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Securing Northside? [Exemplary] - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-07-2017
Quote:I'm not actually sure if this'll end up with any 'mature' content or not, but better safe than sorry, I guess, so I marked it '[M]'.
Hijiri noticed their captive stirring as she awoke. Like him – and Davion, and that incapacitated stormtrooper who had been left here when they went off to fight the NSW – she was currently lying in a cheap, metal-framed bed, under a thin blanket, and dressed in a pale green hospital gown. Unlike the Battle Rabbit and his allies, each of her hands was cuffed to her bed's frame, and she had a thin, metallic choker around her neck.
He turned and levelled his stern gaze upon her as she regained consciousness, giving a silent warning not to try anything. In return, she looked back impassively, and yawned once.
They remained like that for several seconds.
“Wow, what a bundle of laughs you two are.” muttered Trevor, who was in the process of cleaning the floor; he was still being punished for his cowardice and incompetence in that first battle they'd fought on Tier Five. Aside from him and the four patients, two of whom currently were sleeping, there was no one else remaining in the medical bay.
“... Where's Kev?” the woman asked, after another few seconds of silence.
“The man you were with? His name is 'Kev'?” Hijiri enquired. He'd only woken up this morning himself, but from what Kroll had told him, it seemed that two days had already passed since his fight with the wolf-woman, and the uninjured 'troopers had refrained from taking on any more patrols whilst they waited for Imperial Command to send some reinforcements for their squad. Instead, they had been occupying themselves with training, and taking turns at 'questioning' their healthier prisoner.
Unfortunately, they had thus far had little success. If anything, the suited man seemed mildly amused by their attempts. He was either trained to resist torture, or somehow able to prevent himself from feeling pain... with all the time Hijiri now had on his hands, bedridden as he was, he'd spent many hours surfing the Dataverse on his phone, and had come to realise just how varied and unexpected the powers and abilities of many people in this reality were; compared to some of the things he'd seen clips of online, not feeling pain wouldn't even be particularly impressive, all things considered.
“Yeah. Kev. Where is he?”
“We have him locked away somewhere safe and secure for... questioning. He hasn't been much help so far, though. Our squad-mates are planning on trying out some more... inventive methods next, to confirm whether he really is immune to pain, or if that's just some very impressive acting.”
“Don't you hurt him!” she snarled, suddenly sitting bolt upright – wincing as her as-yet unhealed wound sent a jolt of searing pain through her abdomen – and wrenching hard on her cuffs. When that had no effect, she growled.
Shrieking like a little girl, Trevor dropped the sponge he'd been using and dashed back as quickly as he could without actually taking the time to get to his feet. He sat pressed up against the wall opposite the beds of Hijiri and the prisoner, staring her way and trembling.
“Don't.” Hijiri advised, predicting that she would attempt to use that Power-Up ability of hers to break free, now that she knew her 'base' strength was unequal to the task. For a moment her only reaction was to glance at him out of the corner of an eye, but then she took a couple deep breaths and managed to bring her anger under control.
Her passive expression back in place, the woman turned to look at him properly once more. “Why not?”
He pointed to his neck, indicating a spot where, on her, that nice new metal choker touched her flesh. “We all couldn't help but notice when you and I fought that unlike my own, your Transformation doesn't replace your clothing; you simply grow large enough to tear through it all. That collar you're wearing is something Kroll – one of our stormtroopers – had me summon from Omnilium this morning; you should have seen all the chains that you were wrapped in before. They're no longer needed, though.”
“Oh?” she did not sound convinced.
“The choker is made from a special type of metal; something called 'adamantium'. It doesn't exist in my world, but from what I've seen on the Dataverse, it's extremely hard to break. Transform while wearing it and you'll either choke to death or possibly even decapitate yourself. I wouldn't recommend it.”
She had frowned the moment he mentioned that 'adamantium' stuff... apparently, she was more familiar with it than he was. After a moment's hesitation, she lay back down and stared straight up at the ceiling. “... I'll kill you all, eventually.”
“Heh, heh... heh.” Trevor laughed awkwardly, his attempt at bravado falling flat. He cleared his throat nervously. “Y-you don't seriously think anyone's gonna b-buy that, right? There's no way you're ever getting free now that we've caught you.”
“I die if I change, but when I die, I come back a week later. I can get free whenever I feel like, crackshot.” she sounded bored, and didn't even deign to look at him as she spoke.
“Ah...”
“You won't, though.” Hijiri stated with absolute confidence. If her actions so far had been any indicator, she cared for that suited man, for whatever reason. As such, leaving him in the hands of the Empire for a week, and depriving them of their only other potential source of information on the NSW, was hardly likely to do him any favours.
She didn't deny it.
Having her die if she ever lost a fight and then come back to rescue him later may have been her ally's idea of a good plan, but it was pretty clear that she was none too fond of that method.
***
“Bring me Kev.” The door had barely budged an inch when she spoke. A helmeted head poked through.
“You called, sir?” Priya's voice addressed Davion, who had awoken by this point, completely ignoring the prisoner's command.
“Yes, this bitch won't shut up abou- you missed a spot!” he suddenly yelled, interrupting himself. Trevor squeaked in fight and hurriedly backtracked, scrubbing the floor as hard as he could with his sponge. “Anyway, I'd like you to bring the other prisoner through here. I want to speak to him myself... also, ever since someone let it slip that I'm the ranking officer in this squad, wolf-lady here hasn't stopped pestering me to order someone to bring him through.”
Hijiri looked off in the other direction and began whistling innocently the moment Davion said 'someone'.
“Oh... yes, of course, sir. By the way, sir, Officer Andreas got in touch. She said to let you both watch this, once you had woken.” so saying, the 'trooper tossed down a small metal object just before going on her way.
No sooner had she left than blue light poured from the device, and a life-sized holographic image of Michelle Andreas formed in the air before them.
“Michelle, baby! It's so great to see ya again!” boomed Trevor, suddenly on his feet and brimming with confidence. He sauntered forwards, past his sergeant and their prisoner alike, showing not the slightest iota of apprehension now. He even removed his helmet and casually tossed it aside – revealing a surprisingly handsome face beneath – apparently unconcerned that Davion hated it when his squad took off any part of their armour whilst on duty. He ran a hand through his silky, wavy brown hair. “What's the news, doll, d'you finally come to your senses and decide to pull me out of this dump so we can be together at last?”
“Dodson, you-” the sergeant began, before deciding to shut up and listen when Michelle started speaking.
“This message is for the attention of Davion Calrime and Takanomiya Hijiri.” The automated recording began, causing Trevor's shoulders to slump when he realised she wasn't the real deal. “In light of your excellent performance in the field, Imperial Command has given me the authority to issue your rewards: Davion Calrime, for courageously withstanding a hail of gunfire long enough to slaughter an entire warehouse of criminal filth, you are hereby promoted to the position of Lieutenant. Takanomiya Hijiri, for facing off against a Prime you had no reason to expect you would be capable of defeating, and succeeding in protecting your squad from otherwise certain death, you are now promoted to Corporal. Congratulations, gentlemen.”
And with that, the message ended.
“Huh.” Davion said flatly, seeming unsure whether he should be happy at the pay rise, or suspicious of all the extra responsibility he'd now likely be given. “... Well, that was unexpected.”
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-08-2017
“Here you are, lieutenant, the prisoner you requested.” the smile could be heard in Kroll's voice as he strode into the medical bay, stepped aside, and waved 'Kev' through. Priya brought up the rear.
“Hmph. Glad someone's enjoying this.” Davion grumbled.
“You're not?”
“He hasn't decided how he feels yet.” Hijiri clarified. “Ask again in a few hours and maybe he'll have an answer for you.”
The ex-nobleman-turned-stormtrooper laughed. “Well, in the meantime, you're more than welcome to take a crack at questioning our friend here. Though I doubt you'll have much more success than any of the rest of us.”
As they spoke, the suited man – sans jacket now, since it had been thoroughly soaked through with his associate's blood – walked over to the female prisoner, lifted his cuffed hands and gently rested one on her brow, smiling gently. Though her expression didn't noticeably change from its usual passivity, the wolf-woman closed her eyes and her tensed muscles loosened as she relaxed.
“Alright, then, let's give this a shot.” Davion's voice was gruff and no-nonsense. It was hard to look intimidating whilst badly injured and wearing nothing but a mint-green hospital gown. Still, he did have the advantage of actually looking pretty tough; with close-cropped brown hair, stubble lining his jaw, thick features and an impressive amount of muscle on his frame, he was distinctly more 'manly' than Hijiri or Trevor. “Your girlfriend told us you're called 'Kev'. That right?”
“Kevin Fischer, at your service, lieutenant.” the man responded pleasantly. His clothes were rumpled, his face badly bruised and his lip split, but it hardly seemed as though Kevin was experiencing any discomfort at all.
“And her?” the lieutenant went on.
“Sarah Watt.”
“Seriously?” Kroll demanded irritably, causing Priya to laugh and Kevin's smile to widen a little. Apparently, the squad hadn't even managed to get their names out of him in two days of interrogations.
“Why were you part of the Wolfpack?”
“We joined several months ago, as soon as she found out they existed. My associate believed the rumours, you see; she thought she might find others with powers like her own by joining a gang supposedly comprised of lycanthropes”
“Of what now?”
“Werewolves, sir.” Kroll clarified, as Hijiri and Priya nodded their agreement. Trevor just glanced across at his superior and shrugged... then hastily returned to his latest task (window cleaning this time) after receiving a glare in return.
“And did you? Find any?”
“No, lieutenant. At least not that we know of. If there were some, they hid their powers from us.”
“Hmm...” Davion gave his next question some though... “why are you suddenly being so helpful, when my men-”
Priya coughed, pointedly.
“-when my soldiers tell me you've been taking beatings for two days now in order to keep all this hidden?”
“Ah, rather a good question, lieutenant. A good, good, good question indeed... alas, though, my answer may prove to be something of a let-down. For you see, I was merely entertaining myself. I am, for all intents and purposes, immune to pain. I simply enjoyed their annoyance. Alas, once they heard that my associate had awoken, your squad made it clear that it was only a matter of time before she would be well enough to face their interrogations in my place. So, now seemed as good a time as any to come clean. We faced off against you as a result of my associate's misguided sense of loyalty, but honestly, I couldn't really care less about those 'NSW' fools myself, so if I can save her from facing torture by sharing their secrets, then I will gladly do so.” he turned his head slightly, casting a glance towards Kroll, who stood ramrod straight, with arms crossed. Not too happy at having wasted all that time.
Davion sighed. “Well, okay then; you know we'll be wanting every bit of information you've got on the Wolfpack, right? So spill it.”
Still as cheery as ever, Kevin did exactly that. The occasional additional question was required, over the course of the hours that followed, to clarify some detail or other, but by and large, they were able to get the full story out of him without any real resistance... much to Kroll's chagrin.
In addition to discovering the locations of a few more NSW bases (the pair hadn't been ranked high enough to know them all, sadly), they also learned the reason for the large shipments of guns which had been showing up. It seemed that one of the more powerful figures in the gang, a Prime who called himself 'Shotgun Steve' – though was actually named 'Reginald Bennerton', according to Kevin – had decided to step up a turf war between the NSW and their biggest rival, the NSP, or 'Northside Pyros'. The Pyros were said to be just a bunch of teenage idiots who liked fire way too much for their own good and had gotten involved in protection racketeering somehow.
They were still a threat, of course, but with far less resources than the longer established and more accomplished Wolfpack, they couldn't hope to win a fair fight. Their main defence (aside from all the pyrotechnic explosives) was their anonymity... but with as much gear as they'd had packed into that warehouse, Hijiri wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the Wolfpack's plan was as simple as walking through the Pyros' territory and killing every teen on sight. That'd definitely cut their numbers down to size, and when the local EPD forces arrived, they'd likely be slaughtered too. The NSW could potentially continue running rampant until Command had time to organise a squad of Space Marines and call in Judge Dredd to lead them down from Tier One.
The amount of time that would require would result in the deaths of a lot of innocent bystanders. Looking at his lieutenant, the Battle Rabbit could tell by his expression that Davion was having similar thoughts. Kroll and Priya's body language seemed uneasy, but with their helmets on, Hijiri couldn't get much more from them than that. Trevor was (somewhat worryingly) dusting the supposedly sterile medical equipment, and seemed to have tuned out most of the conversation. The other 'trooper remained unconscious on his bed, Kevin smiled brightly, and the wolf-lady, Sarah, seemed completely relaxed.
“And it never bothered either of you? Knowing that they were preparing for some huge battle, and you might end up having to gun down kids?” Davion demanded of the prisoners.
“Not in the slightest, lieutenant.” answered Kevin cheerily.
“Nah.” agreed Sarah.
“You try to seem all friendly, and you act like some kinda emotionless fucking robot... but you're really just criminal scum, no different from the rest, huh?” Davion glared at them both. The suited man simply shrugged, and his companion gave no reply at all. “Get him out of my sight, and as soon as she's ready to be moved, I want her in a cell too.”
“Yes, sir.” the two stormtroopers each grabbed Kevin by an arm and began to haul him off. He didn't resist, but Sarah's expression became worried, and she tried to reach out for him, only to be stymied by the cuffs which held her.
“Kev...”
At the door, Kroll turned back. “Dodson, get over here now! You've been cleaning this one room all day, so it's about time you headed over to the training grounds! We can't have you continue to be a useless dead-weight for your entire life!”
“Aw... yes, sir...” Trevor groaned, then hurriedly gathered up his cleaning equipment and followed with his head hanging.
Only when they had left did Davion speak up again.
“Since when has Iechtelsteir outranked that moron?” the lieutenant looked to Hijiri for answers, but the Battle Rabbit could only shrug in response.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-10-2017
“Nash... What. The Hell. Is that?” Davion stared, horror-stricken, as Leon shuffled around uncomfortably. The 'trooper coughed, awkwardly.
“It's... well, it's your uniform, sir.” the man explained plaintively. The lieutenant glared at him. Meanwhile, Hijiri began doing up the buttons of his shirt and smirked wickedly. It had been two more days since he and Davion had awoken following the warehouse raid, and they were now finally well enough to leave the medical bay. Leon had brought them their own clothes, so that they could change out of the hospital gowns. While Hijiri had lost no time in changing, though, his superior was having a little... trouble.
“Where is my amour!?” The words came out as a barely discernible growl.
“Sorry, sir, but, well, you see...” As the 'trooper tried to find a way of breaking it gently, Hijiri snickered.
“Seems like someone decided to have a joke at your expense, huh sir?” He smirked at Davion. “Apparently, instead of promoting you through the stormtrooper ranks like normal, you were bumped up to 'officer' status.”
“That's absurd! 'Troopers fight on the front lines, while officers study strategy and tactics in big posh schools! They're completely different skill-sets! You might as well promote a chef to a biologist, just because both their jobs involve animals! Besides, how the hell am I supposed to fight in that!? Where's the armour!?”
“Uh... well... there is some armour to go with it, sir, Imperial Officers actually get this really cool black breastplate and helmet which look totally badass... but Iechtelsteir said not to give it to you yet; he says officers are only supposed to dress like that when they're actually heading into battle.”
Davion snarled at him. “I don't give a shit what that ex-noble wannabe sniper thinks! This is Tier Five, we could be attacked at any moment... so bring me the damn armour!”
“Y-yes, sir!” tossing the outfit to the lieutenant, who caught it, Leon dashed from the room.
“And you can wipe that stupid grin off your face right now, corporal.”
Hijiri laughed.
“... Who would have done this...? Why? What does it benefit Command to have me dress up like an idiot and pretend to be some sort of tactician?” Noting the tones of confusion and resignation in his superior's voice, Hijiri stopped joking around, and tried to take this more seriously.
“If I had to guess, I'd say the most likely person to be behind this would be Officer Andreas. I'm not sure exactly what her motivations are, but from the moment I saw that hologram, I've just had this feeling that she was behind our 'rewards' somehow.”
Davion snorted. “She's only a lieutenant herself, and she barely even does any work, Takanomiya, what could she possibly have done to gain that kind of authority?”
Hijiri simply looked at him for a moment. Davion couldn't meet his gaze.
“I spent a several hours shut in a room with her while I waited on your squad on my first day here, and that was more than enough time for me to notice something weird about her, and you've known her much longer than I have, right? So don't try to tell me you haven't spotted it too.”
The lieutenant groaned. “Okay, fine. She's suspect number one, then. You know what this means, though? We're going to have to actually confront her about it at some point.”
“Oh. Yeah.” It was the Battle Rabbit's turn to groan. “How about we... you know... put that off for as long as possible?”
“And give her more time to continue her scheming? That's almost certainly a terrible idea.”
“But...?” Hijiri insisted.
“... But I don't really look forward to speaking to her at all, much less potentially having to argue with her... so let's just go with your plan.”
***
Several minutes later, leaving the changing area with Leon, after the 'trooper had returned with Davion's nice new gear, they saw Priya and Sarah waiting. The prisoner, also having changed out of the gown, was now dressed in a sleeveless, grey crop top and denim hot pants, both of which did a fine job of showing off her lithe figure. The woman could easily have been attractive, were it not for the strangely blank expression her face almost always held. Also, Hijiri noticed that, as when they had first met, she had for some reason chosen to eschew any sort of footwear.
“Where did those come from?” demanded Davion suspiciously, gesturing to Sarah's clothes. “I thought her outfit was destroyed in that fight?”
“Well, it's not like we keep a stockpile of prison jumpsuits lying around in case our captives decide to strip naked and tear up all their clothes, sir. As hard as it may be to believe, that sort of thing isn't generally all that common. So I gave her some of my things to borrow, sir.”
When Priya began speaking, Sarah very unsubtly looked off to one side. Her demeanour remained as bland as ever, yet she was clearly intent upon avoiding meeting anyone's eyes. Hijiri smirked. He wasn't sure quite what the deal was with her unwillingness (or inability?) to express her emotions properly, yet he couldn't help but find it funny that someone with a Transformation ability which worked like hers should still find nudity embarrassing. He would have assumed it was something you'd get used to after a while.
“Davion frowned and rubbed his forehead, then sighed. “When did this squad become so unprofessional? Since when has it been acceptable military procedure for soldiers to lend prisoners their clothing? Actually, why are you two even still hanging around here? Shouldn't you have taken her to her cell once she was changed?”
“Oh, yeah, that. I was going to, sir, but Iechtelsteir called me to say to wait for the pair of you, then bring you both to the indoor training section. Our reinforcements have arrived, sir.”
“Iechtelsteir? Again? Why is he suddenly running this squad?” the lieutenant demanded, as they all started walking.
Priya shrugged. “Dunno, sir. Doesn't he come from a noble family, though? Maybe he just has more experience bossing people around than the rest of us?”
“Alright, alright, 'why did everyone let him take charge', I meant?”
“Well... I dunno. No one could be bothered complaining, I guess? Oh, except Windvale, who said we shouldn't have to do any work at all until you were back on your feet to force us to, and Leben, who thought we should contact Imperial Command to ask them for instructions. But then he gave Windvale your Dataverse Device and let Leben drink the rest of the rubbing alcohol, sir.”
“He did what!?”
“Didn't you wonder why Leben had fallen back into a coma, even though he'd woken up and was well on his way to recovery when we headed out on that raid?”
“I don't give a shit about that guy's drinking problem... though that does explain why Dodson was dusting medical equipment a couple days ago, rather than actually cleaning it. No, I mean what the hell did Iechtelsteir think he was doing giving away my Dataverse Device!?”
“I guess he thought you didn't have long left to live?”
“He could have at least waited to find out!”
Hijiri laughed, and got a glare in response.
“Oh, look, we're here!” the stormtrooper quickly punched a button which slid open a mechanical door and dashed in, dragging Sarah through after her. Leon hurriedly followed. Apparently, neither was particularly keen on enduring their commander's anger any longer than they absolutely had to.
“After you, sir.” said Hijiri, standing aside and waving the lieutenant through as a butler would, though he didn't drop his smirk as he did it.
Ignoring him, Davion strode in, just in time to hear a chorus of 'yes, sergeant!' from the assembled 'troopers, who were presumably their reinforcements. The man they had been addressing, who stood facing them from in front of their orderly formation, turned as the others entered. Hijiri and Davion immediately noticed that he was wearing a pauldron identical to the one Davion's own stormtrooper armour had been fitted with, prior to his promotion. A pauldron which was used by the stormtroopers as a rank marker; in this case, indicating a sergeant.
“Greetings, sir.” said 'sergeant' Kroll, giving the lieutenant a smart salute. “It's good to see you've recovered enough to get out and about.”
“Iechtelsteir, you bastard! Who the hell said you could take my damn shoulder-pad!?”
“Your... you mean your pauldron, sir?” Kroll inquired.
“Yeah, that thing! And what's this I hear about you giving Windvale my Dataverse Device!? I'll never see it again! He's surely ruined it already!”
“Ruined?” came the voice of Brandon Windvale, from where he sat, cross-legged, over by one of the training room's thick, steel walls, a half dozen metres to their right. The remains of what looked like it might once have been a Dataverse Device were spread out before him, along with various other mechanical parts and hi-tech tools of some sort. He had taken off his helmet in order to get a better view of whatever he was doing, and so his shoulder-length brown hair, slim features, tanned skin and long, pointed, elven ears could be seen clearly. “I didn't ruin anything; I'm just improving it a bit, that's all.”
Brandon had originally been summoned in the Tangled Green, and had been a hunter, primarily, though he had also been meant to serve as an archer to defend the elven city-tree of Yggdrasil in times of need. After discovering the wonders of technology, though, he'd immediately run off to make a living in Coruscant instead. Since he was fit and had decent aim, it wasn't all that hard for him to get recruited into the stormtrooper ranks.
“Is... is that a blaster?” Davion was correct. It seemed that Brandon was in the process of grafting the Device onto someone's blaster.
“Oh yeah! I thought it'd be just totally awesome if we could check our emails, texts and stuff in the middle of a battle, without having to actually go to all the effort of taking our Devices out of our pockets. So I made this...! Unfortunately, it does seem to have the odd minor, tiny little bug in its programming, so I'm just looking around to see if I can get that sorted right now.”
Ignoring for the moment the abject stupidity of welding a phone to a gun, Davion chose instead to focus on the rest of what the technophilic elf had said. “'Little bug'? just what constitutes a 'little' bug in your mind, Windvale?”
“Er... well, the most serious one is probably the glitch that seems to be, ah, causing the blaster to fire on its own every time you get a call...”
Davion stood in silent incredulity for a few seconds, before he gave up on finding a way to express the stupidity of his soldier's invention, turned to Hijiri and said “This is your fault, you know. My squad was normal before you showed up... well, maybe not always so normal in their down time, but disciplined, at least. Windvale only built his idiotic contraptions outside of work hours, Iechtelsteir never stole from dying comrades, Singh didn't play dress-up with our prisoners-”
“Seriously? She had no clothes, what was I supposed to get her to wear? Don't include me in your damn ranting...” Priya interrupted. Davion ignored her.
“-and Leben... well, okay, he may have occasionally drunk rubbing alcohol beforehand, but he was recovering. We even managed to take him out to a pub once without having to drag his comatose carcass back to the 'racks afterwords.”
“Hey, hey, don't just blame me.” Hijiri objected. “Don't forget, Dodson joined you all the same time I did; doesn't this all seem more likely to be his fault?”
“Seriously, Takanomiya, did you actually just insinuate that our behaviour was being influenced by Dodson? Not cool, man. Not cool at all.” Brandon piped up.
“Windvale has it right; no one here has any interest in aping the behaviour of an incompetent cretin like that man. You are solely to blame for this, corporal. You go around out of uniform, not even using a blaster in battle, jumping around like a fucking ballerina and changing into some stupid, fancy outfit in the middle of your fight with the wolf-bitch over there. They've been hanging around you way too long, and now this lot have somehow got it into their thick skulls that they can all just do whatever they want and act like a bunch of special little snowflakes just because you've managed to somehow not get yourself killed yet, and-”
From over in the direction of the perfectly discipled lines of reinforcement stormtroopers, there came the sound of someone clearing their throat, and interrupting Davion in the process.
“Not that any of us would like to avoid listening to your crazed ranting, sir, but we do have a whole mob of impressionable new recruits here, many of whom have never even worked lower than Tier One before... you're not exactly setting the best example, sir.”
“Wait...” the lieutenant was suddenly distracted from his complaints by something Kroll had said, “new recruits? Never worked lower than Tier-freaking-One? What the hell is this!? Is Command trying to kill off as many of our own people as they can possibly manage!? These brats won't last a week down here! The gangs'll tear them to ribbons! Why would those morons even waste our time with all this cannon fodder!?”
“Oh for the love of...” Kroll muttered, facepalming... or... helmet-palming?
Hijiri patted Davion on the shoulder. “Look, lieutenant, you're a great guy to have on our side in a fight, and it's really impressive that you managed to keep so much of your squad alive for as long as you did, despite having to work on Tier Five... but please, whatever you do, don't ever try to make an inspiring speech.”
The Prime nodded towards the newcomers, a few of whom were visibly shaking. Davion followed his gaze, then sighed. “Alright, Iechtelsteir, you wanted us all here, including the two prisoners acting all lovey-dovey over there-”
Sarah, who had been very slightly leaning up against Kevin – who was standing in a corner off to the left of the doorway – suddenly stood bolt upright, as though she had been caught doing something wrong. Kevin continued to smile softly, but also raised one eyebrow questioningly at the lieutenant.
“-so what was that all for, exactly, sergeant?” A moment passed after Davion had finished speaking, as they all waited. He blinked. “Dammit, no! Take that stupid shoulder-pad off this instant, you're not a-”
“I wanted us all to have a chance to introduce ourselves to our new allies, sir, it was as simple as that. I also thought we might as well let them meet our captives as well while we were at it, lieutenant; judging by the fact that Command has for some reason yet to send anyone down to collect them, I can only assume that we are likely to be stuck with them for some time, even if only as the result of some clerical oversight.” Kroll deliberately spoke over the lieutenant, clearly trying to distract him enough that he would forget to force him to remove the pauldron. It seemed to work.
Davion glanced across at Hijiri, suspicion in his gaze. The Battle Rabbit met him with the same expression.
“Andreas?” Hijiri muttered under his breath, so that none but Davion could hear.
“Has to be. 'Clerical oversight' my ass.” Came the equally quiet response.
“Alright, whatever.” The lieutenant continued, at a normal volume this time. “I've shown up, they've met me. I need to think some things over in private... and now that I'm an actual officer, I suppose that means I'm not required to actually spend my every waking moment watching over you lot anyway, so I'll just leave you all to it. Corporal Takanomiya, you're in charge for now.”
“Yes, sir.” Hijiri replied... yet as Davion left, and the door slid closed behind him, he heard the Prime addressing Kroll as 'sergeant'... apparently being just as happy as the rest of his squad to perpetuate the belief that that guy was in charge... for some reason.
