Mila was sniffing the air, trying to pick up the trail.

Behind her, she could feel a steely determination come over Her Human... and hear His shotgun rack.

Roy replaced the spent magazine.  "We're getting closer, although to what is anybody's guess.  But it's a good bet our target is looking to bolt.  I've got Lyri's team above the compound, watching for runners..."

He hefted the rifle.  "And I've got one mag left after this before I'm down to machine pistols."  He gave a grim nod, looking at the thing on the floor, and started after Larry and Mila.

As he walked, he shook his head slightly.  "Demons baffle me.  Their big rationale for the war is that they're the superior life form...but they sure go to a helluva lot of trouble trying to create something better..."

  Karson  shook his head..Like buying a new Hover  car.  5 minutes off the lot you check out  another one?.  To me> I think they want some Cannon fodder....save the pureblood.

  there was a womans  voice  ',,NO..PLEASE "   the weapon  went off  ..there was  snarling. And a  Burble.. Larry's head  went   up and  he let out  a  Challenge  Roar... when the rounded the  corner  a young  woman laid in the  tunnel  a heavy Pulse burst to the chest..her dead eyes pleading to the   ceiling.. Buy Larry  Didn';t care... Charging   Down the  Tunnel as a  Larg,,  but it was  covered  with  Wort first and  had a prehensile tail .

 Larry   charged  forward  at Full Speed , the  creature    tried to stop.. it was confused, at the speed of the LArg charging  it..., they  two heart beats was   Enough  for  600 pounds  of LArry  to   Slam into the  creature.. It  had a meow-like  roar o9f pain and fear.... but the squeal that  came,was of a  woman,   As    Larry  tossed his   head back and forth , slamming the  creature    against the walls was his head  thrashed, the Teeth  cutting  and   tearing the  flesh from the  throat and   Chest where  the Larg   had   latched on,  there was a ferocity boarding hate   as  Larry ignored    claw  attemp0t  as the  creature   was  torn oep0ned.

  Mila  was   hit with a  wave of  pain, coming from the  wort-larg...

 Karson  aimed at the  creature ,he didn't have a  clear  shot...what...have ..they...done... Karson whispered.

Mila howled.

"Looking for short cuts," Roy answered tersely.  "No patience to develop the natural potential that's already there, which is why Larry's painting the walls red with that whatever-you-wanna-call-it."  He moved up, angling to try and get a look up the hall past the larg and its latest chew-toy, keeping one eye on the action and ready to throw some fire support Larry's way if it looked like he needed it.

They'd heard the pulse round go off.  Whoever fired it had been close enough to the woman that she saw them and had a moment to plead for her life.  That meant that they were practically on the heels of whomever was running away.

A pretty clear scenario was assembling itself in Roy's mind...as soon as they'd realized their lab was under attack, Darani had decided to run for it.  She probably had her best and brightest with her, and they'd grabbed whatever samples they had...but those samples hadn't played well with each other or her assistants, which was why they'd found the Briss gutted, and kept finding fallen personnel along the way...possibly, the designated handlers for whatever creatures they were trying to escape with.  Their specimens, however, doubtless controlled by fear and pain, sensed that their handlers were scared and no longer in control, and turned on them.  The seemingly random placement of them made sense, in that scenario...the Briss had probably gotten into a fight with the...whatever...that Larry was destroying.  When Darani heard the Verian pistol fire, she'd instructed someone to stay with the Sanri-Ape...which had turned on its handlers.  He hadn't exactly been quiet about taking down the thing, so there was plenty of noise to alert her how close they were.  The dead woman was probably one of her lab techs or assistants, shot and left here in hopes that the ESN pursuers would stop to investigate who she was, and the...thing...was sent to finish off anyone who was checking the body.  They hadn't counted on the presence of a battle-hardened larg with plenty of aggression pent up...

Mila's reaction to the scene was unsettling, though...something about it was definitely not sitting well with the dog.  Roy had seen that body language in dogs before...when they were in pain, but Mila hadn't been touched by anything.  Could they have been trying telepathic implants, on top of everything else they've been doing in here? Roy wondered.  It was something that more medically-minded persons would have to figure out...

Henry  had his head in his hands.

"They... they are merging a larg, a wort, and a human... it is not going well for any of them," he managed to get out.

