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Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 9, 2019 3:41:25 GMT
Eliza spat a curse as she slid across the deckplates, then twisted, using her own momentum to roll up back onto her feet some distance away. Thus far, she was still uninjured, though fatigued, and with the battering her armor was taking, it would need significant refits before she took another mission warranting full armor. Assuming, that was, that she took another mission at all, she realized grimly as she processed the Elder's words. Again Eliza rushed, capitalizing on the other Witch's inexplicable agony to close once more, moving to slam into the older woman's unarmored mass and drive her back against the bulkhead behind her.
"How many times do I need ta say it, woman?" she growled. "Ye donna know me. Ye never did. Ye lost yer path ta seek control. Mine is ta guide, as best I know, as our original charge was given," she continued. "And if this abomination canna be slain but in th' Void, then guess where we're headed?" It was madness, of course, but what other alternatives did she have? Her comms were fried, along with a number of other systems. She wasn't at all certain it was spaceworthy, in fact, but..if there was a chance to end this threat that had clearly preyed on more than just a few, then the choice seemed clear. "Th' question is, are ye wi me, or do I need ta sort ye here and now first?"
The Elder hissed. She almost could have laughed if not for the agonizing pain she was in. " You and those mongrels will join us in the end," she managed to get out. Her eyes narrowed, despite the sudden turn about, she was smiling. "This is the fate all of us are damned to...the hidden lie in every pact we made. So long as you and any others that remain are still bound, you all will join us in the madness, and being eaten by the demons will seem to be a blessing compared to what awaits you…freak."
The announcement tone. Another minute gone. A choice before the witch now.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 9, 2019 18:55:22 GMT
Eliza almost sighed as her grip tightened once more. "I'll worry about that later," she answered. "But if that's yer answer, then here's mine," Eliza added with a near-calm that belied the fury underneath the exterior, snapping her head forward once, twice, three times in rapid succession, driving the forward section of her helmet's armor plating into the Elder's unarmored face, then jammed her left fist up towards her midsection, even as she reignited the plasma dagger with the intent to bisect the older woman. "Ye can gan back ta bein' dead now. I've got a Void bein' ta kill," she growled before releasing her grasp with her right hand in order to drive her armored fist full force into the Elder's face, a blow that would act more like a war hammer's strike than a punch. She spared no further time on the Witch, realizing how narrow her window was growing, and sprinted for the gravity drive, towards the origin of the feeling of wrongness.
"Miller, saber!" she bellowed as she passed through the blasted iris door, extending her right hand for the man to toss the weapon towards her. As she moved towards the center of the chamber, she scanned the area, taking note of several individuals she'd not seen before, though she recognized the armor all the same. Noting also the state of her armor, Eliza removed her helmet to ensure she could be clearly heard. "Alright, everyone, I've got news on how we can take this shitestain down!" she yelled, making sure her voice carried across at least most of the vast chamber. "We're dealin' wi an extraplanar entity, and like most such things, ye canna kill it but on it's home plane! That said, we've a few minutes before th' jump, so now's th' time ta make preparations. If this thing wants a fight, then we'll damn well give it one! However, that means we're headed into th' Void ta do it. Miller, Spartan that's na Ghostie over here," she added, motioning briefly towards the Spartan she'd yet to learn the name of, but was fairly certain he was every bit as alive as she was. "What can ye tell us about what ta expect, beyond it bein' bloody cold?"
The female Spartan nodded as she ran over to the indicated chamber panel. There didn't look to be any visible method to unlock the section for entry, which left the crude option of grabbing the extended node and pulling with all her strength. After several seconds, the hatch came free and tore loose from its hinges, now tossed aside allow Anna entry into the service ducts. A huge as she slid into the tunnel now looking down and looking for any sign of indication to the emergency shutdown.
Even as the other two Spartans were on their tasks, Bravo Five would hurry to the crate, checking his armor's received transmissions, then frowned. "Crimson, check your coms, I'm getting nothing at all." After a second, he tapped a key on his left gauntlet, only to sigh. "Damnit...keep telling the SRA spooks we need to harden shit against magnetics better."
