The Skittering Chaos 14
Thread Necromancer
Creator of "mean" and/or "excessive" things
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The Skittering Chaos Chapter 14
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"You are looking at about twenty guys coming your way in vans," I inform the team at the apartments, relaying the information that Moxxie and Millie had given me. While I have a decent amount of biters, I'm using them to watch for reinforcements from the alleys. I'd already taken out a few scattered groups of Crimson thugs who were running towards us, ambushing them from alleyways.
At the same time, I continue to use my bugs to identify enemy combatants in both areas of operation and use fireflies I'd possessed to indicate hostiles. One advantage that the apartment team had over the warehouse team was that I'd focused more of my fireflies in that direction. Most of the walls were thin drywall and didn't actually provide much more than concealment. As such, I'd started indicating with my fireflies where to shoot through the thin walls to eliminate the enemy combatants.
"Copy, we'll find a place that's nice and defensible for us to hold out in while the girls get out, Mary Anne, Archie, get these girls moving, we got more incoming!" the leader of the apartment team orders while the two imps nod and continue to help the various slaves up to the roof. There they would move across a roof to a neighbouring building and get loaded into the vans they brought.
With the bugs I have on Felix and the others in the warehouse team, I feel them move up towards the office. The gunfire there has fallen enough that I can finally speak. As I am about to speak, however, I feel something going on inside of the office. Of the four people inside of the office, I can feel one getting picked up. I don't have enough bugs on them to properly determine their movements as I'd kept my bugs on the more immediate threats, and it was taking a bit of time to traverse the air ducts with my bugs.
"There are four enemies inside of the office, I can sense something going on inside with magic but I don't know what. Some Crimson reinforcements are coming your way, three vans of men," I tell them before Moxxie's voice comes through from the phone.
"I've got eyes on the reinforcements, I'll try to thin out the ones heading to the warehouse first," Moxxie says. With all the advantages the apartment imps had, not only the drywall situations but also the fact that they were veteran militiamen, they will likely fare better against the reinforcements than the green horns at the warehouse.
"Is Uncle Lars alright?" I hear Felix ask as they enter the metal box entrance. As I pull together many of my bugs near the area form a bug ball by Lars to ask about his condition, I can feel with some of my bugs on them that the imp that was left to help Lars is slowly helping him to his feet.
"Are you alright Lars?" I ask through my bugs. He, however, just waves at my bugs.
"Ye-" is as far as he gets before he starts hacking and coughing.
"He'll be alright, he just got his arm shot up, and maybe a few broken ribs, but he'll be fine I think," Beth says, answering for her uncle who just nods his head. Satisfied, I report back to Felix.
"He will live, the shot possibly broke some ribs and his arm is injured, but he'll live," Felix sighs in relief while his cousin Lloyd chuckles. As he does so, however, the magic of one of the thugs starts increasing rapidly. It feels almost like the man assuming a demonic form, but not quite. I can't quite figure out what is going on magically, but as more bugs enter the room and latch onto the thugs, the one man seems to be sucking on some of the men's necks after he's already snapped their necks and bit into them. I hadn't exactly been sure what he was doing, but from the feeling with the magic- He's started to move.
"One enemy in the office remaining, watch out, incoming from the office," I say through my bugs but I can already feel how much more powerful the magical signature of the last remaining thug was. I reach into my coat and pull my gun from it, flicking off the safety. I look at Skidmark and Squealer who look up in surprise as I pull my gun out.
"Warehouse is going FUBAR, we need to get there now," is all I need to say before the two nod, grab their guns, and start moving towards the van that had brought the robot in.
"How many of their reinforcements have you taken out?" I ask the sniper team.
"Hell yeah! That's my Moxxie," I hear Millie cry out before Moxxie answers.
"I've taken care of one of the vans, the other two swerved onto the back streets and are heading for the warehouse, there are still three heading for the apartment, should I focus on those?"
"Things at the warehouse went FUBAR, take out as many heading for the apartments as possible, we're not likely to be able to help if things go to shit there as well."
"Copy that, I'll focus on the other reinforcements," Moxxie says as I feel his sniper with one of my bugs shift towards a spot closer to the apartments.
"So we still doing false flag shit?" Squealer asks and I nod.
"As much as possible now that we've got to get involved, come on, hopefully they'll think we're vigilantes," I say as I hop into the back of the van with Skidmark. Skidmark himself is loading metal balls into his cannon as the truck starts and Squealer hits the gas, barely waiting for us to get in. With a biter, I identify some of the trucks moving in towards the warehouse and move some bugs towards the vans and closer to the warehouse.
The two Crimson vans move in, stopping right beside where the three gangsters had been shot up by Cherri's new robot.
"Stop before turning the corner, we'll get out there," I tell Squealer with some bugs in the front. Following my instructions, a few seconds later the van lurches as Squealer brakes. I wait a moment for the van to slow, my bugs growing more agitated as I can feel with my bugs the one imp, Lloyd, being used as a club against the rest..
I jump out of the van and hug the building as I move up, my gun out in front of me as I use my bugs to mark each of the emerging Crimson gang members, bugs for each of their limbs and their torso. Interestingly, on the torso bugs as they move around, I can feel various grenades on bandoliers of the men coming out. Maybe I should get my bugs to try to pull their pins? I'm about to round the corner, however, it would take too long.
