Esdeath finished off another pair of Orks with a pair of twin ice sabers. She reverses her grip on their handles and threw them towards a Speed Buggy coming towards her. With a clap of her hands followed by spreading them out with the index and thumbs touching their opposites, the swords' mass grew into two large javelins before exploding into a spread shot of ice shards. Those shards suddenly expanded and connected with each other, forming a thick wall which the buggy crashed into, killing its occupants.
With a "sprint", she ran and pressed her hands against the wall. Large spears of ice sprouted from the other side, skewering the remains of the buggy and dead Orks before she gave the wall a slap that sent the ten foot spears launching from their resting places. Several Orks were impaled against whatever was behind them where like in earlier displays, the spears rapidly expanded into balls of spikes, shredding their victims. With a snap of both fingers, those balls of spikes began melting and evaporating on the inside yet Esdeath's control over her ice allowed the rest to not melt. The pressure built in all of them until they finally exploded, sending deadly shrapnel at any fool too close to them.
Seeing the hundreds of bodies around her, Esdeath raised both hands and all the fluids lying about froze and rose up by her command. The red ice blocks formed into caricatures of animals unknown to either human or Ork. They resembled snakes with two pairs of wing-like fins along their three foot bodies. Make no mistake though, these wings were razor sharp and the models had the density of steel. With a wave to herself, Esdeath had the flock of nearly three hundred ice sculptures flying around her at high speeds like a protective cocoon.
With her fun in this area over with, she began walking to where a large fortress was with TATSUMI trailing behind to clean up any stragglers. Calling it a fortress by Valkyrian standards was an insult but to the Orks, it might as well have been a palace. Thick walls made of patches of steel with spikes sticking out everywhere surrounded an open area about a hundred meters in diameter. At the four cardinal directions of the wall was a tower with a large anti-aircraft cannon on it. They were large enough to be fitted on the side of a warship, in all rationality. They were currently firing at an overhead Leviathan-class warship. She laughed at the fools.
There were dozens of Orks stationed on the walls, some fighting each other in a sort of horseplay fashion as they were probably tired of guarding the fort while there were big fights going on all over the planet. The skies were littered with flak clouds and aerial dogfights. Occasionally, the Leviathan above would launch a volley with its broadside cannons, sending a large variety of different payloads at each close-by Fly Boyz or large concentrations of ground forces.
With a smirk as the coming "punishment" she was about to inflict, Esdeath could only bask in the atmosphere of the war around her. She'd love to have a fight with one of the more larger Ork armies, or even a legion of this Imperium's Space Marines. With future battles in mind for later, she pointed her finger at the wall and the hundreds of ice avian-reptiles surged like a hungry swarm of piranha.
The Orks on the walls saw the flights and began firing wildly at them. Several dozens were destroyed in seconds but they were fast and agile, controlled only by Esdeath's mind and control. They dipped and dived to close the distance and swarmed each Ork in groups of five. They flew in circles around their respective Ork, their bodies connecting from end to end with each other to form a longer snake-like creature. These creatures proceeded to wrap around the Orks and continued moving at high speeds. Their razor sharp wings tore the greenskins apart as if they were blender blades.
The wall in front of her was lost to them in barely a minute. She jumped up onto the wall's top to see her swarm fighting a losing battle against hundreds of Orks. It helped their chances that they weren't afraid to blow up their own allies to kill the lethal ice manipulations. She finally caught sight of Oggaluz and like the intel stated, he was the largest in the group, decked out in red-themed armor with yellow paint splattered here and there. He had two large nozzles spewing clouds of fire that melted her creations with some effort due to how well and cold she made their quality.
On both sides of him were two Mech Boyz, large Orks who were high enough in rank to have some of the best armaments found by the clan. They were armed to the teeth with large machine-guns and rocket launchers. Both had large, square metal jaws and funny looking monocles around their eyes. She decided she could make an appropriate entrance worthy of her status and reputation. Esdeath walked over to the tower connected to her wall. Placing her hand on it, she concentrated and ice began freezing over the metal. She didn't freeze the whole thing, but only made it cold enough to make the metal structure brittle.
With the tower structurally unsound, the recoil from the next firing of the AA cannon was enough to shatter the ice towards the center of the fort. With a groan and a crescendo containing the sound of a million cracks of ice, the tower began falling backwards. The Orks in the cannon were too stupid to even know what was happening while their tower crushed dozens of Orks nearby who hadn't gotten out of the way in time.
