Chapter Ten - Belladonna (DX)

And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.

Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.

--Ezekiel 1: 4-9, KJV

***

"I never thought I'd be hiding with Antithesis ..."

Ash looked over to Cat through the edges of the debris cloud surrounding them. It felt odd that her words were so clear. Something in her mind told her they should be coughing on all of the dust, dirt and pollen that filled the air, even though she knew they both had protection. Cat had her full helmet that looked like a motorcycle helmet with cat ears, and Ash was still wearing the Protector tech hazard mask that breathed far easier than any gas mask she'd ever known could. There wasn't even the moist haze of her own breath bouncing back against her face.

Then she glanced behind them, where the masses of green type Antithesis still filled the tunnel. She wouldn't call them placid, but they seemed more irritated at the cloud getting between them and their UV lamps than they did at the humans' presence.

"Let's not overstay our welcome," she answered and moved into the thicker debris cloud of the main glade.

Cat followed her in close behind, the sound of concrete, glass and steel still occasionally falling as late arrivals joining with the newfound winds that pushed down into the glade and kept it more or less clear of the dust that still hovered around the edges.

Both women stopped short when they got halfway across that space, their heads craning back as far as they could. It was Cat, ironically, who found her tongue first.

"... Fuck. We're boned, aren't we?"

The tree that had once towered over the space at the base of the convention hall had traded its humble beginnings to tower over a good portion of New Montreal instead. It was probably visible from most anywhere in the city, its bloom having closed back up most likely for punching through the entirety of the building that had hidden it. Like the trees of the glade, it was still composed of countless vines, but now those vines were thicker than actual trees, wider across than a grown man, and constituted a collective diameter greater than the width of a bus.

"That depends on how big a chainsaw Myalis can sell you," Ash answered the Vanguard.

Before even the AI could answer, the ground again began to rumble beneath their feet, forcing the girls to stagger to keep from toppling over.

"What the fuck now?!" Cat swore. "Is he growing more of them?!"

The tentacle grass swirled and rose up beneath them, lashing together into a single platform that shot skyward. Both were nearly forced to their knees at the speed of their organic elevator until it finally began to slow as they reached level with the massive bulb that now crowned the alien stalk.

Before their eyes, it rotated open into a massive, meaty flower, off-pink with red and green striations across its huge petals. Above it all, a colossal halo of light hovered in the sky, even the ever-present cloud cover pushed away with the halo seeming to concentrate the revealed sunlight onto the petals.

Devoid of ceremony, the platform dumped its cargo onto the petals and then lashed itself around the main stalk, out of sight with disturbing alacrity.

Ash tested the give of the material under them as the girls got to their feet. It was thick and tough like leather, but it was laid over something spongy. It reminded her a bit of a bouncy castle without the bounce.

"This thing must be as big as a city block," Cat mused in awestruck wonder, then grinned over at the Defender. "We're actually visible from space! Myalis is already fielding calls about it. Apparently, every Samurai with a killsat in the northern hemisphere is getting an itchy trigger finger."

Apex, then, turned her attention to the middle of the bloom, where a relatively much smaller bud still waited, and she pulled the hammer from her back. "Then let's make this quick."

"Wait!" Stray Cat stopped her before she'd gotten more than a couple steps. "Damn, I should have done this a long time ago instead of relying on that fucking drone ..." She went silent, but her posture suggested she was still talking. Before Ash could ask, a white box appeared in the Vanguard's hands and she tossed it over. The only explanation she gave was to tap the side of her head.

Opening it up revealed an earpiece.

... Oh.

She slipped it on over her ear and noticed that an AR holo field appeared in her sight as if it were just in front of her, though it seemed to be broadcast to her eye, as the window still appeared when she shut it.

Hello again, Miss Apex.

"Ah, Myalis, good to hear from you again." It wasn't quite hearing, though. Like the augmented reality in her vision, the sound simply appeared in her mind. It reminded her of bone conduction, but even the odd sensation of tickling vibration in her jaw wasn't present.

It is not a proper Vanguard connection as I have to Catherine, but it will suffice if you need anything. Such as a parachute. Do watch your step.

