Michael
Leaping through the sheets of rain and ignoring the rain water getting into his eyes, Michael Cynosa’s feet eventually landed onto another edge of a rooftop. Then he sprinted and made another amazing leap, crossing a distance of over seventy meters before nailing another landing.
He hopped another three meter tall fence surrounding another giant antenna, one of Kodak’s numerous signal jammers set up around the Revelation hotel. Until he could take out at least half the total jammers, he can’t establish contact with his team and give them updated orders.
Michael recalled a brief call with the dropship pilot, who grimly stated a delay due to the intense weather, even for ships as advancely crafted as the Alpha dropship. The signal jammer in front of him was the second to last one he needed to eliminate before he could restore communications with his team.
Even with possession of numerous grenades and other remote detonated explosives, Michael didn’t need any of that to rip apart these jammers and collapse them. Using just his bare hands, he would simply bend and warp the metal bars making up the antennas until he just uprooted them like trees. Even after doing this to eight jammers and jumping and running around between each, Michael still wasn’t tired.
And this one was no different. Micheal walked over to one corner of the antenna and grabbed the metal bars near the base of the structure. Using all of his might, he ripped part of the antenna from the ground and continued applying enough pressure until he uprooted another side. All the was needed was just a bit more force. Michael simply lifted up his side of the uprooted antenna and caused the entire structure to buckle from his strength alone. He performed one last flick of his arms before toppling the entire structure over and having it lay horizontally on the building roof.
By now, the storm was as worse as it could get. Now it was as much an obstacle to Michael’s mission as Kodak was. The thick sheets of rain made it difficult for Michael to see ten meters in front of him, even with his enhanced eyesight as an agent. Most of the jumps he made from roof to roof had mostly been intuition and instinct rather that him relying solely on sight. Hail began hammering the area. A hail stone impacted the top of Michael’s head.
The sudden impact of the hail stone didn’t faze Michael one bit. His energy shields did their job and prevented the hail from impacting his head directly. Even if it did, his pain suppressors would have reduced the impact down to just a mere poke at his scalp. The hail stone bounced harmlessly off of the agent’s skull and Michael caught the stone before it landed on the ground. The hail stone was nearly the size of a baseball.
Had it hit, the impact would have caused bruising and Michael would feel the sudden blood rush to his head and possible swelling. Luckily, his enhanced physiology would make sure such a minor wound heal within seconds. But as long as he had his energy shields, his body wouldn’t need to worry.
Within the darkness of the weather, the sporadic flashes of lightning, an eerie orange glow that appeared unnatural, began striking his vicinity. Michael watched as a lightning strike flashed dozens of meters ahead of him and set an unoccupied vehicle ablaze. The intensity of the car fire allowed it to burn even in this heavy rain.
Michael’s enhanced reflexes allowed him to swerve his head out of the path of a green tracer and he instinctively dived to the ground. A few more infamous green tracer rounds sizzled the air above him before his ears could pick up a distinct gunfire aside from the impacts of hail.
Standing back up and breaking into another run, Michael lept from his current roof to another. He found himself a vantage point and observed the activity on the streets. Michael spotted the muzzles flashes from Kodak forces as well as green tracers from another faction that had just arrived.
Michael’s reinforcements had arrived. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or tense as a third faction had just arrived to throw a wrench into the mission.
Luckily, the agents from the Church of Nano-Evolution were preoccupied with attacking Kodak forces and weren’t focused on him. But such an assumption almost costed Michael his life as a radioactive rod smashed into his back. The agent immediately dived off the roof and down into the dark alley in between buildings. Michael landed gracefully onto the wet pavement beside a dumpster.
Energy shield strength: 70%
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If he didn’t have his energy shields, such a shot would have easily burned a hole through his coat and armor plating, embedding a radioactive rod into his back and gradually killing him, even with his enhanced healing factor.
Michael’s HUD immediately popped up the waypoint to the last jammer he needed to destroy to restore communications. The blue circle pointed him ahead around seven hundred meters from his location. Michael’s legs go to work as he sprinted out of the alleyway and ran up the wet, flooded road.
