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A life for a life. Every life saved, soothes the pain for every life taken.

Chapter 35: Glacial - Argolis's miracle

Sandy stood in the middle of the Maneuvering room of the submarine, as always ignoring the availability of the comfortable and technologic commander's seat a few feet behind his back, and he was hiding his nervousness and tiredness in the best possible way.

In the last twelve hours, he had been continuously in command, ignoring the always heavier tool that the stress imposed, and guiding the Unseen in its apparently impossible mission.

And now, his presence in the control room was even more vital than before, since escaping the angry, furious hunt that the enemy was giving them was becoming harder and harder.

The loss, almost simultaneous, of two of their SSNs had obviously caused alarm in the officers of the RA: two explosions so close in time, both bringing to the loss of a submarine, went far past the scenarios of an incident or a failure of the machineries on board the ships.

It left, said simple, no space to believe it may have been a coincidence, an incident, and the RA officers had obviously immediately started to examine the possibility of enemy attack.

They had probably considered the aerial threat, first. After all, the Typhoon fighters of Kesteven were attacking continuously, firing swarms of Sea Eagle missiles from a safe distance and, even if at the expense of most of the Empire's stocks of such weapon, the pilots of the air force were sinking an always growing number of ships in the sea around Argolis. Couldn't they have fired stand-off anti-submarine torpedoes too...?

Of course they could have... It was the only possible answer, because it was impossible that Kesteven's submarines could reach the Glacial Seas from their docks: it would have requested to pretty much circumnavigate good part of the world.

A perfect cover... But it lasted for little time, unfortunately.

Indeed, soon enough another submarine of the RA had been sunk, a couple of miles starboard of the position of the Unseen. And that had been a bit too much for the RA officers: someone must have had posed again the question that there may have been a hostile submarine, or more than one, lurking under the keels of their warships... And they had probably had their satellites taking a more accurate look over the docks of the Empire's navy.

And they discovered that 8 submarines were missing to the count. Out at sea. Sandy thought idly to himself, trying to reason like a hypothetical RA officer of the enemy flagstaff. 1 of those is the Astute, but they know pretty much where it is lurking, since it's been sinking their freighters of weapons in the Abukirk bay in the last periods... And another, of course, is out on a normal nuclear-deterrence mission, hiding deep in the ocean with its eight nuclear missiles, ready to cause Armageddon if someone is stupid enough to cause a nuclear conflict. But this leaves 5 SSNs. Out somewhere. On chase.

The conclusion must have been amazing, but verisimilar, to the RA admirals: five submarines had left their docks in the north and sailed under the ices of the Arctic to reach Argolis and attack.

Probably, most of the officers have reacted with disbelief and skepticism... But this is, pretty much, the only reasonable explanation: the route under the Arctic is the only one that could allow us to be here so soon. It would have taken literally weeks, otherwise. And even if skeptic and doubtful, the idea of having five SSNs lurking in deep waters a few miles away from your hull is so frightening that no one accepts the risk without taking defensive measures immediately.

And in fact, all of a sudden, the RA had started a full-out submarine hunt: tens of sonar systems, spread along the whole fleet, suddenly switched to active and began transmitting their signals in the depths to try and find the enemy subs with the echoes...

And Sandy and the others had been lucky in that crucial moment, since the RA had exaggerated: too many sonars had been suddenly used, and the ocean had changed from a silent desert to a noisy, deafening cacophony of loud, echoing "pings" that had disturbed each other and made impossible to localize anything, filling the sonar screens with so many different lines of noise that it was nearly impossible to triangle and locate the position of a submarine submerged. The racket had been so tremendous that the Unseen had been blinded as well: the screens of the sonar sensors had all been filled with crazy, confused readings that for a few minutes had made impossible to identify and locate anything specific.

It had been a blessing, in any case: Sandy had rapidly exploited his experience to order the right maneuvers to do, and they had guided the Unseen to rapidly slid in the trail of waves of one of the moving enemy ships, maneuvering to hide the huge submarine in the waters moved by the twin, enormous propellers of the enemy vessel, probably a large Fleet Tanker.

The Unseen was hidden to the enemy ears by the noise of the other ship's propellers and moving waves, and the submarine was also protected by the active sonar as the waves acted as a bit of a shield, and Sandy expertly made sure to keep his vessel sailing slowly and at a depth sufficient to ensure that the Unseen did not ripple the surface with her own bow wave, otherwise the men on the decks of the ships above could have noticed easily the presence of something sailing in their trail. Sandy only needed to be very fast and careful with the use of the periscope every time he took a look at the ship to control the route: every time that the submarine went up to periscope depth, the engines were stopped and the vessel moved only for inertia, losing a bit of terrain on the ship they were following... But that way, at least, the only thing that the enemy could eventually notice was the periscope mast stretching over the surface. And thanks to the sky, it is small and stealth enough that even radars hardly see it...

By the time the RA had made order in its ranks and organized an effective plan of hunt for making the best possible use of the numerous, powerful sonars available, the Unseen was well hidden.

Sure, Sandy was worried. They had not heard other explosions, luckily, which left good hopes that also the other subs of the squad had managed to find a way to escape the hunt, but naturally they were all in the deepest, most serious danger. Their lives were all hanging by a single, fragile hair.

And of course, the admiral was also a bit irritated. Two of the commanders of the other subs in the squadron had burned their cover too soon by firing their torpedoes practically immediately after the Unseen had fired and sunk the first enemy SSN.

Waiting with patience, we could have probably kept them doubtful and undecided for some more time...

But he had to admit that his irritation came from the nervousness and the stress of the operation more than from that consideration: after all, it was unrealistic to hope that the RA could really consider as incident more than one single submarine sunk. It was already a so rare event, after all, to lose a sub because of a mechanic failure. Even waiting, the second explosion would have caused doubts to arise even in a corpse.

Now the Unseen was still waiting in the trail of an enemy ship, where maneuvering astutely it was possible to escape detection, emerging every now and then to take a look of the surface with the periscope and ensure that they weren't going to crash into the propellers of the ship ahead or sail out of the protective trail she left behind.

"Rise to periscope depth, stop the machines." Sandy commanded calmly, trying to hide the tiredness in his voice as Tom Baker stood by his side, even more tired. For Baker, after all, it was the first true mission of war... And with the forces we have to reckon with, he starts his career with a hell of a bang...

"Deploy periscope, COMMS and ESM mast." Baker ordered when they felt the submarine stopping its nine-bladed propeller and move silently forwards only for inertia as they rose up nearer to the surface, deploying from the conning tower the two telescopic masts required.

The periscope emerged over the waves of the ship ahead, and immediately took a full look around, turning rapidly on a 360° range, the COMMS mast linked to the satellites of the Navy and made a rapid search to see if there were new orders or messages for them while the ESM mast (Electronic Support Measures) silently listened to the enemy transmissions.

"Commander, we got... transmissions from at least twelve different radars, transmission level dangerous from seven of them!" The ESM officer shouted, his voice tinged with alarm. "Dangerous radars named R1 to R7."

And a muffled groan resounded in the control room as Sandy bit his lips and ordered to dive down as soon as possible under the protection of the waters: the idea of having been seen by the efficient enemy radars on chase was terrible.

He could figure how things were going on the surface ships on chase, all around them... He could almost see the Radar Officer turn from his console and communicate to his commander:

"Radar Room, evanescent contact, now lost, two seconds only, just two-rotations of antenna... Contact on 1-5-5, five miles starboard!"

And Sandy could image the commander of the ship looking out the windows of the compass bridge to see the area where the contact had come up, thinking that it may have been a submarine... horrified at having a SSN sailing so close...

And he'll see the ship we are following, and all the waves she rises behind. Oh, I just hope he'll think it's been a wave particularly high or a floating wreck causing a weird radar echo or something...

As always, anyway, a couple of seconds had been enough to accomplish the whole operation, and the submarine had already folded its masts away and had descended back to safer depths, out of the sight of the enemy officers now looking with their binoculars in the direction of the radar contact. Hopefully, they'll drop their suspects... they will...

"New orders...?" Sandy asked quietly to Baker as he looked off to a screen. The old admiral had to admit that he hoped for a new communication, possibly the order of retreating from the war zone, admittedly. They were risking a lot, after all... a whole fleet, all around them, was searching them to bomb them to shreds. But he made sure to hide his hopes away as he talked.

Baker, anyway, tiredly shook his head, hiding his disappointment. He had been hoping for a new order even more than Sandy.

The old admiral almost wanted to sigh in disappointment, but he did not do anything, hiding it all away: after all, he was the one in charge, the veteran with war experience and the one the whole crew looked up to.

The tension in the young submariners on board was already tremendous: if he showed signs of giving up, what he could expect in exchange from the rest of the crew...? The mood would have dropped all the way down to the seabed, no less.

The admiral looked instead to the screens where the images registered by the periscope were being shown. They were still following the enormous Fleet Replenishment Ship that Sandy had chosen as perfect hiding place. He could clearly see the immense, rather slow ship, with its large aft surmounted by the wide Helicopter Deck and then the tall castle of the ship, with the tall towers that lifted up and moved the huge tubes used for transferring fuel to the other ships, the four tall structures amidship...

The Replenisher was a precious, huge ship. It carried perhaps 20.000 tons of Dieso fuel for ships and several thousand tons of fuel for the helicopters, plus literally billions of bucks in ammunitions, missiles, spare pieces and whatever else a fleet of warships at sea, at war needs...

"It would be such good target..." Baker muttered, and Sandy nodded silently. Well, it's true... without even considering that if the enemy loses the capability to replenish his ships at sea, the warships here will have, soon or later, to retreat to docks for refueling, rearming and all the rest...

"Yeah, it would be... But where can we find a better hiding place, if we sunk this ship...?" Sandy observed calmly. "The Replenisher has no Research-Sonar, no towed array sonar, it's big, moves slowly and surely straight so that's easy to follow and moves a lot of water, making a lot of noise. It's a perfect hiding place... We couldn't follow so easily a destroyer without crashing into its sonar towed array... or worse into the propellers."

"And destroyers have sensors that could find us in no time. Besides, they move in zigzags and vary continuously their speed from 30 to 6 knots... They would discover us immediately if we tried to stay in their trail..." Baker completed with a grumble. "It's a mess."

"Indeed, it is." Sandy explained calmly with a nod of agreement, sipping a bit of coffee from the small cup he was holding in his hand, looking stony and imperturbable on the outside, despite the raging flood of feelings, fears and thoughts in his mind.

In the images registered by the periscope's cameras, the huge Replenisher ship was a mile away from them, and was doing a RAS (Replenishment At Sea) with a frigate: sailing side to side, the two ships were separated of perhaps fifty meters at the most, the smaller frigate keeping a speed of exactly 1.5 knots higher than the Replenisher to maintain the correct position... And the huge tubes of the fuel were stretched between the two hulls, together with several thick cables of steel along which pallets of ammunitions, missiles and stores were being transferred to the frigate.

A couple of choppers from the Replenisher were also bringing other, larger and heavier loads from the huge ship to the much smaller but much more dangerous frigate.

That one ship, for example, would have had to leave the area if there wasn't a Replenisher around... Damn it...

"Sonar to commander! We get a contact, machinery... a frigate is veering straight towards us, two miles portside, sonar active. It may have tracked us!" Hadley communicated, and despite his own experience and prowess, his voice betrayed the fear caused by an 8000 tons warship steering to attack with a hail of depth charges.

No... they did not track us... Their sonars can't be so good to track our noise in the middle of the waves of the Replenisher... But they've got a radar contact, tagged "probable submarine" and they won't run the risk... It's a preventive bombing...

"Horizontal planes 5° degrees descending... 300 feet depths... silent speed eight knots, rudder starboard... Let's clear the area. Hadley, try guiding us exactly under the Replenisher's hull!" The ancient admiral ordered immediately, and the crew answered with the same rapidity as they maneuvered the agile, silent Unseen to get to a more safe area as the obsessive, loud pings of the frigate's active sonar now echoed inside the room.

"It's so damn close..." Baker muttered as they all instinctively looked up, almost like they could actually see across the hull of the submarine and up to the keel of the moving frigate.

"It'll drop the depth charges in a few seconds. Everyone ready!" Sandy ordered, and all the crew tried to brace for the incoming bombing: for the first time, the Unseen was being attacked by the enemy.

"Sonar to commander, we're almost under the Replenisher, out of the way! Veer for port, 3 degrees!" Hadley shouted, and Sandy immediately confirmed with his order as the Unseen veered to slide towards safety... and somewhere above, the first depth charge exploded in the waters.

The Unseen trembled like a leaf with the concussive wave of the explosion, the lights flickering out of existence for a moment as several cups of coffee, empty or full, that had been standing near the men of the crew fell to the floor and shattered...

Another explosion followed, deafening in the depths of the ocean, aft of the Unseen, and then another and another and another, over and over again as the frigate crossed slowly the trail of the immense Replenishment Ship, dropping the massive, half-a-ton cylinders of steel crammed with explosive from the launching pads aft, dropping two depth charge every two seconds as it advanced, bombing cruelly the area of the fleeting, short radar contact.

On board of the Unseen, it felt like a powerful earthquake: Sandy and Baker staggered backwards, almost falling before they grasped the commander's chair from both sides to stead themselves as every man of the crew braced himself for the rough ride as the whole submarine was shacked again and again.

But the frigate was bombing without a true sonar clue, only dropping bomb after bomb in the area where the RA suspected the presence of a sub... And the Unseen was already silently sliding away, sailing under the keel of the huge Replenisher ship, where the depth charges could only brush it with their shockwave... But with no hopes at all to cause true damage, or open a hole in the thick hull of steel of the SSN.

On board the Unseen, everyone nervously looked up to the roof of the control room without really seeing it, waiting impatiently for it to end, to subside... And they all held their breaths as the frigate veered again... but away from them, starting a slow circle on the area of the radar contact to drop more and more depth charges, that exploded throwing up immense geysers of dark water over the surface, tearing fish to shreds of flesh and gore but not really threatening any submarine as the Unseen slid away to greater distance and relative safety.

"Sonobuoys, commander! Sonobuoys! I hear multiple active transmissions, and more sonobuoys are being dropped around the ship!" Hadley announced, and Sandy immediately straightened up to order: "Slow down to two knots and veer for 3-1-0 starboard!"

The submarine slowed down all of a sudden, and they all felt it almost shivering as it lost most of its speed, sliding silently forwards for inertia even as it turned off to the side opposite respect the position of the sonobuoys, even if such maneuver meant leaving the protection of the Replenisher ship above them.

Sonobuoys are used to detect and identify moving underwater objects by either listening for the sounds produced by propellers and machinery (passive detection), or by bouncing a sonar "ping" off the surface of a submarine (active detection). They usually float, or have at least some part of them that does in order to transmit their signals to the allied units. Specialized sonobuoys can also detect electric fields, magnetic anomalies, and even bioluminescence (light emitted by microscopic organisms disturbed by a passing submarine); as well as measuring environmental parameters like water temperature versus depth, air temperature, barometric pressure, and wave height.

Usually, sonobuoys were used in great numbers by planes or choppers, which dropped the buoys in the ocean to create large controlled fields where they could listen to the depths and catch wind of a submarine passing by...

"Planes from one of the aircraft carriers, or choppers from the warships. But it does not matter that much from where they come, huh...?" Baker asked softly, his voice quiet with unnatural calm, which hid, and yet announced, the tension and fear inside him.

"Of no use at all." Sandy agreed with a calm nod. "Commander to torpedo room, prepare to launch Triton missiles."

The Triton was "a miracle-weapon" for Sandy, used to his age of glory, when the basic concept was that a submarine was powerless against aircrafts or choppers: it could only hide and try to flee in the depths, or attempt a desperate action by emerging on the surface, with the crew climbing up on the tower and deck to employ the handful of portable SAM missiles carried on the ship.

The Triton, instead, was a whole different world: it was a small but powerful missile, derived from the CAAM short-range air-air missile of the Air Force, which had been made capable of launch from dived submarines.

Four Triton missiles were fitted into a single launch-cell that could be loaded into a torpedo tube just like a normal torpedo... And just like a torpedo, the Triton missiles could be fired out, one after the other, to be pushed out of the surface by a powerful capsule of compressed oxygen that fired the missile into the water and up all the way to sixty or so feet over the waves of the ocean, where the normal rocket engine ignited. The missile had a Thermal Imagery camera in its seeker, capable to take perfect images of the world around itself at day as at night, in any weather condition, and the weapon was guided on the target thanks to command signals coming from the submarine, with which the missile staid in contact until the very impact thanks to a long, fine but very strong optic fibre. Range was of nearly 20 kilometres, and the missile could engage any kind of target, with the lonely limitation of its rather small warhead.

