Post by HyperGFreak on Jun 26, 2009 23:31:41 GMT -5
Setup and cleanup were fairly time-consuming practices for the Deities, their natural efficiency counteracted by their great attention to detail. It was such that the sun had begun to set by the time that the trio of AOMD vehicles coordinated their efforts and converged over the Lawless Zone. The majority of the species were preoccupied with recent occurrences regarding Tormata, Washington DC, and other races, and thus none of their leaders were present at this second test of their kaiju’s limits. However, each of the six pilots and passengers present there were just as skilled and clever in the study of the sciences as their leaders and would make fine substitutes.
For their next test, the ADAM Organization’s triad of ships ventured into the barren, unforgiving, desolate realm of ice and snow. This was done on the express recommendation of Orlov and Byers, in the name of safety and caution; with the chaos in the aftermath of Tormata still obvious and overpowering, and the possibility of a second sudden appearance of dark forces, it was best to avoid attention. Even now, the ships hovered in the deep center of the frozen zone, levitating over a relatively smooth plain of thin snow over a sheet of ice. Within the deepest icy crags and mountains of the area, the sheet, a jagged, slightly slanted break in the cold slopes, remained over a thousand meters in diameter.
The high-pitched keening of the wind and the silent thumping of snow flurries on vehicles were undisturbed by the brief flashes and beams of light as two kaiju were beamed down to the surface. The ice was probably solid throughout the peak’s hundreds of meters of height, or supported by solid rock, as the ground showed no visible signs of distress even as over a hundred thousand tons of force was applied to it. Some two hundred meters above the ground, safely above their own creations, the AOMDs steamed, heat stores coursing through their frames reducing vision-blocking snow to steam momentarily.
Unlike the Arctic, the Lawless Zone resided within the Ring of Fire, meaning that the sunlight varied alongside the rest of the world. The Deities, while not particularly sentimental and not given to praising beauty, were still caught off guard by the surprising view of the twilight reflecting off alien spires of ice twisting and looping into the clear sky in blissful silence, dancing figures rising up on all sides of the plain in a sort of barrier. “Simply amazing,” one of them muttered. “This landmass should be impossible, to be spawned by nature…a desert and a volcano that suddenly shifts into a brief stretch of vegetation, and then this icy realm? At these polar coordinates?”
“Nothing is impossible.” Someone else broke radio silence in a different vessel. “We still haven’t even begun to delve into the secrets of that creature from earlier today. Granted the lack of any visible environmental engineering, this landmass seems too perfect for a gargantuan monster habitat…”
Beneath them, Insidious shifted, a low, rumbling caw dying deep in her throat. There were little nutrients for her to absorb from frozen water, and little she could do to this environment. In sharp contrast to her typical activities, she fittingly kept to herself, almost like a bird huddled up upon itself against the weather. A thick pool of light blue mucus, already frosting over and pushing away snow, spread from her base and tail feathers hundreds of meters from her rotting feet, the rapidly-breeding maggots on the ground withering in the chill. Her own flesh failed to completely freeze over due to the constant cascade of poison flowing down her frame, while her typical sextet of “wing feathers” draped down over the ground, inactive without anything visible to spread over or rot.
To her side, the mucus twisted and pooled out of the way, avoiding the diameter of a swirling magnetic vortex’s base. Insidious rarely showed concern for allies, but in this case, perhaps due to some mental programming of the Deities’ commands, perhaps due to some unspoken understanding between the twin monsters, both understood that mucus did not belong in a violent twister. While only a third of her true height, Renneth glided in the air with his crest and back spines at over a hundred meters, floating slightly over the electrified tips of the Dove’s plumage. His arms dangled limply, uselessly, at his sides; his talons folded in neat military rows, six interlocked in a solid wall directly before his shifting chest. The head stared unseeingly forwards, the blank eye sockets ignoring the panorama even as their companion’s head turned slowly from side to side, seeking a target, any form of nutrition. The tornado beneath him had already swapped into his new surroundings, the dust of the desert long discarded and replaced with snow. Likewise, the brown dust coating over his crimson flesh was not a powdery white; as his spines flexed and rippled with magnetic force, the magnetic behemoth almost become the earthly image of an angel, wreathed and haloed in pearly swirls.
Mental pilot commands quickly activated filters and shielding to shut out the effects of Renneth’s field. Insidious appeared unperturbed by her comrade’s weaponry, blatantly ignoring even the thin, edged, vicious shards of ice that the saurian had incorporated into his vortex, dozens of them four to five meters long swinging and slashing around. Their wardens looked on carefully from their aerial viewpoints, paying more attention to their radars in caution as befitted their orders. While other alien races might take offense at being ordered around by a mere human, the Deities had no such qualms, so long as the orders were logical to them.
Before the onlooker’s experienced eyes, Renneth suddenly “tensed up,” so to speak; his six claws remained folded and sheathed before him, but his head slowly swiveled to face outwards to the eastward sea, followed by his body and personal vortex. The air silently began to ripple around his eye spike and the wall of molten claws before him, a golden glow of energy gradually overtaking them as he sensed the intruders into his own airspace. The slight movement and the accumulation of the area’s energy also served to alert his partner, who slowly shifted her entire frame to turn and face the same direction. More out of caution and efficiency than actual concern for Insidious’s view, the magnetic kaiju glided to the side several dozen meters, giving her a clear path to the incoming targets.
“What are these…?” one of the pilots asked, all of them by now aware of the pair of incoming creatures on their own radar.
“The humans have dubbed them ‘Ursis,’” his in-ship partner responded, glancing down from his bird-eye’s view upon the duo of Lawless Zone irritated inhabitants questing towards the source of Renneth’s irritatingly persistent magnetic keening. “A species of oversized predatory bears that hunt other inhabitants of the cold in pairs. Typical animal partnering instincts there, yet they are surprisingly aggressive and strong for their kind.”
Silence overtook the Deities present as the pair of Ursis came over the ridge, the bears’ fur coated in white snow, their noses whiffling and sniffing at the air. Both paused briefly as they drew into view of the extraterrestrial kaiju. For several moments, there was little reaction from either alliance; on one side, the natural keepers of the Frozen Zone faced the aliens, sensing the unnatural, irregular, forces that did not belong on Earth. On the other side, Renneth watched them impassively with his charged weapons trained directly on them, unmoving aside from the slight bobbing of his levitating parts and his moderated, constant twister, while Insidious did little besides rumble eagerly and begin to lean forwards, her tentacles almost unnoticeably solidifying from fluid waterfalls into tentacles of metallic consistency, the large puddle beneath her feet starting to casually slither forwards.
Undeterred by the comparatively massive size of the hulking white giant and the unorthodox appearance of her companion, the Ursis’ hackles rose, starting to aggressively pace forwards, closing the several hundred-meter distance between them and the Deities’ weapons of mass destruction. One’s lips curled, crimson steaming gums and yellowed teeth in sharp contrast against the omnipresent snow and ice, and it let out a sharp snarl. Encouraged, the second started forwards as well, the two picking up pace, padding swiftly and silently through the frost. The trio of AOMDs took up positions and rose even higher up, reaching heights of over three hundred meters in the name of caution.
Renneth didn’t wait and risk the wrath of their claws or jaws, simply discharging his first energy blast from his eye spine. From the sharpened tip blasted a thin golden stream, lancing onto the center of one Ursis’s forehead then strafing directly left over the other’s legs. Both rose up and roared in anger, the fur blackened and burned away to reveal charred and tender flesh beneath the beam’s path. Neither had known the pain of intense heat in their cold home; ironically, Renneth’s assault had been powered by the energy and small warmth of the molecular movements present even in the Frozen Zone. As the pair reared up, revealing their undersides, the alien unleashed his second burst, this time striking the opposite bear and raking it across both their bellies. Skin and hair disintegrated from left to right, creating an almost symmetrical horizontal char on both’s frames.
The magnetic extraterrestrial’s assault once more served to antagonize its recipients, who both began a headlong charge at their foes. Moving with surprisingly agility, Insidious’s six wing “feathers” lashed up to an almost horizontal position, briefly liquefying as they went. The front ten to fifteen meters of each tendril disconnected, sending waves and globs of acidic mucus rocketing forwards towards the two bears, while the rest of the tentacles re-solidified and returned to her sides, this time pointing forwards and extruding out eagerly towards her foes. However, the Ursis themselves moved with surprising celerity, each bounding to one side slightly without losing much momentum in their rush. The light blue mucus sailed between them, splattering over the ground, already coated in ice. Renneth’s own following assault proved more difficult to evade, as a silvery hematite slab swung around from behind him, spinning around a central point like a propeller and sailing into their path. Both bears skidded to a halt, swinging wildly at the obstacle, but the mars they created in the large chunk’s surface did little to prevent it from pushing them out and back, effectively breaking their momentum.
“I expected more aggression,” one of the copilots murmured gently, even though they were yet no roars or audio clues that needed to be heard. “His regenerative capabilities have already returned to near-maximum capacity, we acquired four sharpened slabs for him recently…why has he not actually attacked?"
“He senses more incoming targets,” the other responded bluntly and briefly, viewing his radar’s input.
Renneth’s lone slab whipped and whistled in warning to the surprised Ursis as he himself turned away from them, swiftly gliding to the side and around Insidious in a safe circle, taking his twister with him in that relative track. Behind him, the sharpened stone swung then speared the ice, leaving cracks around the point of entry and tossing up a brief cloud of snow. Both bears jumped back in surprise, observing the foreign object apparently moving of its own accord. Their natural aggression swiftly reasserted itself, but as they began their advance once more, they were not alone. Her base pool of mucus rapidly growing as she seemed to “salivate,” more and more spewing from all parts and pieces of her body, her area of influence swiftly and silently stretching out, her six tentacles extending out in readiness to grasp and devour, Insidious lumbered forth, delighted as always.
To her rear, Renneth skirted the rest of the mucus behind her as it was sucked up to her main reserves, his six claws breaking up as he traveled several hundred meters more outwards, facing the opposite end of the icy plain. Half a thousand meters remained between him and the valleys and crags from where a second pair of hunting Ursis emerged, come to investigate the noise and disruption of their fellow kin. Three warped pieces of metal slammed onto one of the Renneth’s circular, ball-joint like wrist, reforming one of his hands, while the other trio spiraled off into the sky somewhere. Viewing the combat taking place behind the seemingly inorganic saurian, the pair of Ursis simply rushed into the fray as well, perhaps helping their kind, perhaps seeking another meal, perhaps driving away intruders.
The alien cared nothing for the reason, merely lowering down to his foes’ level, his head only at fifty to sixty meters. Both his arms remained at his side, clawed and unclawed, bent out slightly, ready to swing, but otherwise completely relaxed and calm. The magnetic field reached out with a probe once more, increasing its intensity around the bears, sharp pains striking their minds, briefly dazing and confusing them. This soon turned to anger, and they broke into straight runs, their long tails flying behind them as they bounded through the flurries towards the still-motionless extraterrestrial.
An infuriated enemy or a provoked opponent often fails to release their irritation in anything other than impotence, something Renneth knew full well and took full advantage of. His missing trio of claws spiraled back down out of the sky, arcing horizontally over the bears’ backs, tips down, rippling and glimmering with more accumulated force. Three beams rained down across and over the bears, force burning up a flank and body, slashing across a muzzle, stinging a large fat-warmed rump, even blasting snow to water around the targets’ frames. If he was hoping to slow his enemies’ pace, though, he was to be sorely disappointed, as this as well seemed only to goad them into a faster charge. Still he remained unmoving, almost mechanical in his neutral position. The left Ursis drew several dozen meters ahead of its companion, charging Renneth, its powerful jaws open wide and its eyes fixated on the smallest bitable object, the clawless arm. Its muscles flexed and tensed, its sharp claws drove down and splintered the ice into tiny white shards; the next moment, snow burst out in an impact crater as it drove itself off earthshakingly into an aggressive leap.
