[PE-122]
The Violence Man
The Violence Man, hereby referred to as PE-122, is the name for personifications of violence which appear by spontaneous generation throughout the multiverse. Instances of PE-122 are known to manifest on the scene of grotesque displays of violence, as the name implies, but how violence is measured to meet the threshold is currently unknown. Once manifest, instances of PE-122 will aim to cause the greatest amount of bloodshed, destroying anything that threatens to get in the way of that end - although they have been seen showing restraint in rare cases.
Instances of PE-122 appear as large human males with clothing appropriate to athletes of the time in which they manifest, alongside distorted anatomy and proportions, as pale as porcelain. Every recorded occurrence has stood at 6’8” exactly, and shared the same vantablack eyes and baldness, with a mouth twisted into a permanent smile that glows like the sun when opened for eating - as they do require sustenance, albeit not in the traditional sense. On occasion, as they open their mouths to eat, a bright red fluid drips out and begins to disintegrate whatever it is in contact with until eventually evaporating. This fluid, called Liquid Violence, is hereby PE-122-1.
The one aspect which differs between specimens is musculature. Instances all appear highly toned, and will appear to grow muscle as they become stronger, which would not be unusual if not for the fact that they produce muscles which do not correspond to the human body and are fully aesthetic. For example, while a regular human’s rectus abdominis may seem to have up to six subdivisions, basic instances of PE-122 have what is colloquially known as an “eight-pack” and will possess extra muscles along their arms. These muscles provide no functional benefits.
Upon death, instances of PE-122 vaporize instantly into a mist PE-122-1 which lingers for about one minute in Earthlike environments. Due to this, they must be opened while still alive. When vivisected, there are no discernable internal organs belonging to PE-122 beside its brain which takes the form of a smooth sphere in the center of their heads that works by sending electrical signals through the body. Due to this, it is unknown why they bleed viscerally when wounded.
Figure 1. The arm of an instance of PE-122 (left) compared to an average human (right). Muscles nonexistent on the regular human are hereby marked with a red dot.
To begin, instances of PE-122 simply undergo spontaneous generation after an area has borne witness to an act of grotesque violence. Whether an act of violence is grotesque enough seems to be dependent upon not just objective carnage left behind by the scenario, but also additional unknown variables within the subconscious minds of those who had been present at the time such as their perception of the event and their internalized final end. One theory for why this is the case, is because it is necessary the incident must be carried to The World of Forms [OS-348] which then plays a role in the generation.
[ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICE] Due to the shortfall of evidence for this theory, partly on account of the lack of knowledge pertaining to OS-348, it is not to be endorsed at this time. Rewrite.
Besides their spontaneous generation, instances of PE-122 have other anomalous properties. When brought into existence, they may act as though they were people, albeit oriented toward the end of spreading carnage wherever they go. For this purpose they do have intellect, but it is a mere facsimile, and they do not have a soul in the technical sense of the word. Their minds are akin to machine learning model compiling training material, rather than an AI Persona Core being creative on its own. It is unknown precisely how the spontaneous generation occurs, but the fact that studies done on them show traces of multiple different souls’ essence, it is thought that somehow the memories of the deceased are salvaged and used as a component.
In addition to the above, instances of PE-122 possess a myriad of abilities to help meet the end toward which they are ordered. The most notable are anomalous strength and durability, as instances have the power to damage armored vehicles immediately upon generation, and are hardy enough to shrug off direct hits from low-caliber firearms. From there, two more abilities are supplemental to this end, the simpler of which is the ability to ignore wounds and regenerate rapidly to the extent that losing an arm can be regenerated within an hour. The remaining ability is more complex, and is to be referred to as Violence Absorption.
As has been hinted at before, these beings possess both hunger and a limited intellect. When asked what it is that they need as sustenance, as an attempt to find other ways to satiate them, they simply respond by saying that they require violence. In practice they appear to be fulfilled through the experience of violent acts, as tests reveal those in constant combat never need to stop for eating, and whether they are the ones dealing or receiving wounds has no effect on the extent to which it satiates them. That said, while they may be satisfied by merely carrying out violence, they may be seen actively gorging themselves whenever possible in spite of that.
