Beyond What's Known

Chapter 8

Alana rushed out from behind the trash bins, pressing her earpiece. Using all three Infurnuses was going to be quite a flashy spectacle, but she was hoping there would be some actual function to it as well. If Burpy had been missing when the Goon left with Eli yesterday, then Alana might have the element of surprise. Even more so if he wasn't expecting the Eastern Infurnus to have joined the fight.

"I'm gonna go all out over here to keep his eyes on me, then I need someone to fire an Xmitter," she said quietly, loading Ash first. "Maybe if we stop him from firing the Goon we can get the drop on him, even if we can't fire our slugs either."

"Copy!" Kord replied.

Eli was in the middle of the street dueling with Trixie, who skillfully dodged and weaved around, keeping Eli's focus on her and not on any remaining civilians. Kord slipped into an alley, as stealthily as a cave troll could be. Alana caught a quick glimpse of his blaster and the Xmitter inside it.

"Trade off!" Alana called, firing Ash as Trixie dove away from an Attacknet. Trixie nodded and dove for cover in a storefront whose window panes were now frozen solid from her Frostcrawler.

She fired Ash, who spat out balls of flame around Eli, scorching the street. Eli scowled and fired a ghouled Beeker, who doused out Ash's flames, but by the time Ash was returning to protoform, Alana had already fired Burpy, who flew in circles to create a wall of fire around the corrupted slinger.

"What?!" Eli called frantically as he disappeared behind the six-foot tall flame barrier.

So he wasn't expecting more than one Infurnus.

Alana glanced down at the final Infurnus in her blaster. He had his eyes locked forward and chirped apprehensively. She couldn't imagine what this was like for him, going up against his slinger's tormentor- no, his own tormentor, the ghoul that had corrupted him.

Well, maybe she could. Alana still felt like she had stared down death when she first saw the Dark Slinger again. But she could at least be grateful that she'd gone the last decade without facing the Goon instead of being under his control all that time.

Alana fired the Eastern Infurnus and watched as he megamorphed, spiraling around Burpy's circle of flames and stretching them upward, completely sealing Eli off from the rest of the street. The Infurnus kept circling the flames, waiting for Alana.

"Now, Kord!" Alana called.

Kord stepped out from the closest building and fired the Xmitter. The slug transformed and let out a screech that Alana hadn't heard since the gang's ordeal in the scrap heap. An electromagnetic pulse radiated out from the slug, and Alana watched as the core of her blaster flickered off, rendering her weapon useless.

It'll disarm him, too, Alana reminded herself, stepping forward and giving the Eastern Infurnus a thumbs-up. He dove down and swallowed up one portion of the flames, giving Alana a brief opening.

"Wish me luck!" she called, giving a mock salute to Trixie, who was wringing her hands worriedly.

She took a deep breath and leapt through the opening, holding her arms out in front of her face. The Eastern Infurnus belched out a final burst of fire, sealing the wall behind her and closing her in with Eli and the Goon before he returned to protoform.

After the incident with Twist, the gang probably should have done some more training for hand-to-hand combat. Even without knowing they had an enemy who was impossible to take down without a blaster, disarmed fighting was a notoriously difficult concept for slingers. It took a completely different mindset to make your own body your weapon, and it was hard to transfer shooting to punching, even if it didn't involve sentient high-speed ammo.