(OOC: Would Captain Hall react like this under pressure, when she's blaming herself and Green for the death of her men? If not, I'll gladly rework this post.)
CANON BATTLE POST
The cover behind Juniper Hall rattled and shook as lead shells impacted and flattened against it. That would be disconcerting enough. But with the knowledge that there was an entire truck's worth of armor between herself and her assailant and that the two Namidians, one president, and multiple non-combatant agents were trapped inside the truck, it was horrifying.
Fortunately, the bars on Junipers shoulder that denoted her rank of "Captain" weren't just for show. She'd already anticipated how to best turn the situation to her favor. Her first priority was to ensure that the Namidians didn't pen them in and gain control of the battlefield, her second was to ensure that their three prisoners survived to be interrogated. Only once those two objectives were assured did she have the luxury to worry about minimizing collateral damage and the damage her own team was likely to sustain.
"You, you and YOU! Return fire to the APC if any troops threaten to break cover! Everyone else, with me! We're moving that van out of the way!"
She called out to the other riders in her unit. Not every agent under her command was Gifted, but those who weren't were still more than capable in a scrap. She summoned her own Gift and began to expand the ITSDA's feeble cover into something more substantial by summoning several brick walls and concrete roadblocks in a rough ring around the cab-less truck.
"Crimson, get moving and clear our flank!- Captain Harding! Cover him!"
An agent crouched in cover by her side, a deceptively fair-featured blond. The boy shot her a keen
"On it!" before leaving the cover of their truck and taking a running leap into the air. He left two burning footprints and an explosion in his wake as he dived high towards the Namidian gunman without so much as a shadow of hesitation, as though he was as comfortable storming the armored car as he would have been making a pot of coffee.
Earlier, one of the Namidians had called Phoenix Crimson a "simple predator" and June knew that he'd been right; Daniel's life had revolved around violence since the age of thirteen. And although his lifestyle had made him reckless and volatile, he had nonetheless become frighteningly good at his job. The APC full of Namidian storm troopers was no minor threat, but June knew that for sheer offensive power Daniel was the perfect weapon to tackle it.
She turned her attention away from the APC, and towards the other threat. The black van that had stopped them dead was only manned by a single gunman, but her training told Juniper that Dieter Sievold's private army was well trained, dangerously resourceful, and stocked full of Gifted lieutenants. With a terse set of orders she began directing her own troops, shoring up her defenses against multiple directions and gathering her troops' resolve for a counter attack...
"PHOENIX--!"
While Daniel dived toward the APC with an eager grin, his image was blurred and multiplied by the subtle perception field that Captain Harding had formed around him. As the distance between Daniel and his target closed, Mister Green swivelled his mounted gun away from the cluster of ITSDA agents and tried to clip the immediate threat. His hail of gunfire was immediately joined by scattered bursts from the Ghoul troopers who were racing down the vehicle's boarding ramp. Fortunately, all of their shots seemed to twist and distort harmlessly through Daniel's illusionary shield. Stored power built up in Phoenix's gloved hand and the latent energy behind his attack ignited the air surrounding him just before he struck.
"...PUNCH!"
The APC rocked back onto it's suspension as the side that Phoenix struck was lifted several feet into the air and crashed back down. Mister Green was jarred back and forth in his perch; he leaned away from his gun to stare into the APC's interior. Phoenix's first punch had hit with the force of an AT-gun, which was just enough to penetrate the vehicles multiple layers of armor. A horrific split of metal had bulged into the passengers' compartment. Mister Green had been briefed on Phoenix Crimson, and after he'd learned about Vivianne's unfortunate encounter with him, he'd taken it upon himself to learn more. Still, seeing the boy's sheer offensive power first hand was impressive.
He knew he'd have to end the fight quickly if he didn't want his escape vehicle to be totaled and end up sharing a recovery ward with his other lieutenants.
Just as he finished that thought and prepared to shout instructions to Squad Samus a second punch rocked the vehicle back on its wheels again, and this time the dented armor buckled completely inwards as Phoenix's burning fist broke through. Any Ghouls who hadn't yet evacuated the vehicle were thrown bodily off their feet and scattered throughout the passenger hold like salt in a shaker. Green's instincts suddenly screamed
"Danger!" and with a start he realized that instead of drawing his fist back for a third punch, Phoenix was channelling his energy for an explosion.
