Gordon Freeman

"I am good at killing."

Beat.

"We should go. It is better to be moving."

Stationary targets are easy to dispose of. And they are wasting time.

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Annabelle nods and checks to make sure the shotgun is ready to fire.

"Yes, let's go."

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"I like the way you think," the woman says to Annabelle with a smile. "All right, everybody. My name's Dora Marquez, and we've got us some Combine two streets up ahead. Vamanos!"

(The Combine smell like something not quite human- like men with salt water where blood ought to be, overlaid with the whiff of electronics and gunfire. And they are, indeed, very near.)

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Annabelle grins, "Lead on Ms. Marquez."

It's a bad day to be Combine. As soon as Annabelle can get a clear shot, she's aiming to hit as many Combine between the eyes as possible.
There's a reason her nickname was Crackshot.

Hopefully she'll be able to grab some body armor from the Combine as she's the least bullet resistant member of the team.

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It does not take X long to break ranks. She works best alone.

There is no need to compensate for teammates, then.

X goes for what 'high' ground she can find. Or make. Adamantium claws are useful for carving out foot- and hand-holds.

And after a little observation she will most likely launch herself straight down into a group of Combine soldiers. Unless there are too many. Then she will use her gun.

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High ground, not so much. City 17 is fairly flat. High buildings, on the other hand... well.

The soldiers are traveling in knots of three or four at a time. There are at least two squads headed into the tenement buildings that line the local streets, and another out in the open, escorted by a floating, beeping thing that Gordon's data sheets identified as Scanners.

Given the nature of this crowd, that's likely to change very, very soon.

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I was made for war.

Annabelle has missed this, the last few weeks. Weapons are her art and her calling, an art that can only really be properly performed on a battlefield.

She opens fire on the Combine with a kind of savage joy. One shot, one kill is what she's aiming for in this dance of death. She'll have to start dodging when they figure out who's firing on them, of course.

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captainryan.livejournal.com

Ryan can sympathize. He's tucked down behind cover himself, firing in three round bursts.

He's going for the Scanner first. After that, the soldiers are fair game.

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X, on the other hand, is going directly for the soldiers accompanied by said Scanner.

The faster the main force becomes aware of them, the faster they will send support.

And since that is the goal--

snikt

She takes the first soldier in the stomach, flipping out a kick to take out a second one's knee. If that kick also slices up a gun (or two)--

That was part of her plan. Insofar as she has one beyond 'cause mayhem' that is.

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The Scanner explodes in a shower of thousands of sparks and pieces of metal.

"Hijo de puta!" Dora exclaims as she crouches down behind the remains of some long-forgotten Volkswagen. "Are those claws?"

It's sort of a rhetorical question. Somehow it's doubtful whether she could hear an answer over her own gunfire. And that of the soldiers; they start shouting to one another in croaking, half-mechanized voices even as they fan out, trying desperately to get away from the force of nature that's materialized in their midst, adamantium and all. Not that their maneuvers do them much good, as they've got Ryan's fire to evade, and Annabelle's-

Ooh. Ow. There goes the first mask; that's a headshot kill, all right. Ryan's bullets are finding plenty of targets, too, but Combine body armor's fairly tough stuff, so they're not going down as fast. The cleverer ones of the bunch are making use of rubble or shattering street-level windows to give themselves safe vantage points to fire back from.

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Annabelle is impressed both by X's skill and the claws. Ryan's doing well too, for that matter.

Annabelle is still aiming for head shots to get around the problem of thick body armor. There will be more Combine getting shotgun pellets in the face.

Cover complicates things. Annabelle keeps part of her attention on looking for ways to either remove the cover or use it against the Combine. A lot of her attention is, of course, on moving between bits of cover herself.

A nice, large piece of architecture that could be shot loose to fall on hiding Combine would be nice...

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Meanwhile X begins cutting a path from out of the midst of things, flinching on the occasion that bullets make contact, but doing her best not to favor her wounded arms.

Or legs.

She'll heal. It does not take very long.

Now if she can just get into position--

She brought along a few grenades--3 or 4 at most--courtesy of her trip to Santo several months ago.

And if there is a group of soldiers behind cover that feel like they are very safe--

They should probably be disabused of that notion.

Edited Date: 2008-09-09 04:07 am (UTC)

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acts_of_gord

It takes some looking to find it, but there's an appropriately placed building with a fire escape sticking out of the front. The bottom three floors' worth of steel were removed some time ago, as the Combine cares very little for fire safety and more for avoiding civil unrest, but there's still plenty of metal far enough above street level that no one who actually wanted to survive would bother trying to jump off it. A few good shots would be all it would take to bring that lot down.

As far as the groups who've taken shelter in the nearby buildings... well. The trouble with smashing windows to get in is that you can't un-smash them to keep things out. And walls tend to concentrate explosions marvellously.

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Annabelle grins as she sees the fire escape. Well placed shots are her specialty, after all.

Three very precise shots ring out and quite a lot of metal is heading towards some Combine.

Annabelle grins savagely, "NOW WHO'S DEAD BY ARCHITECTURE!"

That exclamation probably makes no sense out of context.

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It gets an odd look from Sonia, that's for sure.

