Big Sis!
A crust of snow cracked beneath her paw as Ravager reached the mountaintop. Corpses still rolled down the slopes, torn, slashed, gutted. She didn't indulge her hunger today, marveling at the surrounding heavenly scenery. Whiteness covered the entire mountain, burying several desolate settlements below. The Extinction had scarred this area of the world, and the biting cold covered the stones in reflective ice that shone wonderfully, reflecting morning rays after she had climbed above the clouds that denied even a glimmer of light to the surface.
And everything was covered in this white blanket! Normies explained to her that this thing was called snow, a kind of frozen water that fell from the clouds. She didn't believe them at first and had grabbed a heap of this snow. Her sharp eye noticed thousands of individual ice crystals, all merged together and melting so quickly in her paw. But how could ice be so gentle to touch? Ravager didn't understand, and frankly, she didn't care. Ignoring the mission at first, the Commander had squealed like a child and jumped into the white pale, sweeping her arms to make an angel print. Janine's cough had reminded her of the importance of their mission, and the group resumed their travel.
Crudely embedded houses led to the top. These weren't abandoned; she smelled the faint scents of frozen bodies inside. Swarms of insectoid creatures composed of long-bladed limbs and smallish dark green carapaces had spewed themselves from the interior of the vast network of tunnels that penetrated the whole place, their minds distorted by the nightmares descending from above.
They had found it. The Apocalypse class, an individual whose power affected the entire world. And they weren't alone. Terrific, always eager to please, had opened the corpse of a large slain beast, frowning at the strange, repetitive arrangement of organs in the body. Ravager had joined her, examining the triangular heart chambers, clearly designed to survive extensive blood loss. Someone tinkered with the Old World's knowledge.
Ravager had ordered Terrific and Janine to head above using the tunnels while she braved the outer side of the mountain, attracting and butchering the insects, various creatures, and madmen fighting them. She had carried a screeching individual into one house, staying silently above a bullet-ridden child's cot, saying nothing, and compared the woman in her paw with the frozen little one. Not a local. Her suspicions had been proven true, and the claws closed, squashing the pleading bitch.
Hunters vying for the prize.
At last, she reached the summit, stepping on top of the world and looking down at the heavy clouds passing below. Ice, both clean and covered with ichor, and blood, both red and sickly yellow, reflected multicolored flashes into her eyes, pleasing the monster. Her skin tingled, craving warmth. An adaptation followed soon, and her body temperature normalized.
How beautiful. Ravager decided, thrusting a paw through the mandibles of a creature that was stalking her. Occasionally, shimmering peaks of smaller mountains peeked through the swirl of black clouds, as if they were islands rising from the depths of the dried-up seas. The sun bathed her in its rays. A top of the world. Back when she was locked in the laboratory, back when she grieved for the dead civilizations, she never dared to imagine seeing such a brilliant scene anywhere! The monster clutched fists to her chest, her concerns about hundreds of slaughtered beasts abandoned.
A squeal broke Ravager from her concentration, and she raced, faster than a bullet, to its source, hearing Terrific fighting several levels below. Janine's cub, Kostaltyn, the first of her litter to survive, thrashed in agony, bleeding flammable oil and sparks, his eyes bulging out of sockets. Ravager elbowed Janine away and was on him, using her brain to the fullest.
The situation became known instantly; his clumsy and crude implants overloaded, igniting his nerves instead of transmitting synapses to the exo-suit. I warned him not to trust these toys! She carved them out of him, but Kostaltyn's heart gave in, and Janine howled mournfully.
Again. So many gifts, and I can't even save a single soldier even when I want to. Her fangs gnashed as she handed the body to the mother.
A group of people in thick, blue clothes formed a line, barring them a path to a makeshift pile of planks behind them. Each had an emblem of oaks on their arms, and they bore weapons. Her eyes swept the summit, taking in the information.
A heavy step left by Kostaltyn's exosuit. It was a lunge in response to a threat. Janine's tattered coat and sharp objects stuck in her hide. Not bullets, tranquilizer darts. Her Wolfkins lay scattered about, asleep and with a few broken bones, but otherwise unharmed. Claws and bullets damaged the group's clothing, wounding four, and their weapons did not resemble those used to eradicate the locals. No cause for blood vengeance yet.