Instead, I take aim at the first gang member's head as I approach the corner, then fire as I turn it. I barely even think as muscle memory takes over, and I line up my shots with each of the bugs I have on their heads. I fire twice more and two more go down before even reacting to the first shot. I line up my next shot with two of the bugs and fire, feeling two of the gangsters fall like puppets with their strings cut. I move to do the same again with my fifth shot. I fire into another gangster, and hear a clang as the bullet hits the side of the truck. I feel the next gangster behind the truck go down but my bug on his head isn't injured. The truck's wall likely altered the course of the bullet.
I don't have time to ponder as I take a step out, and fire at a gangster who accidentally steps into my body's line of sight. With the bugs I have on the dead I have them come together to start pulling the grenades from them, and towards me. I can feel the gangsters moving now, trying to get behind the cover of their vans. The bugs are taking too long, so I bend a little and reach down with my lower set of arms. I remember how Angel had been able to pull weapons from his little hammer space, much like Circus had. As I touch a grenade on the bandolier, I try to mimic it, and I can feel the grenade in the back of my mind, somewhat like when I pull my arms into myself. I slide my hand across the bandolier and pull in the various grenades on them. I begin to move along the side of the building as Skidmark catches up to me.
"Damn bitch, you work fast!" he says and I ignore his comment. I pull on one of the grenades and look down to see a smoke grenade. Useful, especially since I'll hopefully be the only one that can sense through the smoke. I pull the pin on the grenade and underhand toss it forward to the front of the van. There is a small pop and smoke billows outwards from the thing quickly making an impregnable cloud. I walk into the cloud, using both my antennae, bugs, and a hand on the van to navigate it while I keep my gun trained on one of the gang members that's in front of the van. Two shots left, six enemies to go.
In the warehouse, I can feel the thing finish off with those in the metal box, and move to one of the exits. Hopefully the robot is enough to deal with the big guy, but with how it didn't even flinch at all the fire that the imps in the box had poured into it, I didn't have my hopes up. Damn, I should have empowered their weapons like I had my own. We might not have taken so many casualties.
Finally around the van, I snap off two shots, first into the closest gangster's head and then another into one of the gangsters heading to the front of the second van. The two go down as those before. I feel Skidmark move up to the van and I form another little bug ball, pulling them from some of the grenades I'd been hoping to snatch.
"They're behind the second van, two behind the mid section, two behind the engine block. I'll hit the ones behind the engine block, you hit the ones behind the mid section," I say to him as I pull back and reload my pistol. Then, once more I move forward towards the second van while still in the smoke. As I disperse my bug ball, I have them join the others again in trying to pull grenades from each of the gangster's bandoliers. As I reach the edge of the smoke, I feel one of the gangsters begin to reach for their own grenades. I take aim at the arm and fire. The bug that was on the hand is jerked off before I fire again at the gangster, this time aiming at the bug on his head, before with another step I have a shot on the second gangster and I blow his brains out as well.
Skidmark himself moves around the van and doesn't even aim when he starts firing at the thugs. He just sticks his cannon around the van and starts wildly firing his metal shot-puts. The cockroach demon can barely keep a hold of his gun as the metal balls slam into the gangsters. The smell of blood intensifies as I smell a lot of it around the other side of the vehicle while I can feel my bugs get thrown off by a tide of fluids. Skidmark makes his way around the vehicle now and properly aims at them, putting another of his metal balls into their skulls. As I start to head towards the warehouse, I aim back and fire at the gangster that went down after my shot penetrated the van. Despite how he hadn't been moving, I'd rather not have any nasty surprises. I form another bug ball near Skidmark.
"Form up on me, I'm moving up on the warehouse," I say before I move onto Squealer.
"Bring the van up to the main entrance of the warehouse; Skidmark and I are moving up."
I reach down and suck in a few more of the grenades that my bugs bring me along with some that the one behind the first van had. I had prioritized smoke grenades with my bugs while the one gangster had all kinds of grenades. Drawing out a smoke from the other space, I pull the pin on it, toss the grenade forward, and move in. I can feel lots of electronics starting up in the area, and with some bugs and a biter I have around, I can see and sense that people are recording what is going on. Some had started earlier, while others had taken longer, but like with most of the idiots in the living world, they couldn't help but try to record the various violent struggles that occured. Thankfully, the one apartment building was abandoned and there was some kind of bridge for a train on our left, obscuring any kind of vision from that way. The only places where Hell's inhabitants could get a proper picture of us were some apartment building windows down the street that lead to the warehouse, and I'd already smoked the street to get us across, hopefully unseen.
I feel the van moving up as I run into the next cloud of smoke while crossing the street. I can feel the robot being stomped on by the big guy. Skidmark is moving around the smoke near the tracks towards the imps that had been smacked out of the warehouse. From the bugs on them, they are doing marginally alright as they start to pick themselves up from where they'd been tossed. Already they'd started scrambling for their guns. Seems their demonic regeneration was working wonders as usual.
