2013.04.03 - Death from Above

A beautiful temperate afternoon in Madripoor, down by the docks.
Standing on a docked boat was a Russian woman, wearing a business suit with sensible business shoes, performing inspection over the repairs on her precious boat, as her underlings swabbed the deck and did other clean-up duties. She kept darting glances at a certain corner of the boat, until finally she could take no more. Walking over to the corner, she delivers a swift kick to the ribs. "Up, Bard, up! You're supposed to be -working-, not lying down on the job."
Blinking eyes peer up at the woman as Roy Harper lowers his shades to look up at her. Clad in an blue Hawaiian shirt and khakis, with a holster tucked in a harness over it, the SHIELD agent grins. "Ehhh, relax a little. Considering how little peace and quiet we get around here, we should just enjoy it while we can."
Belikova scowls a bit, but relents just a bit as Roy grins a roguish half-smile as she allows herself to be tugged to sit down, brushing a recalicrant loose brown lock of hair back in place. "You do realize, of course, Bard, that you should -always- remain vigilant... or else..."
"Relax. There's no sign of trouble anywhere for miles, not unless you think that helicopter over the horizon is gonna be trouble..."
There may be no more single dangerous ariel vehicle known to man then the Apache 64-A... maybe the 64-D? Arguments could be made, but they'd be hard pressed to make their point. Loaded for bear it is a weapon of superlative usefulness, it's cannons punch through armored vehicles and concrete walls like there were paper, it's rocket chew through hardened targets, it's even capable of shooting down incoming fighter planes with it's payload. Agile, swift, it is a broadsword or a scalpel in combat. The same comparisons hold true for it's pilot.
Deathstroke really had no plans to bring the gunship along, frankly a simple agent hunt and kill wouldn't require more then your average pistol for him, but since he's in Madripoor on that prison break job anyway, why not a twofer? Despite the ease of the mission, there's always something interesting about taking down secret agents, they're inventive and frisky, the jobs are almost always short, but not boring. And the one thing Slade hates above all others is being bored. The unique silhoquette of the Apache slices through the sky, heading straight for the boat at a rather impressive rate of speed, the HUD in his helmet giving him targeting options. His finger depresses the trigger even as his enhanced vision picks up something... The sound of a 30mm cannon burping out nearly 200 rounds in a two second burst cuts through the air a full second /after/ giant fist sized holes appear in the boat itself, chewing through wood and steel and fiberglass and turning all of those material into small puffs of shrapnel. The astute however may notice that at the last second, the line of bullets veered away from the target, almost as if it were a shot across the bow instead of, well, one through the bow. Deathstroke's eye narrows in his helm as his enhanced vision catches up with his reflexes, "Harper?" he says to himself, and slowly, beneath the helm, his lips part in a feral grin. See? Never boring.
Someone else is using this time to relax, as well. Domino slept in, had a long, hot shower, then settled in with her digital devices, a glass of rum, and the assortment of oil, rags, and firearms to work over as she pleases. Roy's out with Belikova, so he -should- be safe for now. Getting a break away from that guy is perhaps the highlight of the day thus far. Peace and quiet, a rare commodity out in this neck of the woods.
Also one which is short-lived. It takes a while longer for the sound to catch up to her at this distance. It's one of those sounds which is difficult to forget, hear it once and you know exactly what it is at any other moment in your lifetime. Someone's shooting something very big and very fast at something else in the city. Considering the number of enemies she's got lurking within the shadows, getting a visual is a no brainer.
The docks are fairly easy to spot through one of the windows in her apartment. That's where the trouble's at. It's okay though, right? Roy and Beli should have hit the open water hours ago.
Still...
Domino walks back to the table full of goodies and plucks the earcom from its resting point, hooking it into her ear before, all too calmly, making the call. Maybe she's just being paranoid, but... (Harper? Yeah, there's some joker with an Apache out by the docks--) "Pick up your damned phone, Roy."
"That's not a helicopter, Bard..." Belikova says slowly, as she shades her eyes against the sun, looking at where it's coming from...
"That's an effin' APACHE!" Roy finishes, as the gunfire pounds through the ship.
Belikova's men start abandoning ship with alarcity, some riddled by shrapnel. Belikova is already leaping into the water with a splash, while Roy leaps for the docks. Momentum is assisted as the boat explodes into a giant ball of flying metal shrapnel and flaming oil, with multiple secondary explosions as excess ammo start going off as well.