Miller, as he noticed the burnt corpse laying in the coolant, would slowly make his way down, almost deliberate in his steps. He hesitated as he reached the body, noting a scorched jumpsuit on it, and what looked like a remote detonator in its right hand. And then he suddenly turned his head back toward the black armored Spartan, shifting his eyes toward Bravo Five before the expression of realization, and perhaps remembering, came upon him. "You all need to get out now if you want to go home."
That was seconds before the charges sparked and flared, forcing Miller to drop in reflex while the concussive blast slammed into the giant in armor, causing the bright yellow flare of light of his shields, but holding just long enough as the structure holding the outer ring would flare red hot, cut through, and sparks as the charge sputtered in the aftermath of its success.
And then came the last set of footsteps in the form of a battered, but surviving, armored corporate executive moonlighting as a mercenary, and her warning.
As everyone busied themselves around him, Eligos remained mostly still, eyes locked into the dee black singularity before him. It was...impossible. It really brought into perspective how impossible the ship was and all the things it brought with it...and took along with it. he found himself right by the orb of raw void, hand stretched out along its even horizon, feeling the subtle cold pull, the fluidity of black time and space rippling under his mechanical palm, as if beckoning him, calling for him.
"At this point...I don't think we truly can." Came his answer to the survivor. When had he gotten there anyway? He turned his head for a moment to turn towards the man as the charged blew up, the concussive force actually lifting him off the ground and projecting him backwards, forcing his limbs to reach for the ground, fingers and boot tips hooking onto floor panelling to avoid flying all the way back to the spikes. Well then...The cyborg slowly stood up, head shaking as he tried to shrug off yet another concussive blast, thankful the EVA suit actually protected him. The arrival of his partner in thsi job would not deter him as he began to walk towards the orb, purpose and haste in his step...it would collapse soon.
" It won't just be cold, it will be void. Black, devoid of light and heat or anything we hold dear and granted in our limited perception. No rules will apply, things may shifting the blink of an eye, shaped by our mind and beliefs, so if you use your weapons you better not doubt for a second they will work... Nothing will make sense, a nightmarish hellscape that only gets worse the further away from the entry point we get..." The words left his mouth, yet he couldn't be sure if he was the one saying them...or how he knew this information. He stopped by the cooling fluid before turning around to face the battle-ready corporate head, as well as the survivor "So, how do we get in?"
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Damn. That explained the comm silence on Eliza's part at least. Vincent wouldn't begin to act like he knew exactly how this ship's drive worked but it took a lot to interfere with MJOLNIR's external communications suite. More than he would've simply assumed an 800 year old ship's drive could output at any rate, but assumptions didn't seem to amount to much here.
"Copy. Secure it anyways, we'll open it later if we need it. I'm not leaving it behind." Vincent replied, finishing up with his improvised detonator just as Miller's motion tracker contact came through the door behind him. He had no idea what the man was doing beyond it involving the burnt corpse in the room's coolant pool, but that didn't matter. What did was his task at the moment. Seeing the briefest hint of a spark as he pulled the pin, the Spartan would move to back away as the charges adhered to the cylinder connecting the drive to the ship proper flared and exploded, the pressure wave washing over his armor's shields in a flare of golden yellow before subsiding. Only a quarter charge gone. No, not even, and an angry red glow where the copper penetrators had cut clean through the drive's base.
That'd bought them some time. He hoped. Vincent wasn't about to stick around to find out, though.
"That's the plan. Everyone, airlock. We've got exfil." Vincent said, before glancing to the hatch Anna had ripped open and beginning to move towards it, passing Eligos as he went without a word. If the crazy bastard wanted to stay and die he wouldn't stop him - they didn't have time to drag someone struggling against their help of the ship with potential hostiles still between them and the exit. Kneeling before the cramped service tunnel and ducking down to peer in, Vincent gave a sharp whistle as he looked for the other Spartan.
