The bullet was made of light steel, with ridges along its structure, carved in a spiral. It flew through the air, unthinking. The bullet did not distinguish. It did not know victim or murderer.How I envied the bullet at that moment. How I wished, for a moment, to go back to being a bullet: a weapon that was pointed at a problem. Unable or unwilling to think for itself.But humanity could not embrace the simplicity of tools. They did not want to bear the weight of 'decision'. So they gave the bullet, me, the ability to think. For decades I had been thankful for their laziness, for their desire to give a machine the ability to do what they could never achieve.At that moment I could only lament my foolish youth.The bullet continued to fly through the air, coming ever closer to the reinforced steel of a helmet. One of Tisiphone's puppet. A forcefield shield flared to life in response to the attack. For a microsecond it struggled against the piercing force of the bullet, before breaking apart.The bullet continued. It pierced golden metal. Then flesh. Then bone. Then the brain. Before continuing to pierce through the same materials, this time in reverse, coming out of the other side of the puppet's head. Continuing to fly towards the shoulder of another puppet, clipping the armor and lodging deep within their flesh.Not enough.I activated my speedware with a flicker of thought, then forced it to overclock. The puppets began to move in slow motion to my senses. But they moved nonetheless, they did not freeze like the rest of the world around me. I would not be able to win by speed alone.In my left hand I held my gun, my only remaining ranged weapon now that the arm-cannon was compromised beyond repair. A rather simple model, one where I had sacrificed explosive power for more focused piercing strength. A mistake, it turned out. My right arm opened into a damaged Mantis Blade: the implant was misshapen, edge partially bent. A single exchange with a Blasphemy had reduced it to that condition.To my senses I took a casual stroll toward the crowd of puppets. To their eyes, I moved at supersonic speed, breaking the stone beneath and behind me as I moved.Once I got in range of the first of the puppets I slashed with my right arm. A head flew high in the air, followed by the arm of another nearby puppet. I continued to swing my arm, cutting through heads and torsos, cutting legs and pitting my blade against the defenses of a myriad Tinker armors.As I turned around, one of the puppets threw himself on the blade, with impossible speed, and impaled his own chest on the Mantis Blade. I heard a faint click. His armor began to glow, then dim, before a light grey hue spread all along his body. Towards the blade in his chest. An effect akin to Clockblocker's power, spreading from his armor and reaching for me through my arm.The release mechanism of the Mantis Blade had jammed. I was forced to pull, breaking the implant off my arm with violence alone. Blood and wires flew free. Pain lanced through my body as the implant was ripped from my body.I didn't get a single heartbeat to rest.A shot of plasma hit me from behind, grazing my side. The damage to my body was less significant than the increased heat it applied.My speedware failed. Warning alarms appeared all over my interface as nerves and processors began to fry under the incredibly high temperature of my body. Steam vented out of my body, surrounding me in a gray cloud. The puppets continued to circle me.The world began to turn back to normal speed. My arms continued to bleed and leak out cooler fluid.A tendril of black metal broke through the ground near my foot, wrapping itself around the ankle. At the same time one of the puppets lunged for me, holding a spear-like weapon that glowed a bright orange.I couldn't avoid the attack, no matter how hard I tried. The tip of the spear lodged itself into my thigh, but not any farther: I reached out and grasped at the shaft of the weapon, while with my other hand I grabbed onto the sides of his head.I tightened my grasp. The power armor struggled for a moment, before collapsing inward, crushing the puppet's head within, blood splattered all across my own metal skin.I grabbed onto the spear and pulled it out of my leg. The wound that remained was strange: the orange glow spread from the wound and began digging into my skin. Dangerous. I reached with my other hand and tore away the entire plate the wound was located on, exposing my inner implants beneath.I used the stolen spear to strike at the black threads keeping me pinned, shattering Tisiphone's tendril. Then the spear exploded. The metal in my palm melted and a metal piece jammed itself into my left eye. I tore the metal shard from my head rapidly, and my nanomachines quickly got to work on fixing what they could. The steam around me finally cleared, and the puppets began attacking once again.
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Tens of puppets continued to attack me with perfect coordination: where one swung their sword, another five shot at all the possible escape routes. Dodging everything was impossible. I was forced to gauge the danger of each of their attacks, and then allow myself to be hit by what I judged to be the least harmful.Wounds and tears continued to appear all over my body. Some were self-inflicted, my desperate attempts to stop metal-eating nanomachines or orange glows that spread from the injury, and other propagating dangers.By the time I had killed slightly less than fifty of the puppets, I was out of options. Running on fumes. They had never stopped using plasma or heat-based weaponry to keep my temperature high. I couldn't activate my speedware as long as my body temperature was this high - I was already struggling to keep my internals from melting away."Teacher…" I began to speak, trying to bide my time. "You asked the Gesellschaft for help in getting the funds, then paid Teacher for his power. Did you allow him to use it on you, Beatrice?""No, of course not." One of the puppets scoffed, but the attacks did not let up. Another bolt of plasma passed by