A figure showed from the shack. He was a gray Malformed, his skin hung in sacks along his oversized limbs, bandages covered his limbs, and to move around, he relied on a person who had a white armband with a red cross on it. Ravager sniffed the air, catching frozen pus and medication from his body and a tingle of nightmare, a complete copy of the ones that had denied her sleep for over ten days, touched her brain.
The target.
She raised herself on two legs with a crack. Ravager didn't like that choice, having grown accustomed to the quadrupedal style during the two years of her imprisonment. However, her liege always berated the 'animalistic' posture, insisting that she would walk on two legs to avoid needless intimidation during a negotiation.
"Hand him over." Ravager extended a paw. "Otherwise, death."
"Please, listen to us!" A teen jumped from the line, her long blonde hair tied up in a bun hidden inside her cowl. The hanging eyelids, reddish eyes, and dark circles around them told Ravager that this girl had not gotten her share of sleep either. "This was an accident! We… I didn't mean to hurt him."
"It isn't relevant, fool!" Ravager growled. "That one's power…" She pointed at the Malformed. "…threatens everyone's existence. Turn it off."
"I can't," the Malformed spoke in growling and mewling, drooling saliva, but a little communicator near his ear translated the words into the Common. "I wasn't even aware I was doing anything. If I'd known, I would've stepped into the sky."
"Then death it is." Ravager stepped toward the Malformed. A slash of her claw propelled the air to draw a recess in the snow, slicing the weapon of a man in blue as he tried to aim at her. He blinked, struggling to comprehend her speed, and she wished to plunge her head into his chest and feast on his hot insides. His lack of aggression saved him.
"There is no need to fight anymore. Don't die because of me." The Malformed broke free and hobbled toward her. "I never meant for any of it to happen; I never wanted my tribe to suffer because…"
"It wasn't your fault. But I can't let you live."
"Yes. Yes, you are right. Stop it."
"No!" The teen jumped high and struck down with her tonfas. She was fast, faster than a scout, but to Ravager's amber eyes, the girl moved in slow motion. Every cell in the monster's body demanded an immediate sacrifice, but she refused to oblige, and the tonfas' ends struck the snow, covering Ravager in yellow lightnings that weaved around her limbs, biting gently, and she laughed, amused at the feeble efforts. "How are you standing?"
"Useless." Ravager let loose the claws.
"We can help him!" The girl pleaded, surprising the monster with her determination and willingness to fight against her. "There is a drug that can stop the abnormality from working! No one has to die…"
Ravager raised an arm, stopping Janine from lunging, and stood, oblivious to any sounds around her. At a snap of her fingers Janine, good, sweet, loyal girl, rammed into a creature that climbed up a cliff and began tearing it apart, while the rest of the Wolfkins patiently waited. It can't be. Even the information about a medicine capable of stopping powers wasn't that important to Ravager. Her breath grew heavier as she examined the girl's almost perfectly formed skull, her arms that had grown in muscle since the last time she had seen them, and a new ear…
"Eugenia…" Ravager whimpered to the thief who had robbed her of her chance at freedom. The girl stopped talking and looked the monster over, her eyes widening.
Why? Is there any justice in this blasted, half-dead rock? The vat-borns were dead, and this bitch who hunted them for fun still lived? How dare there be such a deep remorse in her eyes, and why did it stay her paw from correcting a mistake of the past? Why was Eugenia pure, still human, dressed in fine clothes, while she was a merciless monster suffering from constant headaches and gripped by barely suppressed violent desires and memory loss?
I won't return to the Room. "You can't enslave me again," Ravager growled, loud enough for the ice covering the cliffs to crack. Janine almost fell down, but she regained enough of herself to grab the woman by the nape and pull her to safety, assigning two Wolfkins to protect their unconscious comrades.
"It's… you." Eugenia touched her ear and the visage of that teen from that fateful night when the world was still alive briefly flashed in the tormented mind. "I am sorry. I am so sorry for what I have done to you." Her voice broke, and she dropped the tonfas. "I didn't k… no, I have no excuses. Let me help. Cut me if it'll help you, or I can go to prison for life. Planet is my witness; I deserve it and more. But please, come back with us. There are people ready to help you."
And Ravager believed her, recoiling in pure horror at the sincerity of the offer. She followed a simple ideology. Help? She was a monster; that was why she had been dragged back to the laboratory, why she had been punished, and why she had lost her family. By resisting her nature, by refusing to fight as a monster would, she spelled their doom. A road of death and slaughter waited for her. Spitefully, she cheated her fate, choosing to wield her talents for the sake of people rather than sink to the depths of depravity. But the core rule of her simple ideology remained unchanged. It wasn't possible for those destined to be evil to turn good.
