All was silent within the APC, everyone patiently waiting for Aphis's return. Even through this quiet, something seemed very off when the viper failed to return after a short time, and the soldiers all held their weapons uneasily.
The door then suddenly dropped open without warning; activated from the outside and revealing, to everyone's shock, the panting form of Aphis. A faint stream of what appeared to be yellow-green blood was painted on the side of her panicked face, and the expression her red-eyed glare bore was utterly serious and devoid of anything natural.
"Chryssalids!" the viper yelled at once, wiping the smear of blood from her face with her free hand, and turning briefly behind her; making sure none of the creatures she knew were lurking around were not about to impale her in the back, as one tried and failed to do not a few moments before. "We're under attack!"
Everyone jumping to their legs, an ADVENT officer instantly barked an order in its electronic voice, and the soldiers all rushed out of the vehicle. Picking up his plasma cannon, Miskaton stomped out to join them just as the sound of multiple screeching cries began to echo over the sound of the storm. However many chryssalids there were out there, there was clearly many.
Seraffo, her own beam rifle in hand, was about to follow Miskaton and the troopers out, but stopped where she was and looked down at the human she was with. "Quint, stay in here where it's safe," she spoke, placing a hand on his chest. "I... We cannot risk losing you."
"And let you fight those things?" he snapped at her, though in a voice that sounded more concerned than wrathful. "What's even the entire situation out there?"
"By the sound of it, they have killed the drivers. We just have to fend them off long enough to regain control of the vehicle," she told him, racing up to the edge of the door in a burst of movement and shooting her hood-drawn head from the corner. Quint ran up to her immediately in pursuit.
"But Seraffo, if those really are chryssalids, then you know what you're dealing with!" he shouted, placing both of his hands on one of her arms. "They'll tear you to shreds if you go out there!"
"And without a weapon, they would do the same to you with ease. Just stay here, I beg of you," she told him a final time before leaping out a short ways into the snow, where a band of three ADVENT troopers stood in a defensive formation. They were clearly waiting there to provide ordered and organized support as several more of their comrades, Aphis, and Miskaton were a dozen meters up front and around the APC, fighting what clearly was a large host of at least five chryssalids that were storming in from all corners of the woodland countryside.
Before they could charge into the fray, the ground just to the left of them sounded as though it had exploded, and snow was sent into the air. As the cloud of white powder faded to the ground, two more chryssalids, previously burrowed within the snow-covered floor of the forest, made their presence fully known to all. Seraffo was the first to react, and shot a blast from her beam rifle, missing the one she targeted by less than an inch. Her example was quickly followed by the troopers and their magnetic rifles, and the sound of gunfire began to thunder out.
As one chryssalid lunged at the ADVENT grunts, quickly decapitating one of them with bloodcurdling scream and a swinging slash from its foreclaw, the former skittered over toward Seraffo with a grating rumble reverberating from its throat. She managed to take another shot at it as it leaped at her, but the beam missed, and she felt the full force of the creature's body against her own. It effortlessly sliced her rifle in two like a hot knife through butter when it tried to strike at her directly, and Seraffo only barely avoided suffering a similar fate as she was fully tackled, back-first, to the ground. Rearing up upon its hind legs once it was standing over her, the chryssalid sent both of its front pair down in an effort to impale her with the sharp-tipped appendages.
Harshly hissing and showing her fangs at it, Seraffo constricted the lower portion of her body around the creature's midsection and thorax in a speedy motion before the attack could connect with her, halting it with a tremendous tug. Spending all of her strength into the attempt to pry the creature fully off of her with her tail, her hands grasped at the thing's still-extended front legs and tried to push them away.
But the chryssalid proved too strong despite its wiry frame, and its legs grew closer and closer to her body until Seraffo's coils slipped downward on it by but a hair. Stabbing its legs down immediately, one hit, piercing through the armor and flesh lining her right shoulder with as much ease as a sewing needle through cloth. Seraffo let out a cry of pain as she felt the blow, and her body's grip on the creature began to falter, but still she tried to fight back.
