Colleen

Colleen Odyssey walked through the dark alleys of the adjacent buildings near the carnage. Her sister Lola walked right behind her. By now, the rain water was up to their shins, making traversal on the ground only marginally more difficult to agents of their caliber. Both of their energy shields protected them from the growing pieces of hail raining down on them.

A hail stone the size of a hand grenade bounced off of Colleen’s shoulder. Judging from how violent and forceful the richochet was a normal person would have been knocked out if such a stone hit the head.

“At least it doesn’t smell like shit here with all this water,” Lola said behind her.

“Quiet,” Colleen said sharply.

“Oh come on, those fanatics can’t hear us over this storm. As long as we stay out of sight, we can crush them anytime we please,” Lola said. “Why the fuck are we hiding out in alleys? Why didnt we just charge those fuckers head on?”

Colleen gritted her teeth at her sister’s insistence of meeting all of her enemies face to face. Every. Single. Time.

She breathed in and exhaled. Her sister was blood after all. They simply had different means of accomplishing the task at hand.

“Because it wouldn’t have been smart. Even with our enhanced speed, it would still be possible to hit a target that was charging at you straight from the front. Our energy shields wouldn’t hold up against the constant barrage of the Church’s gunfire. Have you seen their weapons?”

“You mean that green shit they shoot out of their guns? What’s so dangerous about that?”

“You can’t be serious. You saw what happened to one of our own. A green tracer burned its way into his armor and ate his stomach away,” Colleen said. “Your lack of research on your opponents will get you killed one day, just like it did with your failed capture of Jane Sunheiser the last time. There will come a time where I’m not around to help bail you out, you know that?”

“Aw it’s so nice to see you care. I wasn’t quite sure since we didn’t play enough catch growing up,” Lola shrugged.

The two continued moving through the alley until they reached near the end. Outside, Colleen watched through the sheets of rain the battle that still raged on in front of them.

“The point is that the Church agents are using radioactive rods that will burn straight through our armor if we let them. Our shields can’t survive more than a handful of direct shots. And they have magic on their side. I hate magic,” Colleen seethed.

She looked up to confirm the presence of any snipers. Colleen knew that sniper units were uncommon from the Church shard since those fanatics preferred the use of their deadly magic and more basic assault rifles and DMRs with radioactive ammunition. She bet that if the Church could, they would scrap conventional guns entirely and just rely solely on their magic. Yet she checked anyway. I never hurt to be cautious, even with her level of physical might.

Colleen held her fist up and gave her sister two raised fingers, her personal signal to wait before attacking.

“What do you see?” Lola said.

“I see incompetence,” Colleen sighed. The Kodak agent had the displeasure of having a secret seat to watching how incompetent her forces were. She lost count of how many missed shots slashed the rain instead of through the flesh of their enemies. Somehow, not a single grenade or heavy weapon was in use by her forces.

Why did Overlord saddle her with such incompetent fools? Especially for this particular hotel. She and what remained of her forces had just barely managed to snatch the batch of Arctic serums from the Alpha Corp and now their looted prize was at risk.

And now, the hotel was being attacked by Church agents who were seemingly summoned out of nowhere.

Colleen sighed once more, pinching the bridge of her nose and rubbing her eyes.

“Are you alright, sister?” Lola asked. She cradled her sister around her forearms. Normally she would perform the gesture on her upper arms, but the spikes and razor wires wrapped around her prevented such touching.

“We’re ending this nonsense,” Colleen said, looking her twin in the eyes. “I can’t stand watching any more of this incompetence.” She grabbed the special hilt off her belt and handed it to Lola. “You take the viper fang. Stay on the ground and let loose. No holding back. I’ll take them from the high ground.”

“We really need to find another one of these,” Lola said, igniting the glowing purple blade. “I feel bad having to share. You never get to have as much fun as I do.”

Colleen snickered, grabbing the CMA-40 rifle off her back. “Don’t worry about me. You do your part and I do mine. Get out there while I get on the rooftops.”

Lola nodded with a grin on her face. She jumped over her sister and sprinted full speed into the flank of the force of Church agents. The waters were high enough that Lola’s sprint caused water to fly up from each fast step. The majority of them took cover behind abandoned vehicles that haven’t been washed away by the flood waters.

Colleen watched as her twin swung wide and lobbed off the hooded head of one Church agent, then she bulldozed through their midst and began chopping up the enemy. Meanwhile, Colleen jumped between the walls until she got herself onto the roof of a building and immediately began firing her rifle in semi-auto mode. In less than two seconds, she popped three hooded heads while her sister continued jumping and flipping around the CHurch agents on the ground.

