Into the storm

[runmakitarun]

As the last of the team files through the door Makita closes it firmly behind herself and leads the way over to the window. Down in the square below twelve people move purposefully through the snow.

The six women are mostly unremarkable. One stands out as being exceptionally tall, one is short enough to almost look like a child, and hair of various colors and lenghts and styles can be seen escaping from their warm hats. The six men, however, stand out. The smallest is six and a half feet tall and looks to weigh at least 270 pounds. All twelve of them move with the smooth grace of practiced killers.

Makita doesn't bother whispering as she points them out, "See how they move in pairs? Each sorceress has her Guardsman a few paces behind her. You can see that even in a group they're thinking in twos. When we hit them, I want us to concentrate on splitting as many pairs as we can. They operate much less efficiently when their teams are broken up."

"There's another square like this a few blocks down. If they're headed of our HQ, then they'll have to go through it. If we move fast we can get there first and set up." She shoulders her rifle and looks at her team again, "Let's keep it fast and quiet."

So saying, Makita leads the way out the door, heading toward the rear fire escape for the building.

Comments

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

Visibility is still atrocious, but with the help of the hi-tech scope, Goldy sights the enemy group as they cross towards the ruined fountain. Digital read-outs show an erratically gusting crosswind effect. They also confirm the expected Protokol shielding each of the sorceresses have in place. This is not going to be easy.

That's the way Goldy likes it. By now, a quick-release two milligram Diazepam tablet has gotten her shivering under control, and well-disciplined willpower is keeping her breathing slow and steady. She deliberates over the six sorceresses—which witch is which?—searching for the one with the highest rank. Unfortunately, the uniforms don't seem to carry any discernible insignia, so she randomly picks the tall woman positioned on the left flank.

They draw closer and split around the once beautiful centerpeice, now more rubble than ornamentation. Goldy lets them come, lets them get clear of the potential cover. Then, once they're exposed again, she prepares to expend the first of her six Protokol Piercing Rounds.

Within the pale red imaging of the scope view, three concentric circles align themselves on the target's head.

Goldy exhales slowly ...and squeezes the trigger.

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

The Dragunov fires a big round, and the distinctive crack of a large caliber rifle can be heard even over the howling of the wind.

The shield protokol surrounding the targeted sorceress acts as designed and a spinning wall of glowing red springs to life around her as the bullet gets within one meter. But the red flickers and then shatters as the bullet flares with energy.

Every guardsman is already in motion, diving to cover their charges, but no one could be fast enough in this situation. Her head snaps back in a spray of red just as the big man nearby grabs her arm to jerk her down. The other five pairs scatter immediately to locations which provide cover from Goldy's position.

The sixth man grabs his motionless charge and slings her over one shoulder while he moves for cover of his own. One of the guardsmen leans over to converse briefly with his sorceress and then turns his hailer in the general direction of the building Goldy's perched in. A hail of bullets stitch their way across the entire building, not enough to hit anything specifically, but enough to keep heads down.

The rest of the Reds are keeping half an eye out for the sniper and half an eye for other threats. They're on guard, but distracted.

[runmakitarun.livejournal.com]

Makita pops her head up to find that one of the Red pairs have taken cover behind the krawl she's hiding in. With a savage grin she pulls herself silently up, draws one of her pistols, and empties a clip into the guardsman as she slides back off the krawl before the sorceress can turn on her.

She drops the empty magazine down the front of her shirt and reloads on the run. Heading for the nearest piece of cover: a large concrete bench. She's counting on the others to cause enough chaos for her to find better cover before the witch recovers enough to counter-attack.

[slayer_fray]

Mel switches into a dive the second she hears the shot, and comes rocketing down out of the blizzard, diving like a falcon with the world's most tasteless plumage.

She's from a completely different direction than Goldy, so at least one of the pairs have managed to present their backs to her.

She pulls the pin of her grenade and hurls it at the nearest guard, jerking out of the dive at the same time. Moving fast and erratically, she presents a very obvious moving target, and hopefully a distraction from the snipers.

[twiststheblade]

Miho starts moving as soon as she hears Goldy's shot, taking advantage of the confusion. There's a pair of witch and guard heading almost straight for her, so she returns the compliment. She won't have the benefit of surprise anyway, if they get a few feet closer to her hiding-spot.

As she moves smoothly towards them, she is preceded by several shuriken. She's after the guard, really - she's not sure if her metal will penetrate the witch's shield - but the first spinning star is aimed for the woman's throat. Just in case. The next two are for the guard.

