Match 14
#37 Nimia “The Shelled Tiger” Altamirano
Vs.
#36 Arlo “Croc” Monson
“You’re one ballsy bitch, you know that?” echoed the voice of the Augrin’s captain, sounding out through loudspeakers going throughout every hall on the ship. Even then, it was partially drowned out by the sound of constant gunfire and choked gasps as Nimia ducked, weaved, and carved her way through the dozens of pirates looking to kill her. For very understandable reasons, mind. “Coming straight to my ship, killing my men–”
She was ranked, which meant killing her gained them immortality; she had a pretty high bounty on her head that went international so any moron could claim it, even hardened sea-raiders; and she’d already killed a few of them when they tried boarding her boat just a little while ago. More once she stole one of their boats and drove it up to the side of the ship while its cannons tried blowing her out of the water. Unfortunately for them, one pirate had the absolutely ingenious idea of opening up one the doors along the tanker’s side to try shooting at her with a grenade launcher.
It did sort of work, since the stolen boat was now on fire and sinking into the ocean, but it also gave her a great opportunity to thruster-jump straight to the door, impale the idiot through the gut, and get a decent, six-chamber grenade launcher out of it too, along with a whole lot of grenades from his belt. Which she wasn’t quite willing to use in a confined space, since that tended to result in blowback, but hey, always nice to get new toys.
“–and messing up my damn halls. Really, the hell are you thinking?”
Speaking of, her new revolver was getting some good use as she fired with her right, swinging her darling with her left to bisect one pirate as she fired her last two shots into another two trying to gun her down. Most of the pirates were carrying either assault rifles or smgs, and they really weren’t doing great with them.
She went low as bullets raced above her head, before swinging up and cutting straight through a pirate from the groin up, before switching Lucky out for her Cleon and blowing a few heads off. Always good to have back-ups, and now she had three magnums to play with alongside her darling, which was doing a pretty good job all her own at cutting through dumbasses.
“You’re really looking to set me back, huh bitch?” Arlo Monson’s voice echoed again, deep and irritated. The man himself sat back in his seat at the bridge, scowling. Losing crew wasn’t much of an issue; he only really needed around two dozen of them to actually pilot and maintain the ship, but most of his crew served extra functions, like running raiding parties and cleaning shit up. Granted, it’ll be less mouths to feed, but the dumb fucks were leaving holes in his ship and that was just pissing him off.
So he decided to up the ante. And really, with all the automation on the bridge, he didn’t really need anyone other than himself onboard.
“First fucker to kill that bitch gets a hundred mil and a month at Pariso. Heavy weapons allowed,” he said, tapping away at the console with his metal fingers. Heavy metal shutters started slamming down throughout the ship, centered around Altamirano to cut her off as the smarter fucks on his crew started grabbing the heavy gear from the armory, donning deep blue riot armor and grabbing shit like the grenade launchers and phosphorous shotguns. Plenty of the ship was bound to get fucked, but at least Altamirano would be dead.
But she didn’t die. His men knew the ship, knew where to set up ambushes, knew where to actually wait for her to come to them but Arlo’s bribe worked against him as the overconfident morons aimed to be the one to kill her first. They could’ve been careful, could’ve planned things out, but those who considered theft and murder viable career paths usually weren’t the most cautious and considerate of people, and that lack of caution resulted in a good chunk of them getting carved up as they tried to rush Altamirano’s location.
The 37th was just using her sword by that point, dismissing her guns and carving a bloody swath through every hall as Monson snarled–“Fucking morons, get it right! Plan things out, you dumb shits!”–and started closing more doors, aiming to cut her off. It was a rat maze, of a sort, where he was setting her down a corridor where some of the actually competent fuckwits managed to set some cover and duck around corners, and when she showed, they all opened fire.
A hail of burning shot filled the air, along with regular bullets, and should’ve been more than enough to kill the bitch. Except for the simple fact that there was a storage closet in that hallway. And she ducked in it.
“...FUCKING MORONS!” Arlo raged over the loudspeakers as Nimia took a breath, tugging at her blood-soaked shirt.
“Fuck, this is getting messy...Heh. Been a while since I’ve had to kill this many people in one go. Fucking raiders…” She sighed, twirling her darling in the dim light. Her blade was so soaked with blood, it looked stained red...or, wait, orange?
