Bravo One, despite being against the clock, took a slightly longer route to get to the courtyard by circling back around to the warehouse, the idea being that the gang would hesitate to assume a threat could come from a place they’d already searched. The fight was still on the super's terms for now, but the next bit needed to be timed correctly.
“Overwatch, have any of them made it to the truck yet?” He asked between shallow breaths as he leapt through the hole in the back of the warehouse and skidded to a halt before running into the lone container in the middle of the building. The intense light of the Reaper's truck’s high beams streamed in through the opening, bathing a thin bar of the floor in harsh white if one were to view it with the naked eye. From in here, the music was mercifully quiet for the first time in the night.
Almost there. They’re all staring into the lights like idiots, but the brave one'll be at the cab in about ten.
“Tell me when.” Joseph said as he paused a dozen or so feet from the double doors. He let go of his rifle and let it hang on its strap as he crouched down low to ready himself. From his bandolier he extracted the shield working from one of his blue tubes and fired it up, feeling the paper turn to embers in his hand then to powdery ash. A dimly glowing blue disk construct, large enough to protect his upper half, hummed to life, hovering and tracking just an inch or so above his forearm. That done, he distributed his weight evenly between his arms and legs, feeling a slight resistance from the shield as he settled in before something down there snapped, and the construct broke free. Looking down, he winced at the damage he'd done. He must have summoned his shield too low to the ground, and the disk had popped into existence a couple inches inside the concrete foundation of the building, leaving an ultra fine cut about the width of his hand in the floor. When he'd tried to move, something had to give, and the floor had cracked significantly, adding "foundation problems" to the warehouse's long list of blemishes.
Oops. Joseph imagined some forensic team in the future scratching their heads over that one. Maybe they'd miss it entirely.
He’s at the cab.
Rolling his shoulders and neck, Bravo One got down lower, assuming a loose sprinter’s crouch.
Reaching inside.
He flexed his core and filled his lungs in preparation for-
He’s in.
Joseph shot forward at top speed toward the doors, his dead sprint making his rifle bounce against the ceramic plates in his carrier. The wind whistled in his earpieces for a split second before the software flagged it as background noise and compensated. He felt it through the fabric of his mask though, chilly and dry. He powered through the open space and burst out into the night just as the Reaper in the truck cab killed the lights, allowing the night to descend on the depot again and leaving Bravo One's foes blind. In the back of his mind, Joseph registered the strain he’d just put on his injured leg and how it seemed to burn hotter than its twin.
A problem for future Joseph. Present Joseph needed to focus on the fight. Speed and violence.
The ghillied up super flew across the courtyard, a brown, bristly freight train, like a piece of the desert had come to life, and it wanted people dead. The four blinking figures in front of him, all dressed in the Reaper denim/leather garb, had their backs to him, able to take in the majority of the courtyard for the first time without the truck's high beams blinding them. A couple of them turned their attention toward the women huddled near the fire barrel, one of them looked past the trucks and put his hand to his mouth to call for his missing comrades that were far past hearing his voice.
“Fritz! Where are you?” He shouted. “You’re su-”
“Behind you! Behind you!” The short guy in the red skull cap, Long if Joseph remembered correctly, bellowed. As Long shouted his warning to his fellows, he tried and failed to simultaneously get all the way out of the truck cab and bring his gun in line. stumbling. All the while the charging super with the blue shield bore down on his fellow Reapers.
The four unaware combatants hesitated at Long's words, not reacting with the urgency they should have, and that’s what killed them. Before they knew they were in a fight, Bravo One was already amongst them. A tall man in a thick leather jacket was the first to go down, Bravo One rushing past him on his left, the humming blue disk punching up through his rib cage and out through his upper back with a *shick* like the world’s quietest saw blade. The energy dispersal properties of the shield flung the blood out and away from the center, showering the other 44 Reapers with hot blood.
