"This is great footage and all but stop f*&!ing around and kill this thing!" Astrianna yells over their comms, as if they weren't trying their best already.
The battery on her laser pistol ticks down another increment as she pulls the trigger in the general vicinity of their house-sized foe.
"We're trying!" Leila loudly reassures Astri and makes some noise with her sonic pistol as well!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Bruised and battered, Cueta raises the doshko and swings it again at the creature. Her arms ache, her armor is shattered, and she can feel her undershirt growing thick with blood. One of them - the balloon or her - wasn't living another minute. Cueta hoped it was the balloon.
The pilot watches numbly as her doshko bounces harmlessly off the ellicoth, and a sense of dread moves up Cueta's spine. It wasn't going to be the ballon.
"Disengage, Cueta, before it kills you!"
Tactically, of course, it was very good that Cueta was able to keep the monster occupied, and give the others the chance to keep shooting. Prospero-4 knows he wouldn't be able to do much in melee with that beast, at least without his power armor. So he just tries to make every shot count.
While Leila keeps on missing the surprisingly agile beast by centimetrons both Astrianna and Prospero are able to land fire damage from their lasers.
The beast staggers as the astounding amount of damage landed on it finally seems to be having a major impact on the Ellicoth. But it has prey right in front of it that seems to be suffering just as much. It stops trying to gore the small human with the wicked blade and instead wraps its tentacles around the her. Cueta feels her already damaged vitality being sucked into the beast and some of the burn marks on it disappear!
"Hey now stop it you dumb blimp!" Leila cries out in frustration and worry as the thing seems to steal life from Cueta. And her attacks kept missing! Oh well she'd have to try something else instead. Some thing more personal! She drew her survival knife and dashed up behind the critter, slicing at anything that looked vulnerable (or anything within her short reach really. Good thing it could be rocket augmented)! "Hey! Look at me! Stop eating Cueta!!"
Wow I heard haflings were brave but this is bordering on idiocy. Astrianna thinks as Leila suddenly rushes the floating monstrousity wiht a piddly little knife. I'm not getting anywhere near that thing! Her thoughts continue as she lifts her pistol to fire another well-placed pew.
Despite her interal feelings on the matter, she shouts Leila on. "Get in there and stab it like it stole your Moon Pie!"
"..."
Prospero-4 notices the small alarm warning about low battery, and fires one more shot before replacing the battery into a fresh one.
"What is a Moon Pie, anyway?"
Bruised and battered, Cueta swings again, hoping against hope that the doshko lands, and smiling - perhaps a short lived smile, but still - as the blunt head of the weapon smashes into the ellicoth.
Nobody is able to get through the thick hide of the ellicoth other than Cueta though Leila comes VERY close.
Cueta's smile is indeed short lived as the tentacles continue to flail at her and drain her of the last of her vitality. Her vision blurs as she feel her life force being sucked away, then she sways, and then slumps over, her doshko slumping away from her unfeeling grasp.
Once again, Cueta was drifting through space, her helmet off. This time however, she drifted towards a sun, its soft yellow light bathing the pilot in its glow. Even in the vacuum, the light was comforting, warm. Cueta smiled as she drifted, her breathing calming, her eyes shut. It felt like a fine spring day on the nine; she could almost feel the cacti blooming, the wind gently blowing across her skin.
"CUETA!!" the halfling cries and stabs the balloon again! Vengeance!!
"We need to kill this thing first, then immediate medical aid to Cueta. Am I analyzing this correctly, and the creature heals itself as it attacked her?"
Naturally, there is no emotion showing on Prospero-4's face. But perhaps Cueta's fall inspired the android for greater deeds, as now he is able to find a vulnerable spot in the Ellicoth's hide.
Damn, we have a really hard time keeping pilots. Astrianna thinks when Cueta gets her life essence sucked out of her like a McClafferty-fruit flavored juice box; with a jumbo straw.
