Chapter 8-10 Bleed it Out

Chapter 8-10 Bleed it Out

You will not win every battle as you are. This is not a critique on your skills, but a statement of circumstance. Look at yourselves. Feel your current biological templateyour standard baseline sheathe.

That burning in your lungs after mere hours of activity? The strain in your muscles as you struggle to bear weights barely heavier than yourselves? This is a limitation of physical attributes. Youwithout thaumaturgy or high technologycannot alter your attributes. Instead, you must work around them.

Now, emerging out from this cage before you is a Manticore-Retriever. We call him Mattis. This model of nu-dog is one ton of synthetic hyper-muscle capable of tearing through a LIAC. It moves five times faster than a flatwhich is what you all are right nowand it does not feel pain or fear.

Over the course of the next few seconds to minute, Mattis will kill all of you. You have no chance of surviving, but survival has nothing to do with your orders.

Sell your lives. Bleed the dog. Write a post-session report during your death-time in your Phylacteries.

Mattis. Kill

Oh, hells, [laughs]. Looks like its gonna be a short day."

-Commander Winston Nicoma, Highflame Regular

8-10

Bleed it Out

The monowire raked across Avos headplates inch by inch, the slithering strand sinking with each retraction.

A blow thundered against his chest, the impact heavy one moment and gone the next. His new mycelia drank blunt force far better than the muscles he used to have. Twice more he felt Draus strike him with her free hand, propelled back by bursts of force from her wing-scythes.

Retaliating, he clawed as she struck, his new digits leaving ugly scratches upon her rig, the tips of his fingers splitting even titanium. Operating on sheer instinct, he clasped her tight around him as her wire sawed through his armor, the serrated edges of his eight Echoheads slashed across her back, curving in to spear at her.

The world was spinning fast, but their fall was long, the neutering of time making even gravity hobbled.

In the same moment her wire severed the ceramite under his jaw, one of his Echoheads punched true. They sang with a crackle, the air popping with a small shockwave. Through layers of metal, meat, and bone, the Echohead dived, impacting hard against the Regulars ribs. Blood gushed and the tail fed. Avo fed. It didnt matter that her wire was still working to decapitate him, the thrill was afire in him.

It was better to be alive at this moment than be spared, safe but bored for the rest of time.

She twisted. Force burst free from her side. Avo felt his gut lurch as his armored back clashed against a hardened pillar. The impact shuddered through him, the structure behind him fissuring. As he was before, his bones would have shattered. He would have died. Now, though the impact thundered his breath out of his lungs, the blow danced down his mycellial fibers, evening across his body

Twisting again, she dove him down as they struck another pillar. The wiring twisted around his outer skull and he felt it tighten more, biting halfway through ceramide. Pain began to tinkle through his senses as his Echoheads chittered, clearing the confusion.

Spinning, crashing, grinding, and brawling, she was driving him against the column holding up the third-highest dueling ring. With fifty feet running between each pillar, the velocity at which she slammed him was enough to crumble a commercial aerovec.

Angling herself, she timed a surge of acceleration from both wings to smash him back-first against the pillar again. A heavy impact staggered him, but his plating and thread-like interior kept him from losing his breath.

He felt himself scrape, twisting away from the wall again. The wire chewed even deeper. Another squeeze and hed be without a head. A static picture greeted hima thin thrumming extension emerging from between the knuckles of her right sub-arm.

Implanted frequency stilleto. Because of course she had one.

She clenched her fist, making to finish him before her wire did

But his blow came first.

The Echohead, still lodged deep inside her punctured midsection, extended once more. This time, even the lacing of her ribs failed her. Her core shattered against the head of his tailthe flavor of his devastation like shoving ones tongue into someone elses shattered mouth, licking at fragments of bone dancing like teeth broken free of gums.

The monowire sliced through. A line of pain glided deep. Yet, her blade never came, and her grip slackened. With brutal delight, he found that his Echohead had instinctively clamped its teeth around the shaft of her spine.

He had her. Now, she would

Her wings exploded with force. Something hard crashed into him as several courses of pain comingled across his body. With a sickening snap, he felt her pull free from his tail, a piece of her vertebrae still bitten between its jaws. He, meanwhile, struck a pillar at a diagonal angle, with all the force of his acceleration cracking down between his neck and shoulder.

It was a testament to his new bodys durabliity that he only folded instead of splattering. His exterior plates held, but the mycelia tore. Chasms of pain opened down his back and shoulders, the agony consuming his mind. He felt his Echoheads lash out, haywire and uncommanded, desperate to protect their host.

Meanwhile, Avo felt, his skull spinning, focus lost.

And with that, his Celerostylus went untensed. The weight of time fell like a hammer blow from the skies as gravity tore down from the air. A hoarse cry wheezed out from Avos mangled lip. He blinked. Licking at his wounds, he found the front half of his mouth missing, his incisors chipped, and the plate beneath his skull severed clean.

The monowire must have sliced through him as Draus shot past him.

He coughed, hacking out blood.

Something was filling one of his lungs as well.

Had Draus managed burst his lungs from a few punches thrown an inch away? What the hells did they learn at Regular academy.

