At last chapter 8 is done, written and edited to the best of my abilities, i hope my eyes (useless as they are) managed to pick up everything. I don't think there is much to say about this, oh except that anything in italics (not this paragraph obviously) is a persons thoughts, not spoken words. Enjoy.R+R please.

Chapter eight

In over their heads

Across on the other side of the control complex is a sight of chaos; it seems it is not just the marines who disturbed the alien nest. Two of the hulking stalkers back away from another entrance of the complex, firing luminous blue balls of plasma as fast as they can at the alien creatures, who pour out of the partially open doorway. The bottleneck created by the door only allows the voracious animals to come through in a trickle, slow enough to allow their bipedal quarry to simply shoot them as they come without them gaining any ground on the retreating creatures.

Suddenly the aliens stop flowing through the gap in the door; the predators keep a finger held above one of the red square buttons on their left wrist computer, ready to resume firing if the brutes return. Through the gap in the doorway the two brothers in arms notice some fevered activity, followed by deep screeching; not the same sound that the aliens had been making. Repeated banging noises emanate from the partially open doorway, which instantly start to bend and buckle outwards with each bang.

Through their masks the two predators look at each other in amazement, and for the first time in their lives, fear. With two final booming impacts the two halves of the door collapse, revealing the source of the impacts. In the door way, standing even taller than the hunters, are two fearsome monsters, which, unlike their smaller brethren, do not have heads shaped like a curved cylinders, these creatures have long, wide, hardened crests.

The two creatures roar at the startled predators and dash towards them on all fours. The predators stand their ground and resume their firing, however to their horror their plasma balls impact on the larger creatures' heads and have no effect on them, the armored heads being able to withstand the small explosions. The Praetorians roar at the predators as they charge, their heads held down low ready to ram them, their speed is incredible for animals their size. As they close in, the hunters unclip from their sides, long metal spears with sharp, jagged, ornate designs on each end.

The second the praetorians are within striking distance they swing their spears at their respective attackers, but all they do is create sparks as each of their spears scrapes along the hardened shell of the praetorian's heads. Without even slowing down, the praetorians ram right into the two hunters, sending them both hurtling backwards. No longer held back by the door, the horde of aliens gushes out of the building, rapidly catching up to the floored predators.

As they get back to their feet the predators are quickly surrounded by the angry mob, one of whom has lost his spear and is at the mercy of the frenzied creatures. They do not hesitate and jump at him, quickly overpowering him, fluorescent green blood and fleshy masses fly in every direction. The other predator however has managed to keep a hold of his spear and swings it with great skill at aliens all around him, keeping them at bay. However his brave efforts to save his own skin are futile as he cuts it down one alien that gets too close and acid blood splashes over his mask and quickly melts it away, along with small patches of his face, the burning sensation makes the predator flinch, a moment which is taken advantage of by one of the praetorians who grabs the predator by its arms and hoists it up a foot off the ground to just below the praetorians head who looks down on its prey.

Its horrific jaws open with a hiss exposing the secondary jaws, ready to strike. Preferring to look straight at the face of death, the predator looks up at the praetorian and roars at it as the piston like jaws shoot out and smashes into the predator's skull with a loud crunching noise, the hunter's body flinches then goes limp. The praetorian drops the body, hisses and retreats back to the hive with the other praetorian and aliens.

Inside the APC everyone still looks miserable; Yuna, Paine and Tidus are silent, their eyes blood shot and their cheeks moist with shed tears. The other marines talk quietly amongst themselves.

"What the hell were those things?" murmurs Elma "It doesn't make sense, they came out of nowhere. The motion trackers were silent then they start appearing no less than 15 metres all around us."

"They weren't fiends that's for sure: They didn't vanish into pyreflies," points out Beclem "They were strong too, they must have been; they took Lucil, Othello and Nadine with no effort. Who knows where they took them."

"Well it's obvious to me what those things are: dead meat man that's what they are, we aint gonna let them get away with that." growls Biggs.

"Hey I don't want to rain on your parade but we just got our asses kicked pal, we aint just gonna waltz back in there and show them what we're made of. How can we shoot them if we don't see them coming? You got an answer to that?"

Vasquez gets up and opens a compartment on the wall of the APC and pulls out a couple of grey metal cylinders "Alright, we've got 20 canisters of CN20, I say we roll in there and nerve gas the whole damn nest."

"It's a good idea but we don't know if it will work, we can't really do anything beyond shooting them unless we know more about them." Replies Bishop

"Well, I think it's pretty obvious that they are using people as hosts for those things that come out of your chest, and that these things then grow into those bigger freaks. But in order to get one of those 'chest bursting' things you need one of those 'facerapers'. We read a report of only one of them being attached to a persons face. There were no indications that there were more." says Elma.

"Maybe the one that came out of that man's chest and was lost managed to escape, grow, and then find a way to make more of those creatures, or something." Speaks up Yuna, having cleared her mind and tears.

Tidus nods "I think you're right, it makes sense at least… Damn it, this is Shoopuf shit. We came here to find and eliminate invisible murderers and now look."

"We need to look at the bigger picture here. This is more than just about us, this is about the whole of Spira, if those things get out of Macalania then we could be looking at thousands of lives being lost." points out Paine.

