Xenotober 2022 27 Research

a/n: More fight scenes. Harm warning. Lots of harm.

Editing? Nope.

All the good things belong to Monolithsoft. My OCs will be fine!

This would be the last one, or so Neesae hoped. There was the slight chance that they would only get a single material from it, but they'd been averaging two each kill, which made this the last one. She was tired and grimy and a little worried that she'd gotten her own share of venom over the course of the past two hours. Her fingers tingled and her eyes were smarting. That might be the shift in the air though; the tall grass crackled quietly with static when she walked through it and the wind was starting to smell like sandstone. Somewhere the promised electrical storm was building.

So Neesae really hoped this ictus would be the last one. She knew Rosalee felt the same. Rosalee had suggested that if they needed to bag an extra ictus, they might as well head back to Frye and scrounge around closer to him. If they walked any further along the edge of the lake, they'd come to a crossroads where there was a confusion of indigen. Some were ictus, their target, but did they really need to cope with curious nopopotomus or saltat? Better to hope that a new ictus had already claimed the territories they'd cleared at the start of the mission.

They did their routine with all the care they'd used on the first few monsters. A flurry of shots, the hand-off from Rosalee to Neesae and back to Rosalee. Neesae had developed a neat trick. She'd experimented with a nasty round intended to go in clean and leave ugly. With shelled creatures, it never exited, bouncing around inside and turning whatever was soft into liquid. Nasty, but effective. Neesae left the decision on how she felt about that for later.

Rosalee picked up her shield before checking the materials. Neesae reloaded to hide her impatience. Would it be enough? Rosalee's grin told Neesae it was. She started to say something, her mouth open on a note of relief or sarcasm. Neesae would never know.

Rosalee's mouth gaped and whatever she had in mind switched to a scream. She dove toward Neesae, who was spinning to face whatever was coming at them. She didn't see it at first. All that she saw was a thrashing of bushes and smaller indigen scrambling for the edges of the path. Nothing the size of ictus was stalking them. Then a shadow fell over her. She looked high up, far past where she'd been looking, into the maw of a towering Sylooth, lumbering on two legs and reaching almost to the top of the canyon. Then she saw nothing, because Rosalee's shield was covering both of them.

They were smashed into the sand, Neesae sitting almost flat on her back, with Rosalee on her knees, holding the shield against the blow. As soon as the attack shifted, Neesae rolled free and started to take a shot. She stopped herself, got into position, and aimed for the closest knee. The shot was true, and the creature staggered backward.

"They're not supposed to be here," gasped Rosalee. She was still kneeling, the shield tilted awkwardly at her side. Neesea got off another shot and ran to her side.

"My arm," Rosalee explained, finally making it to her feet.

Neesae took the time to slash upward toward the Sylooth, but even her most dramatic melee attack couldn't reach its waist. The thing swung another fist, more clumsy from its injury, and Neesae was able to pull Rosalee away from the impact. Rosalee gasped and dropped to her knees again. "Really messed up," she wheezed.

Neesae took a shot at the other knee, another hit. Once more, the sylooth staggered back, then bent down and grabbed an ictus that had been hissing and dancing behind it. "Come on, no fair," yelped Neesae in dismay. Rosalee pulled her back down onto the ground and used her good hand to prop the shield in front of them, her right arm useless but still wedged into the shield's grips. Some anti-grav feature triggered and the ictus bounced over them, but Rosalee went from injured to barely conscious in the process. Neesae was trying to decide what to do when the Sylooth reached down. There was a whoosh of air and Rosalee vanished.

Neesae looked up, again much further up than she cared to, and watched as the Sylooth shook Rosalee's shield experimentally from side to side. Rosalee swung limply below. If there had been any hope for her arm, it was clearly gone now. The Sylooth lifted Rosalee higher, staring at the strange enemy.

Neesae didn't wait for it to open its mouth. Young Sylooth were vegetarian, older Sylooth mostly lived on sunshine and photosynthesis, and Neesae didn't trust either factoid in the slightest. She took the best aim of her entire life, her brain screaming that this was the wrong target, waited for the second of rest between the pulses of her hydraulic systems, and squeezed the trigger.

Most of Rosalee dropped to the ground. The shield was still in the surprised Sylooth's grip. Neesae didn't stop to look at Rosalee. She chambered that nasty experimental round, the one that pureed ictus. She figured a skull of something as massive as a Sylooth would work the same as a scorpion's shell. She aimed for the eye and shot.

a/n: Chapter 5 has traumatized us all for the rest of our lives.

Next up: Cradle. The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rocks the world, so I guess Rosalee can only rock one world now.