Kaitlyn had already been scared (and not just for her life) when
the ground had tried to eat them, and she was practically suffocating herself with baited breathe as they escaped onto a helicopter.
That would have been bad enough without a fucking [I]kaiju[\i] hadn't shown up. Despite the gravity of the situation, she still found her mind drifting to scenes from Godzilla and Pacific Rim. She thought about the overpowered weapons used in those movies, but...
Noel was at least close enough to see her fall. He spoke into his radio: “Our defensive barrier has been broken,” Noel was trying to keep himself calm, firm, not entirely emotionless, but projecting only a leader’s emotions; he needed to look fearless, and he looked to Nemo, “We need to get it back up; that means that Nemo and I have to go to where Ari is and heal her before she dies.”
Ari... She'd never even bothered to learn her name. Miss Lei's response had assuaged her fears earlier, but now-
Whipping out her binoculars, she zeroes in on the fallen Arms Master.
No...She can't make out any fine details from this distance, but she's pretty sure that's a smoking-
"No. Please no."The image of a baleful sun sprung to life in her mind, like the Eye of Sauron glaring down at her.
She felt her hands shake, her vision unfocusing.
How does she help? What can she do? She's too far away- and for what? What assistance could she bring? What can she do?
Useless.No. No no no she has to be able to do something. There are always options.
You really thought you could help them?She has to! That's what she came here for! What other use does she have for her worthless life?
Worthless is right, private Price. What were you going to do? Save the day? Be the hero?Kaitlyn shut out the voice, clenching her eyes shut.
She trembled now, tears threatening to escape.
Get up...She forgot about Miss Lei, standing uncomfortably close.
She forgot about the monster, looming on the horizon. She was absolutely certain they would all die if she didn't get back up and erect that shield.
Get up!Kaitlyn was beginning to feel light headed. A small trickle of blood oozed from her nose.
She slumped into the body beside her, pale.
"
K-keep me..." She gasped, eyes shooting open wide
Deceptively strong arms caught Kaitlyn's collapsing form, as Qingshe blinked down at her in something approaching bafflement. Brow pinching, the serpentine woman's gaze turned back towards the west, then panned across the cornered defense and the clamor of the battle with Huo Ren, before looking back down.
Lowering Kaitlyn gently into the churning layer of ebony ooze now occupying the floor of the pod, Qingshe dipped her body in, a thrumming static sensation rippling through the Private's body. Turning her gently back and forth, Qingshe rolled one half of her body below the bubbling surface and then the other, never fully submerging her, before leaving her lying face-up. Golden eyes bled into a cool blue, as she hummed with a tone of clinical interest.
Kneeling in the ooze beside Kaitlyn, Qingshe chuckled quietly, a cooling sensation beginning to trickle through her patient.
"Now now, dear, don't go dying on me before I've satisfied my curiosity. That's just rude." She smiled wanly.
"Besides... didn't I say I was about to put on a show? It really would be a shame if you missed it." Her almond-shaped pupils narrowed.
"But first..."Ari, a scorched hole punched through her chest, was swallowed into the ooze as if the ground had simply disappeared beneath her.
"Oh?" Qingshe briefly giggled in an oddly curious tone.
"There we go. Tsk tsk, Huo Ren, if you want to keep her out of my grasp, you should have aimed for the head~." Smirking impishly, as Huo Ren disappeared from sight in a fiery cacophony of explosions, she turned her gaze back to the west.
.
A rumble could practically be felt in the bones of all who onlooked, the western lands turning runny and flowing into a primordial soup of terrakinetic might. But even as the grand flow intensified, many of the distant mountains and hills were not flowing towards the battle at hand. Qingshe's gaze sharpened at the sight of scores of strange, large earthen tubes beginning to protrude from the distant mountainside, glistening in the sunlight an ominous charred black. There was a thick haze that was gradually beginning to darken the air of the west, billowing up from the mountains into the sky. That same haze also belched black fumes in the wake of the rolling monstrous mass of earth that was currently flattening the entirety of Malimuec and Dulig.
Qingshe's brows furrowed at something only she seemed able to see, before her expression turned aghast.
"She wouldn't..." The words were not spoken with much confidence. Moments later, a black and green display began to form from the ooze on the pod's wall. Upon the display flickered into sight a vision of the battlefield, a 3d model of the warzone, all of it alit in in various shades of white, yellow, orange and red. The zone around where the battle with Huo Ren was ongoing was mostly blanketed in yellow, drawing into the deeper orange near the epicenter and then a small core of pulsating angry crimson.
