Roleplaying:Nuke

==Act 1==
Fniff1 10:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom was at new Mexico.(Note this was a few weeks before he was killed) He hated it, but the Eagles had to get they're hands on this weapon of Armageddon. He looked at his map,Looked around him and looked at his map again.They were close.
Kain Ruger walked over another rise. He had heard word of an undetonated thermonuclear weapon in New Mexico. He was alone, but he new many people would be bringing followers with them. Even so, he could not let them succeed. He could not let such a weapon be used again. Had he been human, his hands would have been shaking. He knew that people would be reluctant, to say the least, about using a weapon of such immense power, but he could not run the risk. For the sake of those who would suffer, he had to put a stop to this.
Fniff1 16:54, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom took out his radio. "Soo..You get some vehicles? Build anything?" He said into the radio. A crackly voice replied "Got a new build.Makeshift but good enough.Jet engine,2 Trollys cut in the middle and bond,Metal Cast,Mounted minigun and can be powered by Fusion cells." "Great,Send 3 over at.." Tom looked at his map. "Livewood New Mexico.Be fast" soon enough,They came.They looked a bit weird but hey,Can't get everything. "Alright men,Time to kill." Tom said.
Kain walked away from a group of dead Talon Company Mercs. They were looking for this weapon as well. It sickened him to have to kill again. They hadn't been anything special. He looked off into the distance, spotting a small dust cloud. He focused on the front of it, and spotted three ramshackle vehicles trundling across the desert. He laughed. It would be quicker to walk, by the look of those things. And safer to boot. There was no shielding on its reactor, so even a fusion core could cause some radiation poisoning. If they didn't figure that out soon, he wouldn't have to deal with this lot.
Fniff1 17:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
"OK,What's the limit of these vehicles?"Tom asked when they arrived."About 113 miles an hour!We had to be slow because they get really unstable when we speed em up to 40 MPH!" A guy shouted out. Tom grabbed on to a handlebar of the vehicles and said "Cover up the reactors,We're going FAST"
If there rearly was a nuke in new mexico the EMAA had to get there hands on it.a nuke could change the balance of power in the east coast.smith called out to the driver"speed up you asshole" up ahead was a man he called out "what are you doing heer this entire area is under tempory EMAA control"
Fniff1 21:08, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
3 buggys were going 100 MPH and saw a APC. "Man that looks good! Come on guys! Lets rip apart that APC!"They drove to it.
"ah shit target the trolleys NOW" a plasma blast and a missile tore 2 of the trolleys apart as the 3rd crashed into the Apc it's fussion reactor it fell apart."take that you bastereds"
Fniff1 21:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom jumped on the windscreen of the APC and said "Take this you b*stards!" As they tryed to shake him off.
"ah well" he jumped out the apc and tossed a grenade into the carts reactor he then ducked back inside and called out to the neerby man "you might want to duck NOW"
I assumed that the APC has wheels. If it has tracks, then a gauss rifle shot would make a track slip too
Kain sighed and looked through the scope of his gauss rifle. He aimed and fired, blowing out one of the APC's wheels, causing it to roll. He stood up and walked off toward the growing battle as men scrambled out of each vehicle and started a small skirmish around the two vehicles.
He considered just sitting back and sniping, but he needed backup here. He could not disable that nuke alone.
the opressor has tracks and the desert raider has wheals
"fuck a sniper find that man and bring him to me for beter or worse" the power armored elite were unafected by the radiation but the mercs were collapsing under the heat.
Fniff1 21:42, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom went a few miles away and found an old town and said into the radio "We're changing base.Come to..... Cater town. Jesus everything here is either red neck or hick styled." after a while all his transport cars came and settled down.After a few hours the eagles made a new base. They were getting closer.
Kain watched as a power armored man walked up to him. Strange, for once, someone in this place hadn't tried to shoot him on sight.
"You, hand over your weapons. You're coming with me." The soldier commanded.
"I'll follow, but my weapons are mine." Kain said calmly.
The soldier reached for the laser rifle over Kain's shoulder. Kain caught his hand and squeezed. He felt the bones crack and yield under the immense force. Then he shoved the man, launching him down the dune. He strode down after him and lifted him back up.
"Now, lead on little soldier. You said I should follow you, yes?" Kain said to the astonished soldier, who, bereft of a better course of action, started leading this strange man back to the APC.
"your the sniper who took out my tank right im will ing to let that slide IF you tell me what you want with the Thermonuke"
Fniff1 22:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom was riding around to area 51 in a truck powered by fusion cells but the engine was hidden. He stopped when he saw area 51.He wanted to humiliate the others when they came in.
"My business is my own. And I am afraid that if you wish to take the device for yourselves, we are enemies. And that means that unless you have a dozen more men around here with gatling lasers, you are all dead men." Kain said. The soldiers shuddered.He had said that as if explaining that water was wet.
"But yes, I am the man who shot your APC. Why is it that you want the device?" Kain added.
i don't smoke in real life by the way
"we want the thermonuke to help change the balance of power on the east coast at the moment only the enclave have nukes and if the EMAA gains one we can change the balance of power forever we don't even have to use it"
He lit up a smoke and took a deep breath.
Kain nodded. They wanted the nuke for their own gain. And they thought it could change the power balance between them and the Enclave. Fools, one hydrogen bomb would bring the Enclave down on them like rain. Except rain made of hammers. Kain wasn't sure why that made sense to him.
++Running diagnostic program alpha-7++
He looked at the men. They were staring at him. He wasn't wearing any form of elemental protection. In fact, he was wearing a Pre-War business suit.
There was, however, one extra man wearing an armored Radiation Suit. It was the same gaudy silver thing other men wore when they worked in these conditions, minus the bullet-proof vest and wierd symbolage painted all across its chest, the knee-pads, elbow pads and the fact that to the helmet had been grafted numerous ocular enhancers.
What wasn't common amongst the former workers around Area 51, however, was the fact that he was holding a pair of Plasma Pistols. One of these pistols was suddenly aimed at Kain, the other one was still at his side.
"What the hell are you doing lookin' 'round fer my bomb?" The man behind the mask shouted, a voice that sounded like what had become of a basal tone that had been polluted by a few years of chain smoking. "You ain't even made me a deal or nothin'."
Cue entrance of token gun-obsessed, trigger happy wasteland hick.
"what the hell your neuclear bomb this whole areas under tempory EMAA controll we need that nuke"
Kain looked at the plasma pistol. He noticed it was loaded with a hotshot cell, and had a modified accelerator and grip. An impressive, if crude-looking weapon.
"The bomb is not yours, yokel. It belongs to those who built it, and they are long dead." Kain said, in the same disturbingly calm tone he always used right before shooting something.
He didn't want to do this, but if the man made him, this hick was a dead man.
smith leveled his rifle at the man "put the pistol down and tell us where the nuke is"
Kain was thinking the same thing. He drew his Laser Rifle and pointed at the man's face. When the man refused to comply, Kain shifted his aim down to the man's groin. Not much of a threat, this crackpot didn't look like he was using it much.
He switched the safety off and prepared to fire, if he had to.
hahaha Run!!! i made good on my promise in the talk section
The Verti-bird swirled over the desert, it's rotors kicking up dust and sand, and serving to scare away a few disgusting mole rats. The gun on the VTOL swiveled, checking the LZ. Inside, seven men checked their gear, power armor, weapons, supplies, and equipment needed for broadcasting the nuke's signal. James Thomas spoke up to the pilot. "GREEN Fire Team is ready for drop off." The pilot nodded, and the men dis-embarked via ropes that dropped from the opening in the back of VTOL. The first men created a small perimeter while the others fell down the ropes. James was the last, and contacted the pilot. "C.R.S.O. GREEN Fire Team is in place. Moving to set up base camp. Estimated time of arrival at Livewood, New Mexico is two hours, repeat two hours. Will contact again when nuke is secured. James Thomas out." James cut off the radio, and signaled for his men to move to the shade of the ridge about two-hundred yards away. They were awfully far from the east coast to do a mission like this. Of course, it wasn't like anyone else could get the nuke. The Director wouldn't allow it. Obtaining a thermonuclear device might just force the enemy factions in D.C. and New York to back down with an unconditional surrener. Stiil, James didn't like being so far away. There wasn't a single friendly unit for thousands of miles. James even wanted those asshole airbornes with him at this point. Annoyed enough, James joined the men to set up base camp. It was gonna be a long day.
And I mine! There's a nasty surprise waiting for you in your milk bottle!
Kain stopped. He could have sworn he heard rotor blades in the distance. With his audioreceptors, he more than likely did.
++Calculating source range: 4 - 6 kilometres++
Enclave? Likely. They were the only ones capable of providing aerial transport. He needed to get to that weapon quickly. He grabbed the yokel and looked him in the eyes.
"Tell me where that weapon is, or I tear the suit and watch you rot, yokel!" Kain snarled. He had moved so quickly, that the one EMAA soldier who had raised his weapon would have shot their commander in the head had he fired. He could feel the terror emanating off the local. And the shock of his sudden and shocking change of character.
i swear, if there is anything tainted swirling around in my milk bottle, i will take my scrambled eggs and waffles and forcefeed you up the ass, lol
James sat down in his field tent, studying his maps. He compared both the pre-war and post-war versions. Almost identical, except for EMAA troop bases and vehicle depots. James needed to avoid those detacments and located the nuke before they did. If he failed to secure the nuke and ready it for future transport, he was to detonate the device and maximize casualities at the cost of GREEN Team. His second in command, Templar Evhert, walked in, his blackened power armor gleaming. It had painted carbon/black, and the symbol of the Crusade was emblazoned on his shoulder. "Templar Evhert, reporting sir. We're all set up. Weapons are prepped, our Mr. Gutsy, Orion, is working, and we've got temporary barricades set up, with camouflage over the camp." James nodded. "Good work. Tell the men we're moving out in a half hour." James said. Evhert nodded, and walked out of the tent. James continued to study his maps, ever intent of his mission.
The one I crap through, or the one I talk through?
Kain threw the yokel angrily to the ground as he told them it was inside Area 51. He salked off in the direction his GPS core indicated (Its a compass and longitude-latitude based thing, not a GPS Sattelite). He didn't know or care whether or not Yokel or the EMAA troops were following him. There was no way they would catch him on foot anyway. He had to disable that bomb before those Enclave beasts could get their hands on it. (He's in for one nasty surprise when he finds out its the Crusade)
the one you crap through, lol
James checked on everyone's gear. Pretty much everyone except the two support soldiers were carrying Crusade G36C Assault Rifles, Crusade .357 Desert Eagles, and a variety of personal explosvies. The support soldiers, a heavy weapons dude and a sniper, were carrying either a missile launcher or DKS-501 Sniper Rifle, respectively. Each of the soldier's blackened power armor glared like black to a white background. It didn't matter now, however. By two more hours, it would be complete darkness in New Mexico. James loaded his G36C, and motioned for the team to move out.
Kain had to stop as he entered Area 51. This place was huge. He looked around and saw that it stretched from horizon to horizon in every direction but the one he came from. How had the US government kept this place a secret?
He had to find an administrative computer, otherwise it would take days, if not weeks, to scour this place on foot, even with his advantages over a human. He growled his frustration, and moved deeper into the base.
As Area 51 came into sight, James couldn't help but be overcome. There was too much ground to cover, and it would only be night time for several hours before they'd have to withdraw again and try tomorrow. James grabbed his binoculars, and studied the landscape. A lone figure was walking through the dust, his movement almost robotic. James motioned Evhert foward. "We're moving. That individual needs to be removed. Have Corporal Yale knock him out. No closer than half a mile." James said. Yale was the team sniper. If he couldn't hit him, no one else would have a prayer at trying to hit him at this range. Yale moved foward, placing his rifle on the rocks, while James and the team continued their trek towards Area 51.
And so it begins, yet another rivalry between my characters and the Crusade
Kain dropped as he heard the characteristic crack of a sniper's rifle. He had no time for this. He disjointed his arms and legs, and scurried, spider-like across the ground, all the while, staying out of the sniper's line of view.
++Calculating sound source distance: 0.82 km. South by Southeast.++
Kain calculated the necessary zoom and iris dilation. He drew his gauss rifle as he stepped around the corner of his cover building and fired a warning shot. It ricocheted off the rocks and destroyed the scop on the other man's rifle, just as Kain had predicted it would. Even if the fool did not heed his warning there was no way he was going to take another shot at Kain.
The strangest thing was, the man had come from the direction of the VTOL sound earlier. And yet, he was not wearing Enclave power armor. Who are these people? Kain thought as he walked away, looking for an office of some sort. It would most likely be near the centre of the base.
"Fuck!!!" James heard Yale yell, as the scope of his rifle exploded in parts. James immediatly ducked as the scrap exploded in tiny bits, showering him. James looked at Yale, who was on his back, his power armor helmet staring at James. "Erm, sir, I think he returned fire. Just a hunch." Yale said, his voice shaky. Yake had never been out-snipered before. Whoever that wastelander was, he definetly knew his ranging and firing skills. James tossed Yale an extra assault rifle and a bandolier. Yale wouldn't be using his sniper rifle any time soon. James re-organized the team into a loose formation, and began the tek down the upper ridge and towards the closest part of the chain-link fence, hwere Evhert automatically began a systematic cutting of the fence.
Kain was fuming. He had just run into another one of those fools who had been fighting the EMAA earlier. He had grown sick of subduing them and locking them in transport vehicles, and had simply torn that one in half. And here came another. Unwilling to be merciful for the second time since South Dakota, he tore the man's lower jaw off and snapped his neck.
He walked into yet another building. Failure to find an office again. But in a way, this was better. He had found a squad-level armory. He looted every 2mm bullet and microfusion cell he could carry, in both his backpack and the storage units in his limbs and torso. Then, just for the hell of it, he took a .44 Desert Eagle, and thirty cartriges of bullets for it. He had longed to once more feel the kick of a heavy pistol in his hand for so long.
Fniff1 12:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom was in the far side of the nuclear launch center. He was surprised that all the bombs fired except this one.He said to a trooper "Go turn it off.I want it to be safe while we transport it." The trooper went over to the launch center and suddenly he melted. The place was more radioactive then the glow.
Bwahahaha! Enter:The Machine!
Kain stalked further through the surprisingly intact Area 51. He spotted even more of those men, but he avoided them this time. He had found his target: the CO's office. He walked up to the door and ripped it from the hinges. It was a waste of good oak in a world where such things were hard to come by, but the ends would justify the means.
He walked up the stairs, past all the clerical computers, up to an office with "Base Commander Robertson" written on the door. This was the place. He knew that this steel door would be alarmed, so that if opened without a key, the hard drive would be wiped. He couldn't risk barging through the walls and damaging any cables, so it would have to be the doorway. But Kain didn't need a key. Bracing the side of the door that usually opened, he plunged his fingers through the doorframe on the other side of the door, and crumpled it towards the side he was holding steady against the alarm sensor. He walked through the opening he had made. Folded in from the hinge side, the door was opened without its key, and the alarm hadn't gone off.
Kain reminded himself to add a sensor to both sides of his door when he got back to his homestead in Illinois. He sat down at the terminal, and after a few seconds had hacked it. Rather than search the files and wait for this crude terminal to load, he downloaded the files to his own internal hard drive, and accessed them himself. He knew where that bomb was.
Smith followed kain into the co's office and saw that the data was gone he set of in persuit of kain.the emaa needed that nuke up ahead kain was pasing a conventional bomb store "dont you want to disarm those as well robot"he issued an order to the techys "take this place apart the bombs heer could be very usefull"
"I will give you one last time to leave, little man. I strongly advise that you take it." Kain growled. His human brain was beginning to get peeved, and it was overriding his mechanical persona.
++Loading Combat Protocol Omega++
Kain drew his pistol, one of the EMAA soldiers spotted it, and opened fire. The bullets caught Kain in the back, dropping him, as he was caught off guard. Then, as the soldiers watched in horror, he stood back up and turned to face them.
"That was a mistake." He growled. The shooter went down to a .44 shot to the head, and another soldier fell, and another. Smith stared in awe. This machine was terminating (hehehe, I made a funny) his entire unit. They managed to get the odd shot off, but they were firing wild. Not one of them hit.
"Now do you comprehend the gravity of your situation?" Kain snarled into Smith's face, as his unit lay dead, wounded and/or dying around him. "You may follow if you want, but if you so much as think of putting a foot wrong, I will end you."
James made the all clear signal, and they entered the base. Already supplied with data that would lead them to the nuke's probable location, they avoided any contact with enemy soldiers, until they came to the entrance of the next area, where three troopers were on guard. James made a whirl of hand motions, and three silenced rifles burped 5.56 rounds, dropping the soldiers quitely. James ordered half of his team to remove the bodies and police the weapons, while he grabbed the key card from one of the dead bodies himself. James gave a hand motioe to stock up at the door, and with his rifle raised, entered the key card, the door sliding open. Several silenced burps served to neutralize the startled men directly in front of them, and James again motioned for his men to police both the bodies and weapons. James began to close the door behind him when he heard several high caliber rounds go off, followed by shrieks and screams. He thought he heard the words "mistake" and "gravity, nut his power armor was probably just making him hear things. Next task, head towards the CO's office. The terminal there would confirm the information that James already had.
He doesn't have a lie detector, bluff away
Kain performed a mercy blow to a suffering EMAA soldier, a bullet between the eyes. He turned and walked away, leaving Smith behind to stare at his all but obliterated squad. He heard the pop of silenced weapons further back through the facility, he considered investigating.
++ Initiating Probability Assessment Program Theta-Xb ++
He decided on investigating. If an enemy was careful enough to silence their weapons, then they didn't have the numbers of the EMAA, or the other group, whoever they were. He stalked off in the direction of the noises.
++ Distance Estimation: 600 metres ++
The extra time this would take would be worth removing a variable from the equation.
Raziel Ichammad hissed at these intruders, these outsiders. The dark skinned, almost satanic, figure merged back into the darkness of his chambers. His eyes, so accustomed to the dark, saw the pitch black room as if it was day. He leaned over a table, grabbing the materials residing on top of it. With that he left his chamber, almost instinctively grabbing his tribal scythe. He preferred not to use it in battle, using his sickle and armblades instead. Raziel stepped into the great Cathedral where his people dwelled, catching the attention of his brothers and sisters. The "Cathedral" was their home, and inside of it was their souls. The great bomb, the ender of worlds, the bringer of destruction, all of it was in the possession of Raziel. He smiled, his pointed teeth protruding from his mouth. His body, covered in various armor and markings, almost shimmered as it was stained with blood. His face, covered from chin to forehead with wrappings along with a gasmask, was an enigma to his followers. And last was his arms, both of them covered in wrappings. Then, strapped to them tightly, were crude blades. In a harsh voice, he spoke to his people:
"Children," the entire population of the chamber turned, "Out sanctuary has been intruded! Outsiders wish to take what has become so holy to us, they wish to take our salvation!" Raziel pointed to the bomb with a dirty finger. The bomb stood erected in a silo, around it was the offerings of Raziel's people, many of which were skulls, organs, and other various body parts. Raziel clamped together his armblades, reestablishing the attention of his followers.
"We must fight children, we must protect what is rightfully ours!" Raziel grinned under his wraps, "Prepare your tools of death, there's gonna be a slaughter."
With that, his people went into an uproar, unable to be heard from the surface. This bomb belonged to them.
Wow, the illegitimate child of Frank Horrigan and The Children of the Cathedral
Kain was fast approaching the building he had heard the silenced gunfire from. Holding his arms up in front of his head, he charged into the wall of the building, ploughing through. His suit was hanging off him in tatters now, between the EMAA and that charge through the wall.
He looked around. The shooters had moved on already. The shootees, however, were scattered all over the room, taken by surprise, none of them had managed to pull a gun on their assailants. Impressive. One crawled from under a table. He had been shot in the gut, and his life was rapidly expiring.
"H...He-e...Help...me..." The man begged feebly. Kain didn't bother wasting the bullet. He stamped down on the man's head, crushing it like an over-ripe fruit. He turned, searching for heat signatures among the buildings. None. Whoever had killed these men, they were professionals. This would not be as easy as the gunfight with the EMAA.
James continued his silent trek. So far, he'd heard random encounters of scattered small arms fire and blades, but GREEN Team had managed to avoid all unwanted contact with the enemy. James put his hand by his power armor helmet and motioned for Kendall, the team's resident stealth guru, foward. "Fifteen feet. Two tangos." James whispered. Kndall nodded, and crept foward, hiding behind several crates. Waiting for the first soldier to move, he brought his trench knife foward, slashing at the man's unprotected throat. The man collapsed, grasping at his neck. Kendall immediatly targeted the next soldier, putting his arms into position and breaking his neck, the man falling over instantaneously. Kendall motioned all clear, and the men in black moved closer to their objective once again. Behind him, Yale and Evhert began to clear the bodies.
Kain walked through yet another empty building. He knew he should be looking for the bomb, but he didn't like the idea of a team of strange men in power armor running loose around a heavily equipped air force base. He stopped and sat down in the room and looked around. His eyes settled on a set of black combat fatigues. He scratched his head, and switched clothes.
He walked out of the building, his Deagle held in his hands. He moved quickly from building to building, and then spotted something even more disturbing than a power armored soldier. A hunchbacked creature that could only be described as a thing. He didn't have to chase it. He jumped between their positions, powerful mechanical legs easily clearing the distance. He crushed the thing with every ounce of his 540lbs frame, killing it on impact.
He felt the sweat soak into his head wraps, he heard the faint breaths of his brothers, and his muscles strained. Raziel hung upside down on the tall ceiling, using notched blades to stay in place. They were waiting, waiting for prey. He and his two most trusted comrades scoured the facility, their facility. The rest stayed behind, hidden within the walls of their home, waiting for unknowing prey to linger into their own death. Raziel's body tensed, a sound echoed about the concrete walls, an all too familiar sound. It was the sound of rifles. Razeil turned to one of his comrades, Sakked Malic.
"Brother Sakked, do hear the sounds? It is the sound of the mechanical death, the very weapon that brought death to a once peaceful world." Sakked's mouth drooled a little, that too bearing his pointed teeth. Raziel saw the man smile. "Yes Brother, these weapons will be ours, along with the flesh of the owners." Raziel's tongue flung out of a crooked jaw, revealing it's unnaturally long nature.
At this point, James was getting alittle too nervous and relaxed at the same time. He was relieved that the operation had gone without a hitch so far, except for Yale's sniper incident. However, he was extremely nervous that they would encounter the actual individual that had fought off Yale in the first place. Unlike his asshole brother, James actually took most enemies seriously, whether they derserved it or not. He motioned Evhert foward. "What's our status time wise?" James asked. "We've still got another five hours to secure the thermonuclear device, sir. We're making better progress than we expected. If this thing works, we may have time left over." Evhert said. James nodded, and re-assembled the team after their short respite from active ifiltration. James motioned his hand signal once again, and the team moved and stocked up against the next door. James slowly punched the entry key he had pilfered from the dead guards, and opened the door, his rifle poking out from the side. Satisified that the immediate vicinity was clear, James slowly stepped inside. He had just entered Launch Control. Or so he figured, since his radiation counter was spiking. "Evhert, get Jansen up here." Evhert complied. Jansen was the resident techie and radiation specialist. The man trekked foward, crouched, and slowly removed his power armor, placing an Adv. Rad suit on. He stepped foward, and jumped back, crawling towards James. "It's way too hot in there. My own counter is off the charts, practically 2000+ RADS per sec. No way we're going to get the nuke's silo open from the reactor. However, if our information is correct, maybe we should pay a visit to the CO room. We bypassed it on the way here." Jansen said, and proceeded to replace his black power armor back on. Dammit, James thought. No way he'd access the nuke from there. Even worse were the numerous figures moving about in the nuke's chamber,which could be seen through observation windows. They were all wearing dark colored clothing, and carried blades in their hands. Around the nuke, scattered body parts remained.
