Street Team
The street that Chariot, Mule, Vlad, and Thrones were on terminated at a T-intersection, further enclosed each way by buildings of shorter size. Where the intersection they had started on appeared more for offices, they now stood in what seemed like a commercial street, where shops would have been populated by buyers and merchandise, were it not for the computer’s strong inclination towards total simplicity.
As they approached, Chariot made a beeline for the corner at the left, peeking around to make sure that the next street they were entering was not about to present them all with patrolling enemies. It was clear, but just as she was about to continue on, her feet skidded to a halt, and she quickly shuffled back to the safety of the corner.
It was immediately apparent to the rest of the squad what had stopped her; a strange little robotic machine had wandered onto the street a block away. With three long, spindly legs, it walked perpetually whilst a camera-like head swiveled in a full circle, clearly watching for targets. Within a few moments, it walked into one of the open buildings, disappearing from view.
Thrones, from the back, frowned as the group spotted the robot. The mission had been to exterminate all enemies spotted, but the recon-bot certainly hadn’t noticed them, and to follow it just for the sake of breaking it…
“A pain,” the Sankta spoke, her golden eyes meeting Vlad’s. “Pursue?”
Following the others along at a more sedate pace, Vlad fiddled with the earpiece before he was satisfied with it. “This does make splitting up much more feasible,” he remarked quietly as a test before he slipped up against a building without missing a beat. Chariot’s sudden withdrawal did not go unnoticed, and Vlad peered over the woman around the corner.
“So they do use the buildings. Shame.” Sighing in agreement with Throne’s assessment of the situation, he glanced between her and Chariot. “Unfortunately. The longer we wait, the further it might wander. Ideally you or Chariot will be able to disable it quickly or at range.”
“Next time,” replied Thrones, before tilting her head towards the entrance that the machine slipped into. “Chariot, please?”
Chariot turned back to glance at each of them in turn before standing straight. She bounced on her heels a couple times, loosening up. “Well I suppose that’s a vote of confidence in my speed over all of you,” she chuckled. “We might want to assume destroying it will alert some kind of tracking system, right?” she asked, holding her sword in a more readied position.
“I’ll rush in, beat it down, then we’ll probably want to back out quick,” she hummed, “Might give us a chance to lure in reinforcements if they come looking for the source of their dead drone.”
"Right then." Mule scooted sideways onto the curb, kneeling with her handgun across her shield as the group lingered at the corner. The weight of the target container shifted around on her back, where, as promised, it was shackled into the mouth of a carabiner. Anything busting her rappelling kit was probably doing worse to her, and coincidentally both meant mission failure. She aimed her weapon at the opposing corner, on the off chance more company arrived while they were dispatching the lonesome bot.
"Just pass me by on your way back. Set." Even if she wasn't the one pulling the trigger, it was their first combat. The alien architecture, the unknown force, the unproven allies... Her hair stood on end as her trigger finger tightened against the bottom of the slide.
Chariot nodded one last time, and after a hop back and then a sudden sprint forward, she was off across and down the street. As she reached the entrance to the building their target had entered, she checked one last time side to side, and disappeared within its confines. The radio was silent for a moment, then a minute, then two…
There was the faint sound of some clanging in the distance, almost too quiet to even distinguish from the rattling of their own equipment, and then finally Chariot’s voice came through.
”All clear. Didn’t take much of a beating,” she laughed. The red-haired woman promptly appeared outside the building and crossed back to their position. “Let’s hope most targets are like that, am I right?” she chuckled.
A flash of light caught the corner of the party’s vision, as a new red pillar of light shot into the sky. It was thinner than their mission target and did not extend infinitely, and after a second more it was followed by a rising, distant alarm ringing out into the sky.
Covering up a yawn as the three of them waited for Chariot to report back, Vlad kept an eye out on their rear and glanced over the building their other teammates had entered into. There hadn’t been much chatter over the comms, but hopefully they were making good use of what time they had left. Shifting slightly to catch the noise better, the fact that it didn’t last for more than a moment was a good sign.
