round 2 Iron Breaker - A Threat

[Segolene LeMarnix]

((Spawning Ground, The Void))

:: Iron Breaker could sense them before he even reached their ancient spawning ground. Or rather he could sense the absence of them. The Hardskins were immune to their natural powers. Entirely invulnerable to the control they so easily asserted over others, and it was that immunity that made them a void in the sea of thoughts the Collosoforms swam through. One Hardskin limped towards a massive concentration of its kind, further off and another, stranger, Hardskin sat silently in space. This stranger was different. Iron Breaker could sense them in the void sea. Hundreds of thoughts and emotions glowing like a hundred stars, each a separate voice. But among those lights there were voids. Like the Predators that have dogged their people since time immemorial. And on the Hardskin Predator, where there was always cold void, emptiness, there was now a handful of lights. ::

:: Iron Breaker seethed. Born in Broken Light postured and flashed like the youngling that he was, always ready to first warn and threaten. Never acting. Iron Breaker acted. The old, scarred veteran undulated forwards, gaining speed quickly. He dispensed with flashing off a threat, and instead allowed his anger and fury to set him in a pure white glow. His carapace was pitted and cracked along nearly every foot. A half dozen massive metal spars stuck from him in odd angles, war trophies he'd earned fighting the Hardskin Predators for multiple generations. Their harpoons still glinting in the dull light he gave off. One of his feelers was missing, sheared off by the Predators grasping claws before he had torn it completely off in his rage and spilled the Predators into the sea. To his kind he was ancient and knarled, no longer young and swift like Born in Broken Light, but massive and immensely powerful. A warrior with few equals among his people, and a storied history filled with shattered Hardskins and countless victories. ::

:: He moved directly towards the new threat and dispensed with the usual psychic bow wave his kind usually put off. Instead he focused his mind towards rousing the swarms that clung in torpor to his carapace. The twitched and rose groggily, quickly shaking off their slumber and becoming aware. Iron Breaker aimed for the long flat disc that made up the new Hardskins bulk and angled his strike to drag and skid along its top surface. He rocketed past Born in Broken Light without so much as a pulse of greeting and slammed into the Hardskin with gratifying force. He raked along it's edge from one end to another and felt a burst of satisfaction as multiple holes were opened by his rigid flank. The swarm needed no further encouragement and went to work. ::

:: Passing the rear of the Hardskin, Iron Breaker turned tightly between the two glowing spars of the creature and coiled to strike again. This time he rose up between the spars and past the disk, up and up until he was looking down on the new, weaker Hardskin. He paused a moment to take in this new foe and wondered why it hadn't clumsily fired any spears at him yet. It made no matter. The lights inside were flickering and dying in places and he was hungry to snuff out others. Like a shot he descended on the Hardskin and smashed through an invisible barrier of force. The act hurt but it was not beyond him to breach it and he screamed into the void as he shattered the field. The feedback shook him inside and made him sick for a moment, but it only arrested his descent by a fraction and he smashed into the top of the disk section, rupturing the Hardskin in multiple places. ::

:: With a roar Iron Breaker found purchase with his carapace and gripped hard, buckling the Hardskin beneath him. With enough force and a good grip he would begin to tear this foe creature to shreds. ::

Iron Breaker
Cosmozoan Guardian and Warrior

as simmed by

Lieutenant Oliver Weston
Intelligence Officer
USS Drake