Kain moved back toward the CO's office. He needed somewhere to sit down and consider his options, and the one place he had actually gained a smidgeon of information seemed as good a place to sit down as any. He saw black armored figures move in through the doors. At last, he had found his greatest competitors.
He moved in slowly and quietly, closing the door as they disappeared further into the building. He silently shifted one of the nearer terminal supercomputers across the door. There were no windows in the building. Nodbody gets out alive. He thought to himself.
"Shh... did you hear that?!" Yale said, his helmet scanning the room nervously. "It's nothing, Yale. Keep your scared shit to yourself." Kendall said, normally quiet. "Every pipe down. We've still got a mission to complete here. We'll secure any data we need, and hightail through this building and back towards Launch Control." James said. Although he didn't like admitting it, James had heard the scratching sounds of a large object moving against something. It had sounded eery, like something was following them. James promptly forgot about it. He didn't have time for useless chit chat and non-sense. "Let's move. Kendall, your on point. Yale bring up the rear. Jansen, Evhert, you guys watch our sides, and keep watching the adjacent rooms. Campbell, Smithers, your with me behind Kendall." James said, keeping his voice low.
taking control of an NPC for this paragraph
Yale was really on edge. He was scared so much he could piss out of his ears and not realize it. Yale's hands were shaking, and his aim was off. Yale was a sniper by trade, and wasn;'t used to close-quarters fighting in the dark. Yale kept his G36C in a tight grasp, watching the back, darkness comsuming his visor. Then he saw it. A shadow, Yale called out to James. "Hey, guys!!! You may want to see this!!!" Yale whispered, forgeting the cardinal rule of stayiing quiet. James, wanting to be completely silent, ignored the comment, and continued on. Yake broke another cardinal rule, and stepped away from the group. He felt like he was in that pre-war movie Aliens. Yale's rifle swung back and forth, his eyes squinting. Nothing. Relieved, Yale sprinted back towards the group, keeping an ever-cautious eye on the back of the group.
They came to a door at the end of a hallway. This was the CO's personal office. The steel door was folded in half, from the hinges, courtesy of Kain's earlier visit. That meant that something had both known that the door was alarmed, and knew a way to circumvent it.
"Christ, what the hell can do that?" Yale said, his voice shaking.
--
Kain moved quietly up the stairs after them. The jittery one was looking every which way, putting his partners on edge, but also making it exceedingly difficult for Kain to sneak up on them. Not that he really had to. Not when he was this close.
Yale's eyes were jittering every which way. Where the hell is he? Jesus! Yale's eyes grew as he continued to freak out. "Shit, shit ,shit, dude! We gotta get out of here!" Yale yelled to his comrades. James walked towards him, grabbing him by the armored collar. "You listen here, Yale, and you listen good. There is nothing out there. Nothing. Look. It is complete darkness in here. If there was something it would have been caught by Kendall's vision by now. To prove my point, I'll walk out there." James said, pushing away Yale. He walked eerily close to Kain, and turned back towards the crew. "Yale, there is nothing fucking here!!!" James yelled, and fired off his rifle into the cieling, illuminating Kain behind him. Yale and the rest were staring at him. Yale removed his helmet, dropping it to the floor. "Si-sir--s--sir!!!" Yale said, scared shitless. "What the fuck is it, Yale?" James said, and walked back towards him, moving against the CO door.
Kain grabbed the commander by the belt and tossed him upwards into the ceiling. He bounced back down, right into Kain's arms. Kain slammed him through the partition wall into the next office and left him there in a heap. He moved on to the others, now all of them were screaming in terror as he walked forward, unaffected by their bullets. Until one of them clipped his head. He staggered. Enough games. He burst forward, only gunfire casting lunatic shadows over the hallway as he gripped one of the men, and tore the front plating off his armor. Then he punched into the man's chest, over and over, reducing his organs to paste.
A man tried to fire a missile launcher in a vain attempt to sacrifice himself for the good of the mission. Kain didn't bother with preliminary punches or kicks, he brought a clenched fist down on the man's head, caving in his skull, and crushing his cervical spine.
Men. Men in armor. Raziel felt drool drip from his jaw as he saw these men, this fresh meat come into his territory. Sakked and Mikhail, his other brother, moved to different sides of the room, waiting to ambush these unsuspecting soldiers. Raziel heard footsteps, each one getting closer. These savages moved with such foolishness, thinking that their guns can save them. Raziel crept behind an old supply box, it's contents long forgotten. He put his ear to the cold, damp floor. One man close to Raziel, six more farther behind. I'll kill this one first, put the element of fear into their hearts... Raziel thought as he tightened his blades. It was time.
Then something happened, something Raziel for once did not expect. Another Intruder? Why do they all want our prize, my sanity? Raziel watched as this newcomer defeated the others with ease, he watched as the bullets bounced off of him. Who was this man? Was he human? Raziel hissed, he did not enjoy things that he didn't understand. It just interested him more. He gave his brothers the signal to stand down, they would remain hidden for the time being. Raziel merely observed everything play out.
"He just fucking killed Campbell and Smithers!!!" Yale screamed, and budged his way into another room, slamming the door behind him. Evhert and Kendall, saved by the man's decision to pummel Campbell and Smithers to death first, fired their weapons, in an attempt to get him away from James, who had been smashed against the wall. The shadow blurred, dissappearing into the darkness. Evhert helped James up, who brushed himself off. "Status!!!" James yelled. Kendall, Evhert, Jansen, and Yale regrouped around him. "We're fucking dead!!! He killed Campbell and beat Smithers into a blood pulp!!! Look at him!!!" Yale said, freaked out once again. James punched him in the face. "Get a grip on yourself, Yale!!! Your a fucking CRSO member!!! I swear to God I wil get you home if I have to drag your dead carcass one handed!!!" James yelled at Yale, who was deteriorating rapidly. "Evhert, grab any ammo you can scrounge off Smithers and Campbell. We are leaving as of now. That nuke is a secondary objective." James raised his rifle. Whatever that fucking whirlwind was, he was gonna pump it full of lead until it keeled over.
Kain watched as the once tight-knit unit started to unravel. All it would take was one deft cut. He jumped, crashing through the door they were hiding behind, crushing one of them beneath it. He punched through the door, crushing the soldier's skull, just to be on the safe side. Another shot clipped his head. He was getting shot so often, his body was probably starting to work harden.
He cartwheeled into the screaming man, bearing him to the ground. He lifted his body, and brought it down against the concrete floor with the dull crack of splintering bone. The whole incident lasted less than a minute. Without so much as a word, he leaped backward, crashing through the wall, again, leaving yet another set of clothes in tatters, but causing more fear in those men than he would ever have conceivably needed to. Three dead, four to go. He leaped upwards, bursting through the ceiling. Enough of the physical torture, time for a little of the psycholigical. He switched vision mode to infra red, and aimed at the three of them. He opened fire, blowing out one man's knee. He dropped like a ninepin, while the others jumped for cover. Kain scuttled around in the ceiling, to get to a position where he could see them all.
One of them tried to drag the screaming man to cover. Kain took a shot at him. He deliberately missed, and then repeated with the other man as he tried to save his comrade. He always moved, so that they couldn't fire through the ceiling and make a break for the door. Not that that would help them at all. He knew it would be killing these men, unable to help their friend, even though he was within arms reach, fired on by an unseen foe. The man their leader had called Evhert reached for him, correctly surmising that Kain's shot would miss. As he grabbed his friend to pull him, Kain fired again as he relocated, catching Evhert's hand.
"Somebody grab Jansen's medical supplies!!!" James yelled, coughing. Evhert, brushed his hand, and fired at the door way, cursing. The shadow back out once again. "Yale, fucking return fire!!!" James screamed at Yale, who was in a fetal position on the ground. "Fuck it!!! Men, we are leaving!!!" James said, and poured his clip into the doorway. James then backed up, punching in a code into a door control at the back of the room, Evhert, Kendall, and Yale running through the opening. James slammed on the controls, the door slamming shut. James then shot the panel, killing off the circuitry. "It won't take him long to get through that, whatever the fuck he is. Evhert, get Yale out of here and back to base camp. Kendall, we're going hunting." The remaining men nodded, Kendall joining up with James. Yale wouldn't budge however, despite Evhert's best efforts to move him. "Fuck it. Yale, get the hell up!!!" James yelled at the hollow shell of a man. Yale still didn't move, rocking back and forth. Behind them, the man could be heard ripping through the door. James knocked out Yale with the butt of his rifle. "Kendall, grab him. Evhert, your on point. I'll watch our rear."
Kain heard their leader order a retreat. He had broken them. There was no sense in any more killing. He stopped tearing the door apart, and moved back downstairs. He shifted the machinery away from the door. Better to leave them a clear way out than have them backed into a corner. He headed towards another building. It was time for another change of clothing.
"Jesus Christ, did you see that thing?! It was a fucking whirlwind!!!" Evhert exclaimed, rubbing both his wounded hand and knee. "He just beat the crap out of Smithers. He turned his chest and face into bloody shitty goo." Kendall said, reloading his rifle. Yale was awake now, and had calmed down slightly. James looked at them. This was a job for a battalion, not some small covert team. Judging by the enemies he'd seen, and that crazy bastard who killed Jansen, Smithers, and Campbell, they would need more than a few rifles and some grenades to secure the nuke. "Wait; did you hear that?" Kendall said, getting up from his spot on the floor and looking around. "It's not that crazy guy; something else." Kendall said. "I didn't hear it, Kendall, but I'm sure as hell gonna kill it." Evhert said, drawing his .357 Crusade Desert Eagle. Out of the darkness, at the end of the corridor, three figures emerged, followed by more. The foremost one, shrouded in a long cloak, waved his blade, and stepped back, allowing more figures to start a sprint towards them. "Aw fuck it again." Evhert said, and raised his Deagle, firing several slugs into the foremost figure, who dropped immediatly, his blade clanging to the floor. However, more of the dark figures took the dead one's place. "Evhert, grab Yale..." James' voice trailed off, as he took a firing position and began spraying bullets.
Hooded figures moved about up ahead. Nightmarish things covered in filthy bandages and robes. All of them were mutated in some way, twisted beyond belief. Possibly the most disgusting of all (Its not Raziel) had arms that hung to its knees. Those scrawny, but impossibly powerful arms ended in bladed hooks. Its eyes were covered in bandages, and it moved with a disgusting limp. Kain wanted to shudder, but his cybernetic body couldn't quite mimic the revulsion for some reason.
It was concussion from that last headshot he had suffered. He would be glitching like that for hours. He looked at the small group moving around, as if searching for something. Kain fired his laser rifle with surgical precision, putting down three of the things with a controlled burst. The others spun back towards him and started to sprint at him. This was going to be a long, unnecessarily violent night.
Fniff1 16:41, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Tom shot a mutant behind him. They were a lot around,Which wasn't surprising. The place was way too radioactive to even press the button to shut the nuke down. It wasn't surprising there were a few scampering around. He saw a man stagger though and try to get to the button. He melted. A guy was standing in shrill horror when he saw the pile of goo that was his friend.
Radiation King
Deek Harris shrugged as the sand accumulated on his visor was cleared off by the automatic wiper on the visor. Removing the customized helmet, the man ran a hand through his wind-blown gray hair and looked towards the facility. Various footprints led into the facility, several of which didn't belong to humans. What happened? the old man thought to himself, vaguely remembering a large man in a business suit tossing him hard to the ground before he blacked out.
My nuke! The old man suddenly thought as he scrambled to his feet and recovered the plasma pistol that had fallen just out of reach of his right hand. Looking at the doorway, he burst into a sprint, straining the seals and joints of the suit to their very limits. In record time, he arrived at the nuke's respective silo, with three men standing in front of the doorway that sealed off the radiation-filled pit. One man dissappeared in a pile of goo as he attempted to access the console that controlled the nuke's launch sequence. Fools didn't even pack radiation suits, Deek chided to himself as he rapidly punched in the 10-digit sequence of numbers on the keypad that would grant him access. As the doors slowly unlocked in an epic manner, Deek re-atached the modified hel;met, with its infra-red scope, night vision, Electromagnetic scanner, binoculars and flashlights, and sprinted through just as the last bolt fell away.
The second man, staring at his partner as the man also began to feel the effects of radiation poisoning, fell to pieces at a single shot from Deek's plasma pistol. Twirling the gun in a simple manner before re-strapping it to his thigh, Deek moved to the control panel and disengaged the launch sequence, which was one digit away from beginning the activation sequence and dooming the surrounding area.
"That was close," The man said as he looked to the bomb, "But this world isn't ready to die again, not just yet, old gal." He reached out and put a hand on the console. "There will be a day, but this isn't it."
Kain growled as he ripped the last mutant's arm off. Strange, these things were almost animalistic in their response to limb loss. They ignored the fact that they had lost a limb, and concentrated on the fact that they had (in some cases at least) three limbs left. Curious, Kain followed the vapour trail they left behind, by reducing the focus of his optical sensors. These things were so irradiated, they passively gave off a radiation signature. This was not good. Not good at all. Even a Glowing Ghoul had to make a conscious effort to produce a localised burst. These things seemed to sweat radiation. It was mostly alpha particles, but they also secreted a small amount of Beta and Gamma radiation. Any unprotected humans in their immediate vicinity would suffer ill effects after a few minutes. On a darker note, it also meant that there was a source of extremely high radiation levels in the area. Most likely the bomb.
==Act 2==
--Vegas adict 20:55, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
"damm it we have to get that nuke" the EMAA technomisers moved up and secured the area "sir thers a lot of radiation" smith grimaced "this compromises our mission set the charges and blow the place.
"Aw fuck..." Evhert said, as he fired his clip into another one of the hooded figures. It was disgusting. James pushed Evhert out of the way, as the figure slammed foward, propelled by speed, even if it was dead. It's blades sliced through the air, and sliced into a concrete wall, lodged into the frame. Evhert just stared at him. James helped him, shot down another hooded figure, and grabbed Kendall, who was still firing. "We need to leave!!!" James yelled. Kendall shot him a glance, and began backing up, moving in pace with the rag-tag group.
Fniff1 21:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
"oh goddammit!" Tom shot his rifle at the wall. The bullet's remnants bounced off the wall and hit the control pad. "14 seconds til launch."
"OH COME ON!" Tom cried in anger. He pulled out a grabbing hook and said "Well Good bye! Rest in pieces!" (change it 
if you want.)
Radiation King
(IF you would be so kind as to refer to my final post in page one, you would notice that Deek had disabled the launch sequence for the nuke.)
Deek stared at the man who was diving down the shaft parallel to the nuke he had owned all these years, shaking his helmeted head. Unbeknownst to Tom, he had engaged the triggers at the bottom of the shaft- and, if he touched the bottom after the 15 seconds were up, he would be shocked with something equivalent to 25,000 kilojoules of electric current.
It was at that point where Deek noticed the annoying biddlybeep, biddlybeep of his satchel-bag's built-in oxygen alarm. The sound told Deek it was time to abandon the hot-zone and head for decon because the oxygen bottles were nearly depleted, and he would have to switch out.
So, holstering his plasma pistol, Deek walked off to the side of the silo and stepped into an inconspicuous, yellow-and-black chamber, the door sealing behind him.
Kain savagely punched another mutant in the chest, driving his fist clean through it. Sleep well brother Kain thought to himself. He snapped another mutant's spine with a quick knee to the lower back. Then he saw those black armored soldiers moving away from the nuke's warehouse. At last, some good news.
Kain rushed toward the silo, running into ever greater numbers of these mutants. He struck down another one without breaking stride, punching the front half of it's head to mush. He raised a booted foot, and slammed it into the next mutant's face, and then used its head as a springboard to jump another, which went down to a well-placed diving elbow strike.
Fniff1 22:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
"1.. launch pad disabled.Have a nice day." One of the troopers said "Now what do we do?We can't escape,Tom will kill us!" Suddenly a bunch of mutants came over and started killing them. Tom was out of area 51 in a few minutes thanks to a heimaker (Makeshift helicopters) Over the base. Tom rode off into the distance.
That's me finished!
Deek had just finished replacing his oxygen tanks and was reconnecting the hoses as the decontamination program sprayed him down automatically when a mutant corpse went flying past the sealed Plexiglas window in the door. Deek couldn't help but stare at the mutated corpse; its bloated torso and stubby, clawed arms flailing desperately at the door before the scratching stopped. Suddenly more than frightened, the old Wastelander crawled farther back into the radiation chamber as he finished connecting the last of the oxygen tubes. After taking a few minutes to calm down, Deek turned on the oxygen filters and opened the door.
Again, he met with the cyborg from outside. "You!" He shouted through the helmet, "I keep telling you to stay away from here; can't you understand this place is dangerous?"
"And as I told you, relinquish the weapon, or I tear the suit and let you rot." Kain said. Again, in that calm, sociopathic way.
Kain was considerably stronger than the man, and many times quicker. Even if the man was unwilling to cooperate, Kain would have no trouble killing him. He backed him into the room.
"I understand that this place is dangerous, and that is why I must disable that weapon. I do not want to see another Great War that I can give a first hand account of. And that is what will happen if the EMAA or the men in the black armor get it. And do not ask me what the Erosion Monitoring Association of America (its the funniest, most androidy thing I could come up with on such short notice) wants with a nuke." Kain rumbled.
"I-" Deek sighed, removing his protests and putting the holstered plasma pistols on the iron catwalk floor.
"Alright, but you'll have to come over here. I'm the only person in this place that knows the disarming codes for this baby, and I'm old and tired. I can't multitask." He smirked behind the polarized mask. Even if the old gal would never see deployment (as per her purpose), at least he would be rid of the fear of living in the shadow of a 50-megaton thermonuclear ICBM.
James finally fell over exhausted. Kendall, Yale, and Evhert appeared beside him, all of them panting. "Evhert, what have we got in terms of ordnance?" James breathed. "Well, that whirlwind dude killed Campbell who had all our heavy ordnance, and smashed Smithers, who was carrying all of our explosives. We didn't have time to scrouge every thing. Except for the robot at base camp and the supplies there, the only things we have right now are the equipment we're carrying." Evhert said. James nodded. Even without heavy weaponary, they still needed to get that nuke. The Director would be all over his ass if he didn't return with it. "We're going for the nuke." James said, getting up. "What?!" Yale exclaimed. "You heard me. If you want to kill that thing Yale, you'll have your chance. It's nearing daylight now." James said, and picked up his belongings, heading for Launch Control. Behind him, the trio followed suit. James cocked his rifle. He was gonna light up that son of a bitch.
Kain walked along after the man. He had a feeling things were still going to be difficult, but at least he had an ally now.
"You disram the weapon. I'll deal with those mutants around it. How long do you think you can last in the hot zone?" Kain said.
James took a minute to radio in the whirlybirds. "Bravo, this is GREEN Team. Requesting back up at Grid Kilo Two-Four-Eight. Nothing too heavy, just the airborne that were designated our backup." James said. "Roger, GREEN. VTOL 4-7-2 will be there in just a second. We'll drop down the airborne, and return when the package is secure. 4-7-2 out." The pilot responded. Moments later, the verti-bird hovered over the dark desert, airborne descending from the back hatches. The Airbrone Templar in charge greeted him. Great. Why did they come again? James asked himself. It didn't matter however. They were the backup, in case James needed them. "Kinda early, Exemplar Thomas. Orders?" The soldier asked. "The nuke is up ahead at Launch Cotrol. I need you to watch our backs while we begin to secure the nuke. Be careful; some bastard with super powers took out half the team in less than five minutes." The airborne nodded, his camo colored power armor shifting in stance. With that, his hands snapped, and the airborne formed at attention. James motioned his hand, and the black power armored soldiers moved at point, the camoflauged airborne behind them.
"At the current rads I'm getting right now and with all the seals clamped down right," Deek looked at the read-outs on his HUD, "About twenty minutes, providing my suit doesn't get breached. You can handle it, right? You're just a guy in a business suit, and I'm wearing a Radiation Suit, and... Well, 'reckon I stand a better chance in the hot zone 'n' you."
"You underestimate me yokel. There is much more to me than meets the eye." Kain said smugly.
He looked through the plexiglass window to the silo proper. Those creatures were swarming now. Something had them riled. Kain could only hope it wasn't him.
"I will clear the room. When I call you, you may come in and disable the weapon." Kain said. He was not risking as valuable an asset as Yokel in that room, until he was sure the only thing that could kill Yokel was himself. And Kain of course.
James stepped over the dead bodies. They had just finished another set of the squealers, and James wasn't intent on stopping now. He waved the airborne to stop. "Hold this door with your life. If we're not out in twenty minutes, get out of here and have HighCommand hit the place with an airstrike." The Airborne Templar in charge nodded, and motioned for his men to position themselves. James entered Launch Control, and to his suprise, found some scientist in a rad suit. To his dismay, he also found the figure who had ambushed them. The man who was just about enter a chamber behind him, turned around, his weapon drawn. He raised his eyebrow. James, nervous, raised his own eyebrow. Kendall, Evhert, and Yale, who was once again scared shitless, stood on either side of James. "So... I'm guessing you want to de-arm the nuke as well? I hope our earlier encounter wouldn't carry misconceptions about either side's purposes..." James said, lying. He sure hoped the man bought it.
Deek sighed as he began to punch in the codes to open the door. "My name's not yokel," he said as he punched in the last digit and the doors to Launch Control slid open in their ponderously slow manner, "I'd appreciate it if you'd call me either Deacon or Deek." The old man then waved Kane through as the mutants began taking notice of the fact that there was a heavily fortified door slowly swinging open right in front of them.
"Call me when you're done clearing the area." Deek said, watching Kane as he moved towards the open door. Deek could feel the radiation from here (figuratively speaking), and even from this distance he was catching a net gain of about 2 rads per second. Deek had never bothered to hit launch control because the area was covered in copious amounts of radiation, and held steady that way. Deek knew, however, that if he wanted to get rid of the nuke, he would have to get over that little obstacle and punch the codes, or everyone here could die by a single misfiring weapon. And dying in nuclear hellfire wasn't really far up there on his "List of Things to Do", at least not today.
Kain fired his laser rifle at the approaching crowd of mutants. It was too risky touse his M72 in here. All it had to do was punch through a mutant and hit that nuke, and that would bring the Enclave right down on this air base, to pick up the pieces. And chances are, even this close, a little piece of Kain might survive. He didn't like the idea of the Enclave reverse-engineering his remains to make some kind of super soldier.
Soon, however, the mutants were in melee range, with those blades. Kain was too fast for them to land a hit, but it was disturbing that their blades cut a furrow in almost everything they hit. Then Kain noticed that they were barely marking the steel structural supports. That meant they wouldn't even take the shine off his endoskeleton. Small comfort. Then he kicked one in the gut, rupturing it's belly and breaking its spine. He followed up with a headbutt to the next one, bursting its head apart. Hesaw a steel post, once used to hold up a tall fence to prevent people from getting too close to the ICBM's on launch, and to prevent them falling through to missile storage. He picked it up with a dramatic flourish, and began to lay about himself with it, crushing, mauling and impaling anything that came near him. And yet they still came, like some unending tide of ants, biting andscratching. One would land a hit here, another would land a hit there. Kain's artificial skin was being comporomised all over his back, arms and chest, but that could be hidden. He crushed a mutant beneath his boots, and returned to swingning his makeshift staff around himself.
