+ Reid +

For a brief moment, the room was silent. The scarred man and his fellow black-armored bastards lowered their heads as they watched Reid's dropped weapon and shield clatter on the floor.

He didn't waste it.

Reid plucked a slug off his right tasset and whipped it at the man holding the pistol. He threw the left one a fraction of a second later at the man holding the sedative tube. He wasn't taking any chances. Not here. Not about these black-armored fucks. Not with Bubbles.

The bone orbs smashed through the clear walls and into the black armor of the guards. It bent and folded as a ripple of force traveled through the guard's bodies for a fraction of a second, and their flesh broke under the strain of the impact. The one with the pistol was torn apart at the ribs, both sections of their body flung into the far wall where they splattered like jelly. The one that held the sedative had their head mostly-cleanly removed from their shoulders.

Reid kicked off the metal floor hard enough to crumple it around his boot, and threw himself into the still-reacting group. He backhanded the first enemy with enough force to crush their skull. His hand flipped back around and grabbed another by the neck, and he squeezed as he threw them into the ceiling. They impacted with a wet thud. His left hand lashed out and seized on an arm that had been starting to reach down for a device held on the next bastard's waist. He tore off the limb and used it like a club. It lasted a single swing before Reid dropped it. He pushed out a palm with power in his arm, intent to shove the next few bastards into one another. Instead, his hand went straight through the first, and peppered the others in the guts of their comrade.

He pulled his arm back through the hole, and pushed with far less force. It sent the group into a tumble, and Reid stomped forward. His boots crushed bone, and flesh, and brains. In a matter of seconds, everyone but the scarred Vuxarinan holding the radio was dead - or nearly there.

Reid held one hand on the back of the man's neck, and the other in a vice grip around the man's hand holding the radio. He pushed the radio down for a moment, and whispered in his ear.

"Keep talking, and you live."

He waited, but the man didn't nod. Reid squeezed harder on his neck. The man shouted towards the radio in response.

"Fuck you! Kill the abominations-"

Reid had started to increase his pressure on the man's neck, intent to cut him off - when things took a turn he hadn't expected.

The man's words were cut off not by Reid, but by a rapidly-growing series of fleshy, bulbous tumors that sealed his throat, then covered his eyes. A wet popping noise came from the man's head, and he slumped in Reid's grip as the remainder of the tumors popped and released a thin green gas.

Reid flicked his attention out into the cavern. Shots rang out alongside screams - from kids, and from guards in dozens of places all at once. He spotted one clawing at their own face in a desperate attempt to pull away the growths that overtook them. Moment by moment, the gunfire and screams died down until the only thing Reid could hear from below were the sobs of survivors.

He turned back towards the bed. Bubbles was still sleeping, sedated. Her antennae bounced slightly with each breath.

A too-familiar voice crackled out from a speaker on the wall.

"I... I made the catalyst too slow. You stupid, quarter-brained bastards! How dare you kill them - you worked for me! So many gone. So many, wasted. My poor Christopher, Brice. Blair and Jesse. Clem... Gail... Lalit... Tahar. Oh, heavens, even Danni. It's too much. They deserved to live their purpose. They deserved to be remembered as heroes to the advancement of Vuxarina. Not like this."

Reid narrowed his eyes at the wall where the speaker sounded. A faintly green tinged gas was spilling out of the top and bottom of the small speaker unit from multiple holes. The gas was filling the space, but it didn't affect Reid - nor Bubbles. None of his resistances were tripped, and the gas itself seemed to actively avoid him. Like it was targeted at something.

Like it was part of a skill.

"You caused the tumors. You killed... all of them. At once."

"Mostly correct. Subjecting themselves to my skills was part of the onboarding they went through. The gas just activates the target dormant biomatter in the right markers. The gas caused the tumors, really. But they should've known not to threaten my kids. Not to hurt them. They're only children, after all. They didn't deserve to die like that. I only wish you had given additional warning about your plan. We could have saved more, with better teamwork."

Reid fumed at the speaker. "Warning? Teamwork!? You're the reason everyone - anyone - here has suffered at all! None of these kids should've ever been down here in this goddamn pit in the fucking planet! I would never do a goddamn thing with you! You experimented on children!" He pointed a finger at Bubbles. "You screwed with her DNA, you fucking animal!"

