Nyx switched channels on her comms.

“Oh, you got to be f*cking kidding me. Rookie! Check the hunter boards when we get back! Caz needs us for a bounty op. Personal reques – O shit!” Nyx ducked out of the way as a blade-like forearm swept above her head. Dust kicked up and clouded her mask. Taking advantage of the opening, she planted the sharp ends of a disc-shaped metallic object onto the underside of the behemoth’s jaw. She primed it and avoided another vertical slash from the monster’s other forearm.

The bomb exploded, scattering shards of shrapnel in all directions. The monster’s jaw remained intact, although a shimmer could be seen on its underside. The Johrei shields protected it from the blast. Nyx cursed again.

The 20-foot hexapod towered above Nyx and her crew, roaring a bestial roar that cracked through the air like thunder. Nyx began to hear dozens of whispers clawing through her mind.

The Madness…

As a Supplementor, who grafted only the core of these monsters into her body, the voices of Madness only buzzed lightly in her ear. Augmentors like Caz, however, have it much worse…

Nyx gathered a small set of metallic orbs in her hands, each glowing under the sun in a patterned design, and tossed them at the leviathan. It raised its arms to block. Scattered explosions followed, but its shields remained intact.

“Tch. What are you doing rookie? The flank. I need its limbs chopped off yesterday!” Nyx shouted. The beast recovered from the blast and extended its arms, ready to strike again.

The Rookie, Aio, began running along the back length of the Enthipid’s elongated torso. Segments of armored carapace contracted and expanded as the hexapod glided in rhythm to the intense battle up ahead. Nyx fended off blow after blow, redirecting the Elite Enthipid’s scythe-like arms with her Johrei blade. Her style of fighting reminded Aio of a dance.

“The joints? Hello? Can you focus Rookie?” Nyx added with contempt, parrying one blow, and sidestepping another. She signaled towards two figures hovering along the sand in the distance and motioned them to circle their Suncycles around the opposite end of the Enthipid. “Abe, Calli, back him up. And take care of its right flank!” Another swipe. Another parry from Nyx. Sparks flew from Nyx’s blade, causing reflective vapor to rise.

“On it!” Aio shouted back through the battle.

“Roger!” the other two shouted. Their two-wheeled bikes swiveled around to surround the beast. Dust kicked up from the recoil as the vehicles as the vehicles accelerated, gliding across the sand outside of the creature’s range of attack.

The Rookie snapped out of his stupor and began looking for the weak spots in the beast’s joints. This Enthipid had one set of of shortened armored forearms, and 2 sets of elongated armored hind legs. It was large enough to cast a shadow over him and the sweltering heat of the wasteland felt cooler in that instant. However, his cutlass’ grip loosened, whether from nervousness or perspiration. This was the first time he’s seen an Elite up close, but he remembered the training. Target the center of the Elite’s joints. That’s where the armor is thinnest.

Abe and Calliope began whirling their Suncycles around the beast, kicking up dust to obscure its vision. The Elite spun around towards them, and Abe ducked a stray leg swipe by inches. The same leg almost redirected and hit Aio, who jumped out of the way at the last moment. The impact probably wouldn’t have been fatal with his Bastion armor on, but the knock-back would have sent him tumbling. As he steadied himself below the gap in the leviathan’s joints, the creature roared again. Its strike managed to connect with Nyx ahead of him, shattering the Johrei sword she held. Her mask cracked from its blow, shimmering with light, and blood seeped from its gaps. However, before its forearm was able to swing down again, another explosion knocked back its arm, sending the creature reeling back. Nyx, angry, set off another set of scattered explosives, kicking up dust, and obscured the Elite’s vision.

There was no time to waste. As the Elite stepped back from Nyx, it noticed Aio’s figure in its compound, ruby-colored eyes, and began to raise its back leg to strike. However, at that moment, Aio swung upward with his cutlass. The joint was more than twice his height, and on a normal weapon, his swing would have easily missed its mark. However, by issuing a non-verbal command into his blade, more Johrei shards began forming above the tip of his blade until its length nearly tripled. The weapon arced, and the Enthipid’s leg was sliced clean off, causing the hexapod to lose its balance momentarily. It screeched.

As it tried to steady itself, Calliope fired her glide-rifle into the Enthipid’s open wound. The bullet’s trajectory left behind a line of Johrei shards, which temporarily connected with the Suncycle circling around the leviathan like a crystalline rope. Calliope pulled out a carabiner from her belt. She attached it to the line of Johrei shards in front of her while the monster reeled in pain from the shot. The Johrei shimmered, and she issued a non-verbal command. In that moment, the carabiner zip-lined along the line of Johrei shards, carrying her with it. As she glided towards the back of the behemoth, carried by artificially-created inertia, the Suncycle’s front and back wheel spun out of control behind her and crashed into a nearby rock formation, damaging its engine.

