Fidelja trembles as Mishek's song washes around her, but either he's keeping it off her or she's reached a peaceful plateau of fear. Both seem likely. The figure is on them now and Fidelja strikes out with the hot end end of her welding arm, aiming vaguely at a joint, but mostly trying to manuever so that she can catch one or both clawed hooks with the clamps closest to her elbow. She's screaming, but only internally.
Dismayed and puzzled by the lack of effect from his song, Mishek resigns himself to combat, for which he's really not suited. Fidelja seems to know what she's doing, so he steps to one side to flank the pirate, grabbing one hooked arm to hold it immobile. Then he realizes both arms, grabbed from behind, would be more effective. Oops. Hmm. At least he's hampering one.
The pirate turns, clumsy but implacable, and tries to sink its free gauntlet of hull-peircing hooks into Mishek.
Fidelja's initial flailing does not seem to accomplish much, but as the pirate turns on Mishek, arm striking directly past her, one of the figure's hooks clinks and catches in the clamp low on her cybernetic arm. She stumbles off balance toward the taller pirate, wrenching their paired arms up and away from Mishek, and, ooh hey, the flare of her welding arm is now angled directly at that cracked faceplate; she can work with that.
Mishek isn't sure whether the blazing hot point on the end of his companion's arm is more alarming or if their opponent's very sharp-looking hooks are, but either way this whole situation is less than ideal. He sees what Fidelja is going for a second before realizing what an easier target she'd have if that faceplate were out of the way, and decides to make this occur. The advantage of being treekind is that one's fingers have the strength it takes to burrow through stone, so when he digs them into the crack in the faceplate and pries, a large chunk of the thing comes away.
A large chunk of the pirate's face also comes away: whatever cracked the helmet earlier was evidently very hot and very fatal. Despite being pretty obviously dead, the pirate still nonetheless struggles against its two adversaries, thrashing and swiping with its hooks, trying to gouge and tear.
The pirate--corpse?--pirate's face smells like burned meat. It smells *more* like burned meat a moment later when Fidelja rams her welding arm into the--okay, nope, not thinking about that, never thinking about any of this again, oh god, oh god, oh Muamman's soot-black beard.
"I don't think that's going to help when it's already fertilizer," Mishek points out. Fertilizer shouldn't keep moving, though, it should lie down quietly and turn into nice nourishing mulch, not try to turn other people into fertilizer. This is baffling, and incorrect, and he can't help but think rude. Belatedly he realizes the hooks that he and Fidelja are struggling against are only metal so far as the gauntlet part goes, and the suit can't be much harder to tear than the faceplate was to break open. Carefully moving his hold farther down the arm, he keeps the flailing hooks away from him with one hand, digs the fingers of the other under the edge of the gauntlet, and wrenches.
Being torn into several pieces finally parts the remainder of the pirate's head with its spinal cord, and the body drops inanimate to the ground. Around them the ship stretches out dim and quiet, for a long moment. Then, from very far off, comes the faint sound of dragging footsteps.
Fidelja stares stunned at the torn apart body for a long moment and then turns her stare into the darkness where noises are starting. "Well, we found someone," she says shakily. "Can we go back to the ship now?"
Mishek frowns in the same direction. "Well, that was the original purpose, yes... But our friend Hamfast does business here. Should we perhaps try to learn if anyone is still alive? We don't even know what's causing this. Dead bodies aren't supposed to walk around - unless there's a necromancer around with very little regard for proper casting protocol and other people's safety."
"Says the guy who ported into a smelting vat," Fidelja mutters-- and then immediately feels ashamed of herself. Mishek just saved her life, probably. And you're supposed to look out for your neighbors. Out here on the fringes of space pretty much everyone counts as a neighbor... right? Fidelja stares at the burned and broken body of the pirate, where Hamfast's green service-spider is poking around taking readings. "Okay. Okay, right. We should take a look around. If we run into any more like this we'll--we'll aim for the spine. That seemed to do it. No problem."
"Yyyes," Mishek says thoughtfully. "No problem, assuming they don't have distance weapons. Although I suppose they might not be able to use them properly, being dead. That one certainly didn't walk very well." He considers a second. "Perhaps we should... try to avoid them if possible? Do you think hiding would work?"
Fidelja eyes the tall, whippy tree-man from his toes to his six-foot-something head. "...Maybe not." Then again, this *is* an elven facility. They're tall. She rubs her face with her organic hand. "It wasn't very fast. Hide when we can? Move fast when we can't." They need to figure out what caused this. Or find a survivor. The latter possibility sounds less likely to end with them also getting shambling-corpse-ified. "The living quarters are probably near the orchards," she hazards. She's never met an elven farmer that wasn't a bit of a nature snob. "We can see if any of the Yavanda folk are holed up there."
"Oh yes, that makes good sense," Mishek agrees, pleased. "We should be able to outpace them if necessary. Well, off towards the orchards, then." And grow lights, and nutrient-rich water or liquid fertilizer--all kinds of potential delights... assuming the place isn't swarming with the vicious kind of upright fertilizer.
The orchards are still running as normal: grow lights on, fresh air filtering through. But all the elves are missing, rather than working. Scattered tools lie where they were dropped, and fruit is crushed under both bare footprints as well as heavier tread.
Fidelja immediately regrets suggesting they go through the orchards. Her eye implants can adjust, but the lights are still unpleasantly bright, the leaves rustling in the filtered air make ominous sounds, and the greenery everywhere looks like it could hide all manner of unpleasant things. On the plus side: Mishek will have a much better chance of blending in in this lot. "What do you think happened here?"
Mishek shivers all over, leaves rustling, at standing in the right sort of light again. It takes an effort to keep from crooning happily at the nearby trees, rumbling a song of growth and good rooting. He mustn't get distracted, though, there might be fleshly people in need of help. Folk who run a lovely tree home like this must be pleasant, it would be dreadful if something bad had happened to them. He looks around at the dropped tools and crushed fruit (such a waste of the seeds, but there's always enough to spare). "It looks as though they stopped work in a great hurry. Perhaps the pirates' arrival frightened them? They may have fled or gone to defend the place." Frowning, he looks across the large, pleasant orchard to the areas outside the grow lights. "I think perhaps we should begin searching from here. We can't guess where they might have gone to hide, but we can look. Even if we find no one, there might be more signs of what happened."
Several hallways are empty. One is spattered in elvish blood as well as blood that's thicker, older-looking somehow, as if congealed. A pirate lies in the middle of the hallway, thoroughly decapitated, though its clawed gauntlets are a fresh, gorey red. There are broken farming tools scattered around, and the shattered remains of a float pallet, tipped on its side and used as an ineffective barricade. The sound of heavy, dragging footsteps echoes down from the left corridor of the t-juncture at the end of that gorey hallway.
Fidelja grimaces from the decapitated pirate to the noises down the hallway, skittering a half step back. She unslings her ax from her back--aim for the spine, right, she can do this. It's just like nursery school lessons. Only with a person as a target instead of a practice post. Rrrright. She feels frozen. How fast are these things? How *smart* are these things? On impulse, she runs a quick web search: "killer corpses trying to eat me, advice", but mostly gets back info from horror vidsticks, racist anti-ghoul web forums, and stupidly technical necromancy texts. She blinks rapidly at Mishek and tries to act like she has any idea what she should be doing. "Lure it down the hallway?" she suggests softly. "Fight or run depending on how many turn up?"