The phone ringing in Roy's shirt pocket goes unanswered, for obvious reasons.
Deathstroke, not willing to pass up a good explosion when it's offered, chases Roy with a rocket. Sure, he could kill the man with the gunship, but Slade is a man of honor, and Harper and he have... history. A lot of it. He'd not more kill Harper with a gunship then he'd expect Harper to kill him with a sniper's bullet from a mile out. There's a code. Still, the code doesn't say shit about scaring the young marksman into wetting himself. So, Deathstroke blasts the dock a dozen feet behind Roy into kindling, giving him /another/ helpful push further up the dock. Much further. Deathstroke doesn't think for a moment that he'd be unlucky enough for a bit of shrapnel to have killed the other man, he's well aware it's not that easy. Besides, Harper's not the target, and so killing him isn't as much fun. Killing the woman he's obviously protecting on the other hand. Well, that would be well within the code, and also fun.
The Apache does what no helicopter should be able to and loops back in on itself, it's insane forward speed not only halted, but altered, as the gunship rolls over in a perfect loop. Deathstroke scans the various forms through the smoke and fire, seeking his target, the blades of the chopper sending said smoke swirling about in maddening blasts of choking toxic fumes, washing them over the survivors of the explosion. Braaaaaaaaaaaat. Braaaaaaaaaat. Two more bursts from the cannon cut through the water, cutting a line in front of the swimming survivors, pointedly informing them that if they keep trying to swim back to the docks and help engage in the fight, they'll never make it. It's safer in the water, where Deathstroke can ignore them. They get the idea. Now... where did she go...?
Still not answering. "Son of a bitch," Domino mutters while ending that call and quickly dialing up another one. "Austin, I--yes--I know--no, I haven't forgotten your fucking codena--"
This may take a while.
"SEVEN! Shut up for three seconds! Apache gunship, docks, indiscriminate bullet hosing. Get me a source, I want to know what the hell's going on down there. You've got a minute twenty before there's nothing left but a crater, get on it."
This one's gonna cost her. Maybe not in the monetary compensation sort of way, either.
As far as that whole code goes, Domino doesn't follow it. Her second rule of survival eloquently sums it up: Cheat. While Austin is busy doing her technological voodoo the mercenary woman is absently looking around her living space, trying to formulate a plan. It's too far out to drive, her contact isn't answering his phone... There's also a seven foot long 14.5mm cannon sitting upon the table. What else is really good at swatting birds out of the sky from a mile out? With a baring of teeth she grabs the edge of the table it's perched upon and shoves it across the floor, lining up the anti-materiel rifle with the window. She needs a closer look on this. The rifle's scope will do the trick nicely enough.
Nope, definitely no time to answer that phone, and it goes to voicemail, alias: "Can't answer phone, running for life, leave number and I'll call back."
And meanwhile, Roy Harper is already working on covering his head, and running down the docks in a zig-zag line, trying to time his dodging and praying like hell he's got the -right- idea about the patterns of the guns firing. Just run, Harper, RUN. Up the stairs and keep on going until he can dive behind a large concrete barricade... goddan it, he was going to be black and blue with all the hitting of hard wood and concrete at this rate...
The men manage to tread water, not quite retreating that far, but scattered enough to make getting them all in one swoop a tricky proposition. Trained well, apparently, by the Russian woman who just popped her scarred face out of the water, and treads water briefly, before diving to swim underwater. Not maintaining a straight line to shore or to the docks at all, just random surface patterns. Still, if Deathstroke knew his stuff, the entire docks was going to -explode- anyminute to prevent finding easy breathing spaces...
And no one knows their stuff like Deathstroke the Terminator. No. One. Spinning the chopper on a dime, the dock for a hundred yards is blazed to life in a roar of fire and force as rocket after rocket after rocket hammers into the boats and moorings there. Wood is thrown a hundred feet in the air, fire and smoke rise like a curtain, cutting off the view of the gunship and it's activities from anyone on land beyond the dock, save for a few caught glimpses here and there. If the cannon fire into the water didn't do it, that certainly did. When your rabbit tries to go to ground, leave no ground for it to go to. Fires rage now, and when one of the men tries to make a swimming break for a single remaining boat, Deathstroke sighs, "Warned you." he mutters, a burping blast of 30mm fire turns the man into pudding and paste and literally cuts the boat he was swimming to clean in half. The two parts bowing in the middle before sinking quickly.