I emerge from the smoke at the entrance of the warehouse. I can see the massive red man that the imps inside had been screaming about. He is hulking, and his muscles bulge as I take aim at him, lining up my shot with the bugs I have on the front of him. I fire three shots, each finding their mark along the beast's spine. He shrieks as he winds up, a hand across his back. Seeing an opportunity, I fire into the man's skull one last shot before my pistol's empty. The man, like a beast, merely reacts and turns my way, and suddenly I realise that I know him, or rather, of him.
The Crimson gang had recruited Crimson, a previous member of the SlaughterHouse Nine into their ranks. He looked exactly like he did when he had been alive. His tongue lolled out from his mouth, his skin bulged with power, and with my magical senses, his presence was significant, like combining six different regular demon's powers together into a single person. He roared as I loaded another magazine into my gun, spit flying everywhere.
And then I shot him repeatedly in the face.
He hadn't actually died that easily, the moment my magazine entered the gun he'd tried to dodge and weave, putting his hands in front of his face, and trying to side step. My bullets into his spine, however, seems to have slowed him down. My bullets quickly ripped through his hand, and as he shifted, his hand moved out of the way of his face, and I had a clear shot. I can see blood dripping from his hand and his face where the bullets hit. One eye is a ruined bloody mess, his engorged tongue had burst, and blood dripped liberally from his nose where a bullet had smashed into it. His remaining good eye stares at me with wide astonishment, seemingly stunned at how my gun could do so much damage. Without giving him another moment, I load another magazine into my gun, and fire again, shifting my aim and my bugs to let me hit some of the softer targets on his face. With his hand out of the way, the magically accelerated bullets slam into his face, hitting more and gouging deep holes into him.
Now blind, he wildly charges in my direction as I continue to fire upon him, aiming directly for his ruined eyes as he charges. Just as he gets close, I sidestep and hit him with a blast of magic, destabilizing him as he falls to the side, his hands flailing around wildly as I continue to dump shot after shot into his face, reloading rapidly as I continually dump my bullets into him as he tries to no avail to avoid the onslaught of magically accelerated and silent bullets being driven deeper and deeper into his skull. Finally, he falls limp as my bullets penetrate the magically enhanced bone of his skull, and turn his grey matter to mush.
His face is a blood mess as he lays limp on the floor of the warehouse. Magic rapidly flees him as he lies on the floor, his form morphing quickly to that of a mere human. I raise an eyebrow as the dead man looks exactly like a human. He wasn't like Squealer, who was some kind of latex doll demon with a form built for explicit things. This was a regular human body, not only that, but from my magical senses, Crimson barely had any magic at all. In fact, as I look to the imps, who already had such pitiful magical reserves, he was an order of magnitudes lesser than even them.
I swap out a magazine and slot in a fresh one. I need to get a bigger gun if I am going to keep running into brutes like this. First the beetle and now Crimson, not to mention that unlike in the living world, both the law enforcement and the gangs had armoured vehicles with thick armour plates and enough firepower to rival a tank. I think of some of the guns that I'd picked up, perhaps I should upgrade one, or maybe even a few of them with the same thing I'd done to my 1911.
I hear the van drive up from outside, and see a quartet of imp faces pop up from around a stack of crates. I recognize Lars among them, still breathing hard, his arm hanging limply to his side from where the shotgun blast had peppered it.
"Come on, lets get whoever's hurt into the van, we can grab the loot after!" I shout to them. I can feel Skidmark and the two boys who'd been smashed with Crimson's improvised imp club following along, clearly in a bit of pain but compared to some like Felix, doing alright. I turn to Skidmark, the two imps, and see Squealer getting out of the vehicle as well. As I turn, I begin to transform into my larger demonic form, growing larger as I look to the fallen imp, Lloyd.
With my larger form, I gently slide my arms along the ground, making sure to keep Lloyd's neck almost absolutely still as I slowly begin to lift the tiny imp. Even if we can't die down here except with angelic weapons, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be cautious, and the boy looks far far worse for wear. His nose was broken, blood drizzling from it, while his eyes were shut in pain. Some of his pointy teeth were gone while a horn was also broken off. The boy makes a pained groan as I lift him as gently as possible and begin to move him to the van as Squealer opens up the back, giving me a spot where I can put the poor imp.
All the while things are going smoothly by comparison at the apartment building. The paramilitary imps haven't been able to clear the whole building, but they have set up in defensible spots by the stairs on the second floor where there is a thin wall they can shoot through with their guns. I have enough fireflies over there to be able to point out targets even if I lose some of them from the imps firing through my bugs into the backs of the Crimson Gang members. Perhaps I should have assigned the less experienced group to the slave apartments and the experienced group to the warehouse, and then maybe this wouldn't have happened.
But hindsight is always twenty twenty, I think as I slide Lloyd's broken and battered form into the back of the van. One of the two imps who'd been with Lars is bringing over the female imp who'd been smashed into the wall while another moves to help Felix, picking him up to move as well. Another imp, whose foot was shot because he was standing too close to the robot, starts hopping on over to get into our make shift ambulance. Lars moves to help the one hopping on his one foot while the two, Squealer, and Skidmark are looking around for more casualties.
