The Sum of All and By Them, Driven

[Aver Brand]

“Ya really should stop callin’ me a lady,” the mercenary called out after the agent, who strolled upwards with the limber movement of a dancer. With the expression of someone observing an impending train wreck, Aver followed [member="The Major"] up with her gaze.

Not a bad show, if you were into that sort of thing.

And you could say Aver was, bein’ married to a spider an’ all. Well. In essence. Nobody’d ever gotten around to fixing up all the proper paperwork, mostly because the lot of them went through names as often as other folk went through socks. Too much of a hassle.

Plus, multiple-spouse marriage? Still mostly invalid in a lot of governed space. Matching tattoos were just more practical all around.

[member="Rusty"] had by then made the difficult decision of picking the right explosive for their obstacle. Not that that it was about whether or not they’d get inside – it was about what would make the biggest, prettiest, loudest karking boom this side of the planet.

Wisely, the metal pair both vacated the premises, waited for the Major to reach the hangar, and blew the front door into the next dimension.

 

[The Major]

"My sincerest. . . apologies. . ." Huffed the Major between pulls. At the threshold, she let her weight and grip switch -dropping the sniper so that she hung upside down, back to tower, left hand gripping tightly upon the wire.

From this angle her hair fell over the sides of her face while her neck was cocked back as far as the muscle would allow. Somehow, this cover of dark auburn slicked her features in shadow. Save of course for a pair of white orbs where eyes would normally go, and a Cheshire cat grin splayed with pearly, sharp whites. This face was only a few feet away from the Brand's, and it wasn't a visage you didn't exactly hope to wake up next to. Somehow, the Fallanassi knew Aver would be A-okay. Nobody so apt with a slicing blade was going to tremble at the spiders that go bump in the dark.

"Madame, perhaps?" And on that note the hunter swung back up, a child at play. The Major never laughed, but you could imagine the shrill giggling.

Sybil was still relatively young, and somewhat sheltered from directly talking to people. She knew that she might be poking at the Brand a little too much; she also knew that annoying a cyborg assassin was a healthy alternative to a long life. As the four-eyed one climbed over the ledge, she promised to keep her mood in check as to not further irritate the party.

However, she really thought it was a clever way of asking the Brand if she was married or not.

Purely for research.​

​

Now standing in the hanger bay, the Major drew her revolver gifted by RCFC, and swept the room, not seeing anything more than computers, piles of books, and what appeared to be a very large coffin adorned in onyx and gold.

". . .?"

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver did blink when the agent dropped into her field of vision. Didn’t take a step back though – and had to stamp down the impulse to give the woman a… gentle push. Would’ve been amusing to see her sway, the merc figured.

Amusing, but ultimately distracting. They had a job to do. Shenanigans would come later, after every single cultist was dead and the chaingun secured.

“Brand is fine,” she replied, and then the agent was gone.

Incidentally, so was the door. Smoke billowed from the red-hot pile of scrap metal [member="Rusty"] had reduced it to. The group waiting right beyond the gates had been vaporized. The group waiting a little bit further was still present, though it would take plenty of time and an expert anatomist-slash-puzzler to put them back together.

The third group… well, they were stuck somewhere between abject terror and righteous fury.

One blast from Gertrude quickly resolved their dilemma. The few that survived scattered into cover, and the mercenaries headed in.

“Somethin’ weird on your end?” Aver hailed [member="The Major"] over the comms as she slung the blaster rifle from her back. A beat, two… the telltale pause in enemy fire followed, and the firrerreo gladly stepped in to fill it with the bark of her own weapon.

 

[Rusty]

"What the...?"

It was rare that Gertrude showed any signs of strain, but the old girl was getting on in years. When the sensors built into her receiver started lighting up, he knew she was finished. That last shot had caused stress fractures in her chamber. On a normal weapon, that would be a deadline issue. On Gertrude, it was a death sentence.

Her barrel wasn't the sort that could be changed out. It wasn't a matter of the right tools. The barrel and the receiver were a single piece, a necessary evil to cope with the massive stresses that could be placed on her during firing. At the time of her construction, Rusty simply didn't have access to the advanced materials or machinery necessary that he did now. He had been forced to resort to cruder methods, and while that had resulted in a thing of beauty, her lifespan was limited from the start.

The fine old girl had performed masterfully up until now, but her fight was over. With his HRD, the gunsmith could have adopted an appropriately mournful expression, perhaps shed a tear or two. That was denied to him now. Instead, he reverentially placed her on the ground, and covered her with the cloak stripped from a fallen cultist. Not one she had killed, unfortunately. Her massive bullets didn't leave more than scraps of blood soaked fabric.

