ic Interceptors: Sounds Of Silence

[alderwitch]

Normally, Bombshell would have faded into the shadows to wait for the time to strike, but this was no normal engagement. They would know, of course, to keep a watch for the former spy, so she made it easy. Stepping gracefully into the center of the newly created doorway, she gave a laconic salute with one booted foot perched on the opening as if she were posing for the cover of a magazine rather than making herself a very pretty target to for all the men gearing up to fire. 

 

"You know, if you hated the fruitcake so very much, you could have just said so," Bombshell taunted, her red-lipped smile sharp enough to cut. The words were clipped and clear as if the woman gripping her kitchen table with white knuckles had never existed. "No need for all this... trouble."

[Gizmo]

The sound of bullets hitting Caradoc's armour covered the low rumbling at first but the sound grew in intensity until thorny vines as thick as lampposts burst through the ground beneath the mind controlled gunmen. Willow, covered in jagged layers of preternatural hardwood, clenched her raised hand into a fist and the plants began to wreak havoc other targets, sweeping some off of their feet at the knees and binding others like an octopus' tentacles and pinning them in place. With a terse sound from the back her throat she left the vines to their work and joined Jack of all Blades as they stepped through the hewn door on either side of Bombshell, flanking her like bodyguard.

 

The swordsman gave Dragonfly a grateful nod before drawing a sliver of the twisted physics jutting from her gauntlet into his own hand where it grew into a curved sabre with a spiked hand guard. He flicked his wrist to spin it about almost laconically, the hem of his great coat flaring out a bit as he did. "We'll carve out a path," he told Bombshell, his body language coiled with a jungle cat's promise of imminent violence. "Just point the way."

[angrydurf]

The gunfire if anything intensified when Bombshell took to the field the bullets tracking behind her as she darted to the relative safety of the bunkers entrance. The response to the eruption of vines and branches was eerily silent as the thralled mercenaries and gangsters that made up the Majors ad hoc army continued to try and fight heedless of their own safety.    Those able to retain their weapons continued firing short bursts often sent wild and risking hitting their own forces when they were suddenly jerked off their feet to dangle in the air.  If they did not manage to free these men from their enthrallment it would be a bloody battle to escape the bunker once inside. Already more soldiers and thugs took up positions on what cover and high ground was available to fire at the heroes as they made their entrance.

 

As he trod through the rain of bullets behind his less sturdy compatriots Caradoc could see an all too familiar terror in the eyes of their opponents despite their continued full bodied assault.  This time however it was not desperation that drove them but the unshakeable command of their hidden master.  Behind the embankment over the entrance he could see two teams loading and preparing to fire RPGs finally in position to bring to bear the heavier weaponry that might actually be a threat to the armored giant that had so easily ignored the small arms fire.

[angrydurf]

The sporadic fire continued to track the Interceptors as the dashed for the relative safety and cover of the breach Dragonfly had carved in the blast doors.  Atop a small rise across from the door the heavier armed mercenaries took aim with anti-armor weapons to eliminate the heavily armored threat that ignored all of the lesser ordinance throw his way.  With a flash and sizzle of rockets igniting the anti-tank rounds sped toward Harrier and moments later he was engulfed in a flare of fire and smoke as first one impacted the ground carving a large crater into the hardened concrete followed by a better aimed shot that flew true to detonate against his armor with a searing fury.

 

Inside the Majors thralls had taken cover in well protected nooks along hte walls intended for the purpose as they alternated firing down the wide entryway toward where Jack, Willow, and Bombshell stood in silhouette against the flares of ricochet and explosion outside.  With tight well timed bursts many hot chunks of lead whizzed past every time one of the Interceptors risked exposure.  The noise in the echoing chamber was deafening and made it all the harder to tell form where and when the next burst might be unleashed.  Crossing the empty parking area behind the blast shield was going to be deadly dangerous if nothing could be done to quiet the mercenaries firing.

[alderwitch]

My God.

 

Knowing that her one time allies were still using war-tactics was one thing, seeing it actually play out on this scale was entirely different. Her heart hammered behind her breastbone, even if her elegant features might as well have been carved from marble. The sidearm remained in its holster, snug against her ribs and concealed against her jacket. Action, not reaction, Talya. Leaning into Jack for a moment while her mind marked the beats and pauses of the steady fire of bullets down the hall, she murmured close enough to his ear that her lips brushed against his cheek. "Left side, back pocket."

