Chapter 107 - The Storm
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BakaSmurf
Only Human, After All
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===
Chapter 107 - The Storm
===
Everyone progressed deeper into the Rapture facility, quietly following the Corrupted Matis and Absolute members leading them towards what would surely be their doom, had they not cottoned on to what was happening.
The plan was simple, if harrowing: hope that Drake was at least correct about the source of their comms blackout being in the direction they were currently marching… And the moment they had confirmation one way or the other, attack their Corrupted squadmates while their backs were turned to them.
Not to kill them, of goddamned course. But they needed Absolute and Matis disabled at minimum. Could Rapi take Laplace? Probably. Worst case scenario, Snow White's repairs using the Oregon Lost Sector's spoils had granted Rapi a few minutes of total Exceed time, which would more than likely give her the opportunity to incapacitate the near, if not outright Grimms-equivalent Nikke before she could become a threat to the non-Corrupted squad.
However, Drake and Maxwell were also in the equation. While it had been Laplace hogging the spotlight to the current point… Her squadmates were members of Matis, and all Joe had heard about Matis suggested that they were hardly considered tailcoat riders. While it sounded like Drake was closer to Laplace in power than Maxwell was, even Maxwell was still considered one of the strongest Nikkes in the Ark, full-stop.
Meaning: they had to take out Matis as quickly as they possibly could. Everyone was set to aim for their legs, then their weapons, then their arms, graduating until they were functionally neutralized. They were to avoid centre-of-mass at all costs, as the destruction of the girl's cores would be a death sentence in short order without brain shelters on hand to prevent their biological grey matter from dying without the life support systems of their cyborg bodies preserving them. With a core even operating on emergency power when combined with an intact skull, a Nikke could survive effectively indefinitely, even if in a comatose state.
Without? They'd have minutes before brain death started to kick in from a lack of oxygen intake alone. Nikkes were full 'borgs, but their human brains were ultimately still just human brains, if brains hardened with a nanite-constructed supermaterial lattice and swimming in a layer of shock-absorbing gel to counteract, if not outright negate extreme g-forces. Protection against physical trauma, not oxygen deprivation. Destroy the limbs, preserve their heads and cores, and they'd have upwards of two hours to get the girls back to the Ark.
Yet, that was all without considering Absolute. While Emma was noted to be the obvious weakest link of the squad, she was still an active and respected member of Elysion's most feared team. She could probably wipe the floor with Anis and Neon entirely on her own.
Vesti, meanwhile… Was the most directly dangerous member of Absolute, as she well would be, given her similarities to fucking Liliweiss. While Joe was sure that Rapi could easily wipe the floor with her regardless, Rapi might well be entirely preoccupied with drawing enmity from Laplace, lest Laplace do to Counters and Eunhwa what Rapi could do to any common MP squad just the same.
Thus… Take out their legs. Anis and Neon had loaded their shotguns with Ultra Slugs, aiming to literally kneecap Drake and Vesti between them. Rapi would blow off Laplace's leg with a round from Wolf's Bane, and Eunhwa would aim to destroy Maxwell's lower half using high-explosive Raufoss rounds—Maxwell had an exoskeleton of her own that would likely compensate for the loss of her limbs if the system wasn't destroyed at the same time.
Joe had to try cutting out Emma's legs from under her using First Affection himself. Eunhwa asserted that she might be able to get Maxwell and Emma herself if the first shot she took at Matis' engineer disabled her outright, but that was if they got lucky. Thus, the Commander needed to contribute to the attack as well. That really marked how damned dire the situation was, considering that even with his capacity to provide supporting fire if need be, they were needing to violate rule one the Ark's Rules of Engagement: Commanders are non-combatants.
This was so much fucking worse than what happened with Marian. Least of all considering they were inside of a giant goddamned Rapture housing the remnants of a dead Heretic. They were having to turn their own guns inwards, while anticipating the possibility of being swarmed from all directions at once the moment the Raptures knew the jig was up. Half their team not just casualties, but actively Corrupted into hostiles…
This was the singularly most powerful team the Ark could have ever fielded in the modern day. If not for the Vapaus bullet Snow White had provided him, this mission that should have been a simple retrieval operation would have just wiped out the Ark's two strongest Nikke squads outright. The damage that would cause to morale, and the Ark's capacity to effectively project power onto the surface…
This was a true nightmare scenario. And it was up to Joe to salvage it. Not so long ago, this responsibility might've broken him outright. Now?
