Makari was pulling the trigger of his HHG, but there was not a single loud bang to be heard. Instead, each bullet that flew towards the mindless people was a liquid capsule. Each glass capsule would shatter against their flesh and a tranquilliser contained inside would seep into their clothes and into their skin.
One by one, they started to drop as the tranquillisers took effect within seconds, being stronger made stuff that Makari could afford to buy as a bounty hunter who had to get his quarry alive rather than dead.
As they were falling down with wet thuds and starting to trample each other, he watched a cylinder fall into the middle of the crowd, and there was a loud bang and a bright
Flash.
Try to imagine that you'd had a light shone into your eyes that was so powerful that it was able to penetrate your fibre of being and shine into your eyes through your skull and brain. Even if you were standing behind it and not looking at it it would still get to you.
The force of the concussion knocked some of the people off balance so far that they went careening off the pier and into the water. Those who remained on land were strewn and lying about the entrance in a state of semi-consciousness found themselves pelted by peppery treats.
For the best, they decided to remain lying down.
And then the doors to the warehouse slid open. Vita stood between them and pushed them open, displaying an unseen strength that might've been natural in the Pavone blood.
She then held onto her ears and thinned her lips Bronzi, furrowing her brow and snorting towards him. "A simple 'Hello' would've sufficed," she groaned. Her body was able to cope with the Gartagen flashbang better than the mindless, D-Motiva infected people, but it still hurt her ears, ringing and droning as they slowly recovered from the sheer sound and fury.
She then looked behind her at the children inside the warehouse who'd all buried their heads under their pillows and were moaning in pain ever so slightly. She looked back towards Bronzi and shot him a withering glance before turning his attention to Seiren and Makari, who were a little more trustworthy - at least dad knew Seiren beforehand. "Where's dad?"
Aoi was the first to step forward from the group, and Vita tensed when she spotted the pink Nekovalkyrja ears on her. Aoi paused and inspected Vita carefully too. The fact that all of the other children in the warehouse were disoriented by that noxious flashbang, but Vita remained stable was something a teenage girl wouldn't be capable of.
It was more than Pavone blood running through her veins, she could see the family resemblance. "I think... he's with the doctor." Aoi responded after a pause, glancing upwards as she tried to recall the last bits of radio communication that flew across the waves.
She stepped forward again to move past Vita, and as they crossed each other's glances, they seemed to pass by each other while looking in each other's eyes as they went.
I know what you are.
Let it be my secret, pinkie.
Only because you and your dad helped me. You helped us.
"Yuuka, Tanaka, Taro, Hiroyuki, Misha, Wakamoto, Chiyo, Annata, Mai!" Aoi paused for a breath as she made a head count of her friends, and slowly they rose one by one to look at her and Vita. Her face broke into a smile and she clasped her hands as her friends remembered her. "Shiko, Kikyo, Billy, Hotaru, Hanako, Reiko, Genno, Sasaki, Morimoto!"
-
"The way I see it," Luca replied to the younger of the Smith brothers as he toyed with the detonator, "We're not going to get anywhere by giving this stuff to individual people. As long as that cloud hangs above the city, they'll just get infected again as soon as-"
"~♪~ Biddlyboop biddlyboop ~♪~"
Luca stopped to look at his chest. His phone was singing that tinny rendition of the Phoenix Man! theme song. He sighed and placed the detonator down as he mumbled something about dramatic timing, and pulled out his phone.
Code:
Yo, Told to drop a line here, Heard about a party. -Mako
"Party...? Oh, right. Guess they're late."
He sent a short message.
Code:
Hi. Kind of in the middle of something. If you see a giant black thundercloud heading towards you, stay indoors. I am going to drop a bomb on it.
He sent the message without a second thought.
"
Where was I? Ah, that's right. We're going to disperse the vaccine into the very thing its fighting against directly." He picked up the detonator again. "I just need a teeny-tiny dab of explosive and an air cylinder to compress all of the Vaccine into so it can fly in all directions with great prejudice after it gets 'opened'."
In so many words, he was going to drop a bomb on the cloud.
He then got the message from Zeta. "Hear that? Deliberate poisoning!" He radioed Zeta, Ellen, Panther and Enzo. "Means we've got a paper trail to follow after this. Enzo, Panther, Zeta, any of you find anything useful? How's Ellen holding up?"
-
Ellen could feel her thoughts being scattered to the wind as her vision blurred and the noxious fumes of the cloud began to overwrite and subvert her senses, slowly and steadily muddling her mind as memory by memory from both consciousnesses faded into blackness. A breath of fresh air through the choking smoke was starting to clear her mind enough for her to stand up and move around. She started taking deeper breaths as she stood back up, feeling her thoughts straighten and return.
Meanwhile, the Lorath found that being stabbed in the hand and held down by a person who smelt as bad as he looked was not an optimal situation. As he wrestled with Enzo and Panther, the Lorath interloper could be seen opening his mouth and dislodging one of his molars.
They both knew what he was going to do next unless they reached in and stopped him.
As Zeta through the busted filter aside, she watched as her elbow popped out yet again for a short measure, and slammed back in as she was about to release it. It flew further than Zeta anticipated, hitting the Emergency booth's walls and shattering into pieces.
As she was inspecting the damage, she could see Ellen stumbling inside the Emergency Booth with an oxygen mask on, breathing in and out of it heavily. Alerts and warning were lighting up on the dashboard, and Zeta could see and hear that the cover over the burning pond had stopped.
-
"1 TH1NK 4 BR33Z3 1S C0M1NG." Echelon observed over the radio waves as she tapped into planet wide meteorology reports.
"Might want to wrap this up soon!" Allison replied, hot on her robot buddy's heels. "If that cloud gets bigger..."
"Y0U'R3 G0NN4 B3 UN4BL3 T0 PL4Y NSS D34THW1SH W1TH M3!" Echelon blurted out. Her priorities were clearly skewed, but she didn't want her friend to lose her mind. Allison shot her a glance of surprise, and continued monitoring the situation.
