[Center]Daniel Anders[/Center] --- To hear people speak in the lord’s language was unusual, yet here: Daniel was confronted with two people who spoke it as fluently as he did. He wasn’t entirely sure which party confused him more: The mutant’s latin curses or the outburst from Brucie as he sprang into action. Where on earth or in heaven had these people learned latin? He had thought himself lucky to find a latin bible in the Bunker’s library, which was cross-referenced with his own holy scripture to form a rough vocabulary. To this day, he had to think about whatever he said in Latin, speaking it like a small child struggling to understand a second language. ...Yet now the suicidal Australian and an orange tongued mutant spoke the lord’s language with an ease that Daniel felt envious for! Pausing, Daniel inhaled and exhaled sharply. The breaths were deliberate and slow as he purged the sins of pride and envy from his body. He’d seek confession after this outing, to be sure. To show such weakness was unbefitting of a holy crusader. Feeling suitably soothed, Daniel began to analyse the situation with the ruthless intellect picked up from years as a Raider. The obvious tactics seemed out of the window: not a chance in hell of intimidating anyone and not a chance to use superior numbers. That meant the best option was a sneak attack. He had a plan in mind, to use Brucie as bait for the wolves, but instead the lunatic had began to blare out music and make a general ass of himself. [i]’I guess that counts.’[/i] It seemed that Daniel’s part of this mission would be the shepherd. He would watch the barbaric australian sheep and, when the wolves came, slaughter them. Daniel spotted something at a slight distance away: a six-foot tall slab of reinforced concrete. It was likely a part of a building at some point, but for now, it would serve an entirely different purpose. He fired the grappling hook of his powerfist into the column and choose to leave the length of the hook slack. After that, he began to move behind Brucie, while keeping as close to cover as he could. His plan was a simple one, remain relatively hidden behind the abundant cover and await the inevitable attack upon Brucie-the-Bait. After Brucie fired the first burst of fire, Daniel was forced to switch from Infra-red into the Standard Scanning Package. He wished he could have gotten a confirm on any more enemies or, more importantly, the safety of the lamb they sought: however, the main resource the mechs had was fire, and nothing would be worse for the Infrared pack than a location bathed in fire. “Don’t cook the APC, Brucie. We need the biologist alive.” His part of the plan was in place: now he just had to wait for the bait to be taken. Either Brucie got into position, or Daniel defended the heathen while he got there. Some might think Daniel too cautious in this mission, and some might claim him a coward or a fool. He laughed at those to blind to see. Abundans cautela non nocet: one can never be too careful. --- [Center]Kiku[/Center] --- It was always gratifying to realise just how good at something you were. Just about every BCSec member should know what a Vampyr was. Among the few sightings of mutants in the shadow zone on record, these stealthy bastards were always a trouble to deal with...unless you happened to be the evolutionary pinnacle of stealthy motherfucking badasses! Kiku couldn’t hide the excitement she felt at getting what she hoped might be first kill of the mission. She was grinning inside her mask, feeling the urge to slash and mash and cut and bleed and… A voice in her head caused Kiku to pause. It was not a normal voice: Too pretty, too serene, too soothing. Even Kiku couldn’t muster a reason to stab the owner of the voice. It was like a choir in her ear. It evoked long discarded feelings: like safety and serenity and inner peace. It talked about a boy...Abimael. Kiky memorised the name, keeping it inside her brain as she attempted to rectify the list of people not to stab for the length of this mission. Her train of thought was halted by the sight of an unfortunate victim of the Vampyr. It was a human pilot, not handsome-Achilles heel-pilot, but some poor sap who’d had his goddamn throat slit and had been bled dry. If she was visable, people would see the genuine sadness in her eyes at the dried sanguine on the floor and walls. ...What a waste. She slid both daggers into her sleeves as she inhaled, then exhaled. They were almost as hungry as she was. Of the trio here though, only two of them would be getting a feast. Kiku made her way into the room with a cat-like focus. At first, she feigned moving towards the pilot’s body, as if going to explore it. She knew the Vampyr wouldn’t strike until she fell asleep or left herself truly vulnerable, that was just how the monsters worked. If anyone knew how monsters worked, it was Kiku; she grew up in a den of monsters, after all. Kiku waited until she was practically in range to touch the monsters before she turned lazily in its direction. The beast thought itself safe as the gas-masked girl looked past it. And then she went for the kill. It was a brutal thrust from her right hand: the black dagger plunged into the beast’s eye with an audible, enjoyable ‘squelch.’ At the same time, she slammed the second dagger into the monster’s left lung. Straight through lucky rib number seven and not-so-lucky number eight. This thrust had been for business: a dagger in the lung stopped any screams of pain. You stopped being able to scream when the air you wanted to scream with was deflating from a gaping hole in your chest. She’d basically popped the balloon that was the Vampyr’s lung. Focusing a little, Kiku dispelled the camouflage of her face, while maintaining the camouflage of the gasmask. She wanted the monster to stare her in the eyes as it died. If she couldn’t drink up the blood, she wanted to drink up the expression of its agonising death. If the Vampyr were not such a hideous, mutated monster, she might have saw terror in the creature’s eye: as if it was Kiku was the monster. She dragged the black knife across the Vampyr’s dead-eye and across the bridge of its nose, taking out its second eye with another satisfying squelch. That was the second thing she’d robbed of the beast. First its voice, now its sight. Kiku had been robbed of her feast, this was the least she could take from the vampyr. The creature was trying to pull back from Kiku, and she let it stumble backwards: into a wall. As it moved back, it pulled out the second knife from the lung wound and a violent spurt of blood sprayed onto the floor and onto Kiku’s boots. The blood lingered for a few second, before the camouflage remedied the imperfect guise. The beast was blind now, and Kiku had no reason to be seen any more as she camouflaged her face again. Blind, mute and defenceless, Kiku decided that she’d dragged enough pleasure from the beast and moved forward for the kill. She tanked the black blade from the monster’s eye socket and then slashed across the monster’s throat from both sides. An ‘X’ formed where the two blades intersected. Kiku stepped to the right as a violent surge of blood pumped from the wound and sprayed the wall a deep crimson. She purred in delight at the sight of the gore. Looking down at her daggers, Kiku stared into the deep red that marred their otherwise perfect edges. Her nerves were on fire as she fought everything she wanted. In the end, logic prevailed. She didn’t want to catch the many diseases associated with the Vampyr’s blood and she didn’t want to taste the Shadow-Zone air that would be required upon removing her gas mask and sampling the creature’s blood. Disappointedly, she reached down and wiped the Vampyr’s blood of her knives with the nearby bed sheets. She reached for something witty to say, but instead she pondered which direction to go. She wanted to go and see the other girls and tell them all about her little adventures: but she still had other rooms to clear. She had one new advantage in the search, yet how that would go for her might be up to debate. Enough of the creature’s blood had gotten onto her that she smelt of Vampyr. Not the perfume you used in BCSec, to be sure, but if she was stalking mutants, Eau d’mutie would be perfect. She noticed the broody-sword-doody in the doorway of the third room. His bulk blocked her sight, so she just looked inside the third room on the right, not wanting to disturb him.