In a maneuver perfected and casual from experience, even somewhat utilized on the battle with the Chuku earlier that day, Renneth’s attention never wavered from the second Ursis rapidly approaching as his left arm simply split off from his torso. From the airborne bear’s perspective, one moment it was about the clamp down strongly onto white flesh; the next moment, the arm shot out before it and literally disintegrated before its fangs even made contact. Renneth’s left arm rapidly divided into various chunks and splinters, stinging the flailing, surprised, unbalanced bear as it passed through. Its dancing claws clipped several chunks, to no avail, and drew small blood from Renneth’s side, to a complete lack of reaction or acknowledgement.
The bear spun as it landed, turning just in time to watch the limb’s particles snap back together almost simultaneously, as if watching a recorded explosion being rewound. The arm reattached itself to the body even as the second Ursis bent at its knees and sent itself flying at the extraterrestrial dinosaur, beginning the second part of the planned two-pronged attack: something incredibly ineffective on a creature that sensed everything around it on all sides with an omnipresent field. Neither of the hapless mammals had any idea of the excellent multitasking capabilities this gave Renneth, lacking the experience of the unfortunate Chuku predecessors.
In just two to three seconds, Renneth simultaneously launched an efficient attack and defense on the Ursis, quickly disabling both. The first’s animal mind still struggled with what had just happened: it had first assumed that its prey was so frail that it had disintegrated on mere touch, and yet the arm was still there before its eyes! The next thing it viewed were the pair of elbow spines, which were somehow leaving the body, propelled outwards by some invisible force. The Ursis was unable to continue with its cogitations at that point, as the two spines sank deep into its flesh, one piercing the flank and the other the side, spearing through thick blubber and skin and into sinew and meat beneath. The first blood of the day stained white fur and earth bright red.
Approximately eight more spines joined the attack before the first two even connected, several spawning and firing out of Renneth’s side and back like darts, while others detached from his shoulder blades, flipping around to face point first on their way. They struck over the form, one driving into the face, others stabbing all over the body and underbelly, one impaling a forelimb, another pinning a foot to the ground. The bear had enough bulk to avoid being killed from its mere wounds, though the sharp pains and the obvious internal damage was enough to make it keel over for now, gushing blood over itself and the surrounding area in a reddish pool.
The second bear’s short limbs were no match for Renneth’s comparatively lanky ones in terms of reach, and it had barely come within the magnetic creature’s range before the clawed arm lashed up and out, swinging forwards and given an absurd, whip-like burst of momentum by the remained three slabs that had by now arrived, repulsing the limb forwards from behind. While Renneth lacked finger joints, the claws turned sideways in the direction of the slash moments before contact, causing the points to drive directly into the bulky lower body of the bear. There was a noise like a popping balloon as three blades tore through blubber and then flesh and meat, two striking deep into the rump and a third claw blocked by bone in the leg. Renneth’s arm continued its motion from right all the way over to his left, tearing three crimson gashes from behind to midriff and sending the Ursis careening away behind him to the side. It struck hard and bounced several times, crashing across the plain with a long stream of red spraying across the ice behind it. His head still facing forwards in its original direction, Renneth’s three claws spun and snapped back to a straight outwards position, blood skewing away over the ice even as his other appendages returned to his left wrist, giving him a pair of full hands.
The first bear now rose and struggled to its feet, blinded by animalistic rage and agony, tearing its skewered paw free from the ice. Even as backstabbing attempt, the wounded creature was now horribly inept; it shook its head and snorted pathetically several times, trying to maintain its proper footing, blood dripping from its nostrils and jaw. It failed and slipped, crashing to its side, its mouth snapping ineptly at the air as it tried to gather itself up again, succeeding only in spinning itself around in a circle like a dog chasing its own tail. Even had it been in better shape, it was unlikely that it would notice Renneth’s central back spine swiftly and noiselessly sinking into his flesh, emerging from his front side, while the other eight hooked protrusions quietly rotated in his back, so that the curved blade pointed inwards to the center.
Mustering its strength, the Ursis flung itself straight at the alien monstrosity’s back. In response, hundreds and hundreds of spines, ranging in size from three to five meters, slipped noiselessly from Renneth’s now-emptied center back, pointing directly outwards. The bear’s eyes widened suddenly as it crashed onto the spiked rack, head first, ending up splayed like a skinned fur trophy over the larger kaiju’s back, the only thing preventing it from being completely skewered being its inept body’s lack of momentum. Even so, Renneth undoubtedly helped the process with a casual magnetic pull on the bear’s frame, causing the bear to be pinned tight and heavily wounded, several spines tearing through its jaw, piercing its tongue and knocking out a yellowed tooth. It clung, its mouth soundlessly open, the spikes scraping the roof of its maw, an agonized whimper escaping its throat, while its four limbs and paws remained impaled, run straight through. Depending on the spine lengths, some stabbed a meter or so into the bear’s skin all over, while others barely scraped the fur, preventing it from being completely killed.
Renneth had every intention of changing its current state. With a speed that belied his constant stationary status, he rocketed straight up almost two hundred meters into the sky, bringing all four slabs up with him. All ended up spiraling above him, and his twister disintegrated into a spiral of snow and ice around him in a large sphere as he shifted that part of his field. The Ursis, still stuck to the spiked field of his back, groaned weakly as its tormentor flipped backwards ninety degrees, the end result being Renneth with his sightless eyes facing the evening sky, the bear between his spikes on one side and a large gap to the ground below on the other.
Gravity itself would have worked in this occasion, but the Deity race was always one for overkill. Somewhere down below the mountain of solid ice, perhaps even beneath the earth, was something that Renneth could pull on, however how faintly, just as how he could fly by repulsing something down below; above where much larger and more influential metal objects for him to push off of. The result was that Renneth simply rocketed downwards from a standstill to a velocity impossible to reach by gravity alone, shooting like a bullet. The resulting crash rocked the entire plain, sending abstract formations of ice around the plain crumbling to dust and sending a resounding boom rocketing around the area, the first notable sound to enter the combat since its initiation. The second downed Ursis was knocked back off its feet, and a massive impact crater was driven into the solid ice of the ground. A tidal wave of snow burst out into the side, enveloping the view of Renneth and the bear, while plumes of ice shards blasted hundreds of meters into the sky. More ominously, this show of winter beauty was accompanied by a massive spread of crimson ichor, and other pinkish flesh-colored chunks and bits and pieces that rained down among the snowfall.
Beneath the white powder, Renneth laid on his back, arms splayed and drenched in a massive pool of red at the bottom of the crater, which was flooded with the remnants of the target Ursis. Fangs bared, the magnetic monster raised his arms for a second, before repelling the hundreds of spines in his back, freeing himself from his position embedded into the ice and driving them completely through the mangled corpse. His back coated in a wet redness similar to his original coloration, Renneth rose upwards, quickly darting to the side to avoid a retaliatory attack from the second Ursis. As the two kaiju spun around and slashed at each other, each avoiding the other’s advances, the Deities were given a very satisfactory view of Renneth’s handiwork and the unfortunate strips of flesh mingling with bloodied metal beneath.
While this had been going on, Insidious had been engaged in an equally ferocious and gory clash with her pair of foes. Rather than letting both of her bears strike her head on, the Dove preferred to take the initiative and go on the offensive herself, her six tendrils lashing out over hundreds of meters, her shoulder spines going into an even higher rate of production to create more and more mucus. All this while, she continued to lumber forwards, the pool beneath her still stealthily snaking forwards towards her potential meals.
For the next chaotic moments, the Ursis were suddenly subjected to a violent dodging game, the six tendrils coming in and lashing at them from all directions. Writhing whips with the consistency of a metal flail, they swung up and down, here and there, wildly attacking, their large bulks striking the icy ground to toss up snow and crack the ground beneath. With their long length and mass, and Insidious’s innate strength, they gathered great momentum as weapons, whistling through the air and Ursis’ fur. One lashed at the left one from above at a forty-five degree angle, and it bent lower and kept on; a second tendril came down directly from above, forcing it to stop and throw itself to the side in a shower of snow as the tentacle smashed down to its side. The other did its best to halt as solidified corruption struck in front of it vertically, planting down before it like a bluish, semi-translucent tree trunk. The ice provided poor traction, and it only succeeded in crashing side-first into the mucus. Before it could regain its bearings, a second tendril rotated down like a pendulum perpendicular the first, towards the Ursis’s face. It cringed away, ending up clipped and flung over onto its back.
As these pair of tendrils continued to torment the flipped bear, the remaining pair tried a new tactic on the rapidly approaching first Ursis, one punching directly towards it while a second molded into a flatter object and whipped low at its legs. The bear was caught off-guard, trying to sidestep the first, and was tripped and flung sideways, skidding towards Insidious. By now the first two tendrils had recovered from their failed assaults, and swung down towards it from above, whipping it heavily. It squealed in pain, its body jerking and bouncing off the ground. These four tendrils now raised up, constricting it and lifting it up to Insidious’s head height, before snapping the bear down onto the ground.
To the side, the second Ursis lashed out furiously at a solidified tendril as it was knocked to the ground once more, but only succeeded into getting some mucus onto its claws, which began to sizzle and slowly thin away. Insidious, still a good hundred and fifty meters from her current plaything, now wrapped two tendrils around the bear’s chest, squeezing it tightly. The Ursis struggled back, pitting its considerable strength against the corruption’s, succeeding in temporarily pushing back its bonds in the contest. The balance tipped as a third tendril snaked up to a flailing leg, temporarily liquefying and lashing itself around an ankle. The muscular flexing disintegrated into wild convulsions as the owner shrieked in sudden pain, unable to rid itself of the sticky acidic fluid coating its limb. Now the fourth and final tentacle came around, swinging like a belt from past Insidious’s shoulder. It struck the Ursis’s skull with tremendous force, creating a resounding crack and causing its entire form to jerk, blood and teeth spraying from its maw. Bouncing off, the tentacle drew back then slashed over once again from the side, snapping the creature’s neck far right. Dazed and stunned, the bear was taken completely unawares as the same tendril pulled itself back in to Insidious’s chest, gathering more mass from her constantly oozing frame, then lunged out, smashing its nose and face in.
In the back, the second Ursis managed to evade Insidious’s reach, and started towards her main body again, no longer held at bay. In response, the four tentacles shook off their prisoner and simultaneously cracked towards the incoming foe, causing it to leap back in dismay. It failed to avoid the blows completely, the Dove changing one’s direction and sending it crashing into fur and flesh in mid-air. The smaller creature went spiraling backwards head over heels, even as its partner regained its feet, spitting out some of its mouth’s gory contents.
With a sudden burst of speed, it threw itself right at Insidious’s face, lunging with a swipe of its paw. Behind it, all six of the “feathers” shot inwards, whipping back to catch the intruder, flailing and thickening as they retracted. With the weapons meters from its rear, the Ursis tore its paw from left to right across the pasty white face, meeting little resistance. The stubby bear claws – even the fleshy pad itself – simply pulled the right half of the alien mutation’s face straight off, removing eye, wet skin, and half the mouth, sending the features melting away. What remained of Insidious’s grin never faltered as she lunged forwards in meeting, her bony breast striking the bear backwards. The flailing feet kicked into the wiry frame, shattering it, even as the half dozen tentacles grasped the owner.
By now, the white flesh of the alien kaiju was more blue, visible waves of mucus generating from all points of its frame, thickly cascading from her shoulder spines, ripples pouring down her hunched frame, even gushing from her tails and slithering forwards to pool before her. A massive, sticky, deadly half-circle puddle spread almost two hundred meters in diameter to her front half, growing deeper by the minute. As Insidious stormed forwards, the thick fluid was pushed away before her, tidal waves increasing the depth of the icy pool in front. Moments later, the six tentacles flipped the Ursis over, back to ground, then simply dropped it, causing it to splash into the pond. It had no time to scream before all of the bird’s tentacles turned to fluid, spraying down and over the bear and thoroughly coating and drenching it.
