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Adrian just grunted upon overhearing the alien's comment of that he, as a marine, was “elite [Killy's] feathered a**.”. He had tried talking to the bird-thing as they had done in the last mission, but that was obviously not working. The sniper just shrugged, keeping pace with the rest of the group, he had gotten so involved with Asher because they needed the dwarf-like native fighter to get off this planet alive – the Inquisitor wasn't so helpful towards that goal except as another gun.
I guess we don't really need him to like us to work together to get off this rock alive. Adrian thought. Still, each time he thought back on Killy's words the marine got the urge to go cut down a couple hundred of the damn mutants outside to prove his sweet, little feathered head wrong.

Destiny Harrumphed at Asher as he continued to flap his stupid, goatee'd jaw, his voice even louder than the clomping of all the boots. She placed a palm on ger forehead for a moment while running, obviously trying to master herself- it was easy to see that Asher grated on her, especially at a point such as now when stress was high anyway. However, she managed to keep quiet, shaking it off by physically shaking her head, the red hair swishing about angrily behind her as she ran.
******

Kai continued running, huffing a bit, before they exited the building they were in, and arrived on another skyway- but this one was a dit different. It was very obvious that the service droids in this building had been deactivated, as the floor was scrached, scuffed, and gouged the windows were cracking and several were missing, and a large section of the floor appeared to be cracked going accross. He halted the group, not wanting to just run into it, as it didn't seem right, obviously.

The Lieutenant moved forward cautiosly, making sure the bridge was stable, and, finding it was stable enough, signalled for the group to continue. As they crossed the hundred yard stretch, however, it became more and more evident that they probably did not want to be in the building at the other end of it for very long, but they couldn't really worry about that.

Several splatting thunks were heard on the glass covering the skyway, and they were soon discovered to be what appeared to be projectile vomit- but the fact that it was sizzling and bubbling also showed that it was highly acidic. "Well, s**t." Kai said, not wanting to be down there- which was wheen the glint of eyes from ahead appeared- out from the dim building, a group of the mutants that had not been chasing them initially had now noticed them, and were advancing, while, from outside, splatting thunks continued to be heard, and some loud crashes behind made it evident that they had broken into the entrance of the building they had just left.


"Contact!" Kai roared, dropping to his knees in an instinctual reaction to decrease his profile, he began firing his Sugar rifle, which proved to have a surprising less-than effective power against these enemies- they were exuding some kind of gasseous cloud that was causing the plasma bursts to bloom before they made contact, what little remaining plasma not doing much at all to the mutants coming forth.

"Projectiles! Anyone with a Whisper, forward, Adrian, I need you now!" the Lieutenant ordered, pulling back to take Adrian's place protecting the admiral, and watching as Mortego, Hendlow, and Adrian moved forward.

All at once, the acid had started eating all the way through the glass, and, almost in sequence, the glass behind them began shattering and falling to the floor, one or two panes at a time heading toward them until there was only a few yards between them and the end of their protection from the Mutant's only known projectile weapon so far.

The Bridge began to shudder.

******

Evelyn continued to monitor the situation. She did not like this at all, but the Marines seemed to have things under some form of control, even through all the arguing. Arguing, she surmised that was brought forth from the stress caused by the strange turn of events and injected by the strange attitude of the small local man they had met. Evelyn might have to do something drastic soon, but she was told she should only do so if it were necessary- and it was not quite yet necessary.

******

Destiny moved forward as well, though she lacked a gun, however, her throwing knives proved just as effective, even at the 25 yard range she was currently throwing them at- the small, sharp objects had been perfectly balanced by a practiced hand, and thrown true by the same hand- often getting face-hits and upper chest hits, she managed to slow down or even kill a couple in a few short throws, but as there were 30 or forty, and they were apparently quite resilient to damage, she could only help so much.

Garrett was done, fed up. Even Killy was behaving unprofessionally, something that had been thus far unthinkable for Lieutenant Hendlow. Now someone was going to get the boot: it was decided! That is, until the whole place started coming down. Garrett had been quickly approaching Killy to give him a full taste of street-grit off his ground-pounders when everything started crumbling- literally.

His first thought was to spread around the goods. "Asher!" He didn't know why- it was probably recognition of skill- but the Lieutenant chose the Surandanian to receive his pistol which also used good old-fashioned lead.

