Re: New York City (Location 2)
NON-CANNON BATTLE POST
Francine Underwood followed the sirens, and came to a stop outside a large police cordon surrounded by a crowd of gawping spectators. Elbowing her way impolitely to the front she got her first real look at the scene:
Police cars had formed a rough semi-circle around one of NYC's many financial buildings. The air was thick with tension, and Ma' wisely decided to watch the situation play out rather than break whatever stalemate had formed between the buildings robbers and the responding officers.
Seconds later New York's finest make their move, and she saw a squad of swat officers make their way around the buildings corner and take cover in the robbers blind spots beneath the banks storefront. The observing crowd silenced and a few faces turned to face away as they anticipated what would come next- Francine stared onwards with steely determination as she saw the SWAT members spring from their cover and place careful single shots into the building as they attempted to take out the criminals without harming the hostages within. A handful of rounds were fired, but were instantly rebuked by a concentrated lance of searing red energy that sent them screaming to the ground with blistering skin.
The door to the bank kicked outwards, and the criminal who'd done so risked taking several bullets to shout out a challenge.
"I thought that we said not to use any tricks! -What happens next is on you!"
Saying that, the gunman let loose with his weapon. Compared to the law-enforcements automatic rifles his weapon was practically space-aged, and resembled a large scientific rifle with an ominously glowing barrel. Where his last shot had only sent a squad of armed men to the ground with superficial injuries, his second barrage was more concentrated, and vaporized the front of a police cruiser under a punishing barrage of infrared laser fire!
Police scattered, and their returning fire back towards the unbelievably well-armed robber fell short of a solid hit. As they regrouped the crowd around Ma' surged as a mixture of spectators tried to flee the scene or draw closer for a better look. A particularly heavy shove almost sent her sprawling to the ground, but she fought to keep her feet and watched on as the battle escalated...
By now the burglar with the advanced microwave rifle had been joined by a second man, who wore some kind of mechanical battle suit. He leapt thirty feet through one of the banks windows, and slammed two fists into a police cruiser as he fell. The attackers armoured joints whined and sparked as bullets bounced off him, but it didn't seem to cause him any harm and he simply strode forwards to throw a policeman violently to the ground- before striding over to finish him off with a second attack
"Do we look like we're here to fight salarymen?! Hurry up and call in the experts, you bastards!"
For a criminal the demand was outrageous- but at this point it was already clear that the bank robbers were anything but conventional. The exo-suited criminal raised a fist and drove it down into a savage piledrive that could have reduced one of the policemen to paste if a violent and sudden gust of wind hadn't interfered between the two, and thrown the criminals aim off target! The policeman was thrown across the street, and the criminals mechanical fist pounded into the road with enough force to leave a smoking crater where the man's shoulder had been.
"Hey! Iffenn' yer lookin' tae pick ah' fight yeh've come t' th'righ' place!"
Ma nature had pushed past the police cordon and directly into the middle of the firefight. A swirling wind surrounding her kept anyone from interfering. Her patience for watching on the sidelines hadn't lasted much longer than it'd took for her to see that the police were clearly outmatched.
"How about y'h drop tha' kid gloves an' fight someone yer' own speed!"
Her two opponents attacked in perfect unison. The exo-suited soldier sprang forwards in a powerful leap that Francine had to backstep away from, only for her to feel her face blister in heat as the second mercenary turned his laser-like rife on her. She reached out with her Gifts and made the earth under the rifelman's feet tremble with shifting earth to disrupt his aim and keep her from being flash-fried! The armoured solider took the opportunity to strike at her again, and this punch found it's mark on the side of her head- and hit with enough force to send her sailing through the air and crashing heavily onto the road a good ten feet away!
Ma' got to her feet shakily, and spat out a gob of blood that'd begun to pool in her mouth. She'd never been hit THAT hard before, but her robust constitution had kept her from passing out so easily. She locked eyes with her two attackers furiously.
"So ye' think yh've got stones' do ye'? Ah'll have ye' know it'll take ah' lot more'n that t' keep me DOWN!"
With the last word she uttered, a streak of lighting lanced across the city's skyline and grounded itself into a nearby skyscraper. A buffeting wall of wind surged itself down the street and sent the nearby bystanders wailing to the ground and herself almost off her feet! The rifleman sunk to his knees and strained every muscle in his body to keep himself from being thrown back under the full force of Ma' Natures might, whilst the powersuited man had to anchor himself against her onslaught by driving his fist into the ground.
