The hivemind is conquering for me?

Gabrielle barely had any time to defend herself as the abomination sprang towards her like it was shout out of a cannon. Due to he reflexes, she managed to get her hook swords up in time for defence and with knowing how much power the creature can put in a strike, braced as much as she could in the time possible.

Her effort was for naught however, as the creature merely tapped its large blade against her own in a feint as it moved towards the the smallest member of the group. Beta 8 was shocked seeing such a large creature head towards him at such speed an instinctively tried to use his power. His body began moving oddly for a moment before his power failed to manifest.

Shocked, he fell back onto his damatrium Xiphos and got it up in time for the bone like swords of the creature to hit it, sending him flying well past the frontline. The creature did not stop after sending the little man flying and chased after it, ignoring all the small arms fire heading its way as it did.

As the stalker watched the strong humans follow it, it completed one of its secondary tasks, getting them away from the frontline so the elites could breach this location and cause havoc.

Meanwhile, while giving chase, Alpha 2 had dropped her minigun as the rounds were simply pinging off the creature when they did hid the fast moving target and had become a danger to her squad. She then retrieved the spear from her back and shouted. "Omega 2, has your power gone haywire? We cannot access our powers!"

"No leader, That creature has a similar power to me, we our counteracting each other! We are just going to have to rely on our own capabilities for this one!" Gabrielle replied with a hatred as she stared at the creature.

As they approached where Beta 8 had been flung, The creature was currently being held off by Three knights from finishing off the incapacitated man behind them. It had only been moments, but the machines of war were already being sliced apart, their metal parting ways for the bone swords like a hot knife through butter.

With the creature currently vulnerable, as it was pre engaged, Gabrielle pushed ahead from the rest of her squad in an attempt to land the first blow. The creature was large, so their best chance at landing fatal blows was to immobilise it first by taking out its legs.

The stalker saw this however, as it had eyes literally on the back of its head. In a swift motion, It cleaved the arms of one of the knights, turned around and began to plunge its sword downwards towards the female.

Gabrielle smiled expecting this, although she had never done what she was about to do on a sword this big, the principle remained the same. Slightly dodging the blade, She then wrapped one of the hooks of her sword around the descending blade and applied pressure, trapping the blade withing her own. She then used the entirety of her power to drive the sword past her and into ground, causing the creature to lose its balance.

Gabrielle then used that momentum to spin around and cut with both hands as she used the extra power towards the leg of the creature. Her sword made contact and bit into the leg, but the sound it made. Gabrielle had never heard Damatrium scream as it made contact with another material before.

She was about to strike again, when she felt danger once more. Without checking, she dove backwards, using the hook of her sword to scoop up her other one in the process. Where she just stood, the second sword of the creature had embedded itself into the ground like a grotesque statue.

Without looking around as she knew her allies were with her now, she yelled. "We need to go for its joints, its chitin is too strong for Damatrium to cut through!" Alpha 4 then sighed though the com piece at this as he began to attempt a flanking manoeuvrer . "Ugh, of course it is. Oh well my sword has managed to stab through more terrifying things, so this should be a cakewalk." He joked. Not daring to look in the direction of Omega 2 in case she got his joke.

"Don't get too cocky Alpha 4, the thing has already immobilised one knight and one of our own. I have received word that the back lines are sending more knights to aid as they cannot shoot from that distance without threatening us. We just have to chip away over time, get ready for a slog!" Alpha 2 said coldly, as she attempted a thrust towards the target while it was distracted by another knight.

…

Jewel had only learnt the concept of shame and embarrassment from her prolonged exposure to Apollo and she was feeling the horrid emotion now. Her limbs had overwhelmed the front line at this point and were giving chase to those that were tactically withdrawing to the second elevated defence point.

While that was a good thing, The failure that was her quick brewed Stalker filled her with embarrassment. It had been fighting for over an hour and had even fought the weak humans past the second defence line. It had been baited away from the rest of her and was slowly getting whittled down.

If it was any other stalker, those lesser lifeforms would already be consumed. 'Pitiful human biomass. Is my beloved the only good thing to come from you?' Her frustration from her failure was causing her lower castes to become a little more feral in their kills. Instead of simply committing a killing blow and leaving the eating to the mixed in drones, they would now stop a moment and tear and chew apart their victims before carrying on, slowing down the overall push.

Jewel's sour mood turned slightly though when she realised her stalker finally enacted a casualty.

…

"ARGH!!" Alpha 4 screamed in pain as he was kicked squarely in the chest by a full force kick from the Stalker, sending him flying into the rank and file Phalanx. The rest of the squad and the collective of scrap metal around them that made up the knights could not stop, look towards the direction where alpha 4 went flying and scream his name before looking back with anger towards the creature for a sudden power boost.

For the creature was straight back to attacking as it pinged from one enemy to the other, never stopping now for it had made the mistake of confidence before and had its left arm blown off by a lucky missile.

The prey targets proved more resilient then it originally thought. Especially its prime target. The females instincts were on par with its own and with her missing limb, the prey had more opportunities to attack her if she stayed still.

What really frustrated the stalker however, was all these metal robots that kept on interfering with her plan. She had decommissioned almost 40 of them by now, leaving a trail of scrap in her wake as she continued to fight. But they just kept sending more, which slowed her down and prevented her from killing her primary target as their weapons were large enough to cause damage to her and needed to be defended against.

After kicking away the pesky stabber however, she found another opportunity. Feigning an attack on one of the knights, she instead used it as a Spring board and jumped off it at incredible speeds towards the spear wielder.

Alpha 2 was not prepared for that display of athleticism, and could not react in time. She tried to dodge out of the way, but left herself vulnerable and in a moment, her left arm and leg were no longer attached to her body.

Ignoring the screams of the prey after her successful attack, the stalker also finally found an opening in the prime prey as its anger began fluctuating and turned to blind rage. She baited for a short while against the robots and the purple haired prey. Upon realising she would have a couple of minutes after taking out these sets of robots before the next. She used her body as a shield, taking significant damage in order to wipe out the robots rapidly.

After piercing her sword three times though the space the humans reside inside, she turned around and plunged her sword down towards the rage filled prey.

Gabrielle had managed to trap this attack so many times at this point that it became second nature. But what she did not expect was for the creature to suddenly drop its weapon, leaving her unbalanced and wrap its remaining clawed hand around her before smashing her into the ground.

Gabrielle coughed up blood as the impact damaged her organs. She tried to wriggle free, but her body was wrapped tightly by the hand. She watched as the creatures face and many eyes slowly loomed towards her as it ignored all the weaponry firing towards it.

"You caused me great pain this day prey. I will savour your last thoughts before I consume you!" Gabrielle's eyes went wide with shock upon realising the creature could speak her language.

She did not have time to lament on the point however. As she watched the creature open its mouth and the needle like teeth inside lurk ever closer. She closed her eyes as tears began well up. She though of her son one final time, the memory of leaving him in that dumpster, the biggest mistake of her life, clouding her thoughts in her final moment.

However that moment never came. Opening her eyes, the creatures eyes were now directly glued to her in shock. Gabrielle did not know why, but its grip had also loosened on her being. Without wasting a moment, she used all her strength to break free and used both of her swords to go for a decapitating blow on the creatures exposed neck.

"Your son is-" The creature began to speak, but Gabrielle had put too much force into her blow and could not stop as she lopped the head off the creature, making it roll onto the floor.

She stared at the creature In shock for a moment, It mentioned her son! She wanted to go see if the creature was still alive somehow to ask it questions, but her injuries and exhaustion took over and she keeled over into blackness.