acts_of_gord | Assault on City 17: Team Ninja

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Assault on City 17: Team Ninja

In better times City 17 had many, many ways of crossing town. For the most part, the citizens of today travel on the surface, and mostly on foot. This is partly because they're easier to track down, and partly because the alternatives haven't been maintained lately. On the other hand, the Combine don't use the underpassages any more either. Clearing one of the tunnels that crosses half the City is a priority for the Resistance; it'll give them a much better crack at getting behind enemy lines. Thus the infiltration team finds themselves in a small courtyard at the back of what was once a highway maintenance building, facing a poorly lit flight of stairs leading down.

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And John, for his part... well, the bigger they are, the harder they'll fall. But eventually, he runs out of psi energy, and pulls out his heavy tranq gun, making headshots on each of the zombies.

"Watch out, Dinah! They have claws! If I need to, I'll shoot for real!" John bellows

"I," Dinah says, turning her back to flip one against another and knock them both back, buying her time to kick the crab off another, "noticed! Go ahead and use real bullets. They're already dead."

She's right. When the headcrab's kicked off the corpse collapses. The skull's been ruthlessly, bloodily stripped of virtually all its flesh, and the top of the cranial vault's missing. We don't suggest checking inside, either.

One particular zombie stops some distance away from the two humans, apparently trapped behind a junked fifty-five gallon drum. It lets out a horrific bellow and swings its arms crudely at the thing. The drum goes flying towards the two humans at considerable speed.

John, in the middle of pulling out his SMG, pulls out his right hand from the tangle of limbs, and grabs the barrel, flinging it at the pack of zombies with a massive swing.

He then finishes putting the clip on his gun, and then pulls it out, opening righteous fire on the oil drum, which then explodes, taking out quite a few. And those that don't explode get a final death by lead.

As soon as she knows what John's intending - which is as soon as he moves his attention from barrel to gun, Dinah dives towards the civilian, knocking him down in time for the explosion to pass by harmlessly.

She kicks the headcrabs off any zombie not dealt with by explosion and bullet, and straightens, adjusting her wig as subtly as possible.

"Let's keep going."

The rebel straightens up, panting. "Nice moves," he says. "Oh, man, remind me not to get in you guys' way."

Ahead, there's fallen rubble in plenty from where 280 collapsed. Moving from rubble chunk to rubble chunk is the only way out of the sea of chemical nastiness. On the other side emergency lighting flickers faintly, and what might be a flare gleams in the darkness. Somewhere beyond that is the bluish-grey glimmer of daylight filtering in again.

John starts to move rubble around, making it possible to cross the pool of filth.

"Hey Dinah, you have some screaming ability, right?"

Dinah has no problems moving over the rubble - at least not beyond the occasional heel getting stuck in a crack - and keeps an eye out for the rebel to make sure he's OK as well.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm not going to use it until we get in the open, though. I don't feel like causing a cave in."

"Screaming ability?" the rebel wonders, but he's moving along with the same care as the other two. "More research projects?"

"In that I have to put up with a lot of scientists researching me," Dinah admits. "No one's found a cause for it yet."

"Huh. My dad told me there used to be singers who could shatter glass if they hit the right note loud enough," the rebel says, picking his way across the trail of debris with the greatest of care. "Something like that?"

"Like that," she agrees. "Turns out you can shatter just about anything if you hit the right frequency and volume."

"Huh. Too bad that doesn't work underground," the rebel says, expression going grim. "There's manhacks between us and the surface. The Combine're seriously flooding the tunnels."

And sure enough, the sound of the buzzsaw robots fills the air.

"Oh, shit! Not on the... shit!" John screams, as the hacks come closer and closer to the group. He knows there's no way they can stay alive if they try to fight the hacks on floating surfaces. "There's not enough--hold on!"

God, I hope I don't kill them please don't let me kill them John thinks in a mantra as he picks first Dinah and then the rebel up to deposit them further along down the way, onto more solid surfaces. He's picked up plenty of people before, but always with the aim of strangling them to death, never to save them.

Dinah, for her part, stays still and mobile while being moved. It feels weird, but not unlike being moved by Green Lantern, and she's fine with it.

When she lands on the solid surface, she launches straight into action, rolling under the manhacks to find a piece of pipe. And then, it's mace time again.

"Wnfgh!" says the rebel, or something like it. He's not being strangled, he's just startled as hell. When John releases him he stumbles, but regains his feet. "Nice one, doc," he says as he flashes a grin.

There's no time left for talking after that. The air is alive with the glaring lights and whizzing saws of the manhacks, and the least distraction is going to get somebody shredded.

John pulls out his SMG to take care of the manhacks. It's not as effective as TK, but unfortunately his mind can't take any more for now.

He shoots at the ones above their heads, coming in, since he doesn't want to take a chance that a stray bullet could hit either of his teammates.

Dinah works quickly and silently with the pipe; trusting John's ability with the gun for no other reason than not doing so is a distraction she can't afford right now.

It doesn't take long to get rid of them with them all working.

Eventually the reason for the liberal dose of manhacks becomes clear: the tunnel is utterly collapsed in one direction, and offers pedestrian access to a small, barred courtyard on the surface. The passage makes it possible to avoid a vast quantity of the city's hazards.

Unfortunately, we mean it when we say barred; three directions are blocked by buildings, and the fourth is blocked by a substantial, hastily erected barricade of rubble.

John looks around the ruined world--now he understands, and the impact of it all hits him. This was a metropolis. But he can't allow himself much time for those kinds of thoughts. He turns his head deliberately, and then looks at Dinah.

"This open enough for you?"

Just to be on the safe side, the Resistance man steps aside. You never know when things are going to start flying.

"Cover your ears," Dinah suggests as an answer, and steps forward away from them.

She takes a breath, hoping she doesn't seem nervous. Then, starting quiet, she finds a note just within the upper range of human hearing.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

Her description of glass shattering from a soprano wasn't accurate. This is a fully fledged sonic weapon, and the rubble blocking the way flies back like she's hit it with a demolition ball.

"...wow. That's incredible," John says, coughing a bit due to the dust flying around. He puts his gun on the holster on his back and brings his hand to bear, just to be safe, in case there's something waiting on the other side.

To it as simply as possible, the rebel's face does this:

O___O

"....okay then!" he finally manages. "No wonder you didn't want to do that underground..."

The other side is open, at least for the moment. The Combine are mostly busy inside the buildings in the area. Which is fine with the rebel, because as they push along and stay out of sight a scrawny twentysomething woman with a lambda on her arm darts out of an alley. "Aloysius! Am I ever glad to see you- we've got sniper sign!"

"Huh boy," says Aloysius, glancing over at his two companions. "How bad?"

"A good five or six of them, all strung out along one block- it's the dormitory complex on Linden. Alexi's pinned down on the other side of the street."

"Guess they figured they'd better not leave anything to chance. Linden Street's the most direct route to the Citadel from here," says Aloysius.

Dinah keeps her eyeroll as subtle as possible. She fought off an insurgence of zombies with just her bare un-superpowered hands, and they're complimenting on her lung capacity. She says nothing, however, until she hears about the snipers, then glances towards John.

"Do you still have tranquilizers?"

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