A short while later, we left the hangar and promptly fled back to the temple, quite keen on staying undetected.
We were moving considerably slower now that Ben was laboriously hauling a heavy piece of valuable Combine hardware. Determination burned brightly in Ben, but he could not move any faster due to the weight of what he held and to not risk damaging it. I stayed close and tried to give him cover, keeping my staff out and at the ready while cerebrally keeping a look out for enemies close by, which unfortunately there were quite a few more than last time.
Civil Protection must have been expanding its sweep towards the outside of the city; the modest buildings in front of us now had officers snooping around inside and interrogating the inhabitants inside. As much as I wanted to maintain my telepathic senses, I had to give it periods of rest, for that put a great strain on me at a point when I needed to be battle-ready. I was about to find out in a few moments that metro cops were going to be the least of our concerns.
While distant chopping noises cutting through the air had been a persistent phenomenon ever since the lockdowns began, these ambient noises suddenly began to sound much crisper and clearer as we trudged our way back to the dilapidated temple. By the time we were more than halfway across the field, passing an overgrown construction site, the reverbing chopping sounds were now unmistakably coming towards us at an alarmingly fast pace. "Seek cover, Krystal!" Ben prompted, retreating to a pile of large concrete pipes that laid in the construction site as quickly as his hoofed feet would allow him.
I protectively kept close to him and took cover alongside him mere seconds before a black airborne vehicle revealed itself passed the cover of some buildings up ahead just past the temple. It had a slim dark canopy at the front and two slanted wings on either side. It was flying through the air using high-velocity spinning rotary blades that curved downward, another set of blades angled vertically inside the vehicle's midsection, and a set of smaller gyrating tail blades that adjusted to the vehicle's angle.
The notorious Combine hunter chopper had finally been revealed to me, and quite the unique aircraft it was. While sightlier being entirely machine, that didn't make it less deadly, for I could see a large cannon, similar in design to the ones on the troop carriers, mounted and deployed just below the canopy. The tall grass off to the pipes whipped and waved violently as the chopper soared over our heads, not appearing to notice us, but I had a hunch that we would not see the last of it.
"They grow restless," Ben growled, still holding the receiver close to his person. "The tunnels below await us. Our chances of escape are much more favourable down in the depths."
"That's going to be an issue, Ben, because I sense officers in the temple…" I reported gravely. I triple-scanned the old temple up ahead; five officers were now searching the space inside. I would have advocated to wait out their search, but we had no time to wait around―especially when we were sitting out in the open like this.
Ben grizzled thoughtfully at the immediate challenge facing us. "We will have no choice but to confront them. Their subsequent decommissions will alert their peers to our presence, though we do not have the precious time to search for another path."
He was unfortunately right; police presence was growing exponentially fast and becoming increasingly more lethal. A brief confrontation was a relatively small price to pay if it meant getting into the sewers quicker. I had no choice but to agree with him.
"All right, I'll pick them off. You stay behind cover while I do so," I instructed, to which Ben nodded in understanding.
We both moved as quickly as we could the remaining way to the temple and returned to the side entrance that we had previously exited from. There was a small enclosed area between the main foyer and the exit, a storage room of some kind perhaps, which was where Ben hunkered down while I discretely investigated the desecrated area, only to spot three out of the five officers I detected looking around for us with pistols and light machine guns drawn. It was only a matter of time before they would find their way over here.
"Anyone else pick up on that 647-E reading?"
"Negative."
"Cardial turnpike appears clean. No sign of malignants."
"Report and lengthen sweeping perimeter. 10-84 remains persisting."
I watched in anticipation as one of the officers wandered closer to our room, armed with only a pistol and currently unaware that I was watching him. I waited for the moment when he was just about to step inside the room before I struck him with my staff, punting it straight into the area of the neck above the windpipe. The officer garbled intensely as he collapsed before his mask made a loud flatline sound, instantly alerting the other officers.
"Officer down!"
"Malignant sighted!"