"Prepare tube three and four for launch, Spearfish torpedoes." Sandy added with a bit of a grin, trading a glance with Baker. "Since our hiding place is now gone and useless, we'll make sure to sink it."

A shiver, this time of approbation and vicious satisfaction, run along the crew as everyone worked to his best to ensure that the Unseen not only survived the chase, but hit the enemy with success.

"We are in a good position, starboard of the Replenisher ship, commander." Hadley communicated calmly, but with the excitement of the incoming attack manoeuvre evident in his tone, and immediately after the torpedo room announced that all the weapons were ready for the launch sequence.

Almost in the same moment, Hadley launched another warning, as he felt clearly in his headphones the ping of a new, very close active sonar. "A Helix B, Anti-Submarine chopper... Portside, it dropped its sonar into the water... It tracked us!"

"Fire Triton missile! NOW!" Sandy immediately ordered, well knowing that the helicopter was going to fire a torpedo at the contact immediately...

And the Unseen shivered as the missile was fired off the tube by a powerful jet of steam, the Triton shooting up towards the surface and breaking out of the waves to sail high into the air... and its rocket engine ignited with long, hellish flames just as a much-bigger anti-sub torpedo splashed into the ocean just two miles portside.

"Port 3-0-0, Torpedo, TORPEDO!"

"Decoys!" Sandy ordered, a pearl of sweat running down the side of his muzzle as his mind raced even faster than the torpedo, which was already speeding up towards its speed of almost 80 knots as it dived towards the target. "Rudder descending, maximum depth, veer portside!"

"Contact at 1-4-1, constant... Passive Homing so far!" Hadley shouted as he heard in the headphones the noise of the torpedo quickly incoming from portside: the torpedo's sonar was still shut down, the weapon aimed remotely by the helicopter's sonar...

Everyone shivered in terror, even as they all hid it as much as they could, and everyone cursed in his mind, plead for the Unseen to veer faster, to be more rapid, agiler as it turned to face the incoming torpedo straight with the bow: offering the narrow bow instead of the long, large flank offered much greater chances to be missed, after all...

And the decoys would have had much greater chances to trick the torpedo if the Unseen could reduce its own signature by veering.

11 seconds to cover the distance. Only 8 left.

Our lives depend from the Rubber Ducks... two decoy rounds were fired from the tubes in the sides of the submarine's hull, each of the two mechanic-lures starting immediately to manoeuvre forwards, generating the exact same noise track of the Unseen and presenting to the sonar a similar return echo despite the fact that they were infinitely smaller than the huge SSN...

The Unseen completed its turn. 4 seconds.

"Negative, it's passed to Active Homing. It locked us!" Hadley shouted, and it sounded like a sentence of death for everyone on board as they almost heard the noise of the torpedo incoming...

And then the explosion.

The Unseen was shaken like a leaf by the massive explosion, the hull crying a loud, metallic whine... But it was evident to everyone on board that the torpedo was only exploded very close. It wasn't a direct hit...

"It... it hit a Rubber Duck...!" Hadley said, almost incredulous as he looked around himself a bit, meeting the as much terrified, and yet euphoric and disbelieving glances of the other men on board... And he quietly mumbled to himself: "Fuck..."

Sandy felt an immense weight vanish from over his shoulders as he jogged over to the Weapons console, where the officer in charge was sweating profusely, but still clutching his hand around the small joystick that currently commanded the Triton missile in the air, the black and white images coming from the missile's seeker filling up the large flatscreen on the wall.

The admiral looked at this with the deepest possible attention, catching up the sight of the surface and of the position and behaviour of the ships above their heads, to be ready facing any possible, incoming threat even as the Weapon System Officer guided the Triton in a tight veer and framed the Helix chopper.

It was flying low on the water, hovering in fixed position, and a thick cable connected it with its sonar array, which was lowered well below the surface, transmitting its pings into the sea... And they all saw very clearly a second torpedo under the short stub of wing on the chopper's side, just ahead of the open side door where the gunner was handling the enormous minigun, ready to mow down any survivor that may have emerged from the sinking sub.

Idiot. There would be no survivors anyway if you had hit us... Sandy surprised himself thinking coldly, but it did not matter anymore as the Triton dived towards the Helix, the WSO guiding it forwards mercilessly, ignoring completely the decoys fired furiously from the Automatic Defence System of the chopper... And the image faded away from the screen as the explosion pulverized the Helix and the crew inside before they had a chance to understand what had happened... and, especially, before having the chance to understand that they had missed the big target and hit a decoy, and drop their second torpedo for a new attack.

There were no celebrations, anyhow.

"Fire another Triton, immediately!" Sandy roared, and they all quickly did their own part to answer the order, propelled by the tone of absolute danger and impatience in the old admiral's voice...

And Sandy looked towards Baker, whispering only one thing: "RAS-1000"

The much younger submariner paled and nodded quickly, while Sandy bent forwards to talk with the WSO as new images came to the screen from the new missile as it broke out of the sea and into the air.

"Veer it portside... The big Destroyer you surpassed with the other missile, remember...? Aim at it, and hit where I say to." Sandy whispered, his voice low but nervous despite his efforts to stay as calm as possible...

And the immense warship came in the middle of the screen as the WSO manoeuvred the missile with expert, small and quiet moves of the joystick in his hand.

The Destroyer was a massive, thickly-armoured ship, which the Triton could perhaps bruise at the most... But it was a particular, sensible spot that Sandy wanted to hit... And the WSO understood it with a gape of horror as he noticed the multiple armoured ports opening bow of even the main gun turret of the huge warship, revealing the RAS-1000 weapon system hidden under the thick armour.

It was, basically, a huge multiple battery of 200 rockets, each carrying a depth charge of explosive: they were fired in a massive barrage up to several miles of distance from the ship, where the presence of a sub was suspected, and the depth charges exploded in a wide area, at different, pre-set depths, so to ensure the destruction of whatever occupied a cylinder of ocean with a range of one mile and the depth of almost 1000 meters. There were no hopes to escape, if you were in the targeted area. And the Unseen was definitely in the sight.

The WSO officer moved his hand forwards almost violently, pushing the joystick ahead and guiding the Triton missile in a steep dive towards the hull of the destroyer. The ship had no time to organizes a serious defence, with the missile coming up from the waters, so close already to the hull, and the WSO ignored without problems the clouds of anti-radar chaff and decoys fired from the multi-barrelled mortars on the warship, and well before a SAM missile could be fired up from the monstrous ship, the Triton impacted straight between the rockets of the RAS-1000 system.

The image faded, leaving the Unseen blind as static filled the flatscreen, everyone staring nervously and listening attentively, almost like they could hear the explosion from deep underwater into the submarine...

It should be enough to stop the RAS from firing, at least... I hope so...

"Last updates from targeting...?" Sandy asked, and the officers in charge for the torpedoes were quick with their answer.

"We get a good firing solution for the Replenisher ship from here, sir."

"Affirmative." Hadley added with a nod. "I've clear on the sonar both the Replenisher and the frigate. We can hit both with a quick launch."

"Perfect." Baker said with cold, vicious satisfaction, and he and Sandy traded a nod. "Commander to Torpedo Room, fire tubes three and four."

"Three out!"

"Four out!"

"Both under guide, passive homing."

"Pass to active."

"Affirmative, Active Homing, target acquired!"

"RELEASE!"

"Torpedo released, out on active." The submarine let the two heavy torpedoes free, disconnecting the thick cable that kept the weapons linked to the control consoles on board the ship, and the Unseen manoeuvred to leave the area as the two massive Spearfish torpedoes chased their targets autonomously with their own sonars.

"No don't need to stay here anymore... We must hide. Near the island of Argolis there should be several abyssal hills and guyots over the seabed, and we might find a good hiding place there." Sandy quickly said, and Baker nodded before they ordered to bring the Unseen down to the maximum depth.

"Affirmative, sir. Argolis is the only one oceanic hill tall enough to emerge over the waters as island, but there's a true archipelago all around it. I've the latest maps loaded in my computer, commander... I think we can surely hide in an underwater canyon I've already noticed. Ready to prepare next route, sir, for 4-4-5." The navigator confirmed, quite amazed of the excellent memory of Sandy, and Baker nodded with a slight, relieved smile.

"We can do it." He said softly, and then he turned towards the much older and expert admiral with a wide, grateful smile. "Thanks, admiral. I'm amazed by your professionalism and ability. It's incredible."

"Well, I'm still alive." Sandy answered calmly, almost shrugging a bit. "In our work, it means a lot."

A deafening explosion caught their attention even as they continued to fight off the waves of soldiers, demons and zombies that charged at them, and the Predators looked up to see in the distance an enormous ship exploding with a tower of fire that rose sky-high.

The massive replenishment ship was annihilated completely by its own incredible and precious payload as the thousands of tons of fuels and ammunitions detonated after a Spearfish torpedo exploded straight under the keel of the vessel, roughly amidships. The explosion resulting was blazing... and it did not help that the Replenisher was finishing a RAS with a frigate sailing very close, that was hit by another torpedo herself, causing even greater devastation as both ships vanished in the space of a second, vaporized by the tremendous explosion resulting from their own monstrous firepower, become their greatest curse after always being their pride.

Killer himself detached his eye from the aiming sight of Cobra for an instant to look to the amazing, frightening sight, while Alexis barely sneaked to it a glance from the corner of her eye as she sent a RA soldier smashing into the thick wall of one of the hangar-bunkers with her monstrous strength.

The small group was advancing along the shattered runway of the air base, moving as close as possible to the immense structures of reinforced, armoured concrete to get some cover from the ruins or from the still towering structures as they advanced under still vicious artillery fire and under the threat of sharp-shooters and riflemen in chase all around them.

Alexis was on the lead, walking several feet ahead of them to scout the area with her formidable senses and even sharper powers, so that she could draw a safe path for them by finding out â€" and neutralizing â€" every kind of threat well before it could actually become dangerous.

Killer followed her, and the Predators walked in the middle, with Siegfried closing the line and keeping the enemies away to safe distances with the fire of his machine gun whenever it was needed.

They were running forwards along the queue of destroyed bunkers, fighting off viciously the enemies that tried to stop them, and Alexis was acting exactly as one of the enormous, armoured bulldozers of the Sappers could have; she seemed absolutely unfazed by the enemies that jumped on her path and fired at her or tried to tackle her into hand to hand: a glare, or an idle gesture of her hand carried enough power that she sent the bullets crashing uselessly in the ground around her like she was chasing flies away, and in close combat, any enemy stepping up was rapidly made inoffensive, with a show of strength that almost made Killer feel uncomfortable.

After all, with how huge he was and with how much muscles and strength he carried around, he was probably the one supposed to go bulldozer... yet, she was leaving him not very much to do.

Killer looked around himself, Cobra ready to fire again as he advanced rapidly behind Alexis: he had to cover the left side, most of all, since the bunkers protected their right side from the enemy sigh and fire.

And he couldn't help but wonder about how massive the bunker-buster bombs had been for smashing into such gigantic bunkers: each structure could protect a jet fighter, and had an immense double door made up by two walls of reinforced concrete and steel mounted on solid rails. The doors opened by sliding to the sides thanks to the powerful electric engines that moved those massive walls on the rails. On the back of each protected hangar there was a further heavily protected room that was used as a small workshop for the maintenance of the aircraft, and the room could be sealed from the hangar with massive shutters of steel capable to protect against bomb's blasts, NBC offensive agents and fire. A centralized decontamination system could water the inside of the structure with gases to clean off eventual chemical pollution, and the hangar had its own pressurized air ventilation system to prevent any radiation or biologic agent to filter inside. The system could also shoot into the huge structure fire-retardant agents to extinguish flames.

All realized under the protection of 30 feet thick walls of Cementitan: super-flexible concrete reinforced with a composite internal structure in titanium and plastics. A "normal" bunker-buster bomb would have barely bruised the surface of such a structure... And instead, each one of the bunker-hangar had been bombed and pierced and destroyed. Some had been bombed so viciously that were left only ruins and stumps of the massive walls... Several others instead were mostly intact, but had an enormous hole in the roof, from where the bomb was passed to wreck havoc on everything and everyone had been hiding inside.

Killer walked up a steep pile of crumbled concrete as they passed by one of the destroyed hangars, and they moved rapidly across the pile of ruin which offered little-to-none cover, running forwards as the artillery of the ships around Argolis continued to fire its endless bombing and high-calibre grenades exploded along the whole airfield and most of the northern sector of the island, which by now was so riddled by the constant, joint Air-Sea bombardment that it looked like a huge, enormous single crater: the bunker busters bomb had opened immense craters, deep and over 300 feet wide, again and again, and were digging towards the deeply buried bunkers were the rebels were still resisting. Killer had to admit that he had never seen such ferocity before, despite his thirty-plus years of experience of war all around the world.

Alexis sprinted forwards ahead of them as heavy fire coming from both sides targeted them on the move, tracer bullets drawing golden and red lines in the air around them as the machine guns adjusted dangerously their aim and bullets hissed around their heads like angry hornets of steel, and Killer followed her rapidly, firing a single time with Cobra and glaring after the enemy he hit squarely in the chest as the unfortunate was slammed backwards to crash into his comrades by the monstrous impact-power of the massive 20 mm round as his chest literally exploded in a burst of blood and maimed flesh.

Immediately after, he was firing a grenade into a group of walking corpses, included the soldier who he had just personally killed, who was climbing back up to his feet even as most of his abdomen and chest had been replaced by a bleeding, still hot hole, his head by the expressions eyes hanging down to rest against his sternum, and yet the soldier advancing to attack even if death.

The grenade sent them down, anyway, as limbs and flesh were torn away by the slivers of steel, and the Predators added the fire of their own weapons as the group of special forces walked in a tactical column, roughly half of them facing and firing to the left as the others used suppression fire against the enemies coming from the right.

"Frigging zombies." Killer muttered with a grimace as he reloaded his enormous assault rifle with a fast, easy gesture. "No one ever said me I would have blasted off corpses one day... And I wouldn't have believed to such a warning anyway."

"I know." Alexis said agreeably as she crouched down and neatly sawed in half an RA soldier in the distance with a single shot of her massive rifle as they both covered themselves with the corner of another of the hangar-bunkers, stretching to fire out of the corner as bullets smashed with metallic screams against the thick concrete, throwing up little slivers of metal and wall pieces that bounced uselessly off the strong, muscular bodies of the two ligers.

Meanwhile, after they had thrown a smoke grenade to rise a curtain of thick haze to hide their movements, one by one the Predators crossed the completely exposed stretch of a few meters between the ruins that they had been crossing and the new bunker, which was mostly intact if not for the fact that the roof had apparently collapsed inside and crushed everything inside, leaving only the outer walls standing up like ruins of an ancient civilization.

Siegfried followed last in line, but as he run forwards towards the rest of the group Alexis's eyes widened and she turned rapidly, even before the thick concrete of the runway cracked and shattered and a thick, metallic-looking tentacle tore out of the ground and shot at the liger, determined to wrap around him and strangle him to death.

Alexis was ready, anyhow, and she snarled as she pounded quickly a few massive .50 magnum rounds into the thick appendage, which writhed in agony with a loud, horrible howl of pain as Siegfried leapt forwards and went into a roll, crouching only at sage distance, machine gun at the ready in his hand and finger squeezing the trigger to pound a long burst into the tentacle, which rapidly retreated underground with deafening, acute whines.

"Those fucking things freak me out." Siegfried muttered, and everyone looked nervously around, fearing to see other deadly appendages tore out of the ground and shot at them: the concrete, after all, seemed to offer no true protection, as they had instead admittedly hoped. Alexis was their only true defence, since she could sense the appendages incoming with her powers. "A lot." Siegfried added as he stood with a bit of a grunt, and he walked by Killer's side as they jogged onwards, the bunker covering them from the enemy's reactions for now.

Killer gazed quickly around, and noticed that everyone, Alexis included, had strange shadows in the eyes... Alexis's eyes, for example, looked almost blood-red, with the weird red shadows dangling in her usually icy-sapphire irises. The two Predators that had been suddenly crying in despair only a few moments ago, instead, were of a dead, empty grey. Besides, they were still looking depressed and apathetic, despite their genuine efforts to fight and be of help... And the others, Alexis and Siegfried in primis, often shot hostile glares to them, obviously irritated at their behaviour and their yieldingness, barely restraining themselves from lashing out violently at them.

