Sixteen

The cultivator woke slowly, groggily, looking about with wide pink eyes. Blood covered its wide lips as it licked them with a wide, gray tongue. For a moment it looked like it wouldn't recognize the world, then the pain hit with awful clarity. It screeched, bucking in Benny's hands, but the old man's grip was unyielding, holding the wounded cultivator down as Kon and Diur stood around it.

"Relax friend, your troubles are over," Benny said in a soothing voice. Kon felt his body start to relax, energy filling the air. Beside him Diur shifted, muscles becoming loose as she looked around lazily.

"Not you two. Keep it together!" Benny hissed in annoyance. Kon straightened, feeling the thin tether of power that had connected them to the old man sharpening, spearing into them and heightening their senses.

Kon looked behind Benny and saw the faintest blurs of a rune behind the Knight. The moment his eyes locked on it the rune became real, stepping into reality to fill the space of the small alley they were in. Power rippled from it, connecting, crushing, and rebuilding all at once. Kon's breath lurched as his chest refused to budge as he stared at the twisting constellation of the most complex rune he'd ever seen.

"It's not alway wise to be perceptive, boyo. Relax," Benny ordered. With his very words, Kon felt his body relax, breathing again as his suddenly racing heart slowed to its normal lethargic pace.

"What happened?" Diur said, looking at Kon as she raised an eyebrow. He was sure she had picked that up watching human holos.

"I…I don't know," Kon whispered back to her. The rune had disappeared again as Benny had returned his focus to the captured cultivator.

"Where were we? Oh, yes, tell us where your employer is," Benny said, voice still conversational. The cultivator's eyes had grown glassy, his chest hardly moving as he looked like a stick of partially melted butter, he was so relaxed.

"His ship. That bitch said you were bounty hunters, not exterminators. We radioed it was going to shit and he's making a run for it," the cultivator said, voice slow and lethargic.

"Where's the ship?" Benny continued. The cultivator blinked and looked up at the masked figure, sadness crossing his face as he stared at his own reflection in the reflective material.

"I'm going to die. It wasn't supposed to be like this." Tears rolled down his placid face but there was no other sign of emotion as Benny waited. When the cultivator didn't say anything there was a thrum of power and Kon could see the edges of the run start peeking back into reality. He jerked his eyes away from it before he became ensnared again.

"Private bay. There's a local enforcer who owns it. Protects it. They won't let you in without a fight," the cultivator said. Benny nodded and with a twist of his hands he snapped the cultivator's neck, dropping the alien to the ground. The strange power in the alley faded away in an instant.

"What was that rune?" Kon asked as they set out of the alleyway. Benny snorted through their comms as they trotted down the still deserted streets. Their map was already populating, shrinking in detail as it grew in size.

"Truth. It's a powerful one and hard to master, but it has its uses," Benny said as they ran. Kon kept pace with the older Knight, stride by stride as they flew through the station and toward the secret landing bay.

"Will that be my first rune?" Kon asked, curiosity keeping him talking even as the prospect of a fight sent bolts of energy through him.

"No. Not at all. We'll talk about it when we finish this. Have you checked your ammo or your weapons at all since the fight?" Benny asked and Kon cursed loudly as they ran. The shotgun only had a handful of rounds left which he quickly loaded into the drum, slamming it home as he ran.

"You need to work on that," Diur said with a chuckle as Kon bit back a curse as he nearly tripped as he finished loading the shotgun. They were almost already at the not-so-secret hangar. The scanners on the Puca were much better than Benny had initially let on and the detailed map now populating his HUD was much more informative than it had been earlier.

"Contacts. Three of them on the right side, two on the left. You kids take the right and I'll take the left," Benny said as they entered a straight away. In front of them was a massive piece of steel that was partially slid open, rusted rails screeching as outdated motors screamed as they tried to close the door.

The guards on the right were standing out in the open, cheap laser rifles in their hands as they looked up at the trio. All three of them were covered and armored in similar suits as Kon's, their features hidden as they lifted their weapons. Diur put on a burst of speed as her aura billowed out around her, she slashed her sword horizontally and the aura condensed and rocketed out in a bar of energy at neck height.

Two of the guards dropped to the ground, instincts keeping them alive. The middle guard wasn't so lucky, starting to drop a second too late, the bar of energy cutting though the top half of the helmet and shearing away its skull. It collapsed in a heap as the energy slammed into the metal door, screeching and tearing a strip of metal away.

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Kon fired from the hip, emptying the shotgun in a burst of shells,slamming both of the survivors back and off their feet. Smears of blood stretched across the ground where the two dead guards were thrown backward. Kon risked a glance to the left to see if Benny needed help, but both of the guards to the left were down.

"Hurry it up," Benny said as he flashed by them in a blur, sliding through the closing doors without slowing. Kon cursed as he tried to speed up, pumping his legs as fast as he could. Diur lunged, jumping through the gap with only a foot to spare. Kon lowered his head and pushed as hard as he could, his body crying out in pain as something stretched too far in his legs, but then he was through the doors.

