The Vessel towered over Aurelio, its body violently animated with the writhing passenger contained within.
Aurelio looked down at Kalani, her skull miraculously not caved in. He stared at the message prompt in the corner of his eyes in a daze.
|Commander at risk of a Grievous Injury|
He remembered the tables his characters were forced to roll on when they succumbed to a grievous injury. He remembered how easy it was for a character to burn up in smoke when that happened.
“Fucking snap out of it!” Elena blared through the comms.
He didn’t have time to heed her words.
The Vessel roared at Aurelio and swung its forearm in a wide arc at his chest. The impact was devastating, sweeping Aurelio off his feet as his entire body rag-dolled through the muck.
|Chosen suffered three points of damage to CORE|
|Chosen at risk of a Grievous Injury|
|Chosen is KNOCKED DOWN|
Aurelio gasped and struggled to take in a breath before feeling the devastating pain in his rib cage. What worried him was all the minute snapping and crackling happening within that made it just bearable enough for him to breathe.
He attempted to take in anything more than a shallow, hot, gasp and found his visor suddenly caked in upturned bile, his throat scorched and tingling with the acids.
“You okay?” Cantwell called over from his comms.
“Check on Kalani.” Aurelio croaked.
There was a small solace of staring up at the night sky and letting his body find a moment of respite-
“You better get the fuck up, Aurelio, or so help me I’m going to cleave your fucking body in two!” Elena violently stated.
The fires in his body responded to the ultimatum and gave him the moment of clarity and determination necessary to pick himself off the ground and face his problems head on.
|Exonaut used REIGNITE on Chosen|
|Chosen is no longer KNOCKED DOWN|
As quickly as the embers in his heart roared to life, they ebbed down to a diligent simmer. This was the power of ignition first hand.
Aurelio would have been elated to experience all of it if he wasn’t worried about making sure the crew and he survived long enough to experience the next solar cycle.
“Cantwell. Get to Kalani as quickly as you can. Make sure she hears your voice through your speaker. Tell her to get up from deep inside of you.” Aurelio directed Cantwell.
The man pulled away from the spent resource and marched towards their downed commander. Aurelio already bit his lip at their circumstance, the map indicating that Cantwell was about six tiles away from the commander, assuming his movement was standard.
His voice might carry through the speaker to Kalani but its effect was certainly not going to be felt. A consequence of losing armor before entering this phase of the game meant a scavenger's fighting potential would be hindered in multiple ways.
The opening moments of their fight functioned too much like the board game to believe anything else at the moment.
“What now, rookie?” Elena asked.
“Cantwell’s gonna try to do what you did to me but I don’t think it’s gonna work. He won’t be in range. You’re going to keep hacking away at that thing. I’m going to look around for something. Stay in its blindspot if possible.”
She buzzed obscenities in his ear but Aurelio ignored her protests. There was a single minded fixation that he had in wanting to fix things that he couldn’t stop himself from at least trying.
She was the only member of the crew with a strong enough weapon to consistently hit and wound the monster anyway. She wouldn’t feel his absence on the battlefield.
And if things got particularly bad, they had the secondary function of the [Metal Spike] to pull them out of a bad situation.
---
Aurelio ran off as she shouted out her protests. Elena was going to beat him within an inch of his life if they survived this untenable ordeal. If he was planning to join the crew, that level of insubordination would not be tolerated.
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She was behind the massive writhing construct as it calculated its next moments of action. It was destructive, quick on reflexes, and a bitch to put down. And they were at the bottom of the food chain if the strangers' words were to be believed.
It grated on her nerves that her crew members were under-equipped. And that grating, like sandpaper on the brain, just welled her up with fury.
“Protect the commander!” She cried out. Cantwell would listen. That slimy bastard was on the periphery somewhere but she trusted that his self-interest in living would supersede fucking the rest of the crew over.
He better be inclined that way if he didn’t want Elena to crawl out from death and hunt him down.
Elena held the hilt of her sword tight and swung it over her head. The arc aimed to cleave through the monster's own head.
Her attack just barely caught the creature's helmet but that was enough.
The thick slab of metal in her hands tore its head asunder. Viscous blue ooze exploded from the impact.
“Take that!” She cried out. Elena ran out from the back of the creature towards its front to face it, putting her body between herself and Kalani. Her commander was barely holding on but that overhead swing had her worried that the damage would be lasting.
Did they even have a med-bay back in the outpost?
