Futuristic The Station

[Spoiled Bread]

Eeriel

Eri accepted the bar from Dorian though she didn't seems to be too thrilled by it. The way he described it reminds her of the grey slimy fungus porridge she used to eat back in the conditioning facility, highly nutritious but barely palatable. The trainers occasionally would reward good behaviors with real treats. She remembered having a sugar cube as her first reward and she thought it was the best food at that time.

As Dorian took off ahead, Eeriel also levitated herself intending to follow him suit but she noticed the others wouldn't be able to do the same so she hold herself from doing so. Instead she just floated high enough so she could see both Dorian and the others.

 

[Hazmat44]

"Oh yes, of course," Verse muttered to himself as he sedately walked through the forest. "Why don't you go ahead and just defy the laws of physics while you're at it." He wasn't glaring at Eeriel, per se. He lacked the face to express emotion. But times like these made him wish he had one.

Why could these people so easily break everything he knew about how anything worked? The universe was supposed to be consistent!

He glanced up at the sun with a mental sigh. At least the daylight cycle seemed more or less the same. He didn't know what he'd do if the sun just up and-

The sun turned off.

Verse closed his eyes and released a series of internal expletives that would've made his engineers wipe his drive.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Underneath the star-studded sky, a pale moon having replaced the sun that was there only seconds before, the ground opened up. From the gaping maw inside emerged a creature, tentatively sniffing the air and growing in confidence as it found no predators.

It measured five feet at the shoulder, covered in thick mottled green fur and bearing a set of claws on each limb that could rend even metal without too much trouble. Four eyes, evenly spread out alongside the top of an angular skull, allowed it to see in every direction. A long tail swung from side to side, capped by a vicious stinger dripping venom at the tip.

Its eyes dilated as it found a scent, and a thrumming growl emanated from its throat. More of them began to come from the entrance, jostling each other as they entered the dark world they were met by. Once a dozen were out, the ground returned to its proper shape with a dull hiss.

The creatures didn't care. They were hungry, and food was nearby.

Pokeking Mitheral HighSanguinaryPriest Spoiled Bread

 

[Pokeking]

Shane's feet shuffled along the grass as he scurried along the grass on the way to the mountains that hopefully would provide to be a suitable stronghold. He wished that there were ample trees to wrap his hands and feet around branches. Alas, there were none nearby so he had to reach his destination the human way. He felt movement underneath his feet and he turned around to see Bornite charging at him like ancient locomotive. How I wish I had my gravcycle. It was his generation's motorcycle and could traverse all types of terrain, even water. The traditional wheels would become sheathed and move to a horizonal position as the grav unit activated. It could even traverse sharper inclines than ancient motorcycles.

Shane's nostrils flared as he tried to out the the way. He huffed as he tried to follow the dragon, "I know. If I riding my gravcycle, I wouldn't have asked you to carry me. Think riding a metal horse. I don't want anyone to feel embarrassed but since you offered..." He reached out and grabbed the harness. He studied the apparatus to figure out the best place to secure himself and held on with his fingers and toes.

Shane took one hand off the harness to shield his eyes from the sun to get a good bearing and then darkness as if the sun was only a giant lightbulb that just burnt out. His freed hand returned to the harness and he gritted his teeth, "What a horrible instant night." As Bornite would look ahead, Shane's eyes were looking back. It was the least he could do for now in return for Bornite's aid.

Mitheral

 

[HighSanguinaryPriest]

Dorian had just landed his third jump about two klicks out from the group when it suddenly went from mid-day to night in an instant. It took a moment for his helmet's sensors to re-calibrate to the sudden shift from light to dark, but when it did, his vision had a improved. Everything before him had a luminescent border, highlighting everything. Dropping a couple of the blue chemlights at his feet, he checked the chamber of his PDW before launching himself once more.

As he neared the apex of his ascent, he spotted several figures making their way towards the direction of the group. Zooming in, he took in their monsterous and feral features. The claws, teeth, and venomous stinger told him these things were now herbivores nor carrion-eaters. With a firing of his secondary thrusters, his body rotated towards the predators as he impacted the earth. Using half power, the government issued sociopath launched himself at the creatures, his MK5A spraying a volley of explosive rounds into their thick scalely hides, the cesium metal cores detonating in a cacophony of explosions. The unstable liquid metal lighting up the artificial night light thunder in a storm.

Whether or not it hurt them, he didn't know. But for sure, he knew it would piss them off. If the 6.5mm explosive rounds weren't enough, he knew for sure the 12.7mm AP rounds will. I just hope it will buy them enough time to get to the hills...

Mitheral Pokeking Spoiled Bread Hazmat44

 

[Mitheral]

Bornite had felt the creatures long before they emerged. And he could see better at night than day really. Or rather he wasn’t as distraced by the things he might not want to see. The neural impulses of the creatures and his friends were like ghosts. It was one of the reasons he didn’t care for undead. But now he needed to chart a path through a minefield of these creatures. How?

A slow ‘smile’ crept across his face. He began to .. sing. It was the sort of croon that he sang to locate crystals, but at a longer wavelength that reached for miles, frequency modulated in brief pulses. To someone from a high tech society it would be like a broadcast burst transmission - short to make it harder to track. It acted like a ground mapping radar. It was a strategy he had developed to plot paths through his primitive brethern.

That was a lot of … Furry Crab Beasts (FCB). While not really a beast of burden, he was built for speed. C0mpared to Earth creatures he would have been like a cross between a mongoose and a cheetah, the size of a centaur. He would be able to outrun creatures built like the FCBs.