"Yes, ma'am. Probably gonna be the most effective way back down, actually."

I share the same suspicion. Try to make sure Cat doesn't do something like put hers on upside down.

"Hey!" the orphan bit back. "Can you not just assume I'm going to screw it up?"

I'm merely prepared for the worst.

Equipped and connected, the two women began to approach the central bud.

"So ... do we just hit it?" Cat asked, eyeing the thick, barky husk of the bud.

"After it opens up," Ash replied.

"When's it going to--"

They were just a little outside the radial distance equal to the height of the bud when it interrupted her. The entire bulb twisted and unraveled itself, laying out a bed of violet petals one after another in a broad circle, revealing the final Atellian creation within.

The figure seemed related to the huntmaidens, but larger in scale. Though curled up in a fetal position, it nonetheless rose to the womens' chests. As it unfolded and stood to its full height, it came to tower over them. Viridian limbs as smooth as a flower's stem stretched down from slender shoulders and wide hips. Instead of a bikini and skirt of leaves, it was clad in a long skirt and train of vines, and its upper chest was protected by an armored bustier that shimmered like exoskeletal chitin. It had no face except for a lovely mouth full of sharp teeth. The rest, up to the hairline, was concealed by or composed of a solid, chitinous mask. Great leaves came from behind its shoulders and waist like the wings of a fairy or angel, and from the middle of those wings came wiggling tentacles like green snakes, eager for the fresh air and to work the slime of hatching from their forms.

But it wasn't all green. Large portions of her torso especially bore a familiar earthy tan, ruddy compared to her newborn smoothness, even as green veins pulsed along the flesh. Forgah was in that thing. He was part of it. Likely in direct control of it. He had fed his body to the Antithesis to fuel this one last attempt to kill them and realize his utopia.

And this Antithesis spoke. It laughed, a lovely, sensual sound despite its Atellian execution, and held its arms wide as if to embrace them. "Behold your god!"

"You're no god, Forgah," Ash answered back as she raised her hammer into a more ready striking position. "You're a corpse puppeting a very pretty weed."

It laughed again. "So clever, Hunter, and so quick to mock. Ever so certain of your superiority."

"Wait, wait, back up." Cat unintentionally disrupted the tension as she stepped between the two of them, hands raised. "Let me get this straight. He used an Antithesis nest to bio-engineer a Prima-Belladonna plant mecha?!"

Kudos for getting that mouthful out without biting your tongue, Cat.

Unable to hear Myalis, the creature scoffed directly at the younger human. "Youngling, you don't understand the momentousness of this occasion, how terrible the predator you ignorantly stand beside truly is!" It motioned with its too-long arms, themselves animated with the gesticulations of its razor sharp claw-fingers. "She sides with leaf-munching Prey, lives among them, pretends to be one of them! And then she comes to the Predators and rips their limbs from their bodies with such primal violence that even those that see it don't believe their own lying eyes! And why would they? Looking so soft, with big, wide-spaced eyes and squishy flesh! She looks like Prey! Yet if there were any truth in the world, they would bow and sacrifice themselves to her as their merciless queen! And the predators would join them!"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Fuck, Blue, are all your simps this creepy?" That part was only audible over the earpiece, presumably because Cat had cut the speaker to do so. It came back on when she answered the creature directly.

"I get it," she said, "she's a badass. You'll find we have a few of those here and there. Enough that we're not nearly so smitten. Hell, half of them probably have kill shots lined up on you right now. The fuck's that got to do with your makeover?"

The creature - no, fuck it, Belladonna was a great name. If Myalis wanted to hash out some model number for it later, that was Protector business.

Belladonna hissed in frustration at the dismissal, a distinctly less pretty sound, especially as it leaned forward and clenched its fists. "I would never kill her with a machine when I can have the glory of ripping and tearing apart the Defenders' pet Monster with my bare hands!!!"