 Karson   drops his weapon to a 'hip fire' position. the  other  arm  went to Henry to  try and support him..Comon  Doc. This ain't over, and if she  gets  away, whatever she was doign here... she'll do somewhere else....and you know, they have others, doing this 'somewhere else'..but   This   Sanri Lady,

 Larry  Finally dropped the  carcass  to the  floor,   a Bite from  neck to  abdomen was spit out, Oval shaped, 4  inches thick. as long a decent sized  coffee table.. the  last whimper from the creature, sounded like a painful sigh of a woman...

   Larry snorted  at the body, then  turned   and charged   towards the    open door.

"I'm OK," said Henry, clearly not.

"Think they... our chips are picking something up. You know Mila and I are linked, yes? May be deliberate, may be overspill from whatever they are using themselves."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 08:57, Thu 31 Aug 2023.

  karson Held  on  to Henry, he didn.'t say anything to Roy yet, as  Roy was chasing  down  a rampant larry.

comon Doc.. we need yoiu.. SM  and I are just shooters.....

 Best Shot   to One Shot.. Just   Dropped   some one...a lab coat.. running   for  a hover Van..The door close, but not by itself... someone's in the  buildfing , at leat for now, on the ground floor

Roy nodded acknowledgment, habitually, as he ran, following Larry.  "Copy that.  Watch for anyone or anything leaving...our target has been dropping her playthings and I'm not sure how many she's got left.  Also not sure which building she might be running to...we're subterranean right now.  Watch for stuff outside the perimeter, just in case..."

   Best Shot here... I can see some Movement? But  they won't  stay  by the  window.. there is  no  door  on top..if they  got  to the  second floor, they are screwed.

    There    was the  sound  of  Gun   fire,, a roar of Largian  pain  and  a sound of  a man  screaming.. the  man  was still  screaming..

    When   Roy rounded the  next bend, he  saw  larry with a   wounded on his left shoulder.. He was Just biting off the  last limb of the man who shot him.. the limbless   body twitched in  pain and Mindless   Horror  as larry  dropped the  Leg on his chest..

Roy ignored the man.  Unless he could somehow telepathically control his limbs, he was harmless at this point, and bleeding out fast.  "C'mere, Larry," he said, as he reached for dermafoam for the larg.  The wound was likely trivial, but there was no sense letting it bleed or stay open and potentially get infected.  It took a few seconds to dispense foam...they could spare that much time.

 The   man thrashing  about, ignored. Karson looked at the Limbs that  were  bitten off..wow? I bet yiu didn;t see this comign  when you woke up this morning..eh?

 He  Looked   at Larry who still seemed over  angry...I guess there is no  way  Larry and the LC are broithers..huh ?  we keep going?  they can't know  how many of us.. but they  knopw  we got past the big things..

Roy snorted.  "Of course we keep going.  We're either going to catch up or flush them out.  Either way, they're gonna have a very bad night."  He finished patching up the larg, giving him a swat on the other shoulder.

"That oughtta keep you from leaking, at least for a while.  Let's finish this.  They can only run so far..."

  the  door the fellow  tried to guard   hung open.. there is an enclosed  stair  way with a shut  door  above them...

  Larry looked  up the  stairs  and Burbled

 karson  frowned..that's a  kill zone , if  ever  i saw one..

"Is there any other way up," said Henry, struggling to think despite the images thronging his mind.

  Karson looked  at Roy...we're in a hard spot here.. id we go back the other way and try to come in from the top, they can  just   run down here.... we need  to  either keep them on top and have  Master Chief  bring   her  people in. or , Just   seal this  off  and Pull a 'shadow.'

Larry was snarling....  The  limbless  man was whimpering, it wouldn't  be long  now...

"Part of the problem is, we're not sure which building this comes up into.  We could set up camp here and call Chief Mullins in and she could go into the wrong building entirely."  He scowled.  They couldn't really afford the time to backtrack, either, even without the worry that their quarry would flee back down as soon as it became apparent that the pursuit had relented.

One crazy idea presented itself.  He slung the assault rifle across his back, drawing a machine pistol with one hand and grabbing his last HE grenade with the other.  Standing back from the doorway, he explained in a low voice, "I'm heading up...cover me from down here.  If you see that door move before I get to it, light it up.  If I can get up there, I'll toss the grenade through the door, that will give us enough clear time to get up the stairs."

