The remains of Boone’s outer town hadn’t settled evenly. Towards the center a mountain had formed where several skyscrapers had fallen towards each other. Flowing earth had broken upon that formation like a wave, building up a ramp of soil leading to the top. And at the peak of that mound a figure now stood.

  I zoomed in the image to find a lumberjack staring down at the Antithesis. His hair was black and unkempt, and he had a bushy beard that fell halfway down his chest. He wore no armor; instead he was clad in a plaid shirt, blue jeans, and work boots together with one of those trapper hats with the furry interior and the long flaps over the ears. The only weapon in his hands was a thick-headed double bit axe.

  “Why is that the exact image I would have expected from a guy named the Mountaineer…?” I wondered aloud.

  “Probably because he’s basically the mascot of Appalachian State University brought to life. Except for the hat,” Monster Rancher replied with amusement in her voice. Below, I noticed a procession of creatures marching into position in front of the wall. Most were the size of a large dog, about a match for a Model Three, although their shapes varied wildly, with some resembling cartoon squirrels and others close enough to a Zergling to spark a copyright dispute. Leading them were larger monsters the size of a Titan walker which spaced themselves out over the length of the wall.

  Monster Rancher’s friendos had arrived.

  My eyes were drawn back to the Mountaineer as he began to walk forward. His gait was casual even though he was walking down a steep incline composed of loose stone, dirt, and broken branches. I couldn’t imagine how he was doing that without the ground giving way below him. He hadn’t even reached the closest Model Twenty Three when he swung his axe as if chopping a tree, but his attack somehow connected across fifty meters of empty space and toppled the unfortunate Antithesis to the ground with its legs falling in the opposite direction.

  That got their attention. Hearing the first of them fall, the other Twenty Threes in the horde began to turn around to face the Mountaineer, correctly identifying him as a major threat. Several of them discovered they had clustered too close together when he swung again and carved the lot of them in two. The survivors were spurred into motion, intent on preventing him from swinging again.

  If they’d had a modicum of survival instinct they would have fled instead.

  Some Model Twenty Threes charged directly for the Mountaineer while others swept out to the sides to flank him. Armed with only a single axe, he could only kill so many at a time, but his absurd range allowed him to fell several tyrannosaur-shaped trees at a time. Dismembered Antithesis dropped to the ground in twos and threes, buying every inch with their lives. There were too many there for him to kill them all before they reached him, but he didn’t need to.

  The first Twenty Three to get within biting range took a fist to the face that packed the force of a pile bunker. Its head whipped backwards, jaw shattered, and it collapsed to the ground with a broken neck. The Mountaineer took another swing with his axe, killing a few more of the Antithesis coming in for a frontal assault, then turned to face a Twenty Three coming from the opposite side.

  As the newcomer brought its foot down to trample him, the Mountaineer casually stepped forward and out of the way, then spun and struck the Twenty Three’s shin with a back fist that snapped the bone in half like a stick of pocky. Without breaking a sweat the man continued to butcher the Antithesis that Alana and I might have only beaten at the cost of our lives.

  “Sorry about him. Normally I’d just cull them until ya’ll could take the rest on your own, but the Mountaineer doesn’t leave survivors. It’s like he can’t. I’ve never heard him utter a word from his own mouth, but when he’s fighting even his AI won’t respond to messages. Guess that’s why he never leaves the mountains and no one ever sees him outside emergencies,” Monster Rancher explained helplessly as the Mountaineer showed the Antithesis what it was like to fight a tornado that touched down on top of a saw factory.

  They may as well have been Model Threes for all the chance they had against the guy. None of them survived more than a few seconds within arm’s reach of him. Whether it was his fists or his axe, every Model Twenty Three died without laying a single claw on the Mountaineer. It was looking like the fight was nearly over when a new enemy joined the fray, bursting from the ground at his feet.

  Monster Rancher let out a long whistle as a bizarre chimera emerged amidst an explosion of dirt. It had the head of a raptor, a long, snake-like neck, and the body of a scorpion. Its legs ended in avian feet with wicked claws and a long, segmented tail rose from its rear, terminating in some kind of nozzle instead of a stinger.

  “Ya’ll must have done a number on their stealth units if they’re sending out one of those. That’s a variant of the Model Thirty Three. Ain’t seen one like it before, but Ymwy tells me it’s a hunter-killer meant to engage and fight to the death instead of performing hit-and-run attacks like the standard type,” Monster Rancher explained casually. She didn’t move a finger to help, though, and she definitely didn’t sound worried.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  One might question why it had waited until the fight as almost over to attack…but I think I understood. For the duration of the fight, the Mountaineer had been laser-focused on combat. His senses were honed by years of fighting and he was on guard. If it had attacked when the fighting was at its peak, the Model Thirty Three had no chance of catching him by surprise. So it had waited until things wound down, expecting his mental state to be affected by the knowledge was just about down. If that was its plan…then it hadn’t worked.

