Machiko Noguchi had not been the first woman to be blinked into the Necropolis, but she’d arrived early on. The fact that she’d survived as long as she had was a testament to her cool nature, but more so the yautja training she’d had. Spend enough time around a pack of brutish hunters tracking and killing the deadliest game the universe had to offer and you picked up a few survival tricks along the way. Aside from the disorienting nature of her arrival, there were several other reasons why this hunt was unlike any she’d taken part in previously. The biggest difference was that this hunt did not seem to have an end. Rescue seemed unlikely. Escape didn’t seem possible. The best plan Machiko could come up with was to wait and see. She was a skilled enough hunter that she had patience enough to spare, but as time dragged on, even she began to grow antsy.

Machiko’s first act of business – after dispatching the horny pack of dead men so eager to get a piece of her – had been to secure a safe, hidden place to spend her time waiting. Whatever fear of heights she had was easily controlled and had grown non-existent after claiming the church’s bell tower for her roost. The church was far from secure, but the tower was remote enough that she didn’t have to worry about most of the undead monsters reaching her without her seeing them coming. It was roomy enough to provide a cramped bit of living space and the height advantage allowed her to survey a decent portion of the city and keep tabs on the migration patterns of the various nightmares and other survivors. If her supplies held out and she didn’t get incredibly unlucky or meet something new and even more terrible than she’d seen so far, Machiko was reasonably certain she could go on as long as she needed to.

But even as Machiko maintained her routine, the Necropolis was changing around her. Even from a distance, she’d heard the sounds of huge battle taking place. Weapons fire and screams – both human and monster. She’d beat back her curiosity and had maintained a distance from the event. Shortly after the sounds of fighting had died down, a rumble had gone through the city. Some kind of explosion. Huge. The seeming calmness that had settled over the city in its wake had started to give Machiko the idea that perhaps whatever had happened had been the ultimate climax to whatever hell was transpiring. She regretted missing out on what seemed like a truly glorious hunt, but it was easy to push those feelings aside considering it hadn’t sounded like the living had done particularly well in the fight. Her presence may have been enough to make some kind of difference, but she doubted it. Her pride was strong, but it wasn’t that strong.

Then the refugees had come. More living than she’d ever seen in the Necropolis since her arrival, all grouped together and looking like they’d been through the worst neighborhoods of Hell itself. Prolonged isolation nearly spurred her to climbing down and greeting them. They looked to need all the help they could get and Machiko had never been a stranger to putting her life on the line to help those in need. But the city had tempered her humanitarian side and strengthened her cautiousness. She remained hidden, waiting and watching them for a bit, to gauge their character. She’d had a front row seat to the Baroness’s coup. It had told her two very important things. The first, that regardless of their numbers, this group was doomed. They’d already been reduced to fatal in-fighting. Her presence would do little to help them and everything to ensure her survival chances were limited. The second, thanks to the vibrant deflection of light and energy shooting into the sky, was that she needed a new hideout. The light show would undoubtedly draw monster to the church in search of the cause of the disturbance. Nothing as simple and tolerable as a small pack of zombies wandering through aimlessly, the creatures would come with purpose and even her height advantage would give her little protection at that point. Machiko waited until the refugees moved on and quickly scaled down the bell tower with a small pack of supplies. Her choice of directions was limited. Following after the other survivors was out, as was going back the way they’d come, at least directly. She decided to cut out to the side and then make a larger loop back, hoping to circumvent whatever hoard might be tracking the group.

Machiko didn’t make it far before she heard the approach of others. Judging by the distinct shuffling of the movements as well as the occasional grunt and growl, it wasn’t hard for her to guess the state of the newcomers. She slipped into a blown-out shop and disappeared into the shadows, dropping into a crouch and remaining perfectly still. The horrifying menagerie began to pass only moments later, led by a nude undead woman, strikingly attractive despite her lack of life. Machiko got a much better understanding of why the group of survivors had been so fucked as she took in both the overall size and variance in the horde chasing them down. There were zombies, plenty of them, but beyond that, there seemed to be every form of creature she’d spotted in the city after them, as well as a number of monsters she’d never had the misfortune of running into. By the sound of the battle, she’d known whatever was going on was big, but this was even bigger than she’d feared. She counted herself lucky that she hadn’t introduced herself to the refugees. If this horde managed to catch them, and she suspected it would, they were in for one hell of a showdown.

In her haste to conceal herself from the parade of horrors traipsing down the main street, Machiko had neglected to fully scout her immediate surroundings. The shop itself was safe enough, but the back door had been left propped open, a worn brick slotted into the threshold. The clerk responsible for the security flaw had been out back having a smoke when the Necrotic field had permeated the city and, up until that point, the door had remained undisturbed and largely unnoticed by both monster and survivor. With Psylocke’s innate psychic call radiating out from around her, commanding any undead life within range to join the party, stragglers were rushing to obey. The small group of zombies shuffling their way down the back alley found a quicker route to the source of the call via the cracked door and pushed their way inside.

