"Yessss, yes yes, the drama, the suspense, the urgency, yes this is a good running scene", while Ana was saving Jericho, and everyone began moving, Valerius was standing off the side and acting like a director. When it came time to run, he began tailing them like a cameraman. In fact there was an industrial film camera over his shoulder, which he likely picked up from the rubble. It wasn't even working, but he continued.

"Alrighty, keep running, the giant spider is all around you and it's a life and death scenario, but don't worry it's all just props, you won't actually die", either he was taking this really really well, or not at all. Either way, it was impressive how he managed to do jumps and somersaults avoiding all the obstacles as he did so. It was likely he was just having fun.

"Yo Patches, tell me what the script says, how does the big mother spider die? We're going to need to make sure we know for the next shot", so did it go from CG to Valerius being the actual camera crew...?

Three rapid shots rang out from each of Jericho's pistols. The ones from his left hand at the spider's face, aimed at weak points like eyes but likely missing their mark. The other three destroyed the old camera, one through the recording lense, another through the screen and one more through the camera equivalent of the scope, Valerius dropping the camera after the first shot to avoid being hit as well. "Go ahead, make one more actor joke. I DARE you." First is was the mutant spider zombie things, and he could handle that, because Ana quickly figured out where to shoot and gave him an out to kill them quickly. But this giant fucker? It reminded him of all the reasons he'd avoided bug heavy places for so long.

He kept firing, making sure the thing couldn't hide without-damn it, where'd it go? He looked around, confused as to how something that LARGE could up and vanish like that. Then he remembered that Ana had barely gotten him out of the way in time. So he tried listening.

Scritch

Scritch

Scritch

His eyes shoot up and he holsters both pistols as he leaps backwards, the mandibles leaping out of the concrete again. Reaching over his shoulder, he grasps the hilt of his katana and pulls the trigger in the specially designed sheath, triggering a series of small explosions that give the katana extra speed as it shoots up out of the sheath and comes down on the nearest mandible, the right one. The laser edge sprang to life and sheered through the hide, though not without loosing significant speed in the process. That wouldn't have worked without the boosted draw speed. Great. With great size comes great toughness. The giant shoots up again, releasing another screech and Jericho flinches, remembering the rest of the team's visors. "Sorry! But, uh, we're gonna need bigger guns. A lot bigger." Jericho moved over closer to Ana again, keeping his katana at the ready. Not like he was gonna hit something vital with his pistols anyways. Things were like peashooters against it.

The spider whirled throughout the broken buildings. Popping up and trying to strike. One. Two. Three. There. Whipping around, Anastasia pulled her rifle around and got trigger happy. The quaking of the gun fully shattered her visor, the glass shards falling to the ground like snow. The spider screeched in reponse, all the shots hitting their mark. It retreated back into the building. A burrowing sound came from beneath them. The spider popped up, spitting acid, and marking Ana for death. The acid flew, striking Ana's suit, eating away at the metal within. Ana could feel the pain of the acid, but she fought on, hoping to not show weakness. She barely noticed Jericho just behind her. He would stay there. No closer to her. No more. Her mouth opened to yell more words of courage and inspiration.

"You see boys? This is how you seperate the men from the babies! The ability to take pain on the chin and laugh! Keep on fighting! No fear will be shown here. Someone mark that spider, we can't track it underground without that! Hurry!"

Ana stared at the slow eating acid. It was a ticking timer for her, how fast they could get this fight done.

When the last of the things went down, quick to decompose as usual, he could hear a voice crackle on the comms of his comrades. He couldn't make it out but he assumed it was Kidd, considering, well, he was the only likely to operate the radio. Well, there's Sasha, the captain's sister, but well....that in itself is enough of an explanation. Not bothering trying to listen in anymore, not like he could hear much of anything anyway, he looked around the location and studying the terrain. Hearing Ana's voice, his head snapped back towards her as she addressed everyone. "Acid spit, huh? Onto the main act already, I see."

