Not entirely certain why the portal was above the facility rather than on ground level, or whether that was just for her own poor luck and circumstance, Anne gave a startled squawk even under Trace's spell as she plummeted right for the building. The terminal velocity for a human made some of the air about her burst into flame, although her own fire retardent and adjusting systems put out the worst of it. She tried to dampen the fall as best she could as she broke through roofside in what had once been the lobby.
"Well, we're in it now, that's for sure." Trace said inside her head, looking around through her eyes. At the moment she was just a observer and a passenger, but that could change quickly. "Geeze... Either Wren downplayed it or these things have been growing this whole time. Should've brought the weedwacker."
"Alright, head over to that door on our left. I'm going to set up a breachhead and pull the rest of them in. Oh, hey-" she could probably feel the smirk. "Bet you five bucks Ino and Voth both get stuck on perimeter duty."
Heading over to the door, Anne nodded. "cAn I pay it in sodas? I was gOing tO try a vending machIne accessory. If I lose."
"That was a JoKe, please StoP poking my Stomach, plant tEndrils!"
She flailed at the thorny things trying to wrap around her slim waist and impale it. "thEre aren't any To Grab!"
"How would you feel about a snow cone dispenser instead? It's not summer quite yet, we could still pick one up cheap." Trace snorted, as blue lines started to draw themselves in sequence around the door. Behind Anne's eyes, Trace was focusing on the ritual Inshabel had ingrained in each of them, fast-forwarding through the weird cultist chants she was required to mention. At least, until she spotted the plants already on the attack.
Electricity burst from Anne in an arc, as sudden as a small-scale lightning strike. It left a globe of smoking and burning greenery around her, but the vegetative mass was already regrouping before the door opened-
A black spout of tar, eyes, teeth, and claws hit a massive fan-leaf mouth dead center, Ino's shadow spreading like crude oil in green water. The girl herself stepped out and smiled tiredly at Anne as the rest of the house followed behind her, she raising her hands like a conductor while the cosmic waste pooled on mossy tile and feasted.
"Ino! Hello! ThanK yOu! You saved our butts!"
She almost hugged her, but the waste in the way slithered and hissed enough that she took the warning.
"Hi Anne! I'm glad you made it. Here, let me get some of this cleared-" so saying, her shadow began to arc around them, licking the floors clean and snapping jaws at anything that came too close. Behind her, Voth, Wren, and Jack in her full armor stomped out of the doorway, Inshabel following along. She surveyed the greenery in silence before softly smiling at them all.
"Well, this is certainly more than I'd expected. Ino, I'll trust you to handle the perimeter and retaking the island. Clearcut it only as a last resort, please, dear." She asked, the creepy girl nodding and smiling. "Wren, guard the way back home, if you would. Jack, Voth, the both of you will be heading deeper inside the facility to put rest to this matter. Trace-"
"Oh, don't worry about little ol' me. Us. Whatever. I'll run interference and work the system from right here." Anne's hand waved on it's own. When Trace spoke dark blue ripples played across Anne's cyan hair. "She going with Jack and Voth?"
"That had been my plan." Inshabel nodded.
"Cool, this is going to be something special."
Creaking around the corner with flamethrowers at the ready, Anne panned the room, trying to scan for hostile movement as she listened to the plan. Her other hand ticked of. One, two, three, five, twenty. Twenty moving objects. She pointed to the positions as best she could for the warriors she was supposed to accompany before syncing lasers to start firing.
From the entranceway, Jack thundered past her, lance and shield at the ready. She took the time to chin-up Anne before driving the point of her weapon into a writhing, burning, screaming weeping willow. The drill-lance exploded out the back before it's motions tore the hole even wider. Voth followed in their shadows, swinging out with a burning two-handed sword.
"Guess I owe you. I hate when she ruins my plans... Up top!" Trace said to Anne, before a rotating blue square of skeletal framework spun out from her forehead towards hissing, reaching moss. When it impact the wall it settled in place and then shrunk to the size of a grain of sand, taking out that part of the ceiling and everything on it.
Voth ducked one of her lasers and then jumped to the side, cutting down a stalk of corn that had been stalking her.
"Geeze. This must be what living in Florida is like." Trace muttered.
"Flora-da sounds terribLe," the distracted machine answered, watching a rose try to swallow Voth in thorns and get hewn asunder. "Oh, Florida. Still bad, yes. InTernet daTa makEs it sOund bad. We don't have to go there, do wE?"
