-==NON-CANNON BATTLE POST==-
Phonix Crimson released a theatrically exaggerated sigh of exasperation.
"That never works. They always want to put up a fight." He handed the microphone back to the officer he'd taken it from.
"...Shame, really." he said, without disappointment.
"Sergeant, please wait outside. This should only take a few minutes." He put on his cockiest grin and slowly strode towards the hospital's entrance, as he walked he shook the tension out of his arms and casually stretched his shoulders with circular shrugs.
He passed through the hospitals automatic glass entrance and came to a stop in the reception area. There was no sign of Vivianne, which meant that she was preparing a trap that Phoenix'd have no choice but to walk into. This suited Daniel just fine; his line of work didn't usually give him the luxury of fighting at an advantage, and at the very least it'd give him a moment to consider his enemy:
Viviane had taken out an entire unit of Swat troopers by herself, so it could be deduced that she was gifted- although Phoenix wasn't sure in which way, yet.
The reception area was a thinly furnished and open-planned affair, with only a few sterile desks, support columns, and utilitarian couches to break up the room. Doors and corridors along the ground floor lead into the further wings of the facility and into waiting rooms, shops and an efficiently placed canteen. With the power out the only light illuminating the room came from the mirrored floor-to-ceiling windows that plated the buildings ground floor. The room was completely silent.
As Daniel stepped further into the building he could see the still corpse of a SWAT Officer slumped over a stairwell banister, he had been shot squarely between the eyes with a single bullet. Whoever his foe was she was skilled, very skilled; the guard looked as though he hadn't even had time to fire off a shot before he'd been efficiently put down. He lifted the mans head to examine the entry wound, it was an ugly fat wound that looked like the kind of mark that high-calibre low-velocity bullet could leave. A revolver, Daniel guessed.
He replaced the man and continued onwards. Without Police Officers to showoff to, and nothing but the eerily dead hospital surrounding him, the bright enthusiasm that he'd entered the building with with was gradually sapped and replaced with a bitter sense of purpose. He told himself that he'd feel better after he'd had the chance to throw Vivianne through a few walls.
His path took him down one of the hospitals many hallways. The sterile furnishings, uniformly placed drinking fountains, fire extinguishers, and two-tone laminated floor made it seem indistinguishable from the rest of the facility but the overhead signs set at each junction claimed that he was walking past the first floor Emergency Rooms. Here the building was fully enclosed and windowless, only the pulsing orange-white light of his armours heatsinks and the glowing charge he kept maintained in his right fist kept Daniel from stumbling over the particularly thick trail of corpses that'd lead him here.
After a long minute of fruitless searching he stopped to call out a challenge:
"This is your plan? Hide and seek?! I guess that you're not as great in a fair fight as you are at slaughtering the helpless." His challenge came out angrier than he'd meant, seeing the senseless destruction paired with the dismal surroundings had pricked his temper and caused him to think rashly... which of course was why Vivianne had lured him down here: Angry heroes made mistakes- such as giving away their position with loud outbursts.
"Whatever you say, boy."
Daniels head snapped up to the ceiling as Vivianne broke her silence, his reactions fired a bolt of lightning down his spine as his dim vision adjusted to spot olive green beads of corrosive solution bubble the ceiling above him. A warning droplet splashed onto the ground by his feet and chewed a hissing pit into the floor, instantly and without warning the ceiling along the entire length of corridor bulged outward and acid gushed in torrents down onto the ground where he'd just been standing, great chunks of rubble slammed into the ground and sunk away as the pool of acid washed outwards before receding again as it dug it's way through another floor and drained into the basement.
From her perch on the floor above Vivianne admired her handiwork with a sly grin. She'd used her Ghoul helmet's suite of echo-locators to plan her strike but now that the air had filled with caustic vapour and shifting rubble she switched to low-light vision, she leaned over the precipice she'd made as she waited to confirm her kill. If the air, acid or rubble hadn't killed him her drawn TMP certainly would. Dropping a floors worth of chemically-drenched rubble onto her target had been excessive and impersonal by her standards but she wasn't in the mood to draw this fight out for long, her Units would soon be in position and she intended to begin Phase Three of her mission immediately.
As the mist parted her highly contrasted vision picked out the glowing white lines of Phoenix's armour, a moment later it cleared enough to show that he'd narrowly been able to leap back from her initial attack and had used his ridiculous scarf to filter his lungs from the congested air.
