Hunters Become the Hunted

 

A few minutes before the blue light officially turns on and the trackers lock onto JJQ, Vedix and Elemental, we gather outside Pod 50, every one of us decked and loaded like juggernauts. We have melee fighters who are going to hold the line, which I am part of, and ranged damage dealers behind them, and then Loflo hidden away somewhere, with his sniper. We told him to find a spot where he wouldn’t be found to stake out, but Swifty is with him just in case. We could see them coming. Hundreds and hundreds of them were charging towards us in a frenzy, hell-bent on slaughter, pushing and jostling and pulling and shoving, desperate to be the first one to the targets, spilling over the rocks and past the Pods. And they were armed.

 

"That bastard Administrator," Luc groans.

"I was right," Elemental exhales.

They were all wielding crude metal knives or cleavers or swords or katanas or spears that were just sharp stones on sticks, but there were eight hundred of them, and each one of them could kill one of us.

"If we open fire and mow em all down," Leon says, "There would probably be none of them left."
"No," Elemental shakes his head. "They shoot rubber bullets."

Leon fired into the ground and found that Elemental was right.

"They hurt enough, though," Nyx says, shuddering. "If you were hit in the head or something you’d probably still die."
"We just need to hit the torso or the limbs, " I reply. "A few hits with those the shoulder or the chest and they won't cause any more trouble."
They're advancing on us now, the pounding of boots on stone thundering throughout the cave. Airo, on my right, thumps his spear on the ground. Ronin, on my left, draws his dual katanas. The enemies are about 400 yards away from us when the Administrator speaks.

"To the Prey and their allies," he says in our heads. "For every Hunter you kill within the next week, you will collectively earn one minute of time outside the cave."

 

It changed everything. The second he said that, we broken formation, and hell let loose. I suppose being told we can go outside and see a forgotten world, after being trapped in a cave for well over a year, really triggered that murderous intent we all had stored away somewhere. Because we charged them so ferociously and viciously that even they enemies, drunk on blood, were stopped dead in their tracks. I hardly remember what happened after that. I remember slamming straight into a wall of bodies, slashing in a wide arc with my weapon, feeling it slice through flesh and bone and blood spraying across my skin. I remember catching glimpses of the others, Luc beating people to death with his gauntlets, grabbing one by the neck, slamming his knife aside and then punching his head until its contents sprayed across the stone; Kake cutting people to pieces whilst twirling his halberd, his eyes darting crazily in their sockets, searching for their next victim; Ronin running through the crowds of fighting, scattering, screaming enemies, cutting them down swiftly, before they even had a chance to register his presence.  

 

In that first massacre I don't know how many people I killed. Someone came at my, whirling a knife, dodging my sword strikes and parrying them, until I cut off his hand and slashed him down. Another, spinning a spear above his head, parried by attacks and jabbed me between the ribs, but I barely felt the hot sensation running down my chest, and I plunge my weapon into his body. Just as I withdraw it from his corpse, a sharp pain erupts in my back. I strike the assailant in the side with a spinning back kick, before turning around to face him. It's Exqua, the 'leader' of this… army of sorts, and he's got his knife in my back. He tears a spear that’s stuck in one of his subordinate's bodies and sends a barrage of thrusts my way, which I dodge and parry, but a few times they scratch my skin, leaving gashes on my side, my face and my arm. Then, whirling it above his head, he brings it down in a devastating vertical strike which would probably have split my skulls in half, but I cut the wooden weapon in half and close in on him. If I can kill him… actually, his arm is already in disarray, with about twenty monsters blazing through them, leaving a trail of death everywhere they went. That was us. I attack Exqua, but he gets past my sword and strikes my wrist, and my grip on my weapon loosens, He makes a dive for it, but I'm prepared and switch my grip to the end of the hilt, before smacking him in the face with the flat of the blade.

 

Exqua stumbles backwards, blood covering the left side of his mouth and nose.

"Give up," I say.

"You let your guard down, idiot," he grins.