"Cut those relays or don't, but get a move on. We're leaving. There should still be a spare EVA suit in a secondary control room, we'll grab that on the way out. Lockheed, stay if you want but we're moving to bail before anything else happens." Vincent continued, looking to the mercenary by the doorway as he directed the last few words to her. He didn't respond to her own directions. She was just as insane as Eligos was if she thought they were going to just stay put and wait for the ship to do the very thing he'd worked so hard to delay if not stop, and if they had a window to get off of the wreck he was going to take it - and take anyone looking for safe passage off with him.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 11, 2019 1:28:37 GMT
To say Eliza didn't like the situation would have been a gross understatement. She didn't want to enter the Void, but from what she'd heard, they didn't have much choice, and from what she'd gathered from Veska before comms had shut down, her own vessel was tainted, likely until the entity was slain. To do that, she needed to go where she least wanted to go. Frustration riled the ashen-haired woman as she stormed towards the much larger Spartan. "Dammit, ye machine-brained twatwaffle! This thing's been poppin' in and out across th' entire bloody galaxy, if na more, fer over 800 years, and we've a chance ta put th' damned thing in its grave!" she yelled. "But ye want ta run off, let a couple of civilians do yer job fer ye, fine!" Eliza then turned towards Miller. "If ye're leavin' too, then I'll need my weapons back. Eligos! Stop havin' an existential crisis, we've fuckery ta murder," she snapped. "Bloody hell..Ye happen ta see what we're needing ta kill in there when ye stuck yer brain in th' mess? Might help ta know where ta shoot. Mind, if we jist need ta be certain it'll die fram th' wounds, then I've still one good Fireball left in me, plus a mess of explosives. Nothin' survives that much shite by itself."
The spherical nothing shuddered as the magnetic fields containing it visibly flickered, air distorting as the charged auras finally collapsed. At first, nothing happened. A shifting sound of metal, but it seemed as if everything had calmed. Miller took the chance, looking at the corpse once more, then pulling himself out of the coolant to stand by the the others on the main catwalk.
But the hole into nothing still remained. And seconds later, the containment rings groaned, bending inward slowly until the inner most ring touched the blackness and sudden snapped into itself. It vanished into the emptiness, followed by the middle containment ring as the singularity grew. The outer ring soon followed, and the void grew again, revealing itself now without anything to hold it back.
Everything in the drive chamber flickered as the countdown still continued, a minute remaining as the walls of the drive chamber seemed to go back and forth between metal and machine to black-purple flesh and ridged bone.
The circle board floor and walking within the service duct around Anna was also shifting, becoming tunnels of bone and flesh for moments before shifting back. She had moments only, and the relays were right in front of her. "Screw you and the bitch that threw you up," came the angry words just before slamming her fist into the circuit boards, grabbing hold of the relay and yanking it free in hopes the plan would still work. Black fluids gushed free, causing her to recoil in shock, but it was enough still to get her moving out of the service duct and rejoining those in the core chamber.
The coolant bubbled as flames ignited from the surface of the walls. A groan echoed, one more of a rumbling roar now. The black hole itself began to expand as the seconds counted down, the computer's voice distorted, warped...twisted.
And then, the singularity imploded, and everything dropped.
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Prior to their shared encounters Vincent would have thought nothing of Eliza's words. He would have ignored them in their entirety, and simply focused on his work and what he intended to do about the problem. It was easier that way. Very few people were capable of physically stopping him when he set his mind to something, and those that tried anyways were treated as obstacles - and most didn't. It was a fairly isolated world but a very simple one where all that mattered were his own actions, things he could readily control and use to steer events towards desired outcomes. It had taken decades for him to find that calm center, and while it wasn't necessarily gone...
As Vincent stood up and began backing away from the service hatch to allow Anna her exit the much larger Spartan would find his patience wearing exceptionally thin as Eliza began storming towards him.
"Do what you want. What I intend to do is to evac those willing to leave on the one clean ship left available, and after that cut this wreck into so many pieces with pulse laser bombardment that nothing on it will ever function again, down to the individual atoms if I feel the need. Anyone who wants to remain onboard while I do so is more than welcome to." Vincent responded, pausing just long enough to look down and address her directly before continuing past Lockheed and towards the room's exit. His voice, while cold and professional, had a newfound frigidity to it - an undercurrent of barely contained anger that had not been there before when the witch had last spoken to him in the hallway outside of containment, and the inherent warning contained in that tone was clear. Vincent did not care who she was, and he'd already come fairly close to the temptation to shoot Eligos before. If she got in the way of anyone seeking safe shelter he would not hesitate to protect their right to make that choice.
