-Bob Marley

"What? That's crazy, at least let me call Moira - if we can delay them, the Order will be happy to help," John said, glancing at the monitors to see what they were up against. Short-barreled shotguns, **** rifles, and SMGs were all continuously pointed forward as the group of soldiers approached the front door. They didn't bother to even check the handle - one of the masked Cabal soldiers thrust out their hand, and the door was thrown off its hinges by an unseen wave of magical ****

"Moira will never again sully the sanctity of my home. I have abilities that are not relegated to the confines of a laboratory, John. But they are not something I take pride in and, more importantly, are not abilities that are safe for you to be around. You must take cover quickly, or there will be consequences."

Tricia's anger had taken hold of her. John wasn't sure what tipped him off - the fact that her eyes were locked on the staircase, the way that she spoke to him, or simply the strange resolution in her features that was distinctly absent at almost every moment he'd known her prior to then. But despite that resolution, and the well-bred fear John felt merely looking at a loaded weapon he thought could soon be pointed his way, John couldn't find it in himself to abandon her to a team of well-trained soldiers literally armed for war.

"Well, if you won't accept help from the Order, what about one of their allies? Tricia, I don't know how powerful these Cabal are, but you're not thinking properly right now. I won't let you face them alone."

"John Newman, you cannot-"

John had turned his eyes from the screens and so missed the source of the explosion that rocked the laboratory. When he turned his eyes back, all he could see was a cloud of smoke engulfing the soldiers that were rapidly entering the exposed staircase. How they had so rapidly determined the point of entry, John wasn't sure. He also couldn't guess how they had tracked him without making themselves more obvious, unless they used magical methods John didn't have the experience to prevent. What he did know - and what was now obvious - was that they had **** left but to fight, pinned in the basement as they were.

"There is little time. Please, I beg of you, find the safe room - come out only when the screaming has subsided."

That actually caused John a little bit of hesitation. Despite the oncoming threat he found himself focused entirely on the Gorbachev, raising one eyebrow at her.

"Why would they be screaming?"

Tricia opened her mouth to respond, then thought better of it. As the sound of footsteps grew louder on the staircase, as their assailants grew nearer and nearer, Tricia turned to the staircase and let a curse fly into the open air.

"By Gaia you are a stubborn fool, John Newman. If you want to endanger your life, then so be it, but I will not be held responsible!"

There was little more time for words - the soldiers were upon them shortly after Tricia finished her sentence. The moment the first of the Cabal warriors stepped into view, John's eardrums nearly burst; a thousand sounds filled the tiny chamber, all at a level of volume that would've been uncomfortable even before the smooth, tiled surfaces of Tricia's laboratory echoed them a thousand times over.

Guns blazed at the first sign of opposition - first Tricia's drones began to unload on the intruders, and then, as the first of them fell, the Cabal returned fire. The smell of gunpowder filled the air around them as bullets sang in the hollow spaces between lives and property. Two Cabal soldiers fell down the stairs, bleeding profusely and either dead or dying. Seras herself took cover behind one of the tables to avoid the spray of automatic fire, not armed with any ranged weapons of her own. Two of Tricia's drones fell to the ground, sputtering and sparking as bullets tore apart critical pieces of machinery. One of them crash landed near the staircase, the other crashing through a set of tubes.

John regretted not overcoming his awkward nervousness at bringing Seras into public to simply return to the Springfield Riverside Mall and purchasing the long rifle she'd done so well with, or to have simply gone back alone, but he had little time for regrets. John crouched behind one of the lab tables that looked the most solid with two fingers raised over, daring to expose just enough of his head to get a clear shot. One of the soldiers ventured down just a little further, reaching his hand out for something. John didn't wait to find out what - willing a line directly up the man's arm, John poured mana into his fingertips.

The bolt of lightning was even louder than the gunfire, actually sending ripples of pain through John's head despite a lack of HP damage from his system. The white bolt struck true, bursting the man's palm open and sending him twitching all the way down the stairs.