Nimia blinked, then stared closer at the sword as it kept emanating building heat. “...Huh. See, I knew you could some fire stuff, but this is new...heh. Well. If they wanna burn me, might as well return the favor.”
Arlo chomped on a cigar, grumbling to himself as he watched the monitors. One of his men had the bright idea to set a charge on the door and just blow Altamirano to pieces then and there. Not the worst idea, except a flaming sword just stabbed straight through the steel and into his head. “...What the fuck…”
Nimia, meanwhile, kicked the door straight off its melting hinges, and promptly ducked an attempt to blow her head off, cutting straight through the offending pirate as the heat ramped up. She was grinning wide, her Darling outright burning as she took up her run again, cleaving through every pirate in her way up to the boss of them all. Took a lot of ducking and dodging though; good news was, the close quarters were working to her advantage, and she was agile as fuck, so literally jumping off the walls was a valid option. It did get a little trickier as she got into more open areas, but she had maneuverability on her side, and honestly, it just felt right using her darling for this.
Something about the increasingly hot sword was just singing for pirate blood, and she was fine with obliging.
The turrets were a slight problem though. Apparently Arlo outfitted his ship’s halls with automated machine guns, mounted in hidden panels along the ceilings and walls. They made it a little tricky to maneuver, mostly because while she could dodge bullets decently well, the sheer number of bullets firing rapidly at her meant she was probably fucked in direct fire.
Humans shooting at her, easy, just anticipate their movements; automated turrets that could adjust on the fly, far trickier. And sure, she could dodge bullets fairly reliably due to a whole lot of augmentations and whatnot, but a massive amount firing at once from multiple angles was going to be a shitshow no matter what. It didn’t help that the turrets didn’t give a shit what they shot so long as they shot her, which was also why a few surviving pirates suddenly felt themselves being ripped open by hails of bullets.
Superhuman agility was one thing, but she wasn’t impervious to being shot. Yet. She should work on that...Honestly, she was kinda missing her fancy armor now. Sucks those assholes at Koroshi repo’d it...for now though, the only reasonable thing to do was to completely take back what she thought earlier and summon her newly gained grenade launcher from her inventory.
Arlo snarled again as explosions sounded through the ship and camera after camera crashed, most only showing fire and smoke before they went down, though he still got some glimpses of the psycho bitch wrecking his vessel. “...Fuck it. No more games.”
He flipped some switches, input a password through his Headware, and finally pressed the big purple button that flipped up from a hidden compartment in his console. His “last resort” would wipe out whatever crew was left, but fuck it, he was pissed off. Even with this though, there was a good chance the bitch would survive…
Arlo stood and walked to his own armory, up in his personal quarters on the bridge. Better to be safe than sorry.
Meanwhile, Nimia was discovering the secondary problem of blowing up multiple turrets and setting fire to tight, compact corridors: lots and lots of smoke.
“Well this brings back bad memories,” she muttered, holding the neck of her shirt over her mouth and nose as she tried to look through the thick smoke, “Mh...right, fuck it, time to go topside. Find stairs, get up, smell the sea breeze, all good.”
Her course decided, she promptly went looking for said stairs, consequently missing the vents opening around the ship and the lavender mist that began pouring out into the blazing halls. Said mist did have a rather interesting effect on the fire–it was actually starting to smother it with its naturally cooler temperature and lack of consumable oxygen–and a far more horrifying effect on the few still-living pirates clutching their wounds and trying to hide from the burning death stalking their halls. The unfortunate murderers promptly found their lungs filling with painful sores and lesions that only grew worse as they coughed and gagged, trying to find some way to get air into their suddenly blood-filled throats.
Nimia, meanwhile, found a gasmask. She pried it from the corpse of one pirate who either thought it looked good, or just wanted to be prepared for whatever he could run into. He clearly didn’t expect his own ship’s turrets to tear holes through his body though, so that preparedness didn’t amount to much. It did, however, give Nimia a way to keep the smoke out amidst all the fire, so that was handy. And, equally conveniently, she found a ladder nearby!
So up she went, not even noticing Arlo’s attempt to poison her.
