Industrial Complex - Robot Command & Control Building - Rooftop
There was a dull thud, and the thug that had emerged from the hatch started to fall as a thin line of blood trailed out from his neck, just above where the two collarbones connected. Danny saw the man still trying to get purchase, grabbing onto the edges of the metal hatch to keep from falling while his mind didn't yet realize that he wasn't getting up, and the hatch closed loudly with the sound of metal against metal as soon as his hands vanished.
Meanwhile, there were shouts of alarm from below, and the bounty hunter could hear several heavy footsteps from the other bandit's boots against the concrete floor.
Danny watched the man fall down, blinking underneath his mask and breathing heavily. He wasn't sure whether that was his snap reflexes that saved him, or training kicking in. He didn't have time to consider which as he heard the sound of footsteps and looked at the edge of the building, jogging towards it and leaping over in a cartwheel with his hands on the edge, feet scuffing against the building and looking for the nearest window to his left or right that could be traversed to.
As the bounty hunter hung from the edge of the building he had his first look at the ground. Trash littered the alley between the command building and the adjacent abandoned building, either discarded machine parts or trash that the occupants didn't bother to take out and, luckily for him, none of his hunters -or hunted- were in that area. It took Danny a few seconds until he moved to the nearest window, which looked nothing more than a vertical hatch given the nature of the building.
Danny shimmied carefully into position and he peeked his head past the hatch's frame before making any rash moves, while listening for the sound of footsteps. He needed a concrete number. He opened up a line in his communications and tried to query what his suit could provide for him. "Desmond," he whispered, breath heavy as he peered through the hatch.
"What?" Came the reply from the other bounty hunter as Danny looked inside the building. The room was mostly dark, save for a few blinking LEDs from the communication equipments or the dull glow from a monitor but his suit's optics easily pierced the penumbra, giving him a good view of the area, which was pretty much deserted, save for the noise of heavy breathing that came from one side of the room, behind a huge server rack.
"They're on high alert. ETA?" he whispered back before positioning himself in the window frame and stepping in quietly, footsteps gentle and light against the floor and the snaking wires as something was building up inside parts of his suit and making it expand. He had been told there was a smoke generator in this newest SQUID suit - but they didn't tell him where it was it stored prior to expulsion.
He tried to grab and silence that heavy breathing once he turned around the server rack, lunging forward with his bare hands. There was a sudden scream of alarm, which was quickly silenced when his hands wrapped themselves around the neck from where the scream was coming from.
As his vision cleared, Danny found himself choking down a scrawny, diminute Nepleslian, who was trying desperately to wrench the bounty hunter's hands off his neck.
Danny held his grip on the man's neck, and adjusted it to push points of pressure, nerves and blood vessels. This was not a soldier, but this person could be of value to Desmond and crew. As Danny put his fingers against the man's neck, he lead them down to the ground, slowly as he stared into their fear stricken eyes looking into the face of a mannequin, waiting for him to pass out. "Shh..." Danny shushed.
"Soon." Came the curt reply from Desmod as the man's hands slowly beat against Danny's arms. His struggles slowed down, until they ceased altogether and his head toppled to the side when he finally went uncounscious, leaving the bounty hunter alone again inside the building.
Inside perhaps, but Danny knew that there were still some unknowns moving around outside, and he dragged his victim underneath a desk. "I have disabled a technician. He could be of value later," he said as he tucked their legs beneath the drawer unit and put a chair in front of him. Hopefully, anyone walking by wouldn't notice them in the darkness.
That's when his suit told him that the smoke was ready to expel, and he realised that he was carrying more ... it wasn't weight, it was ... mass? He prodded himself and found that there was something analogous to breasts and thighs that'd been added to him - or his suit anyway. Franz, why, he asked himself as he walked to the nearest door and stood to one side of it, listening in.
There was no direct reply from Desmond, only a click from someone activating their communicator but saying nothing, giving the then femininesque figure of Danny time to listen to what was going on outside. It had only been barely a minute between his stunt and then.
"-Isn't responding to the radio," Came the first voice between heavy footsteps. Whatever was happening, those guys were ignoring the main fight breaking loose on the other side of the complex.
There was a short pause, and even the footsteps stopped as the two figures simply stood by. "Shit," both of them said in unison, and the bounty hunter could hear several hurried footsteps moving along the metal walls outside the building.
Danny - er, Danni grit her teeth. They were coming right for her - and she couldn't go back the way they came because they could still be there. Leading them back and forth would've just lead them to block the exits remotely and box her in. She grabbed her second flash grenade from her chest, hand bumping into herself. Danni had her hand around the lever of the genade, pulled it out and prepared to toss it in once those footsteps came closer.
