The air thrummed with energy. Faq watched with his smoking eyes as the crumpled ball of titanium bulk head began to collapse more in on its self, as if being sucked into some great hole. The metal twisted and whined in protest as it shrank smaller and smaller until it began to tear on one side. The tear quickly breached the full length of one side of the sphere and the whole thing was sucked at once into an inky black portal. Faq planted his feet and felt the pull of the portal. He could see inside of it, and what he saw frightened even the Violence stricken Crazy. He saw what looked like a singularity in space. Zak had opened a portal to a black hole.
With its titanium shell gone the portal was exacting the full gravitational pull of the black hole. Faq began to loose his footing, and started to slide down the corridor. Quickly he sank his mystical battle ax into the floor and held on for dear life. The ax was dragging a long chasm down the hallway as Faq was being pulled closer to the portal. Dust, debris, tools, and all manner of items were being pulled into the corridor, battering Faq as they raced toward it. For a moment the battering stopped and the end of the corridor was filled by a huge draconic form.
“Tanashi!!!” Faq yelled over the howl of the carnage.
“I’m here Faq! Grab a hold!” the dragon yelled and extending his long serpentine arm to the Crazy.
Faq grabbed the heavily muscled dragon arm and was in turn held tight by the dragon’s grasp. Tanashi pulled hard yanking Faq back into the greater docking area, where he and his friends had set up their ambush. He was relieved to see everyone was alright despite the gravitational anomaly. He noticed Idol was already chanting words of magic in the direction of the disturbance, more than likely un-weaving the magic of the portal. Up on the higher landing mezzanine he could see Howitzer, a full conversion, heavily armed and armored Borg, covering him with a powerful looking rail-gun. Towards the center of the bay, on the main landing pad, was Drax etching runes into the metal in a circular pattern, protected by the dome of his telekinetic force field. Further across the bay Faq could see Jonathan Krimbee, a human power armor pilot, in his Ulti-max armor covering Drax as he went about his ritual. Faq wondered where Ash and Rock were, they should have been here by now.
The outer bounds of the portal waivered and shook as Idol finished his chanting. With his boney figures he threw a hand full of sand at the portal and commanded it, “Shut!” The sand struck the surface and the edges waiver a purplish hue for a second and the portal closed in on itself, leaving the docking bay in eerie silence.
“It is done.” said the dead mage.
“Good, I am finished here also. I need your talents to finish this circle.” Drax spoke directly into his mind.
“You know that’s very rude.”
“I know, my radio is not working for some reason. Hurry, time is of the essence.”
Idol jogged over the rune circle as fast as his rotting legs would carry him, passed the threshold of Drax’s force field and set to work drawing the runes and sigils of magic Nefaria had instructed them to draw, an unconventional rune circle fusing magic and psionics, for a result that they were unsure of. The only thing they did know is that the devil Nefaria wanted Zak back and he wanted him back badly. From what the group knew Zak had greatly insulted a demon lord, and to add insult to injury escaped his prison in that plane of chaos back to this plane of existence.
“Whatcha drawin?” Zak’s voice whispered in Idols mind.
“What?”
“You don’t even know what you are doing. Do you?”
“We are stopping you.” Idol said aloud, “TODAY!”
Drax looked up, and regarded Idol. To which Idol informed Drax that Zak was speaking to him telepathically. Drax reached over, touched Idols cold flesh, and spoke into his mind, “Show yourself Zak, its time to finish this.” An inky black pool formed above where Idol and Drax were standing and Zak descended with a vicious leap down. He impacted with Drax’s force field, which he expected to be there, and clung to the top of it, which gave him the illusion of levitating. He examined the circle the two had been working on, and his flaming skull of a head began to laugh maniacally. Harder and harder he laughed, until he was consumed by the explosion of ten or so mini-missiles impacting on his side. The explosion was so great that Drax’s shield flared a bright blue and dimmed out of existence, luckily he had another one up as precautionary measure. Drax and Idol stood unharmed and saw Howitzer, from above, monopolize on the situation and take aim on the smoking figure rolling across the steel grating of the floor, and fired a long burst from his hi-powered rail gun. Ultra-sonically accelerated slugs dug into Zaks body and peppered the floor around the demon. Zak howled in pain and anger and pulled forth an odd looking pistol. “Hey Howitzer, you ever been shot by phase tech?” Zak growled. And let off three consecutive shots toward the Borg. “SHIT!!” Howitzer boomed in his metallic voice and dodged out of the way. “I gotcha Howie, get outta here”, Kimbee barked into his radio, knowing that one shot from phase weaponry would by-pass all metal and armor and do harm directly to the Borg’s biological tissue. Howitzer was out of the fight for now.