And sincerely, Killer felt himself unusually ferocious towards them, too... He felt pissed and violent, and he couldn't stare at them for too long, because he already had to restrain himself as a voice in his head insistently called for violence and bloodshed. He couldn't see them, but he could sweat his eyes looked crimson, too.

"Ideas about what the fuck makes us so ferocious... or so pansy...?" He asked irritably, don't really managing to restrain the latter term from coming out his mouth as he tilted his head at the soft, depressed Predators, who immediately shrunk away in fear, looking embarrassed as all of their comrades glared at them violently for a moment.

"Astarhi." Siegfried answered immediately, without hesitations, and Killer frowned at the name, giving him a flat look.

"Astarhi!" Siegfried stated again, like it was the most evident of things in the world, before rolling his eyes upwards at the flat expression of the bigger, taller male. "The ancient religion and the old legends call them ‘Perturb-Souls'... they are demons, basically, which have a great power that grips into the souls of everyone who step in the area around them. The most evident effect is that the deepest and truest nature of your soul is revealed... And since me, you, Alexis, and most of the Predators here all have a rather domineering, violent nature, we are compelled into being irritable and extremely vicious." He tilted his head towards the depressed Predators instead, and despite his attempt not to, his eyes frowned in a glare and his irises glowed murderously. "These ones instead are pansies deep inside, even if normally they have learned to resist to the stress and tension enough that we never suspected it, and that they even get to join the Predators. But with the Astarhi around, their deepest nature is pulled out to the surface."

"You suck." Killer mumbled, but he was quite impressed by the knowledge that his younger brother showed.

"YOU suck." Siegfried countered with a snort. "You never wanted to follow the lessons about the ancient myths, now you pay the tool."

"Yeah, well... We got professor Siegfried around, so that will not be a problem." Killer idly answered, and then he looked around over the wasteland of destruction and craters. "So you are telling me we've got demons prancing around us and messing with our souls... But you know, I don't see anyone around, actually." Killer added ironically, pointing off in the distance with his hand.

"That's why the Astarhi are supposed to be invisible." Siegfried mumbled.

"Oh, sure." Killer answered with ironical tone, faking to agree to an obvious, inexplicably forgotten truth, nodding theatrically. "Invisible things, that no one can see and verify the existence of are so common into fucking religions." The huge male liger stated. "I should have known in advance."

"Astarhi are pure spirits, invisible and unmaterial, that can't be seen, touched, located at all... On the other hand, they can act on your soul and emotions and, for example, put you against your comrades or cause suicidal thoughts in your mind, as they are doing with us. The more Astarhi around, the greatest the effect... And the stronger Astarhi can directly Possess a person of choice, if they want to.

They become material and visible only when they want to physically hurt you..."

"True." An agreeable, horrible and dead voice said, and Siegfried turned to the side with a wince as everyone stared to him in horror and shocked surprise.

Alexis was as always the fastest one to react, and she spun on her heel to turn back and leap forwards, tackling Siegfried by the waist and pushing him down to the ground as a flying demon wrapped in a ragged, torn black cloak appeared from nothingness near the young male liger and lashed out a ferocious blow with a huge sickle, the blade of which sailed inches above Alexis's head, cutting a few of her long golden hair, before cutting effortlessly a deep gash in the thick concrete as the blade glowed bright red.

Killer had a glimpse of the demon's look across the tattered, ancient cloak, and he saw that it was an undead, a serpentine skeleton which had only small shreds of rotten flesh hanging from its bones, which bear the weight of countless years... And the huge male liger was the second faster one reacting, doing the first thing that crossed his mind and lashing up one of his game-ending fists to punch straight into the skull of the demon.

His massive knuckles effortlessly crumbled the ancient skull to dust, and the whole cloaked skeleton was smacked loudly into the thick wall of the bunker as Killer's fist sunk deep even into the concrete, drawing a thick spider's web of cracks as the demon vanished away to dust, which was blown away by the icy wind that continuously beat the island.

Another demon appeared immediately behind Killer and it lashed down with an angry roar with its glowing sickle, but Alexis kicked up her booted feet from where she lay atop Siegfried and smashed her foot into the skeleton, sending it crashing backwards into the ground with a sickening crack before it could strike.

It vanished again as it returned to be simple spirit, and Killer quickly turned, back against that cracked wall as Alexis and Siegfried leapt up to crouch in front of him, the blond femme fatale drawing Blue Vixen out and the Predators clustering up closer to her, back laying against the bunker behind as they aimed their weapons nervously to nothingness.

"I can't see them until they are spirits... They seem to have... almost no energy at all..." Alexis muttered, and then she glared to the side as the skeleton demon reappeared in midair, slashing its sickle in a wide horizontal arc towards the Predators while she fired with the gun inside the handle of the sword.

The first bullet pounded the sickle away from the shocked soldiers, and the second bullet shattered the ancient skull to shreds, before the Predators in front of the creature added their own furious bursts, pounding bullets into the skeleton until it rotted entirely away to dust.

"Eyes open!" Alexis warned, and the Predators nodded silently, looking around themselves nervously. "They leave no time to waste, keep your weapons ready to fire in any moment."

"Let's move, fast." Killer added, taking the lead now as they marched ahead quickly, and he took in the sight of a bunker ahead which looked mostly intact. From there we should manage to enter in the underground facilities...

He advanced rapidly across an exposed stretch of terrain without covers, and then crouched near the edge of a deep, enormous crater as the others quickly reached him, moving in two groups to cover each other's movements along the way. Killer rose two fingers in a sharp gesture and pointed to the bunker he had noticed, and the group nodded silently in affirmation, before he leapt over the edge of the crater and walked down the slope to advance exploiting the cover.

He understood he had made the wrong choice almost immediately, as his feet sunk down into the terrain and ruins, which had been crumbled to fine sand by an unknown force... And he found himself pulled inexorably down towards the middle of the crater as the sand slid down, effectively carrying him along.

"Stay the hell out!" Killer warned to the ones following, and Alexis, who was almost stepping inside, glared down instead and shouted a warning.

Killer immediately understood why, as thick, red tentacles tore out from the sand and shot at him from both sides and he quickly tried to balance and stand up even as he slid quickly down towards the bottom of the crater, his hand reaching up for the handle of Wyvern.

He drew the huge sword out with a quick, expert rotation of the wrist, slashing the massive blade immediately outwards to cut in two one of the tentacles and slapping away another, squishing it into the steep wall of the crater with the flat of the immense crimson sword.

Immediately, Killer half-turned to the opposite side to lash out at the tentacles that came to him from there, neatly chopping one as it shot directly at his face and then forcing his body to turn even as he continued to fall downwards, slamming Wyvern down as he simultaneously concentrated to active the spell carved on the blade.

The crimson sword grew even bigger, the blade lengthening considerably as he chopped it down in a hard gesture, and three tentacles were cut in half, the thick appendages whining loudly as they retreated underground, leaving behind the writhing, chopped-off parts.

Killer stumbled backwards in the fall, and even slamming Wyvern point-down deep into the ground didn't restrained its fall down into the crater â€" a trap, that is... Damn me and my stupidity! â€" as he reached the bottom and went into a roll, kicking himself immediately up to a crouch as he felt the ground under his feet tremble and heard the shouts coming from above, and the warning of Alexis: "Jump!"

He did so, leaping as high as he could into the air, and his eyes widened with a glare of shock and fury as he saw a gigantic creature tore out of the bottom of the huge crater, clawing at where he had been just a second before.

The monstrosity emerged from the bottom of the trap that it had so accurately prepared, and the creature glared upwards to Killer with hellish, crimson-glowing eyes as Killer sustained the gaze full of hate with his own reddened sapphire irises.

The demon was monstrous, and it was by far the most dangerous-looking thing that Killer had ever saw in his life: the lower part of the monster's body was the one of an enormous scorpion, standing on six bug's legs ending in crescent shaped, frightening talons and with a gigantic scorpion tail ending in a fearsome blade, all of this wrapped in a thick, dark red exoskeleton that looked strong enough to bounce off bullets without any difficulty. On the back of the scorpion's body, were the thick tentacles, arranged in queues of six on each side and jutting out to vanish underground, moving who knew where to attack him...

And Killer frowned, looking instead at the upper part of the body: arranged like a centaur, the monster was in fact half-scorpion and half-minotaur. A thick, powerful and muscular tauren torso completed in fact the monster, with the bull's head crowned with long, curving horns that stretched forwards well past its muzzle, and as last, ultimate weapon, the two thickly-muscled arms ended in sharp scorpion's pincers that looked terribly strong. The demon had to be at least twenty-five feet tall without counting the horns, and the scorpion tail was enormous and frightening, even without considering what kind of terrible venom it may hold.

"Gods, but you are ugly." Killer muttered with a grimace, and the demonic creature glared upwards furiously, whipping its deadly tail forwards with a snarl as drool fell from its mouth, which revealed sharp, deadly fangs that had really little to share with normal bulls.

The huge liger twisted his body rapidly to the side, the huge tail missing as Killer stomped a foot into the enormous appendage and leapt forwards higher to land out of the crater, on top of the bunker.

The massive scorpion's tail followed him, lashing quickly out to the side as bullets fired by the Predators below bounced off the thick, natural armor of the horrible appendage, Killer swinging Wyvern up to meet the downwards lash and wincing as his muscles flexed powerfully at the tremendous impact.

The liger's feet skidded on the concrete, leaving gashes in the wall's surface with the thick spikes of steel of the combat boots he was wearing, but Wyvern shattered past the thick bug's armor and almost chopped the enormous tail in two, the monster drawing away its precious weapon with a howl of agony as tentacles ripped from the ground in the middle of the group of Predators, forcing them to fight for survival as the thick, enormous appendages gave chase.

Killer had to quickly leap to the side and twist in midair to land on his hands, launching himself in a handspring as the scorpion tail lashed angrily at him again, and as he landed on his feet, the huge male looked with horror up at the sight of the reinforced concrete shattering in fragments as the massive appendage scourged on the bunker, and worst of all a thick gout of green, acid venom was fired out the frightening blade, the liquid splattering on large part of the roof and immediately sizzling as the concrete and the steel quickly begun to melt away like snow.

"Argue this way won't change the fact that you are ugly." Killer grumbled, and he quickly charged towards the edge of the bunker, leaping up just before the gigantic scorpion tail slapped again into the structure, crushing it like it was made of cardboard and knocking down good part of one of the walls as the liger landed on the ground below and slashed Wyvern out in a vicious horizontal cut as a tentacle shot out of the ground in front of him, and he cut this in half before he spun back the blade to rip across another one that shot out at his side.

Alexis lashed out to the left and to the right several times with a speed unbelievable, Blue Vixen looking like a sapphire blur in midair before two tentacles fell away into sliced, useless agonizing fractions that splattered on the ground around her, before she grabbed an enormous, bent beam of steel that jutted out from a pile of ruins and tore it out of the ground with her free hand, throwing it at the demon with a snarl as the creature quickly climbed out of its crater-trap, howling in fury.

The creature shot up one of his hugely-muscles arms and grabbed the gigantic beam as it shot towards him, the huge pincer clanking over the massive structure of steel and then snapping closed, tearing across even the steel as the metal cried loudly and the beam fell away, chopped in two parts.

The monster charged at Alexis for a revenge, but the minotaur howled in shocked, irritated protest when its run was suddenly and roughly stopped, the creature turning to the side to see Killer grinning from around the scorpion's leg he had grabbed in his own hugely muscled arms.

Alexis caught the occasion wonderfully, drawing out her Desert Storm handgun and firing two rounds with absolute accuracy, blowing the red-glowing eyes of the minotaur to gore as the creature howled in agony and writhed, stomping its legs down and snapping blindly its huge pincers back and forth as it roared in fury, Siegfried and the Predators pounding bullets into the monster, even as the rounds dug mostly only superficial wounds over the thick muscles of the creature, and all but bounced off the armor of the scorpion's part.

Alexis grinned viciously, but she had to leap backwards high into the air, spinning twice before landing on her feet as the scorpion's tail smashed in the ground in the spot where she had been standing, and Killer roared as he flexed his mighty body, muscles bulging explosively as his unbearable physical power was unleashed, and he pulled hard back on the leg of the monster.

The demon howled in agony as the thick, huge leg was torn off his body, the creature staggering to the side and almost falling even if it blindly attempted to smash its enormous pincer into Killer and crumbling instead a huge wall of concrete of the damaged building as the giant male liger threw the writhing, severed limb away and charged forwards to slide on the ground like in a soccer's intervention, kicking both feet into the one of the legs on the other side of the monster and knocking it off balance.

"Want to see who's the strongest one of us two, Ugly...?" Killer teasingly called out, and he crouched under the armored belly of the creature before throwing upwards his fists in rapid succession, pounding punches into the gigantic creature.

The thick armor cracked and exploded outwards in slivers and fragments as Killer's punches smashed deep into flesh and organs, even as the liger winced and grimaced at the feeling, grinning instead as the huge demon was rocked upwards clear off the ground by the strength of the blows.

Killer quickly reached up for Wyvern, that was secured on his broad, muscular shoulders he drew it out lightning-fast, lengthening and thickening the crimson blade before spinning on himself as he slashed the sword outwards.

It struck all the five legs left to the huge creature, and this time the enormous crimson blade severed all of the thick limbs as the liger's muscles bulged powerfully out, and Killer kicked himself off to the side, going into a roll on his shoulder and rolling out from over the giant demon before this crashed into the ground with a howl of agony, rolling and scrambling awkwardly on severed legs that did not reach the ground anymore.

Killer grinned at the sight as he came up to a crouch and skidded to an alt, Wyvern held at the ready with the blade stretched outwards as he looked up to see Alexis spinning gracefully in the air between the crazily flailing pincers of the monster, and she spun elegantly in the air, grinning as she slashed Blue Vixen to maim the stumps of tentacles that shot blindly up towards her.

The blond femme fatale landed on the back of the monster, and this immediately arched madly as the Minotaur fired steam off his nostrils and bellowed furiously, trying uselessly to turn and smash his huge arms and pincers into her, but she effortlessly avoided every blow before chopping the dangerous scorpion tail with a single, hard swing of Blue Vixen.

She looked towards Killer and grinned, nodding slightly, and the two traded a whole conversation, shared a whole plan in that single, grinning glance, as the muscular female spun and charged back towards the minotaur part of the monster, leaping up and slamming both booted feet into his back in a deadly flying kick.

The spine of the creature noisily crumbled to dust as the monster collapsed bonelessly forwards, and Alexis slid down his slumped back until she straddled his huge head with her long, seductive and powerful legs, grinning as she squeezed on the demon's throat with her muscular, strong thighs, her hands reaching up to grasp the long bull's horns and grasping on these so tightly that they cracked as the femme fatale cackled.

The demon desperately tried to unsaddle her, rocking his head from side to side, but Alexis only laughed and narrowed her hold around his throat, forcing down with her immense strength on his horns to immobilize the creature, head crushed on the ground and neck stretched long as she grinned viciously. "Try doing fucking better next time, fucker!"

Killer charged in from the side, Wyvern balanced over the shoulder and a matching grin on his own features, before he swung the enormous crimson sword down with a flex of his mighty muscles and roared in vicious, dark satisfaction as he decapitated the huge creature nearly with one single hard chop, as he walked through the severed neck and skidded to a stop on the other side, grinning widely as he shouldered Wyvern and Alexis walked up to his side with a grin and a wink, kissing his cheek lightly.

"Wow." Siegfried coughed as he walked up closer to them. "That was quite nasty... we are lucky you two were around."

"Yeah." Killer nodded idly, grinning a bit. "And... May I ask how that monstrosity is called, teacher...?"

"Samanhi." Siegfried answered calmly, nodding as he took on a serious expression and crossed his muscular arms, before he looked a bit back and forth over the smoking wasteland covered of craters. "You don't think all the tentacles of earlier were his own, don't you...?" The younger male liger asked, unable to hide completely a soft note of hope and wish in his voice.

"No. It would be too nice... And I hope no, because it would also be too easy." Alexis answered airily, and she walked away with a teasing grin, taking immediately the lead as Siegfried gaped a bit at her, Killer smiling softly despite himself before looking at his younger bro with a kind nod.

"No, I don't think this ugly thing was the source of all tentacles. After all, he only had twelve, and apparently they regenerate only slowly... I think there's many, many more... Samanhi or what the hell they are, around here."

"Wonderful." Siegfried muttered, but he did not look surprised at all, and he grinned a bit himself, despite all, when he looked down to see the belt of ammo hanging from his huge machine gun. "And I'm at the last belt... then, I'll have to ‘exploit enemy resources', as the manual says. Sounds like fun."