He'd charged the front gates of the Orbital Elevator alongside Goddess. He'd held the line during Operation Ark Guardian. He could do anything, if only he needed to.
The need was real here and now, and thus, he'd do what was required of him.
Everything remained quiet. No Raptures emerged from the walls to harangue them, no immediately obvious danger aside from their Corrupted companions made itself obvious to them. Therefore, everyone continued to march onward, staring warily at the backs of among the most powerful Nikkes ever produced by the Ark, Corrupted, and whose only hope for salvation was a lone bullet that was left back at Shangri-La.
Eventually, after cleanly passing through a series of twists and turns Drake really obviously shouldn't have known how to frictionlessly navigate, they emerged into a massive open room, at the centre of which sat a… Structure? Towering, carbon black from top-to-bottom, and surrounded by industrial scaffolding—it seemed to hang from the ceiling, many countless wires ran from the cylindrical connective section that anchored it to the roof. It-
Snapped to focus on everyone, a neon red flare visibly glowing that terrible fel crimson that accompanied all Rapture life.
The core.
As it registered to everyone just how perilous the situation had become all at once, Laplace started to turn to look back at Counters and Eunhwa over her slight shoulder, a crimson sheen visible in her once bright, pure sapphire blue eyes.
Part of Joe wanted to shut down at the reminder, at images of Marian's gorgeous heterochromatic eyes tainted red flashing in his mind's eye. At the notion that these girls may well all be lost, that his efforts would be for naught. That under his command, the greatest Nikkes ever produced by the Ark had fallen.
Instead, the barrel of First Affection sharply snapped to his target, and in turn, all guns were raised and sights were fixed on the legs of their quarry in turn—committing to attack before whatever the fuck that thing in the centre of the room was unleashed a horde of Raptures alongside Matis, Emma and Vesti on them all at once.
Immediately, the mistake of having Joe stand in the middle of a Nikke firing line landed, and the Commander was very nearly knocked over by the resulting pressure wave produced by every one of their guns going off at once right next to each other. He did his very best to recover quickly, but such was not enough. Least of all given that Rapi went flying, as Laplace outright dodged her shot and flew at her like a bat out of Hell, the pair producing a ruinous crash behind everyone's backs as the two strongest Nikkes present started striking each other with cataclysmic violent force as the plan immediately started to misfire on them.
Worse still, was that Joe hitched and grimaced in horror at the sight of Maxwell's exploded legs as she inelegantly hit the gore-stained ground upon which she'd just been standing but an instant prior. Mind flashing back to the horrific injuries Anis had received from Chatterbox, the sight mixing with the acrid stench of burnt hypertech gunpowder and synthetic bodily fluids superheated by high-explosive small arms munitions. The man's senses were hopelessly overwhelmed all at once, and he was reminded of one of the most inarguable benefits of being encased within a hermetically sealed Hoplon's cockpit relative to just wearing an exoskeleton.
The reminder that injured Nikkes looked like regular human women that had been horrifically mutilated by nightmarish injuries hit the man like a truck. This, on top of the physical stupefaction that had been inflicted upon him by the staccato of close-in Nikke-grade gunfire made for a dangerous combination.
Such was demonstrated when, as Vesti took a slug to the knee which visibly did significant damage to her limb, but did not destroy it, and Drake actually took even less apparent damage from the same type of slug thrown from the barrel of a shotgun that would have been considered to be a man-portable light artillery piece by any modern military from Joe's home world, both of whom were at least staggered by the attacks…
A follow-up shot from Eunhwa that struck at Drake's ankle and messily blew off her foot signified that it had taken everyone too long to notice that Joe's shot had missed Emma entirely, and she was actively bringing her minigun around to bear on them all.