The deck of the Augrin was massive, a consequence of it being a huge tanker. Normally, one would go up through the lower parts of the bridge to get out onto it, but there were a few hatches dotted around the deck for those needing to get up quickly, and it was that convenient way up that saw her facing towards the bridge itself, a grin on her face as the sea breeze blew over her blood-soaked body and made her glowing blade steam in the air.
“Ah, man, this feels nice. Always did like the ocean...” She glanced over to the bridge, then started walking, pretty sure she knew where the big boss of the boat was bound to be.
And she was correct, considering she found him standing out on a balcony extending from the bridge. Though it has stairs on it, so maybe it was more of a walkway? Either way, it extended forward, served as a platform for him to stand on, and would probably be good for speeches. “So you made it, bitch.”
Arlo Monson was a huge man, even up on his balcony. 7ft tall, easy, and broad in a very muscular way, the captain of the Augrin was a full Sinen, which meant he was a straight up crocodile-man; well, not exactly, since he didn’t have an extended snout or maw or anything like that, just a human face covered in scales, though his nose was a pair of nostrils flat against his face instead of a human nose. He was also bald and completely covered in rigid, dark olive-green scales, though it looked like he had robotic hands. Both dark blue, and currently holding onto a massive minigun.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Also of note, he was wearing a ballistics vest like his goons downstairs, and a rather thick long-sleeved shirt and pants, all in dark blues, plus some little aim-assist eyepiece over one of his green eyes. The right one, specifically.
“Yup. Gotta say, you did give me a rough go of it. This is probably the most guys I’ve had to kill in...well, actually, about a week, considering Mernissi’s platoon of bodyguards.”
“I had ninety-eight men on this ship. I have more flying my flag. You barely made a fucking dent, bitch.”
“Cool! I still killed your dudes and made a whole lot of dents in your ship! Calling this a success so far, asshole!”
He scowled deep, glaring straight at her. “You think this is a fucking game-”
“Oh come the fuck on, is that your best comeback? A fucking cliche? C’mon man, you’re a pirate captain! Yar har and fiddley! Gimme your fucking A-game here! Call me a bilgerat or some shit! Or are you just a poser, huh? I’ve barely had my own boat for...what, a month? Let’s see, hired a guy for the trip to Albin, took plenty of ferries and shit in more civilized areas...yeah, point is, I’m pretty sure I know more nautical terms that you, you handless, cockless, croc-faced son of a lily-livered barnacle-ridden menstrual pad!”
“...” Oh that was some fun rage on his face there. Then he raised a hand to his eyepiece, adjusting it for something, and a faint boom echoed out around the front of the ship–
“...”
“...” Arlo was smirking.
“...You blew up my fucking boat.”
“I blew up your fucking boat.”
“...I liked my boat, asshole.”
“And I like–” Her hand whipped up and she shot him straight between the eyes with her seven-shooter, though the bullet bounced off a crackling blue forcefield.
“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU LIKE!” she snapped right back as she charged his position, not quite using her jets yet but making some good distance at a full sprint.
Arlo clicked his tongue, annoyed, but still smirked as the barrels on his minigun began to spin. A hail of bullets rocketed down at Nimia as she quickly came to the conclusion that running straight at a guy shooting down at her from an elevated position with a minigun in an open area with no cover was a shitty idea, so now she triggered the jets and blasted straight up into the air, flipping around as Arlo quickly raised his gun and swinging her sword straight down at him.
He lifted his minigun straight into her path, using it to block even as her burning sword cut straight through the metal, only to get stuck halfway through. “Ah, shit-”
And then a metal fist punched her straight in the face, sending her head rocking back and actually knocking a tooth out. “GAH, FUCK! ASSHOLE!”
Arlo just smirked at her as he tossed his ruined gun to the side, not that she could see it because apparently the big dude decided he needed to double up on the armor. Also, he could apparently carry full power armor in his inventory. Neat to know, scary to see.
Nimia took in the sight of the big guy’s deep blue armor as Monson raised a huge, pump-action shotgun, painted a bright blue with shark-teeth along the barrel, along with other modifications. Judging by those mods, which Nimia noted as she ducked a shot, they were made cause a weird, curving quality to the row of bullets, necessitating a much deeper duck as they “bounced” over her like a wave.
