21st July
04:19 GMT
His right hand
glows and a spatial lensing effect appears to warp the background but I'm already moving. My crumbler round fires at full power, slamming into the construct armour covering his head even as his own beam flashes out and blasts a hole into the ground behind me. His visor fails, causing him to pull his head back slightly in surprise. As I fire my cold gun he raises his left arm and forms a shield construct, blocking the shot.
Not ablative as the construct armour I use when sparring with Guy and John is, but modular. One part can fail while the rest remains strong. That's actually quite-.
Energy pulses strike my bubble shield as the First pulls back, his escort advancing behind their own floating palisade shields. Not a problem. Just keep moving and-.
A
shockwave of orange radiates outwards from the First, his escort
shooting upwards just before it reaches them. I immediately mirror their action, simultaneously charging and firing my railgun at the closest. His palisade evaporates where I hit but the younger Citadelians have armoured themselves. Okay. I transition behind them and reload my first railgun while forming a second-.
"
Yaarh!"
The Citadelian I shot earlier transitions into my bubble barrier, stabbing with.. an Nth metal cutlass. The bubble buckles and bursts as he fortifies the armour around his right shoulder and barges towards me. I retrain my railguns and dart left, getting a clear shot at the unreinforced armour covering his back. My guns
hum as the crumbler rounds strike home, construct armour shattering, armour and flesh dissolving and
then the cold beam hits. In a second hoar frost covers the Citadelian's body as he plummets to the ground for a second time.
Orange rings can't fix
dead.
The three survivors pull back into formation with the First, forming a combined bubble.. with multiple layers. Okay. I fire a tungsten round at the one I killed, his body exploding into frozen lumps of meat. A filament snatches the ring he carried from the broken remains of his right hand and another grabs onto the pommel of his cutlass.
Holding up my right arm I phase out to allow his ring to pass through my armour and then phase back in, the ring fitting neatly over my right ring finger. Immediately, flashes of the life of a being I can best describe as being a
tentacle elephant appear in my mind. He came to Vega to find a world to settle… A long time ago. Instead, he found Larfleeze. I take hold of the cutlass hilt a moment later.
Two rings again.
Inside the Citadelian bubble my enemies appear to reach a decision. Strands connect the First to his minions and then.. for an instant I'm confused as to what I'm doing here. It swiftly passes as orange flashes around one minion and transitions him into stabbing range. I swing my cutlass to intercept his as my railguns fire! There's a tremendous
clang as his natural muscles try to overpower the muscle enhancements of my armour. I bring my left hand around to push on the rear of the blade as the railguns fire, the first hit destroying his construct armour and the second-.
I jerk forwards slightly as he disappears, a momentary flicker of orange behind me indicating that one of his brethren have transitioned into melee range as well. Before he can strike I transition myself to directly above the Citadelian dome, then drop so that I'm standing on it.
Corrupt and drain.
Compliance.
The orange light in the outermost bubble roils and spins for an instant before visibly
flowing up my body and into my rings. I drop down slightly onto the next level and being to repeat the process as-
Alert!
-two Citadelians flicker into being next to me. Accelerating myself I slash at the one to my right with the cutlass while the one above and behind me is met with a destructive pulse. The pulse is met with only limited success; the construct armour covering his chest fractures but doesn't quite break but he's forced to back away and abandon his swing. The swords -
ugh- achieve little either. Mine cuts through his construct armour and body armour to cut a thin line across his chest while his cuts through my own construct armour and slices through the power armour covering my left forearm. But since I've got an opening…
I hunger.
Both of the Citadelians are pulled back inside the bubbles as another layer fails and is sucked into my rings. Okay, in
theory I could force my way in like this, but somehow I don't think I'll need to as the Hellwraith takes full control of its new host and stabs another Citadelian in the neck with its cutlass before manifesting construct claws and grappling with him. The other two look around in astonishment, giving me the opportunity to create a laser construct attached to my right leg and fire it through the bubble at the First.
If I can see you, light can pass through your shield. Yes, only
orange light in this case but it isn't hard for me to
make orange light.
"Graagh!"
The First instinctively jerks aside and creates an extra barrier, neither of which impede my light speed weapon that passes through orange constructs. This is why we wear
head armour. Credit to him though; he's pretty darn physically resilient anyway. Finally getting his brain in gear he reaches up into the beam of my laser with his right hand and
bends spac-.
Ah! Cutting that out. He turned the laser back on me. Do I pull back and-? No, the whole area around his body is shimmering now, he can just deflect it wherever.
"
Raah!"
The First drops to the bottom of his bubble where the Hellwraith and the younger Citadelian are wrestling, grabbing the demonhost by the head and… Ew. It looked like he just rubbed the fingers of his left hand across its head, but that head then came apart in blood-pumping slices. I feel a slight tingle as the Hellwraith returns to my ring. The Citadelian he fought is visibly injured, but a glare from the First prompts him to start healing itself.
So I shoot him in the left eye with a laser and fry his brain instead.
There's a puff of burned meat smoke as he collapses dead to the bottom of the inner layer of the bubble shield. The remaining younger Citadelian takes his helmet out of subspace and jams it over his head before I can repeat the process. Maybe he isn't familiar enough with ring scans to rely on them to replace the input of his own eyes in combat?
The bubble shield twitches and I transition to a point fifty metres away without much in the way of conscious consideration,
a black beam piercing my former position. Oh great, he knows how to do beam -I transition again- singularities as well. Under other circumstances I might call upon the Ophidian but Larfleeze is
right there. I can't risk destabilising Hinon's control of him. The other surviving Citadelian is gathering up his fallen comrades' rings. Shouldn't help him much, but I can't pierce the shields fast enough -I dodge another black beam, this one passing through a chunk of the forest and violently compressing the terrain- to stop-.
There were three of them maintaining the barrier. I think I've got the First's full attention and the other one isn't giving the matter his full attention. Simple solid shot
might be able to get through it now. I
dodge again, plotting a random evasion pattern as I charge up my railguns and load tungsten rounds. The First drops his singularity projector for a moment, frowning at me as he tries to work out his next move. I fire orange lasers at his eyes to make sure he has to focus on his own defence, then point my railguns at his remaining junior and fire
chargefirechargefirechargefire!
The bubble crumbles at the first impact, caves in at the second and then the rounds hit the younger Citadelian in the chest. His armour cracks, and I'm slightly faster with my cold gun than the First is with his barrier.
"
RAAAAH!"
The First
roars his frustration and his ring momentarily shuts down.
He blinks in confusion for a second, then my cold gun freezes him in that pose permanently.
H
aah.
I watch as the bodies fall to the ruined ground. He didn't realise. Focus on something other than avarice and your ring stops cooperating. No, no way he could have known. The Greenies don't advertise it and neither Larfleeze nor his minions ever encountered the problem.
His body and that of his runner-up associate hit the ground and shatter while the other two just… Burst. I hold out my left hand
and immediately realise that trying to call the rings is a bad idea. Instead, I transition down and pick them up with filaments.
"Are you finished playing yet?
"
Three of the rings show me pictures of species I don't recognise, but the one worn by the First…
Ogandu Onna Oslan.
I nod inside my armour as I turn to face Hinon.
"Yes. Yes, I think so.
"
