ON: 128 light years southwest from Yamatai
PCs: Masatane Saiga and Natsuiro Hiyori
The First Expeditionary ship YSS Adventure touched down on the unnamed world without fanfare, its landing gear crunching down on its jagged, rocky surface as mist parted around its hull. She and her crew were here to explore new worlds and unearth hidden spoils for the Yamatai Star Empire. They had been on many such missions but this one would be far from routine — not that Taii Saiga Masatane and his Star Army soldiers weren't accustomed to unusual events during the course of their journeys. There the Adventure would sit while scans and topographic diagnostics ran for the better part of 20 minutes.
Suited up in Daisy M6 power armor, the captain's away team stepped out into the cold atmosphere here as frost formed on their warmed protective suits. All information was ascertained that could be by now. Contingencies were factored. Equipment was chosen. All they had left to do was check out the faint energy signature that'd drawn the ship to this world.
Sometimes, Hiyori felt that she was more comfortable suited up in power armor than she did outside of it. She brought up her LASR and held postion with the rest of the team as they awaited the Taii to give his orders.So far, nothing had moved, but it was still a ways off from the energy signature. Not that it would take the squad long to travel the kilometer distance. "Squad is ready to go, Taii," she reported.
"Hai," Masatane acknowledged, his own rifle shouldered and pointed ahead. He began moving forward through the low-lying fog. What the squad of five couldn't see at their feet through the haze was outlined by orange wireframes in their helmets' HUD. This place was flat and dark, so far away from the system's sun that it it was in a state of perpetual night and illuminated only by a faint twilight shining down upon it. Their path shone clearly on their displays, too, directing them on a calculated path of least resistance, straight to their target.
The away team darted through the wilderness but as they closed in on their destination, signs of civilization became apparent. A building peaked over a hill, maybe Nepleslian design. It was a simple looking thing made of plaster with a ragged cloth that seemed to serve as a door. A couple of similar looking structures were nearby, flanking what looked to be a dirt road that led off into the distance. Hiyori signaled for the squad to stay low, this was certainly not an expected development, whatever the energy signature was it would have to have originated by a people of a much higher tech level.
Masatane led the way in despite his capacity as the captain, as he always did. They trudged up the little hill that held the structure and then went directly in, with the Taii stepping directly through the cloth hanging in the threshold. As he went in it flopped over his form and drug along his armor's shoulder while he darted his gun's business end in different directions to make sure the room was clear. The chamber they entered appeared to be a reception area of some sort: The remnants of a desk lay crumbled along a false wall with two ways around it on either side. Not much else remained after decades — maybe millennia — of vacancy.
Hiyori bit her tongue as the Taii barged into the building. The captain was just the sort of person to take charge of a situation like this himself, despite the multitude of dangers of breaching an unknown structure. However, this didn't stop her from following after, signalling two of the team to stay back and watch the outside while she and the remaining member trudged on inside. The sight of the detritus and open wall surprised the neko-eared Yamataian, "What do you think this was?" she asked as she walked up towards the ruined desk.
"Research compound," Masatane said knowingly as he stared down, his suit's sensors showing him a schematic of the tunnels and chambers below their feet. "Looks like we can access the main facility through an entrance behind this wall. No lifesigns detected," he stated, knowing that Hiyori and Junko-juni, the team's science technician, had the same readouts on their displays. "Natsuiro-heisho, lead us in," he ordered, making ready to follow.
"Hai!" the Heisho replied enthusiastically. There was a mysterious air about this place, and the chance to do be the first in to uncover it was an exciting prospect. With all the rhythm of a two-step, Hiyori slid past the half-open and not-so-secret door, the Juni following close behind. "Yui, Seonji, fall in. Hold inside," she commanded. There was no need for the two to hang back now. The place looked relatively abandoned, and the ship should be able to notify them of any hostiles approaching their position.
Turning to the science technician, Hiyori asked, "Let's get a direct route to the energy signature," as if she were talking to a ship's IES. Further down they went, and soon the Heisho's HUD lit up with a glowing arrow directing the closest the suits' sensors could approximate of the building's layout.
"It looks like there was a whole eastern wing that was collapsed," Junko commented as she sent the data to Hiyori's Daisy. The complex was certainly more vast under the ground than the sparse structures up top would suggest. The fire team commander nodded and directed the technician to continue following deeper into the facility.