His bones and especially his claws were largely composed of a Cu-Be(4%) alloy. In short, he was built to take a beating. (Imagine a horse getting a beating from a bull elephant with the hide of a rhino and claws of a lion. His bones never broke when bullied.) But that didn’t mean that the flesh couldn’t be stripped off him. And while he could handle the poison of several stings from giant scorpions back on Medea, these creatures were unknown. These creatures DID smell a little tasty. That might solve his food problems sooner than he thought possible.

In a one on one fight - or even several to one, he would probably have come out unscathed. They were slow. But he had to worry about Shane. Shane was a fragile biped, like the Elf he had once saved. He had carried the Elf too. That had turned out alright - despite initial troubles with the Elf’s friends.

Bornite had a simple rule. Don’t fight a fight you don’t need to fight. Run. That philosophy had served him well in the past. It served him well now. Once he was sure that Shane had a firm grasp on the harness of his saddlebags, he sped up to almost 40 mph briefly before slowing down to about 30 mph for the long haul. This he did to keep his gait smooth so as not to make it hard on Shane. (He can go much faster, but it would be harder on Shane.)

 

[Spoiled Bread]

Eeriel

Eri gasped in surprise when the artificial sun suddenly turned off, switched by the image of a big moon and countless small stars to accompany it. If she didn't know she's in a biodome involuntarily she might actually think that the scenery was beautiful. Back in her world one could only enjoy this kind of sight after going into the wilderness away from the neon-filled settlement, which was usualy filled danger.

Speaking about danger, from her position up in the sky she could see a certain area had their trees parted away as if an underground silo just got opened. Though rather than rocket something else big and alive came out instead. Eri couldn't examine the creatures further due to non-optimal light and the distance. It seemed the creatures started moving... and made their way into the group! The light from Dorian's thruster told Eri that he was intercepting the creatures.

"Sir Dorian is engaging the enemies. I'm going to help him." Eri told Bornite, Shane and Verse before flew towards Dorian location and smoothly landed on the ground nearby. Countless number of explosions occured as Dorian was spraying the creatures with his rounds.

"Enemies presence confirmed. Type: giant chimera. Requesting the deployment of stasis grenades and the skullcracker." Eri talked to herself, expecting someone to be able to hear her request. Then she remembered that she's not even in her own world anymore. There's no telepath to relay her message and no support center to send her appropriate weapons. Still, she had no reason to back down, Dorian was still fighting so it would be her duty to fight too.

Focusing her mind into various debris of rocks on the ground. She mentally grasped for every each of it and with one yank of her hand made dozens of rocks float into the sky and rotates around her. She scanned the enemies, trying to look for weakness. She only had rocks and a gun right now so she must pick her target carefully. Then she noticed that the creatures had four eyes, it's always a viable target. With a flick of her hand the rocks started launching themself towards the direction of the enemies' eyes, barraging the creatures like a machine gun.

 

[Pokeking]

Shane stifled a simian shriek and the urge to leap off Bornite to assume a posture of dominance, a way of warding off the creatures, by puffing out his chest and drumming. If that didn't work and the beasties insisted on attacking, he was ready to present his full strength and throttle them. Of course, this was if they were of comparable size and strength. The dragon made an interesting intonation, a noise he hadn't heard exactly before and it piqued his interest. Clearly there was no time to ask now and he didn't know when he would be able to ask.

There seemed to be more of them and Shane raised his voice to plead, "Bornite if you able to run faster. Run! Don't mind me if I get tossed around. I'll make do somehow." He gripped the harness tighter and was reminded of the pioneering astronaut simulation in which he, as a teenager, climbed into a facsimile of a late 20th century space shuttle cockpit and was subjected to the might of its g-force. More pleading, "Gotta make it. Gotta make it." Would they make it before the beasties overcame them?

Mitheral

 

[Hazmat44]

The beasts flinched beneath Dorian's fire, snarling and growling as they vanished under a cloud of armaments.

And yet, when the dust cleared, wounds wove back together, limbs and bones snapped back into places, and eyes filled out sockets that had been empty mere seconds before. They did not repair themselves the same, however. One grew bigger and more armored, chitin replacing fur, but its previously damaged limbs grew shorter. Two became leaner and more streamlined, their fur thinning in the process, and the remaining four grew... sharper, to say the least, their claws and fangs lengthening and growing serrated. The fur of those five thickened, more like sharpened spines than fur. Only one out of the eight creatures was still, a chunk of its skull missing from where it should've been. None of its injuries were mended.

The seven nosed it briefly, as if confused at its demise, and then roared in unison. Their eyes turned with hatred towards the distant figure who had slain one of their own. As one, they charged through the undergrowth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Well, yes," Verse rambled to himself, giving the black sky a glare every now and then. Without assistance, the scientist was forced to run as best as he could, which topped out around six miles per hour. "Of course the carking dome doesn't have a real sun. It'd be absurd if it did. But wouldn't that damage the plants? Who designed this thing?!"

Looking up, he saw flashes of light as the soldier unloaded fire into... something in the forest. Mere minutes later, a roar echoed out across the greenery, and Verse released a deeply deserved (but very simulated) sigh. "Why," he started, building into a shout, "WON'T YOU MAKE SOME SENSE FOR ONCE?!"

With that, he tried to run faster.

HighSanguinaryPriest Pokeking Mitheral Spoiled Bread