A barrage of spearing bolts tore through the water around me, a drumming staccato beat from every rifle the Determinators wore. I joined in the deluge, lancing shots that tore chunks from the surface of The Devil’s Angler’s hide. The biotic thrashed, throwing streaming waves of water away from it as it dove downwards, body trailing blood from hundreds of wounds.

Each Determinator adjusted their aim, leading the target and moving with me as though an extension of myself. The encirclement of machines closest to the side that the Angler was trying to break through activated shoulder mounted pods, missile systems that propped themselves up and spewed a trio of fast moving rockets. Twenty four rockets streamed downwards, crossing the distance between us and the biotic faster than I could blink. They exploded in shaped charges as they made contact, and the sea shuddered with the repeated impacts.

The Angler didn’t slow, though I could clearly hear the hiss of pain and see the trail of blood and bits of flesh spinning in its wake. It barreled onwards, intent on smashing through anything in its way and escaping into deeper waters.

Instead of allowing it to close the gap, the Determinators on that side activated the second pods on their opposite shoulder. Rather than a missile pod, the new device looked more akin to a bulky mortar, holding a wider variety of tools to be used. Each metal soldier fired a fist-sized orb and as they exploded, long spindly strands that vaguely resembled black spider-silk expanded outward. The results completely covered any approach the Angler could reasonably use.

The biotic plowed straight into the mass even as the disparate pieces snagged onto other exploding pods. In a heartbeat the nearly transparent abomination was swallowed up, thrashing in confusion.

All the while, the rest of our force moved downwards, trying to keep pace with the Angler as we went. With its regeneration, we needed to put on as much damage as possible and keep on top of it. The snares tightened around its body, pressing into scaled flesh as the Angler kept pushing.

I grinned as we closed in on it more. The Determinators began firing barbed lances from their utility launchers as we pursued. Wires attached between them and the lances allowed them to further slow the creature. In a few seconds, most of the Determinators had latched on, and I myself grasped one of the lines, pulling in an effort to keep it from going forward.

Amidst all of this, though, I realized something odd occurring. The strands of black material that dug into the things flesh had broken skin, cutting deeper and deeper into meat by the second. The problem, though, came an instant later, when I realized that the strands were beginning to rapidly break down. Fibers snapped and sizzled in contact with the blood, some kind of caustic reaction taking place before my eyes. I grit my teeth as the force of the beasts thrashing grew by the moment, inhibited less and less by our nets.

“Cut off the fuckers tail,” I sent the message, and a plan of sorts, to the Determinators around me. From several perspectives, myself and the hive-mind unit of machines gauged the new information on The Devil’s Angler, and realized that the blood outside of its body wasn’t caustic. However, as of moments ago, the blood that spewed from wounds was reacting violently to seawater, searing its bleeding wounds closed and melting through the snares. The harpoons were more resilient, for now, but in time those, too, would melt.

A burst of speed from it put it another twenty meters forward, only a dozen more before it would break out of the encirclement. Instead of striving to keep dragging it back, half of the Determinators reeled themselves in closer to the biotic. Contemptuously, it turned and slapped at one of the machines with its tail, seeking to batter it away.

A move that worked against it. The machine extended blades from its arms and part of its body, slashing deeply into the tail even as it was smacked away. Dented, but undaunted, the machine was already firing its rifle once more into the biotics side the moment it stopped spiraling in the water. It twirled, sending its newly caustic acid spreading out wide.

If the Determinators had flesh and blood, they might have been wary of that tactic. As it were, none of them would truly die, even if the blood served to be immediately destructive to the hardened metal of the cybernetic soldiers. They delved down, putting on bursts of speed and extending blades much like their comrade had. While they moved, I had one of my own explosive carrying drones dart down through the water, faster than the Determinators even, with the barbed hooks reeling them in.

The drone dropped a small disk that exploded, light and sound clapping only three meters in front of the Angler. Its eyes hadn’t regenerated fully, but what had been was immediately assaulted by the strike, followed up with the percussive blast that wracked its other mundane senses.

