Round 11
Astrianna lets out a string of curses in several different languages when she's hit with another sniper round. Multiple warnings chim and flash messages from her com unit, informing her the batteries of forcefield's kinetic dampeners have been completely depleted. Knowing that the next shot will probably result in unwanted body modification, she hunkers down behind the wall she's been hiding behind.
"I'm out of forcefields, I'm taking cover! Tell me when you've engaged the sniper and I'll move up!" She announces over their com system while crouching down behind a delapidated piece of masonry.
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"You were correct, there is an entrance between the statue's legs. Entering..." For the briefest of moments Prospero-4 wonders if there is some symbolism in entering a humanoid statue in this manner, but then the Exocortex forces him to focus on his surroundings.
The android keeps the channel open, and describes briefly what he sees. He moves to the other side of the room, and waits for Cueta to catch him before moving onwards.
"We are heading towards the head, trying to locate the sniper. Keep channel open, and be prepared to move here once we are engaged." Prospero-4 wasn't quite sure if he actually said those words. It feels like the Exocortex is doing the talking as well, now.
"I *uh* don't think I'll be moving very much thank you." Leila radios back. With a heavy breath she checks that her rifle is ready again and tries to focus. "I'll try to cover you at the very least..."
If there was any humor intended on the part of the statue's creators with the placement of its entrance, it is lost on Cueta. There wasn't much to do on the 9 but work, drink, and pukk. And as a standard of artwork, compared to the things created by the (small) artist's community on the 9, the statue was pretty tame.
"Nah, mio friend," Cueta says, following Prospero. "No reason for concern, chinney." Tapping her armor where the last bullet richocheted off, surely cracking rib, the soldier smiles. "Actually, all things considered, Eh feel music, yeah?"
Ignoring the constellations, Cueta hefts her laser rifle and heads towards the head, giving the room a sweep as she goes.
As Cueta leaves the entrance behind she ascends a series of steps and soon stands at the entrance of a long gallery, ancient and mysterious.
She doesn't have time to appreciate the venerable craftsmanship however as it also has many stone benches behind two of which are crouched Lashunta mercs dressed a lot like Ralkawi with scatterguns.
Also at the foot of steep stairs at the south end of the gallery is a Shirren on one knee aiming down the sight of a sniper.
They're all waiting. And they all fire as soon as Cueta turns the corner!
Amazingly the only thing that hits the glowing human out of the hail of fire is a bit of shrapnel that grazes her armor.
Cueta snarls as another bit of shrapnel grazes off her armor - Luck's gonna run out soon yeah? - and moves through the mercs towards the bug, dropping her gun and drawing the doshko as she goes. Smashing time.
Cueta snarls as another bit of shrapnel grazes off her armor - Luck's gonna run out soon yeah? - and fires two kick laser blasts at the bug.
Leila flinches at the sound of muffled gunshots. After a brief moment she dares to peek out of her cover again and points her gun towards the head of the statue. "Tell me where in the head they are! This old thing can't be that tough can it?!"
Ralkawi's comm crackles to Life ******* tress. Devourer turn all this to ****** ash. I don't know where I am!
Round 12
As soon as Astri knows she's no longer going to get plugged with a bullet, she bursts from her cover and runs over to Liela. "Hey! Let's get you up, they might need our help in there." She says before beginning to dig around in her pack.
The shuffling momentarily stops when she hears Ralkawi over the comms, a frustrated growl preceeding the haf-elf's voice over the comms. "Just stay where you are!"
"We have the sniper's attention, inside. You are free to move," Prospero-4 sends through the comms, and starts sprinting up the stairs. On the upper level, he dives behind benches for cover, and pokes his head just high enough to shoot the sniper.
"And we could use some assistance here - we are currently aware of three enemies."
As Prospero-4 dives into the gallery he gets hit with an odd sense of dizziness without explanation and his movements grow slightly clumsy. Neverthess from behind his own cover his exocortex focuses on the sniper that has been hounding for so long and fires a well placed shot. For the first time the Shirren gets a taste of her own medicine. It's a hit.