"Forgah's fused completely with the custom Antithesis," Apex intuited from the words. "He's part of its very biology. They are one being. He didn't bio-engineer a mech, he did it to his own body." She narrowed her eyes. "What were you fucking thinking, Forgah? You're cleverer than this. Even if you did succeed, you'll never be able to go back to normal. You'll never be an Atellian again."

But Belladonna threw its head back and laughed with glee. "Take it as a compliment, Hunter," it insisted as it threw its arms wide again in its elation. "That I would be willing to go to such lengths to kill you! And once you are dead, I will take the destiny you refuse, that of the apex predator of the galaxy!"

"... At least it fixed his stutter."

Both Belladonna and Apex turned to stare at Stray Cat's non sequitur.

She looked back and forth between the both of them. "Whaaat?" she exaggerated. "Dooon't look at meee like you don't knooow what I'm talking abooout!"

... I'm pretty sure that might be racist.

"Fuck it," Cat replied over the private channel again. "People threatening to eat my planet don't get to complain about getting offended."

Fair.

Belladonna gave a sound like a growl of annoyed frustration. "Fucking monkeys. Of course running their mouths is a racial trait."

Cat pointed to the Antithesis as she turned her head as if to speak to the metaphorical voice on her shoulder. "Okay, and you're telling me I'm the racist?!"

Two wrongs, Catherine. Dodge left.

The girl looked up at the large tentacle-vine coming down and dove left with a yelp before it crashed into the petal of the arena.

And with that, all players on the battlefield jumped into movement as if it had been a starting gun.

Apex took off at a sprint that made the arena look too small as she tested Belladonna's range by spraying it with the submachine gun, but it raised one of those viridian arms up as they ricocheted off of the hardened flesh.

Belladonna in turn displayed incredible elasticity with its vines, both lancing them out like rapiers and swinging them like supersonic whips across nearly the entire radius of the larger bloom. These attacks were rendered just as impotent, however, by the human's ducking and weaving, and even then, most of the strikes were simply left behind her.

Cat came up into a crouch as she pulled out her Whisper. Quiet as a hissing ghost, the high-tech crossbow sent a trio of fragmentary shatterbolts at the thing's head, designed to break apart into razor-sharp glass blades. One missed, one deflected off of its faceplate, and another hit its bare shoulder.

Belladonna hissed in pain as green and red blood sprayed from its wound, and immediately retaliated with more vines.

The Samurai pushed to her feet and right into a sprint, the guns on her shoulders already spinning around to shoot the lashes out of the air as fast as their targeting systems could. It wasn't perfect, but they kept the vines actually reaching her to a much more manageable number.

"Good news, the Jolly Green Bitch isn't completely bulletproof!" she panted over the comms.

"Bad news," Apex answered, "it's already healing."

"What?! Fuck!" Cat stopped long enough to look at the shoulder she hit, where the flesh was already nearly knitted back together. A resurgence of whips forced her to moving again. "Damn it, really wishing I hadn't left my Icarus at home today!"

You have more than enough points to purchase a replacement.

Cat was silent for a moment at that reminder. "Fuck, make it happen, Myalis."

Do you have a preference in ordnance?

"Resonators, and make 'em sticky. Let's give her a proper Antithesis headache."

She dove to avoid another flurry of vines - those were growing back, too - and came back up with a large grenade launcher, black and lined with pink neon lights.

"Sing for me, bitch."

She sprayed the entire magazine in Belladonna's direction as fast as she could empty it. Two hit the creature's back and side, the others landing around the arena.

All of the array of motion atop the alien flower stopped instantly when the screaming grenades went off. The tree shuddered, but seemed too thick to suffer much. Belladonna, on the other hand, shrieked like a banshee, nearly rivaling the grenades for volume.

Tentacle vines lashed for the grenades, they lashed for Cat, and they lashed in general. It took a bundle of them, as any individual vines that tried to grab for them melted even as they tried to get a grip on them.

By the time they ripped the adhesive-bound grenades out of gooey flesh and flung them overboard, the ones going for the Vanguard had found her, wrestled with her shoulder-mounted weapons and hefted the girl off of the ground. They writhed and squeezed with Belladonna's fury, accompanied by the crackling sounds of carbon wafers as Cat's coat reflexively tried to protect her.