They traveled down through the underground network quickly, passing through its dilapidated halls. Behind the lobby area and into the facility proper, the walls quickly turned from ruined concrete to old, rusted metal, pockmarked with use and age. Schematic displays assisted them in their navigation of the corridors where the flashlights duct taped to their rifles could not. Indeed, the place seemed to swallow light in between its well-worn bulkheads and the thick dust saturating the atmosphere, disturbed by their presence after uncounted years of peace.
"No need for charges, just kick it in," the Taii ordered as they came upon the now-flimsy door that stood in their way. Just beyond lay the energy signature they'd come here to account for, now large on their armors' sensor readouts. It didn't seem right — the perspective of proximity shouldn't have caused it to grow so much — but not enough to cause concern. "As you will, heisho."
"Yes sir," she replied, putting the metal boot of her Daisy through the old rusted door, following it with the barrel of her LASR. As the beam of light crossed the center of the room it illuminated a large, mushy pile of what looked like yellow and brown lichen covering a huge pile of dead growth. Hiyori pulled her head back as if the mass had a stench that pierced even her zesuium armored suit. "There's no broadcasting networks or running generators down here, are there?" she asked of the juni, already knowing the answer, but as the neko opened her mouth to reply a piercing screech came over the radio.
It was from one of the other M6s, the HUD noted it as originating from Yui's armor. "What's wrong? Report!" Hiyori demanded, her ears twitching as her suit adjusted and capped the volume. And just as it had started, the sound suddenly stopped, a worrying 'connection error' notification next to Yui's link. "Yui! Seonji! Report!" she demanded again.
"Help! Help!" a static-y reply from Seonji filled the suit's radios. Looking at first the Juni, then the Taii, Hiyori grumbled as she lifted her rifle and started back towards the surface. She could see the Hei's marker quickly approaching their position. "It's not working!" the Yamataian yelled into the comms.
"Heisho! What's going on?" Masatane demanded, his gaze darting away from the quivering, sticky mass in the energy signature's room and back toward the darkness they'd come from as if he expected doing so would help him get a handle on the situation. "Seonji-hei?" he barked over the comm with an expectation of a more reasoned reply back.
"Calm down and report!" Hiyori commanded, getting fed up with this serious breach of protocol from the two Heis that had been left to guard the upper portion of the facility. At the very least, the Neko should have reported as soon as something was amiss. "What did you see? What is happening?" she asked again, not hearing anything more from the panicked Hei. Seonji's Daisy was still clearly approaching fast, and Hiyori had planned to meet her, rifle still raised in anticipation of whatever was causing such havoc.
Seonji came barrelling around the corner, almost running straight into the Heisho, Yui's grenade launcher clutched in her suit's hands. "It's after us! It's after us!" she yelled, heading right for Junko and Masatane's position. Taking a crouching position, Hiyori carefully moved around the corner, ready to blast whatever terror had spooked her squad.
"I don't— I don't see anything," the neko-eared Yamataian had to admit, the HUD wasn't showing anything out of the ordinary, nothing chasing behind the terrorized Hei who by now had the grenade launcher pointed towards the ruined door and her squad leader's position, slowly taking steps back.
With Seonji's life sign monitors were spiking, the Juni sent an override command to her suit to administer a sedative to calm the Yamataian hei down. "It's okay now, you're safe," Junko reassured the frightened Daisy pilot. "I have no idea what's going on," she admitted to the Taii, going over the readouts she was pouring over, being displayed in front of her.
"Eyes down field, now," Masatane ordered, his trigger hand coming from its grip to wave two quick, pointed motions toward the place Seonji had just come from. "Overwatch until we figure this thing out!"
At his command, Junko trained her sights through the entryway they'd come through moments before while Hiyori slowly backed up to consolidate her position with the others. The near-catatonic hei who'd come screaming down the hallway kept her eyes locked on the door, inching back toward the center of the room as if she could see whatever was chasing her approach. She was useless for much else, especially after the calming drug entered her system.
One step at a time, Seonji continued to back towards the fungal mass in the center of the room. Her breathing was now slower, more controlled thanks to the drugs, but her limbs still shook inside her armor. She clutched Yui's gun close to her like a child holding a teddy bear to keep them safe from the dark at night.