Joe hammered at the trigger of the hotrodded ASh-12 in a reactive panic, Snow White's enhancements to his exoskeleton allowing him to just tank the semi-auto recoil far more effectively than he otherwise would have—which is to say he could rapid-fire the weapon in semi-auto at all now.
The lack of a suppressor on the .50-calibre firearm combined with the heavy-duty compensator (a muzzle device which counteracted recoil at the cost of making muzzle flash and the weapon's report significantly more violent), however, meant that the man was still effectively being punched in the face by the sheer concussive backpressure of each shot fired.
Thus, of the dozen semi-armour-piercing high-explosive rounds he functionally blindly fired at Emma, two struck her minigun—and upon striking the weapon's loaded drum, punched into the actual innards of the magazine and its many hundreds of 7.62mm cartridges. The explosive bullets causing the unspent rounds to cook off in the mag, and therefore the firearm exploded in her hands with a rapid-fire series of hundreds of miniature explosions that quickly become one.
This, just as Joe felt his heart drop into his stomach as Vesti, in between Anis working the action of her shotgun, fired off a rocket at them.
With inhuman immediacy, Neon jumped into the path of the actual heavy artillery shell… And in the same motion, slapped it aside.
Note, 'slapped' it. Not 'stopped' it.
The anti-Tyrant munition veered off-course for a fraction of a second before striking a wall some ways off to the side of the squad. Everyone was violently thrown from their feet by the resulting explosion and pressure wave.
Worse yet, a second, inexplicable boom sounded out, though the man had no idea where it had come from relative to the first.
Joe was starting to feel as though he was in the middle of an ongoing high-speed car crash.
Coming to a harsh rolling stop, the Commander clutched at the tactical vest covering his chest, eyes wide and breath coming in ragged gasps. Despite being in full-body pain, sheer adrenaline allowed the man to force himself onto his knee, and snapping his gaze around to get his bearings…
He saw Laplace and Rapi. The two blondes were going absolutely full-throttle on each other, and Laplace- Laplace wasn't losing.
Laplace was actually pressing Rapi, matching a Grimms model blow-for-blow. The two diminutive women were throwing lightning-fast strikes, kicks, punches, chops, knees and elbows with such rapidity that it was nearly impossible to track their movement. Doubly so considering they were also viciously grappling the entire time, to prevent each other from using their firearms in their melee.
One would twist and throw the other, and would, mid-toss and with not even being in contact with the ground, respond with a counter-throw or a leg hooked around the other's extremity or even neck that would bring both to the floor with such extreme force that the material made from the same metal Raptures were armoured in buckled and cratered.
To say nothing of thrown fists and kicks that missed and hit the plated floor beneath them just punching clean through the ground outright. Their limbs were then ripped free, often with a spinning backhand or kick that tore gouges in the hyper tech metal that would, and once did no-sell a United States Naval Destroyer's main battery.
It… Wasn't entirely unlike watching a goddamned Dragonball fight scene, except unfathomably terrifying because it was actually happening, and was happening within fifty feet of your horrifically mortal human form.
How close were they coming to producing sonic booms with their punches and kicks? Close. So goddamned close that it was making Joe's teeth rattle. Missilis had actually produced a modern Fairy Tales model, and that modern Grimms had been Corrupted, holy mother of Christ-
The man's attention was suddenly seized by the- The core? Out of his peripheral vision, he noticed that it was starting to… Was it… Spooling up-?
"Commander!" Eunhwa cried out from where she had come to a crashing stop not far from Joe himself. "That thing- It's Indivillia's core! Indivillia's core is restored and active! This facility must be regenerating the Heretic!"
Joe's eyes somehow went even wider than they had previously, and his heart almost felt like it stopped outright. This information came just as he'd too noticed Drake, Vesti, and Emma rising from where they too had been thrown by- A grenade fired by Anis, given how her MGL Mk 2 had gone clattering away from her as though it had been dropped, while her shotgun was now slung over her shoulder.
Vesti had taken minimal damage, standing and staring with that same doe-eyed expression she always seemed to wear, seemingly entirely unconcerned with the entire situation as her typically teary blue eyes had started to glow the same foul red as the Heretic's core.