Two Church agents flashed into existence out of nowhere, each popping up on either side of Lola. Her twin flipped backward high enough above one of the Church agents and she swung. Lola cleanly split the head of the agent before she landed. She sidestepped multiple green radioactive slugs before she whipped out her handgun and scored a headshot on the other Church agent.

It didn’t take long before Colleen could hear the sudden whoosh sounds around her, signalling more teleporting Church agents. She narrowly ducked beneath a katana blade and spun around, now facing three enemy agents. A second agent raised his fists up and began emitting red energies from his hands. Colleen knew the effect. The Church agent poured his energy into his palms and then his entire fists to create their own magical variation of brass knuckles.

Her energy shields would be depleted after a few consistent hits. The third agent raised a rifle with an elongated barrel at her. The motion appeared slow to Colleen’s eyes and she had no problem outspeeding the Church agent by raising her CMA rifle first. Pulling the trigger, Colleen ended the stand off by shooting a round into the agent’s throat.

The other two rushed to attack her. Once again, Colleen swerved her head out of the path of a sword slash. As for the incoming Church agent with the glowing red fists, he winded up for a punch, but Colleen simply backhanded him aside, knocking the agent down into the rushing flood waters on the street.

She grabbed the wrist of the katana agent who tried another pathetic swing at her. All she did was squeeze the Church agent’s wrist and crushed it, making him drop the sword. By the time she let go, her ears picked up the sound of a fanatic who just teleported behind her and she sidestepped a punch that would have smashed into the back of her head.

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Instead, the energy imbued punch landed into the chest of the other Church agent, caving his ribs and making him cough up a healthy gobblet of blood.

This pattern of attack was nothing new to Colleen. She had fought against the Church shard numerous times in the past. Church agents were deadly with their magic abilities, especially their equivalents to tier threes and fours. But they had weaknesses that were easy enough to exploit.

Even while only half concentrating, she still ducked beneath another punch from the third Church agent. All of the rapid red glowing punches appeared slower than they should be thanks to Colleen’s enhanced reaction times. All Church agents suffer a mental and neurological toll from the use of their magic. As a result, they suffered a debuff to their reaction times and reflexes.

Colleen saw the eyes of her enemy flash red and she immediately sidestepped. A small portion of the roof behind her spontaneously caught on fire. Another weakness was that most of their offensive abilities requires line of sight on a target to use effectively. She was familiar with the glare ability that allowed a fanatic to burn or even disintegrate a target through the power of hatred and rage. But if the user couldn’t even see their target, it was rendered useless. With Colleen’s blinding speed, it would be impossible to use that ability to hurt her in the heat of combat.

Getting sick of this fight, Colleen reached out and grabbed the neck of the Church agent. She stepped around him and wrapped her arm around his neck, putting the agent in a lock. With the razor wire wrapped around her arm and the spikes on her shoulder piece, she knew at least some of that would dig into the Chruch agent, causing him more agony.

Church agents didn’t seem to employ any defensive use of their magic. All of their techniques were optimized to killing and killing only. And that meant that a Church agent could be dropped just as easily from a surprise bullet to the head or any other trap or ambush tactic as anyone else.

Colleen maintained the lock on her opponent and in the five second she held him, not once did the fanatic employ any techniques or tricks to get himself free. And this was the final folly of the Church shard. They were slaves to their hokey religious faith and to their magic abilities. Their admittedly deadly powers were used as crutches to make up for the lack of actual skill and tactics. The fanatic in Colleen’s arms simply kept squirming and kicking his feet out uselessly as if kicking the rain-soaked air would do any good.

This fight was too pathetic. She held onto the shoulder of the fanatic and used her other hand to grab his face. She gripped the shoulder tightly as her other hand she forcibly rotated the agent’s head until she heard an audible snap. The Church agent went slack and stopped his useless struggle. Colleen tossed the corpse down into the rushing waters.

“We’re all clear here, sister,” Lola said through the channel.

“Good, follow me,” Colleen said.

The Kodak agent lept across the street and onto the next building across in a single bound. She lept across more building roofs as easily as she did skipping across outdoor ground tiles as a child.

“This fucking bullshit,” Lola said. “All of this water everywhere is making it hard not to slip.”

“Quit complaining and get up here then,” Colleen ordered. In two seconds, she saw her sister’s arm hang onto the side the current roof and she pulled herself up.

Colleen slowly walked over to her. She didn’t extend a helping hand as her twin already got herself onto the roof.

“That was sloppy,” Colleen lectured. “I know you can jump higher than that. Why were you hanging like that?”

“I fucked up the jump, sis,” Lola admitted looking up to the sky instead of Colleen in the eyes. “It’s hard to get good air time when the fucking water is up to your knees.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Colleen said half-jokingly and rolling her eyes.

“Oh don’t be like that, you bitch,” Lola snapped.