I sense a prickling sensation on my neck behind me, and I whirl around, just fast enough to have the two other attackers sink their knives into my arm and not my neck. At the same time, Exqua lunges towards me, trying to tackle me to the ground, but Chris appears out of nowhere and slams his shin into the enemy leader's side. I fling my arm to the side, tearing the other two's knives out of their hands, and one of them, his eyes filled with an insane bloodlust, goes for neck with his hands. I dodge him, grab the back of his head, and slam his face onto my knee. He drops like a stone, but I don’t have any time to admire my work. The other's one's leg is sweeping through the air, towards my face, and I'm forced to block it with my arm, He's hit me precisely on a gash from Exqua earlier, and pain shoots in spikes through my forearm, but smash him in the forehead with the hilt of my weapon before plunging it into his abdomen. Another is running at me, but suddenly his head jerks to the side, a spurt of blood splatters onto the ground and he collapses onto the ground. Loflo's rubber sniper bullets can still kill with a headshot.  

 

I whirl around, and Chris, who's wielding two daggers, each about 16 inches long, is stilling fighting Exqua. The latter is somehow holding on, dodging and blocking and parrying, all the while going in for sharp strikes to Chris's chest and neck, none of which actually hit their mark hard enough to deal damage. But although he's not dying, his body is covered in bloody gashes, and as he fights drops of red are being thrown onto the rocks.

"Why do you fight so much?" Chris demanded. "Just die."

"Everyone's fighting to survive," Exqua says. "I'm no different. I refuse to die!!"

Then I slam my foot into the side of his face and he goes sprawling, out cold, onto the rocks.

"…well, that was that," Chris mutters after a few seconds of silence. "Are we gonna kill him?"

Then, about twenty enemies suddenly appear out of nowhere and start attacking us. I'm blocking, parrying, slashing, thrusting, getting cut up and stabbed all over the place, and in the chaos I don’t notice Exqua get up and slip away. We're pinned down by them - they’re all skilled, having gone through the same hellish training as us, but there was still a difference between the top 10 and those who were not in that bracket. I sweep my sword down low, severing a couple legs at the knees, slam my shin into another's stomach, and then punch another in the temple. Then Leon arrives to lift the mini siege we're under, cutting them to bits with his dual hand axes.

 

The first battle saw about half of the Facility's Hunters attack us. In total, we killed over eighty of them between us, with Airo having the most blood on his hands and Elemental following up close behind. Sometimes I wondered how the rest of us were going to catch up to them, catch up to that overwhelming strength 001 and 002 had. We fell back to lick our wounds after the enemy retreated, and the first day of the mission came to a close.

"What's next?" JJQ asks, whilst Artee treats a deep gash from a spear on her shoulder.

"…maybe we just keep defending back and forth like this?" I suggest. "And like… farm kills or something?"

"No," Woodsy says.

He's surprised me. I didn’t think he even knew how to talk at this point.

"We need to seize the initiative and attack them. We, the Prey, need to go on the offensive against the Hunters."

"Best defence is offense," Airo agreed. "We should strike them before they get the chance to regroup."

"They have over seven hundred people left though," Relic argues. "Do you think just us few can take them all on at once."

"Exqua will have expected this," Luc adds.

"Exqua is probably lying in bed getting himself treated," Leon shakes his head. "He was badly hurt."

I remember Exqua lying on his side on the stone floor, his eyes slightly open but unseeing, with blood polling on the rocks next to his face. How he had even escaped was a mystery.

"So give me a clear course of action," Elemental says. "What's the plan?"

"We're going to attack," Woodsy said. "Then we're going to run away. And attack again."

"Guerilla tactics?"

"Yup. They have superior numbers, so we can’t fight a frontal battle against seven hundred people. Today we were able to win simply because they didn't expect us to…"

He pauses, searching for the right word.

"Go crazy," Dobo finishes.

"Yeah what he said," Woodsy continues. "But I'm not even sure if this will work."

"What make you think that?"

"Before we left to come here," Woodsy tell us, "Stroma told me something. He said to never underestimate the man called Exqua."