Gordon Freeman

"Uh..."

Think fast--

"Flux capacitor? I've... uh, been working on it. I'm a scientist."

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That rates a whistle. "I've heard some stories about the stuff they've made at Black Mesa East, but nothing that fancy," he says as they push onward into the reeking dark. "Think you can do that again? There's bound to be manhacks down here."

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"Yeah, definitely. It's got some... other uses too." He smiles a bit. "You know where we're supposed to go?"

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Dinah had watched the telekinetic defense with some interest, but without comment. It's useful to know what she has on her team.

Unfortunately, she notes as they press on, she can't use her weapon down here. Not unless she wants to bring the tunnel crashing down on them.

Apart from that, she's just listening to the conversation, keeping alert for more headcrabs. No way is she letting herself be bitten again.

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"Sure do. Through the tunnel, wipe out whatever manhacks show up, and then out to where 280 used to run aboveground. We got some reports that the Combine'd ceded the central section of the highway to the headcrabs, so we wanna make sure and wipe the whole thing as clean of zombies as we can."

As they make their way into the darkness, in the distance, something hums. An alert eye might well catch sight of first one, then two, then several glimmering red lights.

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Dinah scowls the scowl of a young but passionate technophobe.

"Those manhacks?"

She doesn't wait for an answer. Instead she throws herself forward, rolling her spine along the floor for the only purpose of picking up a spare pipe that just happened to be landing there. Landing on her feet, it's just a case of knocking the saw things against the wall, swinging the pipe like a mace.

Thank you, Uncle Carter.

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The whirring noise of the rotating blades mingles with beeping as the manhacks advance- and then with the sound of metal smashing against metal, and a sudden shift to an almost agonized higher-pitched noise as Dinah lays waste to the first wave. The luckier machines are the ones that shatter on impact. Others don't receive quite as much force; their lights switch from red to orange as their internal systems rearrange to compensate for now-useless circuit paths. It won't help, of course. Any manhack that comes anywhere near Dinah is in for a very bad, very short day.

Of course, the fact that they keep coming is an issue. The Combine likes to flood tunnels and abandoned pipes with these things just in case refugees try to escape City 17, after all.

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John's helping, too; his solution is likewise utilitarian. He raises his right hand, and it glows blue as he picks up a manhack. The yellow and blue lights shine and pop around it as he whirls it around, using its blades and its speed to wreak havoc on the other manhacks. When his is finished, it's just a manner of picking up another.

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There's scores of the things, so shattered bits of metal and wire end up everywhere. The walls are rapidly speckled with chips and dents as pieces of flying manhack saw gouge chunks out of the paint and concrete.

Between Dinah's mace work, John's psychic wrecking crew talent, and the rebel's guns, the things do stop coming. Apparently there's only so many the Combine care to stuff into one area without a watcher. There certainly aren't any CPs or soldiers coming to check on the things. "That," the rebel says, "was incredible. Where did you two learn to do that?"

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The stupidest part of the costume? No convenient belts for pipe stashing. Dinah lowers it to her side. and takes the opportunity to toss blonde strands away from her face.

"My uncle taught me to swing a club."

Casual as anything. It's not like she was using metapowers or anything.

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He shakes his head ruefully. "Man. You must have some uncle. Well-" He squares his shoulders and gestures towards the flickering light of something that might be burning or might just be dying electricity up ahead. "Shall we continue? There's more of 280 to clear."

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John turns and looks the man square in the eye. "I can scout ahead, if you need me to. I've got a stealth function built into the capacitor."

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"I sure wouldn't say no," he answers. "Thanks, buddy."

The way ahead is clogged by fallen concrete and smashed vehicles. Possibly gas pipelines, too, if the occasional fits of fire are anything to go by. Clambering over concrete eventually leads to a narrow passage through which one must crawl. On the other side, the ceiling is long since gone, and the former freeway has become a high-walled trench into which every foul-smelling and toxic substance known has long since spilled.

There's no way those things crawling in the shadows are cockroaches....

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John nods, and runs up behind a piece of rumble so that his party can no longer see him. "I'm still here," he calls, once he's behind, "so don't worry about me!"

With that, he runs up the alley silently and invisible to any manner of creature with a brain, occasionally becoming visible for a second to take out a batch of headcrabs with blue shockwaves. They don't even have the chance to stalk him before they're thrown backwards with that blood-curdling cry.

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Dinah smirks to herself, wondering what exactly this stealth function involves. For her part, she stays by the man who, despite his obvious competence, she's already mentally designated as a civilian to protect, the same way she would if a cop invited himself along on her business at home.

Occasionally a headcrab might slip past John, but it's easy enough to smash them against the walls of the trench.

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acts_of_gord

They do smash well, don't they? The headcrabs die faster from impact than from piercing, going down with one good WHACK or shattering from within under John's waves of force.

The formerly human things that begin to haul themselves out of the liquid foulness, bloody claws that were once hands scrabbling for purchase, may be another story altogether.

THere are quite a few of them.

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There're a few of them, but at least they're human shaped,and Dinah's good with things that are human shaped.

She leaves the lone headcrabs to John and focuses on the zombies. And now she remembers the advantage of the heeled boots - a smaller surface area means more pressure on each parasite she kicks at, and the blows are even more effective.

And if she can't get a kick to the head in, she just needs to judo throw the whole thing back in the mess.

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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

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"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."

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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

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

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