"Let's make sure it doesn't come to that." Replies Tidus.

"Well then we'd better think of a way. And I think whatever we choose to do it will mean wiping out this entire area, we have to be thorough; nothing can be allowed to survive." says Beclem.

Silence once again descends on the group; most look at their feet for inspiration. Beclem's eyes suddenly light up and look up at the group. "I have an idea, but you're probably not going to like it."

"What?" asks Yuna.

"Well before I signed up for the marines I was working with a number of Youth League, Machine Faction, and New Yevon scientists and they had been doing weapons research of various forms. Our latest advancement was an incredibly powerful device called the apocalypse bomb that creates a swirling vortex of energy that is capable of annihilating almost anything in range; it's like a giant flare spell and is capable of covering a large area, nearly the size of Macalania. When I joined the corp I found out that these devices had been assigned as part of a standard Dropship's payload of warheads. If we radio Janus to pick us up and fire the bomb at this site I guarantee you there will be nothing left here alive at all, and we will be out of here."

"I smell a 'but' on the end of this." Mutters Paine.

"Correct. The only problem with using this weapon is that, depending on how the reactor building is destroyed, there is a chance that the Ultima reactor will explode as well, now this will mean that a larger area will be covered by the explosion, though I don't think that the area covered would be much greater. The real problem will be the stagnant Ultima energy in the area; it will mean that Macalania will be a pretty quiet neighborhood for a long time."

"After what we have seen I don't think that anyone would want to come back here even if they could." says Tidus.

Yuna looks at him with a sad pair of eyes "Perhaps. It just seems wrong that's all; to erase this place, we lost good friends here and relations. Rikku, Lucil, not to mention your comrades, they won't even get to be sent."

Tidus puts a consoling arm around Yuna "I don't think we have much of a choice here Yuna. Rikku and Lucil always tried to do what was right for Spira, and I think they both would want us to do what is necessary right now."

A tear falls down Yuna's cheek and she slowly concedes and nods.

Beclem gets up and walks to the control console Baird had previously occupied and unhooks the radio.

"Janus, you copy?"

"Copy Beclem, Wedge and I were beginning to wonder what was going on over there."

"Yeah well there is a lot we need to up date you with. But right now we need immediate dust off and prep the Dropship for an Apocalypse strike.

"What? Under whose authority?"

"For now it will be mine, but just do it, don't ask questions."

"Rodger Beclem, Janus out."

Beclem replaces the radio. "Well I guess that's it. We'd better move now. Farrow can tell where we are on radar so let's get into the open so she can set down. Frosty you're driving."

Janus sits in the pilot's seat of the immobile Dropship, waiting for Wedge to return to the cockpit. Lights on the dashboard of the Dropship glow while others blink. She inhales deeply and sighs at the prospect of unleashing a weapon as powerful as the Apocalypse bomb on Macalania.

"Something big must be going down over there. I wonder if everyone is alright. Why would Beclem be giving me the order to prep for this kind of strike and not Baird?" She sighs and rubs her eyes "Wedge what is taking you so long to do?" she mutters to herself. Impatiently she flips a switch on the dash board and raises her voice in the cockpit. "Wedge, get your ass up here they need us there now!"

Through his microphone Wedge hears Janus' orders and jogs onto the ramp of the Dropship. He starts up the ramp and puts his hand one of the ramp railings, winces and lifts up his hand, which is now covered in slimy clear goo that stretches as he pulls his hand up.

"Hold on a second there's something…"

"Just get up here."

"Alright, ramp closing."

He presses a button and the ramp quickly rises, moments later the Dropship begins to take off.

The marines have parked the APC just on the outer edge of the city, no less than fifty meters from the nearest building- an apartment block, and are standing outside with Baird on a stretcher 10 meters or so from the APC watching the Dropship approach.

Janus sits alone in the cockpit and taps on her microphone in frustration.

"Wedge...? Damn it."

There is a mechanical hum as the door behind her opens and she starts to turn around.

"Well where the fu…"

She stares in horror at the alien standing in the doorway, already preparing its secondary jaws for attack. Janus goes for her gun at her side as the alien hisses and moves in at her. Outside of the Dropship's cockpit, Janus' arms flail wildly and the windscreen is splashed with blood.

The marines look on as they watch the Dropship start to pitch and yaw randomly in the air. Instantly realizing that something was very wrong they dash and dive as far out of the way as possible as the Dropship comes crashing to the ground, slides and collides with the APC, in an explosion of metal and flame.

Mentally stunned the marines get to their feet rather shakily and look at the carnage; most of them have a look of dismay, some even downright panic.

Campbell wanders around aimlessly, aghast at this new crises, and talks to one in particular "Oh man, this is it. Its game over man its game over! What are we gonna do now huh? What are we gonna do! We're screwed man!"

Beclem grabs a hold of his shirt "Campbell shut up, we're gonna go back to the hospital and we're gonna review our situation and plans there. But before we do that we're going need to salvage what we can from the APC and the Dropship, if we can. Remember most of the equipment is held in bullet proof boxes; they could have survived the impact and explosion."

Everyone gathers themselves up and moves towards the wreckage, Elma and Frosty pick up the stretcher holding Baird and follow. The clouds in the sky begin to dissipate and reveal a glowing full moon, a beacon of light in a darkening land.