02-09-2014, 02:22 AM
The odd emanation from Al-Hasan was nearly paralyzing in such close proximity. Well fuck.
That was all Andrew had the chance to think before instinct took over. Stevey was flying through the air, Lucas and Jung were on fire, and the replacement Bin Laden was psychokinetic. And to top off their shit sundae, Andrew was about to get a lightning bolt jammed up his ass.
It wasn't conscious thought that saved him. Whatever Andrew did, some wiring of fire and air, the bolt veered off course and blasted through the wall, dismembering Lucas' former hostage and narrowly missing Lucas himself. Everything seemed to stand still for a moment; the Americans digesting the fact that - holy shit - magic is a thing we have to fight, and the Arabs realizing that their great prophet was about to be murdered right in their holiest city. Of course, put two groups whose objectives involve killing the hell out of each other in a room and things don't stay quiet for long.
LT had retreated from Al-Hasan the second things started going south, Mole laying down covering fire all the while. LT raised his rifle just as Stevey's vitals blinked out. Damn.
They'd all accepted the risk, but it wasn't a happy thought that one of his best friends wouldn't be coming back from this one. Not even in a bag. An indicator replaced Andrew's fallen comrade's icon on his visor; a count down before Stevey's dead man's switch blew. One minute.
Mole tried to shoot Al-Hasan, but the bullets were stopped by the yellow strands of air encasing him in a cylinder. All he saw were bullets bouncing off of nothing. He quickly switched to the advancing mob, which was shambling forwards to tear them apart like some kind of zombie movie. The war cries would have been deafening if not for their helmets' smart sound dampeners.
LT was all business, even in the face of hundreds of angry Muslims and a pissed off prophet who had actually been granted powers by God. "Fighting retreat. Andrew, kill Al-Hasan." As if it were the simplest thing in the world. The crazy bastard had managed to get back on his feet, and he was walking towards them even as stray rounds plinked off his shield of air.
Lucas and Jung were back in the fight, although flames were still licking at the edges of their gear. Jung's hostage lay face down, sans skull. 7.62 millimeter bullets slammed through the crowd from four different rifles, sometimes piercing two bodies with a single shot. Andrew had never seen that kind of blood lust; unarmed civvies crawling over the corpses of their friends and family to kill and die for their faith. The fact that they were solely accomplishing the latter didn't seem to faze them.
Jung and Lucas were backing up towards their buddies at the main door, each step punctuated by the recoil of their rifles creating new corpses one shot at a time. Andrew was focusing solely on how to kill the bastard in front of him; his rifle acting more like a stress ball than a weapon.
He decided to copy Al-Hasan's trick with the fire. Command wanted maximum casualties, after all. He drunk in the power, filling every fiber of his being with that inner war even as the exterior one threatened to take his head off. Strands of fire and air coiled together, and a rolling wall of flame billowed out in front of him to wash over Al-Hasan and the advancing crowd. The helmet cams quickly dimmed the image to preserve visibility, but even so everyone stopped shooting. That wasn't an everyday sight, after all.
Then the so-called prophet pulled some real bullshit. He kept walking through the wall of fire, and Andrew's weave parted around him. An instant later and it was gone, with only some minor burns on the most overzealous crazies to show it had even been there.
The shooting started again instantly, but even with the dead slowly beginning to outnumber the living LT had seen enough to realize the battle was lost. "It's done. We're out of here." Stevey's dead man's switch was about to blow, and they were out of time. An icon blinked on Andrew's visor; he was too far forwards. He barely had three seconds to back out before several grenades were thrown into the crowd. Everyone else was already in the main doorway.
Andrew waved one last goodbye to Stevey as he crossed the threshold, and the incendiary charge went off at the same time as smaller explosions ripped through the crowd. If it weren't for the speakers, Andrew was pretty sure he would have been deaf. As it was, a wall of flame segregated the hallway from the rest of the building.