Davion allowed himself a brief moment to feel relieved at having been summoned to the Omniverse; back home, if so much as a single stormtrooper under your authority acted out of order, an Imperial Officer could and most likely would be held personally responsible... and that sort of thing usually meant a swift and unpleasant death via telekinetic strangulation, courtesy of Lord Vader.
Thank Omni that that lunatic hadn't been brought here with them... anyone who thought Judge Dredd was strict had no idea how lucky they were...
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-14-2017
Hijiri gave the sensor panel in the steel wall a light tap and the metal door slid open with a barely audible hiss. He stepped through, into what looked like it might have been intended to serve as some sort of informal meeting room between officers, back when the Empire had actually believed they could keep Tier Five under control. Of course, nowadays there were barely any officers on this tier at all, much less within this one barracks. Technically, even Davion could likely leave if he wanted to; he hadn't been specifically instructed to stay, so it probably wouldn't be so hard to get himself transferred to some cushy office job on Tier One or Two if he were to request it... not that he was the sort of person who would, even if doing so didn't mean abandoning his allies down here.
Since there were no officers around to care what was going on here, Kroll had apparently taken it upon himself to lay claim to this room and its comfortable black leather sofas. He himself sat on the one near the opposite end of the room from the door, watching Hijiri as the Prime entered.
As this meeting was taking place during their down-time – and, more importantly, since Davion wasn't invited – none of the 'troopers had bothered to wear their uniforms. In the case of Kroll vor Iechtelsteir, this meant dressing in a white tracksuit and trainers of the same shade, and constantly having to brush aside his bangs as chin-length white hair repeatedly fell in front of his ice blue eyes. This guy was pretty fond of the colour white. Even his skin was so pale as to be almost albino.
The couches were all three-seaters and to Kroll's left sat the newly re-awakened Frank Leben, still nursing a hangover, yet miraculously alive despite downing a bottle of rubbing alcohol, which really ought not to have been possible. Frank wore a dull brown shirt with the top few buttons undone, baggy jeans and black shoes. He went for a 'rugged' sort of look, being tanned, muscular, and not bothering to shave the stubble from his chin. His unkempt short blond hair completed the image, as well as matching the colour of his eyes. He took a sip from a metal flask as the Battle Rabbit entered.
To Kroll's right was Brandon Windvale, whose brown, shoulder-length hair and slim, elven features remained exactly as they had been this afternoon when Hijiri had seen him in the training section, though he now wore some sort of silky brown tunic, black leggings and shoes to match. The green-eyed elf still chose to sit cross-legged, just as he had been earlier, despite actually having a seat now. He was also still messing around with some gizmo, though thankfully this one did not appear to come with an attached blaster.
Further right still, on a separate sofa, Priya Singh and Leon Nash sat together. Leon with his spiky crimson hair and identically coloured eyes, had a Caucasian complexion and an average build, wore navy blue trainers, black cargo trousers, and a short-sleeved pale grey shirt. As was usual for him lately, whenever he was given a moment to rest and let his mind wander, he had grown solemn and brooding. His girlfriend, Kashi, had been a member of the squad as well, up until the day Hijiri had joined and they had come across that convoy whilst on patrol; she had not survived the fight.
Priya was dressed in a denim waistcoat, black shorts, and black sandals. Her build matched Sarah's almost exactly, which explained why her clothes had fit the other woman so well. Her skin tone was what have been called 'Middle Eastern' back on Earth. Her eyes were dark brown and her black hair, which normally had to be tied back in a bun while on duty, to stay under her helmet, now fell down to the middle of her back. She sat with one knee crossed over the other, and lay a hand on Leon's arm supportively. Despite all of the stormtroopers having lost friends that day (not to mention on many missions previously), she was the only one Leon would acknowledge as actually being able to understand what he was going through; Kashi had been her sister.
Though both were clearly pained by the loss, the fact that they (and the rest of the squad, for that matter) had managed to simply get on with their lives despite such tragedy struck Hijiri as being a very unfortunate thing; the rate of law enforcement casualties on Tier Five was clearly far too high if members of the EPD had gotten so accustomed to losing those closest to them that they could just go back to work the day after such an incident, almost as though nothing had even changed...
Opposite them, on the third and final couch, sat Trevor Dodson and Jallus Reiner. Trevor, despite being an incompetent coward with an unhealthy attachment to his ex-girlfriend, looked every part the dashing hero; with wavy, light brown hair that reached his shoulders, a strong jaw, high cheekbones, brilliantly white teeth and gleaming amber eyes. He even had a cleft chin. Wearing a dark blue t-shirt, stretched tight over a surprisingly muscular chest, and tracksuit bottoms of the same colour with black shoes, he actually would have looked pretty cool, if not for the fact that he was clearly intimidated by having been asked to come to Kroll's little no-lieutenats-allowed meeting and so was shuffling around awkwardly in his seat and fidgeting. The brief episode featuring Michelle's hologram notwithstanding, he seemed to be getting more and more pathetic with every day he spent down on Tier Five.
Beside him, sitting with an ankle crossed over his knee and reading what looked – judging by the front cover – to be a cheap and trashy romance novel, was Jallus Reiner, the final surviving 'veteran' squad member. Jallus was a tall, thin black man with short cropped hair and dark eyes. He was just an average stormtrooper as far as skill went, though not so much in personality. He was an introvert who had grown up reading fantasy stories filled with brave heroes going on grand adventures, and had naively joined up with the EPD imagining some sort of 'glorious' battle awaited him, only to quickly become disillusioned by the reality of war. To his credit, though, he'd never actually shown cowardice in battle, unlike Trevor. Instead, he seemed determined to simply ignore reality by spending as much of his free time reading as was possible. He no longer cared for adventure novels.
“So, what was it you called me here for, sergeant?” Hijiri asked coolly as the door slid shut behind him. Unlike the others, who were all out of uniform, the Battle Rabbit wore the same suit as always. Rather than sitting, he chose to simply lean back against the door-frame.
Kroll smiled at the use of his fake title, but waved a hand dismissively, “There's no need to keep that up here... though it does lead pretty well into the answer to your question, since the first thing I wanted to say was 'thanks'. We hadn't actually been expecting you to want to play along, but this'll make things a lot easier; it'll give me a lot more legitimacy to be seen getting respect from you; because of your rank, because you're a Prime, and because of your fight with Sarah Watt. New recruits are an impressionable bunch, you know, kinda like little kids, and they all seem really impressed by your 'heroic' deeds.”
“I see.” responded Hijiri, “Mind explaining next why you're doing this? Surely you don't actually think Imperial Command will just forget your true rank and so accidentally promote you, do you? I may not have been here long, but even I could tell you that as soon as you set foot on Tier One or Two with that pauldron on, you'll be court-martialed for impersonating a superior.”
“Hah, no, it's nothing like that. I'm just trying to get people used to thinking of me in a position of power. It's all part of Phase One of our brilliant plan.”
“Oh yes, your wonderfully, brilliantly, not-at-all convoluted plan.” piped up Frank, before taking another swig from his flask. There were a few nods from around the room.
“Oh, come on, it's not all that complicated. Michelle and I-”
“'Michelle'?” Hijiri interrupted, eyes narrowing in suspicion. She may not have inspired in him the same level of fear as she did in Davion, but it didn't take a genius to work out that someone who could mess with other people's thoughts could easily be dangerous. “Officer Andreas is involved in this? And since when are the two of you on first name terms?”
“I know, it's so tragic,” sobbed Trevor, suddenly on the verge of tears, “but you mark my words, sarge, I will win back her heart one day, and when I do you'll be the one feeling this horrendous, gut-wrenching pain!”
“Seriously? I've told you four times already, you mind-numbingly ignorant cretin, we are not a couple. Honestly, you should be thanking me; it wasn't easy convincing her to let me bring you on board. Her original suggestion had been that we find a way to kill you off as quickly and painfully as possible. Quickly, so as to get you out of the way before you can tarnish the squad's reputation, and painfully just because she really, really hates you.” Kroll attempted to explain, though it was obvious to them all that Trevor was as intent as ever on ignoring the reality of his relationship.
“Anyway,” the ex-noble continued, “yes, Takanomiya, she is involved. Though I came up with most of the actual plan, her network of contacts will be essential to carrying it out.”
“They already have been, haven't they?” asked the Prime, putting two and two together. “You never would have been able to have the sergeant and I promoted without her 'contacts', would you?”
“Nope, I definitely could not have done that. Well spotted, by the way. After seeing what you were both capable of during the raid, I got the idea to continue to place the pair of you in situations which would earn you more and more acclaim, and make it easier to have you promoted further. Rank creates distance, after all, so with you both being elevated much higher than the inexperienced recruits I'm sure Command is certain to keep sending us as reinforcements, that'd make it easier for me to influence them... without having to risk attracting the attention of more important figures, as I might if I asked Michelle to have me promoted myself.”
Hijiri turned to Frank. “All that just to get some new recruits to listen to him? You sure weren't kidding about it being convoluted.”
“Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet.” Not the most reassuring response.
“Can I continue?” Asked Kroll. Hearing no objections, he did so. “Phase One is 'Recognition', which includes my false rank, but also much less obvious things, like Woodvale choosing to do his tinkering in the training area rather than in private, and even Dodson cleaning up around the base; the important point here is to make each of us stand out as individuals, not just appear as faceless members of the Empire's army. Next up, Phase Two, is 'Preparation'; we begin training. Obviously, now that we have you on our side, this will be a lot easier... though we may still go ahead with the original plan anyway...”
“Hell yeah we should.” Priya spoke fiercely. “After all the effort Leon and I went through to get them to agree to help us, you'd better not just say 'oh, there's a better option now, sorry, guess you just completely wasted your time'.”
“Agreed. They're fine, so there's no reason not to use them.” Leon added with a nod.
“'They'?” Hijiri asked simply, unsure as to whom the others were talking about.
“You're not really familiar with the way things work in Coruscant, and Calrime was completely distracted by being pissed off at his new uniform, which seems to have worked out in our favour quite well. Neither of you picked up on the fact that when our reinforcements arrived, the prisoners all should have been transferred at the same time. The lieutenant may simply not have noticed yet, but this time around what actually happened was that only those first four – the ones we caught from the convoy – were taken to be tried and imprisoned. Watt and Fischer remained behind.”
“Oh. You cannot be serious...” the shock was actually visible on the Battle Rabbit's face for a moment, before he mastered his emotions and returned to his default stern expression. “You allowed highly dangerous criminals to remain in this low-security barracks instead of being sent to a proper prison, and as if that wasn't bad enough, you also plan on letting them out of their cells so that you can train with them... have you lost your minds!?”
“Have you spoken to them?” Priya countered, her tone harsh.
“What? Yes, of course I-”
“For more than five minutes.” she snapped.
“... No.”
“Those two are no masters of deception. Trust me. Leon and I have been trying to talk with them as much as possible, and honestly, they don't seem so bad. I mean, sure, they're criminals... and not particularly remorseful ones at that... but it wasn't like they had much choice. In their original world, it's illegal to be infected by a supernatural creature, so werewolves like Sarah are automatically considered criminals from the moment they're attacked, rather than victims. By the time Omni pulled her here, she'd been living outside the law for years. It was only natural that they'd join a gang.”
“Uh-huh?” he replied sceptically, choosing for the moment to ignore how weird it felt hearing a stormtrooper of all people defending a criminal. Perhaps working on Tier Five for so long had given this lot more of an insight into the actual causes of crime, and the feelings of the criminals, than their higher-ups might have bothered with. “And Fischer?”
The pair looked a little awkward now. This time it was Leon who spoke. “In retrospect, we probably should have started talking with him first; the moment he realised we weren't going to be willing to actually torture Sarah, he immediately started acting all mysterious and secretive. He still talks plenty, but seems to think it makes him look cool to keep all his personal information hidden. All we know about him is what Sarah would tell us... which wasn't a whole lot, since she always gets weirdly embarrassed whenever we bring him up.”
“She did say that she summoned him here herself, and that he was a friend of hers back on their world. Given that we know she was part of a supernatural gang there, it seems likely that he's some sort of magical creature as well, though she wouldn't actually confirm it.” Priya added.
“Great. That's not worrying at all.” Hijiri muttered with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“In any case, if we have you with us and they were to go rogue, we'd have a much better chance of survival, right? You don't want us all to get killed, do you? So why not agree to help out?” Kroll asked, clearly spotting a good moment to spring his little recruitment pitch.
Hijiri sighed and shook his head... but then agreed anyway, “Fine, I'll do it... but you are aware that we're all going to be in serious trouble of the higher-ups find out about this, right? I don't know how much influence Michelle thinks she has, but there's no way someone like Judge Dredd would ever approve of this. All it'd take would be for one of these 'contacts' of hers to get a message to him and this ridiculous plan of yours will be all over. You realise that, right?”
Before Kroll could respond, though, Frank beat him to it with a laugh. “If you think this is bad, you might want to sit down now, rabbit-dude, it gets even worse in steps three through seven. Hell, you haven't even heard why he wants us all training so hard yet.”
Hijiri looked at Kroll... who avoided meeting his gaze. The Prime groaned, “Ugh, fine. I guess I maybe should.”
So saying, he strode to the nearest couch and took a seat there, to Priya's left. “Go on.”
“Excellent. Phase Three, 'Separation', could potentially begin as soon as our next mission, if Calrime can be convinced. We have to get people – the lieutenant in particular – used to thinking of us as a separate group entirely from his regular soldiers. This will hopefully become easier as time passes and we're able to get him promoted further; the higher up he gets, the more troops he'll be able to request Command send him, so the more easily he'll likely agree to splitting the party. Now that you're with us, that'll likely make this easier still, since he'll obviously be more willing to place troops under the command of an actual NCO than someone who simply pretends to be one.”
“Okay... that's all? That one doesn't seem so bad.”
“Glad you agree. Next is Phase Four; Acquisition. We steal a vast amount of Omnilium.”
“Aaaand there we go again. Because if we're already impersonating superior officers and freeing prisoners, why not just go out of our way to commit more crimes while we're at it?” Hijiri glared at the would-be sergeant. “You can't actually be serious, can you?”
Priya laughed lightly and patted him on the shoulder. “There, there, it's not as bad as it sounds, Iechtelsteir is just trying to get a rise out of you. The actual plan is to confiscate as much criminal property as we possibly can, then 'forget' to record it officially. After that, we can take it to use ourselves, or give it to you and Sarah to de-materialise then imbue into our other gear, which should hopefully increase its power level somewhat. If we get enough, we might even be able to spare some stuff for Windvale's crazy experiments.”
The elf looked up and gave them a bright grin at that... he was practically drooling at the thought of it, actually. Trevor shuddered just looking at him, and the Battle Rabbit might have felt like doing so as well if he could have spared a moment to wonder what madness was going through the guy's head this time. As it was, he obviously had something else on his mind.
“Yeah... but... that's still theft. I have no idea what you're all up to here, but I don't see why this entire plan seems to involve going out of your way to break the law as much as possible.” Hijiri complained, trying his best not to sound petulant. He might have easily expected this sort of thing from some dumb group of vigilantes trying to protect their neighbourhood from gang warfare... but these idiots were supposed to be stormtroopers... could the lieutenant actually be correct? Was this his fault, as a Prime, for showing them that even without discipline and unity, it was still possible to be of use to the Empire? And if so, how could he make it right? Since Kroll had concocted this absurd plan and somehow convinced the rest of the squad, and even Michelle to get in on it as well without the assumption that he would be involved, it wasn't like he could just ask to be re-assigned away from this area and hope they'd give up.
“It might technically be illegal, yes, but so long as we start getting results before anyone finds out, Michelle ought to be able to keep Command in line. This isn't Tier One, after all. No one will really be surprised to find out that playing by the book doesn't always work this far down. We just need to make sure to keep our activities secret at least until they've begun to bear fruit. Now, if you're done with your little ethical dilemma, I'll get on with my explanation...” Kroll said, and then did.
And after covering the Phases Five to Seven, as Hijiri was still reeling from the stupidity of their plot, he took the opportunity to announce that it was now time to go right back to the start and run through the whole thing in much greater detail, making sure that they all knew exactly what was expected of them at every stage of the operation.
By the time the next morning rolled around, and Lieutenant Calrime began the daily training regimen that they had been given in order to beat their reinforcements into shape in preparation for their next big mission, the only one who had actually gotten enough sleep to perform at his best was Jallus Reiner... no one had paid much attention to him in the previous night's secret meeting, and so unbeknownst to Kroll, he'd been able to simply fall asleep for several hours.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-15-2017
Hijiri, sighing, looked across at Kevin, who stood beside him, hands in pockets. “Well, I must admit they've proven much more adept than I was expecting. Him especially.”
Kevin simply nodded, smiling serenely as the the pair watched from the sidelines whilst Sarah and Brandon fought. Though she wasn't currently using her Wolf Form, the female Prime was still a skilled fighter who could hit far harder than an average person, yet despite that, the technophilic elf was holding his own, and had even landed a few impressive blows; most notably the time he avoided an attack by backflipping mid-air and using her face as a springboard to open some distance between them.
It was their third day of this new training regimen, and so far it seemed as though Hijiri's fears had been unfounded... their prisoners actually seemed kinda into this whole 'training instructor' thing. Tonight they had decided to try something new, after both Sarah and the Battle Rabbit agreed that the 'troopers were way too slow and ungainly in all that white plastoid armour, so at the moment the squad only wore the flexible black underlayer of their suits; it cut down on their defensive capabilities, but made them more agile, as Brandon was so keen to demonstrate.
Of course, none of the others was nearly so acrobatic as the elf, yet even so, the Primes agreed that this was a worthwhile lesson to be learned; contrary to what Davion in particular might want to believe, it wasn't going to always be possible to have a suit of armour handy for every fight... or a weapon, for that matter, hence the unarmed combat practise.
For three nights now, the old squad had been training with Sarah and Hijiri whilst the newbies slept, then the next morning they'd train some more along with Davion and the others, grabbing what little sleep they could in-between times. Obviously, this couldn't go on forever; even if no one noticed these late-night practice sessions, as unlikely as that was, they'd still need to stop to catch up on their rest at some point. So far, though, the Rabbit had to admit he was impressed with how seriously they all seemed to be taking Kroll's dumb plan.
One bit of good fortune they'd had was not having been called out on any more patrols; those weren't always the most frequent of things down on a tier this low, and right now had turned out to be one of those times when there weren't any, it seemed. In this case, the reason was because Command was in the process of organising multiple simultaneous raids against a few different NSW hideouts; few enough reinforcements could be spared as it was, and so they'd been told not to go out and 'needlessly' take any more losses.
Hopefully in the long run, this holding back would all pay off. In the mean time...
“I... give up.” panting heavily, with Sarah kneeling on his chest and pinning his arms down using her hands, Brandon finally surrendered. She remained there for a minute or so as she gave him a few pointers on improving his technique, then got to her feet and gave him a hand up as well, her expression as inscrutable as ever. Walking back over to her fellow 'instructors' whilst he staggered off to join the other six, Hijiri thought he saw the corners of her mouth twitch upwards a little, almost as though for a moment she had been about to smile. She wiped sweat from her brow, and Kevin handed her a water bottle.
“My set's done. You're up, Tacky.” They had each been taking on three of the stormtroopers before rotating out for a break, and Brandon had been her third, this time around. Oh, and she'd given Hijiri a nickname.
“'Ta-ka-no-mi-ya' it's really not that difficult, you know.” the male Prime explained for what felt like the fiftieth time. Kevin grinned.
“Meh.” said Sarah.
With a shake of his head, Hijiri walked off into the little section of grass they'd set aside for this practise session. From the other side of the area, where their 'pupils' stood, Frank Leben stepped forwards, tossing his flask over his shoulder to Trevor, who was apparently the only one he trusted to hold it, since they all knew the guy would far too craven to steal any.
“I may not have been doing as well at this as Windvale, but you'd better not be thinking you can keep going easy on me, Takanomiya.” Frank wore a confident smile as he spoke, punching one fist into his other palm. All Hijiri could think about was that he was glad none of the rest of them had the courage to use Sarah's stupid nickname for him... to his face, at least.
“I obviously won't need my True Form for this... but if you can make me resort to using Gravity Manipulation then we'll say this counts as your win. How does that sound?”
“It sounds like the exact opposite of what I just said. You know by now that I'm not as weak as Iechtelsteir-”
“Hey!” objected the fake sergeant.
“-so why treat me like I am? Use your gravity thing all you want!” ignoring Kroll's interruption, Frank charged at the Battle Rabbit, drawing back a fist. The man was actually pretty fit for an ordinary human, enough to be on par with the Prime, actually, if not a tiny bit stronger... but despite the feedback he'd been given so far he still lacked skill, as this clearly telegraphed punch demonstrated.
Pivoting his body mid-charge and throwing himself forwards, Frank let loose his mighty blow... which Hijiri avoided easily by leaning slightly to one side. He grabbed the human and used Frank's own momentum against him to fling him over his shoulder. It was almost like knowing martial arts gave a person some sort of advantage in a fist fight.
Frank landed hard on his back, but rolled aside before the Rabbit's counter-attack could strike home. Bringing his fist to a stop just an inch from the ground – in the spot his opponent had occupied just a moment previously – Hijiri's head snapped round, then he moved in a sudden burst of speed towards his target.
Frank was still half-kneeling, and just barely got an arm raised in time to ward off the Prime's next punch. It had been nothing but a feint, though, and Hijiri caught the arm, using it to pull himself forward, creating even greater momentum as his knee slammed into the man's nose with an audible crack. It was lucky that Coruscant had such advanced medical technology, or else this kind of thing would make it pretty glaringly obvious to Davion that they'd been up to something. As it was, they'd brought a medical droid from inside the 'racks with them, so minor injuries could be dealt with as soon as each fight had ended, thereby hopefully hiding any evidence of their transgressions.
Expecting the drunkard to simply keel over, Hijiri was taken by surprise when he instead twisted his arm around so that he could grab the Rabbit's own arm just above the wrist, and drag him down too. Landing on his back, Frank swung Hijiri around and rolled so that he was on top. Completely ignoring the steady stream of blood pouring from his nostrils, the man drew back for another punch, intending to give Hijiri the same injury he'd just received himself.
Unlike when Sarah had pinned Brandon, though, Frank had done nothing to immobilise his arms, so Hijiri gave him a sadistic grin and simply shot one hand up into his face to jab him in the eyes with a couple outstretched fingers. Crying out in surprise and pain, closing his eyes and bringing a hand up to rub at them as he instinctively stumbled away from the source of danger whilst temporarily blinded, Frank gave up his last chance at eking out a victory here.
Getting back to his feet, the Prime darted forwards and gave his opponent a swift right hook to the jaw, taking him down. He then knocked the air out of him with a kick in the gut that sent him rolling a few feet, and when the man tried to struggle back up onto all fours, Hijiri ended it by stepping on the back of his head and driving him face first into the ground, pressing him down on that broken nose of his. Frank moaned loudly.
Letting up the pressure, Hijiri dropped to his haunches and gave the man a pat on the back. Frank turned to face him, though didn't bother trying to stand again.
“You are pretty strong, Leben, but you're still lacking in speed and skill. Your fighting style might make more sense when you're wearing a suit of armour, but if you take that long to throw a punch when out of uniform all you're doing is giving your opponent plenty of time to exploit vulnerabilities... and trust me, the human body has plenty of those. Like I told you earlier, try to make use of quicker jabs until your opponent overextends. Once you've got the hang of that you can move on to feints. Also, if you have your enemy beneath you but can't see, don't back off unless you can reasonably expect to be able to escape; you know I'm faster than you are yet you let your instincts take over at the end there. If you had grabbed my arm after I poked your eyes then you might still have managed to get me in some sort of hold... well, no, you wouldn't have, but it would have at least been a little harder for me.”
Frank just groaned in response. Helping him back to his feet, Hijiri got up as well and aimed his gaze over at the others. “Who's next?”
“I-I a-am...” came the wimpy reply of Trevor Dodson as he slowly trudged forwards, hanging his head whilst Kroll, Leon and Priya stood behind him, looking pleased with themselves. It seemed they'd pressured him into fighting next. It made no difference really; they'd all lost before, and they'd all have plenty more shots at getting beaten up tonight, both by the Primes and by each other, later on... but Hijiri wasn't about to object.
Trevor had tried to take advantage of him when he'd first shown up in the Omniverse by not letting him know how easy it was to gather Omnilium, making him think that the only way he stood a chance at earning enough to reclaim his True Form was by working for the Empire... honestly, he supposed it didn't really matter much now, as he'd ended up joining anyway after Michelle had explained the truth of the situation... but even so, he couldn't help it, between that, Trevor's cowardliness and just his general dislikeability... it was hard not to feel happy when taking every possible opportunity to beat on that guy. Hijiri smirked.
“Oh yes, it's time for the two of us to have some more fun is it, Dodson?”
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-17-2017
And so it began. Following five days and nights of long and arduous training montages, the stormtrooper 'veterans' under the tutelage of Takanomiya Hijiri & Sarah Watt, utterly exhausted, took one night off to rest and recuperate, after being told by Lieutenant Davion Calrime that Imperial Command had finally finished their preparations; the next day – Day Six of Kroll's Really Amazing Plan (acronym: KRAP) – would be a day of reckoning for the Northside Wolfpack, during which four squads of the Empire's finest most okay-ish stormtroopers would descend upon four compromised hideouts of theirs, and bring them down with extreme prejudice. This should, ideally, weaken the gang to a point from which they could never recover...
***
The stealthy approach had been taken once again, so as to prevent the guards and sentries of the various facilities from spotting them; after what had happened to their last warehouse, the Wolfpack surely would have made sure their people actually bothered to keep a lookout from now on... not that it would have helped them. The crappy old van with its black-tinted windows blended in on Tier Five like a tree in the Green, a cowboy in the Dunes, or an ignorant, racist peasant in Camelot. In short, it was the perfect disguise. As was the second one.
Davion now led a squad of twenty-nine stormtroopers and one Rabbit, in addition to himself. Even with two battered-and-old-looking (but actually fully functional and armour-plated) vans, it was a bit of a tight squeeze; the vehicles weren't all that big to begin with, and thick layers of armour didn't exactly make them any roomier.
Nevertheless, they put up with it, and despite the awful congestion which so often dominated the streets of Tier Five, they did eventually arrive at their destination; a casino. Or rather, a car park round the back of what looked like a dingy old bar, but was actually the disguised entrance to an underground casino...
No, not just an illegal casino (though it was one of those too), but an actual underground casino; the NSW apparently owned a few other buildings around this one as well, and had – according to Kevin's surely reliable intel – torn down the walls between the basements in order to find the space to build this hidden gambling den of theirs.
Davion's squad was the only one being sent after a casino; the other three were all targeting warehouses most likely filled with guns and explosives, just as the first had been. The reason for this special mission was that this place was sometimes used by the gang's upper echelons for their clandestine meetings; if they could take out even just some of the leadership then it could potentially be a massive blow. And as for why this place had fallen to them to face; theirs was the only squad with a Prime on board, so if the big shots turned out to be Primes, or had Prime bodyguards, Davion's people would have the best chance of coping with them.
