CANON BATTLE POST
Huxley pulled open the heavy vault-like door that lead into the west aisle of Prison Durin and carefully pulled it shut behind him where it locked shut with a heavy automatic
*thunk* of titanium deadbolts. With electronic systems potentially compromised, The Commander had entrusted Huxley with a metal security key that he wore on a chain around his neck and tucked under his bulletproof vest. It could be used to manually force open the prison's sealed entrance. If the facility entered lockdown the key would be useless, but for the time being the small piece of metal represented the only means for either Huxley or his prey to escape. Huxley also wore a little trinket under his glove; a little white glove another one of The Commander's lieutenants had given him to wear "for good luck (boss's orders)." Already his irritation with this insane test was building, he needed to let it out. Maybe ripping the organs out of a naked, cocky fool would help with that! His teeth clenched together in an insane smile.
As the soldier paced the prisons circular outer ring in a full circuit, he began to feel his boiling impatience bubble up to the surface. Not yet, he couldn't let loose just yet; The Commander was watching. Once or twice he attempted to radio his Commander for a confirmation of the prisoner's location, but he was only offered static noise as a response; either the concrete was thick enough to disrupt his shortwave radio, or The Commander's test included making his job harder than necessary. He wasn't fully certain which one it was. He completed another circuit of the complex and loudly growled. The sound's echo was short; the hallways weren't that long! Where the hell was Peter hiding?!
Before he could dwell on the subject any longer, something pricked the edge of his hearing; there was the slight scrape of metal on metal coming from the section of corridor behind him! As he sprinted back the way he came, he ducked under a panel of rusted metal grating that he'd missed on his patrol. He finally found Peter Vargus, hunched over the West Door's keyhole, frantically working an improvised metal tool into the door's mechanism as he tried to force the lock open.
"Howdy, bud!" Huxley called out brightly, a satisfied smirk etched across his face as he saw a look of panic flash across the prisoners eyes.
"I shouldn't try that if ah' were you." he slapped a hand over the section of armor where his key was concealed.
"Without tha' key it jus' takes one false move for tha' door to lock down tighter than tha' skin on ah' grape."
Huxley drew his Kabar knives from their sheathes with a pair of long, deliberate scrapes. His target had been clever to avoid him for this long, and had even had the ingenuity to try to force a way through the one path out of the prison that wasn't locked down, but now that he'd been cornered it was time for the soldier to vent the frustration that had been ready to go nuclear throughout this short game of cat and mouse. The two heavy knives spun in Huxleys palms and sung in the air as he performed a complicated series of flourishes designed to intimidate and impress.
"Ah'm gonna' hurt you, now. Y'h should have stayed in your cell."
"My dear man." The prisoner spoke with airs that seemed oddly out of place when paired with his unclothed body and unfortunate situation
"Just because your jailers had the better of me for a few short hours, and that I chose to make my escape through stealth and not through force, do not presume that I'm of little threat. Rather, putting hooligans such as yourself in their place has become a hobby of mine."
To Huxley's surprise, the under-armed and thoroughly underfavored prisoner raised his fists as though preparing to spar. Two knives in the hands of a skilled master against the bare fists of a fugitive Gifted with no apparent abilities was not an even match, and Huxley recognised the false bluster for what it was.
"Whatever you say, bud."
Unable to contain a trace of the excitement in his voice, the psychopath sprang forward to do battle without so much as another moment's hesitation.
As Huxley dived forward, he danced his knives between his fingers to strike Vargus with the butt of his handles; his mission, after all, was still to take the man alive. Both his arms snapped forward in a shockingly fast whiplash designed to crush both of Vargus's temples and end the fight in a single strike, but before the attack could connect the prisoner pushed his weight off his front foot and darted back a step to safety. Being both a dancer and a staff-fighter, Vargus was no slouch when it came to footwork, and he managed to avoid Huxleys follow-through and redoublement attacks by ceding yet more ground. But at his fourth step, Vargus felt his back press into the still-sealed prison exit and realised that he had nowhere left to run. When the point of his enemies knives slashed a thin wound across his chest, he knew he only had an instant to act. And with no other option, he pushed his weight forward and attempted to land a punch on his assailant. Vargus drove one fist high to divert Huxleys attention and jabbed the other below his vision in an underhanded gut punch. The punch was only rewarded with a mild grunt of discomfort as his fist impacted harmlessly against Huxleys bulletproofed vest.
"Unf! Right! Ah' was trying to go easy on y'h!" the attack seemed to annoy the soldier rather than injure him.
Before Vargus had a chance to press his assault, the elite assassin kicked him backwards with a stomp of his heel, raised his rifle, and pulled the trigger. The movement was a single, efficiently drilled CQB technique. Vargus had less time than concious thought could provide to respond to the attack. He dove at his opponent, grabbing Huxley's arm just as the bullet rocketed toward his face.
