Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

The ground floor rooms were mostly trashed and emptied out, so there was little to be found unless one went to look a little better, which might lead to some minor discovery. But now was not the time for that, as there could be things happening upstairs.

Taking the nearest stairs to head up, Adelle found herself at a door on the end of the stairs which went to the next floor apartments. Just as she got into the dorm hall, a somewhat troubled-looking Shiulin backed away from one of the rooms with her double blades drawn, and a trio of bizarre tentacle creatures followed. These ones were made up from a single tentacle which was about five feet in length and the thickness of an average guy's wrist, with a much larger sucker-like mouth on one end. Even as they looked so awkward in shape, the creatures appeared to be capable of good, fast movement, hopping about with surprising accuracy and speed. Most likely Shiulin had expected them to be something completely different and was now finding herself in a tight spot.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Heading on upstairs for now as it would simply take too long to search through each room for anything valuable as they were all trashy and looked like they'd been looted mostly already. When she got upstairs to the next floor she saw Shiulin having a tussle with 3 strange creatures herself, and it seemed that they were forcing her back as well. Adelle rushed over and dove at the nearest one of the trio of creatures, tackling it away from Shiulin and trying to hit a second one in the process to take some heat off of her so she could deal with the remaining one and then come to her aid afterwards.

After tackling one or two of the things if she could angle her tackle right to do so, Adelle would wrap her legs around one of the two to try and pin it as best she could while swinging her sword out at the other one, or wrapping her legs around the one she grabbed if she missed out on getting 2 of them and swinging her sword at it as well in an attempt to cut the thing's mouth end off.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

While her intentions were certainly nice, there was some trouble to be had when one tried to tackle what were basically bouncing snakes. Adelle's charge took her cleanly over the first one, her feet kinda passing over the thing as it was low on the ground during the point of contact. The first swing of a sword almost made it, scratching the smooth pink skin of the second one of the bunch. The things made their moves as Shiulin cut one when it jumped towards her before swatting another aside mid-attack with the side of her large knife as she did not quite succeed in slashing that one.

The initial charge had not quite done what she had expected, but Adelle was still in a relatively good position, until the one creature she had tried to trample over took action at least. That particular one noticed that it had another target nearby, much easier to reach than the previous one even. It was quick to dart into action, appearing in front of the busty girl with one quick leap and slamming itself onto her face with the second, which left it attached to make things harder. All of a sudden, Adelle found herself in a dark and damp place as the sucker mouth sticked to her face, the breath of the creature not making this any more pleasant an experience.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Sailing clear over the first one with only her feet grazing it, Adelle's blade did find its target somewhat at least on the second of the things, cutting it a little bit. She was about to continue her attack on the creatures when one of the pair she'd attempted to tackle flung itself at her, its mouth like opening clamping down over her face and blinding her to all else. Adelle immediately started pulling on the thing with one hand, deciding to stab the thing if she couldn't pull it off of her, figuring if she could get it off of her then it would continue to frustrate and keep it distracted and also give her a chance to get another of the two distracted.

"Dammit, why do I always end up missing when I go to help others like that?" Adelle asked herself in her head, unable to come up with a good answer for her own question as she tried to place what the smell was.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

The smell on the creature's breath had a slight chemical scent to it, and alarmingly enough, it appeared to be at least partially composed of something like chloroform. If that was any indication, too long an exposure would likely lead to her getting knocked out or at least weakened. A few tugs on the thing were needed to get some development going, the first tries managing to get the sucker partially off, only to have it come back again on the rebound. But it turned out that the third time was the charm, which resulted in the creature getting detached completely with a loud pop sound, a bunch of the tentacle's slobbered fluids remaining on Adelle's face as a reminder of that kiss as the thing flopped back to the ground.