"I'm almost impressed!" she laughed, honestly.
"You're light on your feet, for such a loudmouthed idiot!" Her finger traced playful circles around the pin of one of her White Phosphorus grenades.
"Thanks. I like your uniform..." Phoenix returned. He threw his crimson scarf from his mouth and struck a pose, this time raising his striking arm in a karate-like pose.
"...but one of us is going to have to change!"
Lady Crimson snorted derisively, her quarry was back to throwing out inane soundbites.
"You shouldn't have gotten involved. Goodbye forever." With a casual flick of her wrist she plucked the Grenade from her holster, popped the pin, and tossed it in an underhanded spin to bounce past Phoenixes feet before spilling it's deadly chemical payload in a great surge of gaseous powder.
Daniel had to act quickly, whether it was from warcrime-grade phosphorous or acid rain the crimson psychopath seemed intent on killing him the the most painful way possible. His survival would be decided in a mere moment, and time seemed to slow to a crawl as the two Gifted committed their full skill and focus against each other.
As the armed cylinder hit the ground and bounced once past his boot Phoenix kicked himself off the ground with a concentrated detonation under his heel, he hurtled into the air and used a second crack of energy to kick off from the corridor wall just as the grenade bounced a second time and blossomed into a swell of pale smog. With a third wallkick Daniel cleared what was once the ground floor ceiling and hurtled toward Vivianne with a furious battlecry on his lips, his fist pulled back and the glow of it's stored power redoubled whereas Vivianne's own hand inched up to lead Daniels path and tightened it's finger around her TMP's trigger.
The distance between the two closed in less than a second; Phoenix slashed his gauntleted fist around in a powerful but telegraphed strike which Viviane countered by simply taking a step back and letting the attack sail through the air where her head had just been, she dug the stubby barrel of her gun into the young man's unarmoured gut and flashed a cruel smile that seemed to say
'I win. Tough luck.'
"PHOENIX! -PUNCH!" At the final moment Phoenix finished the last syllable of his battlecry.
Energy crackled along Phoenix's entire body and collected to a pinprick just above his knuckle, too fast for either party to perceive the point shrunk down to a singularity and burst into a volatile
'KRAC-CK!' of energy, even the indirect hit sent a blast through the room that threatened to boil the fluid in Vivianne's inner ear, and the blastwave pressed her down to brace a knee against the floor even as it blew open every door throughout the second floors corridor. Phoenix Crimson laughed in triumph as he succeeded in landing the first-hit.
"Hah -HA!"
Vivianne's perception floundered against the unexpected sensory assault as her Ghoul helmet desperately triggered it's flashbang and counter-noise compensators, her highly-drilled combat instincts screamed at her not to reflexively seize her finger against her trigger or to flinch into a guard, and instead she fell back upon the simple mantra that'd served her through her years of service as a ranker Ghoul and continued to serve her as a Lieutenant:
"When in doubt, lash out."
From her pained crouching position she snapped her palm upward and felt it connect with the pliable flesh of Daniels throat, which shut the little bastard up for a moment at least. Her octuple vision refocused whilst her blacked-out visor made what little light shone from the thrown open-second storey windows almost tolerable against her hyper-dilated pupils. With her restored vision she could see that Daniel had landed behind her but her strike had prevented him from following up with a second punch, currently he stood almost doubled over and clutching at his throat and Vivianne's ringing ears distantly registered that he was trying to croak out another speech. Vivianne didn't care to hear it, her wrist-stab hadn't been direct enough to crush Daniel's Laryinx but she wouldn't let that happen again, from now on she intended make every action a killing one.
The blood pounding in her ears subsidised enough to let her regain her balance and her helmet was obliging enough to reduce the rooms noise to a comparative whisper while she recovered, an electronic notification sprung up on the corner of her vision and she knew it's meaning without having to examine it: Squads Lemmings and Annie Lennox had arrived at the Hospital and this morons interference had put her behind schedule. She ground her teeth together furiously and a scarlet flush of rage ran it's way up her neck as a thought crossed her mind:
'Dieter won't tolerate this.'
She locked eye's with Phoenix Crimson to the extent that their opaque masks would allow as they sized each other up and planned their next moves.