Colleen ignored her and walked over to the edge of the roof. She stared down onto another street with more Church agents exchanging shots with Kodak forces near the immediate perimeter of the hotel.

“This is ridiculous,” Colleen muttered. She looked back at her twin. “Give me the viper fang. It’s my turn.”

“But—,”

Colleen’s gaze to her sister shutdown any more protests. They both knew who was the stronger and smarter of the two.

“S-sorry sis. But like I said, we really need two of these swords,” Lola pouted.

“I’ll help out forces deal with the rest of the Kodak agents,” Colleen ordered. “You will make your way back to the hotel and get your ass up to the roof landing pad. I know what our infiltrators are doing. They’re going to get away with the container and escape via the air. Stop them before that happens.”

Lola blinked at her sister before she said, “You gotta be fucking kidding me. The elevators are probably all disabled because of the lockdown and maybe even by those trashy Alpha assholes. Climbing those stairs is going to be a pain in the ass. I’d rather you shove that sword up my ass before climbing all that.”

“I might do it if you don’t stop whining and go,” Colleen said, igniting the viper fang. “That’s an order. If we lose that container then not even I can concoct a reasonable excuse to Overlord.”

“Wait, if I go up there and encounter Michael Cynosa, wouldn’t I need the sword more than you?”

“Stop your crying. The last time you and the strike team encountered him, you took him on just fine.”

“Sure I did,” Lola scoffed. “But almost everyone else died. You can’t even give me a little bit of insurance?”

“Kate and Adam are already up there,” Colleen said. “Just back them up and make sure the container gets back into our hands.”

“Okay sis,” Lola said. She turned on her heel and split off from Colleen. She briefly watched her sister hopping roof to roof back toward the Revelation hotel. Colleen glanced over to the road next to her and saw more Church agents putting pressure on her forces.

Colleen briefly contemplated just allowing these fanatics to eviscerate and kill off the Kodak agents embarrasing them on this street. It would cull the incompetent out of their ranks and in the case that they failed to take back the container from Michael Cynosa and his team, she could at least make a stronger case regarding their failures to her superior by pointing out the sudden invasion by the Church of Nano-Evolution.

However, Colleen’s pride wouldn’t allow herself to take that path. She was trained since she was a teen to crush all the enemies in front of her. If the agents stationed at this hotel were this incompetent that they couldn’t repel this admittedly small force of Church agents, then she had no choice to intervene.

Plus, she didn’t want any surviving Church agents leaving alive and forming a mocking opinion of the Kodak-Cresh shard.

Overlooking the small force of Church agents somehow holding their own against Kodak agents that outnumbered them two to one, Colleen picked out her targets and in what order to kill them within just a few seconds.

She used her insane strength and lept off the roof. Colleen briefly soared through the rain and hail filled air and lifted her arms over head along with the viper fang. Once she arced towards the ground, she brought her arms down and her vision filled with glowing purple and inky reds from bisecting a Church agent straight down the middle into near perfect halves.

Colleen spun around and chopped straight through the torso of another enemy agent, separating her upper half as easily as cutting air. Another trio of fanatics suddenly materialized in front of her with the familiar whoosh sounds and Colleen extended her arm out with the sword and spun around a full three hundred sixty degrees.

Her viper fang caught two of the three Church agents who tried surrounding her and both fell from decapitation and dismemberment. Their bodies floated away in the rushing current of flood water. Lola was right about the water being at knee height.

She whipped out her rifle in one hand and blasted apart the skulls of numerous fanatics along the rudimentary battle line and took down many shooters. Colleen imagined that if she hadn’t disabled her HUD and its pesky notifications, the amount of bonus experience and new records she just pulled while battling in inclement weather would have cluttered up her vision and distracted her, possibly giving these Church agents a marginal chance of catching her off guard.

Colleen spotted a few Church agents firing shots from the upper windows of the building in front of her. Only now did they notice their fellows getting chopped up on the flooded ground. Too late, as Colleen had already aimed her rifle at the building and blasted the faces off four additional Church agents while firing her rifle one handed.

The ridiculousness of this invasion by the Church shard and the possibility of losing the container to Michael Cynosa fueled Colleen’s hatred and pushed her to move with such speed as if she wasn’t kneed deep in flood water. She had lost so many competent agents in their struggle against Michael during their raid of the Alpha supply convoy in the United States. To lose the container now would be a crushing defeat, even if she didn’t get her ass chewed out by Overlord.

She hacked apart and shot the remainder of the Church agents on this flooded street, skewering the final agent. The fanatic stared at her with glowing red eyes, but couldn't execute the glare attack due to his grievous wounds.

Colleen gave the Revelation hotel a side glance and muttered, “I fucking swear if we lose the container.”