Boss Fight

Boss Fight

****

It took them two hours to trek through the trees to reach the old mining outpost. Their general mood was dour, and their anticipation of the fight awaiting them was marred by unspoken doubt and fear of betrayal. Only Jace, Kenny, and their girlfriends seemed immune to the tension in the air.

Peter and Zack shared a knowing look, they knew it was mostly their decision. Patrick and Sean felt bad about having to keep an eye on Mason and Faith. It felt wrong to do so, even if it seemed to be a reasonable precaution.

"Not your fault," Zack whispered. "Better safe than sorry."

"But it was my call," Peter insisted.

"Our call. We all took that decision," Zack corrected and then looked over at Jace and Kenny, "mostly."

The girls were all aware of the tension between the men and guessed at the reason for it, even if nobody had said a word about it. Faith could feel the glances at her. And it wasn't just in the way Demi kept her distance and her MP5 ready to swing up to her. She had long dreaded this situation. But she felt she had ****. At first, when she joined them. she felt she couldn't risk it. They might not understand her, and now...

"Now it doesn't matter,' she thought to herself fingering the devotional medal hanging on her necklace. 'The die is cast, no turning back now.'

Mason knew about their doubts long before Peter asked him to take point with Jace. He could even understand their doubts. He didn't blame them. 'Shit! I would have done the same. Even I had my doubts but...' he admitted to himself. He shrugged to himself glancing over at a nervous Faith. She had won him over, with her sweet attention towards him, something he saw in every tiny detail like this morning's breakfast. Faith, his sweet love. He didn't know when it had happened but it had,and he would do anything for her.

"Now it doesn't matter,' he said to himself as he tightened his grip on his battle rifle, 'The die is cast, no turning back now.'

They reached the edge of the outpost and came up against a sight they hadn't expected to find. They saw quite a number of robed figures walking between the buildings. Some wore orange or mustard yellow robes, a few red ones, but most of them wore black. Most seemed to gather around what had once been the main administrative offices. Cultist? Had to be.

"Coms and Weapons check," Zack said. They all turned on their mics, checked their gear, and took the safeties off their weapons. They mostly fielded the same weapons as before, Peter with an AA-12 auto shotgun, and most of the others had their trusty HK416s ready. Jace had traded his flame thrower for a tri-barrel 5.7mm mini-gun that was belt-fed from his backpack. Of course, Kenny still twirled his trusty crowbar.

Jace and Mason looked back at Peter. He raised his AA-12 auto shotgun and nodded. It was go-time. Rising from their hiding, they quickly closed with the nearest building. Soon after, the chaos began with a high-pitched buzz from Jace's weapon punctuated by the sharp crack from the rifles.

A few minutes later Sean led the girls with Demi at the rear as they followed the trail of dead bodies and the occasional strangler quickly dispatched by Sean. Most of the black-robed cultists were humans, or at least appear to be. The crab-like eyestalk poking out of the hood of one of the dead yellow-robed cultists proved that some were not, maybe they all were. Some were armed but none seemed to be really proficient with them. As they approached the main building, it seemed the quality and caliber of their resistance improved dramatically.

With Jace and Mason providing cover fire, Zack tossed a grenade through an open window and Peter led the ****. Once they breached the building the remaining cultists were quickly eliminated. With the building cleared, Peter carefully led them down into the basement, dreading to find Blutengel's latest victim but hopefully to find Blutengel itself.

In the middle of the basement, they stared in fascinated horror at the sight before them. Ritual candles and drawn lines covered the floor as they surrounded the sacrificial victim in the middle. Although she was already dead they couldn't tear their sight from the pods still growing from her abdomen and taken away by half a dozen cultists in the room.

"Her eggs didn't drop!" A croaky voice yelled in anger.

Tearing their eyes from the horror on the ground, the group finally noticed the tall man pacing the room wearing a bright blue robe. Blutengel? It had to be it... him?

"Why don't her eggs drop!" Blutengel yelled at the two flinching attendants.

"What the hell?" Patrick whispered in horror and surprise, too afraid to make a sound. Even so, Blutengel seemed to have heard him as he turned his gaze to them.