Elena shook her head. She could focus on that later. Her commander was starting to lift herself off the ground and that was all that mattered. She was still breathing and they’d get through it.
The monster retaliated with an escalation of its own. The sludge leaking across its body began slithering across the armor like worms. Slime coagulated around the tip of its arm into a glistening needle point. A small nozzle on its forearm created a spark that caught its fabricated weapon on fire.
It barreled past the others.
The Vessel jabbed its flaming blade towards her center. Elena was unsuccessful in pulling away from the blow.
The armor on her core broke off but she could feel the sweltering heat behind the impact, hairs singed on the exposed side of her body.
The gauge on her arm produced a whining tick, counting up from one to four, the needle hovering just below the danger zone.
“What, where’s Aurelio?” Kalani called out during the ebb of the melee.
“He’s looking for something.” Cantwell answered. He approached the commander and placed his hands around her head. Elena watched in momentary wonder as the orange-brown dust cloud they saw in the junkyard reappeared around his fingertips. “Hold still.”
Kalani didn’t pull away. The buzzing cloud began knitting a helmet around her head from the base of the corroded neckline to the crown of her head. The visor around Kalani’s eyes light up as if reconnected to her suits main power and the soft chime of her re-connection to the crews comms confirmed as much.
“Cantwell, what did you do?” Kalani asked incredulously.
“Aurelio chimed in on a private line. Told me to reach into my gut and cast this on you.” Cantwell answered.
Kalani and Elena shared a look with one another. The same look they’d shared when Aurelio was ‘inducted’ into their crew. We pull him out of a pod and all of a sudden, he has all the knowledge they need to survive? His information was too convenient to wave off as just a boon that a hunk of rock gave him.
Kalani was looking to handle it her way and Elena had failed to budge her out of thinking otherwise.
She would follow orders but she was open with her distaste of them.
“Aurelio, what are you doing?” Kalani asked through their main line.
“Finding something. Found something. Just… give me a sec.” Aurelio answered before disconnecting from their comms altogether. His voice bordered on manic, his silhouette a distant but distinguishable frame at the edge of the battlefield.
He was hunched over something. Over what, Elena couldn’t tell.
She could feel the impatience emanating off of Kalani, “I’m gonna have a talk with that man when we make it through this.” Her commander turned her attention to Elena, “It’s looking worse for wear. That blade doing its work?”
Elena nodded, “It’s cleaving through the monster very well.” Another mark on the strangers character to have known this weapon above the others would be beneficial to their group.
“Then let’s press the attack.” Kalani shouted. She brandished the metallic spike in one hand and ran behind the monster.
Her commander stabbed at the creature's kneecap, letting out a guttural cry as the spike slid through the plates from behind and shattered the front of the knee.
The creature buckled and groaned like an old freighter but it did not kneel.
Before she could come in for a second blow at its other leg, the creature started to convulse. The animated tendrils sloughing out of its body began lashing at the air.
“Run!” Elena cried out. She willed her body to respond and move with feverish determination. That feeling within her chest responded as she felt a burst of energy pool up at her feet.
Ozone and burnt skin filled her nostrils as the ground beneath her fractured into fragments. She leapt and her feet carried her an incredible distance, the ignition gauge on her arm ticking past the danger zone and towards critical condition.
Four away from a potential meltdown.
Elena had done her own acrobatics but Cantwell was unlucky.
The Vessel detonated into a needled deathtrap. His armored leg got caught in the attack, a minor blessing if there was one.
As its barbs retreated back into its shell, Elena pushed herself to run up to the monster again with a sideways slice. Her entire body was immolating, her lungs feeling full of sand and smoke.
“Grah!” She yelled.
The attack whistled through the wind, the monster contorting its body to avoid the blow.
The Vessel readjusted its twisted frame back to its gaunt humanoid form and stared at the crew with its exposed head. The tendrils through those cracks floated in the air like seaweed.
A high pitched buzz pierced their ears.
“nO EscaaPEeeE…” The Vessel hissed.
Elena snarled, “Like hell we won’t!”
Before she charged forward, the lower buzz of someone reconnecting to their network gave her pause.
“Stand back.” Aurelio chimed in.
She turned to see the lines in his arms were cooling down from a hot blue hue. In his hands was a rifle with a molten red barrel.
The shot streaked through the air with a visible orange trail. It penetrated through the dense armored folds at the top of its chest with remarkable ease, leaving in its wake a thick glowing hole seeping out hot slag and bubbling sludge from the wound