The Shirren jerks back as the laser burns into her shoulder pad and retreats, disappearing up the stairs behind her.
The two Lashunta taken aback by the suddeness of Cueta's charge, nevertheless rally and close in on her. They drop their scatterguns and close in on Cueta, slashing out with cruel looking longswords. One misses, the other manages to get through her armor and the almost blinding halo surrounding her. They scream, mostly incoherently, about things like void, burning, and the Devourer as they do so.
"Yeah! Don't get more lost... Do you see the mule?" Leila tries to both talk to Ralkawi and search the statue for any signs of the enemy sniper. It goes so-so.
But her prospects seems to improve as Astri comes over. After being spell-ampuled the halfling stands up on wobbly legs - but she could stand! She almost hadn't dared to think this far; but now she knew she would get better. The halfling blinks away a tear and hugs Astri (whatever part she can reach!) "Thanks!!"
She would love to continue the embrace, but people were getting shot at. And now she could help! The halfling followed Astri's lead towards the statue. "Let's get this annoying annoying scrub!"
Round 13
Astrianna pulls the spell amp from her pack and activates it with simple press of a button. She tosses the spent device back into her bag as the halfling hugs her, other hand giving her a pat on the head. "Just remember this the next time I ask you to edit a video or me, okay?"
She pulled away from the clinging halfling and started towards the statue entrance.
Round 13
Pressed and stabbed by lunatics, Cueta turns and pivots with the doshko, bringing it up over her head and down onto the merc that stabbed her. The doshko responds with a satisfying crunch.
The sniper would have to wait, but he wasn't going anywheres. The lashunta brains covering Cueta's doshko would make her all that more intimidating, once they squashed that bug anyways...
"Lost sight of the sniper. Be careful, Leila and Astrianna."
Prospero-4 feels certain pull to go after the sniper, but believes it to best choice to concentrate the assault on the sword-wielding mercenaries. Staying behind the cover, the android uses the bench to support his rifle and fires a blast at the mercenary Cueta already damaged.
Cueta's overhand swipe sinks deep through the cultist's shoulder pad with a spray of blood. His scream of pain is silenced by Prospero-4's laser bolt through the head.
The remaining cultists seems to not even notice his fellow collapsing and attacks Cueta again. His longsword cuts through her defenses. Drawing blood!
Cueta flinches as the cultist's brains splatter across her face, and closes her eyes at the last second, sending the next swing of Cueta's doshko harmlessly into a bench. Harmlessly for the cultist that is - the bench has seen better days.
Spitting a bit of cultist from her mouth, Cueta yells into her comm unit, "Nostro under attack! Migrate tuyo's arses up in this statue's head like a flotsam sand pigeon, yeah?!"
"Ah-ah-ah-ah!" Leila dashes up between the legs of the statue. She felt winded already and breathing wasn't as easy as it should. Plus it was hot hot hot! But she had to help Cueta - and get that darned sniper!
Eventually she shuffled up the millionth step and found herself in a small hall with Cueta, a cultist and lots of scattered bits. Maaaybe there had previously been two or three more of them? Just in that moment Leila discovered a small perk of the numbing poison; her stomach was much calmer then it should be!
So she had enough focus to flash her flights to try and blind the cultist and then zap him. Her. Whatever! Hopefully it wouldn't dodge, because the halfling really didn't feel like hopping around much more herself.
One down, two to go...
Calmly, Prospero-4 takes aim at the remaining mercenary, and squeezes the trigger.
Then, sensing a calm moment in the fight, he changes a new battery to his rifle and prepares to run across the room.
"I hope there is no way out from the head. I hope we have the sniper trapped there," the android says in the private channel. And then, in hindsight, wonders if he should have gone after the sniper sooner.
Round 14
Astrianna runs across the open ground between the ruins and the statue as fast as she can, every moment anticipating a sniper round through her head. When she finally reaches the legs she pauses and glances around to make sure no one wa following her, then slips between the legs of the statue.