43 DMG!

The man must have still been breathing because John saw no experience notification until the drones opened fire on his prone form, filling him full of even more holes and sending the awaited notification.

+11 EXP! [Non-Party Member Assisted]

"That's unfortunate. Actually, a lot of this is," John noted, taking a moment to consider their situation. There were nine more soldiers armed and waiting on the staircase out of sight, probably trying to think up a better way to get in without being seen. Seras had no weapon, they were trapped, and those were just the most obvious things. The fact that Tricia was not in his party was not great for multiple reasons, but he wasn't going to distract her in the middle of combat with a pop-up.

"Now might be a good time to call for backup," John called out, pleading again against Tricia's stubbornness and hatred of Moira.

"I do not need assistance! Let my drones handle it, and if they cannot, I will finish the job!"

"Yeah, well, fuck that," John thought, ignoring the blonde-haired woman's desires and mashing Moira's number in his phone. Tricia was nowhere near Moira's level; she was barely above John's, even after his Reincarnation. He wasn't going to leave her alone to deal with this, and he wasn't going to let her pride get any of them killed. He didn't even wait for the dial to complete, knowing that Moira would hear the sounds of battle, not unlike the incident at the mall.

"Seras, stay down, I'm gonna borrow some mana!"

John took advantage of his Siphon's range to replenish the cost of his White Lightning as best as he could, while his vampire companion kept her safety a few yards away behind a thick metallic cabinet. Seras only had around 50 mana, but it gave John enough for another shot, if it came down to it, and he'd still have enough to either heal someone or cast a Fire Orb. Given the propensity for house fires, though, John was very much trying not to do that. He didn't want to learn the hard way whether Tricia had fire suppression drones.

John heard a tinkling noise just a moment before movement appeared on the staircase. He was halfway to firing another bolt when he realized that it was not a person descending but rather a small metallic orb, covered in small nubs. John didn't need Observe to recognize a Frag Grenade.

"John, get down!"

That call came from Tricia, who flipped a lab cart to shield herself. A cluster of drones flew in front of her, blue waves of energy coursing over their bodies. A single drone dashed toward the grenade, scooping it up with a mechanical arm, covering the grenade as a manner of protection and attempting vainly to fly it back up the staircase before it detonated. John tucked his head just before the blast went off.

The gunfire, the lightning, and the shouting had been nothing compared to the wave of pressure that coursed over the room when the grenade went off. John's entire world seemed to vanish in an instant, every synapse of his brain shutting down for just a moment as he was thrown violently to the ground. His senses returned in increments, one by one, slowly regaining and understanding of who and where he was. He spent a disturbing amount of time checking to make sure he was, in fact, still alive - fortunately, he had a set of pop-ups that helped with that.

Party Member: -25 HP
-10 HP!
Status Effect Inflicted: Tinnitus

"Mawp, mawp… mawp," John mumbled, shaking his head as an insanely loud ringing faded far too slowly for his tastes. When he couldn't get his full senses back, he turned back over his shoulder, trying to ascertain the state of his allies.

Seras was pinned against the wall, still holding herself up, her ears bleeding profusely. John was sure his must have been doing the same, since as far as he could tell no shrapnel penetrated the desk that he'd been hiding behind. Seras had not been so fortunate - her side was cut open in a particularly nasty way, and though she held her hand firmly against it, she was bleeding profusely. John wasn't sure why she didn't have a status effect for that. Probably something to do with the copious bleeding he'd seen vampires do and act as if it were nothing…

John turned his head to the other side of the room and caught sight of Tricia. Her drones had done everything they could to protect her, but her form was still the worst of the three. With only a flimsy metallic table and a few drones to protect her, she appeared to be bleeding from several places, some more severely than others. One of her arms hung limply at her side, being tended to by one of the drones who had survived more or less intact.