Then Hendlow cut far right, giving him an angle past his teammates. After delivering a few rounds on semiautomatic, he dropped another remote explosive at the back end of the bridge and kept close to the team while covering their forward-retreat.

However, the discipline was not forgotten, merely waylaid.

Cibo's emotions had flip-flopped from sad and guilty to caring and...wait what?! No, that wasn't right either. Forget about the damned alien! 'No. No. No-no-no-no!' she thought as the arguing died down somewhat. Her feet pitter-pattered across the skyway's damaged structure. And all hell broke loose. That, in comparison to everyone's deteriorating state, as well as her own mental and emotional difficulties, was rather easy. In fact, it was like hitting a reset button. Reset! "Can we risk a nade? The blasts will clear them and the gas!" she yelled; they were in a bad way, being trapped on the skyway by the gas ones to the front, horde catching up from behind and Pukers from below, but at least they weren't coming down from above. A flicker of motion up above. The sound of air hitting fleshy membranes. Screeches. Cibo mentally swore, jaded and tired. 'Oh just tie me down and screw me...'

What looked like a gargoyle with an atrophied arm and muscled leg came swooping down from above, the leg's claws outstretched and reaching for the softest, squishiest target. "Evelyn!" she cried out. A black blur moved with a single long stride between the Admiral and the flying creature. It exploded in a red blossom as the Sugar fired through the glass until overheat, completely turning the flying mutant into a cooked mass of meat. Momentum carried the body forward, smashing it through the glass.

A second came down, more deformed than the last yet still flying, trying to enter through this open route. Cibo raised her Bro up to fire, but Yotryan stepped forward again and into her line of fire. He flipped his rifle, grabbing it by the barrel and swung it like a baseball bat in stride. The weapon's electronics spewed forth into the wet maw of the creature, and in a blink, was fried as the damaged weapon dumped energy into the conductive form. Fear spiked in her blood, and she dove between the Admiral and the fight, wrapping the smaller woman in her arms and covering her with her body as arcs of energy leaped about.

Cibo's gun hand swung around to aim at the fray, just as a third came in. The smoking Ottyo crouched down and simply pounced at it, the two meeting in mid air and falling. Others joined in, and the mid-air melee floated away into the distance, red occasionally blossoming, the rare glimpse of a black limb from within.

The fray rounded the edge of a building, and then was gone.

"Go go-- shiiiit!" Garrett's third 'go' came out in a far more explicit fashioning, a symptom of the bridge's sudden collapse. The glass came down in a buzzing torrent, but thankfully they were in armor- most of them, that is. He didn't have any time to try and aid those that weren't, either. The Lieutenant could only hope all was well. And, it seemed, all was well for now.

"You heard the woman! Straight ahead!" He moved alongside Destiny then, gun and eyes on the swivel, concerned only with clearing a path and repelling those that approached the group's front.

One moment, Cibo's mental state was running around in circles. The next, it just stopped trying to make up it's mind as the Intelligence Agent merely gawked. As the bridge slowly came down, so did all her hopes about the gynoid. She knew Evelyn technically wasn't a Terran. She knew the Admiral was literally manufactured in a lab on some supercomputer somewhere, but despite that, honestly hoped that she was normal. Or, at least, normal enough. Over time, as Cibo spent more and more time with Evelyn, she thought of the AI in a girl's body as less machine and more flesh. She watched as the Admiral was happy, sad, and pouting angry! All these were normal, weren't they? So, Evelyn had to be normal. Or, normal enough, right? No.

As she kept up with the rest of the group, her old paranoia and prejudices towards the gynoid came back. What if she could turn people into orange goop with a single mean glare? Deflect blaster fire with a wave of a finger? And, what if she got angry? Really, really angry? An AI capable of ripping troops to shreds with it's mind or something, backed by the most powerful ship in the entire fleet...How would the Terrans deal with an abomination like this?

Cibo was an Intelligence Officer. She wasn't good at working with others, but Cibo was damned well good at playing solo. 'I can't keep It from noticing that I'm shaken up by this, but I can misdirect it! I'll have to report this upchain. Do they even know it could do this? Of course they do, but I'll mention it anyways...'

Her feet continued to silently fall and rise to and from the ground as Cibo ran.