Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Westeria City: Azure Heights

Looking from the sights of his rifle to the woman, then the nearby machine, Pyotr silently spouts something to it in Russian.

UV's single eye closed even moreso than usual; somewhat irritated due to the fact he had to translate. Tilting himself down to look at Teelum, he said; "<:: He wants to know if you know these people, Teelum. ::>" He then continued to stare at the human before adding; "<:: I do as well. ::>"
 
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Teelum said while shaking with fear,"Those are the people from the lab. They're probably coming to try and take me back." Meanwhile, the soldiers were looking around, occasionally saying things to each other via radio. Spotting somewhere better to hide, she ran there still crouched. One of them saw the movement, gesturing the others to join him. Realising that they saw her, Teelum braced herself for battle.
 
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In a building nearby...

Observing the events unfolding two stories below was a small group of supply runners currently situated within a nearby firestation. They had near made it back to the refuge of the former business district of Azure Heights, but an unexpected and forced detour had left them making the decision that it was safer to wait out the night until morning rather than to press on through the dark.

The well fortified building had offered them a relatively secure place to hole up for the night, and came with the fortune of scavenging up some much needed first-aid supplies. The night's stop wasn't as fruitful as a hospital might have proven, but even basic first-aid kits had spiked in value since the fall of the city and provided a pleasant enough bonus to their trip beyond the security of the District.

With dawn yet to break its way across the horizon, the commotion outside had roused them a good hour earlier than planned and their position on the second floor of the building offered them a good vantage point of what was going on below.

"Those anomalies don't look to be stabilizing," Vanora observed with a frown.

Their near proximity to the rifts below was unsettling to even the most hardened of scavengers. There was no telling what may spill through from beyond. Or what damages might be wrecked upon the immediate area.

"We should pull back and put some distance between here," Loban recommended warily.

"What about them?" a third individual, Dryden, asked as he gestured towards Pyotr, and the woman hiding nearby.

"That one has the look of a soldier to him," Vanora noted. "And looks a lot less like 'trouble' than the ones coming out of the anomalies. He could be a valuable asset to the District."

"Well if we're staying, we need to stabilize the fuck out of those anomalies before more shit spills out," Loban added. "Dryden?"

"I can try," Dryden answered.

The trio had the cohesion and even look of an organized team that knew one another's strengths and weaknesses. Vanora appeared the most grizzled of the lot, with one arm entirely replaced by a cybernetic appendage. She had been around the block a time or two even before the city fell, and she bore the scars of her years to show for it. Pushing forty years of age, she was visibly the eldest of the trio. The other two proved younger - mid twenties at best - though no less hardened given the weeks that had transpired. Terrans proved tough by nature, and the fall of Westeria City had only culled those that remained down to the hardest - or the luckiest. Loban and Vanora were both armed with side-arms and rifles, while Dryden seemed unarmed. All three made use of tactical gear and light-weight body armor scavenged from abandoned police stations though.

The fourth of their group was the odd one out; a recent addition to replace one of their own lost only a week past. They were familiar with one another by reputation, but had yet to build the trust and cohesion necessary to work fluidly as a single unit.

"Alright, Dryden you try to stabilize the anomalies. Loban, be prepared to cover us from up here. Slim, you and I are heading below. Our priority is the soldier. We extract him and fall back to the building here. If we can avoid this turning into a shoot-out we will, but if things go south this building can take the heat."
 
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Slim nodded, silently replying as he stood up from the crate he'd been seated on. He adjusted his bandanna over his silver re-breather and pulled his battered goggles down over his eyes. Then he slowly walked over Vanora, ready to follow.
 
Through the mask, a muffled voice came from the scientist/soldier nearest to Teelum. While inaudible to anyone not on the private radio equipped into their helmets, to the others the message was crystal clear. "I saw movement this way." They slowly approached the spot where Teelum hid, unsure what was there, with guns at the ready. One of them goes ahead and flips over the garbage Teelum had hidden behind.
"That's it. There's no doubting it." He said, and tried to push a button on his mask, only to be interrupted by Teelum stabbing him with a metal claw. As soon as she did that, Teelum sprinted away, quickly managing to get behind a building. The scientist/soldier was unharmed, receiving just a small cut. He pushed a button on his mask as he previously attempted, causing his voice to be sent out of a speaker on the mask rather than via radio. "We will have no need to shoot you if you surrender now." Nothing happened.... "We guarantee no harm will be inflicted if you just quit hiding." Still nothing. "Well, guess we have no choice." He said as all of them got their guns ready, and approached Teelum, who gestured for help from Pytor.
 
Certain things any sane designer of detection equipment for invisible anomalies rose immediate alarm. However a mere one or two mild signs of such could be interpreted as a background warning blip. In this case a high gain spike x-ray burst was followed by several more of differing frequencies clearly not just mere reflections from the same source. Evidence for a weakened tarp of space-time beginning to pour inward. Rapid progression advanced into thunderclaps that throw flashbulbs on the street as chips of mass phased out of their own reference frame at an uncomfortably significant percentage of c. Screams of light punctuate solid concrete as a searing tracers liquifacted stone passing a sheer channel through as they hadn't yet phased in entirely. A harmless if worrying alpha-radiation wake detonated through underground passages as the bits of immolated plasma came to stable rest in city undercroft or heavy bedrock. Air,dust, and water vapor forced by sheer velocity of a projectile to join in fusion with the oncoming mass finally threw all its momentum and energy away and stabilized. The barrage torqued out of the wrong side of reality thunders steadily on but the flaring anomalies enter a low tide.