"Upstairs in the metal box, follow me," I say as I start moving towards the stairs. As I do, I might as well figure out the situation. "Moxxie, Millie, anybody coming this way?"
"Not from the looks of it, oh hey Moxxie, second sto-" the firing of Moxxie's gun deafens my bugs for a moment before their hearing is back. Even with a suppressor on Moxxie's sniper rifle, the thing was damn loud.
"Scratch one more," Moxxie says as his wife giggles.
"Honey, you are adorable when you're all serious, I could just eat you up! Now where was I? Oh yeah, nah, I ain't seen no body coming your way, most of them are going towards the big fights over on the far side of their place. Lots of gunfire and stuff coming from over there," Millie pauses for a second. I nod to the statement since I could hear the gunfire on the other side of the Crimson territory as well, though in the warehouse, it's muffled to barely some pops. Then Millie continues, "Huh, they got," another pause as I hear what could be some kind of detonation. "Well, uh, had a tank. Looks like it got blasted."
"Thank you," I tell Millie as we get up to the second floor of the warehouse. One of the imps following me moves to help his cousin who'd been smashed out of the box as we get closer and look inside. I frown as I see the carnage that Crimson had done to the last two imps that hadn't been knocked out of the metal entrance way to the office area. Groans of pain come from there as they lie on the floor. I can see one of them had their arm smashed in by something, leaving it in an unnatural position. The other imp was bleeding heavily as if he'd been gored by some goat. Then I spot the other bit of Lloyd's horn stuck in the imp's midsection.
Remembering some of the first things we learned in the Wards about first aid, I don't try to remove Lloyd's horn from the wound but leave it in there as I gently pick up the imp. As I turn back to follow the others back to the van, I continue to command the bugs at the apartment. The Crimson gangsters were getting ready to try to retake the building while mustering on the ground floor. From the look of it, most of the girls had already been collected, and moving up onto the rooftop where they could get across to the other buildings that led to our vans.
Then a pair of Crimson thugs broke off from the main group and started heading into the basement. Curious, I move some more bugs into the building into the basement, and even a biter as well to look through a basement window. Remembering what I'd already mapped out in there, they could only be going to one location.
While mapping out the pens, I'd found that I hadn't been able to get into one of the places in the basement of the apartment building. At first I assumed it was some kind of vault for money or something, though since they were only going for it now, it must be some kind of special kind of weapon or something to use in an attack, much like Crimson likely had been. Since we weren't after loot in the apartment attacks, I'd been less concerned about it.
"So, what are we grabbing down here?" one of the demons asks while the other one moves his arm up to where the keypad is on the vault door.
"Power armour, and you're going to help me put it on," the lead demon said.
"Power armour?" the demon asks, apparently just as much out of the loop on the Crimson gang's capabilities as I was if they had power armour. "Why can't I wear it?"
"Because dumb ass, I'm in charge here, and the boss only wants those of us with the pass codes to these vault doors to use them," the lesser thug nods as the lead demon pulls open the door. Oiled hinges barely making a sound as the two walk in. I move some bugs in to get a sense of the room. At the same time, I place the injured imp into the van.
"They've got power armour in the basement, how long until you finish up there?" I ask the lead imp in charge of the apartment raid.
"About five minutes, we've cleared most of the floors but we've got wounded girls here that we're grabbing and moving as fast as we can."
"You might not have five," I say as I continue to observe the demons. With the other helping the lead demon, they are getting on the armour rather quickly. The thing, from what my bugs could figure out, was in pieces all over the small vault, with an exoskeleton standing in the middle while there were outfit bits all over with thick metal plates on them that were only a bit thinner than the robot's armour at its thickest. Even after grabbing the heavier guns that the Crimson gang members had had in the apartments, the imps would have a tough time actually piercing that armour unless they hit a chink in it.
Though, now that I can sense the other side of the vault door, I can't feel any kind of mechanism to open it up from the inside, and the gangster didn't have to exert that much effort opening the door. As with most of the windows in the less affluent areas of Hell, the window is shattered and open to the outside. With my biter, I have it crawl in, and quickly drop to the floor before quickly having it scuttle over to the vault door. Pushing at the bottom corner, the vault door slowly begins to close on the pair inside, before quickly gaining speed as I keep having my biter push.
"Alright," the voice of the gangster in powered armour says as he grabs the heavy machine gun inside of the vault, seemingly completing his outfit. "Lets go kick some-"
Then with a clang, the vault door closes on the pair. The two stare at the vault door for a moment before the lesser of the pair decides to ask.
"Uh… how do we get out?"
"Ah, fuck…" is the only answer the lead demon gives. Despite myself, I smile as I turn around.
"Nevermind, two more are gone and now it's just the guys waiting downstairs. I'll mark targets and you take them out," I tell the apartment team before I begin to point out some of the loot that is going to be useful in the future.
As a measure to make extra sure that there wouldn't be a problem, I start moving the bugs I still have in the vault between the various kevlar armour sections in order to gain access to the various grenades that were on the gang banger's bandolier. From there, I get my bugs to collectively start pulling at the pin of one that vaguely reminded me of the shape of a pineapple.