Edited by Andrew Koehler, Feb 9 2014, 02:24 AM.
That was all Andrew had the chance to think before instinct took over. Stevey was flying through the air, Lucas and Jung were on fire, and the replacement Bin Laden was psychokinetic. And to top off their shit sundae, Andrew was about to get a lightning bolt jammed up his ass.
It wasn't conscious thought that saved him. Whatever Andrew did, some wiring of fire and air, the bolt veered off course and blasted through the wall, dismembering Lucas' former hostage and narrowly missing Lucas himself. Everything seemed to stand still for a moment; the Americans digesting the fact that - holy shit - magic is a thing we have to fight, and the Arabs realizing that their great prophet was about to be murdered right in their holiest city. Of course, put two groups whose objectives involve killing the hell out of each other in a room and things don't stay quiet for long.
LT had retreated from Al-Hasan the second things started going south, Mole laying down covering fire all the while. LT raised his rifle just as Stevey's vitals blinked out. Damn.
They'd all accepted the risk, but it wasn't a happy thought that one of his best friends wouldn't be coming back from this one. Not even in a bag. An indicator replaced Andrew's fallen comrade's icon on his visor; a count down before Stevey's dead man's switch blew. One minute.
Mole tried to shoot Al-Hasan, but the bullets were stopped by the yellow strands of air encasing him in a cylinder. All he saw were bullets bouncing off of nothing. He quickly switched to the advancing mob, which was shambling forwards to tear them apart like some kind of zombie movie. The war cries would have been deafening if not for their helmets' smart sound dampeners.
LT was all business, even in the face of hundreds of angry Muslims and a pissed off prophet who had actually been granted powers by God. "Fighting retreat. Andrew, kill Al-Hasan." As if it were the simplest thing in the world. The crazy bastard had managed to get back on his feet, and he was walking towards them even as stray rounds plinked off his shield of air.
Lucas and Jung were back in the fight, although flames were still licking at the edges of their gear. Jung's hostage lay face down, sans skull. 7.62 millimeter bullets slammed through the crowd from four different rifles, sometimes piercing two bodies with a single shot. Andrew had never seen that kind of blood lust; unarmed civvies crawling over the corpses of their friends and family to kill and die for their faith. The fact that they were solely accomplishing the latter didn't seem to faze them.
Jung and Lucas were backing up towards their buddies at the main door, each step punctuated by the recoil of their rifles creating new corpses one shot at a time. Andrew was focusing solely on how to kill the bastard in front of him; his rifle acting more like a stress ball than a weapon.
He decided to copy Al-Hasan's trick with the fire. Command wanted maximum casualties, after all. He drunk in the power, filling every fiber of his being with that inner war even as the exterior one threatened to take his head off. Strands of fire and air coiled together, and a rolling wall of flame billowed out in front of him to wash over Al-Hasan and the advancing crowd. The helmet cams quickly dimmed the image to preserve visibility, but even so everyone stopped shooting. That wasn't an everyday sight, after all.
Then the so-called prophet pulled some real bullshit. He kept walking through the wall of fire, and Andrew's weave parted around him. An instant later and it was gone, with only some minor burns on the most overzealous crazies to show it had even been there.
The shooting started again instantly, but even with the dead slowly beginning to outnumber the living LT had seen enough to realize the battle was lost. "It's done. We're out of here." Stevey's dead man's switch was about to blow, and they were out of time. An icon blinked on Andrew's visor; he was too far forwards. He barely had three seconds to back out before several grenades were thrown into the crowd. Everyone else was already in the main doorway.
Andrew waved one last goodbye to Stevey as he crossed the threshold, and the incendiary charge went off at the same time as smaller explosions ripped through the crowd. If it weren't for the speakers, Andrew was pretty sure he would have been deaf. As it was, a wall of flame segregated the hallway from the rest of the building.
Edited by Andrew Koehler, Feb 9 2014, 02:24 AM.