Their diet is no less peculiar, as they will consume weapons. When asked about it, they simply say that they eat violence, indicating that they consider armaments to contain the essence of violence - though their dim wit can be difficult to decipher. This is their most notable anomalous ability, because after eating a weapon they are able to replicate its effects whenever they make an attack, whether it be unarmed or not. For example, if an instance of PE-122 hits someone with a chair, they’d typically get bludgeoned. If it had eaten a grenade, however, that chair would be blown to pieces on impact with the force of a grenade if PE-122 chooses to utilize that weapon attribute. As another example, projectile weapons can grant PE-122 the ability to launch shards of bone. When well fed, it may even use multiple weapon attributes at once!
This technically means using nearby objects as weapons (as they tend to do) is useless, but no instance has understood attempts to convey that, which is odd since they definitely differentiate between improvised and intended weapons, given that they use the former and eat the latter.
Regardless, as it has been mentioned that they gain strength depending on whether or not they are currently well fed, it must also be said that the strength and durability they’ve been stated to possess above is said regarding them while neither satiated nor starved - the state which they are in immediately upon generation. It takes 72 hours of combat for them to become entirely satiated, at which point they no longer grow stronger as they fight, and after 24 hours without combat they will begin to starve, gradually weakening. Each hour spent without fighting, once starved of violence, undoes two hours of combat experience. Once there is no more experience to lose, if NE-122 is still starving, it will enter a comatose state and lose ‘memory’ of absorbed weapon properties, requiring that they be eaten again to use them. It may only come out of the comatose state through being physically wounded, or sensing bloodshed in the vicinity.
Throughout the course of acquiring 72 hours of combat experience, PE-122 receives noticeable bursts of strength at certain benchmarks. Occur every 8 hours up until the 72nd hour. At each threshold, PE-122 gains the ability to use another weapon attribute at the same time. This means that if it has consumed a grenade and machine gun for example, it may gain the ability to rapidly hold out its wrists and fire shards of bone, which then also explode on impact - so long as it has achieved eight hours of combat experience. Each time it gains another attribute slot, it is referred to as having gone up a stage, with its initial state being Stage One.
At each stage, physical attributes also increase along a non-linear curve where 90 percent of the growth occurs in the stage’s last hour, rather than a linear one where the four hour mark should be directly between the current stage and the next. This means that if it cannot be put down before it starts to noticeably scale, it is advised that they be starved out instead.
On one final note regarding their biology, while they are referred to by the masculine article due to their skeletal structure and anatomy being more closely aligned to the male sex, they are technically without gender. This line of research began before finding evidence for spontaneous generation, when the former lead biologist Dr. Cytherea eagerly volunteered to do research for the sake of understanding their propagation, and finding other ways to satiate their thirst for violence. She found that they lack the instruments of propagation with which mammals are commonly found, perhaps due to their lack of a digestive tract.
After she was executed for scientific misconduct on account of the unnecessary experiments she then attempted to carry out, the position of lead biologist was transferred to Dr. Williams, who found that their cells contain no DNA, but rather are filled with PE-122-1. How they work is currently a mystery, as they seemingly create energy from nothing. This is unfortunately not at a rate which can be easily utilized for a reactor of any sort.
The first encounter with PE-122, was by The First Ascension Republic thirteen years after they had been raised up, making it in 1088A2. They were seeking universes to establish colonies, and as the Ascension Accords had not yet been put in place, they had free reign when deciding how to handle preexisting populations. In this particular instance they had decided to exterminate the world’s civilizations, partly on account of the fact that they were deemed unlikely to assimilate if they were to be simply conquered, and partly due to the hostile reaction they had presented upon the first contact attempted by the Romans.
