Marius Laverne (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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xp_logs2025-05-31 10:50 am
xp_emplate) wrote in xp_logs2025-05-31 10:50 am
Incursion: Earthfall - Seige
Molly and Kyle embark on their rescue mission, and vent a little anger on the way.
Thud. Thud, thud, crack, and a very wet crack, and then another few thuds, all wet sounding.
"Hate these guys." The wound on Kyle's back burned still, under the bandages. The lidocaine spray was wearing off, not that it had done overmuch before, but he could feel skin and muscle knitting itself back together. He thought Molly would probably forgive him several ounces of anger. He wiped torn-off-bug-arm-slime off his hand onto the wall, and kicked the now broken off limb away. "Fast little fuckers, and I really hope it's not gonna just grow that shit right back."
The trail of ichor down the hallway that marked their advance stunk of expired vinegar.
"Don't jinx it!" Molly said. More of the small, insectile-like creatures began to pour from the vents in a swarm, their buzzing shrill and erratic under the heavy gravity. Gritting her teeth, Molly took off in a headstart, slamming into them head on. She crushed one into a wall before, yanking another off her shoulder and slamming it into the ground until it stopped moving.
Even though she moved quickly, each motion felt harder, even breathing. She felt weighed down somehow. But that was not anything she could really worry about at the moment, since they were being overrun by alien grasshoppers with teeth.
One of the many broodling-like things leaped toward her and she caught it mid-air, throwing it down the hall.
"Dude, I'm gonna need to burn my clothes." The smell made her wanna gag.
"Word." The creatures came in assorted sizes, but all fought the same, sharp claws and sharper mandibles and horrible clacking noises as they divebomed both Molly and Kyle's head and shoulders. The problem, Kyle thought, was that they tired quickly and after an initial swoop would start flying low, tearing at knees and ankles. They were clumsy in the sluggish gravity wells, but so was he. Well, clumsy by his own standards.
It didn't stop him from using Molly as a launching pad to step off a bulkhead wall, and grab two of the things mid-flight, and crush both to the ground. It just made it hurt more when he landed knee-first through the thorax of one of the bugs. "Clothes burning party after we get back. Plane's got sweats and t-shirts for emergencies."
"And I just bought this jacket," Molly said, her attention flickering toward a larger, more humanoid monstrosity as it dropped down from the ceiling. Ripping a large panel off one of the walls, she used it as a makeshift shield as it leaped toward her, then went with her forward momentum to drive the panel and the creature into the wall.
"Too slow!"
Kyle's reply came in bursts, a few words, and then a flurry of stomps as he squashed a number of smaller bugs, and then a few more words. "We can send it to that dry cleaner in the DX." He paused, panting and leaning against one of the ship's doorways. "Need a sec, might've fucked up my ankle on that last stomp. Fuckin' gravity."
"Yeah, breathing kinda sucks right now," Molly said.
The sound of heavy movement made her turn as a giant alien slithered into view. It was different from the others, more fluid, almost elegant. She felt a shift. The rest of the swarming broodlings seemed to part away from it. A Queen.
This one was definitely more dangerous. Its massive eyes locked onto her.
"Aw crap," Molly said.
She balled up her fists, ready to hit as it darted toward her.
But it was faster. Quicker than the blink of an eye, the giant creature slammed into her, pinning her down so hard it shook the area.
Air knocked from her lungs, Molly struggled from underneath the monster as its massive tail snaked up, ramming its stinger into her side . . . or at least it tried to.
Unfortunately for the queen, it didn't know that Molly's skin was much denser than your average human, so when it stung her it was like trying to sting a brick wall.
The momentary confusion from the queen was enough for Molly to get her breath back, which she used to let out an angry yell, her eyes glowing purple as she ripped the creature's tail off.
The queen let out the equivalent of a roar and a shriek, white, milky blood splattering all over Molly.
Molly then used her legs to kick the queen up and away from her. Grabbing the tail, she used it as a makeshift baseball bat and started beating it with it.