*BLAMNN!*
The gunshot echoed down the hall with a deafening ring, and in the comparativly stark silence that followed, both men stared at each other with a look of equal shock.
Vargus had caught Huxley's "non-lethal" rubber bullet between his teeth.
"...Tha' fuck?!" Huxley managed. His face was grappling with itself, trying to settle on either a scowl or a fearful yell.
"M' dea' m'n. Tha's Neva'h 'appen'd 'efore." Vargus mumbled around clenched teeth, his expression just as surprised as his foe's. He'd never managed to perform an "actual" trick without his costume before! It was impossible! Or was it...?
Vargus' eyes then fell on to his opponent's arm; a wide, earnest smile grew on the showman's face. The thug had his glove; in hoping to beat him at his own game, these novices had given him the chance to prove his skill!
Peter jumped at Huxley's throat (best not to give the game away yet). As the two wrestled, they exchanged a furious set of punches, kicks and grapples that would decide the battle once and for all. Peter had a few years of practice as a vigilante, but none of that experience compared to the regime of strict combat training that the soldier had endured under The Commander's leadership. Peter's choke attempt was met with a knee driven into his groin, the desperate elbow he threw at the soldier's neck was caught and used to hurl him into a corner, and his attempt to wrestle Huxley to the ground was met with a loaded punch that left blood gushing from the magician's nose nose. A final attempted kick into Huxley's side was countered by a roundhouse that left Peter staggering back beaten, bloody, and winded.
"Ha, ha!" While the severely injured magician stumbled back from the uninjured mercenary, he started to laugh.
"My dear man, I really must thank you for being such a terrific assistant -unfortunately I must begone now. Perhaps we will meet again, but for now it's adieu and au revoir!"
Huxley tilted his head and regarded Black Magic with a confused grimace.
"You're full of y'hself all of ah' sudden, did ah' hit y'h too hard on tha' head? Just because y'h managed one little trick doesn't mean y'h suddenly stand a chance."
"On the contrary! 'One little trick' is all that it should ever take to leave a crowd breathless -" the magician enthused. Even undressed and with blood pouring from his busted nose, it was obvious something had changed in the desperate prisoner; Huxley suddenly felt a pang of fear that the man wasn't merely bluffing.
"- and you've fallen for the oldest trick in the book! Classic misdirection!"
Peter raised the now-gloved hand that he'd been neglecting during the fight and opened his palm dramatically; every one of Peter's fingers had a grenade pull-ring wrapped around it!
Huxley barely had a second to realize his mistake. But instead of running, the psychopath let out a war cry and tackled Black Magic to the ground, engulfing them both in a quintuple explosion of teargas, flashbang, and smoke grenades.
The Commander sat up at his monitor. Orwell, his close lieutenant, looked over his Commander's shoulder. A thick, black smog and a waning flash completely blinded their cameras.
"Backup 1, Huxley is down! Assist him at once. We cannot afford to lose visual contact."
"Sir!" responded three of his officers, all of them offering their Commander identical salutes before racing off with their assault rifles at the ready. Orwell simply tapped the chin of his helmet with his finger in a thoughtful gesture.
A few minutes of tense silence passed before one of the cameras caught the small squadron entering the prison. Suddenly, Huxley emerged from a blind spot the camera's couldn't quite reach, limping and coughing. Two of his comrades moved to help him up, while the third ran past him, covering the hallway.
"That's not Huxley, take him alive!" shouted The Commander over his short-wave radio. He had realized it in a microsecond, even if Vargus had taken the brunt of the attack, Huxley wouldn't have walked out of that blind spot. He actually knew how to position himself when wounded.
The Commander was too late. The two men approaching "Huxley" fell to the ground with loud thuds as his hand expertly threw several Makibishi (Japanese caltrops) near their feet. Just as the third man turned to face the impostor, Black Magic wiped his hand across his body and disappeared.
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Unbeknownst to any of The Commander's men, Black Magic reappeared in the Hummer they drove to the prison. In the blink of an eye, the magical hijacker took off toward the nearest fence and followed it to the first gate found. One of the guards there signaled for a stop, yet the only response was acceleration. The driver smashed thorough the gate as a woman came out of the guardhouse, holding a LAW for use in these kind of circumstances. She fired, yet her target swerved causing her to miss. She said some very unladylike things under her breath for anyone who ever while her partner, already back inside their enclosure, pressed a button. There was no blaring alarm, in fact no sign anything had happened; it had though, every single Schwartze Augen received an automated signal about the escaping transport. In apartments and homes, TVs were turned off and knitting abandoned in favor of weapons and armor piercing ammunition. The entire length and breadth of Gaultown was locked down, in such a way that an outsider would notice nothing unusual at all.