While she had been doing sort of bad, Adelle could see that Shiulin had fared better, having wounded both of her opponents as purple fluid was leaking from the gashes her knives had caused. And it looked like they had not managed to catch her either, the girl's form still unstained and pristine.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Smelling what appeared to be something like chloroform on the thing's breath, Adelle scrambled to get it off, holding her breath as much as she could to keep it from knocking her out. With her face drenched with the fluids of the creature as soon as it popped off her face, Adelle got her blade up and prepared to slash the thing as she stood back up to face it, while Shiulin meanwhile had fared better against the other two and had managed to damage both.

Taking a step towards the one that had been on her, Adelle waited for it to make a move before stabbing her blade out at it in hopes of impaling it upon her blade, where she could plant her foot down on it and bring her sword down on the mouth end of the creature and cut what passed for its head off.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

The duel between Adelle and the one tentacle bugger she had singled out went on for a little bit, neither of them really managing to get much out of the situation as they avoided the blows and lunges from each other, the stabs being good enough to make the creature veer away from her. After a trio of exchanged failed attacks, the situation finally came to a head as the creature rebounded from a previous lunge and came at the busty girl in a backwards manner, which left it wide open. One hit split it in two from the middle, while a second one separated the head from the remaining body half and sent in tumbling into the air, where it proceeded to tumble down onto her head to make a silly hat as the mouth was still wide open even in death. Unfortunately, the silly hat still managed to drool some more onto her. While it was kinda disgusting, there was no real harm as the chemical potency appeared to be gone with the separation of head and body.

While Adelle had been dealing with her troublesome tentacle sucker, Shiulin had kept up the good work and warded herself of any harm with a continuous circular defense pattern of evasion and counter strikes. One of the two critters fell to her knives, the head getting removed with an accurate chop. Even though she hardly looked the part, Shiulin did appear to have decent skills at melee combat.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Taking their attacks back and forth, Adelle and the creature soon came to a bit of a stalemate, with Adelle finally managing to break it as she lopped the thing in half when it lunged at her. She followed up with a second swing that took the head of the thing clean off, which amazingly landed right on her head like a hat. Looking over at Shiulin as soon as she'd done this, Adelle saw that the woman had taken out one of the things herself, leaving just one left to deal with.

"Let's get it from both sides together, it'll be quicker and let us move on," Adelle said to Shiulin, moving around to the opposite side of her and the creature.

Once she'd moved around, Adelle tried to catch the thing off guard and stab its tail to pin it to the floor where Shiulin could take its head off and finish this scuffle so they could continue their search.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Now with two targets picking on it, the remaining tentacle bugger was in a bad situation. It managed to avoid one strike from Adelle's sword, but that was as far as it's luck went for Shiulin was quick to salvage the situation for the two of them. She kicked the critter off the ground as it was caught off-guard, sending it flying and leaving it exposed to the busty girl's sword, which ended the conflict as another severed head flew across the room. While she had started a bit bad, Adelle had managed to do good in the end, even with a silly hat on her head.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Adelle's stab missed the creature as she sought to pin it to the floor, however Shiulin kicked the thing into the air, where Adelle swung her sword again and took its head clean off, where she then flipped the head of the other one off of her head and looked around to see if there was anything else. "Alright, the basement was clear mostly. Nobody was down there, but a couple of creatures were hanging on the ceiling and wall, had a bunch of tentacles that tried to grab me up but I managed to keep from getting snatched up," Adelle said to Shiulin as she caught her breath once the fight was over with. "Want to stay split up and check the rest of this floor? Or have you and Lacri finished with this floor already?" she then asked.

If she wanted to split back up then Adelle would go the opposite direction and start checking rooms and everything she came across in hopes of finding the girls. Adelle would also keep an eye out for anything that looked useful as well during her search for the girls once her and Shiulin either parted ways for the time being or if they stayed together, whichever the other girl decided.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

"Nope, not done with this yet, as the closed doors can show. The ones opened I've checked, had no trouble until these guys came along. Probably disturbed their home or something." Shiulin told Adelle how she had been progressing. "Not sure how the fancy nun is doing as these areas seem to be split into separate sections. She is probably doing some work on the other side of the wall over there in another set of apartments." she pointed out the other direction where Lacrimosa most likely was at the moment. Regardless, she also thought that they should stay together now, unless Adelle thought it smarter that she should go over to the nun sister's side. All things considered, she would most likely be better serving their cause with Shiulin as Lacri was quite a tank and would most likely do better on her own than the female taskmaster did, unless her kinks were played with of course. Those could probably be used to subdue her, but otherwise, it would be hard for most.

