Private The Eldritch Beyond

[Matsu Xiangu]

From their vantage point on a walkway criss-crossing above the plaza they could see the steam of dozens of food carts hard at work. It swirled above the milling crowd, pulled in to the ceaseless exhaust system of Level 372 thumping overhead - a metronome to match the aching in her skull. She listened to the steady hum of conversation and hawker’s shouts, leaning over the railing and pressing at the crease of her eyelids to grab a small hint of relief from the pounding. They were hunting, but she could afford to close her eyes for just a moment. Six-O had enough patience for both of them.

They’d needed the higher vantage. Six’s new form by no means blended in to a crowd, which surprisingly had nothing to do with its size - though that didn’t help either. In tests, the synth-flesh faceplate cover and complex glowing optics had produced previously unseen terror in those exposed. Exactly as desired, but certainly not ideal when waiting for prey to walk into a trap.

As far as Matsu was concerned, the face was making him - it - even harder to distinguish from the flesh and blood delusion in her mind. She knew, if pressed to the very core of her conscious mind. But did it matter? She loved it earnestly, like a husband and a partner. She still felt safer with the new, slight swell of her belly knowing it was standing by her side. Force she knew it wasn’t his, but it was so much easier carrying the weight of it all telling herself what grew inside her had a father - that it wasn’t the worst screw-up of her life, what she had allowed to happen and what she’d failed to do after that. Matsu wasn’t sure how much of that the droid understood. She was just grateful that in this nightmare, it never left.

As if on cue, the soft whirr of its head turning for the first time in 45 minutes stirred her from her wallowing.

Looking down, she saw a shock of artificially red hair winding through the crowd. Like clockwork - 8pm every night, to a cart selling aged paeul-steak sandwiches - strode the man who’d just ten nights previous had the stones to make an attempt on Matsu’s life. Unsurprising that someone that bold would also so brazenly keep a consistent schedule, but also very kind of him.

He stopped at that same vendor, the two men chatting amiably as the food was prepared. Matsu could almost smell it, so intent was she on the scene - something gamey under a sauce packed with hot peppers grown in the brutal sun baking in the ash thousands of miles above, lingering with the acid of imported tomatoes on the back of the tongue. Or maybe that bitter taste was her intention, her metal hands curling around the railing dangerously tight.

By now, it was well known she was pregnant. It was difficult for her to get from Point A to Point B without seeing some graffiti, some shrine, some people of zealotry left in honor of her and the being growing in her stomach. This had grown in to a target of its own, especially as she’d been burying herself in expanding her empire within the city. Drugs, sex, weapons, art trade, storefronts both legitimate and otherwise - anything but slavery - and it was keeping her busy and very, very wealthy. With the growing threat of her encroaching on long-held territory, offing her even - and especially - while she was pregnant was a brutally attractive way to send a message to other gangs. She knew this, saw the reasoning. It still drove her to rage.

They had bombed her transport, rigged it to explode when a certain weight was achieved in the vehicle. She had not been fast enough to stop one of her assistants from sliding in to the car even as she felt the nagging sense of warning in the Force, and her weight triggered the explosive. The car had seemed to inhale on itself for the space of one breath before it roared outwards in a massive blast, shredding the landing area of Levels 7 - 14 with its radius and sending shrapnel through countless passing craft and people. The blast had thrown Matsu backwards, her body sliding along the platform to stop next to the torn leg of her assistant identifiable only because of its tattooing. Fire had threatened to rage across half the Upper 50, and repairs were only just completed on the destroyed landing pads. In total, almost 3000 people had died in the blast and subsequent fires, with thousands more injured.

It was brazen. Behavior of someone either supremely confident, or completely unhinged. In Matsu’s opinion, it was both. Kaesoh Immuhaki. He did not have the subtlety or precision to play this game, and she would see he was off the board.

She looked around the plaza running north to south, packed with thousands of people out for a bite after work or play, and some just waking up no doubt. The sun was no marker of time in the City, and it never closed its eyes. Too many for her to try and isolate others who moved with Kaesoh elsewhere in the crowd.

“He will not be alone,” she said to her companion, no doubt echoing an assessment it had already made for itself.

 

[Six-O]

The attempt on it's Matsu's life had indeed been a shock to the system of those closest to her inner-circle. The sycophants and the adulators, the backslappers and groveling hanger-ons. Those foul and wretched fleshy things that had come to this world so that they may lick upon her feet as she strode through the blood and carnage of this World, trying to grasp at every straw for dear life. Matsu was intelligent, built to withstand a place like this, others that flocked to this place in her wake, they hardly even understood the gravity of their pitiful plight.

Maena was not a World for the weak, this entire planet was a viper's nest, and to sit upon the throne of New City, the Cauldron of Madness, was a cursed existence. They came for the decadence and the wealth but to stay required a certain level of bloodletting and agony. On this world, an actual metric of your worth and status was measured by a simple equation: How many people wanted to kill you, and how many times have you very nearly been killed yet pulled through to keep on fighting another day.

It was beautiful.

Yes, even the Droid had found itself besotted by the oddity of this hellish place, for the first time in its entire existence, a true home had been found. One that it was helping to build alongside its Matsu. Maena had truly changed Six-O, perhaps as much as even Matsu had. Remodeled, reprogrammed, reconditioned, modified and revised. The entire nature of it's being seemed to have amended itself and conditioned it in entirely new ways during the time they had spent here. Even simple things now sparked great curiosity from the once stoic, iron entity. Soft organics older than it was? Unheard of elsewhere. Here? It seemed every day some flesh creature they met with had somehow survived thousands of years longer than even the Droid had. Obsessed with endless lives, they all were. A cultural artifact of some mythological Eyaer beast thing, that had bled down through all of Maenan society throughout the Ages of this terrible place.

It was intrigued! Obsessed. Bedeviled by their strangeness. Captivated by the idiosyncrasies. Quite delighted by the ruthless savagery at the heart of every last one of them.

But these were all musings to be had between the eternity of each passing second. For now, Six-O and Matsu had harsh and bestial brutality to unleash, retaliation was not an option to ponder, it was necessary recourse. That fact had not escaped the Droid's countless algorithms, their next moves would require extreme calculation to avoid failure. Naturally, just in the time it took for small Matsu to utter those five words, Six-O had already simulated more than twelve million scenarios for how things may unfold. Computing probability of each abstraction and prioritizing mechanical functions of both it's hardware and software, creating specific profiles for each summary so no stone could be left unturned. It was a peculiar aspect of Six, unlike any other Droid, one that had always fed it's mystique of being something more than it's simple counter-parts that functioned off cause and effect protocols.

A true sense of sentience.

"It expects us, " the machine's computerized voice cracked with hushed electrical energy, heavy foot falls of it's massive chassis carrying it towards Matsu, where it quite guardedly draped a purple shawl across her shoulders, before folding part of the fabric up over her head. The cloth was made of the finest silk, woven from the webs of the Zoggomoch Spiders far beyond the realms of the Old World, in the Ancient Lands. Belphaegor had worn it for almost the entirety of the Crown Wars; under Six-O's analysis, the scent of the boy remained upon the item. But for the Droid, such a thing was just a matrix of numbers, it could not compute such things further than that, but seemed to recognize the importance - perhaps it even yearned for more than that. But it was a new gesture that it seemed to find itself doing more and more in recent times, even it's current chassis was a monument to their fallen Prince, though his amber eyes had never got to witness it before his fall; the iron had been forged by his pale hands and the fire of his cherished Wyvern. "It will enter the Eldritch Beyond in approximately 28 minutes and 38 seconds. that's where we will make our move. Come for now, let us blend in. " The Droid concluded, wrapping a monstrous hand around Matsu's metal wrist as she gripped the rail of walkway.