Next to her, he placed the battle box. Slowly, mournfully, he switched off the power for the last time, and disconnected the ammo belt. With a single hydraulically actuated fist, he bent her feed tray closed to ensure that no one else would try to use her.

"Goodbye, old girl."

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

Automatic fire thumped beneath the Major's feet, reverberating pleasantly like clockwork. Visceral blaster bolts crackled the air, a whiny to complement the hot bashing madness of full power cartridges. She could imagine steaming shell cases and superheated, rippling ozone.

::No. Only a strange artifact, tho it's not a chaingun.:: She crackled over comms to the Brand, looking about the murky room which seemed to pull the eye to the coffin in the center. It was an decidedly strange object, even for something like her. Large, and far too pompous for an object designed to be slicked in dirt. The blue eyes behind the glasses peer about the vaulted ceiling which suited housing a craft, astonished that it appeared to be this cult's library: bookcases and holo-libraries adorned the corners of the room.

::Must be on a different floor.::

The fun loving fusilier maneuvered past the now defunct desks, her footsteps the only slow and steady sound as she made a mosey about the vast study. Computer screens flicker, and one particular screen near the coffin freezes on a red toothed visage, smiling like a warped, plump cartoon seeped in shadow.

"...?" Inquisitiveness was her nature. Maybe a recording up close from her data glasses could be examined further at a later time. She approached, and even the scholars of circumstance could not determine what triggered the seals of magic to split yonder lid with a brilliant clash.

!SNAP!​

A green limb shears away its imprisoning door with a casual bombast. Or was it a low whimper echoing in the chamber? Sybil could not even say if she yelped at the sudden jerk.

Out comes. . . a beast. A horrible amalgamation of a gray bearded man and tsetse fly: many black hexagonal eyes had sprouted from above its mouth and out its head, bulbous and reeking of poisonous dew. Spittle slithered down the silver hairs and lightly dressed the tiled floor. It’s feet were more alike to twin proboscises sucking with each sick stumble. A ragged robe adorned its thorax, stained with bile from Force only knows where.

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBMhwWN_088​

It stepped over its bed, its maw triangular in a mockery of a smile. Licking what poor excuse it had for lips, the monstrosity speaks, its voice buzzing sinisterly even while pleading for entreaty.

“Oh, Daughter of the Cosmos,​

Wretched spider. ​

Kneel at your place by my side.​

Destiny may bind you to die​

But for posterity,​

Your blood will serve me inside.”​

The Major whips up her revolver, quick aims, and . . .

!BAM!​

Her retort enters the Host of the Astral Tower, indenting and smashing a side of its skull. He bends, nigh relents, but straightens. . .

“!?” Surprise quickly shatters any confidence as something far more disgusting appears on the edge of madness. The Host boils like puss, sputtering green.

“Ah. You are only human now;​

Your eyes have yet to Rip open.​

Hoooh hooh hohohoho!”​

!BAMN! BANG!​

She fires two more, jerking him towards his place of slumber, but these also have little more than a stumbling affect. Down reaches the Host, clasping onto a bar and producing a ridiculously oversized battleaxe bedazzled in precious, foul smelling stones.

!BAMN!​

Nothing! The Host, barely able to heft the heavy shaft of the axe prepares to swing overhead -a strike accompanied with a projected roar. She gasps, horrified, but reflectively dashing left just as the killing blow shatters the floor where she stood in twain.

Books flutter as the First Order Agent rolls over them, her mind racing in a euphoric panic. Training did not abandon her in this foul place, and her eyes were already was estimating the reach of the axe: 2.5 meters. The geriatric looking fly twisted itself under the weapon’s weight and quickly swung in overhead again. There wasn’t enough time to stand, so the Major lept towards the monster laying flat as the she felt her legs go numb from the sheer force of the strike shaking her very world in a near miss.

As she attempted to stand quickly the Host let his axe remain pinned to the floor, opting to grasp Sybil by the neck, squeezing as he picked up a 1.9 meter woman and all 90 kilograms of weight and equipment like a doll. It drew her in, readying rows of bone cutting incisors.

A nightmarish oblivion, and painful mastication, awaited her within the Host’s hot, sticky Hell. But the fear pushed her too far, unlocking the primal savagery that imbued all things living when all is forlorn.​

The Major tore into his limb, wrenching her head about his arm while driving a hidden sleeve dagger so deeply into the monsters flabby skin that the hilt of her weapon crushed open the palm of her right hand though she wore a leather glove.

“EEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEE”​

Bellowed the insectoid cult leader, and he threw her away and coincidently through a pair of computers. She spat, for he tasted terribly similar to grilled chicken. Not yet sore for sheer adrenaline, the four eyed freak stood while ignoring the severe pain in her right fingers. She had to immerse and hide in the Force while the battle was in recovery. Focusing, the Fallanassi drew upon the power of the White Current to make her less than irrelevant and mercifully invisible to the monster before her.

​

But nothing happened.​

​

She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t feel it!​

“Now you see, Girl.​

Too late.​

Too late. . .​

Not even the Force can save you now.”​

Frozen in fear, she watched as the beast crunched it’s mangled left arm, slicing the air in a wide arc that circled outwards. Normally this would be too far out of range to threaten anyone, but suddenly a thick tenctacle like artery spurtted out along its arm, smashing into the Major amidships. Again she soared across the expanse.

​

“AAUUUGGGHHHHHHH!”​

She screamed as torment blinded every fiber of her body. If not for the thin armor plates sewn inside her coat, then surely she would have already been torn asunder. Instead, relief comes in the form of bouncing down the slick floor. She rolls, seeing white and red stars as her crumpled body nearly tumbled off the ledge of the hanger bay. A moment passed, and the Fallanassi had failed to perish. Bringing herself up from the fetal position and unto her elbows and knees, she chokes.

“COUGH! ACCKK! Aughh. Cough-cough! Hahh. Uuugggghh!”​

Vomiting bits of blood, the tears and sweat from hacking up pools in her eyes, making it hard to see.

“I see. . .​

Are these your final wordsssszzzzzz?”​

​

​

Uneasy at first, the Major stands, letting saliva and blood dribble stain the front of her frock blouse. Those knees stop trembling, and from within her coat she produces a tanto -courtesy of Rusty’s specifically designed dinnerware. Dignity solidifies her stance and presence -the revolver once again firmly held in her left.

“You are prey,​

And I am the huntress. ​

Eat.​

My.​

Shet.”​

​

The Major, unknowable, begins to step calmly towards the Host, her now glasses glowing, sizzling, harshly enough to illuminate the discarded annals of the high tower.​

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

“Aight, keep looking.” Aver picked off the last of the cultists with a few tight groups when she heard [member="Rusty"] curse to her right. Curious blue eyes flickered to the shard, widening a fraction at the sight of a grown droid man cradling his gun.

Well. It was, admittedly, one of a kind. Expert craftsmanship, fantastic destructive power downrange. Hard to find that kind of beauty these days.

The merc walked by with a pat on his metal shoulder as they headed for the turbolift. Apart from a few scorchmarks and a particularly interesting blood spatter, the elevator awaited them intact.

Fanastic.

Aver punched all four buttons and wordlessly offered the Hand cannonhttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/113115-nadir-e-series-hand-cannon/ to the shard.

:: FIRST FLOOR ::

ding

One standard room-clearing procedure later, they were back inside and rolling up again.

:: SECOND FLOOR ::

ding

A couple cultists in here, but between the two mercs, it might as well been empty. The precious books were a tad less readable now, what with the fires. And holes. And red mist. Oh, well. Good thing neither of them were particularly avid scholars of the occult – that department was all taken up by [member="The Major"].

:: THIRD FLOOR ::

ding

crack. splat. ShhhRKKK—

Aver watched the unholy marriage of spectacles, insectile limbs, tentacles, jaws, eyes, and sweet karking Force knows what else. She watched it for exactly one second.

ding

At the swift press of a button, the turbolift headed on to the last floor. The soothing elevator music soon drowned out the wet noises coming from below.

“Looked like she had the situation under control.”

 

[Rusty]

Rusty accepted the hand cannon with a nod of thanks. It was an unfamiliar piece, but a cursory inspection revealed that it was well made. It was sturdy and solid, but remarkably well balanced. His mechanical fingers curled around the grip, then slipped the selector switch to charric. As a rule, he didn't use blasters all that often, since the space wizards had an annoying habit of bouncing the bolts back, but a charric packed enough kinetic punch to make that a less appealing option.

Focusing on the new, unfamiliar weapon helped take his mind off Gertrude. It was ridiculous, he knew, to mourn for a weapon, but Gertrude was more than a weapon. She was his closest friend, his oldest companion, and save for a one-off fling with a shapeshifter over a decade ago, the closest thing he had to a lover. They did everything together, and she was gone.

