Into the Abyss

[Dane Summers]

He slung the submachine-gun, took a deep breath, and braced to have his shoulder put back in to its socket. The drugs he had shot up earlier were wearing off, or just not doing enough, because the whole area was in agony. Other then a grimace, and heavily clenched jaw, Ketsu made no sound. Some parts of Naval training in Kusari were done with hard wood, metal core sticks, fencing practice - the things could crack bones with ease, and often did. Trainee's who made sounds of pain, especially screams, were removed for there weak warrior spirit. The finest warriors of the emperor were immune to pain, immune to fear, glorious in there skill, and magnificent in there bravery.

Pah, what a bunch of crap.

But in this case, having his arm shoved roughly back into its socket, he grunted, took it in stride, and placed his mind separate from his body, and the pain no longer mattered.
Claus patted him on the shoulder "Ja, is in, Comrade." - "Thank you" Ketsu said, as he worked the arm around. It was stiff, still hurt like hell, but it worked, and that was important.
Hefting the SMG, he checked the action, found the weight to his liking, and put the strap over his right shoulder, looking into the distance.
He could still see the fading streaks of where surface to air missiles had streaked up, and the smoke still rising from where they had detonated in the air. A small fire was burning where, whatever it was, had crashed. While looking in that direction, an explosion echoed through the air, followed by gunfire. Before Ketsu could even point and say anything, he saw a man in tactical gear, a fellow Militsiya, running toward the position, with a white wave behind him.

Both Claus and Dasha moved into action, trying to cover the fleeing man, who, despite better sense, was leading the mass right to them. Ketsu bit off a curse, took a knee, and began picking off the creatures with pistol shots - whatever got through his comrade's fire.

"POPPING SMOKE!" Claus yelled, about the same time as Ketsu's pistol mag dropped, and was replaced by another, his last one.
"Cover your ears. Then Run." As the flashbang went out, He nodded, holstered his sidearm, and started running to a fall back position - the flashbang went off in a pop, and his hearing became as muffled as if he'd filled his ears with concrete, replaced by yet more high pitched ringing. He spared a glance back, saw Claus and Dasha sprinting away, kept looking, then saw the Militsiya, Middleton, crest the dyke, and start sprinting as well. He was shaking his head, no doubt trying to clear the grenades effects - as he cleared the dyke, Ketsu, side by side with Middleton, sprinted hard and fast, in silence, all sound eclipsed by ringing, hot on the heels of Claus and Dasha.

Following them deeper into the city. Toward the facility.

---

[arvg]

Out in the open, Allie had switched back to his SEEKER, they'd cut through an old factory, down an embankment and were now trudging their way along the main aqueduct that led through the center of the city and into the Complex.

The plan, at least according to Cruz's map, was to get in through the water pumps, a remnant of the pre-bombardment Agroprom five year plan for the area. Fortunately for them the water had long since dried up, and the equipment had a fine layer of rust over it, making it inoperable.

Allie didn't like being down in the Aqueduct, it made him feel exposed, but Cruz had made a good point about how much more exposed they would be up on the embankment path. At least, down in the duct there were no cameras or surveillance equipment that could spy on them.

They kept on, unaware that they were being shadowed.

---

[TheOrangeButterfly]

Claus had run faster than he had intended. With it, he ducked into what looked to be an old factory. His breathing was rapid, heart pounding. He started to control his breathing, bringing it back to a normal level. With it he raised his shotgun up to eye level and began to slowly tread through the building. He was no more than a cityblock or two at most from the facility.

His boots crunched on shattered glass of what appeared to be an industrial part of the city. He heard something behind him, and turned. Nothing. He somehow had lost Ketsu and Dasha in the mad dash from the acid-spitting bunnies. Insanity. What the hell kind of experiments were taking place here? There were lines and lines of old closets, or what seemed to be worker's lockers. He rummaged through a few of them before realizing that anything of importance would have been ransacked by survivors already.

Claus stepped outside again, and looked down the street. There it was. The TALOS facility, in all its bizarre glory. He slowly walked down the street, weary of all the windows and many eyes that could be watching him. He found a side entrance to the facility, and carefully stepped in. Not knowing what may be lying behind the doorway. He found the entrance to an elevator, and marveled at the awesome yet eery aura that this building had that the others had lacked. Something.... different.

Claus clicked on his radio for a moment "Claus checking in. I have made it in." He quickly turned his radio back off and began to look around at the elevator he was about to step into.

---

[mayu20]

Dasha saw how Claus ducked in a building, she watch back after Ketsu and Middleton sawing them at a few meters behind her, then when she watched after Claus, nothing. He was vanished somewere.

"Cm'on you two. Hurry!"

They took some corners around a street and found some kind of passage under a building.

"Here fast!"