"EVERYBODY OUT!" He ordered behind him, as he pulled himself out of the APC's mounted gun compartment and into the open air. The message reached the ears of his soldiers and the urgency in his voice forced the last of his reeling squad out of the boarding ramp only split seconds before Phoenix unleashed his next attack!
Both exit doors, the boarding ramp, the gunners hatch and the rend that his punches had opened all flared like a furnace as Daniel cooked the cab's interior with a violent burst of flame. The last soldiers to evacuate were punished with second degree burns down their backs, but were spared a sudden death by their quick reactions. Mister Green kicked himself away from the gunnery hatch just as a volcanic blast burst through the top of the APC.
"Samus. Green. Draw Phoenix Crimson into the open at all costs!"
A curt clipped voice run out across the Namidian's tactical systems, and those with the benefit of Ghoul helmets saw personalised individual orders superimpose themselves onto their vision. The tide of the battlefield shifted in a disturbingly perfect, mechanical fashion as Laura, one of Schwartze Augen's mission co-ordinators, exerted her influence. Her expert advice and uncanny ability to compose complex tactical situations were absolutely vital for the unit to function at peak efficiency, and had been the turning point of many battles before now. Given that each passing moment gave the ITSDA vital time to break their siege, her expertise was sorely appreciated.
Mister Green's earpiece buzzed and he nodded acknowledgement of his own orders. By trade he was a fixer, a smuggler, and a dealer - but it looked as though he'd have to take on a frontline role for this plan to succeed. With a resigned sigh, he stepped off the still-burning APC roof, drew his sidearm, and landed right in front of Phoenix Crimson.
"Hey! Hothead!" Green called Phoenix's attention. Normally, Green's style was more to talk softly but with weighted emphasis and subtle threat. But Laura demanded a distraction, and that's what he intended to provide.
"There's only one 'Crimson' I acknowledge. And she wanted you to hold onto these!"
Green raised his pistol and pumped the trigger.
Phoenix pulled his fist out of the stricken tank with a minor explosion and wrench of torn metal. A snappy retort touched his lips but the sight of Green's weapon hand tightening forced him to act before he could finish. He dove away with a power-assisted handspring that caused Green's first shot to breeze past him. Landing on his feet, he grasped the APC's driverside door and wrenched it off its reinforced hinges with a flash of thermite. Pulling it infront of himself and dropping to his knee, Phoenix felt his makeshift shield thrum with kinetic force as Green bounced a trio of bullets off the glass.
"Hah! Nice try!" He finished his taunt as he prepared to blast himself forward and tackle the gunman.
"-but I've been beating up Namidians all day, and I don't feel like stopping an-" *BLAMNN!*
-"AUGHH!!"
A duo of Ghouls pounded around the front of the APC and brought their weapons to bear. A bullet slammed into Phoenix Crimson's shoulder and sent him reeling forwards. Ceramic splinters shot into the air and deep into his back as his armor failed to stop the bullet from slamming into his right arm's nerves. Roaring in pain, he pushed himself backwards into the two men before they could fire a second round and take them down. Slashing the one who'd shot him to the ground with a quick leg sweep, he followed that up by checking the man into several weeks of physical therapy with a quick heel stomp to the helmet. The second tried to step back to create enough distance to fire his weapon. But by the time he'd arrested his forward momentum, Phoenix had already stepped over his battered comrade and thrown the second Ghoul over his shoulder with an awkward judo throw. The man was lifted bodily off his feet and slammed headfirst into the pavement! Whilst Phoenix's armor sparked, Mister Green fired another opportunistic round of shots at him, only to fall short and hit the agent's human shied. Daniel dropped his injured foe and snatched the APC's door off the ground. In a rocket-powered bull rush, he ignored the screaming pain of his damaged limb and the sounds of Green's ammunition rebounding off his cover as he tried to finally take this bastard down.
BLAMNN!
Green saw a muzzleflash over Phoenix's right shoulder, and a microsecond later he heard the rifle's report wash past him as the back of Phoenix's armoured shin turn to ruby mist. The shot had come from the treeline that The Commander's snipers had occupied.
Throughout his eventful life Daniel had taken more than his fair share of injuries, and he recognised the worryingly familiar signs of going into shock. But he was no mere brute, he was a predator! Though this battle was lost, he knew how to take his prey down with him.
