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Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 6, 2019 0:11:12 GMT
"Magrail weapon," Eliza explained quickly as she handed over the four spare magazines, each holding 8 projectiles. "Equivalent ta th' .45-70 Government, if I'm na mistaken, so ye'll want to hit th' brace release on th' side jist behind th' grip. Ye've 32 rounds, so make 'em count!" she added more forcefully as she moved up, frowning at the sight of the Spartan no longer simply charging through. What was capable of actually holding a Spartan in Mjolnir? Even to the highly experienced Witch, those supersoldiers possessed skill that was legendary, and she doubted that even prior to the cosmic events that had weakened her magic, she could have readily matched the men and woman that bore the title of Spartan. "Cover," she ordered more quietly. "Looks like we've a bit of a hold up, and ye've no armor ta help." With that, Eliza began to advance, ready to assist her unexpected ally with her blades.
With a hiss and a metallic slide the iris door sealed behind him, muffling the mayhem beyond it and truly separating him from the rest of the ship...His hand dropped from the smashed console, his motion eliciting faint sparks as they jump across the dark towards the gloves covering his mechanical digits. He would slow down awkwardly, allowing himself to simply walk along the midpoint towards the drive. No point in breaking himself before he hit home after all. Even as he walked he could feel the effects of his dash, the odd trembles and twitches of the hidden musculature, signs of torn or misshapen muscle and tendon, the awkward motions of his joints, revealing cracks and bends along the titanium alloy. They were serviceable, but the wear was starting to show, specially after that EMP blast and trip. Heh, he was blaming most of the damage on that to be fair. The flip remained switched, and the pain receptors remained off...the pain would be unbearable should they be flipped on... His arms spread apart as he stretched them, feeling the contrast between the state of his legs and his arms, one pristine as responsive, an absolute display of form and function...while the other showed the laborious wear and tear of high stress.
The voice sung to him. It whispered promises from the dark recesses of his mind. Not by saying them, but by showing them. His impossible vision...a complete true form of crafted artificial flesh, and yet a mind untampered an his own, the duality of his being brought into perfect unison. A tempting offer. At least if true...He wondered about the others. Those outside, those corrupted and broken, bare bodies exposed to the air, uncaring for the certainties of life, uncaring of pain and death...had they been promised things as well? Was that the end result of this siren's song? He shoot his head, the violent motion bringing a degree of pain into his addled brain, and with it, clarity. Ahh...the drugs where leaving his philosophical again. No need to overthink things. His plan was simple. Simple and full of improvise, that was his way, and it hadn't failed him yet.
The digits of his left hand dip into his duffel bag once more as he neared the other door, avoiding the objects, avoiding even thinking about them as he instead picked one of the large explosive rounds for Mayhem, toying with the conical object, finding solace in the smooth metal surface as he neared the end stage of this little breakneck trip, digits reaching for the door controls. "Ok...show me what you have been hiding back here..."
She would move like a flash, impossible for anything but a Spartan augment. Her left-hand caught the shield popper easily, a hard flick sending it right back, but even that inhuman reflex didn't save her from the mach three slug that slammed against her leg armor, tearing a sizable plate section out, and brought her to a knee. A split second later, she had drawn her own M6C, aiming at the Mjolnir clad soldier, yet jerking her aim to blow a hole in the head on one of the warped monstrosities that the soldier had left behind him. She was back up to her feet, now charging toward the black armored time-lost soldier, even with an initial stumble in her start. "You shits stay out of this, family affair only!"
The group of twenty-seven still approaching paid no heed as they continued to rush, and no doubt would interfere in this match that only Hell could have forced.
The brace had been flipped out, stabilizing the unusual weapon as Miller would take his aim, and fired. Despite readying himself, the recoil threw him back, while the round managed to slam through and tear the shoulder off a strange species that the witch would not recognize. He winced, steadying himself again, this time tensing for the recoil that followed. This time, it took the head off his same target even as it was turning to charge.
And then he was flung hard, slamming against a wall near a junction corridor by what looked like a giant hand made of shimmering hair. It retracted into nothingness, then surged out from a wall again to barrel straight at the woman in armor.
