The Vigilante's Path
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell the truth." – A Poet
Some people have, good days, others have bad days. For a fellow named T, he was having a rough, bad day.
Pulling himself out of the pile of rubble that had toppled onto him, he quickly took in his surroundings, having blacked out for a few seconds from being blown out of a window of a third storey abandoned factory, then being buried under several kilograms of concrete. Thankfully, he hadn't broken anything, although that didn't stop it from hurting like a truck had hit him. The pain was overwhelmed by panic, as he scrambled around the rubble for something very important to him-something vital to his survival. He found it lying barely four feet from him, neatly folded up.
It was his Scroll, but unlike most Scrolls, T's Scroll was custom-built from scratch, and more deadly than an Atlesian Spider Droid. However, in T's eyes, its most unique feature was that it's black colour.
He covered one of his eyes as he activated the other, sending out a pulse of black and white pixels that mapped the factory he stood next to and the streets beyond, piercing through the gloom of the moonless night, the streetlights non-operational after the virus that had swept through the three city blocks. Of course, the pulse could only travel so far, but it was good enough for him. Following the pulse of digital effects that only he could see, a small bar appeared in the bottom-left corner of his vision, displaying his Aura. Next to it, a display showed the time and his coordinates on the world.
He was able to memorize the layout of the area with the help of cybernetic implants in his one synthetic eye, which he then switched to night-vision. That was when a white highlighted object appeared in his vision, which he bent down to pick up. It was a brown cap, his brown cap. Slapping it on his head to cover his short brown hair and pulling up his face scarf like a bad criminal from a liquor store hold-up, he broke off into a sprint when more highlighted objects appeared from the front and back of the factory.
These new objects were highlighted in red, and when T used his night-vision, he made them out to be members of the infamous White Fang organisation, and he already knew that they had orders to kill him. He thought of it as intuition, but it helped that T could tap their communication lines with his Scroll. He knew why they were after him, but, it didn't matter.
Quickly shoving the Scroll into the pocket of his matt-black trousers, he quickly wiped some of the dirt off the brown overcoat that reached down to his knees, as he ran towards the smallest group of White Fang. With his cybernetic eye, he was able to highlight the weapons and armour the White Fang Faunuses were carrying, checking for weaknesses or vulnerabilities in their attire. Unfortunately, they had chosen some of their highest-grade equipment on their search. Recalculating chances of success...97%.
Suddenly remembering that Faunuses had night-vision as well, he made a sharp turn and dove into the factory through one of the broken windows, his leather sneakers only making the subtlest of squeaks. He rolled to reduce his momentum before making another sharp turn and sprinting over to the window where the goons were. They had not spotted him, but T was sure that they would eventually find him, meaning that he had to finish his escape plan. Now.
The woman that was hunting him would undoubtedly pursue him if he ran, so what T needed to do was break her legs. Either the metaphorical or literal sense of the term would do, but one seemed easier to do since he had deployed a system virus that wiped out all electronic equipment for several blocks just moments ago.
Sprinting over to one of the windows, T watched as the White Fang goons continued to search the area in a tight circle formation. Only six… he thought as he extended an electric shocker from his right arm, which appeared to be a normal arm covered by the sleeve of his overcoat and a fingerless glove. It was, in fact, far from normal.
He only hesitated for a second before jumping through the window, shattering the glass as he lunged fist first towards one of the goons. They all turned towards the sound of glass breaking, but it was too late as the dark figure sped towards them.
The shocker connected with his neck, causing him to spasm uncontrollably while T grabbed his pistol with his free hand to fire at the other goons. He was able to hit one in the chest, the impact of the bullet sending the Faunus to the floor, before the others came to their senses and scattered behind different chunks of rubble for cover.
T dropped the gun as he used the stunned Faunus as a shield while his right arm retracted its shocker and instead spread out two limbs to form a crossbow. Calculating how his plan would go in his mind – the mathematical calculations scrolling across his vision, he threw the unconscious, still-twitching Faunus forward as he fired an explosive bolt at the second floor of the factory.
The Faunuses sprayed bullets at his running figure for a few seconds before the crossbow bolt exploded, raining more debris and rock down on them. The falling debris also worked to block the path behind him, preventing the other squad of White Fang from pursuing him.
Rounding the corner of the abandoned factory, he ran into four sword-wielding White Fang members. He quickly bashed one on the side of the head, cracking his mask, while sweeping another off their feet as his left hand made contact with their neck. As one of the Faunus brought their sword down to slice him right down the middle, he brought up his right hand and blocked the slash with a resounding clash of metal.