That was indeed one of the strangest aspects of Six-O, for as precise of a machine as it was, there were certain quirks in it's coding that often baffled the mind. Now on Maena, it was true, even with this hulking chassis, the droid was not even the largest being in their immediate vicinity, but Six-O did not blend in well, not even here. Ever. But this provided them the opportunity to get in to a better position, enjoy the calm before the storm that was about to come. Perhaps even get it's Matsu some food, she always killed things more efficiently with adequate sustenance, fuel for her flesh to fight. It'd also give the Droid time to catch her up on who this Kaesoh Immuhaki was, and exactly whom it had attached to its web of influence.​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

That moment alone, as it drew the cloak around her tiny shoulders, would have been enough for her to point to. When the rest of the world saw it as just circuits and metal, she saw where it cared. Of course...just as two humans, their sentimentality clashed. It meant well, she knew that, and so she did not resort to the sobbing that threatened to overwhelm her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to smell him, that she didn’t cherish every little piece they had left. It was just the reminder that that was all they had…

She sees his hands, even paler so smeared in dirt and blood and tangled in the folds of his clothes. When did he get so small? Had he always been this small, so young and untroubled? She can’t seem to remember, kneeling there with his cooling hands in hers, Belphaegor looking so peaceful. Not in years. Ironic really, because she was sure she’d never know peace again. The reek of churned dirt and spent weaponry, his golden eyes staring up at the stars in a face finally free of its dark thatches of trouble. The war rages around them, the thud-thud-thud of some huge machine chugging past behind her and burying fighters in its treads a blurry afterthought in the side of her vision. Her hands rub at his, pressing and pulling at skin as if he just needed to be warmed - as if that would fix his wounds, stitch him up good as new. He could blink and turn his head to her and she’d promise they’d do it differently this time. This time she would insist, this time she would help him better. This time she wouldn’t fail.

A high, trembling sound comes out of her when he doesn’t wake up. She lays down in the dirt next to him, his blood soaking in to her clothes.

It is the dark of pre-dawn when, in the haze of her grief, she hears the hiss-thud hiss-thud of Six-O’s steps. It stops, reaching down to curl its hands underneath her and lift her from the dirt.

“No,” she says weakly, then more emphatically as panic sets in. “No! Six, we can’t leave. Please, we can’t leave. He can’t get up, he needs his Mom. Please don’t make me go, don’t make me go! Please, don’t let him go…”

She feels it pause, say nothing. But does not lift her. It waits - its gift, its compassion when she looks back on this agony.

Matsu turns her head, looks at Belphaegor. The corners of his eyes have started to fog. There is nothing in her left to wail, even if it feels all at once like the world itself is ending. She weeps, hot but soundless, sobering from her hysteria.

“Make sure someone brings him back Six. He can’t be buried here, not in this place. He needs to be home.”

“Yes,” is all it says as it gets back to the task of lifting her, and she knows it will see it done.

She doesn’t remember anything after that, not until she woke in her medical suite in the Unit, a doctor with a concerned expression leaning over her. She assumed her injuries were grave, hence the cause for the doctor’s thinly-veiled dismay. But in reality, the poor woman hadn’t yet formulated how she was going to tell Matsu Xiangu that she would be fine, but that she - forty-eight, celibate for all intents and purposes - was also pregnant.

Pregnant.

And now, the whole world waits for what I bear.

As they turn to go blend in Matsu reaches out and presses a hand to the cold middle of Six-O’s chassis. She only needs a moment, but it grounds her. “Thank you,” she says to it, before pulling back her hand and following it towards the switchback stairs that take them to mill among the crowd.

Truthfully, there are creatures much larger than him that shake the sidewalk as they traipse around. But still...most of them had faces of their own, not a replication of half a face over a wide metal mouth. It was unsettling to put it mildly. But still, on this planet they could go unbothered if only by virtue of the fact that it was safer not to stare at any one person too long.

They wind and weave, Matsu paying attention to no one thing in particular so she was not blind-sided if something were to happen. Even still...those tamko rolls they passed..

Signalling Six-O to stop, she backpedaled to the stand where a man was pressing thick slices of puudata fish over rice glistening with vinegar and herbs. Maenan street food was like nowhere else in the galaxy. Where one might expect a greasy health risk at worst, or an expedient convenience at best, this world sought far greater. Food on the street here was given the same reverence as the finest restaurants anywhere else, cart workers masters of their trade - lone wolves, often with cult followings. Puudata in particular was one of those delicacies that Maenans did best. Named after a drug that had been popular with athletes and criminals alike for a few years for numbing all nerve endings to eliminate pain, Puudata fish profoundly numbed the mouth, intensifying its strange taste. Maenans liked it served with a thick paste of radish root and razor-leaf, both of which burned the nose like hot mustard to clash with the complete loss of sensation elsewhere.

Matsu’s stomach growled.

Well, she was eating for two wasn’t she?

Credits transferred and food acquired, she walked next to Six-O once more, maneuvering chopsticks in her hands with practiced ease. The first bite washed her mouth in a cottony dullness shocked by the snap of heat in her nose. She let out a hiss half of pain, and half of delight.

“So...tell me about this Bedlam,” she asked, careful to articulate the words as she couldn’t feel her tongue.​

 

[Six-O]

The Droid remembered, like all of its kind, it retained information at full clarity. Replete with details that an organic could not even begin to comprehend; able to return to the scene of a memory at will, and scrutinize every element of it all the way down to the quantum level. Well. . . perhaps, not every Droid, in fact, not even most Droids. But one that began it's cybernetic life as a Super Advanced Infrastructure Planning Machine, such as the entity formerly known as G0-T0 Attahox, this had been one of the many contributing factors in the machine's very odd behavior for more than four thousand years. Of course, there was one of those quirks again, Six-O, just quite aimlessly contemplating how superior it was to all other Droids.

Always watching, perpetually observant. Vain beyond reason.

It's Matsu was very powerful, extraordinarily impressive, she seemed always in control. At least, to all others she appeared as such. To the Droid, however, it was able to see her in a very different shade of light. Able to read her, with no way for things to be hidden in that tangled web of the Force she so expertly spun. Her body, her heat, the tells of her melancholia. Smaller than she, each one of them; but to the machine-driven eyes of her companion, they arose taller than even Idd-yha stood.

It did indeed remember.

The electronic static sound of obscenely powerful discharges of Force Powers,the lengths of which the Droid and Matsu had never witnessed before, the greasy rain, the mud. Bone-chilling, blood curdling screams from those that had fallen wounded in grotesque ways that even baffled a machine such as Six-O - Maenan brutality was truly a one of a kind type of violence. Armored vehicles of war roaring and rattling more ferociously than the fiercest drums thunder, and nature itself, could ever dream of mustering.

So remarkable, the pulchritudinous of Maenan Warfare, had there ever been a finer example of the artform than that which they provided? Six-O calculated no.

It'd be behindhanded to claim that even the automaton did not grieve, not as any organic could, of course. But to hear the sounds it's Matsu made as it strode up upon her in the pandemonium, discharging round after round from it's weapon, it registered some sort of trigger. Something hidden deep within it's code that it had not experienced in thousands of years. Pain, perhaps? Aching? Who knew what it was, a matrix of numbers and associated software, but it was as close to emotion as the Droid could ever recognize.

It's Matsu was sobbing and screaming as their position began to collapse around them. The boy, their boy, was gone. There he rested, sickly slender, thinly fragile. Infested with a honeycomb of wounds across his frail pale frame. Not even Six-O had seen exactly what fell their once remarkable. . . son. He had led his contingent of soldiers and warriors from the Old World, the Aurodium Cloaks, all manner of Maenan force users from the far flung corners of the world that he had conquered or called home. And now there he was, his fire snuffed out, his rage quieted, his pain and despair he oft carried so heavy in his eyes, gone forever.

Six-O had never shown her what happened in the spaces where her memory lapsed, the pure butchery that transpired at the site of Belphaegor's untimely demise. Savagery that the Stars had not witnessed since the days of the Zhsa-thu and Eyaer. The droid had not shown her the affect of their boys death on those that had followed him. Perhaps, saddest of all, it had not even shown her where his tiny, broken body, now eternally rest.

