RP [13th Precinct] The Beast Who Cleans These Streets.

Flannery scanned the area, judging the odds as best she could. "Let's play it safe for now but set up for a possible ambush. Gary, you and me are going push up and ready those explosives as you see fit if you think you can get it done quickly. Takeshi and Katya, hold here and get ready to move up."

And with that, Flannery carefully began her advance, trying to stick to whatever few shadows remained as she kept her shotgun up. "Move silent, move deep."

Mobile HQ - Haisley, Lily

While the team crept along at their newest obstacle, the delay between transmission and received getting awfully annoying for the young techie an anomaly occurred.

It would have gone unnoticed by mere casuals and even the precincts JANE, Turi, seemed to miss it but for a split second the punk hackers system flickered. Not a normal ghost in the screen, or a glitch in the software. But the brief micro-second popup of a black command window before it instant minimized and removed itself from the processing list.

The savvy hackercop was no fool and knew her setup by heart and its every process. Someone had remotely plugged into her feed and was confirmed by a quick pull up of a ran command list. The source was untraced and encrypted and oddly enough even discovering it garnered no response from the JANE which made the clearly non-NPF used encryption a massive red-flag if it could simply circumvent the most powerful encryption software in the democratic imperium outside of the IPG.

Unless it was the ipg? Or whoever had breached the NPFs security during the opening siege on the precinct? Or a completely independent third party like the circle of hackers that pledged their allegiance to the myseterious Mad Mutant and flip-flopped between white and black hat activities on the InterNep?

Regardless someone had just thrown down the digital gauntlet at her feet in a challenge if they knew it or not...

Sewers - Andrej, Gary, Flannery, Katya, Takeshi

The choice to advance had been taken by the team. Slowly, methodically on heel and toe, the five officers crept forwards with the darkness as their ally until they had the metal walkway overlooking the culvert opening. Bellow was a tense and quiet gathering of mercenaries that had shifted slightly in their positions but remained rather undisturbed and unalert.

Three men had left down the waterway in their direction but had luckily passed under them without notice or incident as they continued on their patrol. The eavesdropping however offered nothing as many of the mercenaries seemed content to simply sit around barrel fires or in their own little cliques in solemnity as they endured their grim and loathful job in the depths of the deep-sewers.

What did cause a change however was a distant clattering from an adjacent tunnel across the waterway. With a sense of low-professionalism, the remaining nine mercenaries sprang into action, diving behind cover or taking a prone position with twisted metal rifles brought to the ready.

The sound turned out to be an errant junker following the tunnel to the intersection. It paused when it reached the junction and appraised the gathering of men with curiosity, flexing the mechadendrites of its body at them before trailing off down a separate tunnel with a screeching burst of unintelligible machine-code. The men eased up bellow the team and reconvened around the largest of the barrel fires to voice their displeasures at the encounter.

"Not 'him" One declared as he left his twisted rifle to rest against a crate and warm his hands.

"Waitin's kill'n me." Declared another as he muscled a spot around the fire for himself.

"Those things give me the creeps." Said a third as he looked over his shoulder to where the junker had left.

It was the third man that had spoke and looked off towards the junker who first saw something awry. Upon turning back to the fire the man seemed to look directly at Takeshi in the metal walkway beyond and above them. He couldn't see her with his ruined night vision from the lights and fire but leaning forward ever so slightly as if squinting it was clear he thought he had and stepped away from the fire and stepped around, peering into the dark above and directly at the officers' location in the dark.

Behind the mercenaries from a separate tunnel that had illuminated with distant light, three more mercenaries entered the culvert and started towards the fire to complete the rotation after the last team left. Only one teams location was now unaccounted for or unknown...

Gary gave a nod to Flannery, keeping a short distance between them as they kept to what little shadows there were on the catwalk. He kept his hand on his sidearm, flicking off the safety and being ready to shoot should anyone get noticed.

“Son of a Bitch” Haisely scoffed to herself and looked over to the giant dog sleep beside her. “Can you believe this? Sure they probably don’t know im in here but still, who hacks an operation like this.” For a few precious seconds her hands simply hovered above the keyboards, thinking of the best plan of attack, no use rushing in. Considering the super AI would be of no use she decided playing her usual stealth game might be beneficial and quickly and quietly rerouted the signals of video and audio including comms from the team to her personal servers in Nepleslia before bouncing them to her laptop in the truck. The main setup she was sitting in front of was comprised in some regard but she couldn’t just shut it down so for now it would lose video under the pretense of faulty signal but keep its audio.

”Heads up, I’ve lost video feeds from the team.” The hacker said through the main setup where she knew whoever was watching would hear before switching to her laptop for a second message. “Someone has broken into the NPF system and is most likely bugging this station, I’ve cut the video so they cant see, dont respond to this message but from now on dont give any exact details of what you’re doing over radio. I can still see what’s happening on my laptop.”