Bravo One didn’t break stride until he hit the next Reaper, who was in the process of reflexively bringing his hand up to wipe the blood from his eyes while also raising his pistol toward the threat. Joseph was already in striking range, though, bringing the shield from high to low, slicing partially through the biker’s weapon hand and following through with a falling strike that severed the man’s leg at the shin. The Reaper screamed and crumpled forward onto Joseph and the edge of the shield, momentum and the construct's atomically sharp edge working together to end the man's life. It also arrested Joseph's movement, bringing him to a skidding stop.
Now on one knee with a full grown man’s weight slumped atop him, Bravo One couldn't move anywhere with speed. He was about to throw the body off of him, but he stopped. To his right, the two remaining Reapers both had their guns up, shifting their aim from point to point, attempting to get a clean shot on him. Long, having gotten out of the truck cab and braced his weapon on the vehicle's frame, seemed to waffle back and forth on pointing his gun at the super as well, not wanting to fire through his buddies.
Joseph’s mind raced. Why hadn’t they fired? The body? Did they think the guy was alive? They were shouting now, all of it coming out at once.
“Put him down!”
“Drop the gun! Hands up!”
“-son of a bitch, I’ll kill you! Back away!”
The body was almost certainly keeping Joseph alive. That wouldn’t last long. Bravo One could already feel the body shifting on the shield's plane, and when it finally fell, it would mostly likely be in multiple pieces.
The Reapers were shaken, Bravo One could tell. The action had happened so quickly that no one had their brain in the game just yet. They screamed and cursed at him, spasmically waving their guns in his direction but not daring to take a shot, sometimes flagging each other with their muzzles thanks to them all being in a loose single file line. If he could change the angle just a little…
The super's hand slid down to his hip where he kept his ace, hoping Wilhelm would forgive him for this.
This was really going to hurt.
Bravo One slid both legs underneath him and his dead human shield. Then he straightened his back and shifted his center of gravity to the right place.
Three. Two. One. Push!
As quickly and explosively as he could, Joseph leapt, extending both of his legs and launching both him and his new best friend up and to the left. As he did so, the body did what bodies do and succumbed to gravity and inertia. It didn't quite have the kinetic energy it needed to make the jumpe like Joseph did, so it slid wetly down the front of the shield, exposing the super’s head, his shoulders, his chest.
The Reapers were pretty quick on the draw. As he made his move, Bravo One could see the men’s eyes widen and their aim shift up to shoot him as his human shield fell away, but when the body fell past his waist, Bravo One's gun hand shot up from the holster on his hip, a heavy metal tube of insulated steel pointed in the general direction he needed. There was no time to aim precisely.
He pulled the trigger.
There was a white-hot, strobing pop followed by the acrid scent of burning flesh and hair, and the two men in front of him fell to the floor in more or less one piece, their clothes aflame and massive, bowling ball sized holes bored through their torsos. The truck behind them was also on fire, the hood a blackened and warped mess with bubbling paint visible even on the fenders. The cab of the truck billowed smoke and yellow flames licked up from the dash.
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The corpse at Bravo One's feet blazed away, having been at nearly point blank range when the shaped plasma stream left the plas-lock's barrel. The dead Reaper had had his revenge, however. The body's proximity to the weapon's muzzle had caused some plasma backwash. The familiar sting of fresh burns on Bravo One's hands and legs promised an uncomfortabl recovery period after his business was concluded here.
At least he wasn't on fire.
Long couldn't say the same. The sleeve on his jacket was a smoking mess, and the skull cap he wore must have been some kind of synthetic material, because it seemed to have melted to the right side of his scalp. His screams no longer held linguistic intent. He just wailed as he slapped at his head and arm, frantically trying to kill the flames by beating them.
Joseph hit the release catch on the plas-lock’s side, and the slagged barrel ejected itself with a *fup*, clattering to the ground. It would be too hot to put back in the holster, Joseph knew. He'd have to pick it up later.
To his credit, Long had passable instincts once the immediate need to put himself out was taken care of. He ducked down behind the truck’s open door and scrambled to pick up the revolver he’d dropped. Failure Condition One was back on the table.
Joseph reached down and took hold of his rifle again and brought it up in an awkward one-handed grip. He still had a pulsating blue shield stuck to his arm, so a proper shooting stance would be out of the question.