"Indeed." Killer nodded, and they quickly made their way up to the large bunker, avoiding accurately every suspect-looking crater, their senses on the maximum alarm: the island was full of completely new and terrible threats, and every step could be the last one.

Alexis stood to the side, crossing her muscular arms as they all walked up to her, and before she could speak at all, an alarm started to beep on their visors.

The Section Leader beside Killer rapidly reached his hand for a small electronic device he carried in a side-pocket of his tactical backpack and the huge male saw him pale across the blackened visor of the integral "heavy duty" helmet.

"Sarin!" Was his frightened shout as he looked down to the screen of the small Air-Pollution Analyzer device. "They used gas against the rebels! NBC, fast, everyone!"

Killer traded an horrified look with Alexis at the idea of the terrible gas floating in the air: the Sarin is a powerful nervine gas, that acts against the nervous synapse, destroys the communication at molecular level inside the body up to the complete block of the activity neural and muscular, causing a frightening, agonizing death as it spread in the air for aerosol.

Killer looked around to see the Predators crouching and reaching for the thick, protected vest designed to shield the body from the effects of threats Nuclear, Bacteriological and Chemical, and the soldiers quickly wore the dresses up over their normal uniforms, ensuring to cover every single millimeter of their forms as the respirator in the integral helmet filtrated the air clean before they could breathe it.

"We should be immune, right...?" Siegfried asked with a strange note in his voice. He, Alexis and Killer hadn't NBC equipment on them, after all.

"Well, our father says we are. He's the one who did the tests on our blood, DNA and stuff. You should not ask it to me, but to him." Killer answered calmly, turning to look at the immense, armored doors of the bunker, ignoring the soft whimper that Siegfried let out, such strange sound coming from a behemoth of muscles like him.

The hangar was closed by two gigantic, solid blocks of super-reinforced concrete and titanium, and the blocks had only been nudged, pretty much, by the bomb that had pierced across the roof and exploded inside. They had moved only slightly... but enough to fall off the rails that usually permitted to powerful electric engines to make the two walls slide off in opposite directions, which meant that the doors were blocked. And since there was only a creek of few inches left open, they really couldn't enter.

Alexis grinned to him, and Killer smirked slightly back before stepping forwards and forcing his thick fingers into the creek and forcing out to the sides with all of his tremendous strength as he grunted and every muscle in his body bulged explosively... And, much as one of the depressed Predators muttered: "No way, it's impossible", the two massive walls of concrete were pushed open, concrete scratching and gritting noisily against the concrete of the runway, until Killer stood, panting but smirking in satisfaction as he stared at the doors, now opened just enough that they could enter comfortably.

Siegfried and the Predators gaped stupidly at him, but Killer ignored their shocked looks, stepping to the side and playfully bowing a bit forwards. "You first." He suggested, and Alexis, despite the danger, immediately walked forwards, grinning towards him and winking as she walked past and into the bunker.

Killer followed suit, and the two quickly jogged to the opposite corners of the bunker, aiming their weapons at the soft darkness and securing the whole room as the others entered prudently, weapons at the ready, two of the Predators securing the remaining corners so that the whole room was under aim and control.

But there wasn't that much to control... The thirty-foot thick roof of concrete had a huge circular hole in the middle, and a tangle of bent, ruined bars of titanium and plastic composites were bent downwards inside.

The massive bunker-buster bomb had pierced inside from there... and had exploded in the middle of the room, almost vaporizing everything had been inside, crushing everything against the walls with the tremendous pressure and shockwave, creek the doors open and pushed them outwards to derail the two thick walls off their guides. A thick door of steel had been once protecting the access to the workshop in the back, but now of the shutter there was no sign, surely blown away by the explosion... And the only other things that Killer noticed were a few corpses.

Used to think that only who's alive is a threat, Killer had undervalued this factor... And the surprise was great when the nearer corpse let out a howl of menacing agony and crawled back up to his feet to leap towards one of the entering Predators.

The huge male had enough time to see the rotting body, the tatters of a Glacial's uniform and an enormous amount of dried blood covering the whole form of the now zombie, before the corpse was riddled by furious bursts of bullets from him, Alexis, Siegfried and all of the Predators at once, and it fell away in pieces.

"Get your swords through every corpse!" Siegfried ordered with rage, and he quickly decapitated another dead body that was close to him, much as he grimaced in disgust at what he was forced to do. "Cut them to piece, limb by limb, if needed!"

"Ebola." The rifleman of the section, who also was the medic of the formation, looked up from the corpse he had first decapitated and then analyzed rapidly, and he looked up towards Killer with a frown of distaste and deep worry. "These ones are dead because of Ebola virus. Even worse than the Sarin..."

Killer grimace, looking over to the corpse's face, reduced to a rotted mask of blood: Ebola is a virus deadly in the 90% of the cases, and it is a terrible Hemorrhagic Fever virus, which causes the victim to die across terrible agonies by sweating, crying, salivating blood. Blood was lost in tears from the eyes, sweated, and it came into mouth as hemorragies spread across the whole body... One of the most frightening ways to die.

"Ebola is transmitted by close contact with an infected element... And it looks like these men have all been bitten by some kind of infected bug." The Section Leader continued, in the calmest tone he could master at the moment.

"Bet it's been those fucking demonic spiders on the roof." Siegfried growled before firing with his magnum .50 pistol into a massive, furry spider on the roof, which fell down with a splatter and a whine of agony as the Predators looked up with grimaces of horror and quickly started killing every creature, one by one. Each spider was easily as big as their heads, with long, endless spiked legs.

"This is monstrous..." Killer murmured to himself as he gave a disbelieving look of pure horror over the whole, huge hangar. Alexis was silent and motionless, but her eyes were icy, colder than ever... And with the shadows of crimson rage still in them, they gave her a blood-freezing murderous look of savage fury.

When the slaughter of the demonic spiders was over, the Predators looked nervously around themselves, evidently by now expecting any kind of disaster and catastrophe to happen around them at any time, any kind of monstrosity pulling up from the shadows to attack them viciously... And they all sneaked worried glances towards Killer and Alexis: they quickly back away from the blond femme fatale at the sight of the murderous flames of fury in her eyes, that combined with her powers made her far scarier than any kind of torment Hell could unleash, but Killer noticed several of the special soldiers glancing at him every few seconds, with a look that told pretty clearly that they expected to see him fall dead at any second.

"Is... ehm... is everything... ok, majesty...? One of the two Section Leaders even dared to ask, sneaking a glance to the evidently furious Alexis with a shiver of terror and turning back to Killer with that worried, shocked look of mixed fear and amazement.

"Yes." Killer answered calmly, looking down at him with a bit of a surprised, curious frown. "Why...?"

"No weird symptoms...? No... problems at all...? I mean, damn, we are in a room saturated with Sarin nervine gas and Ebola virus!" The officer asked, the shock and the amazement evident in his voice.

"Well, my nose itches a bit." Killer countered stupidly, rubbing at his muzzle idly. "Is it a symptom...?"

The officer looked back at the giant, muscular behemoth for a moment, gaping in shocked amazement before quickly walking away back to his tasks and comrades.

Killer shock his head slowly, a bit of a grin coming to his muzzle despite himself, before he felt someone else pull up beside him.

"Bro..." Siegfried called quietly from his side, talking with low, quiet voice, and Killer turned to him immediately, asking to talk with his eyes, but respecting the privacy that Siegfried seemed to require with how he hid the conversation to the other ears around.

"Bro, this may be a bit too much for these boys... Fuck, it's... too much even for me, too, sincerely. We weren't prepared to such a Hell here, and I fear that we are... a bit out of place." Siegfried explained rapidly, grimacing as he obviously expressed thoughts that horrified him. "We are great at kicking the ass of armies stronger than us... But demons, gods, magic and monsters...? We may not... be of any help if we come further along, we aren't prepared enough. The mood is never been so low before... Their nerves are shaken. I know they'll never suggest to be left behind out of the fight, but... We may be more of a burden than anything else if we come further forwards. And there are two injured guys who definitely can't take anymore. Or we abandon them, but the idea disgusts me to no end, or we must settle them down in a place and protect them."

"I know." Killer quietly answered, and the huge male nodded wisely. "I and Alexis will go ahead alone down into the bunkers underground to see if there's still someone alive to save... You and the Predators can stay here and protect our backs. This hangar is easy to defend, even if you are so few. They are chasing after us, and they will be soon pushing at the doors, so stay ready and for god's sake, make sure no one climbs on the roof to throw bombs down the breech. Protect the front door should be easy."

"We'll make sure that no one can sneak up on you two from the back, at least. That I can promise." Siegfried ensured, nodding softly... And Killer squeezed gently on the shoulder of the smaller, younger brother, smiling.

"Take care of them, Sig. And take good care of yourself... I don't know what kind of other nasty surprises this damned island holds for us all. Watch your ass." Killer said quietly, looking in his brother's eyes with all the look of recommendation of a big brother.

"Watch yours, better, and be careful not to trip in your own cock or something. You are the one who's stepping in the dark, not me." Siegfried countered playfully, and Killer looked surprised before nodding with a bit of a grin.

"You say it because you are the one wishing you could trip in your cock." Killer countered playfully as he walked away to follow Alexis as she entered the workshop in the back of the hangar.

The new room was much smaller, but still large enough to hold a jet fighter and the maintenance team at work... and the roof had its own huge hole, straight above another large hole in the floor, this one a regular rectangle: it was the lift's shaft that went all the way down to the enormous underground hangar.

Killer looked down, but the lift was nowhere in sight: probably it had been long called down and disabled to make things harder for anyone who wanted to invade the underground complex, and now all what was visible was darkness.

"Looks like a tall leap in the dark, doesn't it...?" Killer asked calmly, and Alexis nodded with a snort.

"Better to avoid useless shows of might and go down the smart way. I don't know how deep the passage is, but it must be a good 130 feet at the very least." She said with calm, firm decision, and she walked to the edge of the overture and turned, stepping backwards down into the shaft and starting to climb downwards as Killer followed quickly, moving beside her.

Killer counted the moves it took to reach the end of the dark shaft, and Alexis's estimation revealed itself very correct: roughly, they had to be 160 feet or more underground, under the hangar.

And this is not compact ground... this is hard volcanic stone. Damn, this is impressive... No wonder that no bunker-buster bomb can harm the people and stuff hidden here...

"Thanks, lover." Alexis said softly, smiling a bit as they stepped finally down from the wall and she gave him a slight, brief but sincere smile, even as he scolded her a bit with a glance for reading as always shamelessly into his thoughts. "Glacial used to be extremely proud of this complex... Argolis was the fortress that could have continued to fight on forever, no matter what happened on the surface."

"Your people did a great work, that's sure." Killer nodded, and he looked around himself a bit, before realizing with surprise that they weren't into the hangar, but in a wide, huge corridor that the plane could have easily traveled along, carried by the lift: on the floor, in fact, there were solid rails to guide the lift into its unusual, horizontal travel.

Straight in front of them, an immense shutter of steel had been torn open and it lay shattered in two massive blocks of blackened, burnt metal on the floor, just another similar gate one hundred feet ahead. The two gates originally could have been closed to further protect the hangar, and Killer noticed that isolating the area between the two shutters, another NBC decontamination system could have cleaned the plane once more before bringing it in the underground storage area.

Killer and Alexis walked silently past the torn, destroyed shutters, advancing along the rails of the lift system until they reached the overture of another shaft that descended for perhaps as many feet underground as the first: the corridor itself, after all, was a smart defense. With modern Precision Guided Bombs, send a warhead flying into the lift shaft once pierced a hole in the hangar's roof would have been normal administration. But there was no missile in the world agile enough to descend along the shaft and then made the sharp 90 degrees turns to enter the corridor and then the second shaft, so that nobody could hope to manage to send a bomb all the way down into the underground facility.

"So... Gotta jump this time...?" Killer asked with a slight, entertained smile, and Alexis grinned in the vicious amusement she wore when a battle was in sight, making him immediately straighten and grin a bit despite himself. "Contacts...?"

"A lot." Alexis nodded, her eyes burning with battle lust. "I sense multiple presences... the Hangar is being used as a camp for a whole army of demons, it seems."

"Perfect." Killer grinned, nodding a bit as he looked down to the shaft and walked a bit to the side, pointing playfully at the overture. "Want to have the honor of introducing us, darling...?"

"You bet." Alexis answered with a grin, and she walked past the edge, jumping straight down as Killer followed suit, the two ligers landing easily on their feet in a slight crouch, unfazed by the unbelievable jump, and they stood slowly with matching, eager grins of dark amusement and battle lust as the eyes of an incredible crowd of demons of all kinds turned towards them and stared stupidly in shock for a moment.

The hangar was immense, and in the side wall many other lifts were positioned in an endless row, each in correspondence of one of the shelters that Killer and the others had walked past during the march on the surface, perhaps 380 feet above their heads. Now, anyway, most of the planes it had sheltered were wrecked and useless, piled up in mountains of metallic junk here and there as most of the lights on the roof and along the walls were broken, some crackling with electricity. Bonfires were burning cheerfully here and there along the whole room, instead, with an army of demons crowding the whole space and gathering up in large groups around the flames. Killer could see several Megataurs, the smaller one standing at perhaps twenty feet of huge muscles and a few Gigataurs, even more massive, covered in rippling, bulging muscles and standing well over thirty feet tall, carrying immense axes or gigantic warhammers. There were numerous scorpion-taurs monstrosities like the one they had already faced, too, and a huge crowd of Undead creatures, from zombies to gigantic skeletons tall as Killer if not even more, carrying enormous swords or spears and wearing torn, ragged clothes the colors of which had faded with the centuries... Only several ones of the Skeletons wore bright-colored tunics, which even if ragged, looked new compared to their comrade's dresses. Those with the tunics were also covered by talismans, necklaces of fangs and any other kind of macabre skull or accessory, and in their hands they held polearms topped by glowing spheres of energy. Mages, probably...

Other creatures, their look and features mostly hidden by tunics and dresses complete with inserts of thick metal or pelt as armor, were armed with massive longbows or crossbows with thick arrows sparkling with eternal flames of various color, and Killer spotted with amazement creatures of all sorts, that he had always believed were only fantasies: massive Werewolves, a few centaurs, and several Drakkaren-looking demons, males and females, that he identified as Daius and Dius and Succubus.

"Wow." Killer said stupidly. "This looks like a fucking fantasy movie." His grin widened, and took on a more vicious snarling aspect, hungry for bloodshed. He felt clearly the waves of rage and hunger that he had already experienced on the surface, when the Astarhi demons had been around...

The room must be full of them... But making me angry and blood-craving isn't going to be advantageous at all for them, now... "It will be fun..."

"Yeah." Alexis agreed with her own sharkish grin as they walked calmly and coldly into the room, sizing their enemies up with valuing, cold glares. "And there's a whole shitload of Astarhi making us even more excited about this. Not a smart move on their part."

"Not a smart move of you mortals coming here, and alone. It will greatly simplify our task of killing you two." The greatest of the Gigataurs in the room, the creature that by far dwarfed every other demon in the hangar for sizes and power, observed with coldness. Killer turned towards the source of the voice to see a gigantic bull, with a massive body covered in huge, bulging muscles and wearing a loincloth reinforced with scales of lucid armor plus a thick, golden armored breastplate protecting his hulking muscular chest.

The giant snorted out steam from his wide nostrils, from which hung a large ring of gold, and the tauren flexed his mighty body, showing his incredible muscles in a display of force before he stood up from where he was seating over a Glacial's fighter plane, used as a throne, revealing a towering height of forty feet, if not even more. The goliath demon had dark, short brown fur and a mane of long black fur on top of his head and down the nape of the neck until probably the middle of his potent back, and his two long curving horns seemed to be made of a metallic alloy, instead of bone. In his huge hands, the Gigataur held an immense warhammer, the head of which had easily the side of a van and was made of the hardest granite, while the long pole was of black steel: it wasn't a weapon made to be used with any grace or elegance at all, it was a weapon the only objective of was total destruction... and with its titanic sizes and weight, combined with the strength of the giant, the result was ensured.

Standing beside him, was a muscular, bulky Megataur with completely black fur, who stood almost thirty feet tall and handled in his hands an immense battle axe of a black alloy of metal, lucid and deadly, with a blade on each side of the long metallic pole, which alone was a formidable weapon capable to smash across mostly anything.

"At words, I've been killed so many times that I ceased to count them years ago." Killer grinned, trading a playful gaze with Alexis as she gave her own battle-lustful smirk back to him, her hands closing into fists and then reopening again and again, the femme fatale stretching her fingers impatiently.