The rolling earth and the mountains on the other hand... The approaching mass seemed mostly yellow, but as the earth churned, flashes of thrumming crimson flickered about beneath the surface. Meanwhile, the ashy smoke billowing into the air seemed to be mostly orange and then yellow, as it drifted. And the mountains... No, the massive singular mountain that the majority of the mass was being drawn into, that mass was thrumming so violently red that it seemed barely able to contain itself, as the craggy spire loomed higher and higher, beginning to cast a sneering shadow over the city of Lingayen.
Kaitlyn squirms, a look of distinct discomfort coming across her face as she's submerged, but she doesn't resist.
She seems... Distracted... By something for a moment, looking around, before just gulping.
Should I even keep praying at this rate?She does so anyway.
"
M-miss Lei, do you know what that thing is?"
She shifts, seeing what her range of freedom is.
Qingshe started a bit, before her eyes flicked back to Kaitlyn. A dry smile overtook her expression.
"I presume you mean the monument that Tian Fei is presently constructing upon her backline?"Kaitlyn found the ooze to be far less "oozey" than expected. Texture aside, it gave to her movements as much as any water might have. She could seemingly rise or remain at her leisure, as if sitting up from a pool of shallow water.
"
It looks like a kaiju. I don't suppose you can whip up a Jaeger to fight it?" She offered a similarly dry smile.
"Oh. That," Qingshe quipped, before rolling her eyes.
"Yes, well, plainly speaking, it's nothing more than a meatshield, a golem, a puppet, whatever you want to call it." She waved her emerald false claws dismissively.
"It's truly no different from any of the rest of the earth surrounding it, except perhaps in the capacity that Tian Fei may be focusing more of her valuable resources and attention upon it. Regardless..." She frowned.
"Fighting that thing is as useful as fighting air. Dealing damage to it is only delaying your inevitable destruction, not wearing down Tian Fei. After all, there's always more earth to replace what mass it loses."Humming, Qingshe cradled her chin in thought, humming a lilting tune, as she studied the display before her.
"But I have a more particular concern presently. Tell me, Private, if you would, what is the pattern here upon this display. If you had to take a guess, what would you say I am currently specifically detecting with it?""
Heat," she said automatically, having already studied the display in brief. A good soldier takes stock of the current situation, and absorbs as much information as possible.
Lifting an arm from the ooze- with only mild disgust- she points towards the display.
"
Yellow through red are ranges of heat, from coolest to hottest. The moving mass itself doesn't seem all that too dissimilar from the earth surrounding it, but..." She squinted. "
There's something in it. Something hot... Is it a bomb?"
"Heat, yes. Exactly correct," Qingshe grinned and nodded.
"I was already running this system as a measure to keep track of Huo Ren's actions, just in case he decided to try and cook us all by raising the temperature in a more subtle manner." She added dryly, before smiling grimly.
"However... it seems it would end up being far more crucial for the crouching tiger behind the Dragon."Reptilian eyes narrowed at the display, bleeding golden again.
"Originally, I had turned it Tian Fei's way in order to try and locate the hostages she has been holding, find their body heat beneath the sand. And perhaps, if I got lucky, locate Tian Fei as well. However, there's no locating them in that mess now. The temperature is simply too high. In fact, it makes me wonder exactly how Tian Fei is keeping herself protected from her own foolishness..."Shaking her head, emerald hair swayed, as she inhaled sharply and exhaled deeply.
"Regardless, the real threat is not her golem or the wave of earth. No. Your intuition is on the right track, Private Price, but fundamentally diverged. Tian Fei cannot create bombs, not in the traditional sense, not without a source of gunpowder or the like to shape." Her smile was all teeth, but and her demeanor one exuding mixed trepidation, anticipation and frustration.
"That is no bomb."There was a reverberating sound, a deep tonal
crack that rumbled down from the mountains and across the skies. Ugly black billows of smoke spewing towards the clouds, the thick, conical, craggy spire of blackened earth seemed to groan and grumble, fissures sprouting across its upper reaches... from which an all too familiar fiery substance began to ooze.
"That... is a volcano."
StarfrostedFox,
Not a Sayan,
Lurking Krog,
Guardian Angel Haruki,
pppp,
flat lovenote,
Fetzen