It was high-risk...almost suicidal, but he trusted his reflexes and Karson's marksmanship.  And before anyone had time to start raising protests, he eased through the doorway, his eyes scanning for any sign of motion and wis weapon tracking his line of sight as he quietly eased his way up the stairs, hugging the outside wall to make himself the hardest possible target for anyone looking down.

 Roy   went  a head,  Karson  slowly let go  of henry  and Brought his carbine  up..  Larry  Burbled  , he didn't like thas..

  Roy took his  time, , he reached the stairs.. the  door  was barely opened.. it would seem, with out power, the doors  did not seal.

 The grenade  went in...........

Roy stayed low to the ground as he approached the door...if anyone fired through the door, he wanted his center of mass below the most likely line of fire.  The door, thankfully, hadn't sealed, and he eased it slowly open just far enough to get a hand around the door and rolled the grenade in, scrambling back on hands and knees to clear the doorway and make sure he wouldn't be hit by the door or anything that blew back through the doorway and braced himself for the detonation.

Once the grenade went off, he scrambled back up, and staying low and to one side, pushed the remains of the door open, leading around the corner with his machine pistol, ready to fire at anyone still capable of presenting a threat.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:07, Fri 01 Sept 2023.

The grenade had had the desired effect...several bodies littered the floor.  Some were obviously dead, some were dead but just hadn't realized it yet and no threat...he fired a few quick shots at the few who were down but looked like they might be capable of raising a weapon.  He could hear booted feet retreating...

"We're clear up here, Karson, and getting closer.  I can hear them running away..."  How damned many of their own people are they going to throw away?! he thought, as he surveyed the carnage.  "Send Larry up first, he might be able to run them down from here..."

He moved to the doorway exiting out and down the hall, taking a look to make sure it was clear.  As he checked, he keyed his comm.  "Lyri, if any of you saw a flash, that was one of our grenades, keep an eye on that building.  Anyone above the first floor is fair game right now, if we start going up I'll let you know."  If their quarry started taking rounds from some other direction, it would slow them down, and even possibly freeze them in their tracks...

  Larry   charged up and Out..  he trampled a wounded woman who would never  worry about pain again  after the  running force  of a 600 pound  larg hit her.

  Lyri   said  we  see  them... 3  people two Sanri and a Human , 3  directions.. lary  is  coming out now//  I  just dropped   Cross  and two of the Guard off,,  they  are going to  run down the Human.. Larry is  chasing  the Middle Sanri.. I thing i can drop the  van  down on the other    one..but  we need back Up incase It has a heavy weapon.

Roy holstered the machine pistol as Larry went past, swinging his assault rifle up with practiced technique.  "We're coming out the door in seconds, which way is the third one?  I'm your backup...Brivet's still up there, too..."

 Lyri   said.. ..when you  come out the   Door , Hard   Right..Wait  She Has....  The   Explosion Hit  the Van in the    Under carriage

    Cross Saw  the Van Hit and  going down..don't chase..gun the Bastard  down, then  follow  me...

 with out  any other  words  the two iron Guard   shot   the Huma   7 or  8  times, then chased   after their  LT.... Larrh    did the  charging leap at the Sanri  just  as the  Male  turned  to use  a  Sanri Blaster,  the larg   slammed the   Sanri  to the Ground.  a second  later, the  sanri's  head  exploded into gore  when  massive  jaws  slammed  shut.

    The   Female  Sanri was elated  as the   flames licked the   bottom of the  Hover  Van, she stopped  smiling  when  another hover van  slammed  inti  from the  south.. Cross  headed  to the van  as it  crashed into the fence,, the rest of the  guard   came out of the  Van , they   Pulled  a   limp  Lyri out  of the Van...

    Brivet lowered  the van slowly on the  sanri.. she  screamed  as the maneuver thrusters   burned her , and the weight of the  van pressed her into the  compound  ground.

 Karson was on the  COMs...one-shot  Unit.. need  nadiad..  best shot  injured... mark almost confirmed...

" Burian Bomb copy that, Bandaid is on it's way One Shot, do you need any other assistance?"