The back doors of the vans swung open, and the 'troopers marched out.
“Sir!” said Hijiri.
“Yes, corporal?” the lieutenant responded.
“This place has a front entrance and a rear one, so I recommend splitting out forces, so as to prevent them from running. What do you say?”
Davion nodded. “Makes sense. I'll leave you half the men-”
A loud cough could be heard from amidst the gathered ranks. Followed by a sigh from their leader.
“-half the soldiers, to guard this back exit while the rest of us go storm it from the front. That sound alright to you?”
Hijiri hesitated a moment, trying to find the best way to word this, before shaking his head. “No, sir-”
“What?” Davion's eyes narrowed as he spoke up before the Battle Rabbit could continue; the officer's helmet he wore was open-faced, and so unlike the mere stormtroopers around him, the lieutenant's expressions could actually be seen. It also made him more vulnerable to headshots. Not like that was in any way at all relevant, though. Nope. Just a totally unimportant detail... “You want to lead the charge, is that it, Prime? Well tough luck, this is my squad and I've got no intention of just standing back like some rich ponce who bought his way into power just because Command saw fit to give me this stupid new uniform. Got that!?”
“Uh... sure, sir. That's not actually what I was going to say, though.”
“Oh. Okay, what was it then?”
“I don't need half the squad to guard a back door. Just leave me the vets, those guys should be skilled enough to help watch my back while I do this, okay sir?”
“You want me to go in with nothing but newbies and incompetents? Are you joking? No way.”
“I'll take Dodson too.”
“Done!” the lieutenant organised the squad's splitting in record time and was off like a shot with his recruits. Clearly he thought Hijiri had made a terrible mistake by agreeing to take the coward, and would surely realise that himself at any moment. Of course, not being aware of their late-night training sessions meant Davion didn't realise that Trevor was now actually useful no longer quite so detrimental to have by one's side as he had been previously.
No sooner had he left than Kroll tugged off his helmet and tossed it back into the van.
“So you really do plan to fight without a helmet?” Jallus asked in a tone which made clear how unimpressed with that idea he was.
“Yes. Recognition is important, Reiner. How am I supposed to act like I'm in charge around here if I'm dressed no differently from every other stormtrooper sergeant? Besides, it's not like this cheap-ass armour ever actually does anything anyway; I don't know if you noticed, but it isn't exactly bulletproof.”
Jallus grunted non-committally, obviously still of the opinion that weak armour was better than no armour, but smart enough not to waste time arguing about it whilst standing right outside an enemy stronghold.
“So, we're going to 'guard a back door' are we, corporal?” Kroll asked, turning to Hijiri with a smile.
“That was my suggestion, so unless a superior officer were to overrule me then I guess we'll just be staying outside to ambush anyone who makes a run for it, sergeant.” the Rabbit responded, smirking back.
“Oh, really? A superior officer, huh? Well, funny you should mention that, corporal, because I was just thinking I might like to lead my little squad into combat.”
“You don't say, sergeant? I never would have guessed.”
Turning to the other six, Kroll spoke up again; “Alright, everyone ready?”
“Yes, sir!” they chorused with varying levels of enthusiasm. Trevor, of course, being by far the least keen.
“Excellent. Our goal for the day is to rack up more kills and/or prisoners than the lieutenant's people, got that? Good. Then let's get going.” so saying, he turned and fired, blowing off the small door's lock with unerring accuracy. The hinges creaked a little as it swung slightly ajar.
Kroll and Hijiri took the lead, and the rest marched behind as they headed into the narrow passageway...
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-18-2017
A few dingy storage rooms branched off from along the sides of this hallway, though only one had a guard stationed outside. He was obviously expecting them and immediately slunk back into the room the moment he laid eyes upon them, rather than panicking and trying to get a shot off. Clearly someone had spotted them unloading the vans... well, either that or Davion had already begun his attack around the front and they had just assumed that the Empire wouldn't be dumb enough to leave them an open escape route. Which was, admittedly, a fairly safe bet to make.
From within the room came the sounds of people readying weapons; apparently, that one guard was not alone. The squad drew to a halt at the same moment they heard the back door banging open behind them. They turned just in time to see a mob of NSW thugs crowding in through the narrow doorway behind them. They were surrounded.
“Takanomiya, distract those ones,” Kroll pointed to the room towards which they had been heading, “we'll take care of the others.”
“Yes, sir!” the Prime barked, diving forwards and flipping over in mid-air so that he struck the doorframe itself, facing into the room at an angle, and could immediately make a second leap before they (or gravity) had time to respond.
There were five in all, wearing cheap and worn clothing in the same grey-on-white gang colours as the other Wolfpack members they'd run into previously. The big, dumb-looking one right in the middle held a sawn-off shotgun in one hand and an SMG in the other. To the far left a wild-eyed woman carried nothing more than a big knife, whilst the other three – all men of unassuming builds but with mean looks to their faces – held 'heaters'; the slang name for stolen and customised imperial blasters.
Bouncing off the wooden frame, Hijiri drew his katana and plunged it up to the hilt into the chest of the central figure before any of them could even get a shot off. As the dying man began to fall, the Battle Rabbit swung his own body around, using his weight to position the big guy between him and the two to his left, he then darted right, leaving behind his blade; there was no way he'd have time to pull it free before his foes could strike, so this was his only option.
He still held the scabbard, though, and was able to dive beneath the two shots fired his way, and flick out his arm to shatter an ankle with the sheathe. It was fortunate that this room was so small, since when the man cried out, dropped his weapon, and stumbled forwards, that movement put him directly between his ally and Hijiri.
A laser from off to the left missed his head by inches as he sprung up, shoved the injured man into his friend and then turned to face the other two. The man who had shot was readjusting his aim, and the woman was almost upon him, her knife headed straight for his gut as she bared her teeth at him.
Hijiri side-stepped casually, she followed immediately, and her backup fired again, all in the same moment.
The woman yelled in agony and the knife slipped from her fingers as her colleague's gun blasted a hole straight through her outstretched arm. Seeing her distraction, the Prime grabbed a clump of her long and matted hair, spun, and dashed her head against the wall. She collapsed, unconscious immediately.
He took a step back, admiring his handiwork as the two remaining gangsters who weren't dead, unconscious, or curled up on the floor clutching their ankle and sobbing like a baby levelled their weapons at him.
“It's over now.” said the one to his left, pulling his trigger a fraction of a second before the other one did too.
Altering gravity to reduce his weight down to practically nothing, Hijiri darted backwards far faster than the pair had expected, rocketing out through the doorway. Turning in mid-air, he used a wall as a springboard, reached the opposite wall, and did the same again, landing on the ground in a crouch. He began focusing his energy, so that a couple seconds later, when the first guy rushed out – waving his heater around like a fool as he attempted to cover every possible location by himself – the Battle Rabbit needed only to lean forwards and release the energy he had built up thus far, significantly increasing the weight of his first, even as it rose up in a graceful arc which culminated in an excessively heavy strike to the thug's groin.
The man was lifted a couple inches off the ground before he fell, and there was an audible crack when the blow landed. Hijiri's victim's eyes rolled up into his head; he had blacked out before even hitting the ground.
“You bastard!” the next man screamed, apparently not a big fan of the underhanded move.
He had Hijiri directly in his line of sight and the Prime was still overextended; he didn't have time to dodge.
Just as the NSW goon's finger began to tighten on the trigger, though, a hole appeared in the centre of his forehead and he toppled forwards. Looking past him, Hijiri saw Kroll and the others headed his way.
“Nice work, Takanomiya, though you might want to work on not having to be rescued all the time; I might not always be here to have your back, y'know?” Kroll announced smugly as he and the others approached.
Ignoring his friend's words, the Rabbit cast his eyes back over the squad. He still found it difficult to tell them apart in their armour, but he'd gotten a little better at it; it'd certainly be helpful to have some sort of mental power like Michelle, but alas, all he could do was look closely at their build and their gait as they walked. It took him a couple seconds, but he worked out who was missing.
“What happened? Are Reiner and Leben alright?” Hijiri noticed that as well as the missing pair, a couple others bore hastily bandaged wounds; they may have beaten their foes, but the fight clearly hadn't been as one-sided as they'd have liked.
“They'll be fine. Reiner isn't even hurt, he's just helping that drunken oaf back to the van. Leben took a shot to the thigh, and not just a graze, either, the blast passed right through the bone and came out the other side; he's not going to be any use today. He's lucky the guy who shot him was using a heater, though; the wound is completely cauterised, so at least there's no need to worry about blood loss.”
“Huh. Well, it could have gone a lot worse... so, we just wait on Reiner then head further in, sergeant?”
“Almost. We do have a few other things to take care of first. Starting with this.” so saying, Kroll stepped into the room and, holding his blaster in one outstretched arm, fired immediately.
“Die, Empi-” the sobbing man got out before the blaster-shot put him down. From where he stood, Hijiri couldn't see what exactly had happened, but he did notice the laser which flew wide and hit a random spot on one of the walls as the thug keeled over. It seemed that he had managed to overcome the pain in his ankle enough to pick up and aim his weapon, with the intent of killing the next person through the doorway.
He clearly hadn't anticipated anyone expecting that of him, though, and so hadn't acted quickly enough to beat Kroll.
The fake sergeant sauntered casually back out of the room.
“We can't just leave potential threats lying around. Singh, Nash; handcuff the unconscious ones and load them into the van. Who knows, we might get lucky and find out the locations of even more of their bases from them after this is all over.”
“Yes, sir.” the pair chorused, as Leon crouched down by the guy Hijiri had hit in the balls and Priya headed into the room he'd cleared to check for other survivors. The knife-wielding woman would be the only one, now, since Kroll had finished off the man whose ankle had been broken.
“We'll wait for them before heading on. In the mean time, Takanomiya, go get your sword, then we'll check a few of these other side-rooms, just in case they have any surprises in store for us.” the ex-noble commanded.
“Yes, sir.” Hijiri said, along with Brandon.
“Yes, s-” Trevor started to say, a moment later, before realising he'd messed up the timing again and trailed off with a sigh...
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-19-2017
Hijiri, carrying the re-sheathed sword in one hand, ready to draw at a moment's notice, was crouched by the trapdoor. It hadn't exactly been well hidden; the thing sat in the dead centre of the room and was covered by a bright orange and fluffy rug. Ever so slightly conspicuous. None of the other rooms had held anything worth mentioning; certainly no guns, explosives or gangsters waiting to spring another ambush, at least. As such, they were now ready to head out; Priya, Leon & Jallus had all returned from their appointed tasks.
“Do it.” Kroll ordered. He and the rest of the squad were standing, blasters levelled at the trapdoor. While they'd waited on the three who had now returned a pair of skinny guys armed with regular bullet-guns had tried to flee out this way, looking scared. They'd started firing when they noticed the squad, but luckily neither had been a remotely good shot; in fact, they could barely even handle the recoil of their own weapons. It was no wonder they were so desperate to get away before Davion & Co found them. Brandon and Kroll gunned them down easily enough, but they weren't taking any chances; they had no idea what was under the trapdoor, so they'd fire the moment they came across an enemy.
With his free hand the Battle Rabbit smoothly tugged open the hatch, revealing...
Nothing. There was no one there.
Carefully advancing, the squad headed down, with Hijiri bringing up the rear. It didn't take long to spot the difference between this level and the one above; whereas that had been dingy and unwelcoming, this area was richly upholstered indeed, with plush red carpets and wallpaper of a colour to match. Golden lights were attached to the walls at regular intervals, providing a far more brilliant illumination than that of the dim bulbs of the building above.
There were no side-doors in this corridor. It carried on straight for a several metres before turning at a right angle. Upon rounding the corner they saw a set of double doors just a few metres away, guarded by a pair of hulking thugs in white suits and grey ties. Apparently the casino's workers were supposed to dress more professionally than the rest of the gang's members.
The moment they laid eyes on the group, the two men raised their weapons; a pair of fat guns that looked almost like miniature cannons; there would be no getting through this way quietly.
Those at the rear darted back round the bend whilst Hijiri, Kroll and Brandon, who had taken the lead when they reached the corner, dived to the ground as the big guns roared and huge bullets slammed into the walls behind them. If those things were to actually land on target they'd easily have torn a fist-sized hole right through their victims and out the other side.
The recoil was strong, though, even for towering masses of muscle such as these, and so they'd need a moment to aim again.
Kroll and Brandon took one, unloading their blasters into his chest and causing him to stumble back, through the doors, whilst Hijiri dashed forwards in the blink of an eye, staying low to the ground until he was upon his target, then spinning as he drew his blade, drawing a line in blood across the big guy's gut.
Facing his allies now, with his back to the doors, Hijiri calmly and coolly sheathed his katana. Behind him, the bruiser dropped his weapon and clutched feebly at his stomach in a vain attempt at keeping his organs internal. He failed.
“Nice work.” the 'sergeant' commended him, as they got to their feet and Priya, Leon, Trevor & Jallus joined them. Past those doors would be the casino itself, and now that he paused to listen closely, Hijiri noticed he could hear faint gunfire in the distance. Hopefully the lieutenant's people were doing alright.
Wasting no time, he swung the doors wide...
He took one look at the various thugs, goons and gangsters arrayed around the many gambling tables within, noticed that they were all already aware of the stormtroopers headed their way – courtesy of the big doorman who'd stumbled in as he died – and had over three dozen guns aimed his way, then smoothly shut the double doors once again, fully expecting them to at any moment be smashed to splinters in a hail of bullets and lasers which would undoubtedly take out the Prime as well.
Instead, however, he was pleasantly surprised when the plethora of projectiles battered against the doors, but utterly failed to make their way through.
It seemed that these things must be armour plated, for them to have withstood a barrage such as that. If so then the NSW's desire to protect their casino from any unexpected attacks would seem to have badly backfired.
“Windvale, you're up.” Kroll said, taking a position by the right door, as Hijiri moved aside to the left.
“Ready.” the elf told them, unhooking a pair of small spheres from his belt.
With a nod from Kroll, he and Hijiri simultaneously swung their doors open just wide enough Brandon to toss through his little gadgets, then slammed them shut once again, as quickly as they could manage.
A few shots were fired by those with the fastest reactions, but even the closest one barely managed to so much as graze Brandon; the bullet struck his shoulder and glanced off, sending a couple cracks snaking across the plastoid plate but not actually harming the elf at all.
Then they heard the explosions.
Not that those were nearly as dangerous as the noise they made might lead one to assume; one had been an EMP which would cut off the Wolfpack's communicators and perhaps some other equipment as well if they were lucky, whilst the other had been some sort of ultra-smoke-grenade, easily capable of filling even a room as huge as that one with its contents.
No one would be killed by those things, but they would prevent their foes from organising, calling in reinforcements, and noticing if the squad entered the room. Of course, the 'troopers wouldn't have it all that easy themselves if they were actually to do so, since the laser bolts from their blasters would give away their positions every time they fired, just as much as the enemy's weapons would.
Hijiri, of course, did not have this to worry about. He could hear the panic in their voices as the gangsters realised they couldn't see more than a foot or two from their faces in this thick smoke. Some were already coughing. It wouldn't be long before they were forced to head for the exits, at which point any dumb enough to leave through these doors would be gunned down by Kroll's group, and hopefully Davion's people would soon close in from the other side.
In the meantime, Hijiri drew his blade, reduced his weight, took a deep breath – to get as much oxygen as possible into his lungs – and slipped into the room; as light as he now was, his steps would make virtually no noise. He couldn't see his targets, but he could still hear them blundering about, cursing, and, most importantly, yelling orders.
Keeping low, he moved as stealthily as someone with no training in moving stealthily could possibly be expected to. Between the loud gangsters and the obscuring smoke, though, it seemed his lack of practice was not enough to give him away, and he soon reached someone he assumed must be at least moderately important.
The man was short, overweight and dressed – so far as the Battle Rabbit could tell with such low visibility – in a suit similar to that of the guards they had seen in the hallway. He was standing on a roulette table as he screamed commands to his goons in between coughs, trying to get a group of them organised enough to rush the hallway and take out Kroll's team through sheer weight of numbers.
Angling the point of his weapon upwards, Hijiri calmly slid the katana into the gangster's belly and up through vital organs and into his heart. His victim shrieked in pain and surprise, and the Rabbit slid out the weapon as he collapsed.
More people began yelling, but Hijiri jumped lightly to put some distance between them. Having no way of knowing where he would land, though, he made sure to keep his blade at the ready, and it was fortunate indeed that he had, for he soon found himself touching down right beside one of the many goons scattered across the room.
“Huh?” she asked, not having noticed him at all until he was upon her. His blade lashed out. Normally, a strike with as much energy behind it as he was using here would have straight-up decapitated her completely, but as lightweight as he currently was, it merely slit her throat.
Her blood rushed out in a torrent – some of it splattering against him – as she stumbled back, hands going to her throat for a moment before she collapsed. More shouting started up as others heard her body strike the floor, and a couple people even fired vaguely in his direction (though neither shot came close to being on target) before cooler heads prevailed and those idiots were loudly and angrily ordered not to fire... shooting blindly in a room filled with your own allies generally wasn't the best of tactics, after all.
Hijiri moved on. He would be forced to exert himself more than usual to inflict the same wounds, and he would have to leave the smoke soon to take another breath – more and more people were coughing now – but he was determined to do what he could to cause some chaos for however long he could hold out.
He got to work.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-21-2017
Back out in the hallway, Hijiri slid the cheap, black air filtration mask over his mouth and turned to Kroll.
“Wehh, wha duh yuh hhingh?” his words came out thoroughly muffled. This thing had been cheap, after all. If fact, he'd summoned it from the absolute bare minimum amount of Omnilium he could possibly get away with; it only needed to last through this one fight.
What he had meant to ask was 'well, what do you think?', which the other man somehow seemed to realise, despite the Rabbit's indecipherable mumbling.
“I think it'll look far more intimidating if you keep quiet; the moment you say anything you'll completely ruin the effect.” his 'superior' replied.
For a moment Hijiri was about to answer him, but then thought better of it and gave him a thumbs up instead.
“Uh-huh... well, going back in now, are you?”
Another thumbs up.
“And you're sure you don't want to spend a little time cleaning up, first?”
Thumbs down.
When he'd come back after his little stab-a-thon in the smoke-filled room, Hijiri's suit had been given a liberal coating of blood and soot, and Leon had mentioned that if he were willing to take a few minutes to do so, then he could break down the unwanted material for Omnilium. The amount he earned would be practically nothing, since dirty blood was in no way a valuable substance, but it would at least let him get clean.
He had chosen not to bother, though; even taking the time to summon the filter he'd need to be able to breathe properly in there had been pushing it; twice already in the four minutes or so he'd been out here the NSW had tried to rally and come rushing through the door. Both times Kroll's team had been able to lay down enough fire to force them to scatter, but that couldn't last forever.
He wasn't about to waste precious minutes for something as minor as stopping his clothes from being completely soaked through with blood.
And so in he went once more.
The smoke had begun to drain away, so Brandon had thrown another smoke grenade just a minute previously – if they didn't keep the room completely obscured then there was no doubt they'd be rushed down by their foes – currently, though, the Wolfpack seemed to have withdrawn from this area. They'd found their way back to the doors at the other sides of the big gambling hall and had pulled out into the areas with much less smoke whilst they made their preparations.
As soon as he was through the doors, and with blade drawn, the Battle Rabbit once again reduced his gravity and leapt forwards, almost all the way to the other side of the room, before coming to rest on a table strewn with playing cards and stepping off; floating to the floor as lightly as a feather. Once there, though, he removed his sodden shoes and socks, then reluctantly disabled the gravitational manipulation.
One might expect that being lighter would help to prevent loss of stamina, but unfortunately no powers seemed to come without a cost in the Omniverse, and he'd almost worn himself out the first time he'd been in here... though thankfully the few minutes break he'd had whilst summoning had helped with that a bit. Nevertheless, it was clear that he couldn't simply hope to remain lightweight for however long this took.
And so he'd need to make do with removing the blood-soaked footwear and trying to step as lightly as possible. Of course, with the room being as vacant as it now was, anyone who did enter would be much more likely to pick up on even minor noises... and to spot sudden movements amidst the smoke, for that matter.
Yes, he'd really need to get around to learning some actual stealth skills at some point in the future... for the time being, though, he'd just have to do the best he could.
First he slowly made his way forwards until his outstretched fingers touched a wall – treading as lightly as he could manage – then paused to listen for the sound of voices...
It was faint, but he did manage to make something out, and headed towards it. Once there he settled up against what looked in the hazy blackness like it might have been some sort of slot machine, and waited.
Without lightening himself and springing around the room as he had been previously, Hijiri had no way of monitoring all the exits to see if anyone was entering from another side of the room... he'd just have to hope that if they did then they'd make enough noise for him to notice, or that the veteran stormtroopers could handle them alone... or maybe that no one else would come through at all for another five to ten minutes; by that point he'd have rested enough that he probably could afford to keep his ability active for an extended period. Not that there was any realistic chance of them giving him that long, but hey, a man could dream, couldn't he?
***
Three minutes or so later, the double doors opened and with much fanfare – meaning in this case slaps on the back and yells of encouragement – a big man stepped into the room. Even being as near to them as he was, the Battle Rabbit could see practically nothing of the gangster besides a vague silhouette. From that, though, he could tell that his adversary was tall, extremely muscular, and was carrying what was either a big cardboard tube or some sort of rocket launcher. For some reason, Hijiri more strongly suspected the latter.
The man walked confidently towards the opposite doors – behind which Kroll and the others waited – not so much as bumping into a single table; clearly, he must be familiar with this place if he could walk around without so much as slowing down despite the poor visibility. There was no way the Rabbit would be able to keep up if he were to try and follow along at the hesitant pace he'd been walking earlier.
First reducing his whole body's weight down to practically nothing, he all but effortlessly pulled himself atop the machine against which he'd been leaning, and spent a few seconds building up power in the arm which held his katana. It was risky, since the thug's silhouette grew less distinct by the moment, but judging by his build, Hijiri knew a little lightweight attack wouldn't do much to this guy.
When ready, he sprung. Covering the distance in no time, he was pleased to note that he was more or less on target, despite barely having been able to make out his foe. The first thing he did was restore his weight to normal. The second was to release the built-up energy in his arm; increasing the weight of both it and his blade enough to make pure lead seem positively buoyant by comparison.
He slammed into the goon's back, sword-first, and was pleased to hear a loud crack as a few ribs broke, in addition to the horrible injury inflicted by the weapon, which had unfortunately not gone straight through his heart; Hijiri had been off-target enough that he'd hit one side of the man's back, rather than the dead centre, and so had pierced a lung instead. Not that it mattered. The guy couldn't last long with an injury like this. All he had to do now was revert to his normal weight – which he did with no problems – and pull free his katana – which he also... uh...
Okay. The blade was stuck. Not great.
Screaming in agony as loudly as one could with a badly damaged lung, the goon lurched backwards and fell, intentionally landing on top of the Battle Rabbit. Hijiri saw stars after his head struck the hard floor, the expensive yet fine carpet doing little to absorb the force of the blow. On top of that, the weight of the big bruiser knocked the wind from him.
Rolling off as soon as Hijiri lost his grip on the katana's hilt, the thug swung round his weapon and for a moment the Rabbit froze in place, knowing that there was no way he could hope to get clear in time if his foe was actually suicidal enough to fire a rocket launcher in melee range.
But then the idiot grabbed it by the barrel and swung it at him; using the expensive – not to mention explosive – piece of military hardware as nothing more than a crude club.
Hijiri rolled aside, just barely, but then was able to get back to his feet, though he was struggling to breathe. On the bright side, with one lung rapidly filling with blood, at least he could safely say his opponent was having an even worse time in that regard.
The sword may have been lost to him – he really had to stop stabbing people with that much force – but his left hand still held its sheathe, so Hijiri waited for the dying man's next clumsy swing, leaned back so that the 'club' would pass him by, then darted forwards in an instant; taking full advantage of his greater agility over that of the towering, muscle-bound oaf.
He slammed the sheathe into an elbow, causing the man to lose his grip with the hand of that arm, and drop the rocket launcher as a result. It wasn't a break, nor even a fracture, but he didn't currently have the energy, time or concentration to use another altered gravity strike. Just like some of the whiny blogs he'd read on the Dataverse suggested; special powers like that were much harder to use in the Omniverse than many Primes would have found them back in their own worlds.
The strike may have been comparatively weak, yet his opponent had dropped his weapon nonetheless, and now staggered back a couple steps as well, before coughing up a gout of blood... much of which hit the Rabbit, of course. If he'd had the breath to spare, he would have sighed. The one good thing to be said for the ogres which had tormented his own universe was that at least they didn't bleed all over the place. He was beginning to envy the stormtroopers just a little... not only were their weapons long-ranged, but even if they did get close to an opponent, the lasers they fired were hot enough to cauterise any wounds they inflicted.
He'd be taking a very long shower after this was all over, that was for sure.
Falling to his knees, the big guy coughed again, then keeled over. Not quite dead, maybe, but close enough. Moving over to him, Hijiri retrieved the sword, then caught his breath before continuing.
He pulled the mask down – probably not the best idea given all the smoke, but it likely wouldn't make too big a difference – and called out cheerfully to the rest of the gangsters. “Come on little wolfies, come back into the smoke, why don't you? Come join your friend over here, and find out what happens to those who defy the Empire!”
A few of them began shouting insults back, to which he responded in turn, and he was soon pleased to hear replies coming from the other sides of the room as well, as those through those doorways also took part. They called him a coward for hiding in all this smoke, rather than fighting like a real man, and he laughed in response, then mocked them for being unable to hunt him down, though he was only one man up against all of them.
It didn't take much of this before what little discipline these 'wolves' had crumbled – they were only common street criminals, after all, not real soldiers like the stormtroopers – and they began pouring into the hall. Not all of them had the last guy's familiarity with the area, though, so there were many curses as people bumped into the various machines and tables scattered throughout the room. Hijiri smiled as he fitted the filtration mask back into place and took in a couple deep breaths of clean-ish air.
On the surface, it may not seem like the best idea to invite a whole mob in here after him, especially if there were more as strong as that bruiser had been, but he knew this was necessary; not only would he need loud noise to cover his movements, but he'd noticed earlier that the most casualties came not from his own attacks but from theirs, when they panicked and started shooting his way, heedless of the safety of the comrades who stood around them. He had to get as many of them making that mistake as he could, as often as possible...
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-22-2017
“We should go in and help, sir.” Priya had folded her arms and was glaring at him... well, actually, she may not have really been glaring, but these stormtrooper helmets had kind of a mean look to them, and to Kroll it always felt like he was being glared at whenever any of them faced his way. Leon stood behind her; as usual these days, that pair seemed to prefer discussing something between themselves and coming to an agreement on the matter before even proposing an idea to the others.
