April 25th, 2011.
Saturday, 2:28 PM.
I got the call from Coil a couple of hours ago. We would be meeting up with the rest of our slapdash team, near our target. I floated Purity a message and then we met up a couple of minutes before we had to be there. We landed on the ground about twenty meters away from the members of our temporary team of villains. One of them immediately broke off from the group and shuffled over to us looking like they were in dire need of a shower and some clean clothes. It was Squealer, from the merchants and we met her halfway. Squealer came to a stop with her hands shoved into the pockets of her disgusting jeans and stared at us.
Purity glanced at me, but I waved her on and she strode past Squealer completely without fear and towards where an unknown woman was standing. Purity must have known who the unknown woman was because they started talking to each other. I brought my eyes back to Squealer. Was she going to try and beat me up or something? Squealer watched me silently for a while before finally breaking the silence.
"Why did you let Skidmark sit at the table?" Squealer asked suddenly, I noted that her voice was pitched high.
I hadn't 'let' anyone sit at the table, it was Skidmark's seat as far as I knew, I just told him to hurry the fuck up. What was she on about? I scratched the back of my head, wondering if I had started some kind of feud with the Merchants.
"Why wouldn't I let him?" I asked instead, wondering what her goal was exactly.
Squealer looked annoyed by that answer and pulled one of her hands out of her pockets and jammed it over her shoulder. I looked up and her thumb was pointing to the left of where Grue and Gregor the Snail were standing and talking to several others. I stared at the group trying to understand.
"They told us to fuck off, before you got there." Squealer said plainly, after a moment.
I blinked and stared at the group again in wonder, trying to figure out which one she meant. Grue seemed rather mild mannered when I had run into him in the past, so it probably wasn't him. Gregor the Snail had some beef with the merchants? It made no fucking sense at all, but then again villains were idiots, mercenaries were far superior in every way. Mercenary master race bitches.
"Gregor the Snail told you to fuck off?" I scratched my cheek wondering why it was my problem. "I would have still told him to sit at the table anyway though." I added after a moment.
Squealer was looking at me like I was an idiot, so I frown at her from behind my mask.
"What the fuck has 'Gregor the Snail' got to do with this?" Squealer demanded before looking over her shoulder at the giant with a paranoid look on her face.
I stared at her in without understanding, before I started to get annoyed. I opened my mouth to tell her to explain what the hell she meant when she spoke first.
"Why did you want us at the table?" Squealer asked again snapping her gaze back around.
I looked at her incredulously, she was kind of annoying. Is this what it felt like for people when they spoke to me? I stepped forward aggressively to establish dominance and it failed completely when Squealer didn't even move, and now I was stuck standing awkwardly close. I realized abruptly that she smelled absolutely awful. I considered tossing her into the ocean for a long moment before realizing I would need to go near the water and squashed the idea ruthlessly.
"Because Skidmark's a gang leader?" I explained simply staring down at her annoyed. "At a meeting whose sole purpose was for the gang leaders to talk."
I expected her to accept that, but she still wasn't satisfied though, she looked more confused now too. Usually I'd love shooting the shit with someone, but Squealer smelled seriously bad. I was about thirty seconds away from overcoming my fear of the ocean and tossing her in for a swim. I might do it after the mission was over though, thinking of all the water make my stomach twist.
"Yeah, but we aren't equals in there." Squealer said stuffing her hand in my face. "They treat us like shit, because you know." She jerked her head to the side, like I could somehow understand the gesture.
I leaned away from her hand, thinking that I absolutely didn't know. I didn't really keep up with the gang inter fighting. I was above that crap; all I knew was if anyone of them brought their fighting near my apartment I was going to start kicking asses. So far nobody had tried, well nobody except String Theory. I flinched at the thought, fuck. I shook my head and plastered a shit eating grin on my face, falling back into old habits to bury the pain.
"Heh, don't worry sweetheart." I leaned in and leered at her through the mask. "Nobody at that table was my equal."
I puffed my chest out and strolled off like I was top shit. Squealer snorted out a laugh and told me to get fucked, but she followed after me a moment later. Grue was still talking with two of Coil's men and Gregor the Snail, but Aural and an albino dude dressed in all white had joined their huddle now.