In truth, this had been a conflict fabricated by the Praefectus Coloniae, such that he could have his casus belli and win glory for himself by conquering a hostile people. Because of the language barrier, as they hadn’t yet gotten used to interacting with people from other realms at this time, this plot was successful for three years - during which, those native to the Earth of that realm were utterly devastated. On the fourth year of the war, people began to realize they had been manipulated, and the war was brought to an end by Consul Septimus Quinctius Cincinnatus.
The vast power differential led to it having been made a one sided slaughter, however, and the damage had already been done. During the first year, civilizations were decimated. Throughout the second year, colonies of the Republic began to be established, and survivors from the first year had begun to be hunted down. Over the third year, an internal conflict which had been brewing in the colony for some had burst, and strife began between those sympathetic to the people of the realm and those who were not.
Due to the enforced peace of the Unilateralis, the First Ascension Republic had scarcely seen war in a century, and what conflict it did know had been small scaled yet fierce - nothing like the one sided annihilation of a realm’s populace. This was hard for some of them to bear, and no easier for the natives. Those who had lived there all had their lives upturned incomprehensibly, and saw death on a scale beyond their comprehension. When Consul Cincinnatus arrived to bring peace and calm each side, he was met with a wretched sight.
That scene was the first of many similar events throughout the multiverse, but being the first of its kind, it also had the largest impact, for men had not yet been numbed to things of that sort. The shock as news broke, and people realized just what had happened during the investigation of the Praefectus, was spread far and wide - resulting in a shockwave that rippled throughout the Conceptual Consciousness, though we knew not what that was at the time.
Consul Cincinnatus had just finished forcing the leaders of the colony and the revolt to sit down together for a diplomatic talk, after having arrested the corrupt Praefectus Coloniae, when they all received reports that someone had decided to ignore the ceasefire. It was initially debated whose side this individual was on, and this led to some minor skirmishes between groups which thought the conflict had started up once more, but it soon became obvious that this individual was killing indiscriminately. After that realization, both sides agreed to cooperate against the monster that had arisen, although that would severely backfire.
Kill squads had been sent against it, but their inability to finish it off only served to make it stronger. By the time that they had realized that it grows stronger from combat, and due to regeneration had to be killed fast to prevent adaptation, it was too late. They sent in a battleship to take care of it, but by then it already had the strength to leap into the sky and grab hold, tearing the ship to pieces and consuming some of the missiles it had intended to use for bombardment. At this point, planetary evacuation was called for and the world was abandoned, while surveillance satellites kept watch from orbit.
Eventually, when that instance of PE-122 was starved by the lack of violence to commit and available weaponry, it reverted to a lesser stage and eventually fell into a coma. When people returned to the planet, they locked PE-122 away by entombing it within a solid block of alchemite with only its head exposed, and requested assistance from the Unilateralis.
After Unilateralis oversight began for the containment of PE-122, there was one security breach when it was found that violent acts within the proximity of the entity also resulted in growing its strength, leading to it breaking free once it had grown strong enough. Improved containment measures were developed after the fact, and eventually there were reports of another instance occurring. Until then, it had been thought to be a unique case, but many witnesses and media outlets reported that they believed what they saw - and what they saw was another instance.
An investigation eventually revealed that this was true, and it was dealt with accordingly, with the procedures that were developed for future occurrences. Further security breaches occurred on various occasions, but with containment procedures adapted each time and multiple options being made extant for the containment of this anomaly, it was eventually deemed safe that Unilateralis oversight may be lessened. As of the present day, it is legal for multiversal nations to keep instances of PE-122 within their own government facilities.
Figure 2. A sketch from a witness to the first minutes of the second instance. It reportedly followed an admiral who had just upgraded his cybernet augmentations into the restroom, and challenged him to a fight which escalated to include the entire bar. He was stationed on a wartorn planet which had just ended a long span of peacetime and became a multiversal hub, which affirms the theory that the necessary bar for what counts as ‘grotesque violence’ is lower for people unaccustomed to bloodshed, at least when it comes to the manifestation of PE-122.
