Moments earlier…
«From: Switch»
«Now.»
Switch drove her mighty boot against the lock plate of the back door, causing the frame to crack and give way. It almost gave her some pause. Even with her synthmuscles and cybernetics, she didn’t expect the door to go down in one kick. She also didn’t expect the apparent lack in security measures, either. The lights inside remained on. No deafening klaxons blared. Nothing that you would expect in this situation. The absence of sentries as well meant that the corpos were either underestimating them, or something fishy was at play.
They must’ve recently moved into the place, considering the air had the signature dustiness that came with freshly hung drywall. None of the usual stagnation that you’d find in a normally abandoned building otherwise—
The report of gunfire interrupted her thoughts. Bullets ripped through the wall just in front of her. A pace forwards and she would have been ventilated. Her wired reflexes kicked in. As if on autopilot, she lifted her assault rifle and aimed in the direction the shots came from.
THRAKA-THRAKA-THRAKA.
She squeezed down on the trigger of her assault rifle, sending bullets ripping through the air and drywall alike. Growler and Melody quickly pushed past her. They had done this enough times in the past to maneuver around each other with the barest of direct communication.
A single shot rang out from up ahead, followed by a second, and then a third. A rather good signal that her partners in crime had handled the situation up ahead. She eased off the trigger and dropped the nearly empty mag, slapping in a new one as she strode down the hallway laden with debris. The air was even thicker with dust at this point, making it hard to take a breath without choking on remnants of drywall.
There might be no klaxon, but the corpos were definitely on alert now. She rounded the corner into the safehouse proper, where the living area was in much of the same state as the back entryway. Whole lot of drywall. Whole lot of holes. A nice place for any Slag-goer, but barely liveable by metroplex standards. Not to mention the two dead bodies right in the middle of the living room.
An ARO popped up in her peripheral vision.
«From: Pizzazz»
«Truck's piled up with enough explosives to level our turf.»
Melody strode forwards, planting a heavy boot atop one of the supposed dead bodies. Seeing how he screamed like a little girl from being stepped on, he wasn’t quite dead. Yet. A minor problem, one quickly solved by an automatic burst straight to his face.
«From: Melody»
«Shame we can't just use those to blow this place up and call it a day.»
Switch took pause at that. There were a lot of questions she had at that very moment, and not enough people with answers who happened to be alive at the moment. She was snapped out of her thoughts with Growler offering a noncommittal grunt while gesturing to something.
A leather jacket hung over the back of the nearby couch. Not just any leather jacket. A Screaming Banshees jacket. Shy had been here. They must’ve moved her in a rush. That explained why security was so light.
«From: Switch»
«We could, but it will be hard getting intel from under the rubble.»
At the rate they were going, this was going to be child’s play. Especially if the rest of whoever happened to be left in this place turned out to be as poorly trained as the mooks that they just handled. She fired off a few more messages to the pair out front—
The sound of pounding boots filled the air. Or, at least her enhanced hearing made it sound as such. Easily four to six more CorpSec were rushing towards them from the front end of the house. Maybe not as light as she’d thought, but it was still rather on the light end of things. Judging from the intervals of their footfalls, they’d be on them in a few seconds tops.
Clink.
A small metal cylinder slowly rolled into the view of the trio. Turns out they do have a modicum of training. Fuck.
“Cover your eye—”
FOOMPF.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Switch barely managed to turn away before the flash completely seared her retinas. Still wasn’t a wise idea to stare into the figurative sun even if your cybereyes can account for it. The next few moments were anything but clean, with the trio of girls unloading their automatic weapons into the doorframe in an attempted suppression. Once again, the air filled with a choking amount of debris. Flecks of fabric from the nearby sofas exploded into what amounted to confetti, the drywall getting further remodeling done to it, and splinters of synth-wood from the cabinets that had yet to be assembled.
«From: Pizzazz»
«Uh, we got incoming. Three trucks so far.»
«From: Switch»
«Hold out as best you can. Interior is also hot.»
Indeed, the interior was hotter than hot. Neither side budged, instead blindly firing at one another as they gamed for an advantage. What was mere seconds felt like hours, adrenaline making time feel like it stretched out into absurdity.
