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Mortuus Orbis	By : Sparrow & InBrightestDay Category: -Misc Video Games/RPGs > Crossovers Views: 3540 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the franchises, characters, or anything else from the settings in this collection. These include Street Fighter, Marvel, Sailor Moon, Kill La Kill, and others. I made no money from this work.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Once again, the entire population of the bunker had assembled in the common room. This time it really was the entire population. No one had been able to find Tania, and it was looking more and more likely that she had been the first person unfortunate enough to run into the monster. The creature hadn’t shown itself since Cindy had set it on fire, but no one wanted to be alone in case it came back.
The monster, and what to do about it, was the current topic of conversation.
“Are we sure it’s still alive?” April asked. “It got set on fire. I know Doctor Báthory says it ran off, but it might have just burned to death.”
“It’s possible,” Satsuki replied, “but I watched its tail grow back after I cut part of it off. It could have survived being burned, and I don’t think that’s a chance any of us want to take.” April couldn’t help but nod.
“So if it isn’t dead, what do we do about it?” Makoto asked. “Do we try to kill it?”
“We might not have to,” Spinneret said. “This city is huge. There are a lot of places we could go.”
“You’re suggesting we abandon the bunker?” Isabeau asked, arching a brow.
“Yeah,” the redhead said in response. “Look, I know the zombies can’t get in here, but obviously other things can. We had those weird worm things come in through the vents, then there was that leech monster in the water system, and now whatever this new monster is. We should take what we can carry and move to another building we can secure.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” April said, nodding. “There are supplies here, sure, but there are other places we can find supplies, and other buildings might be more defensible. The monster wants this place, it can have it.”
“There are other buildings which may contain similar resources,” Isabeau said, “but they would be in separate locations. We are, simply put, unlikely to find ammunition, food and drinkable water in the same place elsewhere.”
“Clearly you’ve never been to a Walmart,” Spinneret quipped.
“Whatever that is,” Isabeau said, sounding mildly irritated, “there is more to it than even that. A great deal of this structure remains unexplored. While this means that there are dangers we do not know about, it also means that there are potentially more resources to be found.”
“She’s got a point,” Kyle said. “I’d like to really get a feel for what’s in here, and what it’s got that we can use. If we can figure out where the threats came in from and seal off their access points, this is still a valuable place.”
“Okay,” Makoto said in halting, thickly accented English. “This place is valuable. That still doesn’t answer what we do if that... thing is still alive.”
“We lock it out,” Isabeau said. “Doctor Báthory, according to your report, the creature can no longer utilize the ventilation system, is that correct?”
“That’s correct,” the blonde said. “It entered medical through a ceiling vent, but given its rapid growth, it very quickly became too large to leave through the same opening.” Isabeau nodded in thanks.
“Very well, then,” she said. “We can erect barricades and block off the areas we wish to make safe, like the sleeping area, the kitchen and medical, and we keep the creature out. If it’s still alive, it will be forced either to leave or to starve.” She went silent for a moment, and there was silence as all assembled considered it. The idea may have been gaining traction, but then Satsuki spoke up again.
“Erzsebet,” she said, looking at the doctor, “how did the creature leave medical?”
“After it found itself unable to escape through the vent, it went out through the door,” Báthory said.
“All the doors in the bunker operate on a time delay,” Satsuki said. “A short amount of time after being opened, they close automatically. If the door was shut, how did the creature get out?”
“It examined the door closely,” the doctor answered, “located the manual override lever and threw it.”
“How long did it take to do that?”
“A minute, perhaps two.” At Báthory’s answer, Satsuki looked over at Isabeau, shaking her head.
“If it figured out how to open the doors in two minutes, then it will find a way through the barricades. We can’t afford to simply try to keep it out.”
“If we can’t just lock it out,” Chun-Li said, “then what do you suggest we do?” Satsuki waited a moment, looking at each of the room’s occupants, before answering.
“We kill it.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable shifting, a few incredulous, wordless noises being made in response to the suggestion.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Kyle said, “but you fought this thing before when you were at full strength, and you couldn’t kill it. Now you’ve got more of their blood in you than your own, and...” he trailed off as the girl, still wearing nothing but bandages and a bedsheet, glared him into silence.
“I was unaware of its corrosive blood,” Satsuki said at last, “a lesson I have very thoroughly learned now. And the fact that I drew blood means that this creature is not impossible to kill, merely difficult to kill. It can be done.”
“Considering its regenerative capabilities,” Báthory said, “how do you propose to kill it?”
The corner of Satsuki’s mouth twitched in what might have been a hint of a smile.
“It obviously doesn’t like fire.” She paused. “We have another advantage now that we didn’t have when the creature first appeared.”
“What’s that?” April asked. Satsuki gestured behind her.
“Him,” she said.
Outside the circle of the bunker’s human inhabitants stood the massive humanoid they had rescued from the hospital, silent, but observing everything that was going on. The faint gleam of the staples Báthory had used to close the massive incision she had made in his chest was visible beneath the metal mesh he wore as some kind of underlayer. A human would have been bedridden for weeks after such a procedure, but the alien was up and moving around with seemingly no problems less than an hour after it was over.
It was more than a little unnerving.
“Whatever this thing is,” Satsuki continued, “he’s seen it before. He’s confirmed that he has, in fact, killed creatures like this in the past. I say we work closely with him to bring the monster down.” Another moment passed, while all assembled weighed their options.
“Wait,” said Isabeau suddenly. “Why are we listening to you? You’re just a girl, what do you know about these sorts of situations?”
Satsuki locked eyes with her, steel in her eyes and voice.
