Sixth Sin: The Blooming Beasts (Pt. 10): Basement Brawl

  --- Mercer ---

  Eventually, practicality pushed him to head for the basement instead of regrouping with the others, because as much as he may want the backup the fact was that he was running a lot lower on ammo than he was comfortable with when taking on a horde of enemies for the third time in one night. (Really need to stock up before the next Hell Night.)

  Burning a bit more of said ammo to taunt the green witch into continuing her pursuit, he began retracing his earlier path to the basement from memory. Even if it meant suppressing a grimace as he spotted several blooming beasts heading in the opposite direction, slowly making their way towards where he knew Tris was conducting her ritual. (She’s a big girl. She can handle herself. She will handle herself.)

  Smothering his less pleasant feelings under a wall of will and rage like he did with every other issue he had while on the job, he shot his grappler forward as he spotted the basement door. Reeling it in as fast as it would go to try and buy himself a bit more speed before launching himself into the room and promptly diving for whatever cover he could find.

  A moment later the green witch collided with the door frame, shattering half of it under the weight of the bio-sludge compost clinging to her, her previous speed too high to safely kill her momentum. (Hopefully that gave her a concussion, or at least cracked a bone or something.)

  He wouldn’t bet money on it, but he could still hope she was at least half as beaten as he was.

  The witch let out a growl as her eyes darted around all of the clutter in the room. “Really Mercer? Hiding in the middle of a fight?!”

  Beginning to awkwardly crouch walk through the mess -a feat far harder on the calves than most people thought- he grabbed a book before tossing it a bit behind him and making a stack of boxes shake as he admitted that, “I was a Vigil, ambushes are kind of our whole thing!”

  Rather than striking at him the witch shot her tendrils towards the boxes, throwing them towards the wall as her mind accidentally associated the movement with his speech. The villainess not realizing the little known fact that sight was used to identify sound source as much as the actual sound.

  (Well, at the very least that’s proof she doesn’t have a sensory ability at the very least. That would’ve made this a lot harder.)

  Supernatural sensory abilities were the bane of every Infiltrator.

  “Just quit hiding and make this easy on both of us!” The green witch shouted, hoping for another response.

  (Alright, the fact that she isn’t simply throwing around those arms to just flatten me and everything else in here means our little jog probably took more out of her than she’d admit… Or she’s waiting until she spots me because she knows Vigils are harder to kill than cockroaches.) That he felt as he carefully avoided the witch’s sightline was honestly a coin flip.

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  “Every second you waste here is another my creatures are closer to killing your hunter friends!” The floral mask warned him, obviously trying to taunt him. (And doing so rather poorly too.)

  He was more upset about that then the implied threat towards Tris and Kur’silo. (They can take care of themselves…)

  Catching a quick glimpse of the villainess between the box towers told him that while most of her body was still covered in a sort of floral golem, her head and most of her upper torso were still uncovered. (Head is a quick kill, but… If she wasn’t bluffing she might have a deadman’s switch that’ll send all of her beasts into a frenzy.)

  He wasn’t sure how much worse that would be than their current rampage, but… He’d seen enough deadman switches go off to know it wasn’t worth risking given how spread out this event was.

  (Going to have to aim for a knockout concussion or a total drain on her Anima.) The first was risky and the latter time consuming. (Either way there’s going to have to be a fight…)

  “Come on, aren’t you supposed to be the hero saving them?” The green witch taunted as he aimed his gun between the boxes, knowing he couldn’t charge a shot given the faint hum that made his guns give off. (Need a quick and clean shot… Concussive rounds are designed for the lowest lethality, but have the heaviest fall off without a charge. So for a knock out need her within two meters.)

  He paused to reconsider his math as he took in the witch’s appearance. (No, between two and three meters. The compost armor weighs her down and I don’t want to break her neck on accident.)

  Just because he was willing to, doesn’t mean he should.

  Ever so slowly his hand began to squeeze the trigger of the gun as the green witch stepped into- Something brushed his boot.

  The tower of boxes he’d been hiding behind exploded as he dove to the side, the villainess’s golem crashing through them and into the wall behind, allowing him to see the green roots branching out from the armor’s legs and lightly grasping at the world around her.

  He ducked out of sight once more as the green witch shook her head clear, before taking a look at the ground and spotting the roots covering more than half the basement floor.

  (The same trick those eye plants pull?) It wasn’t quite a sensory ability but it could be just as much of an annoyance. (Need to do something about that…)

  “How long are you going to hide for Mercer?” The villainess asked, back to the wall as she tried to spot him in the dimly lit room.

  He pulled his helmet off, and set it to a slight delay before carefully circling around as he called, “Who’s hiding?” The light of a crimson double tapped skull lighting up the dark.

  As expected, green tendrils rushed forward, crashing into the space of his helmet and causing a chain reaction that left only half of the boxes of books still standing, and less than that of the roots uncovered by debris.

  With a growl the green witch gripped the ceiling with one of her foliage limbs before swinging towards his still glowing helmet and picking it off the ground. “Real cute…”

  (It’d be cuter if I had an explosive in there to blow off your arm.) Unfortunately, that was just another item on the list of things he needed to collect once more.

  Mercer eyed the arm the witch was using to cling to the ceiling and stay balanced, something she couldn’t do with all of the debris on the floor.

  He on the other hand had been forced to spend six months on and off learning how to walk across all sorts of unstable terrain without falling on his ass.

  And terrain that kept her roots from detecting him because of all of the shifting? (Even better.)

  The green witch tossed his helmet to the side just as he pulled the trigger exactly two point three meters from her head.

  His helmet hit the ground, and a moment later so did she.