Gwyn was eventually able to extricate herself from the others, dragging the freckled assassin along with her to a secluded corner so that they could talk privately. Gwyn had things she wanted to say, she was done with being the only one dotted on in the group.
Before Cécilia could ask what was going on she was wrapped up in an encompassing hug, Gwyn pulled her friend's head down and onto her chest so that she could whisper to her without the others overhearing.
“You probably already know this but I love you and accept you as you are; the girl, the assassin, all of you. You don’t need anyone’s acceptance but you have it anyway.”
Ever since Gwyn had gotten the Seductress class she had thought about why it was available for her. She was inclined to believe that it was her empathetic nature that was responsible, despite her mother’s best attempt Gwyn did care for others, especially her friends.
As such she had always known Cécilia ostracized herself, she didn’t know the why of it until tonight. Cécilia felt that she’d be rejected because of her inability to feel for those she killed, fearing rejection and craving acceptance.
Gwyn held her tall muscular friend as a lifetime of anxiety and stress melted away in the form of silent shaking tears. She held her in her arms as her lament of relief rocked her, until finally green eyes met with green eyes.
“What about Tatiana?” Cécilia asked with concern as despite her desire she didn't want to break up the group or hurt her friend.
“Fuck it, if I want to have all of you I will,” Gwyn gave a teary smirk, “plus I think Tatiana and Marion’s rivalry is filled with sexual tension anyway.”
Cécilia snorted “Language.”
For some inane reason Gwyn found this absolutely hilarious.
Her desperate laughter devolved into giggling and hiccuping that she was unable to stop, eventually Cécilia joined her in her mirth.
Their peels of glee brought the other two wandering over in curiosity, which was when Gwyn sprung her trap. She captured the pair in a warm hug and bore them to the boutique’s floor in a pile of laughing friends.
In that moment of ease and introspection upon the carpeted floor she realized she wasn’t a very good pacifist, she’d burn the entire world if any of her friends were harmed.
They were all she had left.
----------------------------------------
Eventually their good times had to come to an end.
As they were still gleefully lying on the floor, one of Tatiana’s maids came over to inform them that the tracker they had on the fleeing car had reached its destination. Tatiana’s people had tracked the escaping henchmen to the outskirts of the city where the bullet-riddled car had been abandoned.
Unlike before when she had to look unprepared, this time Gwyn and the others had the time to get properly outfitted and armored.
They slipped into a tactical bodysuit each with the help of the maids, they were much like Cécilia’s just without the roses highlighting them. Over top of this slick skintight bodysuit went armored chest rigs and helmets to protect their vitals.
For weapons they each picked out battle-rifles with an attached sling and a small pistol which Gwyn secured to her outer thigh. Numerous loaded magazines were placed into her tactical rig for ease of access.
The girls were equipped for war.
They weren’t going alone this time either as stealth wasn’t as critical now that they had revealed their hand in an extremely bloody manner.
Instead a host of 20 heavily armed bodyguards were going to accompany them. The men and women were armed and armored more like a small private army instead of local gangsters that they supposedly were.
Rather than heading towards the main entrance they were led to the rooftop where a hover-copter awaited. The bladeless copter was sleek and black and had multiple panels on the underside that she was told were capable of redirecting ground based radar around it, thus cloaking them in the night sky.
It was eerily silent as they flew through the night, it was Gwyn’s first time in one and was fairly excited despite her nerves for the upcoming battle.
She could also admit that the city they floated through was beautiful in spite of its many flaws.
It didn’t take them that long to reach their destination where the signal had ended. The outskirts of the city was littered with the corpses of abandoned factories. They were the result of the city's failed industries and the graveyard stretched for miles around all the way to the horizon.
A mile out from their target half the bodyguards repelled silently like ghosts from the transport, disappearing into the surrounding buildings. The hover-copter circled back up and into the dark as they awaited conformation from the away team.
Gwyn noticed below them a few dim flashes lighting up the rusted buildings which she now could recognize as suppressed gunfire.
After a minute's beat there was a signal from the pilot that they were heading downwards to land. They were lowered down onto a nearby rooftop that was stable enough to accept the weight of the craft, from there they were disgorged from the transport.
Gwyn exited alongside her friends, her heavy boots crunching onto the gravel coated roof.
The black clad bodyguards they had brought along rapidly spread out over the open area and secured every sightline. Several posted up on the roofline with large sniper rifles and watched the entrance to the underground they were here for.
Tatiana’s people had informed her that the masked henchman had abandoned their vehicle and gone down into the old subway.
In Winterfield’s early days where underground public transport had been far more popular, the city had invested a large budget to expand the system all over the city. That had been before they had realized just how dense the rock was under the city. After billions of dollars and not much to show for it the city had abandoned the project for more cost-effective above ground transport, this left large amounts of half finished tunnels all over the city.
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Over the subsequent years the criminal elements, Tatiana’s family included, had used these as smuggling routes, hideouts and storehouses. The old tunnels were now a dense maze of twisting paths.
Their foes were truly rats hiding in the dark.
“The site is secure, there are no more hostiles in the area and the car is untrapped.”
One of Tatiana’s men approached and informed her of the situation.
From what Gwyn could see, whoever had been left to keep watch over the entrance had been quickly eliminated. The bullet riddled car itself lay half hidden by the entrance, most likely by tomorrow it would be stripped bare by whatever scavengers that roamed this far out.
It was nice of them to not rig the car to explode, however once they were in the tight packed tunnels it would be another story.