The door irised open, revealing a long tunnel that was encapsulated by sets of rotating sections. Gold gilding was inlaid at what seemed to be patterns trailing along the bladed protrusions, leading his gaze toward the larger sibling door at the end of the corridor. The cyborg would approach, tugged at by a force that lay just beyond.
And as he continued down the tunnel, he could feel the shifting magnetic bands of energy as the sections rotated. It was normally enough to disorient anyone, but for Eligos, it was hypnotic, a song in play. The golden gilding glittered in a fashion to guide him to the second door, Second Containment.
And as it irises open, what welcomed him was the realization of his vision. Before him was a spinning sphere of hex-gridded plates, aloft inside three rotating rings that were patterned with gold in intricate designs. Throughout the chamber, spikes were mounted aim at the sphere, as if conducting energy into it. These too had patterns of gold embedded into them, giving the entire macabre visual an extra hint of decadent indulgence. As if someone had added all these to the chamber, not because they were needed, but for the sheer fact they could.
A few meters from the central containment, above the pool of coolant fluids that sloshed, a console waited. It had power, displaying a series of controls. Near the base of central containment, half sunken into the coolent pool, was a charred body, bits of burnt fabric still on it. A hardsuit was cast aside in the coolant, face up and visibly empty; one of the missing SinoViet crew's EVA gear. Nearby was a large black supply crate that had been haphazardly set aside, one that had a series of labels on it, and was obviously military.
Eligos would know what to do, what the entity asked for, how to finish this task. The coordinates were already in his mind.
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
He would give this shithole points for authenticity, at least, eyes tracking the grenade as it bounced off the wall behind the faux Spartan, priming the device before the device was caught mid bounce and thrown back, detonating mid air but too far from either of them to do more than cause his armor's shields to flicker slightly in reaction. Not enough to damage them, but enough to halt their recharge cycle - the bar roughly three quarters full according to his HUD. Her speed wasn't enough, however, to completely avoid the round fired from his sidearm as it struck her in the leg.
Not a kill shot, but it was good enough and would limit mobility. She wasn't wearing MJOLNIR, and by all appearances it was the standard ODST BDU, not even SPI. In terms of raw ability she wouldn't be able to even remotely compete as he was heavier, faster, stronger, tougher, and provided he could close the distance between them the fight would be over in a matter of seconds. Infinity's war games had never been intended to train Spartans how to kill one another explicitly as opposed to simply sharpening their instincts and combat skills in a general sense as war didn't change much regardless of who you were fighting, but Fireteam Crimson had almost always topped those leaderboards when it came to sheer lethality - while completely unintentional, they had prepared him well for this.
What was unexpected, however, was her next action as the heavy M6C - a threat even to his upgraded armor - was raised, although it wasn't the weapon itself that was out of place. Immediately moving to dodge the expected follow up shot, Vincent wasn't able to quite put a finger on what seemed out of place until the round that had clearly been at something behind him whizzed past the space where his shoulder had been a moment before to obliterate one of the hostiles approaching from behind.
A "family" affair?
Screw you.
MR-1 still clutched in his right hand, Vincent would lurch forward himself with an inhuman burst of speed, although not in a blind charge towards the imposter but instead towards the nearest creature between him and her, a former Elite - and with another metallic flash Vincent would draw and jerk his knife upwards in a left handed grip to impale its skull on the blade. With the creature's significant but suddenly limp bulk between him and her the Spartan's armor would seem to flash before fading into nothingness, activating his suit's camouflage before pulling the knife free of his victim and allowing it to drop to the floor with Vincent having disappeared into thin air.
