Hive Cluster Mitsuki

[Zelth]

Zelth smiles evilly as a few of the creatures meet their end.
"So you do allow the killing of these things then. I doubt I'll have much trouble if I grab a few things from the ship first, but if it does appear that I may be in trouble hold them back a bit as I do still have an assignment to get to. I'll have to run back to my ship anyway as most of my monies is in digital storage, but I know I do have some laying around." She tips the last of the popcorn into her mouth and slurps the last of her drink and returns both containers to her pak before running back to her ship.
Nova jolts upright as Zelth runs in. "What's the hurry?"
"If I have enough monies I'll be doing a round in the arena. I've got to find some." She digs around in a storage crate and pulls out several coins.
At that moment Nova presses a button and a male irken's face appears on the screen.
"Zelth is that you? What happened to your ship?! I never thought it would be your beacon..."
"Hey Xardan, yeah my ship was trashed from within by a traitor. I was lucky to even make it this far. Any chance that you have a large amount of credits or ship parts with you?" Zelth sends him the list of damage.
"No credits but I do have some spares that should be enough to get you running again, not quite to your original specs though. I can be there in 20 minutes."
"Great I'll repay you when I get to Earth. For now I'm going to see about the arena here."
The computer link closes.
"Put this on the ground outside Nova and turn off the beacon Xardan has our location now." Zelth hands a coin to Nova who obediently runs outside, while she finds some of her favourite weapons and armour.

[Ironshot]

"Hmmm...looks like you may be in luck.  Each of your monies is worth 750 credits.  Now you just need to select the parameters for your spar though keep in mind that it is 5000 credits per hour unless you want to fight a Broodmother or are crazy enough to request a spar against a Leviathan," Chris comments mentally to the Irken.  "For example, you could limit it to Raptor-Swarmlings or limit it to no more than two dozen Zerg at a time.  By the way, it's debatable if any of my Zerg can actually die, though they can take fatal damage," Chris adds as he sends a psionic pulse to the 'dead' Zerg and revives them.  The Ultralisk regenerates its head and walks away to help Alice with the conference center while the Hydralisks literally pull themselves together.

[Zelth]

Zelth nearly drops the items she just picked up when she calculated how many credits that would give her. "That's quite a lot but I'm not complaining. I only have 20 minutes for combat before I'll need to see to my ship repairs. So far as opponents I don't mind a challenge." She smiles as the last of her battle armour clicks into place. She steps out of her ship kitted out in a durable dark magenta space armour. "Nova gather up all the monies you can find I'll be back in 20 minutes." Zelth continues on her way to the arena casually swinging the handle of an inactive energy blade between her fingers.

[Ironshot]

"That's 1666 credits or I suppose we can just round that down to 2 of your monies.  Don't know how much of a challenge they will be, but I'll have you face the experimental Lichen."  Chris comments as Wiccamon signals a stop to her own spar.


"Nice range of fighters you have Chris.  I believe I owe you one ton of biomass unless I opt to join your swarm?  I should show you something before I make a final decision on joining," Wiccamon says before giving a command phrase and splitting into two lifeforms.


"My name is Ellie and my partner holding the Starsword is Elementiamon," says the one who looks like a young human woman wearing only a reptile hide cloak and indicating a woman made purely of the four base elements of fire, water, earth and wind.  "If it's no trouble both of us would like to join your swarm."


"Enter the Spawning Pool to the left after letting me know if you have any requests for your final appearance," Chris replies to Ellie while noting to himself that she seems comfortable wearing very little clothing.


"Make the Zerg parts retractable otherwise don't care," Ellie comments as she and Elementiamon walk into the 'Spawning Pool' that is technically an infestation pool.

[Zelth]

"I'll have Nova bring that out once I'm done here." Zelth leaps into the now vacant arena and activates the energy blade revealing a broad pink edge. She stands strong and confident holding her blade a few inches from her face with her eyes closed for the moment as she gets a feel for her surroundings.

[Ironshot]

As the two volunteers are wrapped in a pair of chrysalis, a micro swarm of the new Zerg Lichen surge into the arena and attempt to smother the 'new' customer while spraying digestive acid at her.  Meanwhile, Chris gets an update from Broodmother Beth on Earth regarding the status of the second Hive Cluster in the Sol system.  (Not much really since not enough time has passed to spawn the Hatchery)

[Zelth]

Zelth activates the force field from her pak to clear the creatures from her body. She leaps up deactivating the shield instead keeping herself above the creatures with the jetpack.
He wasn't kidding about the numbers... But it's going to take more than a few pests to beat me...
Her armour hisses from the acid but thankfully it doesn't penetrate too deep into the metal. Zelth extends a robotic pak limb to take in the hastily deactivated sword. Instead two metallic pipes  with sleek ray gun style tips emerge from the top of her pak releasing a pair of rapid moving, wide green beams which scorch the ground and hopefully every creature they touch.

[Ironshot]

In reaction to a few hundred Lichen dying, the rest replicate at an accelerated rate with eight 'arms' extending off the ground at equal distances around the customer in an attempt to overwhelm the shield even as they spray more acid in preparation for the shields dropping... one way or another though there is always a chance the shields will hold until the match ends to the irritation of the Lichen.  Broodmother Alice alerts Chris that the Conference Center is complete as is the spawning of two more Broodmothers: Clare and Diana.  The first Leviathan should be complete at around the same time as the current arena match and breeding of two more Leviathans has started.

