The bar Inquisitor Ligh wanted to visit wasn’t that far off our patrol route: Ocean Breeze. It was a dingy hole in the floor. Literally. Ocean Breeze was one of those basent-type bars that only those who know about it go to. Like what I wanted my Speakeasy to be one day.
No clue how Inquisitor Ligh even knew it was here in the first place. Actually, knowing him, I wasn’t all that surprised. He probably knew every bar and watering hole in the city, both those legal and illegal.
The door was locked, but… well… It didn't take much convincing for Joshua to fix that. I could’ve done it much faster if I tried, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about all of this in the first place. What happened to us being the good guys?
“Keep watch.” Inquisitor Ligh muttered as he walked to the bar. He slid over its top, wasting no ti rooting through bottles.
Dev was the only one who actually listened to his order and stayed at the door, watching over the street. I pulled one of my remodeled Scouters, with both audio and visual integration, out of my bag-
Oh, yeah. I flinched as I looked down at the device in my hand. It looked so much like an eye. I blinked. My hand was covered in blood, the object in my hand twitching and pulsing with commands. I blinked again, everything returning to normal.
I shook my head, refocusing on the Scouter. No HUD anymore. I could still use them with my deck or wrist pad, but they weren’t nearly as versatile as they once were. I popped it back into my bag.
”I’m going to find the bathroom.” Joshua announced and then walked off toward the back offices. Funny how he completely overlooked the bathroom sign on the opposite side of the basent bar.
Hope just sighed and went to sit at the bar, her head slumping as she watched the Inquisitor move about. A tired expression covered her face, as if she were long used to the man’s antics.
”Um- sir? Isn’t this, like… looting?” The very thing we were out here to stop… at least sowhat. We were on patrol for a lot of reasons, but catching looters was definitely one of them. Of course, it paled in comparison to the primary goal of eliminating monsters.
The Inquisitor froze, his head twisting slightly as he looked back at . “Looting?”
“Uh- chek?”
“Hmm… yesh, I could see why you’d think that. The owner of this place… hmm, let’s shay they owe sho money. I’m just collecting my duesh, not sothing fiendish like looting a disaster zone.” His voice started off rather uncertain, though it beca more and more righteous as he spoke.
I eyed the man for a mont before slowly nodding my head. “Right, if you say so…”
“I do.” The Inquisitor turned back to scrounging for bottles. He seed to find one he liked. "Ah!"
I moved and sat beside Hope, enjoying the montary break in action. Honestly, if we stayed here for a bit longer, I could pretend we weren’t in a hyper-dangerous exclusion zone and relax just a bit. I'm so tired. When could we go to sleep?
A yawn-
“Movent,” Dev called from the entrance as neon flashes outlines his form. He shifted, anchoring his LMG on the doorfra as he stared out at sothing in the distance.
I imdiately hopped off my seat and raised my rifle. I wasn’t the only one to start moving. For however much we were ssing around, our group was still made up of Crusaders. Hope jumped up onto a booth's table to look out a small window.
Joshua appeared from the back offices. “What are we looking at?”
“A group of five… definitely monsters. Looks bipedal, almost like robots?” Hope replied, though she sounded uncertain.
Inquisitor Ligh sighed, grabbed his bottle of whiskey, and then slid back over the bar. He casually made his way to the door. “Suppose it’sh ti to do our jobsh.”
The Inquisitor was the first one out the door, heading up the short flight of stairs back up to the street. He directly drank from the bottle as he went, nearly stumbling back down the stairs as he stepped on a slick patch.
The rest of the Squires followed while I took up the tail. As we moved up the stairs, I caught sight of our targets through the neon-lit rain. There were five of them just down the street. They weren’t looking in our direction, so we montarily had the advantage as they staggered down the abandoned streets.
They were indeed plant monsters, as the violently writhing vines gave away. They were more than just the normal monsters, though. It looked like the vines had parasitized combat robots, taking over the robots' bodies and directly controlling them. At a glance, the tech didn’t look like anything familiar. They had Sentinel guns, though.
Hope flashed hand signals, keeping quiet as the group formulated a plan. Inquisitor Ligh- well, he didn't do much of anything other than drink half the bottle in the ti the rest of us worked on a plan of attack.
We moved into position, all of us waiting for the signal. I lined up my rifle with the one on the far left. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure where to shoot to injure the thing, but for now, I focused on the head. Ti slowed as I patiently waited.
Bang!
With the first shot from Hope, the rest of us opened fire, each on our own targets. I sent a burst first, watching it travel through the air thanks to Dexterity’s slowed ti effect. The first four bullets impacted as I controlled the recoil for another burst, three of them deflecting off the robots armor while the fourth struck one of the vines, causing the infested robot to stagger.
The enemies reacted to the gunfire, ducking for cover. Or, at least, most of them. The one Inquisitor Ligh targeted dropped with little fanfare. My eyes flicked to it, catching sight of its injuries. Ligh's bullet bounced off its chin, deflecting into the interior of the parasitized robot-
A cold flash of a bullet piercing through my shoulder sent tumbling to the ground as I hid behind a car’s engine block. A half-second later, the robots fired back as bullets cracked through the air. My world narrowed as I cowered away from sharp howls of bullets passing just overhead.