The rooms that Shiulin had looked through were about as interesting as the ones that were on the first floor, the one room where the creatures had come out from being the only one with some difference as it had partially been made into a tentacle lair with some of the same fleshy substance as the ceiling clinger covering parts of it. These ones would not spawn any tentacles though, so getting near any of the patches was safe. Shiulin eventually found a room where there was a hole in the wall, leading to another apartment on the other side, allowing the access to Lacrimosa's side of the building. Thankfully, it did not appear that anything was going on over there. After a little further looking, the pair found this side of the floor pretty much empty.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

"M'kay, probably be best to stick together now too, Lacri is strong as hell and can easily take care of herself, probably a lot easier than if she had us with her. I mean she's the strongest person I know period, so I'll stick with you for now since I'm already here," Adelle replied about Lacri to Shiulin. "If these tentacled creatures are all about this place... well I hate to say it but I've got to say I think I know what happened to our girls probably considering what almost happened to us. Likely got ambushed by something in this place since it seems to be so full of these monsters... which I suppose there is an up side to it as it may mean that guy wasn't the cause of them getting captured. Won't know for sure though until we find them," Adelle added before following Shiulin onwards, checking the inside of the room out that the creatures had come out for just a moment before heading on.

Following Shiulin through the room where she found the hole in the wall leading to another part of the place, Adelle helped her to look around where they found it pretty much totally empty with neither of the girls being found yet. "Well damn, upwards we go then," Adelle said after they looked about for a minute or two and fond nothing, preparing to make her way over to the steps to go up further.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

In the tentacle meat room, Adelle could actually find a set of clothes that in all likeness belonged to one of the girls. They were set aside in a manner that was far too neat for the monsters that the pair had fought. Those things had little concern what happened to the clothes of their target after they had been taken off, so there was something at work there besides monsters, all things considered. But as there was nothing further to guide the two at that point, there was little that they could do besides advance to the next floor.

The stairwell to the next floor was empty of any threats, which allowed the pair to advance. Just as Adelle was about to open the door into the apartment hallway, there was a loud smash as something appeared to happen on Lacrimosa's side. Another blow followed, and then another, a slight shaking signalling that some serious shit was going on over there.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Spotting the clothes that looked to belong to a human within the room that the creatures had come out of while she searched it, Adelle grew more worried, though she held hope that the girls had only been taken by some creatures within this place and not the guy that had hired them to supposedly find his family members that'd been lost. Heading on upstairs after that, Adelle and Shiulin saw the stairwell clear thankfully, as she didn't want to fight anything on steps and risk tumbling down them and breaking her neck possibly. Just as they reached the top and Adelle reached for the door though they heard some crashing sounds from over around where Lacri was at.