Vivianne reacted before Phoenix and fired her TMP from the hip to scatter lead at his retreating figure, the Hero turned, sprinted and dived inside one of the wards recovery rooms before any of the rounds managed to find a solid hit- but as Daniel dived to cover Lady Crimson saw a round ricochet off his right shoulder plate, another whip between his pounding legs and several more pluck holes through his trailing scarf.
Pheonix Crimson twisted from his dive and franticly rolled into the relative safety one of the floors Recovery Rooms. His heavy breathing indicated the closest thing to fear that he ever allowed himself to feel in combat, the airy and well-windowed recovery room was deceptively calming compared to the hell that the rest of the building had become, but Phoenix resisted the urge to ease his guard- he could afford complacency in some of his fights, but this wasn't one of them.
Bullets were his biggest, and most unfortunately common, weakness; he could outmanuver the arm that fired them, but the rounds themselves travelled faster than his feet, his blasts, and even faster than thought- and it only took a single direct hit to take him out of action. From Daniels perspective Vivianne's compact little submachinegun was easily more dangerous than any of her grenades, acids, or
shockingly strong combat manoeuvres.
His reactions and agility had narrowly saved him this time, but blind luck had definitely played it's part.
He could hear Vivianne's footsteps stamping closer in a heavy sprint, he guessed that she intended to press her advantage and corner him in the room and so he heaved himself to his feet to meet her challenge head on.
Vivianne barged into the recovery room only moments after Daniel, and it's designed tranquillity exploded into anarchy as she waved her weapon over everything inside in an extended barrage that smashed windows, shredded hospital charts midair, and reduced a roomful of medical hardware to plastic shards. Her vision spun around as she tried to find her target, and as her weapon snapped around to clear the near-corners of the room Phoenix lunged from his hiding place behind the door to grab Vivianne by the wrist and twist her gun-arm to harmlessly face the ceiling.
Phoenix Crimson followed up his counterattack with a series of jabbed punches into Vivianne's side, each time he hit he did so with a gunshot spark that buckled her armour and would have ended the fight against a normal opponent, but only seemed to drive the wind from her. She was made of stronger stuff than even her militaristic and intimidating frame would suggest, and as she contracted her muscles to force the barrel of her weapon back toward Daniel it quickly became apparent that she was the physically stronger of the two. Without time to charge his attacks Daniel's punches had lost most of their power.
The two wrestled in silence for a long second, both their hands were grappled around the submachine gun's handle and Phoenix began to feel his muscles give way as the woman's enhanced strength brought her line of fire to within inches of Daniels face with slow inevitability. Phoenix tried to jam the trigger down to spend the rest of her bullets but she stopped him by hooking a finger behind the triggers frame.
"You look pissed. Did something come up, or are you always like this?" Phoenix taunted glibly, although his clenched teeth and groans of exertion told Vivianne that he was struggling not to give way.
"You shouldn't get so worked up. It's not a hot look."
"You little shit!" She wanted to to put a bullet through his skull as much as she wanted to punch him in the throat again, but neither so much as she wanted to get the fight over with and rejoin the broader battlefield. Images of Dieter's quiet scowl, and the subtle threat that implied, etched themselves onto her thoughts and triggered a very real and personal fear within her. As they struggled her masks messenger system updated it's earlier notification to an orange alert. She was falling behind schedule.
"Just die already!"
She decided to employ a dirty trick; with a single economic movement she released the grip of her off-hand from her weapon and gathered a thin layer of thin acid against her burnt and scarred palm before attempting to slap the hand against Phoenix's mask. Her own acids were just as damaging to herself as they were to her opponents, but she'd find it easier to deal with another layer of calloused skin across her palm than Phoenix would with two eye sockets full of the stuff. She loathed using the trick but it came in useful now and then, it was always painful, and it was always messy.
Phoenix Crimson felt the crushing pressure of Vivianne's strength suddenly release and could see her hand swing at his vision. It wasn't until he'd dodged under the arm with a drunken step that he saw the skin on her palm was blistering and bubbling away. Vivianne shifted her feet into a reversal posture and chopped her palm back to Phoenix's head with a lightening-quick fencers lunge. Realizing that attempting to block the attack would coat his arms in the same substance that was eating away at his opponent Daniel twisted his dodge around to dart past Vivianne's side and out of the doorway back into the corridor that he'd fled from.