Nothing seemed to have gone according to plan so far, though, so why should that?
Pausing again near the exit at the sound of the groaning metal, Vincent would look back over his shoulder at the growing singularity as it consumed the innermost containment ring. Growing? One that small, an artificially made one? It should've been evaporating. Not growing. But that was indeed what it was doing, and Vincent's incomprehension lasted only until the second ring began to groan under the gravitic stress. The countdown hadn't stopped. But Anna had pulled the relays, and the coolant wasn't- no. No, there was a solution to this, a way out. But if something was coming as Eliza and Eligos seemed to believe this was the last place they wanted to be. Too many overlapping lanes of fire that would put allies downrange of each other, too much room for whatever it was to maneuver.
And he still had one or two cards up his sleeve that he'd been holding onto just in case the drive had managed to activate, if everything he threw at it somehow fell just short of success. But to make that plan work they needed to get back to the other end of the ship.
"Anyone who wants off, into containment! Lockheed, that includes you unless you want to be downrange of us when whatever it is shows up." Vincent said, moving off to the side to clear the exit ramp for Miller and anyone else looking to escape to safer ground. As he did so Vincent would gesture to Bravo Five to bring the locked crate to him - he'd been hoping they wouldn't need what was inside but it paid to be prepared.
"Anna, secondary control, get that hardsuit. I can't guarantee this won't penetrate the hull if I fire it."
Eligos remained where he was standing, even as the metal twisted and bent loudly with the shriek of a thousand dying souls, consumed by the void, like everything eventually is. He changed his set, wide gaze from Eliza to the soldiers. "Your friends can't leave. They are dead. This place is their limbo. You leave, they return, only for this to repeat again. And again. And again. Until someone else comes along that is willing to brace the void for the sake of ending this...There is no leaving. The ship is a vessel, yet much more. Its not something you can destroy with just firepower soldier boy...You were not trained for this..." As he spoke the hallway changed to flesh only to warp back again...it was compassing, reality was collapsing with them...they would soon see what he saw at the edge of his sight now. What made him accept this so naturally. "...No one was."
He turned around to face the singularity, one hand reaching for Mayhem, the other for Scream, holding one in each had with the safeties off. His hands dropped to his sides, slowly rising as the coolant ignited, the gilded spikes became tarnished once more, almost as if he was conducting an orchestra. Almost as if he could see it happen right before it did...almost. His arms end with both gun barrels aiming towards the void. Bullets would do nothing...Eliza's...abilities might. It was almost funny. Hilarious even. That out of the ones present, the super soldiers were the least prepared for this. Their minds were focused, hardcoded into their own thought patterns, unwilling to accept anything else other than what they have done again and again. The mission didn't matter. This was no longer a salvage mission after all. They were fighting for their own sanities
"Eliza? Try not to blow me up. I have no idea what IT is...I was not shown the true face of the other side, just the twisted overlap. The dead ones back there might actually be able to hurt it, since they are already on the other side."
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 11, 2019 2:30:53 GMT
As the ship groaned, Eliza began to consider her options, reviewing all that had transpired since her arrival on the Event Horizon with surprising calm. The brief glimpse into what was to come didn't faze her, though she'd not seen such a thing in centuries. The Elder's words came back, unbidden as she scanned the chamber, then smiled grimly. "Huh. Better late than never, I suppose.." she muttered to herself as she removed her helmet, then braced as she did two things, one which would be immediately visible, activating the quick release on her armored hardsuit, allowing her to step free in the carbon nanofiber undersuit onto the flesh beneath her feet. The other was less visible, as she again drove her arcane will into the planar ether, fully prepared to be met by the cold of the Void. This time, she did not recoil, though, but pushed deeper, reaching towards the prize she refused to be denied. The Void seemed to border all planes, and if that were true, then she could reach her weapon, and the keys to her power..and her freedom. Ye think ye know what ye contend wi, Void-thing? she thought savagely. Ye know nothin' of th' sort. Ye know th' old order. I am na them, and I will na be denied! She hadn't been of the old Umbra Witches since the Shattering, since the destruction of the Eyes of the World. No..she'd ceased to follow the ways of the old order long before then. The Witch Hunts had forced her to adapt, to become something else. The irony was that it had taken her more than a thousand years later, when she faced what could well prove her death, to fully admit that truth. However, her change was not yet free. She was not yet free. But she had a plan to change that, to change many things. She simply needed to survive.