“They might decide to make up for it numbers then, and I don’t think our group is especially well-suited for that. Unless you’re lugging around some grenades, Mule?” Glancing at the latest marker to appear in the city, Vlad whistled softly as the shrill alarm gradually reached them as it grew in volume. “How’d the building look, Chariot? Any good for an ambush?”
“I specialize in wide-area suppression,” Thrones said, peeking her head down the various streets. “Still need visuals on them though.”
“Good for an ambush? Hardly. Was just a single room styled like a convenience store. We’d be boxed in if we chose to hole up in there,” Chariot explained, “But… we could try getting on top of one of these shorter rooflines. Thrones could make good work up there, but… like she said, we don’t even know how many would be coming.”
"None today. If I had to guess I'm carrying a signals package and that's it." At least, that was what she remembered of the kit that had seemingly been cloned for today. Whenever there was time to investigate every pocket and pouch maybe she'd get lucky and stumble across some of the explosives she was trained with, but on an average day at PLC it had been smoke and illumination she carried.
While the others planned, the Defender strained her ears, listening for incoming movement under the echoes of that alarm. Her head turned, scanning across a nearby two-story as Chariot spoke. Mule gave a nod, going back to the sights on her pistol. "Might be better than waiting in the street. Gets us a little closer to our split team. I can secure the entrance."
Chariot nodded, already moving to retreat closer to their original starting position. “I think one thing is clear at the very least now,” she began, “We’re dealing with some kind of security force, rather than an insurgency or invader. A scouting drone and an alarm system that appears well-entrenched at least in this region.”
The group made it to a two-story building closer to the four-way intersection where they had started, and as with all the rest, the door was wide open for them to enter. Before they could step inside, there was a single crack of a bullet ripping through the sky. It seemed to have come from above, inside the tall office where the scouting team had ascended.
“Seems like they’ve made contact,” Thrones said, eyes flickering towards the building. “Keep moving.”
With that, the Sankta, one of her translucent rings floating over her left hand, strode inside, ready to tear through a wall or two if the scouting team needed help with descent.
Shame. Clicking his tongue, Vlad brought up the rear as they backpedaled towards their starting point. “They’ve probably got infrastructure they can funnel us towards then,” he remarked before sparing a glance upwards at the telltale sign of a bullet. “Well, that’s not as fun as bolts and arrows…” Rubbing at his left shoulder as he rotated the arm, Vlad ducked into the building and looked around for any other entrances.
“So we’re giving them another couple minutes, or until the first wave hits, right?”
Mule swept into the building alongside the rest of the team, shield up and weapon sweeping the shadows of the interior. Satisfied when they didn't draw fire of their own upon walking in the door, she turned about in the room they had entered and once more took a knee.
Just as promised, she canted her shield facing the entrance and diligently waited for any pursuers to come crashing into her zone of control. "I'm all for that. We should recover them before somebody gets hurt."
“And get going after,” Thrones added, taking her own position behind Mule. “Holing up isn’t how we’re gonna get this done.”
They waited for a moment, listening as several more bullets cracked into the air from the Scout team’s building. Finally, it died down, but was quickly replaced by a growing noise -footsteps, though it quickly became apparent they were not the boots of something human. Chariot readied both of her weapons, a sword in each hand, and stood close behind Mule. She was prepared to lay waste into whatever enemy dared brush up against the defender.
From outside the building, a whole squad of tangos appeared. The humanoid machines were jogging alongside one another, not quite in a regimented and perfect way one might expect artificial intelligences to maintain. Each of them was a full head taller than their tallest operator, and carried readied machetes in hand. Five in total.
At first they did not seem to be heading for them, but rather the building where the Scout team was ascending. Nevertheless, one of the androids quickly noticed Mule standing in the doorway, and a few flashes of its cycloptic camera later, they group turned their blades upon them, rushing straight for the defender at its forefront.