In the distance above a long ship in stretched relief whirls wild about its axis as if in zero g the tenuous space keeping the sub-luminal mass from entering local space. Too large and undirected to pass its wake flares the anomalies among an angry halo of x-ray bursts. A sonic boom emerges with it as a smaller ship emerges in the wake of the activity. The dropship was roughly a tank in size though longer with tentacles on either end. Fields between the smaller front flared to life a flickering membrane between them as the rear engines flared to life. It smoked with sudden friction but lacked the apparent speed of its companion's reference frame. It actively busied itself with righting the spin while a reddish heat shield formed to take the inevitable impact.
 
Vanora took point with Slim on her heels as they reached the street level. Before them chaos was unfolding rapidly. Teelum's pursuers were moving in on her location, and the storm of rifts continued to crackle and arc with uncontrolled energy as they opened and closed, threatening to swallow up anyone within their vicinity. A fact made realization as Pyotr and UV were abruptly engulfed in a flare of energy that left not a trace of the pair.

"Shit," Vanora hissed under her breathe. "I thought you said you could stabilize the anomalies," she muttered to no one.

Dryden's reply was returned telepathically, "I said I could try. There's too many. You two need to get out of there-"

The communication was abruptly disrupted by the fluctuation of energies within the area as a sonic boom drew everyone's gazes skywards. What they saw was cause for alarm for everyone in the vicinity. Vanora and her team, the scientists, and Teelum alike. A ship was spinning right for them as it struggled to regain control of it's rapid descent.

"Dryden!" Vanora's voice barked with urgency.

"On it," his reply came once more.

"Back inside," she barked to Slim. "Quickly."



Back upstairs, Loban cursed under his breathe at the situation unfolding outside - and overhead.

"We won't get clear in time," Loban growled.

"Hold tight, this is going to get rocky," Dryden warned.

The wizard's hands were held to either side with his palms up as a green energy gathered within each of them. His eyes had taken on a mirror shade of green as he began a low chant. The words themselves were lost on Loban and anyone within earshot as they seemed to slip through one's perception with all the fluidity of water. The drone of the chanting could be heard, but the exact words were lost to those who heard them.

As the falling ship plummeted towards their location Dryden released the gathering energy within his palms. The two orbs of light simply exploded spreading a green haze that swept outwards to form a dome around the building to protect those within it from the impact of the ship once it struck. Teelum would find her hiding place within the safety of the dome as well out of pure chance and luck due to her close proximity to the building, but the scientists that pursued her were not so fortunate. They were left out in the open at the mercy of the imminent ship crash.
 
Teelum was obviously mortified at the insanity going on around her. If it wasn't the hyperventilation or the swimming pool's worth of sweat that gave it away, it was the rapid and repeated swearing. She let out a large sigh and slowly sank to the floor for a few seconds, before recovering from the near death experience, something the scientists weren't lucky enough to get. Teelum sought out Vanora and her crew to not only thank for saving her life, but to form an alliance.
 
The dropship was one certainly built for sterner stuff but unnatural flexibility far easier to see in wavering organic surfaces getting closer. Eight front tentacles project a weak wing surface that reduced the spin to a heavy wobble on the way to the ground barely in time to extend four rear thruster arms outward from its travel vector. A bright white plume of magnetoplasma thrusters working in a desperate bid for retro thrust bore down on the building in which the mage resided. Superheated plumes from the ventral side of the craft directed downward flash lit a haggard tree among the anomalies; a fell wind would do unkind things to those unprotected by breathing apparatus.

In the moments before impact it appeared the pilot within made their choice seeing the people in its path directing the four retro thrusters upward. The ship's superstructure bent hard then straightened with a bright red and blue flash pounding it hard into the ground straight through an anomaly. Its shower of rubble, plasma thrust, and energy tore at the surface level erupting a plume of embers, fire, molten rock, and ash. The hole behind it forcibly collapsed out of existence even as the energetic shadow in its trail flared once in response. The cruiser-sized energetic shadow of a ship lazily careens harmlessly through buildings drifting against the energetic currents.

Two four-toed landing gear dug hard at the street as the engines slapped shut as best they could though the ventral armor and engines soaked up heavy damage as the cyan on navy water-marked flesh tore at stone before sliding sideways toward the building. The undercroft did not take to the impact well and the ship momentarily sank before it would pound into the protective field and likely collapse into the new sewer hole.

The larger shadow mostly vanished but for the most sensitive. That mothership would bounce off of buildings without the barest effort having consumed an anomaly and stabilized its own internal reference frame across the weak space-time. Whatever building it invisibly careened off of had a bright flash of an aperture turning a door or aperture into a radioactively seared airlock of dead navy flesh then disappearing several dozen seconds later when it struck something else.
 
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Slim had turned a heel and swiftly darting back to the cover of the building. The tall alien ducked his pale and near featureless head to clear the devastated doorway, as the green mist enveloped the building. Though his vision clouded, Slim slid behind a pile of collapsed ceiling just past the entrance. He crouched and drew his pistol from inside his coat, taking shallow, tinny breaths as he braced for the ship's crash landing.
 
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