Drake was just outright standing on the jagged stump where her foot had been, even as synthetic blood leaked past the cauterized majority of the open wound and pooled on the ground on which she stood. Her horned, armoured mask was deployed, though the Commander could still see the crimson glow of her eyes clear through the visor.
Emma… As she rose, Joe could clearly see that he had actually landed many more shots on her than one might've expected. At the same time, it was clear that they had miscalculated, and failed to account for the fact that pistol-calibre cartridges would not have been able to punch through her high-grade Specialist armour. Dent it? Yes. But not penetrate. The outer epidermal layer of her skin had been shorn off by each bullet strike, revealing the Goddessium beneath which had only been slightly bowed and burnt by every individual impact.
Yet, far worse was the fact that the side she carried her minigun on had almost all of the skin blown and burnt off when her gun detonated in her hands, with what was left loosely clinging to her metallic dermal layers in grotesquely hanging chunks. From her ankle up to her collarbone, her clothes had been destroyed, leaving only her left side mostly unscathed, save for where First Affection's bullets had ineffectively struck. The cyborg nature of Nikkes was exposed for all to see, and it was a terrible, gory sight that shook the Commander to his core.
Worse yet… Her face was almost entirely unmarred. Not but a dusting of soot had found purchase on her cheeks, and that gentle, matronly smile of hers was cruelly contrasted by the abominable blood-red glow of her once gorgeous olive eyes.
Emma should have been in agony, having lost so much of her flesh. Yet, there she stood, silent, unshaken, unbothered, even with her metallic skeleton partially exposed to the open air around them.
Only Maxwell had seemingly been successfully downed. And Laplace had not only entirely avoided taking a bullet, she was currently keeping the uncorrupted squad's strongest member entirely occupied and surely incapable of supporting them.
All the while, the 'structure' housing Indivillia's active core revealed two pairs of long, winding and wide tentacle-like arms terminating in great pincers that were held at the ready, even as what were immediately recognized as laser projectors flared to life all over the body housing the Heretic's core.
Grimacing, Joe recognized with his immense tactical acumen, standing against four high-tier Corrupted Nikkes and what, by all appearances, was a fucking partially-restored Heretic…
This was going to suck.
Chapter 107 - The Storm
===
Everyone progressed deeper into the Rapture facility, quietly following the Corrupted Matis and Absolute members leading them towards what would surely be their doom, had they not cottoned on to what was happening.
The plan was simple, if harrowing: hope that Drake was at least correct about the source of their comms blackout being in the direction they were currently marching… And the moment they had confirmation one way or the other, attack their Corrupted squadmates while their backs were turned to them.
Not to kill them, of goddamned course. But they needed Absolute and Matis disabled at minimum. Could Rapi take Laplace? Probably. Worst case scenario, Snow White's repairs using the Oregon Lost Sector's spoils had granted Rapi a few minutes of total Exceed time, which would more than likely give her the opportunity to incapacitate the near, if not outright Grimms-equivalent Nikke before she could become a threat to the non-Corrupted squad.
However, Drake and Maxwell were also in the equation. While it had been Laplace hogging the spotlight to the current point… Her squadmates were members of Matis, and all Joe had heard about Matis suggested that they were hardly considered tailcoat riders. While it sounded like Drake was closer to Laplace in power than Maxwell was, even Maxwell was still considered one of the strongest Nikkes in the Ark, full-stop.
Meaning: they had to take out Matis as quickly as they possibly could. Everyone was set to aim for their legs, then their weapons, then their arms, graduating until they were functionally neutralized. They were to avoid centre-of-mass at all costs, as the destruction of the girl's cores would be a death sentence in short order without brain shelters on hand to prevent their biological grey matter from dying without the life support systems of their cyborg bodies preserving them. With a core even operating on emergency power when combined with an intact skull, a Nikke could survive effectively indefinitely, even if in a comatose state.
Without? They'd have minutes before brain death started to kick in from a lack of oxygen intake alone. Nikkes were full 'borgs, but their human brains were ultimately still just human brains, if brains hardened with a nanite-constructed supermaterial lattice and swimming in a layer of shock-absorbing gel to counteract, if not outright negate extreme g-forces. Protection against physical trauma, not oxygen deprivation. Destroy the limbs, preserve their heads and cores, and they'd have upwards of two hours to get the girls back to the Ark.