The Ursis started to struggle, but to no avail; Insidious stumbled forwards again, the mutation sending even more waves of thick mucus covering the submerged creature. Its eyes widened, bubbles escaping its maw, trapped as it was, and flailing continued, albeit sluggish now in the humors. The puddle’s edges began to withdraw, leaving only the thinnest films over the snow and ice and piling even more fluid over the trapped bear. Seeming to drool in anticipation of the first creature to step into her grasp, the Dove silently bent over the hapless bear, leaning all the way forwards until she completely overshadowed the creature, the puddle of mucus shrinking to a hundred meters in diameter as it piled over.
The Ursis struggled to stand again, its head rising, its neck craning, its limbs punching and kicking. One stray blow slipped into the mush at Insidious’s base, to no avail; mucus continued to slough forwards off Insidious’s frame at a ridiculous rate, encasing the victim in a glob almost forty to fifty meters high, pressing down and pushing it back to earth. Seconds after it was first coated, the acid had gone to work on the fur and flesh, the former thinning and beginning to droop visibly as it was coated. By five seconds, the hair was shortening, the skin visible beneath it; within twice that time most of the fur was gone and floating all over the place in the pool, rapidly dwindling away to nothing. No tears of agony were sighted, doubtless devoured by the indiscriminating, hungry Dove, pain searing through the bear’s frame as the skin cells, first lines of defense, burst and were rapidly assimilated down at their smallest component levels. These continued to strip away, molecular bonds weakening, skin thinning, as the Ursis screamed and shook.
The arms continued to bang against the ground beneath it in what seemed to be slow motion, once, twice, thrice. The third time, the right arm stuck hard and didn’t rise again as fast, slightly tipping the encased Ursis and sending the opposite limb waving ineptly in the sky. Above, Insidious gave a satisfied rumble, her missing face parts already scabbing over and reforming into some semblance of their original appearance. The Ursis’s arm rose back up from the ground again, and while no sound escaped the enclosure, its eyes widened even more with shock. Only the upper three-quarters or so of its arm rose back up, leaving the bottom layer of bloody skin stuck to the ground, floating up in the ever-hungry fluid. Small pieces of meat and blood vessels were visible in the severed part as the bear shook itself, pawing at its own chest with the opposite limb. The claws themselves barely even raked the torso, but the flesh peeled away with ease, large strips torn off and quickly disintegrating, bringing more and more of the body with it. A trio of short gashes quickly degenerated into a deformed hole in the area, its edges widening all the while. More shaking occurred, and weak flesh gave way at multiple points, skimming away and redness beneath visible.
By now, the flesh over the first attacked leg had almost completely given way, the only thing left of it being small pieces of pinkish material bobbing off into the mucus. Beneath it, the entire leg was visible, blood red and skinned, muscles and tendons, blood vessels and bone all visible, orange meat flexing and bending. Still there was no blood spray, just red droplets floating off, and even these fading away into nonexistence. The sight was more than enough encouragement for Insidious, who let out a much louder, triumphant, diseased caw that quickly evolved into a shriller scream of triumph as her juices began to eat away at these newly exposed innards. From her newly reformed chest cavity, whiteness within began to squirm, and suddenly, from each and every of the many holes, monstrosities began to form. Elongated white maggots; skinny, pearly, deformed parasite-worms; a myriad of oversized, slither insects…all spewed from the holes like meat from a grinder, spilling out by the hundreds and plummeting down to their new meal.
Down they fell, lancing like Olympic divers, crashing teethed head-first into the weakened flesh. Their fangs were already sharp, but the Ursis having been submerged for such a long period of time now, they speared into the food like a hot knife into butter, disappearing into the tender raw meat with no trace behind except perfectly circular red holes of variable sizes. They struck all over the body, the majority penetrating the torso and turning it into Swiss cheese. Several others caught the arms, though few made it to the extremes of the head or legs. One caught the jaw, dug through, and subsequently tore out on the other side, digging up beneath the jaw and biting through the tongue with relish. Another went sailing through the neck; yet another pierced slightly above the left eye and dealt with the bone beneath. Many others missed the main body, but easily, imperviously swam through the mucus that was their home, all heading for the nearest source of meat.
Insidious shifted her bulk again, and massive sprays of maggots flew from beneath her useless, maimed legs to coat the lower body parts of the bear, much to its horror and her delight. Here and there, the corruption fed, and in turn the Blackened Dove herself was nourished. Like dolphins breaching the foam, sea serpents rising over a waterline of flesh, hundreds and hundreds of living things devoured another organism, rising up and out, now turning in mid-air and diving back in. The skin on the outside was now almost completely gone; here one leapt, perhaps a sinew or a ligament clenched in its ringed, fanged mouth, there another gnawed at an exposed rib, now joined by five or six of its brethren! Internals skewed away into the sea of mucus, and white worms rose up to catch them and pull them down even as more fell from their host, regenerating and respawning at an incredible rate. The head turned away, trying to escape, as more and more went up to it, while the chest had almost completely disintegrated into a mass of writhing white, a storm of feeding frenzy. A lone rib bone, severed from the others, bobbed up and was ignored, overridden by the stench and call of blood. It had been cracked near the side, and part broke off and subsequently disappeared into the blue.
The main flesh and meat was going, and organs would be the next subject of attention. Some had clearly been penetrated already, as maggots leapt up, food clenched in their mouth, tossed back and swallowed like a shark would, before diving back down. The damaged arm merely gave minor twitches and was simply enveloped by waving white tails, their other ends clearly latched onto the meat like perverse imitations of suckling babes, while the skinned leg had ceased movement altogether. Muscles had clearly been severed, key parts of joints damaged, as it no longer even struggled for life. All that remained was white bone and some dwindling pieces of flesh near the toe joints where the maggots had missed for now. Even hard skeleton was no determent, merely more nourishment for maggots that ate, were crushed by their own kind’s weight, and that were reabsorbed by their mistress for more production.
The second Ursis recovered and came running back up, but slowed at the gruesome sight and fate of its companion, skidding to a halt at the edge of the pool. This was a very poor decision, as it turned out; Insidious lunged forwards in a single fluid motion, crushing and splintering the legs of her helpless victim and reducing them to shards of bone that were swept beneath her, never to be seen again. The edges of the pool, suddenly drawing mass from the ridiculously unneeded mass crushing the semi-digested Ursis, quickly formed one large tendril and punched upwards, aiming directly for the bear’s half-open jaw. It snapped down, but failed to stop the acid’s progress, the solidified appendage punching out multiple teeth and slamming as far back down the mouth as it could manage. It drew to a halt at the back of the throat, and there loosened, spilling mucus into the bear’s mouth.
The Ursis, through instinct, tried to reject the fluid, but found it difficult to spit out the gooey liquid. Outside, the rest of the tendril re-solidified and punched back in, drawing more mass from the base, shoving some of the goo down the Ursis’s throat and forcing more liquid mucus into the mouth. Some spilled out the jaw, the tongue and weakened teeth already burning away, but more just gurgled down the back of the throat. The smaller creature shook itself then simply keeled over, in excruciating agony from the eating away of its throat passages and the toxic effects of the mucus, poisonous spores and mold already forming inside its warm body.
“Thankfully any new diseases or mold spawned by the mucus won’t last long in this weather,” one copilot murmured. “No cleanup will be necessary.”
Behind Insidious, another energy ray blasted Renneth’s duelist, sending it reeling; as it swung up, two of his claws detached and swooped low, knocking the Ursis off its feet and into the air. One large slab of hematite swung beneath and caught it, while a second came crashing down flat-side first, effectively creating a rocky sandwich. Renneth’s claws withdrew, and he glided away, almost back-to-back with his extraterrestrial partner as he applied attraction between the twin pieces of “bread.” The creature’s mouth shot open, a pained scream escaping as the pressure mounted, blood gushing from its already open wounds before the magnetic monster discharged a blast between the slabs, blowing off much of its fur.
Facing their slowly recovering foes, Renneth and Insidious observed their test dummies, each holding a mixture of mild satisfaction or hunger respectively. Gradually, one after another, each Ursis managed to gain its feet, one burning in agony from consuming mucus, another bleeding and broken from its wounds. Twin snarls of primal rage echoed over the Lawless Zone’s frozen plain, cornered, ferocious wild pride refusing to give in. Their only response was a goading keening in their ears and a mocking sneer. With no further thoughts, both Ursis broke into wild charges, paws flailing.
In perfect, almost mechanical, scientific synchronized coordination, Renneth and Insidious both swiveled, putting their backs to their foes, each appearing to look over the other’s shoulder, the former’s back spines still in their abnormal configuration from his last back defense. As Insidious moved, her bulk spun over her victim Ursis, whose torso had been reduced to near nothing, the majority of the maggots now having overtaken the face. Over half a hundred tons of kaiju mass crushed the bear, reducing it to rubble to be digested. The maggots had left little gore for consumption.
If Renneth’s attacker had been paying attention, it would have noticed that the saurian’s first wounds had long since faded into nothingness. In blind fury, it merely drove its sharp claws into the flat of Renneth’s back, succeeding in creating a sextet of puncture wounds but drawing very little blood overall. Due to his abilities to just incorporate metal, Renneth really no longer had any need for internal fluids, and his regeneration did little to focus on creating more. On Insidious’s size, her foe splattered over her weak back, gripping on tightly. She didn’t even bother to struggle, her skin just peeling off and sending her assailant crashing back down into the large pool where its partner had just been eaten alive.
For a brief second, each Deity kaiju struck back at their own foe; Renneth’s hook-spines, curved inwards, suddenly began to snap downwards and in like whips or the eight jaws of a Venus flytrap, stabbing circular hole after circular hole into the Ursis, which swiftly relinquished its grasp at the pain of its oozing wounds. Behind Insidious, as the acid began to go to work, the pool generated a tendril from its center, punching the bear in its stomach and knocking its breath from it while lifting it up to fifty meters, its limbs dangling limply in gravity’s grasp.
Now each alien left the continued choreographed assault to its partner. Six tendrils grew back out of Insidious’s shoulders and reached back out and around Renneth to reach the floored Ursis behind him, even as Renneth’s six fingers detached and slipped simultaneously through the gaps between the solidified, gooey feathers before him. On one side, the rising Ursis found itself struck six times, one after another, ending up stunned and bleeding on its back with a half dozen crisscrossing tentacles levitating above it. It had no time to blink before these liquefied and splattered all over it, coating it thoroughly. On the opposite end, Renneth’s molten claws surrounded the lifted bear, circling it then stabbing inwards quickly and rapidly, punching holes all over its sides and backside.
Renneth and Insidious then swiveled and spun back to their weakened foes, ready to finish their job. Insidious’s method of conclusion lacked any true grace or finesse, but was indeed effective, consisting of spawning four tentacles from the pond the bleeding, deteriorating Ursis resided in and repeatedly fustigating the entire length of its frames, each further blow drawing a squirt of blood from the wounds opened by Renneth and shattering bones all over, then simply storming forwards and crushing its weakened frame beneath her large weight, as she had done to its predecessor. The Ursis had not been dissolved to that state yet, but it was battered, wounded, and in a highly awkward position. Something seemed to crack and the twitching stopped, though in the name of safety Insidious went ahead and spewed more maggots downwards around her. All swiftly disappeared beneath her bulk, though she merely shifted herself into a more comfortable position and slunk back down into a motionless hunch, “nesting” on her second meal.
Renneth, in contrast, spun over next to the other downed Ursis, perhaps noticing it struggling against the acid weakening it, its fur sticking to the mucus but much of it having already been shed. Perhaps his focus was more on his six claws, as he raised his arms to the sky, each claw coming back in and slamming firmly to his wrists one after another in rapid succession. Each connection made a hefty clunking sound, shaking his body as he reconstructed. Then, in a method similar to Insidious’s, but much bloodier, the snow-coated monster simply levitated over the Ursis as it slowly stood, turning around as he did so and bringing his twister with him. The bear was buffeted and struck from all angles by the magnetic pulls and blows, knocked around and pulled from side to side, rocking on the balls of its feet. It raised its head to howl upwards at the dangling metal frame above it as a sharpened shard of ice whipped past, slashing across its shin and slicing deep to the bone. It squealed and jumped as a second blade, absorbed into the vortex, flashed across its back; a third tore across its arm lengthwise, and another ripped through the back of its ankles, all of the blows dicing the mucus-weakened flesh with ease. Another cut the tendons, and the Ursis keeled over backwards, falling headfirst into the outer edge of the magnetic tornado. A blitzing shard drew across its neck and jugular as it did so, the splattering noise reaching the ears of the Deities in their AOMDs in the sky. The pure white twister of Renneth’s turned a light pink.