The taii remained pointed to the darkness, ready to unleash a fiery burst of hot plasma on whatever assailed his team. For the team, the moments at the ready became seconds and the seconds became minutes, their frantic breaths and expectations causing more drama than the foe they thought would come barrelling out through the dust and the darkness. After a time — it may have been two minutes or ten, none of them could remember — Masatane slowly lowered his plasma gun and motioned for the others to do the same.
"Clear. For now," he said. Simple words for the situation, but Masatane was a direct man who had no need for the flowery and often overly-formal displays his fellow Saiga tended to engage in. Slowly, he turned back to the team and the apparently biological lump they'd all but forgotten in the fervor of the moment. And though he was a hardened soldier, few things could prepare him for the sight he would witness now.
Right as Masatane's field of vision came to encompass Seonji, she stumbled over the writhing fungus-thing with a squeak, landing harmlessly on its gooey mass. Just as the girl was poised to lift herself back up the organism began to move more, a line forming as it seemed to expand under the Daisy's weight. That line slowly pulled apart, the slimy, sickly goo-film that covered it sloughing over a widening maw that opened up to let the tooper in.
"Seonji-hei!" Masatane barked, his left arm outstretched as he moved to help his subordinate. But his arm reached out to nothing as the mass lifted itself off the ground, the hei falling backwards into it as the maw came crashing down onto her zesuium-plated torso, a scream filling the radio for a breif second before it was cut short as the creature began to thrash the suit around, taking Seonji fully into its fleshy form and crushing it from the inside.
"The sensors are lighting up!" Hiyori barked into the comms, more than a dozen contacts began to fill the HUDs of the remaining squad. "Taii, we have to get out of here. Now!" she shouted, glancing back just in time to see Seonj's Daisy disappear into the now giant mass rising from the center of the room. She could feel cool sweat forming on her brow as the suit vanished, cutting off the hei's final scream.
Masatane spun away from the monster that had just enveloped and crushed Seonji, bringing his rifle to bear and squeezing the trigger before his vision reconciled what his suit's sensors told him to expect. A hail of fire spewed from his plasma gun, incinerating the herd of eight small, brownish creatures that spilled through the doorway. They resembled the big thing that'd killed Seonji for the moments they'd lived, nipping through the air on immaterial legs as they floated above the ground's surface.
"Move!" he bellowed while losing more energy bolts into the darkness before them — from where they'd come — for good measure. "We're too far down to hail the Adventure. Fortunes be damned, if we can't get out of here I expect at least one of us to get far enough to transmit a report!" Masatane said, demanding the same respect and mission-loyalty he did whether the scenario was relaxed or dire.
The captain's fire was joined by accompanying shots from Junko and Hiyori's weapons, plucking the invading creatures from the hallway ahead of them. "Hurry!" Junko squeeked as she saw the gigantic one behind them continue to shake and squirm as it devoured it's meal with loud, meaty noises of folding metal and noisy slurping of the tasty treat inside. Hiyori travelled alongside the Taii as they made their way towards the surface, lighting the old research lab with every pull of the trigger.
As they made their way forward, the structure itself seemed to rumble and shake. "It's coming—," Junko warned, firing shots behind them as she brought up the rear. The Juni science specialist was no slouch in combat situations, but as the plasma shots seemed to do nothing to deter the beast, she was getting more and more worried as to the possibility that they might not make it out.
More and more of the small mouth-creatures came at them as they traversed the long, rusted hallways they'd already come through. Every dilapidated hole and worn-through crack became a danger as the things flowed freely from any conceivable place. They were tiny and large — fat and slight — coming at the Star Army soldiers in every conceivable mass and veracity. What they all had in common, however, was an undeterred voraciousness. Indeed, no matter how many fell to the team's fire, more would still surge forth with gurgling, hungry intent.
"Chikushou!" the taii spat over the comm as he slammed his thigh against a lone, solid piece of bulkhead to squish one of the hungry aliens that'd attached itself to his armor. Looking back through the darkness was a frightening prospect, even for the war-scarred Saiga bushi. Though the darkness prevailed in his helmet's internal visor, the orange outlines that appeared beyond the abyss were myriad and one, doubtlessly the dastardly beast that had made a meal of Seonji, dominated the wireframe readouts that overlaid normal visual perception.
