Who: Lina & Cindy What: Ground Reaper support, with little ladies up against brutes When: Today Where: Out and about on land Rating/Warning: Violence, language Status: Complete!
“Son of a--!”
CRACK
THUMP
Sssszzzzzzzzssssssss
And then, thud.
No one, in the state of ever, got paid enough for this sort of thing - but the truth was it had nothing to do with the pay and everything to do with protecting this little slice of hell called home, and if that involved being on the front line and coming to blows with a relentless army of aliens (made of corpses reanimated by corrupted sentient tech), then to hell with it, bring it on, because they were in the fight of their goddamn lives.
Their arrival didn’t come without preparation, and before the ground battles began dossiers of what these things were had been sent out; creature names, difficulty levels (husks were the easiest, the harvesters on flight were on the opposite spectrum), weak spots, behavioral patterns, blahblahblah. But the key thing was, anything was game - melee attacks, firearms, and magic.
Whatever it took, do it. Lina had no qualms meeting destruction head on with more destruction.
Fast forward to the shithole they found themselves on, a hole of ruin and debris and rubble, where concrete was jagged and split, where cars were flipped and scrapped to the side, buildings crumbled and gave away. It wasn’t far from the main culprit of destruction (meaning, the actual giant Reaper miles high and wide stomping things), which meant the amount of ground troops to take down was colossal.
“Okay, so,” panted the petite sorceress with armored shoulders, battle ready in dragonhide boots and amplifiers for that extra unf in magic to expel, because this was fucking exhausting - but, at the very least, the medi-gel stuff they were supplied with came with something (caffeine, maybe?) to pep them up every time it was applied to scrapes, scuffs, whatever other wounds. “Am I the only one who thinks us getting the brutes is a little rigged?”
That thing that went thud? It was a big one, built like a bull with what looked like Garrus’ head, and it was dead on the ground and she was pointing at it accusingly. “Do they think ‘oh, look, small cannon fodder, let’s get them’ when they come charging at us?”
That thing, as Cindy’s stepmother would say, was uglier than a mud fence (it didn’t make sense, but then again, many southern phrases really didn’t). She spat on its dead carcass, shouldering her rifle for the time being - the weapon packed some firepower, Garrus had given it to her, with the reasoning that it was pretty good for short, medium, and even sometimes long-ranged combat. Maybe a little heavy-looking for a tiny thing such as herself to be carrying, but it felt like tissue paper to a Fable who could lift and throw cars if need be. Super strength helped sometimes.
She had a couple other smaller pistols in holsters on her bulletproof catsuit’s utility belt, and extra ammo, plus a fuckton of that medi-gel. It came in handy, since as durable as she was, she could still feel pain. Adrenaline rushes could only power her through for so long, before she started feeling the impact from cuts, scratches, bruises, and space warfare ricocheting off of her.
It was pretty great though. Cindy lived for a good fight.
“You know what they say, big tree falls hard or something,” she grinned, her tone breathless, face smudged with dust and dirt, her shiny blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail away from her eyes. Which had a look of battle-ready hunger in them. This was actually kind of fun. “Want to hop into the carriage and find another? There has to be more lurking around here.”
Of course she was riding around in the calibrated pumpkin carriage o’doom. Any day she got a chance to try out the cryo-blasters fitted to the vehicle was a good day.
Oh, and these fuckers were falling hard. They weren’t the toughest of the bunch, but their size and strength were formidable - unlike the marauders they didn’t have a rifle to shoot at them with, but these gargantuan bulls charged fast and with force like they were targets draped in blaring red. Get caught in that, well.
They’d get tossed like ragdolls if they weren’t careful.
“Joy ride during an alien invasion, eh?” Lina grinned, a little blood on her teeth from the latest episode of ‘Red and Blondie Vs. Brutes’ but it was suitable, in a way, for an explosion-happy maniac. Her hair was a curled, wild mess left untamed - the ponytail she had it in undone about two brutes ago - and she dusted off the bit of rock dust and rubble clinging to her clothes. “I’m good for another hunt, just need some hydration.”
“Here - “ Cindy went to the carriage, a sturdy and solid pumpkin-shaped tank where they could even run for cover if need be, and rummaged in the back portion. From a cooler she pulled two water bottles, handing one over to Lina. “Drink up, rehydrate, I also have snacks if you need. I know the magic requires some recharging in the form of sustenance?”
It wasn’t anything gourmet, protein bars and bags of nuts, but they’d make for a good boost out here before tackling the next brute. Personally, she ripped open a chocolate-and-peanut butter granola bar to munch on while she powered up the controls in the driver’s seat of the carriage. “God, it feels like the end times out here,” she shook her head, punching buttons - oooh, listen to that baby purrr at her. Cinderella loved her carriage almost as much as she loved her husband and her cat-baby. “Like we’re in a movie best suited for the sci-fi channel.”