"What the... come on, let's get inside, Lacri could be in trouble or maybe she found them and is trying save them," Adelle said as she opened the door to take a look inside and see if she could spot the cause of the noise, pulling one of her trusty old pistol out and aiming it down the hallway with one hand while holding the sword in the other, as it was more than likely stealth was no longer an option any longer.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Going into the hall revealed little initially, just an empty corridor which was very much like the one below. Considering that Lacrimosa had been at the other side all this time, it was easy to see that she was not there. But after another crash brought her in, unfortunately through a door on her side, the slide backwards ending in the middle of the hall. A young lady followed after, breaking a part of the wall as she followed the nun. She was one of the stranger things that Adelle had seen up to that point, a short girl in a black sweater that went down to the middle of her thighs like a dress, the whole article having a white flame pattern on it. A hood with a high collar shared that same pattern, just barely revealing a short, white haircut and yellow eyes, the latter looking somewhat empty. She was a slim one with no real womanly features to speak of, which only made it harder to understand how she managed to heft her arms about, which were missing below the elbows. They had been replaced with monstrous mechanical hands, big enough that she could probably grab Adelle in one hand and Shiulin in the other black metal limb. She also had a backpack of some sort, and the thing deployed a pair of shield-bearing assist limbs as soon as the girl had noticed the two other people in the hall.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Peeking inside the corridor ahead, Adelle saw nothing out of the ordinary, at least not at first. Taking a step or two inside though, Adelle nearly fainted from fright when suddenly Lacri burst through a door to her side and into the hallway. Looking over, Adelle saw another girl following her out, a small girl compared to them really, and lacking in everything on her chest that Adelle had plenty of. The two seemed to have been fighting from the looks of it, and when she noticed Adelle and Shiulin some more devices came out of her backpack to join the fight.

"Um... what the hell is she? She one of the girls sent out Shiulin? And are you okay Lacri?" Adelle asked, pulling back a little bit to stay out of her range and deciding to let Lacri stay up front as she raised her pistol, taking aim at the girl's shoulder to see if the shielding devices tracked her movements and reacted accordingly to see how quickly they would do so. If attacked, Adelle would dive to the side as best she could to avoid getting hit or grabbed by those large metal hands, pretty sure that it would hurt if they managed to get a hold of her.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

The girl came forward with another gargantuan strike of the fist, which the nun fortunately avoided by rolling to the side and towards Adelle and Shiulin, joining them again. The impact of the fist on the floor told clear as day that getting hit would end badly, the sight of the floor panels shattering and bouncing in the air giving an indication about the strength and weight behind the humongous arms that the little girl wielded. Even though Lacrimosa had rolled away, the girl still followed up by using the weight of the fist as leverage and took a small leap forward and around to align herself against the group before bringing both of her arms in front of her to act as a shield. Only a small gap between the two allowed visual contact as the girl followed how the situation unfolded, or maybe she was considering her options how to deal with the group, never breaking eye contact. Even with the arms there, the shield-limbs were ready to go into action as well. "I'm alright... a little beat up maybe... but she is telling me to surrender. I refused... and she attacked me after that." the nun told what had happened between them. Shiulin did not seem to know her, which was a small relief possibly.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

The girl was obviously immensely strong thanks to those large metal arms and hands, how she even stayed standing without tipping over was beyond Adelle really. Watching the floor panels shattering upon the hit that Lacri thankfully dodged made Adelle'e eyes widen a bit, telling herself to not get hit by those things unless she wanted a broken back or something... which she didn't.

"I see... well that means she's fair game then I'd say," Adelle replied as she watched the girl once Lacri responded on what had happened, holding her pistol at the girl, where she then brought her other one out and aimed it at her too after sheathing her blade, figuring that wouldn't be any use here. As soon as she got a clear shot in on her, Adelle would take it once they all got ready to attack and take the girl down, with Adelle aiming at her legs to incapacitate her.

 

[Guan Yu]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Shiulin too saw very little reason to use her twin blades, so she sheathed the things and unlocked the sheath of the gun she had been carrying. But once it came out, Adelle could see that it was not a firearm but something else entirely. It was a pistol crossbow, the wings of the bow spreading out vertically as soon as it was out from the sheath. The thing had three separate slots for bolts, meaning it could fire three times before needing reloading, but it looked that the bolts were powerful enough to make each hit count as they had special hunting tips that would make pretty serious damage to any fleshy target. Still, she would need to hit the girl to cause that damage as the huge arms would likely just break the bolts if she hit them. Lacrimosa had little in the options department, so she stuck to doing what she did best, even if the claws were a little less optimal in this situation than her piledriver gauntlet.