A series of shuttles were nestled in the hangar bay, but only one of them had people around it. Squat, octagonal, with a series of ridges down it back, it looked like it had been welded together from a half dozen other ships.

"No way that thing can make it through the lanes," Kon said as the first of the guards fired at them. A bolt of acidic plasma flashed through the air, slamming into the door behind Kon with a hiss as it began to eat at the metal. Benny fired once and the plasma caster went to the ground in a heap.

"Probably has a hideout somewhere in a nearby asteroid field or something," Benny said conversationally as he trotted behind some cover just as the rest of the guards recognized the threat they were under. Kon and Diur followed his lead, hiding behind a series of metal workbenches as enemy fire began to burn the walls behind them or rattle the heavy duty workbenches.

"Cultivator!" Diur said, nodding her head to a giant, simian looking alien that had just jumped from the rafters. It landed without sound, a single long sword in its hair hands as it looked at them with flat black eyes. Benny looked around the corner and saw the cultivator and turned back to them.

"Diur, the big one's yours. You're further advanced but he likely has more combat experience. Try not to die," Benny said encouragingly. Diur grunted and nudged Kon with her elbow before sliding around the workbench, her aura beginning to fill the space around her again.

She disappeared in a blur of speed, her sword flashing as she crashed against the simian cultivator's amber wreathed sword. All fire turned away from the two dueling swordmen and back toward Kon and Benny.

"What do we do?" Kon asked as he hunkered lower, the entire toolchest he was behind shaking violently as concentrated fire riddled it. It wouldn't last much longer and then the only thing between himself and death was his borrowed breastplate.

"This is why you plan out contingencies and carry supplies. This is what you would call a learning curve," Benny said. He reached into his own belt and pulled out a bunch of cylindrical shapes before continuing his impromptu lesson.

"You are a bull-headed fighter. Like to get in close and personal and overwhelm your opponents. That's fine. Issue is you're not strong enough to do it consistently. So what you need is a way to close distance or give yourself an advantage," Benny said as a chunk of the metal crate he was taking cover behind exploded in a spray of molten metal.

"Now, when fighting on ships explosives are a no-no unless you're willing to fight in hard vacuum if you blow out the wrong wall. So, what we can do is," Benny continued on like nothing was wrong.

"Benny! Now not later!" Kon yelled as the bench he was hiding behind shrank by a few more centimeters, lasers and plasma chewing through it in a voracious race for his flesh.

"No patience. That's your problem. Get ready to run!" Benny finished his sentence by throwing out a mix of the cylinders over his shoulder and toward the guards. A series of incandescent lights filled the air, Kon's helmet darkening even hidden from the flashbangs. Static filled his helmet for a second before clearing up as Benny's voice filled his ear.

"Flashbangs and some light EMPs. Kills helmets without breaking anything too expensive or critical." Kon filed that in the back of his mind as he flew around the corner of the sagging tool table, mace in hand. Seven guards were clutching their faces, all of them armored similarly to the guards who'd been protecting the doors outside.

Kon grunted as he hit the first one in the helmet. Plastic and metal shrieked as the guard's head snapped to the side as their legs flew out from under them, crashing to the ground. The second guard went just as easily as the first, a crushing blow that shattered the helmet and crushed the skull underneath.

The rest of the guards were reacting though, throwing themselves to the side or firing blindly. Kon wove in between them, his greater speed aiding him as he lashed out, striking and breaking everything in reach. Screams of pain mixed with thudding bodies as Benny fired methodically as he walked, each shot a death.

"All yours kid, I'm getting the target," Benny informed him, flashing away in a blur into the warming up ship, its engines growing loud in the enclosed space. Kon couldn't tear his attention away from the fight he was in. Three of the guards were still alive and had recovered enough of their vision to offer him something resembling a fight.

He ducked under a wild swing, slamming the mace into the guard's gut. The alien bent in half as metal caved in, denting and pushing into the soft organics it was supposed to protect. Kon reached out and grabbed the stunned and dying alien's helmet, fingers catching in the collar, and spun, throwing the alien over his hip and into the second guard.

The two figures crashed to the ground, giving Kon a second to face the third and final guard. It was lifting the laser carbine to its shoulder, barrel weaving about in wild circles. Kon darted in, smacking the barrel upward with his free hand just as the guard fired. Heat burned his palm but Kon pushed threw, slamming the mace into the guard's head. Bone cracked as the guard's head snapped to the side, body thrown down to land with a heavy thud.

Pain bloomed across his left hamstring, the smell of burning cloth and meat filling his nose as Kon screamed in rage and pain. Spinning on his good leg, the second laser bolt passed by without hitting him and then Kon was on the last guard.

Blows rained down in savage rhythm. Metal and meat melded together as a pile of quivering ruin puddled at his feet. His chest heaved, wild energy sparking though him as he looked around for the next fight.

Diur had finished hers. The simian cultivator had lost his head and arm and Diur now carried a second sword in her free hand. Noise drew Kon's attention as Benny came stalking down the landing ramp with their target under one arm, looking no worse for the wear.

"Mission accomplished!" Benny said, showing off the shaking alien in his hand.

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