Already, the tone had shifted. The reinforcement teleporter had been seeding each group with new members, sufficient to more than replace the ones who dropped out of the fight, injured, knocked out, or dead. In a last ditch effort, he had dumped a ton of reinforcements into the one group furthest from this door.

A game of whack a mole, where you swung at one, but two more popped up. Focus on the one entrance, and the other entrances pushed in. All the more so because the group I’d labeled ‘group D’ had increased in number.

The entrance to the hallway became a new spot we had to defend. Roles shifted, our rear became our new defensive front. Fume Hood laid down some cover fire, choking whole groups of the enemy.

And the hallway—more of the same.

Hundreds.

Hundreds, I thought again, as I processed the idea. This wasn’t the only defensive front. Hundreds of human beings, hundreds who didn’t flinch, didn’t break down, and didn’t break pattern.

The loss of his subject’s full volition wasn’t even a huge drawback in this kind of circumstance. It was an asset for Teacher.

Byron hit someone, transitioned that hit into a grab, and pulled them to one side, where one of his constellations blasted out water. Sveta made it further down the hallway, where there were less of our people in reach. Her tendrils cut where the saw teeth ran along flesh, and grabbed otherwise. The two combined were… nasty. To cut someone’s arm and pull on that skin?

Roman tore through people. Pick a target, lunge in, win. Rinse, repeat. Juliette, like Ashley, hung back at the sides, looking for opportunities.

We’d won the entrance. Now the hallway, while the rest of the gallery folded in behind us, pressuring stonewall, pressuring our guys on the outside. Me included.

I had the shield I’d confiscated, and nobody had thought to turn it off or disable it for me. For now, I focused on using it to help shield the group.

Rain had a blade out, and ‘parried’ a swing of a gun being used as a club. It still hit him, parry or no, but it broke in the impact, diffusing the hit.

They were doing that a lot. I suspected the tinker guns made by Teacher’s shitty tinkers ran out of power fast.

Chastity and Samuel were hanging back. So were some of our volunteered capes. Withdrawal leaped up, latched onto the wall, then sprung down, over and over, targeting stragglers. Caryatid used her breaker form’s ability to draw her costume into the form by utilizing loose and torn fabric to shield some of our team. She’d grabbed one of the fences and used it as a shield.