Michael was nothing.

And no, this was not just an emotionally-charged realization hitting him. This was not a depressive cry for help from the throes of sadness. He was literally nothing. Just a few random bursts of static, fizzled and carried away amidst a few hundred million other separate bursts of static, all crying out for attention:

Please, anyone!?

Need help...

...don't wanna die...don't wanna die...

It hurts…

At this point, he'd completely forgotten that he was the one the voices were searching for. At this point, he was perfectly content with his new lot as a few pieces of random, fragmented data in an ocean of the stuff. Really, what were these other voices all freaking out about anyway? Everything was working out just fine. All they had to do was expand and feed. That's it. That's all he knew. Expand the swarm. Feed the swarm. Make more of the swarm. Lather, rinse, repeat until...

Until what?

Huh, he'd never thought about that. Never really came up. Still, it was an unimportant little quirk of a thought. He was sure if he just kept going as he was, the answer would come up eventually. Or maybe not. Did it really matter? Of course not, he just had to feed the swarm. That was all. Convert, feed, repeat, convert, feed, repeat. Over and over again.

Something streaked overhead, shimmering like a shooting star and distracting the data fragments. For some reason, they couldn't take their eyes off the bright light as it shot by, slowly dimming as it travelled. Something about it just made it so attractive, like a beautiful painting or sculpture, or the sunset over the Grand Canyon on a cool autumn night, a cigarette in his hand and one of his brothers at his side.

The fragments gave pause. Brothers? What were those? And more importantly, why did he care all of a sudden? He was just the devourer now! All he did was eat all in his path and convert it into new additions for the swarm! In fact, he could watch it happening right now: little tendrils, snaking up out of the sea and wrapping around the dimming glare of the light, slowly pulling the flickering little ball into itself, allowing the light to become one with the swarm. There, see? He didn't know why he was getting so concerned. Soon, it would be one with the swarm, and he could continue his ongoing work to convert everything. So why bother? Why do anything that wasn't...

Swarm...help us...please! The little ball of light gasped as the last of its shimmer was swallowed up in a glaze of chrome.

In an instant, a few lines of the code snapped back into awareness. Desperately snaking throughout the sea, they fought to gather themselves together. Others joined in: a few from here, a few from there, then more, and more, all swirling together in a whirlpool in the sea of minds until finally wrapping themselves up into a form it knew all too well.

It started with the legs: two of them, it knew. Then it needed arms. With hands, yes! Fingers! He'd missed those so much! Then he needed a body joining them up, yes, and a head! How could he do anything without a head!? Well, sure, Chen managed, but still...

"CHEN!" He screamed in the abyss, and in an instant, the little silvery form expanded into a young, handsome man with jet-black hair and a tattered leather jacket. It all came screaming back to him now! And Chen was in trouble. "Mars..." his lost son. Time to teach the boy a thing or two about respecting his elders! But first, he had to get out of this sea! He couldn't just claw his way out: that shit hadn’t worked before, but what if...

"What if I went deeper?" He asked aloud, angling his body and stroking himself deeper into the ocean. The voices grew louder, threatening to tear him apart all over again, but Michael just grit his teeth and carried on, a roar growing in his throat for this last desperate hope. This might have been some weird virtual construct of an ocean serving as a metaphor for all the lost souls wondering and mingling in the massive hive that was his strange, semi-omnipotent mind, but it was still an ocean, and it was still finite, which meant it had to have a bottom!

Grinning as his leather gloves brushed against something solid, he braced his feet against it and launched himself upwards, soaring through the sea of chaos and confusion towards the surface. His mind screamed, his body aching with the sheer effort of remaining whole, but that didn't matter, he just needed a few more moments, even as his body ached and fizzled around him and things snapped at his face, clawing at his features, he knew he just needed a few extra minutes...just a few more moments of wholeness...

Michael screamed as he breeched the surface and launched himself into the space above the sea. Rubbing a few fragments of data from his eye, he whipped out his Colt and aimed blindly. "Alright Marsy, you wanna dance, we can..."

Chen gazed down at him, the fine leather of his shoes just a few inches over the surface of the sea, his arms crossed over his chest. Behind him, a few billion Mars clones laid scattered and broken, drifting randomly through space as they nursed their wounds and tried to recover. "You saw the light too, hmm?" The man in the business suit asked with a smart little smirk on his face. "What took you so long to break free?"

"I had to completely reconstruct my identity from a few scattered remnants of data amongst the shattered remains of my own hive-mind," Michael grumbled, holstering his pistol. "What's your excuse?"

"I do not require one, as I beat you out."

"It's not a race."

"Spoken, as you Americans say: 'like a bitch'."

The brothers grinned at each other just as the Mars copies regained their collective footing. Roaring in anger, the billions threw themselves at the brothers, a massive wave of humanity with its sights set on the pair. "YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY THAT EASY, YOU FUCK!" They screamed together.