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

The first volley of Hailer fire rips into the building around Goldy's position. This isn't just some rat-a-tat machine gun—its huge rounds shatter the brickwork and blast straight through some of the weaker sections of wall. Goldy is forced to drag her eye away from the scope and shield her head from the falling masonry.

"I NEED MORE COVERING FIRE!" she yells into her now active comm-link.

She sincerely hopes that the others have switched theirs on too.

[dead-comrade.livejournal.com]

Yeah, having their sniper buried under her own position: not good. Krauser leaves off the target he was about to take, shifting his aim for the man firing instead.

Modern warfare does not include bows because he (and his bow, because normal humans can't use it) are not standard issue. He fires the first arrow; before it lands, two more are on the way.

The wind pushes the fourth and last one a little off, although Krauser had to adjust his aim quickly since the target's on the ground--he started falling when the first one went into his skull. Krauser's started taking only instant kills, these days.

There's still a reason why he fired so many arrows into a corpse. The explosive now buried in the man's head is going to go off first, but Krauser's relying on the chain-reaction factor to magnify the explosion.

[song_tra_bong]

Mary Anne tracks the guard whose sorceress Goldy sniped in the beginning. He's moving still, from cover to cover, and still carrying the woman's body. With his size, it's not exactly slowing him down.

The snow messes with her vision, but it's not too different than fighting in the underbrush or the rain. You just have to look past it, look through it, and focus on nothing but that flash of real movement--

Her first round of fire catches him across the knees. He falls, bellowing, the dead sorceress landing beside him. He tries to drag himself upright and her next shots open his throat.

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

Even a group as experienced as a Red commando team can be disoriented during the first moments of a well-laid ambush. The Reds are used to dealing with snipers, after all. They're terribly common within the city. But full-scale ambushes are far less so. Scattering for cover, they fall into old patterns. And they forget to watch their backs.

Mel's grenade bounces off her target's head. Considering how strong she is, that would be enough to stun him on its own, but then the grenade goes off and his helmet isn't really designed to stop that much shrapnel that close. He goes down and the concussion staggers the sorceress next to him.

At the same moment the explosives in Krauser's arrows go off just as the guardsman's sorceress turns to look at him, and she's thrown back a few feet by the shockwave. He shields keep her from taking any hits, but the force stuns her for a moment.

Miho's first shuriken is blocked by the sorceress' shield and the red-haired woman in question spins to see where it came from. The guardsmen spins at the same time, so instead of taking an instantly fatal blow her merely loses an eye and takes a long bleeding gash across his face.

As Mary Anne's target goes down, one of the sorceress', presumably their ranking officer, yells, "Case Blackthorn! Scatter!" Two guardsmen and five sorceresses survived the initial onslaught to some degree or another, nearly half the people in the plaza died within seconds.

The two sorceresses staggered by grenades stumble to their feet and join the other survivors in scattering out of the plaza, each heading off on their own. One surviving guardsman-sorceress pair sticks together as they head north, a lone sorceress heads in each of the other cardinal directions.

The pair facing Miho decide to deal with her before leaving themselves. She's just one tiny woman, it shouldn't take long even with the guardsman going into shock.

[runmakitarun.livejournal.com]

"They're scattering," Makita yells into her com-link. It's an observation that probably wasn't needed, but... "I've got the one heading west! Don't let any of them get away!" She scrambles up from cover and sprints after the sorceress who's guardsman she just killed.

[slayer_fray]

Mel's already flying after her stunned sorceress before it occurs to her to use her com-link.

"I've got mine!" she says, having no idea which direction that is, and even less idea how to penetrate her shields.

[twiststheblade]

Miho rolls her eyes and goes for the guardsman's throat, skipping to the side before slipping in under his guard and drawing him a new smile. She hasn't lost the element of surprise after all - her stature has them under-estimating her. Good.

[dead-comrade.livejournal.com]

"South," Krauser says, calling it as he moves across the uncertain rooftop and drops to the ground past it. He doesn't move into the alleyway, since he doesn't want to have to heal burns until he has to. He was there already, after all, and he's waiting for--



That.

He slips into the alley when the light's faded, picking his way with more speed than care; there's the faintest chance she didn't die right away thanks to her shields, and that means he has to finish it now.

Shortly after, he doubles back, circling, knife in hand, headed north.

[song_tra_bong]

"'M after the set heading north," she says, bolting out from behind her cover and working across the courtyard.

She thinks for a moment about asking for back-up, but figures they will when they've dealt with their own (prey) quarry.

Then, the thought gets pushed aside and it's time to think about fighting a man larger than her--about Achilles tendons and the abdominal aorta and the weight of the knives at her hips.

