[Tita] Monster, Hunter

Demon, tell everyone below to get to the far side and away from me… right now. It was the only warning Tita would offer through Lily.

They could not appreciate the incredible power of John’s commands, of the restraints they put on what Tita was and wanted to be. None, save perhaps Thumalk, would have survived in that temple: where even her children would be smothered and crushed, there could be no doubt as to the fates of the rest if Tita were permitted to exercise her will.

So the human was right, in his own, ever-wrong way: Tita was truly a monster to the insufferable dredges of the Abyss. She had watched the human suddenly throttle towards her with equal parts surprise and delight: he was within reach now, and her tentacles extended out to greet him. His blade exploded apart and revealed the glowing red edge to be only a sliver of what was a blade of glowing ruby within. The heat of its unsheathed core set the platform’s surface to glow as he swung it, and an extra foot of red, slicing energy extended from the blade’s tip as her tentacle approached.

She felt a brief heat, and then loss: the blade brooked no interruption to its path, and the man’s arms expanded with artificially-enhanced musculature as he delivered his blow. The blade melted away the flesh of her tentacle, and the strength of that swing threw Tita’s platinum hair back as the deadliest center of the oncoming gale passed just to her left… and ripped from her, with messy ****, the enjoyment of her left arm. Strands of sliced hair and moon-aligned limbs were thrown backwards behind Tita…

… and her smile remained, because the other tentacle was still able to reach the hunter’s leg. Fraser’s blade reassembled before the red sliver within could overload, but in his augmented arms it was still a deadly glaive. Tita knew the flow of mana well enough to know what had happened to her spell: it had been resisted, but not nullified. He was shielded, or else had some tolerance against magic; whichever proved true, she would not waste her remaining tentacle on trying to overcome it with the same kind of energy.

As her tentacled wrapped around the booted ankle of her captor, Tita had but one command to send. The smooth, malleable skin of her longest limb tightened onto cords of muscles that bulged as she willed it to squeeze. Fraser’s glaive drew sparks from the platform as he cleaved into it… but got only two inches through the braced flesh. The bones and cybernetics in his ankle, meanwhile, gave Tita a satisfying chill as she felt them collapse and snap under her constriction.

Her joy was cut short when Fraser grunted and let his blade breathe again while inside Tita’s tentacle. The sudden expansion and the heat of the inner-blade finished the amputation, but not without apparent cost: the blade closed shut and hissed out steam as Fraser leapt away from the moonbeast. The drones closed in now as Tita was without ruined tentacles… or at least, that was the battle data they had gathered so far. But Tita’s first wounded tentacle raised its amputated stump, now burned shut and malformed by some magical ruination. It would bar natural healing; even her novice training as a healer made that much clear. Praise unto the Moon, deliver this pained body unto your cooling light and let its suffering dissolve. With that silent prayer and a touch, Tita eased the black, twisted patch into a gray that then expanded into a regrowing appendage.

Fraser floated mid-air as visible waves of air or heat pulsed from some unseen jetpack on his back. “So you can shrug off even this...”

“I was a healer before I was your end, human,” Tita taunted.

As Fraser contemplated his dangling, broken foot, he turned to take stock of the ogre: surrounded by five broken drones and crushing a sixth with a carefully-planted fist, he seemed severely wounded as golden blood flowed from his body.

Tita might have taken advantage of his blindside, only the drones were now switching to twin-linked autocannons that assembled and extended out from their underbellies. Tentacle or no, she would not be able to crush and destroy all nine before they began to whittle her down in a hail of gunfire.

<They’ve all repositioned, Tita!>

How I loathe hearing her speak my name so casually… But at last, she could use what was quickly proving to be her favorite spell. Fury of the moonlight, fire of the sun: cleanse this place of folly and filth, judge it in full, and then deliver that judgment… to him. She focused on Fraser, who floated just within range… and laughed as Zenith Holocaust ignited the world.

The drones, with their innards now open to the air thanks to the extended weaponry, had their circuitry fused and melted into slag while their hulls softened and glowed red-hot before each was sent falling through the inferno they now found themselves in. The platform beneath Tita’s feet grew hot to the touch; somewhere below, the mimic and the succubus were barely spared the outermost edges of the glowing orb; and at its edge, still posed and ready to fight Tita anew, Fraser continued to float unharmed.