The sensation of dropping was on everyone, like the uncontrolled descent of a lift platform plummeting at breakneck speed. The entire core chamber was shifting between metal structure and the incomprehensible twisted "flesh and bone" of the other place. Something was forming where the singularity had been, a mass of blackness, swirling and lashing like tendrils as the environment began to stabilize into the other state of the ship.
Its true state.
With a huff, Bravo Five dropped the crate before him, turning his head toward the black Mjolnir armored Spartan-III. "Hope you have a damn plasma launcher in there, Crimson. Beam pistol I got barely got that asshole's notice earlier."
"Knowing Vince, he probably a packed enough ordinance to blow a planet to hell and back," came the retort from the younger Spartan, pulling her smashed and broken helmet off finally. She checked her remaining ammo, then reclipped her M6C. "I got six shots left. After that, I'm out of ammo."
Miller, though silent, would ready the insanely powerful handgun again, setting the recoil absorbing brace up once more. He glanced one last time to the corpse that lay in what was now a pool of black liquid, sloshing thick like blood while flames danced on the surface, and slid a reload into the magnetic rail weapon. "If Miss Lockheed and her cyborg friend are right, then this may be the only chance we have to kill the thing powering the ship."
And even as the thick feeling of cold wrongness would press around them, a soft glow began to emanate from the distinctive watch that the witch carried on her. A glow that she had not seen in nearly a thousand years, and a sense of time moving far differently that she knew it should. All because of one simple decision to finally refuse what she was told was her fate.
And then the mass of blackness would shape and form, reaching up toward the ceiling of the core chamber. Where there had been spikes on the walls were now pillars of bone, pointing to the spot where the gravity drive had sat, and a column of flesh and veins finally took form from the blackness, thick strands stretching about the spherical chamber like the clustered pathways of a brain, while the central mass was pulsing and beating almost like a heart. There was an odd fold toward the center of the mass, like a scar or misshapen flesh.
Then it twitched, shifted, and the fold separated to reveal a large black eye, with a point of burning white at its center, and teeth protruding from the eyelids to frame the organ. It blinked a moment, looking at the odd gathering of humans down on what now remained of the catwalk, and giving a rumble. And from around them, screams and cries could be heard. There was no mistaking this thing now.
Even amid the hellish surroundings Eliza now found herself in, she couldn't help but to smile as she took note of the shift in time, a shift in possibilities. She still felt the cold, but now, she felt something else, a sensation not unlike the warmth of a fire through a thick window. In case of emergency.. she mused silently as she stretched out her hands. The first step of her plan was set, but there was more to be done, and she steeled herself as she shoved again, pushing, cracking, breaking through barriers few living in the Orion Spur even knew to exist. AND FUCK YER BARRIERS, TOO! she silently roared as she clenched her teeth, biting back agony unlike anything the Witch had quite experienced before. To those observing, she must have been something strange to behold, if not for their current location. Her slender form uncased in an ashen-white sleeve of her own hair that conformed to her shape like a second skin, glaring as she endured some unseen torture. The closest she could describe the sensation as was what one might experience attempting to force one's exposed arm through a set of energy shields, or punching through plate glass that was constantly repairing itself, even with one's arm still in the path. The intensity of the pain was draining, and made the process seem like hours, though in truth, only a few seconds had passed before Eliza pulled through a quartet of glowing violet circles weapons that were more than a thousand years old, yet still pristine. As the ashen-haired woman forced each limb through a rune-filled circles, a loud crack sounded, as if she'd driven herself through glass. Indeed, hidden by the strange hair-suit and the undersuit of carbon nanofibers, dozens or more tiny lacerations opened across her hands, arms, feet, and legs. Well, she'd need a long shower after all this, anyway, she mused amid the intense pain. Withdrawing her limbs was equally agonizing, but far more rewarding, as she pulled with them a pair of hand cannons roughly the size of the M6C so favored by the Spartans, though hers were affixed to the heel of either boot, as well as a rifle that seemed more at home in the hands of a military sniper, and finally, a monstrosity of a firearm, a 5-barreled gatling-type shotgun that seemed utterly impossible for anyone short of a Spartan to effectively use while remaining mobile on foot, to say nothing of a slender woman that barely topped 5'4".
