Corruption

Renegade Slinger

==POV: Nikotus==
Days passed: 1/7
Three years since we left Ryuno Shane on a fool's errand.
Three years since we never heard from her again.
Well. We've heard about her, and always been there just a bit too late. She's becoming impossible to track, because the only cavern that hasn't maintained large-scale calamitous destruction is Bullseye Cavern, and that's because of the ten-foot-thick fortress wall around it that Blakk Industries hasn't managed to make a dent in just yet.
I just hope she hasn't gotten to the Northern Caverns. If she destroys those, Tally, Ava, all my family and everyone else I care about there would either be in danger, or dead. I don’t know which I would prefer. Neither, but Blakk Industries would have other ideas.
Probably use Ava as bait, although she’s beyond an expert on Aria, and apart from Ryuno, Blakk’s squad doesn’t have anyone as good at aerial combat as my oldest sister. If they get Tally, that’s another story. We’ve done our research, and Goon Docs, as they were named, can control the minds of their slingers.
Ryuno has two of those. Lyth found us a few days after we bumped into the Shadow Clan, and we assumed something had happened to Ryuno.
As far as we know, Katsu’s still with her. I run through my mental list of slingers we could contact for help. Alina’s guarding the rest of the Infurni, we don’t know where. I remember a girl I met a few years ago, who happens to live in Bullseye Cavern.
“Come on guys, we’re going to Bullseye.” Leo yells back why. “Um…” Going to find a girl I met ten years ago? Going to save Slugterra? “Salad run.”
The wall is huge, reaching all the way up to the roof of Bullseye. From what I understand, the original designers of the walls planned to have them all the way down to bedrock. All slug damage from outside is completely negated from the alloy they used for this. Good thing I have something else besides slug damage.
    With a little help from the parts we bought days ago, plus some of Leo’s tinkering skills, I managed to create something I like to call a composite sword. It’s just a sword which extends out with a solid bit of wire and cuts through just about anything from what I’ve tested. When I’m done, I just fold it up into a hunk of metal the authorities believe is a camping backpack. Seriously. Slugterra ought to get better security.
    Hiroto stares blankly at me, then looks at the wall. “You really think that’s going to make a crack in that thing? No offence to you two, but it’s hopeless.”
    I give him a somewhat convincing grin. “Oh, believe me. I have no intention to leave any ‘cracks’ in this.”
    As soon as I make the first cut - at an ever so convenient place where the wall was just a bit thinner than the rest  - a circle the size of a dinner plate appears on the wall, and it rolls and clunks onto the ground, giving us a view to the other side. Leo tosses me the Shadow Walker he put back together the previous year to me and says, “I hope you remember how to use this.”
    “Me too.” The Shadow Walker was supposed to allow you to walk through anything while holding it, though the wall was an exception. However, Leo made some ‘adjustments’ to it…
    As soon as I roll the device through the hole - just large enough to fit through - and it lands on the other side, my body turns to mush. Then it reforms, and when my vision clears, I’m on the other side of the walls.
    I roll it to Leo who’s already anticipating me, and just as it passes through, he disappears and reappears on top of me. Go figure.
    He crashes onto my chest, probably bruising a few ribs, though I can check that later. He slides his hand through the gap with the Walker - he has really small hands for his age, and he’s practically a kid - and lets Hiroto grab it. When he appears next to us, he turns away and lets out a bunch of vomit.
    Hiroto wipes his mouth and gazes through the other side. “How come you guys didn’t upchuck your breakfast?”
    “One, I didn’t have breakfast. Two, you’re the one who’s seasick.”
    Leo scratches his head and tosses the Walker around in his hands. “I’ll fix up the stabilisers when we get back…or if we get the materials, and if we get back, at least. What do I gotta do ‘bout your Mechas?”
Ashura grabs the Walker from Leo through the hole, and he lands perfectly in front of us, feet down. That was weird; he’s never one to do stuff normally, but I don’t think much about it.
    Hiroto gives us a little smile that is somehow familiar, and I just can’t decipher it, even after living with him for ages. “Oh, don’t worry about them. I gave them a few ‘adjustments’ of my own.”
    I look at Leo like he may understand, but he just eyes Hiroto and welds the chunk of metal back into its position. I have to admit, he does well on his part. It looks as stubborn as it always was, and I doubt anyone else is getting through. At least, that’s what I hope…
    The defining structure of Bullseye Fortress, other than the wall, is the bell tower in the centre of the town. It's more modern than a traditional tower, of course, and because the threat of Ryuno is neutralised by the wall, they've taken the liberty of putting vents where they're required. We enter the building, and are immediately greeted by a merchant with a Fandango on his shoulder.
“I think the whole 'Evil demon dragon destroying Slugterra' thing is a hoax created by Blakk Industries. They just want us to not go to the other caverns.” Another merchant, with no slug on his shoulder, yells across the corridor.
“It's not a hoax, Jeremy. Dave lost his kids to that… Thing.” There's a slight clatter, a growl, and someone cursing, but the merchants say it's just the Hoverblades in the vents; they used to have a population of Hoverbugs and never got round to clearing them out. And then Ryuno happened, and they couldn't, unless they wanted to lose a hand or two.
I don't know who was cursing. Obviously not a Hoverblade. From my research, not even highly educated slugs, let alone ghouls, had the ability to mimic human speech. We go up the stairs of one of the buildings, the wooden planks creaking loudly. At the back of my mind there’s a tiny voice saying, Are you sure this is a good idea? Maybe we never should’ve come here in the first place. Say, wouldn’t it be terrible if something extremely unfortunate happened right now?
Shut up, brain. I need to save my brain cells for later, I reply, and thank goodness I snapped out of it, because the girl I knew ten years ago is standing at the doorway. With a Blastipede loaded up in the blaster aimed at my head.

