Tour of the Underground [Mod]

[Pyxis]

Now that she'd recovered from the utterly ridiculous shadow at the airport, it was time for Pyxis to continue her "tour" of the outskirts. The next stop: the mines. But her first steps inside yielded a similar result to when she'd gone back into the hospital with Vice and Alisa. The shadows just skittered away as they sensed her approach and hid. This forced Pyxis to go deeper, but that wasn't a problem. Since the mines weren't something that appeared or changed much since Heaven's Gate appeared, she was able to consult a map on the old tunnels and use her own tools to navigate the place. Soon, she found herself very deep inside. Maybe here would be a good place to start.

[Erithania]

Beware. Death approaches.

Crimson Mother

Skills
Agidyne
Bufudyne
High Counter
Makarakarn

Null: Fire, Ice
Weakness: Slash, Lightning

[Pyxis]

Pyxis hadn't actually expected to see minecarts in the mines. They were abandoned, after all, and her records showed that they had been abandoned long before Heaven's Gate had appeared. Did people just not take their stuff with them? Whatever the case, here one was, sitting in the middle of the tunnel. And occupied, apparently, as evident by the arms and legs of a humanoid figure draping over the edge. But her sensors gave an unmistakable reading: this figure was definitely a shadow. And a powerful one at that, if the warnings going off were any indication. As Pyxis approached, a head poked out over the lip of the minecart, with glowing crimson eyes peeking out from beneath a golden mask. It fixed its gaze on Pyxis, waved a hand as though to shoo her away, and a shimmering barrier materialized around it. A quick scan identified it as a magic-repelling barrier...something that Pyxis didn't actually have to worry about.

That was a mistake. One that Pyxis wouldn't let the shadow forget. Elpis materialized behind her with a thought, and black, ghastly silhouettes began swirling up from the box at her feet. The silhouettes all lashed out at once, slamming into the minecart and shadow within in a series of blunt force attacks that sent it rolling along the rails and deeper into the tunnels. Pyxis gave chase, noting as she pursued that the shadow's glowing eyes had gone wider, and that it had tucked its body deeper into the minecart. Despite its apparent fear, it managed to get off a large blast of fire, which slammed into Pyxis with enough force that she might have thought she was up against one of their enemies from the full moons again.

Overheat warning started blaring in her mind, as well as pain responses from all over, but she pushed through them, continuing her pursuit of the shadow. Not wanting to give it any extra momentum from blunt force attacks, she instead opened fire on it, punching holes through both the minecart and shadow, while shrapnel bouncing off support beams in the walls rebounded inward to add to the barrage on the shadow. The shadow again managed to get off an attack, this time hitting Pyxis with a blast of cold air that, while it succeeded in shutting off the overheat warnings, still hurt a lot and triggered several damage warnings. On top of that, the cold was slowing her movements. The shadow started gaining ground on her, forcing Pyxis to take more precise aim to compensate for the narrow tunnels. On her second volley, she managed to shoot off one of the carts wheels as well as damaging the shadow, sending it off the rails and straight into the side of the tunnel.

The shadow managed to right itself quickly but, still under the effects of Pyxis's first attack, failed to retaliate and gave her a chance to catch up. She summoned Elpis again, directing her to slash at the shadow before it could attack her again. The attack struck true, doing considerably more damage than even her newly upgraded spread guns. The shadow didn't take well to it at all, falling out of the cart and instead getting to its feet. In spite of the fear, it launched another freezing blast at Pyxis. The ice struck her square in the chest, bringing fresh pain, locking up several of her joints in the process and setting off even more damage alarms, including one that advised her to retreat before suffering critical damage.

Like hell.

Elpis began glowing brightly as Pyxis charged up one final attack. Fortune was on her side thus far, so as long as it stayed that way she would make it through the fight. And as luck would have it, the fear kept the shadow from acting again. Pyxis couldn't blame it. It had put up a hell of a fight, and even without hitting any weaknesses one more hit would have made it difficult to get back (in the best case scenario), but after taking several hits it was now at the mercy of a charged attack against its weakness. Elpis brought the blade of light down, cutting clean through the shadow to finish it off.

[Erithania]

Are you compensating~?



You found a Level 5 Gun. Good for you.

[Pyxis]

As soon as the shadow's presence disappeared from her sensors, Pyxis immediately took the opportunity to heal herself. She had still sustained too much damage to realistically continue exploring, but she could at least heal herself enough to prevent any difficulties in getting back. The rest, she could deal with later. With emergency healing taken care of, though, Pyxis cautiously approached the minecart where the shadow had been lying, and spotted something standing out against the rest of the remains and debris from the fight. Pyxis recognized them immediately, having seem shadows drop them before. They were parts that could be incorporated into her weapon systems to upgrade them, giving them more stopping power and better penetration. Why did shadows keep having things like this, though?

...Pyxis wasn't going to think about that at the moment. She had a sneaking suspicion she already knew what the answer was, but so long as there was no confirmation she was going to push it to the back of her mind, compress it, and password-lock it. More importantly, she could now further upgrade her weapons and ruin shadows' days all the better now. That alone made the trip, now drastically cut short, worth it.