"They have no firearms... Let's get this on fair conditions, lover." Alexis said, grinning as she all but ignored the crowd, turning to Killer as she bent slightly forwards to undo the silvery clips of the leathery holsters of her twin Desert Storms handguns, dropping the weapons on the floor and straightening to draw out Blue Vixen and click the small button that ejected the magazine of the bullets, working back the aiming lever to expel even the round that had been ready in the barrel.

Killer looked at this with an entertained grin, before he quickly get rid of Cobra and his own massive Desert Storm, standing at the ready at her side and taking in the huge number of amazed â€" or perhaps even shocked â€" enemies they had in front.

In the same instant, the two lovers brought their hands up and cracked their knuckles, grinning widely and challengingly out to the crowd, before Killer sneaked a gaze to the side, immediately met by Alexis.

"Make sure no one can exit this room." He simply stated, and Alexis's grin grew wider as she closed her eyes for a moment in concentration, and shouts of terror came from the crowd of demons as every door leading in and out the hangar was blocked and sealed closed by burning walls of sapphire flames.

"This will not save your lives." The Gigataur boomed with his deep, potent voice, and Alexis looked up at him with merciless, challenging dark amusement, arching a golden eyebrow in her own teasing glance. "This is not about our lives, it's about yours. I don't want to run around giving chase to a bunch of fleeting cowards. I want to beat you down to a pulp here and now."

"Insolent little mortal, you'll pay for this heresy!" The giant creature boomed, his dark brown eyes glowing with cruel, ferocious light, and the whole crowd of demons immediately made a step forwards to the fight, even as the two ligers faced them all without fears.

"Apparently, you don't know the meaning of the word terror." Killer stated with mild admiration, looking up to the Gigataur with cold, icy eyes. "I'm gonna teach it to you."

The Gigataur was about to shot back his answer of fury, but he had not even time for that as Killer suddenly shot forwards, sprinting straight towards him at a speed that was absolutely surprising for a behemoth of his sizes and weight, and the giant tauren half-stepped backwards, moving to a ready position and grabbing the pole of his immense warhammer with both hands as the liger charged forwards.

The other demons moved as well, quickly charging towards the liger to stop his advancing, and a couple of centaurs were the faster ones to react, sprinting towards Killer from both sides and running straight towards him to crush him down. The giant liger leapt up with a snort over the kicking horse-legs and stomped hard down with a booted foot on the back of one of the two huge creatures before jumping up again to leap over the stab of an enchanted spear that the other demon was holding in his hands.

Killer landed at several feet of distance, and resumed his charge even as somewhere above, on the walkway that ran all along the perimeter of the hangar at the height of the second floor, a cloaked demon turned to his companions armed with longbows and crossbows and ordered:"Fire!"

But launched in a whirl of more speed than it could be imagined from a so massive body as Killer's own, the liger ducked under one bolt neatly on the run, his huge hands shooting up and slapping a couple others from the air before he grabbed another incoming harrow in his hand and turned on the run, throwing the dart with all of his strength at one of the centaurs on chase, piercing his heart neatly and sending the creature stumbling and falling forwards facefirst to obstacle the second centaur, who tripped on his fallen comrade and lost momentum even if he managed to immediately scramble back up to his legs and run forwards, throwing his spear straight ahead.

Killer, anyway, was already leaping high up into the air, jumping over the heads of a crowd of skeletons and demons that were trying to stop him and aiming straight for the enormous Gigataur's throat, his eyes burning of an icy sapphire as he sailed into the air and time seemed to freeze as his grin widened and the giant's expression changed in one of stunned amazement as the colossal bull lifted his gigantic weapon to strike, bellowing his challenge out loudly.

It was a challenge of brutal, gigantic strength, a contest of muscular power so stunning that no one else could have participated to it, but it was exactly what Killer favored over everything. The Gigataur was one of very few entities that had ever towered higher than the huge liger, and Killer wasn't one that coped well with being second in anything, to anyone.

The massive liger roared back, his deep, potent voice shaking the walls and seeming to fill the whole, huge hangar with a physical, heavy presence, and Killer's huge fist shot forwards to smash into the enormous warhammer as it came down from above to crash into him.

The massive head of the weapon was larger than the liger body was, but even so, his fist smacked into it with tremendous power, sending the gigantic bull staggering backwards a few feet with a snort of steam from his nostrils as the enormous hammer flew out of his hand... and everyone gaped in awe as it seemed to explode in fragments that rained down on the crowd of demons with an almost musical giggle of metal as the liger emerged with a merciless grin from the cloud of slivers, his ivory fangs opened and exposed, frightening canine teeth ready to strike.

It was like a movie on slow motion, and then time seemed to be released all at once, and the whole crowd turned to stare as Killer landed on the floor twenty feet past the standing Gigataur, the liger stomping down on the floor with his feet and digging trenches in the concrete with the steel of the soles of his combat boots before he finally screeched to a stop, grinning widely and half-bent forwards, before he slowly straightened and turned.

It was then that everyone noticed the blood dripping from his fangs, and the thick, tremendous splatter of the same substance on the floor between the Gigataur and the liger... and then the giant bull let out an incoherent gargle as blood gurgled out of his mouth and nostrils and streaked down his chest from his ripped throat, the head of the massive creature falling backwards loosely, pulled by the heavy horns, almost severed off the body and hanging from mere strips of flesh and muscle, before the goliath fell dead facefirst into the crowd, squishing under his immense muscular body the demons that weren't fast enough to step away.

Killer stood slowly up and grinned before looking down over the crowd of terrified enemies with eyes burning with flames of battle-lust, saying slowly and cheerfully: "Showtime."

Alexis walked slowly forwards, grinning widely as she stepped around the huge, dead tauren, her muscular arms crossed leisurely even as she idly kicked the thick, spiked sole of steel of her combat boot into the face of a skeleton-demon that was clawing at the ground, attempting to crawl away from under the corpse of the Gigataur, his lower body trapped.

The sickening crack of the skull exploding in a cloud of fragments and dust did not impress or touched the cold tigress at all; if anything, the crimson, cruel light in her sapphire eyes gleamed stronger and darker as she grinned and stood at Killer's side, looking at him with a smirk.

"That was cool." She observed playfully, and he snorted amusedly with a bit of a nod.

"Years had passed from the last time I did it." The huge male explained with a bit of a shrug.

The demons stared at them stupidly for a moment, stunned and horrified, before Killer idly said: "Behind you."

Alexis, anyway, was already turning with a merciless grin on her enchanting features, her muscular arm rising lighting fast and the blond femme fatale opening two of her fingers in a V over her head as the black Megataur that had been the bodyguard of the greatest bull cam charging forwards and swung his enormous axe down in a ferocious downwards arc, shouting a loud, booming challenge as he lashed out with all the strength of his gigantic muscles.

Killer looked to the side and gritted his teeth, tensing his own powerful muscles to leap to the side and tackle the giant demon, but he stopped before even starting a move as the enormous battle axe was stopped in midair, trapped between Alexis's fingers even as the bull snarled and pushed down with all of his might, his brown eyes bulging in astonishment and sweat suddenly rolling down his features as he met the darkly amused grin of the muscular female, who stood against him and repealed his attack with just her fingers.

"Is that all what a big fucker like you can give?" Alexis asked with cold amusement, and the huge bull, who towered over her with his almost double height, looked down at her in astonished terror as he unsuccessfully tried to tear back free his weapon.

"Then tell me that you want to make me disfigure, next time." Killer mumbled, and Alexis grinned widely, her eyes gleaming with amusement, even as the huge male liger drew out Wyvern and faced the army of demons as they surged forwards with howls of fury.

Killer spread his legs wide and brought both hands on the handle of Wyvern before the first centaurs came galloping on their enormous hooves of steel and rearing up on their hind legs to throw at him their Cursed javelins.

Killer sprinted forwards and spun rapidly on a heel to whizz between two of the long weapons, and he lashed out his crimson blade to the side, battering three more spear out of the air before bringing back the blade in front of himself with a rotation of his skilled wrist to cut a javelin neatly in two.

He rose his hand in a lighting gesture, grabbing the top half of the severed weapon with a grunt before the long, thin blade could pierce into his chest. Killer winced at the sight of the black flames that lazily danced around the speartip, wondering for an instant on just what kind of curse had been added to the weapon to make it deadly... But he had no time to think about it as two colossal centaurs attacked from both sides, the hooves thundering on the floor of concrete as the giants lashed out their swords at the liger.

Killer ducked under the blade of the first and snarled as he lashed Wyvern in a vicious upwards arc, the enormous crimson blade tearing into the concrete of the floor and then cutting the half-horse creature neatly in two halves, heightwise, sending a splatter of blood and gore in every direction even as the liger twisted to the side in the same fluid movement and slammed the javelin into the chest of the other centaur, pushing it deep into the muscular pec of the demon like a knife.

The liger grinned mercilessly at the stupid last expression of disbelief on the demon's face, and even as he faced the assault of a whole troop of skeleton warriors, Killer saw with the corner of his eye the centaur stagger backwards and fall on his ass as his whole body rotted rapidly away to dust from around the spear buried in his chest, the creature howling in agony as his muscular, young and powerful form decomposed to dust in no time.

I suggest staying away from cursed weapons as much as possible, hero.

The liger grunted irritably in agreement with the suggestion of Black Killer this time, even as he charged forwards, ducking under the spin of a massive axe before straightening with a growl and advancing like a fury: in two great strides Killer reached two of the tallest skeletons around him, seizing them by the wrists and flinging them up like clubs into the next one in line, sending bones exploding in a shrapnel all around him as the three skeletons fell away to pieces.

The liger grinned, side stepping rapidly as a long spear was stabbed towards his chest, and he let it whizz past him, grabbing them the neck of the long pole to guide it piercing into the chest of a massive Megataur behind him, before he spun on the spot and lashed Wyvern out, closing his eyes for a moment as he concentrated his energy down his arm and into his huge blade, grinning as the sword grew suddenly longer and thicker, taking the enemies around him by complete surprise.

The crimson blade made a full circle around him as he spun on his heel, and the sword cut across flesh, muscles, bones and armors alike, biting into the steel like it would have into butter as the liger's muscles bulged and drove immense force into the slash.

The demons surrounding him fell down to pieces as blood erupted everywhere around him in a range of nearly twenty feet, opening a large square crowded only of pieces of corpses as the other demons stared in horror at the devastation of his blow...

And the liger break the pole of the spear in two as he spun, the minotaur falling down with the tip of the weapon piercing him from side to side, his legs severed off his torso as the liger spun the now free pole in his hand and immediately lashed it off to smack the skull of a charging skeleton, sending the head of the undead flying away like a cork.

"Come on, guys! This ain't kindergarten! Your master will not be happy of your services!" Killer teased, grinning widely as his eyes gleamed with crimson flames of battle-lust while he glared over the charging demons, from side to side.

He growled as he suddenly felt strong hands grabbing him by the ankle, and he glared down to see a skeleton grinning at him with its empty eye-sockets giving his expression a weird, sinister look as the demon restrained the tiger on the spot as another group of centaurs and minotaurs came forwards to stab at him with spears and swords and axes. The huge liger snarled and immediately reached his other foot backwards, stomping down hard on the smirking skull and breaking it to dust before spinning and slashing out Wyvern, cutting a minotaur in half just over the waist and neatly severing the anthropomorphous .

"Rather, if he has the good habit of punishing you, he'd better start off soon!"

Alexis, meanwhile, had suddenly leapt up in the air, time seeming to freeze in front of the speed and grace she moved with as she made a full backwards mortal jump, kicking lighting fast her booted foot first into the megataur's crotch and then into his stomach before she finished off her fluid move with a vicious kick straight under the giant bull's chin.

The giant crashed heavily backwards with an howl of pain, smashing into the wreck of a parked plane and squishing it further under his colossal weight as a splatter of blood came off his mouth, and the Megataur quickly stood back up to his feet with a loud bellow of fury as he smashed a fist into the plane and effortlessly sent the fighter crashing backwards into a wall.

"You didn't see much of the action, huh, boy...?" Alexis asked teasingly, grinning predatorily as she cracked her knuckles and reached a ready position, beckoning for him to come. "Want to see it again...? I can show you."

The hulking giant charged forwards and swung viciously down his gigantic axe, the blade biting deep into the concrete when Alexis easily leapt over the blow, and the bull tore the weapon back and slashed in a wide horizontal arc to cut the muscular female in two.

Alexis cackled cheerfully and leapt up again, landing on her feet on the flat of the huge blade and lashing out a turning kick before the giant could do more than blink and grit his teeth in frustrated fury. Her booted foot smacked into the demon's bloody face, making him howl in agony as the giant crashed down on the floor and skidded for several feet as blood and teeth were blasted out of his jaws. He immediately swung his axe again, tearing it away from under the ligeress's foot and then lashing it out at her with a howl of rage, and Alexis kicked off the blade and gracefully flipped once backwards into the air as she drew Blue Vixen out from the sheath on her back.

Time seemed to freeze once more as she straightened in midair, eyes narrowing as she took in the sight of the crowd of cloaked bowmen on the catwalk that ran along the walls of the hangar, every longbow turning towards her as a cloud of cursed harrows shot forwards, each deadly-sharp tip glowing with a spell.

"I can play this game, too..." Alexis snarled, rising her hands in front of herself as her eyes glowed sapphire, and a tremendous shockwave of what looked like electricity sent the arrows scattering all around, missing her as her psychic blow crushed two of the archers against the wall of the hangar, crushing them both to mush as a thick spider-web of cracks spread on the reinforced concrete.

Alexis snarled and looked down as the Megataur kicked back up to his feet and jumped up towards her with agility unexpected from such behemoth, and she spun to the side to avoid a vicious slash of his gigantic axe, kicking her booted feet on the railing of the catwalk and spinning on herself as she leapt back towards the minotaur as he begun to fall back down. The giant bull shot forwards one of his enormous fists, and Alexis noticed the numerous rings of thick steel that made his blow if possible even more menacing, before she dived under this and grabbed the huge demon by the wrist.

Their eyes met for a moment, and Alexis grinned with ferocious, predatory amusement as she tore forwards towards her and flipped the giant backwards over her shoulder, throwing him backwards like a toy, his huge form shielding her back.

At least twenty cursed arrows sunk into his back, across armor and muscle alike, some almost piercing him from side-to-side, and the gigantic corpse, by now headless of everything and everyone, crashed into the catwalk and the archers on it like a train, squishing several bowmen against the wall and causing a large section of the platform to collapse and fall.

Alexis landed on her feet on the floor two floors below, spinning on her toetip as soon as she touched the ground, facing up towards the remaining archers and rising her free hand to shot a blast of sapphire energy that obliterated everything it crashed into, burning the archers and the catwalk itself to dust and melted metal as the tigress grinned viciously, the crimson shadows in her eyes dancing dangerously.

Demons charged at her from all sides, but she only grinned as the gleam in her eyes grew even more menacing, and she suddenly spun and slashed Blue Vixen apparently at nothing but air... until a Samanhi demon appeared from nothingness, scythe cocked backwards over the shoulder and ready to slash out, and the creature stared in shock at the sapphire blade of the muscular female just before it cut him in two pieces.

"Welcome to the party, invisible-freaks." Alexis hissed maliciously, her hand grabbing the cloak that covered the demon from head to toe and throwing the severed torso of the creature straight into the other charging demons before the corpse could vanish into dark smoke and dust. "Try not dying all too soon. I like this euphoria you give me."

Killer spun Wyvern around himself in a full circle, causing the demons closer to him to fall away in pieces as blood and gore splattered over his form, causing the other demons to backstep in panic and scatter like frightened hares, trampling each other and stepping over the ones who fell to try and get away from the massive crimson blade, before the huge liger lashed out with the pole he still held in one hand and smacked a skeleton straight in the ribcage, causing the undead to fall away in fragments.

Minotaurs and the other demons stayed out at a distance, out of range of the deadly Wyvern, leaving a full army of undead skeletons charging forwards first, the liger looking over those with a grimace of disapprobation. No blood, only fucking dust when you hit those. It already looks like I've crossed the desert by feet...

Killer kicked up his feet, smashing his boot into the sternum of the first skeleton as it rose a broadsword up to hit, sending the undead monstrosity crashing back like a rocket into its comrades, sending several more down in pieces as bones flew around in a thick cloud of dust, before he lashed Wyvern in an upwards cut, the thick spikes of the crimson blade locking in the edge of the large rounded shield of a twenty-feet tall skeleton in armor and lifting the creature into the air effortlessly as the liger roared his challenge and his muscles bulged with the motion. The giant skeleton was hurled high into the air to crash over its fellows, and its falling bulk crushed two smaller skeleton demons before a lash of Wyvern sewed neatly across the swords, shields and bones of another three, before he stabbed forwards and pierced his blade straight into the jaw of another charging skeleton, spinning Wyvern quickly around himself to once more clear the space around himself as demons charged at him on all sides.