Yet, that was all without considering Absolute. While Emma was noted to be the obvious weakest link of the squad, she was still an active and respected member of Elysion's most feared team. She could probably wipe the floor with Anis and Neon entirely on her own.
Vesti, meanwhile… Was the most directly dangerous member of Absolute, as she well would be, given her similarities to fucking Liliweiss. While Joe was sure that Rapi could easily wipe the floor with her regardless, Rapi might well be entirely preoccupied with drawing enmity from Laplace, lest Laplace do to Counters and Eunhwa what Rapi could do to any common MP squad just the same.
Thus… Take out their legs. Anis and Neon had loaded their shotguns with Ultra Slugs, aiming to literally kneecap Drake and Vesti between them. Rapi would blow off Laplace's leg with a round from Wolf's Bane, and Eunhwa would aim to destroy Maxwell's lower half using high-explosive Raufoss rounds—Maxwell had an exoskeleton of her own that would likely compensate for the loss of her limbs if the system wasn't destroyed at the same time.
Joe had to try cutting out Emma's legs from under her using First Affection himself. Eunhwa asserted that she might be able to get Maxwell and Emma herself if the first shot she took at Matis' engineer disabled her outright, but that was if they got lucky. Thus, the Commander needed to contribute to the attack as well. That really marked how damned dire the situation was, considering that even with his capacity to provide supporting fire if need be, they were needing to violate rule one the Ark's Rules of Engagement: Commanders are non-combatants.
This was so much fucking worse than what happened with Marian. Least of all considering they were inside of a giant goddamned Rapture housing the remnants of a dead Heretic. They were having to turn their own guns inwards, while anticipating the possibility of being swarmed from all directions at once the moment the Raptures knew the jig was up. Half their team not just casualties, but actively Corrupted into hostiles…
This was the singularly most powerful team the Ark could have ever fielded in the modern day. If not for the Vapaus bullet Snow White had provided him, this mission that should have been a simple retrieval operation would have just wiped out the Ark's two strongest Nikke squads outright. The damage that would cause to morale, and the Ark's capacity to effectively project power onto the surface…
This was a true nightmare scenario. And it was up to Joe to salvage it. Not so long ago, this responsibility might've broken him outright. Now?
He'd charged the front gates of the Orbital Elevator alongside Goddess. He'd held the line during Operation Ark Guardian. He could do anything, if only he needed to.
The need was real here and now, and thus, he'd do what was required of him.
Everything remained quiet. No Raptures emerged from the walls to harangue them, no immediately obvious danger aside from their Corrupted companions made itself obvious to them. Therefore, everyone continued to march onward, staring warily at the backs of among the most powerful Nikkes ever produced by the Ark, Corrupted, and whose only hope for salvation was a lone bullet that was left back at Shangri-La.
Eventually, after cleanly passing through a series of twists and turns Drake really obviously shouldn't have known how to frictionlessly navigate, they emerged into a massive open room, at the centre of which sat a… Structure? Towering, carbon black from top-to-bottom, and surrounded by industrial scaffolding—it seemed to hang from the ceiling, many countless wires ran from the cylindrical connective section that anchored it to the roof. It-
Snapped to focus on everyone, a neon red flare visibly glowing that terrible fel crimson that accompanied all Rapture life.
The core.
As it registered to everyone just how perilous the situation had become all at once, Laplace started to turn to look back at Counters and Eunhwa over her slight shoulder, a crimson sheen visible in her once bright, pure sapphire blue eyes.
Part of Joe wanted to shut down at the reminder, at images of Marian's gorgeous heterochromatic eyes tainted red flashing in his mind's eye. At the notion that these girls may well all be lost, that his efforts would be for naught. That under his command, the greatest Nikkes ever produced by the Ark had fallen.
Instead, the barrel of First Affection sharply snapped to his target, and in turn, all guns were raised and sights were fixed on the legs of their quarry in turn—committing to attack before whatever the fuck that thing in the centre of the room was unleashed a horde of Raptures alongside Matis, Emma and Vesti on them all at once.