Philips pushed his way towards the nuke calling out to the android "i think even we shouldnt mess with a nuke we can help you disarm it"
Deek pulled out one of his plasma pistols, sighting in as the monsters continued to swarm around Kain. The rads he was collecting jsut standing still were remaining fairly constant, but he wasn't going to take the risk of being gored just yet.
He fired a pair of shots into the crowd of mutants, taking one out with a lucky shot to the head, the other one losing an arm and a portion of its torso. Deek decided now was as good a time as ever and, carefully, sprinted through the crowd of Mutants surrounding Kain, single-mindedly focusing on the Launch Control panel while calling up the deactivation codes from memory. Just barely reaching the panel and dodging a mutant attempting to slice his head off with one of its bladed arms (and killing it with a point-blank plasma shot), Deek began typing in the codes.
"Just give me five minutes, and I'll have this thing shut down! Keep holding them off!" Deek shouted through his helmet microphone, continuing the password entry process as the mutants continued their assault. Occasionally he turned back and shot a couple of the interlopers with his right-hand Plasma Pistol while continuing the process with his left, occasionally he stopped to, with both hands, heave a charging mutant over the railing and into the pit.
Kain backed up toward Deek to give him a little more cover. He really needed very little technique when it came to fighting organics. It was exhilirating, the crunch of bone, the snap of sinew, the cry of pain. His murderous Commonwealth programming was actually coming in handy! He dropped the pole, and picked up a pair of blades from a recently deceased mutant, and began laying about himself like some deranged butcher, hacking and slashing with wild abandon until the ground at his feet was so slick with blood that the mutants were literally falling over each other trying to get to him.
After what seemed like forever, Deek stamped in the last few digits of code and pushed the "Enter" button before turning back towards Kain.
"Alright, code's in!" Deek shouted. Even as he spoke, the ground behind Deek began to rumble as two massive manipulator arms descended from the cieling, shedding dust, sand and other materials as the ancient gear went to work removing the warhead and moving it away into a safe place (read as: now the good guys and bad guys will have to actually search the facility for it), leaving only an ICBM fuselage and no warhead.
"Kain! Warhead's gone!" He shouted.
"Then so are we!"Kain shouted. He picked up the elderly yokel and charged out of the building, Deek slung over his shoulder. He wasn't going to wait for him to get shredded by these abominations. Abominations? That didn't sound like Kain.
++Running Diagnostic Program Alpha++
Core overriding personality. Depleting core power. Core rebooting. Problem solved.
++--------++
Deek was hit like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of a Mack Truck, with Kain none-too-gently sweeping the elderly man over his shoulder. Along the way, with Kain leading the haphazard two-man charge out of the hot zone, past the mutants, past the soldiers, past the corpses, Deek swore he felt the helmet seal around his neck pop.
Regardless, Deek and Kain reached the desert sands in record times that a professional track runner would be jealous of. Deek flopped onto the sand, watching the Android tower over him. "... What are you?" He asked after a moment's stunned silence.
Kain told him his whole story. The yokel looked impressed. Kain sat down next to him, with a heavy sigh. Not that he was out of breath. He didn't have lungs.
"What now, Deek?" Kain said, almost expecting him to say something like: Leave 'em to kill each other
"You think you can fucking walk out with hiding that damned fucking nuke?!" James said as he appeared, his men and the airborne behind him. James fired half of his clip, causing both men to dive for cover. James kept moving foward. By this point, James' men had stopped, and taken cover. The two men didn't return fire, but drew their weapons, remaining behind cover. "You think you can fucking hide from me?" James said angrily. He was pissed off now, gone from nervous to just completely angry. He fired the rest of his assault rifle in the air, waving the weapon around. "You just messed with the wrong damn soldier, buddy!!!" James yelled out loud. The man, who had killed several of James' unit earlier, stepped up from cover. James stood across from him, dropping his expired clip into the dark dust and reloading. "You son of a bitch. Do you know how much time you've cost me? Now I have to go farther into that damned building looking for a damn warhead!!!" (lol plz dont butt rape james or nothin' make the possible duel sound cool)
Raziel cursed, this machine, this mechanical devil, was ending his brothers and sisters like they were mere twigs. He had ordered a retreat to their lower quarters, down within the silo walls. He still waited with brother Saddak until an opportunity presented itself, his life was, as much as it hurt to say it, more valuable than those of his loyal followers. They watched in demise as that metal demon slaughtered their comrades, their family, like pigs. Raziel gripped the edge of his blade as he watched the devil rip apart another one of his sisters. What kind of abomination was this man? That was enough, Raziel couldn't hide any longer. He looked to Saddak, "Brother, I must go and slay that which slaughters us, get the others to safety and protect the bomb, we cannot let it get into the hands of these monsters." Saddak understood, even if Raziel couldn't see him under his wraps. One last nod, and Raziel was off.
(I gotta go after this, just make a fair fight and make Raz run off.)
Kain ducked as a blade the size of his hand came straight at him through the darkness. A third party? Definitely, he realized as that thing he had seen crawling into the silo jumped right over the man in black to get at him. Kain swatted it in mid-air. It landed with a soft thud in the sand. Then, against all odds, it heaved itself to its feet.
"Oh hell no! This monster's mine! Get your own kill freak!" James roared at Raziel before firing. As the mutant jumped to cover in a ruined HUMV, James switched over to shooting at Kain.
Kain strode forward, weathering the hail of bullets yet again. He grabbed the barrel of James' still firing assault rifle, and pulled the weapon out of his grip.
"How many times do I have to tell you to leave the weapon be!" Kain roared, breaking the gun over his knee James headbutted him while his guard was down, stunning them both.
"So this is how you want it." Kain growled. He didn't get a chance to retaliate. Raziel jumped him from behind, bearing him to the ground, slashing at his chest and shoulders. Kain grabbed the blades on Raziel's forearms, and threw the mutant off. Then, as Raziel went for another rush, Kain grabbed his blades, and snapped the edge off them. Without looking, he kicked out at James, knocking him backwards. He threw the mutant backwards. It performed an applaudable back handspring to regain its footing on the loose sand.
Just as Kain went to move in for the kill, James fired again, knocking him off balance.
"Get back here motherfucker!" James howled as he emptied a clip on full auto into Kain's chest.
"There will be time for that once I am finished with the . . ." Kain trailed off. The mutant had disappeared.
"Well, James, it seems our reservation has been moved forward." Kain said with a mirthless smile as he turned back to the Crusader.
"Ya damn right, ya stupid bastard!!!" James roared, catching another rifle as Evhert tossed him the G36C and an ammo bandolier. James didn't even hang the bandolier over his neck; he just held it into his hand, using it like a belt-feed. "Kiss your ass good bye, brosef." James said, and unloaded the entire first clip into Kain. The android shrugged it off, and started at a sprint. James did something completely unexpected. No, he didn't charge Kain. That would be suicidal. Instead, he flicked his fingers, and the entire group of CRSO soldiers and airborne popped from cover and unloaded into Kain, sending him staggering backward. However, Kain fell to one knee, sighed, and stood back up. James yawned. "How the hell are you not dead yet?! I'm gettin' real tired of shooting you, buddy." James said, mildly annoyed.
Deek watched Kain get double-teamed by Raziel, James and the Crusade soldiers. As the rounds popped and blazed overhead, and Kain was pelted by sword and slug, Deek was helpless to assist. Even as Raziel ran off and the Crusade death squad hailed him with bullets that could have killed a lesser man (and at least a Protectron), Kain just barely slowed down.
Then he saw his chance. James had lowered his weapon for a reload and taunting spree, and his Crusade squad had stopped to watched. Crusade Spec-ops aren't so tough, Deek mused as he stood. With a few shots, he disabled or killed the SO soldiers and suddenly dove at James. The leap knocked both of them flat to the ground, sending a spidery crack straight up the center of Deek's fancy polarized helmet. "Kain, get this guy!" He shouted. "I got him!"
Kain smiled his emotionless smile and lumbered forward. He reached down and lifted James out from under Deek by the neck. He held him up with one arm, and drew his M72 Gauss Rifle with the other.
"I have always wondered what effect this has on a human body at such close range. Of course, your power armor would invalidate the test." Kain said coldly. So he removed James' helmet as his wounded soldiers were helpless to watch. Then he released the catches on the struggling man's shouder pads and bracers, ignoring the punches and kicks raining down on him. He grabbed James' Desert Eagle just as the human went to pull it from its holster, and with one hand, performed a field-strip on the weapon, and scattered the parts over the windy desert. Then he pulled off James' breastplate. Not like he had done to the other one, that would be unfair, in the event that the man survived a close range Gauss Rifle shot.
He threw James back, and in one fluid motion, rifle and cyborg became as one, Kain raised his rifle and fired into James' chest. Miraculously, it passed through, cracking his sternum in half all the way up, and bruising every organ in his chest cavity, but, at the same time, it hadn't pierced a single one. Fate, it seemed, had more use for James Thomas. Even if it was that he would lay there in the desert and die of exposure and radiation poisoning. Kain and Deek wandered back into the apparently safer confines of the base.
Kain sat down in another barracks room. That had been a strange fight. Most disturbingly, that mutant had come out of nowhere, and disappeared just as silently and suddenly. Even though he didn't like to admit it, Kain knew they would have a significant part to play in all of this.
He reloaded his M72. Shooting James like that had been unnecessarily callous. He shouldn't have done that. That was the CPU taking over again.
++Rebooting CPU. Remove controls. Delete Programming Scripting: Lines 11731671-229098453.++
Smith and the EMAA battle enginers aproached kain "we need your help we found somthing you should see"
"I won't hear any of this." Deek said, looking intently at the man in front of him through the fracture in his helmet. "Thanks to your little insurgency, I'm going to have to completely retrofit another one of the rad suits in here with my helmet gear. And do you have any idea how long it took me to get everything online on this thing?"
Deek removed his helmet and held it out to Smith, so that he could see the fragments now falling out of the crack in the helm. "I'm going to have to hook everything else up, then run diagnostics, then I'm going to have to live-test it in the warhead chamber. Now get out before I sic the security on you." As if to complement the statement, Deek moved towards the security terminal nearby and pulled out a large ledger from the small satchel on his back.
"should i care we found FEV in one of the chambers heer and thats what i want to know about"
"That's the sludge vat, dumbass. It's green because of algal growth and oh, I don't know, radioactive materials?" Deek scowled. "Or are you too dumb to check your own damn geiger counters?"
"oh rearly why were all are helmet counters showing 1-2 rads which is normal"
"Because the containers are lead-lined and have vacuum-sealed Plexiglas lids. What, you think all of the funding here just went to booze and porn? Whoever funded the renovations for this base had everything all planned out; the residual radiation, the disposal of the radioactive materials, the missile silos- everything." Deek looked towards the console again, deftly typing in a few numbers.
"But you won't be around to notice that, will you?" He said, as a pair of Mk. 5 Turrets ascended from the floo. They held their fire, for now- Deek hadn't entered the targeting parameters yet. "Now I suggest you leave, before I enter your armor's codes into the targeting computer and you get vented. This is my house, after all."
"No super mutants, so no FEV. If you and your halfwit insurgents could find it that easily, those beasts in the missile room would have no problem using it to expand their little empire to the rest of the base, at least." Kain said. "And you remeber what I did to your last squad, so please encourage the man in the doorway to put his gun away."
Kain rested his laser rifle across his knee. He didn't like the idea of killing another squad of these idiots. It wasn't their fault they thought with their testes. Nor was it their fault that their commander couldn't think at all.
"not my call it was a judicator who discovered it i have no control over them on a diferent note there is a live thermo nuke somewhere in heer that we have to disarm"
"Its disarmed. But not deactivated. Meaning, it can still be armed by anyone who wants to see this place go up in flames." Kain said. "And I suggest you encourage the Judicator to get himself an education. He sounds like a mental invalid."
Kain returned his laser rifle to the tattered holster on his back, satisfied that the EMAA weren't going to try and shoot him. This man remembered the other seven who fought him. They hadn't lasted a minute. Kain, just to cement his appearance as an unstoppable leviathan, picked up a broom and snapped it in half, then crushed each half to sawdust between his hands.
James lied in agony. Around him, his remaining soldiers killed mutants by the fucking dozens. Yale ran towards him, jamming stimpak after stimpak into his sternum. "How ya feelin', chief?" Yale said. "To be honest", James said, coughing blood up, "I'm gonna blow that fucking geezer a new one and tear the same damn hole into Mister Terminator." James said. His chest was bloodied from head to toe. He was no condition to fight. haha now its my turn James, aided by Evhert and Yale, struggled back up, and grabbed the Desert Eagle from Evhert's holster, his grip unconsistent. "Evhert...tell those damned airborne to take as many EMAA troops and mutants as captive as possible. Call in more airborne, and then mass execute these fucking homos. Kendall, your with me." James said, and started limping.
James motioned for Yale, Kendall, and Evhert to move inside. James followed, rather slow, towards Launch Cntrol. Neutralizing two EMAA soldiers, he executed both of them, headshots. "Yale, get those damned doors open. I don't care how much stupid fucking radiation there is. Shooting began outside. "The airborne must've started with the killing, Senior." Kendall said. James didn't care. He didn't have time. He was losing blood, his aim was, although still excellent, rapidly deteriorating, and he was pissed out of his mind.
Kain heard gunshots. Strange, it sounded like a few men. But more than the ones he had fought before. This was disconcerting. Very disconcerting. He stood up and pushed his way through the EMAA soldiers. He was still trying to figure out what the Erosion Monitoring Association of America were doing with guns and what they wanted with a thermonuclear weapon. Now was not the time for such distractions. Men in black and green armor. One of them spotted him. Kain cracked off a snap shot with his M72, taking the man's head clean off.
He fired again, killing another man. He fired again, another dead soldier. He looked over his shoulder at the men in the room, staring wide-eyed at him.
"What are you waiting for?" He shouted at them. Idiots. One and all. Idiots!
James ducked as two M72 shots took out a couple standard crusade troopers behind him. James returned fire, killing three EMAA troops before being forced to find cover. Across from him, Kendall eviscerated an EMAA trooper with his ripper, the miniature chainsaw slashing through flesh and bone. That was James was gonna do to Kain, if he lived long enough. James popped from cover, firing twice, both shots hitting Kain in the chest. Kain shrugged them off, shooting another standard crusade trooper. More firing could be heard outside, with the sdistinctive firing of G36Cs versus R91s. The airborne must've finished their executions, and found themselves re-engaging the EMAA. No worries. James had every confidence that the airborne could kill every single one of these hicks. What he was worried about was their number strength. James brushed the notion from his head. Rubbing his blooding power armor, James fired again, killing yet another EMAA trooper. Soon, after several minutes of firing, it was Kain, Deek, James, and a whole bunch of dead bodies, Evhert and Kendall included among them. In the corner, Yale just looked at him. "So, what's the plan chief?" Yale said, his voice drowned out by the gun-fire from the outside.
Yes, that was enough, just enough. Raziel rearmed himself with more arm blades, he cursed at the demon for dismantling his other ones, they had served him well. He was running now, retreating back to his remaining followers. Those soldiers and the Demon took the lives of so many of them, acting as if they were mindless beasts. He would show them, by the next sun their flesh would be his, no matter what the cost. One thing caught Raziel's interest, that was the presence of the Elder man, Deek. Raziel had seen him come through many of times, although he never spoke to them, he was a brother in heart. Only one other person had not shot on sight when Raziel and his people revealed themselves, and that person was long dead. But Deek was different, he kept their bomb safe, even if the man thought it to be their own. Raziel had saw him working with the mechanical devil, maybe they were working for the same cause. Still, that didn't repay the lives he took.
He continued to his chambers, they would watch for now.
Kain snarled. He slung his M72 back into the sheath on his back, and picked up a pair of Crusade G3C's. Light, well balanced. Large clip, a fine weapon. As a show of strength, he crushed the first one in half by squeezing it. He fired at James with the other one. He was impressed, this gun didn't have any problem with the dusty, sandy air. Not even a cough. Only Russian Assault rifles would have fewer problems, at leat, according to his files.
++Loading Combat Program Omega. Sub-Section B1. Power Armored Enemies - Shoot to kill++
Kain shot down the shattered piece of brickwork that was serving as admirable cover for James, keeping him pinned down as he advanced on his position. This would end here.
Yale slid him Kendall's former ripper, as Kain advanced, using Evhert and Kendall's assault rifles on James' position. James blind-fred, his clip smashing into Kain, who stumbled slightly. James jumped as his cover eventually collapsed, the brick-work's frame finally giving way. The bullets slammed into the ground, shooting the floor at James' feet. Finally, Yale charged Kain from behind, slashing at his face with his combat knife. Of course, being an android, it only served to piss off Kain off. throwing off Yale, he shoved the butt of the rifle into his face, and punched Yale, sending him flying into a wall, rendering Yale unconscious.
"What an anticlimax." Kain muttered as the man he had terrified slumped against the wall.
Kain walked toward James as he reloaded his weapon. He grabbed the frantically reloading man and once again, pulled the weapon from his grasp and broke it over his knee.
"How many of those do you have?" Kain taunted him. Kain tossed his own gun aside, and let James step back and get his ripper revved up. It was about time they treated each other civilly. Strange thought, as Kain was about to kill the man with his bare hands. They stepped toward each other, ripper and mechanical arm clashing in the setting sun. The ripper squeeled as it sheared through Kain's artificial flesh and met his hardened titanium carbide arm, and his carbon nanotube fibre bunches, its teeth shearing off in places as their damaged edges finally gave way. James wasn't done yet. He was quite the swordsman, leverage, parry, the thrust, they were all as natural to him as breathing. Even though rippers were not designed for thrusting, Kain knew for a fact that they were brutally effective at it nonetheless. His artificial skin was hanging on by a thread. He would have to reform it sometime. There were more than enough corpses here to provide the raw materials, all he had to do was calibrate his body to provide the right electrical impulses. Now was not the time for such distractions.
"I've got more than enough to shoot you down, bro!" James said, and drew his final Deagle in his free hand, shooting into Kain's seared arm, the .357 slugs slamming into the hardened titanium. It hardly made a dent. "Dammit!" James yelled, as Kain grabbed his ripper arm, squeezing a pressure point so that James dropped the ripper. Kain then forced James back. James counted the odds. He had already pumped this guy with a small army's worth of lead, and it had hardly made a scratch on him. On the other hand, James had a hole in his chest, he was losing blood, and all of his remaining backup was outside fighting the EMAA. Even worse, James only had two clips left. Think, James, think! A voice cried out in his head.
Kain walked forward, moving slowly, with the deliberate momentum and crushing force only his actuators could put on. He looked at Jamses, terrified, or at least panicking. Kain raised his fist, for the last time. This blow would crush James' skull like a rotten fruit. Then a shot caught his back. Kain staggered and turned. Yale was back up, and ready to fight. He had thelook of a madman in his eyes. He ran at Kain, and met a shot from Kain's own Desert Eagle.He fell. Kain no longer cared if the man was dead or alive. His mind was broken. He was no longer a threat.
"State your last words, James." Kain had heard the men calling him that. It seemed to scare the man that Kain knew his name. "My name is Kain Ruger. State your final words, James. I will ensure that they reach whoever you want them to reach."
James spat at his feet. "Tell Colonel Chapel how much of a bitch you were. Kiss my ass, Kain." James said, spitting at his feet. At that moment, airborne rushed the room. They spread out into a line, their G36Cs aimed at Kain. The lead one screamed at Kain. "Put your arms behind your head!!! I said fucking out your arms behind---!" The airborne soldier never finished the sentence, as Kain fired into the camo colored power armor, killing the man. The airborne immediatly opened fire, pelting Kain, who jumped for cover, wanting to avoid more bullets. Two airborne pulled James from the room, while the other provided covering fire.
"Good timing." Kain said as he stood up and brushed himself off.
++Running Damage Assessment Program Alpha++
*Endoskeleton: 100% integrity
*Ocular Sensors: 100% integrity
*Audioreceptors: 100% integrity
*Artificial Dermal Coating: 60% integrity, no permanent loss. Estimated repair time: 140 minutes. No additional material necessary.
++-----++
That was good, he wouldn't need to harvest the corpses of his fallen foes. He could probably speed up the repair process by draping the damaged artificial skin back where it was supposed to be. He began the grisly task of replacing his "skin" back on his body. He watched as the repair time dropped to under two hours. He switched out of his suit to a set of black military fatigues, to prevent any loose skin falling off.
Deek sat across the room from Kain, watching the cyborg mess around with the flaps of fake skin. "You really gotta do that right in front of me, Kain? I haven't even had lunch yet." Deek grunted as he removed the flashlights from the side of his previous helmet and carefully attached them to another one, one that had been hanging from the wall prior to the skirmish and had miraculously survived all impacts.
Once he had affixed all of the external components, he withdrew a small sottering iron from his belt-mounted toolkit and began to re-connect all of the loose wires. "And who were those guys with the black and green suits, anyways? They kept screaming something about "Crusade" or some such nonsense."
"A Crusade is a Christian Holy War. But their colours and insignia correspond to a Pre-War Airborne Regiment, according to my files. The 82nd, if I'm not wrong." Kain said as he scanned through the files on his internal computer. He could have had that helmet finished in less than ten minutes, if he let the computer take over, but Deek had insisted on doing it himself. Kain understood his reasoning. He wanted to do this himself.
Deek carefully guided the sottering iron down to one of the exposed circuitboards in the top of the helmet, guiding the wire in with the other hand. Closer, closer, closer...
A muffled hissing sound, accompanied by the scent of burnt skin, filled the air around Deek. "Oh, fuckin' a!" he shouted, waving his hand around in the air as the melted sotter burnt his finger. Quickly dunking it into a shallow bason of dirty water which had once been a drinking fountain, Deek scraped the remains of the metal off. "Ouch, ouch, ouch..." Deek quickly grabbed an adhesive bandage and burn ointment from a first aid kit on the wall, wrapped up the wound and went back to his work, finishing off the last of the circuit. At the last possible second, Deek folded a flap of loose rubber over the circuitboard and pasted it tightly into place. He then poked a button on the side of the helmet and watched the HUD flicker to life. "That's better," he muttered as he pulled the helmet back off his head.
"Alright then, Kain. Looks like we drove the crazies off and those Mutants have gone back to the disposal chambers... That leaves one faction around here." Deek sighed. "The East-Midlands American motherfuckin' Army." Deek said, with a fair note more of dislike in his voice. As kif reading the question forming in Kain's cybernetics-assisted brain, Deek spoke: "It ain't the first time the EMAA has given me shit for havin' a nuke down here; I just haven't been able to dispose of it properly because I don't want those chuckleheads gettin' a hold of it. Their vaunted ideals and twisted goals- not to mention the fact that they have thousands of cannon-fodder soldiers at their disposal- is keeping me from doing anything about them. I ain't worried about the Crusade, though, and the Mutants have left me alone as long as I can remember; so I guess as long as the warhead remains in the isolation chamber they'll keep leaving me alone."
