Assault on City 17: Team Ninja

[acts_of_gord]

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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[smelltheashes]

Linden Street is some distance away, but Aloysius knows the route well enough to snake his little group through without being spotted. (Or perhaps not; the occasional rocket thunders into the ground close by where they'd just been.) Eventually he ducks into the slightly recessed shelter of an emergency door. "Just around the corner," he says, "there's a fire exit. Can your flux capacitor jimmy a magnetic lock at all, or is this going to need explosives?"

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, it can, I think. Where's it at?" John's undone complex locks before. Shouldn't be too hard.

[[Wondering if John would actually be able to unlock the Combine locks. He's done a lot of stuff, but the finer control is difficult for him. Plus, they're much different than magnetic locks.]]

[smelltheashes]

[[Up to you. There's nothing wrong with a little property damage to get in, and the Combine aren't used to building things to resist psychics and metahumans, that's all I'm saying.]]

"A yard or two down. The lock's on the outside- you can't miss it."

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

[[This is true.]]

John runs down the hall, keeping low to the ground just in case, and he sees the lock. He raises his hand, and focuses on it, feeling with his mind the mechanisms controlling the lock. He drops the focus, and walks back to the group.

"I can unlock the door, but I can't permanently unlock it, only hold it open. One of you is going to have to open the door while I'm keeping it unlocked."

[acts_of_gord]

"I've got it," says Aloysius. "Ready whenever you two are."

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

"Alright, come on."

John walks down the corridor and brings up his hand, focusing again on keeping the mechanism in the lock open. "Alright," he grunts from the focus of speech and TK at the same time, "Open it. Now."

[acts_of_gord]

Aloysius lunges forward immediately and shoves the door open with one shoulder. This is because he needs the other hand for his gun, in case the Combine left anybody behind. Thankfully they didn't; the area's merely what you'd expect of a former fire exit stairwell, all graffiti and badly-cleared-away trash.

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

John drops his hand, and grabs his gun out of its holster, holding it out as he walks through the door. He's not taking any chances. It's not shoot to kill, not with Dinah around, but he's certainly not going to rest on his laurels.

"Which way now?" he asks, quietly.

[acts_of_gord]

"Up," says Aloysius, equally quietly. "They usually stick the snipers on the third floor and higher. Gives them a better angle of fire in case anybody wanders down the street."

His gun's at the ready as they head for the stairs.

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

John nods curtly, and begins winding his way up the stairway, checking at each landing that the way is clear, and for the floor number. When they reach the third floor, John runs up a little ways longer--the fourth and fifth floor doors are available, but any stories higher than that are blocked by a large chunk of collapsed roof.

John goes back down the staircase quietly, and opens the door slowly, back to it, gun entended. No one in site, he steps through, holding the door open with his right hand to keep from creating excess noise because of a door opening and shutting.

[acts_of_gord]

Aloysius eases through the door as close to silently as he can manage. He's not used to the sort of stealth that seems to come naturally to John, though he has the right idea.

The dormitory must have been built by the least imaginative architects ever: a central hallway running the length of the building, with glass-fronted doors (some still intact, some not) on either side of the hallway about every twenty feet or so. Up ahead some distance, a few of the doors on the streetward side have sagged open a few inches.

Well. Sagged may not be the right word. not with the bloodstains and burn marks on the floor.

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

John sees the bloodied doors, but quickly scans the room for security cameras rather than head in immediately. Seeing none, he makes his way to the disfigured doors silently, fingering the trigger. He then leans back against the hallway walls, peering around the door without exposing himself.

Just because they're facing the street doesn't mean they're obvious.

[acts_of_gord]

This was a residential area once. The people who lived here are gone now, to varying degrees, but their possessions mostly remained behind. It's amazing how effective a worn-out couch and some ancient, decrepit tables can be at sheltering someone who doesn't want to be seen.

Mind you, the paff! of a single bullet being fired, and the low croaking of "Necrotic neutralized" being spoken through a Combine vocoder, make it pretty plain what's on the other side of the furniture barricade.

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

John takes advantage of the couch to shuffle to the open side of the door, shimmying in and then crouching until right before the couch, when he stands up--

whe-whe-whe go the darts as all three stike post-human flesh where the skull meets the next.

[acts_of_gord]

The sniper doesn't even get to send off a startled signal to his comrades, but only slumps to the floor, knocking his emplaced gun wide of any possible target.

(This is not an area normally prone to necrotics. This is an area of citizens and rebels. There is no guidance laser. People would notice.)

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

John reloaded his gun, cocks it, and backs out just as slowly.

He does the same thing for every other room with a sniper in it, smooth as clockwork, and then comes back to the rebel. "Floor's cleared. Don't know if there's anything you want from here: ammo, health."

[acts_of_gord]

"You're good," Aloysius says admiringly, but that's all. He's got to grab those ammo clips and a couple of the health vials. Not like there's a medic around, after all.

[jv-034.livejournal.com]

"Not good. Conditioned, same as you." John gives a grim smile. "You alright? Lose any blood? Can take care of that, too."

[acts_of_gord]

"A couple of places," Aloysius admits. "Nothing I haven't handled with some bandages and vials over the course of the past week, but if you can lend a hand, that'd be great."

[acts_of_gord]

Meanwhile, down in the street...

The Combine haven't been patrolling at street level here. Their foot soldiers are needed elsewhere, and anyway there were headcrab zombies wandering about. The snipers could take care of those when they became an issue. On the other hand, no one had much wanted to deal with zombies coming after the actual foot soldiers, so the last few ranks of Overwatch had taken a few steps. Dinah may find, as she makes her way down Linden Street, that there's a faint chirping noise coming from some oddly metallic lumps scattered about the place.

[raptorcanaria]

Chirping, huh?

Dinah had been making her way fairly energetically, determined to present a moving target to any sniper that might see her. Chirping little robot things, however are a different matter.

She crouches in the middle of the street, bringing her face closer to ground level, and screams.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

[acts_of_gord]

There are quite a lot of the mines. They're placed relatively close together, so that if someone survives the explosion of one, the next one'll be set off, and so on and so forth. The Combine are efficient that way.

They're also set to leap into the air and detonate somewhere between one and two meters above the surface if proximity or concussion sets them off.

We're not sure what someone from England would consider appropriate music for what happens next, but any American who'd ever watched more than one or two fireworks displays would consider the ensuing demonstration of hopping and exploding and shattering in all directions to be well worth the final movement of the 1812 Overture.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah is, fortunately, very much American.

Though she's busy right now, curled up into a protective ball with her hands over her ears.

For the first ten seconds, anyway. After that she's running through, avoiding explosions and watching for any other dangers.

[acts_of_gord]

The only remaining danger at street level- John and his tranq gun are rampaging through the dormitory like there's no tomorrow- is up ahead: an entrenched Combine soldier manning a heavy pulse machine gun, mounted on top of an oddly shimmering glassy wall. He stares at Dinah, or at least gives the impression of doing so- it's not as if the glowing orange lenses set into that dark helmet can blink, after all- and brings the gun to bear...

[raptorcanaria]

Ted would tell her that a decent hero could unarm a man with a gun without even breaking a sweat. He's been over this over and over with Dinah, insisting that she should be able to deal with this. She even knows how she would: somersault on to the wall, use her momentum and his surprise to spin and kick, knock the gun to the ground and even the score.

But she's already tired, and she already has the energy from screaming, so she just takes another breath and pitches another note.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

This is a shattering move. One she's honed and practiced so it will dismantle machinery.