Another scream filled the radio, this time, it was Hiyori. The color drained from her face as a Daisy dropped right in front of her from the staircase like a puppet on meaty, slimy strings that wrapped around its joints. It was clearly Yui's suit, but unlike the Yui that left on the mission with them, this one was missing it's head and had hemosynthetic blood drooling from the neck hole. Hiyori pulled the trigger on her LASR purely on instinct, but after the first few wild shots, began aiming for the flesh-like nodules that bulged on the armor's joints.
Junko meanwhile had managed to get ahold of a thick metal table and lobbed it at the creature behind them with one hand, "It's catching up," she noted worriedly as she blasted it again with plasma from the other. "Taii, I think I can get a connection with the ship going, now," she informed the captain, "Should I patch you through?"
"Make it happen, juni!" Masatane said, palming the remnants of his assailant from his armor. The broken, barely-there connection to his ship came through as they ascended the staircase to this place's only exit. Fleshy little monsters came more from behind them now, though the taii still snapped a few shots off at the industrious ones ahead who thought it wise to head the Yamataians off.
"Adventure: This is Saiga-taii. Under intense attack from an unidentified force," conveyed Masatane, trying to get the essentials in. "Ravenous creatures. They got Yui and Seonji-hei with no trouble. What's your status, Adventure? Enemy contact?"
Static reigned in return while the Plumeria zeroed in and established a stable channel with the fire team. "Uhhhhhhhhh," the reply came, the end of the voice's single syllable grinding over itself in its speaker's throat before cutting off and quickly continuing, "That's-a negative, Saiga-taii. Ain't got nothin' up here."
"Well get the damn Adventure ready for liftoff, Delacroix-chui!" Masatane shouted back, not wanting to put up with the Nepleslian operations officer's usual lazy front. He knew the man had professionalism in him and the taii's tone made it clear it was required now.
"Uh-h-h-uh! Yes Saiga-taii! Right away, sir!" came the reply back, suddenly more urgent than it had been before. "We actually just got'sum contacts on the short-range — n-no — we got a bunch'a them on scan. Orders?"
"Sit tight," Masatane ordered more calmly now. "Just don't let anything in. And if our lifesigns go null, get out of here and report back to the KMS."
As he spoke, the taii and his team kept moving up, ascending the stairs and blasting the countless enemies into oblivion. A few moments had come when he thought his plasma power feed would be overloaded and unable to keep up with the onslaught but his controlled bursts kept that from happeneing.
"We're getting there," Hiyori announced as she left Yui's body hung over the railing, dealing with the flying, drooling mouths that were attempting to attach themselves to her, dodging just in time as one attempted to drop down atop of her. The neko-eared Yamataian shoved her rifle into the thing and swung it towards the ground, blasting it apart as it hit the stairs. The exit still seemed a ways off and the walls were absolutely covered still in the little monsters. Not to mention her Daisy being covered in these creature's guts. If it weren't for the gaping mouths, it was hard to tell the live ones from the dead.
As Junko passed the lifeless Daisy, she patched into the suit's IES and righted the body up in her arms. "Okay, hun, one more for the team," she whispered as she activated the suit's weapon's systems. The leg canisters on Yui's armor opened up and a swarm of missiles fired towards the bottom of the staircase, exploding with a deafening boom in the underground passage. Dust and smoke filling the air as the science officer could see orange outlines on her HUD of the ceiling collapsing behind them.
More and more enemies came at the three remaining Star Army M6s, some getting close enough to gnaw and scrape at the armors but none were afforded enough time do to much damage. Soon, the Adventure's away team came to the surface, bowling out into the lobby from whence they came, only to be met by a skittering swarm of the black-eyed, clawed maw-beasts. There they stood — Masatane, Hiyori, and Junko — back to back while they slaughtered seemingly endless masses of the enemy from both the surface entrance and subterranean complex they'd come from.
"Up in three!" the taii called, his order translating perfectly in his well trained squad's minds. "Ich, ni, san!" he cried while engaging his suit's thrusters, trusting that the structure's ancient stone would be weak enough to break through.
Engaging their thrusters, Junko and Hiyori took to the sky alongside the captain as the gigantic creature broke through the ground from below, nipping at their heels and barely missing catching a final neko meal. Hiyori was overjoyed as she saw the beast crashing back down after the failed leap, barely clearing the spout of concrete created by the Yamataians' launch and then turning the air to follow the Taii back to the Adventure.