Squealer had caught up to me and was walking beside me, and Purity was still talking to the other woman against the wall. When I was level with the two of them, they peeled themselves off the wall and fell in step beside me. We strode up to the main group, all of us standing in a line, looking like the bargain bin Avengers. The two soldiers noticed our approach and turned to partially face us; no doubt having read the comic and struggling not to piss their pants. Grue turned with them and stared at them.
"Squealer, Urchin, Purity, Night." Grue said calmly, smoke flaring around his helmet. "Any problems?"
Coil had managed to choose the team leaders for all of the other teams and for whatever reason they had listened to him. Kaiser had immediately proclaimed himself leader of 'Team 1', but there looked to be some dissent in his ranks over the idea. Faultline was the leader of Team 2, Grue was the assigned leader for our lovely little 'Team 3' and Hookwolf was the leader of Team 4. I wondered if this many villains had ever worked together outside of End bringer attacks. It was actually pretty cool.
"Nah," I said, cheerfully. "Where do you want us, buddy?"
He relaxed a bit after that, I wondered if he thought I would try and contest his leadership? I wasn't that much of a dick, as long as the plan wasn't terrible, I was content with following along. Purity turned towards me for a moment and hesitated. I looked down at her curious, but she just turned back to Grue and nodded without comment. I realized that the all-white guy was watching her quietly with a frown on his face. Grue motioned them towards him and we all had a huddle, the teamwork almost brought a tear to my eye.
"Our target is a warehouse two streets that way." Grue pointed in a direction. "We don't who, or what is inside, just that it's one of the ABB's places."
I had a look in the direction he was pointing, but there was a bunch of buildings in the way. I glanced up at the rooftop of the building in front of us. One of the soldiers spoke up, the man was almost as tall as me which was pretty cool. The soldier however didn't look like a stick figure, he had at least 40 kilos on me, an absolute mountain of muscle. He was covered head to toe in dark blue military gear. He wore a helmet with a face mask, an armored vest with heaps of pockets and he had a weird looking rifle slung over his shoulder, I immediately nicknamed him Tallboy.
"The warehouse has three entrances, two guys at each; knives, machete's but no guns." Tallboy rattled off, "Plenty of windows, second story and above, they will see us coming from this side. Bottom floor has no windows."
The other soldier picked up where he left off, and I took a moment to study him as well. He was dressed much the same as Tallboy but was nowhere near as tall. The man was however extremely stocky, like someone had dragged the wide slider all the way to max during character customization. A fire axe rested on his shoulder and he had a shotgun strapped in a holster on his leg. I dubbed him Wideboy.
"Two Asian women at the corner of the next street; working, probably lookouts for the hideout." Wideboy said, "I suspect if we came in from another direction, we'd run into more of them. Stealth will be difficult."
Everyone mulled over the information for a bit, before Grue spoke up.
"We aren't going to bother with stealth then, but we will be going non-lethal," Grue said, making sure to meet everyone's face. "Here's what we're going to do."
He laid out the plan quickly and concisely, Grue definitely new what he was doing having obviously had some experience with planning out an offensive. Makes me wonder who came up with the stupid 'rob the bank in broad daylight while right down the road from the Wards' plan. Must have been one of the others that had thought up that little shit-show.
I wandered away from the group when he finished giving us our roles and prepared myself for the mission. Not much to prepare though, I did some stretches and some squats. I windmilled my arms like I was fighting a ten-year-old in glorious hand to hand combat to loosen up my shoulders. We would be pairing up, Grue would be working with Night, the formerly but recently re-recruited member of the Empire Eighty-Eight. I wasn't sure, but I thought that Purity might be trying to yoink her from Kaiser. I'd heard of Night before and she had a strange power. If no one was observing her she could instantly turn into some crazy Cthulhu-looking-motherfucker.
My respect for Grue's competence jumped up again, he was clearly trying to work some synergy into the pairings. Grue's darkness, combined with Nights own tentacle-hentai form seemed almost made for each other. Honestly, the two of them could probably solo anything short of Lung himself on their own.