It seemed the monster was taking its time coming to greet them as they had kept walking and walking without a single trace of the thing. He began wondering if they were ever going to find this thing, when Ana noticed something strange and halted the group. Having inspected it for himself, it was indeed strange. Despite the snow falling, there was none on this ground. Usually when it snows, it's collected on the ground but not in this case. It just vanishes...Could it have anything to do with that acid spit ability the spider has? Though, the spider was nowhere to be found. Just where... Well, that was solved quite quickly as a shadow skittered past them along the buildings. "Show Time." He smiled.

He was quite impressed with the fact that it was so big but is still managing to conceal itself, it also must be quite agile as well. It's arrival onto the scene was marked by Ana's yelling as she sprinted over to Jericho and dragged him down by the shoulders and onto the ground. Luckily she managed to get to him in-time and intact. It showed off another interesting little quirk, with the way it emerged from a tiny crack in the walls, unfolding itself like a piece of paper. It explains why they couldn't see it at all despite it having been so close. With it's size coupled with it's abilities, the fighting leveled definitely increased. Should be more of a fight than the last bunch, that's for sure. Anyways, as Ana dragged herself and Jericho back up, she yelled out more orders.

As the spider spun around the broken buildings trying to jump in and strike, Ana whipped around and fired off a stream of bullets. Aside from fully shattering her visor, it was hard to be sure if she managed to hit it...that was until the monstrous spider let out another loud screech that is as it retreated back into the buildings. Soon after, they heard a burrowing sound coming from beneath them and it wasted no time popping up and spitting it's acid in Ana's direction, striking her suit. Despite being hit, and no doubt suffering from the acid, she grinned and bared it, showing no fear as sheraised her voice one more. Hearing her order, he reached into the satchel carrying his knives, pulling out a couple knives along with some adhesive and what looked like some small transmitters.

Using the adhesive to bind the the transmitters to the knives, he waited for a moment to give it time to stick before locking onto the spider with his eyes as he sprinted after it and hurled them at the monster. He wasn't sure if he hit the thing nor if the transmitters stuck, but what can you do?

"You see boys? This is how you seperate the men from the babies! The ability to take pain on the chin and laugh! Keep on fighting! No fear will be shown here. Someone mark that spider, we can't track it underground without that! Hurry!"

Jericho kept himself busy with dodging another globule of acid rather than coming up with a witty reply. Call us a bunch of babies eh? Pretty sure there's a difference between a baby and not wanting to end up a puddle of liquid human. Still, they didn't have much time, with Ana's suit getting eaten away and her visor gone. When the spider tried to ambush them again, he had switched back to his pistols, firing rapidly at the giant insects eyes, trying to make it hesitate or falter or something.

After repeating the process three times, one of his shots finally got lucky and found it's mark, sending the spider reeling back in pain. Almost immediately after, he noted three throwing knives sailing at the beast. He hoped that they found their mark as Jericho moved Ana, without directly touching her, into a position with better cover. She didn't need to catch a second blast of acid if it could be helped.

Patches waited and waited for the reply. Nothing. His mind sparked to life and ran at lightspeed. He had forgotten the most important thing. He ignored the cat again in order to head to the comms system.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Hello? Is this thing on? Broadcasting to all you fine folks out there running for your lives. Can you hear me? Good. Listen up to this. That spider you're fighting? It absolutely loathes loud shockwaves and soundwaves. It'll be stunned by those to no end. If it goes down underground, use any explosives near its position. Should rightly knock it out of the ground for a nice pounding. Patches out. Enjoy your fight.



Anastasia looked down at her stomach. If the suit had not been there, her insides would be mostly gone. Melted and pooled on the ground. Thankfully, the acid wasn't prepared to eat through metal. Still didn't stop it. It had already done damage to her abdomen and stomach. Damage that would put her out of commission and into recovery when combined with the radiation exposure.

The radios buzzed to life on everyone's suit. The tip was given, and then it went silent. Ana yelled out. Everyone got that? Blow it out of the ground! No mercy given! Let's finish this! I'll do the honors! Ana unhooked a grenade from her belt. she pulled the pin with her teeth and tossed it into the air. Its explosion went off, creating a blast across the area. The dirt displaced and the spider launched into the air, landing on its back. Everyone! Attack! Ana dove in, her trigger finger warming the railgun.