The Apache raises a bit over the water, and comes to a hover a few dozen feet past Roy's hiding spot. It sits there for a moment or two, until Roy is brave enough to peek his head out, and for the first time he can see the pilot, the trademarked Black/Orange helmet covering his face. Two finger raise up in a little salute to Harper before the gunship turns around to zip over the water again, seeking it's target. Roy can almost hear the low throaty all to familiar chuckle of Slade Wilson.
Clearly, today is a day for big guns.
Chak-CHUNK!
Six feet back from the palm-sized muzzle brake lies the comparatively diminutive albino, hunched behind the rifle's optics with a pale blue eye drawing a bead on the gunship thousands of feet away.
"We're running out of time," Domino says into the ear mic in a slow, level tone, "and I'd really love to know who I'm about to piss off."
Windage. Bullet drop. No time to get fancy. A target as big as an Apache gunship should be easy to hit but at this range it's about the size of a housefly through the magnified lenses. She's got five chances to make this shot right. Less if the pilot somehow manages to figure out where the shots are coming from.
"Seven? You might want to mute your speakers for a moment."
-BWAM!-
A solid hunk of lacquered steel in the form of a shell casing crashes against the table and rolls off to strike the floor, thin wisps of smoke drifting away from the vented muzzle as an explosive shell sails across the Madripoor skyline toward one of the Apache's intakes.
Oh for fuck's sakes, Wilson! If Roy was the murderous cold bastard mercenary type, he'd SO gouge Slade's liver out with a spoon for -that- stunt. Any shouted reply is lost in the thwipthwipthwip of the Apache's blades cleaving through the air, though no doubt about five parts of that was questioning Slade's parentage, fifty on the mercenary's ability to procreate, and the last remaining parts on his gender preference, not that it mattered very much.
Pulling out his pistols and firing off a few ineffective shots, Roy curses, and then pulls the cell phone out of his shirt pocket. "DOM! GOT TROUBLE! It's Deathstroke the Terminator, and... and... I think he's after Belikova!"
... wait, busy signal.. FUCK!
FUCK!
And Belikova was just emerging from the water once more, right out there, being a sitting duck...
Time slows. People always seem to think Deathstroke is faster then a human being, frankly that's not exactly true. He's not faster then an expertly trained martial artist or an olympic gymnast may be, he simply reacts more quickly because his mind processes information at speeds greater then computers could hope to. The instant the shell impacts the intact and the soft WHUMP! sound precedes the whining scream of consequently overtaxed engines, time slows to a crawl in Deathstroke's mind. Incoming fire, far off range. Large calibre, sniper's roost, crack shot. He ticks of a list of people capable of making the shot in his head, it's around 100 globally. He marks off forty of them due to their being known to be elsehwere. Another 30 who'd never work with Harper or Slade's target. He's down to 30 suspects for the sniper in a milisecond. As the Apache begins to list to one side he's crunching the numbers on angles of the shot, potential locations for the sniper, even as another portion of his mind breaks off and his hands begin to compensate for the beginning of the out of control spin, wrestling the gunship back into line. Then the sound of the shot reaches him, and he calcualtes likely distance of the shooter from the suspected angle. He compares this in his mind to a topigraphical map of Madripor. 30 potential shoots now narrowed down to a trio of possible buildings from which that shot could have been made. He considers trying to take out all 3 buildings but... that's not his style. What is he? Hydra? Blowing up whole city blocks for a single target? Naw.
Still, that gun is a threat... time to be a smaller target. They're Harper's ally, let them make the call on who to help. He points the Apache straight at Roy's current hiding spot, guns the engines, and then with a practiced move elbows out the side of the cockpit window and with surprising agility worms through the hole and drops towards the burning wharf, leaving Roy to deal with several tons of heavily armed smoking ruin hurtling at him at nearly sixty miles an hour. As he falls the thirty feet to the wharf, the moment sending the assassin into a roll, he idly state, "Hold this for me will ya?" though there's no way Harper could hear him.
"Tag," Domino mutters from behind the fourteen millimeter cannon, watching the smoke and the momentary loss of control from the chopper at range.