Correctly anticipating more gunfire, Michael dived into the rush waters along the road as more green glowing tracers slashed the rain-soaked air above and behind him. Having just enough time to flip himself on his back, he saw a small squad of Church agents on the roof he had jumped off earlier. They all stopped firing and hopped down.
Michael knew that even with his record running speed, these Church agents had teleporting capabilities and would quickly catch up to him as long as they maintained line of sight of him. Quickly getting back up, he just had to hope he could keep ahead of them far enough so that they wouldn’t see him through the heavy rain. Just to be sure, Michael kept his movements unpredictable and stopped moving in linear fashion. The agent performed sommersaults, flips and dashes in zig-zag patterns to further throw off his pursuers.
Aside from the sporadic radioactive rod sizzling the air past him, Michael did a decent job evading the Church agents. Michael turned sharply to the right and dashed into an alley between buildings. He jumped from wall to wall to get above ground, easily hopping into another building rooftop five storeys up. He sommersaulted through the air before he landed onto another flooded street. Knowing he had to be on the move, he looked up to see where the waypoint was.
The blue circle pointed him toward the last antenna a hundred meters away packed into another grouping of buildings. Michael dashed again but while pursuing the blue circle to his next objective, he suddenly bulldozed his way through several Kodak agents. He pushed on and ignored the gunfire behind him. While sloppy, he knew his energy shields would hold up against the impacts of Kodak’s barrage of gunfire behind him.
A few rounds struck Michael’s upper and lower back but he managed to evade the Kodak squad. His ears picked up the stacattos of gunfire redirecting behind him, mostly likely the Church agents catching up and encountering the Kodak squad instead. Michael let the two forces battle it out while he pursued his objective.
Michael bent his knees and lept into the air, easily clearing the height of a three storey building in a single bound. The signal jammer was just a few more buildings away. He made one last leap before he grabbed his combat knife and using his strength, slashed his way through the fence in a single smooth cut.
Destroying this jammer was just as routine as all the previous ones. He grabbed the metal bars and worked to uproot the entire structure on one side before simply lifting it upwards and toppling it over.
He immediately repositioned himself by leaping to another building, jumping until he found the highest one in the vicinity. Michael’s feet landed ona rooftop eight floors above the flooded streets. The rain had marginally decreased in intensity and he could somewhat make out the dark silhouette of the Revelation hotel. Michael watched as as the entire front area of the hotel became a crisscross of gunfire between the Church and Kodak.
Muzzle flashes and conventional ballistic rounds from Kodak mixed with the green tracers and vapors of the Church’s radioactive weapons to create a cacophony of chaos. Michael squinted and he saw a faint but familiar purple glow emerge out of the hotel. The purple glow belonged to one of the few viper fang swords still in possession by one of two particular Kodak agents.
It had to be either Colleen or Lola Odyssey joining the fight. So far, Michael’s distraction was going as intended. Now, he needed to get into the hotel and make his way up before things truly went sideways.
Michael opened up a private channel with Dan and finally managed to reach him.
“Dan, comms are back online. Get to the rooftop and I’ll meet you up there as soon as I can. Sit tight and stay alive.”
Michael abruptly cut the line and his HUD fed him an ominous update to the worsening weather conditions.
Warning: Incoming razor hail. Seek immediate shelter or risk significant injury.
Yet another archaic element had been thrown into the mission. Razor hail was a deadly weather phenomenon occurring mostly in Kodak regions. Earth’s atmosphere had become increasingly volatile in the past few centuries. One such result of such degradation of the planet’s ecological systems was the formation of razor hail.
The sharp blade-like hail were made of ice and carbon fragments that could be as large as two dozen centimeters.
Michael’s energy shields were at seventy percent energy from regular hail. Once the razor hail shard came raining down, he knew that his life expectancy would decrease even further. His energy shield could only take so much of a beating.
Now, reaching the hotel was his upmost priority.
Michael lept onto the next building roof. Something crashed and shattered to pieces on his shoulder mid-jump.
Energy shield strength: 67%
The agent landed on the roof and clutched his shoulder, his mind grimly telling him what had just hit him. All around him, Micahel watched as naturally occurring blades made of ice and carbon fell and shattered onto his surroundings.