Most pilots and kaiju would have relaxed at this point, but Renneth simply turned again, this time facing a third direction, where an opening in the surrounding crags and cliffs occurred. The pilots had already checked their radars and was aware of an advancing blip, this one alone, attracted to the magnetic field, though due to their vantage point they were still unable to completely view it. Insidious, attracted by her ally’s movement, swiveled herself, producing another six tendrils in readiness as something that looked faintly similar to brain matter oozed out form beneath her base. Large, crunching footfalls grew audible, and small fragments of ice shattered and fell off surrounding structures.
“It’s alone,” one pilot murmured. “That’s different.”
From the edge of the icy plain emerged a fifth bear, larger and much more intimidating than either of its predecessors. While its size still failed to compare to Insidious’s massive bulk, it sported prominent muscular growth and much larger claws and fangs, as well as a spine-coated back, the quills shaking in the wind as it lumbered slowly forwards, its arms swinging before it and each gradual, aggressive footfall creating a resounding boom. Crimson eyes regarded the impassive intruders, its muzzle dropping open to release a thunderous roar at the invaders of its territory. On the other side, the last of the aliens’ wounds closed up, Renneth even electing to merely plug one of his holes with a chunk of metal rather than an actual regeneration. Energy crackled around the four levitating slabs and protrusions.
“Looks similar,” someone muttered. “Angry mother, perhaps?”
“No,” another replied. “This one’s shown up on the probes. Different species known as ‘Berzurkir,’ very rare and aggressive. They say it can hold its own against larger monsters fairly well and ‘smash boulders.’ We haven’t actually seen it’s full strength in action yet, so they might send a message to Renneth asking him to test his regeneration…”
True as that may have been, the master of the wild was outmatched in this regard, faced by not only one but two daikaiju wielding powers that it had never before viewed. The Berzurkir took another step forwards and halted several hundred meters from its opponents, tossing back its head to let out another tumultuous bellow. This time, Insidious gave her answering croak, her need for more flesh still unappeased for the moment, using more of her energy to draw out six more tentacles and raise them into the sky.
Renneth gave the umpteenth traditional opening, this time firing five beams simultaneously, small rays of force from his eye spike and the tips of each gyrating hunk of hematite. They struck the monolithic creature, one in each limb and the last in the center of the chest. Fur seared away swiftly, the focus, unwavering bolts burning browned and blackened pinpricks into the Berzurkir’s skin. It needed no more encouragement to storm forwards, the earth reverberating, its arms reaching out as if ready to give its foes a ‘bearhug,’ so to speak.
The magnetic alien counterattacked first, levitating forwards with his claws at the ready. Before him rocketed a pair of his slabs, turned sideways with their flats facing the bear, forming a horizontal barrier. Confidently, the Berzurkir drew a muscular arm far back, even as the twin pieces of rock slammed into its chest, lifting its feet slightly off the ground and beginning to push it backwards. Its feet scraped the cold ground for several seconds before its claws gained traction and slammed firmly back down, giving it a second to swat the first chunk of metal firmly. Its momentum turned into a second attack, its second paw giving the other half of the barrier an overhead swipe as its limbs windmilled wildly.
However, the bear was to be disappointed, as the stone slabs failed to shatter beneath even its own vast strength. Small, functionally irrelevant impact craters were left on the points of contact, but aside from that not even a small patch of hairline cracks were created. The Berzurkir, in bewilderment, delivered another direct blow to the hematite even as it began to slip backwards once more, to no avail; the magnetic field around Renneth and his parts held them together firmly, preventing the molecular bonds from splitting.
The twin slabs brought the distraction that Renneth had planned, both halves of the barrier suddenly splitting away to the side, revealing the alien mere meters from the Berzurkir’s face. A series of clunks were heard, all six of the claws slamming onto one of Renneth’s wrists, drawn firmly in as he held the limb out before him, turning sideways and extending the six-pointed hand towards his foe. Suddenly, his wrist began to swivel at an incredibly rapid rate, transforming the hand into a pinwheel-style blade, creating a whizzing noise not unlike that of a chainsaw. Another second, and the hand was sent crashing into the Berzurkir’s flesh, the molten blades slamming through battle-hardened meat and tearing upwards and away.
The Berzurkir howls in agony and rage, as the long weapons draw deep into the muscle and flesh, ripping it up and scooping it out, carving a massive gash into the bear and hurling the meat upwards and away. Renneth continues to drive his spinning arm deeper, tiny chunks of gore and innards spiraling up and hurtling into the sky to rain down across the plain. In retaliation, the bear tries to swing its opposite arm down, aiming for his foe’s shoulder; one of the extraterrestrial’s slabs sense this and rush in, counteracting the blow. The bear succeeds only in spearing its bulky paw upon the bladed tip, sending dark crimson ichor flowing down the silvery surface.
Renneth puts on a sudden burst and drives his weapons even deeper into the Berzurkir’s stomach, before ripping up and carving upwards into the central torso. With another shriek, the mammal punches its bulky first straight into his tormentor’s metallic chest, punching a deep wound into the alien. At the same time, it cranes its neck at Renneth’s nearby shoulder, trying to bite him; however, the two kaiju are by now nearly face to face and eye to eye, and the saurian shifts himself, driving his chin spins into the bear’s own, hooking it temporarily. It lets out another resonating roar, and as they two jerk and dance temporarily, Renneth rips his limb back out, half the claws leaving for their original arm. The bear counterattacks, slashing another blow across the alien’s chest. The deep wounds appear, but little more blood appears, as the Ursis had first discovered.
As the first, bleeding paw swipes again, Renneth’s newly reconstructed arm shoots into its path, two of the claws drawing a gash among the bear’s hip. The pain causes the Berzurkir’s fist to clench, seizing the offending appendage firmly. In response, the Deity warrior simply splits off his arm, detaching it and allowing the bear to pull it aside with ease. The bear throws back its head and lets out a war cry of triumph, one that is swiftly cut off and silenced as Renneth’s first limb – now enhanced with a large slab of hematite stuck to its length, making a massive blade – stabs back in, deeply penetrating the entire stomach perpendicular to the buzzsaw’s vertical gash. The Berzurkir gags on itself, coughing up blood and jerking forwards even as its “severed” arm splits into various tiny particles, flowing free of its imprisonment. The magnetic alien’s entire form follows the same way, disintegrating and sailing up high into the air, disappearing from sight and the Berzurkir’s grasp.
The bear looks up as the thousands of particles of metal sail into the air and disappear above it, roaring in frustration and batting the air, blood leaking from its wounds. It doesn’t turn its attention back to Insidious, focusing its fury on its foe’s apparent retreat; unfortunately, it also remains completely unaware of her own follow-up assault. While the Dove made no attempt to aid Renneth while he grappled with the beast, she did take the opportunity to prepare her own assault, slapping all her mucus feathers together and slowly shifting them into a massive glob almost her own size, rounded and pulsating, supported by short tendrils growing out of the puddle at her feet.
Without bothering to attract the Berzurkir’s attention, Insidious shifts, flicks her tendrils, and sends the massive ball of acid soaring directly at the mammal. The blob completely splatters thickly over its front side, and coats most of its back, enveloping it in acid. Its snowy white hair flattens against its chest, draped down and already thinning, as it paws at the goo coating it. On its back, the quills start to shorten, their sharp tips growing blunter by the moment. Even as tears begin to spawn from its burning eyes, vital fluids leeched from its frame, the massive animal shakes off the pain, much stronger and resilient than its smaller kin. It turns to face Insidious, and starts to storm towards her, ready to strike its new foe, but is intercepted by a surprising source.
Electric charges crackle around Insidious’s neck plumage, and tiny streaks of bluish lightning shoots from her frame to the corpse of the last Ursis to die, the one with the tattered frame, diced in Renneth’s twister, but the relatively intact body. The Berzurkir pays no attention, its slender eyes fixated solely on Insidious’s sneer, and does not notice even when the carcass slowly stumbles to its feet, swaying on its own, stumbling like a drunken body. The energy storm around her crest intensifies, jagged streaks jumping over the carcass, aiming for specific muscles and points on the frame; the fine muscle control brings the dead Ursis staggering swiftly into the larger Berzurkir’s path.
The bear halts, a questioning growl raising from its throat as it views the smaller beast that dared challenge it. Something was wrong; its instincts told it that no such thing could exist, that a natural one of this species could live in that state, let alone challenge its dominion, but Insidious’s lightning continued to drive the cadaver forwards. Its legs tripping, nearly falling but forcing itself back up, the body makes its way up to the Berzurkir’s leg, stumbling and collapsing against it. The Ursis continues to flop around, literally walking bipedal, in a position that would be incredibly uncomfortable for it had it still been alive. Finally, the Berzurkir slashes at the irritation, nearly tearing the smaller bear’s right arm straight off, flaying the skinless, dissolving flesh into tiny strips.
In response, the makeshift zombie slashes around with its remaining arm, catching the larger animal in its thigh. Such a clumsy, drunken blow would never normally have even scratched the bear, but with its defenses weakened by its soak in Insidious’s acids, the paw sinks deeply in. The larger creature howls in fury, as the undead stumbles back, leaving its own half-severed hand behind in the other’s body; a vengeful, wrathful backhand knocks the Ursis’s semi-decapitated head off. Most of the blood has already slipped away, but that doesn’t stop part of Insidious’s puddle from slithering over and catching the grotesque trophy as nourishment.
Amazingly, the headless body still gets up, continuing to charge straight at the weakened bear, stinging its kneecaps with a mindless tackle. Now thoroughly aggravated by this small challenger, the Berzurkir kicks it savagely to the ground, proceeding to ruthlessly stamp on it, blood gushing up from each consecutive step, the claws sinking into the weakened flesh like a child’s bare foot into the wet sand at the beach. Fluids gush up between its toes as it reaches down and rends the remnants of the Ursis’s body to tatters, ripping its powerful claws along the lengths.
The Berzurkir’s rampage is cut off as six powerful metal-like tentacles smash into its wounded chest, causing it gag up more bile and fluids and knocking it flat onto its back. Its feet kick up wildly, smashing the rear of the now fully impaired Ursis into the ruins of its upper half, a swamp of chunks of white fur and reddish liquids. It is back up on its feet in a split second and rushing at Insidious, who raises her feathers in gleeful response. The two collide, pitting vast animalistic strength against alien bulk and power. Twin claws, capable of shattering boulders to rubble, have no trouble ripping the rotting flesh off a skeleton, scavenging the skin off a carcass, as both penetrate to either side of the Dove’s ribs. The flesh on both sides of her body is pushed off and away, more mush than solid, dragging away much of the superficial, meaty coating on the higher parts of her body. Mucus begins to shed at a massive rate, production increasing and skewing over the foreign object, eating away at it once more. The alien corruption bends her frame, sending her head and proboscis downwards, but the bear rears away, aiming a strike that takes off a large chunk of her shoulder. The spear-like nose penetrates her foe through the left breast, driving deep and becoming caught on ribcage, missing any important organs much to Insidious’s exasperation.
Regardless, she pumps hundreds of gallons of her mucus directly into the hole, which quickly falls apart, disintegrating into another long, painful wound along the length of the bear’s front side. The two rear up to strike once more, but this time Insidious lets out another specific energy blast, raining it along the Berzurkir’s limbs. Its legs convulse and its body gives way, crumpling to the ground in an effective seizure, fighting the movement as it loses coordination. Insidious is on top of it in a flash, repeatedly pounding its face into a bloody mess, rounded, blunted tendrils smashing and skewering into open gashes.