With the team informed she set to work in her virtual battleground, opening up the commands log once more she skimmed through the list and singled out the recent seemingly ghost command that was run. It was nothing more sinister than a simple backdoor style break in but being unnoticed was disturbing. In an attempt to see what she was dealing with Haisely executed a soft reboot of the OS, rebooting it with some of her own encryptions protecting it as well this time. If they were properly plugged in then she was expecting to see another popup when their own software reconnected without them being any the wiser of the security she‘d just put onto it.

Sewers.

The arriving team of mercenaries luckily drew the attention of the curious merc when the loud splashing of their boots drew his attention. The team couldn't have known how horrible the mans vision truly was in his mask or how shot his nightvision had become when the light from the barrel fire was the only light around. But the call had been close.

So even with personal comms, Andrej simply clicked his tongue a few times and used hand-signals to carefully push the team along; Their every movement on the metal catwalk agonizingly slow to avoid making a single sound despite most of the mercs below seeming engrossed in their own conversations. There was a few brief moments when something happened. Such as the occasional communications from Haisley that came in almost indistinguishable and garbled and how all of the HRRT suits shared screens between them one by one went blank and how most of their HUDs only shared local data from the suit as their shared net connection ceased.

The proximity radios still worked at least.

But after several long and tense minutes the team had crossed the catwalk and made it into the adjoining passageway and could pick up the pace. When they were well out of earshot of their former location Andrej called a halt and began a series of queries to Turi and attempts to reach haisley.

Nothing went through.

"We must be too deep, i thinks." The thick kuznyetski brouge sounded over the shared comms as the team leader internalized the situation with little more than a casual shrug and simple commented that back before the precursor to the NPF had JANEs and fancy communications equipment they still managed to crack heads just fine. And so the team went on.

Without the updating maps they may have been in trouble, But the path they took remarkably didn't branch off but kept going in a straight line for what must have been hundreds of meters, So long it was that the farthest traces of light could be seen like a distant match in a dark room as the final mercenary team was located. Unlike most of the other mercs the three men remained static ahead of them and sat around the base of a large hatch; And more importantly blocking the only available path.

Whats more, While not easy to see at a distance some like Takeshi with her longer optics could make out finer details such as one of the men having what looked like older surplus nightvision goggles on his helmet. They couldn't be as advanced as the built in filters of the HRRT suits that strained to make out and enhance what little ambient light was in the tunnel meaning the team still had the element of surprise.

From them to the team was at least 75 meters but was devoid of any cover whatsoever and a large floodlight beside the men gave little chance of sneaking up to subdue. Clear it was no longer time to stay in the shadows and play wait and see, Andrej drew up his suppressed ZARCNAM and made a single two-fingered gesture forwards to the team in an Advance motion. The tunnel was still wide enough for five or six to walk abreast.

The officers had no ROE. They had been cleared to engage from the moment they stumbled upon armed individuals in government property even if it was a sewer. And even then their objective was vague at best other than a clearly unsanctioned raid on... Supervillians?

So there was little apprehension from the teamleader at least when the man with the NVGs seemed to stiffen and make a reach for his goggles to put them on and suddenly realize that there were figures in the dark he could just barely make out. Andrejs shot, suppressed as it was still clapped in the darkness and missed the man with the NVGs by a hair as he kicked off to the side to draw his own weapon, the two other mercs not knowing what the first man had seen by the time the officer fired but instinct still taking over as all three men depressed on their triggers down the narrow tunnel.

Unlike most of the weapons of the officers the twisted looking rifles of the mercs spewed out random patterns of laser-energy fire in a cone so wide that some of them practically shot straight up or down when it left the prongs at the end of the barrel. The fire rate however was immense and the tunnel filled with red light as beams of energy hit just about everywhere but had luckily yet to reach any of the team, yet.

Mobile HQ.

The fight was long and hard. For what felt like an eternity the punk-hacker played a razors edge of back-and-forth cyber warfare against the unknown intruder. When it had become apparent that their backdoor had been found and was being counter-hacked the intruder had gotten seriously and had put every single ounce of haisleys skill to the test as firewalls sprang up and were torn down, Data packets are thrown about and targetted attacks almost locking haisley out of her own terminal network time and time again until it came down to a few lines of hastily thrown together code that made seemingly dead sub-routines all spring back up at the last possible moment for one final gamble to counter-hack the intruder and shut them down. The JANE, Turi had been no help and still acted as if there had never been an intruder to begin with which would have been concerning in its own right if Haisley had not been to busy dancing her fingers across a keyboard.