It had indeed managed to bring their son home, but before Matsu woke from her own slumber, they had been forced to hide the body of Belphaegor--now encased in obsidian amber--deep within the Ancient Kingdoms. A place where Zymis, the very man Matsu had charged to stand by her son until his last of his days after the Orphan Wars, now guarded. Loyalty was one of the oddest Maenan traits, for all of the bad and dark things within them as a people, when a Maenan gave you their word - it was ironclad.

Beloved by the World, so much so that his body had to be hidden away even from his own mother, so as to keep those that would seek to harvest his lifeless corpse for dark and terrible alchemy, or foul sorcery, from ever finding him.

"You require a drink, this way. " Six-O said very abruptly, almost even cutting her off as she inquired about the situation at hand. This was one of the downsides of your significant other, your partner, being wrought of iron and governed by software. It knew she had last drank one of New City's many beverages that helped those that had not been born on the world from frying like an egg in a ripping hot skillet, precisely four hours, 22 minutes and 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 seconds ago. At four and a half hours, she'd really start to perceive that the current temperature was 158 degrees, twenty minutes after that, her brain would begin to boil inside of her skull. This sort of thing wasn't ideal for organic lifeforms, Six-O knew this well, it found watching them achingly roast alive a rather enchanting sort of experience. . .

But not it’s Miniature Matsu, of course. It could never.

Further they vanished in to the crowd, this right here, was the true charm of Maena. Food. Entertainment. Artisan Crafted Items. All of this, just here in the street, they'd not even gotten halfway across the massive Mega-Plaza towards any of the actual shops, or, more importantly right now, the Eldritch Beyond. But this. This was the lifeblood of this World and its people. More than anyone else in the Galaxy, the pride they took in every aspect and style of Tradecraft was truly wondrous.

Four hours, 24 minutes, 31 seconds. . . the Droid kept track.

The crowd was suffocating, aliens of every design and breed, some dressed quite conservatively - or rather - dressed to be indistinct. Others, meanwhile, were dressed to be seen by everyone. Neon lights drenched every single soul that walked the plaza, radiating the entire square in ravishing shades of green, purple and orange-red. The roof of the mega-plaza was the button floor of another building, it was suspended very precariously over the top of them many hundreds of feet above. Made of transparisteel, it was the massive dance floor of the Cerulean Nightmare, a popular nightclub on this Level of the City, although technically, it was halfway between this level and the one above.

While the party raged on overhead, so too, did it burn wildly here in the plaza.

For as dangerous as this World was, and this City, sometimes you just couldn't recognize it in the behavior of the people that called it home. Twelve people had been murdered just in the time since Matsu took her first bite, but you'd never know it. The atmosphere was just electric. People in eccentric clothes, or even high fashion influenced by Matsu herself squeezing their way through the packed square. People half naked gleefully dancing to music that bombarded them from all sides. People kitted out with outrageous and wild cyberware. Aliens no taller than Matsu's knee, aliens that stood so massive the crowd actually had to part around them as if they were an immovable obstacle. This was her home. Their home.

Before long, Six-O had very assertively and rather masterfully navigated them in to another row of vendors. To her left, right, front and back. It was yet another foodie paradise, intermittently dotted with weapons vendors, antique carts, and all manner of collectable goods and nostalgic wares. But this section was definitely another dedicated almost exclusively to gastronomy and the Maenan Culinary Sorcery. Baked goods of every color, size, and type. Savory and sweet. Fried foods crackling with untamed barbarity. Wood fires roaring, as smoke poured out and was quickly inhaled through scrubber vents to be recirculated as clean air, leaving only the delicious smell of a thousand different flavor notes and who knew how many different types of smoked bbq dishes. Burgers wailed vicious joy in her ears as they strode yet further. Voices beckoning her to give in, and try their eats one after the other.

Six-O, however, seemed as if it already knew where it was taking her.

"Kaesoh Immuhaki, well connected, big player - small pond. " The droid's cybernetic voice reported. A rather simple assessment for 'he's a big fish, but isn't a top fixture', to date the attempt on Matsu's life was his biggest job. He wasn't small potatoes by any means, this man was a very infamous murderer and street goon. But as Matsu already knew, and had likely already suspected, going for her was well outside of his pay grade. The people that generally tried to kill her were all top level players. "Kaesoh leads a clique called the 12th Block Bloodswarm, but they're just a sub-division of a larger crime cell. One with connections out in Yog City. . . " the Droid paused, while continuing to walk with her. "And Hutt Space. " It concluded, knowing Matsu might have a better idea of how deep this may go just with that. The rogue Yog-Suulii faction that was responsible for the war that took Belphaegor's life, still existed, and still claimed Hutt Space as their domain - at least, ever since they had been expelled from Maena in the great war.

"You require a drink. " It's voice quite suddenly erupted again, it was dangerously close to that time now, fortunately, it had stopped leading her through the plaza by then. Where they had stopped? Right in front of the Chiptune Slice, a motley looking, ramshackle food cart. The sign hung askew, pulsating neon LED bulbs, blinking with frantic passion to the tune of a song that played from an absolutely retrofied pink tape deck, camouflaged by a whole host of nostalgic stickers and pizza iconography.

Behind the jerry-built counter, and in front of a Maenan Fire Brick oven, that belched purple smoke from it's chimney, stood an odd figure from the past. Nesaea Iberis. Once upon a time, before Belphaegor became fairly asexual and, of course, in a strange illusionary relationship with his Wyvern, Nesaea had been a young woman that Matsu had discovered with her son on more than one occasion, in a vast number of compromising positions. An old friend of the boys back when he frequented the Black Casket Arcade. At least before she'd taken off to learn the Maenan culinary arts and see what the Galaxy had to offer, which like every Maenan, she concluded that it all was subpar and lacking when compared to home.

But, there she stood now heavy hardware sitting precariously on the edge of the cart that floated her brick oven - a weapon that looked as if it could fell a damned Dragon. After all, a girl could never be too careful on Maena, and it was fairly common knowledge the men were mad as all hell, but Maenan women were considered the fiercest in all of the Galaxy. Bubbly and twisting passionately, seductively, with the music she bounced back and forth in her tiny workspace with practiced grace. Tight checkered pants clinging around the sides of her shapely hips, a tank top that barely covered her breasts hanging upon her shoulders, the straps that supported this meager sliver of fabric, laden with pins she'd acquired years ago from the Arcade, as well as vintage Matsu and Six buttons and a large 'Pale Prince' tattoo could be seen scribbled across the side of her neck as her neon green and black hair bounced with her sensuous movements.

It seemed before even Matsu managed to open her mouth to say something, Nasaea knew she was there. Quickly swimming a pizza around in circles inside the oven before lifting it up towards the dome then towing it out on her peel, where she then tossed it on to a metal tray, gracefully spun the turning peel out of the way, pulled a circular cutter from her hip and triangled the pie in a matter of seconds.

Sourdough, with a decade old starter. Corellian Blue Mozzarella, Chiptune fire sauce, which was her own spicy tomato sauce. Then two special ingredients, grown hydroponically by her as well. Maenan Blue Dream Broccoli, and Purple Noir Onions. The pizza looked almost like candy, and was massively popular. This particular pie was known for its punch to the face from the fire sauce, then that electrified buzz you got from the blue dream brocc, and the sense of paranoid dread you inhibited from the noir onion. It was a one-two-three combination, finished off by a truly mind kark dazed feel from the fairy dust she sprinkled on each slice. It was like witnessing the void open before you, and the horrifying demons from the beyond come out and skull kark your tastebuds in to an existential crisis of pure brain bashing ecstasy. Said one prominent food critic from the Core Worlds - before their untimely death some four days later.

