[IC] Ultralight

[Lotrix Molick]

The team's medic took an unnecessary deep breath and let it out in a sigh. It served more as a calming mechanism than anything else. She looked at the rest around her, giving a nod. "Once I get in close, I need you to focus fire. If it can't be brought down with weapons fire, we should damage vital limbs and try to sever them. Oh, if I go down, make damn sure to get my body back to base." Her hand closed around the doorknob. The sound of metal on metal scraping briefly came from it as she worked it to open the door. Once unlatched, Ambrosine opened it as quietly as possible. She kept in a low crouch but made sure to be able to spring up if the creature charged her.

She was relying on the team to know what to do in the moment and shoot straight. She could take a bullet, but blue on blue would just make the fight harder. To Asche, she sent a message to let him know of her positional change. "Entering area. Focus fire with team if a fight breaks out. And most of all, be careful. I can patch you up, but I would need to shake enemy attention to get to you."

[Buzzkill]

Flared nostrils. Heavy breathing. D-d-d-dempsey’s back pressed tight against the cool window as the door opened, exposing a view of the rod-cutting machine frozen in mid-movement. Just like a rod-cutting machine, Dempsey was also frozen. Waiting. On standby, a sniper rifle with a finger on the trigger. Just a weapon, just a product, just a function. Beads of sweat trickled down the sides of his face like a windowpane in humid weather. In the darkness, wires sparking high above them, the sniper had only his scope to see by, nightvision in gray-green hues at the end of a crosshair tunnel. Too risky. Can’t just look through the scope. Gotta be careful. Gotta be careful! At least they could hear the scraping. Even in the dark, Dempsey would rather try to see it coming with his own eyes. He had rabbit eyes. Hunted eyes.

The shriek of metal on cement floor was second to Dempsey’s shriek as the abomination attacked, springing clumsily towards them. The metal flashing from its forearm was a blessing in disguise, a point his eyes could focus on. Ambrosine’s words caught up to him in a delayed rush. “Get your body back to base?! Whaddaya mean? GET DOWN!” the redhead squawked, his weapon bearing around on reflex like an extension of his own arm. He was too focused on pink limbs and the sheen of skin and that flashing blade, no face, just get back—

Dempsey’s body was curiously still as he pulled the trigger and felt the impact from his shoulder as he fired. The rifle was loaded with the AP rounds Smoker had requested—their plan had been to go for its head, but at this sort of melee range he just wanted to blast it back. Back, back! His hair rose another half inch on end as the stress built within him. “E-e-e-e-e—“ his stammer hit the radio comms like machine gun fire before the rain of syllables finally hit home: “Engaging hostile!”

He scurried from the window, long-range rifle swinging back up over his left shoulder in its modified holster. “D-does not match description! Knife-hand-hook-man-no-face!” What. What. Hopefully he’d blasted it back, but what then?! Surely that wouldn’t stop it for long, not when he hadn’t had time to aim for vital points! Pistols appeared in the stringy man’s hands like a close-up magic trick as he scuttled for the door. Where’s my lightsticks?! Though they didn’t have the range of a real flare gun, shooting one of his tinkered flares might be enough to shed some light on the ground floor. “Backbackback!” He jammed one of the modified cartridges in, aimed high, and fired the flare.

[Phantomlink959]

@Buzzkill@Lotrix Molick@Burger@Concept

“D-does not match description! Knife-hand-hook-man-no-face!”

"Ideal. That isn't." Asche scowled as he heard Nailgun over the radio, pressing one finger onto the talk button for his own, "This is Smoker. I see one that matches, Jitterbug sees one that doesn't. The math tells me we've got at least two of these things in here. The at least is what worries me, so keep your heads down and eyes open for more." The agent went silent once again and halted his approach towards the monster in front of him.

"This thing. Only get one shot."

He heard Dempsey's shots ring out and jolted to action, mag-dumping his rifle into the bucket-headed monster's back before dropping his gun to hang from the sling around his shoulders and sprinting away from the creature, back into the corner.. The moment the creature turned towards him, he would slide through Shadowspace to reposition.

"Everyone, focus on the new target first. I can hold my own against this one until you finish the other." he directed over the radio while bracing for the fight. If it was in-tact even Asche wouldn't risk fighting the thing alone, but with the condition Mags left the creature in the cursed man figured he could at least survive and distract it until help arrived.

[OwO]

As Asche closed in on the helmet-wearing abomination, he noticed something peculiar about the tattoo—rather than being made with straight lines, each line appeared to be segmented into lengths in some sort of pattern. The ink used seemed to be more metallic than black, shimmering as what little light shone. Asche pushed forwards, however. Though, the finer details the tattoo, such as the meaning, were lost.

When Dempsey fired the round, it blasted from the creature's collar to back. Leaving behind a considerably small hole, the headless abomination's advance was halted. The AP round, while effective against armour, was considerably less damaging than a regular round. As a result, most of the force had been kept by the bullet until it struck a concrete wall. Despite this mismatch, the round was fired at such a close range that it didn't really matter. The abomination was pushed back, rolling against the ground until it slid under the railing. With a fleshy clunk, it had fallen to the walkway beneath. He had bought some breathing room for the doctor and himself.