Then her earbud makes a familiar ticking sound. Someone's calling in. "Yeah, take a number--Not you, Seven. Keep working."
She's about to line up a second shot when she sees a tiny black speck falling away from the cockpit, her eyes narrowing at first then widening as she realizes that the gunship isn't just going down, it's going down in a pre-determined trajectory. The pilot's trying to use the damned thing as a last-ditch weapon!
Maybe she can change that. Maybe. Hit it just right, knock it a few degrees off center, give whoever's down there a chance to--
Incoming call from 'Wonder Trucker.'
"Ah fuck me," she hisses while swatting at the screen of her phone, letting the call get through. "ROY! What--"
'Deathstroke.'
"Goddamnit..!" Pause. "I'll call you back."
Click.
The call goes back to Seven while she gets the crosshairs set on an accelerating target, the tension within her shoulders as solid as a rock.
Austin cuts back in right in time for Dom to mutter a "Sorry" before pulling the trigger, the second shot slamming into her shoulder with a positively jarring force. "-Deathstroke,- find out who hired him, I want an address -now!-"
"Wait, Dom... FUUUUCKKK!" And.... FUCK!
No matter how many times Ollie might wash Roy's mouth out with soap, there really was no better word to describe the sight of an Apache with mounted enormous guns coming at you than "FUCK."
Unless it was a thousand of them, as Roy bolts from behind the concrete barricade, clutching the phone to him as much as he could, not -away- from the docks, but -towards- it... because the Apache's velocity was going to not only go through the barricade, but to keep on -going- and quite likely overtake him if he had run away.
Although, of course the way of the docks was... well, Deathstroke.
Make that five thousand 'fucks', thank you. Or just sum it up as 'fuckityfuckityfuck.'
The phone goes back into the Hawaiian shirt, the Springfield tactical pistols come out, and guns come blazing. "CONTACT! STAY AWAY!"
And as Belikova's surviving men start to come to shore, Belikova jerks her head towards the shouting.
Deathstroke's roll takes him nearly twenty feet and then into a three point slide that ends when his armored body slams into a BMW who's alarm is shrilling from all the explosions. He eyes it and almost lazily puts a .50 round through the wheel well, the firewall, and into the beamer's alarm box. It squeaks a pathetic death. Slade stands and surveys the area in a single quick glance, counting the seconds somewhere in the back of his mind. He moves for the dockline, his legs carrying him at sprinter speeds as he easily leaps a restraining wall that's six feet high like he was a hurtler on crack, an MP5 in one hand and a combat knife better described as a short sword in the other. As he lands on the other side of the wall he says, "Boom."
A hundred feet away the Apache plows into the barrier Roy was using for cover. Sort of. The impact of Domino's round twisted the chasis to the side, and the still whirring blades provided sudden altered drafts that carried it off to it's left by a solid twenty feet at the last second. The impact shakes the ground for a half a mile as fuel tanks explode, the sudden searing heat setting off a chain reaction as 30mm ammo being firing off in random directions even as inertia carries the gunship forward through the barrier and across a small parkinglot and through another barrier, and finally comes to rest a burning exploding wreck against what used to be the harbor masters office. The rockets go next, the few that are left, and one of the rotor blades brakes free and whistles past Roy's ear, close enough he can feel the heat from the smoking blade as it buries itself in the concrete a few feet in front of him like an expertly hurled javelin, a pointy twisted metal end jutting towards him, quivering with a soft ringing sound as whisps of steam raise from it.
"Slade!" Deathstroke growls, "Not now Peabody, I have-" "Shut the fuck up!" says the only man alive allowed to talk to Wilson that way, "We have eletronic intrusions, someone's datamining. I'm cutting off all sensitive intel." Slade growls louder, "It's /all/ sensitive!" Harper. That little shit is trying to crack his system!! For a moment he wonders if that was the plan all along... but Roy's not that smart. Still, he adjusts his perceptions of Roy's long range ally. 10 people, able to make back to back shots like that who also work with techie geniuses capable of cracking Peabody's firewalls. "Get me a name." Slade snaps. Someone will pay for this.
Deathstroke adds a moment later, "If you say Weasel and this is that Deadpool idiot, I'm going to turn you into a pair of loafers."