“Alexander of Macedon was sixteen when he won his first battle. If anything, I’m behind.”
“That doesn’t-” Isabeau began, before Satsuki opened the lock on her scabbard and drew an inch of glistening black steel out of it.
“I’m not just carrying this sword for its own sake,” the girl continued. “Junketsu- my uniform, the one that attacked you- is what’s called a kamui. It’s a living thing made from alien fibres. When I wear it and let it drain some of my blood, it vastly enhances my physical characteristics, but all it wants to do is devour me." The girl paused for breath, ignoring the curious expression beginning to take shape on Spinneret’s face. She went on. "It and things like it have been infiltrating and controlling humanity in my world for generations. I’ve made it my life’s work to try and defeat them. I've been training an army and fighting that secret war since I was eight years old.”
She slid the sword back into the scabbard with a snap, and shut the lock again.
“I know what I’m doing.”
After that, silence resumed, everyone trying to digest this new information. Eventually, Makoto spoke.
“I don’t want to spend every day worrying that this thing will figure out how to get through barricades,” she said. “If we can kill it, then let’s do that.”
“I still vote we leave,” April said. Mary Jane nodded.
“Yeah. The hell with this thing; we can just go,” she said.
“I maintain that it is in our best interest to hold the bunker,” Isabeau said. “I recognize the flaws of the barricade plan,” she nodded to Satsuki, “but I still feel it is the safer choice.”
“Agreed,” Kyle said. “I say we seal this place up tight and let the thing leave or starve.” He looked over at Báthory and asked “Doc?”
“The bunker contains valuable resources,” she said, “and it is the best location to continue my research on the inhabitants of this strange new world. I would not advise leaving. Having seen this organism’s intelligence firsthand, I also would not recommend trying to keep it out with barricades. Furthermore, it is between us and the rest of this facility that is as yet unexplored. If we ever want to see what other resources this place holds, we will need to remove the creature.”
The room went silent again. Eventually, all eyes turned to Chun-Li, who had been sitting on a wooden crate, looking down in thought. Now her eyes came up to look at the room, and her expression was grim.
“I just had to carry what was left of Cindy to the incinerator,” she said quietly, before nodding slightly. “I’m with Satsuki and the doctor. Let’s kill this fucking thing.”
**
April, Makoto and Báthory were not fighters, at least not currently, as Makoto was forced to acknowledge, so they needed to be kept safe while the plan was set into motion. To that end, they were to remain in the common room. It would be nerve-wracking, Isabeau supposed, but it would also be the safest place for them.
As the others left, Isabeau stopped for a moment, just outside the door, and motioned Erzsebet over. After a moment, the blonde complied.
“Yes?” she asked quietly.
“Erzsebet,” Isabeau replied, equally softly, “I realize you are no more a fighter than those two are, but I feel I must make a request of you.” The doctor raised an eyebrow, waiting for whatever Isabeau was about to ask. The knight took a deep breath.
“I am asking, should the worst happen, that you ensure that those two make it to safety. The stairs are easily accessible from this room, so as a last resort, if you must escape to the surface, you can.”
“I was unaware you were so invested in our new friends,” Erzsebet said, looking almost bemused.
“I’m not especially attached to the mick,” Isabeau replied, causing a small smile to appear on Erzsebet’s face, “but I don’t want her dead, and I do want young Miss Makoto to be safe. Can you do that for me?” The smile disappeared, and the blonde nodded.
“I will keep a close eye on her,” she said. Isabeau was a woman of proper decorum, but she couldn’t completely avoid releasing a small sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” she said. “Hopefully this won’t be necessary.” No more words were needed, and with a final look, Báthory stepped back and allowed the heavy door to descend into place. Isabeau turned away, heading down the hall to her position.
Everyone had a role to play.
“So far as we know,” Satsuki had said. “The bunker is arrayed in a shape almost like a horseshoe. When the creature fled from the explosion, it must have ended up on the far end of the building. Therefore, we know roughly where it will reappear. Furthermore, it’s too big now to use the vents, so it will be forced to come through the halls.”
Passing along the corridors, Isabeau eventually came to her designated post, just past medical, near where the storeroom explosion had happened. Taking up position, she now had no choice but to wait.
“How do we know we won’t have to go looking for this thing?” April asked. Doctor Báthory stepped forward to answer that.
“Based on my admittedly limited observations,” she said, “the creature has an extremely high metabolism. It devoured an entire human body very fast, and almost immediately managed to turn the chemical compounds within into more of itself, growing rapidly. During its fight with Miss Kiryuin, it suffered multiple injuries, including the loss of part of its tail, and was then burned. It will need to expend further energy to heal its wounds and regrow lost body parts. As a result, it will need to feed, sooner rather than later.”
“So, assuming it’s still alive,” Satsuki had said, standing outside the storeroom they had locked her uniform in. “We won’t have to find it. It will come straight to us.”
With that she had let the sheet fall, opened the door and walked inside wearing only bandages, making sure to lock it behind herself as she went. Five minutes later, she had emerged wearing the uniform once more.
Now the onus was on the creature to show itself. As the minutes passed, Isabeau was reminded of times she and her comrades in the Order had lain in wait for half breeds. The battle against the bestial monsters was dangerous, but in some ways it was preferable to waiting, as remaining at full readiness for long periods of time was a strain all its own.
Even so, Isabeau D’Argyll had both the finest training anyone could ever hope for and centuries of experience, so she managed to stay alert as the first hour passed. Instead of allowing her mind to wander, she began to develop a sense of what she should be hearing, familiarizing herself with all of the subtle noises that were always being made by the systems the bunker ran on: the water moving through the pipes, the heating ducts hissing, that damnable air purifier…
All of which was why, no matter how soft the footsteps were, she picked up on them immediately.
