Love Child
fadingshadesofpurple
Disclaimer: Once again, none of the characters are mine (unless stated otherwise.) They are all copyright Naughty Dog/SCEA. Don't sue me.
For those of you that read and didn't review, I hope you've enjoyed it so far. You would tell me otherwise, right? (right?) Anyways, to those who read and reviewed, thanks! A special thanks goes out to Jak Fan and Ecohorse, who have been reviewing the most. Thanks guys! I only hope I won't disappoint you in the future chapters.
And it appears that I have made a mistake in the former chapters. The creatures that attack the drill platform are cloakers and Metal Jackets. I had confused the Metal Jackets with the stingers. Stingers, which appear in this chapter, are the little ground hiding scorpion like creatures that leap out at you at said, annoying times in the game. Metal Jackets are those creatures that fly and hurl balls of dark eco at you, and these were the creatures that were attacking Torn inittially, not the Stingers.
Anyways, no more banter from me. Here's chapter 8. Quite possibly the longest chapter in this story so far.
Chapter 8. A Cavern of Treasures...
The air train rocked gently back and forth as it hurtled across the barren wastelands towards its destination. Inside, a group of Krimzon Guard, along with Ashelin, jerked back and forth with the rocking motion of the air train. Ashelin sat a short distance from those under her command, listening carefully to their rough small talk, and barely hearing it over the noise of the zooming air train. Evantually, her own thoughts blocked their talk out completely.
She shifted her hand down to her abdomen, where an extra piece of armor had been snapped in place, all to protect her usually bare stomach, hips, and abdomen. Slipping her hands underneath the armor, she pressed against the skin underneath as gently as she could, feeling for a bulge, a sign, anything that indicated that she was now carrying yet another life inside of her own. She felt nothing though, and removed her hand, disappointment curiously forming itself in the back of her mind.
Suddenly thoughts of Torn, the baby's father, filled her mind. She smirked a little at the questions that followed.
What would he think?
What would he say?
What would he do?
She had only this mission to complete before she would find the answers to those questions.
The air train came to a halt suddenly, and a loud hissing noise, one akin to the sound of a humongous vacuum cleaner being turned on, sounded. She stood up, brushed her thoughts aside, and focused her golden eyed gaze on the air train's door as it slid open. A blast of heat hit them from the outside, nearly knocking some of the KG over, but Ashelin held her ground.
Hastily she stepped forward, quickly barking orders out to those under her command as she stepped down from the air train onto the soft desert sand. The fire in her eyes was nearly unquelchable as she viewed the scene around her with determination. Off to the distance, the sand dipped quite a bit. A rocky path formed itself at the bottom of this hill, a path led that led to a rocky formation even further in the distance.
"That must be our location," she shouted over the drone of the air train, and whipping winds of the desert. "Follow me! Move quickly and keep your eyes pealed for any Metalhead activity! Got that?"
"Yes, ma'am," the responded automatically.
"Good. Then Move out!" She started off, and they followed, as she moved for the rock formation she was certain was the cavern her father had mentioned before. Beyond it, only a sea of sand could be sand, a sea of sand that met with a cloudy sky at the horizon. They stepped down the dip, each in formation: Ashelin, a group of men at the front, and another larger group at the rear.
They followed the path until they came to the rock formation. Here she took command again. "Stand guard for any metalhead activity," she said to them. "I'm going to look for an entrance to this thing." They all moved in position, craning their heads to view the sky and the area all around them. All was calm, as things should be.
Meanwhile, Ashelin moved around the rock formation, hoping to find a large hole or something of that sort that would indicate it was, indeed, a cavern. She circled it nearly halfway, and found no luck, but the fire and determination attributed to her character would not allow her to give up. She moved about the cavern some more, shifting her hands and knocking on the rocks for anything that sounded hollow. Perhaps the entrance was hidden behind a rock. She came three quarters, and found what she was looking for. She knocked on a rather thin, yet tall, slab rock and heard a distinct echo ricochet from behind it. She grinned at this, for she believed that she had found the entrance. Signalling to her men, they circled her, and she ordered three of them of the lift they heavy slab and move it out of the way. Each took their position, and shifted it aside, until it revealed what Ashelin had known all along to be under the slab: a tall, slim black hole of an entrance, that could only lead to the treasures her father expected her to bring back.