“HEY! It’s me! Nikotus!” She blinks emptily, then widens her eyes in shock as she realises who I am. She grabs my wrist and leads me to the dining room. Over the time I’ve been gone, she’s made quite a lot of renovations. The couch that used to lie at the left of the wall was gone, and all the walls were a completely different colour. “What the heck? You’ve been gone for ages!”
She tackles me in a big hug, then glances at Leo, Ashura and Hiroto. “And…who are those?”
“Erm…guys, this is Hilda, my childhood friend. Hilda, meet the guys.”
She gives me a light chuckle. “Stupid sense of humor, as always. Come on in!”
As soon as we step past the doorway, she flips over the night stand - at least I thought it was a night stand - and the door and windows get covered by a few layers of metal, similar to the walls outside Bullseye.
Her expression changes abruptly, and she stares intensely at me. “You guys took a big risk, coming here in the middle of such a complicated situation. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, plus a few extra stuff, like how to get out of here alive - if not in one piece.” I ignore ‘not in one piece’.
We sit down at a table. Hilda’s Blastipede hops onto the table, and begins conversing with the remaining non-ghouled slugs in our arsenals. “So, you all know about the thing destroying Slugterra. This hotel,” Hilda waves her hand around the room, “has vent systems installed pretty much everywhere. Air conditioning, heating, even empty ones that aren’t really used for anything.
”Then there’s the Hoverblade problem; we don’t know when they moved in, but every so often, one’ll come down through a vent, bite off a couple of fingers, and take them back up to the rest of the flock. One of them even got a hand recently. They make a lot of noise, but it’s not unbearable.“
I look up at the ceiling to listen for clatters and bumps. Nothing. She has, I notice, smartly blocked up all the vent entrances. ”It’s weird, but the Shane hasn’t been sighted near Bullseye since we built the wall. Neither has her team. A sighting was reported a few weeks ago, but it was described as “a fleeting identicality between one of the merchants and the monster that terrorises our caverns”. Searches were dropped because the merchant had a Thugglet and they are known to flicker illusions when they sneeze.“
Strange that it flickered to Ryuno, though. Thugglets may turn invisible for a second or drop illusions when they sneeze, but putting up an entirely new illusion? They wouldn’t do that – have you ever seen someone do the can-can as a sneeze reflex? I thought not. Thugglets wouldn’t do something like that, it takes too long.
“I assume you’ve met this place’s merchants – Dave is off work cuz of his kids, so Kenneth’s filling in for him. As for Jeremy, he and Andrew are good friends through conspiracy theories, and Kevin’s completely oblivious to everything happening these days. We don’t see much of him, though. He's never here. I hope nothing has happened to him…”
I grip my naginata tightly. This place changed so much from when I last visited her. Suddenly, the vents clatter loudly and someone shouts, ”In five minutes we're burning this place to the ground and taking the Fire Elemental. We will not be taking prisoners.” Hilda looks up at the ceiling.
“This hasn't happened before…” An Attacknet bursts through the plaster and webs up Ashura. He's pulled screaming up into the vents, and seconds later, all my Lavalynx are ghouled. The worst part of it all, the most painful part, isn’t even the screaming, or my main slugs becoming ghouled, or Hilda’s house getting ripped apart in an absolute frenzy.
The worst part is when Ashura stops screaming, and there is absolute silence other than the Hoverblades in the vents.