Lacrimosa was the only one of the three to approach, the initial approach doing little to goad the girl into action, but she had her feet exposed as the lower arm was not quite all the way to ground. Shiulin took a shot with Adelle, both of them getting blocked as the arm dropped down to cover the blind spot. The nun used the lapse in attention to grab onto the upper arm and vault herself over, bringing a claw down as she sought to land onto the girl and push her down. The plan did not quite work as expected, one of the shield limbs pushing her back before any serious hurt could be done, though the tips of the claws managed make a small scratch on the girl's hooded face. The giant arms came after Lacrimosa once she was not within striking distance of the girl's body, taking two huge hook punches at her but missing as the nun sister backed away from the onslaught.

With the body now exposed as the recovery on her swings was low, the girls took another set of shots. Adelle's bullet was intercepted by a shield arm, but the things fared worse against the bolt that Shiulin fired, which slipped by the protectors completely and hit the girl square in the thigh. Lacrimosa came back with another jumping attack, which was blocked this time around with one arm while the other came down onto her, flattening the nun to the ground as all the weight of the fist was brought to bear upon her. Quickly adjusting the hand to keep Lacrimosa down with her open palm and fingers, the girl shifted position to hide behind the other arm and her shields while keeping the nun down with the other. "Surrender, or I'll crush her." she called to the two from behind cover and waited to hear what they had to say.

 

[Mind Flayer]

Re: Steel Sky (Adelle/Mind Flayer)

Watching Lacri approach the girl as she and Shiulin drew their weapons, with Adelle noticing Shiulin's special crossbow and admiring it a little bit. Adelle also noticed the girl's feet were exposed to fire so she decided to save that spot for a sneak attack later on if they were in dire straits and she could get the shot off. Taking the shot at the girl's legs instead for now along with Shiulin brought the girl's defenses up, causing both of them to miss.

Aiming for another shot at the girl as Lacri vaulted over her, Adelle pulled the trigger, yet her bullet was again blocked, however Shiulin's next bolt struck the girl's leg. After Lacri attempted another vaulting maneuver though, Adelle watched her get knocked to the ground and pinned under one of the girl's large metal arms, where she called for them to surrender or else. This almost made Adelle laugh, as Lacri's regenerative abilities meant that she might go down for a few seconds, but not for long... however Adelle held her tongue and looked over at Shiulin to see what her reaction was to be to the girl's demands.

After seeing what Shiulin's reaction to the demands would be, Adelle quickly looked around for anything that she could use in the hallway against the girl, though she doubted much would be found that would be useful. If nothing could be found to use to free Lacri and if Shiulin didn't reply to the girl, Adelle would raise both weapons and continue aiming at their opponent for a few moments, knowing Lacri would be just fine after a minute or two and was likely already preparing her own counterattack. Shifting her foot over to tap Shiulin's and get her attention, Adelle winked and directed her gaze at the girl, mouthing silently to Shiulin to aim at her weak spot while she pulled her pack around.

"Why should we? You'll probably just crush her anyway even if we do. And why did you attack? We're just looking for a couple of our hunters that went missing a couple of days ago, that were sent on mission here to find some man's missing family. So unless you're the one that has them we don't really care about you," Adelle called back to the girl, reloading her pistols with some of her armor piercing rounds she'd gotten a while back and kept for a rainy day, figuring now was as good a time as any to use them to break through the metal arms.

Once reloaded with a change in ammunition, Adelle waited for the girl to respond to her questions before firing as she aimed her guns at her again, aiming her bigger pistol she'd gotten from Miguel at the arm holding Lacri down, specifically at its elbow joint in an effort to damage it, while she aimed her other pistol at the girl's more exposed foot to fire a couple of shots at it, kneeling down to steady her aim better. If the girl released Lacri and they found that this had just been a misunderstanding then Adelle wouldn't shoot, but if she tried to push further and continue demanding their surrender, Adelle would shoot at her intended targets on the girl's body to both free Lacri and hopefully get a shot through enough to prevent her escape, as it was likely that she knew where the missing hunters were since she was here attacking them and all.