"So much mucK. It'll maKe my SerVos whine," she partly whined, and to an extent, Trace's company and the other thoughts helped her. She was wasn't afraid. Too occupied to process fear or self preservation exe.
"God, I hope not. Maybe to Disney World if I can ever convince some of us it's worth seeing, but otherwise I'd rather eat a paper shredder." Trace said, while Voth flapped her arms to get rose guts and petal pieces off of them. Jack hefted her lance in both gauntlets and then swung, cleaving through an arc of brambles and creeping vines in front of her.
"Alright, let's see, we're going to need a map of this place... Once everything in this hallway stops trying to kill us I'll hop into the walls and try to get a layout drawn up. Maybe I can get into the subsystems, start shaking everything down."
A bamboo stalk around 25 feet long whipped, and whipped, and whipped out; it struck Voth hard in her chest and smacked her into a wall, where she hopped up and shook her head rapidly. She smiled at Anne, embarrassed, before leaping back into the fray.
"LEt;S find a communication pOrt, Jack In," Anne suggested, blinking at the chaos. "We cAn be mOrE useful..."
She charged, bent low, for a wall, popping out shredding blades and flamers as Trace directed and letting the technomancer's magic configure her to need, trying to ram solid surface and find something to hook to per the other's plan.
The moment Anne's hand punched through the drywall, Trace briefly squeezed it before flowing from her into the metal bones of this place. Even though much of the wiring and power had been compromised by roots and design, she was still able to travel through them like a sprite. Plants embedded in the wall withered and died as she raced behind them, electricity scorching them as an afterthought.
"Whoa!" Jack hollered, snatching Voth's collar back before a many-headed log sized cactus impaled her. "Stay in lockstep with me. You're not here to kill everything on your own."
Voth nodded rapidly for a few seconds before raising Antonio's fiery sword and taking position at her flank, glancing at Anne and briefly watching the flame throwers do good work. She brightened up and stomped down hard on a squealing squash.
"Was iT named thAt before Jack came to Earth-? AAAAAAH! AGH! AHHHGHH!"
The thing whose face was emerging from the underbrush was very green, very broad, very swampy, and ridiculously riddled with errant teeth and bone. Its fungal hands gripped aimlessly as its eyes looked about. "WRH!" it barked in its throat, flowers emerging. "WARGH!"
She slapped it in terror, and her metal hand buried halfway in the creature's skull. It turned and smiled at her as zombies, mutant plants, and the general results of trying to bioengineer using an Ork's fungus and Big Mountain sold tech continued to swarm. The corporation's aims at using the high spread rate had gone too well. The same could not be said of isolating the genetics and combinations that did it. Instead, the alien biology seemed to have cracked and spread its intrinsic properties through grafting into many species it would otherwise have no relation to whatsoever.
The Ork flowers and their seed and spore festooned employee corpses howled almost as loudly as the squished squash squeled.
At the sight of the walls and floors puking up shambling, malformed... Things, Voth took a knee before pointing her fake leg out and aiming. The limb split apart, revealing the weapon already primed to fire; hyper compressed air wasn't quite bullets, but it forced back the things she hit a step and kept them from being utterly overwhelmed. She rose, shaking, eye starting to glow; she was panting as she tried to keep her head and not berzerk at the sight of so many unfriendly faces.
Jack was having the opposite reaction; she was almost right where she wanted to be.
She waved her lance to the side; ports along the crossguard opened as gas and it's vapors followed along the spin of her weapon. She stomped down, hard enough to crater the tile before a spark flared and the entire drill-lance ignited, the whirlpool of fire sounding out a scream. Jack slammed it against her shield, the sparks and cinders lighting up her hard eyes and teeth grit in a grin.
"Come on then, motherFUCKERS!" She yelled, before charging like a person-sized tank, shield up and lance driving into the enemy horde. Joints snarled as she forced her way forward. Voth fought between her and Anne, doing her best not to be outdone.(edited)
Not such a warrior as her ghostly mate's housemates and her own hoped to be, despite direction, the machine watched Jack's carnage and tried to help clear a path for Voth to rest for a second and recover.
Her grenades went off as she slowly began to process her own combat algorithms. She should have brought poisons. She should have brought disease. They wouldn't affect her, or Trace, but it would affect this surfeit of organic horror. But... then she reconsidered. It would also probably hurt their very much meaty alive buddies. It was better she hadn't, and they were exterminating well in their own right.
