"One of our informants have just alerted us to a recent stir of unusual activity at fomorian nightclub called Foebellow Prairie. Hunter, I want you on point with Reaper to scope out the extent of this disturbance. Stigma, Earthquake, you're going to be right behind them on high alert. We don't know how what exactly's waiting for us there, so I'm having a few other teams that are going to be on active standby."
Captain Aodhan's terse message cut off from their headsets without further notice.
"So…" From his comfortable position snuggled into Fiona's side on the couch, Lann stared at the three of his friends who had all suddenly stopped eating the lasagna he'd made and had cocked their heads to the side, as if listening to something. "G-good or nah?"
"Oh, no—I mean, yes, your lasagna's really, really good, but we have to leave right now. Duty calls." Karok hurriedly scraped the last of the lasagna on his plate into his mouth and chewed furiously, his sauce-splattered cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk. His fork and plate thunked onto the coffeetable as he stood up from the armchair that he'd claimed and stretched out his legs with a wince, as they'd fallen asleep after sitting down for quite some time.
"Sorry, Lann. We'll be back later to finish this, though. Shouldn't be more than a few hours, hopefully." Evie got up as well and added her plate to the pile on the coffee table, although her face was devoid of any sauce. "Karok, baby, you've got some tomato on your face. Lemme get that."
"…I did not need to see that." Fiona rolled her eyes before pressing a kiss to Lann's forehead and pushing herself up from the couch. "You can leave the dishes in the sink, and when I get back I'll do them."
With a wave, Evie and Karok disappeared past the threshold of Lann's front door.
"Oh, no, it's n-not a problem. I d-don't mind d-doing the dishes."
"Nonsense. You cooked, therefore I'll clean."
"No, n-no, I'm j-j-just going to b-be w-waiting here, so— mmrph!"
Fiona pulled back from her spontaneous kiss, smiling softly as she ran her hand through Lann's hair.
"Turn in early – you deserve it, with how busy the diner's been recently. I'll take care of everything."
"…Alright."
Fiona leaned in for another kiss.
"Fifi, we gotta go! You can bone him later!"
Evie's shouting ruined the mood, as usual. Lann burst out into light laughter, but then pressed a quick kiss onto Fiona's cheek to make up for the untimely interruption.
"Be safe."
"I'll try."
Lann's front door closed behind Fiona. The woman jumped the short railing in front of the apartment and fell down roughly three stories. She hit the ground running towards the SUV parked crookedly in the street and slid into the passenger seat just in time to see Kai and his boyfriend, Hurk, burst out of their apartment. Both men vaulted the railing like she had, but Kai was hauling his ass into the SUV while Hurk slammed a helmet onto his head, gunned the engine of Kai's motorbike, and peeled off in the opposite direction.
Kai slid into the back seat of the SUV the moment the car started moving, the expression on his face just about ready to kill someone through the force of his glare.
"Ooooh, someone got interru—" A fast and sharp turn by the driver of the SUV sent Evie's head almost slamming into the side window. "Hey! Watch it, Kain!"
"Wot? My name's Bran, fo' fuck's sake! Why doesn't anyone 'member my goddamned name! It's always Kain—this, Kain—that, Gallagher—this, Gallagher—that—"
"SHUT UP AND DRIVE, YOU WHINY IDIOT!" Karok shouted as he held onto the grab-handle above the window when their driver skidded around another corner and almost hit a parked car.
"Oi, fuck you! You heroes always think yer so tough and shit—!"
A deafening gunshot and a bullet broke through the SUV's roof, right above the driver's head. Fiona, Karok, and Evie turned to look at the back seat, while the driver looked through his rearview mirror.
Kai's special-order .357 Magnum was aimed at the roof of the car, but it moved downwards to aim right at the back of the driver's head after a moment. The barrel trailed a thin line of smoke out of it.
"One more word."
The rest of the incredibly fast drive to CBDC's Headquarters to pick up their weapons and supplies was deadly silent. When all four of them had geared up and piled back into the SUV, their driver had changed into a blank-faced woman that said nothing while doing 70 through a 45 mph zone.
Foebellow Prairie was a sleazy fomor-run nightclub in the shadiest outskirts of Rocheste. The dilapidated brick-and-cement building had originally been a part of a plan to build affordable housing for homeless youths, but funding had been cut at the last minute, leaving the grimy husk of a building to opportunistic fomorian hands that turned it into a four-level seedy nightclub, illegal drug den, brothel, and now the main base for a small portion of the Fomorian Army.
"So… where'd your boyfriend run off to?" Evie murmured through her headset as she and Kai were slowly but surely crawling through an oversized ventilation shaft. "I mean, I'm pretty sure he's not a hero."
"…There was an accident at the shop. One of the cars had fallen on top of the workers."
"Oh. Ouch… Hey, move over. I can't see anything."
Kai shifted a bit and Evie's head awkwardly crammed underneath his arm. From their cramped position in the ventilation shaft, they were able to peer into the office on the topmost floor of the Foebellow Prairie.
