T-Plus 16

Oliver had to pull the scientist back from entering his natural habitat. They had arrived at the technician’s experimentation area, decorated with the splatters of alien matter. Most of the earlier ones had darkened in color and blended in with the grey rubble and floors in the dark. The closer they got to the egg pedestal, the brighter the remnants became, and the more veins bulged up from the ground. A few more steps and they would wake several more than they’d like at once.

“Wow, there really are an uncountable amount of aliens here,” Toast exclaimed with excited claps.

“Did you think I was exaggerating?” Oliver snorted as he surveyed the area for the thinnest bunch of veins.

“‘Numerous’ can be a wide range of amounts,” Toast retorted, “ranging from several handfuls to uncountable. This can be classified in the ‘tens more than I was expecting’ category.”

“So you thought I was exaggerating,” Oliver said flatly.

After skirting several clumps of alien tendrils, the technician found a point of entry. Although still double the number of what he had been handling on his own, with Toast here now the number was manageable. Oliver double-checked the number of tendrils his foot would reach with one stomp, counting three sets of three all clustered together.

Toast came over to watch Oliver measure the width of his feet with aliens. He squatted some distance away with his light pointed at the floor around Oliver. Once Oliver was semi-confident that he wouldn’t aggravate more than necessary, he gave Toast a nod. The scientist stood, positioning himself just within arm’s reach. Confirming the location once again, Oliver stomped down on his marked area.

As before, his foot didn’t come down on hard tile, but came in contact with something that bounced and resisted his weight like a rubber tube protruding from the ground. He stomped down a second time for good measure before hopping back away from the tendrils that drilled out of the ground, reaching for his feet. The tops of these aliens were completely rock, but the bottom half and their tendrils were still coated in their original flesh-like goop.

“Wow! They really are half rock!” Toast cheered as he grabbed the piece ceiling tile that was beside him.

He bashed the alien that approached him away, running circles around them as Oliver kicked over the first alien in front of him, watching it tilt over in comical fashion, unable to regain balance with its rock head weighing it down. He climbed up the hill of rubble behind him, gaining the high ground against the nine half-evolved aliens.

All had varying degrees of evolution, with the greatest ratio of rock to flesh being sixty:forty. The one alien with the most rocky bits hovered near the back of the group, its mouth forming ‘o’ shapes in preparation to spit rocks at him and Toast. As he lurched out of the way of several grabbing tendrils, he noticed the rock alien in the back winding up with its projectile.

“Watch that back one!” he warned, kicking his current assailant back into the pile of rubble.

Oliver pulled out his blowtorch, burning away the multiple tendrils reaching for him. He glanced at the furthest alien’s aim, rolling out of the way as a gust of pebbles slammed into rubble above his head and causing a small cascade of dust and rocks to come tumbling down. Several of the aliens closest to him got caught up in the mini avalanche, pushing them away from him.

With a moment of leeway, Oliver saw Toast across the way dealing with his own set of aliens. A number of those around the scientist were mostly rubbery flesh, and he easily burned away those parts and filled the air with the smell of burnt plastic. Oliver scrunched his nose, scrambling away as he kept an eye on the scientist’s methods.

Once he burned away the non-rock part, he picked up the remaining rock parts to chuck at other aliens or just crushed them under pieces of debris he picked up from the surrounding area. Their rock halves were sturdier and took several hits before they would see cracks spreading on their heads. It was far more efficient than what he’d been doing so far, so Oliver adopted it into his own methods and dispatched several of the squishier ones around him in the same way. Every time he heard faint gurgling of pebbles from the back, he would start rolling behind cover, cowering and keeping his head down as a pebble spitwad flew over his or Toast’s heads.

Soon, it was just them, cracked alien heads, and the only alien they had summoned that could spit rocks remaining. Oliver sat behind a stack of ceiling support beams, wincing when he heard the thud of rocks against rubble right behind him. After dealing with the other eight with Toast’s help, his breath had run ragged and his pants sported a few rips and tears where the slier aliens had grabbed a hold of him. The front pocket of his backpack had taken the brunt of a desperate bodyslam, and the strap that held his trusty flashlight had been ripped off by a wayward tendril. For now, his flashlight remained in his hand, rendering one of his hands effectively useless in the upcoming fight. He wasn’t quite sure where Toast had taken cover, so he wasn’t sure how well the scientist was faring compared to himself.

“Toast? Are you alright?” he called out, peeking out around his wall.

The alien hadn’t moved very far from its original spot, although its bottom half was more maneuverable than its fully evolved form. The two of them had hidden themselves behind sturdy walls to recover their energy, while the alien was gearing up for another rocky projectile.

“I’m good. How do you want to do this?” the scientist responded from somewhere to his right.

“I’ll burn it. Can you deal with its head?”

“I wonder if I can pick it up and throw it.”

