Deborah Javuant, & Shannon Balore.
Written in collaboration with @Mr Allen J and @Nosuchthing
RAVEN/DOVE West Coast Joint Headquarters.Once the bullets started firing, Deborah immediately knew what was going on.
The Hound had finally launched his attack on Headquarters, and Deborah's first instinct was to get the hell out of there. Because, it didn't take her power to realize that Dr. Cross and her band of goons weren't the only target here. Deborah had quickly reached into her desk and pulled out two pistols - throwing Shannon's to her. Well, this was the best weapons the two had - even though both were in NEST before they were even considered for the position of DOVE Chairwomen. The two ran out of the hallways of their office - it would have been smart to barricade themselves inside and hunker down... if they were against anyone that wasn't the fucking Black Hound.
Deborah was leading the run through headquarters, she pressed her earpiece, asking, "Control, this is Deborah Javuant! We are heading to the garage for-"
"No, that isn't advised," A mission controller said. "The Intimidation Unit have overrun the lower floors of Headquarters."
"Then we'll get a chopper-"
"They also have the helipad locked down."
Deborah almost screamed,
'Then where the fuck are we supposed to go?' but she had to keep her cool above all else. If she got rash, then she'd be dead before she can even worry about escaping this hell. They heard footsteps behind them... and Shannon looked behind herself, and saw a group of Intimidation Unit soldiers. She quickened her pace, as she channeled her fabric manipulating abilities to pull a thread from a single agent's pants - one thread - enhancing the tensile strength to steel-like levels as she attached it to one end of the hall to the other. They barely even noticed before they were tripping over each other.
That bought them some time as they quickly ran through the building.
"We are setting up a barricade at the elevator, get there fast as possible, Deborah!" A RAVEN shouted, and Deborah took a sharp right down the hall, and came in sight of a barricade of furniture, and... ice? Deborah didn't question.
"Hurry up, Deborah, get in!" An Agent shouted as Deborah and Shannon got behind the barricade.
"What's the plan?" Deborah asked.
"Hold out!" An agent shouted, as the oncoming wave of Intimidation Unit hit them.
A barrage of bullets overcame any and all sound while everyone began a desperate battle at the elevator. One that RAVEN was losing. Even with their Metahumans, the oncoming tide of the Intimidation Unit was whittling them down with ease. Deborah was just blinding firing at them, when she realized this was something they couldn't win. They desperately needed back up.
"Agents! This is Deborah Javuant, and we need reinforcements! We're by the elevator on the top floor, and we're pinned down! We need back up!"
Deborah shouted as she popped out of cover again to deliver a barrage of bullets, but a stray shot had grazed her hand and made her drop the gun. She loudly shouted as she grasped her hand and looked... there was a large hole in it.
"Debby!" Shannon shouted as she fell towards her.
The Intimidation Unit had cleared the upper floor, but it seemed that they hadn't banked on a teleporting metahuman on the other side. Alice and Quentin appeared from behind, and caught their opponents off guard. Alice glanced at Quentin for a fraction of a second, then continued to charge forward, this time with her rifle up and blazing. Two went down to the first burst, entirely unprepared for the attack from behind. They didn't remain unprepared for long however, and Alice vanished as they turned, riddling the wall behind her with bullet holes. She appeared beside one, catching him off guard with a side kick, he stumbled, and in bringing his rifle to bear managed only to down another of his companions. Alice reappeared near Quentin, her back to the wall. She was panting, "Guess we found Deborah..."
"Yeah..." Quentin nodded in agreement, before adjusting his hold over the rifle as he spoke up yet again. "Alright, keep them occupied, I'm gonna hit these assholes from behind whilst you pick them apart."
She nodded, "Got it, keep them from pinning me down..."
"Will do. " The veteran RAVEN affirmed her with yet another nod, then took up his position at a corner behind the hallway that the IU were positioned around. Most of them had their line-of-fire pointed towards Deborah and her agents making a stand at the elevator, but a few were also observing the rear, whilst others were already startled by the sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance of a teleporting metahuman.
"Al, on my mark." Quentin whispered, ready to strike.
She tightened her grip on her rifle and nodded, her face grim, but determined.
"Go!" He crept out from behind cover and opened fire, nailing one of the paramilitaries through the side and slumping against the wall with an agonised groan. The others soon scrambled for cover and began returning fire, bullets whizzing down the corridor past his head. "C'mon, Al.. c'mon.."