Her setup was a mess and some of the terminals and databanks had been wiped down to the core, But to the victor went the spoils and entire remaining screens flashed and fluttered with endless lines of code only someone like Haisley could make sense of.

Though little of it did...

Most of what she read was her own data and info stolen and read back to her. Meaning whatever network she now had access to was remarkably bare except for what they had been siphoning out from her network. It came as a bittersweet victory that her intruder was using a burner setup and the amount of data she could draw was practically nothing.

What she could discover was their terminal location, basic firewall information, the data and programs and scripts on their system, and basic information about that system. Little more worth to her than the time it would take to do so considering the intruder if they hadn't already hightailed it from their safehouse or lair as soon as they had been made by the cops.

But it was still worth a look!

She was barely a few minutes into her snooping when her data trace came back with its findings. It was mostly as she had suspected, being a mostly blank database but the location of the terminal was... odd...

A small red dot on her map, centered by a small circle with its guesstimate area it could be in looked awfully familiar. It was hard to miss the massive hole and sewer streams leading into it after all...


Had she longer to think or act or realize the HQs security systems and cameras had faltered one-by-one in the cyber attacks she may have realized sooner that her victory had instead been a trap! She barely had time to curse, And lily barely managed to jump to her feet when the HQ literally rocked slightly forwards and the rear doors made of armored durrandium capable of withstanding considerable small-arms fire actually dented inwards!

A moment later they where wrenched open and a massive silhouette over seven feet tall stood at the entrance to the HQ, The dark of the now night sky and lack of lights casting no light, and the interior lights of the HQ dimmed to dark so the one single remaining monitor doing little more than casting a shadow.

The silhouette reached inside...

Haisely had just managed to collapse back onto her chair with a sigh and start reading through the useless info before the doors were ripped off the truck. "Are you kidding me right now?" The girl asked to no one in particular as she folded the laptop up and extended her claws and tail. Once again Haisely cursed herself for not bringing the stealth armour she had at home, it would make situations like this a lot nicer to get away from.

Her golden irises focused on the appendage coming into the truck, while it seemed like it would be easy enough to move backwards further inside to escape the reach that allowed the person to enter and cut off escape and with that thought out the way the hacker girl dashed towards the arm, swiftly sidestepping its grasp and aiming to squeeze out past the body on the same side to prevent their other arm from reaching her. As she ran past Haisely made sure to run her claws along the intruding arm to give them a taste of who they were messing with.

As the first shot rang out Gary kneeled and pulled out his Pistol, holding it up with his arm he fired it at the man their captain had missed, the laser whining down the tunnel. Gary quietly whispered "One." under his breath while the gun kicked upward, he pulled it back down and fired again "Two.". More using the pistol for suppressing fire rather than to actually hit something, he continued sending laser down range.

Sewers

The oppressive and comically inaccurate laser fire did a lot to suppress the team in the initial opening salvo but had gone from comically to depressingly inaccurate very fast when it became evident that the forty-five-degree firing arc each twisted rifle was putting out frankly couldn't hit any of them when after a few feet it would simply hit a wall on either side, the ceiling, or the wet corrugated floor.

One of the mercs upon realizing this chose to angle his rifle slightly upwards in an attempt to hit them with something but jerked sideways when Garys impressive fire literally ricocheted against the bulkhead behind the man and Andrejs' followup shot did the same causing a deadly environmental Hazzard for the two mercs. It was short lived when Flannery took one of the mercs center mass with a double-tap from her carbine and Andrej caught the other merc once in the meat of his thigh, staggering him before a followup shot punched the helmet right off his head.

"Two casualties in action, assuming they fatalities" The kuz lieutenant voiced for the suits recording before cautiously stepping forwards towards the unmoving bodies, kicking the rifles from their deathgrips before stopping before the door. It didn't need to be said by the man that whoever or whatever lay behind the sealed bulkhead must have been death to have not heard the racket they had just made.

With a simple command the team formed up a short distance with Flannery covering their exit while the door was rigged by Gary with a surprising amount of dexterity his single arm hampering in no way. The two mercenaries, Devoid of any identification or documents lay dragged behind them and left in as neat a pile as could be. With a single nod to Gary from andrej the doors heavy-duty bolts exploded with a pop and the team rushed through the smoke with weapons trained.

Secret Lair

The smoke thinned almost immediately and an intense light seemed to blind the team as their suits took a second too long to switch from their nightvision mode to a normal viewing. Before it could, however, a barely perceptible tingle went up each team members body and for those more perceptive in the team would notice their HUD disappearing from their visors and their surface electronic equipment shorting out. Even Takeshis' cybernetics phtsically strained as if an immense weight was on them before she was able to recover; Albeit with a noticeable weakness in her arms she had not felt since they had been organic.

