68 - Re: Slaughterhouse 9 Pt. 5 [Cherno]

Casus met the beast in battle, weighing his own superior agility against its great mass and inbuilt weapons. Its own mobility certainly surpassed expectations, and its flesh had either been processed somehow, or it was being supplemented with good-quality thaumatech. Slowly, Casus stacked up festering wounds while avoiding getting crushed beneath its vast bulk or battered by the Blasting Array in its maw. He couldn’t keep this up for long.

The downside of the Omniphage Dregsteam Cartridge was simple: It ate away at the user the same way it ate away at their foes, though at a much slower rate. The effects of repeat use were nearly as horrific as acute anathema burns... But Casus didn't need to use it more than this once. By the manufacturer's own recommendation, someone with Casus's attributes could safely use it as frequently as once a week.

That knowledge didn't make it feel any less horrid.

At least he was nearly done with this one. It had just about enough juice left for a Coupler Charge, and then he’d move on to the partly-used Pressure Cartridge.

Casus thought to perhaps listen to the Foreman’s commands to see what the beast would do next, but it was to no avail. Not only did he belt out his orders at a superhumanly fast rate, he did so in the language of a remote land with which Casus was not sufficiently familiar to interpret in these circumstances.

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The lanky man had pulled a lower-half face mask over his head, and started rattling off commands that the mask amplified to an impressive volume given its size. Krahe, however, almost had to stop herself from laughing, because he recognized the language. It was Cantonese, or rather, a strange dialect of it. She wasn’t sure whether it was linguistic drift or if whoever brought the language to Zastreon had spoken this dialect. Regardless, she couldn’t reasonably interpret it and relay the command to Casus quickly enough to keep up with the Foreman’s comical rate of diction.

The Foreman's auctioneer-like, machine-gun cadence of speech hadn't made it easy to discern that fact, but the brief moments when he had to stop barking orders to breathe or reposition had fallen into place alongside the surgeon’s earlier descriptions of the weapon. It wouldn’t act unless commanded by its creator… But it was seeing the big ol’ kinetic blaster in its mouth that really put a grin on her face. The path to victory had just paved itself in front of her eyes.

The graft-beast had no agency of its own. Unless the Foreman gave it a direct command, it would only move around in a limited area and lash out at perceived threats in the immediate moment. That still made it a potent area denial factor; it was, after all, effectively a shitty spidertank. It even had the same flaw of a single high-powered armament, though major similarities ended there. Unlike a spidertank, the Pet had its own energy shielding generators, which, Krahe supposed, made it not quite “just a shitty spidertank”.

It was no wonder why the Foreman had to speak that fast, given that the hexapod’s motion and rate of action was fairly quick for its size. It kept on blasting and trying to smash Casus, occasionally lashing out at Krahe when the Foreman gave the command. Three attempts now, and he still hadn’t been able to tag her. A small mercy that only a few particularly stupid gangsters dared to try joining in, only to very quickly die either to one of the duo or to a stray shot from the Pet itself.

"Keep it occupied, I have a plan!" she barked to Casus. Rather than complain, he stepped in for her to block one of the creature's blows, tacitly telling her to get on with her plan. The force of that alone was enough to visibly dent his chestplate and push him back, carving tracks into the ground.

She kept firing off Cinder Gatling rays in the Foreman’s direction, taking a moment to reload her pistol while she ran in the general direction of the fateful alleyway. Then, when the Foreman finally managed to refocus on her, she allowed him to tag her while still trying to make it look as if she hadn’t done it on purpose. As she got into position, she had no choice but to kill a trio of Gor’ah on the body-pile’s edge.

Krahe even put up a token defense as the Pet refocused its attention on her, shifting by a few meters as it turned in place and charged its kinetic weapon. Casus took this opportunity just as she’d expected, cranking his belt twice and dropping into a low stance with his right leg forward and the left back, so low it was almost kneeling. His left arm hanged loose while the right rested against his forward leg’s thigh. That stance… It was similar to Monochrome’s, but different nonetheless.

“WARNING: Omniphage discharge. Stand free.”

Alarm flashed over the Foreman’s face as he barked at the Pet, causing it to stop midway through opening its maw to swing its body around. Casus was already in motion, and managed to slip beneath its mass in a sliding kick that abruptly transitioned into a rising uppercut straight into the huge thing’s midsection. Mercurial liquid gushed out of the wound as the suit forcibly injected it, and the ejecta soon mixed with the tank’s actual contents of blue, faintly glowing fluid. Baneworm venom mixture.

The beast raised itself as if to try and crush Casus beneath its bulk, but he discarded his armor’s entire right sleeve to free himself as he deftly rolled out of the way, the rest of his armor falling away from him alongside the spent cartridge. He had bulging black veins all the way up his neck and his eyes were bloodshot, but the moment he got his bearings he slammed a High-Pressure cartridge into place and transformed again… Just in time to be smashed right into a wall by one of the Pet’s limbs.