“Oh? It seems to me he's doing fine by himself.” Kroll tugged one of the doors open slightly and peered out. There was no sign of Hijiri, but the shooting had started up again, and many of the thugs were screaming or moaning in pain... either because he was cutting them down one by one or because the idiots were repeatedly firing upon their own crew. To begin with, as well as the shouts of rage, the insults and the screams, he'd also been able to hear a few of the wolves calling their people back, trying to get them not to rise to the bait.
Those voices had now fallen silent; the squad's resident Rabbit having apparently considered that lot to be priority targets. He wasn't just making the best of a bad situation, he must want all those goons in there with him.
“He could get shot at any time, they're shooting lasers everywhere in there! Besides, we've been at this for too long, this place may be pretty big for a casino, but it's not like it's all that far from one end to the other; the lieutenant should have reached us by now. Something must have gone wrong. The sooner we clear this place, the sooner we can go help the others.”
“Hmm...” Kroll didn't particularly want to risk the lives of his veteran stormtroopers at this point; he'd need everyone's help to make his plan a success, and they hadn't yet had enough of Hijiri and Sarah's training for him to feel confident that they could handle such a huge mob.
“You know she's right, sergeant.” Leon added, folding his arms as well. Did these two think that made them look intimidating or something?
Kroll sighed. “All in favour of helping Takanomiya?”
“Aye.” answered Priya, Leon, Brandon and Frank at once.
“... Uh, well... I guess...” Trevor added a moment later, after realising that no one else was about to object.
“Very reassuring, Dodson,” Kroll said drily, “we're all extremely impressed by your eagerness, I'm sure, but you're bad enough for friendly fire even without a cloud of smoke to help you perform even more dreadfully than normal, so why don't you just wait here for us?”
“Yes, sir!” Trevor sounded pleased with his new task, at least for a moment...
“Good luck holding them all off yourself, kid,” Frank gave the idiot a pat on the shoulder as he passed him on his way to the doors.
“Wait, what?”
Priya and Frank had entered the other room, with Leon right on their heels.
“There's a pretty good chance more of them will try and get away through here at some point, so do your best to take out as many as you can.” Kroll said, giving Trevor a bright smile.
Brandon had left as well, and now Kroll turned and strode through the slowly closing door himself.
“Huh? Wait! I changed my mind!” Trevor suddenly cried, dashing through after the others, only to shriek in terror, trip over and fall to the floor as numerous lasers and bullets were fired in his general direction.
He couldn't see a thing, but from somewhere nearby he heard Kroll's voice hissing quietly. “Nice work, imbecile, now they know we're in here and'll most likely be headed our way as we speak.”
Trevor whimpered.
“Let's find some cover. Dodson; you're forbidden from firing unless I say so, got that?”
“Y-yes, sir.” the coward moaned.
Following Kroll's lead, Trevor crawled off behind a table; the other four had spread out and gone somewhere else. The table wouldn't offer much in the way of protection against bullets and blaster-fire, but it was better than nothing, he supposed.
Kroll made a few whispered comments into his Communicator, then stood, leaning over the table and waiting. When the next gunshot occurred nearby he fired calmly, and someone screamed. Immediately, he ducked down, then spoke into the Communicator again, as more shots rang out.
Replies came from the device, then the 'sergeant' tapped Trevor on the shoulder and gestured to move on. They kept low, doing everything they could to avoid being discovered as they moved. Though their brief conversations were too quiet for him to hear much of what was being said, Trevor realised as they stopped behind a different table and Kroll popped up and took aim facing another direction, that they were organising things somehow so as to (hopefully) avoid shooting each other.
He wasn't sure how, exactly, but this squad did seem to work pretty well together. Kroll shot someone else, ducked, spoke, and they moved on again; it seemed like the plan was to keep moving in order to make sure the NSW didn't realise that their shots were those of the stormtroopers; it might come across as just a tad suspicious if someone in the same spot repeatedly kept 'accidentally' killing their gangsters. Up until this point, they had all been actively trying to avoid shooting towards the sources of the lasers and bullets, since they had clearly realised Hijiri was armed only with his sword, which meant they'd only have been killing their own allies by doing that, so as long as they never worked out which of the gunners were actually stormtroopers, the veterans could keep gunning them down with almost no risk.
Men and women continued to scream as they were slain by the Battle Rabbit somewhere in their midst, shot by the squad, and fired upon accidentally by each other as well. It couldn't last long, and so it didn't. As soon as they all realised they'd eventually lose at this rate, the mindless goons – in the absence of any competent leadership – decided that their best tactic would be to kill the 'troopers before they killed them. Unfortunately, since they didn't know where the EPD soldiers actually were, their only recourse was to shoot at anyone who fired.
Given that doing so meant having to fire their own weapon as well, which would in turn make them a target for their allies, who would then be shot by other gangsters, it didn't take them long to realise the folly of this idea. Of course, by then it was much too late.
***
“Feels good to be able to take this stupid thing off.” Hijiri remarked, tossing aside the ventilation mask and attempting to wipe as much of the soot-stained blood from his face as he could manage.
“Yeah, well, at least you had one.” Kroll coughed.
“Point taken. So, where to now, sir?” they had left the room behind them piled with corpses, only leaving after they were as certain as they could possibly be without waiting for the smoke to dissipate that there was no one left alive within. At least a few had likely escaped, but the ex-noble didn't seem concerned, so Hijiri didn't let it bother him either; those who fled would spread the word that Davion's squad held some formidable soldiers, after all, and so help get them recognised around the area... which was good, apparently.
“We have to make our way to the front entrance of this place; there's still no sign of Lieutenant Calrime. His group could be in trouble.” Priya told the Prime, who nodded.
“Any idea where that is?” the room they were in now was another hallway, but unlike the first, it was dotted with doorways all across its length... at least up until a couple dozen metres away, at which point it turned a corner, after which they could as yet tell nothing more about it.
“Not a clue.” answered Kroll. “We're just going to have to check them all. It's doubtful they got this far, given the lack of bodies and scorch-marks on the walls, but there could still be traps or enemy reinforcements behind any of these doors... not to mention valuables. Remember the plan, everyone; we need weapons, or at the very least expensive goods that can be converted into a lot of Omnilium.”
Frank – who had at some point removed his helmet, taken out his metal flask and started drinking – laughed at that. “Don't worry 'boss' none of us are gonna forget your KRAP anytime soon.”
Kroll scowled at the drunkard. The fake sergeant hadn't bothered to come up with an actual name for his plan – despite having different names for each of its component Phases – so Frank had taken it upon himself to come up with one in his stead. He eventually went with 'Kroll's Really Amazing Plan'... or KRAP, for short. Shockingly, the wannabe strategist didn't much like that name.
“Just get to work.” he snapped.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-25-2017
“Yo.” The blood-soaked Battle Rabbit said, reassuring himself that he would be reincarnated after a week when this moronic plan failed. He struck a 'cool' pose.
The assembled gangsters turned... and stared.
“Wh-what?” asked a fat man in a scruffy grey-on-white suit, similar to the one Kevin was fond of wearing. His jaw had dropped, along with those of many of his thugs. It was no surprise. They'd likely never seen anything this stupid in their lives... despite being part of a gang filled with men and women so idiotic that they'd actually thought it was a good idea to fire blindly in a room packed with their own crew.
He had to hand it to Kroll, at this rate they could probably tick 'Phase One: Recognition' off their to-do list in no time, since no one was likely to forget them in a hurry if they kept pulling ridiculous stunts like this... assuming they didn't all get themselves slaughtered in the process, of course, which was by no means assured... or 'remotely likely' for that matter...
Ugh... how in hell had it come to this?
***
Approximately Ten Minutes Earlier...
Hijiri swung open another door. This one led into a room with TVs lining one wall, a bar, and numerous comfortable seats and sofas. It stank of cigarettes... or... what was it the 'troopers had said those were called back in the Galactic Empire they (and Coruscant itself) hailed from...? Oh, yeah, 'deathsticks', that was it. As stupid a name as he'd ever heard, though he supposed that if you weren't remotely concerned with any sort of marketing strategy and were just looking for an accurate name then it was technically rather apt.
The room was completely deserted. Apparently even the bar staff here were just as willing to fight against the Empire as the rest of their criminal friends. He closed the door. It was possible that there might be something valuable in there somewhere, but it didn't look like any of it was immediately usable; he didn't exactly have time to go around extracting Omnilium from every remotely expensive thing in the building; right now they were looking for weapons, first and foremost...
Also, if he was to linger about in there for any length of time then one of the others might come in to help him search... and if that person happened to be Frank... well, the last thing they needed at a time like this was to have to struggle to drag him away from a large quantity of free booze.
Just as he was about to head into an adjacent room, though, they all heard gunfire from out beyond one of the doors. Bursting through, weapons drawn, they found themselves in another hallway, with a few more doors. Following the noise, they passed through another two doorways and down a short flight of stairs... the Rabbit realised he may have been underestimating the size of this place.
Before long, though, they saw the first bodies. Mostly Wolfpack goons, but with a couple of stormtroopers as well. Upon reaching a corner, Hijiri – being the fastest of them, and the only one capable of coming back from the dead – volunteered to poke his head around that corner and see what was up.
This next hall was much wider than the previous ones, and seemed like it might have been some sort of reception area. There were crude, furniture barricades on either side, and some fighters crouched behind them, whilst others hid through various doorways whilst they reloaded. For the moment, it seemed they'd come to another temporary ceasefire... though judging by all the corpses – mostly on the NSW's side, thankfully – both groups must have been here a while.
Ducking back around, he relayed his info to the others. They spent a little while discussing the matter in hushed tones... and by 'they', that is to say Hijiri, Kroll, Brandon and Priya. Leon simply followed her lead, Trevor was ignored and Frank just leaned back against a wall, removed his helmet, and started drinking again.
Ultimately, the plan Kroll settled on and the others agreed with reluctantly was... well... stupid, to put it bluntly. The first part involved Hijiri sitting down for three minutes to absorb the Omnilium from the soot which had stained the blood that now soaked his body. Not the blood itself, though, just the soot. He'd look more intimidating this way, the 'sergeant' assured him. Especially if he smiled... for some reason, the others seemed to think his smiles made him look mean... or 'like a goddamn psychopath', as Brandon so eloquently put it.
Whilst he was concentrating on that another brief gunfight broke out, and Kroll gave more whispered instructions to the others. Hijiri couldn't really tell what, though; manipulating Omnilium always seemed to require his full focus.
The next step in the plan was to summon seven pairs of sunglasses. This only took three or four minutes or so, since he summoned them all as a set, rather than individually. When he was done he saw that the others had removed their helmets already. Doing Kroll's bidding, they all dutifully put on their shades (and Priya let down her hair as well), then stepped out behind their enemies.
“Yo.” Hijiri said, as they all struck their poses.
“Wh-what...?” the man who seemed to be the leader of this group asked, before lapsing into silence and simply staring at them for a few seconds, almost as though he was too shocked by their stupidity to even speak. “Are you people actually braindead?”
“I am Kroll vor Iechtelsteir!” declared Kroll suddenly, then pushed his bangs out of his eyes, puffing out his chest and placing his hands on his hips. “I am a sergeant of the Empire and this is my elite team of stormtroopers...! Plus one Prime.”
From one of the nearby doorways a skinhead with a face full of piercings spoke up, “You swine really think just 'cause you got a fish that makes you some kinda bigshots? Let's just waste 'em, guys!”
Dropping out of the moronic pose, Hijiri turned to the ex-noble, “I told you this was a dumb idea.”
“No, it was a great- Dodson, what the hell are you doing!?” Hijiri turned and noticed that the others were all just standing around casually now... none of them were even pointing their blasters at the enemy. Trevor, however, was not standing. Hijiri's brow furrowed in confusion.
Somehow, from somewhere, the soldier from another universe had picked up the Japanese custom of dogeza, and was now kneeling down and bowing to their enemies... whilst apologising profusely and begging not to be killed. Dropping his scabbard, Hijiri used his now-free hand to facepalm, as their ostensible leader began ranting at the pitiful coward.
Frank took out his canteen again and started drinking. No one had removed their shades. They made quite the picture, to be sure.
“Quiet!” roared the fat man, pointing his gun – a Uzi – straight at Kroll's chest, “Now, if you lot want to live through the next three seconds, you'd better give us a damn fine reason not to gun ya all down right here and now.”
“What!?” it was the same skinhead as before, “Boss, are ya crazy!? Ya can't seriously be considerin' lettin' these bastards live!? Them just bein' here means they musta killed all the resta our guys already!”
Priya coughed loudly.
The leader, who had been about to respond to his goon – angrily, judging by his expression – turned to her instead and growled, “What is it?”
She remained silent, but Leon spoke up in her place. “Your gang includes women as well as men. Don't you think it's disrespectful to them to use a male-specific term like 'guys' to refer to your entire group?”
For a couple moments the assembled thugs simply stared at them in bemusement... as though wondering if it was actually possible for people to be this moronic. Then the silence was broken by a girl with a mohawk and the top half of her right ear missing as she burst into a fit of laughter.
Talking over her, their boss said, “Are you dumbasses seriously berating a criminal syndicate for not being politically correct? Really?”
Leon opened his mouth to speak at the same moment that Kroll snorted with suppressed laughter and Frank handed over his flask to one of the thugs – a woman with a vertical scar bisecting her lips – who took a swig from it. They seemed to be conversing in low tones while ignoring the other members of the two groups entirely. At least someone was enjoying themselves.
“What's so funny, huh?” rumbled a huge ogre of a man, who was just barely managing to keep his head below the top of their four-foot-high barricade, even though he was sitting on the ground.
“Hah. Sorry, sorry.” said Kroll, pretending to wipe away tears of laughter, “I just found it funny to hear your boss there call you a syndicate, that's all. I didn't mean to offend anyone.”
“What's so damn humorous about that, huh?” snarled the fat guy.
“Well, come on, it's just not true, is it? I mean sure, I guess you're pretty big in Northside, but compared to the Orc Mafia, the Hutt Mafia and the Westside Coalition... those three are some of the biggest players in Tier Five, so I guess you could call them criminal syndicates... but you lot? No offence, people, but you all couldn't even manage to take out a gang of teenage pyromaniacs... you're not exactly the most feared of organisations, y'know?”
Turning scarlet with rage, and practically slavering at the mouth, the boss guy didn't look too happy, “All right, that's it! It was a little entertaining at first, but I've had it with you lot! Die already!”
As though having been waiting for this moment all along, the thugs opened fire the instant the word 'die' left their boss' mouth.
Crackle. Spark. Pop.
“Hey, it works...! I mean, yeah. I knew this would happen all along. No surprises here.” Brandon said with a wide 'I'm-so-glad-I'm-not-dead' grin plastered to his face.
An energy shield of some kind which seemed to be infused with electrical energy had appeared in front of them just in time to deflect the lasers and bullets which would have turned them all into mincemeat otherwise. Brandon was holding a small cylinder with a red button at the top, connected by a black wire to the small plastoid backpack he wore, which was giving off a pale blue light of a similar colour to that of the forcefield...
As they continued to fire, though, Hijiri could see the light begin dimming noticeably, and it even flickered a couple times, “Get back!”
Following his lead, they all dashed around the corner. Frank was the first to speak. “Damn, I wish I'd had a little more warning before they started shooting; I left my flask with that chick...”
“Shut up and get ready to fire, this shield won't last long.” Kroll snapped, suddenly all business. The field had already withdrawn a little as Brandon had run back the couple metres to get around the corner, so some of the enemy had poured forward after them, and more would follow every second. Once the small generator in the technophilic elf's pack gave out, they'd be overwhelmed in moments. Due to the field's limitations, they couldn't fire out from behind it themselves, so they had no choice but simply to wait and take aim...
This entire plan was completely dependant on something utterly outside their control in order to succeed... they had to trust in the noobs. Luckily, that trust paid off. Just moments after their retreat tactical withdrawal around the corner, as the gangsters were leaving the safety of their barricade and sheltered doorways, the trap was sprung.
Davion's group had been notified by Kroll through their Communicators that they would be distracting the enemy, so they should attempt to close the distance between them as quietly as possible, then charge the barricade when fighting broke out.
These things they had done, and now did, respectively. Swarming over it in moments, the stormtrooper recruits and their lieutenant opened fire on the unsuspecting mass of goons.
Yes, this entire plan had hinged on a) one of Brandon's ridiculous inventions actually functioning as it was supposed to, and b) the NSW thugs being dumb enough to give them their complete and undivided attention despite knowing that there were more stormtroopers behind the other barricade several metres from their position. To call it optimistic would have been a massive understatement.
If they were going to go ahead with this whole 'pretend Kroll is in charge' thing, then they'd definitely need to have a talk about strategy at some point; that guy was really going to need to improve the quality of his plans before he got them all killed.
With another push of the button, Brandon's shield deactivated, and they all began firing upon the now-panicked foes they faced. Between Davion's own training regimen and the one they'd been undergoing with Hijiri and Sarah, the veterans had improved significantly over the last week; even Trevor was managing to land some shots, and he hadn't hit an ally even once so far!
From that point on, despite the originally greater numbers on the Wolfpack side, the battle was all but over. After clearing those coming after them, the veterans rounded the corner – cautiously, at first – and began targeting the others... and those gangsters soon came to realise that a grinning, blood-soaked maniac armed with a katana looks way more intimidating when he's standing right next to you, sword raised, than when he's a few metres away, striking a pose.
Once the fat man and other senior personnel had fallen (i.e. after, like, ten seconds or so) the slaughter ended almost immediately, with the remaining thugs begrudgingly dropping their weapons and raising their hands in the air. The stormtroopers may not have been the best soldiers in existence – they weren't a patch on Space Marines, for one thing – but they were still trained and disciplined combatants, and when they weren't fooling around like a bunch of idiots, they were easily more than a match for these low level street gangs.
As the others started pulling sets of handcuffs from their belts or, in the cases of those who had bothered wearing them (including every member of Kroll's group bar Hijiri), their backpacks, and going around cuffing their new prisoners, Frank knelt down by one of the fallen gangsters, plucked the metal flask from her hand, and sighed, “Damn, I was really hoping we could keep her.”
“What?” snapped Leon, who had happened to be roughly shackling a nearby thug, “These people are criminals, not pets. This isn't like with Watt and Fischer; this lot have nothing to offer us. We're hardly going to circumvent imperial justice just 'cause you wanna chat up some girl you met five minutes ago.”
“Heh. Yeah, I guess not.” he ruffled the woman's blonde hair fondly – ignoring Leon's eyeroll – and got to his feet, then drained the rest of the canteen's contents, stuffed it into his pack, grabbed some 'cuffs, and began helping out.
Once that business was taken care of, and they'd searched the building thoroughly to make sure there were no more thugs lurking around, they were all about to head back to the cramped vans when Kroll pointed out that there wasn't actually enough space in there for them all as well as the prisoners... in fact, there had barely been enough space even without them. He then suggested that they should remedy this issue by forming a convoy of sorts; one van could take the lead and the other bring up the rear whilst in between the prisoners could walk, herded along by the squad's veteran stormtroopers.
Davion agreed easily enough; having spent the whole mission with the recruits, he could tell easily enough that they'd all appreciate a break. Honestly, if it had been up to him he never even would have wanted recruits down here; they weren't ready for this level of danger.
Before they left, there were a few minor changes that had to be made. First, since they wanted their captives staying together rather than rushing off into the crowds at the first possible opportunity, Kroll ordered Hijiri to summon a length of chain with which they could tie the 'cuffs of the prisoners together, so that they were all stuck in one large mob. Davion told him to shut up... then he ordered Hijiri to do the same thing himself.
Second, since it wouldn't look very professional for the stormtroopers to be recognised driving around in crappy old vans, at Kroll's 'request', Hijiri gave them a new paint job and made them appear good as new. It wasn't all that hard, since they had actually been almost as good as new; they'd simply been designed to appear like they were almost falling apart. Both vans still had tinted windows, but were now gleaming white and had the letters 'EPD' emblazoned in a bold, black font on either side.
Thirdly and finally, the Battle Rabbit turned all the blood and other grime which covered himself and his compatriots into Omnilium, absorbing it within his body. They now also looked good as new. After having waited almost half an hour by the time they were done with their 'make-over' as the lieutenant insisted upon calling it, Davion was in a hurry to be getting back; he didn't like simply loitering here, where more foes could show up at any moment.
He was so preoccupied, in fact, that he didn't even notice that his veterans had chosen to stash their helmets in one of the vans, rather than put them back on, and that they were all still wearing their 'cool' sunglasses instead. Happily, he also overlooked how bulging full their plastoid backpacks had all been ever since they were sent to search the building following the end of the fight...
The journey back was pretty slow, as walking meant that they could travel no faster than the slowest of their prisoners... not that it would have gone all that much more quickly if they'd stuffed them into vehicles, though; Tier Five was just as congested as ever.
Despite the long time it took, Hijiri couldn't help but feel that it might actually have been a little productive. Many people saw them, no doubt taking note that the stormtroopers were finally doing their jobs around here. Some even approached and spoke to them, which gave the group a good opportunity to emphasise their own humanity; faceless, imposing helmets may be good for inspiring fear in enemies, but down here on Tier Five, there were just too many of those for that to really be a viable tactic. The only way they stood any chance at properly performing their jobs was with public approval; if the citizens were as scared of law enforcement as they were of the gangs then no matter how many goons they killed or captured, the Empire would never manage to properly secure this tier.
Once they got back and had locked their captives securely in the holding cells, Davion gave them all the rest of the day off as a reward for living through this latest raid. When night fell, though, Kroll was not so generous, and so, as usual, Sarah and Kevin were released from their cells and the veterans got right back to training.
They had survived in large part thanks to Brandon's gadgets working exactly as intended... which – given how rare an occurrence that was – was not a position any of them other than the elf was ever keen to be in again. If they hoped to avoid such a risk, though, they had a lot of work ahead of them.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-28-2017
They had lost twelve of their twenty two reinforcements in the previous day's battle, meaning that once again Davion had been forced to request more from Imperial Command... this was appearing entirely too common for Hijiri's liking. Rather than focusing on actually wiping out the gangs down here, it seemed as though what Command wanted was more like simple damage control; they were just sending down a steady stream of sacrifices to keep the criminal scum busy enough that their evil would be prevented from spreading to the upper tiers.
In fact, judging by some of the information available to Davion (and through him, to Hijiri) they appeared most concerned at the moment with the fact that some random Prime had beaten up a few stormtroopers in the Nexus, crossed Coruscant, and left to the Vasty Deep; one of the neighbouring Verses. Whilst he did understand that an individual capable of bypassing imperial security with apparent ease was somewhat worrying – especially considering the fact that the Emperor, King Bradley and the rest of the Council all lived on Tier One, and so could theoretically be threatened by such a person – he couldn't help but feel that maybe if they cared that much about cutting down crime on the lower tiers then Coruscant would be a much safer place overall.
When he mentioned this to Davion, though, the lieutenant had simply laughed. He then told Hijiri of one incident which had occurred recently in which another Prime with a bounty on their head had shown up in the city; and in her case had actually managed to make it all the way down to Tier Five before being caught. The Prime in question had been some sort of demon, judging by what Davion had heard, and so command was taking no chances, they sent a whole squad of stormtroopers, backed up by one of the Empire's finest; an actual Space Marine.
Hijiri had never met one of these imposing men, but he had read about them on the Dataverse, and so was familiar with their reputation, and some of their capabilities. As such, he knew full well that he could never have defeated one in a fight. Which meant that the force sent to vanquish that demon had been more powerful than their squad the previous day, when they'd raided the casino. This was all the confirmation the Battle Rabbit needed that Imperial Command cared more about one individual Prime than a whole mob of regular criminals...
Though it wasn't until the lieutenant told him how close she'd come to killing the Space Marine that Hijiri realised they might actually have a good reason for prioritising going after Primes, even if it meant letting lesser threats roam around freely. Who knew what kind of damage that woman could have wreaked, had she simply attacked people at random after entering the Verse, rather than trying to get down here... hell, if they'd sent the squad after her without its Marine, she'd likely have mown them down like blades of grass.
It was as they were discussing this that some rather more urgent intel – to their minds, at least – finally came in. Although the reports of the three raiding parties would have been sent out the previous day, it was only now that Command had finally deigned to inform them of the situation...
And what a situation it was. As they already knew, their group had lost twelve stormtroopers. Another one, without a Prime to help them out, had suffered the exact same number of casualties. Hijiri could only assume that they must have had a leader who was actually competent, or something... as unlikely as that sounded.
The third group, though, had not been so lucky; they had failed to report in entirely. They had been completely wiped out, and by the time anyone went to check up on the warehouse they'd struck, it had been stripped of anything and everything remotely valuable. Losing a casino and a warehouse must surely have been a heavy blow to the Wolfpack, but they'd also managed to slaughter a full thirty-person squad, keep a lot of their gear, and doubtless inform the rest of their gang that their locations may have been compromised...
They'd still have to go ahead with their planned interrogations of all their prisoners, of course, no matter how low the likelihood that any of the bases would still be occupied when they went and checked them, since it would be just typical if they were to not bother with an interrogation only to then find out later that the NSW had been too stupid to move their operations, and so could have potentially been dealt with.
***
“Takanomiya!”
“Hmm... yes? Is something wrong?” Hijiri looked back at the doorway, turning away from the bald, bearded thug he had been repeatedly punching in the face in an attempt at extracting information.
The Battle Rabbit was strong, but he'd never had to question the ogres he fought back in his reality, so all this torture stuff was completely new to him, and he wasn't really all that skilled at it. He should really ask Jallus for advice on the matter at some point; that guy had already broken three of them today, he had an almost worrying level of... ingenuity, when it came to interrogative techniques.
Leon stood in the doorway, glaring daggers at him. “We're supposed to be going out on patrol in five minutes! Why are you still in here!? Get that bastard back in his cell and get that blood out of your clothes! I don't want Calrime and Iechtelsteir whining at me just 'cause you couldn't keep track of time properly!”
“Shit, really? Five minutes? Sorry, Nash.” his ally's whiny voice was a little annoying, but that was to be expected; no one had been at all surprised to find that he was upset at not being paired with Priya.
Davion had decided to send them all out in pairs, on staggered patrols of the streets around the base, making sure that there were always people out during the day monitoring the area, and always some more back at the 'racks as well, awaiting any orders from Command. The problem was that he hadn't let them pick their partners, so many of the veterans were being teamed up with the recruits, and Hijiri had been the one unlucky enough to get paired with Leon.
He may not be quite as annoying as Dodson, but without Priya around to babysit him, the guy had a tendency to start brooding and get real miserable real fast. To be fair, his girlfriend had been killed, like, only last week, so it wasn't exactly surprising that he hadn't gotten over it yet...
Hurriedly freeing the prisoner from the restraints which held him in his chair, Hijiri then roughly bundled him to the door. When they approached Leon, though, the man suddenly spoke up.
“You'll never win, swine, no matter how hard you try. Even if your Empire does beat us someday, it'll take a whole lot more than you lot to do it, so you can be damn sure none of you'll live to see the day it happens.” He spat a mouthful of blood on the stormtrooper's nice, shiny white breastplate.