Touchdown. Domino doesn't have time to wait and see what happens. Roy may or may not be alive. Who the hell knows about Belikova. Deathstroke..he'll be alive. She's got one rapidly narrowing window to bring the pieces together. Driving out there to fight the guy won't work, being a fellow merc she -knows- Deathstroke's MO. Once he's on a target there's only three ways to break it off. The target dies, -he- dies, or he gets the call to abort the mission.
She needs to make that call happen.
Dom's out of her room, down the hall, and leaping down the stairs in record time. Sometimes it's faster to kick against the wall than to run across the barely carpeted floor, leapfrogging over another person in the front entrance before she leaps out onto the sidewalk. "Where's my address, Seven!"
"Goin' fast as I can, Miss Dramatica! Not exactly a ghost here, already got myself a seccer trail. Guys play serious hardball--"
"-Address,- Austin! Now!" Domino snarls while stopping short at the sight of what had been Roy's modified Shelby Cobra only a few days ago. He lost that beast's keys in a cardgame against her. His loss, her gain. "The pieces all fall into place," she mutters while hauling the keys out. This should help cut out some of the time.
With a thunderous roar the supercharged V8 sparks to life, quickly followed the tortured howling of tires leaving jet black marks across both lanes. Roy's odds are getting worse by the second. Pretty soon even she might not be able to pull off this crazy stunt!
Roy might not be the brightest bulb around, but at least he -could- make contacts who could help cover for his flaws, which might have been his best ability... or at least, second-best ability, next to markmanship.
That markmanship is on full display, cover fire being used to try and shield Belikova from Deathstroke. Just keep buzzing Deathstroke, yeah, while Contact got back to dry land...
"Behind me!" shouts Roy as he tries to keep moving to get between Deathstroke and his prey...
Belikova looked askance, but doesn't dispute it, as she notices herself being the last one to get back on board. Her men -had- waterlogged weapons, which meant they had to recover them. And so Belikova swims for shore, trying to keep as clear a berth as she can.
"WILSON! C'mon, whatever you're doing, you don't -need- to be going after her! Who paid you off?" Roy says, slowing down cover fire just enough that he can be heard...
Deathstroke stops when two rounds plink off of his armor, and he slowly turns his gaze to Roy, leveling that single eye and it's expressionless mask. "Really?" he says in an amused tone. To help Roy out, Slade twists to the side in a blur and then keeps on advancing towards his target. The reason for the blurring twist becomes obvious a moment later as something cylindrical bumps against Roy's foot, having rolled it's way over after the under handed toss was covered by the sudden twisting motion. HED is printed on the side in big white letters. Grenade. Slade raises the MP5 and idly mows down a man climbing from the waters who was stupid enough to raise a pistol, "Rookie." says the slightly eletronically altered voice.
"Good, you're finally on the road."
"How the hell did you--"
"I'm following the signal from your phone, just hush and let me be your GPS. In six hundred f--five--three--Turn left, girl, -turn left!-"
The Shelby dips forward then twists to the left, the back end sweeping out in an aggressive attempt to overtake the front as Domino catches and holds the slide. The blaring of another car's horn is virtually lost within the deafening cacophony of the muscle car's passing.
"Would you just give me an address already?!"
"What, so you don't need my help anymore? No way chica, it's -way- more fun this way--Jeezus this guy's tricky. Know the old plaza coming up on your left? Yah, go through there then duck around the gazebo. Isn't satellite imaging -amazing?- Now I get to watch you tear around like a madwoman in that abomination--"
"That's enough, Austin!" Dom snarls as pavement gives way to cobblestone, the car drifting every direction except -forward.- "..Are you high right now?"
"Nnnnyahmaybe," the hacker woman admits. "Hah, whup! Not so fast there ya dif, that port's only for paying customers. 'Kay, cross-referencing contact list with current job--Belikova, yah?"
"I really don't need the working commentary, Austin..."
"Whatever. Building with neon lights, should be in your sight in eight seconds. Room thirty seven. Melinko. Real badass, you kids'll get along famously. Gotta jet, this guy's good!"
Seconds later the Shelby screeches to a prolonged halt, the pale woman behind the wheel nearly clawing at the door to get back out onto her feet. This..is going to get messy very quickly.
Yes, okay, so this was roughly the equivalent of a chihuahua going up against a mastiff. But Belikova was clearly the target, and Roy can only give a sheepish shrug. "Had to try..."