Now the mammal straightens, fighting off the effects on its limbs, regaining coordination, snarling and aiming a wild swing at the Dove. It misses, but she slithers back several dozen meters nonetheless, new flesh already slithering down her sides to replace the missing material. Her feathers withdraw, still facing the bear at the ready but pulling back to her sides; she faces the animal silently, no, faces something behind the animal.
For their next test, the ADAM Organization’s triad of ships ventured into the barren, unforgiving, desolate realm of ice and snow. This was done on the express recommendation of Orlov and Byers, in the name of safety and caution; with the chaos in the aftermath of Tormata still obvious and overpowering, and the possibility of a second sudden appearance of dark forces, it was best to avoid attention. Even now, the ships hovered in the deep center of the frozen zone, levitating over a relatively smooth plain of thin snow over a sheet of ice. Within the deepest icy crags and mountains of the area, the sheet, a jagged, slightly slanted break in the cold slopes, remained over a thousand meters in diameter.
The high-pitched keening of the wind and the silent thumping of snow flurries on vehicles were undisturbed by the brief flashes and beams of light as two kaiju were beamed down to the surface. The ice was probably solid throughout the peak’s hundreds of meters of height, or supported by solid rock, as the ground showed no visible signs of distress even as over a hundred thousand tons of force was applied to it. Some two hundred meters above the ground, safely above their own creations, the AOMDs steamed, heat stores coursing through their frames reducing vision-blocking snow to steam momentarily.
Unlike the Arctic, the Lawless Zone resided within the Ring of Fire, meaning that the sunlight varied alongside the rest of the world. The Deities, while not particularly sentimental and not given to praising beauty, were still caught off guard by the surprising view of the twilight reflecting off alien spires of ice twisting and looping into the clear sky in blissful silence, dancing figures rising up on all sides of the plain in a sort of barrier. “Simply amazing,” one of them muttered. “This landmass should be impossible, to be spawned by nature…a desert and a volcano that suddenly shifts into a brief stretch of vegetation, and then this icy realm? At these polar coordinates?”
“Nothing is impossible.” Someone else broke radio silence in a different vessel. “We still haven’t even begun to delve into the secrets of that creature from earlier today. Granted the lack of any visible environmental engineering, this landmass seems too perfect for a gargantuan monster habitat…”
Beneath them, Insidious shifted, a low, rumbling caw dying deep in her throat. There were little nutrients for her to absorb from frozen water, and little she could do to this environment. In sharp contrast to her typical activities, she fittingly kept to herself, almost like a bird huddled up upon itself against the weather. A thick pool of light blue mucus, already frosting over and pushing away snow, spread from her base and tail feathers hundreds of meters from her rotting feet, the rapidly-breeding maggots on the ground withering in the chill. Her own flesh failed to completely freeze over due to the constant cascade of poison flowing down her frame, while her typical sextet of “wing feathers” draped down over the ground, inactive without anything visible to spread over or rot.
To her side, the mucus twisted and pooled out of the way, avoiding the diameter of a swirling magnetic vortex’s base. Insidious rarely showed concern for allies, but in this case, perhaps due to some mental programming of the Deities’ commands, perhaps due to some unspoken understanding between the twin monsters, both understood that mucus did not belong in a violent twister. While only a third of her true height, Renneth glided in the air with his crest and back spines at over a hundred meters, floating slightly over the electrified tips of the Dove’s plumage. His arms dangled limply, uselessly, at his sides; his talons folded in neat military rows, six interlocked in a solid wall directly before his shifting chest. The head stared unseeingly forwards, the blank eye sockets ignoring the panorama even as their companion’s head turned slowly from side to side, seeking a target, any form of nutrition. The tornado beneath him had already swapped into his new surroundings, the dust of the desert long discarded and replaced with snow. Likewise, the brown dust coating over his crimson flesh was not a powdery white; as his spines flexed and rippled with magnetic force, the magnetic behemoth almost become the earthly image of an angel, wreathed and haloed in pearly swirls.
Mental pilot commands quickly activated filters and shielding to shut out the effects of Renneth’s field. Insidious appeared unperturbed by her comrade’s weaponry, blatantly ignoring even the thin, edged, vicious shards of ice that the saurian had incorporated into his vortex, dozens of them four to five meters long swinging and slashing around. Their wardens looked on carefully from their aerial viewpoints, paying more attention to their radars in caution as befitted their orders. While other alien races might take offense at being ordered around by a mere human, the Deities had no such qualms, so long as the orders were logical to them.
Before the onlooker’s experienced eyes, Renneth suddenly “tensed up,” so to speak; his six claws remained folded and sheathed before him, but his head slowly swiveled to face outwards to the eastward sea, followed by his body and personal vortex. The air silently began to ripple around his eye spike and the wall of molten claws before him, a golden glow of energy gradually overtaking them as he sensed the intruders into his own airspace. The slight movement and the accumulation of the area’s energy also served to alert his partner, who slowly shifted her entire frame to turn and face the same direction. More out of caution and efficiency than actual concern for Insidious’s view, the magnetic kaiju glided to the side several dozen meters, giving her a clear path to the incoming targets.
“What are these…?” one of the pilots asked, all of them by now aware of the pair of incoming creatures on their own radar.
“The humans have dubbed them ‘Ursis,’” his in-ship partner responded, glancing down from his bird-eye’s view upon the duo of Lawless Zone irritated inhabitants questing towards the source of Renneth’s irritatingly persistent magnetic keening. “A species of oversized predatory bears that hunt other inhabitants of the cold in pairs. Typical animal partnering instincts there, yet they are surprisingly aggressive and strong for their kind.”
Silence overtook the Deities present as the pair of Ursis came over the ridge, the bears’ fur coated in white snow, their noses whiffling and sniffing at the air. Both paused briefly as they drew into view of the extraterrestrial kaiju. For several moments, there was little reaction from either alliance; on one side, the natural keepers of the Frozen Zone faced the aliens, sensing the unnatural, irregular, forces that did not belong on Earth. On the other side, Renneth watched them impassively with his charged weapons trained directly on them, unmoving aside from the slight bobbing of his levitating parts and his moderated, constant twister, while Insidious did little besides rumble eagerly and begin to lean forwards, her tentacles almost unnoticeably solidifying from fluid waterfalls into tentacles of metallic consistency, the large puddle beneath her feet starting to casually slither forwards.
Undeterred by the comparatively massive size of the hulking white giant and the unorthodox appearance of her companion, the Ursis’ hackles rose, starting to aggressively pace forwards, closing the several hundred-meter distance between them and the Deities’ weapons of mass destruction. One’s lips curled, crimson steaming gums and yellowed teeth in sharp contrast against the omnipresent snow and ice, and it let out a sharp snarl. Encouraged, the second started forwards as well, the two picking up pace, padding swiftly and silently through the frost. The trio of AOMDs took up positions and rose even higher up, reaching heights of over three hundred meters in the name of caution.
Renneth didn’t wait and risk the wrath of their claws or jaws, simply discharging his first energy blast from his eye spine. From the sharpened tip blasted a thin golden stream, lancing onto the center of one Ursis’s forehead then strafing directly left over the other’s legs. Both rose up and roared in anger, the fur blackened and burned away to reveal charred and tender flesh beneath the beam’s path. Neither had known the pain of intense heat in their cold home; ironically, Renneth’s assault had been powered by the energy and small warmth of the molecular movements present even in the Frozen Zone. As the pair reared up, revealing their undersides, the alien unleashed his second burst, this time striking the opposite bear and raking it across both their bellies. Skin and hair disintegrated from left to right, creating an almost symmetrical horizontal char on both’s frames.
The magnetic extraterrestrial’s assault once more served to antagonize its recipients, who both began a headlong charge at their foes. Moving with surprisingly agility, Insidious’s six wing “feathers” lashed up to an almost horizontal position, briefly liquefying as they went. The front ten to fifteen meters of each tendril disconnected, sending waves and globs of acidic mucus rocketing forwards towards the two bears, while the rest of the tentacles re-solidified and returned to her sides, this time pointing forwards and extruding out eagerly towards her foes. However, the Ursis themselves moved with surprising celerity, each bounding to one side slightly without losing much momentum in their rush. The light blue mucus sailed between them, splattering over the ground, already coated in ice. Renneth’s own following assault proved more difficult to evade, as a silvery hematite slab swung around from behind him, spinning around a central point like a propeller and sailing into their path. Both bears skidded to a halt, swinging wildly at the obstacle, but the mars they created in the large chunk’s surface did little to prevent it from pushing them out and back, effectively breaking their momentum.
“I expected more aggression,” one of the copilots murmured gently, even though they were yet no roars or audio clues that needed to be heard. “His regenerative capabilities have already returned to near-maximum capacity, we acquired four sharpened slabs for him recently…why has he not actually attacked?"
“He senses more incoming targets,” the other responded bluntly and briefly, viewing his radar’s input.
Renneth’s lone slab whipped and whistled in warning to the surprised Ursis as he himself turned away from them, swiftly gliding to the side and around Insidious in a safe circle, taking his twister with him in that relative track. Behind him, the sharpened stone swung then speared the ice, leaving cracks around the point of entry and tossing up a brief cloud of snow. Both bears jumped back in surprise, observing the foreign object apparently moving of its own accord. Their natural aggression swiftly reasserted itself, but as they began their advance once more, they were not alone. Her base pool of mucus rapidly growing as she seemed to “salivate,” more and more spewing from all parts and pieces of her body, her area of influence swiftly and silently stretching out, her six tentacles extending out in readiness to grasp and devour, Insidious lumbered forth, delighted as always.
To her rear, Renneth skirted the rest of the mucus behind her as it was sucked up to her main reserves, his six claws breaking up as he traveled several hundred meters more outwards, facing the opposite end of the icy plain. Half a thousand meters remained between him and the valleys and crags from where a second pair of hunting Ursis emerged, come to investigate the noise and disruption of their fellow kin. Three warped pieces of metal slammed onto one of the Renneth’s circular, ball-joint like wrist, reforming one of his hands, while the other trio spiraled off into the sky somewhere. Viewing the combat taking place behind the seemingly inorganic saurian, the pair of Ursis simply rushed into the fray as well, perhaps helping their kind, perhaps seeking another meal, perhaps driving away intruders.
The alien cared nothing for the reason, merely lowering down to his foes’ level, his head only at fifty to sixty meters. Both his arms remained at his side, clawed and unclawed, bent out slightly, ready to swing, but otherwise completely relaxed and calm. The magnetic field reached out with a probe once more, increasing its intensity around the bears, sharp pains striking their minds, briefly dazing and confusing them. This soon turned to anger, and they broke into straight runs, their long tails flying behind them as they bounded through the flurries towards the still-motionless extraterrestrial.
An infuriated enemy or a provoked opponent often fails to release their irritation in anything other than impotence, something Renneth knew full well and took full advantage of. His missing trio of claws spiraled back down out of the sky, arcing horizontally over the bears’ backs, tips down, rippling and glimmering with more accumulated force. Three beams rained down across and over the bears, force burning up a flank and body, slashing across a muzzle, stinging a large fat-warmed rump, even blasting snow to water around the targets’ frames. If he was hoping to slow his enemies’ pace, though, he was to be sorely disappointed, as this as well seemed only to goad them into a faster charge. Still he remained unmoving, almost mechanical in his neutral position. The left Ursis drew several dozen meters ahead of its companion, charging Renneth, its powerful jaws open wide and its eyes fixated on the smallest bitable object, the clawless arm. Its muscles flexed and tensed, its sharp claws drove down and splintered the ice into tiny white shards; the next moment, snow burst out in an impact crater as it drove itself off earthshakingly into an aggressive leap.
In a maneuver perfected and casual from experience, even somewhat utilized on the battle with the Chuku earlier that day, Renneth’s attention never wavered from the second Ursis rapidly approaching as his left arm simply split off from his torso. From the airborne bear’s perspective, one moment it was about the clamp down strongly onto white flesh; the next moment, the arm shot out before it and literally disintegrated before its fangs even made contact. Renneth’s left arm rapidly divided into various chunks and splinters, stinging the flailing, surprised, unbalanced bear as it passed through. Its dancing claws clipped several chunks, to no avail, and drew small blood from Renneth’s side, to a complete lack of reaction or acknowledgement.