Her helmet was broken. No VISR, and even if this thing had somehow replicated her augmentations as her movement suggested none of their eyesight had been that good without assistance, and it was a hell of a task dodging what you couldn't see coming much less trying to hit it with a semiautomatic weapon. Slipping past another two of the creatures and holstering the sidearm, Vincent would bring his SMG back up the moment he had a clear line of sight and counting on the weapon's suppressed nature and high RPM as he emptied the remaining twenty rounds in the magazine in a wide arc intended to preempt any further dodging.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 6, 2019 3:09:01 GMT
It had been centuries since such an attack had been seen, since before the event that those still versed in the use of magic knew as the Shattering. To Eliza's knowledge, the barriers between the planes were still strong preventing such abilities. Despite this knowledge, that hair, so similar to her own in texture arms hue, sent the normally focused woman into rage unlike anything she had ever felt. The only sound she heard was the deafening tattoo of her heartbeat and a distant-sounding keen that seemed to somehow mirror the unspeakable intricate cocktail of rage, pain, and denial. The oncoming fist seemed to almost slow to Eliza's perceptions, despite not having drawn on her abilities as an Umbra Witch. Instead, a potent flood of adrenaline propelled her armored form out of the fist's path, moving in a pirouette that was as graceful as it was deadly to anything that was so foolhardy as to come into melee range. So swift was her turn that for a few seconds, she resembled more an elongated blur surrounded by a wide disc of blue-white light. Molten sparks flew as her blades carved through terrestrial metal along the Witch's path. All the while she watched her HUD, seeking out the mockery the entity that gripped this cursed ship had summoned up to stab at her psyche. The gravity drive was largely forgotten now, for Eliza's focus of rage rested wholly on the thing she could only assume was meant to be her mother. However, even if it truly were Jeanne d'Arc, if her earlier experiences had been any indication, she was raised as an undead, and deserved to then be laid to rest. Regardless, it needed to be cut down, torn asunder, and destroyed beyond all hope of recovery.
Footsteps against the deck. A silence would engulf as a figure stepped out of the shadows. Flowing robes fluttered around the ancient frame as steel grey eyes bore down at the armor clad witch. "Abomination," came the words in an angry voice that would echo back over fifteen centuries of time. "A blasphemous thing. As much a heresy as the unholy union that was Rosa's child!"
There was no reunion of heartbreak, no tears to be shed, be they of rage or sadness. Stepping out into the light was a woman clad in the ancient raiments of the great leader of a long dead and forgotten order, but a figure that would strike deep in the armored woman's memory all the same. A simple yet detailed headdress adorned her head, face masked from the eyes down with a fitted veil. And the click of her boots against the deck as black smoke and tendrils of pure nothingness wafted around her as her stride was cold, steeled, and hollow all at once.
This was not who Elizabeth Marie D'Arc had expected. But the person they were was no less a concern.
"You were your mother's most foul betrayal to us that was obscured long, child. Befitting that it was the deepest Dark that revealed what you truly are…"
Bullets rang against the metal plates of the corridor wall, then hit with a series of meaty thumps as the woman managed to use one of the monstrosities as a shield. She turned around just as the massive hulk slumped a bit, aiming her M6C and firing with insane precision to blow the heads out of another three of the demonically warped creatures. Two more shots, hitting the knees of a mutilated Sangheili that was about to grapple the living Spartan from behind, and then she took a vital nanosecond to lift her hand, gun gripped tight, and shot the previously bullet riddled Brute through the jaw.
"I'm going to remind you, Vince. You chucked a popper and shot at me first." Another shot, and the howling Elite dropped with a ragged hole right through its mouth. "Next time I say you made me wait, you should ask first why."
For something that could have been assumed to be here to stop the time-lost soldier, she had helped him more than hindered. A curious question.
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Despite his armor's camouflage costing the imposter any viable form of target acquisition she would continue to fire shots from the oversized M6 variant.... and none of the shots would miss. None of them were aimed for him in the first place, and instead she would continue carving her way through the grotesque menagerie that filled the hall. In a matter of mere seconds the number of hostile contacts would drop from twenty five remaining hostiles to a mere twenty, with most of her kills accounting for the few remaining heavyweights among their number - former Brutes and Elites, things that could readily do serious damage even unarmed.
Despite the white hot rage that was driving Vincent her actions would light the smallest spark of confusion... although that was quickly stifled.
It didn't matter. None of her actions did. Anna was dead. ONI had recovered everything they could off that rock after Operation PROMETHEUS. No survivors. All that had been left were dust and echoes, glass and ash. Video records had been recovered, remains identified and the intact tags that could be collected catalogued. She had been definitively among their number, and there had been no mistaking that. And after what Vincent had seen since boarding there was nothing aboard this ship that could be trusted - he had no idea what it was beyond the fact it was in his head.
And I know that now. You hear this, you piece of shit? You know what I've fought, what I've killed. All you've done is add yourself to the list, and you know how far I'll go to make it happen. Vincent thought, the internal words colored by a mixture of vicious mockery, rage and iron willed conviction. He didn't know if it could feel fear or ever had, but he'd know before leaving this ship one way or another.