By focusing on the borrowed pistol, he was able to shove that all to the side. Trying to cope with the sight of...whatever the hell that thing was, that helped for a moment. The Shard considered running out there to give [member="The Major"] a hand, but something told him she was having a Moment. A Moment, the Captain had explained all those years ago, was something personal, something not to be interrupted. A Moment could make or break a person, but whatever the probable outcome, to interfere was to rob it of its impact. If the lanky woman survived, she would be one step closer on her journey, wherever that might take her.

If she didn't, well, that fly-man-thing would still be there when this was all said and done.

As the lift dinged open on the top floor, Rusty surged out, his robotic body moving with unseemly haste. The last thing he wanted to do was get stuck in a fatal funnel, in the event that someone was waiting on the other end with a crew served weapon.

There was someone on the other end, but they weren't waiting with a machinegun.

It was a woman. Ish. Rusty was pretty good with human anatomy, but he wasn't exactly sure what the hell he was looking at. The woman, probably human at one point, had undergone the same sort of process that had melded the huntress's foe with a fly, but while he had been pure nightmare fuel, she was merely unsettling.

There was no hair. Or, for that matter, clothes. The woman's body was wrapped in bands of chitin that preserved her modesty somewhat, but she didn't seem to care. The top of her head was covered in a solid chunk of the stuff that resembled an arming cap, and wrapped around the lower portion of her face, giving the impression that she was wearing a mask.

Her body could have been the model for one of those sculptors that liked to carve nekkid women holding vases and the like, so long as he had a strong enough stomach to handle the weirdness of the chitin. Though the Shard was admittedly an inexpert eye when it came to that sort of thing, he supposed she'd be attractive to the right sort.

If, you know, she wasn't covered in bug-plating. Or if she didn't have long, wickedly curved claws where her fingers should be, or vicious talons in the place of toes.

Nice boobs though.

"Um...I got nothing," the Shard muttered to [member="Aver Brand"]. "Do we shoot her? I feel like we should shoot her."

 

[The Major]

Predictably, the fly-like creature let out a skittering, squealing peel of a laugh at a piercing volume. Enraptured, the beast reviled in the orgasmic throes of quirking glee as the fight pitched forward -ever faster, ever harder- sweat against hot and angry breath. He spreads, and he spits rancid venom. With this the Host scorches the tile floor into hissing puffs of dust.

Sybil, meanwhile, had the blood rushing to her ears as the torment of her wounds elevated her consciousness into a quivering mass of mangled, tooth bearing humanity.

Music. She could hear music.​

​

She leaped towards her quarry, and the insect prepared to slash her again. This time he would split in her two along the seam between her eyes.

!BANG!​

A quickshot this time was delivered at expert timing, just as her feet landed she adopted the deft hand plunge, just as the Host put power into his strike. Now off balance and spluttering from the new wound upon his chest, he would experience ecstasy as the Major dashed into range and under his guns.

A symphony; a cacophony. She tore, slashed, and stabbed, curling in between and behind her prey, dancing. Keep the beat!

​

!BAM!​

Swoon!

!BANG! ​

Now the monster spun, twirling as his life essence gushed hither and tither. Striking out, the Horror found its flailing could not keep pace with her ferocity. First his left limb failed to respond. Then his right. This Abnormality watched as the Huntress tore off the offending limb, once again using her teeth and knife. Enraged, the dying bug attempted to tear back with its jaws in the same manner. His reward was to have the business end of her musket drive up into the back of his mouth. Somehow, crouched beneath him, the Agent was able to thumb the trigger of her warhammer while it was still strapped to her back.

​

!BLLLUUUURRRRGGGGHH!​

The recoil caused the stock to bounce upon the floor. Even this move was rehearsed: for that chaotic backlash helped propel the Fallanassi into a quickstep which she used to shove down the Host, sprawling unto him as he fell back. Most of its head and teeth now decorated the ceiling just above their brief respite, dripping down in wet and green ichor.

The Major rolled off the twitching, neighing mass, and stood to while grasping unto the giant axe she had been assaulted with just a few minutes ago. Gripping tightly, the woman could barely heft up the weapon and bring it to proper posture. A moment passes.

And she fell the beast with a massive, moist clatter.