She took a deep breath. Things were about to go down that could kill him, but there was nothing as he waited, just a sudden calm while the noises from the battle came from somewhere far. It was like the thugs outside had simply forgotten about him.
There was a long pause, long enough to set Danny on edge, then suddenly, both of the entrances sprung open, and his assailants started to storm back into the building, having realized the ruse they were played in.
Danni was hoping that this would be like a bullfight. They charge with force, she succeeds with misdirection. She threw that grenade into the room on one side, and started expelling smoke on the other. The feminine form began to melt away as the room filled with a black smoke that seemed to absorb light. Danny, however, could see through it and breathe comfortably in it.
He then grabbed his blade and pulled it free with a rasp - the blade currently unpowered to prevent detection and the colour of his suit changed to match the blackness that he'd surrounded himself in. There was a loud bang, which was only amplified by the thight confines of the metallic building, and after a few seconds the bounty hunter could hear his assailants cursing as they picked themselves up.
Meanwhile, the smoke in his corner of the room thickened.
In the silence, Danni could hear the sound of footsteps, as well as see some light beams as the thugs moved around with flashlights to flush him/her out. They were methodical in the process, taking their time with slow steps rather than miss out a detail, and the bounty hunter could hear them creeping closer to his spot at every passing second.
"Clear!" Came a voice.
"Go!" Replied another one.
A pause. Then it repeated again
"Clear"
"Go!"
The third time this process repeated, they were almost right on top of him, and there was just a virtual wall made by the server racks just keeping him from extending his arm and grabbing one, or two, of them, but it would be very difficult for them to see a couple feet in front of them because of the smoke.
Danny could hear the footsteps. His heart raced. They were coming for him and he was alone. Fight, or flight. The biological responses were flooding his head and his body, making things seem to slow down, his mouth dry, teeth clench, and mind process at speed. He swivelled his grip on his sword into a reverse grip and saw a thug walk into his field of view.
He pivoted and swung the pommel of the blade at the thug's jaw and followed through, the pommel meeting his left hand before he thrust the blade into the torso of the attacker and pulled out. For the moment, his perceived discomfort of killing was melting as the blood poured. One down... still an unknown number left, possibly 'a few'.
There was a series of loud noises as the thug went down, instinctly pressing the trigger of his weapon to fire at a target that wasn't there even when Danny's sword cut through his soft armor and himself. If the whole room wasn't dark he would be able to see his blade come through the other side.
The bandit let out a gargled groan once his rifle stopped shooting, and started to slide off the blade. As if on a cue, the other elite mooks inside the room also started firing their weapons, suddenly no longer caring about preserving the equipment, and the bounty hunter heard several of the bullets impact and whiz angrily near him.
Danny crouched down immediately and started slinking away, using one of the server racks they'd already checked as a safe passage. He felt for his stun baton, whipping it out with the lanyard, and with his finger on the power button, dial set to full power.
For the next man he approached, he grabbed them under the arm and jammed it into their neck and put the power on with a zapping crackle, then intended to bash whoever was beside him in the face and throw the body of his first victim at whoever remained, but instead of finding a neck, the baton hit against a thick and hard fabric of the man's armor, covering his neck. Luckily for Danny, his target also seemed to have been in the process of reloading, so there was little he could do beside shoving the bounty hunter back with the rifle.
The strike forced the breath (and possibly the smoke) out of Danny, and forced him to reconsider his tactics. The guy in front of him only had an unloaded rifle, but he had body armour and a helmet in his favour - in addition to knowing where Danny was. Element of surprise: gone.
Danny let his baton hang from a lanyard around his wrist with the power cut and proceeded to grapple with the man, trying to wrench the rifle away from them, grabbing the barrel and pushing downwards to pivot it over, which was just in the perfect moment, seeing has the thug only had one hand on the rifle, holding its grip, as the other hand franctically tried to wrench out another magazine from his pouch.
Danny tossed the rifle aside, and smelt something burning on his thumb as he did so - but now wasn't the time to investigate. He used his free hand to grab the man's head by the helmet and push it backwards to expose the neck. With a flick of his wrist, his baton was back in his hand and his finger was on the button - a grin on his face beneath the mask, too caught up in the violence.
He planted the business end of the baton at the base of the thug's jaw. "Scream," Danny growled as he held down the power for a moment.
"He's here! He's He-" The thug started to scream.
He pushed his finger all the way down to full power, and there was a sickening cry of pain from the man as he shook from the electric shocks. More shots rang out, coming from the second entrance of the building, two distinct noises that Danny could make out as the shooters fired aimlessly at several places.