And it was at that crucial moment that Quint, watching everything from where currently stood, chose to act. Without even thinking, but still careful enough to avoid impaling himself on one of the orange-tipped spines that lined the foul creature's dark carapace, Quint ran and pounced onto the back of the chryssalid, flung his arms over its hideous head, and quickly wrapped the chains of his handcuffs around its neck.
The handcuffs proved to have an effect, as the chryssalid soon let go of Seraffo's ailing form, and began to stagger backwards as its attention was thrust onto the human. The vile creature let out a strangled cry as it struggled around in the snow against the human's lethal chokehold like a mindless beast, the chains slowly breaking through the chitin covering its vulnerable throat as Quint pulled with all of his might. Through grating teeth that he clenched together so hard that his gums began to bleed, Quint continued his attack through the deafening sound of the battle going on around them, even as the beast lost its balance and slipped onto the cold ground. It wasn't until he saw the chryssalid's legs extend in a sudden and desperate motion, before they, and the alien itself went completely limp, that he took his hands off of it. Standing up, beads of sweat falling from his forehead, he circled around the fallen beast.
It was dead, as Quint could plainly see upon a quick inspection. Its throat appeared to have been caved in by his successful efforts to garrote it, and the only traces it once being alive were how its mandibles and legs occasionally let loose a dull twitch. Without hesitation, he dashed up to Seraffo, who was against the hull of the ACP, and felt a pang of alarm and fear as he saw the terrible wound she bore with full clarity.
"Q-Quint..." she spoke, as he helped her get a better standing. "Th-thanks for that."
"Your shoulder," he spoke back in a worried fashion, pointing to the good-sized hole that stuck through her armor and flesh, where a thick trickle of blood was beginning to bleed from, staining the ground with its murky green color. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," she insisted shakily, placing her left hand back onto it. As she stared back at him, a look of horror fell across her face when a large figure came rushing up to them out of the corner of her eye. "Quint, behind you!" she called out in a desperate cry.
Before he could heed her, Quint was violently torn away from Seraffo with a shout of panic as a pair of mandibles clasped around his shirt's collar, and began to drag him away. After being pulled back nearly a dozen feet, Quint felt, with a chill, as a pair of four-fingered foreclaws wrapped themselves over his shoulders. Squeezing his eyes close as this new chryssalid's head above him let out a vile hiss and clacked its jaws together three times, he prepared for the bite it was about to give him, when an enraged shout went out from Seraffo's direction.
"You will not take him from me!" she cried defiantly, her tongue lashing out from her mouth and extending several feet forward like the crack of whip until it had reached Quint. Wrapping around his leg, and with a deceptively powerful tug, her tongue pulled him straight out of the chryssalid's grasp and back by her side. The moment he plopped onto the snow next to her, Seraffo's tongue let go and retreated back into her mouth. Bellowing in anger at the interruption of what was originally going to be its kill, the chryssalid once more started for them.
Quint was only getting to his feet when Seraffo used the last of her strength to slither her larger body between his and the chryssalid's. The insectoid alien was upon them and rearing back to deliver a deadly strike by the time the human realized what she was doing, to his immediate abject dread, and Seraffo unflinchingly braced herself for the incoming attack she was willingly going to block for him. The chryssalid didn't seem to care about who it was going to kill, but either way its assault was suddenly stopped by a large metal hand that suddenly nabbed it by the scruff of its neck like a newborn puppy.
That hand belonged to none other than Miskaton, and he quickly placed his other limb onto the lower portion of the squealing creature that tried in vain to thrash itself free of his grasp. In one savage, but brief stroke, under the pained screams and cries of the chryssalid, Miskaton completely tore the creature in half. Yellow-green ichor and twisting innards of various colors splashed about upon the once-white ground below like a revolting parody of an egg releasing its yolk, sending a foul and damp smell through the cold air. Throwing both halves away behind him uncaringly, Miskaton picked his cannon back up and stepped toward Quint and Seraffo.
"Seraffo. You have been seriously injured," he spoke to the viper directly, his monotonous voice still in use, despite the predicament going on at the moment.
"It's just the chryssalid's poison..." Seraffo sighed, clearly in what was beginning to appear as extreme pain from her festering wound. "I'll be okay... I just need to get into the APC. There's a... a medical kit in there. It contains antivenom a-among other things..."
