FIGHT!

<snip>
"Lookout! She's going to re-appear in her light bee!" Ransom yelled, skidding into the room and stopping as he saw the scene.
</snip>
Crouching down, helping Jay with Jade, Cass winced “Fuck” she hissed, fighting back yet another wave of nausea “We need to – Ah!” she clutched a hand to her chest.
“Cass?” Jay reached out to steady her, his brow knitting with concern.
“Worry about Jade” she balled a fist to rub the area where she had been stabbed “These nanites are just a bit aggressive”
“You’re not going to–”
“Guys!” Jamie’s warning came as Tara swirled up into existence, her form flickering and twisting as she hung in the centre of the room for a moment before she lanced a horribly distended arm out towards him “Whoa, shit!” he threw himself back, out of the way as her jittering fingers swiped through the space he’d just occupied.
Rising from Jade’s side, Jay aimed his pistol at the violently glitching hologram “Tara!” he yelled, distracting her while Jamie darted around one of the beds to drag the medi-bot towards him “Stand down now!”
“W//eak” she turned to face him, wearing his own face, before crackling with static and without warning, flying towards him. Jay, on instinct, fired a shot which streaked past her liquidly distorting form to detonate in a shower of sparks against the far wall.
For a split second, Tara simultaneously projected in two separate places, one copy tearing the pistol from his grasp while the other gave him a backhanded slap like a hammer blow.
“Fucking flyb////o/y” her voice stuttered and shifted as Jay stumbled unsteadily on his feet “//Time to die”
Bringing the pistol up, Tara pointed it at his head as Cass lunged impotently, up from Jade’s side with a look of horror on her face.
“I don’t think so” Ransom swung his dimension slip drive with the intention of jamming the tool down, into Tara’s back, but missed as she voluntarily glitched; the gun clattering to the floor as she juddered and snapped around into a different location, where she felled him with a savage punch to the side of his head.
“N/ot this time” she snarled, her face momentarily twisting to resemble Brittany of old.
Distending her arms, she stabbed them down towards Ransom; the man only just recovering his wits in time to roll aside at the last moment and dodge away beneath one of the beds.
With Tara distracted, Cass looped her arms around Jade and began hauling her out of harm’s way, while Jay sprinted forward to barrel into Tara from behind; the momentum of his attack carrying them both across the room, to land in a together in tangle on the floor "Tara - Stop!” Jay's voice had a note of desperation about it.
Punching him hard in the face, she warped back upright and stamped a foot down onto his midriff, one of Jay's ribs popping as he convulsed beneath her boot, his breath whooshing from his lungs.
“You are so // so // dead” she snarled, flickering down to crouch over him, one hand enclosing his throat in a vice-like grip and holding him pinned to the ground while the fingers of her other hand stretched and distended into long thin spikes “Are you re/ady?” her mouth twisted into a hideous grin as she pushed two of the spikes down, towards his eyes.
“Everybody down!” Jamie bellowed, finally succeeding in reactivating the medi-bot and hauling it around on its servos.
Igniting the secondary cutting laser, he scythed it across the room; the scorching beam sizzling across the wall and setting fire to the sheets of several on the beds before finally hitting Tara, freezing her in place, with her fingers mere centimetres from Jay’s eyes.
Diving forward, Cass scooped the gun up from the floor, took careful aim and shot her.
The detonation from the electroshock round blasted Tara, sideways, off Jay, partially disassembling her holomatrix and exposing the light bee within; leaving Jay to scramble up, out of the way as Cass fired again, this time dispersing Tara’s head. “Stay down, you bitch!”
“///Dead fuck/toy” Tara’s disembodied voice snarled as the fractured remains of her body began struggling back up, onto her feet “Fucktoy wh//ore///”
Her lip curling with distaste, Cass fired once more; the final blast completely obliterating what remained of Tara’s body and leaving her light bee wobbling, mid-air for a moment, before it plinked down onto the ground.
“Is that it?” Cass lowered the gun uncertainly.
“I bloody hope so” Jay winced as he coughed on the smoke filling the air from the smouldering bedding “We should put those fires out before –”
The sprinklers deployed with a sibilant hiss, soaking them all to the skin in seconds.
“Well, that’s just fucking brilliant” Cass sneered, throwing her hands up in disgust as Jade pulled herself up from behind one of the blackened beds “Help me...” she croaked.
The effect was immediate. Jamie and Cass both rushed to her side to help and support her, while Jay stooped to retrieve Tara’s dead light bee from the rapidly pooling water. As he straightened, he came face to face with Ransom.
“Is it like this all the time with you people?” the man asked
Jay grimaced “Kinda”
He was about to qualify the statement and explain that there were occasional intervals of calm (and that he was looking forward to one just as soon as they got out of the infirmary), when Jaxx and Eve sprinted in and hurriedly and sealed the door behind them.
<snip>
Ja[y] asked, "What the Smeg?" Evelina turned to say, "We have a problem."
</snip>
He visibly sagged at this news “You have got to be fucking joking?”


<tag-ooc>
Tara’s dead – hopefully that all made sense; it was a something of challenge writing a fight scene with that many people :-S
There’s more to come from me (and some involvement for Brett), but let’s sort the cleaning chickens out first...</tag-ooc>