Instances of PE-122 are to be kept on Class I-1 facilities without any other sapient anomalies in containment. Preferably, though not definitively, these ought to be on asteroids such that there may be a limited area which must be searched in the event of a containment breach. They must either remain in cryostasis, or be constantly kept sedated through the approved brain implants. Unwanted specimens are to be disposed of through solar incineration.
In order to determine how instances of PE-122 came to be, biological experiments were first done, with metaphysical explanations being explored after those were revealed as a dead end.
Test 01-1: Biological Spread
Scientists proposed theories that there may have been a sort of transformation when PE-122 was first recorded to appear, and that the specimen in containment was once human. The area was swept for biological and paranormal infectants, to no avail. Scans reveal the internals of PE-122 to be remarkably sterile. This determined that unlike [PE-283 | Animate Blood] or [PE-312 | Nightsworn] there was no ‘curse’ or disease that could have started this.
Test 01-2: Propagation
Seeing that the next obvious method was to investigate whether their biology had any clues, the lead biologist Dr. Cytherea was appointed to begin investigations. She began by investigating whether they could propagate through normal means, although this was clearly unnecessary given that it would have been obvious had the species priorly been extant on the planet that it was found for long enough that one could be raised. She soon found that they, in fact, are not capable of such acts - and then took more drastic measures. Those led nowhere, and resulted in her removal from the project.
Test 01-3.1: Cell Structure
The new lead biologist, Dr. Williams, had decided to run some experiments on sample cells from PE-122. He found that the cells were unlike anything we had ever before seen, and contained a fluid akin to the one which can be seen dripping from their mouths as they eat. This fluid was found to act with similarity to [PO-019 | Instant Kill Solution™] when some spilled upon an assistant at his laboratory, who instantly dropped to the ground in horrible pain before dying. IKS is more effective, given that it kills without the drama beforehand. Each cell seems able to propel itself independently without outside forces, perhaps lending to its anomalous strength.
Test 01-3.2: Cell Formation
When one lab assistant had playfully punched another’s shoulder, a petri dish was seen shaking, which led to a branch wide quarantine. Once it was safe to say the area was safe, Dr. Williams noticed that the cells in the petri dish seemed to have replicated. Further tests have shown that being in the presence of violent actions results in the growth of PE-122 cells, but that they will not grow into an entirely new entity on their own - simply remaining as an expanding mass of anomalous flesh. This seems to clue us in on its regenerative functions.
Test 01-4: Metaphysical Explanations
After it was determined that the species cannot propagate itself, and more instances happened to be found with time, one scientist floated the contemptible idea of spontaneous generation. Due to the fact that all instances of PE-122 occurred in times when the local population had just experienced unprecedented violence, at least for those alive at the time, he suggested that it was a manifestation of the impact on the collective consciousness . That PE-122 literally is the idea of violence itself made manifest, that was the idea of Dr. Shepherd, who had always been a gentle man with little stomach for the more brutal parts of his job - for he had been recruited from the nations of the multiverse on account of his intellect, rather than from H.U.N.T. facilities like most of our scientists.
To maximize the psychological impact, he was made to destroy all colonized worlds within his own home universe. This was psychologically devastating, but yielded no results with regards to making an instance of PE-122 manifest. It was decided that merely pushing a button may not have been personal enough, and so several minor nations that were on the extermination list were then made to fight one another through an orchestrated conflict.
The Republic intended to intervene but was stopped when the year’s consul, Titus, succumbed to blackmail. He would later be exposed for this, and further strife would reign through that period of ten years which followed. On the ninth year, another instance of PE-122 was spotted, contained, and the war concluded. At this point, the thought arose that the standard of being psychologically devastating must be determined based on how inured the populace is to violent actions, and the extent of damage required in this instance was greater due to the growing familiarity of the people of the multiverse with war.
