There were a lot of problems that could be solved by carrying around a human body, though Gudrun would, if pressed, probably admit that this was negated somewhat by the amount also created in doing so. Aside from being an optimally-shaped shield (no better way to stave off a hangover than another drink, as her mom used to say), it also was a fantastic defense against arcanists. Military science had spent years figuring out the best way to artificially trigger the human body's resistances to the Power in a way that didn't involve carrying around a truckload of machinery, but even now there was still no substitute for the real thing.
Even a well-designed mannequin could be the anatomical defense, of course, but anybody who knew their shit understood that at this point it was a resistance in name only, with practically every modern combat incantation built to sidestep it like it was nothing. But for the motion defense, the neurological defense-- Gudrun didn't care to understand the specifics, she knew it hadn't been that easy, and they still needed to do it the old fashioned way. And even after the heart stopped, a body still had a minute of M left in it, and a solid five minutes of N.
More than enough, in other words, to do anything that fucking mattered.
Of course, she had all her own resistances. (Shit, what kind of mouthbreather would become a soldier if they didn't?) But two people close together complicated the targeting process, made it harder to tell where one person ended and another began. And that delay, that little two seconds of scrambling as they tried their hardest to think beyond the pissy 6 month training course they made them do in school or whatever, was everything.
...though, as what had happened back in the Lavyrinthikos had shown, it wouldn't matter much if they decided to just go with brute force instead. But that was just life! Sharks lived forever while humans were still getting bullied by leopards because they didn't look back. She was pretty sure she read that somewhere. Or maybe it was in a drama? Whatever. Survival of the fittest! Kill or be killed!
Gudrun had only caught a glimpse of what was happening in the ballroom, but it was enough to make it clear that still being on this floor five minutes out from now would be a fucking terrible idea, and the fact that she'd just shot a dude through the head bumped the timer up for this particular spot to about 15 seconds. She'd thrown the still-twitching corpse over her shoulder and started hoofing it before she even had a plan.
(Dying gods this prick was heavy. The navy really would take any arcanist with a pulse nowadays. Or wait, were they even navy? Or had they just snuck on the ship and put on uniforms? Not worth thinking about right now.)
The job was to protect Lamu, and while honestly the whole thing had started to seem a little sketchy, she was pretty sure this slut she was meeting with was probably worth it too. Actually, wasn't this a huge opportunity? Yo, if she saved a bunch of alliance fat cats from the Triumvirate or terrorists or whoever these dipshits were, she'd be a bona-fide hero. They could give her a medal, put her in the papers! Actually, that would probably a disaster, but at the very least she'd make a lot of cash.
But she was getting ahead of herself. The Obsidian lounge was somewhere on this floor. Where on this floor? She remembered trying to memorize the map at some point - always a good idea, to memorize the map, basic stuff - but now she was too drunk to remember. Shit! Why did they have to name the rooms after rocks anyway? Why couldn't they just use numbers like normal people? Something real twisted happened to your brain when you got rich.
The pamphlet. Right, yeah, it was still in her bag. Using one arm to keep the corpse steady - it was drooling on her shoulder now, gross - she used her 'free' hand, meaning the one that was currently holding a pistol, to root around in it, her eyes remaining locked ahead. Dodging her wallet and some silverware from the room she couldn't fit in her suitcase, and something slightly wet she couldn't immediately recall the nature or origin of, her fingers found the distinctive texture of parchment. Grabbing it through the trigger, she pulled it out and glanced down for just a moment.
Other side of the floor, two halls off. Great. Great great great.
There was nowhere to hide in these halls, so the only possibility was sheer speed, which the body made difficult, but it was send-or-shit time so she locked in, kicked off her fancy sandals and smashed her feet into the carpet. She just barely made it to the first corner when she heard people behind her shouting, but since this wasn't followed by urgent footsteps or gunshots they probably hadn't caught on yet, although she'd be shocked if they wouldn't be searching the whole area within the next minute. The shorter hall at the bottom of the rectangular layout was mercifully empty except for a couple of dudes who had been tied up and gagged, who Gudrun decided on the spot she was going to pretend she didn't see, despite the noises of alarm and pleading they were making.