Lina always required recharging in the form of sustenance, but no, she was right - expelling that much energy in the form of spells spent calories plenty, and it was why her appetite was of the insatiable sort sometimes. “Devastating violence requires food to back it up,” she nodded, climbing into the passenger’s seat of the vessel. It was balls-to-the-wall decked out, and it seemed to travel well with how shitty the streets were (not that they helped in the scenario, but what was fucked was fucked and they needed to do anything they could to kill those things).
Water chugged, she fished for a bar to unwrap and and chomp, quickly. It’d do.
“This is probably the most messed up I’ve seen this place,” said the redhead, pushing a coil of hair behind her ear. “I can’t deny it’s nice to cut loose and let the big cannons go -” Not like she could practice her spells in highly populated areas with public property, bad recipe. “But everything we’re going have to do afterwards?”
Thank fuck she had fortified her house when she did, and it’d been recently amped with extra warding and protection when this hit - because when it came to protecting the home and surrounding areas your kid would grow up in, it upped the desire to fight that much more.
It really was messed up, but they knew this invasion was coming and there had been a lot of prep that went into it. Cindy couldn’t accuse anyone of catching her off guard, that was for sure. “I’m just glad all the parts for that super weapon to combat the giant nuisance stomping on everything arrived in enough time to actually build it,” she said, chugging water and then putting the pedal to the metal in the carriage. The tank didn’t zoom off like a racecar, but it moved quickly and efficiently - it also ate up debris, so that was good. Her pumpkin was a hardy vessel of war.
“Or to hire Stark Industries to do it, whatever they did - I considered it my job to get as many as I could prepared for ground battle. Hopefully it won’t last too long. The longer it does, the more the aftermath is going to suck.” And no, she didn’t want to see too many homes destroyed - hers and Garrus’ was protected too, and old bomb shelters were being used for others who couldn’t fight; then there was also the fact that covering this up just seemed moot. How even could you spin it?
Besides one hell of a monster movie being filmed in the area.
“Alright, cryo-blasters engaged,” she flipped a few switches. “This is going to be interesting.”
Good timing, too, because sprinting them were a couple of those human-like stragglers - the husks, the ones that had creeped Lina out the most. If she had followed the intel right, they were people once. The others, too. How that worked, she wasn’t sure, and there was something in her stomach that coiled uncomfortably at the thought that in regards to the husks it was a fifty-fifty split. Brought from outer space, and…
Unlucky people that got caught in the crossfire that turned.
There were other things around, in the distance - even through the sounds of gunfire and the piercing cries of lasers from above couldn’t drown out the shrieks and gnarled growls. They’d come across them sooner or later; it was a matter of time, and their ‘break’ on the carriage was on borrowed time.
“So what’s the plan with you and the husband after this?” she asked, peeking her head out with a grip on the carriage’s door. Extra surveillance with those ruby eyes, and she’d had ammo in the form of magic crackling at her fingertips in case something got too close. “You two gonna take a vacation? Try the kid thing? I can’t imagine the idea of family planning with this having been on the horizon.”
Whatever was shrieking, making all that noise, it sounded part like gears grinding and part like nails on a chalkboard - like the decibels could shatter glass. Just gave the area more of a ‘space apocalypse’ feel to it. No doubt this was Garrus’ dreamworld come to life - but he’d stopped the galaxies from imploding there, so they’d manage alright here. Especially with plenty of firepower.
Lots of firepower.
She let the blasters rip, aiming and firing at the straggling husks in her trajectory - it was cold, go figure, looked like dry ice but the sheer burn of the chill was enough to crumble sentient life, to stop all functions entirely. Around them, from the force of the blast, there was a smoke and sizzle of wintry smoke too. Good shot.
“You know, I think we’re looking forward to doing something for us,” Cindy replied, because yeah, family planning with alien invasions on the horizon? Kind of difficult. “So maybe a vacation, maybe a trip to the clinic. He froze the swimmers before he changed completely because kids were in the plan. I think once it’s all said and done, it’d be a good time to visit the clinic. We talked about it, we’re both ready.”
No guarantee that knocking her up would work, but the chances were very good - odds were in their favor - since Cindy was healthy, it was healthy frozen penis pudding, so everything should be kosher.
Talking about family expansion during an invasion, why the hell not - they were veterans to the mechanics of this place, and could go toe to toe with what came their way and discuss the beauty of frozen swimmers. Lina did little to fight her grin, the feel of frost in the air nice against heated skin as brief as it was.
The black market would go apeshit over the weaponization this puppy had, geez.
“Hey, whatever gets it done, right? Make a romantic date of it, do the do,” she suggested, and hoped to hell there’d be no issues - maybe there was some mumbo-jumbo that could help increase the princess’ fertility for that extra luck. “And you’d handle being knocked up much better than -”
Uh, she was about to make a comment but, y’know, their situation wasn’t exactly polite and went for the rude option. The very rude option, in the form of a streak of black cutting the air and not far from the carriage caused an impact of fire and darkness, a string of haunting howls and beastly snarls and from the smoke of it all broke through another turian-headed, bulk bodied creature, straight on.
