Heavy Metal Hijinks

[HK-36]

[member="Domino"], [member="Rave Merrill"]

Well, HK was in for one heck of a rodeo.
When Domino asked where the vitals would be on the great wyrm, HK called out back to her,
"I am guessing somewhere between the huge mouth filled with teeth and its butt!"

And it was then that Rave threw her alchemic blade, and the beast started to roar.
And writhe.

HK was climbing up the beast's side, higher and higher closer to the mouth, clutching to its hide for the dear life as it twisted, trying to attack Rave. The droid was so close, he could see the edge that was the worm's mouth, he began to calculate for his throw. The beast roared, wonderful! It was perfect opportunity, but then,

The ground seemed to be coming closer to his at an alarming rate.
For the beast decided to turn over in its writhing.

"No. No! Oh, I hate this job."
HK called out as he secured the grenades in his hand, pressing tightly into the crevices of the worm's leathery hide.
With a loud crash the worm turned on its back, still writhing, and the droid disappeared between the beast and solid ground.

Another scrape and more writhing as the worm turned back over, HK breaking out into the view, still clutching to its side, his additional armor plates cracked in some ways, scraped, paint peeling off, few bits of metal here and there flying off of his body.

It was time to make the hopefully final move. Scrambling that last piece of distance to the edge of worm's mouth, HK pulled off the series of pins, arming the belt of Anti-Force user grenades and he tossed it smoothly down into the beast's mouth, mechanical strength and high-speed calculations helped.
Releasing his hands from the beast's hide, he tried to slide down from it onto the ground, keeping contact with the creature using his feet and open palms.

It would not be long before the collection of grenades erupted, both explosive frags as well as sonics, incendiary, gas grenades, cryobans, flashbangs, etc. Chances were one of those would work wonders.

 

[Domino]

So much for know-it-all droids. With a frustrated grunt Domino just wrenched the knives she'd put in the beast back and up, Guiding them with her hands as she tumbled them through where a brain should be. Which apparently it wasn't since all the worm did was go into more writhing. One of the knives split lengthwise across the blade and the hilt broke off the other, but she kept pulling the blades through the wormflesh. Then HK pulled himself to the thing's mouth and tossed his grenade belt in and so much for preserving the skin, around the head anyways.

Domino turned away from the dust cloud when it came her way and pulled her shirt up over her nose. The thing was dead, she didn't feel it through the force anymore and extending her senses outward she didn't feel any more of them either. Still, if there were more that underground facility would have to be armored or reinforced or something. "Everyone alright?" She called out, "Sound off!" Waiting for the others Domino walked up to the remains, a ball of kenetic ready just in case.

@HK-36 Rave Merrill

 

[Velok the Younger]

@Domino @HK-36
The worm came to a halt -- most of it. A small portion near the tailtip squirmed, and a jagged alchemical knife emerged, dripping wormguts. Rave washed it off with her belt canteen and a couple of handfuls of red dust. The droid seemed intact, as did the twi'lek and most of the hide.

"Tikulini are solitary. I'm willing to bet the seismic survey won't turn up anything especially nasty -- but even a tikulini can't chew phrikite. Its tunnel will have bent around veins of what we're after. Should save a good bit of time, depending how often the tunnels approach the mineshaft."

 

[HK-36]

[member="Domino"], [member="Rave Merrill"]

The beast's mouth lighted up with multitudes of the different grenade effects as if somebody has just cast Maximized Colorful Spray inside of the Tikulni wyrm, except more science fiction-y. Either way, the beast was dead, the hide survived in large enough patches to be worked, HK has hit the ground just before the explosion, rolling on it with his battered armor, dirt caked onto it as he lost the momentum and turned quickly, still kneeling, to see if his method had effect.

In quick movement he took his white-blade training lightsaber in his hand, the blade lighting up with its Aura of Light-Side, as the droid beheld the creature's death as the cloud of dust rose around the wyrm upon its demise,
"I wish Kerrigan was he- oh, khark."
The droid in split seconds activated his high-speed rotary engines, specifically the one in the wrist of the hand that held his lightsaber, suddenly turning it into a buzz-saw with low buzzing sound. Or in this case, a shield as the due to the explosion the droid saw the creature's teeth flying at him like shrapnel.

His saber pew'ed and zapped as he sent most of the teeth flying aside, to be lodged safely into ground or rock, away from his troops, Domino, or Rave. Well most, because there were couple of dings heard through the high-speed buzzing as two teeth-shrapnel lodged themselves in the cuirass that covered the droid's chest.

His saber stopped as the teeth were batted away safely, and HK turned towards Domino on his heel as the dust from grenades begun to settle slowly,
"I am fine!"
HK said as with a wet splat the worm's guts and a fold of its leathery hide landed over him.