Take away my aggression, change me? After everything she had done? After refusing to show mercy to her mother, after abandoning her family and inverting the spawn cloned out of her? Ravager's paws trembled; a jolt of pain coursed over her brain, bursting veins, bringing her closer to the instant where she would phase out and wake to piles of corpses around. No. There is no redemption. I can't… It isn't right. Yes, it made sense. A lie. It had to be a lie. If there was a shred of goodness in her, a piece of hope, why didn't she rescue anyone other than Zero or not befriend and change the people there?
She was grateful for the wailing sound in the air. The space ten meters above the plateau took on a reddish hue, mingled with occasional darkness, and it burst, shattering and releasing the blinding white light to illuminate the gathering. Ravager's snarl sent her pack toward the group in blue; Janine glanced at Eugenia with half-dead eyes, but did not attack, holding her dead boy.
The caustic smell of anesthetic wafted from the round hole, then Ravager heard the noise of mechanical joints shifting, and a humanoid machine landed on the top of the mountain, sending cracks with the weight of its twenty-meter-tall frame. Its feet were wide enough to kill a Wolfkin with a step; the heat coming from under the gray plating began melting snow, and rivers of water poured from the cliffs, creating steam and freezing without reaching the ground. Green blades flashed on the long fingers, and three oculars at the head found the group.
It was a trick. Her ears picked up the excited beating of two hearts in the center of this thing, below the neck. And there was another quiet beating far too slowly to be human. This last person was hiding in the tunnels, clearly not wanting to be found by those who controlled the humanoid machine or by Terrific. Another competitor?
A stream of flesh poured out of the portal. Cracks of bones filled the air as bodies strained to separate from a single mass. Muscled beasts and bladed insectoids landed on the wet ground, circling the machine's feet; membranous wings flapped as dozens of screeching creatures, little more than torsos attached to wings, took flight.
Ravager was thinking, restraining herself from attacking. She scanned the cannons' barrels, calculating the potential radius of their shockwaves if they would indeed be firing projectiles and had taken into account that the hunters very obviously sought to claim the Malformed for themselves. The fact that the beast hadn't attacked them yet supported that theory; these creatures showed no mercy to anyone they'd encountered before.
But if those bastards could teleport, why didn't they retrieve their prize already? Were they luring other groups into a trap or was there a limitation to their teleportation method? A line-of-sight requirement, perhaps?
"Hand over the mutie," a twin laughter boomed from the robot's head, confirming Ravager's theory. "And no one will have to die."
"That is a lie," said a man in blue. "Their words contradict the mindless slaughter unleashed by their minions…"
"Correct." Ravager nodded and reached for Eugenia. "You can help him?"
"Yes."
Eugenia didn't scream. Not even when the claws took away her ear and tossed it into the open jaws. The girl had changed, alright, and not just mentally. Her body's structure was different, but Ravager cared more about claiming what was hers. Eugenia had no right to that part of her body. She leaned in and rubbed a scent mark into the Malformed's cheek, engraving herself into his very DNA, forever linking the two through a bond felt by her. No matter the distance, he won't be able to hide if Eugenia lied to her.
"Still able to open portals?"
"You bet." Eugenia grinned, holding a hand over the missing year. "On me, we are getting out…"
"You are getting out," Ravager corrected her, dropping to all fours, fangs jittering, eyes locked on the machine. "And monsters battle."
To her surprise, Eugenia opened the portal and stepped through it along with the Malformed, while the rest of her group remained, quickly changing their weapons to what she assumed would be a lethal mode. Domes of force shields spread from their wrists, and they ducked to cover themselves and the Wolfkins, while Ravager positioned herself in front of the gathering.
"Who are you people?" she asked, the madness nearly consuming her.
"Iternians, miss," answered the man, suppressing his anger at her maiming his comrade. "You?"
"Reclaimers. Why did you stay?"
"Saw the dead children on the way here."
"Ah. Then we are of the same mind. Don't get killed. We must chat later. Janine, you are in charge until Terrific finally deems it fit to get her ass here." Ravager crashed into the machine, sending it staggering backward. The two fell into the vast emptiness while the united crew opened fire.
What a weird day it was.