"No." Kyle's refusal – sheer disbelief, a rejection of reality – was flat and dull as he took two giant steps back. Something flittered just in the corner of his eye, and he snapped out his hand, grabbing another flying creature out of the air, also rejecting the automatic comparison his thoughts gave him about his cat, and the occasional moth or fly that got into his suite. "Molly. Whenever you're . . . done . . . " He said, faux-conversationally. "Buzzing's getting worse the closer we get to the bridge."
"I'm almost – " the body of the queen seemed to shift upon its last breath, reverting back to . . .
"Uh oh, sorry Captain K'r'k. Guess he's not boldly going anywhere," she said, making a face. Reaching down to grab a pipe. Molly nodded forward.
"After you."
Namor, Bobbi, and Marius arrive at their own destination, hoping to save the crew before it’s too late.
"Oi!"
Marius came pounding down the ship corridor to join them. His face was waxen and his hands were full: he had come bearing gifts.
"Found these on the way," he explained, handing one blaster to Bobbi and offering Namor what appeared to be some kind of rifle. "They just dropped them. Seems their weapons are more for the look of the thing. Couldn't hurt, eh?" He took a moment to swipe his free hand across the new sweat that had started to prickle his forehead. "Ah, must be worse off than I thought . . . this extra gravity might do me in."
"A reminder to us all," Namor deadpanned as he shifted the weight of the rifle hand to hand like an afterthought. The group stood before the sealed cryo-chamber door, massive and inert. The corridor lights flickered above, casting long, broken shadows. "That the weight of circumstance favors the strong." His motion turned to a lazy arc – testing balance – but the swing caught mid flourish, just slightly. His jaw clenched. The moment passed.
"The air is heavy." A thin smile crossed his lips. "No hindrance for those born to the deep. Give me a target, and I will drink in the ruin like rain. You two – see to the door."
Quickly scanning the blaster to make sure she could use it properly, Bobbi nodded. It mercifully wasn't that complicated, even if it was alien, and she shifted it in her arms, prepared to fire with extreme prejudice if need be.
"Heavy indeed," she agreed, grunting with the added exertion from the apparent increase in gravity. That coupled with the pain in her side made for a much more unpleasant experience than she'd cared for but there was nothing for it but to power through it. She eyed the door and looked to the others. "Did you see these in action? Not sure if we should test them out on the door or not," she mused.
Marius shrugged. "Didn't you say there were signs of attempted force? One assumes they would already have been employed had they been effective. However, I –"
Suddenly the Australian broke off, nostrils flaring. His head snapped towards a vent.
It was an instant too late for a warning.
They were smaller than the thing that had called itself Samedar, but what they lacked in mass they made up for in numbers. The creatures poured from the vents in a glut of spidery arms and translucent wings, swarming and scrabbling over each other in a blind rush towards the intruders like bees responding to a wasp in their hive.
They were not immune from the increase in gravity. Their wings whirred, but their flight was erratic. One launched itself unsteadily at Bobbi, keening "Queen-killers! Queen-killers!"
A crimson beam struck the alien point-blank. The body struck the wall with a sound like a bug hitting a windshield, and with similar physical effect.
Namor, however, did not fire. He moved.
His rifle was reversed as he drove forward, smoothly settling into a ready position. Then, with a flick of disdain, he drove the butt of it into the nearest creature’s thorax. Chitin cracked. The body folded. He spun, then, and more bugs were routed.
"Redundancy," he said flatly, pivoting. Another thing struck – he parried it with the side of the rifle like a trident haft, then brought it down again, harder, until it stopped moving. "And poor listeners. Intolerable."
His eyes swept for chaos for more targets.
"I loathe repeating myself: see to the door. Stop wasting fire on mere insects."
"Well, at least he's found use for the rifle," Marius remarked as he turned to regard the door. There were no visible hinges, but this was not a problem. Finesse was for people who weren't being swarmed by extraterrestrial parasites.
