I only gave myself exactly one minute to ruminate on my previously brushed off questions about how this whole MG thing works before I brushed it off again. Regardless of the actual end-game of the government and Semiseelie, there were people relying on me to come and save them- so as far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter at the moment.
A few of the said people’s wallets… falling out of pockets in the meantime didn’t mean I wasn’t there to help.
As I walked over to the staging tent, I called for my drone which had been nervously flitting about since the end of the last battle. When it landed on my open palm, I refilled its energy reserves and stuffed it on top of the backpack. Like last time, I made sure everything was accounted for and secure before notifying the other parties involved in the rescue operations that I was starting the second extraction.
It was fairly easy to get back to where the first bunker was since I had already cleared out and prepped the whole length of it. Sure, there were a few newly spawned demons- mostly where I had been sloppy about controlling my output the first time- but my new flexibility and control over my body made dealing with them a piece of cake.
I wasn’t at the level of grace and precision from when I hadn’t really been in control, but it was still quite exhilarating to be able to duck and dodge like a greased-up contortionist. Okay, maybe not quite to that extent, but since I previously could only barely touch my toes while keeping my legs straight, it sure felt like that. The few times I actually was hit with a glancing blow, all I felt was a slight compression all over my body- even where I didn’t have clothing covering me. I still would have preferred to be a few hundred yards farther away from the danger, but all things considered, the defensive measures did make me feel reasonably safe and helped me feel more like the unstoppable killing machine I should be.
A few minutes later, and about when I was starting on preparing the second section of the route, I got a message from Carlos updating me on the situation at the next shelter. The reductive summary was that it wasn’t good.
Unlike the last one, there were two people who had each independently decided they should be in charge by the simple fact they were armed and no one else was. Due to healthy amounts of optimism, shelters had been designed assuming cooperation and reasonable thought on the part of people experiencing what could be interpreted as the end of the world- so there was only one phone connection and one entrance to the supply room.
I think you can see where the battlelines had been drawn.
Neither idiot was going through with their supposed threats of violence, however, as previously noted the whole demon invasion thing tends to stress people out, so command wasn’t sure it would stay that way. Instead of dealing with it themself, and against my better judgment, and because it technically was my job to help these people, command was asking for my input on how to solve this mess. Thought-typing while I worked, I offered what I thought was a fine idea, “are there any accessible air vents? I can dump a bit of teargas down the pipes to make everyone more complacent.”
Almost immediately, one of the aides working on the problem sent back, “please no. That would probably set them off before they could be incapacitated, and would harm the other people there. Do they know your ETA?”
To be honest, I didn’t really know my own ETA, so I pulled up a map and started doing rough math on my pace. “Twenty minutes, including time for a few interruptions, I think?”
After a quick thanks and some waiting, the aide sent, “new issue: the one in charge of the phone has started making demands… A lot of them are pretty nonsensical too. Diplomatic immunity, 100 USD, 400 ZWL- I think that’s Zimbabwe dollars- a 1998 Ford econoline E150 cargo van, and a parachute.”
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Mind briefly stopping as I tried to make sense of that list, I replied with a summary of my conclusion on that new issue: “what the fuck?”
“My thoughts as well. We’re trying to call in help from a hostage negotiator specialist, but that will take some time.”
Trying to not word it too aggressively, I told them, “we don’t have time to wait for someone to be available, then wait for it all to get sorted out. I can probably deal with it in person, but I would need the anti-magic field removed and a more subtle entry point than the front door.”
I wasn’t able to check on what the aide had sent in response to that due to a rude interruption of a singular demon standing in the road between the building I was in and the one I wanted to get to. So far I had only seen them actively hunting in packs, so this oddity immediately put me on edge. It was also larger than just about every other demon I had encountered being about fifteen feet tall and thirty long.
Since I had not learned any lessons from the many other demon encounters I had had, I forgot to turn down the detail of my perception. If I hadn’t already done so, I would have been inclined to bleach my eyes.
The demon was loosely shaped like a slug, possessing no limbs and being disturbingly fleshy and moist. Its exterior membrane was paper thin, letting my sight peer slightly into it before getting overwhelmed with the natural density of chaotic ULE living things contained. Peppered along its surprisingly numerous spinal columns were little sacks of fluid, holding a severed head of all kinds of animals- including humans- with the tops of the skull removed and tendrils poking into the brains.
As it sat there, another smaller, spidery demon approached holding the body of a pigeon. As soon as it neared the larger one’s mouth-end, a toothy proboscis shot out and enveloped both the bird and its transporter. As the appendage tried to retract, the slug’s many eyestalks bent over, helping shovel the fleshy tube back into its mouth.
It either didn’t have some way to see through walls, or didn’t care about me, so I took my time sculpting an array of rockets similar to the one I had made back at SEYA. The difference with these ones was that their payload was a baseball sized cavity to be filled with ClF3.
Even with my improved coordination, I wasn’t confident in my ability to just throw a ball of the dangerous chemical in such a way as to not hit any part of the hallway I was in and shatter the container in a safe and controlled manner. Adding fins and self-propulsion to the equation largely eliminated both of those concerns and definitely didn’t add more that I decided not to worry about.
Carefully holding the projectile with my hand and the chemicals with my mind, I added the payload. Since I still had my hand after doing so, I aimed at the very large target and inverted my control on the silane, forcing it to quickly combust and funnel the resulting gasses out the back. Not bothering to check if the chlorine trifluoride was effective- let alone if the rocket had hit- I repeated the process four mone times until my ammunition was expended.
When I turned my perception from the little room I was hiding in to survey the results, I quickly noticed four bubbling and expanding holes in the demon and one in the building behind it. While that last one was concerning, the larger issue was that the slug wasn’t dead. Desperately flailing its eyestalks in pain from being almost bisected, sure- but still very much alive.
I would guess it was also trying to flee, but it didn’t have the structural integrity to move anymore.
Calming myself, I relaxed my perception, looking for any signs it was in communication with other demons. From my brief survey, no other sources of ULE had reacted to my attack, giving me the confidence to repeat my barrage- this time with more time taken to aim and more focus expended on encouraging the ClF3 to react even more violently.
When I was finished, five minutes had elapsed from when I had first noticed the demons and I had melted a nice valley through its body and the pavement it had been sitting on. Recognizing that would be an issue, I spent a minute or two dumping plenty of cyanoacrylate into the pit with the hope it would harden to a reasonable degree by the time I came back with the civilians.
It had also given me an idea on how to solve the original issue with this shelter without doing something that had a high chance to kill one of the belligerents. Killing wave after wave of demons was one thing- thinking about doing the same to another human, even one threatening me made me feel sick.