Under protocol METAPHYSICS 04, which enforces the doctrine of strict avoidance on the issue of studying non-reproducible anomalous effects unless necessary to stop a Class Divine Threat or greater from growing out of hand, testing on the manifestation process of PE-122 was then indefinitely postponed. Further study is subject to Council approval, due to the need to interact with The Faux Apostles [OS-348-1].
In order to determine the attributes of PE-122 alongside whether it may be deployed as a tool for our own benefit, PE-122 was first put through rigorous physical examination to ensure that it would not be destroyed by accident, then exposed to gradually increasing forces. After it was determined that it was very durable and had great potential, ways to control it began to be investigated, followed by tests of its effectiveness in the field.
Test 02-1: Physical Examination
PE-122 was placed in an empty 10x10x10 meter room, and the atmosphere was rapidly taken out, making it into a vacuum. The entire time, there were no worthwhile effects on the vitals of PE-122, as it withstood the vacuum without issue. Closer examination showed that each cell in its body output heat from the energy spent retaining shape, as they pulled toward each other to prevent suffering tissue damage from the sudden depressurization.
Afterward, PE-122 was exposed to 1000 mSv of radiation over the span of 1 second. No cellular damage was observed, likely due to the fact that the cells do not contain DNA. This was then ramped up in increments up 1000 mSv until reaching 10,000 with no effect. After the exposure was increased to a constant flow of 10,000 mSv per second and left on for six hours, it was determined safe to consider it immune to radiation.
The next test involved gradually increasing the heat of the chamber, which did begin to melt its body. It immediately tore off its restraints, but failed to tear through the chamber walls due to the alchemite-shroomite alloy repairing itself faster than it received damage. Although there were battleships on standby around the research ship to handle the situation, it did not grow in strength as seen from its rampage across the planet’s surface. The temperature turned down once it became clear that it would be unable to resist the heat for much longer.
The next experiment was the opposite of the last, and after its regenerative power brought it back to full vitality from its extremities having been burnt to stubs at half their prior length, the chamber’s temperature was drastically reduced. It fell into a comatose state, and awoke when thawed out. Tests done while it was comatose reveal that its brain functions drop to a negligible level, and it fails to react when shot. Furthermore, once frozen, they are easily fractured apart.
That contrasts greatly with their normal endurance, as under regular circumstances, the Stage 1 instance of PE-122 used for testing was capable of resisting a hydraulic press until the force had exceeded 100 tons, at which point it began to buckle under the weight and suffer physical damage. It is not as durable against raw pressure as weapons, however. Bullets would embed in the body of PE-122, and blades would still cut, although dulling in the process.
Regardless of what injuries were received, this did not seem to inhibit its motor functions. The only way found to cause it to stagger or falter in ability was found to be the removal of an entire limb, since even having its torso caved in would not prevent PE-122 from running at full sprint. The bodily damage dealt to PE-122 resulted in it growing vastly in strength, which then resulted in the experiment being called off.
Test 02-2: Weapon Replication
After the previous tests showed it to be both strong and durable, experiments upon its ability to replicate the effects of weapons commenced. PE-122 was placed upon a barren world, where one Abyssal Drake was introduced to fight it. This creature was chosen for its unbalanced ratio of durability to attack power providing the potential for drawn out fights, and the first fight was intended to provide a control sample to compare to future matches in which other variables are added. It was defeated by simple grappling and bludgeoning, which indicates that once it eats weapons, it only has the ability to replicate their forms for a limited period of time, given that it had consumed the firearms of soldiers sent to attack it and their artillery munitions during initial recovery. The control fight had lasted 7 hours plus 36 minutes, and due to noticeable growth in its strength throughout the spar, it was starved of combat for one week before being introduced to another opponent, as to starve it back into its weaker state.