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While I don't very much enjoy begging for comments, I would absolutely love it if I could get some feedback on this and these chapters, speculation, anything really, or even critique.
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"You are looking at about twenty guys coming your way in vans," I inform the team at the apartments, relaying the information that Moxxie and Millie had given me. While I have a decent amount of biters, I'm using them to watch for reinforcements from the alleys. I'd already taken out a few scattered groups of Crimson thugs who were running towards us, ambushing them from alleyways.
At the same time, I continue to use my bugs to identify enemy combatants in both areas of operation and use fireflies I'd possessed to indicate hostiles. One advantage that the apartment team had over the warehouse team was that I'd focused more of my fireflies in that direction. Most of the walls were thin drywall and didn't actually provide much more than concealment. As such, I'd started indicating with my fireflies where to shoot through the thin walls to eliminate the enemy combatants.
"Copy, we'll find a place that's nice and defensible for us to hold out in while the girls get out, Mary Anne, Archie, get these girls moving, we got more incoming!" the leader of the apartment team orders while the two imps nod and continue to help the various slaves up to the roof. There they would move across a roof to a neighbouring building and get loaded into the vans they brought.
With the bugs I have on Felix and the others in the warehouse team, I feel them move up towards the office. The gunfire there has fallen enough that I can finally speak. As I am about to speak, however, I feel something going on inside of the office. Of the four people inside of the office, I can feel one getting picked up. I don't have enough bugs on them to properly determine their movements as I'd kept my bugs on the more immediate threats, and it was taking a bit of time to traverse the air ducts with my bugs.
"There are four enemies inside of the office, I can sense something going on inside with magic but I don't know what. Some Crimson reinforcements are coming your way, three vans of men," I tell them before Moxxie's voice comes through from the phone.
"I've got eyes on the reinforcements, I'll try to thin out the ones heading to the warehouse first," Moxxie says. With all the advantages the apartment imps had, not only the drywall situations but also the fact that they were veteran militiamen, they will likely fare better against the reinforcements than the green horns at the warehouse.
"Is Uncle Lars alright?" I hear Felix ask as they enter the metal box entrance. As I pull together many of my bugs near the area form a bug ball by Lars to ask about his condition, I can feel with some of my bugs on them that the imp that was left to help Lars is slowly helping him to his feet.
"Are you alright Lars?" I ask through my bugs. He, however, just waves at my bugs.
"Ye-" is as far as he gets before he starts hacking and coughing.
"He'll be alright, he just got his arm shot up, and maybe a few broken ribs, but he'll be fine I think," Beth says, answering for her uncle who just nods his head. Satisfied, I report back to Felix.
"He will live, the shot possibly broke some ribs and his arm is injured, but he'll live," Felix sighs in relief while his cousin Lloyd chuckles. As he does so, however, the magic of one of the thugs starts increasing rapidly. It feels almost like the man assuming a demonic form, but not quite. I can't quite figure out what is going on magically, but as more bugs enter the room and latch onto the thugs, the one man seems to be sucking on some of the men's necks after he's already snapped their necks and bit into them. I hadn't exactly been sure what he was doing, but from the feeling with the magic- He's started to move.
"One enemy in the office remaining, watch out, incoming from the office," I say through my bugs but I can already feel how much more powerful the magical signature of the last remaining thug was. I reach into my coat and pull my gun from it, flicking off the safety. I look at Skidmark and Squealer who look up in surprise as I pull my gun out.
"Warehouse is going FUBAR, we need to get there now," is all I need to say before the two nod, grab their guns, and start moving towards the van that had brought the robot in.
"How many of their reinforcements have you taken out?" I ask the sniper team.
"Hell yeah! That's my Moxxie," I hear Millie cry out before Moxxie answers.
"I've taken care of one of the vans, the other two swerved onto the back streets and are heading for the warehouse, there are still three heading for the apartment, should I focus on those?"
"Things at the warehouse went FUBAR, take out as many heading for the apartments as possible, we're not likely to be able to help if things go to shit there as well."
"Copy that, I'll focus on the other reinforcements," Moxxie says as I feel his sniper with one of my bugs shift towards a spot closer to the apartments.
"So we still doing false flag shit?" Squealer asks and I nod.
"As much as possible now that we've got to get involved, come on, hopefully they'll think we're vigilantes," I say as I hop into the back of the van with Skidmark. Skidmark himself is loading metal balls into his cannon as the truck starts and Squealer hits the gas, barely waiting for us to get in. With a biter, I identify some of the trucks moving in towards the warehouse and move some bugs towards the vans and closer to the warehouse.
The two Crimson vans move in, stopping right beside where the three gangsters had been shot up by Cherri's new robot.
"Stop before turning the corner, we'll get out there," I tell Squealer with some bugs in the front. Following my instructions, a few seconds later the van lurches as Squealer brakes. I wait a moment for the van to slow, my bugs growing more agitated as I can feel with my bugs the one imp, Lloyd, being used as a club against the rest..
I jump out of the van and hug the building as I move up, my gun out in front of me as I use my bugs to mark each of the emerging Crimson gang members, bugs for each of their limbs and their torso. Interestingly, on the torso bugs as they move around, I can feel various grenades on bandoliers of the men coming out. Maybe I should get my bugs to try to pull their pins? I'm about to round the corner, however, it would take too long.