"My'nyis Matsu, " She said coyly, pink and orange eyes locked in to her gaze under draped hood of Belphaegor's old cloak, smirking at the small and legendary New City Witch, carefully urging a slice towards her. “It’s been a very long time. “ ​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She is used to its interruptions. She wasn’t sure she’d ever found them annoying - she’d always been strangely enamored with the thing, as intoxicating as she’d found the silence in her mind when it was around. But over time she’d come to recognize a separate tone in those perfunctory observations, as if she were merely being presented data and not its more complex ‘thoughts’. Therefore, she’d come to see them as involuntary alerts instead of purposeful interruptions. Besides - she’d seen how much it liked to employ fire in eradicating targets. She figured she would just be grateful it cared.

As he turned their trajectory, the massive thud of the temperature control systems in the city cranked on. It was a ground-shaking reverberation that would scare the wits out of anyone merely visiting the city, though its residents had long ceased noticing it - just part of the heartbeat, the breath of this place. The mere scope of the engineering of New City was a marvel even among mega-cities, built by brilliant engineers at its inception and still maintained by the brightest minds at its higher levels. The further down you went, the less help was available when something broke but that wasn’t ever a challenge for Maenans. Down in the 600’s it was said that the gangs themselves tended to the system - after all, even addled on spice, one needed not to combust from heat, or suffocate when the filtration systems clogged. Those service tunnels were said to be a whole world unto themselves, brought to the consciousness of the city during the System Wars of sixty years previous when rogue rival gangs took it upon themselves to start sabotaging each other’s systems. Entire sectors had asphyxiated as their filters were cut, and countless others brains boiled in their skulls when the cooling had been destroyed.

For the most part however, the city functioned without a thought given to it. New City’s breath, as natural as that. The cooling never made it comfortable, but it stopped them from dying immediately - and that was all a Maenan needed.

It was right in assuming she didn’t need the details of Immahaki’s ranking within said pond. The fact that she needed to ask meant he wasn’t running anything of note, though he was certainly attempting to secure the backing of someone who did. Lately it seemed like everything went back to Yog and the Yog-Suulii in some form or another. That didn’t feel like anything new - humanity always needed an enemy. But damn if it hadn’t become so personal...

It warned her again of her impending heat stroke. “Alright, alright, keep your hair on...“ she said to it ironically, putting her hands over the swell of her stomach as she turned sideways to skirt past a positively towering alien stomping down the walkway.

Seeing Nesaea Iberis felt somewhat like being confronted though she managed to push down the impulse to scream. Lately it felt like the city was intent on keeping the wound fresh, reaching out to pick at her scabs so she was never anything but bleeding and raw. Wait until the city found out she’d deliver them only infection, because they’d had to keep picking. But she tamped it down, let the promise of pizza distract her until she was viewing Nesaea as a good memory and not an incessant reminder.

Lithe metal fingers curled around the edge of the paper plate laden with pizza, pulling it towards her. “Like a different life, almost,” said the older woman, biting in to the slice. She’d thought briefly, when first learning she was pregnant, about whether some Maenan delicacies were meant for developing fetuses but had dismissed the concern almost as quickly as she’d had it. She was carrying a transferred essence of an Obsidian Desert native - some hallucinatory broccoli and onions was not going to be the reason something went wrong.

It truly might have been a different life, for how distant it felt. Belphaegor, even in the days before he’d been more of a man than a boy, had never seemed to Matsu to have much interest in anybody beyond their intellect and platonic companionship. She’d watched as any mother would, but even Nesaea with her ample charms had not seemed that captivating to her son. Oh sure they’d been good friends, and maybe something had happened, but that was as far as it had ever gone. And then the wyvern had come along, and if there was anyone who couldn’t cast stones it was Matsu Xiangu.

“You’ve done well for yourself, I hear there’s quite the competition for spots on this throughway,” she commented, trying to ignore that sudden spike in paranoia that she was being watched as the onion started to kick in. She told herself Six would be well aware of anything like that and she didn’t have to listen to the onion. It was a testament to the ingredient - Matsu wasn’t all that affected by anything hallucinogenic after decades of mentalism. Besides, Nesaea had obviously won this spot with the iron she left displayed prominently. Good luck to anyone watching them.

“Oh that? Just a little something - a deterrent,” replied the young woman, turning her head to follow the passing of a potential customer and giving him a wink. “Besides,” she continued as her gaze slid back to the small woman huddled in the cloak, “people can’t live without my pie, so why come for me?”

Matsu nodded, taking a long drink of water as she felt the imagined menace from Six-O beside her since she had neglected to heed his announcements thus far. She felt as if the counter wasn’t completely solid under her elbows, the world taking on an angle as the fairy dust kissed her senses. She wondered if she did enough, if she could understand what everyone else was on about, overwhelm even her legendary mental defense...

“He helped me you know, with all of this,” came the younger woman’s voice, pulling Matsu from her strange silence. Nesaea was holding her hand out gesturing to her shop. “The medium I grow everything in, sourcing the dust and glitter, the right temperatures to preserve the effect or flavor of everything. When I was just starting out, when it was really just a thought in my head. I’m not sure I’d have all this without him.” It was said with the careful tone of someone who wanted to share something tender but was trying very carefully to make sure it landed softly.

“Then he lives on,” Matsu said, flashing a smile that barely reached her eyes and for only a millisecond. She meant it, but it was exhausting. “Thank you,” she finished, pushing the last piece of her slices in to her mouth as she gestured with one hand to slide credits between their links. It wasn’t the decorum she usually held herself to, but damn did she need to kill something. She hoped the extra ten thousand she’d slid would be sufficient to let Nesaea know she was grateful even if she didn’t have it within herself to express it.

She didn’t say anything as they walked, using the wake that Six-O created as people scrambled to get out of its wway to move relatively undisturbed. Neither of them paid much attention as they walked past a stall with someone shrieking as their tattoo artist started stabbing them through the eye over some dispute, nor to the brothel advertising a freak show offering a woman who’d been born with a hundred holes. The logistics of that were sort of interesting though...

Ah, anything to avoid the thoughts in her head.

The Eldritch Beyond loomed. She knew that she didn’t have to say how she was feeling, nor would the droid object to her urge to wipe the establishment clean of anyone who had even a passing association with Immuhaki or the Bloodswarm. A message needed to be sent, efficient if overly violent.

“I want to see anyone he’s talking to, preferably hear the conversations themselves if possible, before we do anything,” she said. Any sort of trail. An endless path of goons to follow in distraction for forever, all the way up to the top.​

 

[Six-O]

By the Droid's computations, entering the Club would be no grand or awe-inspiring feat of infiltration. Nothing that would truly inspire growth to their flourishing reputations. Down this many Levels in to the New City of Idd-yha, the culture was entirely different than those where they usually roamed. The pecunious hordes that sought to coalesce only with their equally affluent kin, simply did not care for such meticulous division of their clientele. It was a great boon for the two at this moment, but extracting themselves when the killing would begin, that was the true testament they would have to bow down for, before this night would end.

They entered as simply as any other, what greeted them, as brilliant and opulent as anything the upper-levels had to offer; the Maenan's truly were a spectacular people to witness.

Debaucherous revelry, encompassed by soul shattering synth, that mutilated the senses. Tearing down the walls of reality until you were left splintered and madly raving, tethered by a mere thread of your sanity. The Eldritch Beyond was circular in it's construction, the darkness of it's interior hazed by resplendent, scintillant, amethyst; which provided a spectral and strange glow upon the backdrop of the scene. The outer-ring of the venue was a wide thoroughfare, within which booths and tables were littered, each section strategically placed to allow foot traffic to easily navigate.

At the center of this, a colossal dance floor had been erected, the sides of which were transparent. Within it's boundary, a place for man or beast to wage untamed, gruesome, violence. Tonight the festivities of that blood chamber seemed to be both. A savage display of bloodletting had been unfurling for the better part of the hour, while a raucous party raged directly above them. Carnal, and uncaring, the bodies that stood upon the platform writhed wickedly and cruel. Their bodies unhinged and grinding lustfully upon eachother to each pulsing note that slaughtered the air.