The bear spun as it landed, turning just in time to watch the limb’s particles snap back together almost simultaneously, as if watching a recorded explosion being rewound. The arm reattached itself to the body even as the second Ursis bent at its knees and sent itself flying at the extraterrestrial dinosaur, beginning the second part of the planned two-pronged attack: something incredibly ineffective on a creature that sensed everything around it on all sides with an omnipresent field. Neither of the hapless mammals had any idea of the excellent multitasking capabilities this gave Renneth, lacking the experience of the unfortunate Chuku predecessors.
In just two to three seconds, Renneth simultaneously launched an efficient attack and defense on the Ursis, quickly disabling both. The first’s animal mind still struggled with what had just happened: it had first assumed that its prey was so frail that it had disintegrated on mere touch, and yet the arm was still there before its eyes! The next thing it viewed were the pair of elbow spines, which were somehow leaving the body, propelled outwards by some invisible force. The Ursis was unable to continue with its cogitations at that point, as the two spines sank deep into its flesh, one piercing the flank and the other the side, spearing through thick blubber and skin and into sinew and meat beneath. The first blood of the day stained white fur and earth bright red.
Approximately eight more spines joined the attack before the first two even connected, several spawning and firing out of Renneth’s side and back like darts, while others detached from his shoulder blades, flipping around to face point first on their way. They struck over the form, one driving into the face, others stabbing all over the body and underbelly, one impaling a forelimb, another pinning a foot to the ground. The bear had enough bulk to avoid being killed from its mere wounds, though the sharp pains and the obvious internal damage was enough to make it keel over for now, gushing blood over itself and the surrounding area in a reddish pool.
The second bear’s short limbs were no match for Renneth’s comparatively lanky ones in terms of reach, and it had barely come within the magnetic creature’s range before the clawed arm lashed up and out, swinging forwards and given an absurd, whip-like burst of momentum by the remained three slabs that had by now arrived, repulsing the limb forwards from behind. While Renneth lacked finger joints, the claws turned sideways in the direction of the slash moments before contact, causing the points to drive directly into the bulky lower body of the bear. There was a noise like a popping balloon as three blades tore through blubber and then flesh and meat, two striking deep into the rump and a third claw blocked by bone in the leg. Renneth’s arm continued its motion from right all the way over to his left, tearing three crimson gashes from behind to midriff and sending the Ursis careening away behind him to the side. It struck hard and bounced several times, crashing across the plain with a long stream of red spraying across the ice behind it. His head still facing forwards in its original direction, Renneth’s three claws spun and snapped back to a straight outwards position, blood skewing away over the ice even as his other appendages returned to his left wrist, giving him a pair of full hands.
The first bear now rose and struggled to its feet, blinded by animalistic rage and agony, tearing its skewered paw free from the ice. Even as backstabbing attempt, the wounded creature was now horribly inept; it shook its head and snorted pathetically several times, trying to maintain its proper footing, blood dripping from its nostrils and jaw. It failed and slipped, crashing to its side, its mouth snapping ineptly at the air as it tried to gather itself up again, succeeding only in spinning itself around in a circle like a dog chasing its own tail. Even had it been in better shape, it was unlikely that it would notice Renneth’s central back spine swiftly and noiselessly sinking into his flesh, emerging from his front side, while the other eight hooked protrusions quietly rotated in his back, so that the curved blade pointed inwards to the center.
Mustering its strength, the Ursis flung itself straight at the alien monstrosity’s back. In response, hundreds and hundreds of spines, ranging in size from three to five meters, slipped noiselessly from Renneth’s now-emptied center back, pointing directly outwards. The bear’s eyes widened suddenly as it crashed onto the spiked rack, head first, ending up splayed like a skinned fur trophy over the larger kaiju’s back, the only thing preventing it from being completely skewered being its inept body’s lack of momentum. Even so, Renneth undoubtedly helped the process with a casual magnetic pull on the bear’s frame, causing the bear to be pinned tight and heavily wounded, several spines tearing through its jaw, piercing its tongue and knocking out a yellowed tooth. It clung, its mouth soundlessly open, the spikes scraping the roof of its maw, an agonized whimper escaping its throat, while its four limbs and paws remained impaled, run straight through. Depending on the spine lengths, some stabbed a meter or so into the bear’s skin all over, while others barely scraped the fur, preventing it from being completely killed.
Renneth had every intention of changing its current state. With a speed that belied his constant stationary status, he rocketed straight up almost two hundred meters into the sky, bringing all four slabs up with him. All ended up spiraling above him, and his twister disintegrated into a spiral of snow and ice around him in a large sphere as he shifted that part of his field. The Ursis, still stuck to the spiked field of his back, groaned weakly as its tormentor flipped backwards ninety degrees, the end result being Renneth with his sightless eyes facing the evening sky, the bear between his spikes on one side and a large gap to the ground below on the other.
Gravity itself would have worked in this occasion, but the Deity race was always one for overkill. Somewhere down below the mountain of solid ice, perhaps even beneath the earth, was something that Renneth could pull on, however how faintly, just as how he could fly by repulsing something down below; above where much larger and more influential metal objects for him to push off of. The result was that Renneth simply rocketed downwards from a standstill to a velocity impossible to reach by gravity alone, shooting like a bullet. The resulting crash rocked the entire plain, sending abstract formations of ice around the plain crumbling to dust and sending a resounding boom rocketing around the area, the first notable sound to enter the combat since its initiation. The second downed Ursis was knocked back off its feet, and a massive impact crater was driven into the solid ice of the ground. A tidal wave of snow burst out into the side, enveloping the view of Renneth and the bear, while plumes of ice shards blasted hundreds of meters into the sky. More ominously, this show of winter beauty was accompanied by a massive spread of crimson ichor, and other pinkish flesh-colored chunks and bits and pieces that rained down among the snowfall.
Beneath the white powder, Renneth laid on his back, arms splayed and drenched in a massive pool of red at the bottom of the crater, which was flooded with the remnants of the target Ursis. Fangs bared, the magnetic monster raised his arms for a second, before repelling the hundreds of spines in his back, freeing himself from his position embedded into the ice and driving them completely through the mangled corpse. His back coated in a wet redness similar to his original coloration, Renneth rose upwards, quickly darting to the side to avoid a retaliatory attack from the second Ursis. As the two kaiju spun around and slashed at each other, each avoiding the other’s advances, the Deities were given a very satisfactory view of Renneth’s handiwork and the unfortunate strips of flesh mingling with bloodied metal beneath.
While this had been going on, Insidious had been engaged in an equally ferocious and gory clash with her pair of foes. Rather than letting both of her bears strike her head on, the Dove preferred to take the initiative and go on the offensive herself, her six tendrils lashing out over hundreds of meters, her shoulder spines going into an even higher rate of production to create more and more mucus. All this while, she continued to lumber forwards, the pool beneath her still stealthily snaking forwards towards her potential meals.
For the next chaotic moments, the Ursis were suddenly subjected to a violent dodging game, the six tendrils coming in and lashing at them from all directions. Writhing whips with the consistency of a metal flail, they swung up and down, here and there, wildly attacking, their large bulks striking the icy ground to toss up snow and crack the ground beneath. With their long length and mass, and Insidious’s innate strength, they gathered great momentum as weapons, whistling through the air and Ursis’ fur. One lashed at the left one from above at a forty-five degree angle, and it bent lower and kept on; a second tendril came down directly from above, forcing it to stop and throw itself to the side in a shower of snow as the tentacle smashed down to its side. The other did its best to halt as solidified corruption struck in front of it vertically, planting down before it like a bluish, semi-translucent tree trunk. The ice provided poor traction, and it only succeeded in crashing side-first into the mucus. Before it could regain its bearings, a second tendril rotated down like a pendulum perpendicular the first, towards the Ursis’s face. It cringed away, ending up clipped and flung over onto its back.
As these pair of tendrils continued to torment the flipped bear, the remaining pair tried a new tactic on the rapidly approaching first Ursis, one punching directly towards it while a second molded into a flatter object and whipped low at its legs. The bear was caught off-guard, trying to sidestep the first, and was tripped and flung sideways, skidding towards Insidious. By now the first two tendrils had recovered from their failed assaults, and swung down towards it from above, whipping it heavily. It squealed in pain, its body jerking and bouncing off the ground. These four tendrils now raised up, constricting it and lifting it up to Insidious’s head height, before snapping the bear down onto the ground.
To the side, the second Ursis lashed out furiously at a solidified tendril as it was knocked to the ground once more, but only succeeded into getting some mucus onto its claws, which began to sizzle and slowly thin away. Insidious, still a good hundred and fifty meters from her current plaything, now wrapped two tendrils around the bear’s chest, squeezing it tightly. The Ursis struggled back, pitting its considerable strength against the corruption’s, succeeding in temporarily pushing back its bonds in the contest. The balance tipped as a third tendril snaked up to a flailing leg, temporarily liquefying and lashing itself around an ankle. The muscular flexing disintegrated into wild convulsions as the owner shrieked in sudden pain, unable to rid itself of the sticky acidic fluid coating its limb. Now the fourth and final tentacle came around, swinging like a belt from past Insidious’s shoulder. It struck the Ursis’s skull with tremendous force, creating a resounding crack and causing its entire form to jerk, blood and teeth spraying from its maw. Bouncing off, the tentacle drew back then slashed over once again from the side, snapping the creature’s neck far right. Dazed and stunned, the bear was taken completely unawares as the same tendril pulled itself back in to Insidious’s chest, gathering more mass from her constantly oozing frame, then lunged out, smashing its nose and face in.
In the back, the second Ursis managed to evade Insidious’s reach, and started towards her main body again, no longer held at bay. In response, the four tentacles shook off their prisoner and simultaneously cracked towards the incoming foe, causing it to leap back in dismay. It failed to avoid the blows completely, the Dove changing one’s direction and sending it crashing into fur and flesh in mid-air. The smaller creature went spiraling backwards head over heels, even as its partner regained its feet, spitting out some of its mouth’s gory contents.
With a sudden burst of speed, it threw itself right at Insidious’s face, lunging with a swipe of its paw. Behind it, all six of the “feathers” shot inwards, whipping back to catch the intruder, flailing and thickening as they retracted. With the weapons meters from its rear, the Ursis tore its paw from left to right across the pasty white face, meeting little resistance. The stubby bear claws – even the fleshy pad itself – simply pulled the right half of the alien mutation’s face straight off, removing eye, wet skin, and half the mouth, sending the features melting away. What remained of Insidious’s grin never faltered as she lunged forwards in meeting, her bony breast striking the bear backwards. The flailing feet kicked into the wiry frame, shattering it, even as the half dozen tentacles grasped the owner.
By now, the white flesh of the alien kaiju was more blue, visible waves of mucus generating from all points of its frame, thickly cascading from her shoulder spines, ripples pouring down her hunched frame, even gushing from her tails and slithering forwards to pool before her. A massive, sticky, deadly half-circle puddle spread almost two hundred meters in diameter to her front half, growing deeper by the minute. As Insidious stormed forwards, the thick fluid was pushed away before her, tidal waves increasing the depth of the icy pool in front. Moments later, the six tentacles flipped the Ursis over, back to ground, then simply dropped it, causing it to splash into the pond. It had no time to scream before all of the bird’s tentacles turned to fluid, spraying down and over the bear and thoroughly coating and drenching it.
The Ursis started to struggle, but to no avail; Insidious stumbled forwards again, the mutation sending even more waves of thick mucus covering the submerged creature. Its eyes widened, bubbles escaping its maw, trapped as it was, and flailing continued, albeit sluggish now in the humors. The puddle’s edges began to withdraw, leaving only the thinnest films over the snow and ice and piling even more fluid over the trapped bear. Seeming to drool in anticipation of the first creature to step into her grasp, the Dove silently bent over the hapless bear, leaning all the way forwards until she completely overshadowed the creature, the puddle of mucus shrinking to a hundred meters in diameter as it piled over.