Cool, okay. Think. How were they gonna get out of this shit? As she reckoned it - not confidently, the adrenaline was barely beating out the booze - it depended on how far this mutiny went. If it was contained to just the ship they were on, then an obvious answer sprung to mind. Since they had no shot of winning against the two battleships on their flanks, the tactic had to be to take the passengers hostage. That made sense with what she'd seen a minute ago-- Locking down everyone in either their rooms or up on the top deck, getting them away from the more open areas, taking control of central parts of the ship. Yeah. Yeah, checked out.
But if that was the case, there was obviously a hole in the plan. Right now, they'd need to be focusing their attention down there, where all the soldiers and staff would be. But that twink who'd been showing them around earlier mentioned that the shuttle was on the top deck too. So if they moved fast, and got most of the people up there in, they could fuck off to one of the other ships and they wouldn't have shit.
...again, assuming the mutiny wasn't happening over there. If it was, they were probably screwed. But again: Sharks. That was a problem for five-minutes-later Gudrun.
Approaching the next corner, Gudrun heard dull, heavy thuds, the kind she associated with people using the Power but hiding it with that one thing they did. She shot to the wall, peeking just slightly ahead. Three people, one guy in a servants outfit, a girl and a dude in military uniform. Two people in black chitons dead on the ground. The guy in the servant's outfit was injured, leaning against the wall and yelling something at the other two.
All three of them were outside the door to the Obsidian Lounge.
There was no time to even think about how stupid a plan it was. First, Gudrun tore the stupid arcanist tiara off the corpse's head and put it on herself, taking his scepter in hand. Then she shifted her position, letting it hang to her left as if she were supporting it over her shoulder, then hunched as if she herself were in pain, smearing a little blood on her chest. She hid her hand with the gun behind his back; good thing she was ambidextrous.
Then, with a poorly acted limp, she stepped around the corner.
"Hey, assholes!" She shouted, with a despondent expression. "You can't hear me right now behind your gay little barrier, but if I look like this you'll probably think I'm trying to save your guy!"
Holy shit, people were so dumb! They were actually going for it. The lady was totally running out of the field to talk to her!
Gudrun's eyes darted. The guy in uniform, currently in the process of bleeding out, had a scepter. But the other two were just fuckos with rifles. If she could take them both by surprise, get over to him before he had a chance to realize what was happening...
The woman, Mekhian with straight hair, passed through wherever the sound bubble was. "What the hell happened?" She hissed urgently as she approached. "Are you with the guest team?"
"Yeah that's right," Gudrun said, using speed to disguise her terrible acting. So they had guys in with the crowd too? Made sense, since the guy who shot his shot at Tar-Izzy was probably one of them. "Some cunt we were trying to get to go back down the elevator went for the ballroom door and saw what was going on. She went psycho when we tried to take her in, hit him in the head."
"Take her in? You mean to the others in the ballroom?" She continued approaching. Yeah, closer, closer.
"I dunno, I only showed up when it was kicking off."
The woman wrinkled her nose. "Are you drunk?" One more step.
"Nah, they got me in the head too."
"That's--"
But it was too late. Twisting her whole body, Gudrun hurled the corpse forward, slamming it and herself into the woman with as much force as she could presently muster. Then, before she could recover and raise her rifle - her big, fancy-ass ceremonial rifle, the type they'd given all the goons for this outfit - Gudrun tackled her, elbowed the slut in the gut, tore it from her hands, and stuck the pistol right against her temple.
Then, without bothering to clarify the situation with any verbal commands, she simply charged forward, sandwiching her behind the corpse under her arm. Yeah that's right. One big happy family!