"Suppress and eliminate!"
I grabbed the downed officer's pistol and ran out of the room, taking quick shots at the converging officers. The four did not anticipate my quickness and were slow to track me, resulting in two of them falling to my shots. The other two fired upon me, though I had already conjured my shield as I rushed them.
They both succumbed to my attack as I knocked each of their weapons out of their hands before clubbing them on each of their heads, holding back nothing. They each collapsed like ragdolls as their masks released their flatlining sounds. I took a shaky breath once I realised it was over. Even though they would have not hesitated in killing me, my hands still trembled. I never enjoyed killing, even if my foes had it coming, but I had to maintain my priorities for the well-being of my friends.
"They're gone," I relayed back to Ben, recomposing myself. Ben cautiously peered out from the doorway and surveyed what had happened.
"Excellent work, Krystal," he commended, fully emerging with the pulsar receiver in his hands. "Truly, you are an accomplished warrior."
'Hardly by choice,' I thought wearily to myself. Ben began to walk towards me, stepping over the many stray cables lying around with his precious cargo.
"Now, we mustn't waste another moment. Reinforcements are due to arrive now that this party has been terminated."
"I figured as much," I agreed, "so let's get that thing and us below ground before they do."
We unfortunately underestimated how quick the response time would be, because seconds later as we motioned back to where the trap door was, the air outside began to ripple with the sounds of a hunter chopper coming our way. A claxon alarm suddenly began wailing out as the unseen chopper passed overhead, followed by a series of thunderous thumps on the roof of the temple.
Ben growled with aggression as he looked at the cathedral ceiling with distrust. I couldn't sense anyone up there, so they couldn't have been officers or soldiers. I didn't have a moment longer to figure out what was deployed onto the building before a large portion of the high ceiling had combusted in a devastating series of explosions that made enormous chunks of debris come raining down on us. "Stay close!" I yelled to my friend before deploying my shield, just seconds before cascading chunks of stone and wooden debris crashed all around us.
It was an onerous effort to maintain the shield against the falling remains of the ceiling, but I managed to successfully protect myself and Ben during the whole sequence inside my magic sphere. I finally relinquished it once the shower of stone and wood had stopped, momentarily falling to my knees from the strain. "Krystal!" Ben gasped, putting a hand on me.
"I'm fine. I'm just fine," I promised, quickly mustering my strength back up. I rose to a stand quickly and surveyed the aftermath of the attack. The whole foyer was now filled with rubble along with a brand-new giant opening in the ceiling, allowing in a brighter ray of light. I turned to make sure that Ben was unharmed, but our way out of there unfortunately was not. Several large boulders had crashed on top of the trap door in the floor, each looking like they weighed a couple hundred pounds each.
While certainly a despairing sight, we were not without our resources. I could clear away this heavy rubbish with my magic if given a moment, but we were not granted such a gift. I could sense and hear squads of officers now moving towards our location, abandoning their searches for they had finally been alerted to our presence here.
Ben too sensed the incoming onslaught and delicately nestled the pulsar receiver behind a few fallen slabs of stone and rose to his hoofed feet. "It would seem that a greater conflict was inevitable," he said with a fangy snarl. "So be it. We are not defenceless."
"Well, for what it's worth," I said, holding my staff with two hands, pointing it at the obscured entryway into the temple, "this will be an insightful skirmish. I've been a little curious as to how vortigaunts fight with their numinous assets."
Been looked at me as he crouched down on his hands in a quadrupedal state, giving me a daring look as if I had given him a challenge. "All of this you shall witness when…"
While Civil Protection had the numbers, me and Ben had the determination.
That was what allowed us to prevail. Squads of officers from neighbouring search parties swarmed the old temple and moved in to decimate us, but we held our own with what made us unique, which was our innate tendency to become 'wild' when cornered. I made use of my agility during the first raid when large groups of officers invaded the temple; I flipped over their heads and incapacitated them with quick strikes from my staff and caved their knees in, trying my very best to keep ahead of their aims.
