RP: Bounty Hunts [Bounty 2.5] Battering Ram

As Rathe ducked behind the machine, he noticed that the man laying beside him that had taken the deadly HHG round carried shotgun ammo that fit his gun. The golden skinned nepleslian moved the body, already halfway behind cover, closer to him and scavenged the pockets of the dead mercenary. He found twelve shells of buckshot and an unused grenade. After loading his trench gun, he pulled the pin with his teeth and threw the grenade with his left hand at the two thugs instead of the giant. He then chose to hold the trench gun his left hand to accommodate the injury in his right hand.

"Rathe!" Jaina shouted in the comms of her group, as she saw ID-SOL regard the bounty hunter as a game of bowling. "Help the hunters! The rest of you, shoot the bastards!" With that she herself raised her rifle and started firing in controlled bursts aiming at the gangsters that were supporting their leader. It was almost amazing how dedicated the bad guys were to support their boss. Jaina wondered if some kind of brain-washing was involved.

Thanos meanwhile ran up, his rifle was gone and in his hand was one of the shortened Fatboys, while his right hand held a sword. He ran into one of the gangster shoulder first, sending him flying. Another badguy swung his Ripshot up and fired a burst at the mercenary with a mask of death. The round simple ricocheted off the chest armour that Thanos wore. The gangster with ripshot died a second later as Thanos' sword cut into the man's throat.

As soon as Tannozako's weapons clicked empty, she noticed that the enemy combatants were deciding to rush her. Knowing she had no time to reload, Tannozako simply stuffed the small pistols back into her cargo pants and prepared for-

Desmond to get sent flying into the wall. She took a few microseconds to register his condition before the humongous Ganger was bearing down on her, throwing a fist that would have floored any normal human, and probably killed them. Instead, Tannozako Braced her legs for an impact and threw her arms up in front of her to catch the gigantic fist, intending to use her inhuman strength to at least break a few bones and tendons by crushing her opponent's hand.

Danny seemed a little taken aback. Seemed like Flash Grenades were now accounted for by the enemy forces. They'd either looked away from the blast, had eye protection and ample ear protection. It didn't disorient or distract as many of them as he'd have hoped and now the bullets were hitting the concrete and forcing him down, pinned under cover. When he heard a break in the shooting and their yelling coming closer and closer, he drew his sword and started to smoke things out with the SQUID suit.

Acrid, choking smoke filled his position as he kept his sword low and depowered as he moved around his piece cover strategically with light steps, hoping to flank and bullfight his charging attackers from another position. With thermal vision, Danny could see them entering his smoky domain and the blade powered on and gave him away.

And gave away the diagonal cut he was about to make, lunging forward with his powered blade and a masked face filled with smouldering fury.

The mimicon might have had the strength to put up a fight with the ID-SOL, but she didn't have the mass to take on the gene-forged warrior in an equal ground. As the giant's fist connected with the mimicom's open palm, her internal nanomuscles strained to take the brunt of the punch, her hands closing around the fist with crushing strength, but ultimately not cracking the reinforced bone. In the split-second that it took for the fist to connect and that to happen, Tannozako staggered backwards, but the ID-SOL was up on her again with inhuman speed, both fists closed in what looked more like a wrecking ball, and bearing them down on the artificial being.

As the brute's hands started to bore down on her, the area around them was soon filled with the acrid smoke from Danny's suit, blocking the ID-SOL's view. Not far from there, the suit-clad bounty hunter stalked through the smoke, watching the two thermal blurs that were the goons accompanying their leader. Above the staccato gunfire and general sounds of battle, he could also hear a peculiar nose come from them as he strode closer; they were laughing. There was a break in the inky mist, long enough for the first bandit to see the powered blade emerge from it and connect with his collar bone. Where a normal blade would have given massive trauma to the bone and cut deeper in the best of cases, the power field of the weapon allowed it to just keep going, slicing through the man like a hot knife through butter, only finding minimal resistance when it met the durandium plate of his vest, until it emerged out a little bit over his waist on the other side.