Following that, a longsword was deposited by drone. Without hesitation, it opened its mouth to swallow the sword entirely. Once another Abyssal Drake was sent in, it was then observed that repeated blows from PE-122 left lacerations in the beast. Once it was knocked down PE-122 grabbed it by the neck with its left hand before making a swipe with the right that cleaved off its head like a blade. This fight had taken 7 hours plus 8 minutes. Interestingly, it was noted that force output from punches started higher than before, despite being starved. Testing indicates that consuming instruments for violence will also result in its strength and durability growing.
For the third fight, PE-122 was given another blade to consume, alongside a grenade. The result was that punches left lacerations for 6 hours, before then causing explosions upon impact. Observations note vulnerability to its own explosions, and getting knocked back after each blow for the first 22 minutes with the imbued attribute. The Abyssal Drake was slain thirty minutes later, making the total fight 6 hours plus 52 minutes. Another one was introduced without the usual wait, as to replicate a prior behavior. After 8 minutes, PE-122 not only received a sudden burst of strength, but also managed to ‘merge’ weapon attributes within its body. Its next move was to uppercut the creature’s jaw, resulting in its head not merely exploding, but the rest of its body being sliced in half vertically. This was indicative, as proven by future experiments, that weapon attributes grow alongside its strength. Furthermore, that until Stage Two, it may only replicate the effect of a single weapon at a time.
As one final test, it was once more starved, then placed on an uncontacted world with a sapient species. It began to tear through the planet’s population, as expected, and was observed as it went on its rampage. It would still consume weaponry as usual, but would often pick up items that were not meant for combat such as furniture when it was at Stage One to hit people with. During its recovery and containment it was seen doing this, which is nonsensical due to the fact that its body has the offensive capacities of any weapon it eats. Observation then revealed that it is not necessarily the body imbued with the effect of weapons, but any ‘attack’ made by PE-122 which will carry the attribute of weapons consumed.
This actually makes weapons an aesthetic choice, as it can hit someone with a chair and cause the same damage that striking them with a sword would deal, but it seems not to care for aesthetics - rather, simply choosing this arbitrarily. It seems to only use everyday objects not meant for combat to hit people with, as it merely eats any weapons it obtains on the spot. After it had been seen fighting for long enough, the planet was destroyed by kinetic bombardment, and PE-122 was collected from the planetary debris after starving back to Stage One.
Test 02-3: Controllability
Once it became the case that multiple instances were in storage, and thus a non-issue if one were to be defeated in combat, it was put forth that they be controlled and weaponized. It had not yet been confirmed whether they were even capable of dying, although it was presumed possible after the near destruction during the temperature resistance experiment, which is why it was not authorized for weaponization before that point.
As earlier research had shown that they do in fact have brains despite their lack of other organs, and the fact that their ‘brain’ is simply a smooth sphere within the center of their heads that works by sending electrical signals through the body, this became the new focus. Firstly, it was found that they die if their brain is removed, but also if the regeneration is simply overwhelmed which can be done if the body is sufficiently pulverized. While capable of standing with a hole through the torso, it can’t come back from being reduced to a smear on the ground!
Since the vitality of PE-122 was deemed sufficient for surviving the procedure, study was then put toward the development of neurological implants, which was difficult given unconventional biology. The sphere that acted as its brain was found to be incredibly dense! After 2740 human test subjects were killed in the making of this device, along with 20% of instances of PE-122 in storage, there was success in making a device to dampen signals throughout the whole being’s body. While it was (and still is not) fully effective, the developed implants make PE-122 highly susceptible to suggestion. Furthermore, it may shock the brain remotely to disable movement.
Test 02-4: Field Test
Once PE-122 was approved as a weapon, it became mandated that one instance at each stage constantly be kept in storage, such that the one best fit for each scenario may be deployed on demand. In order to test its utility as a containment tool for future anomalies, a security breach was made to occur at a facility owned by FAR through the remote disabling of electric flow to the shackles of the instance of [NE-043 | Hecatoncheires] which was imprisoned, in such a way that it appeared to be a malfunction of their own system.