Above them, a twisted arch of electronic looking equipment winked out as a focussed EM pulse effectively nuetered the technological advantage of the officers and their HRRT suits.

It could have been catastrophic had the scene before them now been any less bizzar than what they were currently taking stock of.

Before them a massive several thousand square foot... Theater style arrangement was unsprawled like a massive studio apartment. A massive circular couch before a viewing screen orders of magnitude of impossible than should be found so deep underground had a match of the latest trending video game MishuMashers41 being played in a split screen while of all things a short and stocky mutant with a permanent sheen over his pale blue-gray skin seemed to be playing against a strange scene out of a theater troupe as a colorful and gaudily dressed individual in a tradjedy mask while of all things a literal bear in comically large human clothing seemed to be sitting off to the side staring blankly at the screen.

Past even all that was a wet-bar setup with several shelves or liquor and spirits where a woman in dark black and blue clothing seemed slumped over drunk while a man in an orange jumpsuit with question marks and exclamation points seemed oblivious to her support and chatted along merrily at her.

On the other side of the strange assortment was everything from massive viewing screens and terminals, a dojo style training floor, a Kitchenet, a walk-in wine cooler, a small library with a comfy looking reading chair that housed a rather staunch looking man with mutton chops and of all things a moderately size indoor jacuzzi that housed a familiar face in the form of Gillie in a rather flashy and lace covered bikini who with a rather amused grin on her face leaned forward over the lip of the tub and shouted at the bewildered officers.

"Oh shit, Andrej is that you?" She cackled when the Kuz practically ripped off the mask and balaclava when his HUD went down and looked rather perturbed when a situation even he couldn't ignore seemed frankly too... Stupid to be real.

"Hello... Cousin?" He asked, Carbine still shouldered but angled slightly down when it became obvious that despite the situation none of the weirdos in the massive room seemed to care about their arrival.

When the kuz man looked as though he was about to make a decision on the situation however a small shrill squeak from the other side of the beat erupted that sounded almost like a tiny voice when most of the occupants of the room stopped their activities and turned towards the bank of viewing screens where a high definition camera feed was poised of a familiar sight in the form of the large mercenary gathering. The feed posed right above the catwalk the team had passed and was in complete view of the feed which no doubt broadcast the officers advance.

Simular camera feeds showed the immense tunnel system from hidden cameras with some familiar-looking locations, Including the surface where the officers had entered the tunnel system from.

At first nothing happened. Then the group of a dozen mercenaries turned rapidly and began shooting at something in the shadows. Before the scene could unfold further however movement drew most of the team as a dozen more mercenaries poured out of a room not in any camera feed but from an adjoining tunnel in the very massive room they now stood in and were advancing straight at the officers in the open.

The Beast Who Cleans These Streets, Sewers

He was the Beast Who Cleans These Streets. The avenging monster in the dark who in a world gone mad was the only sane sole left standing. A child cried out in the dark and depressing rain of his heart like the most depressing and darkest of rains and the most crying of children could produce.

He ignored it. He was the beast after all and a beast need not care for the selfish wailings of his deadest and most brokenness of hearts.

Under his most beastly of arms the cat-copper hung limply, the rebreathing mask covering her face to save her from the sewers oppressive corruption. Such corruption it was that even the beast in all his beastlyness felt the ichor of the darkest and most evil of evils attempting to sway his very soul into the darkest of darkness.

The girl. No, woman, for girls were weak and women where not weak like girls so they were strong had put up a valiant fight against the beast. But the beast was very smart when it came to computers and was a beast even in the digital spaces. He had dashed her digital facades aside like the beast dashed criminals in the most depressing and darkest of dark and depressing nights. She had fallen for his super-trap like evildooers fell for the beasts super traps did.

So when he had used his beastly strength to rip open the personification of evil doors to the metal vehicular tomb she was entwined in he had liberated her from her slave seat in front of the terminals. He had been too rough with her and she had fainted it seemed.

The beast was too strong from fighting evil, He had forgotten how long it had been since he had come across a good soul and needed to learn to restrain his overwhelming and beastly strength!

Something was ahead. He knew it by the light and barely slowed long enough to jump over the metal corrugated railing with beastly strength and land near the armed evil men. Like feral wolves they spun on him and pointed their instruments of evil at him. He turned his side to save the maiden in his grasp but laid into them all the same. Their evil fire from their dastardly instruments never once touching the beast before he fell into the group and began dealing out the justice of the day to the evildooers of the deepest of darkest depths.

Sewers - Haisley.

Haisley was literally being dragged around by a green, powered armored giant in the FUCKING SEWERS, being flailed around like a dam doll while a shitty mask was half suffocating her and some weird ass mercs she knew the team had been fighting were now failing miserably to hit the literal broad side of a barn that was now attacking them while she pretended to play dead. And from the looks of things they weren't missing on purpose.