The Ursis struggled to stand again, its head rising, its neck craning, its limbs punching and kicking. One stray blow slipped into the mush at Insidious’s base, to no avail; mucus continued to slough forwards off Insidious’s frame at a ridiculous rate, encasing the victim in a glob almost forty to fifty meters high, pressing down and pushing it back to earth. Seconds after it was first coated, the acid had gone to work on the fur and flesh, the former thinning and beginning to droop visibly as it was coated. By five seconds, the hair was shortening, the skin visible beneath it; within twice that time most of the fur was gone and floating all over the place in the pool, rapidly dwindling away to nothing. No tears of agony were sighted, doubtless devoured by the indiscriminating, hungry Dove, pain searing through the bear’s frame as the skin cells, first lines of defense, burst and were rapidly assimilated down at their smallest component levels. These continued to strip away, molecular bonds weakening, skin thinning, as the Ursis screamed and shook.
The arms continued to bang against the ground beneath it in what seemed to be slow motion, once, twice, thrice. The third time, the right arm stuck hard and didn’t rise again as fast, slightly tipping the encased Ursis and sending the opposite limb waving ineptly in the sky. Above, Insidious gave a satisfied rumble, her missing face parts already scabbing over and reforming into some semblance of their original appearance. The Ursis’s arm rose back up from the ground again, and while no sound escaped the enclosure, its eyes widened even more with shock. Only the upper three-quarters or so of its arm rose back up, leaving the bottom layer of bloody skin stuck to the ground, floating up in the ever-hungry fluid. Small pieces of meat and blood vessels were visible in the severed part as the bear shook itself, pawing at its own chest with the opposite limb. The claws themselves barely even raked the torso, but the flesh peeled away with ease, large strips torn off and quickly disintegrating, bringing more and more of the body with it. A trio of short gashes quickly degenerated into a deformed hole in the area, its edges widening all the while. More shaking occurred, and weak flesh gave way at multiple points, skimming away and redness beneath visible.
By now, the flesh over the first attacked leg had almost completely given way, the only thing left of it being small pieces of pinkish material bobbing off into the mucus. Beneath it, the entire leg was visible, blood red and skinned, muscles and tendons, blood vessels and bone all visible, orange meat flexing and bending. Still there was no blood spray, just red droplets floating off, and even these fading away into nonexistence. The sight was more than enough encouragement for Insidious, who let out a much louder, triumphant, diseased caw that quickly evolved into a shriller scream of triumph as her juices began to eat away at these newly exposed innards. From her newly reformed chest cavity, whiteness within began to squirm, and suddenly, from each and every of the many holes, monstrosities began to form. Elongated white maggots; skinny, pearly, deformed parasite-worms; a myriad of oversized, slither insects…all spewed from the holes like meat from a grinder, spilling out by the hundreds and plummeting down to their new meal.
Down they fell, lancing like Olympic divers, crashing teethed head-first into the weakened flesh. Their fangs were already sharp, but the Ursis having been submerged for such a long period of time now, they speared into the food like a hot knife into butter, disappearing into the tender raw meat with no trace behind except perfectly circular red holes of variable sizes. They struck all over the body, the majority penetrating the torso and turning it into Swiss cheese. Several others caught the arms, though few made it to the extremes of the head or legs. One caught the jaw, dug through, and subsequently tore out on the other side, digging up beneath the jaw and biting through the tongue with relish. Another went sailing through the neck; yet another pierced slightly above the left eye and dealt with the bone beneath. Many others missed the main body, but easily, imperviously swam through the mucus that was their home, all heading for the nearest source of meat.
Insidious shifted her bulk again, and massive sprays of maggots flew from beneath her useless, maimed legs to coat the lower body parts of the bear, much to its horror and her delight. Here and there, the corruption fed, and in turn the Blackened Dove herself was nourished. Like dolphins breaching the foam, sea serpents rising over a waterline of flesh, hundreds and hundreds of living things devoured another organism, rising up and out, now turning in mid-air and diving back in. The skin on the outside was now almost completely gone; here one leapt, perhaps a sinew or a ligament clenched in its ringed, fanged mouth, there another gnawed at an exposed rib, now joined by five or six of its brethren! Internals skewed away into the sea of mucus, and white worms rose up to catch them and pull them down even as more fell from their host, regenerating and respawning at an incredible rate. The head turned away, trying to escape, as more and more went up to it, while the chest had almost completely disintegrated into a mass of writhing white, a storm of feeding frenzy. A lone rib bone, severed from the others, bobbed up and was ignored, overridden by the stench and call of blood. It had been cracked near the side, and part broke off and subsequently disappeared into the blue.
The main flesh and meat was going, and organs would be the next subject of attention. Some had clearly been penetrated already, as maggots leapt up, food clenched in their mouth, tossed back and swallowed like a shark would, before diving back down. The damaged arm merely gave minor twitches and was simply enveloped by waving white tails, their other ends clearly latched onto the meat like perverse imitations of suckling babes, while the skinned leg had ceased movement altogether. Muscles had clearly been severed, key parts of joints damaged, as it no longer even struggled for life. All that remained was white bone and some dwindling pieces of flesh near the toe joints where the maggots had missed for now. Even hard skeleton was no determent, merely more nourishment for maggots that ate, were crushed by their own kind’s weight, and that were reabsorbed by their mistress for more production.
The second Ursis recovered and came running back up, but slowed at the gruesome sight and fate of its companion, skidding to a halt at the edge of the pool. This was a very poor decision, as it turned out; Insidious lunged forwards in a single fluid motion, crushing and splintering the legs of her helpless victim and reducing them to shards of bone that were swept beneath her, never to be seen again. The edges of the pool, suddenly drawing mass from the ridiculously unneeded mass crushing the semi-digested Ursis, quickly formed one large tendril and punched upwards, aiming directly for the bear’s half-open jaw. It snapped down, but failed to stop the acid’s progress, the solidified appendage punching out multiple teeth and slamming as far back down the mouth as it could manage. It drew to a halt at the back of the throat, and there loosened, spilling mucus into the bear’s mouth.
The Ursis, through instinct, tried to reject the fluid, but found it difficult to spit out the gooey liquid. Outside, the rest of the tendril re-solidified and punched back in, drawing more mass from the base, shoving some of the goo down the Ursis’s throat and forcing more liquid mucus into the mouth. Some spilled out the jaw, the tongue and weakened teeth already burning away, but more just gurgled down the back of the throat. The smaller creature shook itself then simply keeled over, in excruciating agony from the eating away of its throat passages and the toxic effects of the mucus, poisonous spores and mold already forming inside its warm body.
“Thankfully any new diseases or mold spawned by the mucus won’t last long in this weather,” one copilot murmured. “No cleanup will be necessary.”
Behind Insidious, another energy ray blasted Renneth’s duelist, sending it reeling; as it swung up, two of his claws detached and swooped low, knocking the Ursis off its feet and into the air. One large slab of hematite swung beneath and caught it, while a second came crashing down flat-side first, effectively creating a rocky sandwich. Renneth’s claws withdrew, and he glided away, almost back-to-back with his extraterrestrial partner as he applied attraction between the twin pieces of “bread.” The creature’s mouth shot open, a pained scream escaping as the pressure mounted, blood gushing from its already open wounds before the magnetic monster discharged a blast between the slabs, blowing off much of its fur.
Facing their slowly recovering foes, Renneth and Insidious observed their test dummies, each holding a mixture of mild satisfaction or hunger respectively. Gradually, one after another, each Ursis managed to gain its feet, one burning in agony from consuming mucus, another bleeding and broken from its wounds. Twin snarls of primal rage echoed over the Lawless Zone’s frozen plain, cornered, ferocious wild pride refusing to give in. Their only response was a goading keening in their ears and a mocking sneer. With no further thoughts, both Ursis broke into wild charges, paws flailing.
In perfect, almost mechanical, scientific synchronized coordination, Renneth and Insidious both swiveled, putting their backs to their foes, each appearing to look over the other’s shoulder, the former’s back spines still in their abnormal configuration from his last back defense. As Insidious moved, her bulk spun over her victim Ursis, whose torso had been reduced to near nothing, the majority of the maggots now having overtaken the face. Over half a hundred tons of kaiju mass crushed the bear, reducing it to rubble to be digested. The maggots had left little gore for consumption.
If Renneth’s attacker had been paying attention, it would have noticed that the saurian’s first wounds had long since faded into nothingness. In blind fury, it merely drove its sharp claws into the flat of Renneth’s back, succeeding in creating a sextet of puncture wounds but drawing very little blood overall. Due to his abilities to just incorporate metal, Renneth really no longer had any need for internal fluids, and his regeneration did little to focus on creating more. On Insidious’s size, her foe splattered over her weak back, gripping on tightly. She didn’t even bother to struggle, her skin just peeling off and sending her assailant crashing back down into the large pool where its partner had just been eaten alive.
For a brief second, each Deity kaiju struck back at their own foe; Renneth’s hook-spines, curved inwards, suddenly began to snap downwards and in like whips or the eight jaws of a Venus flytrap, stabbing circular hole after circular hole into the Ursis, which swiftly relinquished its grasp at the pain of its oozing wounds. Behind Insidious, as the acid began to go to work, the pool generated a tendril from its center, punching the bear in its stomach and knocking its breath from it while lifting it up to fifty meters, its limbs dangling limply in gravity’s grasp.
Now each alien left the continued choreographed assault to its partner. Six tendrils grew back out of Insidious’s shoulders and reached back out and around Renneth to reach the floored Ursis behind him, even as Renneth’s six fingers detached and slipped simultaneously through the gaps between the solidified, gooey feathers before him. On one side, the rising Ursis found itself struck six times, one after another, ending up stunned and bleeding on its back with a half dozen crisscrossing tentacles levitating above it. It had no time to blink before these liquefied and splattered all over it, coating it thoroughly. On the opposite end, Renneth’s molten claws surrounded the lifted bear, circling it then stabbing inwards quickly and rapidly, punching holes all over its sides and backside.
Renneth and Insidious then swiveled and spun back to their weakened foes, ready to finish their job. Insidious’s method of conclusion lacked any true grace or finesse, but was indeed effective, consisting of spawning four tentacles from the pond the bleeding, deteriorating Ursis resided in and repeatedly fustigating the entire length of its frames, each further blow drawing a squirt of blood from the wounds opened by Renneth and shattering bones all over, then simply storming forwards and crushing its weakened frame beneath her large weight, as she had done to its predecessor. The Ursis had not been dissolved to that state yet, but it was battered, wounded, and in a highly awkward position. Something seemed to crack and the twitching stopped, though in the name of safety Insidious went ahead and spewed more maggots downwards around her. All swiftly disappeared beneath her bulk, though she merely shifted herself into a more comfortable position and slunk back down into a motionless hunch, “nesting” on her second meal.
Renneth, in contrast, spun over next to the other downed Ursis, perhaps noticing it struggling against the acid weakening it, its fur sticking to the mucus but much of it having already been shed. Perhaps his focus was more on his six claws, as he raised his arms to the sky, each claw coming back in and slamming firmly to his wrists one after another in rapid succession. Each connection made a hefty clunking sound, shaking his body as he reconstructed. Then, in a method similar to Insidious’s, but much bloodier, the snow-coated monster simply levitated over the Ursis as it slowly stood, turning around as he did so and bringing his twister with him. The bear was buffeted and struck from all angles by the magnetic pulls and blows, knocked around and pulled from side to side, rocking on the balls of its feet. It raised its head to howl upwards at the dangling metal frame above it as a sharpened shard of ice whipped past, slashing across its shin and slicing deep to the bone. It squealed and jumped as a second blade, absorbed into the vortex, flashed across its back; a third tore across its arm lengthwise, and another ripped through the back of its ankles, all of the blows dicing the mucus-weakened flesh with ease. Another cut the tendons, and the Ursis keeled over backwards, falling headfirst into the outer edge of the magnetic tornado. A blitzing shard drew across its neck and jugular as it did so, the splattering noise reaching the ears of the Deities in their AOMDs in the sky. The pure white twister of Renneth’s turned a light pink.