The powered blade also gave Danny's position away. As soon as he had dispatched the first bandit, something flashed next to him -too close to comfort- with a loud 'boom' noise, and almost instantly his sides were peppered with several small shots. Despite the shots not penetrating his suit, the sensation of the small pellets impacting against the soft armor, which the next best thing to a second skin, was enough to stun the bounty hunter. Where a normal person would've been down on the floor with pain, Danny quickly cleared his head out of the red haze in time to hear the shotgun being cocked back.

While the trio, which was more of a duo, held at bay the strongest and meanest of the bandits and his troupe, the other side didn't fare too well against the bigger group. The mercenaries hadn't had the chance to rally like the bounty hunters had, and once their leader went to one way, they took that opportunity to charge the other, less prepared side. Some of them had been cut down in their desperate charge, but with Irene pinned down by their fire, more than enough reached the place where the mercenaries were taking cover in and swept over them like a tide.

Right after Rathe heard the crumpled detonation of his grenade, something snatched the shotgun off his hands and hit him in the face with its stock, jarring him. As his vision started to clear, he could see the bandit using it to brain a mercenary next to him, using the weapon like a golf club as he held it by the barrel. He could also feel something wet tickling down from his upper lip and down his chin. Before he could react, though, the group was already out of sight, running out of the building through the opening in the wall. It seemed that they had decided to just cut their losses and run instead of staying with their leader and fighting the attackers.

Irene kept right on emptying shells in the monster's direction until the shotgun clicked. Time to bring out the artillery. She patted the pouch she'd placed the monstrous four-gauge shells in, and when she was sure they were still all there, she immediately drew the SZ M79, forced herself up, and shot off a few rounds at the whirling mass of muscle, trying her damndest to avoid shooting the poor bastard the thing was whaling on until the smoke threw itself onto the ID-SOL and his target. And the rain of bullets. Can't forget the rain of bullets.

Shit. New plan.

As soon as the Room Changer's nanites stopped their metamorphosis, she loaded three shells into the shotgun, and when there was a lull in the barrage, shot up as fast as she could, shouldered the RC, and unloaded a blast of thunder at the swarming criminals, and went back into cover.

Outside, Helric sat in the APC. His hands held onto the machinegun in the turret. It seemed like all hell went loos in the building. Gunfire, screams, explosions and suddenly some people started running out, going down the rubble that used to be the wall of the building. Helric aimed the machinegun their way and squinted his eyes to see who it was. It was clear, that these men were not mercenaries, but bandits who broke free and got out of the building. Helric did not waste another second and pulled the trigger, firing long controlled bursts of high-caliber machinegun rounds at the escaping men.

After taking a second to clear his mouth of the warm liquid that polluted it, which was presumably blood, Rathe made a mental note to retrieve his gun from the bandit who stole it from him. As he returned to his feet, he pulled the HAS back out from its holster and fired shots at the largest figure in the smoke, which was undoubtedly the ID SOL.

Despite having been knocked back, Tannozako was not staggered, retaining her compsure as she watched the ID-SOL prepare for his next massive attack. While he was bigger and faster than a normal human, Tannozako was essentially a power armor without any of the bulky armor. Her own speed and reflexes could easily match, if not surpass the gang leader's own. Quickly she ducked to the side, reeling around and making her way through the acrid smoke- which didn't particularly affect her aside from disturbing her vision- not that she could miss the hulking form of her opponent anyway- She took the time to reload one of her CompacTen pistols, and began firing point-blank at any and all weak points she could find.

Industrial Complex - Outside Main Building

Helric pressed the trigger of the APC's MMG, letting loose a burst of fire at the advancing bandits once they made their run our of the breach. The residue smoke and collapsed smokestack made it harder for him take more of them out than if they were in the open, but the bounty hunter was rewarded when he some of them topple down the small slope of rubble as they crested it. As soon as he got those kills, the return fire came sharp and strong when the bandits reoriented themselves. Rifle rounds pinged off the front of the armored vehicle, and one of then nicked him in the neck, followed by a couple more that hit him in his upper chest, impacting against the vest underneath and knocking his aim off course.