Seeing this opportunity Valerius advanced upon the vulnerable spider. Leaping off it's upturned legs and onto it's abdomen, and plunging his saber into it, before charging forward and up the body, slicing it from the bottom up, the pure laser blade making all kinds of burning and gnashing noises as it sliced through as much of the soft underbelly as possible. He had some idea of what might happen... A horde of spiders... So he was planning on jumping off as soon as he got near the head. That was what he did. Leaping off and rolling off to the side to examine his handiwork.

As Valerius moved up the spider vertically, Jericho waited until he was past the halfway point before using one of the spasming legs to spring up onto the middle and slice horizontally across the spider's vulnerable underbelly. Why they hadn't try to get the belly sooner, he couldn't understand, probably all of them wrapped up in the battle and trying to not become speared on pincers. Reaching the other side, he uses another leg to spring board up towards the head. It was crazy, and fairly dumb, but still safest to kill the brain. As he passed it, he slammed the laser edged katana into one of it's eyes, using it to stop and watch the results of the gashes. "Please not baby spiders, please not baby spiders...PLEASE not babies..."

As expected, he managed to mark the spider and thus they managed to keep track of the monstrous thing. And soon the radios in the humans suits crackled to life with another transmission and then Ana relayed the message and gave the order. Apparently the monster spider was weak to shock and soundwaves. In short, let it rain with explosions. Seemed doable. As Ana kickstarted things and revealed the spider, the attack was on. Everyone then went to work taking care of the spider, as they covered the other areas of the creature, Alastair focused on the spiders legs and feelers.

In case things went awry, he wanted to make sure the spider didn't have any ideas of escaping or getting far. While the others focused on damaging it, he'll take care of its mobility. Attaching more of what's left of his explosives to his knives, he took aim and went to work destroying its legs and feelers. Blowing off a number of them, he went in close and, using his bare hands, used his brute strength to rip off the legs that managed to survive the barrage of explosions.

As Kidd listened to the spider-human mutant with a pair of weary eyes while pointing the wrench towards him, his trembling arm flinched at the mention of a mother spider wanting him dead and how his new comrades are in evident danger. A long pause of silence from the Furlyne while Patches went back to the comms to relay another important advice to the exploration team. Could he trust such a suspicious looking being? But he seemed to be supporting the team with his useful information about their target... The arm with the wrench lowers itself as the boy spoke, keeping a careful eye on him.

"Alright. Fine. Since you're generously helpin' us and all, I guess I can trust ya. A little bit. But what I don't get is, what's in it for you? Why are ya helpin' us out?"

Patches smiled a friendly smile and took on a harmless tone of sarcasm.

"Well you see laddy. When you're a village boy in the big scary city, you tend to look for help when the big baddie comes around. Come running to mommy and daddy if you will
Now I just want to hang out with you folks. Sound good?"



Anastasia wanted some of the action as well. The acid was starting to debilitate her and she wanted to help. She ran forward to the head of the beast. Grabbing one in each hand, she tugged on the mandibles as hard as she could. The snapping of exoskeleton rung through everyone's ears, as the mandibles tore off completely. She observed them for a second, enjoying the glistening shell. The spider spazzed around, its remaining legs kicking out and tryinf to lash someone. It let out one least throe of screams, before its legs curled up and it finally died.

"Haha, ahhh shit." Ana collapsed on her butt, the pain of the acid finally taking effect. She ripped of the torso of her suit, observing the acid. While slowed, it was still eating through, twisting into her stomach oh so slowly. She brought up her radio, communicating to the ship.

"Hello? Catboy? We need a pick up. Bring the ship into the main section of the city if you will. Ana turned off her comms and tried to stand up, falling back down. "Hey. Can someone help me up and assist me before the ship gets here?"

It was a brutal victory made even more brutal when Ana wanted more action and went in for the mandibles, tearing them off completely. Considering she was hit pretty bad with the creatures acid, her feat was incredible, showing off the Russian's iron will. Humans are always quite the surprise. After spazzing about and letting out a last scream, it finally died. He had to say, it endured quite a lot of pain. It had at least something to be proud of as it left for the after life.