Immediately, the mistake of having Joe stand in the middle of a Nikke firing line landed, and the Commander was very nearly knocked over by the resulting pressure wave produced by every one of their guns going off at once right next to each other. He did his very best to recover quickly, but such was not enough. Least of all given that Rapi went flying, as Laplace outright dodged her shot and flew at her like a bat out of Hell, the pair producing a ruinous crash behind everyone's backs as the two strongest Nikkes present started striking each other with cataclysmic violent force as the plan immediately started to misfire on them.
Worse still, was that Joe hitched and grimaced in horror at the sight of Maxwell's exploded legs as she inelegantly hit the gore-stained ground upon which she'd just been standing but an instant prior. Mind flashing back to the horrific injuries Anis had received from Chatterbox, the sight mixing with the acrid stench of burnt hypertech gunpowder and synthetic bodily fluids superheated by high-explosive small arms munitions. The man's senses were hopelessly overwhelmed all at once, and he was reminded of one of the most inarguable benefits of being encased within a hermetically sealed Hoplon's cockpit relative to just wearing an exoskeleton.
The reminder that injured Nikkes looked like regular human women that had been horrifically mutilated by nightmarish injuries hit the man like a truck. This, on top of the physical stupefaction that had been inflicted upon him by the staccato of close-in Nikke-grade gunfire made for a dangerous combination.
Such was demonstrated when, as Vesti took a slug to the knee which visibly did significant damage to her limb, but did not destroy it, and Drake actually took even less apparent damage from the same type of slug thrown from the barrel of a shotgun that would have been considered to be a man-portable light artillery piece by any modern military from Joe's home world, both of whom were at least staggered by the attacks…
A follow-up shot from Eunhwa that struck at Drake's ankle and messily blew off her foot signified that it had taken everyone too long to notice that Joe's shot had missed Emma entirely, and she was actively bringing her minigun around to bear on them all.
Joe hammered at the trigger of the hotrodded ASh-12 in a reactive panic, Snow White's enhancements to his exoskeleton allowing him to just tank the semi-auto recoil far more effectively than he otherwise would have—which is to say he could rapid-fire the weapon in semi-auto at all now.
The lack of a suppressor on the .50-calibre firearm combined with the heavy-duty compensator (a muzzle device which counteracted recoil at the cost of making muzzle flash and the weapon's report significantly more violent), however, meant that the man was still effectively being punched in the face by the sheer concussive backpressure of each shot fired.
Thus, of the dozen semi-armour-piercing high-explosive rounds he functionally blindly fired at Emma, two struck her minigun—and upon striking the weapon's loaded drum, punched into the actual innards of the magazine and its many hundreds of 7.62mm cartridges. The explosive bullets causing the unspent rounds to cook off in the mag, and therefore the firearm exploded in her hands with a rapid-fire series of hundreds of miniature explosions that quickly become one.
This, just as Joe felt his heart drop into his stomach as Vesti, in between Anis working the action of her shotgun, fired off a rocket at them.
With inhuman immediacy, Neon jumped into the path of the actual heavy artillery shell… And in the same motion, slapped it aside.
Note, 'slapped' it. Not 'stopped' it.
The anti-Tyrant munition veered off-course for a fraction of a second before striking a wall some ways off to the side of the squad. Everyone was violently thrown from their feet by the resulting explosion and pressure wave.
Worse yet, a second, inexplicable boom sounded out, though the man had no idea where it had come from relative to the first.
Joe was starting to feel as though he was in the middle of an ongoing high-speed car crash.
Coming to a harsh rolling stop, the Commander clutched at the tactical vest covering his chest, eyes wide and breath coming in ragged gasps. Despite being in full-body pain, sheer adrenaline allowed the man to force himself onto his knee, and snapping his gaze around to get his bearings…
He saw Laplace and Rapi. The two blondes were going absolutely full-throttle on each other, and Laplace- Laplace wasn't losing.
Laplace was actually pressing Rapi, matching a Grimms model blow-for-blow. The two diminutive women were throwing lightning-fast strikes, kicks, punches, chops, knees and elbows with such rapidity that it was nearly impossible to track their movement. Doubly so considering they were also viciously grappling the entire time, to prevent each other from using their firearms in their melee.