He could see, even from where he was, Long’s fruitless attempts to get the gun back in his burned hand before the Reaper abanded that action to try the other.
That, Bravo One couldn’t allow. He advanced. His leg hurt like hell. He tried to draw a bead on the portion of the truck door where Long’s head should have been, but the motion and the one-handed grip made it difficult. He squeezed off a shot at about twenty feet and heard the *ktch* of tearing metal and shattering plastic, but all it did was make Long redouble his efforts, clawing at the ground around pistol numbly. In his panic all of his movements were jerky and fumbling. The man was shaking like a leaf, perhaps from the shock of his injuries, perhaps from legitimate terror. His panic told him that he had only one way out of this alive, and that was the gun. Nothing else mattered. The thought of getting into better cover, cover that might stop a bullet better than a thin truck door, didn't even occur to him.
Joseph let his gun hang on its strap as he brought his shield up to deflect any bullets Long might send his way and then used his unshielded hand to draw back the charging handle, racking another round into the chamber. Again, this needed to end quickly or there would be unsuppressed gunshots leading to Failure Condition One. He advanced... less smoothly than he'd like, but he advanced.
Then, Long did something Joseph didn’t expect. “Help me!” he screamed from behind the truck door.
Bravo One stopped mid stride and blinked, not quite getting-
Watch your six, kid!
It was all the warning Joseph got before someone barreled into him from behind, wrapping their arms around his shoulders and neck and using their weight to try and ride him down to the ground.
That’s when his leg finally chose to give out. There was a wrenching sensation, and then his body was no longer able to keep him upright. He toppled forward. He was just able to angle his shield so that he didn’t slice himself in half, but one of his ceramic plates inside his combat harness wasn't so lucky, breaking with a muffled *clack*. His face hit the gravel, and his goggles closed their apertures momentarily to protect the lenses, making things go dark.
His assailant had him from behind, attempting to… what? Choke him? Whoever they were, they didn’t have a good grip or proper positioning to go for a blood choke, but that didn’t stop them from keeping Joseph down long enough to get help from elsewhere.
"Kill him! Fucking kill him!" Long's voice was shrill in his terror, strained to the point of breaking.
Joseph tucked his knees up and pushed out with his free hand to roll over. The person on his back was lighter than he’d expected. The two of them practically rolled over twice before Joseph ended up on top, his attacker still stuck to his back like a tick. Now that he wasn’t face down in the gravel, the apertures on his goggles opened again to reveal Long’s revolver in his face.
However, it wasn’t Long holding the weapon.
The woman in the night gown, the one the 44 Reapers had brought to their little private party, the one Joseph had sought to save, the one currently under super hypnosis, was pointing Long’s revolver at Joseph’s head.
“Do it! Kill him!” Long screamed from beside her, as he held his trembling, ruined hands protectively to his chest. Half of the skin on his arms was missing, exposing bone, and the flesh that was still there was a blackened mess. The plas-lock must have burned the guy worse than Joseph had realized. He couldn’t have picked up his weapon, much less fired it, even if he had all night.
The brunette woman’s long, tangled hair was matted to her head with sweat and tears streamed down her cheeks bellying the inner battle happening in her mind that her blank expression would not allow her to show. Her entire body trembled, her hands especially, causing the revolver's muzzle to reel like a tree in a gale.
It was probably why she got so close.
She’d been compelled to help Long, but she wasn’t confident in her aim. Point blank was where she needed to be if she were to make the shot.
Night Gown Lady inched closer, wincing almost imperceptibly as her bare feet carried her over the sharp gravel and toward the man she was meant to kill. The revolver’s hammer slipped back, millimeter by millimeter as her shaking hands pulled on the trigger.
Bravo One needed room to move. He bent forward at the waist, bringing his unseen attacker forward with him, then he flung his head back, hoping to connect with something important. Whatever his head hit, it was noisy and gave slightly when it made impact. With that, the grip on his neck weakened, allowing Joseph to lunge forward, hand outstretched for Long's gun. His fingers brushed the barrel first, knocking it out of line. Then his movement carried him up the barrel to the chamber. Past it. Past the rear sight. The revolver's hammer quivered as it reached the limit of its mechanical housing.