After the impressive spurt of willpower, Ana collapsed on her ass as the acid began taking a toll. Laughing it off she called in for the ship before asking for him. Alastair have seen scenes like these quite often in human comics and animes, where right after a hard fought battle the hero helps up the heroine, most often than not carrying her in some form. There was also many other different kinds of scenarios, humans are quite interesting indeed. As a butler he needed to be a gentlemen and serve the crew, this is just one of the duties.

Nodding to himself, he decided upon his course of action. Cutting off Jericho her reached down and picked up Ana. Given the look of her and the others, he wondered what was going on. They had that look he's often seen where a character has done something strange. Had he done something strange? Couldn't be, he was sure he did things correctly. Then again... As he stood there reviewing the situation, he stood there with Ana slung over his shoulder with her head to his back and her ass facing forward, in full view. Ana didn't seem to pleased.

Jericho's left eyebrow twitched as he looked at the way the Unnamed was holding Ana. And he also regarded the look of pure death Ana was giving the alien. If Jericho had to guess, she was counting the ways she could pull the mass of black energy apart with her bare hands. So he quickly switched on his radio. {And Kidd? You better hurry, because Ana's about ready to kill all of us.} He then turned to the Unnamed and proceeded to quickly explain why she was so unhappy.

"Female humans are mostly very sensitive about what parts of their body a male is looking at. You just exposed her ass to the entirety of the mostly male crew here. For future reference, unless the female is unconscious, carry her like this." He then attempted to demonstrate the married couple's hold in the air. It quickly occurred to him he may be digging himself an early grave the longer he talked and looked at the mass of black energy. It wasn't like she didn't have a nice ass, but if he was gonna look at it, he'd rather have some serious plausible deniability rather than saying it was in his face and he couldn't help it.

Valerius was just about done getting up from the side of the spider. As he was walking back to the crew everyone was getting ready to leave. Alastair had already arrived to carry Ana back to the ship, she was in fairly rough shape it looked like. Jericho was trying to demonstrate how to hold Ana and it wasn't going so well...

"Oh right, I think he means... Uhhhh...", Val was doing strange things with his hands, that appeared slightly different... And then he eventually made hand movements that looked like groping.

"No wait, I think that's wrong...", he was going between loads of different sexual gestures and somehow ended up suplexing a random mannequin that came out of nowhere. This was absolute nonsense. He then proceeded to demonstrate several ways to hold different things, like cats, babies, and so on.

"Ah there we go", the end result? He just put on a pair of sunglasses over the hazmat with the text 'dat ass' going along the bottom.

"Okay I can't think of anything", well he can... He's just not complaining about the current situation.

"Get the fuck off of me!"

Ana shoved herself off, falling back down on her ass. She grunted in pain hitting the ground, and winced. That one was gonna hurt. She crawled back and covered her chest.

"You. Stop baring my ass to everyone!Jericho. Help me up now! That's an order!

She pulled up her communicator and spoke into, talking to the ship.

"CAT! ETA ON ARRIVAL FOR THE SHIP? GODDAMN HURRY UP."

Ana weezed from the acid, harmless at this point but still squirming inside her. She had to stop for a few missions. Perhaps work in the medical bay. Of course that meant wearing THAT outfit. Eugh. She shook the though out of her head and waited for help.

Jericho stared for the full two seconds that it took Ana to cover her breasts. Never in his life had he seen such a beautiful pair of-
"You. Stop baring my ass to everyone!Jericho. Help me up now! That's an order! He quickly did as she instructed, diverting his eyes away from her beautiful body in order to maintain both his life and his man hood and picked her up in a couple's carry, keeping his face up, but his eyes had a hard time not looking down. He could practically-Right, OK, no more of that. She's a cyborg and more than capable of making you short two or three very important body parts. He turned her away from the others and suddenly found that the side of the building in front of him was very interesting. {Kidd, PLEASE hurry...}

"Huuuuh? What's this? Lil' Jerry's redder than my dialogue text?", Val had the most shit-eating smile at the moment as he creeped around the corner of Jericho and Ana's view as the crew waited for the ship to come around. Most of them were still in hazmats, Valerius included.

"Never seen a lady naked before huuuuh? Cherry-boy", with Jericho holding Ana, there really wasn't much he could do and Val knew this.

