Four people wearing white armour and helmets repel down and onto the witch's floor and another four come up the stairs blocking the witches escape. Minna, Gertrud and Sakamoto point their guns at the four that repelled down while Shirley and Eila aim at the ones that came up the stairs, the white cloaked soldiers raise and aim their guns at the witches and they wait. They wait in silence as they stare each other down and stare down the barrels of the each other guns. The silence and the passing seconds are unbearably tense and frightful. Every one of the witches nerves are being tested in this silent, potentially deadly standoff. Finally one of the white cloaked men breaks the tense standoff and fires a burst of led towards Minna only missing the top of her head by a hair. After that, after that one small burst of fire all hell breaks loss.
The armed witches return fire before the sound of gun fire fades away. One of the men goes down holding his neck. A bullet ripped through throat and he drops to his knees with his hands desperately trying to stop the blood spraying out of his neck but to no avail, less than a second later he lands face down on the floor dead. Two more men are hit in the opening fire but they somehow get back to their feet and continue on unharmed, one of them did at least as the other receives several bullets through his head from Sakamoto's gun before he could get into cover. The remaining six men get into cover and start to shoot at the witches who return the favour firing just as many bullets back at them.
"Shirley, Eila hold position, Trude, Sakamoto come with me" Minna orders as she advances towards the repelled men. Two of them are already dead giving them an advantage in numbers but this move will leave Eila and Shirley outnumbered two to one. It's a risk she's willing to take, as things are the witches are out flanked so destroying one of these groups must be her probity. Also by destroying the repelled team it puts them in the perfect position to attack the other groups flank. "Everyone else if you can make it to a gun then do so but don't take any unnecessary risks"
"I'm right behind you" Gertrud replies as she fires a burst into the right shoulder of one of the men drawing blood and disabling his right arm. "I got one wounded here"
Sakamoto dives wordlessly into cover beside Minna keeping her gun aimed at the unharmed man ready to kill him when he next sticks his head out before she says. "I got the other one covered"
"Understood" Minna responds with a nod.
Minna slowly and quietly advances towards the uninjured man as her two comrades cover her keeping both men in their sights. She slowly creeps her way towards man counting on the exchange of gunfire by Shirley and Eila with the other group to cover any sound she makes. She gets closer and closer until she's close enough to him where she can hear him breath and she has to hold her breath to stay undetected. She closes in and gets closer and closer to him until she can smell him and feel his warm in this cold library. Now that she's close enough she strikes. She throws her left fist around the corner hitting hard against the side of his thick armour. The man falls to the ground but to achieve this Minna broke one of her fingers against his hard helmet. The man turns over and looks Minna in the eye, his stare full of fear and hers blank of emotion. He reaches down to his hip going for his pistol but Minna doesn't let him use it. She kicks the gun out of his hand before she aims her own and fire a three round burst into his face. Minna may have one the fight but her broken finger and the pain alone is enough to kill her, pulling the trigger didn't help as the force of the recoil sends a wave of pain that makes her eye's water and nearly makes her pass out.
Minna was about to walk back and find Yoshika for treatment when the sound of a gun being cocked reaches her ears and the pressure of a barrel pushes into the back of her head. Minna breaks out in a cold sweat and she has to fight to keep her hands from shaking not wanting the man with the gun to see her weak and afraid. So this is how it ends she thinks as she waits for the bullet that will end her life, this is how it ends. The next thing she hears is the slump of a body hitting the ground, when she turns round to see what happened she finds the man dead at her feet and herself face to face with a grey suited man holding a bloody knife.
She stares into the black line across the man's eye seeing only her reflection. Her eyes quickly move to take in the man, he's strong, tall and the fact that she can't see his face makes him terrifying to Minna. She's had nightmares in the past where a man twice her size stood over her holding a knife to her throat and looking at the bloody knife in his hands gives her flash backs to those dreams and makes her shake in fear. That knife that bloodied Knife in his hands is what scares her the most. It's huge at least eight inches long and the red blood from the man it just ended the life of is still dripping off its steel blade. She what's to thank him for saving her but when she goes to speak no words leave her mouth. She closes her eyes, takes a quick breath and opens them determined to say her thanks but she can't, when she reopens her eyes the man's gone and she's left there wondering if he really was real or if she just imagined him. Only when the pain from her broken finger spreads through her body does she come back to reality and realises where she is and what's happening around her.
"Minna are you ok?" Sakamoto asks as she runs up to her.
"I'm fine" Minna responds looking her friend in the eye before taking a moment to take in the situation around her. "Take Trude and attack their flank, I'll go back to Yoshika for treatment then help Eila and Shirley"
"Yes ma'am" Sakamoto replies as she runs towards Gertrud to tell her about the plan.
Minna makes her way back to the others trying not to draw attention to herself as she moves from cover to cover back the others. The whole time she moves her mind keeps going back to the grey suited guy and her mind starts screaming questions at her demanding answers that she can't possibly know. Who is he? Where did he come from? Where did he go? Why did he save me? Is he friend or foe? This question take over her so much that she doesn't notice she's re-joined the witches by the fire until Lynne and Yoshika runs ups to her.