One thing could be said about the Nevada desert: if one were borrowing solar-charged optic blasts, few places were better. The blast peeled the door inward like warped aluminum, creating an opening just wide enough for a person to slip through. An entrance, but narrow enough their attackers would be forced into a chokepoint.
"Ladies first–" Marius began to offer Bobbi when a chunk of ichor and exoskeleton slapped against the wall directly next to them. Namor appeared to be enjoying himself.
"Gross," she said after the splat sound morphed into a squelch as the alien viscera slid down the wall. Bobbi made her way inside and stopped by a conveniently placed control panel, which had an even more conveniently placed sign with instructions in English hanging beside it. "Here, this can't be . . . no, it couldn't be that easy, could it?" she questioned aloud, looking around at the dozen or so pods filling the room.
"Gonna try the defrost sequence, cover me, please?" she asked as her fingers went into action, following the sequence on the sheet as carefully but as quickly as possible.
A shadow passed over the room as the Atlantean stepped between the last skittering insect and the corridor's narrow breach. His rifle hung in one hand now, dripping and dented. His other hand swept back his hair, streaking it through with something unidentifiable and faintly glowing.
"You are both adequately covered. Offensively, defensively, and sartorially." A flash of teeth caught in the hallway light. "Try not to spoil it with gratitude."
A pause. The thawing sequence engaged, humming to life with a slow, mechanical rhythm.
"One hopes whoever is in those pods comes with more answers and fewer limbs."
Back on the bridge, the cavalry arrives for Matt and Clint.
"Clint!" Matt yelled likely much more loudly than he needed to yell, but between the incessant buzzing and the smell of what he could only describe as buggy reptiles and the feel of moving through water, this was all he could manage. He dove through the air, tripping over his own feet as he tried to move. For a man who was usually extremely graceful, it was out of character. His hands wrapped around two guns and he tossed one towards his brother.
Clint watched the gun sail by just out of reach despite his attempted dive for it and growled in frustration. It did whack an alien bug in the back of the head, though, so that was something. It took him a few minutes to recalibrate after the change in gravity, but his powers managed to compensate - which he'd always theorized was possible, but never really had the opportunity to test - and then he started throwing tools with deadly accuracy. "Matt, you good?" Clint asked from his position. "I'ma head your way. Safety off, shoot . . . over that way somewhere. I'm outta quarters."
Matt had great aim. Usually. This was probably the first time he and Clint had ever not connected on something one of them threw. The gravity shifts were throwing everything off and he was much more disoriented than he wanted to admit. Grabbing a second gun, he aimed, toppling over as things shifted again, finger already on the trigger.
Friendly fire was a real concern.
"Fucking ow," Clint called. "You shot me, Matthew!"
"Sorry, Clinton!" Matt snapped, shooting some aliens with more success. He couldn't smell a lot of blood from his brother, "'Tis only a flesh wound!"
"'Tis but a flesh wound my ass," Clint fired back, chucking a dime at Matt's forehead - it wouldn't do any damage and wouldn't actually distract him, but it felt fair. He ducked behind a console just long enough to rip a strip of cloth off the bottom of his shirt with the help of a weird cutting tool so he could at least make the flesh wound on his upper arm stop bleeding, then popped back up to start throwing quarters and nickels again, spicing things up every now and again with a random wrench or sprocket when he found them.
Just then, he heard the call for sitreps from Bobbi and mic’d up to give them an update on the bridge's situation. After getting confirmation that they’d have backup soon, Clint found a thing that might actually be a phone of some kind and tossed it at a bug alien thing that was trying to sneak up on him. "Backup's incoming soonish," he called to his brother. "Try not to shoot them!"
"No promises!" The uneven gravity was not working for him, this was why he preferred hand to hand! And why he liked stable gravity, apparently. He did at least do his best to not shoot towards the door.
A couple of minutes later the metal door groaned, then shattered inward with a loud crack, one of its hinges flying off like a frisbee. Molly stepped through the haze, breathing hard, fists up, sleeves rolled.