PAUSE
PCs: Masatane Saiga and Natsuiro Hiyori
The First Expeditionary ship YSS Adventure touched down on the unnamed world without fanfare, its landing gear crunching down on its jagged, rocky surface as mist parted around its hull. She and her crew were here to explore new worlds and unearth hidden spoils for the Yamatai Star Empire. They had been on many such missions but this one would be far from routine — not that Taii Saiga Masatane and his Star Army soldiers weren't accustomed to unusual events during the course of their journeys. There the Adventure would sit while scans and topographic diagnostics ran for the better part of 20 minutes.
Suited up in Daisy M6 power armor, the captain's away team stepped out into the cold atmosphere here as frost formed on their warmed protective suits. All information was ascertained that could be by now. Contingencies were factored. Equipment was chosen. All they had left to do was check out the faint energy signature that'd drawn the ship to this world.
Sometimes, Hiyori felt that she was more comfortable suited up in power armor than she did outside of it. She brought up her LASR and held postion with the rest of the team as they awaited the Taii to give his orders.So far, nothing had moved, but it was still a ways off from the energy signature. Not that it would take the squad long to travel the kilometer distance. "Squad is ready to go, Taii," she reported.
"Hai," Masatane acknowledged, his own rifle shouldered and pointed ahead. He began moving forward through the low-lying fog. What the squad of five couldn't see at their feet through the haze was outlined by orange wireframes in their helmets' HUD. This place was flat and dark, so far away from the system's sun that it it was in a state of perpetual night and illuminated only by a faint twilight shining down upon it. Their path shone clearly on their displays, too, directing them on a calculated path of least resistance, straight to their target.
The away team darted through the wilderness but as they closed in on their destination, signs of civilization became apparent. A building peaked over a hill, maybe Nepleslian design. It was a simple looking thing made of plaster with a ragged cloth that seemed to serve as a door. A couple of similar looking structures were nearby, flanking what looked to be a dirt road that led off into the distance. Hiyori signaled for the squad to stay low, this was certainly not an expected development, whatever the energy signature was it would have to have originated by a people of a much higher tech level.
Masatane led the way in despite his capacity as the captain, as he always did. They trudged up the little hill that held the structure and then went directly in, with the Taii stepping directly through the cloth hanging in the threshold. As he went in it flopped over his form and drug along his armor's shoulder while he darted his gun's business end in different directions to make sure the room was clear. The chamber they entered appeared to be a reception area of some sort: The remnants of a desk lay crumbled along a false wall with two ways around it on either side. Not much else remained after decades — maybe millennia — of vacancy.
Hiyori bit her tongue as the Taii barged into the building. The captain was just the sort of person to take charge of a situation like this himself, despite the multitude of dangers of breaching an unknown structure. However, this didn't stop her from following after, signalling two of the team to stay back and watch the outside while she and the remaining member trudged on inside. The sight of the detritus and open wall surprised the neko-eared Yamataian, "What do you think this was?" she asked as she walked up towards the ruined desk.
"Research compound," Masatane said knowingly as he stared down, his suit's sensors showing him a schematic of the tunnels and chambers below their feet. "Looks like we can access the main facility through an entrance behind this wall. No lifesigns detected," he stated, knowing that Hiyori and Junko-juni, the team's science technician, had the same readouts on their displays. "Natsuiro-heisho, lead us in," he ordered, making ready to follow.
"Hai!" the Heisho replied enthusiastically. There was a mysterious air about this place, and the chance to do be the first in to uncover it was an exciting prospect. With all the rhythm of a two-step, Hiyori slid past the half-open and not-so-secret door, the Juni following close behind. "Yui, Seonji, fall in. Hold inside," she commanded. There was no need for the two to hang back now. The place looked relatively abandoned, and the ship should be able to notify them of any hostiles approaching their position.
Turning to the science technician, Hiyori asked, "Let's get a direct route to the energy signature," as if she were talking to a ship's IES. Further down they went, and soon the Heisho's HUD lit up with a glowing arrow directing the closest the suits' sensors could approximate of the building's layout.
"It looks like there was a whole eastern wing that was collapsed," Junko commented as she sent the data to Hiyori's Daisy. The complex was certainly more vast under the ground than the sparse structures up top would suggest. The fire team commander nodded and directed the technician to continue following deeper into the facility.