"Minna are you ok?" Yoshika asks as she runs up to her.
"Yeah I'm fine I just hurt my finger" Minna answers as she gets into cover. "Lynne, Erica, Perrine, Sanya go get a gun off those dead bodies over there, Yoshika can you heal my finger"
"Yes ma'am can I take a look at it?" Yoshika asks and Minna holds up her hand in response. "Ok now I need to set it before I start to heal it, I'm sorry but this is going to hurt"
"Its ok just do it" Minna tells her as she braces herself for the impending pain. Minna takes one deep breath before Yoshika moves her figure into potion sending a wave of pain more powerful and painful than anything she has felt before causing her to yell out in pain. "Ficken fölle""
"Don't worry the worst is over now" Yoshika reassures her with a kind smile as she starts to use her healing magic on Minna's figure. "There good as new"
"Thanks" Minna says as she bends her figure a few times testing it out and making sure its fine.
Once she's confident its ok she turns her attention back the battle. Sakamoto and Gertrud have begun their assault on the men's flank and between them and Shirley and Eila one of the men lays dead on the ground. Lynne and Sanya return with black guns that are very odd looking, the rifles magazines are loaded behind the trigger and they have some sort of sight on the rifles that has a red dot in the middle of a small clear glass plain. Perrine and Erica join Sakamoto and Gertrud and now the witch's fire power starts to take its toll on the men, the three remaining men retreat back down the stairs but one of them doesn't make it and he fails into a hail of bullets turning him into a bloody mess before he hits the ground. But before the witches can relax bullets start to hit all around them forcing the all to die to the ground hugging it for survival as they take fire from somewhere.
"Cloak Deactivated" A metallic voice says as the grey suited man becomes visible.
The grey suited man has gotten behind the two who are now firing at the witches from the other side of the balcony. He was right about something being special about those girl's as they seem to be able to hold their own against C.E.L.L and the Ceph. Now he's determined to help these girl's out so he can ask them a few question's afterwards. He crawls behind the nearest of the two guys with his knife drawn. He moves quickly and slices his knife through the man's throat before turn to the second man who has stopped firing and turning to face him.
"Maximum Strength" The metallic voice says again as it stimulates his muscles temporally making them grow and giving him super human strength.
He kicks the man as hard as he can so hard that he fly's across the room and through the wall landing into the snow covered street below. The cold air enter the building instantly and his suit has to work double time to react to the sudden temperature change so it can maintain his body temperature. Once again he turns to face the girl's and sees that they are all fine and that the two remaining men are trying to make a run for the entrance, unlucky for them that he's in their way. The grey suited man jumps down crushing the rear man under his feet and he drives his knife through his eye to make sure he's dead. He turns to the other man just in time to see his finger pull the trigger and his thumb to switch the gun to full automatic.
"Maximum Armour" The metallic voice announces and his suit turns into a metal like substance.
The Man open fires with every bullet he has in his gun and every bullet meets the same fate, they all bounce of the metal his suit has become without leave so much as a scratch behind. The man fires and fires not stopping once or firing once in controlled burst, meanwhile the grey suited man waits and watches the man waiting for his opportunity to strike. He doesn't have to wait long as within ten seconds of automatic fire the distinct sound of the gun becoming empty, tat click that sends fear through the man's body and mind while it signals the opportunity the grey suited guy has been waiting for has arrived. He charges the man running him through with is knife causing blood pour out of the man's mouth and the life to leave his eyes. Now he can turn his attention to the girls and find out what makes the so special. He turns round to jump up to the balcony while he pulls his knife free fearing that the girls will shoot anything that comes up those steps but when he turns round he's face to face with the redhead he saved and an eye patched women who's got her gun pointed at he's head.
"Who are you?" The eye patched women demands.
"Mio its ok he saved my life so I don't think he wants us dead" The redhead calmly says as she lowers the eye patched women's gun before turning her attention back to the grey suited man. "I'm Minna-Dietlinde Wilcke he commander of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, the Strike Witches and this is my second in command Mio Sakamoto" The women extends her arm towards him. "And you are?"
"Prophet" The grey suited guy replies as he takes her hand and shakes it. "Delta Force commander Raptor Team"
"Where is the rest of your squad then?" Sakamoto asks still maintain a stance like she's ready to fight.
"They each have their own mission and spread out over the city" Prophet tells her. "I can't tell you any more than that without authorization"
"Ok then so s Prophet a codename?" Sakamoto asks again this time more at ease as Minna puts her hand on her shoulder.
"Yes, my real name is classified"
"And whys that?"
"Because the people me and my team takes down are powerful and if they find out who we are hen our family and friends will be in danger"
"Ok then so know that we now about you can you please tell us what is going on here" Minna asks and Prophet has to look at her to see if she's joking.
"How can you not know it's been like tis here for nearly two months?" Prophet asks still trying to work out if it's true or not that she doesn't know what is happen in the city.
"It's a long story" Minna answers and is clear she really doesn't know about anything that's happened in the city. "So can you please tell us?"