 

The trick to the kill box, was to disrupt the rhythm of it. It was a little like the world's most terrible music, and if you knew the beat - then you could dance. Bombshell's fingertips ghosted along Willow's ribs in mute reassurance as the thief vanished between one flash of light and the next, trusting her honed skills to dance unseen through the hallway filled with a hailstorm of gunfire and towards one of those protected pockets, and trusting those she left behind to make use of whatever opportunities she could provide them. 

 

This moment, really, was why Talya had never mixed relationships with teamwork. It was one thing to have a teammate vanish and hope they returned well and whole; it was an entirely different level of fear to work through when that person was beloved. 

[Avenger Assembled]

As the smoke cleared, Caradoc shook his head, feeling bruising beneath the armor that Gina would no doubt point out to him in the morning. But there were more important things than pain now. I will be fine, he told Dragonfly by radio. I will guard the rear. 

 

He took off with another roar of flame, his armor belching black smoke and fire, and landed in the middle of the two men who had come armed enough to hurt him. Well. So they had believed, anyway. He swung his 'sword' with an unholy shriek of barely concealed Terminus energy and cut through one's launcher with as much hesitation as that man might have used to cut melted butter, the too-fragile fragments of the launcher's casing falling to the ground as they smoldered with a black flame that gave no heat, gave no light, yet might never be put out. As that man staggered, shocked, and all around the mind-controlled mercenaries turned to stare, Caradoc spun and fired from the hip at the other RPG-wielder. He missed him. Of course he did - the blast that struck at the man's feet, instantly converting matter to energy and beyond, creating an explosion that tossed him into the air and back again with tremendous force, would have killed an unprotected human being. 

 

As bullets sparked off his armor like rain, Caradoc seemed to ripple like a bad dream and transformed before the eyes of all onlookers into the monster that haunted their dreams - a cold, mechanical paragon of the mixed murder arts, the walking abomination that the forces of the Terminus sent to kill superheroes for the sheer entropic sport of it, an Alpha Omegadrone. He picked up the now-disarmed rocket launcher soldier by the throat and hefted him high in the air, and when he spoke on the radio again it was with a basso barking fury like a mad dog. It was a hard discipline, and a hard thing to do. But Steve remembered being controlled - and knew that any sacrifice to end such a thing was worthwhile. 

 

"THEY NEVER WARNED YOU OF ME!?" 

[Fox]

Dragonfly disappeared, the world wrapping in around her and spitting her out behind the nearest cover as she made a mental note - again - to build in some better plating next time she was doing major suit revision or repairs. She'd gotten too used to the small fry, the arms dealers with hand cannons and small arms - automatics were just outside of her armor's ability to reliably shrug off, and she couldn't take the risk. That wasn't acceptable.

 

A half-dozen football-sized drones shimmered into being at her mental command, bright blue eyes shifting red as they went from surveillance mode to seek-and-destroy; one of the mercenaries firing at Jack found himself the unlucky recipient of a hail of energy, a cheerful lightshow reminder that no cover was perfect.

 

They kept firing, which earned another frown from Dragonfly. Targeting was always rough at that angle, but she'd readjust. In the meantime, maybe it would given their enemies something to think about.

[Gizmo]

Jack gave Bombshell an almost imperceptible nod just before she vanished from view then stepped forward to give the soldiers something to focus on rather than wondering where she'd gone. "Assuming you guys are mind whammied I'd almost feel bad about this," he shouted, his voice mostly lost in the cacophony of gunfire, "but you did bring guns to a sword fight."

 

The humming blue blade in his hand whirled into a blur of motion while the fencer bounded about the kill box, kicking off of the walls and flipping through the air like the dot of a laser pointer staying just out of reach of a cat's paw. Even so, Jack wasn't nearly fast enough to completely dodge such a hail of bullets - unfortunately for the shooters. Where lead met patented Hallomen spatial warp forged by metamagi fighting instinct it ricocheted off in blinding sparks. One soldier let out a strangled cry as his own bullet came flying back to lodge in his shoulder while most of them cracked into the bunker walls with a shower of concrete dust.

 

In the time it had taken to exhale the corridor was a haze of fragments punctuated by blinding white and dancing blue. "Go ahead, florecita!"

[April]

Willow sprinted into the kill box the fulliside of gunfire she drew blowing pockmarks into and chunks out of her armor, but that armor just regrew around her.  Growing too, in her wake, were massively thick vines that tore up the ground like hounds loping after their master.  Until she reached the center of the entrance when the vines erupted outward, grasping at and curling around the thralls and choking the area with vegetation.

 

What was once a clear area with excellent sight lines became more dense than the heaviest jungle, and Willow faded into it.  Near Jack, one plant tendril reached out to brush his cheek, but otherwise he and his allies were unhindered.