The Combine, for what it's worth, are still human enough to yell "SHI-"

Oops. Were human enough. That's gonna leave a mark, all right.

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Speaking of ~~NPCs~~ the Resistance members, are there any that need a hand right now?

Annabelle is keeping an eye out for more architecture to use on the Combine, or grenades. Grenades would be nice.

Annabelle dodges gunfire from the Combine by rolling behind a rusted out hulk of a VW bug as bullets zip by where her torso had been moments before.

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X didn't flinch back from the explosion, and she only spared half a second to make sure no one's moving.

It is better to be thorough.

She hits the ground hard, dropping beneath a sudden rush of gunfire and buying herself a moment to scan the area.

There's got to be another few entrenched groups she can dig out.

Literally, if necessary. Adamantium is very useful.

Edited Date: 2008-09-09 07:22 pm (UTC)

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Two of the rebels up ahead are playing a bullet-laced game of cat and mouse with the arriving Combine reinforcements, darting in and out of cars and rubble. And there's plenty of rubble, thanks to X's efforts- storefronts may be designed to take the impact of an oncoming car, but they're rarely reinforced against damage from within. The dust from the explosion is clinging, harsh stuff that'll linger in the hair and lungs for days.

Doubtless Annabelle will be thrilled to notice that the dead Combine soldiers are carrying grendes- cannister-shaped affairs rather than the pineapple sort, but recognizable nonetheless. Pulling the pin on one causes the end to light up, perhaps some sort of concession to individual safety. There's a grenade or two on each dead soldier, and one Combine out of any given four or five has shotgun ammunition. The rest are armed with submachine guns, and carry the appropriate ammunition for same. A few of them even still have viable armor, thanks to death by-

We don't suggest examining the headshotted Combine too closely. What was under the mask bears very little resemblance to the structure of the human head as most know it. Most heads don't have nearly that much cyberware, and are stuffed with a lot more gray matter.

On X's side of things, there's a growling sound- engines, at ground level. An armored black vehicle with no apparent windows or doors, only a massive gun turret in the front, is bearing down on the rebels' position at speed.

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captainryan.livejournal.com

Ryan moves forward to lend the rebels an extra gun. Three moving targets are certain to cause more confusion and be harder to hit than two, not to mention that Ryan can afford to be a little more brazen in drawing fire.

Holtzmann shield generators are fun like that.

If there's a pause in combat, he'll pick up a few grenades and one of the submachine guns. Yes, he's got his rifle but limited ammo. Better to have something where his odds of getting more munitions are good.

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X's assessment is quick, and she shifts her angle of approach to intercept the gun turret. And the car it's on, of course.

Her mass is too small to make a difference (if Santo were here, or Piotr, it would be different, but that is irrelevant), and she is not strong enough to overturn the vehicle.

A running start, however, means she can use the wall as a pivot point and hit the hood of the car. At least it'll put her close to the turret, and even if she's using the claws in her hands to keep her attached to something moving at speed--

She's got claws in her feet that'll cut through metal well enough. She'll take out the barrel first--it's much better when a weapon cannot fire anymore.

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The car turns out to be somewhat larger than one might expect- it's an armored personnel carrier on the rampage. X's claws slash through the gunbarrel with a terrible shrieking of metal, just in time to prevent rocket fire joining the street combat up ahead. The APC slows, then begins zigging and zagging in an effort to shake X loose.

Doubtless that will prove harder than one might think.

The Combine are concentrating their fire more on Ryan and Annabelle's vicinity than anyone else. The rebels give the impression of having scavenged body armor, after all, whereas the new arrivals look as if they might present easier targets. That, of course, is not the case for Ryan; briefly the gunfire falls off as they realize something is going wrong and reassess their strategy...

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captainryan.livejournal.com

Ryan likes his shield generator, he does. Smiling just a bit, he takes advantage of the break to switch out weapons and pick up extra ammo and explosives.

Which is about when it occurs to him that the Combine might decide grenades could take him out. They won't, he knows that much already, but they will send him flying.

So he might as well send them flying first. Anyway, its a good way to determine precisely what these grenades do.

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Doubtless a mutant weapon is very difficult to shake. X shifts position again, bringing one knee up under herself. That (conveniently) puts her toes right up against the hood, which means she can jab in one claw and hold.

And now, of course, she has her hands free.

The real question is--would it be more efficient to try to annihilate the engine, or go after whatever might be driving the car?

Efficiency suggests her position makes option 1 more acceptable, and so X suits thought to action.

What is under the hood?

Edited Date: 2008-09-09 08:47 pm (UTC)

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Bluntly put? They do a lot of damage. It's probably not a good idea to attempt to throw oneself on such a grenade to save the rest of the unit, as it would appear that the grenades are perfectly capable of sending their victims- or their victims' parts- flying.

As for X's situation, what lies under the hood is an internal combustion engine of a sort. Whatever fuel it runs on, it's heavily based on alcohol rather than petroleum. It looks as if someone got hold of a Wankel rotary engine and forced it through fifty years of design evolution or more in the space of a week.

The APC driver chooses that moment to slam on the brakes, perhaps hoping to fling the unwelcome passenger from the hood and into the line of fire.

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