Why did it grab her and not lily? Why didn't the dam dog do something instead of just looking happy to see some company and just stay in the dam HQ truck and let her get whisked off?

And what was the cloth thing that kept dragging over her face? Did this asshole HAVE A CAPE?

Sewers - Mad Cat

Haisely awoke groggily and upon realising she was being taken somewhere decided to continue playing dead, she remembered all the events up until this point but had been knocked out, in an effort to try and piece together exactly where she was the hacker accessed the basic memory of her cybernetic ears and tried to pinpoint any key sounds, sadly this stupid beast had basically covered her head with his tree trunk of an arm, combined with his cape flapping the basic recording was useless. She cursed herself for not getting the upgrades yet under her arrogant reasoning of "if I get knocked out i'll probably be dead or have my cybers dissabled before i wake up" apparently not everyone was that smart.

With her options severely limited Haisely resigned herself to her most hated tactic, above all her skills, abilities and attitude, she was still a woman and depending on the people coming after her it could be worth something, as the damsel in distress. "H-hey who are you? Where are you taking me you brute!" The hacker felt physically disgusted with herself for putting on a cutesy voice, she had nothing against people who couldn't fend for themselves but personally hated the idea of having to rely on others and not being able to defend herself.

Sewers -



Katya, though in shock as the guns began to make horrifying crackling noises and short beams of lasers brightly began to fly, reacted faster than she thought she could and raised her shotgun with her trigger finger squeezing the trigger instinctively. With her holographic sights for her shotguns aiming onto the mercenaries, she did not hesitate even a moment to squeeze off two shells from her shotgun, with a distinctive cha-chik noise ringing around the sewer as she jerked the forestock of her shotgun back and forth in a violent manner. The first projectile to fly out of her shotgun was a rather odd one since it was a heavy slug made out of not lead nor metal but a rubber, intended for disabling the opponent rather than killing them. The second slug, however, was a slug made out of lead, intended to kill.


With Kuz lieutenant's voice of confirmation of two casualties now ringing inside Katya's ears, she slowly lowered her shotgun and approached the two unmoving bodies after the lieutenant has kicked the rifles off of them. Katya quickly checked for their pulse - nothing. She knew they weren't going to be getting back up anytime soon. Ah well, thought Katya, as she slowly turned to face the sealed bulkhead. If she was herself a few years ago, she might've had cried for them, or at least feel sorry for them. But not anymore. If anything, she was beginning to feel rather glad that she was seeing them lying dead on the sewers, and not herself or her teammates.


After laying the bodies down neatly, Katya quickly joined the formation by standing behind her fellow officers, with her shotgun's barrel at low and ready. After hearing the heavy bolts pop, Katya instinctively rushed through the smoke with her fellow officers, quickly swiping the left side to ensure no threat was around, or at least she was going to...


Secret Lair (Ooooooooh)

" AGH! "

Katya groaned as her eyesight was interrupted by very bright light as she turned to face the lair. With her fingers desperately messing around her visor, she managed to shut down her visor's night vision mode. Soon, however, she realized that the HUD for her visor has completely disappeared. Crap, so no more nice things. Fine, Katya thought to herself. She didn't need these visors when she was working as contractors, and she definitely doesn't need them to fight some mercenaries with terrible aim. Katya's hands soon grasped onto her now-useless visor and raised it to give her better sights.

" God-damned... "

Cursing quietly under her breath like a child afraid of her parents hearing her curse, Katya quickly raised her head toward the woman in... out of all things in the sewers, a jacuzzi, before raising her shotgun's barrel toward her. It didn't last long for Katya to turn her shotgun's muzzle elsewhere, however, as she heard something approaching. Instinctively, Katya turned herself toward the now-open exit, before noticing the massive beast heading toward her and her fellow officers!

" Oh- SCRAP! "


Even before her finger could start squeezing the trigger again, her whole body instinctively launched itself to the side to avoid the massive beast rushing at her direction, with her hands still tightly holding her precious shotgun. Looking around the rather fancy-looking interior of a secret lair, Katya quickly rolled herself behind a desk, flipping it over to use it to conceal herself from the beast's sights, or at least tried to. Trying to catch her breathe, Katya quickly jerked the foregrip of her shotgun back to see a red shell loaded inside the chamber, and jerked it forth. She then raised herself just enough to allow her upper body to rest against the top of the now-flipped desk and pointed her shotgun toward the beast, with her finger again squeezing the trigger to send out a lead slug toward the beast.