The all white guy was apparently called Alabaster, and also a part of the Empire, he was immortal or something. He would reset to perfect health every couple of seconds, but apart from that he was just a normal guy, albeit quite racist. Alabaster would be going in with Gregor the Snail, who's power was to create a variety of chemicals in his body and then shoot them at things. They would make a good team, Alabaster being essential free to move through the big guys attacks.
Purity would be working with Aural, which didn't really have any synergy that I could see. Purity blew shit up with her kinetic blasts and Aural was just an unstoppable, untouchable melee beast. Oh, I saw it now, it was a range/melee team. I eyed Grue curiously for a minute, wondering if he played any video games.
The two soldiers were here as Coil's contribution to the war effort and would be acting out his orders via ear-piece radio's. I was kind of annoyed that Coil didn't actually have to be there in person, I was kind of looking forward to hanging out with the dude. I guess he wasn't much of a fighter. I wondered again, like I had millions of times before what Coil's power was and I came no closer to answering the question this time either.
Which left me dealing with Squealer, that bath in the ocean was looking more appealing by the second. I was on babysitting duty, I guessed. Squealer was a tinker, with a specialty in vehicles. Her own neurosis lent her to creating big ass ugly things. She couldn't bring her big ass truck with her, without alerting everyone in the god damned city. Besides, most of the streets had roadblocks setup, which meant she had pretty much fuck-all combat potential for the mission.
I eyed her for a moment in thought, I wonder if she could make me a hover-board like Kid Win's? Or a pair of motorized roller blades? I slapped my fist down into my palm, getting excited by the idea. I could be zooming up fucking walls and shit, it would be awesome. I stared at her wondering how I would get her to make me something. I wonder if she would take money, or if I'd have to threaten to beat the Merchants up.
I ran that thought over in my head for a moment, I was already stealing members from the other gangs, I could always poach her from the Merchants. I imagined a scale in my mind; with my super-powerful roller blades on one side and the Merchants on the other. Squealer noticed me watching her and stared back without fear. I nodded at the imaginary scale, and my roller blades won out.
'What?' Squealer said at my continued staring.
"Do you have like, a gun or a taser or something?" I asked her, not giving the game away. Surprisingly enough she nodded.
"Yeah I made a taser before I rocked up." Squealer pulled it out of her filthy pants pocket. A small black cylinder, with surprisingly clean and stylish design.
"Looks pretty snazzy. I thought all your stuff looked like shit?" I probed. Squealer crossed her arms and blew a huff of breath out her nose.
"My stuff doesn't look like shit, dickhead." Squealer said sounding pissed off. "I like the way my things look but I didn't have the time to make this look better."
I just stared at her, didn't have time to make it look better? Did Squealer have rocks in her head? It looked fine the way it was, anything she did to it now would ruin it.
"You make everything look like shit on purpose?" I said completely flabbergasted. "Are you retarded?"
She waved the taser in my direction threateningly, and I moved back a bit with a startled laugh.
"Fuck off, it doesn't look like shit," Squealer defended furiously, and after a moment added, "Dickhead!"
"No, you." I poked my tongue out and it hit my mask. I huffed and spun on my heel, walking further into the alleyway.
Squealer stomped after me cursing under her breath. I took the long way onto the roof, trying to think about how to best convince her to do my bidding. I yanked the fire escape ladder of the building down and climbed up. Squealer followed me up without any issue. I stuck a finger under my mask and scratched my chin, planning what I would say. Once we were finally at the top we stepped onto the roof and I walked over to the edge of the roof, looking down at the distant ground in thought.
I had a look around and saw the warehouse; we would have to cross another street to get to it. Squealer stepped up beside me and I shuffled out of her tasers reach just in case. I nodded once with a decisive noise and turned to Squealer.
"Make me a hover board." I demanded haughtily and Squealer turned to face me startled at the sudden noise.
"Why would I make you anything, dickhead?" Squealer said mockingly. I frowned; my plan hadn't covered this impossible turn of events. The negotiations seem to have taken a turn for the worst.
"Because I asked you too!" I said eagerly.
I was already dreaming of boosting around the city like a maniac, but Squealer huffed and crossed her arms in a mix of annoyance and amusement. I cut her off before she could respond.
"But when you make it, don't make it look shit." I insisted quickly. "Make it look cool like the taser, you know?"