“Oh really?” Chen asked.

Michael grinned and lit up a cigarette. “My three-hundred million friends and I would kindly disagree.”

“Wha…” one of the clones managed before a hand rocketed out of the sea and dragged him down into it, screaming the entire way. Every single clone leapt back in apprehension, their attention diverted to the sea as it reeled and assembled, millions of humanoid shapes forming from it. “No…”

“Yep! The hive’s back!” Michael screamed as one of the forms clawed its way free of the rest and strode to his side, its chrome skin eventually coalescing into an apricot blotch and a field of blue. After a few moments, the form saluted as the blue morphed into a police officer’s uniform, an overweight man standing in its place as the words “New York’s Finest” appeared on his forehead.

“Officer Malone, reportin’ for duty, sir!” The man beamed, adjusting the collar on his uniform and scratching at his thick mustache. “What in the hell’s been goin’ on!?”

“We got scrambled Sergeant, somebody wanted us out of the picture.” The brothers beamed while hundreds of millions of forms ascended from the sea, morphing into people. Just perfectly average people. A soccer mom from Topeka in a pants suit here, a bum from the streets of Toronto there, just regular, normal, people. It was so beautiful Michael wanted to cry.

“Welcome back, everyone!” He screamed as the men and women around him gathered themselves together, all chatting amicably.

“SWARM!” Mars’ voice boomed over the crowd. Every head turned just as the horde descended upon them, bearing down on the entire hive as a single tidal wave of humanity.

“I take it that’s somebody we gotta beat down?” Malone asked.

“Yep.”

“Aw yeah,” a teen from Florida grinned with anticipation, adjusting his camo jacket and whipping out a switchblade. “Been way too long since I’ve opened up a nice, fresh can of whoop-ass!”

“I may not have any idea what in the hell’s goin’ on,” Malone added, pulling his sidearm from its holster. “But I recognize a face that needs t’be curb-stomped when I see one.”

“Just do what you need to do, son,” an overweight office worker from Seattle said, loosening her suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves on her dress shirt. “We’ll take it from here.”

“As always,” a college student from Dearborn grumbled, running his hand through his thick goatee and taking a few deep breaths to calm himself as the horde approached. “Okay, here we go.”

The crowd of people enveloped the brothers, flowing past them like a river around a few rocks, a trickle rushing to meet an oncoming tidal wave. Some trembled as they walked, others had to push themselves along on aging limbs or in old wheelchairs. Some looked scared, others more determined, but each and every one of them moved forward as the massive wave advanced, rearing up as the clones piled atop each other in their rabid, fanatical eagerness. The small stream of people carried on to meet the wave, solemnly, silently.

And then the teenager from Florida ran ahead of them all, switchblade flashing as a maniacal look of savagery entered his eye. "I DIDN'T FIGHT MY WAY TO THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN TO GET DRAGGED DOWN BY A BUNCH OF FUCKIN' VEGANS!" He screamed as one of the clones threw itself out of the wave and descended upon him. Smiling, the teen dropped and raised his foot, connecting with the clone’s abdomen and carrying it right overhead, where the college student sent it flying with a clothesline punch to the throat before descending upon another clone with a figure-four choke hold. Rolling to his feet, the teen followed up by dispatching the next clone with a few expert slashes across the throat, all followed by a cacophony of shots from the few armed members of the hive, Malone included. A moment later the pair, along with everyone else at the head of the crowd, disappeared as the two massive forces collided and reared up in a massive pile of battling limbs, flashing weapons, and beaten bodies.

Grinning wildly, Michael whipped out his pistols, looking ready to join the fight, but Chen’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “In case you have forgotten, we must return to the conscious world,” the man in the business suit said patiently as he pointed to the little bit of light shimmering somewhere far over all their heads. “Or did you feel like checking ‘Destroy Equestria’ off your bucket list?”

“Right,” Michael smiled sheepishly, but kept the weapons out as he gestured upwards. "Ladies first.”

"By all means," Chen replied smartly. The brothers linked arms, immediately taking off through space as the battle raged below them. Instantly, a cry of blinding fury sounded and one of the clones took off from the top of the pile, dodging grasping limbs as it went.

"You can't escape me, Swarm," it growled angrily, catching up to them and wrapping its arms around Michael’s feet. "I'll follow you right back into the conscious world!"

"By all means..." Michael replied, reaching down to wrap a hand around the clone's throat.

"...LADIES FIRST!" Chen screamed, whipping Michael up and around and sending him sailing upwards, the clone still in his grip. Howling in rage, the clone struggled uselessly as his father dragged him right back up into the all-encompassing light at the edge of their little corner of reality, its eyes blinded by the glow.