He grinned a bit. "We have a bit of... An agreement. As long as I don't shoot them, they won't stab me until and we all have a happy life together... Until now. Those morons from the EMAA really got 'em riled, and with all of this going on... They're not really happy with the proceedings of the Crusade and the EMAA poking about inside the base, inside our home."
Thats what EMAA stood for! Kain felt slightly relieved that an army was looking for this weapon. At least that was better than what he had thought. But if they were zealots like Deek said they were, it would be a very bad idea to let them have the nuke. Kain came to a realisation.
"Deek, give me the codes. Then run as far away as you can. I'll detonate the device in six hours. We'll see what the EMAA think about the weapon when it incinerates their regional army." Kain said solemnly. If he had to die so that this weapon would not be used, then so be it. He was a man inside a machine, no more.
"Bad idea." Deek looked straight at Kain, for once not fearing the man's size, height or completely intimidating physique. "Really, really bad idea." He turned to look towards the android.
"The whole bottom of this base is honeycombed with tunnels; even if you set the nuke off at the bottom of the facility, you would bring down an area of land equal to at least the size of Rhode Island. Not to mention the collateral. If there's any way to go about gettting rid of that nuke, it'd be this."
Deek reached back into another one of his belt pouches and pulled out a large, burnt, yellowed piece of paper. He unfolded the paper into an even more massive spread and put the whole map onto the floor. "Here," Deek said, "an elevator. It leads down into an old mine-shaft that leads to a dry aquifer about ttwo hundred miles underground. They formerly used it for small-scale nuclear warhead tests." Deek was referencing the previous occupants of the base here. "We blow the nuke down there, no-one is at risk of dying. Not you, not the mutants, not me- no-one."
The sound of smooth jazz from the tape deck could just barely be heard over the roar of the AWA Behemoths as they thundered across the desert. Paragon Vladimir Sechin was really tired of watching the world go by out the window of the Behemoth he was in. Ahead of him was the AWA driver, and behind him, thirty-five AWA soldiers from the Retribution Brigade, all of varying ranks, looked at their commander's back as he looked out at the wastes. Outside of his Behemoth, two more AWA Behemoths hauled their massive bulk across the waste, while behind it, several more followed, two of which were hauling AWA Trebuchets.
Vladimir was really tired of driving. They had been driving for an incredibly long time, weeks probably. It was all because AWA High Command at Stalwart had heard of some nuke out in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the country, and they decided to send pretty much the entire Retribution Brigade out there to disable or destroy it. Good thing we're almost there, Vladimir thought as he scanned the maps once again. They had heard it was in some bunker or silo in the middle of the desert in this general area.
Finally, Vladimir saw what he was looking for. He radioed in to the commander of the Behemoth ahead.
"Paladin Brown, you see that mesa there? That's where our base camp is going to be," he said into the mike.
"Roger, sir," Paladin Brown's voice squawked out of the microphone. "I'll alert the driver and the rest of the Behemoths."
The Brigade altered course towards the mesa. Vladimir turned and addressed the soldiers on his Behemoth.
"Alright men, let's find ourselves a nuke!" Vladimir exclaimed.
Raziel removed the wrapping along his left arm, it had been hit by one of those "Crusaders". Raziel had observed them from the moment they entered the desert, without them knowing of course. They were after the bomb, probably to detonate it. Raziel had seen the videos and read the terminals inside of this facility, he being the only one of his cult with the skill of reading and writing, he knew what power the bomb held. Would they destroy their desert? Their home? Where would they go? The sun would boil their already burnt skin if their wraps were off and nobody else would accept them. They would all die without this concrete jungle, Raziel would not allow that, he had worked too hard. A sudden crackling of shots blurred his thoughts, returning him to reality. He grabbed a secondary pair of arm blades and equipped them, slightly cringing at the pain in his left arm. He looked over to Saddak, who was nursing a severe wound in his shoulder. "Brother, we must stop them. The demon is of no worry to us anymore. These soldiers are going to destroy our home, we cannot let that happen." Raziel scraped his blades together as he spoke.
"Raziel, I understand, but we must think of what remains of our people. They are tired, wounded, and desperate. We can't let them battle much longer." Saddak's voice was nothing more than concern, he spoke the truth. Raziel rubbed his chin, only feeling the wraps around it. "Saddak, gather 10 of our most skilled and healthiest brothers and take them to the upper chamber, we will speak again soon." With that Raziel walked off into the shadows, leaving Saddak with his mysterious order.
"Let's role, people!" James yelled, cocking his Desert Eagle. They had been studying the new faction's movements and numbers for an hour now. James had counted his own number strength. Him, Yale, and four airborne platoons. More than enough for any professional army. However, these boys had vehicle support, and James' own whirlybirds were being held in reserve for transport and emergency situations. Now, James had decided to try for the nuke one more time. "Do it." James said, and the missile team fired two missiles, their outlines treaking through the air. Both collided with the first armored truck, flipping it on it's side. (srry, lol). Men struggled to pull themselves from the wrecakge, helping each other out in the midst of heavy small arms fire from the airborne. Immediatly, the other trucks stopped short of the Area 51 gate, and unloaded, their troops moving to support the men wounded from the missiles.
Vladimir immediately seized control, and the AWA returned fire. Several of the Behemoths' mounted weapons were able to fire upon the Crusaders, and they did so with much gusto. The air was filled with the sound of many miniguns. AWA Knights and Sentinels drew their assault and laser rifles and began to engage, while AWA snipers fired upon the Crusaders.
A emaa sargent ran up to him "sir the crusade seem ti be fighting a group outside the gate" smith looked surprised "know anything about this kain"
Kain heard gunfire outside the gate. He leaned out the door and zoomed in as far as his eye could allow. James and his four units ++Scanning Records - Unit designation: Platoon++ were firing on yet another group of newcomers, to great effect. Apparently, the Airborne were quite the little terriers when fighting a conventional foe. So it was him alone that had caused them such difficulty in their earlier advances.
"Deek, we need to move. Another brigade of heavy forces are moving in. AWA. I know this lot. They wipe out anything that disagrees with their overblown morals. Do not misunderstand me, I admire their conviction, but their methods in solving such disagreements are somewhat uncompromising." Kain said, giving a short summary of his views on the AWA.
As Kain and Deek moved back toward the silo, Kain saw the fast mutant again. Or did he? just a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, and it was gone. With that beast's speed, it was as likely that he had seen it as not.
++Replaying visual file: 1715-6556-B15++
Yes, he had seen it. It made his skin crawl. Metaphorically, of course. His skin was artificial, it couldn't "crawl", so to speak.
The battle was not going as planned. The Crusade were much more effective than Vladimir thought that they would be, which probably meant that they were Airborne. Great. The only thing that really gave the AWA an advantage, besides Vladimir himself and the above average skills of the Retribution Brigade, was the Behemoths.
James ordered half of ht eairborne platoons to descend onto the flipped over Behemoth, where the men engaged the wounded troopers in hand to hand combat. Descending with them while the other airborne covered them from the rocks, James launched himself at another power armored soldier, and shoved his Desert Eagle into his face, firing several times and crushing the man's face in lead. However, James didn't have time to rload, as the other Behemoths trained their weapons upon the airborne near the truck. James fired back several times, and dove for cover as bullets struck the ground around his feet.
EMAA forces were rushing toward the skirmish at the gate, which was now developing into a small-scale battle. One of them spotted Kain and Deek, and made a b-line for them. Kain, expecting another offer of allegiance, raised his hands to show he was on his own mission. Then the man fired on him. Deek made it to cover and vapourized one of the men with that pistol.
Kain fired at another man, the 2mm bullet streaking toward him, and striking his eyes. His head disintegrated under the massive force the bullet applied. The other troops ran for cover. Then, the unexpected happened. An EMAA officer called the gunfight to a halt, and executed the three survivors for dissent. Brutal, but well received nonetheless, as Kain and Deek waved graciously as the man waved them on. The EMAA were not without virtue.
One of Vladimir's Glock 21s cracked three times in his hand as he shot at an important-looking Crusade soldier. The shots hit their intended target, punching three large holes through the gap in the man's armor where the breastplate met his helmet. He gurgled, a disgusting bubbling sound, and fell over. Vladimir searched his body and found the man's map data, detailing the location of both the nuke's storage facility and what looked to be the Crusade camp.
That'd do. Let's see how they take Trebuchet fire, Vladimir thought as he called an orderly retreat to the mesa. The Trebuchets had remained intact, sheltered behind the Behemoths. The AWA moved back towards the mesa as the Crusade disengaged. Next time, Vladimir thought.
Kain watched with interest as a dustcloud moved toward a mesa overlooking the base. It was the same AWA group who had fought the Airborne at the gate. They would die from exposure unless they took proper precautions. He knew that they would, but it would be interesting to see how long it took for them to run out of fresh water.
He suddenly felt very exposed up on his rooftop and so dropped back down to Deek.
"Nothing to report, Deek. The AWA are moving off, and the Airborne are holding off pursuit. They do not have the resouces to combat the AWA Behemoths." Kain said as they moved closer to the stairs that led to the storage facility..
Perhaps they would be able to strike a deal with the mutants for passage. Maybe they would see sense in destroying the warhead, but leave the missile, which, according to Deek, they worshipped. He realised the rashness of his earlier proposal in light of Deek's geographical information. He couldn't destroy the homeland of a sentient race, no matter how repulsive they were.
Deek looked at Kain again as he affixed his helmet. "Then that leaves one safe place left in the entire facility. If those EMAA pricks and the Crusade are still going after the bomb, we've got to get to the mutants. They've helped me out before, why wouldn't they now?" And he clasped the last seal in place as he started down the ladder, back into the facility. "Let's go."
As the two trekked deeper into the bowels of Area 51, the ambient radiation would fluctuate noticeably between nearly unbearable and psychotic, yet still they soldiered on until they reached the base of the ICBM where the Mutants made their home. The flashlights on Deek's helmet flickered to life as he made his way towards what he vaguely remembered as the chieftan's abode; a low, crude scrap-metal hut around which were strewn massive piles of bones and rotting flesh.
"Take it easy, Kain, they're not going to hurt us as long as we don't shoot first," Deek said, as he tentatively knocked on the front wall of the largest building and hoped there was a door there- the radiation was fine, but the stench could take weeks to get off.
Vladimir already knew what to do. They had brought a lot of water in the Behemoths, although they had less, due the Crusade's untimely capture of one. Vladimir already realized the importance of locating more water, regardless of how irradiated it would be. He sent out several scouting patrols in recon armor to locate more sources of water, then turned his attention towards the Trebuchets.
They were a beautiful piece of work, based off of the design of a pre-War weapon known as a "howitzer." They were perhaps the largest weapon Vladimir had ever seen, rivaled only by large Enclave weapons, such as their Plasma Cannons or Tanks. As long as they had shells to fire (and they did), the Trebuchets would grant the AWA the ability to unleash destruction at an impressive range. They had their drawbacks, though, which Vladimir and the Retribution Brigade had already addressed. They were able to be taken down from the air quite easily, so Vladimir had station Missile Squads around them. Also, due to the weapons' indirect fire methods, it was unable to defend itself from being flanked, so the Behemoths and AWA infantry were stationed around the Trebuchets, while AWA Sergeants-at-Arms constructed crude walls from scrap that foraging parties were already bringing back. Let's see the Crusade deal with this, he thought as he looked at the partially readied Trebuchets.
Kain looked around, flexing his hands as the mutants scurried back and forth around himself and Deek. He was glad he could tear each one of them in half if he had to. Otherwise staying down here would be extremely stressful. He found himself hoping that these creatures could live on in the Base, after all they had only attacked in defense of their home. Not that the Airborne, EMAA or AWA would understand that.
He almost lashed out at one that came too close, but stayed his hand to avoid something kicking off this far from a safe exit. The last thing Kain needed was for Deek to be eaten by these things because he got jumpy.
Saddak Abend eyed the two surface dwellers as they entered the main chamber, one of them was the demon. Raziel had told him often to not bother the old one, Deek, an order Saddak did not entirely understand. Raziel had some sort of pack with him, the conditions Saddak did not know. All he knew was not to hurt him, and he guessed that meant not hurting the demon either. He cursed at that, the demon had slaughtered many of his brothers, although he knew that they were misunderstood. Saddak rose from the perch which he watched from and descended to them. Many of his personal guard rose with him, but he waved them down. He would handle this himself. Saddak fell to the floor in front of them, startling both Deek and the Demon. He studied them for a minute, checking for weapons. Once satisfied, he looked to Deek. "Ah yes, Elder Deek, Raziel speaks well of you," He looked Deek's companion, "and you... welcome..." It burned his tongue to say that, oh how much he wanted to rip the bastard to pieces, but he restrained himself. "What brings you to our humble abode?" Under his metal face mask he smiled, licking his dry lips.
Raziel ran with the speed and accuracy of a Gazelle, his feet only lightly touching the ground. He had left Saddak in charge, he hoped that would work well. Saddak had been known for his uncontrollable temper, how he would strike at the slightest thought. He had, on many occasions, been forced to lock him up to keep him from devouring Deek. One day he would have no choice then to banish him if he kept that up. They did want people to fear them, but that was only to keep them away, not to mindlessly kill them. He shook his head, so many worries at the moment. Raziel finally reached his destination, the outer edge of the facility. From here he could see the soldiers fighting and preparing troops, all of them wanting to get their hands on Raziel's bomb. He smiled, how much would it disrupt them if their leader was assassinated? No harm in trying... Raziel thought as he readied his blades.
Kain bowed his head. He knew no form of apology could make up for the massacre he had inflicted on these people. He knew that this thing would want to tear him apart if he put a foot wrong, but Kain, unfortunately could not let it do that. If it did attack him, he would tear it limb from limb, and then kill its guards too.
He pulled the machete-like weapons he had taken from one of the mutants he had killed and laid them at the creature's feet. The least he could do was return the warrior's swords. Sentiment, Kain, that'll get you killed someday He thought to himself as he stood back up.
==Act 3==
Deek looked at the mutant. He had never been able to put a face to the boogeymen that lurked about the dark places in the facility, all he knew was that occasionally he would find an intruder sliced to ribbons and laid out on the floor in front of his bunk. Now would be the first time he had met one face-to-face. And, strangely, he wasn't afraid.
He extended a gloved hand to his mutated counterpart. "Pleasure to meet you. Now, on to business." Deek pointed at the pile of blades that Kain had brought before the man. "First off, this guy was just defending himself and me because there are a shit-load of hostile men up above on the surface fighting over your holy relic. Long story short- it would be a mutual benefit for all involved if we removed it from existance- permanently. I found a four hundred foot vertical shaft in the tunnels beneath this facility which I need to throw the warhead into in order to detonate it. It's the only way we'll ever be able to survive in this place. If we don't get rid of the warhead, look at it this way: those men will keep coming back until every last fiber of our being- all of our entire way of life- has been entirely destroyed. Do you want that?"
Saddak gasped for a moment, destroy the bomb? He leaned his head back in thought, why did they hold the bomb so dear? It was Raziel who originally announced it holy, his reasons were never said. Saddak did not know what it did, he had heard that it destroyed worlds, a power that he wouldn't mind having. This order was too heavy for him, he needed to consult Raziel. But why? Raziel had been ordering him around for years, he was always in control. No, not this time. Now Saddak was in control, and he wanted that bomb for himself. He looked up at Deek, who was still waiting for an answer. Behind his back he prepared his blade, he would kill both of them here, they would be tonight's meal, his mouth drooled. Then he swung, first he would kill Deek, then the Android. Just as his blade was about cut Deek a new neck, it stopped in mid air. Saddak looked back, mostly expecting the Android, but only to find Raziel himself, Saddak's arm in his hold. He spoke with a crackling voice, "Lower your weapon brother, you're making a bad decision." Saddak hissed, nobody would stop him, not even Raziel. He twisted out of his hold and spun around only to meet the Android's fist. Saddak fell to the ground, his consciousness fading fast.
Raziel looked to the Android, in most ways, he did Saddak a favor. Raziel was going to kill him, the android merely knocked him out. He ordered two guards to drag the limp body away, he would deal with him when he woke up. Raziel then turned towards Deek, who was in semi-shock. "Yes, do what you like, I would rather have this weapon destroyed than in the hands of those soldiers." He looked back at what remained of his people, they were growing thin. He looked back, giving the android a conceiving glace, then to Deek. "We'll hold the front lines, good luck.... brother." With a nod and a chant to his followers, they separated paths. Raziel, along with his people, were off to fight.
Kain moved along the pathway with Deek. His place was with the yokel. He should have killed that mutant. Should have punched harder and painted the walls with its meager allowance of brains. He kept his laser rifle drawn now, in case any other mutants got any bright ideas. He raised his weapon at sudden movement. He froze. Children, two of them. Odd.
They stopped at the massive doors to the storage facility. Kain looked at Deek, Shouldn't he be doing something to get these doors open? Kain thought. Deek just looked at the doors. Kain rolled his eyes and moved to the crack in the doors. He drew back his arm and lashed out, denting the steel. His hand was going to be in tatters after this, but if it meant getting further ahead of the various other factions, then so be it. He punched again and again, finally reaching the locking section. He ripped the heavy bar out of the door, displaying his immense strength, and cast it aside. Then, he heaved all his strength against one door, pushing it back along its rails, into the facility walls with the screech of tortured metal. There was nothing barring the way down this corridor, it hadn't been touched since before the War.
Deek looked, stunned, at Raziel, before he went into his pocket. "Here, take this-" But by the time he had produced the separated page from his ledger, Raziel was already gone.
Deek ran to the base of the missile, ignoring the mutants arming for battle and gripping the codebook as if it were the Bible guiding him to Heaven. He reached a terminal at the far end of the facility to find that it was, by fortune, a terminal that linked directly to the operations center of the disposal chamber. Deek smiled; today was turning in his favor. Typing in the codes to bring the warhead to the silo floor, Deek waved a pair of mutants over to his position and told them to grab a mine cart. Exchanging glances, the two mutants ran off and returned a few minutes later pushing a rusted mine-cart, just as the massive warhead swung overhead and down onto the floor of the Storage Area. Deek thanked the two mutants and looked about himself. It's going to be a long few weeks after this... Deek said to himself before calling Kain over. He watched as he typed in a few more codes and guided the warhead to a specialized train car with its own motor.
"Kain, take that mine cart and attach it to the rear of the train car with the nuke on it. If we're going to let this baby go ballistic, we're going to need to be within signal range so I can hit the transmitter and give the order to blow that thing sky high." Deek was in full battle mode now, looking at his read-outs and checking all of the seals on his radiation suit. Everything was green; he had fresh oxygen tanks and all of his seals were good, no breaches reported. Then he climbed up onto the back of the train car.
Looking over the car, he noticed that there was a small, enclosed cab nestled right below and off to the left of the warhead, making up the upper left hand corner of the rectangular car. Slipping carefully into it, he noticed that the radiation levels dropped to near-zero in the cabin. Looking over the various controls, he flicked a few dusty switches and listened as the train car whirred to life, its various orange and red hazard lights winking to life along the perimeter, lighting it up like a Christmas tree.
"Well, so much for subtlety," Deek chided as he opened the cabin and looked at the ore hopper Kain had affixed to the rear. His plan was coming together quite nicely, for a hare-brained scheme he had throught of while running through a post-nuclear labyrinth with a massive cyborg, seeking zealous mutants guarding an armed nuclear weapon. "Kain, climb into the hopper. We're moving." Waving the cyborg into the back of the hopper, Deek looked back and waved futilely at the last of the mutants arming for battle before he closed the cabin door and pushed the throttle forward.
The nuke-cart-turned-last-best-hope-for-the-mutants-and-Deek-and-his-assorted-party-members lurched forward, moving at a steady twenty-five miles per hour, slipping into the large mine tunnels specifically designed to accomodate the vehicle.
Kain sat in the ore hopper as it rattled down the tracks. They were going to pull this off. It was going to work. He looked up. No movement. He was getting paranoid. But he still couldn't shake the feeling that they were being followed.
James dove for the building entrance as artillery began smashing the area around them. Behind, Airborne troopers filed into the building after him, reloading weapons, checking gear and each other, and strangely, laughing. "He thought he could get us with fuckin' bombs?" One of the airborne remarked, brushing off his armor. James picked himself up, while two Airborne shut the door as the last men got inside. James walked towards the door where James and his now demolished team had met Kain the last time. Of course, he still had Yale. Yale. Not much good that would do. James drew his Desert Eagle, and motioned for the men to follow him in. He had a nuke to find.
Kain heard the thud of artillery above ground. To anyone else, it was drowned out by the train, but not to his audioreceptors. He switched to his M72. If it was the AWA or Airborne, he'd need the heavier firepower it offered. He checked the area through his scope. Nothing. Yet.
Vladimir knew before he gave the order to fire that Crusade troopers had already entered the bunker. Fair enough. He was still shelling their base with high-explosive and makeshift fragmentation shells. Vladimir picked a squad of about ten men, all power-armored soldiers proven in combat, and began to lead them into the bunker after the Crusade. His soldiers drew their assault rifles, laser rifles, and combat shotguns and followed Vladimir through the door.
The train thundered on through the tracks that weaved through the bedrock far below the arid New Mexico sands, Deek patiently watching the console and making damned sure nothing came loose on the train. He sincerely hoped that he wouldn't have to stop any more than he absolutely had to down below, lest he actually have to fight around a massive nuclear warhead.
Like right now.
Deek edged the train to a stop at the first set of switches, still manually operated despite the technology available to the post-war world. Jumping down from the cab, he jerked hard on the rusted lever, pulling again and again until the tracks clicked into place and the locomotive could continue on its ride. Otherwise he would have had to follow the runaround tracks back to the nuclear silo and start over again...
Refusing to think that he would get lost in these tunnels, Deek jumped back into the train's cabin and edged it forward.
The trip to the mineshafts was relatively uneventful, until James and the men started to encounter more numbers of the mutations. The leade Airborne soldier, Sergeant Gates, really hated those things. "Fuckin' mutants!" James could hear Gates remark, and watched as Gates, a rather large, muscular man, pick up a charging mutant, shove his assault rifle into the mutation's disgusting mouth, and blow it's wrapped head apart, blood and brains spewing everywhere. "Great! More guts on my armor!" another Airborne said, this one Airborne Templar Peterson. Peterson, brushing off the severed organs, cocked his G36C once again, looking at James. "Permission to fuck up these fuckers, sir?" Peterson said. James nodded. "You heard em', boys. 1st Platoon on me!" Peterson said. Gates remained near James. "I may be one crazy son a bitch, sir, but Peterson is asking for a fuckin' death wish." Gates said. "Whatever. Peterson is an airborne; cocky, crazy, and a great shot." James said in reply, and followed Peterson's lead. However, the men immediatly seeked cover as they were fired upon from behind, about an over-sized squad's worth. The lead man quickly noted James as the point man, noticing his armor color, and fired at James, who ducked for cover at the sight of lasers rushing his way. "These pretty boys can actually shoot!" Peterson remarked.
Vladimir was pissed off now. "Pretty boys?" he roared over AWA gunfire. "We'll see who's pretty when your blood's painting red stripes over your multi-colored, color-coordinated armor!"
With this, he fired off a quick burst from his G3A3 assault rifle. The shots hammered into one of the Crusaders, dropping him as the bullets punched through the armor gap in his left armpit. Vladimir sprinted as Crusader fire filled the space where he once stood, his enhanced armor giving his feet wings. One Crusader who got too far from the pack was toast. Vladimir slammed the butt of his gun into the man's neck, collapsing his throat.