They started much farther down the halls, exceedingly faint, but growing louder, the patterns and the volume of the footfalls indicating the stealthy approach of a predator. Slowly, moving as quietly as she could, Isabeau began putting distance between herself and the corner the sounds were coming from.
Closer, she thought. Any moment now…
While she had received a description from Satsuki and Erzsebet, Isabeau had never actually seen this monster. She was, in some ways, curious to finally set eyes upon it.
The footsteps of the creature grew louder, and she stepped farther back, until finally it had to be just around the corner, and suddenly it just stopped.
Isabeau brought her own movement to a halt. She watched the corner, waiting for the moment it would appear.
Come on, beast, just show yourself.
Around the corner, a set of long, black fingers became visible, slick with reflective slime and ending in wicked claws. The fingers settled against the wall with a barely audible ticking as claws met concrete, and simply rested there for a moment. Isabeau tensed, spreading her feet apart. She didn’t consciously know exactly what was about to happen, but past experience told her that it would happen fast.
She was right.
The fingers suddenly clamped down, claws sinking into the concrete as the creature yanked hard on the wall to propel itself forward and came flying around the corner, its towering, tenebrous form rebounding off the opposite wall, landing on the floor and accelerating toward her.
The sudden appearance of the monster and its burst of movement sent a jolt of adrenaline through Isabeau, but rather than allow it to paralyze her, she channeled it, training kicking in where conscious thought would have failed her. She whipped around and took off into her best sprint. Her weapons couldn’t penetrate its armour, and while the Blacksight would allow her to fire a precise shot directly into its mouth or strike another vulnerable spot, that risked dousing her in the creature’s deadly blood, and while she would suffer, it would simply heal.
Unable to harm it, she ran, hearing the hammer blows of the creature’s footsteps on the floor, the swish of its tail moving behind it as it bore down on her. She harnessed her fear, using it to drive her forward ever faster, not looking back.
“Here!” she yelled down the hall, careful to time her breath and speech with her strides to avoid slowing herself down “It’s here!” Her voice echoed through the corridors, to where the others would hopefully hear it.
Battle was now well and truly joined.
*
Night Eyes was waiting in the room they had decided upon for their battle against the creature, along with the human named Satsuki. Three other humans waited with them: the male and the remaining females, Chun-Li and Spinneret. In a traditional hunt, this would be terrible form. Normally, Night Eyes would have preferred to take up an ambush position by himself, his cloak active, and waited for his prey to come to him.
This was not a traditional hunt, however. Satsuki had explained her plan to him, checking to ensure that he understood in spite of any potential language barrier, and it was clear enough. This was not an ambush.
The cloak would not have been much use anyway. While Yautja used the technology on many hunts, the hard meat were different. Their senses rendered the cloak pointless, so a battle against them was not a matter of stealth, but a true test of a hunter’s reflexes and skill with a weapon.
Looking over at Satsuki, Night Eyes wondered about her skill with her weapon of choice. Some Yautja did make use of swords, single-edged blades like the one the girl carried, though the design was noticeably different, based on what he could tell from its current, sheathed state.
Evidently he wasn’t the only one examining the weapon, as the costumed female, Spinneret, spoke up.
“Do you know how to use a gun?” she asked. When Satsuki nodded, she followed it up with “Then why do you use a sword, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I am proficient with firearms,” Satsuki replied. “But they weren’t any help to Eliza. Bakuzan can cut through anything, it’s the only thing I’ve seen that can wound this creature. Moreover, it’s tradition. Practicing kenjutsu, the art of the sword, is a way of instilling discipline and quieting the mind, one that has been part of the family line for generations.” At this, a faint smile appeared on Spinneret’s face.
“Do you have family waiting back home?” she asked. “Parents? Brothers or sisters?” Night Eyes watched Satsuki. It could be difficult to read the subtleties of human expression, given their different facial anatomy, so he wasn’t sure what her next expression meant, but it was subtle and disappeared quickly.
“Mother, yes,” she said. “We see each other sometimes. That's it.” The older woman shifted back and forth for a moment, somewhat uncomfortable, apparently.
“Sorry,” she said. “I have a husband and a little girl back home. It’s… a double-edged sword, I guess. I miss them, a lot, but it gives me something to focus on; a reason to keep trying to get back home.”
Satsuki side-eyed the other woman for a moment.
“Do you believe we can get back home?”
No answer was forthcoming, not for the moment, anyway. Whether one would have emerged given time proved immaterial, however, as a voice echoed down the long halls.
“Here! It’s here!”
Night Eyes recognized the voice as belonging to the female in the greatcoat. He couldn’t remember her name at the moment, but he understood the significance of her words immediately, as did Satsuki.
“It’s coming,” she said. “Everyone, to your positions.” Spinneret nodded and bolted off down the hall. The command given, Satsuki reached up and flicked her fingers quickly across a metal device attached to her left arm. Night Eyes was not entirely sure what happened next. For a very brief moment, it seemed that her uniform swelled into a grotesque monstrosity of white flesh, burning eyes and a cavernous mouth full of jagged teeth. Before anyone had a chance to react, it contracted down around Satsuki, becoming an… outfit.
Night Eyes briefly wondered if the sensors in his bio-helmet were malfunctioning, not entirely certain that what he was seeing was real. After a moment, however, he accepted that apparently, Satsuki’s battle attire covered her arms and legs but bared nearly her entire torso.
“What the hell…” Kyle said. “Does that really help in a fight?”
“Yes,” Satsuki answered simply.
