And so Raethor held up his hand again and made a fist to signal their transition to a full clearing pattern. Step one was to mirror the forward formation and so Jessica’s short body adorned in its prim uniform and small arsenal consisting of only two autorepeaters and a handful of flesh grenades stepped forward. As a mid-range combatant she was ideal to hold the first position close to but somewhat offset forward from Dio. Henry then stepped up from behind Peter, adorned in a large arsenal of four autorepeaters, a hand cannon, and a shoulder-mounted rifle usable only by highly-trained combatants. It was somewhat jarring to watch his relatively thin frame wield so many heavy munitions, but the thin sinews of secondary augmentation were just visible on his sides— that is to say an external wiring of nerves and connective tissue connected to a bank on his back-left hip carrying a dense matrix of nutrients that would be continuously wired to his muscles during combat to improve their performance.
Luther did not wear secondary augmentation, nor an exoskeleton, nor a fleshsuit, nor any manner of special ordinance. In his arms were two autorepeaters wielded in akimbo style. Not because this was better for long-range targeting, but because he had long-since given up on trying to operate at that distance. His aim was good, but Lululu’s was better and he didn’t need to supplement her targeting at the rear. Meanwhile, Peter had that distance covered from the front. Luther’s above-average aim was therefore best used at mid-distance to track fast-moving targets. But because it was more than sufficient for this task he added a second weapon to his off hand to gain an advantage most did not possess— burst fire.
He moved forward to take the position behind Dio that Jessica had vacated in moving forward, his aim trained backwards, as did Jesús on the right behind Peter where Henry had moved away. Jesús, however, unlike Luther, was not shy about supplementing his flesh with arms. On his shoulders were a flesh-grenade launcher (consisting of an arm severed at the elbow and innervated with a connection to his high-yield nutrient storage) and mutation retrieval mechanism (another arm, this one tasked with cycling each of his six autorepeaters as they fired and cooled down after every shot, which Anya was also equipped with). To his left hip was a gatling gun, and to the right a gas launcher. Either weapon could easily take down fifty targets in a shot or firing cycle, but unfortunately were so taxing on the user and their nutrients that it was unreasonable to use them in all but the most extreme scenarios. While his back was covered in heavy ordinance and a bristle of rifles, every open space was taken by the pale yellow nutrient vat, which was capable of adjusting itself to fill in space where available, though most of it had wound its way around his legs as that was the only real place where space was available. This had the advantage of bringing nutrient storage just overtop where it was most necessary, allowing for quick and extreme bursts of speed by reducing nutrient transport time and relying on the vat’s surface area instead of the nerve and connective tissues’. Unfortunately it also meant they would run out relatively quickly and made his legs a highly-effective target.
He was slow to take position, even with the thick exoskeleton— quite literally a set of hollow bones with high-yield tissues inside— he wore to maneuver them only just unobscured by his ridiculously-sized all-consuming nutrient tank. Once finished, Raethor took several large steps forward and placed himself dead in the center of the position, carrying nothing but a backful of autorepeaters, needing nothing more to augment them than his own blood and flesh. His ample nutrients were more than enough to not necessitate carrying any more. The same was true for Yuna, whose close-range combat style did not require propellant to get a projectile up to long-range speeds.
Chris moved next, almost invisible and without any sound. He carried one rifle with its sight sawed off. There was never any need for him to take a second shot, so he didn’t bother cycling them. He did, however, wear a suit of mutilated skin stitched together with nerves of power that provided an active camouflage to his movement. When Chris moved, death would silently follow as a grim shadow hanging just above the enemy. Ever out of sight but with a chill to follow his every step, the enemy shivering in his presence just before the end.
He took position far to the front-right, with Will following not far behind to the front-left. This was the most vulnerable part of the movement cycle, but because of their highly-trained nature Anya and Lululu took a handful of steps backward to constrict the squad’s footprint while fully prepared to stop and fire on targets coming from behind if necessary. Their focus did not waver during movement as an ordinary unit’s might. This was one of the many benefits to their focused lifestyle of training and bodily augmentation. It also helped that they were by far the best shots among the company, Peter aside.
Will, unlike Chris, was not a particularly deadly shot. He wasn’t particularly good at anything in a combat sense. But because of his servile nature toward command and a total willingness to follow orders, he was one of the few front-line capable soldiers well-suited toward a support role. He therefore wielded only a single auto-repeater, like Chris, but his every surface was covered by various rounds of smoke and shrapnel grenades; darkness repellants and comms equipment. He was in this forward-position because while he was weak as a direct fighter, he would be able to enhance a tactical retreat or augment others’ shots from there much more effectively than another combat-centric soldier might.