"Get the fuck away from my men!" James roared, and slammed his body weight into Vladimir, smashing him to the ground. Immediatly, Vlad flogged James across the face, forcing him back. James staggered alittle, and fired his Deagle, a round hitting Vlad in the shoulder. Vlad cried out in anger, and lunged for James, who side-stepped, allowing Vlad to over extend himself. "That's right, pretty boy!!!" James yelled as he once again dove for cover. Behind him, Gates fired twice, dropping two of the ten enemy soldiers, the others returning fire and forcing Gates to seek cover.
Gunfire. Kain knew he heard gunfire that time. He jumped onto the locomotive, careful not to go anywhere near the warhead.
"There's gunfire back in the main chamber. I'll drop off here and mop up anything that gets past Raziel and his flock." Kain said. Before Deek could say a word, Kain jumped off the locomotive and sprinted back up the tunnel, his mechanical legs carrying him faster than any human could run.
If James and the Airborne wanted that weapon, Kain would be standing right between them and their prize. Nothing would get past him. He had to succeed.
Damn, that sucker was fast, Vladimir thought. He had never been so easily outfought before. Now it's personal.
Vladimir slid into cover behind a wall, then turned around the corner and shot a Crusader in the back of his knee. The man fell and staggered. The Retribution Brigade knew what he was going to do. They opened fire, keeping the Crusaders pinned and forcing them to watch to people who piss off an AWA Paragon.
Vladimir easily caught up to the hapless Crusader as he desperately tried to crawl away. Vladimir didn't bother wasting 5.56 ammo on him. Instead, he pulled out his Glock 21, pointed the business end at the Crusader's head, and pulled the trigger. The "extreme curbstomp," as Paladin Brown once called it, punched through the Crusader's head, then bounced away when it collided with the now-slick floor. The floor was coated with blood, bone particles, and bits of brain matter. Vladimir hastened back to his men, running backwards while firing his assault rifle, catching Crusaders as they popped up to try and return fire. They weren't going anywhere until Vladimir dealt with their commander, and that wouldn't be pretty.
Raziel cut another soldier's neck. The man gargled for a moment, then collapsed to the floor. Raziel looked around, these soldiers were fighting themselves, he chuckled. At this rate, Raziel and his men would only have to kill a small few. He called his brothers back to a large hallway connecting the chamber the soldiers fought in and the way to the mine shafts. There was no use getting his people killed while these fools killed themselves, he would wait. He would wait for the victor to make their way into his trap.
Ho-lee shit... This could be a problem. Deek stood staring at a collapse that had cut off the main shaft from the direct route to the pit, leaving only one other route. And, of course, with Kain gone and Deek physically incapable of clearing the rubble, it became the only choice.
Deek leapt back into the cabin of the locomotive and backed the large vehicle, inch by inch, back to the three-way intersection he had just passed, the one where the sounds of gunfire and shouting echoed all the way from the silo's base. He caught the mutants coming through one of the side passages while he was switching the tracks and headed them off.
"Raziel!" He shouted. "We've got a problem. Main path's been cut off; I'm going to have to loop around using the tributaries, and Kain's gone off on his own. Can you check the path ahead while I move the locomotive?"
Without waiting for an answer, Deek slowly shifted the final inches of the track into place and moved the train off into the secondary path, that twisting, looping path that led to the pit in several roundabout manners. No doubt it would be a tight squeeze, but it would be everyone's only hope...
The Crusade were a lot more deadly, even with lesser numbers. Vladimir silently cursed as a Sentinel next to him dropped, punctured by those odd Crusade guns that tore rifts through his men earlier.
The shit just hit the fan. Odd, black cloaked figures appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and attacked both the Crusaders and the AWA soldiers. Their odd-looking swords dropped two AWA soldiers before Vladimir could retaliate. He pulled the trigger on his Glock 21 with one hand while drawing his tanto with the other. The first mutant that moved its miserable body in his general direction got a face full of .44 rounds. That, of course, didn't stop them. Vladimir dropped two more before he had to enter close-quarter combat. He moved his tanto with quick, precise movements, slashing and stabbing in a dance of death with a tempo of about 188. By this time, he and two other AWA soldiers were left. Time to go and get reinforcements.
The fighting died down, with Vlad and his remaining pair of soldiers withdrawing from the room, and the mutants slightly less numerous. James fired at the lead mutant, which appeared much more intimidating than the others. The rounds missed, purposely; it only served for the creature to back off. After the last of the mutants were dead, James counted his numbers. Pretty much half of 1st Platoon was dead, and there were scattered wounded in each of the different squads. Not too bad, concerning that they had been attacked from both sides. James breathed deeply for a moment. He sure needed a drink
The Crusade had superior numbers, so Vladimir decided to beef it up a bit. He grabbed a new squad, consisting of many infantrymen, grenadiers, pyrotechnicians, marksmen, laser troopers, Knight Hospitallers, even a couple heavy assault troopers. Almost all of these fighters were Templars, and most of them were at least knight rank. Next time I meet that Crusade commander, Vladimir thought, he's gonna dance before he dies!
Kain listened closely. He heard the gunfire die down. Either the groups up in the main chamber were done, and moving towards him, or they were retreating to try again later. That didn't seem like something the 82nd would do. And if the AWA did retreat, it would be to gather more soldiers for another push.
He moved to the side of the tunnel, taking cover behind some fallen rubble. He was so quiet, and so still, that he almost seemed to blend in with the stone around him, especially now that he had gotten rid of his business suit and replaced it with black military fatigues back up in the storerooms above. He could kill plenty from here before they found where he was.
Vladimir's massive war party re-entered the bunker. The Crusaders had already scarpered off, and Vladimir had no idea where they went. After a quick scouting run revealed the location of the bomb, he and the AWA troopers went off that way.
Raziel grinned as he saw soldier's approaching, finally some combat, Raziel thought as he tightened the straps around his arms. He looked over to Mikhail, the man was testing the sharpness on his spear. He was one of few that used any weapon other than arm blades. They were all in position, ready to strike down on the naive soldiers. He heard their footsteps coming closer, each one making more then enough noise with that armor. Now he could hear them silently talking and whispering to each other, he could even hear their breaths. They were below him now, on Raziel's mark his people would slaughter them. "3, 2, 1, MARK!" Raziel said under his breath, excluding the last word. With that a reign of radiated warriors lashed out onto the unsuspecting men.
The battle lasted for over 10 minutes, the floor littered with soldiers and mutants alike. A group of the soldiers had ran off, retreated to a safer location. Raziel ordered his men to fall back closer to the bomb, the soldiers will think that they had just went back to their chambers. They would be wrong.
The EMAA men had been hiding with there stealth boys active following the Android.As the mutants atacked the crusade.smith sighed."disengage stealth boys and destroy the mutants" the mutants were cut down but one of the EMAA troupers was holding a mutant to gunpoint.the man called out "this one seems to be the leader sir" smith walked over and punched the mutant in the gut."tell me everything now"
valic, these men are trained professionals, they wont retreat to mutants. i mean seriously, they were trained in mind to kill mutants, lol
"How many did we lose, Gates?" James yelled. "We lost Peterson and about ten other guys. We've still got pretty much 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Platoon ready and at combat effectiveness. The mutants... well, we beat the fuck out of em', to put it bluntly." Gates yelled. James motioned for the men to stop, and move foward again. "Let's roll!" James roared, and the men surged foward again. James took a few minutes to stop another damned mutant charge, and grabbed the lone straggler. "You fucking prick..." James said, and put a bullet in his face. James had noticed the EMAA soldiers behind them, but there had almost been a temporary truce between them since the AWA had arrived. Of course, that truce was basically to not shoot back and they wouldn't shoot back either. James reloaded, and surged foward again, stepping over the mutant corpses.
Kain switched to IR vision. It would be more useful in the dark. Rolling his eyes at their naivety, and general incompetence, he spotted a group of cloaked AWA soldiers. Trying stealth. And failing. Kain opened fire, his M72 taking a brutal toll on the men. One managed to retreat to cover an return fire. A token gesture, nothing more.
Kain fired as the man reached over the rock to blind-fire again. The bullet took the poor unfortunate's hand clean off at the wrist. Rather than expend more ammunition on him, Kain sprinted across the tunnel, jumped the man's cover, and landed all 540lbs of himself on the man, breaking his neck.
"Thinking things through! Thats why I've been around since the 22nd century, you fucking vegetable!" Kain said to the corpse. He kicked it out of frustration at these people's lack of common sense. Running around an irradiated desert looking for a hydrogen bomb. Not one of this lot were suitable to lead mankind into the future.
Raziel rose from the ground, looking up at the Android as he took the soldiers out with ease. That man held too much power, way too much power. He quickly brushed himself off, he would have to replace these wraps later for they were soaked in blood, both his and theirs. He truly looked terrifying, much more than he ever wanted to be. What had he become? Raziel's thoughts were interrupted by more gunfire, he hissed as a round nicked his left arm, causing a small gash. Raziel darted to cover, he was at a disadvantage at most. They had ranged weapons, capable of killing in a matter of seconds. All Raziel had was his blades made of bone and steel, maybe he needed to get with the times. Again he was fired upon, apparently those soldiers had grown quite a grudge against him. He chuckled a bit, then went back to the shadows. He watched as the Android fought off the entire squad by himself, Raziel felt guilty at most for not aiding him.
He jumped down behind the "Crusade" soldiers, all of them too busy with Raziel's unlikely ally. He saw another brother at their feet, it's face blown off. He recognized this one, it was Mikhail. Raziel gasped as he looked at Mikhail's gruesome corpse, no, he didn't deserve this. Raziel burst from the shadows, catching the attention of two soldiers. He quickly unsheathed a fury of throwing knives from his person, sending three to each soldier. The first soldier was caught off-guard, allowing the knives to puncture the unarmored sections of his body. The man spun around firing his weapon, then fell to the ground. The second soldier received one knife to his midsection, slicing into his stomach. The other two knives bounced off of his armor. The man regained his sensed and fired at Raziel, but it was too late. Raziel slid underneath him and rose quickly, slicing into the unarmored skin under his helmet. He gurgled for a moment, then fell as well. The whole confrontation lasted but 8 seconds, long enough to get the other soldier's attentions though. By the time they looked back, Raziel was gone.
Vladimir swore. Those goddamn mutants just would not give up. They were taking a heavy toll on his men, but they were not the worst. Something big was lumbering around in this god-forsaken bunker. Whatever this thing was, it was either exceptionally large, or exceptionally heavy, and it packed firepower that Vladimir could only dream of.
"Retribution Brigade," Vladimir called out, "do not get separated from the group. Something big is out there, and it'll eat you for breakfast unless you get support." Tell it like it is, right? No sense in blowing sunshine up their asses.
Another mutant charge came out of the darkness. They were unlucky, though. Vladimir's motion tracker on his HUD caught them. He alerted the AWA to their presence in the best way possible, by spraying G3A3 fire into their putrid bodies. The unluckiest one, though, had to be the one that got close. Without even thinking, Vladimir whipped his fingertips across its throat at an incredibly high speed. The lightening-fast strike collapsed the mutant's throat tissue. It gurgled and fell. Vladimir looked down at body. He removed the wrappings around its head, and was disgusted to see a skinless human face staring back at him. That wasn't a pleasant experience.
Deek watched as the EMAA soldiers crept, completely unaware, past the downbound Nuke Cart which was easily moving slow enough for a person at a slow jog to catch up to, to not even attempt to jump aboard. Instead, they attempted (and failed) to capture his friend Raziel, only managing to pick up a falling Mutant corpse that strongly resembled his friend.
Deek couldn't help but chuckle at their ineptitude.
He opened up an intercom channel with Kain, who had managed to tune into Deek's closed-band radio system. "Kain," He said, "I've just had to take a detour from the main path; add five minutes of time to the counter for arrival to the pit. Be ready to move and pull me out when you're ready." Then the train twisted downward onto another level of the mine system and slowly faded out of radio range.
Touche, Valic. But we'll see how well those blades serve you in the long run.
"Dammit to hell!" James said, and pushed himself up from cover. He was pissed. "I am fucking tired and fed up of all these damned muties!" James snarled, and drew his Desert Eagle, firing three times, each shot hitting a different mutant. Finally, after his men had all followed his lead in unwisely engaging the mutants on equal terms in close range, James spotted what to looked to be the leader, his head wraps swirling and his blades bloodied with Peterson's intestines. "Hey you fucker! Get over here!" James roared, and pushed aside a mutant, his handgun breaking the mutie's jaw and neck with incredible force. The lead mutant retreated into the darkness. "Airborne, on me!" James yelled, and the Airborne disengaged as fast as possible. "Mother fucker!" James yelled, and fired into the darkened areas. James turned as it lunged at him, blades drawn. James forced the first blade aside, but winced in pain as the second one knicked the joint between his shoulder armor and arm armor. "Dammit!" James roared again, and fired twice, narrowly missing the mutant.
Vladimir heard shooting somewhere far off to his left. That's probably where the Crusade are, he thought. That's good.
Vladimir was surprised. This bunker wasn't only storage for a nuke. The AWA had discovered poisonous and soft-point bullets in mass quantities in a large armory. Vladimir switched out his regular 5.56 ammo, all of it, for the soft point bullets, as well as grabbing two clips each of .44 poisonous and soft-point. Several other AWA soldiers had the intelligence to do the same. Vladimir decided that the ammo was too valuable to keep in the bunker, so he tasked a group of Templar Knights and Paladins to head back to base with the rest of the valuable ammo.
As the remainder of the squad approached the bomb's storage chamber, Vladimir saw something in his motion visor. It was a little bigger than a man, clad in black armor, and was armed with some kind of very powerful pre-War weapon. Vladimir knew without a doubt that this was his big creature. Vladimir opened fire, spraying the thing with soft-point 5.56 ammo.
Raziel cursed, how the fuck did they see him? The damn leader of their group launched a bullet into his right shoulder, and another into his back. Each step stung Raziel, even more considering he was sprinting. They would follow him, he was leaving a trail of blood. Raziel glanced back, they were right on his trail. They were dead set on killing him, never a good thing. Raziel looked ahead, his vision much more accustomed to the shadows, and was able spot the old maintenance corridors. His 89 years of survival, training, and experience kicked in. Raziel ran up along the wall to his side, running at an extreme angle now. His balance, although amazing, was not perfect. He jumped onto another wall, this time leaping again from that one strait into the Crusaders. The soldiers seemed shocked, but only for a moment. Nearly a half-second later their instincts kicked in, allowing them to fire rabidly at Raziel. He yelled as shots hit his body, most of them hitting his chest. He felt one whiz by his hear, most definably cutting a piece out of it. He landed onto the shoulders of one soldier, knocking him to the ground. The man's heavy armor scraped against the tile floors. Raziel's blades sliced the man like a tornado, most likely killing him. Raziel didn't know if he did kill him. With that he darted off, bullets flying past him.
Raziel knew where he was heading, it was the silo. The silo consisted of a nearly endless tunnel into the earth, at the bottom was Raziel's praised bomb. The soldier's still followed him, their determination frightened Raziel, they really wanted to kill him. He reached the rail, now if only he could get down fast enough- Raziel gasped and gripped the railing, getting a good look downwards. It was a long drop. He looked up, it was the Crusaders. "NO! No, GOD DAMMIT!" Raziel spat as the leader came closer. His helmet was off, Raziel could see the smile on his face. "You have no idea what you're messing with! That damn bomb could end us all!" Raziel knew trying to convince the man was useless, but what other choices did he have? He was about 10 feet from Raziel, slowly examining him. He finally spoke. "You are one ugly son of a bitch," He pulled out his pistol, "You're going to fucking kill us all!" Raziel interrupted, trying to buy time. The soldier just spat. "Fuck you," He shot. Raziel gasped as the bullet went into his neck, then he flipped over the edge of the rail. Raziel was in a surreal moment, falling down a nuclear bomb silo with a bullet in his neck. At one point he remembered being "normal". What was his name then? He could barley remember, it started with R as well. Oh yes, it was Ram-
Raziel then only saw darkness.
Kain chuckled. Soft point lead. The man might as well have thrown a snowball with a rock in the middle. Kain walked through the barrage, tanking through the incoming 5.56 shots. The "Vengeance Brigade" would end down here in the dark. An ignominious end for a group of fools and hypocrites.
Drawing a combat knife, Kain decided on a show of strength, and hacked the seven inch blade clean through one soldier's neck, letting his head roll off into the silo. Another man fell, his back broken hy a hammerfist. Kain landed a Krav Maga double-palm strike on the next man, caving in his chest cavity. The last soldier was killed with a brutal kick to the head, Kain's powerful mechanical leg decapitated him and sent his head spinning off into the darkness. It bounced off down the corridor with a satisfying plink.
Only their commander now. This man was different. He seemed to be working at the very limits of what a human could do. He could redirect a few of Kain's attacks, if barely. And those whose immense force he couldn't redirect, he could dodge. This was undoubtedly his most impressive foe thus far. But he was still only human. Kain landed a quick jab that launched him across the tunnel. As the man tried to get up, Kain launched a rock about the size of a small child at him. It could have killed him, but probably didn't, given that he still gave off a slight heat signature from his chest. Kain shook his head and moved off down the tunnel.
"Damned mother fucker." James said, and turned back towards the battle, where the airborne were sitting out a duel between the AWA commander and the android, Kain. James holstered his handgun, and walked towards Gates. The entire company was just sitting behind cover watching the android and the AWA commander duke it out. "Gates," James said, "Frag Grenade." James said. Gates pulled out a frag grenade and handed it to him. Of course, by the time he had already grabbed the frag, the android had skulked off and the AWA commander was lying in a heap. "Gates, grab him. I want the entire 2nd Platoon under watch on this guy. No chances. I heard he's one of those Weeping Wipers project thingys, or something." James said. Gates nodded, and 2nd Platoon moved to secure the man, two on either side and the remainder of them taking guard postions. Of course, the airborne immediatly flew into combat positions as the AWA returned, firing and forcing the airborne back.
Smith disengaged his stealth armor and walked up to the crusaders.
"Technomiser ian smith EMAA 3rd retrival squad i dont like you but while those mutants control the nuke its a problem for both of us"
Deek looked down the slope ahead of him. He could tell by the condensation on the walls of the cavern that he was going in deeper, he was about on th esecond level of the mineshafts. That was good, Deek would only have to go for another hour, hour and fifteen minutes before he actually hit the shaft.
And then he saw Raziel fall from a balcony.
He didn't know it was Raziel, so much as guess when he felt that foreboding knot in his stomach that something had gone way wrong, so he actually slowed down the train and crawled through the hole in the ICBM sub-silo's wall, intno the pit where Raziel had fallen. Keeping one eye on the retreating, blinking form of the train, Deek picked up Raziel's limp form and, with surprising speed for such an old man, sprinted back to the train and hopped into its still open cab.
Kain pounded along the tunnel, hoping he was heading in the same direction of the locomotive. He could conceivably pound his way through the walls of the tunnels, but if they were already unstable, that could leave him buried, with no feasible means of escape. He decided on just running along. He heard the Crusade soldiers behind him, but their sounds were becoming more and more distant. He was going to get away. He hoped.
He started exerting his leg actuators to their maximum, running several times faster than a human could. He spotted the blockage Deek had mentioned earlier. He was headed the right way so far. He took the tunnel with the rails switched to it, and kept going. His fuel cells weren't even below 99%. Clearly his handler in the Commonwealth hadn't lied when he said these hydrogen cells could last up to two hundred years. Kain had guessed at closer to 120. He ran a few diagnostics on his body as he went, and replayed the visual logs of the battles so far. He discovered a few interesting things.
James, the Crusader, always dodged to the left, and talked a lot. That was useless in battle, it used up valuable air.
The AWA commander was formidable, more than a match for the conventional humans and mutants on the base.
Deek preferred to fire with his right hand and use his left as backup.
And Kain himself used little to no technique whatsoever. He seemed to just tank through attacks and use his superior abilities up close, or sit back and blast his foes from range with his M72. He had only used his laser rifle once, so far, during the battle with the mutants in the silo.
Vladimir Sechin's ears seemed blocked up, except for a distant rattling sound. His vision was blurred and fuzzy, and he seemed oddly disconnected from whatever was going on. Vladimir turned on his side to see where he was, although he moved as though he was underwater. And then it hit him.
Pain racked all of Vladimir's body. His chest felt as though a Behemoth had used it as pavement, and his shoulder was severely wounded. Vladimir hacked, and he spat up a stream of blood. Through his dazed vision, he could see an AWA knight with a minigun shooting at distant blurry forms. Vladimir slowly moved to his pack, reaching for a stimpack and some Med-X. His fumbling, rubbery fingers clumsily grabbed one, which he stabbed into his burning chest and pressed in.
That was better. Vladimir tried to draw himself to a sitting position and shoot at his enemies with his Glock 21, but he never got that far. A pair of Knight Hospitallers grabbed Vladimir and pulled him to cover, then began to perform first aid on him. He lapsed out of consciousness.
Vladimir's eyes snapped open. The continued use of Stimpacks and Med-X had healed him while he was unconscious. Vladimir hopped up. The AWA soldiers were still fending off the Crusader soldiers. Vladimir unslung his G3A3 assault rifle and opened fire. He winced as he discovered that he was not fully healed. His chest ached and his arms and shoulder still hurt. Regardless, he had to lead his men. Vladimir grabbed a Nuka Grenade from the body of a fallen AWA grenadier, primed it, and hurled it into the Crusader ranks. The resulting explosion killed enough Crusaders to convince them that sticking around was not a good idea. They made a hasty retreat.
Vladimir continued onward, tracking the large fighter. He wondered about that strange individual. How could anyone possess that much power?
Eventually, the AWA soldiers, or what was left of them, discovered railroad tracks. By now, they were fending off mutant attacks almost constantly, but Vladimir pressed onwards. He was too far in to pull out now. Up ahead, distantly, Vladimir's helmet detected non-human motion. That was probably the fighter. Vladimir ordered his soldiers to hold their position while he met with this...thing.
Vladimir stepped forward towards Kain. He moved slowly, his hands above his head.
"I am not going to fire," he called out. "Obviously, even if I did, it wouldn't do much good, would it, considering I already tried to fill you with soft-point rounds? That last attack's left me rather on the down side anyway. You're good at what you do, I'll give you that. So why don't we just sit down and talk? What do you want the nuke for?"
"My business is my own soldier. The weapon is not yours to take. You can leave or you can die." Kain roared.
Kain was in no mood to be listening to an AWA soldier. Deek needed him in the shaft, and this fool was only slowing him down. Didn't these people understand that the weapon would do more harm than good? Clearly not.Perhaps humanity was doomed to repeat its mistakes.
"Forgive me." Kain sighed.
++Loading Battle Program Alpha++
Desert Eagle in one hand, Laser Rifle in the other, Kain advanced slowly. His optics glowed red, it was a signal for allied soldiers to steer clear. All combat inhibitors were disabled, all combat systems were maxed out. His fuel cells were operating at maximum output, and processors were at maximum operating capacity.
"Nobody gets out alive." Kain growled as he gunned down the AWA soldier with the minigun. Before anyone could pick it up, Kain had taken off at a sprint and picked it up. Slamming the ammunition drum into place, Kain shook his head. He would speak to this man when his soldiers were dead. Kain's minigun spewed death into the AWA ranks.
Vladimir ordered the AWA soldiers to retreat. He didn't plan on losing all of his squad again. However, he stayed put. He needed to talk.