Roy's voice trails off as the foot is met with a thump.
Rather than even -think- about it, though, the quick reaction whenever something has been tossed against your feet by a mercenary...? Kick, kick it far, kick it quickly, and run till something explodes THEN dive for cover.
Belikova curses something in Russian as another man goes down. "Scatter!" she cries, as she floats on the water, glancing up to see if she could risk climbing out.
Two men start converting on her location, but are quickly waved off quickly, with a command to set up cover fire -first-. That is relayed on to the others who -have- managed to find cover and weapons ready...
The grenade wasn't cooked first, so there's plenty of time ticking away as it tinks and plinks and bounces a good dozen feet, giving Roy enough time to cover up behind some smoking rubble of... well it used to be something. Slade however doesn't stick around to deal with Harper, because that's not the job. The job is still in the water, "If you come out of the water I will stop killing your men." Deathstroke's voice says clearly through the gunfire as he presses his back against what was the hull of something in dry dock and is not just a curving wooden barrier. "And I will only kill you. If you do not," he explodes into motion, spinning around the edge of his cover and unleashing a burst of the MP5 that stitches holes across one man's face while a bluring silver gleam buries eight inches of combat knife in the eye of another man, the force of the throw lifting him from his feet and sending him back into the water. Once moving, the assassin doesn't slow down. Another burst from the HK takes two more men down, their chests blossoming with roses before he leaps a retaining wall to land amid three men with guns of their own. There's no more gunfire, just fast sharp sounds, a scream of agony that's cut short, and then Deathstroke walks back into view, blood covering the front of his armor splashed over his mask, and a greatsword in his hand. "I know what you're thinking." he says into the short silence that follows, "You're thinking the armor makes me heavy, makes me slow, the water is your safest option." Deathstroke turns and like Babe Ruth literally bats a sailing grenade out of the air and sends it arcing out over the water where it explodes harmlessly, "Ask your bodyguard how wrong you are. I will come for you, there is no safety, no sanctuary. Save your men, or don't, it matters little to me, either way there is no escape." his statements are matter of fact, cold and flatly delivered.
Any resistance waiting for Domino isn't going to stay that way for long. Two 9mm sidearms, lots of bullets to spare, and a serious overdose of adrenaline all add up to a very brief and very bloody skirmish. True to Madripoor's history, bullets and blood alike are spent in quantity.
She's got her sights set on just one man and just one objective. How she accomplishes her task doesn't matter. It has to be done very quickly or she may as well have not bothered wasting her time trying to find the guy. To that end, she brings a knife into play.
"Call off the hit, Melinko."
Dom's not going to take no for an answer. This woman is intimately familiar with the human anatomy and ways in which it can be injured without impairing such fine motor skills like dialing a phone. How much this guy wants to suffer is entirely up to him. She will get her results, and she may well become that much more of a monster in the process.
This city, it has a way of changing a person.
Didn't have a choice here. Moving to fire his pistols, Roy mutters a curse as he discovers himself out of ammo. Now -what- was he going to...
Darting around quick glances, looking around the docks, trying to find -something-, anything...
Oh frell it. He -had- to do this...
As ridiculous and stupid as it was, he had like, a one percent chance of survival, and he might as well bet on it because like it or not, Belikova had to stay alive. Which was why Roy closes the gap quickly, running over. Forget screaming like a madman until -after- he has managed to jump onto Deathstroke's back. THEN scream like a loon in trying to grapple him. Because whenever there was no plans, Roy Harper generally did what he did best- go nuts and hope something happened.
RING.
RING.
RING.
"Uh, 'xuse me, Wilson, mind if I get that phone...?" Pause. "... Wait, that's not my phone... Uh... Slade? I think you're ringing."
Deathstroke puts the pointy end of the sword through the open screaming mouth of the man who's instep was crushed by the stomping of a heavy armored boot, a man brave enough to come at Slade with a knife alone. He doesn't drive it /through/ the mouth, just places the blade there, "Brave. Stupid, but brave." Slade says into the angry eyes of the man who suddenly is very very still. "I like brave. I hate stupid. Quandry." He flicks the blade out, slicing open the man's cheek and leaving what will be a vicious scar, "Good soldier." he states as his first and the cross guard of the sword render the man unconscious. Sleeping, wounded, scarred... but alive. Slade respects good soldiers, and of them all that man stood up and came straight at him. Stupid, hence the scar, but brave. There's a code after all, maybe one day that man might be something.