This was most likely going to drag out until one side ran out of bullets, and she only had three spare mags left.
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Cherry looked at Pizzazz. And then back at the approaching vehicles. And then at the parked truck. Back to Pizzazz.
Well, if she was going out, she might as well go out in style. Pizzazz didn’t have any time to react before Cherry hurtled her way down the front sidewalk and scooped the crate of timed charges. She never handled this specific kind of explosive before, but the assumption being that if you’ve handled one, you’ve handled them all. The labels on the arming side helped a little, too.
She set the arming interval to three seconds, hefted the crate onto her shoulder, and shotputted the thing in the direction of the speeding vehicles heading towards them. Three seconds to completely disobey orders and bound back up the sidewalk. Less than that to grab onto an extremely confused Pizzazz. Even less time to crash through the front door while shielding her partner with her body.
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Switch tumbled away from the crumbling remnants of the couch she was hiding behind, getting ready to make a game-making play. Against muscle-shirt clad gangbangers whose skill level amounted to knowing which side of the gun the bullets come out of? This would be a joke. Against trained CorpSec? Less so. Something was going to have to happen to break this stalemate—
The world suddenly went upside down. The building rumbled. Plaster rained from the ceiling. The front wall of the living room suddenly disintegrated. Through grayed out vision, Switch could barely make a figure that tumbled through the air with all of the grace of a flying brick. It took her a few seconds to shake off the bite of the concussive force that just tore through everything and everyone. The haze in her mind cleared up just enough to help her realize that the smoldering brick laying on the floor was Cherry and Pizzazz.
“What the hell?” Switch exclaimed, her usual stoicism melting and making way for surprise in that moment.
Much like a phoenix reborn, or more akin to the seething anger felt towards a coffee table after stubbing one’s toe, Cherry rose to her feet. It seemed like she took the brunt of the explosion, but by no means should she have been able to stand on her own volition. She looked closer to a well-done steak at this point. A Thread-infused, unnaturally glowing well-done steak.
Not that any of this stopped her from going on an unholy ass-kicking spree. With a faint glow now covering her hands, Cherry launched forth into the hallway that was previously no-man’s land. Left hook. Right hook. Each swing sent a CorpSec officer flying in any which direction. The minimum was broken bones. The worst of them ended up with a hole punched clean in them.
“These hands are rated E for everyone, but all of you don't count as anyone!”
For better or for worse, she wasn’t taking any prisoners. Switch barely kept up with the rampaging beast, tackling her own way through the remnants of the front half of the safehouse. She was sure that Cherry could handle herself, but it wasn’t the wisest of decisions to let her stray off into the street punching everything in sight.
«From: Switch»
«Growler. Melody. Make sure that Pizzazz is still breathing. I will try and hold Cherry back.»
By the time she broached what used to be the front door of the house, she finally got an inkling of what actually happened. It looked like the apocalypse just rode through for a brief stop, with vehicles overturned onto their sides and the other buildings down the streets reduced to smoking piles of rubble. Luckily, the epicenter of the explosion looked like it cooked off far enough down the road that the safehouse was spared the brunt of the explosion.
On the other hand, any poor CorpSec personnel that tried to clamber from their flipped truck weren’t spared. Even a modicum of movement elicited Cherry to pull them from the ground, vehicle, or wherever they had managed to end up, before delivering a punishing series of blows that left them looking little more than ground meat before she moved onto anything else that looked vaguely punchable.
Switch assigned herself the role of backup gun, ready to shoot anyone that actually had the time to draw their gun on Cherry. Best to let the girl work her anger out for now, given that there wasn’t much hope in actually stopping her.
She placed a call that got immediately picked up. “Viola.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Bring a car around. I need you to take Cherry and Pizzazz to the Doc.”
“I'll get going now.”
Switch glanced in Cherry's direction, currently taking her anger out on one of the overturned trucks by ripping the doors off with her bare hands. “Give it thirty minutes.”
“Oh. Is Cherry doing the thing again?”
“Yeah.”
She ended the call and sat down on the sidewalk. Time to wait for the big girl to tire herself out.