“That’s not the weirdest thing I’ve seen in this place,” Chun-Li said, looking at Kyle and half-smiling “but it’s close. Let’s move.” Without speaking further, she took off down the hall. Kyle took one more look at Satsuki’s bizarre outfit and then followed.
As the others moved out to assume their roles, Night Eyes reached behind him, retrieving the combistick from his belt. With the press of a button on the center grip, the spear telescoped out to full length. Night Eyes took hold of it with both hands as Satsuki drew her sword, both of them readying themselves for the arrival of their target.
Satsuki watched the humanoid draw a short, thick cylinder from an attachment point on his belt and, pressing some sort of contact on it, extending it into a spear. Looking down at the weapon, he switched on some sort of three-beamed laser emitter on his mask, aiming the beams at the sharp blade at the front end of the spear. The red light shone on the metal for a time, and gradually the material began to heat, eventually glowing a soft, cherry red. Flipping the double-ended weapon around, he applied the same treatment to the other spearhead.
Satsuki looked away from him, opened the lock on her scabbard and from it drew Bakuzan. Heating their blades had been her idea—the plan was that high enough temperature would sear the creature’s blood vessels shut, preventing, or at least slowing, its healing enough for them to kill it—but she had to admit to herself some uncertainty about how the black blade would react.
The life fibers Junketsu was woven from were not born of the Earth. Instead, their origin point, the organism known as the Primordial Life Fiber, had fallen from the stars in a meteorite several million years ago. It had presumably shed most of its cocoon of ice and rock on its way through the atmosphere, but what remained when it had landed had been something fascinating. A strange metallic element unlike any found on Earth.
Properly worked, it was all but indestructible, and forged into a sword could keep an edge so fine it didn’t seem entirely possible, sharp enough to cut through even life fibers. Satsuki had been unable to help but wonder if the stuff had been intended as some kind of prison for the Primordial Life Fiber, built by some ancient and distant alien race who had encountered it themselves. Or maybe as a gift to whomever might be so unlucky as to encounter it next.
Unfortunately for humanity, there had been barely enough of the mineral to make Bakuzan and have a little left over, so defeating the life fibers had seemed impossible.
In any case, given that no one currently knew the exact properties of the substance, heating it through normal means was not a sure thing.
Of course, that didn’t mean she didn’t have a plan.
When she had last faced off with the creature, when she had been splashed with its blood, Junketsu had reacted, extending its living fibers to remove as much of the acid as possible. Junketsu did not act selflessly, so it occurred to Satsuki that the kamui had reacted to her thoughts; that she had subconsciously commanded it to remove the acid. If that were true, then the capabilities of the living garment could be greater than simply toughening her and enhancing her physical abilities.
Gripping the sword, she focused her will on Junketsu. She realized she would need more than a desire to heat the blade, but a clear idea of how to do that, and so she willed the kamui to extend its fibers again. Slithering crimson threads emerged from the long sleeve that covered her right arm, crawling down her hand and onto the weapon before slithering up the blade’s back, where they spread out like a root system, covering every part of it save for the cutting edge. Satsuki shut her eyes and focused, and the threads began to vibrate. There was no sound, no hum like a plucked guitar string, but the process worked. The energy transferred from the fibers into the blade; into its very microstructure, the molecules beginning to vibrate.
Slowly, the black blade grew hotter.
*
Isabeau kept running, the pounding of the creature’s feet, its claws scraping concrete, growing ever closer behind her. Hearing the swish of the tail moving through air, she jerked to one side quickly, barely evading the strike as the sharp blade swept through the air where her torso had been less than a second before.
She couldn’t stop it from gaining, but that was alright. Looking ahead, she could see the small side alcove she was rapidly approaching.
“Isabeau will make first contact and draw the creature to this point here,” Satsuki said, sweeping a hand across a roughly sketched map of the bunker. “She has both the discipline required to handle first watch and the physical training to evade its initial attacks.”
“If I am to draw it to a designated point,” Isabeau said, “how fast can it move?”
“Incredibly fast,” the girl said. “In a prolonged chase, it will run down any one of us.”
Drawing one deep breath, Isabeau pushed off with one foot, changing her direction as she threw herself to the left and rolling as she hit the ground. The move took her out of the main hall and into the alcove, albeit with an uncomfortable impact against a wall. The creature, larger and heavier than a human, was unable to change direction as quickly and began to slide past her, digging its claws into the floor to slow down, hissing in anger as it did so.
“If it can catch any one of us,” Chun-Li asked, “how do we do this?” At this, Satsuki displayed a calm little smile.
“It’s not going to be dealing with just one of us.”
As the creature rose to its feet and made to advance on Isabeau, something shot between it and her.
A storm of translucent, off-white strands filled the air, adhering to the sides of the little side hall and separating the monster from its intended prey. Turning its strange, elongated head away from Isabeau, it caught sight of Spinneret standing farther down the hall.
“Okay,” the redhead muttered under her breath, an involuntary shudder passing through her as her spider-sense reacted to the monster, “here we go.” She ran down the long hall herself, passing medical now, and the monster followed, attention fixed on its new target.
Mary Jane understood the importance of her part in the plan, but this was perhaps even more uncomfortable for her than it was for Isabeau. She was used to using her webs to maneuver, swinging from trees, buildings and other tall structures, moving in all three dimensions to evade her enemies’ deadliest attacks. Here, all she could do was run, and she couldn’t move faster than the creature. She felt it drawing closer and closer, and then her spider-sense gave her a sudden, horrifying picture of its proximity; she knew that one of the monster’s long-fingered hands was reaching for her, the black talons about to close around her hair.