With the signal of Dempsey's rifle, Asche had fired everything he had at the helmeted one. The first few rounds hit the nape, leaving the bullet to collide with the abomination's spine. Rather than the crunch of bone, however, the bullet seemed to collide with metal. The rest of the rounds were a similar story. They either scraped the sides of its neck, bounced off of the helmet, or completely missed. The few hits that did land, however, disorientated the abomination. It turned, but required a bizarre amount of effort to do so. Not even turning ninety degrees, it managed to topple itself over to the ground. Despite this setback, it rushed towards Asche at a frightening pace.

In his patented panic, Dempsey had fired a flare at an attempt of lighting up the room. The flare, of course, went up. Inside of a building. Clang. It had hit the roof and chaotically spun downwards. Thankfully, the flare had managed to land in the center of the room. It revealed with it what could only be described as pools of blood all over the floor. While most of the floor was dry, deep puddles littered the floor as a bizarre reminder of what was going on just before. Even without medical experience, one could tell that that was a bit too much blood, even for two abominations. Alongside the blood, the flare revealed the large chains holding the molten metal vats in the air.

[Phantomlink959]

"See you later, asshole" Asche quipped, allowing himself to fall backwards into the corner of the room as soon as his shots connected, his body melting away into smoke as he transitioned into Shadow space. "Okay, bullets definitely don't work. Plan B it is, then. If we HAD a plan B." the agent's words echoed into the shifting stillness around him as he dropped the depleted magazine from his rifle and loaded a fresh one.

"What did I see, what can I use..." The large man released his rifle from his grip, allowing it to hang from the sling as he focused his mind on the layout of the smeltery. "Go high, get off the floor. No, no stable perch near an exit. Those vats, though." As he spent those few moments trying to consider his options, the man felt an all-too familiar ache in his arms and the back of his right eye, "Alright, enough thinking, time to get out of here."

Asche centered on his memory of the office from before and a path through the endless landscape of twisted angles began to take shape. The hike felt like it took hours, in contrast to the moments of his previous trip, and the throbbing in his arms had grown nearly unbearable. Finally, the black haired man returned to the real world through one of the many corners from which his surroundings were built; materializing near he door which Stim had just opened; immediately, he clicked on his radio, "I shot one of these things in the spine and it did precisely jack and shit, with all the hardware bolted onto them I'd wager their bones are armor plated too. Aim for the joints, those will probably be softer targets." he rattled off to the others, reaching for his own rifle and noticing his hands were shaking badly. "Wrong, something is. Lost, was I? Confusing. Troubling." shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Asche steadied his breathing and grasped the pistol grip on his rifle.

[Lotrix Molick]

Stime grumbled a bit into the mic, but she responded quite coolly. "I could try to herd one into something dangerous. I'd say if we get them into that collection funnel and drop the molten metal on them, we might have a good shot at killing them. The problem is that we need to get them to enter. Anyone know if there is a Stim sized hole in the bottom of the hoppers?" She was making a very serious quip, but she was still nervous. Early and unexpected damage could make recovery a hassle or even make life in the mission difficult. The hoppers, though, might be able to hold the obviously clumsy things for long enough.

Looking for something to do in the meantime, Stim looked around for more ideas on what could heavily damage metal reinforced foes. If they had a metabolism, she might be able to force toxicity levels to at least slow them down and make them easier to handle, but that qould require a distraction. She could go toe to toe as the distraction so her squad could get the area ready, but she wouldn't do it without knowing if her risk was worth it.

[Buzzkill]

"WEAUUGH.” It was something like a scream and something like the noise your rubber boot made when stepping on a cockroach. Short. Shrill. To the point. “There’s so much blood!” The light from his bungled flare hadn’t had the calming effect of revealing the entirety of the factory like he’d hoped in some twisted misunderstanding of reality. Instead, dark puddles of body fluids (from the monsters?! From Smoker? Who?!) gleamed like black ice from the cement floor.

Dempsey scuttled sideways like a beach crab, rifle still cocked over his shoulder. To his relief, Smoker’s voice crackled in over the speakers. Not only was he alive, he had instructions. The redhead nearly fainted from relief even as he was barking back “Joints! Soft! Gotit!” Armored bones?! He’d gotten a glimse of the tiny hole he’d shot in the last monster before it had gone down the stairs-- with enough precision, maybe even armored bones could be fractured at their weak points. Loosen the glue! Loosen the bolts! Loosen the shells!

The wild-eyed sniper peeked in through the door and caught a glimpse of Smoker, who’d evidently made his way back towards them. “Yes! Yesyes! I like the moltenmetalidea!” he fired off, jiggling his arm like he’d like to elbow the medic but was too nervous to accidentally set off the defibrillator or break the syringes strapped under her vest or something. “Howdowe break the…” He made a complicated, blurry gesture with his hands and waving fingers to indicate the vats and the chains. “Mechanism. Must be, somewhere. Raise, lower. Function, panel… lever...” Dempsey was muttering now, eyes flickering around the warehouse. Shooting bullets at the chain wouldn’t be enough. They needed to scout more, to press in, to put themselves in a position to move quickly.

A shrill whine building from behind his clamped teeth, Dempsey pressed inside, backing up against the conveyor belt for a little bit of cover as his eyes frantically roved around in search of some kind of mechanism. Like he was while he worked, he was consumed by the job. And with terror, of course, but that made him think clearer. Sometimes. Rifle still in hand, the sniper crept forward, hoping Smoker would alert him if the second monstrosity came too near or the first attacked again after its little tumble. If they were smart, they would stay away! But it was never that easy, was it?! The redhead’s teeth fought to chatter against his clenched jaw, kinetic energy building one more step as he slunk through the darkness.