BOOOM!
"Wooaah!" Nandor shouted with alarm as the floor he'd been running on buckled, forcing him to jump as the next moment it broke and fell to the abyss. "I am not liking these floors!"
The hallway continued to shake as the three explorers were running deeper into the labs as fast as they could, jumping over the occasional tripwire and wide holes with nothing but Indigo's torch lighting the way.
Sometimes, if they were unlucky they'd turn a corner and find a smaller makeshift turret waiting there with a barrel aimed at them. It wasn't hard for the huntsmen to dodge the fired shell, and Nandor took charge of disabling it with a slash of his shortsword Windfang.
"Which way Foreman!" Indigo took the lead as they were coming up to an intersection, the manjuu hanging on tight to his back then chirped and tapped his right shoulder. "Alright then!"
They turned right, and again a turret was waiting for them. This time though it wasn't another naval gun, but a pair of heavy machine guns on a shielded mount behind a pile of rubble.
"Get back, GET BACK!" Indigo shouted in alarm as he leaped to the left into the empty hallway, with Nandor jumping back the way they came. They barely made it as the machinegun turret fired, the bullets tearing through the air and one clipping the young apprentice's boot though an Aura of light green absorbed much of the force. The stream of bullets immediately ended when there was no one in it's line of sight.
"There goes waiting for the ammo to run dry." Nandir gasped out as he sat against the wall, panting at the thought of nearly getting shredded.
Just then, the hallway shuddered again with pieces of the ceiling falling down on the three. Indigo batted away a ceiling light that would have fallen on his head and grumbled about being 'too old for collapsing ruins.' Meanwhile, Nandor risked a quick look into the sentry guarded tunnel, saw the gun barrels quickly swing right at him, and he swiftly pulled back and away from the corner.
"I miss the old crossbow traps." The young man muttered with longing. Ancient ruins aren't supposed to be trapped with cannons and machine guns!
I charged through another pile of broken crates and pulverized a reloading turret with a swing of my B turret, the poorly-welded armor of the mounted gun no match for almost fifty thousand tons of steel charging at full tilt. The debris I sent flying also served the purpose of throwing off the aim of my enemy as the twin beams of yellow light burned through several of them instead of me.
"That all you got, you anemic robot!" I taunted as I ran, blasting away with my secondaries all the while at visible targets. Again, a rocket was fired towards me from somewhere, not powerful enough to meaningfully damage me but it could still disable several components, several shattered searchlights, two burnt out harpoon launchers and a blown up rangefinder being the most recent examples. So my Phalanxes were on guard for them, one on my portside ripping it to pieces.
"FaAALL!" I had to dodge sideways as a giant robot shark flew down and ripped a chunk out of the floor I stood on. The still cloaked Siren herself was crouched on its back, a cannon gauntlet aimed right at me. She was going to fire, and it was too close for me to attempt dodging so again I hid myself behind my A and B turrets. My secondaries were still swiveling to aim towards her direction, and my main guns were still a few seconds away from firing-
"Grrh!" The Siren's 6-inch gun may have failed to penetrate my armor but one of those damned lasers did a good job melting two of my A turret's barrels to uselessness and damaging the mount. Its traversing speed has been reduced, to my irritation. The other beam though did more significant damage in that it got between my shields and hit me in my chest.
Ever felt a burning pain in your chest? That's how losing a boiler feels like, that lucky hit piercing through deck armor and my armored citadel to damage a boiler. I felt myself losing a good amount of my strength with that loss, and had me coughing up blood from the severity of the injury. Damage control was immediately on top of it, ghostly hands doing their work to patch me up inside and reroute power.
In the meantime, my C turret, which is the one on my rear, just finished reloading then so with a grim smile I swung it up and over my back to aim at my enemy. "Eat this!"
BOOM!
The Siren's pained scream signaled that I finally hit her again at the start of our fight, which is good because I'm running very low on dummy rounds for my main guns. Maybe a couple more salvoes before I'll be forced to use my more destructive shells. I charged through the cloud of gunsmoke my guns made, needing to close the distance and finish her off while she's stunned. What I found were large craters, small parts of the robot shark and a pulverized laser cannon, but no sign of the Siren. She's good at running, I'll give her that considering the sheer disparity in our respective weight classes but it was still very frustrating to have this fight go on this long. A cruiser type ship like her shouldn't be doing this well against a battleship of my kind!
I then felt several shells impact my armor from around me, surviving and newly deployed turrets making themselves known again, adding more damage that'll have me sitting for repairs in drydock. And again my secondaries returned fire and destroyed many more with their counter barrage. Out in the open sea I definitely would have won, but we're underground and the Siren had all the time to prepare the battlefield to reduce or nullify many of my strengths and enhance her own. Doesn't help that using radar in this place only got me scrambled and confused results, so no help from there. Makes me want to shove a Katie down her throat, see how she likes sunshine in her-!
No no, calm down. I learned from past experience and stories, both real and not, that anger makes a fighter sloppy.
"Now where are you..." I muttered, turning in place and carefully looking all around me. Many of my searchlights had been destroyed in the fighting so the storage chamber had become significantly darker- wait, I'm dumb. I have night vision and infra-red to assist in targeting! "Remember you've undergone modernization during the 80's..."
So saying, I thought about activating either night vision or infrared. It was a surprise that I got both, leaving me blinking in confusion for a few seconds before I adjusted well enough. No I know how its see like the Predator. What was once dark shadows became a vision of various shades of green and white in one eye, while in the other the whole place became a mix of very pronounced black and greys. Both visions highlighted the hostile turrets showing up with their high heat signatures through infrared, deployed in various positions, which were then targeted with much higher precision by my guns, and the mass of heat that was the Siren partially hidden behind an intact shelf to my left. I eagerly aimed my main guns her way, firing first the last intact gun on my A turret to ferret her out of her hiding spot.