Running isn’t all I can do. She spun around, firing lines of web at the thing from both hands. She knew it could cut its way free, but she wasn’t trying to trap it, instead attaching the webs to one of its legs.
With a single, hard pull, she yanked its left leg out from under it, and the monster lost its balance and toppled to the ground. It was barely a delay, as the thing pulled itself upright with an inhuman level of dexterity, but it gave Spinneret the distance she needed, and she kept moving.
Just ahead, she saw her goal, the open door to the room holding the water main, where Satsuki and their new ally were waiting for the monster. Pouring all her remaining energy into one last burst of speed, she leapt through the doorway and into the room, not bothering to try to land and slow down. Instead, she fired strands of webbing back at the entryway itself, snagging onto the concrete on either side of it and firing herself like a slingshot backwards and up, where she stuck to the wall right over the entrance.
The creature came to a halt at the threshold, tilting its head, its tail moving gently back and forth behind it.
“There is one potential problem with all of this,” Erzsebet said. “The creature’s hunger will be balanced by its intelligence. It may sense that we are attempting to draw it into a trap.”
“I agree,” Satsuki said, shifting her attention to Chun-Li and Kyle. “That is where you two come in.”
Moving in from the direction of the inhabited areas, Kyle took aim at the creature with his assault rifle and fired, unleashing short, controlled bursts aimed away from the monster’s center of mass and down lower, at its legs. Previously, Ash had required that all firearms be loaded with hollow point rounds. The utility against zombies was obvious, as it prevented overpenetration and minimized the risk of hitting anything other than your target.
For this creature, however, the plan had been changed, and he was now firing armor-piercing rounds. The high velocity, steel-core bullets hammered at the monster’s black hide, sparking at its hardened exoskeleton. Kyle knew what had happened to Ash, and there was no way to avoid the fear coursing through him as the creature turned to him, baring its teeth in preparation for an attack.
But Kyle Reese had grown up in humanity’s darkest hour. He had spent his childhood occasionally hearing the whine of an aerial hunter-killer’s turbofans as it passed overhead, looking for warm bodies to turn its plasma guns on, and as he had entered his teenage years he had known that his life could easily end staring into the skeletal, chrome features of a Terminator.
Fear was an old acquaintance.
Advancing on the monster, he slowed his rate of fire, taking careful aim at its knees and firing again. The armor-piercing rounds still didn’t penetrate its carapace, but they didn’t have to. They cracked into its joints and unbalanced it, rendering its stance just a little less firm, less balanced. Just as importantly, Kyle’s attack kept the monster focused on him.
Which was why it didn’t see Chun-Li until she was practically on top of it.
Its senses picking up on her at the last moment, the monster turned, spinning to face the Chinese woman just as she closed to melee range. Spreading her hands wide behind her, she glared into its eyeless face, as if her gaze alone could burn the thing.
“KIKOKEN!!!”
Chun-Li slammed her hands into the monster, a bright flash of blue-white energy erupting from them and crashing through its body. There was no visible wound, but the beast’s sudden shriek of surprise and pain was music to her ears.
The sheer force of the blast punched it back, knocking it off its feet and sending it into the room with Satsuki and the alien. In the time it took for it to spring back to its feet, Mary Jane flipped back through the doorway and into the hall, where Kyle turned the switch and brought the heavy door slamming down. Just to make sure, Spinneret threw layer after layer of webbing onto the barrier, adhering it to the floor as tightly as she could.
This was as far as their part in the plan went. It was up to the two combatants in the room now.
*
Night Eyes braced himself as the sounds of battle drew nearer. In spite of the atypical circumstances, he could still feel the thrill of the hunt creeping into him, as Satsuki’s allies acted like hounds, flushing the prey toward the two of them. Gripping the combistick, the tips bright with heat, he watched the door, waiting for the moment his prey would be open to attack.
Then the beast appeared, its towering frame filling the doorway, and he froze.
The Yautja did not have a written history. Their written language was useful for counting and for long-distance, silent communication, but they had no texts speaking of their past. Instead, the ancients, the eldest of the clans, served as repositories of knowledge, passing down stories of their people. There were tales of the great hunters and warriors of ages long gone; of the time the Yautja had ventured from the cradle of their homeworld to travel amongst the stars; of the first time they had met the intelligent races of distant worlds. These tales were meant to inspire. They encouraged the young ones to go forth and do deeds worthy of their own legends.
But not all tales were inspiring. Some told of things to be feared, of dark memories the Yautja must never forget, or perhaps could never forget.
Some of these tales spoke of a time long ago, when the galaxy was a much darker place, and of how the first hunters had crossed paths with a race of towering demons in skeletal armor. The demons were said to use dark sorcery, manipulating or maybe worshipping a foul black substance from which manifold horrors sprang.
That among these horrors were beings that bore a similarity to the hard meat was something understood, but also something the Yautja preferred not to think about. Even so, the ancients’ descriptions were evocative, their words painting a chilling picture of what the demons’ creations looked like.
As the creature loomed in the doorway, as Night Eyes took in its immense height, the different textures of its carapace, the slender yet powerful build and the way its head narrowed, tapering to a point at the very back, he knew.
This was not one of the hard meat as the hunters knew them. This was a nightmare of ancient legend given flesh and form. That which the Elders had called bhu'ja-dteinou, the Messenger of Demons.
For just a moment, Night Eyes knew the desire not to meet the abomination in combat, but to flee.
Then the female human clapped her hands onto it and released a burst of energy, pushing the Messenger into the room, and the moment ended. If the humans would stand against it, then to run would be the greatest dishonor imaginable.