"We move on," she turned to her men, before stepping into the darkness without hesitation. The ground beneath her feet felt hard, not sandy, as she moved through the cavern's narrow walkway: a series of rock steps bedecked on either sides by high rocky walls that led to a cieling of darkness. The floor stayed as hard, but the walls became increasingly slimier as she went, feeling her way through the darkness by grasping these very walls alone. Evantually, one wall dropped off, and she found that the rocky stairwell turned around a wide, and deep chasm. Thick, rocky columns towered out of this chasm, and she could see, with what little ligth she had, Precursor Runes glistening on them.
Evantually, the rocky stairwell came to an end, and a new path began, one that led them through yet another narrow passageway. This one winding, and the cieling low and made of rock. The floor was slippery, and she heard little droplets of water falling from the cieling. "Water? Where the hell could that be coming from?" she thought to herself, but then shrugged it off. She was here to find ancient artifacts, and her thoughts should be focused on the wherabouts of those artifacts.
She had not yet realized that she and her team were heading into a very dangerous situation.
They came to the end of this passageway finally, and found themselves in a wide open cavern. Tall stalagmites and stalagtites jutted out from the cieling and the floor, along with more columns. Ashelin approached one of these columns, and touched it, fascinated to find that more Precursor runes glistened at her touch. She looked in the distance, as her men moved about her in awe at the spacious cavern and whatever treasures it would hold.
Water droplets rained down from the cieling, and that sound, besides the sound of their own footsteps was the only sound that could be heard. She looked up, and headed to a wall in the distance. A fascinating wall, she found, to be carved into a series of shelves, each housing a precious precursor artifact. "Bingo," she muttered to herself with a smirk.
Her victory, however, would not last forever. For suddenly, she heard a shifting in the part of the cavern that none of her men now stood, and she looked to that part to see what had moved, narrowing her eyes in the process.
A pair of steely yellow eyes gleamed back at her hers, and a shining gem atop the head that held those eyes glowed eerily as well. Her eyes widened, and her mouth formed the words, just as her mind and heart grasped what was about to happen. One of her men beat her to it. "Metalheads!" he cried, as one, a grunt that had been lurking in another, forgotten corner, lunged at him.
She turned around at this, and started to run to the center of the open cavern, as Metalheads of all shapes and sizes materialized out of the shadows. As she moved, the ground beneath her feet, and a stinger appeared, nearly knocking her off balance. Quick witted as she was, she switched her footing carefully, brought out her gun, and fired on the stinger twice before it fell dead. Not bothering to savor her victory over a useless stinger, she hurried forward to the center of the cavern, where her men clumped together in fear, their weapons raised to aim, but not to fire.
"You idiots!" she shouted at them. "It's a Metalhead ambush!" she said this as a series of grunts, Juice Goons, and even a couple Crabheads moved forward to deal out their their usual round of fatal blows. "They were waiting for us all along.."she murmured to herself. "I should have seen this coming." Then louder to her men she shouted, "What the hell are you waiting for? Shoot them! And protect the Artifacts!"
A fury of fire could be heard next, as the KG opened fire on the approaching scourge of Metalheads. Ashelin flipped out of the way herself, as a juice goon attempted to fire its deadly bolts of red eco at her. She dodged again, as another one moved in on her, and flipped towards the back wall of the cavern, firing on them as she did so. She managed to take one out, before she completely ran out of ammo and had to reload, slowing her down, and allowing the still remaining juice goon to creep up on her. It leaned back to fire on her, paused, looked up and shifted its aim to the cieling. In a flash, she stopped loading her pistol, glanced up and quickly realized why as a furious stream of red eco bolts hit a stalagmite wedged into the cieling, sending it crashing to the floor. She rolled out of the way, as it fell, narrowly missing her in the process.