Regarding the here and now... still hidden by his camouflage and given a moment to think - the smooth tone of his recharging shield bar topping back to full serving to calm him just enough to become rational again - Vincent settled on a course of action. He didn't trust this thing pretending to be his blood, but it didn't matter. One way or another it was going to die, but he'd make use of it until then. The sound of Miller hitting the wall some distance behind him settled it. The reasons were unclear but she was killing the other monstrosities in the hall, and as long as she was doing that she was of use.
The living took priority. Once their needs had been seen to he would settle more personal matters.
Reloading his emptied R97, Vincent would cast a quick glance to the upper right corner of his HUD. 40 rounds in the magazine, 80 left in reserve. Two more reloads left and then he'd be down to his sidearm and whatever explosives he was carrying, the combat knife currently sheathed on his armor's chestplate.
Twenty hostiles remaining. Better make them count.
Finally shifting his aim away from the imposter, Vincent would take aim at the next of the remaining heavyweights before cutting loose, using his more stable stance now that he was no longer sprinting to shift from target to target even more quickly than before.
Eligos stopped as the doors opened before him, revealing the rather surreal scene before him. He was stunned to say the least, the gilded room irradiating ostentatious decadence to the fullest extent, capable of putting the private rooms of the wealthiest corporate heads to shame. He began to move, not as if he walked but as if pulled in by a gentle, guiding hand. Even without noticing his footsteps began to follow the cadence of magnetic song. Such a strange room, like a tricked out blender or meat grinder turned corridor. One could only imagine how dangerous this could be if gravity was turned off...Who the fuck designed this?! He kept moving, noticing as the gold inlaid seemed to glitter and shimmer unnaturally: And then, he reached the final door.
If the previous room had been decadent, this one was in a whole new level, the very air seemingly saturated with specks of golden dust, particles that coated his visor and his suit, as if intent on gilding him as well. It was strange, heavenly even but...it contrasted with the first image he had gotten of the place when he first jacked into the vessel. The images he had gotten had been macabre, dark and lugubrious, carved out of grey metal with rough texturing, evocative of ancient artefacts of ancient forbidden lore...not...this.
He twitched as the voice changed once more, the song becoming information, placed neatly within his brain, smoother than any direct download he had ever experienced. Interesting...he soothed the voice, the presence, the soul of this place, letting it know the intent of activating the drive, of opening up the central sphere to reveal that orb. That orb of black condensed possibility, a singularity of unseen perfection. He fetched the two grenades from his duffel back, holding one in each hand in a firm grip, thumb neatly hooked through each of the pins before he moved towards the console. As his digits danced over it, imputing the information he barely understood, and coordinates that bore no familiarity to him, he wondered why the vessel needed him for this...Was the full control of the drive the limit on the control it had upon itself? Maybe. The console lit up, displaying all the entered information and asking for confirmation, a single button that would hold the fate of the vessel and all within it...
He paused, eyes flickering over the console towards the bowl of thick fluid dancing beneath the inert orb, hand held suspended above the console. He noticed the charred corpse, laying there in a place that shouldn't have had any sort of conflagration on it, as well as the EVA suit discarded nearby...He remembered the creatures behind him, behind the sealed door, mutilated past belief yet still moving. Rotting away and still existing...A final sentry? Oh mistrusting dear old me? How rude. He thought to himself, knowing full well his thoughts were no longer just his own...The crate was enticing, a bit out of place...and lacking the gilded appearance of virtually everything...Tempting, but he wasn't messing with that.
His index finger fell upon the confirmation key, setting the coordinates in place and commanding the gravity drive to awaken from its slumber. As the room rumbled to life he moved away from the console, standing between the door and the circular, ringed drive, fingers drumming along the textured surface of the explosives as he waited...
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 6, 2019 20:24:01 GMT
Eliza didn't truly hear the first words the other woman uttered, though the voice was enough to quell her rage enough that higher thought processes returned, bringing with them a powerful sense of confusion. The Elder was long dead, her soul almost certainly consumed by now. It couldn't possibly be even an undead twisted form of her, Eliza thought, given how very long ago that all had been. Yet the woman still stood, wearing the same infuriatingly judgmental expression as Eliza recalled from her youth. She concluded that it had to be an apparition, no doubt drawn from her memories, though the Wicked Weave the woman had thrown at Miller did raise some questions. Was that also simply a facsimile, or had the barriers finally weakened again?
