"Ungh," Cueta grunts as she leaps up, throwing her hands over her head into the "jumping" portion of the jack, beads of sweat rolling down her temple - jumping in armor was no simple task!
"How do we hurt it, chinney?" she yells, midair, even as her starstuff launches itself towards the mold.
"Eww! It's alive and trying to eat Astri! *cough* Oh she's distracting it with her lunch - clever.. Hmm. I don't think that'll actually work! Better try ->insert reply to question here<-!!" Leila yelps and raises her gun. Carefully eyeing the rest of the walls she withdraw a bit and fires her thunder-pistol into the mass of static.
Leila surmises that the swarm seems like it would be vulnerable to fire. Also she would know the pistol attack won't do any damage as she knows about swarm defense being like the following.
A swarm is immune to attacks and effects that targets a single creature (including single-target spells), with the exception of mind-affecting effects if the swarm has an Intelligence score and an ability similar to the formian’s hive mind.
A swarm takes half again as much damage (+50%) from effects that affect all targets in an area, such as grenades, blast and explode weapons, and many evocation spells.
A swarm takes normal damage from an attack or effect that affects multiple targets (including lines and fully automatic mode attacks). For the purpose of automatic fire, the swarm counts as five targets. For example, if an automatic attack is made using 12 rounds of ammunition, it can attack a maximum of six targets, so it can damage a swarm normally. However, if two other targets are closer to the attacker than the swarm, they must be attacked first, leaving only four attacks to target the swarm, so it takes no damage.
Cueta and Leila's attacks disappear into the swirling storm of mold that is attacking the group seemingly without any effect. Vek's firey weapon does seem to do a little bit of damage with strands of white filaments turning black and falling away but it seems minimal at best
The swarm does seem to quite enjoy chowing down on Vek though. Deprived of its half-elven meal the swarm snakes into the room and moves towards Cueta. It's now stretched into the server room enveloping her while keeping its position on Vek.
Vek again withstands the incredibly foul smell from before but Cueta is unable to. The stink coming from the strands crawling all over her causes her stomach to turn
Astrianna, her fancy armor now stained with the chunky remains of her last rations, doesn't feel great, but is able to do things again at the very least.
Prospero continues to download data oblivious.
"Try spreading out so it can't reach you all," Vek's voice beeps through the team's intercoms, echoing somewhat off the interior of his suit helmet. "Or did anyone pack some grenades? I can move if need be." A click and faint hum suggests the activation of a force field.
Leila gnashes her teeth (sorry mom!) and wishes she really had paid more attention in grenade class. But at least she knew someone who did! Dashing over to Prospero she opened the emergency chat channel - the one that weren't *just* used to pester people into changing the current song. |Hey Prospero! Tag in - there's this moldy mess that needs to be burned and/or exploded!|
Round 2
Astrianna really wishes she could wipe her mouth off right now, but there's no way in the nine hells she's taking her helmet off. "Of course I have grenades!" She snaps over their comms at the quesiton. "But you're in the damn way!"
Her last statement is puncuated by a loud WOOSH as she pulls the trigger on her flame pistol. Sticky burning petrol covers the fungus swarm, vek, the walls, and everything else within range as she tries to empty out the tank onto the swarm.
The smell is cloying, and all up in her nose, like the crotch of a 9er water farmer after a summer's day in the filament fields. Wretching, Cueta moves as far from the swarm as she's able, eyes watering, one thought running through her mind.
Oh gods all the gods THE SMELL!
Vek dives out of the way of Astrianna's gout of flame. The first attack that seems to cause significant harm to the terrifying entity intent on consuming them. It does seem to cause significant damage though, the area of effect nature of the attack combined with the fire causing seemingly thousands of tiny tendrils to writhe as they blacken into ash.
Cueta stumbles to the far corner of the room.
Prospero emerges bewildered from his communion with the ancient machine and tosses a grenade at the swarm. It bounces around the room and explodes in a fiery flash. The Swarm seems to be able to avoid the worst of it but still a lot of tendriles burn and litter the floor of the server room.
Leila takes over in downloading the contents of the server It'll take an extra 3 seconds to get everything done! Oh no!
The swarm still seems far from death despite the flame attacks, deprived of food, it moves inside the server room. To cover Cueta and Prospero. The invading bite of the swarm hurt but they are able to fend off the effects of the horrific smell.
"Cueta, Prospero, you might want to move." Perhaps it's just the suit's microphone, but Vek's voice sounds incredibly calm given the danger of the current situation. His fists shining like a star, the vesk walks around the server and pounds his hands together. Taking a deep breath, he clashes his fists together. A spark between the two rapidly expands, exploding outward in an eruption of flame and heat that washes over the mold.
Round 3
"Ha! Take that you shitty fast food monstrosity!" She taunts the mold as the flames wash over it, changing the smell making it through her filters from "centuries old stank" to a more tolerable "burned pile of manure".