A cacophony of ecastasy to die for.

"You look like you'd like to kiss the Void, little thing. . " Said a voice to Matsu suddenly, as she and the Droid were cutting through the densely packed Club in a counter-clockwise direction. "I ka'n zyen ha'oi tiiv, " it continued, skirting along with them. "Take off that hood, let me see. "

That was all it took, the outstretching of it's yellow hued arm towards the cloak of Matsu Xiangu for the Droid to react. It's protocols instantaneously unleashing code through all of it's software. It happened so fast, so effortlessly. The machine had reeled around, one of it's massive hands enfolding around the thin wrist of the man, the other enveloping it's entire face. Like an arid twig, Six-O snapped that arm in two with a simple wrenching of it's own, a green bone piercing through the flesh before it tore away like a wet ribbon, then was thrust deep in to it's gut, penetrating the abdomen. He may have been expected to scream, but it had seemed as that arm sank through his body, the Droid had crumpled the creatures face with a single squeeze, crushing it inwards upon itself. Leaving him to collapse to the floor, gurgling and incoherent.

No matter now, what was done was done. The jackals were already gathering, pawing over the dying fool to lift anything of value, and drag him away. By morning he'd be whittled down to nothing, ready to sell with Traders that venture out in to the Old World, and that which was harvested, would line a workshelf of some foul Alchemist or Sorcerer by the weeks end.

"There, " Said Six, naught but several moments later as the phantasmagoric atmosphere of the place boiled riotously around them. Perhaps that slice of Chiptune Pie had not been an apt choice, but hell, when on Maena - do as the Maenans. This was their home, and she was one of them now. "just beyond the Herald. " The Droid concluded, not motioning or pointing as it urged her more closely to the side of it's chassis.

Sure enough, if she could focus hard enough, many meters askew from the Herald; whom stood in red chainmail, a hand clutched upon the hilt of a sword that rested silently upon her hip. Her opposite arm holding aloft a floating flame as she preached the Will of the One True God to a small crowd that had gathered 'round her, near the wall. Sat Kaesoh Immuhaki.

More than a dozen of his closest confidants rejoicing in wanton euphoria in a cordoned off section of the Outer-Circle, which stood alone and cluttered with women of every organic design, in various states of undress and sensuous rapture. Six-O had already began scanning everything, allowing itself to theorize and measure every possibility it could accurately compute. It's Matsu desired a job from it. It would please her. It must.

Any conversation that would be had, any face it could analyze, all would be recorded.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

With or without the Chiptune pie, the efficient violence that burst behind her would have been over faster than she could process. Her vision trailing, she caught the wet slop of blood spraying from the loose end of an arm, an impalement, and the clamoring of the equally depraved to loot their fallen brother. Truly, he must have been higher than her not to notice the hulking droid behind her. Such was the circle of life this far down - he would not have lasted much longer in the city regardless.

“Thank you,” she said to Six-O, carefully lifting the edge of her cloak so as to avoid staining it with gore, leaving the barbarians to their feast.

Following Six-O’s prompting, her gaze fell to the man in question. It was ever the habit of small men to gloat over another’s death with their own excess, and she considered this in especially poor taste considering it was no secret they’d failed. It was in line with everything they’d gathered on Immuhaki however: arrogant, with something to prove. Perhaps simply saying he’d managed to get close enough to get a good attempt in had been enough to raise his status. He was in his fifteen minutes of fame, a time some used to propel themselves to something more lasting. Matsu did not plan on letting him have the chance.

“I’m going to get you a better view,” she said. “Stay here.”

The vibration of the music thumping through the club’s sound system pulled incessantly up her bones, seeming to enter through her feet to pound in her brain. It was the pizza talking, and there was a strange euphoria that made a laugh bubble up unbidden that she had to shove down. How strange...to be here, to be on the one world she’d ever felt at home, living as much for the next moment as dreams further afield. How dare they try and take it from her… This was a game Maenans thirsted for: survival, retribution, maintaining an upper hand, winning by any means necessary. And she had proven herself very adept.

She had circled partway around the aperture forming the center of the club - now that she noticed it, most likely designed after the upper levels of the city in miniature - until she was close enough to see the large booth with Immuhaki and his celebrants without setting off any notice. She watched the group, her breathing slow as she let her mind wander towards them. She probed for the one least likely to cause her any trouble, for she wanted to save her energy for extracting every last morsel of information from Kaesoh’s head. She latched on to one of women, who was deeply intoxicated and would be no fight at all.

Suddenly, even with the blaring music, anyone in the booths closest to Immuhaki’s would still be able to hear the woman screaming as she flailed back off the lap of the man she’d been entertaining. She stumbled towards the edge of the platform, her display drawing looks from every single one of Immuhaki’s men so that each of their faces would be perfectly displayed for Six-O to register and catalog.

After all, one couldn’t be sure what they’d look like by the end of this.

It was unfortunate of course that despite letting go of the woman’s mind, she was still close enough to the barrier to lose her balance and pitch over the rail, falling to the battleground below where her neck promptly snapped on landing. Half the club rushed to the rails of their levels, watching as a Shi’ido in the form of a ‘small’ Gorax picked up her corpse and used it to try and bludgeon the six men he was fighting at once.

But one Clawdite didn’t run, instead making her way slowly around the level to tell Kaesoh that she’d spotted Six-O .

 

[Six-O]

With flesh the color of frosty mint, her alien form sparsely wreathed by yellow moire, the Clawdite bended down upon knee beside Kaesoh Immuhaki, those thin lips imparting words of caution upon the mans ear before she rose back upwards and swayed off like a bending fern in the breeze. The gig was up.

It had always been just a matter of time for the two, Six-O and Matsu, as the Droid had informed earlier in the evening, these people were expecting retribution. But, basing judgement from the glare of Immuhaki's eyes as his gaze stretched out across the curved interior. The machine estimated that it was not expected to go down right here, in the Eldritch Beyond. It'd make sure to cache the lour that gasped at the features of his face, it's Matsu would love it. After tonight, he'd not have much of a face left to scowl with.

"The Droid is here, " The man proclaimed, his men promptly rising to attention. Shoving women off from their laps, or out of the way with rigid digust. "which means that Eastern queen is in here somewhere. "

As the men all began to dissolve in to the undulating crowd, Kaesoh brought the palm of his hand up and over his mouth, obscuring the movement of his lips while he allowed the cybernetic index finger of his opposite arm to press a blinking, pink button, on the side of his neck. Not a moment later, with eyes locked in to the gleaming red gaze of the mammoth sized Droid. Kaesoh Immusaki made the first move, lunging two highly modified pistols up from his sides, before hastily discharing a single blast from each.

One the color of crimson, the other marigold. Perhaps, attributable to his dependability, neither one even came close. The crimson lance striking a Duros in the back no more than two meters aloft from Matsu, enveloping the man with crackling energy that hissed with untamed fury as his flesh began to sear and peel off from the bone. Leaving him to wobble his final steps off balance and aimless towards the Haruspex of Idd-yah.

The marigold beam, on the other hand, that struck one of the Herald's flock. Bursting that luckless individual like a balloon of gore, whose wet innards spread like thrown paint, in a twelve meter radius around their bewildered legs.

Then, absolute pandemonium was unleashed.

The Herald was the first to react, the flame that once silently levitated above her outstretched palm being focused in to pure fury as she thrust her arm towards the direction the shot originated from. A tongue of righteous fire unfurling ferociously with a craving thirst to consume all in it's wake. "Bi ra'tloidiv mh nyi Maekyn a'ph, Xoth-za! " Her voice boomed with zealous rage.

More and more were quick to join her. Damned crazy Maenan's, the only thing that seemed to honestly scare them, was that they may miss out on a fight.

