He blasted the wall again, and the smoke wasn't even clear before she dove through it, swinging off to the side, and he did a head-dive, turning his seven-foot-plus figure in a very unexpected somersault, jetpack roaring to break his momentum and hover in midair.
"It's turning around," she noted, saw the skull-pattern visor glance at her hanging there by her nails, and she started swarming up diagonally, getting behind the temporary cover of a primary support and heading for the more permanent cover of the roof ten stories up.
He looked at the play of shadows, heard the crunching impact of a monstrous foot compacting plascrete, and turned to zoom away and around the corner, hoping to get the bulk of the building between himself and the thing coming their way again.
The neo-reptilian hulk of the bipedal creature was just starting to loom around the corner when several pulses of light impacted on its other side, accompanied a second later by thunderous cracks of particle weapon discharge from the Big Honking Motile Cannon category. Heliograd 200 mm?, Celestia thought, not stopping her scampering for altitude as some welcome opportunist took the chance to shoot the oversized boot-faced thing with skin like a dried turd. Could be a GenerGuv 220, but it would be an older model…
Hey, just because she didn’t like using ranged weapons didn’t mean she hadn’t developed a very healthy interest in ALL kinds of ordnance, especially when walking Things too big to actually be walking around were tearing up the city, and the Mech crews and Tanks were responding with enthusiasm. Damn, Fyr was tearing things up six miles away right when she was needed here...
Whatever had hit Bootface hadn't done enough damage, as the biomech turned around again, that spatial warp gathering in one hand for tossing out, while the sausage-like maw-head began to open and light up.
Celestia hauled herself over the edge of the roof, briefly contemplated her high 20-something Stupidity Stat, and ran for the section of the roof that hadn't already collapsed into the lower floors to get a better view of the fight.
Screaming volleys of incoming missiles, with much shrapnel and concussion waves, were generating bunches of smoke and obfuscation she looked right through. The thing below used pscanning as much as anything to find stuff, along with multiple optical clusters scattered about its hide, so that would only be partially effective for whoever was trying to shoot and gain cover. The combination of a psychic force shield and dispersive hide that could just soak and spread impact energy throughout the mass of the creature meant it hadn't even taken any real damage.
She ignored the sound, pressure waves, and brilliance of the impacts; high resistance to Thunder and Radiant damage took care of them, the psychic damage was taken care of by her Null, and her DR would deal with light shrapnel without any problems, while her Bracers encouraged harmful airborne objects headed her way to kindly miss her.
Augment Wardstones against Missiles were SO nice on the battlefield of the future.
Bootface’s tube-maw was actually a cannon. Well, well, what do you know?, she thought. Fifteen stories tall, twenty-story building; she couldn't be that crazy, could she?
Of course she could. Her Stupidity Stat was superhumanly high, after all. Thank you, Dauntless, she thought ironically, rolling her eyes at herself.
The length of the street lit up with howling psychic plasma lancing out to a target quite some distance down thataway. There was an explosion, but since any matter was going to react badly to Weird Plasma coming in and trying to have a baby, that didn't mean anything.
Her, she was jumping down onto this momentarily stationary target as a ball of perpendicular space went spiraling down the street from its left hand/arm cannon.
She could actually take a normal fall of fifty feet without any problem, benefits of a 5g physiology, but wasn't taking a chance and the Tats on her ankles flared briefly, chucking the kinetic energy of her fall out into the surrounding air with a puff of mist, and abruptly she was standing on Bootface's shoulder. The hole her Null had naturally made in its personal shields sealed behind her, but it wasn't like anyone was dropping charges in after her.
At least, not yet. That was the idea, however.
She flicked out Chill, and started cutting.
The point-defense lightning projectors were first, as she didn't want to test a point-blank pure psychic discharge from something this big. She stepped on its optical nodes and coolly tore them out with her feet in passing, and cut her way down its front side. Yes, there and there and there...
This phrenic monstrosity wasn't the only thing that could rend space. Her cream-white and black adamantine Sword was howling for attention as it bit into a hide that seemed equal parts scales and leather and ewwww-gross, slicing it and the masses of neural fibers below apart. Purple-orange lightning, maybe mind-green and emo-dark in the pspectrum, promptly vented outwards with some vigor.
She could feel the integrity of its personal Pshields starting to crinkle. Now, being on the front side of a big beastie that was under bombardment by another mech or something probably wasn't a good idea, but given that this thing was basically unharmed she decided to chance it as she worked along its shoulder to its neck, Chill cutting apart anything that looked interesting.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
A pustule erupted up in front of her with a shower of anti-boarding acid, spattering around her with an acrid smell, and slid down her Vajra as she cut the side of the creature and let it run down its own hide. A cluster of optic nodes bent her way, and was severed with a flick of her wrist. She saw its head turn towards her, finally taking note of her as she raced to the base of its neck and tossed a Deadweb at that three-foot soulless eyeball.
The BeaconTech ™ Consumable blew over the orb with a wet splortch, promptly covering the eye in Energized Lead, meaning it was now psi-dead and completely obfuscating both normal vision and any enhanced psenses focused on that eyeball. Lens. Whatever.