The rifleman sent another lance of energy at her, and Ma' hissed in pain as her side was seared with first degree burns, she suffered through the wound and in response sent him flying with a gesture that blew him screaming off his feet with a storm of ice-cold wind. The thug crashed through one of the banks reinforced windows with concussive force.
Francine's anger was unabated and she threw another typhoon down the street to knock out the second criminal, but far above the battlefield a spectator interfered...
"Ah... poor thugs. Your little toys just can't compete against Gifted powers, can they?"
Khaos would have enjoyed watching the criminals be tossed helplessly around some more, but he'd thought of a way to make the fight even more interesting... he narrowed his burning green eyes onto Francine and used his own Gift. What would happen if he introduced an unexpected twist, he wondered?
Francine's attack surged forwards, and even as the woman threw it she realised that she'd gotten too carried away! A fist of intense wind scoured the ground and sent the armoured Namidian off his feet- crashing into a ruined police car- and then sent the man and the vehicle both spinning violently through the air on a collision course with one of the unconscious SWAT members littering their battlefield. The villain flailed helplessly mid-air, Francine tried desperately but too-late to undo her strike, and Khaos's vicious smile widened as he was about to sow the seeds of his namesake.
**Ca-Krunch!**
A scream of crushed bodywork, shattering asphalt, and screaming bystanders pierced the air. Ma' had instinctively covered her eyes in a psychological reflex not to let herself see her mistake turn into a murder, but when she carefully lowered them she saw something unexpected:
A seven and a half foot tall Goliath of pure muscle had joined the criminals, and interposed himself to defect the thrown vehicle with a brave grapple. Francine's residual wind whipped around him as he strained to throw the ton of metal aside where it wouldn't do any harm. After kneeling briefly to check the vitals of the now-unconscious armoured henchman who had crashed at his feet, he turned an iron-hard glare onto the woman herself.
"What the hell was that?!"
The man roared furiously at the superhuman vigilante. Francine didn't know how to answer that- for one thing it was generally her job to shout people down, but for another thing she didn't know why her attack had veered so wildly off her goal... Whether or not she was a 'skilled' vigilante was an open question, but she'd never intended to put anyone else in danger through her actions. When she'd thrown her attack she hadn't even expected her true target to suffer anything more than a few bruised ribs!
"You could have gotten someone killed! You fucking IDIOT!"
"I-i... I didn't mean..."
She didn't finish the sentence, as her justification sounded weak before she'd even finished. Getting berated by a criminal for incompetence was an uncomfortable situation for poor Francine, and more than a little humbling.
Even so, something about the mistake felt odd to her- the forces of nature were unruly and temperamental, but they generally followed her instructions all the same. For her Gift to have lash out the way it had was extremely unusual.
By now the wind had literally and figuratively been taken out of her sails, and without the barrage of weather there was nothing from stopping the giant from striding within arms reach of her. He raised an arm threateningly to strike her, but stopped short before he could take advantage of Ma' Natures rare indecision.
"I wasn't going to..."
Francine managed a few more words, but the giant shushed her hurriedly. The man's bald head was twitching around quickly, and he'd suddenly lost interest in Ma'. Something had apparently grabbed his attention, and was enough to make him pause even in the middle of a battle. This was a surprising fight for the woman, but rather than object she decided to see where this new development would lead.
"...Do you hear someone chuckling?"
The giant asked bizarrely as his eyes flitted around. Ma didn't respond. The giants head suddenly snapped to face the roof of a nearby building before he shouted out in unbelievable fury.
"YOU THERE!"
Across the street, and fifteen floors higher, Khaos shifted on his perch as one of his puppets suddenly locked merciless eyes and addressed him directly.
"Oh! Now this is unexpected!"
Khaos was surprised, which was a rare thing indeed. His puppets weren't meant to be aware of his interference! He began to question whether he was as well-prepared as he'd first thought after all... He saw the giant abandon his first target, and start sprinting towards his own building with heavy purposeful bounds. Khaos slipped off his vantage point and began to escape by foot as he tried to find an area that'd let his Gift phase him away without the enhanced-humans enhanced senses reducing his odds of success to impossibility.
On the ground Ma' was dumbstruck. After her foe had shouted out some kind of challenge she'd briefly seen a masked figure on a nearby rooftop, and somehow her fight on the ground had come to a rude end. She was left angry and unsatisfied, but the worried thrill of panic that she'd felt at having almost killed an innocent police officer had kept her from chasing after the pair- in fact a small traitorous part of her was even considering fleeing the scene so as not to become an accessory to the crime herself!
A shatter of glass brought her back to her senses, and she raised her fists instinctively as she saw a fourth felon approach her. This one was wearing some kind of holographic headpiece, and had a variety of strange gadgets on her person- yet another unexpectedly over-equipped criminal.
