Assault on City 17: Team Destroy

[acts_of_gord]

The group of Milliways patrons earmarked for the pincer movement is ushered into City 17 without much ceremony. The streets here are cobbled, the buildings grey with age; the handful of cars in the street are old, old things, worn down with time and lack of care. They have the look of machines that were abandoned where their owners fell. This was a residential part of town, once. That was before the Combine- before the black thing on the horizon existed. In the distance it rises, visible down the eastward-facing streets: a tower of such immense size that its top pierces the low-lying clouds.

"Hey," calls a human voice- a Hispanic-looking woman, young of face but old of eye and attitude. She's dressed in dark blue and black, partially bulked up by the body armor of a fallen Civil Protection metrocop, and she carries a submachine gun. "Didn't see you guys show up. Are you part of the diversionary force?"

Comments

[smelltheashes]

Yes. Yes they are. The Strider's still standing afterwards, but between Ryan's explosives and Donighal's powers, that's not going to last much longer.

Down at ground level, Dora's gotten to the point of sitting up and demanding her guns back- and looking around, blinking. "Hey," she says, "where's that kid with the claws?"

[aeons_crackshot]

"She was taking out one of the Striders, last I saw," Annabelle tells her. "I'm not sure where she is right now, I was a bit...preoccupied."

Annabelle is rummaging through the remains of the Combine soldiers looking for guns, grenades, and bug juice. There might be more Striders coming.

[md_donighal]

Michael, meanwhile, has been toying with his Strider like a flying matador. Now, noticing that it's the last Strider standing, he decides it's time for the momente de la verdad. The fireball he charges up this time is roughly the size of his torso, and it should, at the very least, make a hella impressive

FA-THOOM

on impact.

[smelltheashes]

The air fills with the stink of scorching- and then, without any further ado, the Strider's central mass explodes. All three legs go flying in three different directions as alien gore begins to rain down like a whale carcass in the care of the Oregon Highway Department.

[aeons_crackshot]

There is a grimace of "ick" from Annabelle as it starts raining Strider bits.

"Well, I think that one's done for." She turns to Dora, "Are we likely to get any more Striders?"

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan, for his part, ducks back in the window and thereby misses most of the shower. "Show off," he says ungratefully as he looks back out the window.

He's got a pretty good view up here. He might stay, at least until his ammo starts running low.

[md_donighal]

Michael starts settling gently but rapidly back to the ground. (Nothing personal, gravity, it's just that you were stifling his potential.) Nova senses picked up Ryan's mutter, and as he passes the window, he can't (or, at least, doesn't) resist the urge to say "Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it."

Within seconds of that observation, his feet are touching down. "Sorry about the mess," he says.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle looks in his direction as he comes in for a landing and raises an eyebrow at his comment to Ryan. "It's alright. It'll wash out...probably."

She grins somewhat mischievously at Michael, "I always knew you had a predilection for drama." She may be teasing him a bit, it's not like she has room to talk after climbing the Strider to plant a grenade.

[acts_of_gord]

"No," says Dora, wincing as some of the other rebels start reporting casualties. "Not just now, I don't-"

"Dora," calls a narrow-faced man with reddish hair poking out from under his watch cap. "Are you hearing what I'm hearing?"

"... oh hell." Dora goes paler than before, if that's possible. "Incoming gunship. Who's got a rocket launcher?"

There are no positive answers among the rebels.

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle grimaces at the news that a gunship is incoming. "I suppose that we've worried them quite a bit if they're sending one of those our way."

"I don't have a rocket launcher, I'm afraid. Is there anything else that might help kill one of them?"

[acts_of_gord]

"Not unless Black Mesa East's managed to make another tau cannon," says Dora. "They'll shoot down just about anything else- take cover, people!"

[aeons_crackshot]

OOC: I can't think of a way that Annabelle could hit the gunship with the weapons that she currently has. Unless one of the pulse rifles could hit the ship. Is this a good point to have Annabelle G-manned?

Annabelle seldom feels that she needs more firepower, but this is one of those times. She curses as she moves to take cover.

[smelltheashes]

The rebels are scattering rapidly, Sami and Ying Ying shouting frantically for someone with bigger guns. Apparently there were rocket launchers available at some point, but that Strider's warp cannon took out the wielders with splash damage.

[md_donighal]

Tau cannon, Michael thinks once cover has been taken and he allows himself the leisure to think. Hmmm... He assumes everyone saw what he was doing earlier, and if they didn't, he'd rather have them scared of him than dead. "Allow me." Without waiting for acknowledgment, he pops up from hiding long enough to shoot off a fireball roughly the size of an RPG explosion, backed by a beam of tau particles*.

* Or possibly fronted by such a beam, given their lifespan.

[smelltheashes]

The gunship had only just flowed into sight- yes, flowed; it moves through the air with the sound of engines and the eerie grace of a skyborne sea creature. It wheels around as it approaches the rebels' location, bringing one great blue compound eye to bear-

And then it lets out an URRRROOOGAAH of pain as Donighal's attack tears into its midsection.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan's fairly certain there's nothing he can do against that thing, unfortunately. There's little point staying in the building, then, especially since there's a chance of the gunship crashing down on it.

He starts heading towards the stairs, weapon ready for any resistance he missed on the way up.

[md_donighal]

That scream drives home to Michael, much more intimately than did the Florentine rain of strider-bits, that the Combine's weapons are organic, or at least started their existences that way — that every one of them is to some poor species from another world what those Overwatch Elites he toasted are to humans.

Curiously, this gives him an almost Buddhist detachment from what he must do next. He looks the gunship right in the eye, heedless of the difference in scale between them that was clear from the moment he first glimpsed Gordon's sketch of that graceful engine.

"I'm sorry," he says, hoping his tone comes through even if his words mean nothing to it. "I wish it could be different, but I can't let what was done to you happen to them. I wish I could set you free some other way, but I don't know how."

While he's been talking, he's been X-ray scanning for the gunship's brain. Once he finds it, he puts a bolt through it. If his aim is as true as he hopes, it should be a clean kill, at least as clean as killing ever is.

[acts_of_gord]

The aim is true, the death is clean; and when the smoke clears...

"Hey," says Dora, pulling herself as upright as she can. "Where'd they go? Anybody here see what happened to them all?"

But there's no answer.