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

There's a crackle of static, and then Goldy's voice can be heard over the airwaves again.

"For future reference, Hot Stuff, there are four M's on the team. Others may not be as familiar with your sexy tones as I am."

It's wry rather than chastising—apparently she feels a lot better now that her position isn't under attack. While it was, she couldn't get any more shots off, but her eye is back on the scope now, scanning the square for targets.

"G holding," she reports. "Tiger, I still see you and a sorceress. No clear shot though. Get her out in the open and I'll try and take care of those shields."

In the plaza

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

As Miho's blade flicks out, the guardsman's eyes widen in sudden shock, and then pain. He won't be underestimating her any longer, but that's mostly because he's only got seconds before he bleeds to death in the snow. Blood spills down to stain his armor and pool across the surface of the snow, and even though he's a dead man he strives to complete his mission. The massive man stumblingly spreads his arms and throws himself clumsily at Miho.

To the east

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

The sorceress who's guardsman Mel just blew up shoots a momentary look of intense rage at the... flying girl. Then she turns and sprints to eastward. Her hand darts into her coat and comes out with a small cylinder. She pulls the pin, mumbling to herself, and her eyes glow bright white.

Then, abruptly, she spins in place to reveal that she's holding a massive glowing silhouette. It looks like a really large auto cannon, and there's a cruel smirk on her face as she yells, "Come on then!"

To the west

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

After Makita took down her first target, the sorceress started to chase her. But with all the other combat going on, there's a shift in direction. The witch cuts an angle and begins moving west quickly. She needs some space before coming back to kill the ambushers. The sorceress moves with the long, ground-eating lope of someone who actually knows how to move in the snow as she leaves the plaza.

To the north

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

Despite the sudden outburst of violence, one pair of Reds manages to get through the entire initial ambush untouched. The sorceress and her guardsman are close to solid cover and move immediately into an ordered withdrawal. The guardsman fires a few bursts into the plaza in order to try to suppress any ambushers, but he's mostly concentrating on covering his charge as they run north, mostly managing to keep cover between themselves and the plaza itself.

Re: To the west

[runmakitarun.livejournal.com]

Makita pounds west, watching the way the sorceress moves. The woman is good, and that means this is probably going to be a long chase. With the snow coming down the way it is, it will only take one flurry to drop visibility enough that Makita will lose contact with her target, and that could get her killed.

So as she pursues she fires short bursts from her pistol toward the target. She knows that the shield will stop the bullets, but every time it does so it flares with unnatural light. As long as that shield keeps strobing on and off, Makita can be confident that she won't lose the damn witch.

Re: To the west

[runmakitarun.livejournal.com]

[ooc: This is where Cait comes in. Elthon, when you make your tag please include a link to the other thread where she runs toward the fight. I'm OCD about cross-linking and that will help. Feel free to have Cait run into the sorceress first. We'll work with a tentative posting order of Cait, Sorceress, Makita.]

[slayer_fray]

Mel just grins back, ducks down against the board and picks up speed, sweeping from side to side in large arcs as she draws her scythe.

She's used to running from guards and cops on this thing, presenting a moving target for blaster pistols, but she's not so experienced heading towards people.

[theredstars.livejournal.com]

There is a reason that the Gorkas hate and fear the witches. They wield incredible amounts of power, and Mel's about to see just how much. The glowing weapon begins spitting fire at the small dodging slayer at a rate that should be physically impossible.

There are a lot of rounds flying, but despite all the firepower at her disposal, and all her training, the sorceress really isn't sure how you're supposed to bracket in and shoot down a person flying around like that. Of course sometimes, if you have enough firepower you don't really have to aim.

[slayer_fray]

This is true; sometimes you really don't. Mel's at the peak of a flight when she catches a burst of flame to her right shoulder, knocking her off her rug.

She doesn't even cry out, somersaulting in the air and rippnig her burning jacket off as she watches the rug fly off into a drift nearby. No way she's losing that.

It's done what she needed it to do, anyway; sped her after her target so fast that when she finally drops, it's more or less on top of the witch.

Re: To the west

[cf1.livejournal.com]

[ Here (http://runmakitarun.livejournal.com/7355.html?thread=81083#t81083) ]

Oh, someone chasing the strangely shielded woman. From the size of the figure, Cait bets on Makita, and the shielded woman is coming towards the people who are not bulletproof.

Quick action might be a good answer. Cait rips off an as large as possible section of wall from the closest building, maybe a slab of concrete if she can find one; anyway, a LARGE heavy something is flying to intercept the sorceress.

Take that!