"Hahhh..." He half laughed, half groaned as he threw himself to the ground.
"...Damn."
Mister Green reloaded his sidearm with an economic flick of his thumb and slam of a cartridge, before strolling over to ensure the defeated agent's demise with a final round to the head.
"Not a bad attempt..." Green reflected.
"...but you can't expect to luck your way through every fight. You must have known it'd end this way, eventually."
"Mister... Green, right?" asked the downed hero.
Mister Green's mouth twitched its way into a smirk. The punk was still alive and begging to know his killer's identity, needing to know who it was who finally took him down. Normally, Green wasn't one to enable the hero's need to yammer, but he took pity on the kid.
"Yes," said Mr Green while he lined up his sights. In spite of his pity, he was intent on claiming revenge for the trouble that Phoenix Crimson had put his organization through today.
"Not anymore," said Phoenix calmly. He then used the last of his consciousness to bounce up to a crouch, ignite his rocket boots and his fist, and uppercut Mister Green.
Mister Green's hair and clothes ignited as he and Phoenix Crimson flew above and past the APC and hundreds of feet into the Pennsylvanian forests. Ultimately, Daniel collapsed as he and his opponent fell through the treetops and smashed their heads and limbs against the branches on their way back to Earth.
His opponent, however, wasn't so lucky. The uppercut and fall had left him conscious, but nearly mortally wounded. Both his arms and legs were paralyzed, maybe permanently. In his monstrous, blind rage, the mysterious Mr. Green finally unleashed his power. His alchemical ability, the Gift that allowed him to turn any material into another, let him transform the grass by his feet into water. Normally, this wouldn't be sinister but the water began flowing into the open mouth of the unconscious youth lying at his feet, threatening to drown the unconscious boy in mere minutes.
Mister Green would have his revenge, one way or the other.
Private Theodore Logan was a hard man, although not a superhuman. He had been rigorously trained by Schwartze Augen in both conventional military technique and specialized Counter-Gifted Combat. He didn't possess super strength or optic blasts or any other kind of Gift, but he had been trained on how to counter and destroy those who did.
That was why he felt no fear when he and his squad had been ordered to subdue an entire convoy of ITSDA superhuman agents with nothing more than the weapons they usually carried. For any other military force it would be a suicide order, but for Squad "Samus" it was a routine command.
"Green and his target are both down - you must advance, quickly."
Laura's voice pulsed its way through his Ghoul helmet, giving Logan's squad the order they had been waiting for. The squad's leader gave a simple hand signal as a confirmation that their orders were clear, and every member of his unit moved and acted in perfect unison:
First, Mister Black shifted form and stopped sending individual rounds at aimed individuals. Instead, he flipped the fully-automatic switch on his weapon and began pelting the pinned ITSDA agents, forcing them into deep cover.
Simultaneously, Logan and several other foot soldiers hustled from behind the cover of their shattered APC. They sprinted in a wide arc that took them around Mister Black's field of fire and into a sidelong flank with the trapped agents. Now with the lieutenant on one side, Logan's unit on the other, and The Commander's team of snipers and vehicles filling in the gaps, their quarry was well and truly trapped.
Laura's voice checked in again, ever helpful.
"Captain Juniper Hall has called every ITDSA operative remaining in Chicago for urgent assistance. The nearest responding agents are just over four clicks away. Our time buffer remains unchanged, but urgency status has been upgraded to 'Violet'."
In time with her announcement, Logan's enemies redoubled their own firepower. Bullets whizzed past him, and he shouldered his rifle to return the sentiment; his mask's optical display informed him that his rounds had found their mark and synchronized with his squad mates' own feeds and S.A's bank of handlers to suggest a new target. As bid, he fired a tight burst of rounds which sent his new target scampering for cover.
Despite the fact that the battle obviously wasn't in the their favor, Hall's soldiers were fighting like demons, doubtlessly thinking that if they dug in deep they might be able to hold out long enough for backup to arrive. Logan knew that their desperate effort was in vain. Surrounding and immobilizing their convoy was only the beginning of Samus's offensive.
The man to Logan's side hefted his M72 LAW Missile system over his shoulder and aimed in a high arc. The weapon was designed with anti-armor in mind, but had been restocked with High Explosive ammunition for this operation. With a sudden thunder strike of ignition, a warhead was sent square into the center of the ITSDA stockade.