Actually, now that she looked, Monson kinda had more of a shark aesthetic going on in general, funnily enough. His blue armor had little fins up on the top and sides of the helmet, the black visor had triangles set like the toothy maw of a shark; generally very sharky looking. “Y’know, I’m starting to think you don’t actually go for the crocodile theme at all!”
“What??” He didn’t pause in his shots at all, still trying to blow her apart as she jumped up on the railing and tried to sprint close, narrowly missing her by inches, “I’m not-It’s not a theme! I have scaled skin, how the fuck is that a crocodile theme!?”
Nimia shrugged as leapt into his guard, delivering a hard cut that made his shield crackle before she ducked under a backhand. “I dunno, I just kinda figured because your nickname is Croc.”
“What!?” Somehow, he sounded more offended. “My fucking title is The Admiral, you stupid bitch!”
“Well then maybe the fucking thing should’ve said–”
Match 14
#37 Nimia “The Shelled Tiger” Altamirano
Vs.
#36 Arlo “The Admiral” Monson
“-instead!”
“The fuck are you on about-” His voice cut out as she kicked him in his shielded face, flipped off of him to land on the balcony proper again, and immediately dove to try to gut the asshole, only for him to kick her in the face instead. More the side of the head, actually, which was why she sent flying off the balcony and rolling onto the deck, spitting out blood and–
“Oh fuck is that another tooth-” And then she was rolling back as he nearly blew her head off, scowling up at the fucker above her.
“Goddamn, you’re good at pissing me off...gotta say, you look good on the ground though,” Arlo rumbled, tilting his head as his shield flickered into view again, “I’ll make sure to grind you down into-”
He instinctively flinched back when she shot him in the face, before smirking as his shield held firm over his helmet. “Ha! You’ll need to do better than-”
His eyes had about half a second to widen as he realized she swapped out her magnum for a grenade launcher, and then everything was smoke and fire.
Nimia counted in her head as she fired round after round at the walkway Monson was on, keeping an internal track of just how many 40mm grenades she was firing at the huge asshole and how many she still had on her. It took about three for the balcony to collapse completely, and she adjusted her aim as the big fucker crashed to the ground, snarling in rage.
“YOU FUCKING-” The next grenade shut that up, and the one after that sent him rocking back even as he tried dodging to the side.
Nimia fired the last one in the chamber, then popped it open and started loading as smoke billowed out from the impact–Then she twisted to the side as a fucking anchor of all things nearly smashed her head open.
The specific type, she would later learn, was an admiralty anchor, but at the moment it just meant there was a huge piece of steel with two curved hook things at the front nearly taking her head off as it was yanked back by a long length of reinforced cord.
“Y’know, I’m almost mad you didn’t do this from the start!” she called out, grinning as Monson stepped from the smoke, glaring furiously at her through his cracked visor, “It’s a lot more fitting to the nautical-whoop-!”
She lurched to the side as it nearly crashed through her, vertical-facing this time, though it twisted to horizontal and nearly caught her in the side when Monson yanked it back. It didn’t though, because she was very good at ducking, something Monson didn’t seem to appreciate.
“Tricky bitch,” he snarled, but kept his distance. As angry as he was, Arlo was a cautious man who, despite his large size, didn’t like close encounters. Too high risk, especially when someone small turned out to be a hell of a lot stronger than they looked. So he pulled his anchor back and twirled it beside his head, keeping the momentum up as he started walking, aiming to circle Altamirano.
And she just grinned and started circling him too, both of them keeping each other in their sights. A breeze blew across the deck, scattering embers as the two continued to pace, the grenade launcher in Nimia’s hands vanishing back into her inventory as she brought her sword back out, signalling her intent to finish this close.
Arlo growled at that, checking his own inventory for a moment. He’d taken his shotgun and he still had shells for that, but what the fuck else could he use here? The anchor’s cord was taking up both his hands as he kept it stable and twirling, and the bitch showed she could dodge bullets...fuck it. He just needed the right angle.
Nimia’s grin dropped as her foot caught on a raised piece of the ship and her balance was screwed up just enough for him to throw the anchor full force, through it horizontal-facing and straight at the center of her mass, all to guarantee he could smash her fucking chest in–
And she went with the stumble and dropped completely, her grin back as she went under the anchor, pushing herself up once it was past–
So he yanked back hard, aiming to slam it into her back–
And she grabbed the cord.