Esdeath hopped down onto the laid out tower, passing the brittle section to stand on the more stable parts. Walking to the end, she looked down upon the startled Orks, some though were laughing at one Ork whose legs were crushed by the tower and was trying to crawl away. She let out a sincere giggle as she found humor in the situation as well. These Orks would probably make great drinking buddies.
Her giggle though might as well have been a yell as it got the Orks' attention, namely Oggaluz who looked ready to burst a blood vessel in his head. He finally found Esdeath and seeing her standing on what was his big gun tower, he came to the correct conclusion that she must have toppled it and a stranger breaking his guns made him one angry Ork.
"Soooo… nice place you've got here," she spoke, her helmet folding back to reveal her face and long, icy blue hair. Her grin didn't make her any friend in Oggaluz though.
"HEY! WHO DO YA TINK YA DOIN' TRASHIN' MY BOYZ! MY FORT! AND MY BIG GUNS!? I 'ATTA ROAST YA ON A STICK WIN I GET ME HANDS ONYA!"
"Ohh, I was hoping there was still some desire to fight left in you by the time I got here. I was the one to challenge you and I was hoping the sight of my clan crushing yours so badly wouldn't scare the fight out of you," she announced with a mocking concern in her voice.
"DAT WAS YU! I AINT 'FRAID NOBODY! I'LL BURN YA AND FEED YUR BODY TO ME PETS!" His declaration was joined with cheers from all the Orks. "COM'N DOWN, YU SQUISHY 'UMAN GIRL!"
Esdeath very nearly crushed the armor on her arms as she held her arms across one another. That was the second time an Ork called her a Human. Now this is personal. "Leviathan Command, I've made contact with Oggaluz. I'm proceeding to engage him in his fortress. Esdeath out."
She stepped off the tower though her AT generator wings created ATF platforms underneath her boots' cybernetic claws. "I'm going to say this once, Oggaluz. I'm not a human. I'm not WEAK or SQUISHY, and I'm going to prove it to all of your boys here who the squishy one is when I rip your limbs and head off, only to put them back together and do it again. You will not have a glorious death. You will die on this barren world humiliated as all of your clan will remember you as the Ork who was like an Orkling compared to his warboss."
She dissipated the AT field and landed elegantly on her feet, a snarl on her face. Oggaluz slammed his mechanical fists together as the Orks made plenty of room for them by climbing up on the walls and towers. Some of the braver ones stayed in the open area. The Orks began chanting the fight on, bets being made in teeth and weapons as to who was going to win. Some Orks could just feel the strength within Esdeath's body and sought to make the bets actually interesting by voting on her. Several fired their guns into the air in excitement as others jumped up and down.
"'ERE WE GO! 'ERE WE GO! 'ERE WE GO!"
Esdeath was to humiliate him, so she wasn't going to release any of her limiters on her body. Instead, she was going to use all the physical capabilities she had available at the moment to utterly crush the fool across from her. A Mech Boy raised his cannon into the air which prompted both to ready themselves. She could easily destroy this entire fort and everyone in it were she to let loose with her cryokinesis but that would not stop the WAAAGH!; it'd just send them into a panicky mess. Her mission was to destroy any hope they might have for a good fight. She would make an example of Oggaluz and threaten any Ork who still resisted them with an even more humiliating death.
The Mech Boy fired his cannon into the air, accidentally hitting a few Orks on the wall across from him but the two duelists didn't care. Esdeath ran towards Oggaluz who leveled the two gun/flame thrower combination weapons at her. He opened fire with grenades and Bolter rounds, something uncommon for Orks to have. Esdeath's speed and battlefield vision allowed her to run through gaps in the curtain fire. Just for show, she even slapped a couple of grenades away with her bare hands, something that caused Oggaluz to use his flame throwers.
Esdeath performed an axe stomp on the ground with enough force to shake the earth underneath the entire fortress, knocking a few unlucky Orks off the towers they were sitting on. The more immediate effect was a wall of earth being upended in front of her to block the flames. Valkyrians were very resistant to thermal weapons but she didn't want to ruin the surprise yet. She'll let him think he might have had a chance before tearing the illusion to shreds.
She punched the wall, blowing it away and sending chunks of rock at the Ork boss. Oggaluz shielded his face with his arms which stopped the flow of flames. Esdeath took advantage and ran forward, closing the distance. The Ork tried smashing his arms on her but she caught both with a hand each. The ground under her cracked as her feet dug into it but her posture and arms didn't budge.