In the far corner of the room was a terrified Clodagh handcuffed to a radiator and gagged with duct tape. Sprawled out and cuddling on the couch right next to her were two women dressed in rather revealing garments, and three very sharp swords were resting innocently on the glass coffee table.
One of the women, the one with flaming red hair cut into an angled style and dressed in a tube top and short shorts, giggled and swatted at the teasing hand that ran up her thigh but stopped short shy of actually groping her. The other one, with short silver hair and garbed in a black leather cat-suit and fishnet stockings, whispered something else into the red-head's ears before leaning in for a kiss.
"Oh la la— Stormbringer and Resonance are a thing."
"Shut up, Reaper."
The door to the room slammed open, but the women making out on the couch paid it no mind as a much younger girl with long white pigtails and a glaive bounced into the room, followed by equally-young boy with carefully-styled white hair spinning a dagger between his gloved fingers. The two… kids, for a lack of a better word to describe their youthful appearances, swung themselves up onto the desk, sitting right on top of piles of paper and not caring one bit.
"Ooh, Jade Fox and Phantom. I haven't seen them so close up before… do you think they're siblings? They kinda look alike."
"…"
The door swung open once again and Shakarr stormed in, followed by a snarling black gnoll and a hissing white gnolless.
Shakarr took one look around the room and barked out, "Where the hell is the Executioner?! I told him not to be late!"
"I dunno. Why would we fuckin' care about what the man does in his free time." The Phantom spun his dagger around his fingers casually.
Resonance stopped making out with Stormbringer long enough to say in a seductively lilting voice, "I'll bet he's still busy with that stick-in-the-mud boyfriend of his. Pity they're exclusive and gay as rainbows, because I wouldn't mind being in the middle of that sandwich."
"Oi!" Stormbringer pulled at a lock of Resonance's hair. "Sexy girl is still in your lap!"
"Eww, don't say that." Jade Fox's face screwed up into an expression of juvenile disgust.
Shakarr huffed out an irritated breath. "Humans, control yourselves for Cichol's sake—"
The Phantom's face, too, screwed up at the Resonance's wistful suggestion. "No! He's practically our father-figure!"
"D.I.L.F." Resonance's grin was all teeth and fox-like. "Dad I'd Like To F—"
"Whose dad are you fuckin' and why wasn't I informed of this." The Executioner casually sauntered in through the threshold of the doorway, looking immeasurably pleased to be fashionably late to a secret meeting of the Fomorian Army.
From inside the ventilation shaft, Evie and Kai turned identical shades of pale as the blood in their veins turned glacier-cold.
"… Shit." Evie let out a long and shaky exhale.
"I'm going to fucking kill that son of a bitch." Kai's hands immediately went to his sniper rifle, but there was no possibly way he could set it up in a space as small as the ventilation shaft. He took out his .357 Magnum instead.
"We're doing recon!" Evie hissed and shoved Kai's hand down. "You can shoot him later!"
"What could possibly waylay you into being late for an emergency meeting with the glorious Shining Shakarr, you buffoon?!" The white gnollness snarled at the Executioner, who simply smirked back arrogantly at her as he leaned against the frame of the doorway and crossed his arms across his chest.
"Honestly? I got stuck in traffic. There's too many CB's on the main roads for some reason, so I had to take the long way. I'm guessing that they want their pretty little doll back." The Executioner's head jerked over in Clodagh's direction, who shuffled closer to the radiator with frightened and tearful eyes.
"Che! Now that all of you humans are here, you undoubtedly know that there's been a setback thanks to Vehemence and Black Hammer. We have a girl hostage, but she is not the Oracle. Without the Oracle, we cannot awaken our Great Master Cichol. Stormbringer! You'll be in charge of raiding the storehouses by the Colhen docks tonight." Shakarr paced angrily across the length of the room.
Resonance and Stormbringer finally ended their obnoxious lip lock. The red-headed woman smirked smugly at Shakarr. "Finally, some action."
Shakarr grunted and roughly shoved off the two kids sitting on top of his desk. With twin snorts of haughtiness, Jade Fox went to perch on the arm of the couch while Phantom sidled up next to the Executioner and copied his pose.
"While those damnable Blades are distracted, Resonance and Jade Fox will focus on turning the Royal Army's golem pet, Aghlan, over onto our side. This sigil should be enough."
A fomorian mind-control sigil landed in Jade Fox's hands.
"Phantom, Executioner, you two will sneak undetected into the hospital that is holding the Oracle, and steal her away without so much as raising a single alarm. Got it?"
The Phantom snorted again. "Boss, I can do that in my sleep. Why's the old geezer hav'ta follow me?"
"Oi, watch your mouth, you lil' punk."
Shakarr growled again. "Because a human child wandering around a hospital alone is too conspicuous, that's why!"
"Hah, right, kid."
"Shut up!" The Phantom's face started to turn cherry red, his immature temper flaring up.
"And what will you have us do, Shining Shakarr?" Black Scar snarled in his own gnollish way. Everwhite snarled along with him, and then once more at the humans.