To match the blasters of the carriage, a cold fog came from her fingers (words of power, too, demona crystal muttered under her breath) and then ice, from her to the ground that spread like a high-speed wave of icicles forward into the brute’s direction for an entangled trap. It froze its legs in place but it didn’t stop it from trashing, and nor did it stop the second one from taking a more roundabout route to try and pummel them from the side.
Oh good, a brute interruption. Cindy knew it would happen eventually. The discussion on date night and conception night could be put on pause for a moment - until once these rude dickheads were dead, that is. "Man, these things are shitty," she grumbled, as the carriage was rocked with the force of the blow - but it really was equipped to be placed in the heat of battle, so the hardy pumpkin endured.
Flipping a few more switches, Cindy changed their angle, hitting the gas, and let loose with the standard tank gun. It was one of the first weapons calibrated on the carriage, the main weapon, and fired off highly explosive rounds. Ka-boom.
"Bitch," she hissed at the brute as it fell, the first one still caught in an ice trap and struggling to stomp after them. "You've got that one?"
Oh, definitely, Lina called dibs on the other one - she had flung herself out of the carriage already and landed flat on her feet with ease, skidding a bit from the force, and the brute she’d trapped was a strong one. It had thick leg broken free from its icy mousetrap from all its wild thrashing, and its talons were digging into the ground as an anchor for another hearty yank for freedom.
It’d given her an idea.
“Later, ugly,” she whistled and leveled with it by crouching on the ground, palms pressed against the earth. The alien chimera looked up at her with lit, soulless eyes - and there was a sound it made despite it being jawless, and for a moment it made her think of an animal that needed to be put down, hopeless and dead anyway. “Dug Haut.”
Around them the ground quaked, violently rattling anything already doomed to fall, and the terrain shifted for the emergence of gravely spikes to emerge. A combination of dirt, stone, jagged cement, some in random locations as it was the nature of the very spell, and one purposefully underneath the second target. It pierced it from below and severed it in half, leaving it a mess of bloodless meat, metallic plates, and tubes.
Cindy hopped out of the carriage too (after she’d braced herself for that earthquake), her rifle at the ready - but no need to finish off what remained of the second brute, because it was literally in pieces. She wondered what it had been anything before that, before it became some Reaper experiment - if it had been anything. Also made her wonder what would have happened if they lost this sudden war - would humans here on planet Earth become just like what they were fighting against? Soulless, empty husks, shells of their former selves?
It gave her a shudder to consider, but all the more motivation to just keep on fighting. “Spikes,” she grinned crookedly, brushing some fallen hair back away from her face. “Nice touch. I like it.”
The terrain was now an actual spiky booby trap, just a big one, so she couldn’t knock it. Quickly, she did an assessment - they’d covered a good stretch of area, she’d have to check in on Garrus to see how he was doing too. “Think we’ll get another wave of ‘em?” she asked.
That hadn’t been too difficult. Probably because they weren’t bombarded with a whole gang of other ones with them - sometimes they could catch the brutes by themselves, sometimes they had company (brutes and banshees together were her least favorite combination as of now). “No doubt about it,” Lina sighed out. “As long as that Reaper’s still out -”
Her finger pointed at it, not really that far from them in the scheme of things - every step it took made the ground beneath their feet vibrate a little bit but by now, she’d been used to it. Its movements were sluggish due to its size, and the firepower in the form of lasers obliterated everything in it’s path. Earlier, she’d tossed some of her meatier spells at it but even then that didn’t cause much of a dent.
“We need to see where they’re at progress-wise with that weapon,” she said, standing up and glancing over at her fairytale partner. “We can’t keep up this constant firepower for days, not with the kind of casualties it’s already hitting us with.”
At what point did they fall back and evacuate, should the scenario happen? Lina didn’t think contemplating the option was a sign of pessimism in the slightest - they had to be realistic, and they had to be practical.
“No, we can’t keep this up constantly.” Cindy agreed with that - people were only human. Or, well, maybe not technically (for some of them). But even a superpowered individual, with superpowered stamina, could only go so far before exhaustion set in. Not to mention a need for recharging.
She reached into a pouch on her utility belt and pulled out her cellphone, firing off a text or two. “The weapon was in the works for awhile, but yeah, fuck only knows how it’s going zillions of miles away in space,” she sighed. “Checking in with Agency people seems to be our best bet, for updates from both up there and on the ground.”
Jane was up there, right at the heart of things. Right in the middle. Cindy knew she would be, but of course this tough-as-nails fairytale princess worried. She wanted to do more than flee the scene and lose her shoes.
“Let’s get some updates, and then go from there?”
Lina’s response was a definitive nod. Best they could do is handle the foot troops from this point of view. The more dead, the less havoc they could wreak. “Sounds like a plan,” she said, squaring her padded shoulders - the armor was a little big for someone her size, but the material crafted was incredibly light - and pulling at her fingers until the bones cracked therapeutically. “Hopefully we’ll get some good news, otherwise we’ll just keep killing these alien fuckers while looking pretty at the same time.”
Covered in dust, sweat, and grime. Latest fashion statement for Orange County’s alien invasion.