"First off, fuck ye, ye frigid twat," Eliza growled as she stalked towards the Elder(?). "Yer blind adherence ta that thrice-damned prophecy is what brought th' clan ta ruin. Both of them, really. And then ye dinna even have th' spine ta admit that maybe ye were mistaken after th' Clan Wars! And now, wi both clans long gone, I've been workin' my ass off doin' th' task we were originally tasked wi, and ye've got th' baws ta call me a betrayal?! Why donna ye crawl back in yer grave, ye bloody disgrace!" As if to emphasize the suggestion, Eliza lunged forward, thrusting with her saber while her dagger was held in reserve, ready to intercept a counter, even if it held little chance of penetrating her shielded armor suit. Gone was the wild fury of before, replaced by a more deliberate wrath that gave focus to each movement.
A last shot, the clip dropped from the M6 as her free hand would grab a spare from her seatbelt, and then smoothly slide it in to reload the magnum handgun even as she was dodging another of the mutilated humans. Saving the bullet, she managed to get behind the warped thing, grab it be the chin, and twist hard, causing a snap to resonate briefly in the midst of gunfire and the howls of the enthralled. With a faint smirk, she spun the magnum on her finger, regripping and firing at a large beefy Kilrathi that had decided to make for her. It took the first shot across the face, tearing away a chunk of flesh and it's ear, but it still raged. Another round, and another, with the last blowing open its head and dropping the leonine being to a semblance of rest.
"That took longer to realize I'm not one of you than I had thought." Another click as she shifted her grip on the M6 and looked up to see the Spartan had dropped several more of the thralled horrors. Ten left, and the sounds of another fight had broken out behind them in the corridor.
And then the warning voice chimed. "Gravity drive activation in ten minutes, all hands to stations for spatial fold."
And her expression would go wide with horror. "The deckhead…shit." The woman pulled her own knife out and flung it hard, a perfect strike between the eyes of a human thrall that had been in range of the soldier. "Vince, blow that damn door and get to that Drive! None of us, living or dead, can go home until that thing is blown to hell!"
And a very angry groan would rumble through the hull. It was not happy.
Hair lashed out from the matriarch's robes, forming into solid blade structures to deflect the lesser witch's blows. A grunt, a lift into the air at the granting of those same wafting threads of nothingness, and the once grand Elder of the Umbra Witches was carried back, just out of reaching range.
"You children and your toys." Contempt in her voice as she glowered at the armored witch, her eyes simmering with disdain. "A great witch needs not such things to compensate for weak wills and fragile egos! You made a pact that you put no faith in, made this shell to hide in away from danger! And you embrace the ways of the sleeping mortals instead of holding fast to the traditions your mother disgraced over and over!" A snarl as the tendrils lashed about and began to form into a series of what Eliza would recognize as lower demons, the basest of the base. "A shame you both have been on us all! And a disgrace to the Darkness that wait us all!"
The swarm was formed, demons unleashed. And they surged forth toward the armored witch. This should have been impossible. The Shattering had slammed the ways between planes shut. Over nine centuries had passed since that horrific day, nearly a millennium. And yet even her own special filters would confirm it; they were demons, and the Elder was there, crackling with the same threads of nothingness and shifting fire red that she would recognize as infernal.
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
Each burst was made with surgical precision, Vincent's lowered center of mass and relatively stationary position granting him superior aim compared to his on the move shooting previously - the initial burst shredding the upper body of one monstrosity before crisply shifting to the next, absolutely no movement wasted and no hesitation as four more consecutive bursts of suppressed fire followed. Five kills, fifteen rounds left before reload. The imposter, whatever it was, seemed to finally register as a hostile entity to the other creatures in the hallway as well, several of them turning with the intent to kill or at least maim.
One more shot from the M6, a fluid reload followed by a short but brutal exchange of hand to hand later and another five creatures dead as the pistol began firing again. The only pause in her movements would come as the ship rumbled once more, an automated announcement broadcasting through its internal PA system.