Deathstroke stumbles as sudden weight slams into him from behind, "Harper?" he says incredulously as something begins to hammer down on his head and shoulders. He slams the sword into the ground as he spins, reaching low to close his fingers vice like around Roy's trailing ankle while his helmeted head slams backward viciously, an elbow comes in from the side in the same moment, the armor on his forearm is pointed there, for just this sort of occasion, the edge stabbing towards Roy's midsection. "Can't you see I'm busy?" he asks, yanking down on the ankle as he tries to dislodge the marksman from his back so he can swing him around like one of those olympic weights on a chain and hurl him away, "People to kill, phone calls to answer, I mean really very busy. But don't worry, I'll come back and play in just a moment." he ticks his HUD, "The contract isn't complete, but if you give me four seconds..." he pulls the .50 pistol from the holster on his hip and points the hand cannon at his target's face, finally getting a clean shot...
There's hesitation. Domino does not want hesitation. She wants results. All it takes is a vicious twist of the blade to get the point across. Yes. -Now.- Call it off or forever be half of the man you once were.
"The hit's off."
The blade comes free with a wet report as steel dices through clothing and biological tissue, the albino ignoring the injured howl as she wipes some of the spotted dots of red across her face until they turn into warpaint-like streaks. She gets on her own phone next, dialing up Roy as she keeps Melinko pinned to the floor by one of her boots.
"Harper. Still in one piece? How about Beli? Great, do me a favor and deliver a message to her?"
"You owe me."
"Enough!" Belikova shouts, pushing her men aside, as she clambers onto the dock. She turns to face Deathstroke. "I accept your terms."
"Contact, no!" There's a low groan as Roy's abdomen is sliced, and then he's thrown away like a discus for great distance, coming to a stop upside down against the smouldering remaints of what was once a watchman's booth. And... fuck. He had no choice whatsoever, but to watch as Belikova makes a desperate shove to get the men who were trying to protect her thrown out of the way so that she can keep her men -alive-...
And somehow... somehow, nothing happens. And then there's the phone ringing. And it seemed to be coming from somewhere around his... oh.
Fumbling with wet bloody fingers for the phone, Roy quips, "Hello. Busy bleeding. Can you call ba.... Oh. Dommie? Kinda in one piece. Beli... well, she's... I think... oh c'mon. You really want me to tell her that? She'll just throw me back into the ocean and let me be shark chum... I don't -really- wanna be chummy with a shark..."
Deathstroke freezes in place, the gun unwaveringly stuck with his target's head in place. "Repeat." he says, his finger putting four lbs on a five lbs trigger. "The job's done. Omega Seven Niner four: Toledo. Cancellation code, you're done." Slade frowns and the gun lowers itself slowly, not that anyone can see the expression, "Peabody," he says, cutting to another line, "my fee?" there's a pause, "Transferred in full." Slade slides the weapon back into it's holster and turns his back on his former target, idly plucking the sword out of the concrete as he passes, a flick of his wrist sending blood and concrete bits splattering about. "Contract terminated. Never contact me for another job in the future. I don't work for cowards." and he cuts the line. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened. He's not been shot at by the sniper since the gunship went down, only one place that person could have gone. Peabody comes back after a moment, "Our hacker goes by ProCys7," Peabody spells that out for Slade, "real name Austin Yearling. Top notch resume. Want me to track her down?" Deathstroke considers it, "Known associates-wait. No." he walks over towards Roy and stops before the downed man in the rubble, "Austin Yearling, Roy Harper, Domino real name-" he pauses, Roy can hear the smile in his tone, "well... lets not show off to much. It's unbecoming." the smile in his voice disappears, "All of you meddled in my affairs Harper..." he looks around at the ruin then extends a hand down to the other man, "Well played."
"Fine, I'll tell her myself," Domino says with a light sigh before ending the call.
Only two souls remain within the gore-splattered room. Only one is left widely uninjured. The white-skinned mercenary tucks her phone away and unholsters a sidearm once more, leveling the sights down onto Melinko's forehead.
"Belikova sends her regards."
BLAM!
Category:Log