On the ground, she glared at her assailant, brought her pistol up to aim at it, as she finished loading it, and then paused for a brief second. "Two can play at this game," she muttered to herself, shifting her aim to a second stalagmite above the Metalhead, and firing at it. The much slower juice goon did not move nearly as quickly as had, and it let out a screach of agony as the stalagmite fell and impalled her.
Once down, she stood up and surveyed her troops, only to find, with a heavy heart, that many of them had been downed. No more of the juice goons remained, but 5 crabheads stood clumped in a corner, aiming ceaselessly on her men as they tried to fire back. And even as she realized that they were losing, more Metalheads materialized from the shadows further down in the cavern. Juice goons and a few Metal Jackets, as well as some stingers. At this, she began to realize that she had underestimated the size of this cavern.
She leapt down toward a clump of her men that were still alive and kicking, and began to assist them in the fire, even as the thoughts "we're screwed" entered her mind. She fired, and they fired, a few more juice goons fell, along with all the Metal Jackets, and 3 of the remaining crabheads. Still more Metalheads came, and the surviving ones crept up on the remaining KG with the deadly knowledge that they would sieze this day, and this mission. Ashelin looked down at her weapon, realized it needed to be reloaded, and set about to reloading it. "It's hopeless," one of the men standing next to her muttered. And she couldn't argue with him. Things did, indeed, seem bleak. The Metalheads had them surrounded, and were slowly and forcefully backing them into a corner.
Her men held their fire, taking in the situation around them, just as their leader realized that something else was going on. The Metalheads were planning something...
No sooner had she thought that, when one let out a cry, and fired on the ground beneath their feet. It crumbled, sank, and gave way altogether.
Something heavy, and dark, and cold hit her, nearly knocking her senses from her body as she, and the remaining KG around her sank into what she quickly realized was a pool of water. She smirked as she kicked about, trying to reach the surface, wondering what the dangers of water could do to her and her men.
Then a sickening realization came to her as she heard the pleas of help, muffled by the water, of her comrades around her, as they sank like rocks into the abyss below her. Their armor, their godsend in battle on land and any other situation, would be their seal of doom in water. She watched as they sank, watched as they tried to shift about, but could barely move, watched as the darkness claimed them one by one.
Her armor had a distinct advantage over theirs; it was lighter and allowed for her agility. It also meant that in water, she would float.
One knew this, and this final guard, latched onto her arm as he sank, lulling her with his pleas of help, yet dragging her to her doom all the same. "Let go," she shouted into the murky water, but the soldier shook his head. "Let go!" she yelled even harder, attempting to jerk away from, but finding that move to be futile. Then she took her pistol, nodded her head at him in a "don't make me have to do this" way, and cracked it against his face, in a forceful attempt to cause him to losen his grip.
It was the fury of eco fire raining down from above that caused him to lose his grip on her and join the rest of his rank, not her forceful use of the pistol. She looked up, realized that the Metalheads were firing to make sure that all of those who had sank into this abyss stayed there, and deftly tried to swim to the surface, if for only to catch a breath of much needed air, let alone search for a place to hide from their fire.
As she swam furiously, a blast of dark eco caught her shoulder, ripping through the makeshift armor she wore there. She screamed as agony as the dark eco hit so deeply it drew blood. For a moment, it knocked her off course, even as she saw that she was only inches away from the surface. She fell back, watching the blood, her blood, float to the surface and hang their. Through the shifting water, once murky, but now even more so with the her own blood and the blood of her comrades merging with, she saw the Metalheads, and almost swore that they smirked with delight at this sight of bloodshed. Indeed, they ceased their fire, and stepped away from the water pool slowly.
Meanwhile, Ashelin, wounded, ceased her shifting more out of shock then in a gesture of hopelessness, and simply floated just below the surface. Empty, shifting thoughts ran through her mind, and one rather funny, yet innappropriate one caught her attention for a single fleeting second, before her sense regained control of her.
"So this is where the water came from..."