Finally, something to deal with. From behind Mule, Thrones’s eyes glimmered, her Arts assimilating with the Originium within her body. Her right hand extended outwards, palm facing the sky, as the translucent ring darkened until it was pitch black. In one step, the androids were running, in the next, they were leaping, and by the time they got within three meters of Mule, they were suspended into the air, falling upwards.
The Caster’s left hand, palm facing downwards, clapped against her right, and there the androids laid, suspended five meters up into the air, their joints creaking and crackling as two opposing forces kept them there, eventually reducing them to scrap metal. “I do better with a Laterano sniper,” Thrones said out-of-the-blue, “Less work for me.”
The crushed androids floated gently back down as tension eased itself out of her body. Chariot relaxed her stance as Thrones so summarily obliterated the team of bipedal robots.
“Go figure, right?” the Kuranta laughed, “Glad to have that on our side.”
Another alarm rang out into the sky, the same as before after Chariot had destroyed the scout drone inside the previous building. Her ears flicked, and a serious expression overtook her.
“If I had to guess… we’re being tested like this, and we’ll never complete the mission if we wait,” she began, “I theorize that the simulation is ramping up difficulty each time. If we don’t get moving towards our destination, we’ll be overrun long before we even see it.” Chariot raised a hand to her commlink and spoke to the scout team briefly.
One squadron dispatched and not so much as a shot from her. Mule lowered her shield, her forearm feeling just the slightest bit disappointed as so many machetes found themselves turned away, warped and shattered beside their unfortunate owners.
"Smart sounding guess." Her only input offered as Chariot rang the Scout team for what she hoped would be a swift recall.
Scout Team
The building, after even the briefest of glances, definitely did seem to be around ten stories tall. It’s size and shape spoke to a fake office building that the computer imagined up, though it had been hollowed out of anything remotely resembling a living space. If there were hobos in this simulation, this seemed like the kind of abandoned building for them to sleep in. Doubtless every other building was much the same, however.
There was an entrance into the building, but it lacked a door, inviting anyone inside without restriction. The more the Operators scrutinized the details of the simulation, the more it seemed as though the computer was doing its best to save on processing power and memory space. Only the barest necessities to pass as being a city.
Multiple staircases were immediately visible to Strix, Dragoon, and Feral once inside, and seemed to be of a design that gave them access to each floor in succession, an assumption that seemed even more likely considering the simulation’s apparent laziness. Just as outside, there were no simulated beings inside either.
“Testing, testing,” Thrones’s voice sounded through the earplugs. “If things get too hot inside, cut your way out and jump; I’ll catch you. Over.”
"Loud and clear." Strix responded over the comms before turning to Dragoon and Feral. "Dragoon, take point. Let's head directly for the roof so we can get a lay of the land. I’ll be counting on you two while we’re in tight quarters.” She looked up the stairwell, uneasy about just how silent and still everything was.
“Copy that,” Dragoon replied, adjusting the haft of her mechanical spear to collapse slightly to a more manageable size for close quarters combat. With that done, she brandished it tightly in both hands, starting to advance slowly and carefully up the stairs.
Strix was listening intently for any sound other than their small group ascending the stairs, hoping to hear any enemies approaching on the floors as they passed them.
It was questionable that any enemies would manage to avoid the other team members posted outside and sneak up behind them, but seeing as it was a simulation, Feral fell in behind Dragoon and Strix. She kept a careful watch on their rear as the trio ascended the staircases leading to the roof.
The operators trekked upwards, eyes to the landings above them as they spiralled up the staircase. They made it a quarter of the way, then half, then three quarters… Their assessment of being alone seemed right, until their ears picked out a faint but alien sound. Their own clothing was light, and even with the few metal pieces they’d had -their weapons- it made little noise. But this was definitely not their own.