He had held his patience whilst the thug talked, but this was a step too far. So quickly Hijiri barely saw it coming, the trooper grabbed the NSW goon by his head and slammed it with all his might against the doorway. The man collapsed immediately.
The two stared down at the unconscious body for a few seconds.
“He shouldn't have spat at me.” Leon muttered defensively.
“Let's just get him back in his cell. Afterwards I'll clean up this blood, then we can head out on this patrol you're so eager not to miss... what's the deal with that, by the way? Didn't Singh leave an hour or so ago? Why aren't you off moping somewhere?”
Leon glared again, “You could at least try sounding like you care, you know...”
Hijiri just looked at him sceptically. They both knew that he wasn't in the habit of accepting sympathy from anyone other than Priya, so would have just complained even more if the Rabbit had tried to be nice.
The stormtrooper sighed, and they both bent down, picked up the thug, and started dragging him off, “Iechtelsteir says I can't keep working with Priya if I don't make more of an effort... he's gonna keep splitting us up at every chance he gets...”
“You... do remember that he's not actually a sergeant, right? He can't order you to do anything you don't want to.” the Prime reminded the other man.
“I guess...” came the non-committal reply.
“Well, whatever.” they had reached the correct cell by this point, so they hauled their captive in and tossed him none too gently onto the cheap bed which sat in one corner.
Leaving the small room, and locking the door behind them, Hijiri then turned to Leon and focused his mind on collecting Omnilium. The rainbow-coloured bubble expanded outwards around them both as he did, and then they waited... a few minutes later it retracted once more, taking with it all of the man's blood.
“I've gotta admit, that's a pretty neat trick.” Leon commented grudgingly.
“I guess it is... it certainly can come in handy at times.” the Battle Rabbit agreed, looking down at his perfectly clean suit as he did. Being able to absorb Omnilium from anything he wanted given enough time was proving rather convenient indeed.
Collecting it from blood and other grime wasn't all that productive, of course, but with all the valuables they'd stolen appropriated from the underground casino during the raid... well, once he got around to breaking down all of that, it would certainly go a long way towards helping equip the squad, that was for sure.
That was a matter for later, though. For now; “Come on Nash, let's get going.”
“Sure.”
They headed away from the holding cells, through the building, and out down the path which lead onto the streets. So far none of the patrols had come under attack today, despite them being only in pairs, and as such, much more vulnerable than usual. With any luck, that meant the various criminal elements realised that attacking EPD soldiers in the immediate vicinity of an Imperial Barracks was a really dumb thing to do... and so weren't likely to attempt it during this shift either... he could really do without the hassle of another life-or-death struggle right now.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-29-2017
The pair walked down the street casually, Hijiri with the sheathed katana leaning against one shoulder, and Leon with his blaster holstered at his waist, his helmet under one arm and his shades on in its place. Kroll's idea was that they should all try to 'look cool' in front of the public...
The Battle Rabbit had sunglasses of his own, but given the often-dim lighting down on Tier Five, he had opted not to wear them. It seemed kinda silly. Besides, he figured he looked cool enough normally.
They'd been at this for just over ten minutes so far, and hadn't come across any crime as of yet. What they had seen, though, were a lot of ordinary citizens; traffic seemed to be moving unusually well, so that was nice, as it meant the didn't have to inspect every vehicle they passed. There were plenty of people walking the pavements as well; which may have been part of the reason the roads were less packed. Many of them, being denizens of Tier Five, were prone to nervousness around the members of the Empire Peace Division; whether due to actual involvement in criminal activities or just out of a general sense of mistrust for their motives and methods... not everyone liked the idea of a high-security utopia like Tier One, if the cost of safety was losing their privacy.
Though a surprising number of people apparently weren't bothered by them, and there were even those who gave them smiles. It seemed that some of the ones who had noticed their little procession through the streets with their captives the other day had shared the story, and in the area around their barracks, at least, the knowledge that the Empire had actually done something about one of the local gangs which strangled businesses with their protection rackets, dealt drugs freely in these neighbourhoods, and frequently murdered anyone who got in their way, must have given them some optimism.
They tried to appear friendly, as Kroll had insisted. Surprisingly enough, Hijiri soon realised that his partner was much better at this than he was. He'd been expecting the crimson-haired man to mope around sullenly the entire time, but he now saw what the others meant when they said that Leon could be charismatic enough when he put in the effort. It also explained why it had been he and Priya who had been the ones Kroll chose to work on persuading Sarah and Kevin to help them.
He smiled and even waved back on occasion, doing a brilliant job of concealing his true feelings. Beside him, Hijiri would make the attempt every so often, but for the most part he remained as serious as ever. But then something unexpected happened; someone approached them.
It was two someones, actually. A pair of boys who couldn't have been older than thirteen or fourteen sidled into the street from one of the many, many dingy alleyways which riddled Tier Five, sometimes seeming so frequent an occurrence that they appeared to take up almost as much space in total as the buildings they circumvented.
One child was brown-skinned, with spiky black hair and silver eyes, whilst the other was pale, blue eyed and wore his blond hair in a not-so-manly-looking plait which reached his waist. The first wore a grey hoodie with black tracksuit bottoms, whilst the second had on an ice blue t-shirt and three-quarter length cream trousers. In addition, they both wore black trainers.
The kids were on the other side of the wide street, but as soon as he saw them the blond boy shook the other by his shoulder and pointed their way, saying something excitedly, though they couldn't hear a word of it over the noise of the traffic. The silver-eyed one didn't seem all that bothered, but when his friend grabbed his hand and dragged him out on the the road, he followed along without complaint.
Numerous vehicles skidded to a halt, horns blaring, and somewhere in the distance, Hijiri was sure he heard a crash of metal upon metal. He winced. Well, so much for avoiding congestion today.
Somehow having survived to reach the other side, the more eager-looking kid hauled the other along after him as he approached them.
“You were the ones who took down that casino yesterday, right!? What are your names!? I heard you were the ones all wearing sunglasses for some reason! What's that all about!? Are you allowed to do that!? I thought it was illegal to not wear a helmet for stormtroopers or something!? Was it hard!? Were they really tough!? Is it true you're a Prime!? That's so cool! Can I see your sword!? Do you have superpowers!? My mum says Primes all have superpowers! Can you show me!? Pleasepleaseplease-!”
With no preamble, and apparently forgetting about his friend the moment he came within a few metres of them, the pale boy had rushed the rest of the way alone and immediately started blurting out every question that popped into his head as he ran. Realising that they weren't going to get out of this without either being rude – which Kroll didn't want – or actually entertaining these two until they left, the pair came to a stop.
Leon spoke first, giving them a bright smile, “Hi there, I'm Leon Nash, and this is Corporal Takanomiya Hijiri. His name's backwards, by the way.”
“It's not backwards, just different from yours. It just happens that we do things a little differently where I'm from, that's all.”
“Details, details.” the stormtrooper replied, waving a hand dismissively. The Battle Rabbit sighed, but Leon continued as if he hadn't heard, “And yeah, kid, we did just that... though we lost a full dozen stormtroopers during that raid, so they most certainly were tough... of course, none of us died.”
“Huh?” asked the sullen one, sullenly, as he closed in the last few paces at a walk, “What's that supposed to mean? You do realise that just wearing a dumb pair of sunglasses instead of a helmet doesn't stop you being a stormtrooper, ri-? Wait...”
He'd cut himself off halfway through saying 'right?', and they soon found out why, when the first one spoke up hardly an instant after the other had closed his mouth, as if he'd had the exact same thought.
“Does it!? OMG! Do they kick you out of the EPD for wearing sunglasses!? Are you rebels now!? That's harsh! I can't believe they'd fire you all for something so minor as that! We should make a petition! Are you mad at them!? Don't worry! We'll help you get your jobs back! Somehow! I promise we will!” the kid turned to his friend – who was currently engaged in rolling his eyes – grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him roughly, “We will, won't we, Hughie!? Come on, tell them we will!”
Leon laughed, which surprised the Rabbit, since it was all he could do to keep an expression of utter incredulity from creeping across his face. That was quite the conclusion to jump to... not to mention, that loud kid babbled way too much.
“No, no, it's nothing like that, I just meant that no one in our particular group of stormtroopers died; we're the ve- elite stormtroopers. Way better than the normal ones. That's why our boss, Sergeant Iechtelsteir, told us to wear the shades instead of our helmets. They make us stand out from the other 'troopers, y'know...? Although, now that you mention it, it probably would be for the best if you didn't report this to Imperial Command... not that you're ever likely to get the chance, but still... we really are supposed to stay in uniform, after all." Leon had been about to use the word 'veteran', before deciding that 'elite' sounded cooler.
“What about you!? Don't you have to wear a uniform too!?” this time he addressed Hijiri.
“Nah, Primes get an exception from that kinda thing. I may be a member of the EPD, but I'm not actually a stormtrooper, so I get to wear basically whatever I want.”
“And you chose a suit?” asked the moody teenager, as he carefully pried his counterpart's hands from his shoulders, “Lame.”
“Lame, huh? I'll show you lame...” he turned to the excitable one, “you wanted to see my superpowers, right?”
“Oh yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah!” He nodded. A lot. So much, in fact, that his braid swung around wildly as he did.
“Wait, no, don't-” was all Leon got out before giving up, and even that was too late for the Rabbit to hear it. The moment the kid had answered him, Hijiri had taken off, jumping straight up, dozens of metres into the sky, and at the apex of that leap, his whole body suddenly burst into a bright white light, momentarily, before his True Form was revealed. Clad in this, his much cooler outfit, the Battle Rabbit floated slowly down to earth; having reduced his weight enough that he could land as gently as possible. Mostly just because it looked better that way.
When he did, he noticed Leon covering his eyes with one hand and shaking his head forlornly, the blond kid looking up at him with starry eyes, and the black-haired one glaring off into the distance, deliberately not meeting his gaze... somewhat petulantly, it seemed to him.
“Tch. It wasn't that cool.” muttered the boy, even as his friend who stood next to him practically bounced up and down with excitement.
“Uh-huh, sure, whatever you say.” The Battle Rabbit wasn't buying that kid's statement for a moment. He was well aware that his transformation looked totally epic, with or without some moody teen's approval.
“And what's with the bunny ears, huh grandpa? You into that kinky roleplay shit or something?” 'Hughie' obviously wasn't letting him off easily here, seemingly particularly annoyed that his friend was so interested.
Before he explained all that, though, Hijiri turned to Leon, who seemed awful put out by something... because they weren't interested in him anymore? “Nash, what's up?”
“What's up? You just jumped something like fifty metres into the air and started glowing like a fucking lightbulb. Don't you realise what that means?”
“...” Hijiri thought it over... “No, not really.”
“Look!” he gestured wildly around them. People were still hurrying on their way as they walked the streets, and car drivers still honked their horns as they waited for the traffic to get moving again... but some of the pedestrians had changed course and were headed their way, whilst many of the nearby drivers had lowered their windows to hear what was being said... they were drawing a crowd.
“I'd hold off on explaining your whole origin story thing for a couple minutes at least, if I were you, unless you want to have to repeat it again from the start as soon as you're done, since it seems our audience is about to get quite a bit larger... so yeah, thanks for drawing all their attention.”
“Ah. Oops.” Hijiri had the decency at least to look embarrassed.
“Oh, and by the way, I'm blaming you if we don't get this patrol finished on time.”
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 10-31-2017
It had been over an hour since they'd been first approached by that pair of boys; Hughie and – as they had since found out – Neil. In the time they'd been standing here, the crowd had kept changing and growing, with interested newcomers showing up more frequently than those who had had their fill were leaving, and demanding that Hijiri start his story over from scratch; he'd been telling them a lot about his own world, and talking about much of what had happened since he showed up in the Omniverse, as well... though of course he never mentioned Kroll's plan, nor any of the stupid stuff they'd been doing at his behest, such as letting criminals aid in their training, or stealing from a certain underground casino they'd visited...
This storytelling had grown so tiresome that the Battle Rabbit and stormtrooper were almost relieved to hear the woman's scream.
Normally, even with a whole squad around, they wouldn't do something as dumb as follow the sound of a scream into a dark alley; it was much too easy for the gangs to pick off stormtroopers like that... however this was an exceptional circumstance; not only did they now have a (slight) reputation as good guys to protect, but they also badly needed an excuse to escape this crowd.
“Clear the way!” Hijiri yelled, drawing his blade and pointing it in the direction of the alleyway from whence the sound had come, “Quickly, Nash! Someone needs our help!”
Of course, Leon didn't need to be told; he saw their chance to escape just as easily as his corporal did, and as Hijiri rushed through the rapidly parting crowd, he followed on at a slower pace, speaking to them as he did, “This could get dangerous, citizens, it would be best if you were to stay back, well away from these criminal lowlifes, where you can remain safe!”
They cheered as the two rushed into the alley... apparently not picking up on how forced and unnatural Hijiri's dialogue had sounded... or how, honestly, Leon's hadn't been all that much better. Neither had really had enough experience with this hero-ing thing just yet.
It wasn't long before the pair came across the source of the shriek; a young woman with shoulder-length, vibrant, cyan hair was pressed up against one wall, whilst three goons in the NSW's gang colours loomed over her... well, two of them loomed, the third just kinda hovered around looking mean. He was under five foot, that one, and it can be pretty hard to loom over someone when your target is taller than you are.
The girl wore black high heels, a dark blue miniskirt and a dark purple, sleeveless, and extremely low cut top, with no bra... it was the kind of outfit that a certain type of loathsome individual – such as any one of these three here, most likely – would insist meant she was 'asking for it'.
“Stop, villains!” Hijiri cried out, valiantly; well aware that the audience could likely still hear him from back on the main street, where they waited. He should maybe think about taking an acting lesson or two at some point, if he ever had the time; he had only the vaguest of ideas how heroes were supposed to speak, after all.
Even as he pointed his katana towards their foes, and beside him Leon levelled his blaster in the same direction, both were more focused on scanning the shadows of their surroundings as best they could; when the inevitable trap was sprung, being taken off-guard could make for a quick death.
One thing they had not predicted, though, was what came next... from behind them.
Cheering, and shouts of encouragement.
“You can do it!”
“Save her!”
“Get those bastards!”
“-on Hijiri, you can-!”
“-them, Leon, that Sec-!”
“Yay, Mr Rabbit, beat up-!”
“Damn thugs deserve ev-”
“Woooah! You're so-!”
“This is going straight on-!”
“-Secondaries can fight cri-!”
“-areful! They have a hostage!”
“This is gonna be awe-!”
“-Youtube channel, just-!”
“-out of minutes! Nooooo!”
“Hi-ji-ri! Hi-ji-ri! Hi-!”
“-ormtrooper elite looks-!”
“You're not that cool!”
Neither of them needed to turn to identify the source of that last comment there. Seriously, that kid was either one hell of a dedicated tsundere, or he held a serious grudge against the Empire for some reason... or rabbits, Hijiri supposed; everyone in the Omniverse came from such diverse backgrounds, after all, so who was he to say that Hughie couldn't be harbouring a lifelong vendetta against his kind after having been born into a world ruled by a race of evil bunny overlords...? Okay, so it didn't really sound all that likely, but anything was possible, right?
Much more shocking than the silver-eyed boy's continued hostility, though, was the sight that met their eyes when the pair did glance back over their shoulders; the mob was tightly pressed into the narrow alley, so keen were they on seeing what was going on, with the foremost of them standing no further away than a metre from their would-be heroes. On top of that, many of them had their phones out, and were presumably videoing all this; he could have sworn he heard someone in the crowd yell 'Youtube' at one point... did they have that here? He never would have expected it.
Turning back to their quarry, the Battle Rabbit saw that the small man held a short switchblade in each hand, whilst one of the bigger ones – a guy who really could have done with losing a few pounds... or stone, for that matter – had some kind of large-calibre pistol aimed their way. The remaining gangster held a machete to the woman's throat... and already they could see a thin trickle of blood on her neck, so he clearly wasn't being all too careful.
On the bright side, no one else was jumping out at them, so perhaps they really had gotten as lucky as it seemed, and wouldn't have to fight any more than these three? It was a pity the Battle Rabbit had used his True Form earlier to show off in front of that crowd; if he'd saved it then it might have come in real handy here...
The thugs didn't seem particularly confident, despite having a hostage with them. The presence of the wild, mob-like crowd seemed to have them on edge; this wasn't likely something that happened all that frequently, Hijiri expected.
“Wh-what you gonna do if we don't stop, huh?” demanded the bruiser holding the girl, as his eyes darted nervously across their audience, as though fearing they might descend upon him like a pack of wild dogs at any moment, “We got us a h-hostage, mister, so you make any funny moves and we kill her, got it!?”
Hijiri ground his teeth in frustration, but didn't move, despite the crowd baying for blood right behind him. Without freeing the now openly weeping woman from his grasp, there was no way they would be able to even attack these three.
“N-now listen up, you two an' all yer little friends there are just gonna stay put while we make our getaway, and we're takin' her with us, you got that?” snarled the big guy. As he spoke, he leaned forwards over the quivering girl, crushing her against himself possessively whilst he glared their way. The Rabbit didn't want to think about what he might be planning with her...
As the thug did this, though, for just a second, if that, his blade was... oh... maybe an inch or so away from her neck? It wasn't exactly a golden opportunity. Realising that it was probably the best – if not the only – one they were going to get, though, Leon took the shot.
His aim was not perfect, it had to be said... but it got the job done. He'd been aiming for the centre of the man's forehead, where a single laser would have put him down for good. Instead of landing there, however, the blast took a chunk out of the top of his skull, causing him to stumble back, releasing both the girl and the knife from his grasp in an instant. He let out a wordless cry of agony as his nervous system painfully informed him that a significant lump of his brain matter had been burnt to cinders in a fraction of a second.
He fell over backwards and didn't even try to get back to his feet, though the noise he was making left no doubt that he was still very much alive.
The moment that one had fallen, the fat guy tried to make a grab for the girl with his free hand. Hijiri was too fast for him, though, and darted forwards, his katana lopping off the offending appendage before it could so much as brush her skin.
He twisted, then, using his blade's sheathe to knock the gun aside even as the thug tried to bring it to bear, whilst at the same time running his weapon itself across his opponent's stomach, disemboweling him with little difficulty. Compared to his fights with Sarah as part of their training regimen, these Secondaries he'd been facing off against lately were hardly even posing a challenge, except in large numbers.
The little guy closed in on him next, knives at the ready. Before he could even move, though, Leon dropped the guy with a blast to the gut. Closing in, the trooper put an end to his pained moaning with the help of two more shots in the back.
Turning to the sobbing victim, Hijiri saw that she stood above the only one still breathing, ready to impale him upon his own machete. Barely pausing to think, the Battle Rabbit dropped his scabbard, his hand clasping around her wrist in a flash. He pulled her back gently, applying almost enough pressure to cause pain; just to make it abundantly clear that she didn't have a hope of overpowering him.
She dropped the blade, at almost the same moment as his own flickered down, darting across the throat of the wailing man. After seeing him die, all strength – both physical and mental – appeared to leave her, and the girl collapsed against his chest, burying her face in his shoulder as she cried.
“I'm sorry,” he said gently, as he released her wrist and instead lightly embraced her with that arm. Honestly, he didn't have the slightest clue how to go about comforting someone in a situation like this... or, well, in any situation at all, for that matter. He really wasn't cut out for this sort of thing. Ultimately, he settled for simply explaining the reasons behind his actions, “but even when it's someone like that, killing another person is still considered murder. If I had let you take your vengeance there, no matter how rightful it may have been, as a soldier of the Empire, I'd have had no choice but to arrest you afterwards... and I just couldn't bring myself to do that.”
In reality, of course, his reluctance to let her kill the bastard was far more to do with all the cameras pointed his way than it was to any sort of unwavering dedication to upholding the law. He and Leon would have been totally screwed if someone from Imperial Command had seen them letting a confirmed murderer walk away... and locking up a helpless victim would have totally ruined the whole 'hero' image.
Remembering suddenly that he was actually still supposed to be playing up that image right now, Hijiri looked past the young woman, at the surprisingly quiet crowd, and without saying a word, he held his blood-soaked sword aloft, in the least stupid victory pose he could come up with on the spot.
People started cheering almost at once. Leon flashed him a grin, before turning to face them himself, pulling down his shades and giving the girls amongst them a playful wink, which of course encouraged them to scream all the louder, as though this more-or-less ordinary stormtrooper was some sort of celebrity... the Rabbit wished for a moment that he had worn his sunglasses after all, if only so that he could have rolled his eyes without anyone noticing.
This was sure turning out to be one hell of a weird day...
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 11-05-2017
Giving their few remaining spectators – who apparently really had had absolutely nothing to do all day except follow around some random EPD guys out of some sort of hero-worship complex – one final wave, Hijiri and Leon turned and headed through the double doors at the barracks' entrance.
They had used the shallow cut on her neck as an excuse to escort the woman they'd saved to the nearest half-decent hospital (yeah, it turns out that even on Tier Five there is actually the occasional medical establishment which really will treat its patients, as opposed to just overdosing them on painkillers and selling their organs on the black market) and then dropped her off there; foisting the responsibility of looking after her on to someone else, whilst still appearing to be doing the right, considerate thing. Genius.
At that point their crowd had still been fairly large, but through a combination of their constant assurances that nothing else was likely to happen today, and the 'unfortunate' reality of their patrol; that this area was much less affected by crime than other parts of the tier, due to its proximity to a stormtrooper base, the majority of the audience did eventually go back to what they'd been doing before encountering the pair. By the time they were done with their circuit, less than a dozen people remained; a vast improvement, in their opinion.
Of course, those two teenagers had stayed right up to the end, despite silver-eyes' obvious dislike for Hijiri and Leon. The Rabbit assumed they didn't have jobs and were skiving school, in which case they probably didn't really have anything more pressing to do. It was a shame that the education system here was in such shambles, but Hijiri was no teacher; he had no solutions on that account, except to do his best to cleanse the city of these degenerate gangsters and hope that the problem would sort itself out at some point...
The moment the twin doors closed behind them, Leon sighed, his cheerful expression falling, “Well, that was a huge pain in the ass.”
“Totally.” the Rabbit agreed, “Still, we got some decent exposure from that whole event, so Iechtelsteir should be pleased.”
“Exposure, huh? Snagged a few pics of that hostage girl yourself, did you?”
Hijiri rolled his eyes, “Don't be an idiot, Nash. You know what I mean.”
Those civilians had all seen what they did first hand, and some of them had even got it on video as well, so between the Dataverse and word of mouth, it was likely that knowledge of their exploits would continue to spread... sure, Kroll's idea of having them all recognised on sight across the length and breadth and depth of Coruscant was still a long way off, but at least in Northside, it seemed fairly likely that in the coming days or weeks, most people would learn of their achievements.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I'll leave the reporting to you, corporal; I'm off to see if Priya's back yet.”
“Of course you are...” Hijiri replied dryly. Letting Leon go wandering off towards the section which held all their sleeping quarters, Hijiri headed for what had become Davion's office ever since his promotion, when Kroll (and by extension, the rest of them too) had insisted he get himself one, like a proper officer should...
Only to find it empty. The lieutenant shouldn't be out on patrol right now – honestly, he shouldn't have been going out on patrol at all at his rank, but Davion being Davion, he had bluntly refused to even consider sitting around here all day doing paperwork whilst his troops went out and risked their lives – so he must be around somewhere. Hijiri checked the indoor training section next, thinking that he might find him there, working out... that was something he was fond of, after all.
No luck their either. He did run into a couple of the noobs, though, who had just come back from their own patrol recently and were practising their aim with some sort of hi-tech, floating, AI-controlled targets, and they suggested trying the canteen, since they'd noticed a few of the veterans hanging around there, and thought he might have went to join them.
Hijiri doubted that, since Kroll had been trying his best to put some distance between 'his' group and the lieutenant, though there was always the chance he'd find Davion giving them all a lecture for lazing around when they could be training, so he headed across.
Through the steel corridors and mechanised doorways he went, until he reached the final one before his destination, tapped the sensor panel in the wall to open it, and stepped through.
“-her hands slid down the bulging muscles of his chest as he pulled back slightly, breaking their kiss. Each of them bore a fine sheen of sweat glistening upon their skin, and they stared into one another's blazing eyes. His passionate gaze lit a fire in her heart, as he smirked wickedly down upon her. Reaching below their sheets, she caressed-”
“Just what the hell are you idiots doing?” Hijiri demanded, the bewilderment plain on his face. Jallus glanced away from the trashy novel he'd been reading aloud, Trevor turned to face him, and Priya and Brandon looked up as well.
They were out of uniform today, which could only mean that Davion must have left the barracks after all, since there was no way they'd chance being caught like this by him during work hours.
Jallus sat on a table with an ankle crossed over his knee, casually leaning on one arm whilst holding his paperback in the other hand, and wore a black suit with a trench coat of the same shade, all of which he probably thought made him look really cool, though actually he just seemed like a total edgelord. Priya had on a long-sleeved grey crop top and denim hot pants, and was lying draped over a table, groaning softly. Trevor wore dull, grey-blue overalls and was in the middle of mopping the floor. Brandon was dressed in a dark green silk tunic and even darker green leggings (as always, still preferring that 'fantasy-esque' clothing to more modern outfits, despite all his time spent living in Coruscanrt), and had been lounging in one of the canteen's cheap metal chairs browsing the Dataverse when the Rabbit entered.
Kroll was also present, though he didn't look up from what he was doing, which seemed to be more or less the same as what Brandon had been up to, except that he was clearly much more focused, whereas the elf merely appeared bored. The 'sergeant' wore an entirely white tracksuit. He also had in a pair of earplugs, which explained the lack of attention.
“Ah, he stopped talking... we're saved...” Priya moaned as she raised her head, her long hair falling in front of her eyes, “have my ears stopped bleeding yet...?”
“Your ears are just fine,” Jallus commented smugly, “and you were the one who wouldn't stop pestering me about what I was reading... I was only trying to answer your question thoroughly.”
She groaned, still speaking to Hijiri, “Fifteen minutes... fifteen minutes...”
“Uh, yeah, sounds real rough.” the Prime commented sceptically, then turned away, not being particularly interested by the contents of Jallus' personal library. He gestured towards the oblivious Kroll, “Look, Dodson, you're closest, hit him with that mop.”
“Huh? Wh-what? Are you-”
“Do it!”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Dutifully, the snivelling coward swung the shaft of his mop down at their boss' head. At the last moment, Kroll shifted slightly to the right, and the pole harmlessly struck the table in his stead. Standing in one swift motion, he kicked his chair straight back, taking Trevor in the chest and slamming him hard against a wall. The idiot collapsed in a heap.
Kroll calmly pulled out the earplugs and turned to Trevor, as relaxed as if nothing had even happened, “Yes?”
The battered trooper groaned and raised an arm, pointing wordlessly towards Hijiri.