“That’s gonna be taken out of my paycheck”, Calli groaned, looking back as she planted her feet on the Elite’s spine. The monster still focused on the Rookie and raised its arms up at Aio.

As it swung down, Aio braced his arms forward for a block. Johrei shards formed into a shield above its head, primed to weather the blow from the Elite. However, the shields shattered upon hit.

“How is it this strong?” the Rookie exclaimed. He was knocked prone from the blow, coughing up sandy dust, but managed to quickly evade to the side as a second swing came bearing down. No time to recharge the shields, he thought. Instead, he tightened his grip on the cutlass. His vision blurred from the initial impact. He didn’t have enough time or strength to dodge another one of those strikes. As the Enthipid rounded its leg for a third swing, Aio noticed a reflective wiring tied around two of the creature’s legs.

In the next moment, the hexapod collapsed under its own weight as Abe rode the Suncycle outwards and pulled its knotted legs out from under it. The fall shook the ground beneath them as sand kicked up in droves. The flattened creature attempted to pull itself up as Abe swooped by and picked up Aio with one arm, tossing him into the back seat. With a non-verbal command from Abe, an unknown force bound Aio to the Suncycle. Aio looked back at where the Elite was.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

A bladed forearm was stuck into a flattened rock where Aio had just been. That sent a chill down Aio’s back. One second later and – he didn’t want to think about it. He faced forward, shaking off those thoughts. The Elite struggled to pull itself out of the rock while reorienting itself.

“Keep your head down, kid”, Abe said, pulling out his pistol and firing shots at the creature’s eye. Aio ducked, glancing back again to peek at the Elite. It blocked the shots with its other forearm. A faint shimmer of Johrei could be seen outlining its arms before disappearing again. Right as it pried its forearm out of the rock, the creature screeched, mouth wide open in pain. Its right leg was cut cleanly by a barrage of machine gun fire at its joints.

Calli magnetized her feet onto the creature, pelting at its weakened leg. As she tried to swing her gun around at the undamaged back leg, it thrashed wildly, attempting to throw Calli off its back. She steadied her footing, unperturbed. She readied to pull the trigger, but noticed the Elite’s Johrei shields dissipating near her and began to hear a creaking sound from the carapace below her feet. Before she could react, dozens of chitin spikes shot out from its spine, hitting her square in the chest and flung her off. The Johrei shields protecting her chest piece broke and blood flayed from her where the spikes landed. Luckily, the Bastion armor underneath held, but she didn’t have time to count her blessings.

Her gun flew off and landed near her Suncycle and she was about to hit the ground hard. She pulled out her glide-rifle, from an unknown pocket of air in front of her and fired straight ahead. In the next second, her carabiner attached onto the Johrei path, and she glided across the bullet’s trajectory, attempting to reroute her fall momentum by pulling herself horizontally along the air before crashing into the sand. She issued a non-verbal command, and the Johrei disappeared, causing her to roll sideways onto the sand, tumbling until her momentum finally died down. She lay prone, facing the sky, and coughed up blood and sand.

“Ugh, dust in my mouth”, she complained, but couldn’t move her muscles. She didn’t have time to process the next steps as the Enthipid closed-in on her unsteadily.

“Just my luck,” she murmured quietly to herself.

In an instant, the Enthipid towered over Calli, eyes gliding over her with extreme bloodlust. Calli’s eyes widened, peering into rows of reflective metallic teeth, stained with blood, as the Elite opened its tremendous maw. The team had planned to surround this thing in close-quarters combat from the get-go, but a monster’s a monster, even when it’s at a disadvantage.

Calli braced for the worst, closing her eyes, when suddenly, the inside of the monster’s mouth imploded, splaying flesh around the area, and soaking the surrounding sand its with its vermillion blood. Her eyes opened to Nyx walking by, tossing shimmering metallic orbs towards the monster’s open mouth. Another explosion dislodged its jaw.

“No shields in there”, Nyx chided at the beast, her voice hoarse from exhaustion.

The leviathan’s jaw, hanging ajar, couldn’t close properly and the Elite raised its forearm to swing at Nyx. However, it began to lose its balance from the joint damage it took on earlier, and its hesitation was rewarded with another set of explosions, pushing it back. The Enthipid toppled to the ground and, sensing its demise, it began to glow. Johrei skin shimmered brilliantly along the surface of its carapace, warping the images around it, before dissipating into the air like vapor.