". . . Hah. . ..​

Hah. . .​

. . .Hah​

. . . Hahh. . ."​

​

::No. No chaingun here.::​

Sybil stumbled about almost drunkenly to the lift. Halfway there she exhaled tightly. . . and collapsed, thudding face down in a torn, adrenaline fizzling heap.

​

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Wholeheartedly, Aver agreed with the shard, and shot her.

Her left hand wrapped around the beautiful new LeMat, and her right went to press down the hammer. Seven shifts of the wrist, seven loud, mean bullets.

The chamber never got to click empty because by then, the gun was already back in its holster. The gunner? (Gunnette?) Best guess somewhere in cover – the pretentious architecture of the tower served them well in that regard.

The merc moved quick. Between the Force and her cybernetic enhancements, blasting through the whole cylinder sounded like a single continuous shot.

And kark, if that wasn’t enough to put that thing down… well, there was still the bottom barrel.

And the Hand cannon [member="Rusty"] was presently rebounding with.

[member="The Major"]​

 

[Rusty]

[member="Aver Brand"] was an artist with a gun, there was no doubt about that. Rusty watched with pride as she and the LeMat worked together seamlessly to pound bullet after bullet into the betittied beast. Whether they struck chitin, it shattered. Where they struck flesh, it ripped. Ribbons of green blood flew through the air, spattering the ground and wall behind the foe.

It shrieked in pain, but didn't fall.

Rusty didn't remember breaking into a sprint. He didn't remember leveling the hand cannon, or exactly when his trigger finger started twitching so quickly, the bolts left the barrel of the Hand Cannon in a single continuous stream. One minute, he was standing still. The next, he was barely a meter away from the target.

The Hand Cannon was well made, designed to fire continuously for several minutes before something broke. It was not, however, meant to fire so quickly. Under ordinary circumstances, to sustain the rate of fire that Rusty demanded of it, you'd need a rotary cannon, not a single pistol. Firing that quickly was not just dangerous, it was downright suicidal.

The weaponsmith didn't care. Gertrude was dead. He wanted to rip and tear, and he didn't much care what happened to him in the process.

The shots had all been clustered right between the creature's breasts, perfectly center mass. A gaping, smoking hole had opened, and as the Shard collided with her, he shoved the overheating blaster into it. It shrieked in pain again as it fell backwards, but managed to get a foot into Rusty's abdomen. As they rolled backwards to the ground, it threw him ass over teakettle.

Which was probably, in retrospect, a good thing, because the power cell blew mere moments later. The creature's body soaked up most of the blast's energy, but the end result was, instead of a fireball and shrapnel, a finely atomized mist of green gunk that coated everything within ten meters of what was left of the body.

"That," Rusty said as he pushed his way to his feet and surveyed the carnage, "is disgusting."

[member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

Being a mighty hero imbued with Force techniques and training was great. So was being a cyborg. Or a crystalline living being housed within a robotic chassis detailed with synth parts that gave an organic sheen.

Being mostly human meant that hitting the dirt meant staying on the dirt for a while. Whatever happened was god's most wild guess. Consider yourself lucky if you didn't awaken to find yourself hung upside down, naked, in a basement with things plugging things that shouldn't be plugged. Consider yourself lucky if you in fact did ever see the light of consciousness again.

Meanwhile, Sybil remained in an unconscious state. Somewhere near her body was a broken tanto slicked with mucus membrane. The revolver looked like it needed a good cleaning, and the stock of her musket had a decent scratch on it from the combat.

Not that she would know. It was a real shame too. A lot of the computers survived the encounter, and they certainly deserved perusal. Those data banks might have interesting stories to tell.

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="Rusty"]

 

[Aver Brand]

Apart from the obvious perks of finding cover, which hardly need mentioning given the ensemble, there were also a few lesser-known benefits. Aver had grown to appreciate them through the years of varied and often vividly gruesome battlefields.

Chief among them was the part where you didn’t get splattered by organics turned into mincemeat at speeds that were downright rude.

The merc emerged from her decorative niche, looking rather spotless in a room that had just been given a fresh coat of green paint. The prone shard included.

Aver rejoined the droid. Nodded.

“What I’m wonderin’, [member="Rusty"], is where the kark is that chaingun.”

And, briefly, if [member="The Major"] was still alive, or if the writhing mass of tentacles and teeth was presently riding the elevator to meet the with a grin.

Cheerful thought, that.

The merc canted her head to the side. “Roof?”

 

[Rusty]

"Can't see any reason they'd put the damn thing on the roof. Basement, maybe?"

