Gordon Freeman

"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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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."

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

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"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."

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"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?"

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

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"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.

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"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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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