As Quentin's suppressive fire went down, Alice teleported into the group that was still focused on Deborah's position. One man turned in time to spot her, and was the first to drop with half a magazine dumped into his chest. She turned, vanishing into thin air and reappearing with her rifle already blazing, bullets sprayed amidst the slow to react IU, clipping one and wounding another. Then she was in the centre of the group. They couldn't risk opening fire for fear of hitting their own men, whereas Alice had no such compunctions. She swung the now emptied rifle like a baseball bat, cracking it into the head of the first man to charge at her. He dropped and she seized the next one, disappearing once more. There was the sound of a scream, and a black clad flailing figure fell past one of the windows.
Her next attack wasn't quite as effective, they were ready this time for her to jump into their midst, and one swung a nightstick at her. She swayed backwards to avoid it, and another fired low, at her legs. She vanished, but not before a sharp pain in her upper thigh. Alice collapsed against the wall next to Quentin, one hand pressed against the wound.
"Fuck... fuck that hurts..."
An unsettling silence overcome the floor as the fighting died down. but it was only as Quentin retreated back into cover to eject yet another expended magazine that he realised she'd taken a hit.
"You gonna be okay?" He asked with genuine concern, tugging at one of the remaining two magazines in his vest and finally pushing it up into the magwell of his AR until he felt it latch it in place. "Think we've got most of 'em."
She nodded, gritting her teeth as she tore a strip from the sleeve of her uniform to tourniquet her leg. "Flesh wound, nothing important... Really stings though, first time I've actually been shot..."
"First time's always the worst, just keep it pressed tight." Quentin muttered back, before creeping back out from behind cover to see where the others were positioned.
Pressed against the wall beside him, Alice couldn't see what he could, so she was relying on his eyes.
"How many and where?"
The veteran RAVEN paused for a moment before he gave her an answer. Just a few meters down from them was an overturned vending machine that had been used as makeshift cover, its ruptured contents of drinks cans splayed out across the floor in a vile puddle of sickly sweet liquid, mixed in with spatters of blood. From behind it came the sound of a man's ragged breathing, and he could just about make out the outline of the man's helmet peeking out from above it, though only just. "One wounded behind the drink's machine." Must've been the one he clipped earlier.
If there were others out there, Quentin couldn't see them, but that just made things worse."Can't see anyone else. Might still be one or two in hiding." His gaze passed over her 'flesh wound', then he raised an eyebrow. "Stay in position here, watch my back. Don't put too much weight on that wound and keep it pressed down right."
Alice nodded, tying the strip of fabric tight about her leg. It hurt, but she could walk on it. As Quentin moved around the corner she pulled the flask from the inside of her uniform, taking a quick swig to dull the pain. The alcohol was cheap, and it burned as it went down. She grimaced, but shoved it back inside her chest plate.
It was becoming clear that he'd need to push on and make sure the others were cleared out. One benefit of being barefoot was that his footsteps were almost completely silent to any listening ears, unless they happened to be
metahuman ears and somehow he figured the odds were low on that.
Ragged, labored breathing could still be heard from the wounded man as before, but from the sounds it Quentin made an educated guess that he wasn't long for the dying. Hearing the man's final moments was sobering, in a way - it was easy to desensitize himself to the fact that each member of the Intimidation Unit had a face behind the masks they wore. It was a reminder that they were human, same as him.
And then it stopped.
Quentin paused for just a moment, wondering if it was a trick, but as he grew closer to the man's corpse he soon realised that he was well and truly gone.
A moment came where it seemed as though they were in the clear, then he heard a rustle and what could've only been footsteps from one of the rooms.
One more. But which room exactly, he didn't know... until he saw a faint shadow cast across the corridor from the room on the right, its silhouette matching the profile of the IU.
He could only guess that the bastard was dug in tight. Charging in was suicide and flushing him out could've been a risk too great to take. Right now, a grenade would've been useful... then the idea
clicked.
Making a temporary retreat, Quentin grabbed for one of the cans of energy drink that had spilled out from the vending machine and took up a good position behind the doorway. There was
one shot here, and it had to count. He gave it a moment's pause, then tossed the can inside at an angle that made it bounce off the ceiling with a heavy clunk.