There is a bit of panic and hesitation in the half-elf as she realizes there is one less person between her and the huge beast. On one hand, if she stays they might kill it. On the other, if she doesn't start running now while it's eating her companions, it will definitely catch her.
The awesome blows from Leila and Prospero tip her over the edge, and she grits her teeth before firing off another shot from her pistol. "Yeah it drained her like a McClafferty-fruit flavored juice box! With a jumbo straw!" She was too stressed at the moment to think up another funny one-liner, and made a mental note to edit the mind-script of this fight later so her telepathic viewers didn't have to hear the same joke twice. Oh, and the part about running away. Maybe I shouldn't even offer mind-scripts. Ugh, now I'll have to edit that out too. This is too much work! STOP THINKING YOU IDIOT JUST SHOOT
Seeing Cueta falls seems to trigger a protective instinct in the group, other than Astrianna, and Leila's small knife manages to stab through the Ellicoth's hide while Prospero-4's laser blast sets its hide on fire!
The Ellicoth desperately turns and slaps its mouth-tentacles on Leila. While they bludgeon the halfling pretty badly... they don't seem to have the same effect of healing the Ellicoth that was happening with Cueta!
Cueta lies still next to the Ellicoth where she's fallen.
Prospero-4 feels his weapon vibrating oddly in his grip, and he wonders how much longer the rifle can take constant firing with overcharged power conduit. But it needs only to last until the Ellicoth goes down.
Or will something so big go down at all? Are their weapons anything more than mosquito bites on the gigantic monster. Should they have brought heavy artillery with them..?
"I'm going to try and lure it along! Make sure it can't charge you!" Leila called out between the ouches and the owws. But on the bright side it didn't try to eat Cueta anymore!
"Now come here you evil critter!" Leila waved her bloody knife at the beast and took a step back. Then her rockets engaged and carried her away from the monster. She drew her pistol again and squeezed off a few rounds. "Let's see if you can catch me!"
Prospero's blast causes the Ellicoth to swivel it's giant head towards the andorid, leaving it completely vulnerable to Leila's sonic pistol attack delivering a blast of painful noise right into what must have the beast's ear canal as she rockets away. It throws its head back and its tentacles writhe in agony as it rears up before flopping over and thudding into the ground next to Cueta. It takes a long time for it to die.
"W-what? It died?!" Leila could hardly believe it had gone down
She was almost disappointed. But only almost! She lowered her gun and came rushing back. "Oh-oh! How's Cueta?!"
"Oh thank Calistria. We should be prepared to kill more floating buildings in the future." Astrianna comments as she approaches the thing, pistol still defensively raised.
The readout on Astri's SquadHUD (tm) shows that Cueta's armor had a few sealed breaches and she was severely dehydrated or something, but she definitely wasn't dead. "I think she's okay, though if she were concious I assume she would have said something by now." Moving up to the pilot, the vlogger shuffles through their duffle bag of medical supplies.
"In any case, she's about to be a whooole lot better. I checked the specs on this healing serum and it has TWICE the usual amount of painkillers in it." She says with a grin before priming the MK II serum, flipping open the small circular panel on the arm of Cueta's space that hid the intravenous potion docket, and jacking the serum in.
"Pew!" Leila sits down by Cueta and start going trough her bag for the Eoxian medkit. And then unwrapping it and trowing out all the useless stuff. Like ... These unmarked green vials. And the jar of nails. Eww! Hopefully the oversized syringes worked at least! "All-right! Let's see if this actually helps!"
Astrianna's injection revives Cueta who comes around to the sensation of being prodded by various implements by Leila which causes quite a bit of discomfort whenever she pokes a bruise. This happens pretty darn often.
"Hmhmhm... I don't think this is helping. Cueta? How do you feel?" *POKE!* "Better? No?" Leila was starting to feel that maybe living bodies was a tad bit more complex to fix then old machinery. Hmm. Maybe I should have started practicing on Prospero first..?