It was only made distinct amidst the silence once they had reached the eight floor, and it sounded as if it were coming from the floor below them, emanating through an open door breaching the staircase landing. It was perpetual, repeating, and it was moving closer and further periodically.
“Possible contact,” Dragoon whispered into comms, gripping her shortened spear tightly in her hands. “Sounds like it’s coming from below, possible assault from the rear.” She kept her eyes firmly facing forwards, trusting in Feral to keep an eye on the rear. As pointman, she couldn’t afford to worry too much about the situation past her assigned role. Too risky to take her attention off the front otherwise.
“Scouts, Vlad here. Kicked the nest by destroying a scout down here. Could use a bird’s eye view when you’re all clear. Over.”
It seemed that her intuition had paid off. Feral gripped the hilt of her sword with her dominant hand, the other securing its place on her belt at her side. It would be up to her to see what exactly was behind them, though it didn't seem like it had followed them up so much as it had already been there before they snuck up by it.
"Moving to check the source." She whispered, soft as ever into the provided device.
With all the carefulness she could muster, the Lupo backed down the staircase until she was near enough the doorway from which the noise originated. She did her best to try and listen closer to the source—or sources—to discern exactly what it is. Only once she was confident she was clear did she dare to duck her head past the edge of the doorway for a brief glimpse, and even then, only after the noise had drifted further away in its periodic alternation.
“Anything?” Strix said quietly over the comms as she peered down the stairway towards where Feral had gone. In the narrow stairwell her effectiveness was greatly reduced, so Strix was anxious to get to the roof. “Any contact? We should keep moving so we can get eyes on the others. With the roof access we can deal with contact from just one side.”
Almost as soon as Strix had finished her sentence, Feral was met with a light battering of dust and bits of wall. The door’s corner was instantly chipped away as the piercing sound of a single bullet followed. Something had fired upon her, narrowly missing a direct hit right into her cheek. Though she couldn’t discern the origin in that short time, she got a decent look at the floor’s layout beyond the doorway. Unlike the ground floor, the space there was tight and riddled with small rooms and halls, seeming more like a proper office space.
There were no follow-up shots, or suppressive fire. Whatever had attacked was waiting for them to show their faces again.
It was a small mercy that everything in this simulation was a farce designed to mimic the real world. Not because the bullet that whizzed past her face particularly startled Feral, but because of what she planned to do in order to get towards the source of said bullet. Dragoon fancied herself a pointman, but her spear would be a liability in the office space she had briefly glimpsed. Strix could in theory spray the room down to give her cover, but it would involve exposing herself in order to do so thanks to her rifle's own bulk.
So all that left was Feral, who lacked for range but not for speed. Whether or not that mattered against an Arts-wielding simulation remained to be seen. She took the few precious seconds that ticked by during her own ruminations to unravel the scarf she had wrapped around her neck, and lightly draped it across the length of her blade after drawing it from the scabbard at her hip.
Then, without ceremony, she quickly thrust the curved sword out from behind the corner she sheltered behind, flinging the eye-drawing piece of fabric several meters towards the right of the entrance. In the same moment, she ducked around the left side, hoping that the trigger happy enemy who had taken a pot shot at her would open fire on her accessory rather than herself as she sought to take shelter behind another door frame or wall within the space. With luck she might even be able to pinpoint the gunman.
When the scarf flew around the corner, the whirr of machinery kicked up, and in a split second the sound of gunshots blasted through the halls. The scarf didn’t fly far on account of being light, but it’s slower fall drew more bullets from the machine than it otherwise would have.
Feral was offered but two seconds to better glimpse the office space; at the end of that main room was a tripod, tall enough to see over the fake desks and chairs, and on top it was a mounted gun that quickly switched targets from the fallen scarf it had just peppered to Feral herself. Another bullet cracked into the wall, missing her as she ducked back behind cover.
"Gun turret. Twelve o'clock from the entrance."