Entering the inner statue chambers, she speaks normally. "Elves are such freaks, I swear, putting an entrance in the butt. Kind of funny though. I wonder if it's symbolic..." She prattles, clearly unaffected by the cultist gore covering the room. The half-elf looks to Cueta, her fine features covered in sweat and a mixture of confusion and annoyance on her face. "Also what the hell is a flotsam sand pigeon?! That doesn't make sense."
As Astrianna dashes past the entrance and up the steps she realizes that the entrance is a pretty standard elven design for a small bathhouse.
She enters the gallery above in the torso of the statue just in time to see Prospero-4 and Leila summarily dispatch a screaming Lashunta with two very well placed laser shots to the head. He slumps over onto the bloody ground looking more like he's asleep than he's dead. His former cult-mate on the other hand, Astrianna notes, is very very dead, cut almost in two by Ceuta's blood soaked doshko seems like which she's busy yanking out of a stone bench.
There is a momentary silence.
Astrianna and Leila both experience a little bit of diziness as they enter the room.
Up the stairs Ceuta can see the stairs split off, one set continues to the SW, the other splits off to the NW. If they decide to pursue, they'll have to decide which way to go.
Round 15
"Cueta, you animal. You killed that cultist so hard you even took out the bench behind him?! Nice work!" Astrianna says as she puts a hand to her head, suddenly feeling unwell.
"Ugh, I think I'm getting heat exhauation or something, just got really dizzy.." She says with a shake of her head before pointing past the gore. "No time for feeling bad, let's move!"
Coming out from behind their cover, she stops in front of the stairs. "Which way did the sniper go?"
The halfling wobbled a bit when beset by the sudden dizzyness. But she still felt better then when she was hiding behind that rock (or being dragged trough the air!). So all in all not too bad.
"Hmm..." Leila blinked and looked around in the room before following Astri towards the stairs. "Just be careful; maybe there's some traps? Or just loose steps ..."
Astrianna and Leila move up between the benches of the gallery and peer up the stairs with Ceuta. They spot a smear of blood on the stairs splitting off to the north west.
"Northwest!" is all Cueta says, sprinting into action, taking the steps two at a time. Dropping her doshko, Cueta draws her rifle as she strides, trusting that her starstuff will keep her safe from the inevitable incoming shot. Probably.
As Cueta runs up the stairs and rounds the corner she discovers the north west stairs are much steeper than the ones that continue on. She also hears the loud crack of sniper fire echoing bizarrely in the tight corridor of the staircase. The bullet slams into her hard enough that the acrid smell of projectile fire in a small space doesn't really register.
Prospero-4 leaps from his cover, and sprints to catch up Cueta, only to see her get shot from unseen source. It is not too hard to guess who's shooting, so the android presses on, trying to reach the sniper before the enemy has time to reload.
Cueta sees the one who shot her standing above her on the stairs. It's a Shirren alright. A bright blue one with large yellow eyes sighting down the sniper that she'd just fired. Her antenna twitch above her camo gear at seeing her bullet hit its target. But then start to vibrate when Cueta refuses to go down.
How long can you deny the Devourer? Cueta hears in her mind.
The bullet slams into Cueta's abdomen, richocheting off Cueta's armor and knocking the wind from the soldier. Staggering up the stairs, Cueta raises her rifle and fires wide and high, the laser doing little more than reigning dust down on the sniper.
"Let's see if its longer then tuyo, yeah?!" Cueta yells, willing herself forward again taking the steps two at a time.
I don't deny the Great Maw that snuffs all. I serve it. The Shirren replies with the calmness of a true devotee. Even your light cannot escape the depths of a black hole.
The Shirren thinks at Cueta as she completely ignores the wild laser shot. She methodically ejects the spent bullet from her sniper and slams another bullet in with a click-clack noise that is subsumed by the resounding crack of the weapon firing right afterwards.