Sewers

Before Haisley knew it the fight was over. The massive hunk of metal had battered, beaten, backhanded, and blown all twelve men across the sewer like they were nothing more than children with spitball and had literally lept up to the catwalk the story above them and continued on with purpose and without slowly down at its considerable pace down the winding paths. Right after she demanded her question of it a light at the end of the tunnel caught her vision.

And then it spoke.

"THE BEAST" was its only answer, and came out of enhanced speakers like a fire-axe dragging down a chalkboard but deeper and more guttural.

The Beast Who Cleans These Streets.

The men fell to the beast as all evildooers did. Their skill and strange weapons and their techniques of their trade and training meaning nothing against a dark knight of justice with the rightness and goodness that justice brought to the fight.

It was so. And so it was that the beast used its beastly strength to land on the floor above; Justice had no time for stairs when evil was near!

The beast continued on the winding paths of the maze of evil, His righteous sensors and mapping data he acquired from the womans (for that was she was) network to follow the trail of her team, no doubt dead or worse in the hands of Michael StrongBraun and his cacophony of evil. He knew StrongBraun well as any of the villains he had taken down in the past.

A mogul of the businesses and trade. StrongBraun used his monies to lobby and steal using the corruption rampant throughout the beasts broken home to legally seize the homes, lives, and possession of common and innocent yolks of the Democratic Imperium. And with his mercenary army and political backing none could, or would stand against the tyrant mastermind of evil.

None except for The Beast. For that was his name and what he was and he gave it to the woman when she finally stirred and demanded such from him. The beast felt an emotion of sympathy and pity from the woman, but it was overwhelmed by the fury and fervor of justice when the end of the tunnel opened up to a large bulkhead and the mastermind's lair was but mere feet before him.

He slowed just enough to drop the woman safely on the floor. The battle to come was not meant for the weaker and fairer gender and burst through the hatch into the lair with a growl that made the night quiver.

Lair

The team took the same tactic as Katya at the approach of the massive suit of power armor stomping down the tunnel at them and prioritized the more important target. None had a chance to fire, however as the suit literally exploded through the bulkhead and past the spent EMP arch and into the lair. The charging mercenaries were too late to intercept and the team paused in abject horror as the sight of a warped and spiked suit of dark green and yellow power armor with of all things, a cape, threw blow after blow into mortal men with killing force that sent more than one ragdolling away with horrifying screams.

The occupants of the lair also looked on with more interest and less horror and the expect carnage went on. Slowly they stirred, woke, exited their jacuzi's, lowered their books, and paused their games to assembled at the massive half-moon shaped couch and sit down to watch as if the scene before them was a movie. Even the massive form of Bigger Al had somehow appeared when nobody was looking and brought a lounge-towel to a still wet Gilly who had leaned back with crossed legs and folded arms and winced once when the twisted suit punched a merc so hard in the chest an audible Crack sounded before he slid into a crumpled mess nearby.

A few of the gathered villains gave the officers appraising looks as if wondering what they were doing hiding behind desks and couches and such before the armored frame stood alone in the center of the lair.

Both the massive bear and Al took a step forward before looking at each other in challenge. The winner of whatever contest that might have been made on who got to fight the suit was decided when it lunged at the closer of the two; Al.

With a strength reserved for only the Oldest of the ID-SOL, Al threw his arms wide and around the armor and literally pivoted and threw it to the ground with little effort. The suit rolled and landed on its feet and lunged at Al again before causally falling on its face, immobile.

Behind it, Gillie stood still as thinly covered in his bathing suit as before but with a short EMP pistol that still sparked with some errant blue sparks.

"Thats why you'se always gotta have a backup!" She grinned at Al with a gap-toothed smile who frowned at his stolen victory before offering a quick smile back but not before Gilly turned with a quirked brow at the still stunned officers near the entrance.

"So what the 'ell you guys doing all the way down 'ere anyway?"

Lair

Takeshi blinked a few times from the sideline as the young lass tried to wrap her head around the fuckery that was going on around her, expensive implants feeling fatigued and heavy as though the synthetic flesh was still the pair of limp noodles she'd traded them for, focusing first on mustering enough strength to keep her nice lil lever-action at the ready before speaking.

"We~" the girl huffed, taking a second to clear her thoughts and convince herself the big armoured thing was taken care of at least for now, before continuing.

"Technically we are following up on a lead... uh Lieutenant?" Takeshi finished, glancing around at her fellow officers before looking up expectantly at Andreji, heart rate high enough to make a racehorse look relaxed. Her cybernetic muscles being offline also making the half-yammie look particularly flat-chested and boyish beneath her uniform now that they were running below their usual capacity.

Lair

Flannery gritted her teeth, much to her own displeasure, as the after effects of the EMP bounced around some the filling in them. Luckly, they didn't explode in her mouth. As much as she wanted to let fly at the apparent supervillains, especially the Bigger Al after remembering the previous fight with him, but she wasn't about to be the one to blow up any plans the LT had. She simply kept her weapon up and forward, waiting on the Andrej's word.