They had guns now. Of course they had guns now. As if the monster’s base forms weren’t terrifying enough. I waited for the suppressing fire to die down before poking my head up again and firing another burst towards my target.
I hit the vines more this ti, causing the creature to release a tallic screech as it ducked into cover. Green goop sprayed out of the vine’s wounds, though it was quickly washed away by the rain.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted another one of the infested robots drop to the ground, dead. Inquisitor Ligh was putting in work, it seed. Joshua and Hope pushed forward, keeping low and using the cars as cover, while Dev gave covering fire with his LMG.
I likewise assisted with covering fire, suppressing the infested the best I could. They didn’t fear death, though. With even the slightest gap, they'd fire back without regard for injuries- err, almost without any regard for injuries. Every ti one of the vines was shot, they’d stagger and hide to recover before peeking again.
At complete odds with the battlefield, Inquisitor Ligh walked right down the middle of the street as if there was no danger. He took a swig of whiskey, uncaring as the aggro shifted to him. Bullets rained in his direction, though all miraculously missed. In one case, a rat fell from a building above and took a bullet aid right at the Inquisitor's face.
With the Inquisitor drawing the three remaining plants' attention, Hope and Joshua closed the gap almost imdiately and engaged. Squire Joshua made the first move as I shot one of the bots in its vines. It staggered, and Joshua took the opportunity to body slam the already unstable infested.
The robot-plant hybrid dropped to the ground as it lost its balance. Joshua dodged backward, ducking into cover and full-auto unloaded into its chest. If several bullets couldn't get through, keep firing until sothing does. Eventually, the robot stopped resisting and went still.
Hope’s attack was much cleaner. She got close and then charged like a bull, blocking shots with the silver Crusade armor that covered her body. She dropped her rifle into her sling, whipping out a dagger and throwing it into one of the vines crisscrossing the infested's chest.
The dagger caught on the vine, though it didn't pierce through the armor. At least, not yet. Hope lept into a full force drop kick, slamming the dagger with her feet. The dagger’s hilt shattered as the blade shunted straight into its internals. It dropped dead without any resistance.
The last was taken out easily. Not by one of us, though. The infested robot was hiding behind a car, firing at Inquisitor Ligh. One bullet finally pierced through his bullshit aura, shattering the quarter-full whiskey bottle just as the Inquisitor went for a drink.
For a mont, the world seed to freeze. He dropped to his knees, cradling the shattered bottle. Then the Inquisitor scread out with far more emotion than I’d ever heard from the man. “You bashtard! That was vintagggeeee!”
A massive tree-trunksized thorn—the kind that the serpant protecting the tree used as anti-air weaponry—fell from the sky, skewering the infest robot through as it spiked into the ground.
The infested robot's hand raised weakly as if to ask for help-
Fire erupted from the ground, turning the entire thorn into a raging bonfire as the vines across the infested robot writhed in agony. Must've hit a gas line or sothing.
Eventually, the gas line shut off as a sensor detected the leak. The pyre died down into a smolder as the burnt thorn sizzled against the rain. I stared at it for a mont before side-eying the Inquisitor. Yet another reason to never get on his bad side.
“You guysh- you clean the field. I- I’ll be back.” A cold, depressed sigh ca from the Inquisitor. He trudged off back toward the Ocean Breeze bar, his shoulders drooping tragically.
Hope stared off after the Inquisitor before shaking her head slowly. The bags around her eyes seed to deepen. “You two, go with him.”
”Got it.” Joshua nodded and then moved off after the Inquisitor. Dev followed monts later.
I reloaded my gun, refilling the mag with loose bullets as I walked between abandoned cars toward Hope. While I was at it, I went ahead and checked the rest of my gear, ensuring everything was still good to go.
She crouched over one of the infested robots, tapping one of the vines with her fist. Hope looked up at as I approached. “What do you think?”
I pushed my reloaded mag back into its pouch and tapped the infested robot with my foot. Unlike what I expected, it didn’t have internals like a robot should. Instead, it had a mass of sothing biological that Technical Expertise couldn’t penetrate. The thing was closer to a shell than anything. “Weird.”
I bent over the infested, pulling apart its chest to reveal the insides. An organ resembling a heart lay still inside of it, leaking green sap like it was blood. The vines grew from the organ, stretching out and poking through the armor to entwine the rest of the way through the robot casing.
Hmm… I took a knife and dug out the vines, revealing more of the thing’s insides. It looked… almost intentional? Like whoever designed the robotic shell made it with the intent to be taken over by the vines. The vines, although weak and squishy compared to the rest of Mother’s arsenal, made up for their shortcomings perfectly with these shells.
It must be why she took over shells rather than just creating the sa monsters she normally did. The vines were probably easier to create than the full-fledged ents and other assorted monsters, and had a strong baseline firepower by using modern weapons instead of slinging thorns like the others.
More importantly, this newest mutation ant Mother was learning and adapting her strategies. It was a worrying thought. I knew she had intelligence, considering she tried to hijack the interface and kidnap , but this was a different level of planning that made worried for the future. If we failed to stop She Who Grows now, and she only grew more?
A chill went down my spine. No wonder the eidolons wanted us to put a stop to her so badly.
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