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As they slotted into position, Anya and Lululu flipped forward and began sprinting toward the new front-line another five meters past the positions Chris and Will had fortified. Blood beat through Anya’s ears in a dull rushing sound. Her feet moved forward as her gun aimed down the endlessly branching hallways. Her heart beat. Left foot, right, left. And the next, and the next. Beat. And the next. Beat. And the next. Beat. Until she arrived at the wall, soaked in sweat and ready to collapse. Perhaps it wasn’t worth concentrating so intently on anything and nothing at all. Better to shut off the brain and allow instinct to take over. But if only it were so simple.
Her legs began to waver, having only just avoided total collapse in the movement by sheer willpower and indomitable spirit, but she screamed at them (internally) that they could not bend. It was not acceptable for her body to waver. No matter the cost, no matter the pain, she must endure.
Raethor had evidently noticed, and suggested she take another pill. Anya’s resolve wavered, but she knew the enemy would not wait for her to recover. Perhaps it was foolish. Perhaps it was shortsighted. Perhaps she should have relied on the others to protect her instead of constantly taking the vanguard even in this state, but her hand slipped once more into the now oh-so-violable chamber inside her Prussian-blue coat to retrieve the warm cylindrical container and its cold pills that would grant her the strength to endure and to protect everything together here and now. Unlike the last time, she was able to stick a single finger into the container and retrieve a single pill. And when it touched her lips the pill was not sour. Not any longer. It tasted rich, almost like beef wellington. As though her body knew this was the solution to her problems and had adjusted its sense of taste to fall in line with this knowledge.
And so they continued down the hall for a minute or two, the back line swapping places with the front and on and on until they came to a hall in the same relative positions they had been after the first position change. Anya was in the front-right, with Lululu on the left. Will and Jesús joined Anya in the front and behind respectively, and the same was true for Chris and Luther. Behind them was Raethor, with Yuna positioned to the front-left behind Anya to bolster her side’s relatively weaker close-quarters capabilities.
From there, Peter (positioned in the rear-right behind Anya) hefted his two rifles and flamer. He was traditionally a mid to long-range marksman, and while equally terrifying with and without a scope his scientific eccentricities led him to pursue martial perfection in ways others deemed unsuitable. As one example, he carried a long tube attached to a medium-small vat of nutrients not connected to external augmentation whose only purpose was to hold a small pilot light at the ready. This only sipped the supply, but kept the weapon at the ready by his hip at all times, so when he cycled autorepeaters his offhand would hover over the flamer in preparation for the worst. Evidently this habit had been formed after he watched a squad member die in close range after being unable to make a shot at that distance. He had first wanted to practice in close-quarters until he could shoot off a pimple at two inches distance, but had been talked out of it by his superior at the time because of just how much effort this would require compared to the benefit.
“You should rely on your squad to protect you at close range.” He had said, but all Peter heard was that the dead man simply wasn’t good enough. And so Peter supplemented his own weakness with a weapon that would keep his squad distant. If anyone paid the cost for his own failures again, it would be him.
But so long as Peter’s hand stood at the ready to light that pilot flickering in his pale greenish-yellow nutrient tube, his enemies would know a suffering only possible thanks to his intimate knowledge of the boiling point of flesh. He would do a rough calculation on the spot and stop firing just before the point of death, but only after the enemy was thoroughly incapacitated. This was a fine line to walk paved with many charred corpses, but as they say, you can’t make a good omelet without first burning a few eggs.
Following Peter was Dio, Alissa, Alex, Henry, Jessica, and Yuna. Dio and Yuna wore augmentation gear, while Alissa sported some next-generation arms only granted to a select few that had allegedly been created out of recent developments in new flesh forging technology. Alex and Jessica had no special gear of Anya’s note, but Jessica wore a patented scowl as though she resented being made to come out here and ruin her chance to train (in bed, by herself; or with Dio and Will doing Emperor-knows-what behind closed doors, probably nothing good… like training improperly and building incorrect muscle memory).
It was especially hard to tell what these folks had equipped on account of their being positioned behind or two rows in front of Anya. For Peter, she knew by heart, but for the others… well, she didn’t care. It was important that you don’t step in front of the flamer, but beyond that their equipment wasn’t relevant to her tactics, and Anya wasn’t currently handling any strategy, nor could she. The pain in her brain and organs had subsided even before taking the fifth pill, but even if it had not returned after she was in no position to think. She suspected the lack of pain was because of the minimal change in dosage from four to five as against one to four, but with or without this knowledge it was clear she needed to avoid taking any more or exacerbating her current state. The normal limit was one. The normal exception was two. Anya was at five….
But as Yuna and Jessica slotted into place at the prior-hall-facing edge of the T-shaped intersection, Anya heard more screams through the door at its end, this time muffled and barely audible.