipped off to hit a nose-slide landing. I kept chaining trick-after-trick, in order to boost our speed, but as the first of the black pods hit the ground with a roaring boom, I knew I needed to go even faster.

  I unequipped my suit and gained a bit more speed, thanks to my BIRTHDAY_SUIT passive.

  “Crap, they really brought the whole army,” Panda remarked, as more of the concussive impacts of the pods sang out across the industrial area we were rapidly leaving behind.

  I looked back, just in time to see one of the massive pods strike the charred remains of the gas station, utterly obliterating it. I wondered what Breezy had to say about them being allowed to exert this much power to go after Players in the system, but there was no doubt some wonky loophole or whatever that enabled their behavior.

  An explosion of steam split the giant pod apart, revealing an enormous six-legged creature with a head bigger than my entire body and thick-looking carapace covering its back. It immediately locked in on us, but it just stared in our direction, while not moving. At least until a small figure who’d been in the same pod gave it the go-ahead.

  In a single eager leap, it covered 100 yards.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered.

  Bee shared the appraisal and I couldn’t help but frown. I really wasn’t a fan of police dogs.

  I immediately got back to chaining tricks, while the floppy tail of my Lustful Loincloth waved in the air behind me. Bee also redirected the flow of her wings to push against me, adding to our speed.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Is it helping?”

  “A little, but every bit counts right now, that thing is fast as fuck.”

  “Your Ring is almost ready,” Panda announced.

  As though in response, a Benefactor Quest popped up in front of my eyes.

  “Shit.”

  “What?” Bee asked.

  “I can’t destroy the ants’ spaceship, it’d kill literally all the children in the world. Except you.”

  “That would be pretty bad,” she agreed. “Wait, do you think I’m the last Wayward Minor there is?”

  “Pretty sure that’d explain why they’re throwing their whole army at us,” Panda replied.

  Boom!

  Another massive pod landed a hundred yards ahead of us and I had to quickly pick a new route to avoid ending up in its path.

  With a loud pop from an internal steam explosion, it shot open to reveal another giant Aphid-Dog and its Handler.

  “Wait, that Ant guy is a Captain, right!?”

  “His Aphid is named ‘Whiskers’,” Bee announced.

  “I don’t think that’s important,” Panda commented.

  “Oh, right, here:”

  “Let’s kill him and his dog, get his Transponder, and then get to the Safe Zone at the Mall.”

  “Good plan, except the Mall is 8 miles away,” Panda explained.

  “It’ll be fine,” I told him, and redirected us back towards the newly arrived giant insect.

  “Your Ring is ready.”

  “Awesome,” I said and started shadowboxing as fast as I could.

  “Also, the other Aphid is about 20 seconds away from catching up to us.”

  “I have an idea for how to kill the other one,” Bee said, “But I need to borrow your Rebel’s Ring.”

  I paused my boxing for a moment to pull it off my pinkie finger and give it to her, before resuming.

  “They won’t know what hit them.”

  “Fak yiz!!”

  “Well, they’re not taking any chances,” Panda replied, looking up.

  I followed his gaze and saw three more giant Aphid-Dog pods and about two dozen smaller ones, all dropping out of the sky towards us.