“I’m sorry guys, one shot from that and I’m dead”, Howitzer lamented over the radio
“That’s why you’re a pussy” was Idol’s response
Zak, now back to his feet, opened fire on the Ulti-Max that had caught him off guard. Gritting through the pain of each shot, Jonathan Krimbee aimed dead on and fired the Ulti-Max’s powerful rail-gun. Each shot Zak fired was true, and each shot passed through the force-field and metal armor as if it were not there to destroy the flesh of the pilot within. Krimbee took several shots to the body and convulsed in shock, spitting blood across gauges and controls inside of his powered armor. The one shot he managed to fire sent a hi-velocity rail gun slug straight to the head of Zak, spinning him in mid air a few times before landing in a heap on his chest.
Zak began to pull up; he now had a noticeable crack in his skull-like head dripping black ooze, bringing his deadly pistol back to bear on the Ulti-Max that was now making an awkward back and forth motion with one of its arms. Just as he got his hand up, the blade of a mystical dragon headed ax sawed its way up the length of the barrel cleaving it in two and severing four of the fingers off of the hand stopping as sunk into the flesh were his thumb met his palm, lodging rigidly into place. “Opps, that’s two of your toys I broke today” Faq giggled, the shadows gone from his eyes.
“Good throw!” growled Tanashi
Zak tried again to get up, and noticed the floor beneath him shimmered in a slight magic glow. He looked to Drax and Idol, and saw Idol finishing a spell. He looked back to the Dragon and the Crazy, and caught a full blast from the dragon’s breath. Black ooze welled from his devastated hand to the floor sticking close in odd pools due the magic that held him adhered to the Dura Crete flooring.
“Start the end of the ritual Idol.” Drax stated
“You have no idea what you are doing Idol.” Zak cackled, “You honestly think your doing a binding? To what end do you bind me? Not even the plane of chaos can bind me!! Ufffhhh….”
Two full conversion Borg feet landed squarely in the center of Zak’s back. Having jumped from the thirty foot mezzanine there was enough force to crack the floor beneath him. “Come back to play chicken-Borg? heh” Zak wheezed. “You killed my friend you son-of-bitch!!” Howitzer roared and opened fire at point blank with his rail gun into the back of Zak’s head. Metal and steel squealed and popped as round after round after round fed into the back of the demon’s head. Howitzer pulled the trigger until the chain was empty then rocket assist leaped off the demon and launched a volley of three min-missiles from his arm into the prone form. The explosion was deafening and the entire docking bay was lit like a summer’s day. As the smoke cleared, a battered body surrounded by plasma fires was visible. Black ooze flowed freely from the mangled stump of Zak’s head and the leather looking armor that he wore was melted like shrink wrap on the battered form from the multiple missile strikes.
Idol spoke the last words of the ritual and the rune circle flared an angry red. “Bring the body.”
Howitzer and Tanashi grabbed the broken form and dragged it toward the circle.
“You are better off with me, Drax” Zak spoke to Drax’s mind. “That’s a summoning circle, not a binding circle. Nefaria tricked you. Why would you trust a minion from one of hell’s planes? You know this isn’t right, not like how you saw…”
“WAIT!!” Drax yelled as the body of Zak landed in the middle of the circle with a sickening thump.