[Zelth]

Zelth flies up higher to keep herself out of reach and increases the speed of the beams to match the creature replication. She unleashes another weapon from her pak this one a small cannon firing out large globs of plasma as fast as it can at the creatures below. Hmm, got to clear them quicker... What have I got to work with... Zelth runs through a mental list of the weapons available in her pak. Three small explosives, hand guns but the thin laser shot won't do much against these, the sword would be equally useless, two more ray guns but I think I'm pushing it with the cannon as it is... Heh whatever gets the job done... Zelth's pak sends out two more ray gun appendages and proceeds to cut through the masses of creatures.
"Having fun with those? I've found 5 monies." Nova asks Zelth watching on screen from the ship.
"They're a bit annoying really... I'll only need 2 for this stay on the ship for now."

Xardan's ship is approximately 15 minutes away.

[Ironshot]

As the Lichen death toll rapidly rises, an unexpected flash of light from the infestation pool heralds the awakening of the two newest Zerg.  Pulling traits from the Swarm gestalt, the Lichen use the elemental nature of OmniElementiamon (Infested) to develop immunity to fire and resistance to plasma even as the 'dead' Lichen revive and the Lichen as a whole accelerate replication even further still trying to reach the customer flying above the arena.


"This looks more amusing than most battles," OmniEllie (infested) comments to her adoptive mother as they walk over to the arena.  For the most part, OmniEllie retains her pre-infested appearance but has the gold digizoid limbs of a hyper evolution mixed with hints of Zerg carapace while OmniElementiamon (infested) has the gold digizoid flecked appearance of Elementiamon's evolved form  with similar hints of Zerg carapace.


"It certainly does, though I'm more interested in how our infestation has affected the Xross loader and the Starmon," OmniElementiamon (Infested) replies.

[Zelth]

Zelth's jaw drops as the dead Zerg come back to life and apparently gain immunity to her plasma cannon. Her antennae twitch as she hisses with rage. The four already active beams speed up until they near form a barrier of green light.
At this stage Zelth no longer cares if this form of attack is effective or not, as like all irkens her pak is encoded with everything that makes her who she is right down to the belief that her species is superior to all others. Unfortunately for her that programming is very stubborn and this near unwinnable fight does not compute...
Nova from the ship watches with growing concern, not for Zelth but for her mission as her master appears to be stuck in a superiority paradox. "I'll have to ask him to stop the fight... But I'll have to be tactful about it she'll need to believe that she is better than the zerg."


((Never mind her figuring out how to word that nearly broke me... And I'll probably need to edit as my knowledge of irken programming is limited I could be wrong about this reaction it may be more flexible than this...))

[Ironshot]

Just when it seems the Lichen micro swarm will overwhelm the customer and her guns, all of the Lichen become disorganized as the limited intelligence of the individual Lichen causes them to be distracted by the wealth of data in the greater swarm's genetic gestalt resulting in many of them picking up useless or even harmful mutations.  Some of the mutations have the potential to be humorous, such as the Xross mutation that combines around an eighth of the Lichen with a squad of Hunter-Splitter Banelings that endlessly suicides even after Chris sends in a few Tarrasque strain Ultralisks to try to properly exterminate the out of control Xross Zerg.  Ellie and Elementiamon even Xross into OmniWiccamon (Infested) and join in with large scale elemental attacks that do more damage to the Hive Cluster than the Lichen Banelings.  "Hopefully I can get this under control once your ride gets here," Chris comments as OmniWiccamon (Infested) Xross' with the Starmon (Infested) to form CelestialOmniWiccamon (Infested) for even more powerful attacks to try to exterminate the rogue Zerg strain.

[Zelth]

Zelth looks around still breathing heavily from her fit of rage, all weapons retract as several more zerg join in killing of the Lichen. She takes a while to process what is now going on as she slowly flies out of the arena landing just out of the way of the chaos. "What happened to them?" Zelth directs her question more to the Lord of Blades than anyone else nearby.
Nova is relieved that she did not have to intervene. "We speak nothing of this computer."
Had Nova not muted the computer's voice, (purely out of hatred for the way he sounds) he would have audibly agreed. Instead the word flashes up on screen.

Xardan is now five minutes away.

[Ironshot]

"I may have given the Lichen too much free will and not enough intelligence.  They went rogue and at least some of them stumbled on the perfect set of traits to be near immortal," Chris says to the customer as he decloaks beside her having raised a psionic cloak around the time the Lichen went rogue.  Even as he struggles to stimulate the regeneration of the Hive cluster enough to overcome the destruction of the ongoing battle, a psi lash originating from the cloaked fleet of the Silent Night Assassins lashes out to brain kill a large swath of Lichen followed by more psi lashes.  "I certainly won't be creating any more Lichen any time soon."

[Zelth]

"So you didn't command them to resurrect." Zelth states this more as a reassurance to herself. She spends the next few minutes silently reflecting as the clean up continues. A small holographic display appears projected from her pak as Xardan contacts her directly. "I'm assuming you've arrived Xardan. I'll be with you shortly."
"Arena went well?"
Zelth only shoots him a look and shuts off the hologram.
I guess not... She'll probably need a while to cool down. Xardan lands his slightly larger ship next to Zelth's awaiting her return.
Zelth turns to the Lord of Blades. "I'm sure you know that my requested help has arrived. I would help to clean up this mess but again as you probably already know my weapons are quite useless against these now. Thank you for my time here I'll send Nova out with payment, I may well come back here once my mission is complete for another battle." Zelth immediately heads of towards her ship. If I do come back here I will be much better prepared...