Alex had been very expressive. Whoever the hell was next in his kill count didn't matter, he only focused on keeping the number high, himself well fed and his boys alive. So far the tunnel had become a bloody slaughter house, on his favor that is, which was good for him and his squad.
With his Hammerfists out and ready to bathe in the blood of the scum, he eyed how a swarm of praetor xenomorphs kept coming from the walls and tried to congregate around his men during the fight. With a quick sprint, he jumped at their position, landing over a ton of smashing fun on a small pack, which splattered them like balloons. The nearby bastards were knocked back by the shockwave he caused.
His men stayed close to him for good measure thanks to the security rope he had sprouted and wrapped around them. Despite their limited visibility, they were very precise with their take-downs. Few bullets were wasted in their spree. One of the praetors came awfully close as it clawed viciously at Ittin but the man ducked under the swings and jumped backwards, then shot off his attacker's face and kept his assault up. Alex had to admit, the man knew how to dance.
More incoming enemies joined the battle as they bull rushed into attack. Alex recognized that fighting style, those were the big grunts of the species like the ones he fought back at the pharmacy. He rushed right back into them like a madman with his Hammerfists clenched. It was on like a damn football game.
Now those boxing classes with Hugh back at the hangar would pay off. One thing was consuming men who could fight and a very different one was putting those skills to the test by applying them into the field.
He screamed like a beast as he ran into the xenomorph forces, stopping a few feet away from them to floor a double fist punch against the ground that caused a mighty shockwave. Alex wondered how many of those the structure could endure before the rubble came down on him but that wasn't the point at the time.
The incoming grunts were shaken and lost balance after that stunt, giving Alex opportunity to duck under a punch and respond with one of his own, nailing a grunt in the gut. The impact broke big part of it's chest and caused it to bend over in pain. Alex gripped it's neck and snapped it with a guillotine move, killing it.
The next grunt went for a wild right hook, which Alex blocked with his left fore arm and countered with a spartan kick. As it staggered, Alex jumped over it's head with the extreme skill of an acrobat and wrapped his legs around it's neck, brutally breaking it before catapulting himself into another grunt with a jaw breaking flying knee and smashing it's skull apart with a double fist punch.
But an angry grunt tackled him head on towards a wall, trying to overpower him but Alex delivered a series of shattering axe strikes to it's back and lifted it up. Alex growled as he ripped the grunt in half and consumed it but more grunts rushed at him at high speed and tried to gang him up into a corner.
"Sir!" Yelled Smee as he saw this and tried to help him out but before he could try, a grunt went for him.
Without much time to react, Smee ran at the beast and did a quick slide under the creature's legs, slashing it's groin with his combat knife. Once behind it's back, Smee fired a good bunch of rounds from his plasma cannon, eliminating that and some other grunts.
Wilkinson kept sniping the furious praetors that lurked in the shadows while Hugh provided him cover fire. When Ittin turned to help Alex he watched as the runner battled several grunts and praetors trying to get the best of him.
Alex shoved a boot through a praetor's stomach, headbutt other one's skull into mush and proceeded to uppercut a pair of grunts hard into the ceiling and then stop a savage punch from another grunt. He earned a shriek from it when he crushed the arm in his grip and then yanked it out clean, using it as a blunt weapon to bludgeon some more alien foes.
After hearing plenty of necks and skulls break, Alex discarded the improvised weapon aside and used his Whipfist to tear the praetors hidden in the ceiling to shreds. The last one of the random grunts in the area tried to tackle him from behind but this time Alex was prepared and with a mighty backhand of his Hammerfist, he spun around and took the beast's head clean off.
When his men finished clearing that area of xenos, they got a little discouraged to see an advancing pack of more coming right on at their twelve, shrieking and growling like they got triggered. But what cheered the whole lot of them up was that the bugs had screwed up.
By marching head on they lost their stealth and became obvious targets, clear and blatant enough that a squad of outstanding marksmen like Alex' men could mow them down before the threat got off hand. They took offensive positions and aimed their shots well. Alex just spat on the enemy's general direction while standing on a power stance.
"Let's show them who's the apex and who's the cattle." He told his boys with a grin, forming his Blade once again.
All things considered, he could only imagine that Dutch and the others were probably having an easier time in the sewers. May have been too soon to say so though.
The sewers were a fucking chaos. Dutch was sure of that. The predators had been pretty hard with their approach. They had the right tools to dispatch the horde of xenomorphs but that didn't mean the job would be easy.
While considerably well illuminated enough for them to maneuver, the sewers still presented and unfavorable setting full of vicious creatures prowling and waiting for the right moment to attack.
The four of them had taken down quite some attackers so far and now they were heading deeper into the dark hive inside. The Hunter and the Warrior made short work of some very nasty enemies on their way down thanks to a deadly combination of their disc blades and shoulder cannons. Dutch and Lynn weren't left behind either. They knew how to handle themselves well enough but now things were getting more dramatic.