"AWA High Command has ordered me to acquire the weapon," he yelled over the rumble of the gun. "I assume they want to use it against the Enclave at Rhode Island or the Crusade's Jerusalem base."
He sighed, then continued. "Personally, I don't agree. This weapon is too dangerous for anyone to use it. I would prefer it was destroyed. As an AWA paragon, I can do that, as I would be upholding AWA values as I interpret them. I would prefer the weapon was destroyed, and the AWA takes its chances with the Crusade and the Enclave. Neither are invincible."
Kain tore the barrels off the minigun and then hurled it down the tunnel, and shot the last AWA soldier running from them in the head with his laser rifle.
"If you want to see the weapon destroyed, follow me." Kain said calmly. He led the man down the tunnel, ready to kill him if needs be.
Vladimir looked at this scary individual. He needed to know who or what he was and what was with him before he went any farther.
"Name's Paragon Vladimir Sechin," he said. "What's yours, and why are you such a deadly fighter? I've never fought someone who could best me in combat like you did."
"My name is Kain Ruger. I am a Commonwealth Android. My brain is human, but the rest of me is high-grade titanium hyperalloy, based on titanium carbide. My actautors are complex fibre-bunches. I can react over ten times as fast as a human, run many times faster, and I can lift heavier objects than those I have tested my strength with. With these abilities, I don't really need technique, but I have immense knowledge of martial arts stored on a hard-drive that is hardwired into my brain. I have come across only one man who has stood against me. A large man in black. With the Reaper's Scythe marked on his shoulder. When I found that he was seeking a criminal in my town, we co-operated, we parted allies. Your power nears his, I am most impressed." Kain said.
Then he indicated that they should get moving along quickly. Those fools from the 82nd could be along any minute.
Vladimir took the complement in stride, and he and Kain turned and moved farther into the bowels of the caverns.
Kain and the Paragon were picking up the pace as more gunfire erupted further up the tunnel. This was going down to the wire. He turned back and fired at a Templar running toward them. The shot passed into the man's eyes, blowing his head apart.
"I think it is best if my feet are the carriage." Kain said.He grabbed the Paragon and lifted him onto his shoulder. Then Kain accelerated again, speeding up to several times a human's maximum sprinting speed.
This was surreal. Here he was, sitting on the back of an android, in a bunker holding a nuke, being fired upon by Crusaders and his own troopers. Vladimir pulled out a Glock 21 and began shooting at Crusaders and any of his soldiers that were dumb enough to shoot at him in the first place. The Retribution Brigade is going to get a lesson in following orders once we get back to Stalwart, Vladimir thought.
Kain turned a corner and watched as the locomotive moved off down the tunnels. The enemy soldiers were closer than Kain had thought. He signalled for Vladimir to take cover, and help slow them down.
++Loading Battle Program Omega++
His most dangerous combat program. He really wished he had kept that minigun. Laser Rifle in one hand, Desert Eagle in the other, he moved out across the hallway, opening fire on anything that moved. Each burst took down another soldier, while the others screamed and ran for cover.
Silas popped out from behind cover, both Glock 21s at the ready. He opened fire upon some of the soldiers. One got too close and got a throat punch for his troubles. Mostly, Vladimir just stayed out of Kain's way.
James sweated as his throat became dry. Convinced he would never reach that nuke with the android present, James had decided that anothe rapproach was necessary. "Yale," James began, "I want the enemy positions sealed off from us. This taking way too long, as we're losing time for the extraction window." Yale nodded, and, after recovering from his ordeal back in the bunker room, ordered two missile teams to move foward The Airborne positioned themselves, aimed and fired. The rocks from the cieling collapsed, sealing off the enemy from the airborne. "That should slow them much." James remarked. That would stop them for alittle while. In the mean time, James could head deeper, while the enemy found another route. it's a race against time, muahahahaha
"Move, they're going to try another route. The locomotive can't be that far ahead of us." Kain shouted. He sprinted along the tunnel, Vladimir following. The Crusade solders hadn't seen the loco taking this tunnel, otherwise they would never have tried to find a way around. They came into view of the train just as it rounded another bend.
"Come on human. The Crusade haven't learned from history. They will repeat it. Humanity will not survive another war." Kain roared as he picked up the pace again.
This was not Vladimir's day. He had always been faster than other soldiers, and his armor made him even quicker, but this android put him to shame, and he was having trouble keeping up. His wounds made it harder, but he pushed on. He had to make it to that train.
Deek watched as a part of the tunnel around him gave way and fell to the floor. The large rocks missed the locomotive and some fell into the hoper, not even attempting to slow him down. However, a few smaller rocks pinged off the warhead, putting a few dents in its form. Not enough to cause a breach or force it to explode, but enough to make Deek nervous. Watching the window slit on the rear of the cockpit, he suddenly spotted a familiar face sprinting quikly up the tunnel parallel to him. No doubt the strobe lighting on the locomotive would catch Kain's attention, but regardless he popped open the cabin and leaned out slightly, making sure to keep Raziel steady on the seat across the cabin from him- the wounded mutant was in a bad way, but from Deek's quick inspection, he would live.
"Kain! Over here; look to your right! I'm on the other side of this tunnel wall, just see if you can get through to me!" He shouted.
Without a second thought, Kain went to work on the wall, tearing it apart with his bare hands. He had smashed his way through two feet of soft sandstone before the Paragon caught up with him. Kain powered through thehe last foot of rock with a kick, putting his leg clean through it right up to the knee. He took a few seconds to widen the gap with more kicking and punching, and then rushed through the hole, and started sprinting again to catch up with the train.
He leaped on to the cab section, quickly explaining that Vladimir was an ally, before reaching out and pulling him on board too. Apparently, people weren't as willing to bring the weapon home after all. Kain looked at the mangled false skin on his hands. It would take weeks for that to heal. Nothing but a distraction, destroying the weapon was of greater importance.
Deek looked at Kain as the android leapt onto the moving train, carting Sechin along behind him. Hearing Kain's side of the story, Deek quickly angled out onto the back of the train where everyone else was. Thank god for autopilot, He mused inwardly as the wind continued to whip past his head.
"Well then, welcome aboard Vlad." Deek said. "We're currently aboard Highball Express Number One with a payload of a 500-megaton thermonuclear warhead. We are currently crewed by an old man, an android and an unconscious mutant. Enjoy your stay and feel free to shoot anything that doesn't tickle your fancy, so long as it isn't the warhead directly behind you." He pointed towards the hopper car, currently filled with a few small boulders.
"Guest accomodations are five-star, rated as the finest in all of New Mexico, and there is room service called every ten minutes." Finishing his spiel, Deek laughed heartily.
"Always good to have another gun on board."
"Unless they are exceptionally stupid, they won't risk shooting around the weapon. Thankfully, the EMAA aren't here right now." Kain said.
The train was hurtling along the tunnel at a grand speed of ten miles per hour now that they were going downhill. This was going to be a long journey. Kain ran more diagnostics on his body and its internal systems. Everything seemed fine, except that the combat programs and lower-range battle programs seemed to have problems loading after Omega that time. But then, he had been shot in the head again in that last firefight. Concussion. At least it didn't affect his body.
Raziel awoke in a sudden dash, covering his face with his bladed arms. What happened? Last that happened was the shot to his neck, then falling, then... then nothing. He was suppose to be dead, yet here he is breathing and feeling. He still couldn't see, temporary blind from the short coma he went through. He listened around, he heard Deek's voice, then the Android, and then another voice that he couldn't identify. Raziel felt around, trying to determine where he was. It seemed to be a car or train of some sort, and then Raziel saw a peak of brightness enter his eyes. Eyesight was returning to him, slowly but surly. To his left was a mildly old man, Raziel assumed it was Deek, and then beside him was what looked like.... a soldier? Shit. Raziel put his arm around a startled Deek and crossed his blades to the conspicuous soldier. He tried to yell, but couldn't. What came out was a raspy cough that produced blood, which then caused him to start to puke. His vision got blurry, and he then fell back into his seat. This time Deek was hovering over him, trying to talk to him. Raziel only heard mumbles. He managed to get a few words out to the elderly man.
"Deeeekk....soldier....bad.....behind you." With that he weakly raised a bladed arm to the armored man silently watching them. He watched as the android walked pass the soldier, giving him a friendly nod. Raziel's expression changed from anger to confused. He shook his head as Deek poured cold water over his face, it slightly stung as it soaked into his dead skin. He stumbled back to full consciousness, his vision recovering fast. He was then able to see the scene. He was on a train with Deek, the Android, and a strange soldier that seemed to have gained their trust. Raziel recognized the man, he had seen him earlier killing off his brothers and Crusade soldiers.
"What is that soldier doing here?" Raziel's voice was horse and raspy due to the bullet wound in his neck.
"AWA Paragon Vladimir Sechin." Kain said. "He apparently doesn't approve of the AWA's aims. That or he is playing us, which will get him killed." (sorry for jumping the gun, but I want to keep this roll going)
Kain sat down near the cab, wary of anything in the darkness. Up on this well-lit locomotive, they were sitting ducks, whereas only Kain and Vladimir could see out into the darkness, and Vlad only because of his helmet. Kain eyed the shadows, every little jolt of the train making him see things in the corners of his optics range. It was maddening. It was human.
Deek looked carefully at Raziel, then back at Kain and Vladimir, before he carefully swung back down to the train's cockpit and took a careful look at Raziel. The metal mask the man had always worn had long since been lost in the remains of the bunker, revealing the flesh-rotted, skinless face behind it. Normally he wouldn't be as disturbed by Raziel's appearance as he was now, but the fact that he was covered in blood, puke and valuable pure water made him twicth a little. That was when he made the command decision to fix Raziel up as best he could.
"Hold still, this could hurt." Briefly removing his radiation suit's helmet and closing the cabin door, Deek sealed himself into the cabin of the train, which had been converted into a medical ward for the time being.
He removed the forceps from the pouch on his hip and held the pen-light, now activated, between his teeth as he stared at the neck wound. It had grazed the mutant's surprisingly healthy windpipe, slicing it open at a small point. Deek sighed. He didn't have the tools to handle such procedures right now; the medical suite upstairs would have it, but he would have to drop the nuke before he went back up there.
So just getting rid of the slug would have to suffice. SUrprisingly, the ammunition used by whoever had shot Raziel in the neck wasn't hollow point or a splat round, so the retrieval would be easy. It hadn't pierced a neat hole coming in, the sides were ragged and bloody, and would likely become infected- but, hell, if Raziel had survived for as long as he had, his immune system would practically be able to hold off an Ebola infection.
"This is going to hurt," Deek said, passively stabbing his last syringe of Med-X into Raziel's forearm and gripping the pen-light tighter in his grip as the forceps went into Raziel's neck, after the offending bullet.
After what seemed like ages (but was only really two or three minutes), Deek produced from Raziel's neck a single .45 slug, all in one piece, without any offending fragments embedded where they shouldn't have been. He quickly sprayded the area with the anisthetic and wrapped the whole wound in gauze and absorbant padding.
"Alright. First, the good news," Deek said as he re-affixed his helmet and tossed the slug out of the cracked door and helped Raziel back into a comfortable sitting position. "The bullet didn't go in too far, and it didn't cause any lasting damage. Plus, if you ended getting an infection, your immune system and my antibacterial tratment should stave it off." Then he grimaced behind the polarized helmet's visor. "The bad news is that you've got a clipped windpipe and possible tracheal damage. We don't have the kind of equipment to deal with that sort of thing down here right now, so you'll have to hold out until we've dumped the nuke and then wait until we get you back to the surgical suite on the top level of the facility to get you fixed. Can you survive that long?"
Without waiting for an answer, Deek went back to his duties at the train's command console, increasing the throttle and moving the train back to atwenty-five mile per hour clip, not taking into account the added speed from the downhill slope.
"Alright Kain," He said through the intercom, "we've got another few junctions to cross before we hit the pit, not counting the one coming up right now, so you should get ready to cover me while I hit the switch."
As if anticipating the upcoming stop, Deek hauled the train to a stop and popped open the cabin door. The manual switcher was a few hundred yards away, but Deek wanted to make sure the switches were set before they started rolling again.
Vladimir saw a movement in the tunnel behind him, and he instinctively dodged to the right. There was a thud. He looked and saw a railway spike imbedded in the train where his head would have been. Vladimir's helmet caught motion. He zoomed in slightly and caught a glimpse of AWA soldiers led by a Paladin with a Chinese Assault Rifle.
Bastard, he thought. There had been only one Paladin with a Chinese Assault Rifle in his party, and that was Paladin Williams. They could obviously identify who he was if they could almost hit him with a Railway Rifle, but they shot anyway. That made them enemies of the AWA and mutineers.
Vladimir switched out his assault rifle's standard 5.56 rounds for poisonous .44 rounds and hit a Knight with a three-shot burst. You don't mess with Vladimir Sechin, he thought.
"Even beasts know when to give up." Kain growled, before raising his M72 and firing. Another Knight went down, his brains adorning the tunnel walls.
He was starting to get aggravated at these puny attacks by the EMAA, AWA and Crusade. It was really starting to get ridiculous. He should have just strapped a bottlecap mine to the nuke and made a run for it. He would have made it far enough away that only his artificial skin would be damaged if he put the right fuse on the mine. He could do it now, and with the bomb underground, he would have an even greater chance of survival.
Kain put the thought down as soon as it entered his mind. He had no right to destroy the home of these mutants, never mind killing Deek and Vladimir.
"Faster!" James roared. He had no idea where he was headed, but the airborne would jump off a bridge naked into the jaw of a deathclaw if he asked them to. That was devotion. Gates kept stride with James. "I think it might be appropriate to say, sir, that we have reached the central atrium f the rock tunnels." Gates said politely. James stopped and looked. They had reached the central area. Around them, six different entrances, each with train tracks leading out of them, jutted from the openings. In the center, it was nothing but an open room with a high ceiling. Hmm. If there was any way to detonate the nuke and escape in time, it would be here. This was where they were heading. "Gates, set up camp. This is where we wait."
(srry i reached it ahead of you guys. unrealistic i know, but if there's any chance of a climactic battle in the end, i gotta catch up.)
dammit, lol'
Vladimir took shots at the AWA soldiers. Fish in a barrel, he thought, although he wasn't too happy about having to kill his own soldiers. That damned coward Paladin Williams seemed unable to get in the way of Vladimir's gun, and that made him very angry.
"WHOK-" Deek shouted a spastic, knee-jerk reaction as a series of alrge caliber bullets whizzed past his head with deadly intent, striking the rock wall behind him. "Are you freaking kidding me?" Deek thought to himself as he watched the group of Darwin Award-winning AWA soldiers advancing down the tunnel firing guns- real guns, with real, dangerous bullets right next to a real, really fucking armed nuke- in an attempt to bring him down.
"You fucking morons!" Deek shouted as he pushed the switcher lever one last time- and promptly felt the rusted iron shaft break off in his grip. Tumbling forward and thudding bodily to the ground, Deek, stunned, felt a few more bullets smack into the loose, gravelly ground beneath his chest. "Stop shooting or you'll hit the damn bomb!" He shouted again, turning back towards Kain, Raziel and a pissed-off looking Vladimir.
"Kain! Bend these railroad tracks into place! Vladimir, hit the throttle when I tell you to! We'll blow these guys off if I have anything to say about it!" Deek shouted, hoping that the button he had seen beneath the glass cover would, in fact, give Deek the edge he needed. If it didn't, there would be a 95% chance that they would all be captured and executed- but more importantly, forced to watch the nuke be carried off to parts unknown.
Raziel panted as he took cover behind an overturned mine cart and coughed up blood. The wound in his neck was bleeding again, not to mention the broken ribs he suffered from the fall. One of them must've sliced into his lung, allowing to to fill with blood. Raziel knew the consequences, yes he knew enough about injuries to know when something is fatal. He didn't have much longer, but he was going to make it to his dying breath to assure these pigs didn't get a hold of the bomb. He looked over to Deek as he shouted orders to Kain, the android. Raziel often wondered how much of a free mind the machine had, so far the mutant had not seen one act of free will preformed by Kain. Two bullets smashed into the flimsy metal he crouched behind, they spotted him. Raziel darted out using inhuman speed. He ran in the direction of one soldier, zig-zaging to avoid bullets. The soldier started firing randomly, mostly out of fear. Raziel turned to the wall the man stood near and mounted it. He dashed across the wall, maintaining nearly perfect balance. As he was inline with the soldier, he leaped off, landing on the poor soul. Raziel had lost all senses at that point, now relying on pure instinct. As he regained reason, he was covered in more blood, this time fresh. Before him laid the shredded remains of a soldier, his face still in shock.
Raziel rolled over to Deek near the train, he was trying to get the damn thing working.
"Deek, these men keep coming. How much longer until we can get this thing rolling?" Raziel stood waiting for an answer, at the same time cleaning his blades of blood.
Bdapp, Bdapp, baapp, bdapp, bdapp... Deek was still struggling with the broken switch-lever, attempting to shove the broken piece forward with the broken handle being used as a lever. With his free (right) hand, Deek was shooting with one of his notorious plasma pistols, attempting to take down an AWA soldier without use of the nuke.
"Another three minutes, four minutes at most..." The man grumbled, looking at the tracks, "IF KAIN DECIDES TO GET HIS ASS OVER HERE ANYTIME SOON.!" He added, angrily, before moving away from the broken lever and heading for the cockpit of the train.
Kain rolled his eyes (or what functioned as his eyes) and walked over to the rails, bending them with one hand, and firing his laser rifle with the other.
"Stop shooting at the thermonuclear device, you deadbeat morons!" Kain roared as a few shots bounced off the nuke. He shuddered to think what devastation that would cause to the tunnels and the base were the nuke to detonate.
He gunned down another AWA soldier as he finished bending the rails. The job wasn't perfect, the train would jostle a little as it went past a small kink in the rail, but it wouldn't be a big deal.
Deek ran for the open cabin of the train carting its massive nuclear payload. Without noticing the bullets flying around him, he leapt into the cabin and shouted for everyone to "Find a place to hang on" before he smashed the glash over the button he had mentioned earlier.
Five JATO (Jet-Assisted Take Off, basically rocket engines) attached to interior compartments inside the train suddenly rose from the sides and bottom of the train and lit. Combined with all of the 25 miles per hour speed the train was capable of doing, the train careened across Kain's makeshift repairs and sped off at a grand total of 88 miles per hour, taking corners like a car at the Indy 500 and jerking its occupants about like ragdolls.
"Are you trying to kill us?" Kain shouted over the roar of the JATO engines. Even so he was glad that they were back on track. Literally. He returned fire at the rapidly expiring AWA troops, killing another.
"Go away!" Kain roared at them as they faded out of sight around a bend.
"Yeah, that's really helpful Kain..." Deek retorted over the intercom as the nuke train and ore hopper sped off down the tunnel, taking another hairpin corner at surprising speed speed and feeling the roll as the weight shifted from one side to the other befor ethe train settled onto a straightaway, heading for one of the final problem zones, a large atrium slash turntable that would have to be manually rotated to put them on course for the pit. Deek hit the button again, and the JATO rockets disengaged and retracted. A small drag 'Chute deployed from the back of the train and slowed it down to a safe braking speed. Watching carefully, Deek swung open the cabin door and looked over Vladimir, Kain and Raziel.
"Gentlemen," He said nonchalantly while looking towards the atrium. "Let's get this turned to the right tunnel and head for that pit." And with that, he moved the train slowly into the center of the atrium and onto the turntable.
KuhB1iam, this would be the point where you and the Crusade attack.
==Act 4==
Raziel watched as the soldiers quickly faded away into the darkness as he soared off in this rocket-propelled train. It was hell trying to hold onto the rails as the vehicle flung him and his companions around like they were occupants of a snow globe. At long last, the train halted it's murderous rampage and continued at a normal pace. At this time, Deek's old, yet still formidable, figure burst through the worn door. "Gentlemen, Let's get this turned to the right tunnel and head for that pit." He spoke with determination, Raziel liked that, he once knew a man like Deek. What was his name, was it Hagus?.. No, no, it was- Her- no, that's not it. Raziel thought as he rewraped his scared head, Ah yes, it was Hadds. How do I know him? Raziel's old memories would always flash back to him once in awhile, mostly in dreams. He had tried piecing them together, but so far he has nothing. Maybe some memories are not meant to to be remembered.
The scared mutant rose from his sitting position, he had replaced his bloody, torn, and missing wraps with knew ones and resharpen his blades, he would need them. Raziel walked towards Deek to be of assistance, "Hadds, just tell me what that body was, I swear I won't be tellin' nobody-" Raziel stopped mid sentence, what just happened? Deek looked at him with a crazy look, "Raz, what the hell are you talking about?" Raziel regained his senses, he was back. "No-nothing, I'll go help Kain..." With that Raziel left Deek, who was still staring at him, and went to help the android.
Kain stood at the back of the train. He had that same forboding feeling he had before something went profoundly wrong. The fact that his body's internal computer kept trying to rationalize and quantify the notions of his human brain only amplified the sensation. All in all, not a good feeling.He shook his head. Just the deep breath before the plunge, nothing more. Still, it was the feeling of waiting for a storm he couldn't avoid.
Kain looked at Raziel. The mutant was walking around in a daze, calling Deek something like Hadds. Maybe it meant messiah in some strange language the mutants had. They probably called Kain something like Sammael, the poison of God.
James ordered the airborne to move as many rocks as possible to block the tunnel path. This was where they would stop that damned train. If it ran out of fuel, that is. Disgusted at the amount of blood on his broken armor, James loaded his Deagle once again, and waited for the bastards.
Deek continued turning the table, along with the assistance of Vladimir, Kain and Raziel, and finally adjusted the course to the correct tunnel. Pointing dramatically as the rails slotted into place, Deek looked down the rails as if he could see the tunnel, in fact, folding out into the pit before him. "It's only a matter of time," he thought to himself, "before this thing is gone."
"Alright, everyone get aboard. Raziel, wrap your chest up with bandages tight so those broken ribs set well; don't think I didn't know you had 'em." Deek said nonchalantly as the old man climbed into the cabin of the rocket-propelled nuke train again. "ALL ABOARD!" he shouted, feeling not unlike a train engineer of olden times.
"Well then, lets be rid of this perversion of nature." Kain said. He leaped on to the back of the train. His eyes could penetrate the darkness, but he still couldn't see the trouble they were about to plough into. James had taken the precaution of setting up just around a bend.
Kain sat down, his M72 laid over his legs. The weight of the past few week's travelling and the events of the past few days came washing off him like a waterfall. This would all be over soon. Then, he could set his android nature aside, and return to herding Brahmin in South Dakota.
Deek looked out the slot in the front of the cabin as he ignited the secondary boosters, speeding up the train once again. "I can't believe we're going to pull this off,", he thought, not even seeing the fact that, just around the next bend, would be a date with destiny, "This time it might actually wo-"
Deek was thrown into the front of the cabin at herculean speed and strength as the train hurtled into a barrier of fallen rock and lifted off the tracks, scissored straight upward and nearly rolled all the way over were it not for the help of the counterbalance in the form of the attached ore hopper. Deek felt the train fall roughly across the tracks even as he noticed his helmet had, once again, failed to buffer the impact effectively and shattered like a windshield met by a hammer's caress. Deek, angry, ripped the helmet off and flung it to a side of the cabin, pushing the door open into the tunnel, for once ignoring the evident feeling of radiation.
