Edwin and Flen were sitting in the command room on Deck 1 which was the opposite side of Andrei's bedroom and the ladies bedrooms. The two were discussing the current affairs going on with Tantan politics and how both of them were glad to not be involved. They both knew that they were fortunate to both be four element sensitive and to not be one of King Fhordin pawns.
Andrei approached the two and did his best to not interrupt them but his presence when he first arrived was felt and they knew he was approaching. The two had looked up when they felt the sudden rush of power and it was intoxicating to both of them. They had forgotten how powerful he felt or maybe he became more powerful they weren't sure.
"Have you ever thought about the fact that anyone within a decent distance from you can feel you?" Edwin said it then realized it sounded better in his head. "I did not mean it that way at all, but when you were pretty far away still we both felt the same rush of power you exude. Is there a way to turn it off or is that a permanent "I AM ANDREI" mode" Edwin made a motion with his arms and body of a mocking massive creature as he shouted.
Andrei chuckled at the mocking attempt by Edwin and was glad that they were in good spirits. "I will figure that out now that you mention it, but in the meantime I wanted to tell you that the scientist we captured from the Ra base is going to set up a live beast ring here for all of us to work on combating beasts as well as retrieving cores. I am going to go back to Dracula to get more blood cores so we can make blood handles out of legendary cores from Sparky's clones so I need you guys to start fighting them and getting as many cores as possible. I will send as many blood cores as I can and hopefully the blood handles created from Sparky make us even more powerful."
Andrei then headed to the cafeteria to find the Sandarians knowing they would be eating and he wanted to get going to rescue their last living brother. He approached them and handed a blood handle to each and told them what they were and if they wanted to trade each other but currently they were the last two available.
Xena produced a Saber shaped sword that she swung multiple times and it felt good and she put it in a secondary hand and then stuck it on her gear on her side. She glanced at what was produced by Blunt's but it was a large mace that looked identical to his tail so she figured he was comfortable with his as was with hers. Andrei even pointed out to just try out each other but they insisted they were good with what they had so Andrei dropped it and proceeded to get ready to port when they were interrupted.
Ashinat and Brutus had been eating at another table but decided they should interject as they saw the whole table stand up. "Let us go with you, we want to try out our new weapons and help you get the last Sandarian." Ashinat was not pleading but was not demanding either. Andrei was about to port just the Sandarians and himself but now that they were going to go he wanted to make sure they were safe so he used Lauren's ability to reach out to Sophia to come to the cafeteria at one to head to get "Red".
Mini and Sophia appeared from the lift and Andrei thought it was coincidence till he realized that Mini was in her mech gear and he hadn't informed her of them leaving. "You think you can just go without me?" She looked him dead in the eye and he realized he wasn't going to win any argument with her and kept his mouth shut.
They all circled up and Andrei was the last to touch as they ported to a planet called "Lootherin" that was full of active volcanos in all directions. Lava rivers and lakes were in every direction of the group when they arrived and Andrei double checked his Galaxy map to make sure he was in the right place. He confirmed it and then looked around to see what might be what. Mini launched up into the air and her four clones were released by Andrei seeing her rise up. She felt their connections upon appearing and she had them pan out in the four directions while she rose straight up to get a birds eye view.
Mini through Lauren now said to Andrei "The planet seems to be desolate, what direction are we to travel?"
Andrei looked at his mini map then stuck his arm out in the direction, Mini looking down saw his direction and then followed it to the horizon. She had a clone already heading in that direction as it was basically due west of their location. Her clone reported a cave but entered it and was empty. Then exiting the cave something killed her clone mech which caused Andrei to pause. "Well shit something got my clone and my clone didn't see it."
"Did you say something just killed your clone?" Andrei responded through Lauren to Mini. Andrei knew that her clones were built with some incredible materials so for it to be destroyed made Andrei worried.
"It didn't see what attacked it but the head was attacked from behind is all I can relay" Mini informed Andrei through Lauren. Then the rest of the clones returned to Mini and Andrei felt a small touch of sadness seeing only four of them in the sky. He refocused his thoughts to the task at hand and they moved out towards his yellow arrow on his mini map.
When they were close to the area where the clone had been destroyed Mini gave them a heads up and then they saw the clone smashed into the ground. They cautiously approached the dead clone on the ground and could see that the head had been smashed into the ground. Andrei felt a rumble in the ground ever so slightly and stopped putting his fist up in the universal stop motion. They all froze and waited for something to happen, Andrei didn't feel another vibration so they proceeded lightly forward. Andrei realized that wasn't going to be happening when the Sandarians all moved, it was no longer silent.
The vibration was felt again coming from a distance and Andrei was pretty sure he heard it as well. Then out of the ground shot out a beast's tail that had multiple spikes with edges in the spikes to pull out flesh or grab a hold of what the spikes impaled. The tail came down at a great speed directly at Andrei who was ready for it with his shield being maxed out and its reflection was going to change this beast's tune. The tail made contact with the shield; the spikes bounced off the shield and smashed back into the ground in the opposite direction.
The entire ground shook and suddenly more tails appeared and started to attack all of them. Andrei ran his "Identify" on the one he just knocked limp onto the ground and it said "Unknown Legendary Beast" which confused him since the interface always gave it name. Then Andrei noticed his yellow arrow was directed right in front of him, which appeared to be the center of all the tails. The ground continued to shake and the tails were lashing out at all of them. The Sandarians were holding their own with their new blood handle weapons.