Rather than having only a few stray foes reach for them occassionally, the four of them were battling non stop against a swarm trying to thwart their progress into the right direction. Despite this, they kept running and killing their way through.
"So this is your concept of a good time, huh?" Lynn asked as she dodged a long barrage of strikes from xenomorph drones while shooting and stabbing back.
"Verily. Isn't it yours?" The Hunter replied before launching his disk on the run and letting it soar, decapitating several drones in one go.
"That it is." Duch supplied while clutching a praetor's neck and slamming it's face into concrete hard enough to splatter it.
As a grunt tried to tackle him, Dutch seized the grunt's jaws and during a brief struggle, he ripped them open, splitting it's head in half. He launched the headless corpse as a projectile against the incoming foes. A few more fiends growled at him and began an assault but Dutch fired them up with his cannon and divided their numbers.
The Hunter went right ahead and launched himself with a flying kick, taking off the head of a distracted xenomorph. When he landed, he avoided a furious slash from a praetor by vaulting over it's head and ripping it off in midair. He then ducked just in time to dodge a deadly acid spit from a shrieking drone and responded by splitting it's head in two with his disc.
As they ran that deadly gauntlet, the Warrior's attention was caught by a pack of abominations they did not expect to see.
A damn pack of crocodile xenomorphs.
They knew how the aliens worked, they infected organisms and when their sick little babies came out, they inherited traits of the creatures that were forced to give birth to them. In this case, bloody crocs. Warrior actually chuckled at that, there were crocs in the sewers after all. Everyone else always thought that to be a myth.
The others had just noticed that when they inmediately saw how Warrior jumped into the water with his spear drawn like a madman to fight the grotesque creatures.
He nailed one in the head with his spear tip and twisted it to kill it for sure. In a quick burst of his insane reactions, he caught the tail of another foe and chopped it clean off with his wrist blade, earning an intense scream from the beast.
But the pack was still too big for him and before he threw his next strike they were already on him, savagely striking him with their claws and fangs. But he could take it and so could his armor. He brutally defended himself, delivering quick but lethal blade strikes. He began fending them off with his shoulder cannon, making big holes in their heads and chests until they began retreating.
With inhuman accuracy, the Warrior tossed his spear against the running prey, impaling two of them through the chest with the very same spear. The rest were picked off by a barrage of precise and lethal shots fired by Lynn, wasting no bullets in her assault.
Her cannon halted when it needed a reload but instead of quitting, she switched to her knife and soared through the air, bringing the blade down on the neck of a running alien in an aerial takedown. She rammed it through the head, killing it and then she pulled the electric blade out and tossed it at a hissing alien, piercing it from it's throat to the back of it's neck.
The Warrior regained his focus as he heard a loud conmotion and ruckus not too far away. They were on the right track and they couldn't waste any time.
"Over here!" He yelled as he ran through the water towards the source of the enemy. The other three followed his lead and rushed through the area, killing a few random xenomorphs that got in their way.
"Are we getting close to the Queen?" Lynn asked.
"Positive. I can sense it." The Warrior replied.
It didn't take them too long to realize that Mercer's little campaign with his boys was actually producing favorable results. When the four got to the holes crafted by the xenomorphs, they realized that the creatures were being driven off, their attention was caught by something much bigger and threatening.
Yeah, definitely Alex' doing, they just knew it.
They were thankful because that made their pass a whole lot safer. Their prey were all heading into the tunnel, called upon by the slaughter that Alex had started and possibly by the Queen in a defense attempt.
Now the party was getting started and Alex and his men were handing free shots for everybody. With enough cover fire provided to him, Alex ran fast at the wrecked train and it's wagons where the savage xenomorph horde came from. With a battle cry and his Hammerfists formed, he crashed with the force and speed of a bullet train.
The result was obvious but amazing regardless. Alex went straight through and smashed every xenomorph stopping his advances. All the nearby ones were pulverized, over ten of them reduced to little bits and acid on the floor. Alex had entered the train that was now a pumping hive and he planned to kill his way into the core. He then flashed a grin that could have easily intimidated even the creatures he fought.
Oh, it was game on.
The aliens he had consumed had granted him a handful of new abilities too, it was up to him to use and develop them to their peak and though he loved to stick with the classics, he was dying to try new things on the fly.
So his body shook for a moment, vibrating as a whole in the process and as it did, the incoming praetors drew their claws and ran at him.
Good. No one should miss the fun he had planned.
They were about two meters away from him when he opened his arms and a massive surge of devastating tendril with an awfully sharp end sprouted violently from his chest. The deadly weapons were shot forwards and erected, reaching their way through several skulls, brains and hearts. All of them brutally pin pointed and torn apart by the Breachers as Alex had now called them.
Yeah, Breachers sat well with him, had a good ring to it.
A lot of the enemies went down without much trouble. That was certainly productive and didn't drain him that much. The Breachers were mostly shaped like the tail of a xenomorph except they were longer and bigger. The chaos he could unleash with them was pretty remarkable too.