Catherine!

The only reply she could give Myalis was to scream as her entire body was compressed with the strength of a double digit Antithesis.

"Youngling," Belladonna growled, "you are far more of a nuisance than you--"

A flash of movement drew its attention a moment before a heavy hammer slammed into the faceplate accompanied by an explosion strong enough to stagger the giant and force it, through sheer shock, to drop the younger girl.

But it hadn't been held by anyone. Instead, Forgah turned his attention to the charging Defender, who, having thrown the hammer and tossed aside the fruitless sidearm, had pulled the shotgun and begun firing ahead of her.

Apex pulled the trigger as fast as she could, determined to empty every last explosive shell from the massive weapon in the few seconds before she reached her prey whether it did anything or not. As if in slow motion, she saw the vines begin to come at her. She shifted to the right as one came down alongside her. She spun as one thrust at her. She fired two more shells before sliding under a horizontal one.

Another from the side managed to slap the weapon out of her hands, but it didn't matter, because by that time, she was throwing her shoulder into Belladonna's midsection at forty miles per hour.

Size be damned, both of them went down, reduced to wrestling with proper limbs as Belladonna's own body handicapped the back tentacles. They rolled and thrashed and struggled against one another, both of them screaming and snarling like incoherent animals. Belladonna headbutted Apex. The Defender headbutted the Antithesis back. Each tried to dislodge the other long enough to strike properly.

And then Belladonna seized, its entire body going rigid as its spine arched.

Myalis had determined it was unnecessary for Ash to turn over her combat knife. Monomolecular blades were nothing new to the Protectors, so it had received a cursory scan of its design and material makeup for the records and left strapped to the woman's chest.

Now, that knife was buried nearly to the hilt in Belladonna's chest, where in the struggle, Apex had ripped away the bustier. There was more brown flesh there, and a bulge like the lip of a skull plate. The blade was coming in underneath that lip.

Apex torqued the blade violently, first to the left, then to the right, each motion causing Belladonna to cry out and jerk in that direction. A twirl and a final slam against it with the palm of her hand, and the viridian would-be goddess went slack, and every tentacle was still.

The air stirred for a moment before the Defender released a long breath and pushed to her feet with what looked like more effort than it should have been. Then she reached down and, planting a foot on the monstrosity's stomach, ripped her knife out as if she'd almost forgotten it. She wiped the sides of the blade off on the body before returning the combat knife to its sheath.

It was another long moment before she finally looked over to Cat. "Hey. You okay over there, Miss Samurai?"

"Yeah, actually, being dropped on these petals isn't too bad." The Vanguard dusted herself off a bit, then looked over to the body. "At least that's--" The entire tower rumbled as if struck by an earthquake, forcing them both to brace to keep from being tossed off their feet and over the edge. "What the fuck now?!"

"Of course he'd be a load bearing boss," Ash shouted her frustrations like it meant anything.

"What?!"

Forgah was in direct control of the hive and all of its functions. Without his direction, it is resorting to its natural behavioral patterns. It also knows you are here.

"Fuck! Get us those parachutes, Myalis!"

The AI skipped the boxes, causing the backpacks to appear directly in front of them. Fortunately, they were simple to put on, two shoulder straps and a belt, and they were ready to jump in less than a minute. Which was good, because the way the tree was shaking, they didn't have the time to be dragging their feet.

Cat, it is very important that you do not pull the cord until I tell you to do so, understand?

"Got it. Let's go!"

Their feet had hardly left the ledge of the giant bloom before the tree began to unravel itself. Ash had some experience jumping with her Defender training, and waited to time her pull so that the chute wouldn't throw her into the ruined sides of the interior of the skyscraper as it rose up around them. On Myalis' cue, Cat pulled it a moment after she did.

Most of the tendrils of the tree slapped down over the top of the ruined tower, or else they would have been dodging those all the way down. Still, the corpse of the building groaned and shifted under the weight as more debris collapsed inwards.