They traveled down through the underground network quickly, passing through its dilapidated halls. Behind the lobby area and into the facility proper, the walls quickly turned from ruined concrete to old, rusted metal, pockmarked with use and age. Schematic displays assisted them in their navigation of the corridors where the flashlights duct taped to their rifles could not. Indeed, the place seemed to swallow light in between its well-worn bulkheads and the thick dust saturating the atmosphere, disturbed by their presence after uncounted years of peace.
"No need for charges, just kick it in," the Taii ordered as they came upon the now-flimsy door that stood in their way. Just beyond lay the energy signature they'd come here to account for, now large on their armors' sensor readouts. It didn't seem right — the perspective of proximity shouldn't have caused it to grow so much — but not enough to cause concern. "As you will, heisho."
"Yes sir," she replied, putting the metal boot of her Daisy through the old rusted door, following it with the barrel of her LASR. As the beam of light crossed the center of the room it illuminated a large, mushy pile of what looked like yellow and brown lichen covering a huge pile of dead growth. Hiyori pulled her head back as if the mass had a stench that pierced even her zesuium armored suit. "There's no broadcasting networks or running generators down here, are there?" she asked of the juni, already knowing the answer, but as the neko opened her mouth to reply a piercing screech came over the radio.
It was from one of the other M6s, the HUD noted it as originating from Yui's armor. "What's wrong? Report!" Hiyori demanded, her ears twitching as her suit adjusted and capped the volume. And just as it had started, the sound suddenly stopped, a worrying 'connection error' notification next to Yui's link. "Yui! Seonji! Report!" she demanded again.
"Help! Help!" a static-y reply from Seonji filled the suit's radios. Looking at first the Juni, then the Taii, Hiyori grumbled as she lifted her rifle and started back towards the surface. She could see the Hei's marker quickly approaching their position. "It's not working!" the Yamataian yelled into the comms.
"Heisho! What's going on?" Masatane demanded, his gaze darting away from the quivering, sticky mass in the energy signature's room and back toward the darkness they'd come from as if he expected doing so would help him get a handle on the situation. "Seonji-hei?" he barked over the comm with an expectation of a more reasoned reply back.
"Calm down and report!" Hiyori commanded, getting fed up with this serious breach of protocol from the two Heis that had been left to guard the upper portion of the facility. At the very least, the Neko should have reported as soon as something was amiss. "What did you see? What is happening?" she asked again, not hearing anything more from the panicked Hei. Seonji's Daisy was still clearly approaching fast, and Hiyori had planned to meet her, rifle still raised in anticipation of whatever was causing such havoc.
Seonji came barrelling around the corner, almost running straight into the Heisho, Yui's grenade launcher clutched in her suit's hands. "It's after us! It's after us!" she yelled, heading right for Junko and Masatane's position. Taking a crouching position, Hiyori carefully moved around the corner, ready to blast whatever terror had spooked her squad.
"I don't— I don't see anything," the neko-eared Yamataian had to admit, the HUD wasn't showing anything out of the ordinary, nothing chasing behind the terrorized Hei who by now had the grenade launcher pointed towards the ruined door and her squad leader's position, slowly taking steps back.
With Seonji's life sign monitors were spiking, the Juni sent an override command to her suit to administer a sedative to calm the Yamataian hei down. "It's okay now, you're safe," Junko reassured the frightened Daisy pilot. "I have no idea what's going on," she admitted to the Taii, going over the readouts she was pouring over, being displayed in front of her.
"Eyes down field, now," Masatane ordered, his trigger hand coming from its grip to wave two quick, pointed motions toward the place Seonji had just come from. "Overwatch until we figure this thing out!"
At his command, Junko trained her sights through the entryway they'd come through moments before while Hiyori slowly backed up to consolidate her position with the others. The near-catatonic hei who'd come screaming down the hallway kept her eyes locked on the door, inching back toward the center of the room as if she could see whatever was chasing her approach. She was useless for much else, especially after the calming drug entered her system.
One step at a time, Seonji continued to back towards the fungal mass in the center of the room. Her breathing was now slower, more controlled thanks to the drugs, but her limbs still shook inside her armor. She clutched Yui's gun close to her like a child holding a teddy bear to keep them safe from the dark at night.