They decided to use the explosives when he tried to right his aim again.

The front of the vehicle went up in flames as the grenade round impacted, showering the top with shrapnel. Helric had a few seconds to register that before the force of it thew him back, hitting his head against the MMG ring and knocking him out.

Industrial Complex - Main Factory Building

Bruise. Bruise. Bruise. Lots and lots of little bruises were beneath Danny's second skin. The skinny mercenary gasped and dropped his blade stance to roll with the impact of the scattergun, just in time as the second shot rang out, shooting several pellets past the place where he had been. The sound of half of someone's torso sliding off with a disgusting, meaty pulse was punctuated by it dropping to the floor, and the sound of blood and entrails spilling out. Quite theatrical, but very messy.

Danny meanwhile, too high on adrenaline and pain to admire his handiwork had to run, deactivating his powered blade to give him some further obscurity in the haze he'd created and moving out of the cloud completely. Desmond could see wisps of smoke trailing after Danny as he exited the cloud and ducked behind cover, breathing heavy as he took inventory of his injury. The shotgun boomed again, firing somewhere inside the smoky haze.

Over the communications, he could be heard muttering something in Lorath that sounded like very strong language. "Chicken shit eggshell wearing shotgun toting son of a-"

Desmond, on the other hand, slowly got up from the wall that he had been thrown against. The bounty hunter supported himself against the concrete surface with one hand, while drawing his pistol with the other. It took him a few moments to right himself and assess the situation. To one side, Tannozako was somehow miraculously fighting an ID-SOL single-handedly, which told him that the woman wasn't like every other Nepleslian like she looked. To the other, well, the mercenaries were still recovering, among the two dead bandits that Irene had created. His eyes shot wide open once he saw two of them firing into the melee.

The mimicom put up quite a fight against the ID-SOL, using her superior speed and reflexes to counteract the giant's sheer strength and reload her weapons, getting into the ID-SOL's blind side. Tannozako managed to let off the first two shots with the small weapon before something hit her on the midriff, ricocheting off when it impacted against the durandium skeleton. The impact wasn't alone, and was quickly followed by several small pellets that, while not strong enough to penetrate the metallic sub-dermal armor, did shear off her synthetic skin, ripping long shreds of it every time Irene fired the shotgun at the melee, and buckled the hollow metal underneath when Rathe's HAS hit against it, the former's aim ruined by the nature of the weapon, while the latter was ruined by the pain on his limb.

There was solace in that for the mimicom, however, as the shots hit both her and ID-SOL in equal measure, and while it only dented the metal and ruined the synthetic skin of the former, the other reeled and staggered from the hits, but was still standing thanks to his heightened physique as his arms and torso were hit. The pain of the wound seemed to spur the bandit kingpin, and as the impacts threw off Tannozako's reaction, it allowed him to wrap one big, meaty hand around her neck in a final act of vengeance.

"Stop shooting you fucking idiots!" Desmond yelled over the comms, his voice still shaky from his recent injury, but he still had enough of his wits about him to be pissed at what he saw. Before he could yell at them any longer, the patch of wall next to him erupted as several pellets from the bandit's shotgun impacted against it when the man simply followed the source of the noise, making the bounty hunter cover his face and scatter for cover.

Hot on the heels of the shotgun blast, sheathing his blade and and sliding into cover, Danny yelled to Desmond "Get down!" as grabbed his Ripshot and waited for the shotgun wielding thug to make a move, come out, fire, get closer - the mercenary's eyes looking through the iron sights and lining up something at the centre of the cloud he'd created. His fingers drummed against the handguard of the machine gun in anticipation as he tried to keep the rear sight and the front sight lined up, adrenaline and nerves sullying his aim. There was a short pause, and then the shotgun blared again as the thug fired at a random direction, splattering the shot against another one of the abandoned machines.