“Do you think we could infiltrate quietly?” Tatiana asked her man as they observed the subway tunnel that opened into the earth like a portal to hell.
The bodyguard shook his head slightly “no mam, they’ll be most likely watching the entrance, they’ll be expecting us at some point and we’ll be traveling slowly to check for traps.”
“Could we enter another way?”
The tunnels did spread out all over the city, there were numerous entrances.
“It’s likely but we won’t be able to find their trail and the longer we wait the further they’ll get.”
Tatiana observed the entrance as she contemplated, her options were to either delay in order to find an unwatched way in and potentially lose the trail or to go through a most assuredly watched and trapped entrance but keep their tracks.
“Go in.”
At her order the men and women under her command gave nods of affirmation and triple checked their gear. In the time they had been talking, crates of weapons had been unloaded from the hover-copter, Gwyn herself snagged a few flash-bangs.
She even saw a brawnier man grab a compact missile launcher and strapped it and a bundle of missiles to his back. Another bodyguard, a woman this time, grabbed a deployable auto-turret and looked excited to use it.
It did look interesting to Gwyn as well.
With a swiftness they descended into the gaping maw and down into the earth.
Underbarrel flashlights cut through the gloom to illuminate their path. It appeared that these tunnels had seen regular movement, tracks of foot prints and dots of blood carved through the dust and rubble.
Gwyn was watching the floor, sweeping her flashlight from side to side as she walked beside Tatiana. Each of her friends were focused, determined to hunt those who had dared to hunt her, it made her heart soar once more.
The stumbling tracks led further into the maze under the city, twists and turns threatened to disorientate them but the team had devices keyed to keep track even down here out of satellite coverage.
They had further to go however.
Before long Gwyn felt that they had been traveling for hours but it could have been any time at all, she had lost track of time in the dark far from the heavens.
The professionals led the way, coasting along the walls and making sure to peek around the curves and bends as to avoid ambushes and traps. Occasionally they’d stop to dismantle a trap or disable an alarm or camera, the enemies knew they were here but it was always a good idea to keep them as unaware as possible.
They were drawing ever closer to their prey.
“Hold.”
A female bodyguard, the one with the remote auto-turret, whispered a stop over the comms, immediately the entire group froze where they were. The tunnel up ahead curved around a sharp corner leaving them blind.
From out of one of her vest pockets she withdrew a palm-sized spider drone and sent it along the wall, watching all the while from a wrist mounted screen.
After a beat she began talking over the comms to the rest of the team, Gwyn remained silent as she waited.
“Contact, there’s an old platform ahead. It’s been reinforced heavily, wait one,” there was a long moment of silence as she maneuvered the drone along the ceiling, “30 tangos, 3 mounted HMG’s, 1 Auto-turret, no HVT’s insight.”
“Cover?”
“Negative, it’s a straight shot to the platform. We’d be out in the open.”
“Ideas?”
Gwyn contemplated what they could do, if they turned the corner they’d be cut down in seconds. She clicked her comm for attention as she wanted to gather some more intel.
“Would the Auto-turret be affected by the flashbangs?” If she could use her flashbang combo to take them out they might be able to close the gap.
“Negative. Their sensors can adjust faster than we could get in range.”
“Cécilia, if we got close enough could you shoot out its sensors to disable it?” Gwyn asked the redhead near her.
She remembered what she had been told by the assassin, her suit blocked heat and motion sensors and Gwyn was wearing one now as well.
“Sure? I’d been exposed afterwards though.” Cécilia shrugged as she replied to the query. Cécilia trusted Gwyn but seemed to have reservations about sitting directly in a killing zone, which was fair as Gwyn had the same reservations.
“I’ve got a plan, Cécilia and I will crawl up to them since our suits won’t be picked up by the turret, then she’ll shoot it out while I disable the watchers with a flashbang. After that you guys rush the platform and deal with the others.”
“Solid plan, it’s your call boss.” The female bodyguard addressed Tatiana as she had the final say.
The group waited for Tatiana’s decision, she looked indecisive. This plan would put two of her closest people in the line of fire after all but in the end she decided to trust them.
“Do it.”
They moved slowly and silently.
Cécilia and Gwyn crept forwards, plastering themselves to the floor. Inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter they got closer until they were in range. They couldn’t move very fast just because the sensors couldn’t see them, the lookouts could still pick them up with their mk1 eyeballs.
Once they got close enough that both of them had the right angles, they stopped.
Timing would be important, Cécilia needed to shoot first just before Gwyn threw her grenade as it wasn’t protected from the auto-turrets motion detector. They didn’t want to lose the element of surprise by the grenade being shot out of the air, they’d be sitting ducks afterwards.
Gwyn prepped her Alluring Flashbang while Cécilia lined up her shot upon the stationary auto-turret.
On the silent count of three they both moved, a pull of the trigger and a lunging throw.
The auto-turret sparked as its sensors were blown out causing shouts of alarm to brew, only to be silenced as an unnaturally distracting grenade bounced onto the platform.
Cécilia covered Gwyn’s body as the blast of light and sound erupted from the platform and bullets from their swiftly moving allies whizzed over their heads.
They waited on the floor until the forward element had passed them, the following bodyguards hauled them to their feet and got them promptly into the raging battle. The cracks of gunfight echoed and rang down the acoustically inclined tunnels and holes, Gwyn was thankful of the helmet's hearing protection.
The team was quick, clean and lethal.
Their enemies stood no chance.