"Now who the fu-"
*Ping!* A round squealed off the side of the door, ricocheting into the stone wall just to Deek's right.
"Jesus Christ!" He yelled, quickly climbing back into the cabin and shutting the door behind him.
Raziel gripped the railing as the train seemed to preform a complete airborne crash, but Raziel wasn't sure. He couldn't see, somehow glass had been flung at his face, shredding the wrapping around his scalp. The wounded mutant howled in pain only to be silenced by the unforgiving impact of the train. He was smashed into the side of the train, most likely injuring his already broken ribs further. His vision, although already barely being able to see, was getting darker. Raziel blacked out for a moment, his limp body looking more like an old corpse than a living person. 
He awoke to the sound of gunfire, his mind jutting back to reality. He shook his head, how long had he been out? Did their mission fail? Did those fools have the bomb? Three rounds suddenly pierced the wall and railing, the fools were defiantly here. He heard Deek curse as he was shot at, that relived Raziel. At least someone had survived. Raziel tried to stand, his broken ribs and internal bleeding prevented him from doing so. He silently muttered a prayer, something that he had not done in nearly 65 years, but he saw the occasion fitting. More rounds whizzed by him, nearly blowing Raziel's head off. The mutant waited for a second, and then made a sprint for Deek's cabin. He heard the brick and metal shatter behind him from the spraying of bullets, he though he felt one nick his arm, but that would have to wait.
Raziel stormed into the room and slammed the door behind him. He looked forward to see Deek, helmetless and obviously pissed off.
Raziel chuckled a bit, "A bit 'off track' don't you think?" He started laughing hysterically, for reasons he really didn't know. Deek started to laugh as well, both of them laughing to a bad joke on a flipped train in the ruins of Area 51 carrying a nuclear bomb, an android, and a rebellious captain all while being shot at by an overwhelming force of soldiers.
Too bad these soldiers had to ruin their fun.
Vladimir had been thinking about how comparatively fortunate he was, all things considered. Sure, he had been rebelled against and had lost some of his soldiers, but by and large, he had retained control of the situation. He was about to accomplish his goals, and would have loyal troops to return to.
Then came the train crash. Vladimir flipped and landed hard. Something cracked. Nothing was broken, but Vladimir was sore and ached. He stood up and shook himslef, then looked over towards the front of the train. What had caused that crash? Vladimir was about to investigate when a G36C coughed in the distance. Vladimir was knocked over as a concentration of Crusade bullets drilled a hole in his chest. He fell over. Vladimir Sechin's luck had run out.
...Or maybe not. Vladimir looked down. He had been shot. Why wasn't he dying? He saw where the bullets had pierced his armor...then saw his scar tissue behind the armor. That would explain it. For reasons he had never been able to fathom, Vladimir's scar tissue was exceptionally strong. His luck would hold, and he wouild live another day. He drew his G3A3. Now, time to teach those Crusade assholes a lesson.
Kain shifted the ore hopper off his legs.
++ Structural Integrity Diagnostic Running - Strucural Integrity retained at 95% ++
Kain stood up and walked towards cover, bullets ricocheting off him. He really didn't care any more. His brain was in shock. He sat down next to Vladimir, pulled out his laser rifle, and returned fire on the Crusaders. This was getting very tiresome. Didn't James learn that no matter how many soldiers he threw at Kain, a normal human would not be capable of going head-to-head with an android of Kain's calibre.
++ Loading Combat Program Alpha - Data Fragmented. Defragmentation intiating. Please wait . . . ++
Kain sighed. His human brain, being in shock, wasn't quite connecting with his processing cores or his CPU. Kain goraned, and fired his gun without the aid of his body's advanced processing and calculating abilities. As it turned out, he wasn't such a good shot. Did he really rely on his physical superiority so much?
Deek continued laughing wildly at Raziel's rediculously out-of-place joke while he went over the remains of the control screen and the front of the cockpit. The main control panel had been shot to hell, busted entirely when the cabin had crumpled and collapsed inwards like an accordion. The secondary control post, however- the exposed pedestal where all of the same equipment as the stuff on the cockpit, except on the back of the train- should still be functional.
"Raziel, take this," Deek said half to himself as he withdrew his last stimpak and plunged the needle deep into his friend's leg, injecting the stimulants and painkillers into the mutant's bloodstream. He then continued: "and stay here where it's bullet-proof." And with that, the old wastelander dove out of the cabin again, fell to the cave floor, stood up and started shooting as he fell back towards the rear of the train.
A Crusade soldier caught him halfway. Taking a massive risk by hopping out and over the safe bosom of the rockslide, the Airborne trooper dove wildly at Deek, brandishing a revving Ripper. Surprisingly, Deek- with agility on par with Raziels, if not even better- appeared to phase out of the way, flow around behind the Crusade soldier and force the man down on his own Ripper. Deek turned, pulled a mysterious looking knife out of one of the myriad pouches on his belt, aimed it for the crusade lines nestled within the fallen rocks, and let the blade fly with the press of a button. The sound of metal screeching past metal and into flesh met Deek's ears, followed by the sound of muffled footsteps as the old man (?) sprinted the remainder of the distance to Kain.
"Think you can get the train back on the tracks? We've got to get past the Crusade lines, and even then make sure the nuke hasn't been too damaged to recieve the detonation signal once it's reached the bottom of the hole." Deek said, completely uncaring about his little "display" with the Crusade soldier a few scant seconds ago.
Kain looked at Deek blankly.
"Deek, I apologize for being so rude about this, but I am a combat android, not a fucking crane." Kain grunted, as he shot a Crusader in the face. Kain stood up, looking at the Crusade forces. "If the weapon is too badly damaged to receive (i before e except after what?) the signal, I will detonate it myself."
Kain walked across the rock fall, surprisingly slowly. His brain was still battling the nervous effects of shock. At least he had no sense of pain. He had force gauges on his body, so he knew that had a normal human been in his position, they would be something like tomato paste with bits of raw meat mixed through it. If he had a sense of pain, he wouldn't be walking, after the hopper sitting on his leg for about two minutes. What did Deek think he was? Sure, he could overcome the power of a medium transport truck (and that was because he could apply greater traction than the truck's wheels), but there was no way he was going to move a locomotive.
Kain fired a close range laser shot into a Crusader's head, reducing him to ash. Kain then picked up his G36C, and opened fire on the Crusade with their own hardware. He killed another two before the gun in his hand clicked empty. Kain just picked up the next corpse's weapon, and continued firing.
Vladimir stood up to help Kain, Raziel, and Deek...then promptly fell over. The crash had taken more out of him than he thought. Vladimir moved slowly, cracking his bones back into places, then injected a Stimpack into his thigh. The healing agent entered his bloodstream and did wonders to improve his health. He stood up again and moved into position near Deek. "Deacon, we need to move!" he yelled, before popping out from behind a wall and spraying soft-point rounds towards his opponents. "If we stay put, that damn AWA traitor Paladin Williams and his larger force is going to sweep in from behind and take us out!" Vladimir fired again and took down one more unfortunate Crusade soldier.
Deek was standing against the rock wall in front of the wrecked locomotive, tapping the sandstone barrier as if he was searching for something. "You want to stay put? Help me find a weak spot in this wall where we can get the train through! The parallel track is an auxiliary, but it should still work to get down there!"
Then, a lucky shot pinged off the wall at hip level, deflected around and right into Deek's right thigh. Searing pain shot up his right leg, and down the wastelander went, the whole way shooting his Equalizers at the rock wall. "Don't worry about me!" Deek shouted, continuing his hail of supressive fire from the plasma pistols. "Find that weak point and get the train moving again, there's mining explosives in the tool compartment! Go!"
Vladimir nodded, drew one of his Glocks, and began to move. His adrenaline kicked in and he ran, faster than he ever had cause to before. In one fluid motion, Vladimir aimed and fired his Glock, sending a deadly hail of .44 bullets towards incoming Crusaders. "Kain, I need you to...just keep doing what you're doing! Keep the Crusaders away while Deek and I find a week point in the wall!" In one smooth motion, Vladimir leapt into the train car and moved to find the tool compartment.
He found it easily enough, although Crusader fire made his task slightly harder. He opened it and began pulling out anything that looked like it could help. Quickly, however, the Paragon found the explosives. He put them into his armor's storage area, then turned to leave the train.
Crusaders had managed to get around Kain. That was not good. They were moving towards the train. Vladimir drew his other Glock and opened fire. The Crusaders fell as Vladimir fired with deadly efficiency, but soon both of his guns clacked; they were empty.
Vladimir jumped off the train car, whipping his entire body around as he did so. His foot flew around like a sling in its stone, twisiting and breaking the neck of the closest Crusader as the "Whirlwind Kick" slammed into his chin. Even if he had survived, the man would have had a broken jaw, which would have dropped him. The next Crusader raised his G36C, but, before he could fire, Vladimir grabbed the gun and brutally twisted it out of his hands, using its own guard to break his fingers. As the man howled in pain, Vladimir fired a three-round burst into his face, silencing him. The last soldier had had to removed his helmet when several of Vladimir's rounds had torn massive holes in it it. That proved to be his undoing. Vladimir reached across his body with lightening speed, drew his tanto, and stabbed straight through the soldier's head.
Vladimir ran to Deek. "I've got the explosives!" he yelled over the gunfire.
Kain sighed. Completely despicable, all this violence. Sickening though it was to him, Kain punched into another Crusader's chest, creating an impressive dent in his armor, and his chest cavity. As he doubled over, Kain snapped his neck just to be sure he was dead. Kain clotheslined another man as he ran at him. No need to land a second blow. The man's helmet had gone from helmet-shaped to bowl-shaped, with blood, brains and bits of skin leaking through the cracks in it.
Kain picked up one of the officer swords one of the men carried. He smiled and hacked through a Templar's neck, sending his head spinning off into the darkness. Kain jumped, immitating the body movement that Vladimir had used in his kick. 540lbs of android did nothing but help the killing power of the technique, practically exploding the Templar's head like an over ripe fruit. Kain hated the fact that he had enjoyed doing that.
Vladimir handed the explosives to Deek and began to provide covering fire for him with his G3A3. He swore loudly when he saw Kain perfect the technique he had used earlier. Jesus, that android was good. Vladimir swore even louder when he saw his former AWA comrades advancing up the tunnel behind them.
Deek stared at Vladimir for a few long seconds as he sat on the ground, the half-inch-wide hole in his leg bleeding all over the floor of the cave as bullets whined over his head. Then: "Vladimir, what the fuck are you thinking? I can't even walk right now! There's a good spot about six inches to my left, take off the strips on the back of the bombs and push it as hard as you can against the surface, then get as far away as you can! It's got an automatic thirty-second fuse on it!"
"These men, with their armor and guns, it all seems so... familiar." Raziel had taken to attempting to recover his lost past while in his half-conscious state. He had determined his injuries. Three broken ribs, one of the had splintered into his lung. He had lost all eyesight out of his left eye, his forearm was fractured, same with his shoulder, and the bullet wound in his neck was bleeding again. Along with that, he had an undetermined about of bruises, cuts, and gashes along his body. He was exhausted. The Dying mutant had tried to rise, tried to help out his newfound allies, but he simply didn't have the strength to do it. He heard them yelling, he heard the Android's killing echo the cave, the bones crushing and snapping. After decades of holing up inside of this curious base, feeding off of passing travelers, ruthlessly murdering them, he finally felt the sins he had committed. It all seemed to alien to him, all the previous years, it was as if he was a different person. He heard the muffled voice of the Paragon, the very soldier Raziel had sought to kill not but hours earlier. Raziel coughed, producing blood. He spit it out, inside of if were small fragments of bone. A sudden sound released the dazed mutant from his state.
After painfully rolling behind an overturned desk, he witnessed two Crusade soldiers enter the small, claustrophobic room. He heard their muffled voices, although not being able to hear the exact words. Raziel gritted his teeth and tightened his grip around the worn handblades. Just as one of the soldiers was about to check behind the desk, Raziel kicked it forward, knocking the soldier to the ground. His assault rifle sprayed bullets as he fell, one of them skimming Raziel's skull. He leaped onto the second man, sinking his weapon deep into the unfortunate man's neck. Raziel had memorized the exact weak point, right in between the chest and head. He kicked off of the dying soldier, landing next to the second one who was just getting up. Raziel kicked the weapon out of his hands, sending it skidding across the room. Raziel felt his broken rib shift, cutting an even bigger slice in his lung. He looked at the helpless Crusade soldier, standing with fists up, ready to battle to the last breath. The mutant sighed, at that moment dropping to a crouch and slicing, through armor and boot, his Achilles Heel. The soldier fell to the ground, paralyzed. He would recover in due time, only long after Raziel was gone.
"So willing, so willing to give your life for a cause you don't even understand..." He sighed. Raziel leaned over and removed the Crusade soldier's helmet. After a hissing sound, a young woman's face was revealed. She was beautiful, probably in her 20's. She spat at him, "Disgusting abomination, you deserve to rot in whatever hell I send you." Her voice was innocent, yet plagued with such vulgar and sin. Raziel rubbed the spit from his burnt face. "I am the dream. I have lived longer than you, your father, and probably grandfather combined. Do you know what I received? Suffering. How much I want to end it, but not having the willpower to do so." The female soldier looked away as Raziel got closer. "I am the result of this unforgiving world we were born into, the result of people like you, like your entire organization." His face was only inches away from hers. How long has it been since he had been with a woman? He chuckled. Rising back up, he began to walk out the door. He looked back for a split moment, "Earn this." With that he left the girl, leaving her with much to think over.
Vladimir grumbled slightly. He had planned on the old man's help. It was a pretty safe bet that Deek was a much better hand with explosives than Vladimir was. Nevertheless, Vladimir followed Deek's directions to the letter. The bombs were planted. "Alright, you grumpy old man," Vladimir shouted over the rattled of gunfire, "It's time to move! Stay as still as possible so you won't bleed any more!" Vladimir hefted the old man like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder and sprinted towards the cover of the train, ducking and doging to avoid Crusade and, now, AWA gunfire. The mining explosives blew behind him. Vladimir drew out his tanto. "Alright Deek, it's time for some field surgery! This might hurt!" He dug the tanto into Deek's leg and used it to pry the bullet out. Vladimir then drew out a length of field bandage and covered the old man's wound, then gave him a shot of Med-X for good measure. (Can you say "Far Cry"?)
Deek pushed himself to his feet; the wound had, much to everyone but Deek's surprise, begun to clot and the bleeding slowed. "Thank you, Vladimir. Now let's get moving!" Pushing himself up onto the top of the train, Deek headed for the auxiliary control panel on the back of the train. Pressing another button, Deek felt the train rumble to life and the train's wheels screech on the rough, gravelly cavern floor and lurch slowly forward.
With the cracking noise of a lobster being broken open, Kain crushed the last Crusade soldier in easy reach with a bearhug that could have crumbled concrete. He dropped the man into a mangled heap, his back broken. Kain then turned around, flipping James off as he went, and took off towards the train as Vlad and Raziel clambered aboard. Kain applied a liberal smattering of lead to the advancing AWA soldiers with a captured G36C and jumped aboard the train.
Kain had to snap the overturned Ore Hopper's linkage off the train before they could really get going, but once that was done, they would be well on their way.
Raziel watched Kain kill some more soldiers, brutally of course, and jump onto the train. They were moving now, easily reaching their destined location in no time. And what exactly was the plan? Detonate it in these mine shafts? Raziel knew enough to know that the explosion would not only flood the area with radiation, but possibly collapse the entire facility. Where would the lone mutant go after that? His cult was all but eradicated, shot down by extremist soldiers. A few may survive, but it wasn't likely. He had taught them to fight until their last drop of blood, which they literally had done. If his beloved home was destroyed, he would just find another. Maybe travel a bit, something in his body was telling him to go south, near Texas. His trail of thought was broken by Hadd- Deek, who was calling out something to Kain.
Raziel sat against a half-destroyed door. Despite traveling down a century-old train track at dangerous speeds with a nuclear weapon on the back, the exhausted mutant finally found some time to rest. He still couldn't see out of his right eye, it was probably permanent.
"Shit." Deek looked at Raziel falling asleep- no, succumbing to his wounds. After telling Kain to "take the controls," he carefully moved across the back of the train and took hold of Raziel's arm, clamping down hard so as to pop out a vein. He moved to his belt pouch and withdrew a syringe of Med-X and a syringe of adrenalin, then put both of the solutions into Raziel's arm. Making sure Raziel was safely awake, with a strict order "not to under any costs fall asleep until we get you to the surgery ward", Deek stepped to the front of the train and looked out at the massive pit that was growing larger by the second.
Hopping down to the cockpit, Deek retracted the boosters and slowed the train to a near-stop at the edge of the pit, at which point he safely ushered everyone off. "Kain, let's get back to the actual base." The old man ordered. "Take Raziel and move him to the surgery ward ASAP. Vladimir, come with me over to that bunker. We've gotta send the signal from a safe area so that we don't get burnt."
Just as Deek said "burnt", the nuke cart, bullet holes, spare materials, warhead and all, plunged off the rails and down into the pit. The winking red and orange lights faded into blackness as it dissappeared into the chasm. "Go," Deek shouted, as he took Vladimir and led him towards the bunker. Sliding the door open and then shut again, the old man was pleased to feel there was a current of fresh air circulating inside, coming from the ventilation system concealed in the wall behind. He removed his helmet and unclasped the upper torso of his radiation suit, folding it down so that the upper torso hung around his hips.
The revelation was... Well, it was shocking.
A network of scars and incisions crisscrossed Deek's left and right arms, extending all the way from his knuckles up to his shoulders, on both arms. The torso was covered by a white t-shirt, but a simple conjecture could inform one that the scars probably stretched all across Deek's chest and back, as well. There were even a few long, rough, scraggly marks that snaked all the way up Deek's neck to dissappear beneath his hairline and his chin.
The old man moved over to the computer console and, smacking it on the side a few times to warm it up, brought it online. He entered the keys required to trigger the ignition sequence, put himself on the speaker and patched directly to the surgery ward.
"And now we wait," Deek said, pulling up a chair in front of the speaker and waiting for the sound of foosteps on the other end.
"Deek. We have a problem. The transmitter is not responding. The receiver on the bomb must have been damaged in the crossifre or the crash. This is not good." Kain said. He shook his head slowly. He nodded to himself afterwards. It must be done. This weapon must never see the light of day again. Sentiment Kain, it'll get you killed someday. But no better sentiment to die for than hope that the world can recover. Kain thought to himself. Had he been human, he might have shed a tear or two.
"Deek, have you ever seen the sun rise over a small farmstead in South Dakota? I have. I owned one. Still do. I want you to visit it when you get out of these tunnels, look after my Brahmin for me. I fear that, when the sun sets tonight, I will not see it rise again in the morning." Kain said, mournfully. He marked the location of his farm on Deek's small, hand-held Pip-Boy. Then he marked it on one of Vladimir's maps, imploring him to visit if he got the chance.
"I will detonate the bomb myself." Kain sighed. "I have but one request. Remember me."
With that, Kain walked towards the door.
Raziel hazefully watched the android converse with his other two companions. Although near death, Raziel still had his extra-sensitive hearing. The dying mutant heard the courageous words of the android, his sacrifice brought sorrow to Raziel's burnt heart. Although the machine began as a devil to Raziel, he had shown himself to be all but. Through his reckless brutality and fearlessness he had become more of a legend to Raziel, not a demon. Kain had reminded him how there is still hope in this hell, he reminded him of... Austin? Had Raziel ever been to Austin? The mutant struggled to remember, but alas was futile. So many pieces to his unknown past, such a puzzle it does create. Pain coursed through his body in a sudden twinge, he felt his bone ache. Raziel had enough medical knowledge from reading books, although his ability to read is still an enigma to him, to know what was happening. He was going into shock. Not even the meds that Deek had given him would have stopped this, all Raziel could do was hope to God that he was going to wake up.
With his last seconds of consciousness, he blessed the Android. Maybe, if there is some sort of afterlife, he will finally be happy.
Kain crouched next to Raziel's unconscious body. Kain then cut a hole through the artificial flesh on his forearm (not that he eeded to, it was hanging off in tatters after that firefight) and reached into the storage compartment in his arm. Out of it, he took a syringe full of a faintly glowing blue fluid. He injected it directly into Raziel's heart, and stood up, his servos forcing his face into a satisfied expression. An Institute Super-Stim. It would keep Raziel alive long enough to reach a med-centre on the base, where Deek could treat his wounds.
"Sleep well, brother. May you find peace someday." Kain sighed.
Kain laid all of his weapons out on the floor. He then handed his M72 Gauss Rifle to Deek, and his Laser Rifle to Vlad. He left his Desert Eagle and Combat Knife for them to give to Raziel if he woke up. If not, Deek was to take the pistol, and Vlad was to take the knife. Kain then removed a pair of his spare power cells from a storage unit in his other arm. Truly a wonder of technology, these things. He handed one to Deek and one to Vlad. These could be the foundation of the energy in a new world. They would be Kain's gift to the future. That, and his actions in the next ten, maybe fifteen minutes.
James was completely confused. Where the hell was the fucking nuke? It was supposed to go through here nearly five minutes agi! "Dammit!" James roared, attracting the attention of his Airborne accomplances. He needed to find that nuke, or Moore would have his ass mounted on Jerusalem's front gate! Frustration mounting, James trudged off in a random direction, the Airborne following. He wasn't going to find anything just by standing here. im going to encounter deek and raziel on teh way out. dun worry though, we wont shoot. we no haz time.
Deek looked at the power cell and Gauss Rifle that had been shoved into his arms by the massive android dressed in tattered Crusade fatigues. The man was crazy, batshit insane, to be riding a nuke down a 400 foot chasm with the intent to blow it up. No way was Deacon Robert Harris, Great-Great-Grandson of Francis Mark Harris, going to let Kain get away with diving down that hole and never coming up!
"Dammit, Kain!" Deek marched out of the bunker after him, not bothering to pull on his helmet and radiation suit's torso, the effects of the radiation again mysteriously lost on him. The old man glared at Kain's back, watching as the android headed for the edge of the cliff. "You're onot gollowing that bomb down, you're too good a guy to blow yourself up!" Deek continued throwing loud words at Kain, knowing his words weren't getting through, that it was going to end futilely, but continuing anyway. "Dammit, think of the consequences! All of the people that you'll never get to meet! That brahmin farm you told us about! Dammit, you've fought too hard to take the easy way out! You're not going to die a legend, you're going to live past today to tell the story of this place to future generations!"
"Deek, go back inside." Kain said. "The world has no place for the likes of me. It is in my nature to destroy. I have tried to deny it over and over, but I will always kill, because that is what I was made to do. I hate the killing, the violence, but it happens regardless. I need this to end as much as you, Raziel, Vlad and the rest of the world do. Goodbye, Deek. Remember me."
With those final words, Kain followed the bomb, dropping down the chasm, digging his hardened titanium carbide fingers into the side of the chasm to slow himself down. He didn't know how deep theshaft was, and he didn't want to end up in a helpless heap at the bottom if it was too deep for his servos to resist the associated forces with landing.
(Now might be a good time for characters to scuttle off inside or some such)
"Damnit!! God fucking damnit!" Deek stood at the lip of the chasm, screaming every curse he knew (and he knew a lot, in several different languages) before he finally turned and moved away from the chasm edge as quickly as he could. He scooped Raziel off the cave floor and hauled him into the bunker, sealing the door behind him.