Reid panted at the speaker on the wall. On the right side of the room, a large, submarine-hatch-like door hissed, then unsealed itself with a pop. It slowly creaked open, and Randal's voice carried through it.

"Huh. An apt insult, indeed."

The doctor's head peeked through the door on a slightly-too-long neck. As he leaned into the room, he exposed a set of small, skin covered plates that ran from the back of his head down the length of his neck. His hands gripped the sides of the doorframe. One was Vuxarinan. The other was covered in red fur and capped with pointed, curved claws. His waist was nearly too large to squeeze through the door, and when it did, Reid saw why it was so massive. The doctor had two pairs of purple, mantis-like legs that rose off his body nearly to the ceiling before they angled back down to the floor. His Vuxarinan legs hung limply between the mantis versions. On his backside, a deep red section of chitin bulged, anchoring a thick, curved scorpion's tail that ended in a two-foot long stinger.

Randal Ferber made a contended, sad smile at Reid's stare, and gestured at his mismatched body with his Vuxarinan hand as he moved himself further into the room with practiced grace, despite his size. The motion of his body and hand, coupled with the shock of the man's grotesque form distracted Reid long enough for the doctor to delicately stab into Bubbles with his stinger.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Behold, a man of conviction."

./\.+ Lycra +./\.

Time and the pounding in his chest seemed to slow as the realization dawned on him. Belar had an orbital battery pointed at them, and it was spooling up to fire. Math flashed through his head. The intensity of the light, the fact that there were twin beams. The crystal required to produce something with enough intensity to drive down into a planet. It was rough, almost a guess. They probably had less than four... no, three minutes until those twin pinpricks of light obliterated the ground they stood on.

His eyes flashed to the Vuxarinans gathering around them. Scarred and charred armor stained with bits of blood. Weapons half-readied at their sides as they watched their foes flee. Confident in their victory. Smiling.

Many were wounded. Legs and arms bandaged. Lycra's mind continued to race ahead of his heartbeat. Running wouldn't work. He didn't know the beam's focus nor its diameter. Even if it was highly focused, only a handful of them might be fast enough to escape it. The hovering crystal carts were parked only a few dozen feet away. They could move more people faster with those, but it still wasn't any guarantee of safety. The crafts were slower than he would be at a full sprint. Maybe they would be fast enough to get back to the tunnel they'd come in from, but the orbital cannon's beams would turn the ground into a molten mess before they would be able to get deep enough to be out of its effective penetration range.

His wandering eyes caught sight of Jenna. She was being carried through the building's doors on a makeshift stretcher rolling on a crystal cart base. Her amor was heavily damaged, despite all its resistances. On her left side, it was the only thing holding the two pieces of her mangled left forearm in place. The limb had been severed and burnt at the elbow. Her skin was singed in multiple places, badly burnt in others. Trails of dried blue blood ran from her ears and nose. Fresh blood coated her smile.

She was smiling.

As soon as she saw Lycra, she mouthed "We did it" through her bloodstained teeth.

Lycra felt a swell of emotion rise from deep inside himself. Jenna couldn't die. He didn't want her to die.

The gears in his head lurched into rapid motion once more, and pounced on a viable thought.

He set his jaw, and turned to Hirvonen. The old soldier returned his gaze with a severe look.

"Orbital battery. We have three minutes. I need ice and earth mages, all our defensive tools, more crystals, those carts, my cannon - and volunteers. Digger train."

Hirv's eyebrow rose for a half second as he digested Lycra's words.

Lycra was already grabbing the scant remaining tools from his backpack to sort them, and free himself up to carve and shape the crystals they would need for the plan to work. Lycra was smart. He was a faction leader, a frontline fighter - but he wasn't a tactician. He didn't know their troops and their capabilities like Hirv. And he trusted the man - to make the right calls with the information he'd been given, and that he would ask if there was something he couldn't put together. He was the right person for this.

Another half-second passed as Hirv processed things and put the pieces together. He took a deep breath, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"ATTENTION! I need you all to haul ass, you have two minutes! FOURTH SQUAD! Sprint inside and get us as much good crystal as you can carry!"

The soldiers dropped what they'd been doing and had turned on their heels before the next words were out of Hirv's mouth.