John glanced to the staircase. A cluster of the soldiers were on their way down, and Tricia's cover was shredded. John didn't have enough mana for more than one more White Lightning spell, and he assumed that if that grenade had left any part of the entrance to the lab untouched, his Fire Orb wasn't likely to finish the job, so he conjured two of them with most of his remaining mana and threw both of them directly toward the open stairway.

Both of them found their marks - one of the Cabal soldiers tried to dodge, but in such close proximity John could control the arcs of his spells almost all the way to the door. Both soldiers burst into flames, a masculine and feminine scream echoing in a sick kind of synchronicity through the fractured walls of the laboratory. More flames spread across the tiled floor, burning on anything they could find - clothes, blood, even the bodies and weapons of the already killed soldiers. Ammo began to cook off as the fire spread, turning the doorway into even more of a kill zone. There came more screams as Seras and John pinned themselves behind their cover more firmly - but as John turned to see what Tricia was doing, the extent of her injuries became more obvious.

Tricia was stumbling toward another piece of cover now that the table she'd hastily taken advantage of was shredded. One of her legs was dragging, the other shaking under her weight, and both were covered from thigh to foot in red. She was clutching frantically at her head with one good arm, screaming in a way that sounded less like someone in pain and more like someone having a breakdown. John was less concerned with all that, though, than one of the Cabal soldiers. As a group of them grabbed the shattered remnants of the drones that had fallen closest to the stairway, cursing and swearing as their hands blistered in the flames and on the red-hot metal, one lone soldier raised his gun toward Tricia. The drones around the room were in disarray, many disabled, and though they tagged several Cabal soldiers and downed one completely, this one was determined.

John had no mana for a spell and no ranged tools, and he couldn't drain any more mana to fix that since Tricia hadn't joined his party. Thinking only enough to enhance himself, John burst from cover, funneling Agility from Seras to himself as they ran. Seven points was enough to give him that very familiar adrenaline rush, the same one he'd experienced in the Dungeon Barrier while training with Kim. It was as if time slowed down for everyone but him, until John could hear each individual bullet firing around him as it left the barrel.

John healed himself back from the tiny damage he'd taken from the pressure of the grenade's explosion just before he reached the falling Gorbachev. He crossed the gap to Tricia's stumbling form as fast as he could, grabbing her and throwing her behind a rolling cabinet just as he heard a shotgun blast, his ears honed in on it almost as if he knew its target before it hit.

John was thrown forward and to the ground by the **** of the impact, a massive pressure seeming to build in his chest before bursting out the front. He saw a spray of blood emerge from what was - only a moment later - a perfectly untouched portion of his chest and a pop-up that sent a chill down his spine.

Critical Hit! -85 HP!

John groaned as over half of his health disappeared in an instant, leaning forward and going nearly on all fours as he struggled after Tricia's prone form. More shots followed him, but his frantic steps kept him only narrowly ahead of them. He ended up landing on top of her behind the barricade, the sound of gunfire continuing as the remaining drones did all that they could to keep the intruders back. John's heartbeat hammered in his ears above it all, as he glanced into Tricia's face.

"You are… an unbelievable fool!" Tricia seethed, scowling at John as she pushed him off. Despite her lithe frame Tricia's shove had a decent **** to it, rolling John off her as she got to her knees.

"Tricia, stay down, we don't have-"

"No, you don't have a way to fight back! So many of my experiments will have to be repeated, and I may have even lost data those drones hadn’t sent in yet. All of it easily preventable if you had just listened to me! John Newman, you imbecile, you stubborn goat - you're as bad as that redheaded harlot!"

"Tricia, what's-"

John stopped speaking, his mouth hanging open as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing as he took in Tricia's form for the first time since the injury. Tricia's clothes had been largely shredded, revealing underneath them a black latex-looking suit, which was also filled with holes but appeared to be rapidly repairing itself. That was not the most shocking part, however; what truly stopped John in his tracks was her expression. She was livid, enraged beyond anything he'd seen on almost anyone, much less the eternally indifferent blonde. But the worst part was the eye, or eyes, that were growing… everywhere.