Instead, I take aim at the first gang member's head as I approach the corner, then fire as I turn it. I barely even think as muscle memory takes over, and I line up my shots with each of the bugs I have on their heads. I fire twice more and two more go down before even reacting to the first shot. I line up my next shot with two of the bugs and fire, feeling two of the gangsters fall like puppets with their strings cut. I move to do the same again with my fifth shot. I fire into another gangster, and hear a clang as the bullet hits the side of the truck. I feel the next gangster behind the truck go down but my bug on his head isn't injured. The truck's wall likely altered the course of the bullet.
I don't have time to ponder as I take a step out, and fire at a gangster who accidentally steps into my body's line of sight. With the bugs I have on the dead I have them come together to start pulling the grenades from them, and towards me. I can feel the gangsters moving now, trying to get behind the cover of their vans. The bugs are taking too long, so I bend a little and reach down with my lower set of arms. I remember how Angel had been able to pull weapons from his little hammer space, much like Circus had. As I touch a grenade on the bandolier, I try to mimic it, and I can feel the grenade in the back of my mind, somewhat like when I pull my arms into myself. I slide my hand across the bandolier and pull in the various grenades on them. I begin to move along the side of the building as Skidmark catches up to me.
"Damn bitch, you work fast!" he says and I ignore his comment. I pull on one of the grenades and look down to see a smoke grenade. Useful, especially since I'll hopefully be the only one that can sense through the smoke. I pull the pin on the grenade and underhand toss it forward to the front of the van. There is a small pop and smoke billows outwards from the thing quickly making an impregnable cloud. I walk into the cloud, using both my antennae, bugs, and a hand on the van to navigate it while I keep my gun trained on one of the gang members that's in front of the van. Two shots left, six enemies to go.
In the warehouse, I can feel the thing finish off with those in the metal box, and move to one of the exits. Hopefully the robot is enough to deal with the big guy, but with how it didn't even flinch at all the fire that the imps in the box had poured into it, I didn't have my hopes up. Damn, I should have empowered their weapons like I had my own. We might not have taken so many casualties.
Finally around the van, I snap off two shots, first into the closest gangster's head and then another into one of the gangsters heading to the front of the second van. The two go down as those before. I feel Skidmark move up to the van and I form another little bug ball, pulling them from some of the grenades I'd been hoping to snatch.
"They're behind the second van, two behind the mid section, two behind the engine block. I'll hit the ones behind the engine block, you hit the ones behind the mid section," I say to him as I pull back and reload my pistol. Then, once more I move forward towards the second van while still in the smoke. As I disperse my bug ball, I have them join the others again in trying to pull grenades from each of the gangster's bandoliers. As I reach the edge of the smoke, I feel one of the gangsters begin to reach for their own grenades. I take aim at the arm and fire. The bug that was on the hand is jerked off before I fire again at the gangster, this time aiming at the bug on his head, before with another step I have a shot on the second gangster and I blow his brains out as well.
Skidmark himself moves around the van and doesn't even aim when he starts firing at the thugs. He just sticks his cannon around the van and starts wildly firing his metal shot-puts. The cockroach demon can barely keep a hold of his gun as the metal balls slam into the gangsters. The smell of blood intensifies as I smell a lot of it around the other side of the vehicle while I can feel my bugs get thrown off by a tide of fluids. Skidmark makes his way around the vehicle now and properly aims at them, putting another of his metal balls into their skulls. As I start to head towards the warehouse, I aim back and fire at the gangster that went down after my shot penetrated the van. Despite how he hadn't been moving, I'd rather not have any nasty surprises. I form another bug ball near Skidmark.
"Form up on me, I'm moving up on the warehouse," I say before I move onto Squealer.
"Bring the van up to the main entrance of the warehouse; Skidmark and I are moving up."
I reach down and suck in a few more of the grenades that my bugs bring me along with some that the one behind the first van had. I had prioritized smoke grenades with my bugs while the one gangster had all kinds of grenades. Drawing out a smoke from the other space, I pull the pin on it, toss the grenade forward, and move in. I can feel lots of electronics starting up in the area, and with some bugs and a biter I have around, I can see and sense that people are recording what is going on. Some had started earlier, while others had taken longer, but like with most of the idiots in the living world, they couldn't help but try to record the various violent struggles that occured. Thankfully, the one apartment building was abandoned and there was some kind of bridge for a train on our left, obscuring any kind of vision from that way. The only places where Hell's inhabitants could get a proper picture of us were some apartment building windows down the street that lead to the warehouse, and I'd already smoked the street to get us across, hopefully unseen.
I feel the van moving up as I run into the next cloud of smoke while crossing the street. I can feel the robot being stomped on by the big guy. Skidmark is moving around the smoke near the tracks towards the imps that had been smacked out of the warehouse. From the bugs on them, they are doing marginally alright as they start to pick themselves up from where they'd been tossed. Already they'd started scrambling for their guns. Seems their demonic regeneration was working wonders as usual.