"WEAK!" She jerked both arms out and jumped up to land a drop kick to Oggaluz's metal jaw with dented it in several places. The blow also sent him stumbling backwards. Regaining his footing and shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he let out an angry yell and charged Esdeath. She stepped into his arm reach and slipped under an overhead strike. Ducking under the backhand of the opposite hand, she grabbed his jaw with her left hand and sent a vicious right uppercut that tore the jaw off when she didn't let go of it.
It looked kinda humorous to the bystanders who were watching the smaller "non-human" beating their leader's face in with his own jaw. She had an iron grip on his upper jaw and was repeatedly slamming the quickly structurally deteriorating jaw piece onto his skull. She threw it away after the fifteenth blow, not caring that she threw it with enough force to impale the Orkling it hit, and pushed his head up to open up a combination of body blows to his mechanized torso. Each punch sent ripples through his flesh and shudders through his cybernetics.
THUM! THUM! THOOM!
Each left and right hook to the body lifted Oggaluz's feet off the ground for a moment only to fall onto another punch coming up at him. At the twentieth punch, Esdeath rared her fist back and threw more power into the uppercut. With a shuddering impact, the fist destroyed the armored body and continued ripping a deep gouge upwards until her fist exited his chest area. With a tug, she wrenched her arm from the wound that was leaking mechanical and bodily fluids and flicked it to get some of the gunk off.
Oggaluz fell to his knees, his breath knocked out of him for a moment, and spat on Esdeath who held a hand up shield her face. Her cold eyes glared at the offensive gesture and decided to return the favor. She froze the spit and blood on her hand which was flattened out.
"You can have your spit back." She sent a brutal slap to his bleeding and bruised face that sent him falling onto his back following a blast of air emitted from the force of her swing.
Stalking up to him she grabbed his large, metal foot and dragged the whole body into a spin. After a few seconds of picking up speed, she released him after a few rotations to hurl him across the area and into a Mech Boy who tried to catch his boss. The two were knocked over and sent tumbling into the wall, through it, and out the other side. The dust clouded the new hole in the wall and Orks clambered over one another on the battlements to see the state of the leader.
Oggaluz himself was missing his entire right arm and leg with most of his internal organs crushed or ruptured and groaning in pain he wasn't use to feeling. He was usually stronger than most of the Orks who challenged him. Blinking his eyes to refocus them through the dizzying tumble, blood and dust coated his vision like a fog but in the ruckus, he could hear a tapping sound. It was rhythmic and consistent and almost hurried. He knew what it was though. That devil human's footsteps and she marched her way to her prey. He didn't like being the prey.
A shadow fell over his face and he glanced his eyes up and saw through swollen lids the black silhouette of the obvious victor in this duel. Her hair blew to the side in the wind and the only defining feature of her body that he could make out in his current state was her frost-like eyes that pierced the darkness of her shadow like twin lanterns.
"You're looking a little sore, Oggaluz. You still coherent?"
He growled and raised part of his upper body with his remaining arm but a trio of spikes of ice ripped the arm off and pinned it to the ground. She grabbed his flame canisters on his back and jerked on them, tearing off cybernetics and flesh alike from his body and then using them to club the just recovering Mech Boy's skull in. She stopped at his side and bent over. Her hand tore the little that remained of his muscles and with a combination of pure, ruthless strength and his agonizing unwillingness, she gripped his spine and lifted him over her head.
Ignoring the blood that streamed down over her form, she reared her arm back and launched him back through the hole in the wall she made with him previously. He came to a sliding stop back in the middle of the arena and she came after him, dragging the dead body of the Mech Boy thrice her size with no visible effort. The Orks watched silently as she moved through their base like she owned it… and really, after what they were seeing.. they agreed with that thought.
Stopping near Oggaluz's body, Esdeath hefted the Mech corpse into an overhead slam onto her opponent. The crunch and squishing sounds of repeated impacts between the two bodies would make the Orks wince in excited sympathy occasionally. After the fifth slam, she threw her club away and kicked over the "Firestorm's" body.
"For someone called the Firestorm, you sure burned out quickly. Don't worry though. I'm not through with you yet. Thanks to your species' own durability, I'm going to get plenty of release out of carving you up into a work of art."
A large claw of ice formed around her right hand, long, gangling fingers tipped like blades clicked together as she got comfortable with the feeling.
"You will not enjoy this. This will not be over quickly. Please try and scream as loud as possible for me."
Esdeath knelt down and brought her claw up to her new toy when she received a message. It wasn't from the fleet because she turned that off but from someone she couldn't ignore, especially when it was able to punch through her bloodlust with the hive mind link.
Queen Yggdra, I hope you've been enjoying the show so far.