What was once black and purple, now became an overwhelming barrage of multi-colored, stroboscopic light. It was almost psychedelic, a klaedescope of multi-hued explosions tearing across the entire Club. Too many people of every variety of species leaping towards whomever was not one of theirs, at this point, not even Six-O, with all of it's advanced combat functions and software could make heads or tails of exactly whom may have been connected to the 12th Block Bloodswarm, and who was just itching to unleash their inner-rage in a fit of trenscendent vehemence.

It'd already began charging at full pace towards where it's Matsu had been, battering aside any that were in it's way with colossal brutality. Just before imminent impact sensors commanded it's attention to the right, forcing the machine to turn just in time to intercept the rough embrace of an absolute gargantuan of a Karkarodon. The behemoth stood nearly as tall as the automaton, and just as wide. It's face sloppy with blood, eyes wide with aggression and adrenaline; rugged muscles gibbous and robust as it grappled.

It knew it's Matsu Xiangu was more than capable of fighting for herself, but with the child that swelled her stomach inside of her, it's coding prompted even more strongly the compulsion to protect.

It was then that a sudden burst ripped jaggedly across the underside of the suspended dance floor, bursting it's repulsor engines in to a bloom of cascading sparks. Hurling those that had continued to dance in the carnage from it's once secure surface like missiles wrought of flesh, splattering them in to oddly shaped angles wherever they struck. The floor remained hovering, lopsided and weakly, for but a moment longer. Before collapsing down upon the fighting pit, crushing those that had been battling within in to pulp.

But the music kept playing.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Well, that had kicked off faster than she would have liked. Famous Maenan words though - as a people, they simply could not resist a fight, even if it wasn’t theirs.

She was running by the time the pistols came out. It was habit now: if the crap hit the fan, she sought to nestle right in near Six-O for the duration and find with her back to it’s. It kept his code happy, and she could be warned of threats long before her organic brain might process them. She leapt over the Duros as he fell to a quickly congealing puddle of meat, letting out an impressive string of curses when the Flame of an extremely pissed-off Herald joined the fray. Even if this Immuhaki intended to create chaos, Matsu wouldn’t have gone with the Herald.

The fight broke out like a virus, blaster bolts of all colors flying as Matsu sprinted towards Six. A table got shoved in front of her as two Chagrians started fist fighting each other. She didn’t slow down, dropping to the ground to slide underneath the table in one motion as above her one of the Chagrians punched the other hard enough for teeth to explode in tac-tac spray all over the ground where she’d just been. The sharp sound of a knife flying right past her ear made her instinctively flinch even as she rolled herself up to keep running, She heard the strangled yelp of whatever poor fool it landed in but didn’t look back, instead concentrating on the Twi’lek who stepped out in front of her a few yard ahead with a drunk, vicious smile on her face.

She didn’t have time. She was close enough to see the shark who was mad enough to grapple with the droid and anything that brave and stupid was dangerous. The Twi’lek would have to move. Matsu pressed the full brunt of her mind against her even though it was obvious she did not have the Force. (jump over the edge, JUMP OVER THE EDGE, JUMP OVER THE EDGE, J̡̧͜Ų̛M̵Ṕ̵̛ ̷̵̡O͘V͏̢ER̀͘̕ ͏T̕H́E ҉E͡Ḑ͟͞G̷̛E̸̛) Matsu was running by the Twi’lek as she was letting go of the railing to plummet down on to the mess of bodies, glass, and sparking strobe lights that had become of the dance floor.

There was almost no thought as Matsu came up behind the Karkarodon, ejecting the claws in her right hand to full extension and those in her left just enough to help her climb up the shark’s back and sink them in to its throat. It fought her even still, reaching up behind itself to try and rip her off its back. In her rush to gain purchase, the only thing she found was the corner of its mouth with her left hand. If her arms weren’t cybernetic he surely would have removed her fingers in one pass but instead they crumpled, sparking and hissing almost as loud as she did at the pain, but she held on, digging in the claws on her right hand until she felt something pop. Raking her hand around, she felt a spray of blood that hit Six smack in the chest. The shark went down underneath her, twitching and writhing but no longer their problem.

Climbing off him, she moved to Six, using her good hand and her feet in the joints of his body to climb up and hang off his back. It would be easier for him to push through this massive mayhem toward their target than her tiny frame.

All the sudden there was a scream of unbridled rage - the Herald had gone nova, fire bursting up and out from her body to mushroom against the ceiling of the level they were on, so unnaturally hot that it started to melt half the structure it came in to contact with almost instantly.

“Fething hell, we have to get over there before she kills him,” Matsu yelled over the din of the crowd. “See if you can get us close, I’ll try and reach her mind!”

 

[Six-O]

It was as if it were all an awful hallucination, a feverish dream of demonic distress, so very extravgantly grotesque. Even with all the time Six-O had spent upon this World, in this City, it had not yet reconstructed it's code to consider the Maenan Factor for accurately calculating combat scenarios or a truly representative summary of reactionary protocols. This defiency was unacceptable, it'd start the process of correction right now, alloting significant resources to the task right there with it's Matsu fastened upon it's broad back.

To her fully functional hand it'd deliver an astonishingly large pistol, that had been magnetically clasped upon it's hip, perhaps somewhat combersume for her to wield with any sort of artistic grace, but the surroundings were target rich; just point, pull and witness them detonate like rotten fruit heaved against a solid surface.

Striding with great vigor the machine silently agreed with the asessment of it's Matsu Xiangu , with or without their involvement, Kaesoh Immuhaki was a dead man. Their only hope now was to reach the target first, and hope that the Bloodswarm, as well as the numerous legion of souls just seeking to bask in the glory of the bloodletting, would preoccupy the woman long enough for them to achieve their task. Unless, the Witch of Idd-yha could pull at the strings of the Heralds mind. Further towards the inferno the Droid carried her, thrashing any that came upon them with it's stunningly potent arms. Battering blows that mutated skulls in to warped portraits of woe. Hurling others tens of dozens of meters off in to the writhing chaos. Plodding atop the fallen, their bones shattering like glass beneath the machines heft.

The inferno grew, flames extending from the woman like liquid, gleaming and gorgeously brilliant. The interior of the Eldritch Beyond was now abloom with orange light, embers swimming across the smoke-filled air. Dollops of superheated steel were beginning to release from the ceiling, brilliantly glowing, they buffeted the riotous crowd like rain. This was no routine Herald that loomed before them in the fire.

No.

This was Azohra the Pyresworn, a woman of great and legendary renown. She had stood the test of time on Maena, witness to all of it's brutality, too stubborn to die. From the Inquisition of Ashes, where she stood beside Cirrivas the Ember Scourge, to the Crusades against Kr'ylland the Black City. When the Queen of the Hellweave Executioners fell, she remained, keeping watch instead over the womans daughter, Cirrivas the Younger, during the cataclysmic Wars of Uthax-ra. Through it all she has persisted, continuing to serve, carrying on the fight now under the High Priestess Rael.

Six-O plunged ever closer, methodically twisting it's body to the left as another burst deadly fire swam through the smoke and flame from Immuhaki as the man hurdled over ignited furniture in a laughable attempt to escape the harassing heat and growing blaze. "You cannot proceed any further, " the droid's mechanical voice suddenly arose through the din. "You will burn. "

All around them, hell had been embodied. Through the haze people died awfully, squirming like insects on festering meat. Those that had feasted were beginning to vacate, lick their wounds and joyously recant the bedlam to others that had been too unfortunate to partake.

But hunger still sat strong with many.

"If you cannot stop her, I have formulated a plan. But it may put my Matsu in danger. "

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She held the pistol aloft, her eyes scanning around them as Six-O moved in case something missed his attention. It was rarely the case however she mused, watching as some poor human trying to stab it was pushed back by its sheer momentum, knocking the man to the ground. Interesting then, to watch as the human’s face was transported to the back of its skull under the droid’s foot in its relentless march forward. A Togruta running by slipped in the resulting spray, screeching something about brains as Matsu turned to focus on the inferno threatening to consume their target.