“Somebody call for pest control?” she asked, scanning the chaos. Gravity felt off, like everything had been dipped in molasses, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
Without waiting for an answer, Molly grabbed the nearest bug-creature mid-lunge, swung it like a baseball bat into another, and sent both tumbling across the floor with a satisfying crunch.
A third creature lunged and she punched it mid-air. It crumpled like wet paper and skidded across the floor.
She cracked her neck, then wiped bug goo off her sleeve with a grimace. “Please tell me someone here knows how to fix the gravity, because this whole ‘slow-motion soup’ vibe is killing my joints.”
"Jesus fuck me, what happened in here." Kyle stepped through the doorway, no-look caught one of the smaller bugs, and crushed it against a bulkhead. "It smells like acid and burning hair, and holy shit." He dodged one bright blast of energy. "Who gave the blind guy a laser gun, jesus fuck." And midway through trying to both dodge alien death bugs and the space-gun-shot-by-blind-guy that was mostly actually working, he took a graze to the side. "Motherfucking fuck, I'm still healing from the fucking emergency surgery, fucking hell, Murdock don't move I am confiscating those."
"Oh, thank God," Clint said, not even bothering to keep quiet. "He shot me, too. He's lucky we're related and I only smacked him with a dime."
"Sorry," Matt called, "this gravity is fucking with my head big time!" He was a close combat specialist, not ranged weapons!
Motion flashed in the corridor. An unslain creature was surging towards the bridge, frantic and enraged by the death of its broodmates. Saliva dripped as it stretched its jaws wide.
"Empress! Empress! Death to the queen-killers for the Emp-"
Metal flashed.
The attacker's mad dash was cut short. So was its thorax.
A man with a severe ponytail stepped forward, flicking the ichor from his blade with a twitch of a cybernetic wrist. Behind the newcomer a massive green bulk lumbered into view. Incongruously, what appeared to be something like a white ferret was perched on its shoulder. The smaller entity peered around the ear-fin of its fellow and screeched.
Its scaled escort cleared its throat.
"He says, 'then it's lucky this isn't your ship.'"
Thud. Thud, thud, crack, and a very wet crack, and then another few thuds, all wet sounding.
"Hate these guys." The wound on Kyle's back burned still, under the bandages. The lidocaine spray was wearing off, not that it had done overmuch before, but he could feel skin and muscle knitting itself back together. He thought Molly would probably forgive him several ounces of anger. He wiped torn-off-bug-arm-slime off his hand onto the wall, and kicked the now broken off limb away. "Fast little fuckers, and I really hope it's not gonna just grow that shit right back."
The trail of ichor down the hallway that marked their advance stunk of expired vinegar.
"Don't jinx it!" Molly said. More of the small, insectile-like creatures began to pour from the vents in a swarm, their buzzing shrill and erratic under the heavy gravity. Gritting her teeth, Molly took off in a headstart, slamming into them head on. She crushed one into a wall before, yanking another off her shoulder and slamming it into the ground until it stopped moving.
Even though she moved quickly, each motion felt harder, even breathing. She felt weighed down somehow. But that was not anything she could really worry about at the moment, since they were being overrun by alien grasshoppers with teeth.
One of the many broodling-like things leaped toward her and she caught it mid-air, throwing it down the hall.
"Dude, I'm gonna need to burn my clothes." The smell made her wanna gag.
"Word." The creatures came in assorted sizes, but all fought the same, sharp claws and sharper mandibles and horrible clacking noises as they divebomed both Molly and Kyle's head and shoulders. The problem, Kyle thought, was that they tired quickly and after an initial swoop would start flying low, tearing at knees and ankles. They were clumsy in the sluggish gravity wells, but so was he. Well, clumsy by his own standards.
It didn't stop him from using Molly as a launching pad to step off a bulkhead wall, and grab two of the things mid-flight, and crush both to the ground. It just made it hurt more when he landed knee-first through the thorax of one of the bugs. "Clothes burning party after we get back. Plane's got sweats and t-shirts for emergencies."