"Quint, you must take her there," the andromedon ordered, pointing a metal-covered finger at the back of the vehicle. "I will hold off any chryssalid that attempts to harm you two. Not very many remain."
Nodding, Quint moved his shoulder underneath Seraffo's unhurt arm, and once she was set, the two started for the transport area. Not a second later, two chryssalids that had freshly broken off from the attack on the ADVENT forces spotted the viper and the human from the corner of their orange compound eyes, and driven into a drunken fury by the tantalizingly thick smell of the viper's wound, attempted to catch them before they could escape. The first one was quickly dispatched by a mighty, thunderous shot from the charging Miskaton's plasma cannon, sending what little was left of its limp, smoking, and now-silent form spiraling toward a tree trunk several feet away with a brittle crash. The other, ignoring the gruesome plight of its broodmate and the andromedon in its haste, was almost upon its prey, when it was suddenly grabbed by one of its hind legs and dragged to the snow floor by a mighty hand with a squeak of surprise. It made an effort to scramble back to its four legs, until its entire body was prematurely crushed by the andromedon's foot with a sickening crunch.
Quint and Seraffo reached their destination safely, and entered as fast as they could go, heading straight for the medical supplies. Back facing them, Miskaton guarded the wide doorway, and spent the time there gazing out into the battlefield. The chryssalids appeared to be thinning in number, but ADVENT's own forces had dwindled down heavily as well. From the many trooper corpses littering the ground at random, large, pinkish, bulging cocoons had begun to form over them; each ones' thick membranes pulsating with the savage life they held within, and a wearily short time away from hatching into a whole new cluster of monstrous creatures to fight.
"We've gained the upper hand, but we cannot destroy all those cocoons before they hatch," Aphis spoke to the soldiers, once enough peace had been restored for them to regroup. "One of you, start the APC and let us leave this place before we are overrun!"
Speaking something in agreement, an ADVENT officer leapt into the front the vehicle, closed the door behind him, and started it. After each took their last shots at a final encroaching chryssalid, blasting it to meaty bits through the blizzard with their combined firepower, Aphis and the surviving soldiers made a mad dash to the back and entered it swiftly. Wretched chittering and bursting membrane went out through the frozen air as the last soldier ran in and the door closed behind him with a thud of metal, but like a defiant call in response, the sound of the engine blaring went out and the armored vehicle jerked forward, roaring off at a speed much faster than what was used before the skirmish began.
Everyone inside was tense for the first several minutes into the ride, each one expecting to hear the pattering of insectoid feet scamper about above them. When nothing else happened or was heard however, they started to let their guard down until it was obvious all was over at last. Aphis let out a relieved sigh and lowered her weapon, turning from the door to the few living troopers and their prisoner.
In the back, opposite of the armored vehicle's opening and still applying the last of the healing agents, antivenom and bandages she required, were Seraffo and Quint. "Seraffo," Aphis spoke softly, upon slithering up to them and widening her eyes at the currently-limp arm and the white cloth that had been wrapped about her unarmored shoulder, stained with a thick amount of her blood. "It looks as though you took a nasty blow out there. Are you okay?"
"The antivenom has been delivered, and the bleeding has been stopped. I am alright," she replied sorely, before cutting the last strip she needed from the bandages with the edge of one of her fangs. "The human and my andromedon saved my life."
Aphis gawked unbelieving. "The human?" she muttered, giving Quint a shocked glance, before focusing her view on Miskaton. "Is this true?" she asked him.
"I saw him save her, yes," he responded as Quint and Seraffo gave each other a warm beam. "Were it not for his efforts at that one acute moment, Seraffo would not be alive."
"Then I suppose... the Elders will be pleased to know he is alive as well," said Aphis again, the aged viper slowly trekking back to her seat at a tired crawl. The battle, though rather quick, had clearly drained her of her stamina. "We will be arriving within a short time."
Aphis sat down flatly in the seat she was in before this whole mess began, and leaned her aching head against the wall. The tormenting lure of just closing her eyes and falling asleep took ahold of her for the rest of the ride, but she fought it back with her characteristic stubbornness.