“Oh, Takanomiya, you're back... hmm... and where's Nash? No bad news, I hope.” the others all straightened up at this comment, suddenly more serious. Priya was the most obvious, though, going from lying sprawled over the table to bolt upright in a fraction of a second, and suddenly having turned rather pale... apparently now under the impression that his uncaring response to her anguish had not been merely his usual terse attitude, but something much more serious...
He turned to gaze straight at her for a moment, in utter silence.
“No, no...” she started to shake her head slowly, but never broke eye contact, so he could see for himself when her tears started to well up, as she came to her own conclusions. No matter how blasé she might like to act, they all – or, perhaps, all but Leon – knew full well how hard losing her sister had hit her. To then lose him as well, who she considered practically her little brother, would possibly break her beyond repair... he wondered how long he should wait before letting her know the guy was totally fine? Five minutes? Ten?
He turned away, back to Kroll, and started speaking, slowly, so as to drag this out, “We were on patrol and had attracted quite a crowd of... admirers, I guess... we thought you'd be pretty happy, since they all seemed impressed with what we'd accomplished the other day. We wasted a lot of time entertaining them... but then, we heard a scream nearby. We were trying to act like heroes, remember, so we went off to investigate... into the narrow alleyway...”
“No...” Priya muttered again, on her feet now and with a hand covering her mouth. She was well aware just how easy it could be for a gang to set up an ambush in one of those alleys. Whole squads of stormtroopers could be gunned down like that, never mind just one man.
“We approached the sound, and saw three men ganging up on one girl. We continued to advance, thinking to rescue her, but just then-”
“Hey, has anyone seen Priya about?” Leon stepped into the room, glanced about, and noticed her... though apparently not the looks of shock on the faces of them all, aside from Hijiri, of course. Priya hadn't been the only one assuming him lost. “Oh, there you-”
“Leon! You're alive!”
“Uhh... yes?” he looked confused, clearly not yet having put two and two together to realise what the Rabbit had been up to.
“Damn, you totally killed the atmosphere, Nash.” Hijiri commented, though he smirked as he said it.
“You bastard!” Priya suddenly yelled, the look of elation which had momentarily crossed her features upon seeing the crimson-haired trooper alive and well wilting and dying, being replaced by a visage which was positively wrathful, “You let me think he was dead!”
Before the Prime could so much as come up with a witty retort, she was right up in his face, and immediately struck him with a mean right hook. Stumbling backwards, he managed to straighten up just in time to take a blow from the left that knocked him to the floor. In a real fight, he would have tried to put more distance between them after her first strike, but in this instance he hadn't actually expected her to continue after that point.
She would have kept on at it after this as well, if it weren't for Trevor and Leon grabbing her and hauling her back...
After that, she stormed off in a huff, with Leon trailing helplessly after, leaving Hijiri to fill in the others with a much more detailed account of how their patrol had actually went. To begin with, Kroll seemed almost as pissed off as Priya, clearly not appreciative of his winning sense of humour, but by the time he'd finished recounting the story of their 'heroic' rescue of the fair maiden, all was forgiven, and the wannabe tactician was practically beside himself with glee.
Ultimately, he was so pleased that he even announced that they could now go ahead and launch the next stage of his grand plan. 'Phase Five: Aggregation'... a recruitment drive.
***
Elsewhere...
The two boys stepped into the alleyway which they'd hurriedly vacated hours previously, as soon as they'd realised that a couple members of that squad were headed their way. The 'mural' which one of them had been spray-painting lay unfinished yet undisturbed, exactly as it had been when they left.
Crouching down to peer behind a large, metal trashcan, the dusky-skinned boy pulled out the few cans of paint he had left there, and began working immediately, seemingly paying no attention to his partner. For a few minutes, the pale one simply watched, with a small smile, but at last he spoke up, “So, what did you think of them?”
“I thought you seemed really interested in them both.” the answer he received was rather terse, but the blond boy with the plaited hair simply laughed. He stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around his silver-eyed companion's waist, leaning up against his back.
“As much as I love hearing all about your utter lack of faith in me, I meant something more... you know... vital? Do they seem competent? Can they pull it off?”
Still painting, without even glancing back at Neil, Hughie remained silent for a few more seconds before making his reply, “Possibly, yes, though it won't be easy for them... if they think they've faced the worst of what the wolves can throw at them then they're in for a huge shock.”
“And what about us? Is all this really the best idea?” Neil stared at the graffiti as he spoke.
“If they think we might be planning to move in on their turf then their focus will be split. If the wolves pulled out all the stops then they could surely crush all those 'elite' swine no problem... but if they think we're planning on going after them if given the slightest opening, they might be forced to keep just enough of their forces in reserve that those wannabe heroes actually have a chance.”
“Okay, sure, but why pretend? Why not actually attack while they're distracted, rather than just hoping the Empire can finish them for us?” Neil pressed.
“We can't, and you know it. Our modus operandi is arson, not proper combat; most of our members are just ordinary teenagers who like starting fires, after all. If we fight, we'll suffer losses. We may have some tricks up our sleeves, but we've got to be smart about this... many of their bases are hidden, while stormtrooper barracks are not... so it shouldn't be too hard to take care of that lot afterwards.”
“'Modes opera-die', huh? Yeah, let me just pretend I have a clue what that means...”
“You know fine well that's not what I said.” Hughie stopped painting, observed his work for a few seconds, then tossed the cans in the trash, “Anyway, I'm done, so let's get out of here.”
“It's beautiful.” Neil told him, and kissed the side of his neck. At first, Hughie merely grunted sceptically, but when the other kid slid his hands under the hem of his hoodie and began exploring the muscles of his chest, he turned to face him.
“Seriously, Neil? I get that I'm totally irresistible and all, but we're not far from an imperial barracks, deep in Wolfpack territory, and standing beside a wall covered in freshly-painted and blatantly obvious NSP graffiti... this really isn't the right time or place.” so saying, he gently freed himself from his boyfriend's clutches.
The blue-eyed teen laughed at that, though at least had the deceny to look somewhat abashed by his antics.
Hughie sighed, “Come on, let's head home.”
***
They left hardly a moment too soon. It was barely a minute later when four others, dressed in the customary grey-on-white of the NSW, turned into the alley, only to stop dead at the sight that met their eyes; the painting of the inferno stretching from one side of the wall all down the narrow passage to its opposite end... and in amongst those flames writhed the burning bodies of dozens of wolves. As far as messages went, it was a pretty obvious one.
It seemed the Pyros were indeed growing bolder.
“Ya see guys? I told ya I wasn't kiddin'... though... I coulda sworn it wasn't finished when I saw it earlier.” the foremost member of the little group commented in a whiny voice, as he fidgeted nervously.
“The boss ain't gonna like this.” another, larger thug grunted.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 11-11-2017
“Oh, you're back? You wanted to hear me read some more, I take it?” Jallus asked with a smirk as Priya walked back into the canteen, followed by Leon – who had changed into a casual t-shirt and jeans – with her fists clenched at her sides.
“No.” she snapped tersely. She approached him anyway, though... she kinda had to, since the person she actually wanted to speak with was sitting right next to him. “You're such an asshole, Takanomiya...”
She seemed for a moment like she had more to say, but then abruptly turned and walked off again, though this time she got only as far as dropping into one of the uncomfortable steel chairs, rather than actually leaving the room. She sat with arms folded, glaring at a wall... apparently not even wanting to look at him.
Leon coughed, awkwardly. “There was supposed to be more to that statement... an apology for going ballistic earlier, but, well...”
“Don't worry about it.” Hijiri waved a hand dismissively, not particularly bothered by the two large bruises forming on his face, or the split lip she'd given him. He was actually impressed by her strength; in their nightly training sessions both he and Sarah had noted that Priya seemed to have a natural gift for martial arts... yet he hadn't realised just how hard she could actually hit when she was pissed off enough.
She'd even managed to knock loose a few teeth. Luckily, between the improved healing capabilities of Primes and the advanced technology of Coruscant, keeping them from falling out should be a cinch.
“Since you're here, though, do you two want to see this? Reiner's been fangirling hard over some guy he saw on 'Omniverse Youtube'... which is apparently a thing that exists.” Hijiri offered. He, Jallus and Trevor had been the only ones in the room prior to the other two's arrival, and all three had been sitting together, crowded around the black man's Dataverse Device, as he loaded up some video or other.
“Uh...” Leon said unenthusiastically as he tried to come up with a not-so-rude way to phrase his refusal.
“It's not what he's making it out to be.” Jallus intervened, “No romance at all, I promise. I was looking to see if any of your fans from earlier had uploaded whatever footage they took when I stumbled across this in the process. It's worth seeing, trust me.”
Nodding in a I-don't-really-want-to-but-I'm-trying-not-to-be-rude sort of way, Leon turned to Priya. “Priya, you interested?”
Jallus, Hijiri and even Trevor each muttered some variation of 'seriously, try thinking for yourself occasionally', but the crimson-haired 'trooper ignored them all.
“Fine. But Reiner, the moment anyone starts stripping I swear I'll use your face as a hammer to smash that Dataverse Device into hundreds of pieces. Got that?” Leon seemed surprised by this response, seemingly having assumed she'd refuse out of hand, which would give him an excuse to do the same.
“Ah, sure, sure. No romance, I promise.” Jallus tapped the screen, moving to another tab and selecting a completely different video from that which he'd originally said they should watch. The Rabbit and the coward eyed him suspiciously. The other man avoided meeting either of their gazes.
Priya and Leon remained standing, whilst the other three kept to their seats, though for her part, the brown-skinned woman leaned over to get a better view, using one of Trevor's shoilder's as an arm rest, then leaning heavily on that arm and glaring at him when he started to protest. As had become the norm during his interactions with the squad's veterans, he immediately backed down at the first sign of conflict. The guy really was pathetic.
He had actually shown pretty good aim when firing at the automated targets they had used frequently in Davion's little recruit-training-scheme in the run-up to the casino raid... but simply became downright incompetent whenever he felt he was in danger... interestingly enough, this most likely meant that he'd actually make a decent addition to Kroll's little sub-squad if they could get him to feel more confident and teach him how to remain calm under pressure...
The only problem was that none of them actually liked him enough to bother trying to work through whatever issues he had with him... also, if he did become more self-assured then he'd most likely stop doing everyone else's shares of the menial chores around the barracks, which would be a pain.
Seeing that they were all ready and waiting, Jallus hit 'play'.
(10-23-2017, 06:19 PM)Gunther Stein Wrote:[float=left][/float][float=right]
[spoiler]Prior to the video, a warning appears. It flags the video for violence, drug use and foul language. The video begins with the view of a door. As it opens, the recorder announces himself thoroughly, calling to attention a group of criminals. Smoke is in the air, with plenty of drug paraphernalia around the room, it definitely looked like a drug ring.
After some classic dialogue, the action starts, and from a first-person view, the viewer gets to witness quick hands deflecting bullets right out of the air back at the villains. The video ends as abruptly as it began with a public service announcement against gun violence and then a black screen.[/spoiler][float=left]Hero cracks down on crack sales![/float]
[float=left][/float]
Turtle Stein
![[Image: C99BknT.png]](http://i.imgur.com/C99BknT.png)
![[Image: 5qBFHsy.png]](http://i.imgur.com/5qBFHsy.png)
![[Image: WeJ5JUm.png]](http://i.imgur.com/WeJ5JUm.png)
![[Image: 64r252t.png]](http://i.imgur.com/64r252t.png)
“Woah.” said Trevor, seeming almost speechless.
“Yeah,” agreed Leon, “that was something else.”
“I know, right?” Jallus asked, a broad grin on his face.
Priya grunted affirmatively.
Slowly, all four turned their gazes upon their Rabbit.
“What?” demanded Hijiri, defensively.
Priya smirked upon hearing his tone, though it was Leon who actually spoke, “You're a Prime too, so... why aren't you half as awesome as that?”
“Screw you, that's why.” the Battle Rabbit snapped tetchily.
“Aw, is someone a tiny bit jealous 'cause all he can do is jump around like a little bunny?” Priya approached and started patting him on the head in the most condescending manner she could manage, her previous intention to not so much as look at him completely forgotten in light of this new revelation that Hijiri was actually kinda lame.
“I can do other stuff. I can make my body practically weightless, or weigh far more than normal... that's more than just jumping.”
“Yeah, well... it's not exactly in the same league as deflecting bullets back at the people shooting you, is it?” that one was Trevor.
They all stopped and stared at him for a moment – just long enough to make him feel distinctly uncomfortable – before the female 'trooper laughed uproariously... to such an extent that she actually had to lean on Hijiri's shoulder to keep from falling to the ground. It was a little excessive, the Battle Rabbit thought.
“Even the fucking janitor thinks you suck now, oh man, that one's gotta hurt.” she said once she could control herself well enough to manage coherent speech.
“Yes, well, we'd better hope not many others share his opinion.” a new voice declared. Turning, they all saw Kroll entering the canteen, with Brandon at his side.
“I wouldn't bet on it. If Primes like...” she trailed off, waiting.
“Turtle Stein.” Jallus filled in. Priya gave him a questioning look, but then shook her head and turned back to Kroll. Primes and their weird names.
“-like Turtle Stein are going to actively try to make an impression on the public with all their fancy techniques, how do you expect Tacky here to compete?” Hijiri winced when she said it. That stupid nickname Sarah had given him. If ever there was a sign that she had lost all respect for him, this had to be it.
“With his deeds, of course.” Kroll replied with a smirk.
“And his propaganda.” Brandon added, looking like he was about to laugh.
“Deeds? Propaganda? What's that all about?” the Battle Rabbit asked, suddenly interested at the prospect of not looking like a total failure.
“We're not going to be uploading our own videos... not yet, at least... but unlike a vigilante with no ties to the Empire, we have no reason to remain hidden from the public eye. We can go out and stop crimes in front of witnesses... preferably large crowds of witnesses, if at all possible; like you two-” Kroll nodded towards Hijiri and Leon “-managed earlier. Videos can go viral on the Dataverse, but seeing something first-hand will still have a more pronounced effect on most people.”
“That said,” Brandon went on cheerfully, “we're not giving up the battle for the Dataverse either. I've taken the liberty of hacking into all your Omnitwitter accounts and creating accounts for those without them. I also changed everyone's names and avatars to fit a matching theme, and every so often I'll be using the accounts to post recruitment adverts and pro-Empire propaganda.”
“Wait. What?” demanded Leon at the same moment Hijiri said:
“There's an Omnitwitter too? Seriously?”
“Yeah, there is. Check it out. Everyone's password is now 'KRAPFTW' in all caps, by the way. And it's locked at that. The rest of your settings are also locked... feel free to try changing them if you'd like, but you won't have any luck... not that you'll want to, I'm sure, when you see how awesome these accounts are now. Go ahead, check for yourselves.”
They all took out their own Dataverse Devices and loaded up Omnitwitter. Hijiri noticed that he now had the app on his own, despite never having downloaded it himself.
“How did you even manage this?” asked Jallus quizzically as he looked down at his newly edited settings. Leon looked up, also caring about the answer. Priya and Hijiri had yet to recover from the sight that met their eyes upon opening the app.
“Because I'm a genius, obviously.” the elf responded smugly, puffing out his chest.
“He barely did anything.” their 'sergeant' clarified immediately. “Michelle sent me a virus developed by one of her contacts. She said not to use it unless absolutely necessary, since our enemies will likely develop countermeasures after experiencing it once... still, we had to take it out for a test drive at some point, and this proved to be the perfect excuse.”
“What. The hell. Is this!?” Priya screamed at last, jamming her Device into Brandon's face. “Leon and Reiner both get matching helmet icons with tiny differences, and I get some random girl in a bikini!? And why does the name just say 'GurlTroopr'!? Are you seriously telling me you couldn't think of a single thing more interesting to base my identity off of than simply being female!?”
“To be fair,” Brandon replied in an admirably deadpan tone, “the bikini-girl is wearing a stormtrooper helmet.”
“That doesn't fucking matter, you prick!”
“As for your second point... I did consider 'CrazyPsychoBitchTroopr'... but ultimately decided that it was too much of a mouthful.”
“... I hate you so much.”
“You think you've got it bad? You haven't seen what he gave me yet.” Hijiri held out his phone for her to glance at.
“'BunnyBoy', huh? And that picture... I'd say it suits you pretty well, actually.” she responded dismissively.
“You do realise I'm not gay, right?” he snarled through clenched teeth. The icon showed an effeminate man wearing fake rabbit-ears and opening his mouth wide to accommodate a particularly large carrot... it made certain... implications.
Priya placed a hand on each of his shoulders in what might have been called a supportive manner, had she not been struggling to suppress a grin at the time, “It's okay, Tacky, we're here for you, you can leave the closet wheneeeeehver you're ready.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” he said, humourlessly.
“Moving onto slightly more pressing matters than the corporal's sexuality,” Kroll said, getting all their attention, “Another patrol just headed out, and I've given them some posters to stick up while they're at it. The rest of us will start doing the same on our next shifts. That, combined with the information Windvale will be posting online, should make it pretty clear to everyone in Northside that we're recruiting. Michelle will be using her contacts to smooth things over with the higher ups... since we weren't technically authorised to do this... and in the likely event that they refuse to supply us with additional funding in order to pay these new recruits, Takanomiya has agreed to handle that aspect of the plan. As such, it should be only a matter of time before applicants begin to arrive and we can get started with-”
"Huh!? He's paying for this?” seeming to have needed a moment to take in what she'd heard before responding, and still holding his shoulders, the stormtrooper turned back to the Battle Rabbit, “Seriously? That's why you're so much weaker than that other Prime...? Than all half-decent Primes?”
“Yeah.” he looked away, “Look, it's not like it's that big a deal or anything; I can buy all sorts of powerful weapons or give myself new powers whenever I save up enough. Secondaries don't come back to life, though, so if Iechtelsteir's ridiculous plan actually stands a chance at working, it only makes sense to try that first.”
“Huh.” she said again, stepping back and cocking her head to one side, clearly surprised by this admission, “You act like such a selfish asshole, I never would have thought you'd actually care all that much about innocent lives... I kinda figured you were just with us because being an EPD soldier will literally get you away with murder, so long as your victims are criminals.”
“It's called 'tsundere'.” Jallus stated happily. The Battle Rabbit's head snapped round so quickly that his neck actually made a cracking sound.
“Where did you learn that word?” he demanded coldly.
“Did you forget?” the 'trooper in the edgy black outfit held up the trashy book he'd been reading earlier, “Romance novels are my area of expertise... and the Omniverse contains books from all across reality.”
As the others had also turned to face him, he continued his explanation for their benefit, “'Tsundere' is a word I've seen crop up in the literature of a few worlds with various levels of magic and technology... though for the most part it seems to be found in many an alternate-universe incarnation of the same little island nation, on a planet called Earth. It roughly translates as 'a person who acts hostile on the surface whilst actually having much warmer feelings towards another person than they let on'.”
“Yup, that's him alright.”
“Fits him to a 'T'.”
“Definitely.”
“Totally.”
“Agreed.”
“Oh, screw you guys. I'm nothing like that.”
“Heh. Yeah, sure, whatever you say, corporal.” Leon taunted. It was extremely irritating, of course, but on the bright side, he seemed to actually be relaxed, or even happy, right now, rather than simply pretending, as he had been for the benefit of the crowd earlier. So perhaps he finally might actually be on the road to recovering from having lost Kashi... which was one good thing to be pleased about in this whole situation, at least...
Wait.
Crap.
What was he thinking? Actually caring about the feelings of these idiots would bring him way too close to being... that... for his liking.
“I'm not a tsundere.” they all grinned at him.
“The next person who says I am gets stabbed.” they smirked now.
“Admit it, or I swear I'll blow all that Omnilium on the first random superpowers I can think of.”
Kroll sighed, then spoke patiently, like he was talking to a child, “Alright, fine, we won't use that word if it really bothers you so much... you're just a wannabe hero, who happens to also be a total bastard... how's that?”
“... Marginally better, I guess.” the Battle Rabbit said, still scowling.
Quote:OOC Note: Technically, the term 'tsundere' should only refer to romantic feelings, and actual tsunderes are often perfectly civil towards other characters, reserving their scorn primarily for the object of their attraction... I decided to bend the definition (or at least, my characters' understanding of it) a little here, just so I can have them all thinking Hijiri is one... because reasons...
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 11-12-2017
“So where's the lieutenant been all day, anyway?” Hijiri asked as the pair strode down the narrow passage.
“Huh?” in his surprise, Trevor stopped dead in his tracks, “No one told you? Really? He took the next few days off to go meet up with a few friends from his days as a private and go chill up on Tier Two.”
“Oh. Wait... we get days off?”
“Sure. We're not slaves, you know.” the 'trooper said, as they began moving forward once more.
“Yeah, I guess... still, it's unexpected... I just assumed we'd be worked like slaves, even if we technically aren't. Especially on this tier; there's so much crime here that it feels weird to think he's just left for a few days to go off and relax, while all this is still to be taken care of.”
“Well, it's not like he really believes we can accomplish anything down here, beyond occasionally stopping the odd crime in progress or maybe another raid from time to time...” Trevor trailed off.
“Unlike Iechtelsteir.” Hijiri finished for him. The stormtrooper nodded.
“Yeah. It's one hell of an ambition, that guy's got. Thinking we can actually make this place safe...” he shook his head, sceptically, yet smiled slightly as he did. The Battle Rabbit, this time, was the one who merely nodded. Kroll's plan – or Kroll's Really Amazing Plan (KRAP), as Frank had dubbed it – was pretty stupid... yet, it had somehow been working out for them so far.
Trevor tapped the sensor to open the door into the detainment area they'd been approaching. Prisoners captured during the casino raid stared out from the barred cells as they passed. A few made antagonising comments, but the two EPD soldiers had more important things to do than beat up the occasional rude inmate, and so chose to ignore them.
It took less than a minute to come upon the cell Sarah and Kevin shared... originally they had been separate, but since they'd basically become part of the crew in all but name by this point, they'd been allowed to share, and the cell had been made more hospitable, up to about the level of the average stormtrooper quarters...
It was a slight improvement, at least.
“Hey, Tacky. It's that time again, huh?” the barefooted woman was laying on her bunk when she spoke, in her usual monotone. Kevin leaned back against the wall opposite the bars, hands in pockets, smiling.
As Trevor unlocked the door, Hijiri responded, “Yeah. Iechtelsteir's accelerating things, though. We're already beginning the 'Aggregation'... from here on out the NSW, and possibly more of the gangs on Tier Five, are going to realise they need to stop us while they still have a chance... things will likely soon get a whole lot harder for us.”
“Which is why the veterans' training will need to move ahead faster than we had originally expected?” Kevin asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, exactly. Though we're not going with 'veterans' any more. Out on patrol today, Leon told a bunch of people that he and the rest of the experienced lot were 'elites'. When I told him, the sergeant approved, of course, so we're going with that name, now.”
That ever-present, knowing smile grew, slightly. “Interesting. Well, well, well, as always, my associate and I would be overjoyed to assist you in this endeavour... however, you must realise that even more rigorous training than they have been undergoing so far could have negative consequences. They could be seriously injured, for instance, or could end up completely burned out from all the effort required of them... especially given how little sleep they tend to get, performing their regular duties during the day, only to then train at night as well.”
“Of course,” Hijiri nodded solemnly, “we all understand the risks, but for all their faults, every single one of us is willing to do this... even him.”
Trevor straightened up as the Rabbit motioned towards him with his head. “Y-yeah. I am.”
“Well, far be it from me to interfere, then. What do you say, my dear, are you as eager as ever to aid them in this oh, oh, oh so noble endeavour of theirs?” Kevin's smile grew as he spoke; it would seem he was pleased by this development.
“Eh. I guess.” came the non-committal reply.
“Glad to hear it.” Hijiri said, ignoring her seeming lack of interest in her voice. With her, it was hard to tell if that was how she actually felt, or if it was just an act, since she more-or-less always behaved that way, “Before we head out, though, there's just one thing I have to do...”
“Huh?” she asked, as he approached her, removing something from a pocket while he did. It was a thin, plastic keycard. He tapped it against the adamantium choker she wore, which promptly gave a bleep, snapped open at the front, and fell from her neck.
“Like I said, we're accelerating their training. Tonight, you and I will both be Transforming before we fight. Obviously, I'll keep my katana sheathed, and you should avoid using your claws or teeth. Other than that, though, we're basically just going to show them what it feels like to go up against two Powered-Up Primes at once.”
“Y'don't think that's a bit... much?” though her tone didn't change, the hesitation was obvious.
“They'll be fine, I'm sure. You should have seen my face earlier, before I took a trip down to the medical bay. Singh is pretty tough. Besides, they seem to have this idea in their heads that I'm some kind of weakling... just because I can't deflect bullets...”
“Deflect bullets?”
“Don't ask. He'd rather not talk about it.” Kevin answered before he could. Reading him like a book.
“Right, sure. So yer doing this because they made fun of you and y'want payback. Got it... but... you didn't even hesitate to open this thing...” she'd sat up, and was holding the slim choker in one hand. It was hard to tell given her bland expression, but she seemed surprised.
“Well no, of course not.” he gave his words an almost exasperated note... as though having to state something this obvious was a waste of his time. “We all trust you implicitly. Hell, once this recruitment thing starts bearing fruit Iechtelsteir plans on offering you both the opportunity to join up officially if you want. If you say yes, we can just sneak you both in amongst the other applicants.”
“Oh.”
Kevin walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You see?”
Hijiri couldn't be sure what he meant, as the man did not elaborate, but she nodded and got to her feet. Judging by the context in which it had been said, he presumed that she had held some doubts as to whether anyone in the group actually cared at all for her, aside from as a tool to be used to further their training.
He and Trevor led the way back out, and after tossing the thin, flexible metal band down on her bunk, Sarah and Kevin followed after.
***
Now in the grassy, outdoor training area, they all stood assembled as their leader spoke.
“So, you all got that?” Kroll demanded. He had just finished explaining, again, to make sure they all understood, how tonight's training would go down. Hijiri and Sarah could barely keep up their respective Transformations for a quarter of an hour, if that, so though they would begin the night with an epic showdown between the Primes and the self-proclaimed 'elites', there would be much more work to be done afterwards, and the 'sergeant' had felt the need to repeatedly remind them of this... most likely just so he could hear himself monologuing.
“Sir, yes, sir!” they chorused. Even Trevor had started getting the hang of saying it on time, despite his nerves. Kroll walked forward to join the line formed of the other six 'troopers, then turned to face them.
“Alright, let's get this started.”
The Battle Rabbit transformed immediately, the harsh, white light blossoming around his body for a second before vanishing as quickly as it had begun. In addition to the white, vaguely rabbit-like ears which now grew on the top of his head, his outfit had changed considerably, with a pair of white boots on his feet, looser, less formal trousers, and his suit jacket and shirt replaced with a new coat; black, with some white lining.
Sarah, however, did not change.