Machiko heard the movement behind her and reacted instinctively. She whipped around, remaining concealed in the darkness, as she pulled her deadly staff from her shoulder. The bulk of the horde outside had already passed her by, but she didn’t want to risk drawing any unwanted attention, so she dropped low and slid her feet backwards, easing mostly behind the counter. The glass front of the counter afforded her a line of sight on the zombies using her hiding spot as a shortcut. Machiko held her breath and waited, silently willing them to move on past without incident. The undead weren’t particularly observant creatures from her experience. She figured her odds were reasonably decent.

Unfortunately, while Machiko’s assessment of the zombie’s general lack of observation was perfectly accurate, she’d neglected to factor in the odds of them being clumsy, random oafs. And while her hiding spot was well out of the direct path between the back door and the front, it didn’t stop one of the undead from stumbling into the end of the counter and then choosing the exact wrong path to get to where he was trying to go, bringing him around the back of the counter and right to her.

“Cjit,” Machiko muttered, using the yautja word for ‘shit’. There was no avoiding the fight now. The zombie was already fixing her with a lustful gaze, reaching his rotten fingers towards her mostly fishnet-clad body. The revealing nature of her armor didn’t truly factor into the thing’s lust. She’d seen enough to know that. But it did mean the thing wouldn’t need to do much to achieve his goal of violating her flesh. Except, armor’s got nothing to do with it, Machiko told herself. Who needs defense when your body is a weapon? She proved as such, tense muscles springing as she launched herself to her feet, directing the tip of her spear into the soft meat under the zombie’s chin, skewering his head before sheering it off the dead man’s shoulders. She flicked the pathetic excuse for a trophy from her weapon and set herself into a fighting pose, her presence in the shop momentarily overriding Psylocke’s call.

Despite the reality of a plan gone dreadfully wrong, Machiko couldn’t help the wicked smirk that filled her face. After so much time spent waiting and watching, cultivating her patience and seeking for a safe route to survival, it came down to the same old thing, the very reason she’d abandoned her own race to run with the hunters. A life or death fight. It had been too long since she’d gotten to enjoy that simple pleasure. She barked out a challenging grunt in the alien tongue she’d still been trying to get the hang of to the small group of zombies filling the shop, eager to show them what she was capable of. With their brains practically putrefied, the zombies weren’t nearly smart enough to back down from the challenge she presented them. All they saw her as was a set of alluring holes to violate.

Living, dead, undead,, she thought as she circled around the counter to gain some much needed maneuvering space. Guys are all the same. She waited for them to come and they did so with a spectacular lack of grace or strategy. She dropped low, slashing the bladed tip of her spear across the belly of the nearest zombie before springing back up and driving the blunt end of the weapon through the mouth of the second closest. She gave the spear a twist in her hands before jerking it free of the dead zombie’s head, driving the blade through the disemboweled zombie’s left eye. Two more proper corpses littered the shop floor. Cleanup on aisle all of them, she thought passively as she brought her weapon close and reset herself to handle the remaining undead shuffling towards her.

Killing her fellow humans was a line Machiko had never crossed. In her estimation, she still hadn’t. The dead residents of the Necropolis had ceased to be human before her arrival. If anything, these were mercy kills. The yautja hunting pride had kept her from taking any of the zombie heads as trophies. None of them were worthy of that honor. Merely deadly annoyances to be dispatched. Machiko’s thoughts shifted, only briefly, to the skull she had claimed, cleaned, and was still displayed in her recently abandoned bell tower hideaway. The Headsnatcher had been a beast, in every definition of the word, but one of ruthless design. She’d been witness to what it had been capable of before she’d moved in to kill the thing and take its furred head for herself. She’d left Mami Tomoe’s headless corpse behind, feeling a little regretful that she’d not been fast enough to lend the woman any assistance, but the trophy had given her a small sliver of satisfaction and something to focus on. Primarily, that the Necropolis was a deceitful place, capable of bringing unexpected death at any moment.

Hearing a groan from the back of the shop, Machiko moved to intercept and eliminate the final zombie making its way through the building. The sight of the thing gave her pause. She’d seen a couple of the Big Men before, but never a Big Woman. Looking over what had become of Fio’s dead flesh while she’d been gestating inside the Zombie Factory, it was the only way to properly describe her. She looked obscenely pregnant, fat, bulbous gut forcing her to lean forward, nearly dragging her belly across the floor. Her tits were bloated and draped over her gut, leaking a steady flow of viscous goo. Her lower jaw stretched downwards into a permanent gaping with her tongue and throat melded into what looked like a fleshy tube. Her arms had grown longer and stronger in order to brace herself against the ground and pull herself along when her cocked, mangled legs could not manage the feat. As Fio stumbled towards Machiko, the hunter charged in to make short work of the abomination, hoping to take advantage of her cumbersome size in the cramped environment.