This was just like earlier.

“GET BEHIND ME NYX!” Calli bellowed, reaching into the air.

In the next moment, spines of metal shot out from every section of its body. Blood and chitin mixed into its attack as the surrounding area was pelted in spikes, riddling the ground with a hail of death. The rocks nearby shattered under the assault and a sandstorm carpeted the entire battlefield in an orange mist.

Once the dust settled, Nyx looked up from where she crouched. The silhouette of the creature stilled behind the dust.

One last stand it seems, she thought, breathing heavily.

It looked to be dead, but one couldn’t be too sure. Nyx saw a shimmer in front of her. Hundreds of connected shards began fragmenting in front of her eyes, like broken glass raining leisurely towards the ground, and the shock of the behemoth’s attack died down. Then she realized.

“Curse the clans! Calli! Are you okay?!” She scrambled to look at Calli, whose eyes dimmed into unconsciousness. Before the attack hit, Calli had called out to her. If Nyx didn’t jump behind the backup shield that Calli pulled up…

Nyx pulled off Calli’s chest plate. O hunters, this looks pretty bad. She placed her ears down Calli’s chest and checked for a heartbeat. She was alive, for now.

But if we don’t do something about that wound…

Although the spikes shouldn’t have reached them, Calli seemed to have suffered a severe injury around her chest area beforehand. Blood seeped from a deep gash, mixing her blood in with the sand. Nyx reached into her belt pouch and pulled out a translucent wrapping of some kind. She placed it over Calli’s open wound, and it shimmered, sealing it.

“It’s only temporary” she muttered under her breath. “We need to get you some help”.

A voice called out through the wasteland thicket. She looked up to see Abe ride in with the Rookie on the Suncycle.

Aio gasped.

“Curse the clans”, Abe said, watching Calli lying prone. “What happened here? We were far away enough to react to the attack, but the dust – I didn’t know if you guys were okay.”

“Calli saved me from that thing. I saw her get thrown off the beast earlier and saw something shiny reflecting off its spine, although with the debris in the air it was hard to tell. I think Calli had known what was coming and protected me from it.”

Nyx punched the ground next to her. “Elites and their f*cking party tricks”, she cursed. “Abe, can you get her back to the city safely?”

“I can do it”, Abe chimed in. “Her bike’s no good, so I’m the only one who can bring her back anyways. I know a good medic at Magrest. I think he can help. Sorry, Rookie. There’s only room for two.”

“It’s okay. I hope she gets through fine,” Aio stuttered, shock still gripping him. He stepped off the bike, holding back tears. Whether it was adrenaline, shock, fear, or whatnot, Aio wasn’t sure anything could have prepared him for an encounter like this.

Nyx and Abe looked at each other.

“Calli’s been through worse”, Nyx said. “Yeah”, Abe chimed in, “She’ll be okay. The Johrei patch should slow the bleeding long enough for me to get her to a safe place”. He placed a hand on Aio’s shoulder, calming him. Abe looked back at Nyx, “What’re you going to do, Nyx?”

She eyed the dead creature, surveying it. “This thing put us through one hell of a fight. We owe it to Calli to pry it clean of parts.” Abe nodded.

“Sounds good. Anyways, Rookie. Help me get Calli up”.

***

As Abe’s Suncycle shrunk in the distance, with Calli slumped in the back, Nyx pulled out the handle of her shattered blade. She opened a small hatch on the side of her sword handle, reached into her belt pouch, and took out what looked to be an injection needle. She stabbed the tip of the needle into the hatch’s opening and injected a glowing white substance inside. A few seconds later, the sword’s handle began to glow. Translucent designs of interlocked octagons shimmered briefly before disappearing. Aio did something similar with his shield, but used a replaceable vial instead, ejecting an empty vial, and placing the new one into an open slot, recharging the shield’s Johrei capabilities.

Nyx issued a non-verbal command, and a Johrei-blade of knife’s length extruded from the handle. She pulled off her cracked Bastion mask before tossing it to the sand. She had a terrifying look on her face. A smile that bathed in the thrill of the hunt, and piercing eyes which shone with anger and regret – a true contradiction of expressions.

Aio’s leg gave out as he slumped into the sand. He gulped some water he brought with him before wiping his mouth with his sleeve, wanting to go back home. Nyx got close and wrapped her arm around Aio’s shoulder, gesturing with her knife. He looked at her nervously and tried to smile.

“So”, Nyx said, grinning that frightening grin of hers, “Ever skin a god before?”