The thought of some of Trace's revealed creations still lingered, though, as she instead used the fire and drove chunks of lightning from the ghost's borrowed magic into what loosely constituted nervous systems to supplement it.
"Alright, so, I mapped most of this place out through pings. We're going to take the stairs, not the elevHOLY SH1T!" Trace hollered, stepping out of the wall and double-taking at the gnashing green horde. "I leave for fifteen seconds..."
"It was a good fifteen seconds!" Jack called, slamming her shield down onto a prone fungoid monster. The splatter was horrifying, but not as much as it's component parts continuing to writhe and wriggle. Jack drove her boot through it's head and impaled a pumpkin with four Ork faces and bodies growing from it. Trace rolled her eyes and then gestured at Jack before pressing an invisible button.
"There you go. Fast-forward." She said, watching the armored woman sprinting into another group like a hammer thrown into a bag of cucumbers. "Remind me to never talk sh1t about Inshabel gardening again..."
"Thank you, Anne!" Voth said, taking a deep breath and gathering herself before following after Jack. Her aura had activated, a solid circle of red and orange light around her; she did her absolute best to kill everything in it.
"You uh, you doing okay?" She asked, casually reaching through the wall and gripping power lines tight before opening her other hand and unleashing a blue storm, threading the electricity through Anne's flamethrower and briefly grinning at the sound of cooked, popping genetics gone wrong.
"NoOOooo" The sounds of the machine breaking down in terror were more internal than external, but she still flailed mildly at her ghost friend, lip cleanly shorn by artificial teeth from biting too hard. "Nooo I'm noooght I'm scared"
As she buried herself in a ball, the floral hands began to seize her skin and shed artificial blood. "HOooW do I turnnn off pain and feelings?E??E?1-1-0"
Trace knelt down and covered her as best she could, throwing bolts of lightning instead of a constant stream. It had to be plants... It wasn't like they conducted electricity or had central nervous systems she could cripple through her usual methods. Voth had seen what was happening and drew back, between Trace and Jack's position and killing her way into the coming and going ranks.
"Hey, hey- you're okay. I've got your bac-"
A tomato smacked her in the face; Trace floated up a spear of rebar before sending it clean through an orkoid.
"We're all kind of scared... Well, not me, because I'm awesome, but I don't blame you. You'd have to be crazy or Ino not to be! But I'm here to back you up, and so is Jack, and so is Voth and the others. We're gonna get through this together!" Her grin faded. "I'll keep you safe. I'd crack this island in half before I lost you to a bunch of overgrown fruits and vegetables that want to bite back. You want me to possess you again?"
A potato the size of a truck split open longways, it's gaping mouth hurtling toward Voth; a portal opened beneath it, sucking it in, before another one opened in the ceiling and sprayed it's pieces over the enemy.
"...Plus we got Inshabel on our side. That counts for a lot." Trace said, eyebrows raised.
An arm, festooned with mushrooms, braced against the floor. The other, thorned to the extent metal showed and her bare armpit whined with embedded material digging, clawed the floor. The girl sat up slowly, as a flower stuck in her optic. "i'LL do It. i-If I hAve tO be possesSed all the time, I won'T bE able to HELp yOu, so-"
She started stattering oils more strategically and burning them in turn as she worked her way to standing, then started superheating her surface to burn off the scumming flora. "thaNk yOu, Trace. I loVe you."
Tottering over, she started to rip down a wall section opposite the wiring board to open access further in.
"No problem! This is kind of what I wanted, anyway- you might as well see how we work together and all that junk. At least it's just plants and not Jawas.... I uh, I love y-"
"Saveituntilthey'realldead!" Jack suggested, ramming an Ork festooned with flowers into a wall and then in half. Voth hurtled high into the air, bringing her sword down at the end of her leap. Trace made a face before throwing another bolt of lightning and then hurrying to keep the foe off Anne's back.
"It's the hall over there, and then we're going to hit offices, and then stairs- here." She touched her shoulder and put the map she'd gleamed into Anne's head as well. "We're going to have to do something. These two can't keep this up forever. I'm going to try and get into the fire suppression system, if it's water I'll try and make it toxic, if it's carbon dioxide I'll turn it caustic. Sound good?"
"...Okay!" Voth chimed in. Trace double-took at her before giving her a thumb's up.