As she hoped, the guy with the rifle froze up, not knowing what the fuck to do, shouting something and trying to aim but unable to get a shot without hitting his buddy. Meanwhile, the arcanist on the ground was taking way too long to go for his scepter. If he was injured, he might not have put his barrier up yet, and even if he had there were limits to how much punishment they could take. Get close, kill the girl she was holding, shoot the first dude quick as fuck--
Something hit Gudrun just as they passed through the sound bubble. She couldn't process what was happening at first, but it felt like a bomb had gone off below her crotch. No-- That was her first thought, but it wasn't quite that bad; it just felt like a bomb because it shoves her back really hard. Her, the corpse, and the whore she was holding all went flying in different directions, Gudrun forwards, her towards her friend, and the corpse basically straight up in the air.
She fell on her back with a thud, her head spinning like crazy, vaguely feeling like she needed to puke-- But she couldn't lose focus for a second, not now, she'd fucking die! Lock in! LOCK IN!
"Amura, pin her!" One of the men shouted, the words only half reaching her brain.
Another arcanist. One of them had to have come up behind them-- Except no, she looked behind her, the hallway was empty, what? Were they hidden in one of the little rooms? She turned back in front of her.
The woman was now trying to get up from her stomach, her nose bleeding. At first Gudrun thought she was muttering under her breath, but then she realized... her forefinger was twitching.
Twitching while pointed at her.
Wait, what the fuck? She's an arcanist too?! Then why was she--
Nope, nope, no time for questions, only for actions. Without a moment's further hesitation, Gudrun pointed her pistol at the girl, wait, shit, the dude with the rifle was aiming at her too and now she had no cover. Okay, nuclear option: In the space of a half-second she grabbed the scepter she'd been holding, pointed ahead, and - shutting her eyelids tight - shot its head right off.
Gudrun had heard that back in the day, scepters were filled with a kind of pure energy that, if you broke 'em, would go off like a bomb, tearing apart whoever held them and any other unlucky goons who happened to be in the area. It happened a lot in dramas about the Tricenturial War; some arcanist would take a bullet to the heart or some shit, but instead of just bleeding out would throw himself at the enemy. Kapow! (Honestly she found that kinda self-sacrificing shtick kinda annoying. They even made you swear an oath about putting the mission before your life in the army-- Who actually believed in that shit anyway?)
Nowadays it was a lot more boring. Instead of killing you in a big fireball, the energy they used just gave you cancer if you didn't get treated for it within a few months, and occasionally gave people seizures, which based on Gudrun's experience most soldiers on half-decent pay ended up giving themselves after a few slow nights anyway. Yet it still did something.
It made a really, really bright light.
She did her best to bury her face behind the body as it happened, but it barely helped. The entire universe went white, so white it almost hurt. The girl in front cried out in surprise, and one of the men - the one who didn't shout the thing a minute ago, he had kinda an Umibrican accent, fucking inbred Umbricans she swore to fucking God - cursed loudly. The other one shouted 'get the logic engine!', probably to call for backup.
One of the many redeeming qualities Gudrun considered herself to possess was that she had good ears, and not just in the sense that they looked good (though they did look good). She was good at getting a sense of where sounds were coming from.
Actually, she guessed that was more of a spatial thing than hearing. And she did kinda have some tinnitus back from the war she'd never bothered to get treated. (Now that she thought about it, was her hearing actually dogshit?)
The point was, she dropped hard to the ground again and started shooting even though her vision was still mostly blotted out. Everybody started screaming after that (someone said something about 'damage'), and the situation got a little vague. Gunfire was coming from the other side of the hall in return, and the smell of viscera was in the air, though it didn't seem to be her viscera so she was probably winning. She heard something heavy thump against the ground, and the sound of movement.
She blinked, trying to aim in its direction. Her head suddenly felt like a bag of nails. Maybe pulling that move right after being thrown on her ass, after running at full tilt while carrying something heavier than herself, while also having had maybe seven or eight drinks - maybe that hadn't been such a great idea.