The liger roared again in challenging fury, and Alexis, somewhere into the crowd of demons, added her own ferocious and cocky challenge, making Killer grin wider even as he easily stabbed Wyvern down to pierce across the enemies that had ducked his lashes, before he charged forwards and swung his huge sword, cutting through the demon's ranks like they were corn and battering even the Megataurs and centaurs, even huger than he was, backwards with his blows, knocking them sprawling like toys.

Alexis meanwhile had kicked up to her hand a long broadsword from the corpse of a centaur she had just slain and started spinning and slashing her way through the crowding demons like she was dancing with surprising grace. An Astarhi demon appeared in front of her and lunged forwards at her, but she caught the pole of the demon's scythe between the spikes of Blue Vixen's blade and guided the scythe in an ample, murderous circle that decapitated three centaurs and bit deep into the shoulder of a Gigataur towering over them all before Alexis rose the other sword in her hands and neatly severed the Astarhi in half, Blue Vixen stabbing through the face of a charging minotaur and poking out on the opposite side, ripping the face of another demon and sending him stumbling away with howls of agony.

Tentacles shot out from the crowd of demons, lunging at her back as she spun, snarling and rising a hand up to point at the thick appendages with two fingers from over the handle of Blue Vixen, sending the tentacles sprawling backwards with a blast of psychic force, before they were burned to dust by incandescent sapphire flames.

Alexis winced as she saw the source of the attack; a huge Samanhi half-scorpion, half-Megataur, charging at her with a bellow of rage, the enormous pincers snapping angrily and the deadly tail ready to strike. Other demons caught the chance of the moment and surged around her from all sides, and the tigress suddenly spun Blue Vixen, the blade gleaming with her blazing energy, before she slammed it point-down into the floor, sending up a massive explosion of blue light as sapphire flames surged and raged around her, the huge Samanhi and the demons all around him all but vaporized, leaving her standing for a second in the middle of an ample, clear square of peace.

A circle of flames kept the enemies at a distance for a moment as she glared over them from over the blade of Blue Vixen, choosing the best point to attack in the still enormous crowd... And a huge centaur galloped towards her with a shout of challenge, aiming at her a massive weapon that was a mix of longbow and crossbow, with six arrows the size of javelins ready to be fired at her and a sort of magazine that undoubtedly contained many more cursed darts.

The massive half-horse leapt elegantly up over the blue flames and fired, the six arrows shooting towards Alexis as she charged forwards with a roar, creating a shield of energy in front of herself and grinning at the expression of horror of the centaur as it frantically moved a lever in the back of his weapon, every time pulling back the thick rope and firing out a new burst of arrows only to see them smashing uselessly against the tigress's force.

Alexis chopped the creature in two with a violent slash, and in that moment her flames vanished, demons charging forwards immediately with a howl of challenge... And Alexis landed between them, lashing out her two blades to the sides and sending a dozen of them falling down in pieces, before she spun gracefully and cut neatly in two a draconic demon before he could swing his enormous sledgehammer, the female sprinting forwards and tearing her way through the enemy ranks with unstoppable force.

Killer pierced Wyvern straight across the chest of a towering Gigataur, reaching his other hand up to push to the side the massive hammer that the demon was holding as the weapon fell from the forceless hands of the dying creature, the liger grinning as the hammer squished a weird goat demon that had been leaping at him with a long spear.

The male liger torn his blade free with a hard pull, and immediately slashed it backwards over his own head, chopping off the arms of another massive Gigataur that had been drawing back his axe to decapitate him from behind, as Killer rose his free hand and focused his energy into his palm. He made a lashing gesture with his arm, roaring as his incandescent golden energy washed out his hand in a swirling beam that crashed into the enemy ranks like a hurricane, sending entire groups of demons sprawling with howls of agony as they were burned away to ashes by supernatural flames of melted gold.

Again, more came forwards, with a whole group of skeleton warriors charging at him, and he slammed a hand down on the skull of the first, feeling his fingers shatter the bone and enter the empty head even as he used the falling demon as an axis to kick up both feet in a vicious round kick that sent four more skeletons crashing backwards in pieces. Killer looked up in the distance, and he grinned in dark, merciless amusement as he saw demons running away in terror from the fight, trying to break a passage in the gates of fire that Alexis had created to trap them all inside the hangar and failing: several minotaurs all but run into the flames, and where burned to ashes at the first minimum contact, despite the efforts of a skeleton mage that created a jet of water from his enchanted pole to try and suffocate the flames. The supernatural energy of Alexis made the water vanish into steam well before the liquid could touch the victim.

Alexis emerged from her own fight, leaping up to slash her swords out in a wide arc, cutting to shreds one of the cloaked skeletons with the weird polearms, that Killer had identified as mages. "Don't you lose time on those skeletons, lover!" Alexis said as she landed at his side, the two facing off in different directions. "You can't kill them; they'll come at you again and again and take you when your energies are over, if needed. The only way to get definitively rid of them is to kill of the mages!"

Killer snarled in surprise at her words, but the proof that she was right came immediately to his eyes as he saw the bones of the skeletons he had just shattered flying back up into the air to reform new warriors that immediately charged at him.

That's why I kept killing them and they seemed to never end...

"Thank you!" Killer exclaimed as he panted hard, shaking his head to get his bloodstained mane out of his eyes before they sprinted off in different directions, tearing through the demons like they were corn, the huge male now specifically searching for the skeleton mages with his eyes even as he cut a Megataur in half and then chopped off the tauren portion of another Samanhi demon.

Killer spotted one of the mages in the distance, the creature covered entirely in a red, tattered cloak and surrounded by tens of skeleton warriors and other demonic creatures, and the liger immediately charged towards this, tearing open a passage in the crowd with hard slashes of Wyvern, trying to ignore the growing tiredness and the pain coming from several minor wounds he had sustained in the ferocious fight as he sent a minotaur crashing backwards with a single slash of his crimson blade and roared as his golden energy burned around him before there was a blast of force that threw demons through the air in all directions as his tremendous energy vaporized all demons caught in the wave.

Killer snarled and swung his sword outwards as two Gigataurs charged him with their enormous axes, and he stopped their blows with the flat of Wyvern, the blade glowing with his energy and fury now and sending the tauren's weapons crumbling away in pieces before another swing of the liger sent both down in pieces, Killer rising his free hand and blasting out with a snarl a small sphere of his nightmarish black energy.

The sphere sailed in the air as he slashed his way onwards into the crowd, leaving behind a path of destruction and blood, and the dark little sun pulsed once with tremendous power over the heads of the demons, and several of the creatures were torn upwards and lifted into the air to be swallowed into the small sphere to leave behind no signs at all of their presence... And black lightnings crackled from the dark ball into the crowd below, disintegrating everything they touched and opening wide holes in the enemy ranks, before Killer smashed his way into the army of skeletons towards the mage.

Wyvern flashed up in an elegant cut that hit with the speed of a lightning, sending a minotaur falling backwards onto the skeletons with his head flying away like a top, Killer immediately bringing the sword back to block a stab aimed at his neck and slamming up his foot in a turning kick that sent the attacker crashing away in a hail of bones as Wyvern already bit deep into another victim, sending a Samanhi falling in two severed halves as soon as it appeared at his side to attack, before Killer sidestepped the stab of a spear from behind, grabbed the neck of the weapon and pulled it forwards with a snarl, sending the polearm piercing across a reptilian demon before crashing the spikes of his elbow backwards to smash to gore the head of the owner of the spear.

The skeleton mage backstepped in terror at the sight, and it rose its enchanted pole in a wide swing as the ball of flames on top gleamed with intense red light, and Killer crashed with a snarl into an invisible wall that sent him staggering backwards with a grunt of pain.

The huge male immediately straightened, snarling as he rose his fist and slammed it angrily into the magic barrier, and the invisible wall crashed inwards, shattering like it was made of glass, the mage skeleton gaping in horror and amazement even as it swung the pole for another spell.

Killer snarled as spikes of rock suddenly jutted out the ground and grew towards Killer even as he leapt up and charged his blow by drawing back Wyvern to strike. The liger smashed into the first and greatest spike of rock with a grunt, shielding himself with his free arm and breaking through the stone like it was paper, sending pieces flying away in all directions as the mage fell backwards with a shriek of terror, rising his polearm to fire a vortex of flames towards the liger.

Wyvern cut across the flames in a hard downwards slash, and the enormous sword shattered the enchanted polearm and the skeleton to dust and pieces of bone, the flames immediately vanishing into nothingness as the liger spun and rose Wyvern to face the other enemies...

And he found with pleasure in front of his eyes the sight of the large group of skeletons that had been charging at his back dissolving into dust along with their mage-leader. More demons, anyhow, were left around, surging again towards him from all sides.

"Good work." Alexis said, grinning as he pulled up by his side and spun to face in the opposite direction, the two lovers standing in the middle of the crowd, back to back, swords at the ready as blood covered them from head to toe. Killer had several wounds and gashes on his arms and legs, and his armor had the signs of the battle too, while Alexis was amazingly almost entirely untouched, only a bruise here and there. Her ability to dodge and dance her way between bullets and cutting blows alike was by now absolutely supernatural, with the way she could foresee the enemy moves and react with her incredible agility and power. "I took care of the other mages. One last charge of ours, and we are done with this scum."

"Then let's send them back to Hell." Killer grinned, and his energy burned around his muscular form and into the blade of crimson, making the sword glow in a murderous, divine crimson light, as Alexis's swords gleamed with sapphire light, the force radiating from the two in waves rippling the air itself as electricity crackled around them, before the two ligers dashed forwards in the opposite directions.

Killer tore his way through the crowd, tearing down the leftover demons to shreds as Wyvern glowed with all of his energy, the blade cutting effortlessly across even the thickest armors, shields and weapons, crumbling the enemy swords and axes on the impact and slicing the huge Gigataurs like they were made of butter. Alexis, on the other side of the hangar, did almost even better as she circled in the enemy ranks and slashed her way from demon to demon, ripping them apart with her swords one after the other, before they almost simultaneously gathered up their force and roared in challenge as golden light exploded in a massive shockwave from Killer and sapphire energy surged from Alexis.

Two enormous pillars of light seemed to fill the whole hangar as the tremendous shockwave washed through the whole demonic army, hurling even the Gigataurs against the walls like they were puppets as the enormous waves of energy burned every creature to dust, leaving Killer and Alexis panting hard as they stood in the middle of a colossal hangar that was suddenly empty, the walls and floor all but smoking quietly and sizzled as melted steel and concrete flowed slowly down.

Killer looked over this with a victorious grin of amusement and pride even as he panted hard... and then he let himself fall down to his knees before the huge male all let his back fall on the floor and rested a bit, staring idly to the ceiling and letting his breath calm down as he flexed his muscles one more time, feeling the adrenaline slowly getting back to normality...

"Flex again for me..." Alexis purred teasingly from above, and Killer grinned and looked up to see the blond femme fatale standing over him, a look of pure lust in her eyes as her hand slowly and teasingly circled on the fabric of her form-fitting, tight black leather pants.

It was a sight so divine, and her breasts from below looked even more sumptuous, and her hand moving slowly on her centre, where Killer knew that, hidden beneath the fabric, was a Eden of soft golden hair, just above his personal gate to paradise, that he felt his energies flowing back into him like he had just awakened from long rest, and his lusts rocketed sky-high in one second, making him grunt as he fought to prevent his cock from hardening fully and tearing his pants to shreds. It was a sight that could have awakened a corpse.

"Show me those big guns of yours... now that you are covered with blood... it makes you extra gorgeous." Alexis purred, licking her lips slowly as she grinned down at him with eyes burning with flames of lust.

Killer grinned back at her, rolled his huge shoulders slowly and then brought his hands behind his head, flexing his enormous musculature to make them bulge explosively, biceps swelling with pure power as he tilted his head slightly to the side and winked at her with a teasing grin.

Alexis, in adequate answer, squatted down until she straddled him, grinding her crotch over his bulging one, moving with torturous slowness from the root to the head of his massive, semi-hard shaft, making him murr in an almost-warning as she slowly bent down to lay atop him, pushing her huge breasts against his chest teasingly as her crotch continued to grind slowly back and forth against the huge bulge in his pants.

"Careful, bitch..." Killer said gently, grinning teasingly. "It's gonna get hard and domineering if you touch it this way..."

"Huh, gods know how I could use some victory-celebrations, right here and now..." Alexis breathed playfully, grinning teasingly as her eyes glinted with lustful complicity and her hot, strong body ground down against Killer's own muscular form, her crotch rubbing with slow, torturing promises of endless delight over the immense bulge in his black jeans as he grinned back widely as she sighed dreamily. "I would love to transform in reality the glorious sight in my mind and let you fuck my brains out my mouth with your cock until all I can still think and say is ‘yes, Killer, yes!'..." She said with seductive, slightly hoarse voice. "I'd love to have you ramming me so hard that I can taste my own guts and have you impaling me..."

"But I'm afraid we don't have the time for it... We'll have to wait some more. And waiting sucks." She added with a grimace, and he nodded seriously, even if his large hands hungrily squeezed on her taunt, toned buttocks, pulling her closer as he flexed his mighty body to let her marvel at the feeling of his massive muscles.

"In fact. We should move on fast... this mission is taking too long, and we must hurry if we want to save your people." Killer said quietly, and Alexis kissed lovingly on his cheek before standing up gracefully, looking down at him with loving hunger, smiling as he stood up in all of his towering height.

"Of course, always if there's still someone alive to save..." Alexis observed with cold voice. It was horrible and sad to think of it... But it was a very serious possibility. Such an army of demons stationed inside the bunkers wasn't a good sign at all... besides, the visors were very clear with their warning: on the screen, both Killer and Alexis could clearly read that the air was heavily polluted with Sarin gas and several other kinds of biologic weapons as well, and much as the two ligers were invulnerable to such terrible threat, the others weren't. Exposed to such levels of pollution, even the best protective vests couldn't be used safely for more than 48 hours before being either changed and destroyed or decontaminated.

And meanwhile, the ships around the island and the wings of bombers and fighter jets coming from the enemy aircraft carriers at sea continued to bomb the area with frightening ferocity. What if the bunkers had finally collapsed under the thousands of tons of explosive that daily were thrown over Argolis...?

"Don't you sense them...?" Killer asked quietly, looking at her softly, well aware of how terribly heavy was on her the thought of finding so many of her old friends and people dead and slaughtered.

"No..." Alexis answered nervously after closing her eyes in concentration for a moment, shaking her head slowly. "I sense only demons and enemy troops for now."

"We'll dispose of them all as we advance." Killer growled with cold, calm rage, his fingers closing in a huge fist. "Where do we go...?"

Alexis looked around the room coldly, only mercilessly thinking that it was good that demons vanished to nothingness after their death, or the hangar would have been filled with several thousand rotting corpses... and the stink would have been horrible for weeks. The gates of sapphire flames that she had imposed on the various access and lifts along the walls vanished as she let her energy flow back into her body completely, and she pointed with her head at the northern tunnel, where the shattered security shutter of steel and the overturned little train that used to move bombs and ammunitions for the planes between the hangar and the ammo depots deep into the northern section of the underground bunker complex spoke clearly of the passage of the demons on chase. "Is there that I sense the most presences."

Killer nodded silently, and the two lovers walked towards the enormous door of the tunnel, climbing up the wrecks of the little wagons of the train, a couple of which were still heavy with several air-to-air missiles ensured on the racks. Missiles that had not had the chance to be mounted on the planes before the hangar was invaded and everyone slaughtered... Killer looked over at the gates: colossal shutters of steel and titanium that measured their weight in hundreds of tons and that were meant to bear even direct hits by huge bunker-buster bombs, which had been torn open like cans. "Impressive, huh...?" He observed quietly, and Alexis shrugged idly.

"You can tear open one of those like ripping apart a sheet of paper." She observed casually, but the usual note of playfulness and sexual teasing in her voice was almost entirely absent, clear sign of just how much worried, angry and depressed she felt at seeing such spectacle of devastation and death over her people.

"Yeah, well..." He countered calmly, rubbing a hand in his mane. "But I'm only one, a single limit case. This has been done by Gigataurs... and they have many of them. Hundreds... thousands, or maybe even more."