Fingers finally closing upon the frame, Joseph tightened his grip as hard as he could and braced himself.
The hammer shot forward with a *snap*, and Joseph felt a sharp sting in the webbing between his thumb and pointer finger.
No gunshot.
The soft skin of his hand had stopped the firing pin from reaching the primer of the bullet.
The two of them, the super and the young woman, stayed there for a brief moment, staring into each other's eyes, at least in Joseph's case. The brunette in the night gown probably only saw the reflective lenses of Joseph's goggles.
After a long, relieved sigh, Bravo One ripped the weapon down and away, nearly bringing the woman down as well before she released her grip and let him have the gun. Then the super twisted and broke what he assumed was the other woman’s hold on his neck, allowing him to climb painfully to his feet. When he looked down, the woman in the sweatshirt laid there in the gravel, her vision unfocused and blood trickling down from the corner of her mouth.
Joseph winced at that. "Sorry" he mouthed invisibly under his mask.
It was then that the shield on Bravo One’s arm finally sputtered and died, its barely audible hum terminating abrubptly. The night was dead quiet but for the heavy breathing of the four of them.
Long no longer shouted orders at the women. He just stood there staring at Bravo one, quietly whimpering as painful tremors racked his injured body. He was past fighting. Past fleeing. The embers of fear in his eyes were threatening to blaze into full on nervous breakdown.
Joseph took stock. The exertion and stress had taken its toll on him. He was bone tired. His lungs pumped like bellows, and his heart pounded in his ears. Furthermore, his traitorous leg felt wrong, somehow. Out of place. He forced himself to stand on it, however. The projection of strength was crucial at this point.
Never let them see you bleed.
He reached down and gripped his rifle once again, levelling it at Long’s face.
“Tell them to go home and not contact anyone for 24 hours,” he growled. Bravo One’s throat mic transformed the words into something unnatural. Deeper. More sinister. The way Wilhelm described it, it sounded like the lovechild of a grizzly bear and a diesel engine. Its function was mostly to confuse voice recognition software, but if it came with the side-effect of sounding menacing... Well, Joseph wasn't going to complain.
“What?” Long didn’t seem to get the full picture at first. The shock from his burns and the terror at seeing his comrades cut down had muddled his comprehension to the point where he would likely need things spelled out for him.
“Tell the women to go home and not contact anyone for 24 hours,” Bravo One repeated, adding a “Please” before taking an agonizing step forward and resting the muzzle of his assault rifle against Long's head.
If the Reaper thought Bravo One's slight limp made him less threatening, the guy didn't show it. Long nodded shakily, still clutching his charred hands to his chest. When he spoke his voice was tremulous but at least passably commanding.
“G-Go back home and don’t talk t-t-to nobody for a day. Get out of here.”
The woman in the nightgown blinked, processing this for a moment, before bending down and helping her friend get to her feet. Once both were upright, they started limping their way over the gravel toward the depot gate. On their way past, the brunette that almost shot Joseph paused and seemed to let her gaze linger on him for a full second before she followed the compulsion. Her face was as blank as ever... Or was it? There was a flash of emotion that tried to peek through during that brief pause, but it didn't last long enough for Joseph to really interpret it.
Long and Bravo One stood there and watched the innocents hobble away until they rounded a corner and slipped out of sight.
After another tense handful of breaths, Joseph lowered his rifle, prompting a quiet, grateful sob to escape Long's throat.
Then Bravo One barreled forward, moving aggressively into the Reaper’s personal space, towering over him and sezing the collar of the man's vest with an iron grip. The last 44 Reaper nearly fainted. His eyes swam, and his knees gave out. However, a violent shake from the super brought him back from the brink.
“I want to know about Gull."
Long told him everything. About their agreement with Gull. About Las Almas. About Gull's... proclivities.
Any doubts Joseph had about the worthiness of his mission fell away.
It was all so much worse than he had even imagined.