I took immediate cover during the moments when I was getting fired at, and I retaliated with actual fire, setting a few officers ablaze and making their comrades flee back out from where they came. The momentary pause resulting from these retreats gave me the split-second opening I needed to freeze the breached entryways behind manifested walls of ice. This also served as a way of trapping officers inside, leaving them vulnerable to my debilitating advances in whatever manner or method I chose at that moment.
Ben was a different beast altogether. He defaulted to a more animalist range of attacks, crawling up walls and tackling officers to the ground from high points. He was also incredibly fast; he had practically become an earthy blur during the whole incursion, essentially becoming the main target for most of the officers. He, of course, utilised his own apparent sorceries by charging up and unleashing arches of bright green energy from his palms, lighting up the temple with flashes of green alongside flaming reds and yellows.
"Ga-la-luuuuung! Gal-in-cherrr! Alung-guunnnng!" Ben snarled these vortigese battle cries multiple times, which may have worked too well, for even I made sure to stay clear of him out of a mild fear that he would end up attacking me as well, though he thankfully had enough restraint.
The whole skirmish felt like it lasted hours, but it was over in less than two minutes in reality. The smoky air was electrically charged by the time all of the invading officers were taken care of, the first true moment of lull when not a single flatlining sound was going off and all was still. I sensed no more units inside or in the general area, which nudged me to relax my tensed body as the glowing spearhead of my staff closed back up again, reclosing its versatile magic.
Ben was on the other end of the temple, standing in a quadrupedal hunch with his fangs still fully out as his massive red eye studied our surroundings which were littered with the bodies of fallen officers. Having reached my conclusion, Ben sighed wetly as he rose back up to his feet and recomposed himself. "The repose of silence. It is intoxicating after incursion, is it not?"
I nodded with a weary smile, straightening my posture and planting my staff's hilted end in the ground. "I concur. This doesn't seem like your first fight. You held up profoundly well."
Ben chuffed, closing all three hands together. "Galung-gaka-lika-bayeeee…"
I wasn't sure what that meant, but it carried tones of gratitude, so I was compelled to interpret it as such.
Our respite, unfortunately, did not last much longer past that phrase, for the sounds of the hunter chopper began to return outside the ruined temple. Newly made openings created from the fight around the temple amplified the sounds to an almost disorienting reverberating effect, muddying the precise location of the incoming source. Regardless, Ben and I braced ourselves for what was bound to be a much more deadly conflict.
A sense of doom washed over me when I saw a dark shape move across one of the stained glass windows as the deafening whirring sounds continued to course through the air. The high-pitched sound of what sounded like something charging up was what made me and Ben hit the floor seconds before a flurry of pulse fire shot through the once-gorgeous windows and began pelting the damaged stone walls, making it rain dust and large chunks of debris on top of us. This chopper's mission was to kill us, and it was going to bring this ancient building down on top of us to do just that if it didn't flush us out in the open first, which was the option that I chose as the lesser evil.
"Ben! Grab the box and seek shelter! I'll deal with this!" I ordered, leaping to my feet.
"Take care, Krystal! It is vulnerable to its own assets!" he called back, heeding my instruction while also providing me with key advice. It was not quite clear to me what he meant at first, but I was able to piece it together soon enough. I ran out of one of the several breaches made to the wall and onto the grass, now within prominent view of the chopper.
The chopper reliably began turning in my direction, devoting all of its attention to me while Ben would find a safe place to hide with the pulsar receiver. Though the canopy too seemed resistant to my telepathy, I practically felt the crew of two inside aiming at me with the chopper's pulse cannon, which began to wind up again with that dreadful high-pitched chitter. Knowing that my shield would fail in deflecting this much higher calibre of pulse bolts, I dove for cover behind a small building to my left in the nick of time as the ground where I once stood was now getting torn to shreds by relentless pulse fire.