"Is she all right?" Prospero-4 asks, finally leaving his cover. The android keeps his rifle ready as he walks, his eyes scanning the area around them. He approaches the fallen Ellicoth, and fires one point-blank shot on the creature's head. To make sure it's really, really dead.
"I think we need to upgrade our weaponry..."
Xerantha Mortrant's hut awaits.
Gasping, Cueta opens her eyes and sits up, just in time to be poked by Leila. "Ow! Oi! I'm alive, so I'm OK, yeah?"
Brushing the mechanic's insistent finger aside. Cueta grabs her staff and wobbling, gets to her feet. "I'm gonna need a minute, chinney."
-------
Feeling much better, Cueta looks towards the hut, and then picking up her curveblade, approaches the door. "I'll go first. We knocking, or knocking the door down?"
"Okay okay! Geeh. We're glad you can stand at least!" Leila stopped poking and instead patted carefully. Hopefully an improvement.
---
"I don't think they could have avoided noticing us even if they wanted..." Leila observed. "So we might just knock; they could have been shooting already!"
"I am glad to see you are still functional." Prospero-4 nods to Cueta, and helps her get up. "Leila, I advice you to take a short moment to recuperate as well. I hope we will not encounter another enemy of this caliber, but it is best to be well prepared."
--
The android follows his team in approach towards Mortrant's hut, his senses on overdrive. Technically, they are just going to ask some questions, but the encounter with the ellicoth left him a bit restless.
"We can try be polite and knock. If that fails, we can start more aggressive methods."
"Oh that's probably a good idea Prospero." Leila nodded and sat down. Truth to be told, she had almost forgotten being smacked around by the wicked blimp. Probably adrenaline...
"Was that better or worse than stumbling out of a freezer seventy years in the future?" Astrianna asks as Cueta shudders awake. The extent of her concern evaporates as thier pilot seems to be fine, and the vlogger takes some time to check her mail and update some of her social media profiles while they rest. Or tries to, anyway. The signal out in these desolate wastes was trash.
"Wow, we fight one evil killer blimp and you already forgot the plan." The half-elf says with abject annoyance, but not enough that she would look away from the email she was furiously typing to one of her sponsors. "We're going to pretend we want to join the corpse fleet to become undead so we can get Xerantha to spill some secrets! Killing his guard balloon or whatever will show him we're up to snuff."
Astrianna finishes off her passive-aggressive email about content rights with a bunch of winky face emojis and then closes her holo-screen. "All right break time's over, let's go!" She announces before marching towards the door of the hut and kicking it a few times.
Astrianna's knocking is met with nothing but silence.
Cueta's hackles rise tough, her sixth sense tells her there is something waiting for them on the other side.
The aural sensors on Leila's suit, overclocked and with custom scripts run in to analyze the output picks up a soft shuffling sound from the inside.
Cueta nods thanks to Prospero. The mechanic was a no-nonsense and quiet type, and Cueta could appreciate his brevity. Astrianna, on the other hand...
Inwardly sighing, Cueta mumbles, "Worse. Except for the dying part. That was actually pretty pleasant."
Then, her sixth sense sends tingles down Cueta's back, and the pilot's scalp buzzes, as if a small wave were riding across her it.
"There's something behind the door. I'm gonna open it in about 6 seconds. Get prepared." And then Cueta lights herself up, and grabs the doorknob...
"Yes, this is someone's house." Astrianna says with all the patience of watching a toddler scrawl all over a wall with permanent marker.
Still, she throws up her hands and steps back so Cueta can open up the door, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her foot impatiently.
Cueta pushes the door open, but before she has a chance to survey the inside she's surprised as a very muscular undead humanoid with a dozen serrated arms jutting out of her back lands right next to her. It is followed by a stream of shouting Eoxian that doesn't sound friendly at all.
The sheer rage pouring out of the woman, who does seem like the marrowblight the group is searching for, is such that Cueta's focus is thrown off a bit.
"Cueta, you are blocking my line of fire. Step back and let it follow you"
"Wow great, you pissed her off!" Astrianna says over their private comms before switching to broadcast out of her suit's external speakers.