Her amusement quickly turned to fury, and she took an aggressive step forward. Squealer yanked out the taser and swiped it at me again and I hopped backwards to avoid it. Squealer didn't follow.
"Fuck you! How about I make you a taser and shove it up your fucking ass!" Squealer snarled at him.
"Ha! I bet you don't even know how to make a hoverboard!" I added fuel to the dumpster fire that was her temper. "You're just scared!" Squealer scowled at him.
"Which is it dickhead? I'm scared or I don't know how to make it?" Squealer ripped my argument apart without mercy. "I'm not falling for that crap!"
Shit. My arguments are being defeated by a druggie; I was better than this dammit! I'd have to step up my game and hit her with something special.
"Make me a hoverboard or I'll kick your ass!" I said triumphantly, "How about that you fuck-knuckle!"
She tried to punch me in the face with her other hand, but I ducked backwards away. I made aggressive Kung-Fu poses at her from a few feet away, but she wasn't intimidated even when I added sound effects.
"You're the fuck-knuckle!" Squealer howled angrily, "You Fuck-knuckle!"
I gaped at her, unable to believe she would just steal my word.
"Good job!" I said mockingly, "You took my joke and said it back to me!"
Squealer made an incoherent noise of frustration and swung the taser at me again. I grabbed her forearm with a wire and quickly yoinked the taser out of her hand. Squealer backed up in panic as I started to jab the taser at her like it was a spear. She leapt back out of my range and tripped over on the edge of the roof. I had to grab her with wires before she fell off.
"Nice one, idiot!" I started laughing my ass off.
Squealer thrashed for a minute in rage before she gave me the finger and refused to talk to me anymore. How childish, I shook my head. I started to say something, but my phone suddenly dinged. Huh, it was time to go. I dropped off the roof immediately and brought Squealer with me flashing over to the next building and then down to the ground, her name suddenly made a lot of sense when she started squealing in fright. I put us both gently on the ground and tossed her back the taser. Squealer looked mad when she took it but made no move to attack. I strode forward towards the warehouse, ready to begin.
"Hey why are we just walking straight up!" Squealer said sounding worried but kept following me. "What if they have guns or some-shit!"
I blinked at her tone of voice, I guess guns were pretty scary when you didn't have superpower relating to combat. I grinned at her through my mask.
"Imagine being scared by a gun." I said haughtily. "You call yourself a villain, maybe you should go get a job in retail instead."
Squealers unease vanished and her face was once again furious, I considered it a job well done. I made sure to stay out of her range though, just in case she did try and zap me. I had already sent a bunch of tiny wires ahead of us and they came down onto the two guards at our entrance. The two men spotted us, and one pulled out a knife just as my wires suddenly multiplied a thousand-fold around them, tying them up and leaving them on the ground. Poor normies, but life was unfair. Squealer rushed forward and zapped one of the guys and I had to break my connection to the wire to avoid getting shocked.
"I'm shocked," I shook my head at her sadly. "Truly shocked that you would do this." Squealer huffed again and rolled her eyes, before leaning down and zapping the other guy as well.
The sound of gunfire and yelling suddenly came from the other side of the building, which indicated that everyone else was getting in on the action. I threaded a bunch of wires under the door and into the gaps around it before tearing it out of the wall. I stepped over one of the guys and over the threshold calmly. A guy to the left of the door immediately tried to stab me in the face and I whacked him with the door. He fell back onto his ass and I pinned him to the ground with the door. He thrashed around in panic as Squealer eagerly ran over and zapped him too.
Shit was getting chaotic further inside the warehouse, people were running away from a giant cloud of darkness that was slowly rolling across the width of the building. I could see a patch of the wall suddenly melting, Alabaster and Gregor the Snail stepped through the hole a moment later. I tripped a guy over that was coming at us from the right and Squealer bent down and zapped him too. He was out immediately, I frowned in thought.
"Hey, that's not lethal right?" I asked her seriously.
Squealer spun around and pointed the taser at me threateningly, I watched it carefully.
"Of course not, I don't kill people!" Squealer said looking upset at the accusation.