"Very well, boys. That's our call. We didn't come as spectators." Smee said with courage and adrenaline flowing through him, earning nods from the others as they shot forwards, eliminating all possible targets coming from over the train or trying to run away from the sheer butcher Alex was giving them with glee.
Skulls popped and brain matter flew while the crew moved. After some shots they had to roll for cover, they reloaded and tried to keep themselves out of range for the drones at the offensive, puking and launching acid as a projectile against them.
Bill raised his rifle just in time to parry a deadly strike from a praetor trying to get them out of their cover. The advanced metal that the rifle was built from proved to be a match for the fatal edge of the xenomorph's claws.
With no previous warning he blocked another series of close slices, pushing back and outmaneuvering the beast with swings of his weapon. He managed to shoot off both of it's hands. The alien growled in his killer frenzy but Wilkinson saw his chance and rammed the cannon of the weapon straight into it's throat, then quickly reloaded and fired away, blasting that head to bits. He jumped out of the way to avoid further acid projectiles from the rest of the aliens.
Hugh aimed for the roof of the alien infested train, making sure to shoot and catch the attention of all drones and praetors atop.
Alex was having a good time slaying and smashing the husks of xenomorphs that were set on stopping his progress. He pretty much danced through them avoiding the swings of the praetors coming his way and responding with insane blows of his Hammerfists. He easily tore most of them to shreds.
A handful of them tried to sneak on him from the train's roof and windows yet they only fell victim to his Breachers, sprouting from his back to nail every damn bug that attempted to make a move on him.
A whole new pack of grunts went for him with an ill intent. Eyeing that, Alex buried his Hammerfists hard on the ground once again and knocked every single one back with a mighty shockwave. He launched himself forwards and began pounding and stomping all their skulls to mush.
Not wasting any time, Alex picked up the pace with a sonic boom and kept dashing into the core, ripping all the hostiles he saw to shreds with his Blade. Heads flew and torsos were split in his path.
His men hopped on top of the wagons and unleashed their fire power against the crawling beasts from that vantage point. They all could feel the entire area shake from the sheer force of Alex' punches down below.
Good thing though, because it took all the attention of the xenomorphs away from them. Ittin smashed a hole into the wagons below them and dropped some grenades on the enemies, which in turn blew them apart and made Mercer's way easier.
The team kept going forwards and noticed how their surroundings resembled more and more the hive belonging to a xenomorph Queen. It was unsettling but it meant they had gotten there. Alex kicked his way out of the train and greeted his squad after consuming a few more xenomorphs to tie the loose ends.
"We made it here, this is the place." Smee stated while looking around at their messed up scenario. It was the perfect habitat for a Queen to begin her homeostasis.
"The charges, sir. Do we plant them now?" Wilkinson asked, seeing that the place was right.
Alex complied and pulled the weapons of mass destruction off his biomass. He looked at them closely before replying.
"Not yet. Not just yet. I'll take it from here, you guys get evacuating." He then let his Breachers ripple carefully into the ceiling above them, making a good sized hole for their exit. "I need to consume the Queen first and learn what I can or else this will be a hollow win."
The four nodded in understanding and complied without arguing.
"Do what you have to do, sir." Smee said, patting his shoulder Alex carried them all together and jumped out high, taking them through the new exit. The crew waved at him in a sign of good wishes, to which he waved back before jumping back into the hive to close it for good.
He fell back into the nest of the murk and made his way into the small tunnels in the walls that led to the core. He was smelling the Queen's presence in the distance, he could sense her, hear her call reaching to all her brethren. That sixth sense was tingling pretty hard right now, Alex felt as much.
He sprinted down the path carefully, picking apart any creature dumb enough to pretend to hurt him. Darkness was no longer an issue without his men being affected by it, so he progressed at a quicker pace. There was some rubble blocking his way but he handily pulverized any rocks or walls blocking his going until he got to his destination, his feet falling into what seemed like an actual nest with eggs and all.
Now was really the time and place, his insides told him so. The overwhelming murk would have stopped most people from processing what was there but not him. Alex and the aliens now shared a mental link, he was all seeing now, plus all knowing as far as the xenomorphs went. That was a valuable perk, he thought. His knowledge of biology had now extended to the unearthly, the extraterrestrial.
His senses cut through the cloud of mysticism that flew around him.
"Bingo." Alex mused with glee and as if in unison, the Queen snarled at him. She was protected by a group of grunts and a few praetors hanging off the ceiling. Alex just stood in his position unmoving and unblinking, analyzing the situation.
As he did, a random grunt jumped at him but displaying a disturbing calm, Alex just dodged aside slashing the grunt's legs and then brought down his blade in a swift strike on the inmobilized grunt's head. There was a brief silence and then the grunt's face fell to the ground, followed by it's damaged husk. Alex just shrugged at his work.
He was ready to take down some more.
AN: Another update, and a quick one too! That's new for me. This chapter might be a bit too short but I'm saving the fight with the Queen for the next episode. I also need to rewatch the AvC game walkthrough for inspiration, very important too. Hope you all enjoyed, see ya!