Vincent didn't hesitate when she called out to him, a thrown combat knife dropping the hostile count to nine. Kicking off from the deck, the Spartan would yet again make for a mad dash towards the end of the hall, bringing down the butt of his gun to the skull of the first creature to unknowingly cross his path and trampling over it as it fell, another shoulder check caving in the torso of yet another creature behind it and tossing it aside with his sheer bulk. Another one, reptilian and humpbacked, seemed to take notice of the two comrades swatted aside by the invisible force and moved to block Vincent's advance only for his armor's thrusters to flare and the Spartan to lower his center of mass - an all but unstoppable force, bucking the creature overhead to slam into the ceiling and dropping to the deck behind the Spartan as he continued on. Another four seemed to take no notice of the disturbance at all, a single suppressed SMG round fired catching another potential problem off to Vincent's left dead center in the forehead as it seemed to become aware something was wrong and a second five round burst putting down the friend next to it before the second creature could react.
Ten seconds gone, and Vincent forced himself to slow as he came to the doorway. Left hand reaching into the hardcase on his back, the Spartan would quickly set to work readying the charges. Hands moving almost on their own as muscle memory and decades of experience came into play, Vincent would waste not a single second adhering the shaped charges to the doorway before priming them and stepping to the side to hug the wall next to the iris.
No time to back away. Toggling on his helmet's radio once again, only four words would be broadcasted prior to detonation.
Post by Eliza Silvermantle on Nov 6, 2019 23:21:27 GMT
Again, Eliza's blades worked in a frenzy, darting across to cut through flesh she'd herself not born witness to in nearly a thousand years. The hand holding her saber flicked up, moving in a near-blur as she reversed her grip to guide the blade away from her face in order to remove her helmet, allowing it to roll backwards to adhere to the top of the maglock holster that also held the hardcase. "Bitch, let's get somethin' clear right feckin' now," she snarled as she used her dagger to fend off the surviving demons. "Yer actions brought th' clan ta destruction. I am th' clan, so I donna need any of yer shite, apparition or real or whatever th' hell ye are." As she spoke, she hardened her focus, not on the other woman, but within, to the core of her own power. Otherworldly fuckery or not, those were indeed real demons. If that were the case, then perhaps the long wait was over. "In fact, th' only thing I need fer ye is ta get back in yer hole!" ELiza continued to speak, though the words she uttered were not of any tongue spoken within the Orion Spur, nor even the language in which her previous incantations had been uttered, native to the erstwhile planet of Toril, but of the lower plane to which her very soul was bound. Few Witches dared to pact with the Twister of Flame, and now, the younger Witch intended to display just why that was, and just what sort of Umbra Witch still lived.
There was heavy footsteps in the gravity core, metal on metal echoing from one of the upper service shaft. After a moment, the steps halted up above, silence, and then something dropped down, heavy and solid landing on the ring catwalk encircling the gravity drive itself, collapsing the deck plates under the weight of half a ton. Deep blue armor plates, a singed golden visor now looking up at the cyborg, and the brief flash from ports mounted in the back section the reveal the thruster exhaust from a braking burst.
As the figure rose up from their drop, they stood over six and a half at full height. A large handgun was attached to the right thigh plate, a compacted MA5 at their back that was soon pulled free and triggered to expand out for combat.
"Step away from the console." The voice was male, cold and hardened, but no-nonsense. He aimed his weapon at the cyborg to make the threat clear. "Get away from that thing now, so we all have a chance to leave this hell!"
Suddenly he jerked aside, thrown through the air and slamming against the side of the sphere. A crackle from a shielding grid as he impacted first into one of the spikes, grating off and into the main inner hull where he seemed magnetized to the surface.
"Your kind somehow have proven to have stronger minds than I had thought possible. In life or death."
And then, something stepped out from inside the wall. A tall man. Pale, dark brown hair, icy blue eyes. A smile on his lips as he emerged and stepped down onto the catwalk surrounding the gravity drive. There was a palpable nothingness about him, the same feeling that Eligos had sensed when he had headjacked into the ship. Not quite the same presence, but it was the same voice he had heard this whole time.