The taii remained pointed to the darkness, ready to unleash a fiery burst of hot plasma on whatever assailed his team. For the team, the moments at the ready became seconds and the seconds became minutes, their frantic breaths and expectations causing more drama than the foe they thought would come barrelling out through the dust and the darkness. After a time — it may have been two minutes or ten, none of them could remember — Masatane slowly lowered his plasma gun and motioned for the others to do the same.
"Clear. For now," he said. Simple words for the situation, but Masatane was a direct man who had no need for the flowery and often overly-formal displays his fellow Saiga tended to engage in. Slowly, he turned back to the team and the apparently biological lump they'd all but forgotten in the fervor of the moment. And though he was a hardened soldier, few things could prepare him for the sight he would witness now.
Right as Masatane's field of vision came to encompass Seonji, she stumbled over the writhing fungus-thing with a squeak, landing harmlessly on its gooey mass. Just as the girl was poised to lift herself back up the organism began to move more, a line forming as it seemed to expand under the Daisy's weight. That line slowly pulled apart, the slimy, sickly goo-film that covered it sloughing over a widening maw that opened up to let the tooper in.
"Seonji-hei!" Masatane barked, his left arm outstretched as he moved to help his subordinate. But his arm reached out to nothing as the mass lifted itself off the ground, the hei falling backwards into it as the maw came crashing down onto her zesuium-plated torso, a scream filling the radio for a breif second before it was cut short as the creature began to thrash the suit around, taking Seonji fully into its fleshy form and crushing it from the inside.
"The sensors are lighting up!" Hiyori barked into the comms, more than a dozen contacts began to fill the HUDs of the remaining squad. "Taii, we have to get out of here. Now!" she shouted, glancing back just in time to see Seonj's Daisy disappear into the now giant mass rising from the center of the room. She could feel cool sweat forming on her brow as the suit vanished, cutting off the hei's final scream.
Masatane spun away from the monster that had just enveloped and crushed Seonji, bringing his rifle to bear and squeezing the trigger before his vision reconciled what his suit's sensors told him to expect. A hail of fire spewed from his plasma gun, incinerating the herd of eight small, brownish creatures that spilled through the doorway. They resembled the big thing that'd killed Seonji for the moments they'd lived, nipping through the air on immaterial legs as they floated above the ground's surface.
"Move!" he bellowed while losing more energy bolts into the darkness before them — from where they'd come — for good measure. "We're too far down to hail the Adventure. Fortunes be damned, if we can't get out of here I expect at least one of us to get far enough to transmit a report!" Masatane said, demanding the same respect and mission-loyalty he did whether the scenario was relaxed or dire.
The captain's fire was joined by accompanying shots from Junko and Hiyori's weapons, plucking the invading creatures from the hallway ahead of them. "Hurry!" Junko squeeked as she saw the gigantic one behind them continue to shake and squirm as it devoured it's meal with loud, meaty noises of folding metal and noisy slurping of the tasty treat inside. Hiyori travelled alongside the Taii as they made their way towards the surface, lighting the old research lab with every pull of the trigger.
As they made their way forward, the structure itself seemed to rumble and shake. "It's coming—," Junko warned, firing shots behind them as she brought up the rear. The Juni science specialist was no slouch in combat situations, but as the plasma shots seemed to do nothing to deter the beast, she was getting more and more worried as to the possibility that they might not make it out.
More and more of the small mouth-creatures came at them as they traversed the long, rusted hallways they'd already come through. Every dilapidated hole and worn-through crack became a danger as the things flowed freely from any conceivable place. They were tiny and large — fat and slight — coming at the Star Army soldiers in every conceivable mass and veracity. What they all had in common, however, was an undeterred voraciousness. Indeed, no matter how many fell to the team's fire, more would still surge forth with gurgling, hungry intent.
"Chikushou!" the taii spat over the comm as he slammed his thigh against a lone, solid piece of bulkhead to squish one of the hungry aliens that'd attached itself to his armor. Looking back through the darkness was a frightening prospect, even for the war-scarred Saiga bushi. Though the darkness prevailed in his helmet's internal visor, the orange outlines that appeared beyond the abyss were myriad and one, doubtlessly the dastardly beast that had made a meal of Seonji, dominated the wireframe readouts that overlaid normal visual perception.