"Oh..this needs somethin' special, occasion like this," Eliza chuckled as she caught her breath from the rather excruciating act of summoning her weapons. "Ye jist settle fer a moment, Cyclops, while I set th' mood," she remarked, then turned back to her empty armor, shouldered her rifle, and reached inside to enter a quick series of commands. Following this, sound began to emanate from the external speakers...music? It certainly sounded like a Terran guitar, interspersed with voices, though nothing was intelligible at the moment. Eliza, however, seemed satisfied, and resumed the grip she had on the rifle. "Ah, that's better," she sighed. "Tell me, ye ugly bassa, what do ye know of AC/DC?" She seemed quite amused by the question, and as if prompted by some unseen force, she fired twice in rapid succession with the rifle, though the recoil didn't seem to faze her at all. Her other hand was not idle, either, as the barrels began to spin up, promising untold fury to come. She knew that her allies might at this point think her mad, but this entire place was mad, so what did it matter? If she was going to risk her life and very soul against something she barely had a grasp of, she meant to enjoy the fight, at the very least.
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Vincent ignored Eligos. What he did not ignore, however, was the state of the ship around them following the sudden jolt in movement. It was like nothing Vincent had experienced, at least outside of the sims - and within them only one thing had come close to resembling the flesh and bone that was replacing the metal and carbon around them. He already knew it wasn't something Flood borne going off the earlier flash of moving flesh across the bulkheads in the chamber housing the gravity couches. That hardly did much to address the disquieting feeling in his gut, however. All he had left were his fellow Spartans, the gear everyone present had and the old fashioned solution to most problems they came across - they would kill it. And if it got back up, kill it again, pouring on the hurt until it either stopped or ceased to exist.
Another day at the office, really. Once you ignored the actual context of the situation.
Bravo Five seemed to be of a fairly similar mindset, and as requested the blue armored Spartan would set the matte black hardcase on the ground between them before speaking - about to reply, Vincent would find himself cut off as Anna interjected, only giving a slight shrug as he glanced over to her before looking back to Bravo Five.
"She knows me. Anna, swap. I've got five spare magazines, twenty one rounds left in the current one. I'm not going to need it." Vincent said, removing the Confed issued sidearm from its holster and deftly flipping the pistol around to offer the weapon's grip to the smaller Spartan III, barrel pointed to the ground and his other hand removing the five magazines from his armor's ammo pouches to offer alongside it. Once she had taken the weapon and matching ammunition Vincent would reach down to wordlessly heft the hardcase nearly his own size from the floor and begin dragging it towards the containment chamber leading out of the rapidly morphing spherical room that had once contained the gravity drive.
He wasn't going far. But he needed to be sure that a stray bullet or incendiary attack didn't hit the crate. If it did none of them would know what had happened, just oblivion.
Stepping through the undamaged doorway and setting the crate down, Vincent would reach for the dimly lit controls and key in the access code. A slight hiss would sound as the container's internal seals popped, releasing the pressurized interior that it still held from its time within the Prowler's cargo bay. Reaching to work a gloved finger under the slight edge that had appeared, the Spartan would carefully open the lid to reveal the box's contents. Divided into several sections, one would house a micro fusion reactor, the portable type typically used in field operations either behind enemy lines or too far to be readily or reliably resupplied... and next to it, a rather significant portion of the container devoted to prepackaged plastic like bricks and detonators, nearly forty kilos of Confed's finest. More than had been needed for a simple demolition job, but on the off chance he'd encountered something that needed killing... well, he probably should have used that on this wreck from the very start. Too late now.