The prison world then began evacuations, and the Republic called for aid. After the instance of NE-043 overcame sedation, as was necessary to test PE-122 against a full strength target, the Unilateralis response arrived. In order to avoid the potential diplomatic repercussions of waiting for a threat to grow before responding to it, it was made to look as though there were technical delays on their end by exploiting a backdoor within the Republic’s communication network, and a problematic senator was framed for having leaked credentials to their mainframe as our cover.
Stage 7 through 9 instances of PE-122 were released to combat the target. Notably, it was found to be impossible that they be made to hold back, which was a risk with this recontainment mission, despite that we are now able to point them in the right direction to focus their intentions by suggestion to their impaired cognition. Various fallback plans were prepared in the event that they began to rampage through unintended targets caught in the crossfire. This had turned out to be unnecessary, though, as they showed surprising restraint in that they focused on the instance of NE-043 which we had intended them to. Further studies show it to be the case that they will ignore weaker targets when it is possible for them to fight a stronger one.
The NE-043 instance was digging beneath the ground at a rapid pace with its hundred hands to evade ships which had taken off to intercept it, and we responded by loading the instances of PE-122 into bunker busters to drop from overhead onto it. Soon after, the ground burst open due to the tectonic control powers of NE-043. This explosion of the planet surface caused great desolation within a 72 mile radius, which resulted in the destruction of the station which acted as housing for the workers who maintained the anomaly containment systems. This buried all instances beneath rubble, though they soon climbed out to chase down NE-043 soon after.
The Stage 7 instance was the first to climb to the surface, as it had been buried less deeply. It caught up to NE-043 and fought against it for 18 minutes before NE-043 managed to pin it to the ground and pummel it with all one hundred hands for 4 more minutes, at which point the regenerative properties faltered. It is hard to tell when exactly life ceased in PE-122 since vision was obstructed by NE-043, but it didn’t die without purpose. Even if NE-043 was uninjured due to Stage 7 having insufficient strength, this gave Stage 8 and 9 time to unbury themselves.
Once Stage 8 and 9 were freed, they began to combat NE-043. Stage 8 was able to survive being grabbed and crushed within the grasp of seventeen of its opponent’s large hands for enough time that Stage 9 could cause NE-043 to stagger and let go. Upon being released from its grasp, Stage 8 was seen to have two broken legs and one broken arm, but they snapped into place and healed before NE-043 was able to get up. Stage 9, meanwhile, was not dealing much damage, but it was managing to survive fairly well against such a fearsome foe due to its regeneration. This was a great advantage, considering the NE-043 was incapable of regeneration to such an extent, and was gradually beginning to be worn down. By that point, 8 arms had been broken.
It continued to be the case that one of them would be brought to the brink of death, the other would free it, and then distract it while the other healed before being wounded itself. This went for some time until Stage 9 was slain, which occurred once Stage 8 had received injuries that it could not heal from quickly enough to get up and distract NE-043 once again. Since only Stage 8 was left, and it could do only minor damage on its own, this made it seem as though the fight was nearly over - but when it was about to be finished off, unable to hold its own, it had struck the time limit. Having gained enough hours of combat experience, it began to rapidly grow in strength, and replace the fallen Stage 9 instance.
Of course, even in its strongest stage at the borderline between Plague and Nova Class Threats, it stood no chance. It was able to survive on its own for a short while, but only for another hour. The two instances tag-teaming NE-043 were able to disable the use of one leg, tear off five of its heads, and break another thirty six arms before the initial Stage 9’s death. The one remaining instance took down another twelve arms before growing to Stage 9 as well, and then tore off three heads and disabled seventeen arms before dying.
This left NE-043 having been rather wounded, but victorious nonetheless. It lost the usage of one leg, 8 of 100 heads, and 61 of 100 arms during that fight. With bloodloss factored in, this weakened it enough for the combat ship that had dropped PE-122 into the fight to return and finish the job, since it was unable to block projectiles as easily with its arms. Once NE-043 was contained once more, the Republic gave its thanks for our support.