The door descended and contacted the floor with a loud *clang*, and now it was only Night Eyes, the Messenger and Satsuki. Sensing the presence of the two other beings in the room, the Messenger turned to face them, strings of drool dripping from its jaws as its lips curled back. Looking over at her, Night Eyes saw Satsuki raise her own hot blade, focused on the monster.
“Remember me?” she said, and as though it could understand her, the Messenger threw its jaws wide and shrieked, the demonic wail echoing in the large room and seeming to scrape across Night Eyes’ very nerves. It sprang forward, one of its arms coming down for a slashing attack. Satsuki sprang away at the last moment, somersaulting back and landing on her feet and free hand, sword held out to the side, her long hair swirling around her.
In the moment that the Messenger was focused on her, overextended from its strike, Night Eyes lunged for it with his combistick. The creature didn’t even turn its head, but its tail darted out and Night Eyes had to pull his thrust to deflect it with the stick, even as Satsuki rushed the monster again, her sword coming down on the outstretched hand it had tried to strike her with.
The Messenger leapt back, but the cut was true; severing its claw at the wrist. It backed off for a moment, holding the smoking stump of its wrist up to its eyeless face as though in curiosity.
New tissue began to emerge from the stump, the steaming flesh reforming, but very slowly. It looked back up at Satsuki, who brought her sword back up into a guard position, acid blood sizzling on the hot blade.
The Messenger lunged again, this time for Night Eyes. Fear threatened again at facing a creature of myth, but he pushed it back, turning aside its claw swipe and striking it across the head with the shaft of the combistick. It jumped back, tail striking forward to keep him from following. Satsuki advanced from the other side, both of them closing in on the creature, and it sprang upward, landing on the wall and sinking its claws into the concrete to hold itself there.
All three combatants circled the room warily, the Messenger making its way along the wall while Satsuki and Night Eyes watched it from the floor.
Night Eyes focused on the Messenger, on its body language, reading the tension in its limbs, the angle of its head and the slow movement of its tail.
It was how he knew, the barest moment ahead of time, that it was about to strike, and rolled out of the way as it launched itself off the wall at him. As it landed, he rolled onto his feet and drove the combistick into its torso, the hunter’s strength ramming the spearhead through a weak spot on the exoskeleton just beneath the monster’s ribcage. The beast screamed, pulling back off the spear as its tail stabbed toward Night Eyes. He twisted his body as much as she could, and instead of driving into his belly the tail blade sliced open a wound along his side, droplets of luminous green blood flying off the blade to splatter on the floor.
As the Messenger focused on Night Eyes, Satsuki had positioned herself for her own strike, and when the two broke apart she darted forward, sword flashing out and slipping into the weaker armor on the inside of the monster’s elbow. Corrosive blood splashed across the floor, dissolving concrete, but the attack had brought the girl into the Messenger’s reach, and its claws raked across her stomach. The blow knocked Satsuki back, red blood staining the bandages wrapped around her burned abdomen. Night Eyes was momentarily surprised that she hadn’t been disemboweled, but remembered her earlier statement, that her bizarre outfit did in fact help her in battle, and he could only assume that it enhanced her physically in a way that wasn’t readily visible.
All three separated again, blood dripping from each of them as they watched each other, waiting for the next opening.
This was the nature of the fight for some time, a tense, lethal dance. Night Eyes and the girl read the Messenger’s body language, watching and waiting for it to strike in a way that would leave itself vulnerable, and using those opportunities to inflict wounds on it, its blood burning ever deeper into the floor beneath them. It healed, its burned wounds closing slowly, but each time it healed it used energy, and sooner or later it would run out.
But the Messenger was perceptive, and it watched them as they watched it. Every successful attack was paid for with a retaliatory strike from the abomination. Satsuki and Night Eyes were taking a toll on the creature, but each of them bled from multiple wounds. It was frustrating to Night Eyes, in no small part due to the fact that they weren’t coordinating as well as they could. The humans couldn’t read Yautja sign language, traditionally used during the hunt, which meant that it was difficult to attack in tandem.
Satsuki was evidently thinking the same thing, as she spoke for the first time since the fight had begun.
“The heated blades are working,” she said, her eyes never leaving the Messenger, “but this is taking too long. We have to end this more quickly.” She paused, thinking for a moment before continuing.
“When I immobilize it, strike with the spear.”
Breaking into a run, she charged the creature. The Messenger’s tail came forward at her, which was evidently what she had been hoping for. She swatted the spiked tip aside with her blade, and then seized hold of the tail, wrapping it around her arm and heaving on it, pulling the creature off balance. With the creature’s attention on Satsuki and its guard down, Night Eyes rushed in, stabbing into the monster near its shoulder, driving the weapon in as deep as he could, praying that it had some kind of vital organs he could pierce.
The Messenger shrieked, sizzling blood pouring from the wound to burn into the floor, the arm on the shoulder he had stabbed hanging limp, but it refused to die. Instead it leaned back onto one leg and drove the other into Night Eyes’ chest, knocking him onto his back amidst a tearing sensation across his torso. The impact had popped open several of the staples the human doctor had used to close the wound she had left on his chest, and fluorescent blood began to ooze sluggishly from the wound.
Fighting through the pain, he managed to keep focus on the creature, seeing it rip the combistick from its body, and in the same motion whip the spear around, striking the girl in the chest and knocking her away. Ignoring her, it dropped the combistick and charged Night Eyes, bulling into the Enforcer and ramming him into the wall, a shock of pain ripping through his aching body.