A single, white hand held a steering wheel as a naked foot controlled a gas pedal, switching immediately to the break when a distracted woman on her phone pushed herself and a baby carriage in the path of the oncoming Hummer. Before Peter could do anything else, the lady in question dropped her cell and reached into the carriage to pull out an assault rifle. He barely shoved his stolen wheels into reverse and ducked his head before he heard metal impacting metal. He blindly got the vehicle moving backwards, then pulled a turn, peeked over the dashboard, and tore off down a side street.
Until that moment, Vargus had not realized the scope of the trouble he was truly in. Whomever had captured him, he understood they did not simply control his cell, or the complex it was in, not even only the soldiers he had tricked; all of this was at their beck and call, this entire area. Even now, with his glove returned to him, if he vanished from the Hummer and reappeared anywhere around here, he might well get killed before he was even aware of any danger. He took a breath and leaned back, forcing himself to try and relax; an action that saved his life as a bullet punched through his side window and sailed into the space just before occupied by his head. He knew he needed to act fast if he ever hoped of getting out of this alive. To that end, he turned on and off roads until he saw what looked like a way out of this death trap. After several seconds, the machine took off gaining in speed as it neared the outskirts of town. Bullets pinged into it, but it continued unheeded by such things. It had almost reached the limits of Gaultown, almost. Alas, victory was snatched away at the last second as an explosion erupted from below, tossing the Hummer up in the air like some cheap child's toy and engulfing it in unforgiving heat and flame.
Only five minutes passed before people in orange vests began to approach the wreckage and place cones and cloth signs that cordoned off the street and warned of a busted gas main. Every road into or out of Gaultown was mined, nothing had been left to chance (including the cover in the event a device went off). A fire engine pulled up, several persons made their way to the twisted metal and used high grade extinguishers to put it out. Inside, no body was found, just a knife that was still jammed into the dashboard through an opening in the steering wheel and preventing it from turning.
This was reported to Dieter, who calmly instructed his underlings to search and use any recourse at their disposal to find the missing hero. Then he poured himself a brandy, chopped off the end of a hand rolled cigar with a gold cutter, lit up, and let out a puff of expensive smoke before sipping his drink. He leaned back, thinking over how long it had taken to get this base of operations up and running; how much time and effort, how many resources, how many favors given and paid. It had been worth it, very much so in the long run; a state of the art facility not only on American soil yet publicly in the open for any and all to see. Many secrets had been unlocked here, numerous mysteries were forced to give up their secrets in a long chain of success that had just been broken. Within short order, his systems had been successfully hacked, compromised by a virus, and the person responsible had evaded apprehension while a prisoner managed to escape from the Gifted testing facility. That equaled two possible leaks that could tell of this location, and though in times past said leaks would have been thought of as simple maniacs, the Wave was such a threat someone would at least superficially investigate their claims. That would put Gaultown on the radar, defeating its main purpose and giving weight to whatever future claims or rumors about the place sprung up. It was very likely this location would have to be scrubbed, and a new hub formed.
Truth be told, however, Dieter was not angry, not in the slightest; he had learned long before now that nothing lasts forever. One could knit a sweater that became their favorite and would last years, yet eventually threads would start to come free and snag until it all became unraveled. There were other sites set up, plans and back up plans and back ups of those. Moreover, next time his systems would be guarded against such an attack and security measures stepped up to not depend mainly on computerization. The German never suffered losses, he only gained opportunities to learn and adjust.
He did not fault the hero, he did what was expected of him; also, no fault was found with the Commander. He had used sound judgement and reasoning, brought short by a weakness of caring about the men under him. Dieter of course had no such issue, yet honestly he approved of this weakness in others; it could be used against them later. On top of that, his cohort now owed him big for this and Sievold could collect this debt at his leisure. The crime lord issued needed orders to have his agents on standby to scrub the base, and awaited word on either the possible fleeing hacker or the missing magician.
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Meanwhile, Orwell finally broke the contemplative silence that followed The Commander's issuing of an alert to Dieter and an order to his men to retrieve the wounded.
"Commander, why did you give Huxley the man's glove? What purpose did it serve?"
The Commander turned to face his most trusted man, pulled out a tablet, and began to type out a long sentence.
"Orwell, that glove did not belong to our subject. It was a perfect replica, but a replica nonetheless."
Orwell smiled at his Commander's brilliant bit of deception. The Commander continued typing, sending out several minor orders at the same time.
"Though we were unable to contain him, we have certainly learned a great deal about his Gift's psychological component. And that, my friend, was our mission."
Orwell laughed. He wondered if the German would see it that way. Who knew with these men? Maybe he had planned for this all along... It was always wheels within wheels with the Namidian leaders; and it was always a marvel to watch.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 05:04, Fri 21 Aug 2015.