Ch. 16 Rescue in the Ruins

[VirusZero]

OOC: This is for Andraia's bit dealing with the pantheons. @Vile you can go ahead and start with the Underwater miniboss.

IN:
A pair of blade wielding pantheons dropped along with a pair of rifle pantheons. 4 pantheons on the steadily rising platform. Even if these pantheons were brand new, they were still only pantheons. And Andraia ate pantheons for breakfast.

The blade arm pantheons moved forward quickly, quicker than Andraia had anticipated. One's blade zipped above her head as she dropped to the ground and rolled to the left... avoiding the other pantheon's strike in the process. She stopped rolling and pushed off the ground hard enough to launch herself, she engaged her flight and corrected herself so she landed on her feet. She could easily have just not bothered turning her jets off and flown up and through the exit. But she figured it'd be more fun to fight these pantheons. Plus where it was only four of them.

She pulled one of her busters and fired a few shots. One of the blade pantheons dodged, but the other simply raised it's sword and sliced a shot in half. Her shot dissipated upon being cut through. The rifle pantheons moved, trying to get around Andraia to take shots at her without risking shooting their allies.

Andraia slid her buster away and pulled a saber instead. She moved towards one blade pantheon and brought her saber down in an overhand swing. The blade pantheon caught the attack with it's own blade and the two sabers met. The hiss and crackle of energy echoed in the small area while the two sabers attempted, and failed, to push through each other and slice into the opponent. Andraia though pushed down and then gave a shove, which forced the blade pantheon backwards... into one of the rifle pantheons. The collision of the two pantheons sent them tumbling to the ground. Where Andraia promptly stabbed them both with her saber and they powered down.

The other blade pantheon then decided to make it's own attack, seeing that it's target's back was turned. Andraia heard the telltale sound of the saber swinging and quickly activated her jets and went skyward as the slice just barely missed where she had been. But this gave the other rifle pantheon a clean shot and it's buster loosed a single shot. The shot clipped Andraia in the side and she dropped back to the ground. The blade pantheon raised it's saber to strike again, though this time Andraia simply raised her's. Their blades met and, like before, locked. Andraia used the ground beneath her to push off and shove the pantheon. She quickly slid her saber away and drew her buster then unleased a trio of shots into the pantheon's chest. Each shot hit and knocked the machine back a little bit. After the third shot, she fired again, this time to the pantheon's knee which knocked it to the ground. Not too far off from her.
She got to her feet quickly, but the other pantheon was waiting. It fired a shot at her and caught her in the back. Her armour held but it knocked her forward and she tripped over the downed blade pantheon's side. When she landed she grabbed the blade pantheon's arm, saber still active, and stood up. She put her boot on it's back and with one hand pulled the blade arm off the pantheon. She then threw the bladed arm of the pantheon into the rifle pantheon's chest. The blade sliced through it's armour and shut rifle user down.

By this point they were reaching the top of the elevator shaft. And then Andraia realised that there was no opening and spikes had protruded from the ceiling. She looked to the walls and they seemed to be largely solid rock. She gave one a punch but it did little more than waste her time and energy. She engaged her jets and flew up the rest of the way to the top. Once she got there she could see the lack of exit for certain.

But she could hear the wind whistling from somewhere. There was a crack in the wall... She turned towards the wall and certainly enough a thin break was visible. She gave this section a punch also, just to test to see if that would do anything at all, and of course it was futile.

So she moved back and pointed her hand at the wall. She focused her energy and a second later a powerful beam of energy erupted and crashed into the wall. Chunks of rock began to break away and fall down towards the steadily rising platform.

With her powerful beam attack, designed for eating away armour, it didn't take long before she had created a nice wide hole in the wall. Large enough to walk through without too much trouble. Though she had exhausted most of her energy to do so. She wobbled a bit unsteadily as her thrusters, low on power, struggled to provide the necessary push to move her into the hole. Though they did and she dropped to the ground to save whatever power she could.

Less than a minute later the rising platform completed it's journey to the top and the ceiling's spikes stabbed into the floor of the platform. Thankfully no one was there to get skewered.