For a moment, he struggled to move, simply working on drawing breath back into his lungs, hoping that his entire chest wasn’t about to tear open. The Messenger leaned in close, close enough that he could see himself reflected in the sleek dome of its head. Reaching up, it slashed at Night Eyes’ bio-helmet, sparks flying where the claws dragged along metal.
Satsuki appeared behind the monster, sword poised to inflict another devastating stab, but the Messenger’s tail whipped toward her. She moved her sword to deflect it again, and as she did so Night Eyes realized that the Messenger had been expecting that. Rebounding off the sword, the tail moved past Satsuki and whipped back, coiling around her neck. The girl choked in surprise as it cinched shut around her neck, eyes bulging as the creature lifted her off the floor and hurled her across the room.
The combistick was far out of his reach, so Night Eyes went to the next weapon, the wristblades extending from the gauntlet on his right arm. As the monster’s jaws opened, he brought his hand up and drove the wristblades against its face. The blow knocked the creature’s head to one side, and the finely honed blades bit into its exoskeleton. They hadn’t completely breached it, but he could feel that they had cut partway through.
One more pass.
The Messenger’s hand came up, closed over the bio-helmet and ripped it off with a savage yank. As it tossed the armored mask away, Night Eyes triggered a mechanism inside the gauntlet, and the wristblades inverted, flipping back on themselves so that the cutting edge was on the outside. The monster brought its head forward, making to bite into the Enforcer’s face, at which point Night Eyes lashed it across the head, cutting across the weakened portion of the Messenger’s armor with a hard backhanded slash. The blades cut all the way through the exoskeleton this time, slicing into the monster’s face, and it recoiled, dropping Night Eyes as it clutched at its face and shrieked in mingled pain and fury.
Satsuki was just getting back to her feet as the creature dropped the humanoid to the floor. He was proving a fine ally, having recovered from a situation she herself had barely escaped during her first encounter with the creature.
And he had just given her an excellent opening.
As the monster retreated—its bleeding face was healing very slowly, Satsuki noticed—she moved in for another attack. Its tail came at her again, and she deflected it again. As before, its initial attack was a feint, meant to allow it to wrap around her.
And she was ready for it.
Satsuki brought her free arm up, allowing the segmented member to coil around it. In the moment before the creature could follow up on that, she brought Bakuzan down, slipping the blade in between the armored segments and cutting the back of the tail away once again. She jumped back before it could throw any of its blood at her, unwrapping the end of the tail from her arm and casting it away.
The monster fell back, what was left of its tail sweeping back and forth, hosing the floor with acid blood in an attempt to keep its opponents back. The humanoid took the opportunity to move around behind Satsuki and retrieve his telescoping spear. Cautiously, Satsuki moved toward the monster as it gave ground, careful not to step on any parts of the floor still steaming. It backed up farther, the blood loss from the tail becoming more sluggish, and Satsuki prepared for another attack.
Then the floor beneath her shifted with a crunch, and she stopped.
Daring to look away from the monster for a moment, she realized that over the course of their battle, the thing’s blood had been weakening large sections of the floor, and she was now standing in the middle of a section so corroded it looked like a sieve.
The creature realized it too.
Grinning, it leaped back up onto the wall, climbing higher, until it had nearly reached the ceiling. Realizing what it was about to do, Satsuki made to get clear; to ensure her feet were on solid, intact floor. Then the beast launched itself off of the wall, crashing into her full-force. With a loud crack, a roughly circular patch of floor easily four meters wide broke apart into chunks, and Satsuki and the creature fell to the floor below.
She didn’t see precisely how the creature landed, but for Satsuki the impact was painful. Junketsu kept her from being injured, but landing hard on her back on pieces of broken concrete was still enough to disorient her for a moment. Wincing, she reached out with her right hand, feeling around in the rubble until she grabbed hold of Bakuzan’s hilt, then opened her eyes, blinking away concrete dust from the collapsed floor. Her eyes watered, but she blinked again, clearing the tears away and restoring her full vision.
The room she had fallen into, below the water main, was a storage room, similar to the ones she had already seen, but much larger, stretching away for ten or twelve meters in either direction. The same sterile overhead fluorescents lit the space, and as Satsuki rose to a sitting position, she realized she hadn’t actually reached the floor. Instead of shelves full of supplies, this space had massive wooden crates stacked one atop the other. She had landed atop one row of stacked boxes, with a gap between that and an opposing one, an aisle one could walk through visible perhaps seven meters below.
It had only taken a brief moment, a second or two, for her to take in her surroundings, and then there was a crunch as rubble shifted, and the light was blocked out by a shadow.
The monster looming over her.
Satsuki drew in a sharp breath as the beast lunged, mouth opening, inner jaws reaching forward to close on her face.
Not this time.

As twin sets of teeth filled her vision, Satsuki moved her hand as fast as she could and barely managed to put Bakuzan in front of her so that the jaws closed on the black blade, the edge slicing into the inside of the creature’s mouth as she put her left hand on the back of the blade, pushing and holding the monster back.
A few drops of the creature’s deadly blood fell from the cut lining of its mouth, dropping onto Satsuki’s flesh and sizzling painfully, but she grit her teeth and fought through the pain, using more of the strength Junketsu gave her to work her feet under her, and then pushed up with those, forcing the monster back farther as it brought its hands up onto the sword, trying to force the blade out and away from its mouth. Not allowing it to do that, Satsuki wrenched Bakuzan sideways, cutting along the creature’s mouth, slicing completely through its cheeks and inflicting some damage on its jaw muscles. The beast fell back, lashing out at her with its claws. Satsuki dodged those attacks and moved away, watching the blood pour from its mouth. The monster trembled with rage, hissing and shrieking as the blood continued to flow from its mouth and face.