A somehow fully furnished and in no way damp or mildew infested lair (impressive!)

"I would be asking you the same questions, cousin?" The Lieutenant pondered out loud, clear confusion and concern even in his tone and undistorted by the HRRT suit's speakers as he took a concerned step deeper into what surely must have been one hell of a renovation project.

The action was met by the score of mercenaries stiffening and the few who weren't training their weapons on the massive suit of powered armor kept them trained on the DTR team members.

The more interesting individuals in the room however kept their attention raptly on the immobile suit, their full and undivided attention on it as AL, with some concerted effort managed to flip the suit onto its back and placed a triumphant boot on its chest like the conquering hero.

"Oh we live here!" was Gillies' response, filled with an odd amount of excitement as she shifted from foot to foot, spent EMP pistol still in her hands.

"In a sewers?" Andrej wondered.

"Yep."

"In a sewers you have filled with unlicensed mercenary men's?" He prodded further.

"Yep."

"In the very sewers systems filled with mercenaries men's and area that showed up in a video delivered to my workplace by that mans wearing one of our uniforms and a fake mustaches?" He now demanded, Pointing a finger at the gaudily dressed and masked... person... that had appeared on the precinct houses security feed.

"Yep." was once again her simple reply.

With an overexaggerated sigh and literally facepalming his faceplate Andrej spoke one final time.

"That is illegals, Gillie."

Finally the bikini-clad punk seemed to actually appraise Andrej and the team with a tilt of her head and simply answered "Nope."

But at least this time she continued without being prompted.

"Aint nothing illegal about no mail men's; Which harley over there is in the city of roger-wilco. From delivering the mails straight to office the recipients. Aint no law saying they can't have facial hair or what they dress up as on casual Friday."

Nobody had the time to point out it was Tuesday before she continued.

"He did leave your boss 's mail but must-a forgot that tape too on accidents. Aint his fault if some do-gooder vigilante who happened to notice the stirring in ye precinct tapped into ye security to find out why and came here too."

With logic so backwards and childish that it would be pointless to argue with a clear case of stupid. Andrej simply sighed again and with a tone that somehow sounded exhausted and defeated declared "You're under arrests, gillie. You and your friends. For trespassing in the sewers and attempted assault of law enforcement officials."

All was quiet in the lair to the point you could almost hear the coming aneurysm and pop of blood vessels in the Lieutenants head when Gillie casually declared "Nope."

" 'S place is bought and paid for and them goons out there does work for us as private security" She grinned before continuing "If some of em got lost when they went out for a smoke and shot at you thinking you'se junkah's ain't there fault. Plus i don't see no warrant with this address on it either."

The Beast

The wench, for she could be no kind and pure maiden dressed in such and in full display kept the good-officers attention like the beast expected a career succubus would. Never did they notice the giant evildooer start working at the seals of the beasts holy and righteous armor at the collar and helmet until it was too late. The beast thrashed and wailed and fought from inside the coffin of his own design but not at all did his armor so much as flinch as the snarling visage of his gaping tooth-filled maw that brought so many to pre-mature bed-wetting was torn free and exposed him to the evil of the world...

Lair

The pop and hiss of seals drew the teams attention as AL seemed to find some kind of latch and wrenched it off the armor before them. A shriek reverberated and echoed through the lair like a stuck cat and continued on until the individual was forced to inhale a sharp intake of breath.

Before he started shrieking again in absolute horror and agony and squirmed to pull his head into the chest cavity of the armored suit was the sweat covered face of a young boy not even in his teenage years, Face twisted into absolute terror as he continued to howl like he was being prodded with live wires with barely intelligible words about evil, corruption, and big-breasted evil wenches.

Andrej, Like most of the team simply looked between the howling child somehow operating a powered frame 6x his size if the size of his head was any scale and the grinning face of Gillie who offered no explanation.

Nearby, both AL and the bear each grabbed a leg of the suit and started dragging it towards a massive metal bulkhead on the other side of the lair. An impressive feat considering the size and bulk of the armor made it look well over a thousand pounds.

Lair
As the banks of capacitors strewn throughout the young officer's body began slowly replenishing their charge Ms Yeon's arms slowly began filling out to something more befitting of a member of the DTR, small pectorals also expanding to push out the chest section of her armour just a little bit, barely enough to be noticeable though the grip on her lever-gun was getting firmer by the second.

This was all muscle memory however and Takeshi barely noticed it, she was too busy mirroring the look Andrej was giving this bikini-clad cousin of his and the child that was still half-wired into the armoured hulk splayed out across the floor, in all the confusion she muttered the Yamataian equivalent of what the shit under her breath before the young lass cleared her throat, eyes narrowing further as they locked onto Andrej's helmet through her own visor.