Distracted as it was, the Angler didn’t immediately take notice when the first wave of Determinators blazed through the water at speed, coordinating with their fellows to cut through select bits. In moments, the keen cry of the biotic increased in volume as the blades cut through half of the tail like a circular-looping wire saw.

It tried to dart forward, but this time its tail was far too damaged. Instead of a great surge of speed, it instead lurched forward with all the grace of a drunken mariner. I felt a thrum of triumph in my chest as the second wave of Determinators descended, carving through the rest of the muscle, sinew, and bone. Scales all over the front half of the biotic rose and flattened at random as the creature twitched violently, brilliant pulses of red light washed over us erratically. For just a moment, I could almost see a moment of dawning comprehension in what was left of its posture, the front two thirds of its body riddled with wounds, and now separated from its tail.

If there was any way to describe the way it's still healing eyes looked at me, I would have to say it was a bleak hatred. A look that one would give a mortal enemy, a nemesis, that defined their existence.

I found myself grinning darkly, my mask flaring a bright red with the Reaper’s Skull and Lotus symbol at the sight.

The Determinators surged forth, a cold bloodthirst emanating from their steel bodies. Far slower than before, the Angler thrashed and moved downwards, throwing vast clouds of blood outwards from it. This time, we could easily detect the acidity of the concoction that flowed from it, and noticed that the tail was somehow disgorging even more of the blood. Several of the harpoons began to break down, lines melting amidst the storm of liquid.

Patiently we moved outwards, keeping our distance and remaining vigilant of both sections of the body. The severed tail spasmastically thrashed, and looked to be shrinking rapidly, huge volumes of gore spewing outwards like a cloud. Even as it did so, the blood began breaking down the flesh, allowing for an even more rapid evacuation of fluids into the surrounding sea.

We continued down, having never intended to return to the surface without our quarry in any case. Still, we could tell that the gore was heavier by far than the water, and it sank quickly towards us. Below, the rest of the creature didn’t show the exact same signs of breakdown, but it still churned out clouds of material like a chimney spewing smoke.

It twisted, pointing itself downwards and kept moving, wreathed in the sizzling cloud of blood. I felt a flash of annoyance come from the Determinators around me at that, and thought for a moment that they might try to drag it into the open. Thankfully they did no such thing, instead leveling their rifles and firing into the mess once more. I joined in, each of us carefully controlling any recoil and our firing lines to not hit one another. If we weren’t joined in a mental network and aware of each other, we would have almost definitely incurred some friendly fire with our formation.

As it were, our encirclement remained a deathtrap. The biotic remained shrouded from ordinary visuals in spite of the light we brought to the permanent night of the deep sea, as the Determinators deployed U.V. Flares around us. On thermals, we could see that the creature was taking damage, albeit slowly. Its flesh was tough, and while our bullets were causing some harm, it seemed that the Angler was content with regenerating the lesser damage.

After a few seconds, the Determinators brought up their missile pods, and, in the blink of an eye, networked their own firing patterns with one another.

Just before they fired, I watched as a heat plume seemed to explode outwards from the Angler. I almost thought the rockets had been fired early, and only realized that wasn’t the case when the Angler darted downwards at full speed, a boiling froth of bloody water in its wake. It moved on a direct crash course through the Determinators below it. Each metal hunter braced with their blades, each one bristling with sharp implements that had cut through its flesh like a hot knife through butter.

It smashed the first two aside, hitting them hard enough to cave in their chest armor, still functioning but certainly damaged. The other three snagged into its sides, digging in deeply, ensuring that they wouldn’t be thrown off. Sure enough, in the next moment the Devil’s Angler realized that it had passengers in its flight from our attack. It twisted, spinning and writhing chaotically in an effort to disgorge its attackers. The rest of us swam downwards, pursuing the creature and carefully avoiding the blood field between us.

Seeing it now, I clearly witnessed that new, opaque white flesh had taken the place of its previously wounded parts. The front half of its body was a patchwork of white scars now, whereas its tail was fully white, bulging and even larger than it had been before. I grit my teeth and pursued as fast as I could even as one of the three Determinators holding onto its hide was thrown from their quarry. Hopefully it couldn’t do that trick again. I already wasn’t sure how we’d manage to get it back into our formation.