Most pilots and kaiju would have relaxed at this point, but Renneth simply turned again, this time facing a third direction, where an opening in the surrounding crags and cliffs occurred. The pilots had already checked their radars and was aware of an advancing blip, this one alone, attracted to the magnetic field, though due to their vantage point they were still unable to completely view it. Insidious, attracted by her ally’s movement, swiveled herself, producing another six tendrils in readiness as something that looked faintly similar to brain matter oozed out form beneath her base. Large, crunching footfalls grew audible, and small fragments of ice shattered and fell off surrounding structures.
“It’s alone,” one pilot murmured. “That’s different.”
From the edge of the icy plain emerged a fifth bear, larger and much more intimidating than either of its predecessors. While its size still failed to compare to Insidious’s massive bulk, it sported prominent muscular growth and much larger claws and fangs, as well as a spine-coated back, the quills shaking in the wind as it lumbered slowly forwards, its arms swinging before it and each gradual, aggressive footfall creating a resounding boom. Crimson eyes regarded the impassive intruders, its muzzle dropping open to release a thunderous roar at the invaders of its territory. On the other side, the last of the aliens’ wounds closed up, Renneth even electing to merely plug one of his holes with a chunk of metal rather than an actual regeneration. Energy crackled around the four levitating slabs and protrusions.
“Looks similar,” someone muttered. “Angry mother, perhaps?”
“No,” another replied. “This one’s shown up on the probes. Different species known as ‘Berzurkir,’ very rare and aggressive. They say it can hold its own against larger monsters fairly well and ‘smash boulders.’ We haven’t actually seen it’s full strength in action yet, so they might send a message to Renneth asking him to test his regeneration…”
True as that may have been, the master of the wild was outmatched in this regard, faced by not only one but two daikaiju wielding powers that it had never before viewed. The Berzurkir took another step forwards and halted several hundred meters from its opponents, tossing back its head to let out another tumultuous bellow. This time, Insidious gave her answering croak, her need for more flesh still unappeased for the moment, using more of her energy to draw out six more tentacles and raise them into the sky.
Renneth gave the umpteenth traditional opening, this time firing five beams simultaneously, small rays of force from his eye spike and the tips of each gyrating hunk of hematite. They struck the monolithic creature, one in each limb and the last in the center of the chest. Fur seared away swiftly, the focus, unwavering bolts burning browned and blackened pinpricks into the Berzurkir’s skin. It needed no more encouragement to storm forwards, the earth reverberating, its arms reaching out as if ready to give its foes a ‘bearhug,’ so to speak.
The magnetic alien counterattacked first, levitating forwards with his claws at the ready. Before him rocketed a pair of his slabs, turned sideways with their flats facing the bear, forming a horizontal barrier. Confidently, the Berzurkir drew a muscular arm far back, even as the twin pieces of rock slammed into its chest, lifting its feet slightly off the ground and beginning to push it backwards. Its feet scraped the cold ground for several seconds before its claws gained traction and slammed firmly back down, giving it a second to swat the first chunk of metal firmly. Its momentum turned into a second attack, its second paw giving the other half of the barrier an overhead swipe as its limbs windmilled wildly.
However, the bear was to be disappointed, as the stone slabs failed to shatter beneath even its own vast strength. Small, functionally irrelevant impact craters were left on the points of contact, but aside from that not even a small patch of hairline cracks were created. The Berzurkir, in bewilderment, delivered another direct blow to the hematite even as it began to slip backwards once more, to no avail; the magnetic field around Renneth and his parts held them together firmly, preventing the molecular bonds from splitting.
The twin slabs brought the distraction that Renneth had planned, both halves of the barrier suddenly splitting away to the side, revealing the alien mere meters from the Berzurkir’s face. A series of clunks were heard, all six of the claws slamming onto one of Renneth’s wrists, drawn firmly in as he held the limb out before him, turning sideways and extending the six-pointed hand towards his foe. Suddenly, his wrist began to swivel at an incredibly rapid rate, transforming the hand into a pinwheel-style blade, creating a whizzing noise not unlike that of a chainsaw. Another second, and the hand was sent crashing into the Berzurkir’s flesh, the molten blades slamming through battle-hardened meat and tearing upwards and away.
The Berzurkir howls in agony and rage, as the long weapons draw deep into the muscle and flesh, ripping it up and scooping it out, carving a massive gash into the bear and hurling the meat upwards and away. Renneth continues to drive his spinning arm deeper, tiny chunks of gore and innards spiraling up and hurtling into the sky to rain down across the plain. In retaliation, the bear tries to swing its opposite arm down, aiming for his foe’s shoulder; one of the extraterrestrial’s slabs sense this and rush in, counteracting the blow. The bear succeeds only in spearing its bulky paw upon the bladed tip, sending dark crimson ichor flowing down the silvery surface.
Renneth puts on a sudden burst and drives his weapons even deeper into the Berzurkir’s stomach, before ripping up and carving upwards into the central torso. With another shriek, the mammal punches its bulky first straight into his tormentor’s metallic chest, punching a deep wound into the alien. At the same time, it cranes its neck at Renneth’s nearby shoulder, trying to bite him; however, the two kaiju are by now nearly face to face and eye to eye, and the saurian shifts himself, driving his chin spins into the bear’s own, hooking it temporarily. It lets out another resonating roar, and as they two jerk and dance temporarily, Renneth rips his limb back out, half the claws leaving for their original arm. The bear counterattacks, slashing another blow across the alien’s chest. The deep wounds appear, but little more blood appears, as the Ursis had first discovered.
As the first, bleeding paw swipes again, Renneth’s newly reconstructed arm shoots into its path, two of the claws drawing a gash among the bear’s hip. The pain causes the Berzurkir’s fist to clench, seizing the offending appendage firmly. In response, the Deity warrior simply splits off his arm, detaching it and allowing the bear to pull it aside with ease. The bear throws back its head and lets out a war cry of triumph, one that is swiftly cut off and silenced as Renneth’s first limb – now enhanced with a large slab of hematite stuck to its length, making a massive blade – stabs back in, deeply penetrating the entire stomach perpendicular to the buzzsaw’s vertical gash. The Berzurkir gags on itself, coughing up blood and jerking forwards even as its “severed” arm splits into various tiny particles, flowing free of its imprisonment. The magnetic alien’s entire form follows the same way, disintegrating and sailing up high into the air, disappearing from sight and the Berzurkir’s grasp.
The bear looks up as the thousands of particles of metal sail into the air and disappear above it, roaring in frustration and batting the air, blood leaking from its wounds. It doesn’t turn its attention back to Insidious, focusing its fury on its foe’s apparent retreat; unfortunately, it also remains completely unaware of her own follow-up assault. While the Dove made no attempt to aid Renneth while he grappled with the beast, she did take the opportunity to prepare her own assault, slapping all her mucus feathers together and slowly shifting them into a massive glob almost her own size, rounded and pulsating, supported by short tendrils growing out of the puddle at her feet.
Without bothering to attract the Berzurkir’s attention, Insidious shifts, flicks her tendrils, and sends the massive ball of acid soaring directly at the mammal. The blob completely splatters thickly over its front side, and coats most of its back, enveloping it in acid. Its snowy white hair flattens against its chest, draped down and already thinning, as it paws at the goo coating it. On its back, the quills start to shorten, their sharp tips growing blunter by the moment. Even as tears begin to spawn from its burning eyes, vital fluids leeched from its frame, the massive animal shakes off the pain, much stronger and resilient than its smaller kin. It turns to face Insidious, and starts to storm towards her, ready to strike its new foe, but is intercepted by a surprising source.
Electric charges crackle around Insidious’s neck plumage, and tiny streaks of bluish lightning shoots from her frame to the corpse of the last Ursis to die, the one with the tattered frame, diced in Renneth’s twister, but the relatively intact body. The Berzurkir pays no attention, its slender eyes fixated solely on Insidious’s sneer, and does not notice even when the carcass slowly stumbles to its feet, swaying on its own, stumbling like a drunken body. The energy storm around her crest intensifies, jagged streaks jumping over the carcass, aiming for specific muscles and points on the frame; the fine muscle control brings the dead Ursis staggering swiftly into the larger Berzurkir’s path.
The bear halts, a questioning growl raising from its throat as it views the smaller beast that dared challenge it. Something was wrong; its instincts told it that no such thing could exist, that a natural one of this species could live in that state, let alone challenge its dominion, but Insidious’s lightning continued to drive the cadaver forwards. Its legs tripping, nearly falling but forcing itself back up, the body makes its way up to the Berzurkir’s leg, stumbling and collapsing against it. The Ursis continues to flop around, literally walking bipedal, in a position that would be incredibly uncomfortable for it had it still been alive. Finally, the Berzurkir slashes at the irritation, nearly tearing the smaller bear’s right arm straight off, flaying the skinless, dissolving flesh into tiny strips.
In response, the makeshift zombie slashes around with its remaining arm, catching the larger animal in its thigh. Such a clumsy, drunken blow would never normally have even scratched the bear, but with its defenses weakened by its soak in Insidious’s acids, the paw sinks deeply in. The larger creature howls in fury, as the undead stumbles back, leaving its own half-severed hand behind in the other’s body; a vengeful, wrathful backhand knocks the Ursis’s semi-decapitated head off. Most of the blood has already slipped away, but that doesn’t stop part of Insidious’s puddle from slithering over and catching the grotesque trophy as nourishment.
Amazingly, the headless body still gets up, continuing to charge straight at the weakened bear, stinging its kneecaps with a mindless tackle. Now thoroughly aggravated by this small challenger, the Berzurkir kicks it savagely to the ground, proceeding to ruthlessly stamp on it, blood gushing up from each consecutive step, the claws sinking into the weakened flesh like a child’s bare foot into the wet sand at the beach. Fluids gush up between its toes as it reaches down and rends the remnants of the Ursis’s body to tatters, ripping its powerful claws along the lengths.
The Berzurkir’s rampage is cut off as six powerful metal-like tentacles smash into its wounded chest, causing it gag up more bile and fluids and knocking it flat onto its back. Its feet kick up wildly, smashing the rear of the now fully impaired Ursis into the ruins of its upper half, a swamp of chunks of white fur and reddish liquids. It is back up on its feet in a split second and rushing at Insidious, who raises her feathers in gleeful response. The two collide, pitting vast animalistic strength against alien bulk and power. Twin claws, capable of shattering boulders to rubble, have no trouble ripping the rotting flesh off a skeleton, scavenging the skin off a carcass, as both penetrate to either side of the Dove’s ribs. The flesh on both sides of her body is pushed off and away, more mush than solid, dragging away much of the superficial, meaty coating on the higher parts of her body. Mucus begins to shed at a massive rate, production increasing and skewing over the foreign object, eating away at it once more. The alien corruption bends her frame, sending her head and proboscis downwards, but the bear rears away, aiming a strike that takes off a large chunk of her shoulder. The spear-like nose penetrates her foe through the left breast, driving deep and becoming caught on ribcage, missing any important organs much to Insidious’s exasperation.
Regardless, she pumps hundreds of gallons of her mucus directly into the hole, which quickly falls apart, disintegrating into another long, painful wound along the length of the bear’s front side. The two rear up to strike once more, but this time Insidious lets out another specific energy blast, raining it along the Berzurkir’s limbs. Its legs convulse and its body gives way, crumpling to the ground in an effective seizure, fighting the movement as it loses coordination. Insidious is on top of it in a flash, repeatedly pounding its face into a bloody mess, rounded, blunted tendrils smashing and skewering into open gashes.
Now the mammal straightens, fighting off the effects on its limbs, regaining coordination, snarling and aiming a wild swing at the Dove. It misses, but she slithers back several dozen meters nonetheless, new flesh already slithering down her sides to replace the missing material. Her feathers withdraw, still facing the bear at the ready but pulling back to her sides; she faces the animal silently, no, faces something behind the animal.