"So who wants cake?"
Came a muffled question from the slimey guy-dripping fold of skin

 

[Domino]

"No thanks," Domino said turning down the cake again. Having a giant worm nearly destroy the expedition and now seeing blackened and raw chunks of juicy meat and organ sliding from the things head... Well any appetite she might have had was long gone. Crushing the force ball in her hand back out of existence, she turned and headed back over to where her command center thing had been set up (hey she could call her station whatever the heck she wanted) and signaled the all clear. Slowly mine operators appeared out from behind any rocks or the ship where they'd been hiding to shuffle over for a look at the monster. "Take thirty guys, get your breath back while we get more survey data in." It'd probably be longer than that in all honesty, and despite being chosen for having a solid head on their shoulders some of them would probably need every minute of it.

Triggering the buried sound emitters for a pulse, the Twi'lek anxiously awaited the computer to project the received return. Would it show the worm's tunnel bending around a vein, or was the bottom of the mine collapsed forcing them to re-dig and waste even more time?

@HK-36 @Rave Merrill

 

[Velok the Younger]

@HK-36 @Domino

As Rave's heart rate returned to normal, she came over to view the seismographic readout once more. She squinted and reached past Domino to tap the monitor -- something had gotten miscalibrated when the tikulini breached -- and the image resolved. "There. Right there. Nice fat vein, fingers crossed. Shouldn't take this team longer than ten, fifteen minutes to confirm phrikite. This here might be a secondary node."

She wiped red dust from her forehead. "Good solid place to invest, Gromas. Valuable, accessible, gravity's reasonable. I love having operations here. I'll have a ship of mine come by to haul the tikulini off for alchemization, unless you or HK feel like staking a claim to its skin."

 

[HK-36]

[member="Domino"], [member="Rave Merrill"]

HK would pull off the gut-dripping fold of skin that fell on him, shaking it he tried to throw as much of the bloody, oozy discharge as he could from it, of course the stench would stick around it still,
"Suit yourself, there will be more for the troops."

One of the Iron Knights, who were at the moment pocking the Tikulini remains, or what was left of them, with his bolt gun, just to make sure it was really dead, looked over as he heard so,
"No, thank you, sir! It kinda smells over here like that plant-Sith Lady's corpse did when we transported her after that astromech drilled in her head."

The droid just tried to ignore another heart-breaking rejection and the imagery as Rave spoke up,
"Well I am in it just for the one bigger shipment of phrik me and Domino have agreed upon,"
HK would slightly shake the fold of Tikulini skin that fell on him, it was roughly his length, a bit smaller,
"But I may as well keep this piece, I shall clean it and make a rug out of it or something. Hang it in my trophy room-"

He would fold it in two and put it to his waist, looking down to see how it presented as a skirt of sorts,
"Or maybe use it to woo Lady Protector, I guess she would like it. Or maybe woo Cater, I think I could make a hat out of this thing."
The droid tried to fold the skin flap into a hat kind of shape.

 

[Domino]

Seeing HK holding the piece up to himself as a skirt actually made Domino's near-immediate refusal of the hide die unspoken in her throat, turning it instead into a thoughtful "hrmm." That actually would work very nicely together, she thought looking towards the mouth of the mine. Used as a kama for phrik armor... Back it with armorweave, no have it back the weave, keep shrapnel from cutting the rarer saber proof leather and it wouldn't encumber the legs' movement. "I might have an idea for some, let me know if you have any left over, this thing is huge." Seventy meters at the least from eyeballing it and Domino didn't remember Rave using Tikulini in any of her products but then she hadn't gone out of her way to memorize the other woman's catalog.

An instantiate beeping from the console interrupted all her thoughts about armor and yanked her attention back to the mine. "We've got phrik people! Get those droids back in there and start warming up the smelters, there's work needing doing!" This was pay-dirt time, when she'd see if this investment would pay off or not, and judging by the looks of that fat vein things were coming up spades. Once this area was cleared she'd be able to tell if it was worth burying a facility here. Around them the workers stepped with a new life as they directed droids and rushed digging material around, this was what they were here for. In the dust in front of the mine the corpse of the worm lay forgotten.

@HK-36 @Rave Merrill

 

[HK-36]

[member="Domino"], [member="Rave Merrill"]

The droid would fold the skin in his hands like one would fold a damp towel after a shower, holding it over his forearm as he turned towards the mine openings at Domino's announcement, watching the scurrying and hurrying of the mine droids as the vein they have all been looking forward to finally revealed itself.

"Sure wish those droids were unionized."
The machine muttered, advocating equality among all beings, synthetic or otherwise, as always, it may have been a pipe dream but it was always some goal he could work towards to.

There was really no need for him there anymore, not unless a second worm would appear, so the droid turned towards the command compound's entrance, his free metal hand venturing over his armor to pick at the holes that peppered it, there were items lodged in them and the droid decided to pull them out. He would look at one of these objects and mutter to himself,
"Interesting."
Just before he disappeared through the doorway leading to the command base of the mining operation.