"Calm down, we're here to talk!" The vlogger shouts in Eoxian at the madly gibbering marrowblight. "Stop yelling and waving your arms around or we'll pop you like your guard balloon!" Her words are puncuated by drawing her liquid disintegrator pistol and pointing it at the undead, but she doesn't pull the trigger.
The marrowblight snarls something back in Eoxian seemingly very unimpressed by Astrianna's pistol.
Leila reaches for both her thunder pistol and her good old trusty pulse caster. It had a non-lethal setting she wasn't quite sure would work on a marrowblight - but it was worth a shot! Hih!
Maybe it was worth to put something else she had picked up though to test! [broken-Eoxian]"Hey! Knock it off!! We just wanna talk!"[broken-Eoxian]
Xerantha is very much a marrowblight for sure. Leila knows one thing about these kinds of undead.
Don't sully my language with your disgusting airlungs. Xerantha snarls at Leila in Eoxian What did you do to FURWALL!?
Prospero prepares to take the shot, looks like words will do little good against this one.
Cueta doesn't know what the marrowblight is blathering about, nor what her companions are responding. The pilot thinks about putting her curveblade into the thing's face, but then Prospero grabs her attention. Ducking out the doorway, Cueta slides to the side and pulls her sword.
"Thing's got about 2 seconds to get friendly or it gets whacked!"
Astrianna opens her mouth to explain their (untrue) purpose for showing up at Xerantha's house and killing her pet when Prospero suddenly sends a laser bolt driectly at the marrowblight. "Is it so hard to stick to the f$~&ing plan?!" She screeches indignantly, as headlines flash up into her mind's eye- "Famous Starfinder Barges Into Exoian Resident's Home, Kills Their Pet, Then Murders Them." THere was no way she could use this footage... she'll have to delete it immediately and feign some kind of "technically difficulties".
Regardless the half-elf knows where this is going and pulls the trigger on her disintegrater pistol. "Fine just kill it!"
Astrianna's attack *barely* shoots by Xerantha's head while Prospero's laser blast hits her square on.
The marrowblight screams in rage, a truly hideous sound streaming over the group's internal suit speakers, and steps out to swipe at Cueta. Her claw scores a heavy dent on the human's once spiffy new armor.
Leila tries to remember what sort of resistances a Marrowblight might have - if any.
Meanwhile she tries to squeeze in a shot with her thunder-pistol. Partially because it might overwhelm that horrible screeching noise!
"I can try to knock her out with my pulse caster! Maybe she's more willing to talk then!!"
"I assessed the situation, and came to the conclusion the probability of our ruse being successful got extremely low." Prospero-4 explains calmly.
"And considering the met aggression and the reputation of the Marrowblight, I estimated an aggressive approach to be most suitable."
His voice is about as colorful as the voiceover in "Probability Statistics" educational holovid. And with the same calm, he keeps laser-blasting the creature.
"Fine whatever I don't care anymore just shoot it!" It wasn't clear if she was responding to Leila or Prospero- maybe both. In any case, another blast from her disentigrater pistol shows how much she really cares.
"Or stab it!" Cueta shouts, in total agreement. And then, gripping her sword and raising it over her head, the pilot proceeds to do just that. While the first attack scrapes the door frame, Cueta's second swipe seems guided, the blade light, her focus laser-sharp. Her mysterious friend no doubt was looking favorably on the pilot.
Leila knows that marrowblights have standard undead immunities and nothing other than that in terms of resistances.
Everyone in the group lands a damaging hit and the succession of attacks throws Xerantha off enough that one of its attacks miss Cueta but one of the spear like bone spurs jutting off her back stabs out and scores another hit on the displaced out of time fighter.
The intensity of the fight means Xerantha isn't shouting anymore and is grimly just trying to rip the living human in front of her to shreds!
Leila tries to wait and line up a sneaky shot with her pulse caster! Maybe she could knock it out cold if she just got the timing right?