"And I just bought this jacket," Molly said, her attention flickering toward a larger, more humanoid monstrosity as it dropped down from the ceiling. Ripping a large panel off one of the walls, she used it as a makeshift shield as it leaped toward her, then went with her forward momentum to drive the panel and the creature into the wall.
"Too slow!"
Kyle's reply came in bursts, a few words, and then a flurry of stomps as he squashed a number of smaller bugs, and then a few more words. "We can send it to that dry cleaner in the DX." He paused, panting and leaning against one of the ship's doorways. "Need a sec, might've fucked up my ankle on that last stomp. Fuckin' gravity."
"Yeah, breathing kinda sucks right now," Molly said.
The sound of heavy movement made her turn as a giant alien slithered into view. It was different from the others, more fluid, almost elegant. She felt a shift. The rest of the swarming broodlings seemed to part away from it. A Queen.
This one was definitely more dangerous. Its massive eyes locked onto her.
"Aw crap," Molly said.
She balled up her fists, ready to hit as it darted toward her.
But it was faster. Quicker than the blink of an eye, the giant creature slammed into her, pinning her down so hard it shook the area.
Air knocked from her lungs, Molly struggled from underneath the monster as its massive tail snaked up, ramming its stinger into her side . . . or at least it tried to.
Unfortunately for the queen, it didn't know that Molly's skin was much denser than your average human, so when it stung her it was like trying to sting a brick wall.
The momentary confusion from the queen was enough for Molly to get her breath back, which she used to let out an angry yell, her eyes glowing purple as she ripped the creature's tail off.
The queen let out the equivalent of a roar and a shriek, white, milky blood splattering all over Molly.
Molly then used her legs to kick the queen up and away from her. Grabbing the tail, she used it as a makeshift baseball bat and started beating it with it.
"No." Kyle's refusal – sheer disbelief, a rejection of reality – was flat and dull as he took two giant steps back. Something flittered just in the corner of his eye, and he snapped out his hand, grabbing another flying creature out of the air, also rejecting the automatic comparison his thoughts gave him about his cat, and the occasional moth or fly that got into his suite. "Molly. Whenever you're . . . done . . . " He said, faux-conversationally. "Buzzing's getting worse the closer we get to the bridge."
"I'm almost – " the body of the queen seemed to shift upon its last breath, reverting back to . . .
"Uh oh, sorry Captain K'r'k. Guess he's not boldly going anywhere," she said, making a face. Reaching down to grab a pipe. Molly nodded forward.
"After you."
Namor, Bobbi, and Marius arrive at their own destination, hoping to save the crew before it’s too late.
"Oi!"
Marius came pounding down the ship corridor to join them. His face was waxen and his hands were full: he had come bearing gifts.
"Found these on the way," he explained, handing one blaster to Bobbi and offering Namor what appeared to be some kind of rifle. "They just dropped them. Seems their weapons are more for the look of the thing. Couldn't hurt, eh?" He took a moment to swipe his free hand across the new sweat that had started to prickle his forehead. "Ah, must be worse off than I thought . . . this extra gravity might do me in."
"A reminder to us all," Namor deadpanned as he shifted the weight of the rifle hand to hand like an afterthought. The group stood before the sealed cryo-chamber door, massive and inert. The corridor lights flickered above, casting long, broken shadows. "That the weight of circumstance favors the strong." His motion turned to a lazy arc – testing balance – but the swing caught mid flourish, just slightly. His jaw clenched. The moment passed.
"The air is heavy." A thin smile crossed his lips. "No hindrance for those born to the deep. Give me a target, and I will drink in the ruin like rain. You two – see to the door."
Quickly scanning the blaster to make sure she could use it properly, Bobbi nodded. It mercifully wasn't that complicated, even if it was alien, and she shifted it in her arms, prepared to fire with extreme prejudice if need be.