"One step closer an' ah'll fry yer' like ah' fish!"
Thunder crackled ominously overhead as Ma' punctuated her words. She didn't have the hot-blooded stubborn streak that she'd started the fight with, but she was still committed to trying to do the right thing...
"Peace. I have an offer for you."
The fourth criminal called out, and extended something in her palm. It looked like some kind of remote control.
"The hostages inside are wired with explosives. I will trade you the detonator for my two comrades here, and your non-interference for the rest of my mission."
The cyber-criminal indicated the rifleman and armoured thug with two nods. Ma' looked at her sceptically.
"Ahn' why should ah' trust yer? Y' don't exactle' seem the type t' play by tha' rules."
The criminal tilted her head as she considered Ma's words. With a resigned sigh she threw the detonator underhanded to skitter along the road and come to Ma's feet.
"Don't be stubborn. Neither of us have anything to gain by blowing up innocents, and this fight proves nothing- I'm afraid that something else has been manipulating us."
The criminal left Ma' and knelt to drag her two comrades away and out of sight. Distant wailing sirens began to draw closer from a few blocks away.
"The mission has already gone out of control. Extending it only increases the chances of civilian casualties."
Ma' looked down at the detonator with a scowl and picked it up with infinite care- she didn't know how it was wired, so she took special care not to touch anything on it at all.
"Righ'! Fine! We'll call this one ah' tie, then! Jus' cause yer' don't seem t' be takin' it seriously!"
Ma could, of course, Zap the criminals in the back with a bolt of lightning- but it somehow didn't feel heroic to beat down routing enemies, or for her to risk exercising her gifts while holding the remote to a group of hostage-bombs. She had to admit that letting them go was definitely the closest compromise she could get to a heroic end to the battle, but it didn't improve her mood to know it- and after she'd heard a screech of rubber as the heist crews getaway vehicle sped away she let loose with a frustrated string of colourful curses and a savage kick that sent a chunk of rubble clattering down the street.
Up above the last criminal, Bohemian, was in hot pursuit of his target. Unlike his three peers he hadn't brought any of Commanders prototype gadgets into this mission, but he wasn't Gifted either- his advantage lay in the numerous pharmaceutical alterations he had endured. Taking so many experimental drugs had it's price, to be sure- but Namidian science had rendered his skin next-to bulletproof, his senses frighteningly acute, and his muscles as dense as a silverback gorillas. His memory had also become eidetic, and instead of relying on his mission handlers to pass him information he remembered the glowing green eyes of Khaos that he'd read in one of Commanders obscure information files long ago...
Currently he could only see the silver back-of-the-head of Khaos, as the manipulator sprinted across the rooftops in an effort to escape. Bohemian shot ahead with a powerful heave of leg muscles, but his target somehow ducked and twisted away before he could fit his oversized grip around the enigmatic man's neck.
"Ha, HAH!"
Khaos laughed as he dodged, although something in his voice suggested that he was short of breath. The man might be a dangerous manipulator, but he clearly wasn't interested in a direct fight.
"You're an interesting one! But even an amusing puppet can't cut it's strings!"
Khaos dived across a rooftop, landed onto a far fire-escape rail, and parkoured himself to safety.
"Keep talking, dandy!"
Bohemian taunted back.
"You're only a rumour on the Namidian files, you know? -I don't know what you can do, but I'm willing to bet you can't run forever!"
'Close.' Khaos thought. The truth was that because of the ab-humans modified senses that he'd have to put some significant distance between himself and the criminal before his 'odds of being elsewhere' were reasonable enough for him to make the jump. Once he'd lost line of sight with the Namidian, though, he could disappear almost instantly.
The giant leapt clear across the gap and landed onto the fire escape platform easily. The structure squealed under the stress of his heavy form, and he'd left two dented footprints where he'd landed.
"My fame precedes me, then! It's a shame for you that you don't know more- otherwise you wouldn't have bothered trying to stop me."
Khaos taunted. Bohemian ignored the banter.
"-but I really can't spend any more time here. We should meet again sometime, in fact, I know we will."
Khaos smirked in a patronising way that pissed Bohemian off more than it probably should have, and he shouted madly as he made to charge forwards and silence his enemy once and for all- but at his first footfall the metal struts of the fire-escape beneath him gave way, and the entire structure fell away to send him falling into a heap of scrap iron and 15 floors worth of brutal gravity.
Khaos peered over the edge of his building and winced.
"Heh... bad luck, my friend."
Then he was gone.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:40, Tue 31 May 2016.