Satisfied, Danny held the unconscious thug for a couple of more seconds to let the remaining two thugs ruminate on what'd happened. Then he let the man drop like a sack of potatoes, sound of his equipment punctuating it all.
He then turned around and wondered where Desmond was, noticing that one of the exits was now free, leading into the alleyway. There were only two left, he could count their footsteps. Maybe the others could sort them out if they arrived, or they could stew in the dark with the dead and disabled.
"If the both of you leave and drop your weapons, I'll spare you," Danny said, noticing that smoke had been building quietly in his suit again during the fighting. His accent not quite Nepleslian, not quite Yamataian, and not quite Lorath either. "This is my only warning," In this darkness, haze and intermittient lights of the server hardware, were they fighting a man or a woman or some sort of monster?
"Fuck you!" Came the reply from one of the other thugs, but nothing else was done by them, leaving the three of them in a relative quiet between the sounds of the gunfight outside and the electric sounds as the cables that were shot shorted out and sparked every now and then.
Danny shrugged. Offer made, offer refused. He put his baton and his blade away and pulled the Ripshot he'd taken from the big pile of Desmond's guns off of his back, flicking the safety off and went on the attack. Subtley was gone, but the room was still dark and the advantage of the smoke was beginning to thin out and dissipate.
When there were only two racks of servers between him and the last two thugs, he opened fire with a fan of lead, gun tilted slightly to one side to ride the recoil and shredding the servers apart and whatever files were hosted on them.
"Stop shooting, god damn it!" Came another voice once the bounty hunter finished another round of thrasing the server racks, one that Danny recognized.
Danny put his finger off the trigger and stood at alert, the adrenaline winding down and draining from him. Why did his right thumb hurt so much? "Desmond?"
"No, it's Lewis Pasco!" Desmond replied. "Room's clear, did you break into the middle of their smoke break?" he asked, undoubtedly talking about the smoke that was slowly fadind out of the building.
Danny gripped for a word as he looked at his thumb and palm. Seemed like he'd grabbed some of the barrel of that rifle in the struggle. "Not quite. I am responsible for the smoke."
"Cool," the other bounty hunter replied, audibly moving around and kicking the empty brass casings from the thug's weapons. "What a mess," he commented.
Danny moved out too, safety engaged on his Ripshot, pointed to the ground, finger off trigger. He stepped over the man who he'd shocked and walked past the desk where the unconscious technician was lying, pushing the chair aside so Desmond could spot them. Danny didn't seem to have a word for the carnage he'd caused - or that the smoke was ready to engage again.
"Good job," the other bounty hunter said, finding his own words for what the other couldn't as he walked from where he was towards Danny. He himself looked like he had seen better days, the sleeves of his jacket were ripped on several places, and the sweater underneath that had also suffered the same abuse. His armor was dented in some places, and where there had once been ammo pouches there was just a long gash from when they had been ripped off.
"This the tech?" He asked, slightly nudging the uncounscious form with his boot.
Danny nodded, and bent down to drag them out from under the desk, soon carrying the technician's unconscious form. "This man's unconscious too," he said, indicating the soldier with a burn mark on his throat, "I don't think he'll be able to speak until a medic looks at him."
As Danny was carrying the man, Desmond, who was dragging the the uncounscious thug by his feet, would notice that Danny's overall shape had changed slightly thanks to the user-unintended, perverse design of his suit. "Let's make sure they don't move."
"You, uh, you alright there?" The other bounty hunter asked as he pulled the knocked-out man along.
"What?" Danny asked as he put the two unconscious forms back to back, making sure to interlock their limbs, criss-crossing.
"Nothing," Desmond said, looking around the room. The crumpled form of the other two thugs were still right next to the other exit, right where he had dropped them as Danny hosed the room down with the SMG, giving him the perfect chance to catch them off guard. "The other goons hightailed this place and went back to that big factory. The mercs are also gaining ground," he said, pressing a finger against the side of his helmet.
"And the status of our team?" Danny asked as he started to tie the two unconscious men together with some rope from Desmond. The knots were fairly plain and simple, and difficult to remove.
"They're with the mercs," the other bounty hunter said, turning back to inspect Danny's work. "Hey you're quite talented with that whole tying people up thing. Did the same people that gave you that suit teach you that?" He asked, smirking.
"Yes." Danny answered perfectly innocently, innuendo going over his head as he tied their legs. "Shall we regroup with the others?"
"Yeah," Desmond answered, fishing for something in his pockets to light the cigarette that had materialized between his lips in the few seconds it took Danny to ask the question. The bounty hunter looked up, slowly exaling the smoke from his nose in those few seconds of respite.
"Let's move," he said to Danny once the bounty hunter had finished restraining the two, and started to move out of the building.