Her leader's response wasn't amused. Esdeath, I have decided my punishment for your actions in regards to the development of unsanctioned Tier 0 technology. You are to kill Oggaluz and destroy the base immediately. I will not tolerate any complaints.
Esdeath's face was frozen like her favored element as her bloodlust roared within her body in a battle with her mind. Very well, Queen Yggdra. Is that all?
No. This could have been avoided. If you did this to simply one-up Frigga, you could have just come to me and I'd have approved of it. You took unnecessary risks going behind my back with the amount of self-governing I give your existence. It's an insult to the trust I put in you.
Esdeath was moments away from pulling her own feelers off in suppressed rage. All of that hard work and sneakiness to get one over that smart-ass was pointless!
It will be some consolation to you that Frigga was quite irritable at how much you progressed on AT Field shape manipulation while she's just been able to make absolute shields. She'll be very busy for a while since I told her to not antagonize you and that I'll handle your punishment. A fair trade.
It was a fair trade, no question… not that Yggdra Love was asking of its fairness. It was a statement and Esdeath agreed.
Far out from her, the main invasion forces of the Valkyrians were engaging in massive firefights with the Orks but in just a moment, their organized war lust would be scrambled.
It is, though let me ask you something. You weren't really hampering the psychic connection of the Orks, were you? They didn't act like they were bothered when I fought them.
You're correct, besides me taunting and mocking them. I wanted to test our species and war machines against their own without my interference. I'm underwhelmed by them. They are numerous, tougher than most other species, and love war, but their negatives simply outweigh any admirable qualities. Against any Tier 2 or higher species, they would be roaming slaughter fests. They would simply be food for that abomination lurking on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy if we were to use them so they are useless to us aside from a quick meal and adopting the Growth gene into our own species. With as many fights and wars we have, it'd be a boon to us.
You explained more than you had to.
Nothing that you couldn't have come to the conclusion of. Your intelligence is underrated for your reputation. That is all for now. I desire your presence after this campaign is finished.
Esdeath closed her eyes in acknowledgement and was only drawn out when she realized she was slowly carving her frustration into Oggaluz's face. She sighed as her anger for having her happy time cut short. She laid a hand on the beaten Ork and froze his bloodstream. The expanding ice destroyed each and every vessel, artery, and tissue lining in his body, basically causing him to burst, but not really explode.
She stood up and looked around as the effect was immediate. The Orks around her were visibly confused and unsettled, some even started fighting themselves. She had no doubt it was going on all over the planet. She sighed and let out a frustrated yell, her cryokinesis activating around her. She slammed her heel into Oggaluz's frozen skull, shattering it, and the ground turned to ice around her. It rapidly spread over the area of the entire fortress within seconds, flash freezing everything in sight.
Esdeath activated her communication link with the Sky Razers.
"Sky Razers, Prime Luvos Primal here. I have completed the mission. Ophinl Ripley, Blooded Primals, confirm then report your status in one minute." The minute long wait seemed forever with all around her frozen in perpetuity. The fading sunlight reflected off the millions of different surfaces of ice all over the base, making it seem like a kaleidoscope of colors.
"Ophinl Ripley with Unit 1, all accounted for. The Orks are in disarray."
"Blooded Primal One with Units 2-20, all Sky Razers still alive and battle capable."
"Blooded Primal Two with Units 21-40, all Sky Razers still alive and battle capable."
"Blooded Primal Three with Units 41-60, all Sky Razers still alive and battle capable."
"Blooded Primal Four with Units 61-80, one Sky Razer injured but still battle capable. Flight Unit is damaged, armor is damaged as well. She had to resort to close-combat. The Orks lost battle coherency before they could corner her."
"Blooded Primal Five with Units 81-100, all Sky Razers alive and battle capable."
"Very well. Sky Razers, fall back to create a circular perimeter around my position a mile in diameter, then send Ophinl Ripley your coordinates. She'll call for SAF Type-2 shuttles from the nearest Leviathan. Any of those with significantly damaged gear or injuries are to report to the medical center. I expect you all back on the Cocytus as soon as possible. Sky Razers, I want you all to be prepared. Ripley will use those coordinates you give her to bring down reinforcements. Several battalions will encircle this Ork congregation and push inwards, herding the Orks to us. After the shuttle leaves, the rest of us will be performing search and destroy duties of all enemies. We want clean kills so melee weapons and anti-armor laser rifles only. Aim for their knees, ankles, elbows or necks. Understood?"
"As you command, Primal Esdeath," Ophinl Ripley replied.