The slight flare of jets was Arlo’s only warning as she used his own strength against him, letting the cord yank her straight off her feet as she let flames burst under her feet, sending her flying through the air right at him. He still had enough time to drop the cord, pull his shotgun in his right hand–no time to use both, the cord was still wrapped around his left–and get off a shot as she twisted in the air and brought her burning sword slicing straight across–
And he stumbled when she went straight past him–his visor cracked further, making it hard to see–and whirled, aiming to at least blow her head off when it finally clicked that his arm was flying off at the elbow–
“GAH!” he screamed out as she–still facing the other way–stabbed her sword straight back into his stomach. It went straight through, steaming and sizzling and he could see the fucking bitch smiling–
Except it wasn’t a smile. He landed with the shell, and under her blood-soaked hair, he could see half her face was a mess of blasted flesh, her cheek ripped open to show a wide grin.
“...y-y-you...d-don’t think you fucking won,” he snarled, his visor cracking further. He still had his eyepiece though, even if both his arms were off, and he brought up his options with just a thought. “Cause this ship’s goin’ down with its cap-”
And a bullet blew out his eye.
Nimia lowered her revolver from her shoulder, her tongue half-consciously flicking out to lick through where her cheek once was–
37 -> 36
–before it healed back up.
“For fuck’s sake, you can heal a shotgun blast to the face, but not missing legs?” she grumbled as she stood, yanking her sword back out, “Cheap regenerative bullshit…”
She glanced back at Monson’s corpse as it stood there, a cut carving diagonally through the upper half of his chest. His head was tilted back, blood leaking through his cracked visor and through the ruined mess of glass and intraocular fluid that was his eye.
“...My boat now, captain.” She glanced down at said boat. “...Though I think I oughta air it out.” Then gave herself a sniff. “...And get a shower. Definitely need a shower.”
And a little while later, Nimia stepped from a steam-filled shower up in the captain’s quarters. Arlo basically set up the bridge to be his own personal area on the ship, putting him naturally above all the pirates he called his subordinates, and decked out his quarters with the coziest amenities he could, including a lush, fully stocked bathroom with a really nice shower and quite fluffy towels, which Nimia started drying herself off with as she headed back into the bedroom/personal office proper.
Really, she was kinda surprised no one noticed how much Monson liked sharks sooner. His room was full of posters, decorations, little knick knacks...not all were shark themed, some were just nautical, but there was enough that she was pretty sure the guy would’ve preferred to become a shark man than any sort of crocodile dude.
“Ah well. My room now. Might keep some of this stuff though, it’s pretty cute,” she muttered to herself as she sat on his bed, his own personal laptop in her lap as she reclined, letting the soft blue blankets cushion her naked body, “Now let’s see what you’ve got here…”
Turned out his password was “Monsoon”. Pretty sloppy of him to go with something so simple, but maybe he was just genuinely arrogant enough to presume no one could ever get ahold of his stuff? He did have tons of turrets and traps throughout his ship–and she was finding out just how many there were through looking in his files–so maybe it wasn’t completely unfounded.
Ah well. What was most interesting to her were a few specific folders on his desktop; one marked “Augrin” dealt with all the programs he had linked to running systems on his ship, and from what it looked, he really could’ve run the place all on his own. His crew were just there to take care of the menial stuff and perform raids; no wonder he considered them disposable.
Another though, happened to be marked “Competition”. And that was very, very interesting, not in the least because it contained information on who Monson, as the biggest pirate boss around, considered legitimate threats to his enterprises.
All of them were ranked, and she could spot a few interesting names–particularly, Jerome Lynch, the raiding piece of shit she killed months ago–but the main two she was interested in were 35 and 34, the next two she was bound to be facing. Not at the same time, probably, but still, with the opportunity available to her, she might as well do at least a bit of research.
And buy armor. Definitely buy armor, because fuck, losing teeth hurt. Even if they did grow back.
And probably stock up anti-mutagens, considering what she was reading about 34...hm. Maybe invest in nanomachines? Yeah, at least something to up her immunities, especially if she was going into the overgrowth. She went this long without getting mutated, no need to fuck up the record at this point.
Nimia paused, giving a glance to her robotic legs. A good reminder of what a fuck up on her record could entail...Well, she’d keep that in mind.
For now, it was time to know her enemy.