The blast sent the defenders of justice reeling, and neither Logan or any of his squadmates missed their opportunity to break cover and storm their foes' position. Their charge had been planned and executed in exacting detail and Logan knew that all resistance would be neutralized within thirty seconds and all Namidians extracted within sixty.
Moments earlier, a bullet whizzed close enough to Juniper Hall's ear to make it ring, and a second round impacted off the brick wall she'd summoned as cover to shower her with shards of hard-light.
She peeled herself out of cover and cracked off a tight bust of bullets at the distant form of Mister Black, who didn't flinch as the deadly hail missed him by scant inches. Black leveled his weapon and returned fire, sending June back into cover.
"Damn it all!" she swore aloud. She didn't usually let herself get worked up during combat, but the situation was pressing against her hard and her options were shrinking by the second. Half her agents were either dead or dying, and what few remained were pinned from four sides and being picked off one by one.
In a situation like this it would either be total annihilation, or a close victory. In a flash, she decided to stake everything on one last counter-attack.
"Turn to face the West and North flanks! Get me a Grenade on that M.G! YOU! CONCENTRATE FIRE ON THE GHOULS - WE CAN'T HIT THE LONE GUNMAN FROM THIS R-"
*KA-BLAMNN!*
The end of her sentence was cut off as a wall of hot air buffeted past her, and Samus' HE rocket exploded in the midst of the ITSDA's ring of cover. One agent was thrown bodily into the air, whilst June saw another battered to the ground by shrapnel. She herself had stumbled and lost her balance. As she tried to pull herself together, her disoriented vision saw the bug-eyed helmet of a Schwartze Augen soldier rushing from his cover, vaulting over one of her barricades, and brutally kicking one of her reeling agents in the temple. The struck agent fell backwards in an insensible heap and the soldier turned to face her with malicious intent, but she'd be damned if she was going to go down without a fight.
She marshaled her wits through sheer force of will and tackled the Namidian grunt before he had a chance to ready his weapon. The pair both fell roughly to the ground and Hall summoned the first object she could think of (a brick) and clubbed the soldier over the head with it. The clubbing elicited a satisfying crunch and a shrill cry of pain from the soldier. A second SA commando came into view as he pounded his way around another section of cover and cluster of downed agents. She brought fourth a coil of chains around his ankles to trip him to the floor whilst her remaining hand shot to her hip to draw her sidearm, but halfway through the action her wrist was locked in a vice-like grip and twisted with a sickening pop of dislocation. A third soldier had charged her from behind. She only had a second to wince in pain and attempt to club him with her brick before the second target closed the distance and drove an iron-knuckled fist into her jaw.
Her world turned black.
Sherry huddled under the cab-less armored truck with her hands over her head, sure that at any moment a stray round would seek her out. The moment the fight broke out, she'd left the protection of her transport to assist on the front lines. Juniper had been furious that she'd put herself in danger, but realized that she didn't have the time to argue past Sharol's stubborn nature and begrudgingly allowed her to tend to battlefield injuries. The turning point in the battle had come when Phoenix and several other agents were lost and the damage started to pile up faster than she could repair. Despite Sherry's protests, Juniper had been adamant that she make herself scarce. The fact was, June stated, that if she was captured by Namidians the result would be far worse than simply losing their battle. Shouted down, Sherry had relented.
With a hollow echo, a last gunshot sounded and the motorway was suddenly silent. The constant hammering of lead, explosions, and screams of pain suddenly abated. From her position, she could see the armored boots of several Ghoul operatives worming their way through the battlefield toward her position. They stepped over the bodies of several wounded, dead, or dying agents and took up position around the truck's cargo door.
"It's deadlocked. Use the thermal lance," ordered one of the figures. Another stepped forward and started burning through the vehicle's composite armor with a device that sent sparks bouncing down into her hiding place. The other figures surrounded the intruder and settled into a braced posture that told Sherry that they had readied their weapons. She resisted her first urge to break cover and dive to the rescue, and instead crunched her eyes shut and silently prayed that the Namidians wouldn't simply shoot Captain Harding, Slick, and the ITSDA paramedics still trapped inside.
With a sudden rend of metal the door was pulled away, literally off it's hinges, there was the distinctive flash and ring of a concussion-grenade detonation, and the air was filled with aggressive shouts.