It was surprisingly easy to articulate when she wasn't agonizing over how best to do so, Feral found, as she crouched behind cover. The automated drone attempting to shred her with lead was likely essential to her sudden lack of contemplation.
"Move to the door and give me a signal and a one second delay. I will draw the sensor's attention. Shoot it while it is firing at me."
After the first bullet, Strix quickly descended the stairs. She made it down to the floor just in time to see Feral toss her scarf into the hallway and move herself to the other side of the hallway. She looked at the remnants of the scarf now on the ground and then over to where Feral was now taking cover, and nodded. Automated turrets were easy enough to fool, and easier to take down as long as they weren't trained on you. It wouldn't take Strix more than one shot, so long as Feral could keep it busy.
Strix took a breath, and readied her rifle. It felt like hers. It had the sights already set the way she liked it. It even had her modified trigger. She had the fleeting thought of how Retra could have known the specifics of her rifle so clearly but there were more pressing matters at hand.
"Feral, try not to get hit. I'm ready."
The targeting for the turret had to be sensitive with how it nearly popped her head off over a brief glance, so Feral needed no grandiose plan to draw its fire. From her position behind the wall she chose as cover, the Lupo stuck the blade of her sword out into the open and moved it back and forth to garner the drone's attention. She reckoned Strix needed no signal to begin her own assault; the gunfire from the machine would be enough of one.
A whir, and then more shots. The first missed her swinging blade, but the second clanged into it violently, wrenching her wrist if she was adamant about keeping a tight hold over it. Two more shots followed after, targeting the spot where the sword met with searing bullet. One and a half seconds for Strix to identify the target and shoot. Was an Ancient faster than a machine?
Strix counted the time in her head. She would only get one shot at this, and it would be cutting it close. She waited until she heard the firing of the next shot and took a deep breath, and exhaled to steady herself. She twisted herself around the door way and lined up her rifle. Her eyes quickly located her target as the turret identified new movement in its line of sight. 12 o’clock. There it is. She took in another breath, and pulled the trigger as she finished inhaling. She didn’t have time to confirm her shot hit its target before it would begin open firing again if she missed, so she ducked back around the wall.
Blam! The bullet whizzed over and past where Feral was ducking, slamming into the thin mechanical structure of the tripod. The bullet raced through faster than Strix could possibly retract her body back, and her eyes caught sight of the projectile hitting the turret square on the upper receiver. It cracked in two and fell apart, cogs and bolts whirring as the broken machine attempted to do something it no longer could.
Fallen behind the back desks, it certainly wasn’t going to be able to fire upon any of them anytime soon.
Hearing the crack of Strix's rifle and the sudden ceasing of the automated turret, Feral slowly rose back up from cover. She rotated her wrist briefly to banish away any soreness, checking over her blade. She could still hear the device whirring behind the desk that it had been positioned on. It was incapacitated, surely, but it was technically still operational. She did not know how much of a stickler Diver would be about such a thing, so she opted to go and finish it off.
Of course, she wasn't a fool. She had heard something moving back and forth in this room when they passed by. There was a possibility that it was simply the turret. There was also the possibility there was something else in this office waiting for a moment to strike.
"Moving in to finish it off. Cover me. Unsure if we're alone." She murmured into the team's transceiver, before slowly moving across the space that had—just moments ago—been filled with hot lead. Every corner she peaked around quickly, ensuring she would not fall prey to an ambush on the way to the desk.
“Copy that.” Strix had come around into the hallway after hearing the turret fall over. She kept her rifle ready as she followed Feral towards the downed turret, giving the sparse office space a once over as she went.
Implying she arrived successfully, the Siracusan would wave her sword above the desk to see if it had landed in such an angle as to shoot her for looking over the edge. If it hadn't, a good thrust from her sword into the meatiest part of the drone was likely enough to end it for good.