This close, she could see the edges of the deep cuts quivering, new flesh gradually bubbling forth as it tried to heal… before halting entirely as whatever supply of biomatter the creature used to sustain itself finally ran out.
There was a loud thud from behind Satsuki, and chancing a quick look she saw the humanoid drop down through the hole in the floor above and land atop the crates with her. Together, they faced the monster.
It hesitated, taking one slow step away from the two hunters, its eyeless face sweeping back and forth between them.
It knows, Satsuki thought. It knows it can’t heal anymore. Immediately following that thought came realization.
They had fallen to the floor below, an unknown section of the bunker. The door leading out of this room had not been secured as the one above had.
The creature was out of the trap.
Either it realized the same thing, or simple instinct kicked in, but it turned away and dropped onto all fours, bolting away across the crates. As it fled, the boxes moving slightly under its shifting weight, Satsuki knew that if they lost sight of it, it would flee deeper into the bunker and hide, where it might find a food source to permit it to heal again, and with its strength restored it would come after them again. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
They had to bring this to an end, now.
“Come on!” she said, bolting forward and trying to catch up to it. “We can’t let it get out of the room!” The humanoid’s footsteps became audible behind her as all three of them headed across the storeroom. She imagined the creature didn’t know precisely where the door was; it was likely just headed for the wall, and it would follow that to an exit. She had to stop it before that happened.

Junketsu’s heels smashed divots into the crates she passed over as she ran, and Satsuki felt her head swimming, her brain struggling to absorb enough oxygen from her depleted blood. Fighting through the pain and dizziness, she put on an extra burst of speed, closing the gap between them. The creature was slower than it had been before, perhaps because of its injuries or perhaps because of the crates shifting underneath it as it ran. Whatever the reason, Satsuki was just able to close the gap enough to grab it by the tail, bringing both of them to a halt.
The monster twisted its head back around to snap at her, and instead of turning it kicked out with one of its back legs, losing its footing but knocking her back. The crates beneath them lurched with their powerful movements, but stayed in place. Running past her, the humanoid sprang atop the black monster and raised the telescoping spear in both hands, preparing for a downward stab. Before he could strike, however, the creature’s tail arced up from behind him and stabbed at his shoulder. The hunter’s armor plating happened to be in the right place to save his life, but the blow still knocked him off balance and the beast rolled them over, ending up on top. Satsuki ran at it from the side and drove a powerful flying kick into the thing, throwing it off her teammate and sending it flying back, the creature digging its claws into the crates to arrest its flight.
The violent scuffle, however, had catastrophically unbalanced the stacks they were on, and their footing shifted alarmingly. The humanoid managed to get roughly onto his feet, but that was when the entire thing tilted beyond the point of no return, and Satsuki felt her stomach lurch as the crates they were standing on went into freefall. She sprang off the falling crate and landed atop a stable one, and looking back down, she saw the hunter extend the two blades on his right arm and drive them into one of the stacks he was falling past, twin rows of splinters erupting from the wood as he slid down to the floor. Her ally safe, Satsuki turned to locate the creature again.
Shit.
It was well ahead of her.
The monster leapt from one side of the aisle to the other, landing almost gracefully before continuing its race to the wall. Gritting her teeth, Satsuki followed, vaulting across the gap and continuing her pursuit. She was fast; agile, but there was too much distance between the creature and her, and the wall was far, far too close. Well before she could reach it, the thing jumped free of the crates and landed on the wall, scuttling down toward the floor. Looking down, Satsuki felt a chill run down her spine as she realized that there was a door no more than five meters from the thing.
She leapt down, dropping straight to the floor below with a thud that cracked the concrete floor, rolling back to her feet and taking off towards the creature before the dust had even settled. Even then, she saw it had already dropped to the floor and was almost to the exit. She wouldn’t catch up to it in time.
Then something whooshed past her head at incredible speed, the wind of its passage catching some of her long black hair, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a gleaming silver streak miss her by inches.There was a BANG and the creature shrieked in agony, suddenly pinned to the wall by the hunter’s spear, impaled to the concrete through its lower abdomen. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the humanoid panting for breath, lowering his hand from where he’d thrown his weapon like a javelin in one last, all-or-nothing attempt at halting their enemy.
She took the briefest of moments to appreciate just how much training such a feat must require, but no longer than that. Refocusing on the monster, thrashing and squirming on the spear, she attacked.
Before the creature could pull the spear out, Satsuki charged it. Letting go of the spear, it swiped at her with the one usable hand it had left and she swatted it away, stepping inside its reach and stabbing Bakuzan’s pointed tip through its open jaws and into the roof of its mouth. There was a shrill screech, and the thing’s limbs and body spasmed with pain, but Satsuki didn’t relent, throwing her whole weight behind the sword and driving it in until the point of the black blade burst out of the top of the creature’s head.
Even then it was still trying to fight, somehow, clawing at her arms and torso with its hand. Satsuki grit her teeth, and turned the blade in her hands, carapace cracking with a sound like gunshots and green blood spraying from the hole in the top of the creature’s head as the blade rotated, its cutting edge now facing towards her. Then she slammed her foot into its chest at the same time that she pulled on the blade with all her might.
The front of its head burst open like a gory, greenish-yellow flower opening its petals, the thing toppling backwards as the blade came free amidst a shower of shattered carapace and bits of mysterious organs. Satsuki sprang back to try and escape the torrent of burning blood, gagging at the chemical stench of the thing’s innards. It slumped down, hanging limply from the impaling weapon, the bisected halves of its head flopping open to either side. A few twitches went through its limbs, and then it went still.
It was dead.

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Mortuus Orbis