I emerge from the smoke at the entrance of the warehouse. I can see the massive red man that the imps inside had been screaming about. He is hulking, and his muscles bulge as I take aim at him, lining up my shot with the bugs I have on the front of him. I fire three shots, each finding their mark along the beast's spine. He shrieks as he winds up, a hand across his back. Seeing an opportunity, I fire into the man's skull one last shot before my pistol's empty. The man, like a beast, merely reacts and turns my way, and suddenly I realise that I know him, or rather, of him.
The Crimson gang had recruited Crimson, a previous member of the SlaughterHouse Nine into their ranks. He looked exactly like he did when he had been alive. His tongue lolled out from his mouth, his skin bulged with power, and with my magical senses, his presence was significant, like combining six different regular demon's powers together into a single person. He roared as I loaded another magazine into my gun, spit flying everywhere.
And then I shot him repeatedly in the face.
He hadn't actually died that easily, the moment my magazine entered the gun he'd tried to dodge and weave, putting his hands in front of his face, and trying to side step. My bullets into his spine, however, seems to have slowed him down. My bullets quickly ripped through his hand, and as he shifted, his hand moved out of the way of his face, and I had a clear shot. I can see blood dripping from his hand and his face where the bullets hit. One eye is a ruined bloody mess, his engorged tongue had burst, and blood dripped liberally from his nose where a bullet had smashed into it. His remaining good eye stares at me with wide astonishment, seemingly stunned at how my gun could do so much damage. Without giving him another moment, I load another magazine into my gun, and fire again, shifting my aim and my bugs to let me hit some of the softer targets on his face. With his hand out of the way, the magically accelerated bullets slam into his face, hitting more and gouging deep holes into him.
Now blind, he wildly charges in my direction as I continue to fire upon him, aiming directly for his ruined eyes as he charges. Just as he gets close, I sidestep and hit him with a blast of magic, destabilizing him as he falls to the side, his hands flailing around wildly as I continue to dump shot after shot into his face, reloading rapidly as I continually dump my bullets into him as he tries to no avail to avoid the onslaught of magically accelerated and silent bullets being driven deeper and deeper into his skull. Finally, he falls limp as my bullets penetrate the magically enhanced bone of his skull, and turn his grey matter to mush.
His face is a blood mess as he lays limp on the floor of the warehouse. Magic rapidly flees him as he lies on the floor, his form morphing quickly to that of a mere human. I raise an eyebrow as the dead man looks exactly like a human. He wasn't like Squealer, who was some kind of latex doll demon with a form built for explicit things. This was a regular human body, not only that, but from my magical senses, Crimson barely had any magic at all. In fact, as I look to the imps, who already had such pitiful magical reserves, he was an order of magnitudes lesser than even them.
I swap out a magazine and slot in a fresh one. I need to get a bigger gun if I am going to keep running into brutes like this. First the beetle and now Crimson, not to mention that unlike in the living world, both the law enforcement and the gangs had armoured vehicles with thick armour plates and enough firepower to rival a tank. I think of some of the guns that I'd picked up, perhaps I should upgrade one, or maybe even a few of them with the same thing I'd done to my 1911.
I hear the van drive up from outside, and see a quartet of imp faces pop up from around a stack of crates. I recognize Lars among them, still breathing hard, his arm hanging limply to his side from where the shotgun blast had peppered it.
"Come on, lets get whoever's hurt into the van, we can grab the loot after!" I shout to them. I can feel Skidmark and the two boys who'd been smashed with Crimson's improvised imp club following along, clearly in a bit of pain but compared to some like Felix, doing alright. I turn to Skidmark, the two imps, and see Squealer getting out of the vehicle as well. As I turn, I begin to transform into my larger demonic form, growing larger as I look to the fallen imp, Lloyd.
With my larger form, I gently slide my arms along the ground, making sure to keep Lloyd's neck almost absolutely still as I slowly begin to lift the tiny imp. Even if we can't die down here except with angelic weapons, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be cautious, and the boy looks far far worse for wear. His nose was broken, blood drizzling from it, while his eyes were shut in pain. Some of his pointy teeth were gone while a horn was also broken off. The boy makes a pained groan as I lift him as gently as possible and begin to move him to the van as Squealer opens up the back, giving me a spot where I can put the poor imp.
All the while things are going smoothly by comparison at the apartment building. The paramilitary imps haven't been able to clear the whole building, but they have set up in defensible spots by the stairs on the second floor where there is a thin wall they can shoot through with their guns. I have enough fireflies over there to be able to point out targets even if I lose some of them from the imps firing through my bugs into the backs of the Crimson Gang members. Perhaps I should have assigned the less experienced group to the slave apartments and the experienced group to the warehouse, and then maybe this wouldn't have happened.
But hindsight is always twenty twenty, I think as I slide Lloyd's broken and battered form into the back of the van. One of the two imps who'd been with Lars is bringing over the female imp who'd been smashed into the wall while another moves to help Felix, picking him up to move as well. Another imp, whose foot was shot because he was standing too close to the robot, starts hopping on over to get into our make shift ambulance. Lars moves to help the one hopping on his one foot while the two, Squealer, and Skidmark are looking around for more casualties.
"Upstairs in the metal box, follow me," I say as I start moving towards the stairs. As I do, I might as well figure out the situation. "Moxxie, Millie, anybody coming this way?"