The loud sounds of the blades' spinning made keeping a clear head a real challenge, though I did nonetheless. I reviewed what I had at my disposal. I had spent all of my siphoned power, though I detected several areas up the street where I could tap into some more. Fire, I wagered, would do little against this chopper with all of this wind that it was churning out, and while I could try to freeze the chopper's rotary blades―any of the three sets―I feared that would take too long and would not be fruitful if my tussle with the gunship had taught me anything.
While I wasn't without my tactics, I knew I had to take what Ben hollered seriously. The chopper itself I felt held the keys to its undoing, only the question of how to snag them remained. But remain for long it did not. Seconds after the chopper had momentarily depleted its pulse barrage, it soared over me and out of sight passed the buildings, but not before it deployed a gift to me in the form of a large spherical bomb that had a serial number on it and a bright blinking light just outside my alleyway.
I ran as fast as I could back towards the street before the bomb detonated, blowing chunks of the two buildings to bits as I tumbled forward from the blast. I rolled out onto the street, though jumped to a readied stand just as fast. The chopper was now about half a quarter mile away before it swerved hard to the right, its swivelling tail rotors gyrating as it turned back around in my direction.
Its front tilted forward as it sped quickly towards my direction again. But instead of trying to gun me down like I was expecting, that klaxon alarm went off again, and it began deploying an atrocious number of bombs as it flew overhead, sending them out in a fanning manner. I would have wondered how in the bloody universe it managed to store so many of those in such a narrow compartment if I wasn't currently trying to avoid being blown to paste by this carpet-bombing strategy.
The whole street, along with the buildings some of the bombs landed on, erupted in a destructive firestorm that reduced this section of the neighbourhood to ruin. I only managed to survive by the skin of my teeth by conjuring the strongest shield I could muster around myself, which did the job, but it required all of my physical and mental strength just to hold it up. My shield collapsed once I lost the stamina to maintain it, though the explosions had ceased since then.
My fleeting recovery time was spent looking around the obliterated street, which was now completely unrecognizable after the bombing run. More than half of the buildings around me were reduced to mounds of rubble as their wooden, brick, and plaster remains lay scattered all over the cratered street. A dense cloud of dust swirled around me as I looked around in shock. It staggered me to no end just how unapologetically indifferent the Combine were to the spaces they controlled. These were residential areas; communes that housed scared civilians who were trying to take cover from the commotion happening outside.
I had once sensed them. Their cerebral signals were now gone as their remains were buried underneath the rubble that had sheltered them moments ago. The Combine didn't care.
The anger I had felt when I watched Shelly getting tortured swelled up inside me again as I looked back at the hunter chopper past the dust cloud, clenching my fists as it turned back around for another run. As much as I wanted to trash that flying heap of rubbish, and I already knew how I could do it, I realised that even if I did, the Combine would continue sending even more of their forces my way, putting even more innocent civilians in the crossfire. They would not relent until I was dead, so that was exactly what they were going to see.
Still inspired by parts of my impulsive plan to permanently ground the hunter chopper, I waited until it flew over again, now dropping fewer bombs this time around. I guessed that maybe they had spent most of their supply somehow. I raised my staff and caught one of the falling bombs with my capture beam. As the chopper was flying away, I ran in its direction several steps and spun my body around before releasing the bomb at the moving chopper like I was playing the deadliest game of lacrosse.
The bomb soared with great speed towards its deployer. While it exploded before impact, the blast was still powerful enough to send the chopper spinning out of control, making the pilots struggle to regain control. I took the opportunity without hesitation and began running down the street, jumping over piles of rubble.
I was hoping that the chopper would be disoriented long enough for me to find a valuable candidate for the next phase of my half-baked plan, which there were quite a few to choose from if my telepathy still served me true. This was as much a desperate plan of trickery as it was an experiment. I had already concluded that day my self-illusory spell worked perfectly; it made me incredibly curious to investigate whether or not I could cast illusions onto others just as well.