Matsu had spent her fair share of time among the Heralds, if only because of their mutual enemy in the Eyaer. She couldn’t say she liked the High Priestess Rael but it was through no personal fault. As a people, Heralds were ironically quite cold and closed-off to outsiders - the Nautolan was never going to win over hearts through the force of her personality. The Heralds gained new followers every day because they were to be respected, and feared. Because of the promise of purpose and some hidden, ancient knowledge to unlock. So no, she didn’t like Rael, but she respected her and the many legendary warriors among her flock.

Such as Azohra. Considering the rumors that flew around about the woman, there had been speculation she would have made sense for the role of High Priestess herself. Possibly tens of thousands of years old, a prolific hunter of heretics, apostates, and heathens, Azohra the Pyresworn was a nightmare even among Maena’s nightmares. And yes, she’d always been an option, but she would never be High Priestess. And that was because women with a singular, zealous focus such as Azohra’s were not fit to lead. They were only made to burn.

“Alright,” she yelled over the din when the droid relayed it had a plan. Its articles of possession were noted, though they’d become common enough something seemed more wrong if it didn’t espouse them. “Let me try…”

She reached out, her vision blurring as she was drawn in by the sheer gravity of the Herald’s thoughts. In decades of mentalism, she’d come to see most people as falling on a spectrum of weak to strong of mind. And then there were those whose thoughts had a pull all their own, as intoxicating as the power to look itself.

All she could hear was the roar of the greatest fire imaginable.

“Azohra!” she called, trying to catch the attention of the woman somewhere deep in the middle of that raging inferno. There were glimpses of a forest - tall, the canopy awash in light as flames reached inevitably towards the sky, this whole place a memory by the morning - but no context as Matsu pushed and prodded. There was no need for subtlety here, no sneaking in. She wanted the woman’s attention even if it meant having to beat a hasty retreat. “AZOHRA!” The flames paid her no mind, eating even more hungrily at the woods around them. Bark peeled back in shrieks as moisture screamed and popped in the heat, pulp blackening. The ear-shattering crack and groan of a tree falling as fire ate through its base sounded to her right. A memory, she wonders? Perhaps, but not exactly. It felt like a haven.

“Azohra, we need that man alive! I don’t care what you do with him after but he needs to answer to me before he pays for what happened to your comrade. It’s Matsu Xiangu!”

Nothing. Blank and communing with something unimaginable. What a time to witness someone speaking with their god.

She came out of searching, loudly letting go of a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It was now unbearably hot even though Six-O had stopped within a range it knew wouldn’t yet threaten her delicate human flesh. Pushing her hair from her face, she climbed a little higher on the droid.

“No luck. She’s turned in to an avatar, I can’t reach her at all. Whatever your plan is, I trust you,” she said over the roar of the fire, her throat aching with the smoke. She reached out for Kaesoh’s mind, but found nothing. Forcedamnit, he better not have burned already...​

 

[Six-O]

Azohra was an immalleable force of nature, hard-nosed, and merciless. The things she had witnessed, the wretchedness she had weathered; it was unfathomable to most. Even Matsu Xiangu , undeniably one of the most legendary Mentalists to ever stalk the dark reccesses of this Galaxy, could not caress the frenzied furor from the womans mind. There was no deterring this zealous onfall.

"Arr lyerr mi ra'tloidiv mh nyi kra'sh a'ph, Xoth-za! " Azohra's voice decrepitated with splendid fury, an ominous roar, booming with seismic discord.

The tempestuous inferno continued to grow, Azohra the Pyresworn standing directly within it, her hair transformed to aqueous, swaying flames. Her arms, gleaming like steel freshly pulled from the heat of a forge, red and yellow. Eyes the color of radiant xanthous, for a moment, as it's Matsu had tried to plead, those glittering orbs paused upon the two, then moved on. From her hip, Sunslaker, the sword she had carried longer than her mind could even recant; had been drawn, it's tip held high and angled backwards, the hilt bowed just above her fiery crown.

If there was one good thing that came out of this mayhem, it had to be that the melee was finally beginning to thin out. Countless dead or dreadfully wounded littered the floor like discarded offal, just another great night on Maena; food, drink, drugs, dancing and death. What lingered, thankfully thought the droid, were only the Bloodswarm, perhaps a few others here and there.

A turbid haze clung to the air, thick, black, and incredibly acrid. The pungent, stygian cloud, threatening to choke the life out of any lung that inhaled upon it's arcane fragrance. The floor and the ceiling were briskly beginning to lose their structural integrity, as what had once been a mere rain of heated, shimmering steel, had now denatured in to a catastrophal deluge.

Turning back from the path the machine had roved towards the Herald, just as she pitched herself with blazing speed forwards, heaving Sunslaker down upon a carrel several Bloodswarm had sought cover within, reducing them to shattered fragments of viscera and gore from the resulting explosion that followed. Six-O slogged through the fog, and pollution of carnage, it's scanners and visibility spectrums ceaselessly inspecting every minute detail of the scene.

"Gun, " the Droid said dryly, recovering the weapon from it's Matsu, before firing of three pinpoint blasts through the ethereal shroud that hung down upon them. Bursting Bloodswarm goons in to miniscule scraps that aerated the sweltering air, and sent odd shaped ripples through the smoke. "It is occupied. " the machine spoke again, informing about the situation with Azohra. Though, it truly needed no saying, as the plumes of fire never ceased erupting from her location. "You must capture Immuhaki. I will be precisely 3 minutes, 36 seconds behind. "

It had much more ground to cover than she was going to.

But she had given it her consent to be placed in direct danger, it's protocols routing in to a tactic that had only executed once before. The Matsu Missile. Calculating with categorical correctness, the machine honed in on Immuhaki through the miasma. Trajectory, timing, fundamental force required to propel her with relative safety between the lashing tongues of greed-filled flames that oscillated down from the drooling ceiling.

She was going to fly, directly across the sunken pit at the center of the now aureole Eldritch Beyond.

Relocating tiny Matsu in to it's arms, the Droid took an almost painful grasp upon her body with it's hands - not unlike it did in quieter and more private settings between the two. "3 minutes, 36 seconds. " It reminded once more. Then with one jolt of it's ferociously powerful frame, the woman was sent wildely through the air. The target for her drop no less than four feet away from where Kaesoh Immuhaki stood with five of his closest and most fiercely loyal thugs. All of them currently engaged with a group of stragglers in a heated brawl, their progress towards the exit of the club and away from the Herald, Matsu and Six, impeded by the last few stragglers that refused to abandon the wanton violence of the evening.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

It was a funny thing, to be more like a porcelain doll in its hands than anything else. Her thoughts had gone past the border of sinful but she was wise enough to focus on the task at hand, smiling at its caution in repeating the timeframe she would be on her own.

“Three minutes, 36 seconds,” she said back to Six-O , one hand tracing the line between synthflesh and the back of its bestial head before she was positioned for that most delicate of maneuvers: the Matsu Missile.

And dangerous it was, as the one sharp jolt sent her careening over one of the most peculiar scenes of carnage she’d witnessed in some time. It could not have been more than six or seven seconds that she went flying through the air but time slowed to a crawl as the riot roiled underneath her. The dance floor, shattered over the makeshift fighting pit, still gleamed with the random show of lights programmed along its edges and beams, lighting parts of the continued fight in garish neons as if highlighting different attractions at every turn. One woman studded with shards of glass was strangling a nautolan to death with her legs, another group further on stabbing and shoving each other off the enormous corpse of the Gorax in hopes of pulling its teeth and escaping the club with something to sell for their trouble, two human men fighting each other with knives in a seeming war of attrition. There was something to look at everywhere below but she did not have the luxury - that landing was coming up fast.