More pressing were the sounds of stampeding feet that reached them as they hit the ground, undoubtedly the formerly sunbathing Antithesis coming to consume the intruders. As if that weren't bad enough, the bulges in what was a quickly wilding glade began to burst, and green huntmaiden limbs started clawing their way out like the Night of the Living Dead.

"Shit," Cat swore. "We gotta get out of here, those things are going to overrun us!"

Ash threw her gaze around at the still very green and black surroundings. "But Myalis said this place needs to be totaled."

I have already contacted Deus Ex. This was a predicted outcome and she is currently in the upper atmosphere directly above us preparing to fire. You have three minutes to get out of the blast zone before she does so.

"Who?"

"Local laser loli," Cat translated quickly for her. "Trust me, we really don't want to still be here."

"Right," she noted. "So we're charging out, not killing everything. How fast can you run?"

Cat looked her over. "Not as fast as you. Your rig doing something for that?"

"Only for reducing effective weight. I can explain spring-toe sprinting to you when we aren't about to be eaten. Order something small, light and mobile."

A disposable hoverboard is inexpensive and should last long enough to get us out of here. If you aren't familiar with its usage, I can handle the controls. You only need to focus on staying on it.

"Sweet," the younger woman nodded. "Surf's up."

The Antithesis were coming out of the tunnels now, flooding into the glade-concourse. Ash kicked a huntmaiden in the skull as it came out of the ground near them. "I'm gonna need my pulse shotgun."

Delivering. Consider the full charge a courtesy.

"You're the best, Myalis." She raised it and, with a practiced hand, pulled the primer back to cause a teeth-tickling rising hum. "Time's ticking."

And she set off at another sprint, running almost on only the very tips of her toes, minimizing the amount of contact her foot would make with each stride to only the optimum surface area to push off of. Every motion of her stride had a nearly mechanical perfection to it.

Cat let out a panicked shout at being left behind, but Myalis was already sending the board ahead.

... Right toward the endless hordes.

"I need, um," she swallowed as her mind churned up the first thing it could think of, "lots of explosives!"

"She needs MIRVs, Myalis," Apex shouted as the front line of Model Threes closed toward them. She was already raising that sonic cannon to her shoulder.

Yes, she does. Removing NCC designation.

"The fuck's a MIRV?!"

Lots of explosives, one grenade. Technically, these are Heavy Anti-personnel Independently targetable Repeating ball-form grenades, but the concept is essentially the same.

Apex gave a laugh a moment before she discharged her shotgun with a deep thump and a wave the speed of sound rolled out into the xeno horde ahead, knocking beasts flying into their compatriots. "Hairballs! Brilliant, Myalis!"

Thank you, I did have a nanosecond or two to mull it over.

"You know what, fuck it, we don't have time for this," Cat growled. "Just start giving me them as fast as I can throw them!"

The first one went soaring over the Antithesis heads, falling somewhere back into their lines before it exploded and sent weed parts flying. Almost unnoticed among those were smaller balls very similar to the grenade she'd chucked, but they hardly cleared the horde before they shot back down in different directions to explode again, creating a hole in their ranks wide enough to drive through if it hadn't been closed as quickly as it formed by the endless mass of bodies.

"Woo!" Cat shouted from her hoverboard as another ball appeared in her hand and she chucked it into the masses in a curve ball. "Hairballs are awesome!"

Between sonic waves and cascading blasts, the two humans carved their way through the physical wave of bodies and came crashing out the other side moments before breaking out of the tunnel, itself, and back into the dreary New Montreal air, the sky once again properly overcast out here.

Still, they ran on until they were two whole city blocks outside of the red circle Myalis was helpfully displaying on a top-down map in their vision with an accompanying timer. Only then did they swerve off around a corner before peering back from the safety of cover.

And not a moment too soon, apparently. Red targeting lines were already rotating around the terrain like cat toy lasers, and way up in the air, once the younger woman pointed out what to look for, they could just make out a red figure with a bulky flight pack sticking out behind her.

There was a flash of blood red light that threw the entire rest of the sky into contrast, and for a heartbeat, there was no sound, as if everything everywhere stopped and held its breath.

And then it all exploded.