The tails were swinging at each of them and their footing was becoming harder to keep their balance as the ground was shaking to the point that the humans were bouncing and having to time their attacks with the bounces. Andrei looked around and realized the ground wasn't shaking off to the side and he directed everyone to head that way which as he shouted the first words to move they all lost their balance.
Suddenly they were all lifted up into the air and none of them could figure out why. Mini was only hovering to avoid the shaking but she noticed the change and flew out with her clones and she was the first to see what was actually happening. They were on the back of a gigantic beast, the tails that they were fighting were just small defensive abilities of this massive beast. There was a head that was a tree they had passed earlier not realizing it would be a beast head. The tree's branches had eyeballs on the end of the branches. The overall body of the beast was a crustacean build similar to a crab but it had 24 gigantic legs that still hadn't fully stretched out.
Mini flew to the team and started grabbing those that had no chance of flying off the beast and took them to the side. The Sandarians stayed on and continued to fight the tails hoping to do damage to this beast. Brutus seeing the size as he was being flown to safety of the ground realized this was his time to shine. He had the best weapon for a gigantic beast and he spun up the gatling as Mini flew holding him. She was about to put him down when she saw the damage his gun was doing so she changed directions and held him so he could keep unloading on the beast while being mobile in the air.
The beast's legs came to a full stretch with the Sandarians and Andrei on its back; they were now several hundred feet in the air. The legs then started swinging out at Mini and Brutus who were flying around with Brutus unloading his gatling gun into the beast. The beast's body then went at an angle that caused those on its back to completely lose their balance and slide off. Andrei had just thought about this possibly happening and he had his longsword out and placed barriers all around the ground wanting to make sure all the Sandarians lived through this high of a fall.
They all landed safely and the Sandarians were all confused except for O who had seen Andrei do that before. Xena was the one to say "Thank you for whatever that was, I thought we were all going to fall to our deaths, I never would have imagined we would survive that and I can only guess it was you!"
Andrei gave her a warm smile but then saw a leg coming down on top of her and he placed another barrier above her and shouted "Move!" Xena sped out of the way and they all focused on the gigantic beast. Brutus hadn't stopped firing his poison bullets and the legs swinging at him were noticeably slower. They all could see the slowed down attacks so they all figured that they should help out with whatever they could. They each headed to a different leg that was planted on the ground to attack the feet.
Xena figured the best bet would be to climb the leg and attack closer to the beast's center body. She was rapidly climbing and when she made it to the body she stabbed her Saber into the joint of the leg and the body. The beast made a massive sound of distress and then leapt several miles away. The leap had knocked Xena off the leg, during her fall Andrei placed a barrier where should land and she was slowed down to safely land. They all looked at each other, not sure what to make of what just happened.
Mini had a clone chase after the beast to make sure it ran away while it was running at an incredible pace to where the clone wasn't fast enough to keep up. Andrei was told that information and he instinctively looked the opposite direction wondering if it would circumvent the planet and attack them from that direction. He dismissed the idea as it would probably take the beast several hours but he also noticed his arrow hadn't changed.
The location that the beast had elevated out of was now a massive hole. A clone of Mini's flew down into the hole and scanned the surroundings. Andrei had briefly thought before that the beast had eaten Red and they would never find him but now the arrow still being in the same spot told Andrei that Red must have been stuck down below.
The other two clones soon flew into the hole and several minutes passed before the three were seen emerging with an unconscious Red. The scene was rough for all of them to look as Red was covered in blood. Andrei's fangs popped for a moment but no one noticed and he was able to retract them, he then thought about the last time he had O's blood and what it did for him and he remembered he needed to get a sample of O's siblings as well as everyone else's in Death Squad.
The clones placed Red down in front of Andrei and he instinctively dabbed the blood and licked it.
[+1 Strength +1 Agility]
"Red was on top of two soldiers, it appears that is their blood." Mini spoke seeing Andrei test the blood. Andrei's eyes were then focused on a fresh cut and his finger lightly grazed it and then he licked that finger in a quick light motion.
[+10 HP]
There it was, the Sandarian blood will give him increased vitality and then Andrei felt a bit of pain for killing all those eggs but then dismissed that thought as he knew they were altered. "Let's get out of here everyone grab Red and I will get us back to base." Seeing everyone touch Red he then ported them back to Goliath with each landing in their own rooms and Red was in the Focaine Bath.
Through Goliath Andrei could talk to everyone inside through his mind so he decided to do just that now that they had the first members of their squad. "The Sandarian family has been rescued and are all now a part of Death Squad. I want to give a shout out to Brutus, without you we would not have been able to defeat that Legendary Beast. Yes we didn't get the beast core so it wasn't a true victory but I can say that we are all here right now because of your awesome ability."
"We need to all get stronger, we need to find strong people. This is my challenge to each of you. Bert has created a live combat beast training to both collect cores and to level up your blood handle weapons. I am going to be taking Airwrecka to Dracula and will be collecting more blood cores so that we can make more blood handles. In the meantime if you haven't been scanned to get new gear forged for you then be sure to get scanned on the fourth deck."
"If you have anyone that wants to join and you trust, please invite them. Tell Goliath who they are and Goliath will send out the proper communication similar to what you all received to get here. We have resources that need to be utilized and bases that personnel can be utilized in. I will continue to expand our influence and do the same. I will return from Dracula as soon as I can, Lauren will be here when she can to meet our newest members."
[Quest Complete: ""Sandarian Front Lines"]
[Reward: Sandarian Bond]
[Sandarian Bond is a passive given to the user that is friendly to Sandarians. Each Sandarian in the user's presence will increase both the user and Sandarian's stats by 20%]