The flames condensed… and Fraser was the chosen victim as the fires sunk into his silhouette. Tita dashed forward to meet him, unafraid of the holy fires that could not hurt her; his body was engulfed in the contained conflagration, but even this proved too weak to finish whatever wards he had put up. Chains shot up to try and grapple Fraser before he could get another swing in, but the cyborg cut them and rendered them limp before continuing his engagement with Alysha and Fairy. Tita shot her tentacle out to grab Fraser’s arm, but he dashed sideways through the air in a flawless redirection of his charge and circled a clean ninety degrees to Tita’s right, where her other major tentacle was still amputated.

She was ****… and his weapon had recovered from whatever stress he had put it under earlier. “Mourir.”

She tried to spin about to meet him, but her tentacle had already extended too far towards his previous position. It swung wide to try and cut off his charge-

Shhck.

He did not deploy the weapon this time, and instead quite simply sunk the steel into her abdomen. Moon’s touch, sear away the sin of bastard flesh! She barely managed the incantation in her mind as the agony of his driving glaive tore through her. Her left hand touched his shoulder as radiant magic surged into his body… and only now, against this unexpected turn, did his magical shielding finally crack. The clothes covering his body exploded to reveal an arm of pale blue flesh interlaced with metallic cords of faux muscle, and his chest and neck proved to be made from more of the steel of his helm instead of flesh. The helm or chest piece that extended down from his head was not armor to protect him; it was him, and perhaps so little of him now was flesh at all.

But Fraser came to deliver a defining blow. With an unseen command, opened his blade inside Tita.

Tita shrieked as she felt her stomach and crotch being blown apart and away from what remained of her legs; white blood and viscera spilled from her ruined body as she struggled to remain conscious, much less corporeal, with less than half of her torso remaining. Her eyes twisted and stared in all directions as she struggled to remember, through this white-hot hate and agony, the prayer of healing… and Fraser was not going to afford her the chance to remember.

The glaive, its inner-blade still visible, swung away and then prepared to arc down on her head for the coup de grâce and end the greatest threat Fraser had identified-

… only he was pulled away by the threat he had no data on. Fraser’s body suddenly jolted sideways and back towards the center of the battle, but did so unnaturally, as if tugged by something other than his strange flight mechanic. Tita barely managed to follow him as a brutal wind continued to suck at him; Fraser’s jets reactivated just in time to resist the pull, but his blade shut down again as he tried to get his bearings. At the other end of this vortex, holding a handful of his own golden blood… stood a grinning Durr the Wise.

“I can’t let you go and kill my master’s prized breeder,” Durr chuckled as he squeezed his blood tightly, “and risk him being cross with me, now can I?”

Tita coughed another mouthful of white blood. Even given her monstrous new fortitude, this damage was too much… too great to bear. She cried as she barely managed the prayer again and, with a touch, slowly sealed up parts of her ruined torso. She was ****… again. She was at a human’s mercy… again. Worse still, she was now in the debt of that wretched ogre, and it was that disgrace that drew her tears.

But that disgracing act proved short-lived. Fraser reached down underneath the hem of his shirt to the nondescript belt at his waist and let loose, in pairs, a handful of fingertip-sized golden marbles that were too quickly pulled into the sucking wind and towards Durr’s outstretched hand to avoid. Each detonated on contact, mutilating the ogre’s hand and, as the vortex died, his legs and feet as the last few landed their bursts of shrapnel. Fraser was once again free to engage as he pleased… and not a moment too soon as he realized what was happening down below.

Tita could only hear the sound of it all: of another explosion like the one that ruined Yulie, only this time not followed by shrieks, but by some kind of stunned silence. Tita received no indication of what had occurred or who had perished, but it was obvious enough by the bits of transmutating flesh that flew into view.

<Tita, you have to help them! They just… they just killed Mimic!>

Tita was bound to help her fellows as she was the humans and the Vantage allies… but her body continued to twitch uselessly as she urged more healing into herself, finally sealing her ruined body from further exposure or shock. She was without stomach, waist, or legs; with an effort, she grew an out-of-place tentacle out of her new, orb-like bottom and, with her only healed tentacle, rose to give chase to Fraser. But the drones did not end their siege: another pair of dozens came into view and split between Durr and Tita, and now Tita was too close to the others to use Zenith Holocaust again.

