Base Camp
The Ee'ith watched as Pecan was carried away and sedated, milling about with concern, but not approaching the unconscious cook and Cosima. "Will she be ok?" they asked with sad frowns displayed on their masks. The other Ee'ith still with Kiko seemed oblivious to all the drama, hopping up and down eagerly. "My name is Jennifer! But I like to be called Jenny!" she declared excitedly, taking the mug from Kiko and finding a straw to drink from it with, flapping her wings. "Ohh! Oh, it is warm! Oh my!" A warm drink seemed to be a new concept for Jenny, who continued to flap her wings energetically as she drank, creating a low, buzzing sound. "Do you give this drink a name, Kiko?"
Alpha
As Araxie flew upwards to get a better look at the creature, she'd find the rest of it around the corner, where four streets intersected. She could see that the eyes sitting atop the stalk-appendage didn't make up even a tenth of the creature: The rest of its body was a long, serpentine barrel-shaped length roughly a meter in diameter, with ten pairs of muscular, dexterous legs spaced evenly along it. It looked like a bizarre, serpent-centipede... a serpentipede, perhaps. From this vantage point, she could see clearly that the pair of eyes that had been watching them were not at the creature's front end, but rather on its tail; possibly false eyes to deceive prey and predators alike. She couldn't quite make out its front end, besides that it had no head as such, just a broadened end to its body as opposed to its rear, which thinned out into the eye-tail. The creature as a whole was a forest-green in colour, with leathery skin and black claws. It was clinging against the buildings, laid flat with its tail pointed towards team Alpha, and its front end pointed down the street that team Beta was just walking out of, hand in hand.
As Takeshi approached the staring eyes, they suddenly whipped out of view, as a terrible chorus of screams rang out...
Beta
So it was that as Uso and Tsukisaki rounded the corner, they found the creature's face a few meters down the street, located a story above ground, where it clung to the walls. Its face was featureless besides a large, sphincter-like mouth and a frill of slender feelers surrounding it like a mane. It reacted immediately to the presence of the two nekos, puckering its mouth as a splay of barbed tendrils spilled out from it; ten in total. Letting out a deafening cacophany of human-like screams, like it had when provoked by Gut-Stripe, it lashed out with the barbed tendrils, which displayed impressive reach and dexterity.
Along its lengthy, roughly 15 meter long body, a number of fleshy slits opened wide and quivered as it screamed: The source of its multiple voices. As it attacked Uso and Valesti, it crawled down from its spot on the buildings to stand on street level. It stood about the same height as its hunters, but getting past its flailing, coiling tendrils would be difficult. As it bore down on them, its tail was poised up above its long body like a scorpion's stinger, staring them down with its large eyes.
Gamma
Down in the tunnels, the sound of the creature above was drowned out wholly by the ambiance of the machinery in the walls. Further down the hall, a metal door could be seen, with what looked like a motion scanner positioned above it. Well before the team of hunters could have gotten close enough to activate it, however, the door slid open, revealing a figure. It had a strange, vaguely egg-shaped silhouette; thinner than it was tall, balanced atop thin, crane-like legs. Set into the left side of its rounded body was a yellow light. The figure began striding closer with a vaguely avian gait, picking its paces in a measured, careful fashion and twitching its body to and fro. The faint whirring and clicking sounds that became audible as it approached suggested it to be some form of automaton.
Once it had came close enough, it paused, regarding the hunters quietly: The yellow light was clearly some sort of camera lens, twitching to and fro to observe each of them in turn. The metal chassis of its rounded body was a very familiar blue in colour; similar to that of the ancient battleship that the Mishhuvarthyar had commandeered in the Outer Graveyard. A pair of small panels on its sides looked as if they could open, but what they contained was not apparent. Its legs seemed to be a mix of metal and some form of synthetic muscle, and were very slender, ending in small, clawed feet. On top of the left side of its body was a small, bobbing antenna, and directly beneath its yellow eye was a protruding metal tube. It looked like the barrel of a gun.
Whether armed or not, the automaton did not harm the hunters, standing a meter away from them as it examined them before turning neatly around and strutting back down the corridor, exiting back through the door it had entered through.