His retreat took him one, two, and almost a third step out of the recovery room before the scarf trailing behind him was snatched in a vicelike grip and yanked sharply into his damaged neck, he turned on his heel to face back towards the room before a second savage tug pulled him to the ground. He unconciously released a strained 'Glark!' from his constricted windpipe as his legs kicked out uslessly, one of his hands scrabbled to undo the taut knot that'd suddenly imprisoned him whilst the other dragged it's fingers along the corridor wall in a desperate attempt to find purchase to resist the force that'd started to pull him back into Vivianne's line of sight...
Vivianne twisted the red cloth of Daniels scarf around her fist a third time before heaving her arm backward with irresistible force, she heard a painful choke and a slight give of resistance as the fabric yielded another foot. Her off-hand was still wet with mild acid and she ignored the burn of her raw skin on fabric as she wound her fist and tugged again, her main hand clutched her machine-pistol and she knew the weapon only had a quarter-clip remaining. Vivianne's dense muscles contracted and snapped back on her preys leash with another mighty pull, the cloth hit heavy resistance before coming away with a sudden flutter that forced her to take a step back to keep her balance. She tossed the crimson rag aside and brandished her weapon at the vacant doorway just as the wall beside it crushed inward with explosive force. She ignored the masonry shrapnel that pelted at her armour and started firing careful single shots into the gap in the hopes of clipping Phoenix without squandering what little remained of her clip. Flying grit and debris obscured her sight but she heard the bullet punch through something metal, the debris filling her vision was pierced by a shrill hiss and she saw a jet of angled white gas sweep under her vision before arcing up to crash into her chin with enough force to crack the lenses of Vivianne's helmet and wrench her neck upward at a terrible angle.
Phoenix Crimson's uppercut the fire-extinguisher into the hitwoman's neck with all his might, the red cylinder had taken a bullet for him and he felt it welt into her chinstrap with enough force to crumple the metal and vent what remained of it's pressurised contents into a freezing gaseous powder that blinded the pair and forced it's way into their lungs.
Vivianne's vision blacked out for a moment as her helmet took the blow, she could taste blood pooling in her mouth and the strike had turned her around to face an unknown direction- she started firing into the all-enveloping mist in an attempt to keep Phoenix at bay, and as her vision returned she heard the hollow deadman's click of her gun running dry. Her eyes widened as she saw a sudden glow expand from the fog and dive toward her.
"PHOENIX!-"
She forced her battered body to respond, and attempted to quickdraw her sidearm-
"-KICK!"
Both Phoenix Crimsons boots blew into her side, and with a deafening crash she felt herself lifted bodily from the ground and hurtled through a pane of glass. Her spiralling vision suddenly filled with sunlight and air rushed past her as she shot from the buildings second storey window like a cannonball... there was a brief moment of gutwrenching weightlessness whilst Vivianne's combat and base survival instincts screamed conflicting demands in confusion.
The moment came to a pass as she hit the ground. Her bare hands dragged across the rough floor and she felt her damaged helmet split open with the force of impact, her armour and momentum sent her grinding over the concrete carpark that she'd landed on before she came to a stop. A moment later the glass from the window she'd shattered on her way out caught up to her and coated her in a light razor crust. Her brain screamed at her legs to stand but her body had simply stopped responding.
With an agonised groan she rolled herself over and tried to tend to the worst of her injuries. Her eyes were weeping themselves raw after her cracked helmet had spattered them with freezing extinguisher-powder, but what remained of her vision warned her against rubbing it out as both of her hands had been scraped raw by her landing and were glazed with an unhappy combination of extinguisher, gravel, acid and glass shards. Instead she reached out a hand to grab the largest intact section of her helmet that was still within reach, she pressed a button on its side and spoke in a slow and deliberate tone that tried to mask the agony she was suffering.
"Annie Lennox... Lemmings... Laura... West carpark..." She released the microphone key as she felt a fresh stab of pain lance it's way down her neck, her jaw had been broken.
"...Awaiting extraction." she spoke finally, before flattening into the ground with conscious but unmoving exhaustion. She managed to flex her limbs, so she knew that she hadn't been crippled, but when she tried to inventory her broken bones the pain forced her to stop at 'twelve'.