Unable to use his own voice, he had his Echoheads cry out. Another snapshot of the world formed around him. Ten feet until he struck water. A disturbance some eight feet away, ripples beneath the water. Probably where Draus struck.

Splashing into the murky depths, Avo felt the sting of fetid water pouring into his wounds.

Then, subsequently, he felt no pain at all. Hurt and wounds dissolved from his body like salt in water. The missing flap of flesh grew across his mouth. His fangs reformed. From hewn edges, his ceramite plating pooled back together.

Swallowing a drink of the foul water, he felt his collapsed lung begin to expand even as he choked.

The water beneath the rings wasnt just water, but midnight rainwater. But the fact that the bones of so many fighters lay scattered at the base of the pool like ominous sediment spurred Avo back to motion.

The rains restored, but they couldnt spare one of death.

He grinned. That was good. He didnt much care about killing anyway. He just wanted to hurt the Regular.

Ghouls were not natural swimmers. They were capable of it, much like people could, but their designs led to poisoning the water with their blood. With his new Echoheads, however, Avo was a harpoon cutting past the softness of the waves, the tails undulating behind him, propelling him forward at a pace on par with his land-based movement.

Firing his reflexes anew, the water slowed as tumbling tides of displacement billowed out from his sides. His tails sang out and the shifting waters responded, his tactile sense fed more generously by currents of water than air.

Shuth up! Avo growled. He speared at her using his Echoheads, but with her Accelero active, she was too fast. She spun, rolling with his arm still in her grasp, the momentum flinging him across the arena despite his drastic weight advantage.

Avo tumbled and slid. She managed to strike him twice mid-flight before he passed her reach. Impacting the ring hard, he felt the ball of his shoulder snap back into place as he landed poorly. With a flex, he felt his fibers tighten, but the bone ached with soreness.

Groaning, he made to stand but crumpled to his knees as blood flowed free from his ribs.

Across from him, Draus looked little better, face mangled, intestines swaying. But her fingers were still tight around the frequency blade humming in her hands. She wasnt close to breaking. Neither was he.

For a frozen instant, their eyes met, and they beheld the damage their wrought on each other. Her large intestines were still spooled at her feet, the wound half-healed, leaving parts of her organs on the outside. Parts of her optical nerves had regrown, but the tech was gone.

They breathed, waiting for the rains to heal them enough to stand. A cheer came from the stands.

I love free entertainment! Bright-Wealth shouted.

Draus grinned then, an expression of brutal delight that seemed to mirror his own.

He shook his head. Biting. Suppose to be my thing.

Kiss my ass, rotlick, you steal my tricks, I get to steal one of yours.

He groaned. Its not a trick just hungry.

She snorted a laugh and spat a globule of blood. A think one of my ribs might be floating inside me. A couple of pieces maybe.

Avo inhaled and felt the same way. Cut my reflex booster.

She sighed. Fuck. Is that why youre still standin? I was trying to get your spine. Godsdamned booster is thick as shit. Was already hell cutting through those plates. She spat again and swallowed some rainwater. That grafters probably a keeper, you know. Might want to add her mem-data to your Meta. Maybe share a session.

He nodded slowly. Your rig. Broke it.

Yeah, Riverll be annoyed but I wouldve bricked it sooner or later. Draus wiped her face, smearing blood as she began blinking. She had been fighting him blind this entire time. And he was the one with Echolocation.

Eyes coming back? he asked.

I can see sorta the light again. You owe me some mods there. Had some custom chrome done there you decided to ruin with your stumps. She shook her head. Stabbed me with your stumps. Who does that.

Wanted to use my thumbs.

Yeah, I cut your arms off for a reason. Now, Im wonderin what that reason was.

Avo hissed a low laugh. Forced my hand by removing my hands.

The joke seemed to hurt her more than any of her wounds did. Jaus, Avo. Maybe leave the jokes to me.

Yeah, Avo said. You were pretty funny flailing in the water. Like a baby seal.

Baby seal that took your arms and nearly put one through your head. You need more practice.

Nearly got you.

Yeah. Sure you did. Howd you like the monowire?

A little tight. He made his tails chitter. Echoheads?

Yeah, I think they go well on you. Somethin that can make up for your dog-shit hand-to-hand. I mean, godsdamned, Avo, I was blind and I felt that elbow comin. Where were you throwing that from? The sky?

Hissing, he waved her off. What was that?

What was what?

Twisted. Grabbed arm. Broke it. Weird.

Its just basic grappling. What? They dont teach that in ghoul academy.

No, Avo said. Teach ghouls how to die there.

A beat passed. Draus hummed. I suppose they do.

You get the anger out? Avo asked.

No. Still got half a mind to pop you with my projectile launcher. You?

Still hungry. Tempted to pull the air out from your lungs.

Well, aint that a happy ending: all that hurtin for us to come out perfectly unsatisfied.

Welcome to New Vultun.

She laughed.

As the rain fell, Avo watched his hand mend back together entirely, the whiteness of his plating fusing over the claws. He made to stand but frowned as he twitched his fingers. He held his hand up, gazing up into the mist, and just existed for a moment.

Draus? Avo asked.

Hm?

Do you feel like youre real?"