"Heavy indeed," she agreed, grunting with the added exertion from the apparent increase in gravity. That coupled with the pain in her side made for a much more unpleasant experience than she'd cared for but there was nothing for it but to power through it. She eyed the door and looked to the others. "Did you see these in action? Not sure if we should test them out on the door or not," she mused.
Marius shrugged. "Didn't you say there were signs of attempted force? One assumes they would already have been employed had they been effective. However, I –"
Suddenly the Australian broke off, nostrils flaring. His head snapped towards a vent.
It was an instant too late for a warning.
They were smaller than the thing that had called itself Samedar, but what they lacked in mass they made up for in numbers. The creatures poured from the vents in a glut of spidery arms and translucent wings, swarming and scrabbling over each other in a blind rush towards the intruders like bees responding to a wasp in their hive.
They were not immune from the increase in gravity. Their wings whirred, but their flight was erratic. One launched itself unsteadily at Bobbi, keening "Queen-killers! Queen-killers!"
A crimson beam struck the alien point-blank. The body struck the wall with a sound like a bug hitting a windshield, and with similar physical effect.
Namor, however, did not fire. He moved.
His rifle was reversed as he drove forward, smoothly settling into a ready position. Then, with a flick of disdain, he drove the butt of it into the nearest creature’s thorax. Chitin cracked. The body folded. He spun, then, and more bugs were routed.
"Redundancy," he said flatly, pivoting. Another thing struck – he parried it with the side of the rifle like a trident haft, then brought it down again, harder, until it stopped moving. "And poor listeners. Intolerable."
His eyes swept for chaos for more targets.
"I loathe repeating myself: see to the door. Stop wasting fire on mere insects."
"Well, at least he's found use for the rifle," Marius remarked as he turned to regard the door. There were no visible hinges, but this was not a problem. Finesse was for people who weren't being swarmed by extraterrestrial parasites.
One thing could be said about the Nevada desert: if one were borrowing solar-charged optic blasts, few places were better. The blast peeled the door inward like warped aluminum, creating an opening just wide enough for a person to slip through. An entrance, but narrow enough their attackers would be forced into a chokepoint.
"Ladies first–" Marius began to offer Bobbi when a chunk of ichor and exoskeleton slapped against the wall directly next to them. Namor appeared to be enjoying himself.
"Gross," she said after the splat sound morphed into a squelch as the alien viscera slid down the wall. Bobbi made her way inside and stopped by a conveniently placed control panel, which had an even more conveniently placed sign with instructions in English hanging beside it. "Here, this can't be . . . no, it couldn't be that easy, could it?" she questioned aloud, looking around at the dozen or so pods filling the room.
"Gonna try the defrost sequence, cover me, please?" she asked as her fingers went into action, following the sequence on the sheet as carefully but as quickly as possible.
A shadow passed over the room as the Atlantean stepped between the last skittering insect and the corridor's narrow breach. His rifle hung in one hand now, dripping and dented. His other hand swept back his hair, streaking it through with something unidentifiable and faintly glowing.
"You are both adequately covered. Offensively, defensively, and sartorially." A flash of teeth caught in the hallway light. "Try not to spoil it with gratitude."
A pause. The thawing sequence engaged, humming to life with a slow, mechanical rhythm.
"One hopes whoever is in those pods comes with more answers and fewer limbs."
Back on the bridge, the cavalry arrives for Matt and Clint.
"Clint!" Matt yelled likely much more loudly than he needed to yell, but between the incessant buzzing and the smell of what he could only describe as buggy reptiles and the feel of moving through water, this was all he could manage. He dove through the air, tripping over his own feet as he tried to move. For a man who was usually extremely graceful, it was out of character. His hands wrapped around two guns and he tossed one towards his brother.
Clint watched the gun sail by just out of reach despite his attempted dive for it and growled in frustration. It did whack an alien bug in the back of the head, though, so that was something. It took him a few minutes to recalibrate after the change in gravity, but his powers managed to compensate - which he'd always theorized was possible, but never really had the opportunity to test - and then he started throwing tools with deadly accuracy. "Matt, you good?" Clint asked from his position. "I'ma head your way. Safety off, shoot . . . over that way somewhere. I'm outta quarters."