In her haste to end the encounter, Machiko neglected the Necropolis’s most devious rule. Fio tilted her head back, tongue-tube whipping up and unleashing a chunky spray of potent stomach acids at her attacker. The powerful spray came too suddenly for Machiko to avoid. She reversed her momentum in time to avoid taking a face full of the stuff, but the thick goo splattered across her forearms and over the tops of her thighs. The result was instant, drawing a pained shriek from Machiko’s lips as she watched her hands melt around her weapon. She’d felt the intense sting of xenomorph acid before, but this was worse. She tried to back away, but her legs refused to work properly as the bulk of her muscular thighs were worn down to smoking bones. Instead, she dropped hard onto her toned ass, spear landing across her chest as her arms finished burning away into gory stumps waving about uselessly. Machiko shook her head wildly, tears in her eyes, as Fio lumbered closer to her.

Stopping over her writhing, shrieking victim, Fio unleashed another destructive spray of potent vomit over Machiko’s chest. The felled hunter screamed louder, no longer caring about keeping a low profile as her perky breasts were melted off her chest, soft meat and fat blended with the liquified remains of her supposedly acid-proof yautja armor. The fishnet bodysuit that made up the majority of her outfit did even less to protect her. Machiko’s toned abdomen sizzled away, splitting open to allow the puke to pour through her steaming guts. The caustic substance leaked through her exposed ribs and ate holes through her lungs. Her screams faded into urgent wheezing as she strained to draw air into her crippled lungs. Gathering her strength, Machiko lifted her head and watched through horrified eyes as the finely tuned weapon she’d made out of her body became a sloppy soup spreading across the shop’s floor. With no voice, she could only shake her head and cry, hardly resembling the proud, skilled warrior she’d been only moments ago.

Machiko’s gruesome transformation from hunter to victim intensified as Fio retched up another heavy spray of puke across her pretty Japanese face. The lightning bolt scar given to her by Broken Tusk vanished under the spray, eaten away by the acids to reveal only bloody skull beneath. Her dreaded hair burned away, braids popping as the destructive enzymes broke through them. Her eyes sank into her skull, deflating as they were eaten through, nose withered away and lips leaking through her teeth and down her burning throat. The few half-dissolved muscles and ligaments capable of movement gave off a wild series of jerks as Machiko’s brain was destroyed, shriveling and sloshing away like cotton candy, finally ending her agonized existence.

With the bulk of Machiko’s body broken down into a messy slop, Fio dropped onto her knees, leaning heavily against her bulbous belly. Her tongue lapped eagerly through the smoking chunks of the woman’s corpse, hose slurping through the thick puddles. The tongue traced its way through Machiko’s half-dissolved bones to reach the tastiest bits of her, meticulously drinking up the leftovers of her remains. Curling into the corpse’s weakened pelvic bone, Fio eagerly drained the frothing remains of Machiko’s womanhood down into her oversized gut. From there, she found a mostly melted scrap of one of her nipples floating on the outskirts of the bubbling puddle and chugged it down, dissolving the flap of flesh along the way. When most of Machiko’s liquified body was consumed, Fio moved to the fleshless, scorched skull – a skull that would have made a glorious trophy in the woman’s home universe – and carelessly cracked it open to get at the gummy pink goo collected at the back of it.

With her meal finished, Fio struggled to pull her bloated body back onto her feet. She turned and hurried to catch up to the horde that had called her towards it, leaving behind Machiko’s devastated remnants. Only her half-dissolved armor and spear gave any indication as to the identity of the unfortunate woman, let alone any evidence to suggest that she’d been the Necropolis’s longest living survivor. Now, Machiko Noguchi was nothing more than yet another corpse left in the wake of the Legions of the Undead.

***

Psylocke and her myriad monsters were just reaching the industrial section of the city when she got a psychic tingle from somewhere behind her. It seemed one of the minions she’d called into her group had discovered someone still alive. She got a vague taste of Machiko courtesy of Fio and the spicy tastiness told her that the woman had been strong. Unfortunate that she was now so much mush. She’d have made a valuable addition to her zombie ranks. Thankful that the woman would at least have no chance to cause them any further trouble, Psylocke moved onwards.

Coming upon a pack of zombies, she found them still quite enamored with the dismembered remains of Azura. Watching them stuff their cocks into the dead woman’s various bits was quite the alluring sight, but she could not afford to enjoy herself. She commanded the zombies to get to work removing the obstruction of rubble blocking their path. As they did, she strode over to Azura’s corpse, shoving a lingering zombie aside before he could sink his discolored teeth into the woman’s face. She had no doubt the meal would be a tasty one, but she had far more depraved thoughts in mind for the head. Tearing Azura’s head away from her upper body, she lifted it within her hands, rubbing her thumbs across the woman’s cum-coated cheeks as an eerie smile crept across her own face.