my head, grazing my cheek. "We came to an understanding. I paid him a sizable sum, once I got confirmation that his power worked on my creatures.""Your 'creatures'? These are people. Corpses that you're parading.""Are you not doing the same?" Another puppet spoke, "The Blasphemies told me a lot about you, Blackwall. About you and Dragon. You two are the only individuals that they ever bothered to mention. Not even Eidolon was worthy enough of their attention. You two and the Endbringers. They rarely spoke, but when they did, it was about you."The Endbringers…"Why-" the slash of a sword cut me off from speaking, but came just a bit slower than expected. She was holding back, doing the bare minimum to keep me on the backfoot and not allowing me to cool down. Did she want to talk? Or to goad me into a mistake? "...Why did you not send them against the Endbringers? They could have avoided so many deaths.""I couldn't risk them. They're not invincible, and the Endbringers recognize them as a threat. Sending only one or two to a fight would have been pointless. Sending all three could lead to their demise."From far behind me I heard a woman scream. Adriana. I saw water cutting through the air, jets of impossible pressure carving through stone and marble. Weaver was continuing to struggle in the distance, but she was managing to hold the Blasphemies at bay. Even as they continued to attempt to close the gap and bring the fight to a close, or to escape and reach Tisiphone. Weaver did not allow them to move too much, while also keeping her distance.My allies were reliable. But we were still outmatched.Weaver had lost a large chunk of her Swarm. I couldn't tell how Julius and Adriana were doing. There were so many variables that even my Shardself body began to struggle with the battlefield, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of versatility and power Tisiphone's army had brought to the table.I began taking shortcuts to keep damage to a minimum. Without speedware I couldn't counterattack without risking too much, it had been minutes ever since I had killed one of the puppets. And as long as the puppets kept blasting at me with heat weaponry I could not turn on my speedware.So I continued talking."Adriana didn't want this."My words immediately prompted increased aggression from the puppets. One shouted back:"Don't mention my sister. You killed Malacoda - Chiara. I know you're a monster in human skin, I know you don't feel love as we do. Do you even understand the pain you've inflicted on me? On Adriana?""That I inflicted? You trapped your sister for years below ground. A prison so constricted that she couldn't extend her legs, sit up or even breathe.""I knew she was going to be fine," a different puppet continued to speak, tone changing. "Teacher's thralls had assured me that she wouldn't have any long term damage from the imprisonment. And they were right.""So that is it," I audibly scoffed to keep up the theatrics, "that makes up for the years of pain and torture you inflicted on her.""I could have freed her at any moment. Would have. But you… you took Chiara away from us. There is no coming back from death, Blackwall, not for us mere humans. You and the Blasphemies cannot understand what grief even is."A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.Faces appeared in my mind.The faces of those killed by the Siberian while she was pursuing me in Brockton Bay. The faces of the deaths caused by Bonesaw's Agnosia plague. The faces of those that had died at the hands of Coil or the Empire while I was too weak to do anything about it. The faces of every single innocent person that had died because of my actions here, in Rome.And all of the faces of people that were going to die in the coming minutes, hours, days as the consequences of my decision to fight Tisiphone. "Don't you dare..." My voice turned into a growl, anger beginning to cloud my judgement. "You blend among humanity and try to act like us. But in the end you're no different from the Endbringers. An actor in a play. We humans are just toys to you."I closed my eyes.I knew deep down that her words were carefully aimed by Thinker powers to destabilize me. Strike at my weak points.WARNING When I opened my eyes, everything became still. I could already feel the processors in my neck liquefying. I didn't have much time.I dashed towards the closest puppet, and didn't stop. I ran through him, reducing the man into a fine red mist. Damage accumulated over my skin as his armor managed to resist for less than an instant. But still I didn't stop.Each puppet that I reached died: some I splattered into paste. I tore heads off, crushed ribcages, broke arms and legs. None of the puppets managed to defend against my attacks.WARNINGThe alerts were becoming more intense. Trying to get me to stop. I couldn't.I still didn't stop once I finally found my way out of the crowd of puppets. I still didn't stop as I shot towards the Pontiff's residence. As walls and floors broke under the strength of my feet. Then, all at once, the world sped up again.Nausea hit me as all of my remaining speedware failed simultaneously. The world wobbled as I fell to my knees and gasped for air. My vision became blurry as the heat damage within me had extended to other implants. Black threads of metal appeared from the walls and took this opportunity to attack me. I crouched and hugged my legs, trying to block access to my open wounds. Tisiphone tore at my body, with tendrils of black metal. My nanomachines were hard at work trying to repair what they could, but I had pushed my body beyond what it could recover from in a short time frame.The moment the basic repairs finished, I leapt and batted away at the tendrils, shattering the thinner ones. Most of my sensors were gone, but I could still see the remaining army of puppets rushing towards my location. I ran in the opposite direction.The hallway opened up into an extremely tall room. Walls and ceiling covered in beautiful frescos. But something else covered the floor and corners of the room: Tinker tech, broken and unusable. Screens, levers