"Hands where I can see them! Surrender!"
Above her, the van rocked on it's suspension as the squad of armed men beat their targets into submission and roughly pulled the sedated Ash, Zenith and President Galvez out of their bonds and onto their feet. Zenith seemed to be the quickest to recover, and as he was part-guided and part-dragged back to the Mr Green's APC he managed to slur out a short statement.
"Thank you for the assistance... but we don't need to bring him with us..."
The group of extracting soldier stopped, and from Sherry's limited view she could see the pair hoisting the injured Brazilian president nod to each other and drop him heavily to the ground. His eyes were wide with terror, but they were glassed over an instant later when a single gunshot rang out and pierced his skull.
Sherry covered her mouth with her palm to stifle a startled scream of horror.
Tudor swivelled in The Commander's chair as he watched his virtual tactical map unfold. The symbol representing Dieter's APC filled with miniature portraits of Ash, Zenith, and several soldiers. They were shortly joined by Mister Black's marker as they extracted out. The portraits of his own forces, the Numbered Brethren, had already withdrawn from their sniper positions and were linking up with a getaway SUV at the next road.
With a tap and a scroll of his fingers on the chair's armrest, the map panned out to view the ITSDA forces; the nearest agents to respond to the prisoner transports urgent S.O.S would find themselves almost half a minute late. Once there, they'd find that almost half of the forces they'd been sent to rescue had been gunned down, while the rest were rendered combat incapable.
The Acting Commander smiled to himself. In his place, "The" Commander would doubtless fussed over details and berated himself for every minor fault of the operation, but Tudor considered this a successful outcome. The Namidian forces had only suffered minor casualties, whereas the ITSDA had suffered a brutal and harsh defeat. One that they wouldn't soon forget.
He sent a targeted message through the Namidian-net to Schwartze Augen's directors.
"Long range scans show no sign of pursuit. It's a clean getaway- mission accomplished."
He switched channels to his own units.
"N.B you are clear for extraction. We're done here."
"Not quite, Acting Commander--"
The room's speakers crackled with a calm, direct voice. Tudor recognized 'Laura' when he heard her.
"Have you secured Lieutenant Green? Or Phoenix Crimson? Or even Captain Hall?"
Tudor scoffed back at her. He had sent a team to recover their allies and kill their targets almost three minutes ago! And their scheduled minute report had arrived on time!
"Of course I have!"
"Then where are they?"
Tudor examined his tactical map carefully. The recovery team he sent had not yet reestablished contact with the targets. Suddenly, the team's portraits began to disappear.
"Backup! Backup!"
"No! I had won!"
Moments prior, Sherry crawled her way over to Captain Hall and placed her healing hands upon her CO's back. She then shushed the woman and pointed at the soldiers running into the woods. With quick, yet measured movements, the two began to tail the recovery team just as the Commander's other men began to clear the van's immediate area.
When the team finally came upon a corpse-like, yet conscious Mister Green and a sputtering, gasping Phoenix Crimson, Captain Hall's anger took control. A river of hard light spikes burst forth from the ground, stabbing the men in the back. Juniper's training prevented her from instinctively targeting the men's internal organs, but she wouldn't have cared if they died. They would pay. Schwarze Augen, The Commander. All of them.
Captain Hall ordered Sherry to heal Phoenix Crimson and Mister Green even as the soldiers were still howling in agony. She then handcuffed a dazed Green and had Crimson engulf dozens of trees in flame, hoping to short out their enemy's thermal sensors long enough to ensure that they could rendezvous with their reinforcements.
Though the broken Captain Hall ordered Sherry to "let them go" as she headed back to the battlefield with Green, Phoenix and the good doctor spent a few seconds healing the most critically damaged of the group before she and Phoenix returned to their Captain.
"When we get back," said Captain Hall with a hiss in her voice as she stared a hole through a subtly smiling Green.
"You will tell us everything, or you will die. It's as simple as that."
Mister Green chuckled. Crimson stopped himself from punching a hole through the monster's back a second before he would have lit up his arm.
"No, no, no. That's not how you operate."
"Maybe not on the books," said Hall.
"But we have secrets too..."
For once, the normally reassuring Captain Hall ignited fear in Sherry's heart. She didn't sound like she was bluffing...
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:17, Thu 24 Dec 2015.