"You two, my trusted lieutenants, will accompany Black Hammer to the ritual site in The Catacombs. We must begin preparations immediately, even with all of our setbacks. Lord Glas Ghaibhleann will reward you both quite handsomely, after your tasks are done."
The two gnolls bowed their heads low, sneering at the humans when none of them followed suit, before excusing themselves and scrambling out of the room.
"Hey, when are we gonna get paid? We're not doing any of this for free, you know." Resonance slunk up from her sprawl on the couch and grabbed her spellsword with a particularly vicious gleam in her eyes. Stormbringer copied her girlfriend's actions, twirling her jagged-edged swords in lazy arcs before sheathing them across her back.
Shakarr waved a dismissive hand. "All of you, too, will be rewarded in time by Lord Glas Ghaibhleann, once Our Great Master Cichol has awakened. Your payments for this month will transfer into your accounts once we have the Oracle in our possession. Executioner, take the useless girl with you to the hospital and swap her with the Oracle. We have no use for her, otherwise."
While the others left the room grumbling at the delay of the rest of their payments yet again, the Executioner shrugged a shoulder and walked over to the young woman handcuffed to the radiator. He unhooked the cuffs from the radiator but quickly cuffed her properly this time, and then simply hauled up the squeaking woman to her feet. Shakarr scoffed at the Executioner and the captive woman from where he was standing in the doorway before leaving to attend to his own duties.
The Executioner was alone with Clodagh, now.
Taking the opportunity that had presented itself, Kai braced his weight against the metal vent. His hand clenched against the textured grip of his pistol.
"No, don't—!"
The vent gave way and Kai dropped down from the ventilation shaft, his gun already raised up in mid-fall and his finger pulling the trigger—
Three bullets ricocheted off the Executioner's coat-covered back and into the concrete walls. The man's eyes widened fractionally at the sound before he twisted around and reached over his shoulder to unhook his weapon from his the harness on his back.
A massive greatsword would've nearly bisected Kai, if Hurk hadn't pulled his swing back just in time.
Clodagh had fallen to the floor, pale as a sheet of paper and trembling uncontrollably at how close she had been to being shot by an errant bullet or being sliced in half by giant sword.
"Am I dreaming? Because I swear this exact thing happened in my dream last night, but we were back in my high school's wrestling room and then it turned into that movie theater by your old apartment too—"
"You are not talking your way out of this one."
Kai surged forward with his .357 Magnum, already firing another shot when the flat of the greatsword deflected the bullet and then arced out with a defensive bash that sent Kai back a few steps.
"Hunter, this is Ceara! Where are you?! What's going on!? Reaper called in her retreat to the FOB without you!"
Kai didn't bother replying, instead focusing on closing the distance between Hurk and one of his bullets.
"Okay, I know how bad this looks, babe—" Hurk deflected another bullet and planted himself in front of Clodagh.
"You have no right to call me that!"
Kai lashed out with a high kick that cracked right against where Hurk's fingers were gripping onto the handle of his greatsword.
"Just let me expl—"
Another deflected bullet lodged into the ceiling.
"Shut up and let me shoot you!"
Hurk promptly dropped his greatsword and lunged forward. With a well-aimed right hook (while taking a hard left to his eye socket), he managed to send the gun flying out of Kai's hand. The weapon slid to the other side of the room right by Shakarr's desk.
"Please! I'm not your en—"
Hurk's knees got kicked out from under him and he crashed to floor, taking a struggling Kai down with him.
"Stop! Fucking! Talking!"
A scrappy elbow smashed into Hurk's nose, crunching cartilage.
"I'M FUCKING SORRY FOR THIS!"
With great difficulty, Hurk reversed their positions and grappled Kai into a tight sleeper hold. With the weight of a 210-lb man purposefully bearing down on his joints and keeping Kai securely in place, it took roughly a minute until the chokehold finally worked.
When Kai slumped to the floor of the office, Hurk checked the man's breathing. Once satisfied that he was simply unconscious and no worse for wear, Hurk got up with a sigh and cracked his neck.
Then, he roughly pulled Clodagh up to her feet. He unlocked the cuffs around her wrists, but he quickly stopped her from taking them off.
"Keep these on. If you wanna get outta here alive, you're gonna have to play the part and follow everything I say to the letter. Got it?"
Clodagh nodded slowly.
"Good. Now, go pick up the gun by Shakarr's desk. Make sure the safety's on, and then put it in the left pocket of my coat."
While Clodagh scurried away to pick up the weapon, Hurk hauled Kai over his shoulder with a wheezy huff of exertion and made sure that the man's face or arms wouldn't scrape against the edges of the greatsword holstered to his back while moving. When the gun slid into the pocket of his coat, he walked out of the office with a guarded look.
"Stay in front of me, keep your eyes down. If we run into anyone, let me do the talking."
Another meek nod.
Luckily, though, they encountered no other fomors while sneaking out the back door of the Foebellow Prairie – no doubt Shakarr had ordered all of his agents out to cause as much havoc as possible while his three main priorities were being dealt with. Hurk could only pray to the Goddess that he would be able to accomplish his mission in time.