"Not from the looks of it, oh hey Moxxie, second sto-" the firing of Moxxie's gun deafens my bugs for a moment before their hearing is back. Even with a suppressor on Moxxie's sniper rifle, the thing was damn loud.
"Scratch one more," Moxxie says as his wife giggles.
"Honey, you are adorable when you're all serious, I could just eat you up! Now where was I? Oh yeah, nah, I ain't seen no body coming your way, most of them are going towards the big fights over on the far side of their place. Lots of gunfire and stuff coming from over there," Millie pauses for a second. I nod to the statement since I could hear the gunfire on the other side of the Crimson territory as well, though in the warehouse, it's muffled to barely some pops. Then Millie continues, "Huh, they got," another pause as I hear what could be some kind of detonation. "Well, uh, had a tank. Looks like it got blasted."
"Thank you," I tell Millie as we get up to the second floor of the warehouse. One of the imps following me moves to help his cousin who'd been smashed out of the box as we get closer and look inside. I frown as I see the carnage that Crimson had done to the last two imps that hadn't been knocked out of the metal entrance way to the office area. Groans of pain come from there as they lie on the floor. I can see one of them had their arm smashed in by something, leaving it in an unnatural position. The other imp was bleeding heavily as if he'd been gored by some goat. Then I spot the other bit of Lloyd's horn stuck in the imp's midsection.
Remembering some of the first things we learned in the Wards about first aid, I don't try to remove Lloyd's horn from the wound but leave it in there as I gently pick up the imp. As I turn back to follow the others back to the van, I continue to command the bugs at the apartment. The Crimson gangsters were getting ready to try to retake the building while mustering on the ground floor. From the look of it, most of the girls had already been collected, and moving up onto the rooftop where they could get across to the other buildings that led to our vans.
Then a pair of Crimson thugs broke off from the main group and started heading into the basement. Curious, I move some more bugs into the building into the basement, and even a biter as well to look through a basement window. Remembering what I'd already mapped out in there, they could only be going to one location.
While mapping out the pens, I'd found that I hadn't been able to get into one of the places in the basement of the apartment building. At first I assumed it was some kind of vault for money or something, though since they were only going for it now, it must be some kind of special kind of weapon or something to use in an attack, much like Crimson likely had been. Since we weren't after loot in the apartment attacks, I'd been less concerned about it.
"So, what are we grabbing down here?" one of the demons asks while the other one moves his arm up to where the keypad is on the vault door.
"Power armour, and you're going to help me put it on," the lead demon said.
"Power armour?" the demon asks, apparently just as much out of the loop on the Crimson gang's capabilities as I was if they had power armour. "Why can't I wear it?"
"Because dumb ass, I'm in charge here, and the boss only wants those of us with the pass codes to these vault doors to use them," the lesser thug nods as the lead demon pulls open the door. Oiled hinges barely making a sound as the two walk in. I move some bugs in to get a sense of the room. At the same time, I place the injured imp into the van.
"They've got power armour in the basement, how long until you finish up there?" I ask the lead imp in charge of the apartment raid.
"About five minutes, we've cleared most of the floors but we've got wounded girls here that we're grabbing and moving as fast as we can."
"You might not have five," I say as I continue to observe the demons. With the other helping the lead demon, they are getting on the armour rather quickly. The thing, from what my bugs could figure out, was in pieces all over the small vault, with an exoskeleton standing in the middle while there were outfit bits all over with thick metal plates on them that were only a bit thinner than the robot's armour at its thickest. Even after grabbing the heavier guns that the Crimson gang members had had in the apartments, the imps would have a tough time actually piercing that armour unless they hit a chink in it.
Though, now that I can sense the other side of the vault door, I can't feel any kind of mechanism to open it up from the inside, and the gangster didn't have to exert that much effort opening the door. As with most of the windows in the less affluent areas of Hell, the window is shattered and open to the outside. With my biter, I have it crawl in, and quickly drop to the floor before quickly having it scuttle over to the vault door. Pushing at the bottom corner, the vault door slowly begins to close on the pair inside, before quickly gaining speed as I keep having my biter push.
"Alright," the voice of the gangster in powered armour says as he grabs the heavy machine gun inside of the vault, seemingly completing his outfit. "Lets go kick some-"
Then with a clang, the vault door closes on the pair. The two stare at the vault door for a moment before the lesser of the pair decides to ask.
"Uh… how do we get out?"
"Ah, fuck…" is the only answer the lead demon gives. Despite myself, I smile as I turn around.
"Nevermind, two more are gone and now it's just the guys waiting downstairs. I'll mark targets and you take them out," I tell the apartment team before I begin to point out some of the loot that is going to be useful in the future.
As a measure to make extra sure that there wouldn't be a problem, I start moving the bugs I still have in the vault between the various kevlar armour sections in order to gain access to the various grenades that were on the gang banger's bandolier. From there, I get my bugs to collectively start pulling at the pin of one that vaguely reminded me of the shape of a pineapple.
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While I don't very much enjoy begging for comments, I would absolutely love it if I could get some feedback on this and these chapters, speculation, anything really, or even critique.
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