"They do." Alexis replied with another shrug. "But you dispatched that super-Gigataur back there in two frigging seconds, like he was your standard simpleton walking down the fucking streets. And we killed many more of the fuckers in the battle. Huge strength, yeah, but most of them apparently only have been trained at fucking swinging back and forth a gigantic axe or hammer and little more. Let them come... we'll tear through them like a scythe through corn in harvest time."

Killer nodded silently, looking over at Alexis with the awareness that the murderous light in her eyes made her the most frightening sight he could remember to have seen. The glow of battle-lust, the hunger for revenge and bloodshed were so evident and blazing in her beautiful eyes that Killer almost shivered: if in normal times she was unstoppable, in moments of rage like that one she become an icy, merciless angel of destruction.

Alexis went ahead, and Killer followed, hopping up an overturned wagon and then turning toward the blond femme fatale as she snarled and suddenly drew her Desert Storm handgun out, in a lighting fast motion grasping the weapon, firing and holstering it back in the time that Killer, even as fast as he was, would have spent to draw out his own weapon.

He looked to the side with a frown as the female stood silently, and he grimaced in horror at the sight: the corpses of several young mechanics and specialists were sprawled on the ground. A young tiger had all but been squished by the sledgehammer of a Gigataur, evidently, because all what was left was gore and pulp, horribly streaked all over the floor. A bit off to the side, another corpse, missing several limbs, was torn open and ripped by claws and fangs... And Killer took in the sight of several Plasmids, monstrous, man-sized lesser-demons that had the lower body of an overgrown, disgusting bug and a warped, degenerated version of whatever mortal being they had been in life as upper body. It was one of the cruelest destinies that souls could get in Hell, to become warped and twisted monsters-bugs... They had been tearing apart and eating the corpses when Alexis had found them and immediately dispatched them all: Killer grimaced at the sight of the green goo splattered up the walls from the broken rests of the plasmids, which the monstrous impact force of the Desert Storm's rounds had slammed against the walls like dolls.

Alexis and Killer traded a glance and a silent, quiet nod before stepping into the wide corridor, ignoring the splatters of blood and the corpses that littered it: there was nothing they could do for them, other than squishing mercilessly the Plasmids they found feasting on the corpses. Besides, far more disturbing than the demonic half-bugs, that even when attacking in hordes didn't make up a match at all for the two ligers, was the fact that several of the corpses would stand up as zombies and assault their back as they walked by... So that Alexis was forced to kill her same people, the one she was there to save, one more time.

It was horrible, but other than the silence they walked ahead in, Alexis gave no sign of her sufferance, showing no hesitation or feeling at all when she had to rise her sword to slice a face that maybe she knew well, even under the tremendous mask of the death without peace that was their existence. They had fought hard for Alexis, given their lives for the fight... and now, in spite of their desperate efforts, in death they were puppeted and used as weapons against the one they had fought for.

Killer felt his soul writhe and cry in such awareness... and he couldn't help but sneak glances every now and then towards Alexis, trying to imagine the full extent of her own sufferance, and seeing the searing pain deep into her eyes, even as she coldly looked ahead, walking onwards with such frightening, enraged determination that if a wall would have appeared in front of her, she would have walked across it without a twitch. She was unstoppable in her fury... but Killer could sense the pain behind the rage. She felt responsible for it all. Guilty of sacrificing her throne, her kingdom and people in the hands of Riaku, years before, in order to save her younger sisters.

"It's not your fault." Killer said softly after another one long moment of silence, and Alexis closed her eyes with a grimace.

"I'd so like to believe you..." She replied with calm but strangely depressed voice. "But this time, I'm afraid I can't trust even you..."

"No, instead. You have to trust me now, more than ever." Killer said calmly, wrapping his arms around Alexis's waist as he slid behind her, holding her close. "You were forced to act as you did by disloyal means... And you took the only one possible decision to bring your sisters out safe. The kingdom fell in Riaku's hands... But you couldn't imagine that one day; the RA and Hell itself would have invaded Glacial. No one could foresee it. It still feels absurd even now that we're into it up to the hairs. How could you know...? You didn't handed your kingdom lightheartedly into this mess... there was nothing we could do to stop this."

Alexis remained silent, looking down quietly as he rocked her gently in his arm, keeping her leaning against his strong chest as he did his best to cheer her up a bit... to make her understand â€" Accept, better, because in the deep she must know it â€" that it wasn't her fault. That she couldn't have taken another decision... and even if she had, what would have changed...? It wasn't Riaku the one changing Glacial in a wasteland... the RA and the demons would have come all the same, soon or later.

"Tyrant." Alexis said with a soft smile after a few more moments of silence, and Killer blinked before looking down at her with a hurt expression.

"What?"

"You always want to be the one right and have the last word." Alexis stated calmly, smiling wider, and he shoved her playfully forwards with a snort... but he did not let her go. Instead, he squeezed her back gently into his arms, kissing her cheek lovingly as she ground needingly backwards and moved her arms to wrap around his waist and lace her finger behind him, pulling him gently but insistently forwards to lean against her.

"I guess it's true, isn't it...?" Alexis asked, more to herself than to anyone else. "But I was supposed to lead this kingdom and this people. It's my role to foresee the future events and make the right choices. And I failed."

"No one can foresee Armageddon." Killer replied firmly, before he paused and grimaced. "Better, even too many tried to foresee the apocalypse... but they all were wrong, and no one could have imagined we would have dealt with Hell taking over the world. You can't blame yourself for it... And..." Killer paused, trying to find the words to express himself and make her fully understand what he meant, but it wasn't an easy task. "Oh, come on now. You know I'm no good at this kind of things... But you also know that I never even believed a Hell truly existed, myself, and look at me now." The huge male snorted. "Smeared with demon's blood and hell's goo from head to toe. We have been all taken by surprise... now we're into it..."

"...and we'll get through, no matter what." Alexis concluded for him, grinning slightly and nodding with a soft smile up at him as he stared down into her eyes with a loving expression on his muzzle.

"Thank you..." She breathed, before kissing his throat lightly and hesitatingly departing from him. "Let's set the world on fire, then." She stated with her coldness back in full force as she straightened and looked down the dark, endless tunnel. "I sense a couple of demons ahead of us, past the first corner to the right. They'll be the first target of our revenge."

"You bet." Killer grinned, and the two walked rapidly but calmly down the tunnel: the dark was no problem for feline eyes, and the plasmids and zombies were no match for the strength of the two ligers, who easily and rapidly dispatched the enemies they encountered, Killer all but crushing several plasmids by stomping over them with his boots, or ripping the monstrous creatures in two with his bare hands, before both tigers silently stepped up by the corner and leaned against the wall, Alexis peering calmly past the corner for an instant and Killer listening to the demon's voices... voices that he found terribly familiar.

"Shit! Look at this, look...!" An excited, amazed voice called out loudly, and Killer frowned deeply at the awareness of what exactly that voice was. My voice...? What the hell...

"Oh, sweet fucking gods!" A feminine voice came this time, and Killer had even less doubts identifying it this time, because the seductive mix of strength, determination and pure feminine essence made it evident that it was Alexis's own voice, coming from past the corner. "What the hell are you doing, stop messing around with that thing and get it back to the right sizes, we have a work to do!"

"I'm not messing around!" Killer's voice firmly answered. "I changed and this was the result. Look at the size of that thing! He's the... most gigantic thing ever, I swear. It's bigger than a fucking Gigataur's!"

"You' saying he goes around with that...? Gods!" Alexis's voice exclaimed. "You'd think it's not possible to attach that much flesh to someone and still have them capable of standing properly... He's gotta have all that muscle on him just from having to sustain that monster! How the hell does he use it without killing...? I can't even think about hilting without him ripping his mate apart!"

Alexis, the true one, turned back from her observation, turned to look at Killer for a moment and she all but bit her lower lip as she evidently fought not to laugh loudly, her snickers still quite evident to his ears as he looked at her in confusion. She only gestured a finger to him to say to take a look, and Killer gladly leaned over with a frown of curiosity.

He almost coughed as he immediately had to suffocate a laughter at the absurd sight: he was staring straight at a naked copy of himself, perfect in every particular... perhaps, too perfect, indeed. The copy was staring stupidly downwards, gaping in amazement as he hesitatingly squeezed the mammoth flaccid cock in a hand, marveling at the colossal sizes of the over four feet of obsidian, powerful flesh.

Equally amazed, a copy of Alexis, as much perfect and as much naked stood in front of the fake-Killer, staring down at the immense penis with a look of astonishment. "Fuck!" The fake-female exclaimed. "This Alexis is tough, but holy hell! I cannot believe she actually takes that in her pussy!"

"Oh, believe me, I do. Eagerly." The true Alexis stated clearly, grinning widely as she stepped past the corner and drew out one of her Desert Storms, lighting fast.

The time it took to the fake-her to turn towards the voice, and already a bullet smashed straight into the forehead of the fake-Alexis, causing the whole head to explode in a splatter of blood and gore as the corpse was slammed backwards against the wall by the terrible kick.

Killer felt an unusual, horrible squeeze in his guts at seeing this, even as he knew all too well that it wasn't the true Alexis... and the giant male liger was all too happy when the corpse, slowly sliding down the wall leaving a streak of blood on the concrete, changed to assume the form of an headless reptile-demon, something that resembled very closely a Drakkaren.

Gods, this thing remind me of Zerrex and Crystal, goddamn it...

Alexis, meanwhile, had already turned towards the fake-Killer, grinning widely as he kept him under aim even as she eyed down hungrily at the gigantic cock of the male. "Even if you are a vermin and a fake... it still feels like a sacrilege to waste so much powerful meat..." She playfully stated, grinning predatorily as Killer stood at her side, arms crossed and a smirk on his face as his copy looked up at him with an awed look that still seemed to stupidly ask ‘are you really this huge...?'.

"Then again..." Alexis continued, slowly and teasingly as her grin widened. "... from the look of things you wouldn't know what to do with that cock anyway."

The demon startled, opening his mouth to talk and likely plead as he understood he was going to make the exact same end of his comrade... but before a word could leave his mind, headed for his throat, his head was already exploded in a splatter of gore on the wall.

"Shapeshifters...?" Killer asked mildly, ignoring the soft but disgusting noise that the two corpses, both back in reptilian appearances, made sliding down the walls. He reminded several ancient legends about shapeshifters and their exploit in stealth infiltrations and assassinations... And in shapeshifters, he believed. In the past, he had dealt with some dangerous terrorist who were thought supremely elusive because of their ability to hide literally under the faces of innocent people. One of them, after bombing a military base in the South of Kesteven had tried escaping taking the aspect of a nurse. He had chosen the wrong time, anyhow, and stepped by Killer's side while the rescue was still on the way to come... and Killer, suspicious, had followed ‘her' along a dark alley, until it was clear that ‘she' was trying to escape out of the base's perimeter. He had tackled her, and raped her, savagely, brutally enough that he had torn her belly apart with his enormous cock... The shapeshifter had tried to resist, to maintain the features of the nurse, but he had soon surrendered to the ferocious rape, and shifted back to his true form. Killer had found himself ripping his immense black shaft back and forth into a bloody tear in the abdomen of the terrorist, a male reptile, finding his enormous testicles smacking like wrecking balls into the incomparably smaller orbs of the victim, his huge shaft red with blood as it made the reptile's body bulge obscenely and unnaturally.

Killer had been merciless: the rape had been ferocious enough that soon the liger's enormous testicles had hammered the reptile's ones into unrecognizable, bloody pulp and the tiger's huge cock had torn across guts and organs like a massive spear of steel. Killer had raped the reptile in the ass, devastating and annihilating his tight passage after having already literally ripped a vagina into his abdomen, and the liger had restrained himself and kept the lizard alive for just long enough to hear his total confession. The terrorist had given Killer every info he had... and then the liger had brutally finished the rape off, tearing him inside out and splitting him in half like a toy with his monstrous cock. When the liger had blasted out his incandescent, huge load, the reptile was long dead. And in the three days that followed, the other shapeshifters of the organization had been all killed, one by one.

"Yeah, unless you have a perfect twin somewhere. Because I know I sure don't." Alexis replied calmly, checking the four barrels of her Desert Storm handgun and fitting a new clip of stacked rounds into the top barrel with an expert, lightning move, spinning the gun idly before holstering it away even as she walked over to kick idly into a pile of clothes, Killer awakening from his memories.

"Look, they even prepared clothes like ours..." Alexis said calmly.

"Swords, too." Killer added with a snort, taking down from the wall a perfect copy of Wyvern and one of Blue Vixen, idly balancing both weapons in his hands with a frown that resembled the one you see on the face of a wine's connoisseur sipping wine that tastes of plug. "Cheap stuff, anyway. And much lighter than ours... wrong steel alloy and bad balance. This is crap." He observed with a grimace of disapprobation, and he idly grabbed the two huge swords of steel at both ends and broke both of the fake-blades in two like he was breaking the stick of an ice-lolly, snorting as he threw the useless pieces away. "But shouldn't these fucking shapeshifters be able to replicate the look of whoever they see...? They never saw us... Or better, surely they were never allowed a peek at my crotch, at least."

Alexis shrugged with a slight smile, handing to Killer a photo she had found on the wall: it was a recent image of him and her fighting in the streets of Sangin. "They took most from here, evidently... And as to the other... details, they are either Supreme Shapeshifters capable to completely reproduce the look of their target just with even an incomplete peek, or they've exploited the memory of someone." The femme fatale explained quietly, turning to him with a bit of a grin. "Have you an idea of just how many persons drool after that huge cock of yours...? Who does not have the luck of knowing it directly, knows its legend from the gossip magazines and the tales of who tried it."

"I hate gossip magazines." Killer muttered idly, blushing a bit as he looked idly around into the tunnel, making Alexis grin amusedly as she looked down the dark tunnel. "Well, the good news is that if these tricksters are here and preparing for action, there's still people to trick, ahead."

"Right... We should move on fast. I sense other presences down the corridor." Alexis agreed, and she walked onwards into the darkness as Killer easily caught up with a few of his huge steps.

It was shortly later that they walked into a stretch of tunnel that still retained illumination, even if a few of the neon lights along the top of the walls were either shattered or flicking in and out of existence. The light, anyway, was a bit of a pleasant change anyway... and in there, the number of Plasmids lurking around was much lower, and the demonic creatures accurately avoided stepping in the way of the two giant ligers unless they were in a true horde. Not that it changed much for them, anyway... They are cheap stuff.

The greatest surprise, anyway, was to find one of the colossal security shutters of titanium closed and operative: the gate was marked with a huge red one painted on it, and a huge, frightening Gatling seven-barreled gun aimed down the tunnel from an automated turret stretching out of the wall beside the shutter. Now I'm hoping no one there is trigger-happy, or this may get messy.

A soldier in a torn Glacial uniform covered by an NBC mask and protective vest patrolled back and forth in front of the shutter, nervously grasping a huge assault rifle in his hands and speaking into a radio every few seconds, undoubtedly talking to the other rebels past the gate... And Killer smiled a bit at the awareness that they had made it. There were still survivors, and now they could save them.

"Majesty!" The soldier exclaimed when he saw Alexis approaching, a look of complete surprise on his face, evident past the glass of the gas mask. "Is... is that... you?"

"It is." Alexis nodded with a wide smile as she walked up to the soldier and gently placed a hand on his shoulder... and Killer suddenly found himself gaping in surprise as the blond femme fatale's smile changed into a grin and she grabbed the soldier by the throat, lifting him up in the air like a leaf. "I am Alexis... But not the one you were waiting for!" She snarled, rattling the soldier like a doll as he coughed and hissed in agony, bringing up his hands to seize the muscular female's wrist and try uselessly to work against her tremendous strength.

Killer blinked in surprise and misunderstanding, moving a step forwards hesitatingly, before he turned with a snarl at the sound of a small engine starting and at the well-known noise of a Gatling gun starting to revolve.

The huge male turned just in time to see long, blazing flames blast out of the seven barrels, but Alexis had already lifted her free arm and squared her palm in direction of the firing weapon, creating a large shield of sapphire energy against which the huge bullets bounced off harmlessly, before the femme fatale glared with a contemptuous snort towards the massive weapon and it simply exploded into pieces, falling to the floor in wrecked shreds.

"Let me go, majesty! Please!" The soldier muttered breathlessly, his fingers desperately trying to pull Alexis's own ones away from his throat, but there was no use against the ligeress's strength.

"Stop fucking kidding me, asshole. It won't do you any good to make me any angrier." Alexis snarled ferociously, gritting her deadly fangs as she brought her muzzle almost touching the soldier's one as she slammed the male against the concrete hard enough to send cracks breaking open in the wall. "I fucking hate this kind of cheap tricks. Show me your fugly face. NOW!"