Matt had great aim. Usually. This was probably the first time he and Clint had ever not connected on something one of them threw. The gravity shifts were throwing everything off and he was much more disoriented than he wanted to admit. Grabbing a second gun, he aimed, toppling over as things shifted again, finger already on the trigger.
Friendly fire was a real concern.
"Fucking ow," Clint called. "You shot me, Matthew!"
"Sorry, Clinton!" Matt snapped, shooting some aliens with more success. He couldn't smell a lot of blood from his brother, "'Tis only a flesh wound!"
"'Tis but a flesh wound my ass," Clint fired back, chucking a dime at Matt's forehead - it wouldn't do any damage and wouldn't actually distract him, but it felt fair. He ducked behind a console just long enough to rip a strip of cloth off the bottom of his shirt with the help of a weird cutting tool so he could at least make the flesh wound on his upper arm stop bleeding, then popped back up to start throwing quarters and nickels again, spicing things up every now and again with a random wrench or sprocket when he found them.
Just then, he heard the call for sitreps from Bobbi and mic’d up to give them an update on the bridge's situation. After getting confirmation that they’d have backup soon, Clint found a thing that might actually be a phone of some kind and tossed it at a bug alien thing that was trying to sneak up on him. "Backup's incoming soonish," he called to his brother. "Try not to shoot them!"
"No promises!" The uneven gravity was not working for him, this was why he preferred hand to hand! And why he liked stable gravity, apparently. He did at least do his best to not shoot towards the door.
A couple of minutes later the metal door groaned, then shattered inward with a loud crack, one of its hinges flying off like a frisbee. Molly stepped through the haze, breathing hard, fists up, sleeves rolled.
“Somebody call for pest control?” she asked, scanning the chaos. Gravity felt off, like everything had been dipped in molasses, but that wasn’t going to stop her.
Without waiting for an answer, Molly grabbed the nearest bug-creature mid-lunge, swung it like a baseball bat into another, and sent both tumbling across the floor with a satisfying crunch.
A third creature lunged and she punched it mid-air. It crumpled like wet paper and skidded across the floor.
She cracked her neck, then wiped bug goo off her sleeve with a grimace. “Please tell me someone here knows how to fix the gravity, because this whole ‘slow-motion soup’ vibe is killing my joints.”
"Jesus fuck me, what happened in here." Kyle stepped through the doorway, no-look caught one of the smaller bugs, and crushed it against a bulkhead. "It smells like acid and burning hair, and holy shit." He dodged one bright blast of energy. "Who gave the blind guy a laser gun, jesus fuck." And midway through trying to both dodge alien death bugs and the space-gun-shot-by-blind-guy that was mostly actually working, he took a graze to the side. "Motherfucking fuck, I'm still healing from the fucking emergency surgery, fucking hell, Murdock don't move I am confiscating those."
"Oh, thank God," Clint said, not even bothering to keep quiet. "He shot me, too. He's lucky we're related and I only smacked him with a dime."
"Sorry," Matt called, "this gravity is fucking with my head big time!" He was a close combat specialist, not ranged weapons!
Motion flashed in the corridor. An unslain creature was surging towards the bridge, frantic and enraged by the death of its broodmates. Saliva dripped as it stretched its jaws wide.
"Empress! Empress! Death to the queen-killers for the Emp-"
Metal flashed.
The attacker's mad dash was cut short. So was its thorax.
A man with a severe ponytail stepped forward, flicking the ichor from his blade with a twitch of a cybernetic wrist. Behind the newcomer a massive green bulk lumbered into view. Incongruously, what appeared to be something like a white ferret was perched on its shoulder. The smaller entity peered around the ear-fin of its fellow and screeched.
Its scaled escort cleared its throat.
"He says, 'then it's lucky this isn't your ship.'"