Rusty's clothes were completely ruined. Fortunately, he was a Shard. If he wanted to get naked, the only person who'd be embarrassed was the jeweler who got shot trying to put him in a necklace. He shucked off his now green clothes, used the dry spots to polish his face, and then looked around for something to use as a weapon. There wasn't much up here, to be honest, and he doubted [member="Aver Brand"] would loan him another after he blew up the first one.

Oh well.

"I reckon we can head downstairs, see if the glasses lady is still breathing, then head downstairs. If she's kicked the bucket, I'll just use her guns and we can kill whatever else might be hiding here."

It was rare to see cultists that actually had enough clout to do the whole body horror thing. Mostly, they just wore funny robes and sacrificed virgins to make themselves feel better. However they managed to summon the two hell-beasts, this group had established that they were not to be taken lightly. If they managed to kill everything, that was great, but the Shard didn't want to be left unarmed.

Without waiting to see if Brand followed, he headed towards the lift and popped down a floor. The giant fly-man-thing looked plenty dead, alright. [member="The Major"] appeared to be breathing, still, which was something. He squatted down next to her, and tapped her lightly on the forehead with a finger.

"You alive?"

 

[The Major]

Cold steel interrupted the expanse of infinite black. A rather haggard looking face with glasses askew craned upwards to the disturbance. A ghastly looking skull imposed upon the scant lighting, watching from above with the advantages provided by shadow. Sybil assumed she was dead, and that Death had presented himself to ask the tantalizing questions which left all living things stupefied. It only took a few moments for her to realize she was breathing, that the floor was cold, and there was a stink in her nose of iron.

The Major stood to while fighting back another wave of nausea. Quite frankly, she looked like hammered Hell. Noticing that [member="Rusty"] was not equipped with a weapon, the woman offered her gore stained revolver to the weaponsmith. She would have explained only a single round was left, but it was a certainty that trying to speak right now would only result in a stream of vomit. Nothing more; nothing less. Almost creaking a groan at the movement, she unfastened a bandolier of rounds and draped it over the Shard’s shoulder. It wasn't something the huntress noticed, but while doing this blood began leaking out of her right nostril -dripping past her lips and dribbling down her chin.

Turning with the impression of dignity, she stiffly meandered back towards the satin lined coffin of the recently departed Host of the Tower. Fumbling around with a little case in her pocket, she appeared to be looking for a specific needle or pill before dropping all into the rather attractive looking bed by mistake. Sybil doubled over to collect her spilled items, winced with a terrible shudder, and fell to her knees. Luckily she caught herself upon the edge of the coffin. Retch once. Cough twice. And out it came. She kept going until little black stars starting popping into and out of her field of vision, adding such gracious and chunky noises that were greatly amplified by the layout of this floor.

What was most embarrassing was that you couldn't exactly turn off your brain as it happened. The Fallanassi casted an illusion of herself standing cleanly before the Grieving Shard, tho it would fizzle in and out as the vomiting fit would take its worse course. Incidentally it could speak although the presentation of voice lacked any sort of smooth, icy poise.

“Pardon me for a most shameful display. Ghastly business, this hunt. As you can see I've checked if the beast hid your gun in its innards. No luck. Where to next?”

[member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

The ride back down was a quiet, quick affair.

Reuniting with [member="The Major"]? Not so much.

Aver did the mercenary equivalent of examining her nails while the woman purged her guts into the coffin – she reloaded her gun. The remaining one, anyway. [member="Rusty"] wasn’t borrowing another piece from her anytime soon.

“Cellar, apparently,” she offered off-handedly. She’d taken to leaning on a nearby wall while the agent finished dabbing at her mouth. Didn’t envy that taste of bile she was gonna be stuck with for the rest of the day.

Soon as they were all cozy in the elevator, Aver pressed the bottom button and rearmed herself. Maybe they’d get lucky and dodge a third eldritch monstrosity.

Or maybe they’d find the cultists’ sex dungeon.

Never could be certain with these types. The thing Major had fought sure had enough tentacles to make an atrisian awful hot under the collar.

Aver frowned at nothing in particular and flicked off the safety on her rifle.

:: BASEMENT ::

ding

 

[Rusty]

"What in the..."

Rusty thought the weirdest thing he'd see all day was [member="The Major"] projectile vomiting while apologizing for projectile vomiting. At the same time. With, somehow, two bodies. He figured one was probably an illusion of some sort, though not being versed in Force techniques, he supposed he could be mistaken. Still, that was weird. At least the fly monsters had been in keeping with the whole Evil Cult of Evil thing.