Durr, covered in his own blood and with only one good hand left, cast another ritual with his own vitae and blew his drones away with a shockwave of air. As he and Tita were left busy defending themselves, Fraser fell downward to aid his cyborg… and, Tita was sure, to end what remained of the paltry defenses put up by the remaining combatants below.

Tita wanted to save herself, to ignite the world anew and destroy the drones… but she had her directions. With a furious stumble, the malshapen moon elf dragged herself to the platform’s edge… just in time to watch Fraser withdraw the sealed tip of his blade from between Yulie’s body and head.

Two were now dead… and the cyborg’s pressed attack against Alysha promised more even without Fraser’s intervention. No… we can’t… this can’t be the end… I got through his defense once, I need only-!

The cyborg’s blade struck true and stabbed Alysha in the wrist. A second later, the blade was broken off and the segmented block exploded, sending chitinous shrapnel in all directions as Fairy took over in fending off the cyborg’s remaining three blade-limbs and her original two arms. “I have to do everything myself, huh-?!” The cyborg leapt up and away and let Fraser take her place. Fairy threw forward her chains to wrap Fraser up, but he once again thrusted to the side, gaining on her left and near the one-armed Alysha as the latter barely held her sword up in defense.

Tita watched as Fraser’s blade revealed its red-hot core. He was going to finish Alysha first… and perhaps would have if Durr had not leapt down, screaming, with his one-good hand holding a pale ball of light. “I’m not DONE with you, meat!”

Fraser knew the score; with a pivot and a flourish, he sliced up at Durr with a thrust of his jets. Offending arm and shoulder were severed from the ogre’s body as golden blood painted Fairy’s extended chains and caused them to hiss. Whatever spell the ogre held dissipated uselessly. Fairy cut her own chains off and raised her axe to defend as she watched Fraser change the direction of his flight. With his jets thrusting him downward, Fraser transitioned from where he had dismembered the falling Durr to outpace the same and bring his glaive down on the offending axe… and to his surprise, found the axe stayed in a single piece as the glowing blade shrieked and sparked against its iron haft. The blistering heat began to burn Fairy’s fingers until they charred, but the fae held her defense up as she willed chains to counter attack. Fraser bounced away before the chains could wrap him… and the cyborg took the chance to dive at Fairy, her dual, exploding wristblades aimed at Fairy’s head and gut. Fairy couldn’t pivot or defend against both, nor jump and fly away in time, but she turned anyways, ****-

… and was saved only by Greenpaw’s spear thrown just between the cyborg’s wide steps. The enemy stumbled and then leapt back as she realized her attack had been aborted… and with a calculating stare, contemplated the disarmed Almiraj. Fraser let his blade cool as he watched the maimed group with a wry chuckle. The cyborg spoke calmly even as she stalked towards the offending rabbit, “Director Fraser, Unit One has ceased responding. The warning-”

“I will not abandon this fight now! I have… not felt so alive… haha, not since the Frame took me!” Fraser watched with glee as Fairy finally cleared off the platform and hovered over Alysha, ready to answer whatever attack came. Neither seemed ready for the fight. “Come now, there must be more… more surprises, more exceptional strength yet!” He gripped his weapon tightly… and the bits of flesh Tita had peeled away earlier now visible through ruined clothes had already healed. The shattered heel he had stayed off until now was suddenly supporting his dainty step on the platform.

As this went on, Tita’s tentacles batted away the remaining drones and fired entropic spheres to engulf those that chose to pelt her with munitions. Her body bled from new holes her healing had not yet caught up with; her mana was draining too fast to keep up both her attacks and her consciousness. She wanted nothing less than to reach down and give Fraser what he wanted, to burn away that false confidence with the radiance of her divinity… but that divinity was draining out in white and dripping slowly over the edge of the platform she now perched her head upon.

<Please… you have to save John!>

Save John? They could not save themselves. They were running out of numbers, weapons, and blood in a prison barrier none could pierce or escape in time to save them.