“Isn’t it too late to be wondering that?” Oliver asked as he started searching for a safe way to meet up with Toast’s voice.

“Look at that thi- woah!”

Oliver glanced out to see Toast cowering behind a flimsy light cover, a spattering of pebbles dropping down from above him. Evidently, the scientist had the same idea he did and was using the conversation to pinpoint where he was located to meet up. As the alien was reeling back for another one, Oliver rushed out to pull the scientist into safety, ducking just in time for another rock bullet to smash into the floor behind him.

“That was close,” Toast sighed when they were both in cover again.

He dusted off his coat and ran his fingers through his dirtied blonde hair, shaking out the pebbles that had fallen into it. The scientist had fared better than Oliver with only a few rips and tears on his lab coat, probably because it was made of better protective materials than his technician uniform. If anything, the scientist was covered in more alien matter than him, and there were singe marks on the edges of his sleeves where his blowtorch’s flames had licked.

Looking at him and then comparing how much of the alien’s mass was rock, Oliver couldn’t help but ask,

“Are you sure you’ll be able to pick that up?”

Toast laughed as he peered back out at the alien.

“Of course not! Like I was saying, look at that thing! It’s more rock than slime matter. Give me your flashlight, and you can go lift that!”

Oliver doubted he would get his flashlight back if he handed it to the scientist, whether because he would claim it for himself or lose it in one of his gross experiments. Regardless, he handed it over to Toast, narrowing his eyes and scrutinizing him until he saw the flashlight get clipped to the other strap on the scientist’s backpack. He also handed over his extra blowtorch, regretting the decision as soon as Toast began waving them around in “dual wielding” motions.

“Hahah! Leave crippling it to me!”

“Just make sure you don’t burn yourself,” Oliver sighed, peering around the corner to check what the alien was doing.

It had inched forward while they were discussing their plans to its demise, moving toward where it had almost struck Toast. It had stopped its gurgling, ambling around where it had last sensed them. He had no doubt that the moment they approached it, it would start spitting rocks at them.

“I wonder where its spit comes from,” Toast muttered, peering out right beside him. “You think it generates it from inside it? Use a part of itself to become its bullets? Or does it use rocks from its surroundings, compress them, and then spit it at us?”

“Does it make a difference right now?” Oliver asked, gesturing for the scientist to follow his lead.

“Of course it does!” Toast said, crawling behind him as they kept their heads down behind the lower piles of rubble and creeping closer to the alien. “One means their ammo source is exhaustible, while the other means it’s infinite.”

Oliver placed Toast into position first, gesturing him to stay put until he was in place and gave the signal. Being separated again didn’t stop Toast’s ability to explain his conjectures, and he simply raised his voice, knowing that the alien’s methods of sensing them had nothing to do with sound.

“See, if we could figure it out, we would know if it was safe to approach when it ran out of ammo or to just run for it if there were too many of them.”

“Don’t we do that already?”

“But there’d be less risk if we knew it with certainty!” the scientist proclaimed as Oliver skirted the area, positioning himself just across from where Toast was still arguing his point.

“Are you ready?” Oliver asked to cut him off.

“I’ll start then?”

Exchanging nods, the scientist finally ended his tirade, whipping out the two blowtorches in his possession and rushing toward the seemingly unawares half-rock alien. Shouting phrases that made it evident Toast had seen too many martial arts movies and played too many games in his freetime, the scientist circled the alien, dodging its still mostly fleshy tendrils and burning away its soft bottom half. Once Toast had dealt with most of its mobility, dodging several of the alien’s rock bullets by either kicking it away or running to hide behind cover, Oliver rushed into the fray and heaved up the remaining rock parts of the alien.

It was a lot lighter than he was expecting, lifting it above his head when he exerted more power than he intended. He let go, and the two of them watched as the alien flew into the air, spitting out rocks as it flew. It slammed into the ground next to them, bouncing slightly before it landed. There were cracks around the edges where it connected with the ground on its rough landing, but the alien was still very much alive and was already aiming its next set of rocks at them.

The two split up in a panic, diving to avoid the rocks that rushed straight at them. They looped around, meeting up again to discuss their next course of action.

“Wow, it’s a lot tougher than it looks,” Toast observed.

“You don’t say,” Oliver retorted. “It’s a lot lighter than it looks. You might’ve been able to pick it up too.”

“Heh, it sounds like a mollusk,” Toast said. “Since it’s in the middle of evolving, maybe it changes its exterior before its interior. Which would be why it still keeps some of its elastic properties. We can probably toss it around a few more times before it actually cracks. Or we can try burning it. Wonder if lighting it up with oil or something would work...”

“If we had something combustible, this would’ve been much easier,” Oliver muttered, glancing around them for some circuitry.

“Well, that’s something we can try later when we get our hands on some. Now charge!”