T quickly broke the contact as he had to duck under another horizontal swing, which he then turned into a backwards roll. He quickly sprinted to another abandoned factory adjacent to the first, but not before he had thumbed the trigger of an explosive on one of the White Fang goons' belts.
"Someone, stop him!" one of the two shouted before they were both launched into the air by the force of the explosion. T didn't turn around to check whether they were down for the count or not, but it didn't matter.
As soon as he reached the factory, he went around the front entrance to in order to reach the loading bay on the far side. As soon as he arrived at the loading bays, he smashed a button mounted on a wall that caused a large door to retract into the ground.
Inside the loading bay, his escape vehicle sat quietly. It was a modified version of a standard Bullhead, with more powerful engines, rapid-firing machine guns, a pair of heavy duty missile launchers, and, most importantly, an advanced on-board computer. It's unique modifications and custom overhaul was finished off by its unique gunmetal-grey and ultramarine-blue paintjob, which was done in the form of digital camouflage – his Overwatch.
He had told it that he would have to leave quickly, and that it should begin pre-flight checks without him. T could already sense that it could take off if it wanted to, though without a pilot, it would just fly into the factory on the opposite side of the industrial block of Mistral he was in.
Now, all that stood between him and it were a dozen guards that stood with barricades erected and guns ready. One of them was even carrying a rocket launcher. Chances of escape…dropped to 93%.
In his moment of hesitation about what to do, he could hear two other guns priming behind him as a Dust-powered flashlight shone at him, casting his surroundings into a sharp relief. "T!" a feminine voice called out from behind him.
He slowly turned around, recognising who it was even before she called out to him. Closing his eyes initially, he reopened them to face a dark skinned girl with shoulder-length green hair and sharp red eyes. She held both of her guns in outstretched hands, both pointed directly at T's head.
"I have to say," she began, her face remaining a scowl the entire time. "-I never thought that it would come down to this. That little stunt you pulled set us back by months." She said as she was slowly being highlighted in gold in T's vision.
He said nothing in reply as he turned around to glance over the dozen White Fang foot soldiers in the way of him and his escape vehicle, highlighting each and every one of them with a red outline.
"Don't even think about it." The green-haired girl warned. "You've got nowhere left to run, outnumbered, and you're severely outgunned." She said with a smirk. "I thought you were supposed to be good with statistics." She taunted.
T slowly reached into the pocket of his trouser as he felt his Scroll and pressed a single button, but not before saying one last farewell.
"I'm never outgunned." He said as he opened his Scroll in his pocket, which activated the dorsal lights on the airship. This caused the girl and the other White Fang soldiers to cover their eyes to shield themselves from the sudden glare.
T quickly dropped to one knee as he pulled the Scroll out of his pocket and touched another command, which caused the forward machine guns of the Bullhead to start up and spray bullets all over the White Fang members. The roar of the guns warming up was enough for some of the White Fang members to duck down or jump to the side, while others reacted a second too slow. The girl had enough sense in her to jump out of the way as the bullets rained down on her position.
A second after she made the awkward dive to the side, T deactivated the machine guns to cross the few meters separating him and the airship, stepping on any White Fang goon what was still conscious, and some which were a little less than conscious. The door swung open as he approached, allowing him to quickly jump into the vehicle, swinging himself into the cockpit using the frame of the doorway.
He quickly climbed into the pilot's seat as he fired up the engines. He saw the goon with the rocket launcher stand back up and take aim, but before he could pull the trigger, T extended a pistol from his right arm and fired off a single shot at the rocket, inside the rocket launcher.
The explosion rocked the airship slightly, and spread fire across the docking bay. T pushed the engines to maximum power as he directed it out of the loading bay, the whole time Emerald fired her guns, ineffective against the hull of the Bullhead.
T wanted nothing more than to speed away and never look back on what had been done here, but there was something he needed to do. He turned the airship around as he began hovering around the largest of the factory buildings, where he started this.
Reaching for the command to fire the two missiles straight at the building, he found himself hesitating for a second before he gently pressed on the control to fire. His mind ran with calculations on the amount of damage and the chances that the woman hunting him would survive. They had to be high, he designed it that way. If he wanted to, he could have ended her right here and right now. It would have probably saved a lot of people, but she had someone that he needed alive.
He only stayed to watch for a few seconds before taking off at full speed, firing his cannons at one support pillar of the factory just to add to the destruction.
What he had started here...the horrors he had created, they needed to be undone. Though it won't be easy, T had a plan.
A very long…intricate…complicated plan that could - no, would - make enemies on both sides.
The worst part of it all was that he couldn't do it alone.