Turning to the left at the end of the ruined street, I came onto another street with buildings to the left of me and an open grassy area to the right. I would not follow this path for long before I looked over my shoulder to see the hunter chopper stabilising itself again and quickly catching sight of me. I peeled to the left the first chance that was open to me as the chopper began to speed after me in chase.
Having sensed them beforehand, I ran right in front of a squad of seven metro cops that had the intention of moving to the temple as requested backup. They all nearly bumped into each other when they saw me jump out in front of them. "Freeze! Hands up!" the female officer in the front ordered fiercely.
I undermined her orders by slamming my staff to the pavement, conjuring a mighty ground-pound spell that made the earth shudder, sending all of the officers flying off their feet. Not wasting time, I readied my magic again and concentrated with all my might on projecting an illusion. Instead of tapping the spearhead on myself to project the desired disguise, I released it onto one of the dazed officers, a picture-perfect reflection of myself.
The loud whirring of the chopper's rotary blades was now louder than I was comfortable with and sprinted to the other end of the street as fast as I could before ducking into an alleyway. The chopper hovered swiftly over the intersection it saw me bolt into. I had my back against the wall and out of view; I heaved heavy breaths of air as savoured my first moment of fleeting rest the best that I could before I would have to run again.
I heard the chopper's cannon charge up again before unleashing another barrage of merciless heavy pulse rounds, and the telepathic ripple of the officers' signals going silent seemed to drown out the noises of the chopper themselves. I had my eyes closed the entire time, not daring to move both because I was frightened and because I was too winded. It might have been the multitude of factors I had just mentioned, but I had not yet realised that the front section of the building that the officers were previously in front of had now been reduced to rubble until the dust bristled my nose.
The wind generated by the chopper's blades made the dust cloud dissipate within a matter of seconds, but I had gotten the gist of what had transpired beforehand. I still did not move for at least twenty long seconds before I finally mustered some courage to slowly peek out from the side of my hiding place to see the hunter chopper idling fifteen feet above the ground, kicking up ferocious wind as it remained stationary before the giant rubble pile.
It maintained this dreadful inactivity for what felt like the better part of the afternoon before it finally began to slowly rise leftward, flying higher and higher over the buildings before disappearing out of sight. It heard the chopping sounds of its blades growing more and more distant as the seconds rolled by until it blended into the general ambience of the city. I still dared not emerge from my squalid hiding spot, providing myself with another selfish moment of recovery, taking solace in the unnerving yet peaceful silence of the now-vacant street until the monotone voice of the Overwatch announcer began to broadcast an important message across the whole city.
"ATTENTION. ONCOLOGICAL INCURSION HAS BEEN SUBDUED. THREAT LEVEL ZERO. QUARANTINE LIFTED. CIVIL ORDER RESTORED. RESUME COMMUNAL DUTIES AND PLEASENTRIES."
Ben and I reconvened at the temple.
Civil Protection had radically reduced their presence on the streets now that the order to relent had been given, though I took no chances and covered my distance over rooftops. I found Ben comfortably nestled amongst the rubble near where the buried trap door to the sewers was. I had sensed him still lingering here and quietly called for him, to which he promptly emerged, holding the unharmed pulsar receiver in his hands.
"Once again, Krystal, your ingenuity holds no bounds," he congratulated in his humble, yet grizzly manner, wearing a noticeable smile as he approached me. "You are a cunning ally. A trickster of noble heart. The lives of Red Bay are in the most capable of hands."
I was monstrously tired, yet I felt touched by Ben's words as I put my hand behind my head. "Well, I couldn't have done it without you, though," I insisted. Ben seemed indifferent whether or not that was true, which it was, but he grunted in gratitude regardless.
We were about to begin the removal of all of that rubble obstructing our only safe exit before anyone outside got the potential idea of investigating this devastated historical site. The task was going rather smoothly as Ben lifted large boulders aside while I helped with my staff's capture beam. It wasn't until I suddenly sensed a faint cerebral ping appear close by did I momentarily ceased my contribution.