The rabbits were closing in fast. Maybe too fast. Dasha ran in that passage and waited for Ketsu and Middleton to enter as well, then she had a ideea.

"Well, there is only one way to loose this bunny tail."

She removed her grenade launcher and loaded a explozive on inpact shell and fired at the pasage entrace, colapsing the way. The rabbits were traped on the other side of that building. They were finnaly safe. But only 10 grenades remaining now.

"Ketsu, Middleton, are you two alrite? I lost Claus, I saw him entered in a building and nothing then. I hope he is alrite. Let's move I can see the light at the end of this passage."

And there it was. After they exit the passage, they saw a big imposing building. With a futuristic design and robotic aspect all over. There were two big double blast doors, that was the main etrace for sure. They decided that is not safe to take that entrace, so they scout around. While Dasha moved closer to the building, she saw a what was long time ago a traffic camera on a post. She was looking at it and suddenly saw the camera moving.

"Dasha here. Comrads be on alert somebody is watching us. I just saw a traffic camera on one of the posts that is at the facility entrace. I think we have been watched every move."

After transmiting that Ketsu called them as he found a entrance in the facility. that was not guarded and it was small. From a the old sewer system that could lead right into the facility.

"Good thing Claus is not with us. I am sure he wouldn't fit in those small pipes."

After exploring the sewers in the hard way they made in into the facility. It seems to be a janitor room or something. Pipes everywere and nothing else.

"Dasha here. We are in facility. Over and out."

---

My Media

[Jeremy Hunter]

Forge rubbed his brow.

"Roger that Dasha. Keep and eye out for Villers; She's gotta be alive. Good luck."

Forge cut the comm. Not good.

"How's Havana?"
"She's keeping the TALOS Storms guessing."
"Roger that, keep an eye out."

Forge fell back into the chair, the International sitting quietly in JiangXi's orbit.

"Moment its safe, try and raise Villers. Also, send a burst transmission to Barricade, have it RV with the Social Credit."

The bridge officers nodded and began working.

---

May you ever walk in the Light, Shizune.

[mtjsmith]

"Sir, flash traffic from the International...Forge wants to send the Barricade down to.."
"Override the order, we are not sending any more ships down. Han and Pasha will be fine on their own. If Forge doesn't like it, tell him to scan those two Storm shaped crash-sites. If he still doesn't like it, order the flag officer to throw him out the airlock."

---

[mtjsmith]

He stepped on something.

"Oh my god, what the hell is this stinky..."

He looked back to Alvarez and pulled his foot up. Droppings and excrement of some kind gradually fell off his boot.

"Eeeeeeew."

Allie laughed and the boys pushed onwards. The Aquaduct had two main access points into the facility. The one to the North let the water in, while the one to the South was for "water" out. The north passage was generally easier, which is why the boys had headed south.. Along the waste water lines to avoid detection. Computers and warbots didn't need the toilet, Cruz had thought.

"Woah, what's that?"

Thomas crouched down and whispered to Allie. Looking up ahead of them, a mass of tendrils was stuck to the side wall, apparently snoring.

"The poop shutes are up ahead, that's our way in. Now we could totally sneak past that thing.. Or we could blow it to bits. Whaddya think?"

---

[Dane Summers]

Still trying to catch his breath, the SMG out in front of him, Ketsu kept his footsteps as silent as he could, moving through the skeletal remains of a building, long since bombed out. To his left was the imposing mass of a huge concrete hardened warehouse shell, overlaying the facility (he guessed), keeping it hidden from aerial view. On the ground floor, the whole complex was massive, and intimidating - all the more since it showed almost no wear at all. A few bullet holes, and scorch marks on the outside, but the concrete facade was unblemished, and stood tall as if to say 'come at me. do your worst. i weathered phantoms, and mutants, and bombs, and acid rain - what can you do? nothing.

He was trying to find an alternate entrance inside, and was hoping to do some amidst the aqueduct system underneath. It was a simple matter to find a section of street that had been blown in, exposing an underground public transit monorail. And from there, shadowed darkened man-made caves, hopefully leading to the prize.

As the tunnel darkened, he fished out the night vision optics, turning darkness into a putrid shade of neon green. His peripheral vision went to nothing, but at least he could see. Up ahead, was light, causing distortion with the optics - two amber bulbs - one burnt out, the other out of its housing and hanging by the last thread of its power cabling. In between was a heavily reinforced door, that had recently been opened - the corpse of a dead facility worker was draped into the monorail track, covered in torn ragged flesh from too many high caliber rounds. The door itself, swinging open, was covered in blood.

"This is Ketsu - Ive found an entrance...west side of the building, take the path down, under the street. Ill mark the way..."

