Point of Documentation: Marshall, Phoenix 11

To say that they weren’t prepared for a sudden rush from a Voidling was an understatement. Cadence was still wounded and could barely shoulder her rifle, and Marshall was not at his top shape yet due to the weakness he felt from the disease he was battling. Marshall was ready to box with raiders, humans, or even animals that were hunting them. He had it in his mind that he could defend himself from those if need be. Not a living embodiment of change and consumption.

It was time to either choose to run, or to box this thing on its own ground. Marshall didn’t have high hopes for either of those options as it charged towards them. Mostly because the person with the large, actually-dangerous-caliber rifle had a busted shoulder and couldn’t seem to get her rifle off the sling around her arm. She struggled with it, trying to bring it up to bear, but it kept getting stuck on something on her pack and her arm couldn’t seem to move high enough to get around it.

Faced with this: Marshall decided to take the initiative. He raised his pistol and flipped a switch on the side of it. A cycling noise came from the barrel of the large, bulky pistol and caused the thing to start emitting a greenish light from below the main barrel. He had hoped not to need to use this, but his hopes had a lot of holes in them from the start, so why be mad about this one falling through too? A belch of green, screaming plasma soared out of the bottom of the pistol and slammed head on with the Voidling. It rocked backwards as the plasma burned into this thing’s face and melted it.

Cadence looked up and let out a gasp at what had just happened. Then Marshall followed as the Voidling, the mere Spawnling, rocked back forwards. The plasma had eaten most of what could be considered a head on this ever-changing monster. Yet it seemed to be healing it back together and repairing itself as the plasma burned out. Marshall raised the gun once more and the Spawnling backed up. Marshall was confused at this. Spawnlings weren’t supposed to have enough cognitive function to understand things like ‘danger’ and ‘fear’. He had only known them to understand hunger and hate. Yet this thing was backing away from them?

Marshall understood what was happening far too late as the thing kept backing up to the bend that it was at first. The man and the horse. Marshall raised his gun again and tried to cycle another shot. The gun flashed an ‘overheat’ warning on the side of the display and refused the cycle. It must have been damaged in the crash and could only fire once on the anti-Voidling mode before needing to discharge its heat. He cursed and switched to his standard ammo and fired off a few shots. They hit the Spawnling harmlessly on its skin, making ripples and seeming to not slow it.

The Spawnling bit down onto the man’s remains and consumed them in seconds. Then it turned and started on the horse in its infinite greed. As it did this, something began to change in it. Its insides began to pulse a dull purple and it began to gain mass and weight. “Wait…” came Marshall's voice in confusion before his eyes widened in alarm. “Drop the bags, NOW! Get your gun up!”

Cadence let out a frustrated growl of anger as she dropped the pack and shattered some of the more fragile items in it. Her gun whipped up at the moment that it happened. The frame of the Spawnling shuddered as it suddenly gained size, weight, and now what seemed to be spikes on its shoulders. Plates also grew along its newly formed face and frontal legs. Marshall let out another explicit as he realized what it had just done.

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“Aim for the joints and spikes, it just adapted to where I shot it and evolved into a Vulture with that meal.” Marshall said this with a strained calm as he acted out what he told Cadence.

“Yeah, I got that Outlander. I’ve seen these shits before.” Cadence returned with a snarky remark laden with stress and what Marshall guessed was fear. She shouldered her rifle and knelt down to a downed tree on the road a couple paces forwards. She aimed and, with a practiced precision, fired.

Marshall took cover behind some upturned pavement as the shot rang out. He looked up to see the spine that jutted from its left shoulder explode in a hail of shrapnel. It screamed and faced towards her. An almost human face now adorned its head. The face of the man it had just consumed. It snarled in rage and the spine on its right shoulder fired off at rapid speed. The spine hit the tree, shattering it a foot away from Cadence’s head. The splinters flew, and she ducked down the other way in response.

The Vulture let out a roar of anger, of rage, of hunger. It took a step forwards and Marshall put a couple shots into its new and uglier face. He aimed down his pistol and kept firing until the magazine was dry. It seemed to wait until he was done, just standing there and not moving. When Marshall’s magazine emptied and the receiver clicked back, the Vulture manifested a tongue from its swirling innards and licked its lips. A shudder ran down Marshall’s back as he saw this. As if it was saying ‘thank you for the meal’.

It took another step forwards and stopped again. Was it just going to mess with them until it killed them? Marshall hadn't the answer as he reloaded and Cadence swung up and aimed as well. The Vulture seemed to grow back the two spikes on its shoulders with a ‘shunk’ as it turned up the road.

Now that he thought of it, it sounded like something was coming down the road at them. And it was coming fast and heavy. Marshall and Cadence both opened up on it as it turned and roared again at whatever was coming down the road at it.

Marshall, at this point, had no idea what to expect. But what came down that road was even less than that. Not just unexpected, but unbelievable. A retrofitted, plated-up, customized, degraded, rust-bucket-looking Imperial Armored Personnel Carrier, a Wotan-class APC, rocketed around the corner at high speeds and rammed into the Voidling. Its machine-gun atop its frame barked non-stop as it hit, but something else was new to it. They had added a flamethrower to this thing. It belched fire onto the Voidling and caused it to emit a high-pitched scream in pain. That was, it screamed in the seconds before the armored vehicle hit it so hard that it separated in the middle and flung in two different directions. Both of them were still on fire.

The crew-mounted GMG and flamethrower swiveled and hosed down both split parts with explosive fury and followed up with just burning the spot they were in after they were pummeled down. When they had finished, Marshall could see the newly added gunner was wiping his forehead as he let off the trigger on the flamethrower. That wasn’t who he was mainly concerned about. It was the remotely controlled machine-gun that rested next to and slightly behind the gunner. It turned and faced towards them.

Cadence sucked in a breath across from him. She spoke as the gun rested on the both of them. “Don’t make any sudden moves. Those are the guys we need to befriend if we want to get in. That looks like a patrol car of the town we need to be in.”

Marshall raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He simply stood up with his gun rolled around his finger and facing down and away from him and his hands up. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire is a good way to put this…” he mumbled to himself as the hatch on the armored vehicle opened.