Danny could see the shotgun's blast appear on his suit's thermal vision, giving him the thug's approximate location. He aimed a little to the right of where the shotgun blast came from, gripped the handguard tightly and started firing. Eight hundred rounds per minute, thirty round magazine, it didn't take long to empty one if you weren't careful. The smoke didn't allow him to see how much damage he had done, but there were no further shots fired from there, and the thermal blur remained still on the ground.

"Danny, we got runners," came Desmond's voice through the comms, ignoring the rest of the fight going on. By then, the other bounty hunter had emerged from cover and waddled through the rubble and bodies to reach the same hole that the defenders had left through, hot on their heels. The mercenaries also had slowly started to pick themselves up, some aiming at the giant who was fighting the mimicom, while a few slowly inched closer, either trying to get a good shot in or join the fight.

"Understood," he said back, "Just give me a moment to-" he caught his breath and clutched his chest and torso, where the scattergun had hit him. He coughed gently and shook his head a little, making a tactical reload. "Shall we?" he asked as he moved over to Desmond's position and nodding at him to start the hunt.

The two bounty hunters slowly made their way up the rubble and into the breach.

As the ID-SOL held Tannozako by her throat, a figure appeared in a smoke and dust cause by the fight and Danny. It was Thanos, his armoured suit scratched and it seemed her lost one of his fat-boys while fighting. He ran straight at the ID-SOL. The normally silent mercenary roared as he charged at the leader of the bandits. Thanos was just a man, but he was moving fast and with all his gear he was not very light. That was why he ran into the ID-SOL, shoulder pauldron first, trying to set him off balance, maybe send him to the ground, before the gangster could break Tannozako's throat.

Jaina meanwhile picked herself up and waved at her mercs. "On your feet you sods!" She shouted, showing quite well tha she had military past. "Team 2, clear this bloody building!"

As Tannozako was gripped, she immediately stopped fighting back, knowing it was useless. instead, she reloaded her second pistol within her pocket, than pulled it out, and, using both pistols, began firing as many point blank rounds into his wrist as possible, hoping to destroy it and fore him to let go.

After his shots missed their mark, Rathe realized just how much his wound disabled him. He hastily returned his gun to his hip and pulled his dagger from his jacket. Holding the shortsword with his left hand, Rathe charged into the smoke to assist the hunters. Though he was afflicted by the smoke, the silver membrane covering his eyes kept him from being blinded and he saw the ID SOL gripping the windpipe of tannozako. Taking a leap just to lessen the difference between himself and the ID SOL, he thrust the dagger forward with the intent to send it through the arm of the giant.

As soon as you get back to the shop, you're going to make this damn thing accept more than three shells. Irene frantically pumped more 5 gauge shots into the Room Cleaner when the order to move came through. Her feet pick up just as the last shell fed into the shotgun, trying to find cover closer to the brawl (after making sure the two bandits she'downed were properly dead with a few swift kicks) - if that man in armor was able to get Man Mountain over there off his feet, she could waltz right up and turn his face to a pulp with one shot. If. All the while, her head scans the rest of the room for the runners.

Industrial Complex - Main Factory Building

The room was once again silent, save for the noises of struggle as the mercenaries closed in on the giant that had the mimicom on its grip. While the ID-SOL's grip would've been enough to grind the bones in a person's neck into dust, it only bent the thin durandium hollow plates inside Tannozako's artificial skin and nanomuscle in the brief time before she shot at his wrist. That close, she couldn't possibly miss, and even the relatively small caliber of the pistol wouldn't have done much in another situation. It was a toy gun compared to the genetically forged brute. However, concentrated on a single point, the trauma of the rounds stacked, making him yell his pain loudly to everyone on the room, and no sooner than later the Gang's Kingpin grip on the mimicon went slack, he desperately shoved the bounty hunter with an open palm, sending her back a few feet through the sheer force alone.

