SMG4:// Exodus

Part 7: Encandillar

[FOUR MONTHS LATER]

CH 1: The Eagle Has Landed

"Remember, no mistakes..."

There's fire in my lungs. I'm blazing like a missile across the crowded streets and blocks of Inkopolis. I don't have time to think, even worry. Every thought, every twitch of my neurons is directed through my Meta Arm, augmented by it's hardware, and focused wholesale into my slightest movements; every flick and dilation of my eyes, every automatic breath I take, every rapid flex of the tendons in my legs, is carefully and precisely calculated without tolerance. I am a cyborg, I am flesh made machine.

Without so much as a twitch of anticipation, I leap in between an Octoling and the Negative Meme about to devour it. Level Twos always move exactly 15 mph faster than their base speed when the meme was alive. I'm faster, the Meta Arm pushing my legs to their absolute limit and then some. I grab the Octoling and expend just enough of my internal LIMEADe to block three drops of NME the size of sewing needles in my blind spot.

With exactly 28/37ths of a second to spare, I hit the ground with the Octoling in my arms as Shaggy soars over me and rips into the Level Two a hair's breadth above me. He's been flying no more and no less than 5 inches behind me this whole time, maintaining the exact same speed. I grab all the civilians out of the crowd, he cleans the street. Without giving a centimeter per second of my speed, I carry the Octoling into the crowd in front of me and skid to a stop, firing off my Epithelium against the giant wall of NME right behind me and Shaggy. It's cornered.

"REJECT!"

The flood of NME is instantly split in half and I see Waluigi floating behind it. It becomes a pile of Neutral Energy and fizzles away. More Negative Memes leap out of the high roofs of the buildings surrounding us. I maintain my shield and don't move. The crowd of Inklings and Octolings behind me screams in collective terror.

"GO TO HELL!!!" A voice howls from behind the building to my right. It's entire roof is suddenly sheared cleanly off its foundation and crashes into the one across the street, crushing every single NM above us. Matt vaults over the severed wall of the building and dives into his newfound five-story projectile, kicking it harder into the rubble. Both buildings flatten immediately, sending deafening shockwaves through the pavement and rubble careening toward us. The Inklings behind me cling to my side as the concrete falls, I remain still.

Then, an army of Oof Buttons soar overhead, grabbing all the debris out of the sky to the slightest pebble. As soon as they pass my vision, I flick my head behind me and scan for injuries over the sea of scared looking cephalopod faces. 12 feet behind me, there's a middle-aged looking Inkling looking down. I can't see through the crowd, but by the excruciating anguish on her face, her hand was probably corrupted. By the time I get to her through the crowd, it might spread up through her arm. By then it would be too hard to pacify with my LIMEADe. No one had even recognized that it was over yet. I already have my first aid kit unzipped.

I'm next to her in three seconds. I have the tourniquet tied over her arm in two. In less than one second, her infected arm is severed from her body at just above the elbow. It flops to the ground and the NME burns up the forearm and reduces it to an unstable pile of goo. The Inklings near her back away and she begins to scream in pain.

"Waitwaitsorry ma'am," I anxiously try to console her, fumbling the anesthetic in my hand, "It's okay, I didn't want you to get corrupted. I'm so Sorry."

I quickly and sheepishly administer the anesthetic and wrap bandages around her wound. I stamp out the corrupted arm with my LIMEADe encased foot and direct everyone downtown. The woman leans against me, growing a little faint from blood loss. I sigh as we walk down the street toward the city center. It was all just procedures, algorithms to follow. I'd done this so many times that I memorized everything without any conscious thought. Like a performer burning his music into his head, I had practiced this – the five inches, the movement of my eyes, the first aid – down to the smallest minutia. These past five weeks of constant missions and fighting, the ASS had become so cohesive, so indispensable, that one of these injuries such as the woman I'm bracing on my shoulder was an outlier. A casualty was inexcusable.