Something warm and fleshy struck Gudrun hard in the shoulder, only just missing her head and neck when she moved on instinct - a person, she was pretty sure, even if her brain didn't quite feel like it was working properly. She couldn't tell who, though presumably it was one of the people she was fighting. She immediately fired upwards, but they grabbed her wrist and tried to wrest her pistol from her hand.
Reflexively, she leapt up and used her free hand to attempt to drag them to the ground, slamming her face into their chest. They half-stumbled, kneeing her in the gut, which caused Gudrun to immediately vomit violently. After this they made a weird noise (she was now beyond the point of being able to describe noises) and fell backwards.
Chest and neck covered in partially-digested fine dining, she fell upon them like a hunter-gatherer. She slammed her fist into the approximate location of their eyes while biting murderously at one of the hands trying to take her pistol. Though she was pretty sure she got a finger, the pistol fell somewhere, at which point she forgot it existed and began simply smashing her fists into the indistinct figure below. They tried to reach for something, or do something, so she grabbed the offending hand and twisted it violently - lurching her body violently to the side to slam the other away - then shimmied up their chest, trying to put her knee on their throat.
Something went wrong and they both ended up on their sides. They were still trying to get their hands free and reach for something - she could almost place the word, it was like, y'know, one of those - but she kept stopping them in their tracks. Eventually, they gave up and started trying to strangle her. Big mistake, fucko! She did that shit for fun. (Not in that way. She was like, on the diving team in the Maiden's League in tertiary.) She headbutted 'em, kept smashing their face--
At this point, Gudrun's memory of events ceased.
𒊹
"Gudrun," Lamu said sharply, putting her scepter down and clapping her hand against her companion's cheek as she lifted her head up against the sofa's armrest. "You need to wake up, now. Wake up."
"U-Uurngh." The woman's throat lurched. Blood and mucus sputtered out of both her mouth and nose.
"Gudrun."
Slowly, like a sleeping princess, her eyes fluttered and opened, so bloodshot and dilated they could have belonged to a tree frog. "Uhhh." She coughed up a third, more grey-tinted fluid. "Oh fuck, dude. I'm fuckin'-- I'm fuckin'--"
"Focus," Lamu said. "You need to be awake. I'm paying you to be awake."
"M-My head. Dying gods, holy shit. It's like a ghost cummed in my skull."
Nhi, who was perplexingly serene despite the situation, chuckled to herself. "Your friend's got an interesting command of language."
"Gudrun, what happened?" Lamu asked insistently.
"I-- Where are we--"
"The Obsidian Lounge. You were on your way here." She glanced towards the door, which had been barricaded both with the Power, and the table that had previously sat in the middle of the chamber... not that it would help much against any serious threat to get inside. "Or at least, that's my best attempt to rationalize your actions."
The injured woman laughed in a low, erratic way that made her sound like a 13-year-old boy. "You're funny, Lamu."
"Gudrun, focus!" She put her hands on her shoulders.
"Fuck, okay, focus, fuck." She blinked blearily several times, sharply clearing her throat. "Uh. Lemme think." She pursed her lips. "I was coming after you, like I said, but when I took the elevator up, uh... Right, right, there was some bitch who was trying to keep everybody off the deck. One of the servants. I pushed past her, but I realized I'd dropped my engine back in the big room, so I went to get it and this guy stopped me and--" She cut herself off, blinking again. "Whatever. I saw in there, and they were like."
"What, they were what."
Gudrun stared into the middle distance, as if her mind was resetting. "They were dragging some bodies in uniform into the bar, and dragging some other assholes in plain clothes off somewhere. Backstage? Yeah, like... The kitchens."
Nhi sighed, crossing her legs idly. "So that's how it is after all, eh?" She clicked her tongue.
"So I shot the guy and ran over here, but then there were some bodies, and uh." She sucked on her tongue. "Yeah, it's kinda a blur after that. What happened? How did I get here."
"We heard noises, and found you outside in the process of being throttled," Lamu answered bluntly. "The bodies you initially saw belonged to her security detail, while the group you presumably clashed with were-- The enemy," she said, in lieu of any unwarranted speculation.