That was when the mercenaries piled up on him.

True to their orders, half of the mercs seemed to be ignoring the scuffle, and were once again stacking up by the door. The other half, including Rathe and Irene, piled up on the leader. Men clubbed him on the head with the butts of their rifle, only to be punched out by the ID-SOL's one good hand, and Thanos harmlessly bounced off his frame after trying to bull-rush the giant. It seemed like the massive brute could keep that up forever, but as soon as the golden-skinned Nepleslian's combat knife buried itself on their quarry's biceps, the cracks in his resolve started to show. Taking that opportunity in, the mercs piled up on top of the ID-SOL like a pack of wolves just as Irene was about to deliver the killing blow. A gloved hand quickly pushed the room-cleaner aside, pointing it away from the scuffle.

"He's worth more alive," said one merc in a slurry voice. At first glance, it looked like he was grinning, but at closer inspection it was possible for the woman to see that his left cheek had all but been cut open in the course of the fight. By then, the mercenaries had formed a circle around the ID-SOL and were clubbing him with the stock of their weapons, or kicking him into uncounsciousness, while the other team, composed of the less battered mercenaries, went inside the next room.

Once it was established that the brute was down for the count, Rathe pulled his blade from the arm of the downed ID SOL and backed away as his comrades gathered around the fallen giant. In nearly a second's time, the mercs turned from a pack of wolves to vultures picking at a corpse. Rathe almost felt sorry for the bandit leader. Almost.

Industrial Complex

At that the mercenaries started to search the building, while the more injured ones tended to themselves and the mercenaries that couldn't even do that in the aftermath of the battle. The room was littered with the broken remains of disabled combat bots, corpses and rubble, and the acrid smell of burnt rubber and eletronics stung the eyes. "The NPF will love you," said one of the mercs to the subdued gang leader, locking the magnetic cuffs into place, watching as they simply slammed shut and against eachother. Since an ID-SOL could easily bench-press a car, it took a special kind of restraint to contain them, which was thankfully available for a hefty price. A pair of mercenaries guided the giant, gene-forged brute outside with, pointing down at him with the barrel of their guns.

At that moment, Jacob's voice came through the comms. "Heads up, boys and girls," the pilot said, bringing the VTOL closer to the industrial complex. Soon, the noise of the jet-wash could be heard coming from the outside. "We have less than two hours to grab what we need and clear the place before the NPF shows up. I'm touching down to airlift the wounded out of here, while the trucks should be arriving soon," he said. As if on a cue some of the mercenaries got up, picking up their more injured companions and dragging themselves through the breach and into the bright area outside.

Incidental gunfire could be heard from the upper floors of the factory every few minutes as the other group of mercenaries cleared it, but even by the sounds of it it was clear that the resistance was minimal. In a few minutes, the rest of them had the building locked down when the two cargo trucks arrived, allowing the remaining mercenaries to start loading the cargo. The two heavy duty vehicles parked on the opposite side of the factory, in a open area where in the past the building had used to transport its produced goods. That time, it was used to load anything worth of value from the gang that wouldn't get them in trouble with the authorities themselves. And in Nepleslia, that was only a few things. By the end of the first hour, one of the trucks had taken off, transporting several captured weapons and ammo that remained from supplying the small army of automatons that they had employed to guard the complex.

By the end of the second hour, the mercenaries had managed to restore mobility to the IFV, and drove away with it from the complex, carrying the prisoners that they had taken during the battle with a small group of mercenaries, with the gunship flying over it to provide cover. The truck followed in tow with what could be considered the most valuable cargo, a few server stacks that had been found inside the complex. The few columns of smoke soon left their view as they cleared that district of the city, stashing the trucks in another undisclosed warehouse. After turning that small section of the place into what looked like the aftermath of a warzone, it would be wise to lay low, not to mention recover from the losses sustained.