Aptom's Malcult form dodged agilely to the right, letting the spray of explosive shells that would have forced him to regenerate his head pass by. Considering the rules he was operating under, this would have had him out of the fight if he'd let them hit. After all, having one's head blown off would have been fatal damage to anyone who couldn't regenerate as well as he could.
Just as he was about to start taunting the soldier-boy about his piss-poor aim, Aptom realized that he'd just gotten confirmation of something he'd been waiting for for some time. It was something he'd tried to explain to Atkins, with not much success. The fact that he had never been really good with words had only made the situation even more annoying than it had been to start with.
Of course there weren't really any words that could describe the link that he shared with all of the other parts of himself was yet another reason he hated trying to talk about it. "Clone-link" had been the closest that anyone had come, but it was a lot deeper than that. They weren't just clones, and what he shared with them wasn't just a link.
But, since he could never quite find the words to explain that, Aptom just stuck with that explanation.
The news he'd just gotten from one of his many other selves was very good, and since he wasn't in the mood to get his head blown off for a seventh time, he lashed out with a pair of Synevite tentacles and wrapped them around the waist of the soldier attacking him – he vaguely recalled the man's name being Dave, or something like that – and lifted him off his feet. Atkins got all huffy with him for that, of course.
"Aptom! You were previously informed about-"
"I just got a message from one of the guys down in Fort Collins – you remember, where Chronos stored all of those planes? All of the Zoanoids manning that storage facility have been infected." Aptom grinned, in a manner that some people – people he hated – would have probably called insolent. He'd morphed his head back into his normal, "human" form just so he could do that. "Chronos hasn't sent over any humans, and I've been making regular reports, so no one knows that all of the Zoanoids there are me now."
"Good," Atkins said, obviously willing to overlook a bit of fun on his part in light of what he'd just reported; one of the many reasons he honestly preferred working with the guy over anyone else, not that he was going to actually tell the man that, of course. "Make sure that no one else becomes aware of that fact. Have they started putting pressure on you to begin scrapping the aircraft?"
"No, but Shin's been talking about sending in some more troops to reinforce the base; well, that's what he thinks," he said, grinning widely.
"More meals for you and the horde, eh Maniac?" Ryan laughed, managing somehow to give the impression of winking in spite of the obvious fact that Guyvers like him didn't have eyelids.
"They always are," he said, amused by the nickname; it was definitely more interesting than anything else he'd been called in his time.
"All right, now that we're finished with the self-congratulatory back slapping, let's finish this exercise," Atkins said, with a sharp nod to the soldier-boy still wrapped in his tentacles. "Rook!"
"Yessir."
Dropping said soldier-boy, Aptom shifted back into the form of a basic, everyday Malcult. Well, at least as basic as his forms ever got, anyway.
"You sure you're just a Malcult?" soldier-boy Rook deadpanned, as he once again dodged another of his shots. Since the ammo they could use in this particular exercise was limited, and he was clearly starting to run out given the many times that Aptom had managed to dodge him, he was obviously starting to get annoyed; he could go suck eggs. "I don't think any normal Zoanoid could move that fast."
"You ever fight a Zoanoid that wasn't me, soldier-boy?" he asked, annoyed.
"Well, no, but-"
"Good, then shut up. And consider yourself lucky you're not up against a Lu-kill," he said, chuckling. "Then you'd really be in some deep shit."
"Chronos didn't really name one of their Zoanoids Lu-Kill, did they?"
"Sergeant Rook, mind on your mission," Atkins said, sounding about as unimpressed as he ever did.
"Sorry, sir," the soldier-boy said, raising his gun. "Won't happen again."
He twitched slightly, having felt his Citiciss' head get blown off and his Devold take a Pressure Cannon to the chest. Both of his Enzyme IIs had long since been taken out of the fight; both with their heads blown off, which meant that Chronos was fucked if they kept trying to use those things against these particular Guyvers. Even those flying ones – probably called Enzyme III; the old bastard not having much imagination when it came to names, and all – which he'd never really managed to get a good taste of thanks to that old bastard of a Zoalord Balkus, wouldn't be able to take Guyvers IV and V down.
That was good; it meant that a certain pair of Guyvers could do a lot more damage to those Chronos bastards without having to worry about getting hurt, themselves. And, that meant that Chronos was going to be very sorry that they had ever decided to piss off the last of the Lost Number Commandos. Speaking of which, I guess I should check up on how Sho's been doing lately; little idiot's probably gotten himself in trouble again without me there. He grinned; at least he'd have the chance to check up on his little brothers.