The bullet zooms through Cueta's blurred form but still manages to nick the human.
Time to finish this up...
Prospero-4 sees Cueta firing at something, so he climbs the stairs to reach her position. Uncaring for the new battery's capacity, he fires overcharged laser blast to drop off the sniper. All that matters is that the sniper goes down, as soon as possible.
Cueta flinches as the sniper's bullet whizzes by her head, just grazing her neck. The Shirren was a better shot, for sure, almost as good as Prospero. But Cueta would bet she was a better swordsaint. Dropping the gun, Cueta bounds up the stairs, drawing the curveblade. As Prospero's shot whizzes by Cueta, the soldier thrusts the pointy end of the sword at the sniper's neck...
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Leila follows the others and makes an half-hearted attempt to squeeze past them to get a good shot. Not that it turned into a good shot. But at least her annoying light was (briefly) on point!
Round 16
Astrianna walks to the pile up at the stairs, head turning as a bullet hole suddenly appears in the wall behind Cueta. "Yikes." She says with what could only be described as mild concern. "I really want to get a good "shot"for my viewers, but I don't want the Shirren to get one first!"
Stuck watching the fire fight with no real way to help, it appears Astrianna had restored to the most desperate of manuevers; telling puns.
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Prospero-4's massive bolt of laser fire hits the Shirren right in her midsection. She is thrown back bodily and so is only grazed by Cueta's sword attack.
The Shirren retreats up the very steep steps earning another swipe from Ceuta that just misses the fleeing sniper. The group gives chase hot on the heels of the foe that has been causing them trouble for so many days now.
The ancient stones echo with the sound of pursuit and labored breathing. Everyone is hurt and tired and the ascent up the steep steps starts to burn everyone's lungs. There is no chance to even raise a weapon and all of the group's effort is devoted to just keeping up with their enemy.
The staircase ends at a wall that disappears up at a slope that seems almost vertical. The Shirren drops her sniper rifle and clambers up a series of handholds etched into the ancient wall without a backwards glance. The whole group follows in single file with Cueta in the lead. Ceuta's burning light just allows her to see the Shirren above her hauling herself up in the darkness.
Finally after what seems like an eternity of sweat and dim light the ladder-wall opens up onto a small platform bathed in the bright daylight of the jungle. It is on the slightly cupped left hand of the statue raised to the heavens and the view is... dizzying. They are very very high above the jungle floor
Cueta is centimetrons behind the Shirren but is forced to stop as the Shirren vaults over the remains of a worn away guard rail and clambers up, through sheer skill, onto the space between the finger and the thumb.
Great Maw. I have brought so many to you, now I sacrifice myself to your oblivion. is the last mental thought imprint anyone hears from her. Astrianna pops her head up out of the stairs with a wheeze and her tiara-cam has just enough time to focus on the Shirren above before the sniper executes a perfect swan dive off the statue and disappears from view.
The strong winds blowing around the statue means that the group doesn't even hear a thud.
"Ugggh someone please just sho-" Astrianna's huffing complaint is cut off as she catches sight of the shirren perched atop the hand of the statue, jaw dropping in recognition of what's about to occur.
Several seconds of silence pass, and she doesn't even move from her spot from the stairs as she looks from one person to another.
"What the f+@%?" She suddenly says with all the incredulity of a yoski having its dinnner stolen from it. Coming the rest of the way up the stairs she makes for the guard rail, poking her head over the side and looking for a body on the ground below. 'What. The F@##. We go through all that trouble and it commits suicide?
"Peeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwffffffff" Leila deflates and sits down right were she stands. Why didn't the shirren fight to the end, if she was so suicidal? Maybe she figured that all this running would be more painful... She was probably right! Or ...
"Hmhm... I hope she didn't have a jetpack or something? That would be such a letdown." Leila quips. "Or *uh* something really soft to land on."
"Ah-hmm. On the bright side - it feels slightly less hot up here!" Leila comments and, after a while, stands up. She reaches for her comm. "Hey Ralkawi - you still there? Can you see the statue? And hmh is the mule with you?"