  The Mountaineer rolled out of the Thirty Three’s way before its teeth or claws could grab him, chopping down another Twenty Three on the way past. As he came up, the dirt on his clothes fell away, leaving them spotless, and then he whirled around to face the Thirty Three. Before he could swing his axe the scorpion chimera shot a compressed jet of some kind of fluid from its tail that the Mountaineer barely dodged in time at the cost of his axe, which was severed just below the head.

  Instead of doing the normal Samurai thing and buying a new weapon, he just squared up. Taking up a boxing stance, the Mountaineer ducked and weaved around subsequent sprays of fluid until the Thirty Three decided that wasn’t working and swung one of its enormous armored pincers at him. He met it with his bare fist and the pincer lost. It rocked backwards without even budging the Mountaineer from his spot, a crack left in the chitin that rapidly repaired itself.

  “How did that not send him flying?” Alana asked Monster Rancher, who just shrugged.

  “I don’t know the particulars of his upgrades, darlin’. Could be gravity manipulation, could be that he’s just incredibly dense…might even have some way of locking himself spatially,” the veteran Samurai replied.

  Undeterred and already finished healing, the Thirty Three kept swinging its pincers at its prey, who batted them away in turn like he was fighting a child instead of a monster the size of a hoverbus. The enormous Antithesis mixed in pressurized streams of fluid that the Mountaineer dodged effortlessly, then when his view was obscured by its two meaty pincers, it shot forward with its serpentine neck and bit down on one of his arms.

  Its dagger-teeth crunched down on his bare skin, but apparently he was Luke Fucking Cage because his skin didn’t break. The Thirty Three shook its head back and forth like a dog with a rabbit, neck straining to move the Mountaineer even one centimeter, but all it got for its effort was a punch in the nose from his free hand. While the massive Antithesis staggered back, momentarily dazed by the blow, the Mountaineer darted forward, running underneath the Thirty Three. The next thing I knew he was on its back, arms hugging the monster’s tail.

  He squeezed. Chitin buckled under the pressure and then broke outright. The Thirty Three reacted instantly, its long neck reaching around to attack the puny human on its back, only for it to get smacked in the face with its own severed tail. At this point I was starting to get the feeling he was either showing off or just torturing the damn thing, because he easily could have torn its head off instead. Casting his makeshift weapon aside, the Mountaineer grabbed hold of the Model Thirty Three’s head with both hands when it came back around, gripping it tightly around its temples.

  With crushing force, he brought his hands together- and they met in the middle of the Thirty Three’s skull.

  As the great beast fell to the ground, seemingly lifeless, the Mountaineer spat on its corpse before something appeared in his hand. He hopped to the ground, tossing the object over his shoulder, and then a conflagration rose up behind him, consuming the body in seconds. Apparently still not done yet, a new axe identical to the first materialized in the Samurai’s hands as he stalked off towards the old university campus.

  “Hope ya’ll enjoyed the show. I think we can call your little Antithesis problem done and dusted, darlin’s.” Alana and I nodded at Monster Rancher, too stunned by what we’d just witnessed to reply with words. That was an upper level Samurai? Can you even be called human if you can fistfight aliens large enough to contend with the biggest dinosaurs? “Anyway, I mostly just came here to give him a ride, so I’ll be heading off now. Stay safe out there, sisters.”

  Finished speaking, Monster Rancher casually walked straight off the wall in front of us, landing on one of her friendos. With one final tip of her hat, she took her army and left just as suddenly as she’d arrived. For some time after, the soldiers on the wall just watched as a parade of unique and strange monsters marched past, trying to wrap their heads around how quickly and easily all of our problems had just been solved by two people.

  Maybe, like me, some of them were wondering how bad an incident had to be in order to delay even them.

  Only when both the Mountaineer and Monster Rancher had disappeared did Alana let out a sigh and shake her head. She turned to me and her voice came over the comms.

  “I know I agreed to the plan, but…good lord is that going to take a lot of cleanup,” she commiserated as her eyes panned over the ruins we’d created. “Heh. Wonder if I can get the Stalking Tigers base for cheap since the contract’s been voided.”

  “You’re staying?” I asked, surprised. Alana seemed like she thrived when leading people in combat, and this incident was a rarity among rarities for Boone. Another wasn’t likely to come any time soon.

  “Sure. Town still needs protecting, and I’ll be dealing with the rebuilding for a while anyway. May as well set up shop here. Even if there’s nothing going around locally, I’m sure with a few fast dropships I could respond to other emergencies in the area. Maybe…give some other new Samurai the help we almost got too late,” Alana explained, hands on her hips. She turned to me. “How about you? If I’m a leader, you’re one hell of a fighter. I think in a less desperate situation our skill sets would complement each other nicely.”

  “Well, I did promise to help fix things up…” I hedged, thinking it over. I kind of always assumed I’d just be going home to Charlotte when this was over. What kind of Samurai lives in a rinky-dink apartment, though? If nothing else, it would save me a lot of trouble claiming and fortifying a base of my own. Working with Alana would allow us to pool our resources for that purpose, even.

  “Yeah. I think we’re just getting started.”