The largest sprouted on Tricia's forehead, right in the center, its red iris and perfect positioning giving Tricia the appearance of a demonic vision one might experience during a bad trip. The ones that appeared on her neck, cheeks, arms, legs, and every exposed part of flesh that John could see through the holes in her odd living latex turned a demonic vision into something that could very well haunt John in his deepest nightmares.

"Leave, John Newman. This is your last chance - I mean that in every sense of the world. I will not be pushed any further, by you, by them, or by the crimson slut. Go. NOW!"

"Seras, we're moving," John shouted, struggling to his feet. Seras looked out toward the battle, checking to see if there was an opening for her to move. For a long moment there was not - although Seras was not the primary target, there were enough bullets flying that she would've quickly become one if she had exposed herself. Then the battlefield was shifted in a single moment as Tricia turned toward the invaders, and from her forehead, a massive red beam came forth.

The first man who was hit was vaporized almost entirely where the beam struck - narrow though it was, a hole was carved through his chest and a part of his right arm, causing him to drop the weapon he was carrying, let out a single wail, and then collapse along with whatever was left of his right lung. Even the staircase was affected - it appeared that the beam had tunneled through several feet of dirt before finally stopping. After a moment of hesitation, the Cabal warriors who had not already fled turned and sprinted back up the stairs, away from the foe who continued to fire beams. Seras took her opening and ran - just in time as a red beam hit where she had been. John froze at the sight of Tricia so carelessly nearly annihilating his friend, her ally - but as another eye opened on her back, glaring at John, he realized it hadn't been careless, or accidental. Tricia had followed through on her promise, and as his eyes met the strange new one on her back, he felt something reaching out to him, as if another being were touching him through that eye.

It felt foreign. It felt cold. It felt like Hate.

John returned his borrowed Agility to help speed Seras along as they sprinted toward the back door of the lab. Lasers and bullets flew in multiple directions; the two of them weaved through the lab, dodging experiments and tossing shelves out of the way to reach what John hoped was at least some form of safety.

"Master, are you- ah!"

Party Member: -135 HP!

Seras cried out as a laser pierced through her lower abdomen, into the doorway ahead of them, and Gaia only knew how much further. She stumbled, tripped, and was ready to fall to her knees when John wrapped his arm around hers and began to pull her toward the door.

"Come on, Seras, you've been through worse!" John shouted, not sure if that was actually a lie or not, but not caring as they finally reached the door. John threw it open and revealed a mostly empty room, the same white tile as the laboratory covering most surfaces. There were no tools, scientific or otherwise, in the room - only monitors linked up to the security cameras, and a series of bolts and latches on the inside of the room that made it clear it was meant to withstand some degree of ****, especially since it was clearly made of a heavy duty metal… which, really, only made the clean-cut hole bored through it more frightening.

"Get in the corner, keep your head down," John instructed, helping Seras over after he threw the door shut behind him and locked it down firmly. His pants were slowly becoming more soaked as the blood leaking from her wounds - both from the eye beam and the frag grenade - ran down his body, but John paid far less attention to that than his wounded vampiress.

"Wha- what was that? I'm a vampire, and even I think that was some shite," Seras half-shouted, clutching herself even tighter to John as a crimson beam cut through a corner of the room, slicing through the wall as if it wasn't even there.

"I don't… I don't know," John mumbled, hunkering down with Seras in the corner. "I should have listened to her, I guess."

"Startin' to think you're the only one I can trust around here," Seras mumbled, shaking her head sadly.

"I don't…" John paused, glancing toward the door and listening to the slowly fading sounds of ****, gunshots and magical beams becoming somewhat less frequent as the seconds passed.

"I can't read her for shit sometimes, but I don't think we're the only ones feeling that way."