"Earth and Ice mages to me! Sixth - you're cart drivers! Figure them out and line 'em up front to back facing that ledge! Second squad - load the wounded. Fit them on the two middle carts. If you have defensive items, drop them on the rear carts! Fifth - get that Plasma Cannon loaded on the front cart. AND! I need volunteers to man it."

Lycra's dexterous hands flew over rough crystals and carved their faces to line up enough to function as the rest of their group exploded into a mass of motion. The only resistance in the chaos seemed to be wounded that were trying to help the other teams instead of finding themselves a spot to lie down on the middle carts. He ran as he worked, over to where the fastest learner in the sixth squad had taken up the lead position in front of the earthen rise. As soon as the plasma cannon had been loaded onto the cart, Lycra joined others throwing spent crystal away and replacing it with fresh crystals. He hopped atop the unit and adjusted four bolts, yanked out one piece of copper tubing, then jumped down to the cannon barrel. Two hits from his sword knocked the front focusing mechanism off, and he lifted the weapon. If the adjustments were wrong, the cannon would explode in his hands.

He flipped the activation switches without a moment's hesitation.

The cannon's spooling whir sounded out for a moment as green-orange light glowed from the mouth of the barrel. Lycra held his breath and planted his feet as the plasma cannon roared forth. The beam wasn't the concentrated form that made an effective weapon, but a conical swirling mess. Lycra tilted the beam down as it melted and vaporized the dirt and rock before them. After a few seconds, it sputtered out, crystals spent. Before them, a long glowing tunnel had been carved into the mine. The molten rock was already starting to dim and cool, but the tunnel gave off waves of heat.

Hirvonen's voice rose above the ringing in Lycra's ears.

"EARTH AND ICE! LET'S GO! Cannoneers, take over! Hot swap that crystal! Lycra - we need you carving!"

The mages activated their magics, cooling, reinforcing, and widening the walls of the plasma-cannon-carved tunnel as the volunteers swarmed over Lycra and grabbed the cannon from his hands. Four of them lined up on either side of the tube, braced against one another to counteract the next kick of activation. The scent of melting metal filled his nostrils as other volunteers melted their armor's fingertips to pluck still-smoking crystals from the cannon's heart.

He dislodged himself from the swarming mess of Vuxarinans on the front cart and jumped to the second, where dozens of makeshift baskets and basins were piled with crystal. Not all was usable, but much of it was intact. They must have sprinted all the way back to the overturned cart to get these. Panting Vuxarinans collapsed on the ground confirmed the idea. His hands flashed with motion as the cannon spooled again. Hands grabbed finished crystals and ran them forwards. Other hands and eyes tried to pre-sort the resources before they were handed to Lycra. He wasn't perfect. Some of the ones he sent forwards were misaligned. They would make for inefficient fuel. Once spent and discarded, they would still have some unstable energy remaining. But he couldn't worry about that.

The cannon ahead continued to fire. Hot and cool waves of air blasted over him as the mages fought the plasma's lingering effects between each volley. Anyone without an active role or place on the carts ran beside and behind them. The scent of burnt and melting metal had only intensified as time went on. Volunteers were rotated off cannon duty with burned and blackened arms, forced to retire to the wounded carts. And all the while, Lycra rushed to carve new crystals as fast as the other teams could fire and descend.

With a shocking suddenness, he found his hands empty. Shouts of "Last Volley" bounced off the sides of their tunnel. The basins and baskets and upturned armor were empty. Only a small pile of fractured crystal remained on his cart. His eyes flicked to the wounded. He couldn't pick out Jenna amongst the mass of damaged armor and bleeding limbs. The last shot blasted into the rock. Ice and earth mages stabilized the area, and collapsed.

Somewhere along their descent, teams at the rear had caved in the mouth of their tunnel. Behind the sealed mouth, a series of thick defensive walls were layered so tight they overlapped one another. No one had been idle. He gave Hirv an appreciative look as the man jogged to Lycra's crystal cart. Vidita followed close behind him.

Lycra felt a vibration run up his spine. Everyone here - every single person had jumped into action, burned and spent themselves all without question at Hirvonen's words. Hirv put on a tired smile.

"All done, with time to spare. Think we're deep enough?"

A drawn, droning boom echoed through the surrounding stone as the entire tunnel shook.

Light was visible through the barriers and rock at the mouth of their tunnel, like sticking your finger in front of a lamp. Lycra swallowed.

"No."

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