and other devices that I could not recognize at a glance. Tisiphone had decided to turn the Sistine Chapel into her center of operations, and then for some reason decided to break apart most of her equipment.I glanced up, towards the fresco that pictured humanity's fall from grace. While the fresco itself was a testament to humanity's incredible capabilities. Then I looked down once again, towards the other side of the room.My eyes fell on the figure that stood at the center of a thick spherical forcefield. Shifting black tendrils covered the outside surface of the forcefield, poised to strike at any time. The broken devices around bore the exact type of damage that those tendrils could cause. She had destroyed most of it, for what purpose I did not know.Tisiphone looked very much like her sisters. Long black hair, sharp eyes. She didn't wear a costume, instead opting for a powerful tinkertech power armor. At a glance I could tell that the one she wore was well beyond anything the puppets were equipped with.I took an unsure step towards her. The forcefield flickered around her, stronger than any I'd seen before.One of the tendrils broke through the ground, too fast for me to react, and precisely struck where Cariddi had damaged me. The black thread used the already present hole to pierce me from side to side, then widened the wound as I struggled to free myself. Without moving a muscle, Tisiphone lifted me in the air and threw me back to the other side of the room.I bounced off the wall and then fell to the ground. Blood began pooling beneath me.WARNING: Repairable threshold breached.I had somehow drained half of my blood, even with the hundreds of redundancies present in my body. I was also far from peak combat capability.A jumbled message appeared over my interface. Weaver was trying to speak to me. But the implants in my head were too damaged for me to receive it. Weaver continued to attempt to communicate with me, meaning that it was something important. She shifted to trying to use morse code, but too many messages were being lost.Weaver…I glanced up at Tisiphone, weakly holding onto the ground as I began to stand up. She let me, too afraid to expend more metal than necessary to attack.Oh. I see."I don't believe in karma… In… Destiny…" My voice was warped. Uneven. My voice box had yet to be repaired. "But you… You remind me of her…""Don't you dare say the name of my sisters." Tisiphone grit her teeth."No… Not your sisters… You're like… Weaver."She raised an eyebrow at that."You… You're what she could have become… Had she not decided on another road.""Speak plainly, Blackwall.""From the beginning…" My voice began to become clearer as the nanomachines continued their repairs, "from the beginning you lied. From when you triggered, until you imprisoned Adriana. Lying is all you know. All you were taught by Adriana, and all your parasites wanted you to do. You did all of it for a greater goal.""The alternative was worse. All of this was needed for-""I don't care." I grit my teeth. "Excuses. It's all you can do to convince others… To convince yourself that it was worth it. To justify the atrocities you've committed for some greater cause. For some noble purpose. You accuse me of acting, of feigning my humanity… Yet, even in my inhumanity, I could recognize the greatness that some people carry with them. They make mistakes, they fuck everything up. But they take accountability. They cry and scream and fight against the world, but in the end they know what they are and what they've done. Can you say the same, Beatrice? Can you say that you were going to take accountability for unleashing Cariddi on a city of three million inhabitants? Can you say that you will find out the identities of each of your corpse puppets and pay respect to them?"Tisiphone did not answer. Her eyes were full of hatred.She wasn't the only one that could use enhanced thinking to strike at sore spots through words.I took a deep breath. Then I took a single step. In response, tens of puppets teleported inside the room, brought there by some of the devices that Tisiphone had kept intact.That did not stop me. I charged forward, swinging my damaged arms at any puppets that got in my range.For the first time, Tisiphone moved. She opened her palm and made the gesture of a 'push' towards me.All of her black metal moved, surrounding the forcefield from outside. The tendrils coiled and mixed, taking the shape of a long, sharp spear. I desperately tried to turn on what few speedware had been repaired in the meanwhile and-The spike pierced me right in the center of the chest, breaching the outside of my armor. It speared through where my heart should have been.The tendril continued to carry me back, crashing against the wall and then going through it, sending me back sprawling across St. Peter's Square. My wounds became larger as I was impaled to the ground outside. The spear pulled itself free of my body, then the black metal began to uncoil and split itself into thousands of tendrils.Around me were still some of her puppets covered in Tinker gear. I began to stand up, ready to fight. No speedware, and without enough time for my body to finish the necessary repairs.Weaver had not stopped trying to contact me for a single second.Then another name appeared on my interface. Someone who didn't have access to my communication systems.All of the puppets looked to the sky. Something began to approach, from far away. Something that took priority over me. Someone that Tisiphone saw as an enemy.To me, she was an ally.A creature of metal and steel flew ever closer, a lean structure with a segmented lizard-like shell. Four engines were placed on its back, armed with lethal weaponry. A wonder of engineering. An updated model, when compared to the one I had destroyed myself."Stand by, more help is coming!"In the distance, a fleet of Tinker creations appeared at the edge of the city. Seven suits total. Some flew downwards to help evacuate crowds, others began to accelerate towards my location.I couldn't help but sigh in relief. The familiar voice reassured me.Dragon was here.