The machine made a pinging noise when she had waved her sword over the desk, but no gunfire followed. Peeking over would reveal that the gun was immobilized on the ground, unable to angle itself anywhere other than where it was already pointing. The detection system, however, still seemed capable of identifying Feral, helpless to actually do something about. Further observation of the tripod revealed that it was once mobile, its spindly legs capable of moving the turret around. It was likely that this was the reason for their hearing something moving around.
Satisfied it posed no threat, Feral proceeded to stab the device—multiple times, if necessary—until not further activity remained. Sliding her sword back into her scabbard, she returned to the doorway to the room, picking up her bullet peppered scarf along the way.
"Target eliminated. The gun turrets can move. Be mindful going forward." She informed the others as she returned to her place at the end of their little column.
“Dragoon we’re coming back, how are things looking on your end? Any sign of movement ahead of us?”
Dragoon had held position on the stairwell as Feral and Strix handled things in the rear. Gun turret, by the sound of it. In the meantime, she had been looking ahead, making sure nothing was approaching. As her comm lit up, Dragoon just shrugged as she kept a grip on her spear.
“Nothing yet. All clear for now. Anything besides a turret on your end?”
Feral blinked.
"I said target eliminated. If there were more targets, I would not have confirmed that yet." She paused. Probably best not to get into semantics here.
"There is nothing else. We should proceed to the roof. The ground team mentioned a scout outside."
“Scout team, this is Chariot. What’s your situation there? We might need to make things snappy if you’re not already up on the roof,” Chariot’s voice said coming over the communication line.
Touchy, touchy. Dragoon tilted her head as Chariot came over comms.
“Chariot, Dragoon. Copy that, double timing up to the roof. Situation?” She glanced back, giving Feral and Strix a nod. “You heard her, c’mon.” She started advancing again, at a faster pace, though no less alert.
“I’ve reason to believe we’re going to be seeing worse and worse enemies sent to our current position. We need to get moving fast or we’ll be outmatched. How well do you think you can memorize a route?” Chariot asked.
“Well enough. We’re just getting onto the roof now, how far out are you guys from our position?” Strix responded over the comms as the group exited through the roof access. There wasn’t much to see, just more nondescript buildings around them. She made her way over to the edge looking down to the street they had entered from, and following the edge around the building looking for any sign of the street team.
Over the edge, Strix could see the remnants of some obliterated machinery spread out over the street, but a few dozen yards from their original starting position. Mule’s crouched form was just barely visible standing at the entrance to one of the buildings in front of the metal mess.
While the buildings directly around her were nondescript, the horizon certainly was not, and the ease with which they might complete the mission seemed suddenly far less probable. Out upon the skyline, the sniper was witness to a veritable air force of enemies. Three hovering gunships, and a multitude of aerial drones scattered about the vast cityscape. None had noticed her or the rest of the scout team, thankfully, but running the city streets would no doubt have them encountering at least some of those aerial watchdogs.
She could also make out several possible paths forward. Their particular section of the city seemed less organized and “older”, reminiscent of more historical cities of the world, while the more distant portion of the city appeared blocky and grid-like. Tall skyscrapers bore skywalks that would give them cover from having to run along wide-open grid streets. But first, they’d have to make it to at least one of those skyscrapers.
Their path there appeared to Strix as a winding snake of streets, and a lucky glance up the way warned her of an approaching force of enemies headed straight for their starting point as far as she could tell.
“I see you, Mule. I’ve identified multiple aerial targets further ahead. This city is huge, it’ll be a long trek to the end. We’ll make our way to you and regroup. There are some skyways between some of the skyscrapers ahead we should try and make our way to. We’ve got targets approaching the starting position, so we may need to take an alternate route to you.” Strix relayed the information gained from their bird’s eye view. She weighed their options, if they were quick they could regroup before making contact. But there’s no telling what kind of roadblocks might get thrown in their way on the way down. There was a faster way down though...
“Thrones, what was that you were saying about catching us?”
“Jump and you’ll float,” came the Sankta’s voice through comms. “Unless you’re heavier than anticipated.”