Gudrun nodded distantly, as if recalling an event which had transpired decades ago. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
"We don't know anything about what's happening beyond that," Lamu continued. "We lost contact with the bridge and the security staff as soon as everything started happening."
"You, like... Had contact with them in the first place?"
"I did," Nhi explained. She gave a playful wave, wiggling her fingers.
Gudrun stared at her for a moment vacantly, then shook her head as if shaking out the cobwebs. She managed to look at Lamu properly for the first time, narrowing her eyes. "So where's the guy?"
"What guy."
"The one I was brawling with."
Lamu squinted in irritation. "He's over there." She pointed towards the corner of the room.
Gudrun turned her head towards the hastily assembled pile of corpses, with the solitary figure slumped to their death. There were four of the former: Nhi's two men, one bloodlessly dead from the Power and the other with a gunshot wound to the head, and a dark-skinned woman who looked unpleasantly similar to Lamu's mother, whose chest was pierced instead. The living individual, a Rhunbardi with some Saoic traits, could have been his corpse himself; his face, despite their efforts, was still visibly damaged. (Lamu might've had training as a healer, but she wasn't a cosmetic surgeon.)
The woman resting on the sofa frowned in visible disappointment. "Aw shit. I thought I got him."
"It's a very good thing you did not," Lamu said. "We barely managed to keep him alive. He might be the only chance we have to learn what's even happening." If we even have a chance before we need to run, Lamu considered.
"Y'know," Gudrun said lazily, "you're being kind of a cunt considering I just saved your whole ass."
"It's true," Nhi said, smiling.
Lamu sighed through her nose.
"Wait," Gudrun added. She muttered something under her breath. "Three, four..." She blinked a few more times. "There was-- Another dude. Dressed like one of the servants."
Lamu's eyes widened sharply in alarm. "We didn't see anyone like that." Her eyes went to the door again. "If one of them escaped, then we're not safe. He'll bring reinforcements."
Gudrun wrinkled her brow. Her voice was getting lazier and lazier, as if all the drink she had somehow magically transposed from her body to pull off the ridiculous level of violence Lamu witnessed a few minutes ago was now returning redoubled as part of some demonic bargain. "Nah, I dunno. He was real fucked up. Don't think he was going fuckin' anywhere." She coughed, this time more normally.
"If he was already hurt, it's possible he took cover in one of the other lounges before we came out, I guess," Nhi said. "Either way, though, it won't be an issue."
Lamu frowned. "What do you mean? Why not?"
"Because they won't know we're in here."
"I-- That's insane," she replied. "They came looking for us here."
"They came looking for my guards, I suspect," Nhi mused. "And now they're in here, and the ones belonging to their friends."
"Obviously they have object permanence." Despite not being someone who generally used (or often, understood) sarcasm, occasionally Lamu did it by accident.
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" She swirled her drink, as if the last few minutes hadn't even happened and they were still just having their conversation. "But I have a lil' trick up my sleeve that comes in handy in situations like these."
"What sort of trick?"
She sipped. "So long as I don't take any action, then as far as something like this is concerned, I don't exist."
"This bitch is..." Gudrun seemed to be struggling to stay awake. "She's cracked, Lamu. It's the money, it fuckin'-- It's like a lobotomy, bro. We gotta get to the next deck." She groaned. "Bro, I need a lobotomy right now..."
Lamu did her best to ignore Gudrun. "Are you talking about some kind of incantation? You said you weren't an arcanist."
"I did say that, didn't I?" She chuckled.
"This isn't the time for acting ambiguous!"
And yet ambiguous she remained, giving only a little shrug as she idly checked her logic engine.
Lamu sighed sharply. She couldn't trust a word coming out of this woman's mouth, not after all this had happened. She began pacing around the Obsidian Lounge impatiently, biting hard enough into her thumb that it almost drew blood. Her ability to pretend she was a normal person was reaching its absolute limit.
"No matter what, we're not safe," she said, half to the room and half muttered to herself. "What's happening? What are these people doing?"