Then, I watched in astonishment as the two remaining Determinators pointed their utility shoulder launchers point blank range at the biotic. Each one carefully placed it flush against the scaled skin of the fish, and fired a harpoon bolt deep into fleshy tissue. At this point, the Angler hardly noticed another prick of pain, though the metal hooked deeply. The clever part came after; instead of keeping the reel of wire for themselves, they released a line hundreds of meters long for others to hook onto.

Before it could pull any further away, over a dozen A.I. directed their bodies to clamp onto each line. Abruptly, the Angler let out a mournful bellow as the lines pulled taut. The two Determinators moved closer to the tail, already beginning to savage the flesh with an arm blade each.

I wasn’t idle during this, moving down the guide-wires with other Determinators, intent on bringing it down. More of us gripped the wire by the moment, and the Angler slowed dramatically as our turbines disgorged water, pushing us upwards while holding tight.

It balefully glared upwards at us, fanning its tail hard as it continued downwards. As if to spite the two that clung stubbornly to its sides, it now completely ignored them. They performed their grisly work quickly at first, but the new flesh was tough. We realized, though, that the blood had lost the bulk of its acidic qualities, no longer molecularly dissolving what it came into contact with.

Metal groaned as the stresses of the deep sea increased. Already we were deeper than what I was comfortable with, the light of day far above no longer visible in the slightest. Only a twinkling trail of flares marked our passage, and even that had diminished until only a dull red glare from the Angler’s lamp remained.

Finally, though, the biotic was growing exhausted, unable to compete in the long term to the inexhaustible endurance of our mechanical bodies. It slowed more and more until we were at a bitter crawl. Still, it seemed that wherever it wanted to take us, we must have been close. There were, I realized, several sea-floor formations around here, tall stacks of calcium and other deposits, an underwater mountain that I realized with a start was nothing like I expected out of the supposedly lifeless sea-floor. Ridges of vents spewed super-hot material upwards, fronds of living creatures clustered around the lifegiving heat. Crabs cultivated and harvested them, and predatory fish slowly lumbered through the contained ecosystem.

That I expected. What I didn’t expect were the ghostly, pale corals that shimmered with their own glinting light. Only now did I realize that we couldn’t see the lights from above because of the clouds of smoke. Other creatures stalked the chimneys, clearly some kind of biotic creatures, but nothing of the scale of the Leviathan’s. What was more, some appeared to be cohabitating with the local fauna.

Yaga would have a field day with this. Biotics instinctively hunted and ate non-biotics, yet this was a clear example to the contrary. Not just an isolated individual, but an entire ecosystem. Silvery jellyfish were fed by the native crabs, allowing their long, bushy tentacles to be harvested in turn for food. Sea cucumber that more resembled living bricks of metal twisted around and slowly formed the floor, chimneys, and coral housings for colonies of living organisms that I didn’t recognize, but didn’t seem to be biotic in origin.

My attention was dragged wholly back to the Angler as one of the lines suddenly gave way, harpoon yanking free along with a chunk of flesh the size of my torso from the Angler’s side. Immediately, the creature smashed into a large chimney, finally ridding it of its two riders.

The plume of superhot material rushed over its stomach as it moved, setting it to screeching in white-hot agony. Instead of darting away, though, it twisted down and around the vent. We pulled on the remaining line, desperate to keep it from getting away.

The Angler ground to a halt, but I didn’t doubt that it wouldn’t last. The hook would give way any second now, leaving the Angler free to escape. There was no doubt in my mind that we wouldn’t catch it, being that it was far faster than we were.

I took one last regretful look at the ecosystem around us, recording as much as I could from myself and 64 Determinators for future reference. There were more important things at hand.

Missile pods armed, my bombs ready, we fired and left no room for escape around the biotic. In the moment I had before the rockets hit, I let out a sigh and swept my gaze over the field of life in the dark.

“Regrettable,” slipped from my lips unbidden just before the rockets exploded.