Not willing to let the hungry swarm get away from her rightous flamethrower, Astrianna moves around the corner and pulls the trigger again. The burning jet of sticky petroleum distillates peters out at the end, and a clear warning pops up on her HUD; her gun was out of fuel!
"Godsfookindammnit!" Cueta yells, unholstering her laser and firing it into the densest mass of the swarm. Then she's off running again, trying to get away from the biting and the smell, all the while evading the Vesk, who looks like he's about to do something loud and explosive, despite Vek's calm demeanor.
Leila joinks Prosperos work and hopes he will take a try blasting the swarm!
Cuta retreats to the door passing by the Vesk calmly heading the other way, firing as she goes though her laser pistol seems to do little to the writhing biting collection of collectively sentient mold.
Astrianna gun is not only out of fuel, but her line of flame hits the north server bank rather than the swarm.
Prospero still confused from the sudden return to realspace moves out of the swarm and tosses the only other grande he has, a shock grenade. While the grenade is incredibly well aimed it does not seem to be as incredibly effective as the fire grenade was.
Leila continues to download.
Vek's suddenly explodes in a stunning radiance of solar flame, which catches the swarm square on. While it's able to avoid the worst of it by scattering and reforming around the energy explosion the stink of thousands of burning threads of fungus puts an even heaver strain on the environmental filters of everyone's armor. The north server is now starting to smoke and sizzle as it's hit on two sides by fire and explosion!
The swarm seems intent on fighting to the death however, which makes sense as Securitech has been its home for only the gods know how long. It extends to move onto Prospero while continuing to attempt to get through Vek's tough skin. While both the androind and the vesk are able to withstand the stink of the creature Prospero is starting to look very hurt!
The blaring alarms from his suit sensors finally awake Prospero-4 from his torpor. He is reluctant to leave the computer behind, being so close to finishing the code loop - but he quickly realizes he is in mortal danger if he stays.
Quickly, he strides out of the swarm, drawing his snub scattergun as he goes. Once he has some distance, he turns and fires a spray of pellets.
"That's all I can do for a while." Vek's voice is tired, as if the vesk were as drained as the light from his solar fists. Moving out of the swarm, he looks to find a place far enough from his companions to not draw the swarm to both of them.
All her magic and weapons proving useless against the swarm, Cueta withdraws further out of the room. "Withdraw?" she half-asks, half-yells.
Round 4
"Are you seriously suggesting we ran away from a bunch of refrigerator mold?!" Astrianna chastises CUetas as she ejects the petroleum tank from her flame pistol and snaps in a fresh, high-capacity cylinder. "After we killed that huge balloon thing on Eox? After all this, MOLD has you scared?"
She puncuates this by firing another stream of flaming fuel into the mass of fungus, bathing as many filaments as she can in cleansing fire.
Leila wrangles the download content with knowing that Prospero was currently spreading lead at enough volume to impact that moldy mold.
"Juuust a little longer!"
Prospero and Astrianna land very damaging hits and more and more of the server room is littered with bits of mold in various stages of burning and writhing. The swarm seems to have lost a lot of mass but still it comes, following Vek onto Leila as the halfling feversihly continues to copy as much of the ancient computer's contents as she can.
Vek continues to hold off the urge to throw up. Leila on the other hand has smelled far worse in the Spike then the swarm of fungus can throw at her. It does pinch in uncomfortable places as it tries its best to get through her armor though.
Vek feels the swarm might be weaking though as the tendrils seem to be less effective in their assault.
"Captain, I'm afraid that we need to bring the swarm away from Leila," Vek's voice echoes through the intercom. "And to do that, we will need a bigger target than one person. Can I count on your assistance?" The vesk exits the swarm once more, teasing it back away from Leila.
Round 5
"By Calistria I'm going to throw up on you if this doesn't work." She threatens Vek, moving around some equipment to join him on the other side of the room.
"Prospero, if we're going to get this data I need you to end this fungus! Keep it together!" Astrianna shouts over their intercom while frantically turning on every air filtration option of her suit's environmental protection suite.
"Affirmative, captain."
While the others move to divert the mold away from Leila, Prospero-4 keeps his position and keeps shooting.
As the room is being sprayed with pellets, he Prospero-4 thinks whether he is the first android in the galaxy to do mold removal with a shotgun.
"Hmhmhm ... Something smells like old cheese ..." Leila mumbles before being pummeled by the mold. OW! "Angry angry old cheese!!"
Cueta is well out the door before she realizes that no one is following her. Godsfookingdamnit...
Sighing, the pilot turns and heads back to the mold room.
Leila's download completes with a very audible beep!
Prospero's scatter gun serves to blast away another large chunk from the now very patchy looking lump of mold. It's still coming on though and follows it's large source of food to keep covering Vek and the suddenly heroic Astrianna.