If the basement had kept up with that whole mutant insectoid cult theme, that would have been fine with him. That mess was ugly, but for him, at least, it was familiar territory.

But this?

Basement wasn't really the right word for it. This place was cavernous, easily as large as your average spaceport, and in fact, there were a couple of TIEs parked around the edges. Hell, there were also a few small freighters that looked like they might have been configured for carrier duty. That explained that TIE they had seen when they first got there.

The floor and walls were stark, spotless white, unmarred by hoses or conduits that one might expect in such a large facility. The ceiling was equally as neat, though it was painted black. Green runes that looked vaguely Sith-like spiraled out from the center in dizzying, looping patterns that looked like a poor mathematician's idea of fractals.

In the center of the basement, on a raised dais, was the chaingun. It looked to be in remarkably good shape, all things considered. Though it was hard to tell from this distance, it had been masterfully restored at some point in the not too distant past, probably by the cultists. They clearly revered it as an object of power. You could tell by the bowing, and probably the outfits, too.

There were at least a hundred cultists down there, arranged along the same spirals as the runes in the ceiling. There were males and females, mostly human. They were all shaved completely hairless, which was a strange sight indeed, considering that there was at least one Wookiee and a handful of Ewoks in the crowd. The skin on their backs had been tattooed, each one with the rune directly above them on the ceiling. The runes on their backs glowed faintly, and seemed to shimmer unpleasantly.

They were dressed, if that was the right word, in some sort of black leather harness that ran down from their ankles and up to their throats, where it formed a collar. Come to think of it, the harness followed the exact same configuration of Tits McHousefly's chitinous armor. That couldn't be a coincidence. It wasn't entirely inaccurate to call the harnesses immodest; though there was a fair bit of skin showing in some fairly sensitive places, there wasn't anything that would have gotten it censored on a daytime Holonet broadcast. Which, in the case of the Wookiee, was probably a good thing.

There was no chanting, or singing, or any of the usual nonsense associated with cultist rituals. Aside from the sounds of a hundred bodies moving in unison, there was no noise at all.

Chanting would have been normal. Rusty could have dealt with chanting. What he had a hard time comprehending was what appeared to be a hundred grown-ass adults doing The Bunny Dance.

Knees bent, butts out, hands beside their heads, index fingers pointing up. Wiggle, hop. Wiggle, hop. Wiggle wiggle, hop hop. Nose twitch. Hop hop hop, wiggle wiggle.

The dance was made popular by a wildly successful children's show, in which the main character, a Lepi, used such a dance to taunt its enemies before luring them into that episode's humorous trap. It was instantly recognizable to anyone who had been near a holoscreen in the last decade, as the show was a marketing juggernaut that made more on merchandise than some planets would with their entire GDP.

"I do not know how to handle this," Rusty proclaimed.

[member="Aver Brand"]

 

[The Major]

Possibly a telling revelation: Sybil had no experience with whatever this Bunny Dance was. It was completely indescribable within the context of her mind; it also happened to be completely preposterous. Details blended together in sensory overload, and we weren’t even touching upon the smell just yet. Perhaps Rusty did not have such things programed into his frame. This was good. A wafting, repugnant stink of sweat and damp lather assaults the Major’s nose.

“Ridiculous.” She whispered.

Last time the markswoman took the initiative a platoon of these rascals had tried their hand at stopping the trio. Instinctively, the sniper pulled out her musket looking antique and gripped tightly onto its familiar shape. Her brain made the connection that shooting and attracting attention from a hundred quite obviously afflicted with flash mob insanity in close enough quarters with only a slow elevator as escape was a terrible idea.

“Mrs Brand: following your lead.”

Passing the buck, as they say. Sybil liked to think it was more like respecting one’s elders.

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="Rusty"]​

 

[Aver Brand]

Figures.

Typical, drop the responsibility for handling crowd control on the merc you don’t know. She side-eyed [member="The Major"] with a sour expression – with [member="Rusty"], she didn’t even bother.

Aver pointedly ignored the fact that she was the most experienced with mass melee combat as far as their unlikely trio went. This was just the sort of mess she’d get shoved into back in the day.

General, oh general, what do we do with the big bad battalion coming at us?

The usual suggestion would of course be mow them down, but they were underground so no bombs, and air support was hardly an option. Still— blue eyes narrowed as her lips quirked up.

Maybe she was onto something.

“Hold on.”