Another scream filled the radio, this time, it was Hiyori. The color drained from her face as a Daisy dropped right in front of her from the staircase like a puppet on meaty, slimy strings that wrapped around its joints. It was clearly Yui's suit, but unlike the Yui that left on the mission with them, this one was missing it's head and had hemosynthetic blood drooling from the neck hole. Hiyori pulled the trigger on her LASR purely on instinct, but after the first few wild shots, began aiming for the flesh-like nodules that bulged on the armor's joints.
Junko meanwhile had managed to get ahold of a thick metal table and lobbed it at the creature behind them with one hand, "It's catching up," she noted worriedly as she blasted it again with plasma from the other. "Taii, I think I can get a connection with the ship going, now," she informed the captain, "Should I patch you through?"
"Make it happen, juni!" Masatane said, palming the remnants of his assailant from his armor. The broken, barely-there connection to his ship came through as they ascended the staircase to this place's only exit. Fleshy little monsters came more from behind them now, though the taii still snapped a few shots off at the industrious ones ahead who thought it wise to head the Yamataians off.
"Adventure: This is Saiga-taii. Under intense attack from an unidentified force," conveyed Masatane, trying to get the essentials in. "Ravenous creatures. They got Yui and Seonji-hei with no trouble. What's your status, Adventure? Enemy contact?"
Static reigned in return while the Plumeria zeroed in and established a stable channel with the fire team. "Uhhhhhhhhh," the reply came, the end of the voice's single syllable grinding over itself in its speaker's throat before cutting off and quickly continuing, "That's-a negative, Saiga-taii. Ain't got nothin' up here."
"Well get the damn Adventure ready for liftoff, Delacroix-chui!" Masatane shouted back, not wanting to put up with the Nepleslian operations officer's usual lazy front. He knew the man had professionalism in him and the taii's tone made it clear it was required now.
"Uh-h-h-uh! Yes Saiga-taii! Right away, sir!" came the reply back, suddenly more urgent than it had been before. "We actually just got'sum contacts on the short-range — n-no — we got a bunch'a them on scan. Orders?"
"Sit tight," Masatane ordered more calmly now. "Just don't let anything in. And if our lifesigns go null, get out of here and report back to the KMS."
As he spoke, the taii and his team kept moving up, ascending the stairs and blasting the countless enemies into oblivion. A few moments had come when he thought his plasma power feed would be overloaded and unable to keep up with the onslaught but his controlled bursts kept that from happeneing.
"We're getting there," Hiyori announced as she left Yui's body hung over the railing, dealing with the flying, drooling mouths that were attempting to attach themselves to her, dodging just in time as one attempted to drop down atop of her. The neko-eared Yamataian shoved her rifle into the thing and swung it towards the ground, blasting it apart as it hit the stairs. The exit still seemed a ways off and the walls were absolutely covered still in the little monsters. Not to mention her Daisy being covered in these creature's guts. If it weren't for the gaping mouths, it was hard to tell the live ones from the dead.
As Junko passed the lifeless Daisy, she patched into the suit's IES and righted the body up in her arms. "Okay, hun, one more for the team," she whispered as she activated the suit's weapon's systems. The leg canisters on Yui's armor opened up and a swarm of missiles fired towards the bottom of the staircase, exploding with a deafening boom in the underground passage. Dust and smoke filling the air as the science officer could see orange outlines on her HUD of the ceiling collapsing behind them.
More and more enemies came at the three remaining Star Army M6s, some getting close enough to gnaw and scrape at the armors but none were afforded enough time do to much damage. Soon, the Adventure's away team came to the surface, bowling out into the lobby from whence they came, only to be met by a skittering swarm of the black-eyed, clawed maw-beasts. There they stood — Masatane, Hiyori, and Junko — back to back while they slaughtered seemingly endless masses of the enemy from both the surface entrance and subterranean complex they'd come from.
"Up in three!" the taii called, his order translating perfectly in his well trained squad's minds. "Ich, ni, san!" he cried while engaging his suit's thrusters, trusting that the structure's ancient stone would be weak enough to break through.
Engaging their thrusters, Junko and Hiyori took to the sky alongside the captain as the gigantic creature broke through the ground from below, nipping at their heels and barely missing catching a final neko meal. Hiyori was overjoyed as she saw the beast crashing back down after the failed leap, barely clearing the spout of concrete created by the Yamataians' launch and then turning the air to follow the Taii back to the Adventure.
PAUSE
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