“Watt?” the Prime asked. Almost the moment he said it, though, he realised the issue, “Oh.”
Kevin chuckled a little, obviously being familiar with this situation himself.
“Turn around.” she didn't elaborate, but one by one, the squad members remembered why this was important and turned their backs to her. Only her mysterious, smiling 'associate' didn't bother. Presumably, she was comfortable enough in his presence to overlook this, as she quickly removed the black tracksuit she'd been wearing – a few days ago they'd given her some Omnilium to summon clothes of her own, so that she wouldn't need to keep using Priya's spare outfits – then her underwear, before finally shifting.
When a loud, rumbling growl indicated they could now look back, the same nine-foot-high, seventeen-foot-long wolf that he had fought just a couple days after showing up in the Omniverse loomed before them, towering over the puny humans... and off to one side of her, Kevin knelt on the ground, folding up her discarded tracksuit as he observed them out of the corners of his eyes.
Looking at her now, Hijiri wasn't sure how he'd ever managed to eke out a win in that fight... how different this all could have went, he suddenly found himself thinking, if she had won. Davion and the squad would have been killed, as would he have been, and even if he had returned to Coruscant after his rebirth... would he really have had the drive to continue to fight crime at all, much less proceed with this madness that Kroll called a plan?
He couldn't say.
His musings were interrupted, however, when the burst of pure energy smacked him in the face, throwing him to the ground. He was much more resilient in this form, yes, but not necessarily heavier...
Oh yeah, they'd already started. The wolf that was Sarah darted forwards, immediately batting aside Trevor and Brandon with a backhanded swipe from one paw – though to their credit, the elf turned his fall into a roll, and was standing again almost the instant he struck the ground, and the fool soon managed to get back to his feet as well – then trying to knock down Kroll as well with her snout.
He had seen it coming, though, and dropped into a crouch. Then, when her head passed above his position, he fired his blaster, the laser striking the underside of her jaw at almost point blank range... even so, aside from frying a small patch of fur, the attack had little effect.
Priya ran, jumped, and used the werewolf's snout as a stepping stone, bouncing up, onto her back, before dropping into a sitting position, grabbing a fistful of fur to steady herself, and pressing her weapon against Sarah's flank. She then began to fire, time after time. Though the first was more or less absorbed by the fur, the ensuing shots soon began to char the flesh beneath.
Meanwhile, the others spread out and around, trying to keep to her blind spots and avoid her blows, whilst maintaining a constant barrage of shots. Outside of point-blank range, the blasters had little effect, yet in her current position – provided she continued to hold back, at least – Sarah would eventually be overcome.
She wasn't using her teeth and claws, as he had suggested earlier, but beyond that, she also refused to roll over and dash her opponent against the ground, as she had against Hijiri when they first fought. Priya was just too fragile, so the weight of the huge predator would likely break bones, and possibly rupture some organs as well.
Reasonably, Sarah had judged that that was far too big a risk to take for a simple training exercise.
But then, who cared about being reasonable?
Besides, this lot had seemingly discounted him entirely... he had to admit that the werewolf's form cut a much more impressive figure than his, yet even so, it seemed that they had all forgotten that it was he who had come out on top in their first fight.
Lightening himself as much as possible, he started building up energy in the hand holding his scabbarded sword, then jumped up, high into the air above Sarah and Priya, before releasing the charged power, which was instantly converted to weight.
Remembering finally that they had more to focus on than just the most threatening opponent – or at least, the one which appeared the most threatening, based on size and form – the stormtroopers began unloading rounds into the sky.
It wasn't enough, though. With one hand and sword between them now having suddenly gained a combined weight of just under forty kilograms, the previously nigh-weightless Battle Rabbit suddenly dropped like a stone, sword first, straight towards the sitting stormtrooper, and with this sudden change in trajectory, almost all of their shots went wide... and those couple which did not failed to even penetrate his clothing from this distance.
She couldn't dodge, not without falling from the wolf's back, so Priya was forced to simply hold up an arm in a vain attempt at blocking the oncoming blow. There was disbelief in her expression, yet also a little concern. She knew that the Primes were supposed to be going easy on them – hence why the katana remained sheathed – so likely expected him to soften his strike before it connected, since actually hitting her unprotected head (his original target) with that kind of weight and momentum would have certainly killed her... she couldn't be completely sure, however.
She was right not to be. Despite this, she had failed his test. Despite the odds of being trampled, and the certainty of losing her favourable position in a spot her primary adversary could not reach, in a real battle, attempting to take a strike such as this head on with only the minimal protection of holding up an arm to shield her face would have meant certain death... it was a bad call on her part, and showed a serious misunderstanding of the actual purpose of this exercise.
They weren't being taught to defeat Primes who barely fought back; they were supposed to be learning how best to cope in a scenario in which they were left with no option but to face off against vastly superior foes.
He pulled in his unweighted arms and legs, almost curling his body around the sword, and flipping forwards as he fell, he was able to orient himself in such a way as to ensure the blade came down in an overhead chop, rather than merely point-first, whilst also allowing his feet to touch down only a second after the weapon connected... which would ensure that her body was the one to absorb the greatest impact of his fall, rather than his own.
It would have been a risky manoeuvre to pull off normally, with only the basic resilience of his human 'disguise'... but in his True Form, with the additional durability of this much more impressive body, even if he had messed up the landing, he likely wouldn't have so much as twisted his wrist, much less sprained or broken it. Not that it mattered in this case. He nailed it.
Despite the white plastoid armour she wore, her arm was still shattered immediately... though, of course, not so badly as it would have been had they chosen not to wear their uniforms (bar helmets) tonight, and had simply fought in their regular clothing, as they had on some previous training sessions.
She screamed in agony, dropping the blaster she held and losing her grip on Sarah's fur. Priya fell, though for her part, the werewolf made sure to step aside carefully, so as not to accidentally injure the 'trooper further by stepping on her.
Hijiri's stance had been a little uneven for a moment there, with one hand weighing drastically more than the other, yet the issue was solved quickly enough. It took just another few seconds of focus to restore his weight to normal, after which point he hopped lightly off Sarah's back and strolled the few paces across to Priya, who had curled into a fetal position, cradling her arm against her body and breathing in harsh, pained gasps. The others stood around gawking, more shocked than anything else at this point... perhaps not yet sure if this had been accidental or not.
“This exercise,” Hijiri stated coldly, “was not meant to be a test of whether or not you were capable of taking advantage of an enemy's unwillingness to seriously harm you. Singh tried to use Watt's reluctance to put her in any real danger in order to attempt to 'win'... completely missing our actual goal here. As such, she was punished. Now, Singh, get yourself to the medical bay and see what the droid can do for your arm. Maybe the next time you're fit enough to attend one of these training sessions, you'll actually put in the effort to do so properly.”
Leon moved forwards to help her, but the Prime spoke again, “No. The rest of you have training to do, and this is her own fault. Let her do it herself.”
“You can't be serious...” seeing no warmth in Hijiri's stern visage, he cast his gaze towards Kroll instead... the 'sergeant' didn't look all that happy about it, yet after a moment's hesitation, he shook his head nonetheless.
“These training sessions are Takanomiya's thing. Right now, I'm just as much a student as the rest of you... so we'll do this his way.”
“Priya...” Leon said... moaned, almost. He clearly wasn't pleased at seeing her hurt so badly. Good. That'd make him try all the harder to 'avenge' her once their little mock battle resumed.
For her part, though, the woman did an impressive job of composing herself. Slowly, painstakingly, she made her way back onto her feet. She looked much paler than usual, yet managed to force a small, shaky smile onto her face.
“You sure... are one... helluva... tsundere, sir.” she managed between shuddering breaths.
Glowering, he replied simply, “Go. Now.”
She went, trying her best to stand strong, despite the mess he'd made of her arm; through the multitude of cracks and breaks in the plastoid surface, her blood seeped; at least a shard or two of fragmented bone must have actually pierced all the way through her muscles and skin.
He turned back to the others, “Now, let's get back to work.”
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 11-14-2017
Priya stood watching the two recruits who had been assigned to her team for their 'patrol' (if it could even really be called that at this point), as they pasted the recruitment poster to the stone wall.
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Her blaster was holstered, her left hand on its corresponding hip, and her right one supported by a sling, though still coated in the plastoid armour the 'troopers all wore. Putting that crap on this morning had fucking hurt. Still, she wasn't going to let herself whine about it.
No matter how much of a 'tsundere' (or 'asshole', to phrase it in a more normal way) that Rabbit felt like being, though, as she'd mulled it over in her head last night – whilst their medical droid injected her with a boatload of painkillers and did what it could to sort out the horrendous wreck he'd turned her forearm into – Priya had realised that he'd actually had a point. Not enough of one to justify practically maiming her, of course, but a point nonetheless.
A victory over Sarah would have been hollow and worthless if it had only been gained because her friend had held back most of her strength, for fear of accidentally killing her...
If that that realisation alone wasn't enough to convince her to overlook the severity of her punishment, though, she had also woken this morning to see their oh-so-strict instructor sitting by her bedside, an ovoid bubble of half-formed Omnilium encasing the fucked up area of her right arm, as he focused on doing what little he could to accelerate the healing. It wasn't terribly effective, of course, since he lacked a true healing power, as some people in the Omniverse possessed... this was simply an attempt at spending Omnilium to summon new tissue and bone to replace the most badly damaged parts of her arm... yet it was still a kinder deed than she had expected of him.
Judging by what the medical droid had said when she'd questioned it once Hijiri had left (after she had driven him off, more like), the dumb Rabbit had shown up right after their training session had ended and got to working on her arm straight away; he hadn't slept a wink that night. It was ridiculous to think that the same man who had been willing to do that, despite there being no actual risk to her life, had been the same person who had, only hours previously, shown absolutely no remorse after being the one to purposefully break her arm in the first place.
She wondered if all tsunderes were supposed to be this exaggerated, or if he was just a particularly gross caricature, even for one of their kind...
“Hey, lady, what happened to your arm?” demanded a young, high-pitched voice from behind her. As the newbies finished flattening down the recruitment poster and picked up the large, cardboard tubes filled with similar artwork which Kroll had given them to stick up all around Northside, she turned to face her questioner, “Were you fighting bad guys? Did you win?”
It was a child, a little boy not even as high as her waist. The kid had no hair, but instead a pair of antenna-like protrusions on his forehead, as well as pointed ears and bright green skin. He was accompanied by a man of the same race, who immediately began scolding him for his rudeness, before apologising to the stormtrooper.
“Don't worry about it,” she told him, then smiled and crouched down to speak to the boy on his own level, “and no, kid, sorry to disappoint, but it was nothing so cool as that, just a training exercise that got a little rough... my friends and I, the stormtroopers who don't wear helmets, we're all such tough, elite soldiers because we have a Prime who teaches us all about fighting... buuut he's even tougher than we are, so his training is crazy hard and if you mess up you can get hurt pretty bad.”
“Woah, that guy sounds mean!”
“Yup, totally.” she nodded sagely, “He's a big, mean, ol' Rabbit.”
“A rabbit?” the boy sounded confused now. She laughed.
“Uh huh... well, he says he's a Rabbit anyway, though he just looks human most of the time... you never know with them Primes though, do you?”
“Uh, Singh... we're ready to move on.” one of the helmeted 'troopers said, a little nervously. That lot all seemed a little intimidated by the elites... especially now that the cat was out of the bag about their night-time training... though as of yet none of them were aware about Sarah's role in the whole thing, luckily.
“Ugh, fine. Sorry kiddo, I gotta get back to work... because apparently these two need constant supervision just to stick up a few posters.” she rolled her eyes at the boy, who laughed.
***
Today was a pretty good day.
Trying to appear friendly, as Kroll wanted from them all, Trevor flashed a smile at a small group of girls as he, Brandon and the helmeted stormtrooper passed them in the street. They all smiled back. Either because they'd heard about the scene Hijiri and Leon had caused the other day and appreciated that there were 'troopers out there who were actually doing a good job of policing this area, or, more likely, because they were a bunch of airheaded bimbos who saw his oh-so-handsome face and felt like that was enough of a reason to be attracted to him...
He had plenty of experience with that sort of thing. Back before he'd come to Tier Five and discovered that deep down he was actually a pathetic coward, Trevor had held a pretty high opinion of himself. He was told constantly that he was good-looking, he'd made it through stormtrooper basic training with ease, and he was honestly a pretty fit guy. In fact, it wasn't until he met Michelle that he'd found a woman unwilling to be easily convinced to sleep with him. She insisted that this was because he had only hung out with idiots in the past... and, as with almost everything she said, he had accepted these words as the truth without the slightest hesitation.
So now he couldn't help but look down on any woman who showed the least bit of interest in him without having to practically hear his life story first.
Did that make him an asshole?
Some people would say yes. Other people would probably also say yes... but Michelle would say something about the opinions of idiots not mattering, which was good enough for him.
It was just a pity that she (and everyone else he knew, for that matter) considered him an idiot, as well.
He was doing better though. Sure, it was a slow process, but he was gradually becoming more accustomed to being in the line of fire. One of these days he really would prove himself... first to the squad, then later, assuming Kroll's plan actually panned out the way it was intended to, to everyone in Coruscant. Like those of all the other members of their group, 'Trevor Dodson' would become a household name, associated by all with badassery and heroism. Surely, at that point, even a woman as demanding as Michelle would be willing to give him a second chance?
They walked down the street until they'd found what Brandon judged to be a decent place to paste some posters, then told the guy in the helmet to get to work on putting them up. They were out in public right now, after all, so the elf wasn't going to try and make him look stupid by forcing him to help the regular 'trooper. He was supposed to be a member of the 'elite' group, after all... so he simply got to stand back and relax whilst someone else did the menial work for once... it was another foretaste of what was to come. Yes, these guys may force him to perform all their tedious chores right now... but with him becoming less of a liability almost by the day and new 'troopers soon to be getting recruited, it wouldn't be long now, he was sure, before he was treated with proper respect.
Today was a pretty good day.
***
The three stormtroopers marched down the street, carrying cardboard tubes filled with posters. Unlike those so-called 'elites' with their ridiculous night-time training sessions, these men were actually disciplined. They followed proper protocol, and did not act frivolously in public.
They were boring.
They'd occasionally get a nod of respect from the odd citizen who both knew and cared about the EPD's recent efforts against the NSW... but nothing more. They weren't likeable figures.
They were pasting these recruitment posters because they knew that there would have been no point in arguing when that fake sergeant had suggested it. With the lieutenant gone, that Prime who called himself a rabbit was the highest ranking officer, and Kroll vor Iechtelsteir had him wrapped around his little finger. They would have ended up doing this either way, so there had been no point in resisting.
Whenever they paused to paste up a poster, one of the three would stick it up, whilst the other two turned their backs to him and faced out into the street, blasters held at the ready. One could never be too careful in a place like Tier Five, where danger could lurk around every corner... where any of these ordinary-looking people might easily be a killer, rapist or other undesirable.
They were too professional to speak of it, but each of them wished that they could have stayed up on Tier One or Two... down here, where the stormtroopers were almost as bad as the people they policed, they were unhappy...
***
Frank took a swig from his flask, then passed it along. The girl with the eyepatch took it from him, while her friend with the snake tattooed on her face passed along the joint they'd been sharing.
Their team's noob was busy putting up one of Kroll's dumb recruitment posters, while the squad's very clearly sleep-deprived Rabbit hung around talking to some random guy who'd approached him, probably bragging about how great and 'elite' they all were (in between yawns), or some such crap. Frank didn't care. He'd found a couple hot chicks, he had his booze, and now he had some kinda drugs too... he wasn't sure what, since he hadn't bothered to ask, but if his liver had survived years of alcohol poisoning, he figured this stuff probably wouldn't kill him either.
The girls were probably part of some minor gang, he'd guess (though he couldn't be sure, as this was Tier Five, after all, so even those not involved with the gangs were often a pretty rough bunch); most prim and proper ladies didn't generally have tattoos that covered half their faces, or one of their eyeballs gouged-out, after all... not that he really minded. Being frequently stationed on Tier Five, as Davion's squad had been, oh-so-often, had broadened his views a lot... and the constant alcohol abuse had helped in that regard as well...
The funny thing was, the squad had previously tried to keep him away from booze as much as possible, since he basically reverted to being just another boring, stick-in-the-mud stormtrooper when sober... well, aside from the constant craving for alcohol. Now that they were all so keen on braking the rules in order to enact that KRAP, though, suddenly the whole crew heartily approved of keeping him wasted at all times. They cared so much about it that Hijiri had even magicked up his flask with Omnilium, in that weird way Primes did stuff, so that now the small, metal container could hold far, far more liquid than it ought to be capable of. It would have been perfect, if only they hadn't insisted that he pay for the contents himself.
Which brought him to this point, here and now, drinking and smoking with these two probable criminals; hell, the one with the eyepatch was actually wearing a t-shirt with the slogan 'Fuck the Empire' emblazoned in large letters across her breasts... which was probably not something she'd get away with on Tier One, he figured...
They weren't wearing Wolfpack colours, though, so as far as he was concerned they were more or less all on the same side, for the time being, at least (since for some reason all the recent crimes they'd been dealing with in this area seemed to relate to those wannabe werewolves)... and so should take this opportunity to become better acquainted with one another... as he had made sure to mention to them both.
They seemed rather keen on the idea.
***
They had left the barracks empty when they headed out today for their patrols. All at the same time, Kroll had decided, rather than staggering them throughout the day, as they had yesterday.
This way it would be much easier to call for backup if trouble arose, since the whole squad would already be out in the field, and so could respond at a moment's notice... the only worry he had was that with the 'racks all vacant and locked up tight, any would-be recruits who came calling to join up would have no one to speak to... the others had reminded him, though, that such a thing was extremely unlikely to happen today, as their campaign had literally started just the day before...
So he agreed to have them all go out at once... for today, at least.
Though it seemed he needn't have bothered. Their allotted hours for the patrol were nearing their end and his team (which consisted of just himself and two of the guys sent down from Tier One) had already placed all of their posters, so were now making their way back to the 'racks.
It had been all quiet, it seemed. Not a single distress call – or even a remotely concerned call – had come through. They had even been ranging further from their base than before, seeking to spread these posters across as much of Northside as they could... yet had come across nothing that needed their attention.
It seemed like their actions were having some effect after all; the Wolfpack had been cowed by the increased pressure already, and it was only a matter of time now before the other gangs were as well...
His acronym may have been annoying, but Frank had clearly been onto something when he called Kroll's plan 'Really Amazing'. At this rate, Northside would be secured in no time, and then they could move on and expand out into one of the city's other districts...
***
The team consisting of Jallus Reiner, Leon Nash, and one of the helmeted, nooby reinforcements from Tier One, was the first back to base.
They had, purely by chance, been assigned a location nearer to the 'racks than any of the other teams, so it was only natural that they would be the first to return... despite Leon's apparent willingness to speak to practically everyone who showed the slightest interest in them.
For his part, Jallus just carried the latest novel he'd been reading in one hand, focusing more on that than on looking out for crimes in progress. Kroll had told them all that in order to be better recognised by the populace they must emphasise their differences... not wearing a helmet was merely the first step; in order for the citizens to truly see them as actual people, they would need to realise that the stormtrooper elites did not just have faces, but actual personalities to go with them as well.
Now, though, the precious book slipped from his fingers, landing forgotten on the paved path upon which they stood.
“This is bad.” Leon said, at practically the same moment.
“Yeah. No doubt about that.” Jallus replied, pulling his communicator free from his belt.
The helmeted guy just remained silent, like the minor, unimportant individual he was.
“Should we check it out?” the crimson-haired and -eyed 'trooper asked. Clearly unsure how to proceed in such a situation. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing they were taught in basic training... or in their nightly lessons with Hijiri and Sarah, for that matter.
“No.” Jallus shook his head, “They might not have left yet, we could be walking into a trap if we try anything ourselves. I'll call the others and have them meet us back here as soon as possible. Just in case.”
He didn't like killing, much less watching those he considered friends being killed... so this wasn't exactly his ideal job... having been far too naive to understand the realities of life as a soldier before he had joined up himself though, Jallus had foolishly imagined a series of heroic adventures and bloodless victories... and lacking any other skills of note, he had been left with little choice but to remain a stormtrooper, lest he be forced to risk facing the horrors of unemployment. As it happened, however, despite his distaste for it, Jallus was rather good at this soldiering business, all things considered. As such, in this instance at least, it seemed that Leon was willing to follow his lead.
“Alright, go ahead.”
He lightly tapped the screen of his Dataverse Device/Communicator, opening a group call to one person on each of their three-member teams.
“All teams, this is Jallus Reiner...” he hesitated a moment, not sure whether to keep this next bit all professional-like, or just not bother... “and I hate to tell ya this, guys, but you're gonna want to get back to the 'racks right now. We've... got a problem...”
The barracks door, which was supposed to simply slide into the wall when opened, had now been reduced to a crumpled mass of scorched metal in the doorway, complete with a hole easily large enough to walk through. Someone had broken in, and rather than simply trying to hack and override the control panel which granted or denied access – as a thief might – they had instead forced their way through, heedless of the far more severe consequences of such an aggressive action... it did not bode well for the squad that anyone would be confident enough to attempt anything so brash.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 11-18-2017
They had been simply milling around outside the building as they waited for each of the teams to converge, occasionally performing inspections of passing vehicles in order to pass the time and avoid making it look obvious that they were unwilling to enter alone.
The second team back to base was the one consisting of Brandon Windvale, Trevor Dodson, and their one accompanying, standard-issue stormtrooper. It wasn't until around the time of the return of the third team (Kroll vor Iechtelsteir and his two noobs), though, that they realised the intruders' vehicles were all still present... and nearby, at that. They had parked just half the street away.
There were two grimy vans, a battered pickup and, for some reason, a worn down, black Bentley S2 Continental, which presumably had had a retractable roof at some point, though now had none at all... it may well have been worth a small fortune back on Earth, if it weren't such a wreck. That said, none of those present at that point realised this, due to having not originated on that world. It was only later, when Hijiri arrived, that he mentioned it. The Bentley was a four-seater, and between them the other vehicles probably could have accommodated another few dozen or so people, if they didn't mind a bit of a squeeze.
Assuming that they actually had been packed that full, it would seem that the squad was in a rather unfortunate situation... not only were they seemingly being baited into entering the base (as no one had yet to come up and challenge them whilst they waited) but they could easily find themselves drastically outnumbered when they did. It was almost worrying enough to convince Kroll to allow them to call for reinforcements from elsewhere in Tier Five...
That said, even the nearest Northside station was a fair distance away, and with roads this congested – as usual for the tier – making it here would not be a quick process for them, either by foot or by transport. Sooner or later, the public would start to realise that something was going on around the 'racks and would wonder why the 'troopers were simply waiting, rather than doing anything about it. If they could take back the barracks themselves, it would do much for their reputations, but if they had to call on help... all that talk of being 'elite' would seem to the citizens as nothing more than empty bragging.
Worse still, if it turned out that those vehicles were simply stolen and abandoned there in order to make them all think that their unknown adversaries still lurked inside, they may end up going in only to find the place abandoned. If they were to request help only for that to then happen, not only would they look foolish, but they could easily be seen as cowards as well... begging for help at every shadow.
No, it wasn't a chance they could afford to take if the plan was to have any chance at all of continuing to move forward smoothly.
Whilst they waited on the last teams to arrive, they inspected the vehicles more thoroughly... as there was little else for them to do just then. The vans and pickup held nothing of note; all they really learned was that at least a few of their foes must have smoked, judging by the number of cigarette butts lying around. The Bentley, however, had traces of gunpowder on its carpet and all of its seats, and they even found a couple shotgun shells underneath those seats as well, which had presumably been missed when removing whatever ammunition had been stored here.
It was strange, they agreed, for the enemy to have apparently decided to use a car like this to store their weapons and ammo, when any of their other transports would have been more suited to the task... not that it really mattered. There were no identifying marks on any of the vehicles, unfortunately; they wouldn't be getting any indication as to who these people were until they actually encountered them.
Once the final team (Priya Singh's one) had arrived, they left the street once more, heading down the short, paved pathway which led up to the ruined entrance of their barracks. No one fired on them as they approached. There were no signs of life at all, in fact.
And so they entered.
***
As soon as they began rounding the first corner, the silence was broken.
“Ah.” Hijiri said calmly, as he ducked back in order to avoid the hail of bullets and lasers. He turned to look at Kroll, who had been just about to follow him round, before the gunfire had begun, “It seems we've found them.”
“Y'don't say?” Kroll asked, his tone deadpan.
That was as far as the conversation got, as they had only a second before the brainless goons chased after them, around the corner. It was a dumb move. They had simply been standing in the middle of their corridor when the Rabbit saw them and had seemingly assumed that the same would hold true for the stormtroopers as well... though, of course, it did not. They stood pressed up against the wall nearest the corner, in order to keep them hidden from the vision of anyone approaching from that direction for the longest time possible.
Whilst their opponents came rushing through, casting their eyes about wildly in search of targets, Hijiri dropped into a crouch, so as to leave the others with a clearer line of fire.
The thugs were mown down like blades of grass.
In mere seconds, it was over. Five men and two women lay dead on the ground, none of them having managed more than a few steps after entering the squad's line of sight.
A moment passed in silence, as they waited to see if any others would show up. Their Prime noticed it first; the sound of heavy, panicked breathing from around the corner. He sprang into action immediately. Reducing his body's weight to a negligible level, he jumped straight at the opposite wall and flipped over in mid-air to land upon it feet-first and almost instantaneously, before the force of that first leap had even had the time to fade and allow gravity to reassert itself, he had kicked off again, this time angling into the corridor.
He saw the two gangsters as he sped past them. They looked more afraid than threatening, yet both opened fire nonetheless. He struck the next wall at almost ceiling level and bounced off again, the katana flashing out from its sheathe as he spun 360°, the edge of the blade running across one man's throat.
The Battle Rabbit landed in a crouch, pausing only a second to assess the damage dealt. The men both stumbled back, the injured one dropping the heater he had wielded and clutching at his throat... though barely a drop of blood spilled down past his hands. It was not enough. As light as Hijiri had made himself, even with the blade's keen edge, there was only so much he could do. His strike had failed to sever the jugular.
He surged straight up, before the man still armed could recover from his surprise. Flipping again, so that his feet hit the ceiling this time. Even if he had hesitated then, as light as he now was he would have fallen no faster than a feather; he had plenty of time to look before he leapt. Or rather, he would have, if not for the rifle-armed thug currently swinging around to face him.
He bounced. Again. Again. Again. The thin steel of the corridor's walls, floor and ceiling was soon filled with bullet holes. This man held only a regular rifle, with just physical ammunition... which meant limited ammunition.
The Rabbit, as he jumped and flipped around – moving faster than his foe could keep up – began building up energy in his katana and the arm in which he held it.
'Click' went the weapon, noticeably failing to spew forth any more lead.
He struck.