One would twist and throw the other, and would, mid-toss and with not even being in contact with the ground, respond with a counter-throw or a leg hooked around the other's extremity or even neck that would bring both to the floor with such extreme force that the material made from the same metal Raptures were armoured in buckled and cratered.
To say nothing of thrown fists and kicks that missed and hit the plated floor beneath them just punching clean through the ground outright. Their limbs were then ripped free, often with a spinning backhand or kick that tore gouges in the hyper tech metal that would, and once did no-sell a United States Naval Destroyer's main battery.
It… Wasn't entirely unlike watching a goddamned Dragonball fight scene, except unfathomably terrifying because it was actually happening, and was happening within fifty feet of your horrifically mortal human form.
How close were they coming to producing sonic booms with their punches and kicks? Close. So goddamned close that it was making Joe's teeth rattle. Missilis had actually produced a modern Fairy Tales model, and that modern Grimms had been Corrupted, holy mother of Christ-
The man's attention was suddenly seized by the- The core? Out of his peripheral vision, he noticed that it was starting to… Was it… Spooling up-?
"Commander!" Eunhwa cried out from where she had come to a crashing stop not far from Joe himself. "That thing- It's Indivillia's core! Indivillia's core is restored and active! This facility must be regenerating the Heretic!"
Joe's eyes somehow went even wider than they had previously, and his heart almost felt like it stopped outright. This information came just as he'd too noticed Drake, Vesti, and Emma rising from where they too had been thrown by- A grenade fired by Anis, given how her MGL Mk 2 had gone clattering away from her as though it had been dropped, while her shotgun was now slung over her shoulder.
Vesti had taken minimal damage, standing and staring with that same doe-eyed expression she always seemed to wear, seemingly entirely unconcerned with the entire situation as her typically teary blue eyes had started to glow the same foul red as the Heretic's core.
Drake was just outright standing on the jagged stump where her foot had been, even as synthetic blood leaked past the cauterized majority of the open wound and pooled on the ground on which she stood. Her horned, armoured mask was deployed, though the Commander could still see the crimson glow of her eyes clear through the visor.
Emma… As she rose, Joe could clearly see that he had actually landed many more shots on her than one might've expected. At the same time, it was clear that they had miscalculated, and failed to account for the fact that pistol-calibre cartridges would not have been able to punch through her high-grade Specialist armour. Dent it? Yes. But not penetrate. The outer epidermal layer of her skin had been shorn off by each bullet strike, revealing the Goddessium beneath which had only been slightly bowed and burnt by every individual impact.
Yet, far worse was the fact that the side she carried her minigun on had almost all of the skin blown and burnt off when her gun detonated in her hands, with what was left loosely clinging to her metallic dermal layers in grotesquely hanging chunks. From her ankle up to her collarbone, her clothes had been destroyed, leaving only her left side mostly unscathed, save for where First Affection's bullets had ineffectively struck. The cyborg nature of Nikkes was exposed for all to see, and it was a terrible, gory sight that shook the Commander to his core.
Worse yet… Her face was almost entirely unmarred. Not but a dusting of soot had found purchase on her cheeks, and that gentle, matronly smile of hers was cruelly contrasted by the abominable blood-red glow of her once gorgeous olive eyes.
Emma should have been in agony, having lost so much of her flesh. Yet, there she stood, silent, unshaken, unbothered, even with her metallic skeleton partially exposed to the open air around them.
Only Maxwell had seemingly been successfully downed. And Laplace had not only entirely avoided taking a bullet, she was currently keeping the uncorrupted squad's strongest member entirely occupied and surely incapable of supporting them.
All the while, the 'structure' housing Indivillia's active core revealed two pairs of long, winding and wide tentacle-like arms terminating in great pincers that were held at the ready, even as what were immediately recognized as laser projectors flared to life all over the body housing the Heretic's core.
Grimacing, Joe recognized with his immense tactical acumen, standing against four high-tier Corrupted Nikkes and what, by all appearances, was a fucking partially-restored Heretic…
This was going to suck.
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