The Siren did as I wanted, jumping up and away as the shelf she was hiding shattered, and out into the open where I have a better chance of hitting her. So I did, firing one gun on my B turret just to be sure that she doesn't have a jetpack or something to do a last ditch dodge, which didn't happen as the shell was instead blocked by the robot shark. Made a big dent on its side though, pushing both robot and Siren spinning back down, my B turret staying on them the whole time.
Just then a new barrage of missiles came screaming at me from the darkness, the projectiles looking like shooting stars with my current vision as the hostile turret's bombardment intensified slightly. Quick analysis showed they aren't really a threat, being from the rocket launchers the defenders of this base used which the Siren repurposed. So I ignored them, trusting my safety to my three remaining Phalanxes with their barrels glowing hot again from spitting their fury, and aimed at the Siren struggling to rise up from the ground.
"YoOuUu..." She spoke out through gritted teeth, her dark cloak long since torn away to reveal a pale girl in way too little clothes showing an array of terrible wounds. I can also see now that her left arm stopped mid forearm, the end looking very torn. So the hand belonged to her. "K-KAnseN... gIve mE... yOU'rE cUBe..!"
"I'm not giving my heart to you." I replied, wiping off blood that leaked out of my mouth. One of her lasers damaged a boiler during the fight. "Put up a good fight you did, but I'm the lead class of the best damn battleships in the world. You never had a chance."
I then fired all three guns of my B turret at her, this time loaded with HE rounds. Maximum damage against thin armor, much of it to be dealt only on the Siren with a small amount of damage to the environment due to magical shipgirl bullshit. The same way her lasers didn't completely go through me when they hit. The shells immediately hit, and the Siren went up in a fiery explosion, blackened debris flying every which way.
I sighed in relief, sure now that the fight was over. My assumption was corrected by a shell bouncing off my armor, making me grunt with annoyance. I'll have to destroy every last turret here if I wanted to make this place safe for more in depth exploration thanks to the Siren not having the decency to take her turrets with her in death.
I then marched off towards the enlarged crater that I killed the Siren in. Had to make sure there's no chance she'll come back and become a major pain in my side in the future.
A large humanoid mech armored in a haphazard mix of dull gray steel and a black metal drunkenly stumbled around, trying to swat away a certain aspiring huntsman stubbornly clinging onto its upper back.
"Come on, move that way already!" Nandor shouted, reaching its shoulders finally after narrowly dodging a grasping limb. Standing on the mech's shoulder he then put his booted foot on its head and shoved it forward. "I don't have all day!"
It did the trick, sending the mech stumbling forward right into the whip line Indigo tied between two pillars. The mech then tripped forward onto a pile of debris, Nandor having jumped far off to the side to stand by the senior huntsman. And between the two, Foreman the manjuu stood eager with a remote held in a flipper.
"Finish it Foreman." Indigo said with a nod to the manjuu, who then pressed the lone red button with relish. The mech had pushed its torso off the ground then, its degraded optics only now detecting the large amount of explosives that it had fallen on.
BOOM!
"Fourth and final mech, destroyed." Nandor said, admiring the explosion from a distance, hot air blowing his hair and ears backwards. "That makes the final security checkpoint cleared right?"
"Any more nasty surprises waiting for us, Foreman?" At this point the manjuu had long since accepted the name the others had given him, not having had or needed one before. Foreman checked the map provided by the elders, and shook his head in the negative. "Good, we're almost to the main lab area now."
So saying, the trio turned towards the large armored door pockmarked with numerous craters and burn marks at the end of the chamber they've found themselves in. Indigo and Nandor shared a brief look between them, the understanding that the answers to the mystery surrounding much of the manjuu, this undiscovered ancient base and the self-styled shipgirl Iowa are likely to be found behind the door. Then Foreman moved ahead first, the manjuu obviously excited to the huntsmen's eyes as they followed shortly.
Once they got there a holographic window appeared at waist height for humans. Strange symbols were plentiful on the digital panel, glitching every now and then due to the age and damage sustained, and the legible script displayed were of a much more obscure language Indigo recognized as an ancient Valean dialect.
"What does it say boss?" Nandor asked as he looked around the older man, Foreman having climbed his back to get a better look. He'd frowned at being unable to read the text, being more knowledgeable of Mistralian dialects. He looked at the manjuu on his back, the bird person shaking his head being from also unable to read it. Indigo didn't say anything immediately.
Then he sighed and turned around, walking over to a conveniently large rectangular stone and sitting on it. Nandor raised an eyebrow and sent the senior huntsman a look of confusion as he waved at the door.
"It said access denied Nandor." Indigo sighed out, putting down his lantern beside him and pulling out a book. "We can't do anything until Iowa joins us."
Nandor and Foreman visibly deflated at his words.
I stared at the wall of another dead end.
This one looks different from the previous ones. It had an old coffee machine there next to a trash can.
I turned back around with an annoyed huff, stomping back the way I came. Should have asked for a map before we separated, stupid me!
A.N.
This one fought me a bit in that I had to rewrite several sections. Hope I did the fight good.
Tbf, there's no way a light cruiser, even a Siren, can last a long time against a battleship in bar room brawl range. Right?
Next chapter up in... undetermined date. After I update another story.
Oh right, regarding your reviews Korst, yeah I remember writing that part didn't feel... complete in a way.
I'm a novice writer, and I know that though receiving bad reviews don't feel good I'll need to accept them in order to improve.
Future characters yet to be met will be more skeptical about the warship spirit thing. If Iowa will even tell them about that part.