She spun behind its neck as the volley from down the street came thundering in, and definitely felt the creature lurch as one particle beam sliced across its chest and found the two focal junctions she’d disarmed, ripping through its proto-flesh and sending tons of rubbery meat and nerve-cables spraying free. The brute turned to guard its shoulder as it realized the weakness and shifted to bring its good eye fully to bear on its enemy, while optic clusters all around Celestia waggled frantically trying to locate her and were cut off by flashing Shards flicking from Chill’s point.
The proto-lightning discharges of its point defenses lashed around her, but she was already moving up atop its head and heading for its maw.
Spiking a cannon, Rantha-style!
Leap, up and down, One Strike, cleaving space itself against this phrenic biomech, ripping apart the complex cluster of parasilicon and quasimetal nerve-conduits that managed the immense psychic powers controlling the discharge of its main cannon, pseudo-bone harder than diamond parting under the edge of her Sun-Striking Blade, putting a nice gouge into the 'barrel' of this beastie even as it was building up power...
Celestia jumped back as Bootface discharged, and there was a Small Problem for Ugly. Uncontrolled plasma-psi blew out the gap in its maw, driving its mouth down sharply. It made a huge line down the center of the street, and the number of car-casses that lit off was impressive, but she didn’t think it actually hit anything important as the half-vented blast ended up toasting its own lead foot.
Ouch, she mused calmly.
She slid down the side of its head, the point of Chill her brake as it gouged a nice trail through the biotitan’s reeking hide, and if she just so happened to cross that massive eye and splortch it in passing as it reeled back and tried to get its balance, well, shit happened, right?
The psychic scream nearly overwhelmed the physical one dribbling out of its smoking muzzle-maw as she dropped free, a tentacle-hand the size of a semi missing her as she fell. She hit the ground right next to the crater it had made of its own right foot, and promptly darted to the side at maximum speed.
Infuriated, it turned to follow her with its secondary eyes, raising both hand-cannons to follow her before she could possibly get to cover.
You know, you really, really shouldn't turn your weak side to the enemy in the middle of a fight, she thought with a mental sniff.
The first shot blew through its left arm, and a space-rending shot failed as it was blown off-target, the other arm simply short-circuiting. Celestia watched the right-hand shot get hurled wild, released well over her head and kind enough to put a big hole into another of the façades of nameless commercia buildings of Kindlinzone. Gave the plascrete some character, really. “Here a bio-titan scarred me. Buy your soylent here!” Mmm, doubtless she’d be seeing something like it in the future...
Second, third, and fourth shots slammed into the side of the biotitan, and then the missiles came in like the hammers of God His Own Bad Self.
-Whoops, Emperor, All Glory to the Throne, bad Celestia!-
With no psi-shields to catch them, they drove deep into protoflesh like AP rounds and exploded in apocalyptic symphony.
She skidded to a halt, looking back to see the creature’s left arm get blown entirely off, gore flying for hundreds of yards as multiple tons of gun-arm fell with a massive crash to the ground. Chest innards were spraying out as protoplasm and microfusion blasts did their dance and had smoking-hot kittens.
Yeah, that biomech was tough. Most of the left side of its chest was blown away, the weird architecture of its bones and spine visible, and whatever passed for biology having a bit of a tough time… but it hadn’t even fallen down yet.
Three particle beams drilled in together, came out the far side of its corpse as they melted off its stumpy neck in passing. That seemed to do for it, as it swayed, and began to slump forwards.
She eyed the vivic flames she'd left behind, already starting to increase in size given the sheer volume of phrenic energy here to feed them. In minutes this thing and all its remnants were going to be quite the pyre. She wondered if the genetechs from the Mekkers were hoping for new study material, as there wasn't going to be any. No recycling of obscenely powerful biovores allowed...
Boom. Dust cloud, impact wave through the 'crete passing beneath her feet. Scattered unharvested dead carcasses bounced up and down, celebrating with The Wave, we are the champions, my friends... Maybe.
Something wriggled out from the stump of the severed head, and she grabbed for her autobow as the cerevore pulled free of the clingy web of its neural link. This species of 'vore was the size of a pig, and seemed a bit agitated, judging by how jerkily it was moving. Maybe the level of psychic feedback was doing something to it, she didn’t care. The shock didn't prevent it from jumping ten feet down onto the rubble of the road and trying to scuttle away on five chicken legs.
A bunch of man and metal slammed down from above and smashed it into the ground. His boomstick came down, and thoomthoomthoom sounded as the Thunder Bull got closer and closer to the ground with each shot. Alas, the 'vore couldn't seem to take the weight in the end, despite the nice carry-cavity, and stopped moving after a few residual twitches.
Poor cerevore biotitan driver. One little weight problem, and it goes all to pieces.
The war was definitely good for the Karmic stream; she was maxing her buys every day.
Celestia threw the Bull a casual salute as she caught him looking her way, and headed off, calling out in Markchat for a fighting zone close enough to be butchered.
The Legionnaire offered her a hesitant salute back, looking back at the downed biotitan, back at her as she skated off towards the sound of more fighting in the distance, and shouted, “Hag! Wait!”