She arrived in a graceful telekinetic thud that buffeted the force of her landing outwards as a wave to shove her surprised opponents down and buy her a moment of orientation. Switching gears with the ease of a practiced dance, she reached for all six of their minds as she stood. She would drive each of them mad - preferably catatonic, the yawning truth of a universe revealed to each, pulled from the tidal pool to the deep with slick fat irreverence characteristic to all creatures who were simply in the way. She did not need Immuhaki to be coherent to wrest his secrets from inside his skull and thus she dropped the weight of her power on the five of them without hesitation.

But instead of dropping like flies they simply turned on her, expressions of pain lacing their faces but not cowed as she might have rightly expected. The exact opposite actually: each raised their blasters towards her, though without the coordination of men with their full faculties. She was having an effect but it was somehow muted.

Anger seethed through her as she grabbed for her saber, the sound of its unstable beam sawing through the space between them and sending any last foolish stragglers near the group running for cover. The red of the blade, the red of the level above them in a superheated wilt, the red that rimmed the edges of her vision as she deflected their blaster bolts with a circular screech of her saber howling her own rage - a trance, dangerous and concentrated. One of the men went down as a deflected blaster bolt ate a hole in his chest but the others she knew she would have to be precise with. No stray bullets for Immuhaki. Too easy. Too painless.

Instead she got in perilously close, the sound of her saber like the humming of some lunatic with its sighs and screams. One swing, two, she stopped counting as the rhythm of dispatching each of Immuhaki’s men flowed through her. It was the moment when it was down to just the two of them that the fullness of the problem settled on her. A thin, almost unseen piece of metal curled around his ear and inserted in to his temple, a soft blue blinking seeming to wink arrogance at Matsu. Was that…

As she shoved against his mind, searing pain arched over his features and he let loose with fully automatic fire at her. Bolts peppered across her ribs, underneath her left breast and burning through her resistant clothing until she was screaming with the burning pain - not enough to stop her, to stop the rhythm of her blade coming up to cut off one arm, two arm, stumbling back with cauterized stumps and horror in his expression. Rushing in, first leg, second leg. (Can’t run, let me IN) and...nothing. Deactivating her saber, she knelt down and sneered as the man tried to defend himself by biting at her hands as she reached for the device in his ear.

“Go ahead queen, all that power and they’ve figured out how to outsmart you,” he growled, agony laced in his victorious tone. Ignoring him, she pushed his face to the side with her crushed hand, reaching with the other towards the tech. She’d meant to pull it from his ear but found where it connected to his temple was laced underneath the skin...who knew how far. Was this the source of what blocked her from his mind?

He would have to have a courtesy stay in the Unit.

Three minutes. 20 seconds. He would arrive soon - he was ever true to his word.​

 

[Six-O]

Before the Droid would even have the chance to arrive, if it had not become clear already, it was unmistakable now, that they were not going to be able to stick it out here much longer. The destruction Azohra unleashed was thrillingly hair-raising, magnificent, really. On a World brimming with mindnumbing power players, to witness a Herald of Xoth-za vent their fiery frustrations; left very few reasons to ever doubt their zealous claim that it was they, and they alone, that served the One True God.

The Bloodswarm was being taught a lesson they should have already known, as every native did, or Easterner learned in their first hours upon this world. You don't kark with a Herald.

"Cazus uasu Huhr nuhphs, saphr! Xoth-za khurr doukd ikav avai urr!! " The womans voice boomed with phantasmal forcefulness, so much intensity driven in to every syllable, the entire interior of the Eldritch Beyond trembled and recoiled.

All of the Pyresworns infernal wrath was put on display tonight, none that came upon her survived more than a few bleak moments. To her left, a single swipe of Sunslaker drew a glowing cut that angled across a Chev's abdomen and chest. The luminous wound sibilating, and gaping; steam rushed from it's yawning maw and the skin skittered away in utter fear of the harsh heat. To her right, pyrokinetic constructs ascended from the ground in the form of irradiant, scarlet hued, chains. Before the would be attackers even had a chance, their arms, legs and shoulders were bound and flesh was searing. Indentured and defenseless they wailed in agony as rubicund fissures began to suffuse their flesh, their bodies decocting away to nothing but ossein and ash.

More flares of fulgent flame poured forth, indefatigable in their rapacious hunger, brightly colored, and bloodthirsty. Azohra heralded the apocalypse of the Eldritch Beyond, there would be no halting it now.

Two minutes, seven seconds.

Six-O advanced devotedly, and dependably towards it's Matsu Xiangu . Smoke swayed densely, sickly grey and coal black, impressively pungent and harsh. The machine was glad it'd replaced it's Matsu's lungs, though it surmised it likely was still highly uncomfortable for her to breathe in. It could not be a even a decisecond late! Through the billowing, charcoal haze, it wended towards her ferociously. Liberating stringently precise shots from it's weapon, it's sensors unphased by the obsctructing brume. Transforming any that may have sought to slow it's progress in to arterial geysers of erupting gore one after another, and then another one more.

"You don't ev. . even know what's coming. . . " said Immuhaki with a painful sputter which slowly transformed in to a coughing laugh. "Something is coming. . . . someone from. . from the Old World. . and you don't. . don't stand a chance! "

It was all he had the power to say before his lungs began to reject the acrid fumes and he began to violently choke and croup.

The wanton rampage of the Herald was threatening to consume them all. The ceiling shone with spectral energy, auroral and awful, it groused mightily as it began to hopelessly bend downwards in strange and awkward angles. Liquifying in ever greater portions. So much fire. So much death. They had to get out of there, immediately. That is exactly what the droid alerted as the thumping pistons of it's legs, and massive body came bounding, finally, through the smoke and to Matsu's side.

"It is time to go. "

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

The Old World. Now, that was unexpected and troubling. The assumption that this was New City beef had been a well-founded one. She was a player that had come in hard and fast though she had tried as much as possible to project the assertion that she respected the equilibrium of a thriving underground. Those that supported or trafficked in slavery she had hunted mercilessly, but mostly she had sought her own territory and to make deals with those important in Maena’s thriving ecosystem. But there would always be those that rejected change.

Someone from outside this already enormous game made the scale of the problem far more difficult to assess.

Her face contorted in rage as the useless, murderous sack of poodoo convulsed in front of her. The only reason she was still breathing at all was the fact that her lungs were no longer organic, even though they were working double time to filter the amount of smoke and poisonous irritants floating through the air. The heat itself should have seared the lining of her esophagus.

It was a good thing that where he was going, Immuhaki did not need the ability to talk.

She nodded when Six-O came barreling through the smoke, voicing a warning.

“He’s wearing something that stops me from entering his mind,” she said, the hint of dismay peeling across her own. “We’ll have to send him to the Unit to disassemble it. I want to know how it works.”

Immuhaki carried by scrunched shirt in droid fist, head lolling in unconscious bliss, Matsu and Six-O headed for the nearest door. It was easy to figure out where that might be despite the unbelievable smoke: simply follow the animal instinct of the others headed for exits, like rats with a sixth sense for escaping after acquiring the great prize of an excellent night’s tale. Off in to the night they’d laugh, finding the next bar, the next club, to tell the tale of who they’d punched and how they’d gotten that new stab wound, all while the extremely perilous job of fighting the fire in this place went on behind them.

Maenans.

As they exited, the scene outside was chaos. Thick black smoke billowed from every door and window, flames flicking out hungry tongues from those dark maws. It reached towards the ceiling of the level, billowing out in a hideous mushroom cloud crawling suffocating fingers further out instead of up. Soon the entirety of this sector would be consumed by a fire dangerously raging. In a place like the City, fire was even more of a threat: transport out of levels was difficult on a good day, forget about an emergency. There had never been reliable water systems, and an out of control fire threatened infrastructure above and below it depending on how hot and long it was allowed to burn. No doubt a Herald found this not only worth the risk, but glorious.

The omnipresent sound of sirens blaring surrounded them as they put distance between themselves and the blaze. It would take them a while to get out of the level now, but time wasn’t relevant to Matsu - this man would make it to his date in the Unit, one way or another.​