"And you." His eyes turned toward the cyborg as he now made his way around the catwalk. "You have performed admirably, kid. And after eve everything, you have been indeed proven gifted. Touching the Void without succumbing to madness, but instead Awakening." A chuckle as he approached the cyborg, closing in, then tilting his head as he saw the explosives held in his hands. His smile shifted smoothly into a frown as he sighed and lifted a hand, wagging a finger back and forth while clicking his tongue. "I certainly hope those weren't for me, kiddo. After all… you still owe me."
A decisive rumble as the countdown reached seven minutes remaining. Several spikes shifted around, and the changing magnetic fields could be felt. Something was happening, and it was happening soon.
As the soldier clicked the detonator, the flash and burn of the high charge melted through the iris door, dropping the panels and clearing his way into the systems control section.
"Get your ass moving now, we got just over eight minutes!" She was adamant, her M6C firing again as she tried to keep between where she knew he was and the remaining thalls. She saw his reaction, and despite herself, smiled to her brother. "Vince, regardless of what you think I am...it is me, and once you blow that drive to Hell, I can rest again. We all will."
A snarl from the oncoming enthralled. With a growl of her own, Anna dropped the spent clip, slid her last fresh reload in, and spun the magnum around, just to show off. "Just make sure you don't join us too soon. There's a reason you made it this far, don't blow your second chance."
The path, from there, once the soldier would take it, would be surprised clear, with the bodies of dead thralls occasionally littering the way. This wasn't the work of the cyborg, and very clearly was something else. By the time the soldier would arrive, the seven minute warning would sound.
A shudder would course her spine as she tried to reach across the maelstrom wall. An infinite cold, smothering her, a nothingness that wrapped around like a wet blanket soaked in liquid nitrogen. Like nothing she had felt before.
And the images and sounds that shot through her mind. Horrific torments upon many beings, human and otherwise. She saw the Witch Hunts, re-lived over and over, by her once sisters of the Clan. The acts of the incited mortals against the witches, sadist whims carried out. And then the things that followed in the Inferno, chained by their pact holders, slowly consumed by the demons...and the horrible continuance when even that wasn't the end.
There was a place, she saw, that even demons feared to go, a darkness deeper than the Inferno. This ship had been touched by it, infused by it. Soaked completely in that place.
the things that you might like don't grow inside of me
The flash and wave of concussive force would roll over Vincent with a golden, ghostly flicker as his energy shields absorbed what little potential harm the shaped charges might have imparted on his armor. Half a second later the sounds of metal hitting the deck would indicate success, the iris plates cut clean away from their base and opening a hole large enough for his bulk to climb through. And while he didn't need to be told to get moving....
Eight minutes. It'd have to be enough.
Ejecting the just over half empty magazine in his SMG to perform a tactical reload and leaving him with just a single spare in reserve, Vincent would all but roll along the wall and into the hole he'd burned through the door as Anna spoke again. Another smooth, fluid reload, a flourish of her weapon and he was off, belting down the outer containment chamber as fast as his legs would take him. There wasn't a hint of hesitation in his movement but while his body knew exactly what it was doing... there was the slightest seed of doubt planted, the briefest waver of resolve. The facts were absolute, but... while it couldn't have possibly been her, something inside him was increasingly willing to believe it might have been. And if it really was her-
In an ideal world they would've had time. More than before, more than now. Time to convey things he didn't know how to word and had long thought dead inside him. But they didn't, and he couldn't. All he could take away from this was the other thing that had been given life anew, a flame long extinguished but alive again.
And make whatever he could hold responsible pay a thousandfold.
Charging down the corridor at full speed there was nothing to be done about the approaching sound - while his actual footsteps might have been silent and his armor completely hidden from view, the utilitarian metal grating that shifted with every pounding footstep was impossible to conceal. Another closed door up ahead, but as Vincent came to a halt before it the Spartan would reach out to touch the door control with one hand even as another reached back to ready more explosives in case another breaching attempt was needed if it didn't start opening immediately. As he did so, however, another contact would pop up on his HUD. Not his motion tracker. It was an unfamiliar callsign but compatible with his armor's TEAMCOMM, and given what he'd seen just moments before... taking a gamble, Vincent opened a radio channel as he listened to the words he could hear through the door.
"Friendly contact, Crimson One. Weapons free on my mark." Vincent said - and as he spoke the light next to his name on TEAMCOMM would shift to orange, on standby as he awaited both the door to open and a counter response from the other supersoldier.