He turned around, ripped open his velcro webbing, pulled a small plastic stick, broke it over the hard soul of his boot, and tossed the reddish glowing stick towards the halfway point of the darkened tunnel, between himself and the path up - should be good enough for Dasha and Middleton to see.

he took a deep breath, and peered closer at the body, the long minutes seeming to stretch into hours. As he flipped it over, the technicians face, covered in puked blood, was distended in terror and pain. Not a pretty way to go. Searching for some sort of ID card, maybe even a pass card (might be useful) he heard something that sounded like scritching on concrete behind him - Looking up, expecting to see his comrades, he saw nothing, and paid the sound no mind, thinking of a vermin.

It was when he heard it again, this time much closer, that he got up and looked around, searching for the noise. His optics picked up movement, and he raised the SMG, peering into the darkness, expecting anything.
A human shape, shifting, stumbling, seemingly wounded, came out of the deeper darkness. the White of the technicians coat showed up brilliantly in the night vision spectrum, and so did the dark splotches of blood. The man was stumbling his way in a panic to Ketsu, an obvious survivor of the facility.
Letting out a breath of relief, Ketsu lowered the SMG, waved his hand to signal the man over - "its ok, were Militsiya, were here to make safe the facility" - turning away, he activated the throat mic to signal Dasha he had found a survivor.

Stars exploded in his eyes, and his breath left him - his mind couldnt make a thought as to why he was suddenly on the ground, with the body of some technician on top of him, its lifeless dead eyes, and torn out throat making him obviously dead. Instinct took over and he kicked the body off, just as hard iron vice like hands pinned him to the ground - fire and pain exploded in his abdomen as white hot knives stabbed deep into the flesh of his waist - staring into perfectly machine metal face, and cold glowing electronic eyes...

The Seekerbot had found the body of some dead enemy ordered killed by the TALOS automated defenses - used the body as convenient cover to approach its target - catching its target offguard, it used the body as heavy projectile, thrown to terminal velocity as if it had been small stone - With the target's ability to fight back nullified, the Seekerbot attacked - it showed a 99.9% chance that its victim would be rendered deceased in under 3 seconds. It lifted its left combat talon, blades distended, with the optimum entry point through the visual and olfactory cavities....

Assault rifle fire lit up the darkness, as round after round cascaded around the Seekerbot, penetrating the hardened combat exoskeletal structure, puncturing vital control mechanisms - the tungsten armor piercing rounds were enough to get through, and do some damage, but even after a full magazine, the Seekerbot was still going. It rose to its feet, somewhat worse for wear, and with a powerful hydraulic pistoning of its legs, leapt to the dark recesses of the ceiling, being chased by automatic fire, only to disappear into the darkness.

"What the HELL was that thing?!" Middleton, busy reloading another mag. Dasha helped Ketsu off the floor, who was now bleeding profusely, in obvious pain. "Quick, whose got a medkit?!" She asked, searching her pack, and Middleton's too - "I do" said Ketsu weakly - he reached into his combat webbing, took out the white kit, handed it to her, as she set to work trying to stop the bleeding from the deep wounds to his abdomen.

"As for what it is...I dunno..."

---

[Jeremy Hunter]

Tori gunned the Jeep over an embankment, heading for the Militisya's location. In the empty world of JiangXi, the sounds of gunshots were heard for miles. It was a matter of heading towards the staccato of gunfire. Tori glanced to the two VLR compacts, Seeker rifle, and shotgun on the next seat over. That was all that remained after the Jeep had been given a one-way ticket to the ground. She groaned as the engine began to cough and sputter.

"Aw hell no." She kicked the Jeep, which felt back to its throaty roar. She shook her head and swung around a corner, almost to where she has heard gumfire.
Then she saw the bullet-riddled Seekerbot. It was in the road, heading for her.

Tori gunned the engine, grabbing the shotgun as she hurtled towards the Seekerbot.

"Take this you bastard!" She said. It was headimg for her, not stopping. If it was allied, oh well.

The two collided, the Seekerbot being thrown backwards, it smashing imto the ground and sliding as the Jeep fishtailed to a stop. Tori climbed out and with her shotgun, then walked over and blasted the damaged Seekerbot's head clean off. She saw the blood.

"Guess one Muppet won't be getting a drink at Kalashnikov's."

Tori grabbed her assault rifle and stumbled towards the building.

"Oi muppets! If ya can heat me, do me a favor and don't shoot."

Tori slipped into the building, wincing at her hurt leg.

---

May you ever walk in the Light, Shizune.

[TheOrangeButterfly]

Johannes instinctively turned around and raised his shotgun. He heard a voice. He thought it was a female voice entering the factory that he used for an entrance to the elevator, so he waited for her, or it if it wasn't human. His gun trained on the entrance. He didn't want to enter TALOS on his own, but he sure did hope someone else was coming so he wouldn't have to.

---