"fOcuS on keePing the Friends well. The Mission.Do The Mission. MaKe them SaFe," the android instilled into herself, in mantra and code, over the last vestiges of fear, and then she gathered herself up. "i maY nOt be Pretty after this. and it'S very anthithetical to Making things. And maybe scary?"
She let off her skin in hatches, adjusted her feet, braced as the jets popped out, and rammed at high velocity through a wall with a spiked and serrated shoulder reminescent of one of Trash's, albeit much less bulky. The metal whined in the gaping hole, but she fired again, and again, ripping through moving and inanimate alike as she smashed through the building rooms in the space of moments. She superheated her skin, burning off contact, although some of her features started to deform under the pressures, repeated collisions, and temperature.
"rebuIlding is In order," she muttered, looking like the human equivalent of a car after a bad wreck before ripping down the last barrier with a hand bent backwards. "heRe?"
The three were all staring at her through the line of battered walls, Trace with a dopey, appreciative smile and Jack and Voth slack-jawed. The elemental recovered first, beaming and then setting off after her, Jack cursing as she stomped her way through rubble. Her armor rumbled like a truck in the confined spaces.
"Nah, You're still pretty. Pretty f*cking awesome!" Trace crowed, before getting a better look at her and wincing. Voth patted her on the back before hissing and shaking her burnt palm. "Right here. These are the maintenance and emergency evacuation stairs, they'll take us downward quicker than the other ones, and uh... The elevator is a no-go. I think it's a pitcher plant now."
Jack had been watching Trace's mouth, and she frowned. "How many stairs?"
"What? Who cares- oh." She paused and eyed Jack's armor. The smith eyed her back before sighing. "I'll stay here and defend this shortcut. When you all get to the bottom, ask Inshabel to open a door and I'll join you then, I guess." Jack said.
"Psh. Voth's got a fake leg and she's coming!" Trace teased, before nodding. "Alright. I guess we can't have you tripping and ending up like a turtle on it's back-"
"I liked you better when you were possessing Anne. Then she was the only one who had to listen to you." Jack snorted, waving them off and planting her lance in the ground. Voth opened the door and peered into the darkness, her pupil widening like her uneasy grimace.
"There on the battlefield, she stands, praise, hallelujah; the Holy Grail's on its way now," muttered the android before shaking her head free of cobwebs and to a small extent dents, looking over the plan and nodding. "Stairs. Right."
"I foRgot to Ask which Floor," she reflected, forty seconds after swinging over the railing instead of running down. "This might huRt a bit. But less than Re-Entry diD. I hoPe."
"Hi, Mister Evil Corn!" she waved as she sped past the face of a hulking behemoth, propelled by gravity.
Trace and Voth eventually reached her at the impact site, one panting heavily and the other covered in popcorn kernels. Voth wiped sweat off her face and then busied herself looking for a door to let Jack through while Trace scoped out Anne. "We're definitely going to have to put some work into you when this is all said and done... Hey, uh, I love your enthusiasm, I really, really do, but try and look before you leap next time." Trace elbowed her and softly smiled before Jack strode out of a supply closet, going sideways to get through the door.
"Thanks, Inshabel.... Voth, come here." Once she had, Jack knelt and pointed down the dark hallway. "The floor here is moss, and the air is thick with spore clouds. Turn on your aura and set it to burn- I'm going to have to stick close to you."
"Why?" She asked, kneeling as well and staring upwards at Jack.
"Trace and Anne don't breathe, and you can burn them out, but I don't want my lungs to turn into broccoli." She said, grimly smiling and clapping Voth hard enough on the shoulder that she squawked and stumbled while she slowly rose with clanks and grumbles. "Where to now?"
"We're going to follow Wren's trail once we pick it up to the records room and then the power supply. I'll perform a ritual and more or less critically overload the housing to take this place out, and we'll have just enough time for Inshabel to get us to safety." Trace said, putting her hands on her hips and looking upwards as the floor minutely shook. "Ino's having fun."
Placing her hand on Jack's wrist, the machine whirled and woo'd before getting the message out."I wOulD be vErY upset iF you were brocoli, Jack. St-Ta-Tay you."
"tHe OlD DustY Trail! she sNuck in through prisons, right, Trace? WiLL Ino be mad iF we take her lunch?"
"Yup- she took the back way in, but we tromped through the front and then their foyer and snuck into the dumbwaiter. We'll join up with her footprints soon... Ino?" Trace glanced at her. "No, Ino's probably having a great time. Nothing but an island of targets and things to consume. Inshabel's probably mostly with her to make sure things stay okay."