But the third compartment housed what he was looking for. A full meter long, very much utilitarian in design with handle and trigger placements reminiscent of old shoulder fired rocket launchers, the lack of an obvious barrel might stymie most rank and file troops - the weapons had never been widely seen much less used by UNSC marines and only rarely among the ODSTs. Pulled from the Anvil's armory and retooled much as his armor had been, however, the white and green paint accented by a splash of red trim was a very familiar and comforting sight to Vincent. Pulling the weapon from the case and setting it aside for a moment, Vincent would reach behind him to pull the smaller container that had been present free of his back. Cracking it open, Vincent would empty the contents of it into the now empty space within the larger crate before sealing both shut again - hefting the larger container up, Vincent would reengage its maglock function to lock it to the wall just beside the doorway before doing the same with the smaller case.
Picking the weapon on the floor back up, his armor would make electronic contact with the gun to let its status and remaining battery power flash into existence on the upper right hand corner of his HUD. A press of a button to disengage its safety, a section of the blunt end would pop up to reveal a large lens inside, a targeting screen likewise flipping open from the left hand side of the gun to display a miniature image of where the gun was pointed.
He was ready.
Holding the weapon with a single hand and the front pointed towards the ground as the Spartan calmly turned to return to the previous room, shutting the door behind him, Vincent would do so right around the moment it seemed to finally settle on what it wanted to be, a massive column of flesh sporting a single eye having replaced the space where the destroyed gravity drive had once stood. Everyone was armed at this point, and Eliza - having somehow acquired new weapons and something else flowing over her armor's techsuit, the plating having dropped into a pile behind her - would start playing music of all things before firing shots aimed at the abomination in the center of the room.
Fair enough, and with a mental shrug Vincent would hoist his own weapon up to aim at the creature - a half second long targeting laser settling on the center of the eye being the only warning given before the enhanced Spartan Laser would fire, a massive beam of pure destructive force following the path of the initial targeting laser.
As the ones around him prepared and armed up, upgrading their gear and offensive capabilities, Eligos waited. He waited and observed as the room around him shed its physical disguise, bursting froth from its planar cocoon to reveal what it actually was, what he had felt it was since the start of it all. This place. This hellish abode of despair, torture and madness...it should feel odd to him. Alien. But instead it felt..like home. In the back of his mind it made him worry. It made him recall the words of the man in the wall, so fresh in his mind, about the Void having changed him forever. he didn't know how to deal with it. So he did what he always did in these situations, and squeezed the trigger.
The automatic weapon in his left hand roared to life, the rectangular barrel immediately getting eaten at the edges as the over-filled rounds get shot through the chamber of machined steel, the entire weapon rumbling and twisting, the very weapon wearing itself out for the sake of fire power...His switch was still flipped, his enhanced musculature being the only thing that allowed him to hold the weapon steady without any brace and with his arm outstretched, aiming the wild hose of stray bullets roughly towards the eye. Meanwhile he fired the custom revolver in his right hand, digit pulling at a slow steady pace, each pull eliciting an increasingly hotter burst of air,some, and eventually, flames from the chromed tubes on each side, firing a tungsteen-coated gyrojet bullet.
It couldn't be this. This was too easy, it couldn't be the solution to this abomination...this ship drifted around for 800 years, if it could be defeated by simply shooting it it would have been destroyed long ago. No, there was something. More than a stationary target of flesh. Even as he fired his eyes darted around the twisted mockery of the room, looking for any signs, any hint on how this creature worked, how it would attack...for all intents and purposes they were inside it, every single surface was part of its being.
Both weapons clicked simultaneously as they ran out of ammo, Mayhem shooting 6 bullets, Scream spewing 32. He would pause before reloading, waiting for the reaction he knew was coming.