"This is why you're still a low class actor, no emotional scenes means no Oscars, come on if you don't get past that embarrassment what is to become of your career hmmmm?", at this point even Val knew how annoying he was, but he was enjoying himself, saying all this as he began to lean on Jericho for a moment, before stepping off and a few steps away.

Despite what his intentions were, it seems he was doing something wrong after all. Jericho helped illustrate that fact. "Human females sure are strange things." he nodded in agreement with himself, quite possibly forgetting he said that out loud. Jericho further tried to show Alastair the correct way to hold her with strange arm movements but just looked on at him with confusion. It was then where Val stepped interrupted and offered his own suggestions.

His gestures were quite different from Jericho's but nodded along as he took them in. The gestures were quite familiar to him, he seen them often enough in manga and anime. It was there he decided to try out Val's suggestions, they definitely seemed more true than Jericho's, that's for sure. He went for a groping hold on Ana but, while noting how soft the upper part of her chest was, it didn't seem like that one was right either. The ever present killing aura grew a little thicker. Hmm

He then spent the next several minutes going through Val's strange suggestions with such seriousness that it must've appeared quite comical. After each suggestion, he couldn't help but wonder if all of them were wrong and that they were only making things worse. The killing intent from earlier grew ever stronger and Ana was so quiet. Such strange creatures females are, he mused to himself with his ever present smile. Sure enough, Ana was mad. With a crude yell, she shoved her way off Alastair's shoulders and proceeded to make new orders in a rush.

Walking close to Val, "How odd, Her chest was soft and then hardened." he said to no one in particular, lost in thought.

Intently listening to Patches with a hint of skepticism in his eyes, Kidd nodded as Patches finished explaining himself. He somewhat understood when he imagined himself in his shoes, being alone as the only possibly sane one in this area certainly does sound miserable. "If yer not out for any of our blood then sounds good enough to me. Not the boss 'round here though, ya might hafta ask Ana or somethin." Even at this point in time, the Furlyne was not aware of who the actual commander of the ship was.

The speaker system sounded the voice of Ana and the male brunette immediately reacted to the name he was addressed with. "WHO YA CALLIN' A CAT BO-" Bleep. As quick as the voice came on, as quick as it ceased. Kidd scratched the back of his head in irritation just as the speaker system came back on. "I AIN'T TAKIN' YOUR ORDE-- Oh, Jericho, that you? Sorry, thought you were that bossy bitch. I'll see what I can do ta speed her up."

The boy may have never flown a ship before but he knew the technicalities of how to make it fly, it was part of the knowledge required as a ship technician after all. And even if he didn't, there was a manual installed within the database of the main computer like every manufactured ship so no problem there. Just as he instructed the ship to direct itself toward the coordinates of the area where the radar showed them to be at, the speaker system came to life again with a furiously screaming Ana, causing Kidd to cover his feline like ears with his hands from the intense volume. "OWWW. CAN YA SHUT YER LOUD MOUTH. Jeez, that hurt ma ears. She's flyin' as fast as she can within the safety limit alright? We can see all of ya from afar, few minutes to get to ya if I'm guessin' right."

Not too long after, the ship safely lands on the grounds of Moscow. The boy left the comms room and motioned for Patches to follow him to lower the loading bay while in a suit similar to theirs to protect himself from the radiation. As his eyes scanned over at the crew, his eyes squinted as "WTH is going on here" expression was plastered all over his face. Before his lips parted to spout a sarcastic remark, his gaze darted at the burning marks on Ana's body, immediately barking over at the crew behind him. "Get the medic team NOW! One of 'em is heavily injured and needs medical attention!"

When the ship had touched down, Jericho wasted no time in getting Ana on board and to the medical team, who wheeled her away to treat the acid burns and check for other abnormal effects the damage to her suit had had. Frankly, he was just glad to get her out of his arms and away from him. Not that he didn't enjoy the view, but he once more reminded himself that she could easily make the him he is into the him he no longer is. With a heavy sigh, and resisting the urge to put a round in Valerius's head to make himself feel better, he retired to his bunk, taking off his helmet and setting it on the pillow next to him. One more joke. One more FUCKING joke, and I will shoot off his pinky toes...