Showstopper

"Rah!" Eloxochitl shouted **** into the blow she delivered with her cuauhololli club. The strike shattered the jaw of a medium-sized fuvea - only a littler bigger than herself. The animal crumpled to the ground where she hit it once more, sparing it any further suffering.

She looked up at the dozen or so more of the creatures that were running amok in that settlement courtyard where she stood. Their shapes and sizes looked as diverse as fuvea came. Some were small enough to be dispatched with a crushing boot on their neck, and others were big enough to do the same to the adventurers.

"Is there no end to these BLASTED WRETCHES?" the Quetzalcoatl yelled. Her patience was all but spent. For the last two hours they had been doing nothing but killing fuvea. Where they had started around midday, the sun was now setting. She would have been genuinely concerned for their ability to recover from so great a reduction in their population, were it not for the fact that she had gotten tired of the biting and scratching after the twelfth time.

"I know that animals are dumb, but I thought it was something of a universal instinct that once you watch enough of your kind die, you stop throwing yourself at what killed them," Helki remarked into her microphone. She was holding a different area, a couple buildings down from where the team leader was. She had altered her form to full werewolf, raising her height to a towering three metres. She could handle her chain gun with ease as a human, but as she was, she swung it about as though it was a toy. With it, she pumped a copious number of cartridges into an especially large beast. The weapon's barrel had been glowing red for minutes on end by that point. The enchantments on it were all that kept it from depleting its feed or melting down altogether.

She was focused on taking down the large one - the one that kept coming at her in spite of all the gushing cavities she put in it. A would-be distraction came in the form of a set of teeth closing around her shoulder from behind. Her armour stopped them from penetrating. Without so much as turning to look, she reached over with her supporting hand and ripped it away by the head; snapping its neck in the arc. She never stopped firing.

"This isn't right," Najma commented from a third location. She stood atop the roof of a warehouse, letting the fuvea climb up to her where she could take them at an easier pace. "Their behaviour is all wrong. These are wild predators. They only ever live and hunt alone. What they're doing right now, this isn't even pack behaviour. They're attacking a single target as a unified ****. It's downright regimented."

Much like Eloxochitl and Helki, she slew the fuvea in scores. Her cryomancy provided a frosty arsenal for her to work with. Some beasts caught massive icicles through their midsections, others were impaled upon frigid stalagmites, and others were just frozen solid. Now and then, the cyborg would conjure an icy sword to decapitate a nearby assailant.

"Huh, you know, you're right," Helki said while she evaded the closing maw of one giant. "Maybe they're trying new tactics. Do you want to ask them about it or should I?" Now beside it, she reached out and cast a devastating scrape with her canid claws. Muscles were severed in the monster's leg and it stumbled. Helki mounted it and ascended to its head. There, she pitched her gun and fired the finishing rounds.

"I'm having trouble finding one affable enough to ask," Najma played along. She cast an icy slick on the roof between herself and an oncoming fuvea. Predictably, the animal did not know how to appropriately respond, and lost its footing, sliding to Najma's feet. With perfect timing, she encased one arm in ice with a pointed tip and slammed it downward, through the beast's ribs.

"Maybe we can check if our new friends are having better luck."

After arriving at the settlement, but before engaging the pests, Team Tachyon had found that this was yet another job that they had not been assigned to exclusively. Also seeking to defend the settlement was none other than the renowned Xiong Commandos - an independent faction of heroes known for their prowess and unwavering moral compass. It was a tad odd seeing them there, as Team Tachyon had been dispatched by the Adventurer's Commission and the Xiong Commandos did not operate under that authority. Most likely the settlers had reached out to multiple sources.

Upon both parties realising they were not alone, they were happy to agree to pool their efforts. Team Tachyon would hold one side of the settlement while the Commandos - having more people present - would hold the rest. Each member of the adventuring team had taken a moment to be thankful that they would not have to fight for the job. They had no delusions about their odds of besting the Commandos.

And as they later learned, they sorely needed the backup.

The legendary Xiong Commandos had been right there with them, fighting the fuvea horde for just as long, dispatching the carnivores in droves, and they simply kept on coming. At least twice now Eloxochitl had wondered how long they would have lasted without the aid.

When she had cleared out the fuvea in arm's reach, the leader stowed her club and drew her plasma repeater. Superheated matter made a fine tool for slaying the creatures, but by this point in the skirmish, desirable weapons were those that excelled in quantity rather than quality. Most of the blighters were small enough that just about any projectile or application of **** could do them in. It was just a matter of finding a method suited to the abundance of foes.

"Do you think the novice is doing alright?" Najma asked her teammates.

"She's the one you're worried about right now?" Helki challenged.

"Well, we did send her off alone one her first mission." The way Najma said 'we' made it very clear that she did not include herself in that grouping.

"Bite me, Najma. And I can't imagine that she's any worse off than she would be here." Eloxochitl channeled the anger she felt at being called out into an especially crushing swing of her club.

"Who here is volunteering their flesh for rending?"

"What?" the Quetzalcoatl spun to see who had made such a bold cry.

Bounding out of the wilderness came their very own Millia. The cowgirl carved a clean path through the beasts as she went. There was nothing amateurish about the way she swung her greataxe.

"What's the matter, what do you see?" Helki inquired after her teammate's audible confusion over the radio.

What Eloxochitl saw was something she struggled to put into words. Killing the fuvea was no challenge, even massacring the battle-hungry monsters was done with ease - as all present had demonstrated - but the way Millia ripped through them like it was an underwhelming training exercise...

It was with ruthless efficiency that she mowed them down. Each swing of the axe could cut down as many as half a dozen. The resistance posed by the flesh and bone beneath the blade did not seem to matter, as strokes of the weapon flowed together in a near-continuous cyclone of razing edge.

"It's uh... I found the rookie," Eloxochitl said distractedly.

"What? Get her out of here!" Najma exclaimed with alarm.

"I'm not so certain that we need to worry."

"Huh? How come?" Helki interjected.

Eloxochitl struggled with articulating that the cow girl who was supposedly on her very first mission was actively outperforming the three veterans of the team.

Unrelenting in her advance, Millia fought her way past the Quetzalcoatl, only briefly pausing to address the leader.

"Hey there, foxy," the cow girl said with a flirty tone. The way her eyes ran over Eloxochitl from top to bottom and the sultry look she wore gave the impression that she was just seeing her for the first time. She was back on her rampage before Eloxochitl could process what had just happened.

"Foxy?" she said, dumbfounded.