“Eunugh…”

A short groan echoes through a damp and dimly lit office lobby. Its windows were long shattered and floors bulging with the ever-expanding green vegetation spreading through the exposé.

A female with long bronze pigtails wearing a black metal battle suit hides on a corner, eying the narrow hallway leading to a broken elevator above a large hole to the overhead floor. She looks behind her shoulder to the outside street filled with broken-down and unattended motor vehicles.

Her eyes then narrow down to one of the albino brutes splattered onto the ground in front of the double doors leading outside. Its descent made a bloody mess, with its upper torso landing on a car however its lower body was severed from its host and drooped to the ground revealing its steaming-stringed intestines and meaty flesh bones.

“That gun she used… It was definitely one of the XMS-series, but that’s impossible… But considering her considerable strength and speed she must be—“

“Bzzt— Koko, can you read me? … Koko!”

Koko presses a button on her neck device while pinning her side back against the wall. “Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear. Some things came up and I got into it with three creeps and… You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

“Try me. Was it the individual who crashed with the pod early?”

“I believe so. She used a Xeno-Matus style pistol, one of the ones Sirius were developing back in Opactu.”

“That’s… That’s impossible, we saw the underground facility fall through. None of that tech should’ve ever made it out.”

A small bit of rubble breaks from the hole, making Koko poke her head around the corner with a short glance. “I’m telling you what I saw, she turned the dam gun into a miniature ordinance and blasted a creep sky high. And that’s another thing, she was like, super fast and strong and she said she was with the Galactic feds.”

“Koko, I don’t like what you’re saying one bit. You need to get out of there so we can regroup and find a new solution to our new problem. Do you have a clear escape route?”

Koko looks at the outside still blanketed by the darkness of the night, then back to the hole with a sigh. “No… No, not really. I, uhm, left my roader on the upper floor.”

“You know we can’t use any high-frequency comms via headquarters as it’ll draw attention. Do you need me to contact Thurura and—“

Koko bends down and nods her head frantically from side to side. “N-no! No! No! No! I don’t need that little pest in my ear, I can figure this out myself. Just… Just give me a few minutes. I’ll meet you at the Urokashiba bridge by dawn.”

“Alright, if you say so. I’ll contact you in a few hours for an update, stay safe. —Click”

The comms device clicks off, Koko then lifts herself from the ground and repositions herself on the corner. “Seriously… Thurura… Does she have that little trust in me after all we’ve been through?—”

Another break in rubble from the ceiling above makes her point her rifle into the air with a quick movement. She pins her back against the wall and starts to walk alongside it, her boots barely making any sound on the mudded concrete below her.

One of the light fixtures falls from the ceiling and shatters into pieces along the floor in front of her. Afterward, one after another the long bulbs break from their components and crash onto the ground as a huge bubble starts to poke down from the ceiling above.

The impending ceiling then collapses down, covering the area in a dense fog of debris as wood planks and metal scatter along the ground. Koko takes a step back, her eyes narrowing toward the fading smoke as she surveys the ground for any evident threats.

—Haaah

A weighted breath from an imperceptible entity creates a shade of vapor on Koko’s face shield. Her eyes dart to the side, noticing a near-transparent apparition looming above her. Her eyes widen, she shifts her rifle to her front with her index finger grazing the trigger.

Before she could fire, her entire body then turns upside down and lingers in the air with her leg being held upward. The apparition then reveals itself, revealing to be one of the white-scaled brutes with a low growl.

—SNAP

“GAAAH!” Koko cries out in agony as the beast starts clutching down on her leg, her mangled limb giving off several cracks.

Koko gasps in shock, then with a furious gaze points her weapon towards its face and presses the trigger. Her front is covered by a yellow light as her rifle fires a bombardment of bullets that pierce through the beast’s skin.

The brute covers its front, with small holes followed by blue blood covering the front of its torso. It then smacks the firearm from Koko’s grasp and flings her into the air while still in its grip.

“AGHH!” Koko lets out another scream as her leg bends back and forth as she’s flailed through the air.

The beast then chucks her into a wooden reception desk with a devastating crash, leaving her to sit in a pile of wood and glass. Koko attempts to lean upwards but lets out a gasp; She looks down to the inner bone artery sticking out from the meat of her knee bone with gritted teeth.

A large shadow hovers over her, making her eyes go white as the beast outreaches its hand for her face with a muffled growl. Her eyes shut close with her hands trembling whilst clenched to her sides.

The beast stops its hand and turns around with a low growl, then charges away from Koko leaving her to peek her eyes open with a heavy breath.

The whirring of a gun’s inner mechanism ramps up before it fires several rounds with some piercing through and colliding into the wall above Koko. The ghastly roars of the beast echoed through the room until they started to become abrupt and lower.

With a sudden thump, Koko leans her head to the side past the edge of the desk and looks into the beast’s fearful eyes staring up at a set of black boots. A gun’s nozzle appears a few inches away from its face as a final round is shot, leaving its head to explode into cream-colored ooze and blue meat.

The boots then begin to walk over to her, she attempts to take her secondary rifle from her side but looks down at her leg and winces in pain.

In a loud whir, a gun is pointed in her face, Koko looks up to Miya hovering over her, her entire uniform soaked in blue and red bodily fluids.

“Start talking.”

. . .