Astrianna can't see anything as the Shirren had climbed up above them onto a higher part of the statue and jumped behind it. If they want to search for her they'll have to go all the way out and onto the western part of the statue plaza.
Leila is answered by a long string of expletives in her comms that, when she deciphers them, basically communicates that yes, Ralkawi is still there, no she cannot see the statue, and no she cannot see anything even remotely resembling the mule.
Astrianna shakes her head, noting it would be impossible to see if the Shirren was dead. "I don't believe it until I see that menance is dead." She comments, briefly turning in place to catch a panoramic view of the jungle. "This is beautiful, but this place is litterally making me sick. Let's go."
About that time Ralkawi responds to their comms. "WHAT?! You lost the mule?! Astrianna screeches over their comms, the decible dampening software straining to contain her yelling. "Shelyn's t&+&! Just stay where you are we'll find you!"
Using her anger to supress the awful feeling in her stomach that she had been experiencing she entering the statue, the half-elf starts back down the stairs. "Come on! Let's make sure that sniper is dead, then find our mule." On her way down she picks up the rifle the Shirren dropped, intent on bashing the insectoid's head open with it if they somehow survived the fall.
"Pff that sucks!" Leila comments on the general state of things. Then she swaps to her comms and offers some encouraging words for Rawlkawi while trying to follow Astri out of the building. On the way down she tries to look at as much of the structure as possible. "You're filming all this stuff right? Might be some handy clues in here somewhere!"
When back on solid ground again she does her best to try and pin-point where Rawl's commlink is broadcasting from. And if she can pick up any trace of the mule that would be great! "Hmm-hmm-hmm. It's a pity we couldn't ask any of those cultists how far away the rest were."
"Agreed. Let's try to find the sniper's body. I would like to be very sure we won't meet him again."
Prospero-4 peers down from railing, trying to see any trace about the shirren. But unable to see anything, he turns back and heads outside. But just as he is about the take the first step, he once more becomes aware of Cueta's shimmering form.
"Are you all right? Can you continue? I saw you take some hits from that sniper..."
--
Then, outside, he heads to the position where the sniper fell. He keeps his gun ready, just in case the shirren survived and tries to continue the assault. While conducting the search, he taps gently his helmet to open the comm channel. "Any sign of Ralkawi? Once we get her and the mule back here, I believe the statue would make an excellent camp site."
Leila is able to quite accurately triangulate Ralakwi's postion and the mules. The mule is just beyond the treeline to the South East while Ralkawi somehow ended up quite a distance to the south. It'll take about twenty minutes to gather both of them up.
Cueta's luminescence fades as they group heads back down and, when she enters the gallery she feels a bit light headed, almost as if the area disapproves of her in some way in a way that it didn't before. .
The group circles the statue to find the spot where the sniper leaped off. The smell of Shirren blood makes the corpse not too hard to find despite the sheer size of the statue. it seems like the sniper decided to meet the ground antenna-first and the result is.. messy.. The armor she was wearing is utterly destroyed and among the remains you can pick out a bent longsword, two shock grenades, a broken scattergun, the scattered remains of a personal datapad, and shirren blood soaked field rations. There is also a credstick containing 150 credits.
Astrianna blanches when they find the body of the Shirren sniper, but she stands over it triumphantly. "Ugh, that is nasty. I've never seen or... smelled.. the inside of a shirren before but I don't think I want to kill any if this is the aftermath." She complains, wrinkling her thin and distinctly elven nose at the mess and taking one last act of defiance against their would-be killer..
"Those grenades still look usable, but I am absolutely washing them off first before putting them in my pack. Is all she says abotu the salve, looking for some kind of stick or something to nudge them away from the body. "Well that was fun but many more adventures await, and Ineed to converse drive space! Astri signing off." She says to no one in particular. Most likely her future viewers, but in reality it was a symptom of missing streaming everything and the constant feedback from her fans.