"Sorry, sorry." I told her quickly and grabbed another guy that was running across the scaffolding above us and dropped him next to her. Squealer poked him obligingly, accepting the apology.
I looked around the room, disappointed. This kind of sucked, it was just a bunch of normies, and they were all getting destroyed easily. There was no Lung, Bakuda, or Oni Lee in sight. I wonder if any of the other teams had managed to find them.
I tripped another guy who was trying to get out of the darkness, and the dude screamed as he crawled away from it, he looked back as the cloud covered one of his legs and then he was suddenly yanked back into it. Yikes, I started moving away from the cloud, Night was scary. I spotted Aural and Purity eventually, Purity had been blowing up the upper floors and terrorizing everyone inside, forcing them to go down into the bottom floor to get away from her.
Aural walked down the stairs and stepped under a guy's machete swing with ease. She reached down and stabbed him in the foot, the guy immediately dropped his weapon and fell to the ground clawing at his shoe. She took another two steps and another guy suddenly pulled out his gun and shot at her three times. Aural moved suddenly and sliced the air three times in front of her at obscene speed and sparks flashed in the air off the knife as she deflected them away from her. I had already reacted when I saw the gun and shot a wire around the man's arm and snapped it ruthlessly, the gun dropped from his hand with a shout. Aural smiled down at us pleasantly and continued on unhindered.
I stared after her in complete awe. That was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, I turned to Squealer to see her reaction, but she wasn't even looking in that direction. I gaped at her in disbelief. The last guy up on the catwalk suddenly took off running away from Aural yelling all the while, the man reached the railing and leap straight off before landing on the ground with a crunch. His yelling cut off a few moments later when Squealer walked over and zapped him.
That was it, huh. All the gang members had been subdued, there was no hostages, no bombs and no capes. How disappointing, I barely got to do anything at all. Grue strode out of his cloud of darkness and tasked us with dragging all the unconscious people into a pile and searching through the warehouse for any valuables.
There were a bunch of crates on Gregor's side of the warehouse, nailed shut. I tore a lid off one and had a look inside, clear plastic bags filled with green stuff. I didn't know fuck all about drugs, but this was probably just weed. I cracked another bunch of crates, but they were all the same.
"We get to keep this right?" Squealer demanded excitedly.
I shrugged, if she staked a claim on some of it, I doubt anybody would fight her too hard over it.
"Split it with everyone I guess." I couldn't care less; I'd never wanted nor used drugs.
I'd probably just give my portion to someone else, see if I could swing some cash out of the deal. Wait a fucking minute, I thought suddenly.
"I'll give you my share if you make me a hoverboard!" I declared victoriously. "or a pair fucking motorized roller-blades like that anime!" I added after a moment.
Squealer hesitated for a moment and didn't say anything.
"Hey, I'll even go find anything you need to make them!" I tried to sweeten the deal, but she still hadn't said anything.
What the hell man?! Why was she so against making me something, it was pissing me off to be honest. She clearly wanted my share, so why not? Maybe she couldn't make it after all. She shook her head after a minute, looking away.
"Are you kidding me?" I said, frowning. "Why the hell not?" This was such bullshit.
I never got to hear her response because Grue wandered over and looked into the crate.
"Wow, that's a lot of weed." Grue said, surprised. He turned to see where everyone else was and called them over.
The others started to group up around us, tossing whatever valuables they had found next to the crates. Our treasure mountain was growing, bless it.
"How are we going to split it?" Alabaster said sounding bored, his arms were crossed.
We debated over who wanted what and who would get what, no one was really happy in the end, but nobody was pissed off either. It was a roughly equal share each, including the two soldiers. Squealer got the two crates she wanted, I also picked up two, I was going to keep trying to bribe her. Purity took a crate and some of the cash. I didn't bother tracking what everyone else got. I offered to help ferry people's hordes wherever they wanted, surprisingly nobody accepted my help all organizing there own transportation, Ungrateful bastards. Once we had all the treasure out and ready for transport, we called in the warehouse's location to the authorities so they could come clean up after us. We told them we had taken down a gang base and to come arrest all the asshole's inside and then we high tailed it out of there before the police arrived.
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Another one down, if there is any more mistakes please point them out and i'll jump on them when I have the time.