"Christ-" The IU agent inside fell for the bait and bolted almost on instinct outside of the room as Quentin had laid in wait, only for the latter of the two to spring at the last second. The veteran RAVEN threw all his weight against the would-be assailant, forcing the barrel of his rifle upwards before he could pull the trigger, then slammed an elbow into the man's throat. Yet as he subdued what seemed to be the last of the Intimidation Unit, unbeknownst to him emerged another threat.
The Phantasm rose from the floor... body coated in a layer of demonic-looking black smoke that engulfed the floor he was rising through. His arrival was as unexpected as it was fast, because in an instant, he was standing on the same floor as everyone else. Making his arrival right as the smoke cleared. He narrowed his sole eye, and figured that the Intimidation Unit had failed. That it was time for someone with two brain cells to rub together to take this situation by the horns. The Phantasm aimed his weapon at Quentin, looking down the sight, before he fired.
"Al, we're... shit-"
The veteran RAVEN had only just caught a brief glimpse of the assassin when he felt the first bullet, hitting him like a brick to the ribs, then another with an equally painful crunch. Quentin staggered sideways through the nearby doorway, clutching at where he'd been hit, but his heart was pounding so hard that he couldn't focus on that. Instinct kicked in and he practically threw himself behind the cover of a wall in the room, unarmed and facing down an opponent with a
dangerous track record.
Alice heard the shot before she saw the Phantasm. She was injured, and from the looks of it, Quentin was too. Neither of them were in any state to take on the Hound's pet, but it looked like they had no choice, it was kill or be killed.
The Phantasm was finished with playing with the grunts of RAVEN - he had a target; Deborah Termellio, and her alone - he eyeballed the DOVE leader in the center of the barricade, and merely teleported past through both Quentin and Alice, and had his gun aimed and primed at Deborah, pulling the trigger-
A mere string of fabric had wrapped around the gun's trigger, and kept it in place. The Phantasm tried his best to pull the trigger, but he realized that the tensile strength of this string exceeded his strength.
It left a window of opportunity for both of the RAVENs to strike whilst his attention was diverted elsewhere; the assassin caught a faint rush of air before a foot being driven into the back of his knee, then he felt an arm locking around his neck whilst another reached around in an effort to forcefully point his weapon to the ground, but it was all rendered for naught when the Phantasm merely turned into pitch-black smoke and phased through the floor... with Quentin coming with him. As the two fell through the floor, the Phantasm thrashed about, and attempted to get free from Quentin.
"Release me immediately!" The Phantasm shouted, as he merely looked around. It was an office room that had been sacked by the Intimidation Unit.... Before pulling out a revolver from his belt, and aiming it square at Quentin's face, and pulling the trigger wildly. The veteran RAVEN frantically pushed a hand up from beneath the revolver's barrel, grasping at it with equal vigour in an attempt to wrench it from it's owner's grasp. But the Phantasm merely let go of the weapon in order to catch him off guard, then quickly followed it up with a solid strike to his throat, eliciting a hoarse croak from the RAVEN.
The Phantasm followed that up by quickly reached down for his belt and pulled out a large combat knife, then tried to slash at his face. Quentin narrowly shifted backwards, but not before he felt the cold steel biting into the left side of his cheek and dangerously
close to his eye. Warm crimson blood ran down the RAVEN's face and disoriented him, while the Phantasm came in for another brutal slash towards his face. Yet another struggle began between the two as Quentin desperately caught the blade with his hand, yet again, more fresh crimson seeping outwards as cold steel dug into his naked palm, but this time he wasn't taking a beating from the Hound. No, he was going to
survive.
As he wrestled with the Phantasm for control of the blade, Quentin drove a knee into the assassin's lower abdomen and slammed his other palm into his opponent's helmet. Attempting to counter attack, the Phantasm merely wiggled the helmet even more out of Quentin's grasp. Grabbing onto it and pulling it down was useless as the Phantasm's helmet slipped...
... And impacted the ground, revealing the Phantasm's face to Quentin.
And it would be quite a surprise to Quentin. Despite the presentation of a man, and the voice... what was underneath the helmet was the tender face of a
woman.
Soft, but damaged. Her right eye was missing, and in it's place was a
hideous burn scar where her eye socket had been completely burned out. She looked at Quentin and stared him down, recieving a bewildered look back from him in return. Her features were distinctly Arabic and she had a light-copper skin tone. She narrowed her eyes as she turned back into black smoke, and floated down through the floor, not saying a word.
Almost as if she was
shamed by Quentin.
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