The petrified thug, caught whilst fumbling to reload, was borne to the ground with such force that the sword – which now was buried up to its hilt in his chest – actually penetrated the thin layer of steel flooring and embedded its first couple inches in the cement beneath. Eyes bulging in horrified disbelief, the criminal scum coughed up a gout of blood all down the Rabbit's front. Slowly, the weight of his body dislodged him from the blade's base and he sunk down its length until his corpse touched down on solid ground.
Hijiri knelt by his victim, breathing heavily. That had taken far more out of him than he had expected, or cared to admit, and it wasn't even over yet. Despite all the jumping around, it really ought not to have been so bad, since his entire body had been practically weightless at the time, meaning that those jumps required only minimal effort. No, the problem he had was all that time spent building energy; he ought to have waited longer before beginning to charge it up, but had not expected the gun's ammo to last as long as it had and hadn't wanted the strike to be too weak when he finally got his opportunity... so he had tried to play it safe, and was now completely out of breath as a result.
The fact that he hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours probably didn't help either.
Deciding to aim for a little intimidation tactic, since he wasn't sure how well he could actually fight right this minute, Hijiri grinned sadistically and turned to the other gangster, who was by now a quivering wreck, sitting with his back pressed against the opposite wall and staring at him in abject terror. He made no effort to subdue his breathless panting, thinking that, being as consumed by fear as he was, the gangster just might assume that this panting was the result of something other than sheer exhaustion... something rather more perverse.
The big, muscular man actually sobbed, tears forming in his eyes and his lower lip quivering. Apparently, he was buying it. Between the violence of his friend's demise, that expression and all the blood running down the Rabbit's face right now, he must have painted quite the convincing picture.
Slowly, he got back to his feet. Hauling on the sword, he dragged it free of its prison... but could barely keep it aloft more than a second. He had been focused more on moving quickly enough to avoid the near-constant stream of bullets than on keeping track of exactly how long he'd been gathering energy and so it came as a slight surprise to him to find that that one arm now weighed more than his entire total bodyweight normally would have.
It struck the ground once more, with a clang that made the goon visibly flinch. He normally would have simply discarded the additional weight after it had served its purpose, but in this case it seemed to be intimidating their foe, so he didn't bother.
He gradually made his way over there, the katana dragging behind him and making a horrible screeching noise as its great weight forced it down into the steel-panel flooring. He loomed over the gangster as he came to a stop, that cruel smirk still plastered to his face. Tears now flowed freely from his whimpering victim's eyes and he could smell urine. It seemed that 'plan: look scary' was working perfectly.
Someone coughed.
The whole squad was standing watching him, completely relaxed.
“Hold it, Takanomiya... now, do you see the futility of facing us?” Kroll spoke the first half of that sentence to the Rabbit, before turning his gaze upon their prisoner to ask his question, “Your people can't possibly win this fight, not while we've got the corporal. Quite impressive, huh?”
“M-monster...” the sobbing thug stammered, shaking his head.
“Yeah, that's right, we've got ourselves a real monster here... so now, let me tell you how this is gonna go down.” Kroll strode over to them, the heavily breathing, wickedly grinning Prime and the cowering, weeping Secondary. He crouched down next to the gangster, “You're going to leave here now, alive. You'll then do absolutely everything in your power to spread your story. Let all the criminal scum know not to mess with us and our psychotic Ace in the Hole. Do that and we'll overlook past transgressions. Fail to do so, and we'll track you down. You don't want to know what'll happen after that. Do I make myself clear?”
“Y-y-yes.”
Kroll paused, his gaze drilling into the thug, as though estimating his trustworthiness. After a couple seconds, he nodded. “Alright. Get up and go.”
Stumbling and almost falling multiple times in his haste to comply, the Wolfpack's minion fled without another word. The squad parted before him, letting him through their ranks.
No sooner was he gone than Hijiri reduced the gravity around his right arm and focused on building up the weight in the rest of his body. When he was back to more or less his normal level, he cancelled the gravity manipulation's effect and stumbled back to the other side of the corridor until he reached the wall, before sinking down into a sitting position, now even more worn down than before.
“Well, that was dumb.” Kroll told him after a moment of silence.
“You all... took out... most... of them. I couldn't... just hang around... doing nothing.” Hijiri managed to say, his words interspersed between laboured breaths.
“Uh-huh... I bet as soon as we started fighting you totally forgot you hadn't slept, right?”
“No... of course not... I just-”
“Didn't think we were competent enough to take down two more goons after the first seven posed no problem?”
Hijiri didn't reply to this one. In truth, he had worried that perhaps the remaining NSW men would attempt the same tactic which they had seen used against them to such great effect and might even succeed in gunning down one or two of his fellows as they rounded the corner. It was unlikely, of course, given their unimpressive performance thus far, but the possibility had been there.
“Anyway, you'd better get back up soon, there are sure to be more of them about...”
“Yeah, speaking of,” Brandon said, “anyone have any idea why there were only nine of these goons around? Why not just all group up and go after us together?”
“Ah, well, where'd be the fun in that?” asked a voice, seeming to come from above them in every direction, crackling very slightly as it spoke. The announcement system. It was a feature imperial bases were generally built with, in case the base's commanding officer needed to get their orders out quickly, especially in times of emergency. This was Hijiri's first time actually hearing it in use.
Kroll frowned, yet didn't question the criminal's access to the system... presumably having anticipated something like this might happen, “You think it's fun to watch us slaughter your own underlings?”
“More or less.” the disembodied voice responded casually. It was male, that much was clear, “This way I get to pick up info about your Prime, and they're only Secondaries, after all. It's not like they matter. This way I can learn all his weaknesses now, so that if he dares show his face again after I kill him this time around, I'll already know how to deal with him. 'Course, given what I've seen so far, this is all probably a total waste of time.”
“So you're a Prime then, I take it?” their 'sergeant' asked, his voice cold.
“Hell yeah I am, and a damn sight better one than that loser you lot have. I mean, really? There weren't even ten of them, any decent Prime could have wiped the floor with a band like that as easily as I'm gonna take care of you dumbasses soon as you get the hell over here... yet that guy gets worn out dealing with two? I guess I should be happy, since it means you aren't nearly as big a threat as I thought you might be after you fucked up my casino like that... but still... it's just disappointing, y'know?”
“Big talk from a guy hiding behind a bunch of speakers.” Priya taunted loudly, “It seems to me you're just sitting in the back, safe and sound, hoping these goons of yours can take us down before we reach you. My guess is you can't hold a candle to the corporal here.”
“Tch. As if being insulted by a Secondary isn't bad enough... I actually think you honestly believe that crap, don't you, you dumb bitch? Tell you what, since I'm such a sporting guy, I'll even tell you all right where I am. Come to this, uh, gym-looking place. With all this training gear and stuff. I'll be waiting.”
“You're in the indoor training section...? Not the security room... where all the CCTV monitors and the announcement system are located?” Kroll asked sceptically.
“You don't need to believe me. Go there if you want, it doesn't bother me. Just don't be whining about how I'm hiding from you if you aren't gonna come fight me even when I let you know exactly where I am. Anyway, that's enough stalling. Get a move on already or I'll get bored and then I will just have everyone gang up on you all at once.”
"You're the one who wiped out the third squad, aren't you? On the day of that raid?" Brandon asked suddenly, completely out of the blue. In reply, the voice laughed.
"Ah, finally, someone catches on. Yeah. With barely any help from any useless Secondaries, I wiped out a whole squad of sortmtroopers. So there. I hate you bastards for making me look like a fool when you took my Base, and I bet you all hate me for killing all those nobodies. So get over here already! I'm sick of waiting."
"Alright then, I guess we will." Kroll told him, "Just make sure not to run off before we get there... if you your reputation was hurt by losing a Base you weren't even guarding at the time then I'd guess that'd be nothing in comparison to actually running away from our little squad, huh?"
"Run? Don't make me laugh." the Wolfpack's Prime spat, before they heard a light click as the broadcast cut off. It seemed he'd grown tired of talking, for now.
With that out of the way, Kroll turned to the Battle Rabbit and asked dryly, "You well enough to walk now, or do you need someone to carry you?"
“I'm just fine.” Hijiri got to his feet, “I only needed a breather.”
“Good. This guy doesn't strike me as being the type to go for cheap shots; if he'd wanted to take us all out without getting involved himself then he could easily have kept all his people together and left them in a more strategic location than just hiding around the very first corner we were due to come across. I expect he really does actually think he can take us all on himself. So let's just head over to the training section and find out how honest he actually is."
"Sir, yes, sir!" the squad chorused as they set off.
RE: Securing Northside? - Takanomiya Hijiri - 11-22-2017
The next time they reached a corner, it was undefended. The time after that, however, three more thugs awaited them. This group were slightly smarter than the previous ones and chose to simply poke their weapons around the corner and fire without actually putting themselves in harm's way.
Of course, doing so meant firing wildly and blindly, and as such almost every shot they took was off-target by a large margin. At first, though, they actually (briefly) held the upper hand, having taken the squad by surprise; they could hear the stormtroopers' footsteps as they approached, yet the 'troopers could hear nothing from them, standing still as they were.
In the first volley of shots, before the squad members were able to throw themselves to the ground, two lasers actually managed to strike someone. Leon took a glancing blow in the shoulder and swore loudly, giving the gangsters around the corner appropriate cause to jeer at them. The other person hit was one of the regular 'troopers, and her injury was much more severe.
The blast struck the side of her chest, piercing a lung, if the coughing was any indication. The coughing... or the way she clutched at her chest, fell over, and soon died. After that, and much to Kroll's chagrin, Hijiri repeated his earlier bouncing and dashing around manoeuvre... though with a little less finesse this time, and more pronounced actual results.
In one swing of his blade – releasing the energy he had built up whilst moving – he decapitated a man at the neck and at the same time sliced off the top half of the skull of the woman standing next to him. Had the remaining gangster not been so horrified at seeing both her compatriots brutally and simultaneously slaughtered, she might have paid more attention to the fact that the force of the blow was so great that not only was Hijiri left completely unbalanced and vulnerable for a good couple seconds but the katana itself was yanked from his hand by its own momentum and flew onwards another few feet until it struck a wall.
As it was, by the time it even occurred to the goon that she really ought to have fired upon him when she'd had the chance, she'd already taken three shots to the chest herself, courtesy of the rest of Hijiri's squad. Despite the pain, though, she actually almost managed to take another shot. The Rabbit was leaning against a wall, struggling to control his breathing and not even looking her way. She painstakingly raised her weapon even as her internal organs were already shutting down... she couldn't possibly have had much more than a few minutes left to live, if that, yet even so, she kept at it, struggled to aim the gun with only one hand, whilst the other lay limp at her side.
She actually might have managed to pull it off too, had Trevor not been watching her. As soon as he realised what she was up to, the 'trooper put a laser through her brain.
She slumped, and her blaster made a light clanging noise as it struck the floor. Some of the others – who had assumed she was already dead and had started moving on already – Hijiri included, turned and were surprised to see that that guy had actually done something useful for once.
After begrudgingly thanking him, the Battle Rabbit and his allies kept moving...
***
… Not that they got very far.
They'd had to pass through a doorway and into an intersecting corridor in order to head towards the training section, but no sooner were they halfway down this new passage than the announcement system clicked back on, and the voice of that same man from before could be heard once more.
“Alright, you crossed the first couple hurdles easily enough, so let's see how you cope against this bunch.”
No sooner had he ceased speaking than a door to one of the rooms ahead of them slid open, at the same moment as another – an equal distance behind them – did the same. From each of the rooms charged a group of five thugs armed with heaters and bullet-guns, and as with those before, they all were dressed in the grey-on-white colours of the Wolfpack... none of them wore the same suits as had many of the goons back at the casino, though. Whether that meant these casually-dressed ones were lower ranked or whether they all simply preferred to wear less formal outfits whenever their higher-ups weren't actively forcing them to, the Rabbit wasn't sure... not that it really mattered all that much.
Guns blazed from both sides, and men and women crumpled to the ground, injured, dying or dead.
Hijiri flung himself to the ground, rolled, and was up and sprinting forwards practically the instant he saw them. This time, however, he held back on the gravity alterations. Restoring his weight back to its normal level after each fight would have been tiring enough normally, even without the lack of sleep to contend with, and simply remaining light was hardly a better option, since maintaining the effect slowly tired him for as long as it was active.
Thus, trying to fight without using it at all seemed like it might be the best move here if he hoped to last long enough to fight the Prime leading these Wolfpack goons. Of course, one major flaw with this new plan was that whereas he had previously been bouncing around the corridors faster than they could even aim their weapons his way, Hijiri was now forced to simply run straight at them.
True, he was still moving faster than all but the best of human athletes, and weaving slightly from side to side as he ran, to make it harder to get a lock on his position, yet even so, he took a shot to the leg before he had reached them. He would have taken more hits as well, most likely, if not for the fact that three of the five were already dead by the time he'd crossed the several metres which had lain between them. Having friends armed with blasters could come in pretty handy at times.
As he ran, searing pains like tongues of flame ran up and down his right leg, as if that bullet wound was actually aflame... though, on the bright side, the excruciating pain certainly kept him from feeling drowsy. He'd already drawn the katana by the time he'd reached the gangsters, but rather than striking with it immediately, he simply jabbed its scabbard into the gut of the first of them, causing the man to double over as the breath was knocked out of him.
As the second tried to aim her rifle, though, that was when the blade flicked out, singing through the air as it sought out her throat.
She reacted faster than he expected, though, bringing her long and unwieldy gun up to block before he could so much as scratch her. He swung again, at the same time raising the scabbard once more, only to bring it down on the back of the male thug's head. That man crumpled to the ground.
His female counterpart, though, proved herself once again, this time spinning her weapon around and using its stock to bat aside the sweep meant to disembowel her.
He struck again, and once more. Both times, she blocked. He could tell from her eyes that she was intensely focused on keeping up with him... yet even so, the corners of her lips twitched upwards slightly in the beginnings of a smile. Did the thug have some trap in mind, which he was unwittingly walking into? Was she pleasantly surprised to be able to actually hold her own against a Prime? Was she simply enjoying the challenge? Or was it something else entirely?
Regardless, though their duel may not have ended just yet, that smile soon did. With the man on the ground and presumably unconscious – or even dead, given that he didn't seem to be moving at all – the Battle Rabbit was free to utilise his sheathe, as well as the sword, to strike at her.
Even now, she did remarkably well, still managing to block most of his attacks... he slowly forced her back, though. Small cuts and bruises formed on her flesh as he struck glancing blows, one after the other, and she was forced backwards, further and further. Soon she had passed through the doorway via which she had just recently entered the corridor.
It was then, just as he was passing through after her, that Hijiri heard a sudden scramble behind him. Realising too late the position he had put himself in, he saw that he was no longer free to dodge to one side, not with this door frame around him.
There wasn't time to even turn and check behind him. He reacted immediately, then, knowing that even a second's hesitation could cost him his life. He had hoped to avoid this, yet in his desperation the Battle Rabbit was once again forced to reduce his personal gravitation field.
He leapt up, dropping his weapons in order to grab the upper edge of the frame and using it to swing himself up and through into the area beyond. Unarmed, now, he spun at the sound of a gunshot, his back hitting the room's ceiling as he turned to view the events below. He bounced off the ceiling slightly, but as light as he was now, and with a surface area the size of a human body, the mere fact of air resistance would mean that falling back to the ground would not be a quick process; he would drift down slower than a feather, in fact.
Three more gunshots came in rapid succession, with not the slightest pause after the first. By this point, though, he was in a position to be able to watch as they struck home.
The female gangster, whether through tremendous skill or unbelievable luck, actually managed to use the body of her rifle to deflect a bullet as it sped towards her; she had been standing directly in front of Hijiri before his leap, meaning that as he had successfully evaded them, each of the bullets meant to bury themselves in his back had headed on towards her instead.
One, she somehow had knocked aside... the other three, however... not so much.
She staggered back, the rifle slipping from numbing fingers. She reached up to touch the holes in her chest. For a moment she seemed to try and staunch the flow of blood, before realising the futility of such an action and giving up, uncovering the wounds and simply staring in shock down at her dripping, crimson hands.
“No, no, no!” in from the corridor beyond, the shooter – the man Hijiri had assumed unconscious – rushed in, dashing over to the woman and grabbing her shoulders as he shook his head in disbelief, “No! Oh, shit! This wasn't supposed to happen!”
Hijiri's feet touched down lightly on the ground as the female gangster stumbled, then collapsed, slipping from that man's grip. The NSW goon fell to his knees beside her, so distraught over having fatally injured the woman that he never even noticed as the Rabbit walked up behind him... though it certainly helped that with his weight being negligible by this point, Hijiri's steps were practically silent.
He retrieved the discarded katana and spent several seconds pouring his energy into it, before bringing it down in a lazy chop aimed to terminate in the centre of the skull of the man currently yelling at his dying ally and shaking her roughly... clearly not remotely experienced in any sort of first aid. Hijiri guessed they must have known each other pretty well for the guy to get so worked up about her impending death when losing those other three had hardly seemed to affect him at all... though perhaps that was simply due to the guilt of having accidentally killed her himself, rather simply seeing her die by the hands of another?
Either way, it wasn't as if it mattered now. In the moment he released his charging power the blade he held instantly became far heavier than anyone who had observed its slim design would ever deem reasonable and, just a second later, landed with a meaty 'thunk'; cleaving the thug's head right down the middle, almost to the base of the neck. The man froze... then slowly toppled forwards.
Hijiri released his grip on his weapon's hilt; it weighed so much right now that he'd have been dragged off his feet if he tried to hold on, given how light the rest of his body currently was.
Once more, he was forced to exchange stamina for weight over the course of several seconds, though this time the exhaustion was even more pronounced than before; he stumbled dizzily as everything in the room seemed to blur... and multiply. There were suddenly two swords, two corpses with cleaved heads, two blood-soaked women with gunshot wounds in their chests.
He stumbled. Tried to reach out with one arm to steady himself, but somehow missed the wall he'd been aiming for. His right shoulder and temple struck steel at the same moment, and he groaned, sinking down into a heap.
He screwed his eyes shut as he struggled for breath. That smack on the head had just made his vision multiply yet again; closing his eyes was really just about all he could do at this point... just close his eyes and wait it out.
…
Ugh.
Had he slept?
Hijiri blinked repeatedly, suppressing a yawn. Nothing much seemed to have changed in his immediate surroundings, except that that woman had finally given up the ghost and died... though considering she couldn't possibly have survived more than a few minutes after taking three shots to her vital organs, that didn't exactly tell him much.
His vision seemed to have recovered, though his limbs might as well have been made of lead, so he presumably hadn't been unconscious long enough to actually have gotten any rest, alas. Coming from out in the hallway he heard the muffled sound of someone's conversation, though couldn't make out the words.
Damn... the others had been shot at too. Any of them could be dead or dying right now. He might not be the best at this whole 'healing-with-Omnilium' thing, but he had to try and help, if he possibly could. The Battle Rabbit struggled up onto his feet, his entire body violently protesting against this course of action, his every muscle screaming at him.
Staggering over to the katana – which had helpfully lost its additional weight the moment he lost consciousness – he found it wasn't all that hard to retrieve the blade from the shattered wreck of his latest victim's skull. This effect – the automatic cancellation of the gravity alteration whenever he passed out – might actually have been pretty useful as an energy-saving trick if he had some way of quickly and reliably falling asleep after each fight without having to smack his head against a thick lump of steel to do so... as it was, though, he'd probably be better off simply using his normal method of ending it. Exhaustion was bad, but he got the feeling that severe brain damage was probably ever so slightly more of a handicap.
Trudging out into the corridor, he saw that all of their attackers had been dealt with; no surprise there. Unfortunately, being surrounded had taken its toll on the squad.
At first he couldn't be sure who had actually been hit and who was simply crouching down and trying their best to administer first aid... despite not having any actual first aid supplies. As he closed in, though, he began to make out faces... and almost immediately, a wash of guilt rolled over him, as he spotted Priya on the ground, with the lower half of her breastplate removed as Leon pressed both hands to a gunshot wound in her abdomen, doing his best to staunch the flow of blood.
He hadn't seen any of what happened, but it seemed a rather fair bet to the Prime that had she had the full use of both arms, she would have been better equipped to fight and thus would have had far lower odds of falling in battle.
Leon had taken a glancing shot to the leg as well, though he seemed not to have even noticed. Trevor had escaped unharmed, somehow, despite the bodies of two helmeted 'troopers near him having both been riddled with bullets and lasers... which gave Hijiri the distinct impression that the coward had most likely just hidden behind the others until the combat was all but over, rather than actually putting himself in harm's way.
Kroll's left arm hung limp and bloodied at his side, Brandon had lost an ear and had been hit in the shin as well and Jallus had been shot a couple times too, though neither of his injuries seemed serious. Frank, on the other hand, had clearly fared the worst of all the survivors... yet somehow had remained standing. It probably helped that all of his wounds seemed to have come from blasters and were thus cauterised, rather than bleeding... though the fact that he had his flask out and was drinking copious amounts from it likely also had something to do with his miraculous – though undoubtedly temporary – resistance to what surely must have been fatal wounds.
“Shit.” Hijiri muttered as he got closer. Turning away from the reinforcement strormtrooper he'd been attempting to help, Kroll glaced over his shoulder at Hijiri.
“Good. It seems you've survived, at least. This all most likely wouldn't have been doable if you'd gotten yourself killed over there like we'd thought you might have.”
Too tired to even make a comment about the 'sergeant''s lack of faith or explain what had actually happened through in the other room, Hijiri simply said, “What might be doable, Iechtelstier? This is over. I can hardly even put one foot in front of-”
As if to prove his point, the Battle Rabbit stumbled suddenly and almost fell, barely managing to catch himself in time to prevent that. He stopped moving and instead simply focused on remaining upright... an effort which he found to require far more concentration than it really had any right to, in his opinion.
“-the other... and look at you all. That guy could easily have a dozen or so more goons about, and he claims to be a Prime himself? We have to leave and call in backup, that's the only way we stand a chance of making it through this alive.”
Kroll scowled and shook his head. Before he could speak, though, their unknown announcer showed up again to mock them, “Oh yes, please do. Run away with your tails between your legs, beaten and bloodied, and let all those hopeful fools see what really happens when some uppity squad of swine gets it into their thick heads that they can actually challenge the Wolfpack.”
As the man started laughing, the white-haired former nobleman's scowl transformed into a snarl.
“We're not running anywhere. Takanomiya, we've talked it over and decided to take a detour. The medical bay is only a short distance from here. We'll head there first to see what can be done for our wounded, before leaving those who can't fight with a guard or two if we can spare them, and heading on to take out this guy ourselves.
“It's suicide.” Hijiri growled back, “Even with a full squad, properly rested and healed, we might have a hard time taking down a powerful Prime. If this guy is tough then we're completely screwed.”
“Aha! Nice to see someone gets it!” laughed the voice from the speakers, “But y'know, since I'm such a nice guy, I'll let you worthless Secondaries go load up on painkillers and bandages if you want... it's not like it'll make the tiniest bit of difference, haha!”
Click. The speakers shut down once more.
“Aaaand he knows you plan on going there.” the Rabbit shook his head, “This isn't just stupid, it's madness.”
“We're doing it.” Kroll spat, refusing to relent; refusing for one moment to admit to himself that they might be in over their heads. It was a good quality for a rank-and-file soldier, that refusal to desert their duty, no matter the cost... but not so much in a ranking officer. That sort of stubborn thinking was the kind of thing that led to sending battalions of troops marching needlessly to their deaths, rather than simply calling a retreat.
If not for the fact that Kroll was never going to live long enough to reach a higher rank at this rate, Hijiri would have worried over what it could mean in the future.
***
They moved at a positively tedious pace, given the Prime's exhaustion and the others' injuries, yet still eventually reached the double doors to the medical bay, having not run into a single other person after the ambush in that corridor.
It would seem that their mysterious antagonist was actually keeping to his word.
Or rather, it did seem that way, until Kroll swung open those doors and was promptly shot twice. He toppled forwards immediately, and with their view now unobstructed, the rest of them could all clearly see the six NSW thugs sitting casually in the wreck that was their barracks' hospital, each one aiming a gun their way.
“End of the line, swine.” the announcer commented suddenly, then spoke to his minions, “Do it.”
Hijiri dropped into a crouch as the firing started, then began to charge forwards as fast as his leaden limbs could carry him, laboriously dragging his blade free of its scabbard.
The fight was... a blur, honestly...
He stumbled and flailed, slaying two of the gangsters himself before his squad-mates had put down the rest... though doing so cost him dearly.
As tired as he was, and now suffering serious blood loss to boot, he had trouble focusing well enough to even make out any of his bullet wounds, let alone count them... just about all he could tell was that his entire chest felt numb, now, and seemed far too red to possibly be healthy...
He tried to take a step forwards, but tripped instead and fell to the side, landing in a heap of broken machinery which had once been some sort of life support equipment. That hurt... at least, for a moment. Though, happily, the numbness seemed to be spreading all through his body now, rather than simply restricting itself to his chest...
He smiled slightly. A bit of rest would do him good, he was sure. He'd feel better and then they could all get back to...
To...
What was it, again?
He had this nagging suspicion that there was something he was supposed to be doing right now, but he was just so tired he couldn't focus on... whatever it was.
He'd been awake for well over thirty hours by this point and had repeatedly exhausted himself today... right now he was so worn out he couldn't focus on anything at all... other than rest.
He closed his eyes, sinking into the blissful darkness of slee-
Slap.
Ugh.
Slap.
Aughh.
Slap.
He audibly groaned this time, and slowly dragged his eyes open, getting the distinct impression as he did that his eyelids had been replaced with sandpaper somehow. It hurt.
“Wha...?” he murmured in a dry voice... not 'dry' in the sense of speaking in a matter-of-fact tone for humorous effect, but merely 'dry' as in being dehydrated.
“No.” Jallus Reiner, the man who had been repeatedly hitting him, said coldly, “You're not allowed to pass out. Not yet. You see this?”
Jallus roughly dragged him from his resting place... well... Hijiri thought it was roughly... probably, though that numbness still suffused much of his body, so he couldn't be too sure. The dark-skinned 'trooper didn't seem to be putting much effort into not bumping him against random objects, though... so yeah, he was probably being pretty rough about it.
Before long, Jallus stopped.
“You see this? You know what that is, corporal?” Hijiri groaned in response to the question, and Jallus slapped him again, “That's the medical droid. What's left of it. Now, you're gonna repair it or summon a new one, whatever's faster. If you don't we're all fucked. So get a move on.”
“Righ', righ'” the Prime mumbled. Even with his head as... fuzzy as it currently was, the Rabbit was able to call up from inside of himself some vague recollection of what the medical droid should look like...
He worked... fighting off sleep the entire time...
It might have been just minutes later when he finally finished, or it might have been hours; he was too tired to tell.
The last dim thought that flickered in Hijiri's head before he passed out was that the medical droid seemed slightly off... he couldn't put his finger on what it was, exactly, but he was sure there was some minor difference there...