"Taking control of the ship, evidently," Nhi remarked. "Pretty fast too. Sounds like they had people in positions all across the staff. Smooth operation." She clicked her tongue. "I'll have some harsh words for a few people on my security team if I ever get the chance to talk to them."
"Do you think they're with the..." Lamu hesitated for a moment, looking at Gudrun.
Nhi shrugged once more. "Could be." She looked back up. "Or it could be the Triumvirate. Or hell, the alliance government. They mostly haven't been shitting where they eat, but make no mistake, they've got some zealots nowadays who'd be glad to see the old guard disappear-- And this is a good occasion to make that happen."
Lamu continued pacing. Honestly, despite it being much more dangerous for her personally, there was a part of her that wanted it to be the Brotherhood of the Scorned, because at least that would make this increasingly ridiculous situation come together coherently. Utsushikome, the copy of the Apega they supposedly had on this ship-- It would all come together.
She shook her head sharply. No, that was a foolish way to think. She didn't need to understand anything. They needed to get out.
"What do we do," she asked bluntly.
Nhi inclined her head towards Gudrun. "Young lady, you were saying something about changing decks?"
Gudrun snored. Lamu slapped her (relatively lightly) and Nhi repeated the question.
"Oh yeah. Yeah yeah yeah." She ran a hand over her face. "Yeah, so... I figured the whole thing back in the ballroom happened because they wanted to get everybody out of the central decks. So everyone's in their room or, y'know, up top. And there's like the ship, that's there too, and maybe we could, well, you know, round up the party..." She groaned. "Fuck, what was I saying?"
Smiling pleasantly, Nhi looked back to Lamu. "If I understood your friend correctly, she's suggesting that we try and flee for the shuttle upstairs, bringing whoever we find along our way with us." She tutted. "Bit of a sticky part when it comes to that, though."
For a moment Lamu was in a state of shock at Gudrun actually having remembered something useful, but this was quickly tempered by Nhi's remark. "Sticky part."
"The shuttle is locked to the top deck," Nhi explained. "If you look beneath the surface, this old hunk of junk doesn't have most of the quality of life features we take for granted with our ships in the modern day. No eris anchors. So since it's too small for a proper docking facility, the only way to keep the thing there is with a physical clamp, and that's controlled from the bridge."
Gudrun waved her hand like she was swatting at a fly. "Blow it up."
"Heh, yeah, I suppose it is a simple problem in a way, isn't it." Nhi whistled. "Easier said than done, though, especially if you're trying to be sneaky."
"I don't see what other options we have," Lamu said. "We can't stay on the ship. Even if they're not trying to kill everyone - yet - we have no idea what their objective is."
"Hey, I didn't say it wasn't a decent idea," Nhi said, putting her hands up. "In fact, it might be the best one we've got. If nothing else, going up there would give us a chance to alert the other guests. I'm not normally one to start a panic, but we've got a lot of arcanists with us. Your old friends included."
"Too many fuckin'. Fucking..." Gudrun was already closing her eyes again.
Lamu didn't particularly care for the prospect of sharing the only means of escape with over a hundred members of Grand Alliance high society; inevitably, there would be scrutiny, both from the press and military, when they returned to civilization. But there was nothing for it. A solution now bought at least the possibility for a solution later. "How will we get up there? They pretty much control all the routes by now."
"C'mon, Lamu. This is a renovated military ship. There are other ways to get around than what's on the nice-and-clean map they give you. I happen to know there's one such route in one of the other lounges." She glanced to the side. "The better question is what we do with that fellow in the corner there. Is he in a condition where we can wake him, do you reckon?"
"Perhaps," she replied. "I don't know. I only ever studied healing as a secondary skill." Lamu bit into her lip. "We should leave him. If I were these people, I would move in to capture everyone left at midnight. That's when things will be the most chaotic, when everyone's celebrating."
Nhi nodded... but something in her expression turned, if only subtly, a little sinister.
"Let me try something real quick," she said.