"So... your cousin? that aside... we're not going to let them take that kid, right? Lieutenant?" Takeshi asked almost rhetorically, not bothering to swap from her helmet's speakers to a more private channel, the lass' legs bent slightly at the knees and it was clear the marksman was moments away from springing into action.

Lair

Flannery herself was also highly perplexed by the situation and was a bit more vocal about it with an audibly "What in the Hell?" from behind her shotgun. There was some pity for the poor kid, stuck in a behemoth metal suit being dragged to who knows what.

"Boss, that kid needs help. Therapist and maybe foster parents if need be, not whatever these goons have mind." She said, nodding to Al and the Bear.

Da Lair!




Katya was still holding her shotgun, pulling the fore-end of her shotgun back and forth to chamber a new shell into the chamber as she watched the beast's armor make hissing noises. Quickly raising her shotgun's barrel toward the now-opening armor, Katya was rather taken by surprise as her eyes caught a glance of not some horrible beast inside the armor, but instead a young boy probably even younger than herself! At first, Katya was hesitant to approach the young boy, as he kept screaming and howling, and mumbling such unintelligible words as evil, corruption, or wretches, but soon built up her nerve enough to take steps toward the boy, with her shotgun now slung against her shoulder and now holding her sidearm - her trusty laser revolver, on her one hand while the other reached inside her giant backpack to find a first-aid kit wrapped inside a large clear plastic bag for her to easily grasp onto and pull out without having to go through everything inside her backpack.

"What in the heck have they done to him?"

Following behind her fellow officers as they began to drag the poor boy with his suit still wrapped around him, Katya still kept her revolver at ready, all the while her other hand was busy unwrapping the first-aid kit and her eyes looking all over the boy's body for any visible wound or sign of internal wounds.

Lair

"Oh no ye dont little miss goodie two-gloves!" A tiny voice interjected from the.. Bear... As a tiny mini-neko poked out of the large mammals fur and pointed menacingly at Katya causing the large ursa to drop its half the suit of powered armor and stand to its full height and roar in the challenge at the officer, blocking her path as it swiped in the air with its massive clawed paws.

"Yah-Yah!" A sickly and raggedly looking mutant with flanking skin mocked from behind them, A billy-club circling the air in a threatening motion as he danced from one foot to the other like a fool.

One by one the denizens of the lair seemed to take clear offense to Katya's intent and Flanneries concern.

Gillie and Al seemed nonplussed and simply kept walking away at a brisk pace, chatting casually as they dragged the wailing boy.

The strange robed freespacer, while still sitting on the couch had crossed his arms and somehow seemed to have conjured several throwing knives in his hands that crossed over his chest in some arcane gesture.

The strange woman with sticky glossed hair resembling icicles or Stalactites (or frankly just over gelled and clumped hair) had presented a strange conical rifle with a clear and foggy glassed drum magazine that seemed to glow with a faint light.

The eccentric man in an orange jumpsuit covered in boxed question marks twirled his cane at the officers and opened his mouth to no doubt make a quip.

But then was cut off by an overweight man with mutton chops who, after drawing a wicked-looking bowie knife hooted and hollered unintelligibly, cutting off his allies likely monologue.

Not to mention the half dozen armed goons still loitering at the ready; Quite the carnival of colorful freaks had placed themselves between the few officers and a child in distress. Outnumbered and outgunned the wise and smart tactical choice to be made was in all likelihood to make a tactical-retreat and call for backup. Then they could raid the lair in force with other officers and secure the boy and get down to the bottom of whatever strange hijinx where clearly going on.

That notion was thrown completely in the air when the Kuz lieutenant, without missing a beat, took a step forward and cold-cocked the drunk fat man with no regard to second thought towards his knife right in the jaw. His stun-stick was in his hand not even a moment later and jabbed straight into the exposed gut of the bear.

Who seemed to care little for the tingle through all that fur and caught the office in the side with a massive swipe of its paw that sent him careening over the couch and through a glass coffee table. Somehow thought, with his HRRT suit taking most of the impact Andrej stood back up and continued where he left off by cracking his stunstick over the back of the freespacers metalhead.

"Why am i the only ones fighting here?!" he shouted in a tone that implied it was the only option from the start. "Haves you not been paying the attentions all this time?!"

As if to prove some kind of point one of the nearby goons pointed his twisted rifle at the officers. And missed every shot as the energy rifle proved just as inaccurate as all the others and caused more people to dive for cover or get their heads down to avoid the wildly inaccurate weapon.

The odds didn't seem to account for much after all with the exception of the LITERAL BEAR in their path.