Ben was quick to notice my pause which was too sudden to be from leftover fatigue. "What do you sense?" he asked me, more curious than he was concerned over potential snoops or enemies.
I turned around towards the obscured entryway of the temple, over to where there were large deposits of rubble next to one of the obtrusive generators. It took me a second to realise that someone was buried underneath the aged slabs of stone and metal, alive but fading, which pushed me to quickly cease what I was doing and run over there to the individual's rescue. I knew it had to be a metro cop given how they were the only humans in here when the temple was getting blown apart; my better judgement told me to leave them―they were dying anyway―but they were fully human. They were still alive.
I got on my knees and quickly began pulling away at the rubble, flipping over dusty slabs and metal ironwork before eventually unearthing the crippled body of a metro cop with his mask still on, though it was quite bent out of shape from the trauma. The cop's body was mangled and bloody with one arm still wedged in between two slabs of stone. His breathing was critically weak, barely audible through the mask.
Although he played a part in trying to kill me and Ben, a wave of pity and sadness came over me as Ben came over to look at my find―surprised, but complacent to watch what was sadly inevitable.
My heart began to ache as I watched the barely conscious officer slowly crank his head to meet my gaze. His thoughts were foggy and hardly able to process what he was seeing, but his breaths had become more laborious and desperate when he saw me. Startlingly, his free arm began to rise, trembling with great effort as he reached his hand out to me. I watched with grief as he tried to speak in a harrowingly pained voice, made even more disturbing by the mask's broken voice distorter.
"I'm… I-I'm…s… S-S…" he managed, beyond meek and desperate. My ears came down around my head as I struggled to maintain eye contact. While I could not see his eyes currently, I could feel the immeasurable amount of regret and despair they conveyed. He knew he was dying and that there was no way I could help him, yet he still reached his hand out. The only conceivable comfort he could get while still here in this world was for someone to take it.
Taking a shaky breath myself, I closed one of my hands around his. His gloved hand was upsettingly limp, but he held onto mine the best he could. Going a bit further on my end, I apprehensively extended my other hand out and closed it around his broken mask before gently removing it from his face.
What was revealed was the face of a young adult man with white skin sullied with blood from his forehead, a stubbled chin and upper lip, and murky grey eyes that were waning in focus. Nonetheless, he held my gaze and my hand the best he possibly could, which only made it more unbearable as I received his dying thoughts. He expressed nothing but remorse over the people he had hurt during his tenure in Civil Protection―both the people he was forced to hurt and those who he had hurt with rancorous delight.
He was now at the point where he was forced to confront what he had become, and it was enough to make tears start rolling down his cheeks. "I'm…sorry. I'm sorry. I'm… I'm…sorry. I'm…so sorry…"
He wasn't necessarily talking to me specifically; he was airing everything out into the open. Hoping that those who he had wronged could hear him and forgive him for his role in their misery. I was about to start crying alongside him myself until I prevented myself from doing so for his sake.
I now had both of my hands closed around his and looked directly into his dying, yet focusing eyes. "You are not what they made you," I promised him, keeping my voice from cracking. "You are human. They did not take that away from you…"
I knew that did little to comfort him, but it was the truth. The man began blinking away more tears as he continued to say the same two words with less and less drive. "I'm sorry… I'm…so…sor….ry…"
No longer able to stand looking at that dying face of grief and despair, I closed my eyes and brought his hand to my forehead, right above my diadem, and began to pray. "Suhh0 xam unu0, ex hotoomoh. Suhh0 xam unu0 ke 0eih badwtem..." The Saurian words rolled right out of my mouth, with no apparent reason coming to mind as to why I had been compelled to utter those specific words.
The last lingering fragments had persisted only moments after I said my piece. His frail breathing gradually slowed, and he no longer possessed the voice to plead for clemency. Whatever grip he had left to hold my hands faded completely as I felt him steadily fade away entirely.
He was gone.