She throws up again.
Vek does not.
The building is starting to shake and shiver. Bits of ancient masonry are starting to fall out of the low ceilings onto the group.
”While I appreciate the sentiment, Captain, I would not advise opening your suit’s environmental protections at this time merely for the satisfaction of throwing up on me.” Vek’s voice is incredibly calm again as his fists glow like twin stars. Moving to keep Astrianna and the northern server out of the blast zone, the vesk again pounds his fists together to create an explosion of light and heat that washes over the mold.
Round 7
Astrianna makes a series of faces at Vek that range from rage to complete disgust as the smel once again overwhelms her environmental suit. She feels it coming up from her gut (hwatever was left of her lunch), and for a millisecond truly considers opening up her helmet so she could barf on Vek out of spite. It was a tempting thought, but reason got the better of the vindictive half-elf as the swarm descends on them and buffers her skin.
"LEILA!" Astrianna croaks over their com channel as more blue liquid ejects from her suit, indictating she had indeed threw up again. "What the F@~@ is our status?" Continues her uneven speech as she stumbles out of the swarm, nearly falling over as the build begins to shake and rumble. She waasn't playing bait again, and moved as far away from the swram as possible.
The last blast of solar energy from Vek is all the swarm can stand. The last vestiges of the wispy strings of mold still hanging together seem to rear up even as they are burned away into acrid smelling ash.
The rumbling and shaking coming from the building gets worse, larger chunks of masonry are now starting to fall and the walls seem to be crumbling inwards. It doesn't seem like the building is going to last.
”Well, we were wondering... how this island... was in such... good shape,” Vek comments between gasps. ”Apparently... we should be building things... with mold. Now, who doesn’t have a jetpack? Sound off.” Echoes of the vesk’s military training can be heard in the sudden briskness of his tone.
"Huh you are right Vek. Who knew mold could be load bearing..?" The halfling looks up at the roof in wonder until the memory of Astri's voice snaps her out. "Oh yeah we got this server. Don't think we want to stick around for the rest right? Right. Let's gooo!"
Taking her own advice she hurries out in the corridor clutching the downloaded data to her chest. "Jet pack ready!"
As Leila scampers into the corridor. She glances to her left, South. To her dismay the corridor heading in that direction seems blockaded by a collapsed ceiling. THe door heading east has somehow slipped closed and seems to be jammed shut. It will take some strength to force it open.
"Letsgoletsgoletsgo, yeah?" Cueta yells, following behind Leila. The pilot doesn't even think twice - as soon as Leila tugs on the door, Cueta lowers her shoulder and sprints into the door, trying her best to will herself through it...
Rubbing her smooshed shoulder, Cueta looks at the still stuck door and gives it a swift kick.
Being the last one to come out of the server room. Vek has the misfortune of stepping into a sudden sinkhole that appears right at the portal between rooms. He is unable to leap to safety and falls right down!
His natural defenses and flickering forcefield means he only takes 1 point of damage but he's now at the bottom of a 30 foot hole!
Astrianna breathes a sigh of relief as the swarm of fungus starts to fade away, but she had little time to add a note on her comm to put in some kind of victory music here when the video went to edit.
"Uhh why is the entire building shaking?" She asks over their channel as the others start to run out, the half-elf following quickly behind.
She emerges from the room to see Cueta seemingly break some toes against a nearby door. "Move it, I'm not dying in this tupperware nightmare!" Is her battlecry as she desperately smashes her shoulder against the stuck portal.
Astrianna's desperation leads to the door actually buckling a bit. It still remains stubbornely closed. Though it looks like one more good hit will cause it to give way.
"We need to exit the building. With haste."
And realising the others had started to run already while he was analysing the structural collapse, Prospero-4 starts running after them. After only a few steps, he sees Vek falling down a sudden sinkhole just in front of the android. With the momentum he had already built, Prospero-4 leaps over the sinkhole.
Seeing the Vesk all relatively unharmed in the bottom of the pit, the android checks the situation via comms while running towards the exit.
"Are you all right, Vek? I remember seeing jetpack installed in your armor. Is that undamaged as well? Can you get out, or do you need help?"
Prospero avoids any sinkhole related catastrophes and ends up in a very crowded half corridor as the building continues to rumble and shake. Bits of ancient white plastic and plaster starts to settle like dandruff on the group as half of the tendrils of the mold writhe in what looks like pain while the other half hang limp.
Vek instinctively pulls, his velocity slowing dramatically as the floor gives way beneath him. After a moment to steady himself, the vesk takes a deep breath and walks up the side of the pit.
"Anyone else injured?" he asks as he reaches the top of the pit. Seeing the doorway collapsing, his emotions flare - as does his companion spark. "MOVE!" he barks through his comm unit, rushing forward in a blaze of fire and heat before slamming into the door.