"Alright," Deek sighed as he retrieved a fission battery from one of the room's numerous countertops and inserted it into the reciever where the cargo elevator opened into the bunker. "When that nuke goes off, everyone into the elevator. Get topside as fast as you can-"
Deek was cut off by a dissappointing *fzzt* as the fission battery shorted out the two-hundred year old, corroded power sbay, leaving their only means of safe exit well beyond use.
"On second thought, I'll still carry Raziel, but we'll have to use the tunnels. Seal down your equipment, the radiation'll be hellish." The old man knew it would, he'd been subjected to much worse in the past.
(What does I mean by "worse"? That, along with why I just used "does" instead of "do" will be revealed when the groups makes aforementioned sojourn across the country to Kain's little farm.)
During the entire exchange, Vladimir had removed his helmet and stood at attention, with his hand held to his brow as he saluted the android. He had never met someone before like Kain, and never would again, most likely. As he and Deek walked up the tunnels, Vladimir talked. "That man was the greatest example of devotion to the well-being of the wasteland that I have ever met. I will honorarily induct him as a member of the AWA. Templar Kain Ruger. I like how it sounds. There is nothing more admirable than sacrificing yourself for what you believe in, and nothing is a more admirable cause than sacrificing yourself for your fellow man. We are most definitely stopping at his farm ere we leave."
Deek said nothing as Vladimir rambled aout inducting Kain into the AWA as a Templar. Deek didn't really care; for all he gave Vlad could have just handed over the key to the New California Republic and said "here you go, you rule now". Deek had just lost the first friend he'd made in well over thirty years, and naturally he wasn't feeling too good at this point. So he kept his mouth shut and continued carrying Raziel up the tunnels, the torso of his Radiation Suit around his waist, his helmet sat against his chest, on Raziel's lap.
"We should probably pick up the pace," Deek finally said, breaking the silence that had reigned for the last few minutes as the pair made their way up the tunnels. Deek didn't want to be anywhere near the epicenter when that nuke went off- despite the fact that it was supposed to be perfectly safe, the fact that the temperature could easily rise well above and beyond sane levels and the radiation could kill a man in a matter of seconds, the escapist in Deek told him it was time to head for the safety of the missile silo's floor. Once there, he would leave Vladimir to stand guard at the mouth of the tunnels and continue on to the surgery ward alone, where Raziel would be repaired by the finest Pre-War medical technology the United States had never put into practice- nanobots, genetic restructuring, bone reinforcements, the works.
Vladimir talked as he walked with Deek. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I have to deal with a mutinous Paladin on my way out of here. Once that is done, I'll go. If you want, I can bring you to Kain's farm before I leave for my main base again." Vladimir was really hoping that this business with the rebellious AWA soldiers would go down alright. If it didn't, he would be in a world of hurt once he got back to Stalwart, on top of the beating he would take already for failing to bring back the nuke.
"Alright. Always wanted to ride in a Vertibird, anyways." Deek smiled slightly as, around a bend, the base of the silo drew into site.
Unfortunately, so did Thomas's contingent of Crusade soldiers. (This is where you come on, Kuh.)
Imagine Bruce Springsteen's Atlantic City playing in the background
Kain spread his arms out as he closed his eyes and imagined home. The Brahmin grazing, the children throwing sticks at each other up in the village, the soft wind. He so wanted to feel the wind again. He could feel it now. He could hear the trees rustle in the breeze. He could smell Spring on the air, he could taste the air. For the first time in too long, Kain felt human again. For the first time in too long, he smiled a sincere smile. He saw the faces of those he killed, beckoning him onwards, as if they forgave him. He didn't want their forgiveness, unless he deserved it. Did he deserve it? He hoped so. Then, all of a sudden, he was away from those forgiving faces, the soft, warm breeze, the sound of the trees. He was back at the bottom of the test shaft, back under Area 51, with the bomb in front of him. He walked over to the control pad mounted on the side of the fearsome weapon and reached out for it.
He smiled.
He would have peace at last.
----
Up in the silo, the ground heaved and shook. dust fell from the roof and geiger counters spiked for a moment and then went silent again. It was over. Kain had done his job. He had found peace.
Deek looked back down the tunnel as a wave of hot air washed over him and the ground shook. He rolled back the bottom of his radiation suit and, for the first time, stepped out of the silver casing, still holding Raziel and his helmet. He was wearing brown cargo pants and a pair of threadbare socks. He smiled as, with one hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled cigarette. Placing the white stick in his mouth, the old man pulled a Zippo lighter from deeper within his pocket and lit it up.
He found it ironic that he would be here, smoking his last cigarette, imagining the same scene from around an hour ago, viewing the mutants and Kain standing proudly alongside him as the pervasive, all-encompassing desert heat wrapped them in a coccoon of warmth after the sojourn through the cold, damp caves. And yet here he was, carrying a limp, semiconscious Raziel and a visibly distraught Vladimir at his side, facing down a team of Crusade soldiers led by the brother of who was inevitably his leader, having long abandoned his protective Radiation Suit, his only means of defense the corpse-loike being held like a babe in his arms.
"Fight's over, Crusader." Deek stated quietly as he smiled a bit, the smoke plume from the cigarette surrounding his face. "Looks like you won't be getting your hands on that nuke today, or ever. Report back to Frederick with that. He'll be thrilled to hear the news that you've lost his only superweapon."
Raziel's vision blurred in and out of life, seeing and not seeing, living and yet dead. He wasn't sure at this moment, he could be dead, he could be alive, or whatever. It was the rumbling that woke him, the mass rush of heat over his already burnt body. His only guess was that it was Kain, the android, who had sacrificially taken his own life to destroy a monument of destruction and rapture. He saw sunlight, he heard the whispering of voices, and could smell the smell of tobacco smoke. Where he was, he didn't have the slightest idea. For a moment, he though he heard a little feminine voice, such a familiar voice. Almost as if he knew the source by heart, did he? Whatever it was, it called out to him. It called him Jacob, pleading him to return to whatever she called "home". Then, as if from third person, Raziel heard himself talk. But this wasn't his voice, there was no sketchiness to it, no age, no mutation. It was just a normal human voice, and it said, "Don't worry Jean, I'm comin' home."
Suddenly, Raziel's one good eye sprung open. He beheld a scene from a book he once read. Vladimir, rifle raised and aimed, was aiming down a much larger force of Crusade soldiers who, in retrospect, had been the ones to not only exterminate Raziel's brothers and sisters, but also put a bullet in his neck, sending flailing him down a very, very long missile silo. Oh yes, he saw the perpetrator clearly. Clad in Power Armor, the man, James as he recalled, had a bullet ready for Raziel's, Deek's, and even Vlad's head. As for Raziel, Deek, who was carrying him earlier, had propped him against a wall to allow the old man to fire if needed. They talked, but Raziel did not hear words, he only saw vengeance.
Deek looked over at the ancient mutant he had left against the wall, still fondling the grip of his Plasma Pistol as he looked towards the crusade leader. Without moving or turning his head, he ordered Raziel:
"Get to the medical ward, now. Don't go killing yourself here; I won't have any more blood on my hands."
"Look, asshole, why don't you take you crusty ass and pantaloon your way out of my face before I step on it with my damned power armored foot." James said, angry. His fingers stretched over his weapon, and he hoped the old man the wrong decision to attack him. "C'mon old man, hit me with your best shot. Try me. Let's see how many seconds it takes for you hit the ground after I snap your neck. Consider it a challenge, pappy." He knew he was playing with the old guy's emotions. He was hgetting red, and his own hands were near his plasma pistols. "C'mon, oldie!" James roared. "You got a freak and some AWA bastard backing you up! You can take us, right?" James joked, the Airborne behind him laughing as they took defensive positions behind cover. "Or maybe your too chicken." james said.
"Old man," Vladimir warned in a low voice, "this may not be the best time. Who knows what damage that nuke would have done? We need to get as far away from the blast site as possible. Let these Crusaders run and find its remains at their own peril. We have more important fish to fry." Deek didn't look impressed, as Vladimir suspected. Ah well, he tried. "Know this," the Paragon continued. "If you do fight, I've got your back."
"Vlad," Deek said calmly as he returned his Plasma Pistols to their holsters, "Take Raziel to the medical bay. Now." The expression on the old man's face told a story that, no matter what, he wasn't going to let James get out of this facility without a few broken bones. Once Vlad had taken Raziel out of the room, he stepped forward towards James.
"Power armor off, fair fight- no gimmicks, no Crusade support, just you and me- fist to fist."
"Um... how about no..." James said, smiling. The Airborne booed. "Shut up!" James said, snickering. The Corporal in charge of 1st Squads support team called out to him. "C'mon, James, you can take him!" James turned towards the soldier, pointing his sword. "Remind me to discipline you once I'm done with this. Of course I can take a ninety year-old jackass." James said, and removed his helmet, leaving only his cloud grey military fatigues (think pillar of autumn marines, not the armored ones though). However, he didn't like a fist fight so much. It was too... barbaric. James motioned to his new aide, who tossed him two SCM Officer Swords. Tossing one to Deek and twirling the other in his hand with ease, James laughed at the old man. "I've killed more men with a sword than with firearms. You however, have obviously never used something so intricate or deadly. Maybe a pitchfork, or a baseball bat, but not one of these, eh?" James asked, taunting him and circling him. The sword James carried was a Praetorian variant; much more elaborate in design and strength. i swear if i lose this fight i will kill myself
"You'd be surprised." Deek's hand shot up from his side and caught the tip of the Officer Sword just as it drew close to his face, expertly flicking his wirst so that the blade flew up into the air and fell handle-first right into his hand. He quickly analyzed James' combat strategy at a glance- James spent most of his time circling, no doubt attempting to find a hole in Deek's defenses and take advantage of it. The taunts were probably to anger and/or disorient him, throwing him into a rage-fuelled fervor so that his attacks would be wild and inaccurate, easily dodged and reversed. Thank god Deek was a level-headed person.
So as James circled like a hungry shark, Deek stood stockade-still, holding the Officer Sword in his left hand, waiting for James to make the first move.
James made the first move, twirling the sword back and forth and striking hard, slamming into Deek like a freight train, driving him back to within a few feet of the wall before the circle of Airborne pushed Deek back into the fight. Laughing, James drove foward again, driving Deek off balance. Slamming into his face with his elbow, James slashed lightly, creating a gash across Deek's wrinkled skin, blood appearing. "C'mon old man, you must have some sort of inner strength in you!" James said taunting him and remaining completely overconfident.
Deek wiped his forehead off where the gash had appeared, looking at the blood where it pooled in his wrinkled forearms' crevices before gripping the sword with renewed strength. "Oh, you'd be surprised about what kind of 'inner strength I have'." Then, with speed rivalling that of a puma, Deek lunged forward into James, feeling the satisfying crunch of apair of ribs breaking in James' chest. So those implants still work after all. I guess I'll have to thank those bastards for making me into a monster some day... Deek smiled, twisting the blade of his SCM officer sword around as he rapped James in the side of the head with the flat side, causing a wide purple large purple bruise to appear on his temple.
"Did you feel that, young'un?" The waster taunted, fluorishing his blade. Yes, it was all coming back to him now; the CQC training, his first round in the ring with his training sergeant... It wasn't going to be an easy fight, but with his 'enhancements' it would certainly be easier.
Raziel stared at the lifeless walls of the abandoned medical bay Vlad brought him to as he laid on one of the cots. Sight blurred in and out of his wounded body, slowly making things darker and darker. Raziel was not dumb, he knew what this was. Raziel was dying. His whole body was battered and destroyed, it not being able to take the fight his companions could due to him having no mechanical limbs or inhuman reflexes. Raziel wasn't born into a super soldier's life, he wasn't in any way mechanical like Deek and Kain. He was human, if he even deserved that title was questionable. The only thing Raziel was good at was aging, and that too was a curse. He knew it all now, how? He wasn't sure, but he could see what had been blocked from his memory for so long. He was Jacob Scott Ramsey, beloved brother and son. He was born on October 14th, 2139, nearly 140 years ago, in Austin, Texas. He was sent to open the vault, oh lord, God the vault. Raziel started to twitch, no, no, no, where was he? He looked around, he saw the rusting walls of the dammed bunker, he was strapped down to the chair. Men in white were all around him, injecting him with poisons, shining lights on him.... cutting his arms open. He heard himself screaming as if he were watching this in 3rd person. From the window he could see soldiers, menacing looking soldiers with alien looking guns. On the walls were the devilkin, the monstrosities that have haunted him for decades. The bladed demons that killed Victor and Jamal. 
Then he heard something, a explosion maybe or gunfire, something that was urgent enough to make the men in white retreat to the soldiers, leaving him trapped, cut open, and drugged. But then, then Raziel, the Raziel he is now, spoke to an unconscious Jacob Scott Ramsey. In truth, Raziel was talking to himself, but was that himself or simply another being? None of it made sense, but did it need to? Raziel spoke as a whisper into Jacob's ear, "Leave this hell. You will live, you have to live, you must survive so I can exist, you must!" And, by some mind-boggling paradox, Jacob awoke. He had heard what Raziel had said. But did he? Was this just him going insane? No, this was real, it had to be, there was no other possibility. Raziel watched as the Jacob he once was responded to his words and slowly broke free from the chair. He could smell everything he smelled, he could taste, hear, and feel everything Jacob felt. But he was not Jacob. His past self ran through the Vault's walls aimlessly and disoriented, subconsciously searching for freedom. He heard Victors words, talking about escaping through the service tunnels. Yes, that's where he needed to go, that's where he had to go. Raziel watched with glee, Jacob was escaping, surviving to become Raziel. Surviving, Raziel must survive as well. His vision of Jacob crawling through tunnels started to distort, his mind raced through all of his memories. He saw his mom introducing him to Jean, he saw himself watching the stars from the UT tower, thinking about his future. Then he saw a medical bay, he saw Vlad standing at the door way, gun and blade ready. Once again, Raziel started at the lifeless walls of the abandoned medical bay Vlad had brought him to. He was dying.
All around Vlad and Raziel, sterile white Pre-War machinery buzzed and whirred to life. A Mister Gutsy robot floated to life out of the corner, arriving alongside the ancient, ancient mutant. Its limbs had all been replaced by various medical equipment, such as the x-ray scanner it was running, unprotected, up and down Raziel's torso and limbs. After a few scant seconds, it spoke: "Severe injuries detected; beginning full medical procedures." Then it floated away.
The next few minutes were a whirl wind of miracle technology working on Raziel. (for risk of sounding unrealisticI won't say what they were. Just say IT'S MAGIC.) By the time the machines were done with their jobs, the machinery done and retracted into the walls, Raziel was so doped up on medical-strength painkillers and antibiotics he wouldn't notice that any pain he had felt over the years was completely and totally alleviated.
James staggered back a bit, suprised by the old geezer's show of strength and by the mark on the side of his head. "Bloody arse." James said, and whirled forward, striking Deek on the sword several times and driving him back against the wall before recieving an elbow to the stomach. Doubling over for a second, James feinted his weakness, dropping to the floor as Deek tried for a powerful overhand sideways swing, bringing it over his head and then horizontally in an effort to take off James' head. The blade passed through thin air, James jumped back up, and again Deek was thrown against the wall, the circle of Airborne parting ways to let him back into it as James drove forward, his sword's force almost driving Deek's own sword from his hand. James backed up a bit. He was just getting started. "Old man, your toying is wasting my time. Either show some more of your 'inner strength', or I'll have to end this." James said, smiling crookedly.
"I'd be glad to demonstrate, young'un." Deek stood still for a second, staring angrily at James while the "Young'un" watched, as if to make his head explode. After a few seconds of anticipation, lightning speed could barely capture the rate at which Deek's free hand latched out. His right arm gripped down on the SCM officer's sword, wrenching the Praetorian variant of the wicked blade far out and gone, nearly taking James' hand with it, at the wrist. Deek turned the sword around, jammed the rounded pommel into James' solar plexus. IT wasn't a hard strike, but it was enough to knock James to the floor. Now in control of both blades, Deek grunted something silently before he just dropped the sword at Thomas's feet, crushed the blade with one booted foot and walked away.
Just walked away. He didn't even try to land a coup-de-grace against the stunned Crusade Captain, didn't even cut a mark into him anywhere. He just kind of stomped out of the ring of Crusade AIrborne soldiers, picked up the deflated Radiation suit down by the tunnel, and made a run for the medical bay.
The old man didn't really care that he had technically won the fight, just that he had taught the young Crusader that time-tested tradition of "don't disrespect your elders".
Even if- no, especially if- that elder just happened to be an abandoned Enclave pet project.
"You fucking son of a fucking whore!" Thomas shouted out from somewhere behind Deek's retreating form. The soldier drew a hidden pistol and fired four shots at Deek, who was caught completely off guard as he felt four hot rivets sting his back. Stunned, the old hermit turned and charged at Thomas.
A group of Thomas' remaining Crusade commandos formed a makeshift barrier in front of their wounded leader, but Deek dispatched them easily. The first fool to stand against him was felled when Deek crushed his larynx and punched his fist clean through to the other side of his neck, breaking his spine and destroying his windpipe. The next commando, who couldn't have been more than eighteen, recieved a bullet-fast chop to the shoulder, which broke it, and then a three-finger jab to the solar plexus, which forced him to regurgitate parts altogether unpleasant for regurgitation.
When the commandos were dispatched, Deek moved on Thomas himself. Lifting him up by the throat, Thomas- who was now scared shitless because, apparently, he had seen Kain revived in Deek, or something worse- started blubbering apologies and offering things in exchange for letting him live. He was almost chucked into the missile bay- almost- before Thomas offered total amnesty between himself and the Crusade, and something along the lines of "we'll never bother you again, I swear." Deek merely clobbered Thomas to unconsciousness on the catwalk over the silos, then dragged him and his remaining team-mates to the surface of Area 51, leaving them there to wake up on their own and sealing the front door to the bunkers behind him.
After a few minutes of gathering up the bits and pieces of his discarded radiation suit (that would be the third helmet he'd broken today), Deek headed over to the Medical Ward, where the devices hanging from the cieling had finished working their magical mumbo jumbo on Raziel. He tapped the ancient mutant on the right shoulder, jarring him from the comfort of sleep to the cold, stark, sterile walls of reality.
"Wake up, bud, you gotta wake up." Deek said reassuringly, and I mean that in all sarcasm, "You can't die after I just fixed you all up."
Jean? He must've fell asleep on the tower again, probably missed out on Micheal Parker's speech too. If that man knew anything it was how to speak, he sure made convincing lectures. He looked up, something about the night sky seemed strange. It was gray, dull, and bright. It almost looked like a hospital, but more eroded. That was impossible though, he must still be seeing things. Jean was gone too, he was sure he fell asleep beside her. She most likely went to see that David, the little boy she's had a thing for since they were 6. Bah, she could've at lease woke him up. He started to stand when he saw his arm. It was... was burnt. What in the world? He looked at the rest of his body. All of it, black and charred, bloody and rotting. What the hell was this? He got up and ran, something happened, something was terribly wrong. He looked down the tower, seeing an old man below. Yes, it was Deek- wait, no that was Hadds, who was Deek? Or Vlad? The facility... soldiers... the bomb... mutants... Enclave... Oh God. Reality started to come back to him. Once again he was in the cold medical ward of Area 51, bleeding and dying on an operating table. But this time Deek was standing over him, uninjured and seemingly happy. Quickly cringing at the horrible dream he had, Raziel slowly got off of the table. Apparently Deek had done wonders to his body, fixing it up the best he could. He stopped the internal bleeding and sealed the wounds. He readjusted 3 of Raziel's 5 broken ribs, and he put his left arm in a splint. The 146-year old mutant still could not see out of his right eye or talk in a normal voice. Now his voice was raspy and distorted. He was going to have to live with that.
"Tell me Deek," Raziel said in a Ghoulish voice, "do you still plan to live here? In the radiation filled chambers of this place?" Deek raised an eyebrow, somehow Raziel knew where he was headed.
"Do I really have much of a choice at this point?" The old super-soldier-turned-hermit admitted. "I can't, at this point. With your cult annihilated and most of my robotic staff, security systems and bunks have been ripped to shit in the fighting." Deek sighed inside his sealed, amber-visored helmet. "That nuke turned my home into a tourist destination for Crusaders, Enclave and every other member of the Wasteland, probably come to loot and pillage. And I'm just one guy, so I say it's probably time to pull up stakes and move along."
Of course Deek was wrong; he had scanned for supplies himself, nothing was down there but dust and skeletons, and now a few hundred fresh corpses. This could only mean the Enclave would not only be back to reclaim any supplies in the area they could find, but also to reclaim (or kill) their "pet project"- Deek himself. Sure enough, they would come, and Deek only had so many cheap tricks and energy cells left to defend himself.
"We'll stick here for the night," the scientist said, pulling out a map of the area from his belt, "and then head in a general easterly direction. If we're lucky, and we don't get lost, we'll be in Austin by a reasonable timeframe. Gives us plenty of time to check out Kain's old brahmin farm too." The soldier cringed at the thought of visiting Kain's brahmin farm. It was down between him and Raziel for "people in recent memory he'd gotten along with", and now that Kain was dead and the memory still fresh, it would be difficult to see the place he loved so much.
"We'll leave by nine in the morning, if you feel strong enough to stand on both legs. If not," the soldier then smirked, "I'll have no problem carrying you some more, you crippled old mummy."
"No, not yet. I'll go to the Android's farm, but not to Austin." Raziel shoot his head in frustration. Everything in his will was beckoning him to head Southwards, to Austin, the Raziel part of himself decided otherwise. He was afraid, although he didn't want to admit it. He was scared that the people he loved, lived with, and honored would resent him, think of him as a monster. They would shoot him, kill him on sight. But most of all, secretly and hidden from even himself, Raziel still had a growing fear and paranoia that maybe, just possibly, the Enclave still lurked. They still were looking, looking for him! No, Austin would wait. He quickly noticed Deek giving him a worrying look, even the old man knew that Austin was Raziel's place, his home. Trying to brighten up the subject, Raziel began to chuckle. "Maybe California. I once knew a man in dusty leather armor with a trenchcoat and gas mask who I bumped into near the gulf. Nice guy, he stayed with Jean and I for some time while he and his 'rangers' were down in Texas, doin' some exploring." Raziel blankly looked at the ceiling, losing himself in memory. Raziel noticed, and Deek probably did as well, that he was recovering what remained of Jacob's personality. He was becoming more Human, only on the inside of course.
He continued, "Before he left he told me they were headed westward, to California. Heh." If Raziel could produce tears, that's what would be rolling down his face right about now. Only at the end of his explanation of his past friend did he realize the truth of that. His friend was long dead, along with anyone and everyone he had ever known. He was alone, besides the old hermit beside him right now. Jean was dead. Hadds was dead. Jamal was dead. Victor was dead. Hell, Micheal and even his son Miles were dead too. Raziel was truly alone, all that was left was him and Jacob, who happened just to be Raziel's sanity within himself.
Before he knew it an awkward silence had been drawn between the two aging men, one that Raziel didn't wish to continue. "Good night Deek, we'll talk in the morning." With that Raziel rolled over and covered himself with a sheet of ripped cloth. He heard Deek begin to say something, but stopped midword. Raziel didn't want to talk. The two slept as corpses rotted and flames blazed, all down in the mysterious ruins of Area 51.
Raziel had nightmares that night, as he has had for the past 100 years, and as he will have for the rest of his years.