"CaN wE set a Burning Aura toooo, Trace?"
She managed to once again successfully superheat her frame, but it wasn't quite the same. It did make the plants squeal in terror, though. Admittedly, her circuits did too. And, to her mixed glee and consternation, a girder, starting to glow itself with radiated temperature. "Let's goooo (before I get sCarEd again)" she cheered, whispering the last part solely to the ghost.
"Oh no" she commented dispassionately, watching her sparking kneecap split and fall off. "That is conCerning."
Trace patted her hot, hot hand before her expression froze at Anne's leg splitting.
"Sh1t. Yeah, that's, that's cause for concern. You're invaluable right now, but I don't want you to batter yourself to pieces... Hey, Jack, a little help?"
"Let me pull out my spare fake leg." She deadpanned.
"Can't you, I dunno, carry her?"
"She's your girlfriend, you carry her." Jack said, before offering her hands to Anne. "I guess you can ride on my shoulder like a pretty parrot."
"PoLygons wann-A cracker?" the gynoid found it in herself to quip and giggle before looking at Jack's metal armor. "I- should probably stop. If that conducts. I wOulD be VeRY VERY sad iF you were a baked poTato, too. You're a goOd friend."
"It does and doesn't, but I'd rather not find out it doesn't right now." Jack agreed, before snorting. "Baked potato with extra broccoli. I'm even wrapped in foil... You're a good friend too, Anne." She briefly smiled at her and almost clapped her like she had Voth, but pulled back at the last minute.
Once she was on Jack's shoulder, the smith glanced down at Voth's forlorn expression before looking at her quizzically. Voth crossed her legs and looked away before Jack sighed and hoisted her onto her other shoulder. The Elemental brightened up and smiled happily at Anne over Jack's head.
"You getting on too?"
"Hah! Normally you're always telling me to get off your back..." Trace laughed before possessing Jack's armor. She adjusted herself before stomping onward, lance at the ready and her own small smile struggling to be buried.
":@t___Wheeeeeeee" tooted the android in a cheerful steam noise, finding the ghostly mechanized ride highly entertaining. She did make herself useful shooting things, able to track better from the perch. She did not behave much more seriously, however, "Pew! Pew. I'm a turret now. Ten Points. Twenty points. BIG ORK MONSTER fifty points."
Voth didn't have ranged capabilities, but she swung and chopped her heart out anyway. By wrapping her legs around Jack's bicep, she was able to attack over her shield when she blocked. She was having a lot of fun doing her two favorite things; playing and killing at the same time. She giggled as she split an Ork's head in half, the pieces burning in their wake.
Jack continued advancing to wherever Trace directed her, not letting anything stop her or stand in her way. The ghost herself was cackling and crackling as she threw lightning and tried her best to support Anne.
"Thirty points- wait, wait, that was a trash can, I'm only at twenty." Her voice chimed from Jack's gorget.
"i Think We're almost THeRrrrre's a lot of uglies there."
Her play was nearly forgotten and fear reinstilled, looking through the very last room, now devoid of the radiation that had previously kept the encroachers out. They had massed thoroughly. Thickly. The very confines shook with walls of organic matter.
"...Fuck." Jack swore.
"Fuck." Voth agreed.
"Don't say that." Jack snapped, leveling her lance and once more igniting it. "About time to make that play, Trace?!"
In answer, the ghost seperated out of Jack's armor and raised her crackling hands. Her grin widened incrementally. "Oh, yeah. I can feel it from here, get me about halfway there and I'll take care of the rest! Let's do this!"
Where Jack hit, Voth was in her shadow, her aura burning and scorching like her blade did. She was quick and nimble enough to dance between blows and slice to her heart's content under the shadow of the slab of iron that served Jack as a shield. For Trace's part, she glanced at Anne before her entire arm crackled and melted through an Ork's torso.
"Neat trick. You're going to have to help me fine-tune it!" She laughed, thrusting her superheated hand through a face.
"YeSSS. That'lL be GREAT. CaN we Use your SecreT WorkShop?"
"WAIT , THERE IS NO SECRET WORKSHOP WITH FUN THINGS, FORGET YOU HEARD THAT"
"puRge me nowww, I'm a blabberdroid"
By the time she was done evoking, the Orks were, for the moment, all dead and burnt.
Between Trace's control and Ino's envelopment, the threat was dead before she was done sputtering, frankly, even. It would be a fair extent of time before she was out of repair.
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