Back in the hospital Phoenix's armour glowed a solid white that gave the gas settling at his feet an almost ethereal quality. He waited until he head the slap of Vivianne's meat hitting the ground before he released a breath that he hadn't realize'd he'd been holding. This had been a close fight, one of his closest ever- in fact. The woman was clearly no simple thug and although her abilities were no match for his own the way that she'd used them had been exceptionally skilful, even as he'd harried her with continuous attacks she had given as good as she'd got, and Phoenix had lost count of the many near-deaths he'd avoided.
His muscles ached all over, and his limbs shook with involuntary adrenalin spasms as he unsteadily teetered over to the window to look down upon his victim.
He could see Vivianne lying still amid a sea of glass and crimson shards of her ruined armour. After he'd seen the destruction she'd caused Phoenix sincerely hoped that she was dead. His mind lifted from such dark thoughts as he saw a group of armoured men with drawn rifles hustle out of cover and take up positions around Lady Crimsons prone form.
He beamed a shining grin, run a hand through his hair, and called out to what he assumed to be a squad of riot control officers.
"PASS THE SERGEANT MY APOLOGIES!" His voice was hoarse from the abuse it'd suffered over the last few minutes, but he injected it with a double dose of heroism and bluster to makeup the difference.
"- IT TOOK A WHILE LONGER THAN I'D HOPED, BUT HE CAN REST EASY IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT I! -PHOENIX CRIMSON!- HAVE ONCE AGAI-"
*KA-BLAMNN!*
The Shwartze Augen soldier lowered his M72 LAW antitank weapon from his shoulder and quickly chambered another rocket, he was a specialist of Squad Annie Lennox.
Six minutes ago Laura had parsed Lieutenant Sommers broad orders into individual commands, and with her overwatching eye had guaranteed that the two squads met no resistance in occupying the area. The thin line of police officers that'd been waiting outside the hospitals main entrance, and the smaller squads around the rest of the building, had been easily dispatched and the Hospital was now entirely under Namidian control. The only fault in the plan had been with the Lieutenant herself, who'd failed to rendezvous with her units on time... and the Gifted she'd been fighting, who was still drawing breath.
"Annie Lennox, maintain position and train weapons on the hospital- second floor, fifth right section- above the ER dropoff. Terminate anything loud and red with maximum prejudice." Laura's voice chimed out an efficient set of instructions. Half of the squads weapons focused on the window with laser precision whilst the remaining Ghouls fanned out into a 360 degree defensive circle that left them without any blind spots.
"Lemmings, move in to assist Annie Lennox with the extraction of Lieutenant Sommers. Annie Lennox, data indicates that 'Phoenix Crimson' would have a 91.5% survival chance against that blast. Fire again."
*KA-BLAMNN!*
"Both units. Resume Phase Three operations immediately, we are cutting into our time buffer. Vehicular extraction for Lieutenant Sommers is en route."
Phoenix Crimson lay prone on the floor as he groaned in pain. In the life of a hero some days were better than others and the two rockets had definitively put his day in the 'pretty shitty' category. Fortunately the loud, slow, combustible, nature of missiles made them easy enough to counter and he'd survived with only a few pockmarks and slashes over his armour.
He had no idea who the soldiers who'd surrounded Lady Crimsons body were, but they clearly weren't fans. On reflection the style of their armour had been similar in form, if not colour, to the kind Vivianne had worn- given that she was well armed and trained it wouldn't be presumptuous to think she was part of a larger organisation. Daniel knew of several Namidian para-military sub-organisations, and he felt that he recognised the uniform of one particular group... something German... that he couldn't quite dislodge from the mire of his memory. Not whilst encumbered by his pounding head and combat exhaustion, at any rate.
"Persetan!" he swore in Malay as his bruises began to make themselves known.
He sat himself upright with a groan and tested the flaps of his armour, after a quick diagnostic he confirmed that after he'd gotten his second wind he'd be able to resume his patrol. He raised a finger to his temple and activated his masks communicator by habit.
"Phoenix Crimson checking in. Gifted Terrorist has been defeated at Advocate Lutharian Hospital, enemies possibly still in the area. Resuming sortie."
No one responded, of course. Communications were still down, and he suspected that they wouldn't be restored until Justice was finally restored to Chicago.
He stooped down and plucked the dissolved, burnt and bulletridden remains of his crimson scarf off the ground and tied it around his neck once more, he tossed it over his shoulder with a dramatic flick of his hand.
"Better get going."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:02, Fri 19 June 2015.