It was all the warning she gave before grabbing them both under each arm like a pair of unruly children. With a mix of stupidly strong cybernetics, stupidly extensive strength training, and a stupidly precise application of the Force, they were, well… airborne.

If only for a moment.

Then they came down on the dais next to the chaingun, phrik boots cracking against the podium loud enough to reverberate around the cavern several times over.

The… Bunny Dance stopped. A hundred pairs of eyes snapped up, and a deathly silence fell over the chamber as the last echo petered out.

Aver dropped the droid and the agent, and then, quite swiftly indeed, a third item from her belt.

A portable shield generator. The bubble shimmered into place a moment later, and thus became the only thing separating the three from a horde of angry cultists.

Well, three plus one.

The merc glanced at the shard with a grin wide enough to bleed into her gravelly timbre. “She’s all yours.”

 

[Rusty]

It wasn't technically possible for Rusty's death's head face to crack a grin. Technicality, however, went out the window as his fingers danced over the controls for the chaingun.

The setup was a little more complicated than normal for such a weapon. Point in fact, it was so heavily automated, you didn't even aim it, really. You told the computer what you wanted to shoot and how much you wanted it shot, and the gun did the rest. That was something of a disappointment. The Shard had always liked the feeling of pulling the trigger. It was far more visceral, more real, than pushing a button. There was something about the motion, the feel of the sere tripping, the solid thwack of recoil. It was a sensation that he'd almost describe as erotic. Almost. And never in public. People thought that sort of business was weird for some reason.

He was a lump of crystal shoved into a droid. Weird was relative.

Despite the restoration, this was still a 900 year old weapon. It would take a few moments for her generator to warm up and her capacitors to charge.

"I need about 50 seconds before I can fire," the announced. "If you can keep them from doing...whatever it is they're doing, I can take 'em out lickety split."

What exactly the cultists were doing was still a mystery. They were dead motionless, eyes fixed on the chaingun. And, oh, by the way, they were glowing.

That probably wasn't a good sign.

[member="The Major"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[The Major]

Not good. Not good.​

A glass forged needle cracked upon the podium as Sybil discarded it after injecting the serum into her left wrist. The adrenal stimulant worked quickly and sent hot waves of bubbling ire through her fingertips and toes. Motion was begged by her body, but it would have to wait. From her left pocket came out a little piece of worn, black terry cloth embroiled with squiggly blue runes of twin clocks spinning downward in time. Perhaps it represented the ever present monotony of passing time, or maybe it indicated that how much time the user had left. Either way, the agent pressed the cloth across her eyes after removing her glasses.

"Mutter Blut. Hifle!"

Who could say what pushed Sybil to engage in such strange actions. Possibly, interactions of occult nature had a profound hold upon her understanding and perception of the universe. As they delved deeper into this madness it opened the doors and hallways that should have been kept closed. Too late now. As planned, it was always too late.

Okay! But be safe.​

Acquiescence bought upon her a new kind of pain, and with it a clarity in purpose. Still, she almost fainted as buzzing, squirming ice that reminded her of home filled her innards to the brim. Outwardly, Sybil appeared to be teetering in place, a dizzy tower set to collapse. Her left hand pressed even harder upon her face until she almost seemed to be pressing her nails right into her eyeballs. Tiny threads of ink swelled from the rune and sewed themselves about her brow and cheeks. Held now in place in such garish fashion, the hunter let the little trails of blood well down her cheeks as though remorse racked her soul.

How wrong that was.

Her arms now loosely held the musket in one hand by its wooden frame and with a little flick a long bayonet of bright, nearly glowing white metal spiked from the tip with a noise both sickening and madly satisfying.

And without much further fuss, the woman leaped down the podium and crashed down into the center of the assembly. Enraptured by the gore spraying unto her chest from slicing her bayonet down the center of a cultist's breast, the huntress spun and rolled; bludgeoning one here, slicing open the jugular of another there, and on and on. She struck, and was struck. Heavy handed blows landed upon Sybil's body, knocking her into rolls and dives that she further used to attack and be attacked yet again. An arm looped into the air, and arcane power from the glowing ones that were slain was sucked into the strange mask now adorning Sybil's face.

One can hear her hooting, barking, roaring and moaning without restraint.

That took care of ten of the cultists. Now eleven. Crunch! Now thirteen. But that still left the other eighty-odd glowing ones from the podium to deal with. Those not sucked into the brawl in the center of the floor marched towards the bubble shield, mouths agape to harass our lovely Cyborg and Robot.

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="Rusty"]