"What the fuck are you?" Jace said with equal surprise as they spread out across the wide room, their guns trained on Blutengel and the cultist.

Standing over 6 feet tall, the blue-robed being turned to them. At first, it seemed human, that is, until they started to notice a few things, the large bulbous eyes that were too round and seemed to be spaced too high and far apart for a normal person, the slight blueish sheen of its skin that made them wonder if it was real or just a trick of the light playing over its bright blue robes. Even its mouth seemed odd, strangely round. They briefly wondered what other differences were hidden beneath the ample robes.

Blutengel's eyes opened wider, if that were even possible, as it took in the sight of the girls behind the men. A smile played over its oddly fleshy lips. "Wonderfull!! You brought me more maidens!" his croakly voice said, "Come to me!"

Laura and Lacey were the first to feel their bodies flush with the sudden warmth of arousal. The others quickly began to feel the same arousal and the all-too-familiar heat in their loins. Without realizing it, they took a tentative step forward.

"Good! Good! Maybe these offerings will drop their eggs for me." Blutengel's croaky voice sounded gleeful as he beckoned them forward.

"Pheromones!" Faith warned the girls as she stuffed a pair of nose filters into her nose. "Put these on!" she begged the girls as she tried to shove the nose filters into their hands, "Put them on!" she insisted as she tried to get the other girls to wear the filters she started to hand out.

Peter kept his AA-12 trained on its chest and asked, "What the hell do you mean?"

"Their eggs! They don't drop!" Blutengel insisted, pointing to the sacrificial victim in the middle of the room. "I fill their young, fertile wombs with my seed. But even though they orgasm, their eggs don't drop!" Blutengel's hand swept toward the pods still growing out of the victim's abdomen. "See! My brood grows but without any fertile eggs. These offerings, they all orgasm, but they never drop their eggs!"

"Induced Ovulation," Sean whispered as he realized what this... thing meant, but that was impossible.

Blutengel's gaze fell once more on the girls behind the men as Faith, Demi, and Nikki tried to get the others to wear the nose filters. "But I'm sure these offerings will-"

TWACK!!

"AARGG!" Blutengel's croakly voice screamed in pain as he crumpled to his knees. The curved edge of Kenny's crowbar was buried in its knees. "Help!" it cried out to the two cultists as it struggled to escape, his legs seemed to flex strangely on the floor. Peter kept his auto-shotgun trained on it with Jace backing him up while the rest quickly put down the half dozen cultists with a torrent of gunfire.

"Not how it works!" Kenny growled as he swung his crowbar again into its leg.

It struck with a strange "thud" as if it had hit something hard beneath the robes. For a moment they wondered if this... monstrous thing was wearing armor like some strange dark knight from a Lovecraftian story.

Kenny twisted the crowbar deeper into its leg making it scream in pain as he started to drag it to the next room. Blutengel's scream of pain and fear continued as Kenny silently dragged him away. Besides him, Nikki held a long, wicked serrated blade she had pulled from her backpack, and with the cruelest smile and a disturbing bounce, she eagerly followed Kenny to the next room.

The group left the basement and waited outside the main building. For over half an hour, they could hear Blutengel's screams of pain coming from the basement. They all drifted apart to huddle with their couples, seeking comfort in their intimacy. No one said a word as they silently refused to acknowledge what was going on in the basement. Time seemed to stretch on, and it seemed like they had waited an entire day for Kenny and Nikki to return, but it had been just over an hour, maybe two since the screams stopped.

Eventually, they saw the blood-splattered couple walk out holding hands. They could all see the dried-up tears on their faces. They could see the emotional drain in their slumped shoulders and staggering steps as they came outside. Strangely, there finally seemed to be peace in Kenny's usually troubled eyes and relief in Nikki's.

Smoke started to drift out of the widows of the building behind them as Kenny and Nikki looked over their friends, the unspoken question hanging in the air. Kenny casually dropped his trusty crowbar to the floor, nodded to his friends, and simply said, "It's over."

****

"Burn baby burn!" Jace hooted and high-fived his friends before sweeping up Nellie to carry her on his shoulders as they watched the buildings burn brightly one last time before finally leaving and going home.

"We should Celebrate!"