The soldier stared back at her in horror for a moment, but when she slammed him even harder into the wall, making him sink into the concrete almost a inch as he spat a gout of dark blood that the femme fatale idly avoided with a tilt of her head, he quickly nodded, and Killer stared as the young tiger was wrapped into mild white light and rapidly changed into another one of the green-scaled reptiles shapeshifters.

"Another one shapeshifter." Killer growled angrily as he stood behind Alexis and crossed his huge, muscular arms on his chest, glaring mercilessly down at the bleeding, bruised creature.

"Yeah. This one fucker has been posted here to trick specifically us." Alexis agreed, snarling as she smashed one of her fists in the lizard's abdomen, causing him to sink further into the wall as his spine bent to an extreme point and he let out an howl of agony, deafening, and yet not loud enough to fully hide the sickening crack of something inside him. "And now he'll tell us everything he knows, because otherwise I'll rip him apart to shreds, piece by piece, after beating him down to a pulp."

"I'd talk, if I was in you." Killer said sincerely after taking a look over the merciless, darkly-bemused grin of Alexis and seeing the murderous light in her eyes.

"Never." The demon spat, coughing hard as blood leaked from his muzzle and from several wounds on his body, included obviously from where Alexis's cruel claws were digging in his flesh. "I come from Hell... think you can torture me worst than down there...?"

"I'm sure that I can. Should I try...?" Alexis asked teasingly, leaning closer with a murderous grin, before she lunged in and bit straight into the shoulder of the demon, making him cry in agony as she playfully, slowly ripped a sizeable piece of flesh from the junction between neck and shoulder, sending a splatter of blood painting the wall, before she spat the shred of flesh in the face of the crying reptile.

"Think I don't know this tactic...? You are the evil cop, and now your big boy over there will step in with the nice and gentle promises." The shapeshifter cried out, opening one eye to stare at her, and Alexis's grin grew wider as she looked down at him with dark, merciless amusement, shaking her head slowly. A second later, her foot lashed up lightning fast and her spiked combat boot smashed into the demon's crotch, causing him to writhe and collapse over her arm in the worst agony possible, the shapeshifter howling his despair as blood dripped from his devastated once-malehood. Alexis and Killer waited silently and patiently for his cries to lose in intensity from him running out of breath and energies entirely... And Alexis made her new move.

"Boy, boy... you did not understand a fucking thing, instead. I AM the good cop. The evil cop is him back there. You don't want to find out what he can do to you, do you...?" The femme fatale asked teasingly, leaning in with a grin that would have been extremely seductive, if not for the crimson gleam in her eyes and the maliciousness in her voice.

The demon looked at her for a long moment, before turning his glance over to the huge male that towered even taller than the femme fatale, a giant hulking with muscles that coldly and silently glared down at him. He hadn't made a move in all the time, but his lonely presence and the cold, murderous glacial light in his eyes were a presence almost physical, heavy and crushing over him in the tunnel... and after a final look at the massive sizes of the liger's muscles, the reptile swallowed thickly and nodded firmly.

"I'll... I'll talk."

"No need for that shit. I don't said I wanted to hear your voice for more than the strictly needed." Alexis replied with a snort. "Just stop shielding your pathetic mind... I'll take out of it everything I need by myself."

A few moments later, Killer and Alexis were walking forwards down the tunnel, taking another turn to the right towards the north-east underground barracks: Alexis had easily dug every info out of the shapeshifter's mind and discovered that the rebels, the true ones, were still resisting in the deepest bunkers in that area... And that the whole sector was under siege.

Alexis had taken out even more of simple information, anyway... Killer did not want to wonder too much about what exactly she had made to the demon, but the creature had fallen away between howls of an agony that went far past the one of even his destroyed crotch, and the lizard had rattled and writhed helplessly on the floor as blood leaked out his nostrils, mouth and even ears, until his eyes had blackened out and he had vanished into ashes under Alexis's glare.

A scary example of what she can do in her rage...

Killer, on his part, had torn open the immense shutter of steel with his brutal strength... and that had left Alexis staring in loving admiration... And, admittedly, more than a touch of lust.

Killer took a short moment to understand that something was wrong and changed, when he awoke from his thoughts and looked around himself, stopping in confusion and horror as he suddenly found himself surrounded by complete darkness.

This is not simple darkness... it's like being inside a fucking bottle of ink... it's plain, pitch black in here...

It was more than weird, especially for a feline like him, to be blind because of darkness. His eyes could easily see in the darkest of nights, and he had never really known the feeling of being blind into the dark... And now, he almost panicked at the realization that such darkness wasn't natural, common... or understandable at all. Unless... unless I'm blind... my eyes work no more...

"Alexis!" He called out, hoping that the terror wouldn't be evident in his voice as he uselessly looked around himself, to see only black.

"Shush, lover!" She replied, gently but firmly, but her voice seemed to come to him from an immense distance... and it echoed all around him, so much that he couldn't even attempt to locate the source. I'm... completely... lost... "Stop worrying uselessly, lover! It's a spell... a fucking spell that I'd love to be able to despell, but with which we'll unfortunately have to cope, because of magic I don't know a fucking thing."

Calm the fuck down, you moron. You are not blind. Nor you are deaf, all of a sudden.

"Where are you...?" Killer asked quietly, and Alexis grasped his arm and gave his huge bicep a firm squeeze.

"Here." At my side... and yet her voice seems to come from two thousand miles away behind my back.

"Can you see in this haze...?" Killer asked, frowning in surprise as he admired once more the exceptional mastery that Alexis had on herself, her abilities and whatever event pulled up around her.

"No... not in the normal way, at least. But I can still sense energies as always... And if you focus your mind and senses as we use to do at home in training, you should be able to visualize the tunnel in your mind no problem. You managed to feel my movements last time we tried... feel all the rest should be extremely easy after that."

Killer grimaced, wincing internally at the memory of the "last time": they had been training in a duel, with their eyes bandaged. Alexis, of course, has no troubles at all. Eyes open or closed, for her it's the same... but me...? Gods...

Killer closed his eyes and freed his mind by any kind of thought. That, by now, he had learned to do well and fast... it had been the first step in learning to make his mind impervious to even Vera's intrusions, and to seal out of his thoughts every psychic attempting to take a peek. Even Alexis, if he truly wanted to keep her out and concentrated fully.

Then, the huge male listened with attention, not just with his ears, but with all of his body, focusing his senses and melting in one only vision the small signals he caught, even the vibrations he felt coming through his feet from the floor...

And suddenly, he almost was capable to see again. He could clearly feel Alexis at his side, and ‘see' the tunnel going ahead straight for perhaps sixty more steps, before ending in a T shaped crossway. Two security shutters blocked both ways, but only the right one was interesting: a true crowd of demons was putting the area under siege and trying to break down the gates. He could almost see, even across the walls, the minigun mounted beside the shutter firing wild, blind bursts in the darkness... the skeleton mages that were keeping the darkness in place, and several other ones throwing their most powerful spells against the shutter to try and break her down... The vibrations of force coming from their spells is extremely easy to pick up... and a group of Gigataurs was using an immense column of granite reinforced with titanium as a battering ram to try and break a passage in the barrier, exploiting the cover of the magic darkness.

"It's a mess, huh...?" Killer asked quietly, and Alexis nodded. Killer felt the gesture clearly, and it was almost like she could see her with his eyes.

"Let's hurry up!" She exclaimed as she walked onwards and took the lead, and Killer followed her along the tunnel and past the corner, emerging behind the crowd of demons.

The mages were the first to turn in shock and try to react, but Alexis only grinned and rose her arms up and stretched them out to the sides, sending off a tremendous shockwave of her immense force that slammed the demons in the tunnel against the walls on either side, lifting them up into the air like dolls and sending their bodies smacking into the concrete with enough force that the whole structure shock, as the battering ram fell on the floor with a loud, thundering rumble.

The supernatural darkness suddenly vanished as the skeleton-mages howled in horrible agony and grasped their skulls in despair, writhing in the air as the noise of rattling bones filled the tunnel, and Alexis's grin grew even wider as she brought both of her arms back in front of herself, the crowd of demons pulled by invisible, invincible bounds of force towards the middle of the tunnel until the creatures coming from the two sides smashed each into the other, before Alexis sent them all smacking into the walls again, while Killer blinked a couple of times to get his eyes used to normality after the insane darkness of a few seconds before.

The huge male rose his head up just in time to see the skeleton mages grabbing their heads so hard that he thought their fingers would have soon pierced into the skulls... But the point was never reached, since Alexis glared again over them, grinning widely as she sent her immense force washing over the agonizing creatures, leaving Killer staring in amazement as the skulls of the mages all but torn open, splitting in two between a chorus of horrible shrieks.

A moment, and it was over, as twenty heads fell to the floor, all cut in half like they were water melons, and the skeletons vanished into dust even before the pieces of skull had stopped rocking lazily on the concrete.

Alexis grinned, a grin of vicious, amused retribution as she walked forwards and let her arms fall back along her sides, sending the four crying Gigataurs falling on their knees on the floor, the four giants slumping on the floor and writhing in endless agony as the femme fatale walked closer and drew Blue Vixen out, squaring the long blade in front of herself and pulling the trigger in the handle four times.

"I would never want you having to take revenge on me for something." Killer observed mildly as the blond tigress sheathed back her sword-gun, and she grinned slightly.

"I wouldn't even want you as enemy, if that's just it." She countered, smiling a bit before she walked up to the enormous shutter of steel and knocked on it firmly with a fist. "Well, what's the matter...? Open it up!" She called out impatiently.

A camera mounted in the corner of the tunnel turned to Alexis and Killer, and the huge male stared up at this idly before a terrified voice coming from the other side of the shutter shouted: "A Gigataur! A Gigataur!"

"Stop fucking, moron. That's Wyvern, not a fucking Gigataur. Don't you see he's a liger...? Gods, you grew up stupider than I reminded." Alexis explained with an amused but impatient sigh, shaking her head slightly.

Killer blinked stupidly a couple of times, before fully understanding that whoever was past the enormous gates had exchanged his towering muscular body for a Gigataur. This I was missing. Gods, at times I half-wish I wasn't this huge.

From the other side of the door, there was an embarrassed silence for a long moment, followed by a grumbled ‘thank you'.

"You deserved it." Alexis answered heavenly.

"Alexis, is that... is that really you, majesty...? Or it's another shapeshifter's trick...? I'm tired of seeing Alexises everywhere, they tried the trick already a few times." The voice hesitatingly asked from behind the shutter, and the blond tigress nodded firmly, with a softer smile than before.

"To be sincere, you also swallowed the bait the first time they used the trick." Alexis observed.

Silence, as undoubtedly the soldier behind the shutter wondered on how she could know: no one in the bunkers could know the powers that Alexis had developed in time and be aware that she could see in the memory and thoughts of everyone she wanted. "Don't remind me." The voice finally muttered. "It was one fucking mess to fight them off long enough to retreat behind the second line of defence."

"Well, this time is me. Open the door." Alexis calmly asked, crossing her arms quietly.

"Sorry, majesty... but... I can't risk... how do... how do I know you are the true queen...?"

"Oh, come on, Nigel... You used to always come and try to peek into the locker rooms of the stadium every time I showered after a match, and I used to joke you about how disproportionately small your dick looks on you." Alexis exclaimed, an amused grin spreading on her features as she stared straight up to the camera.

"Alexis!" The voice exclaimed embarrassedly, in both an admission that he was by now sure she was the true queen and an invite to skip whatever other memories of the past she still had about him.

"Yeah, that's my name. Open this door up, Nigel, or we tear it open ourselves."

The voice grunted ironically from inside. "It's impossible. Not even the fucking Gigataurs managed to budge it. Forget it, this is four hundred tons of titanium, and it's invincible."

"Ok, you asked for it." Alexis said playfully, and she turned to look at Killer teasingly. "Would you show him, Lion...? A little lesson is in order, it seems."

"Sure." Killer answered quietly, walking forwards to bend down and grab the bottom of the massive shutter with his huge, strong hands.

"It's impossible, you can't do it." The voice insisted, and then there was a moan of scared surprise as something into the door's mechanisms groaned as the liger growled lowly and pulled up, lifting the enormous barrier even as the magnetic locks tried to seal it back closed. The huge male liger gave a snarling grin at this point, and pulled up powerfully as every muscle on his body bulged with might, and the lock mechanisms above snapped loudly, leaving him pushing up almost easily the enormous block of titanium even as the voice inside screamed in terror and Killer heard something crawling away from him.

Finally, the huge male shoved hard upwards with his powerful arms with a contemptuous snort, and sent the massive shutter all the way up until it slammed into the end-rails above, leaving the gate completely open as the whole tunnel trembled and a bit of dust clouded down from above as Killer stood and idly crossed his arms back on his chest, grinning slightly and rising a brow at the bulky soldier that was currently staring up at him in awe from where it seat on his ass, back leaning against an identical shutter. If possible, I'd like to avoid avoiding tearing open that one as well, thanks.

I'm sure it will not be necessary, lover. By the way, this is always so fucking hot to watch. Alexis's voice answered directly in his mind to his thoughts, as she often did by now, and he turned slightly to the side to answer to her tender smile as she walked to his side and touched his huge bicep gently.

"Now, Nigel. We could have just torn our way inside these bunkers and smashed you and the others to a pulp if we wanted... but we didn't. It should be a sufficient proof of who we are. So, open the other shutter or we'll have to tear it open as well." Alexis observed softly, looking idly around: they were in the small space between two shutters, the anti-room that, once sealed, was watered with disinfectants to erase every NBC threat before anyone could enter in the bunker-barracks... And Nigel was obviously on guard service.

Killer looked down at the male with mild interest: he wasn't jealous of Alexis â€" Better, I'm not jealous of whatever pet she takes to fuck the brains out of... - but he was quite interested to see this one, after hearing from her the introductions earlier.

Nigel was quite huge, a muscular white tiger that nothing had of small or weak on his body. Even now, even as he stared from his ass up to Killer and Alexis, definitely impressed and scared, he still gave the idea of being an excellent warrior despite all.

And Killer spotted the black collar of leather that identified him as one of Alexis's pets. Which, knowing Alexis, means he must be not just a good fighter but a good lover. And that is cock is all but small, seen her tastes.

Indeed. Alexis playfully confirmed shamelessly in his mind, grinning a bit to herself as she stood at his side. He's quite huge, in fact, but big as he is, his cock looks almost small on him. Nothing to share with you, lover. He's in a much lower league.

Nigel stood up with a grunt of agreement, and he took a look of loving admiration over Alexis, before the two friendly embraced. "You've grown so beautiful and strong, Alexis... We all knew you would return one day."

Alexis nodded with a warm smile. "I must only apologize for taking too long. I never dared to imagine that things here could have turned this bad..."

Nigel pressed a button, and the shutter that Killer had torn open begun to close, shakily and groaning a bit in protest for how it had been mistreated, and the tigers found soon themselves in a tight sealed room illuminated only by soft blue light. "No one could imagine it, majesty... We never expected anything this bad to be possible, quite frankly." Nigel answered, before he turned and offered his hand to Killer, who warmly squeezed it with a friendly smile. "Wyvern himself. The legend!" Nigel exclaimed, looking up at him with an expression that Killer tried to kindly but firmly ignore, since it almost embarrassed him. The soldier was almost drooling over him and staring at him with what could only be described as pure awe, strengthened by the show of force of a moment before, for great amusement of Alexis. "I could never dare to imagine that one day I would have had the honor of touching the Legend!"

You know, he wants to be laid by you as much as he dreams to be laid by me. And he's wondering just how big you are down there. He's still two feet short of the truth in his fantasies.

Please, shush, Alexis, please. Killer countered silently in his mind, almost pleading her. She only snickered a bit.

There was a moment of silence after the air in the chamber was pressurized to keep every pollution out of the area as Killer and Alexis shut their eyes at the jets of vaporized disinfectants that followed, and then finally the second shutter buzzed open, and they were lead inside a warm and rather comfortable barrack, every head in the large room they had entered turning towards them and every door in the long corridor opening as soldiers, civilians, girls and kids and babies looked out and gaped for a moment at the sight.

"The queen is back!" Nigel shouted. "Alexis is back! Cheer up, everyone, Alexis is back between us!"

A roar of approbation and loving welcome arose from everyone, seeming to shake the whole bunker as Alexis lowered her head a bit in embarrassed but deep joy at that welcome.

Killer squeezed her gently closer against his side, and she smiled warmly before rising a hand in the air in a salute to the cheering crowd as more and more people ran up towards them from every corner of the barracks.

There are still a lot of people we can save.

Yeah... it's... a miracle.