Initially, MAGES. and Falcom didn't think that the attackers with the guns were capable of much more than they already had done; Simply put, all they'd achieved was a basic hostage scenario by using threat of violence to keep victims in line.
But as their advance upwards continued, with squad after squad of their enemies dropping like sacks of flour under their companions' hurricane of bullets, the grimaces on each of Jack, Luke, James, and Josh's faces indicated that they probably had reason to be concerned about their opponents' other motives.
Also, MAGES. was pretty sure she was going to become deaf because of the absolutely ear-destroying noise of close-proximity gunfire. How was Jack still able to hear anything after firing the minigun with no ear defenders?
As they reached floor seventy six, there came an unusual humming noise from several floors up. Jack glanced around and eyed the floor around, keeping the minigun lowered as the group advanced to the next staircase. "Anyone else hearin' that?" he asked, scanning the atrium. "Low hummin' noise. Few floors up."
"That sounds like floor one hundred," Falcom noted, brushing the back of her head slightly but keeping pace with the others. "That's the weapons and dungeon crawling gear floor. That's...that's where you-"
"That's where I was when this all kicked off, aye," Jack nodded. "Managed to..."
He paused.
"...deal with...some...guys."
MAGES. grinned.
"Ah! So you disarmed, subdued, and apprehended them!" she chuckled, a smug grin on her face. "That's the London I know." Jack swallowed, smiling nervously, following along behind the group as they went up a set of stairs.
"Ahaha...if by, 'disarm', you mean, 'dismembered'...then...yeah." MAGES. suddenly stopped smiling as Luke began chuckling.
"Heheh. 'Disarm'." He glanced back at Jack. "I get that one. Because you cut their arms off." Jack hefted his massive gun in his left arm, paused, and pointed a finger at Luke.
"Ayyy." came his rather strained comment. He was quick to grab the gun again, as the veins on his left arm began to look like a topographical map of a mountain range. "So," he gasped, wincing and rolling his left shoulder. "Any ideas what's up there?" Luke shrugged, keeping his eyes down the sights.
"Not a clue, mate," he replied calmly. James tilted his head, moving at a steady speed up the stairs.
"Me either. Sounds like a machine, I suppose."
MAGES., despite being rather disgusted by what Jack had just admitted to, thought hard for a moment.
Then her eyes widened in realization, and she stopped dead.
The others looked at her, as she stared at the ground wide-eyed. "What's up?" Josh asked.
MAGES. swallowed, and looked up from beneath her hat brow. "...I recognise that noise." Jack shrugged.
"Alright. What is it?"
"It'd the sound of an Avenir Anti-Gravity Generator. A very distinctive sound; No other company produces an anti-gravity generator that creates a noise." Falcom frowned.
"Isn't Avenir responsible for most military contracts?" MAGES. nodded.
"Indeed. That means I have reason to fear we'll be facing a very tough opponent shortly."
"Really?" Josh asked, once more idly inspecting his pistol's magazine. "What makes you think that?"
"I helped design the generator a few years ago."
A few eyebrows raised.
"Really? Fuck, you're clever," Jack whistled.
'Maybe she can help me with my little science project...'
"The generator was used successfully in a number of autonomous drones, enabling them to hover and fly as they needed. The generator worked fantastically. Naturally, the military saw potential in this, which was somewhat the project's downfall."
"But I thought you just said the military accepted it?" Falcom noted, as the group began up the stairs once again.
"They did," MAGES. nodded, "But after a number of international field tests, the models were deemed 'inhumane for combat situations involving humans'." Jack suddenly felt a bit more confident.
"Ah, well, that's what they said about me, wa'n't it?" he replied cheerfully, somehow slipping into a London accent in spite of the fact he had never actually lived in London. The others just chalked his change of accent up to the author realizing London wasn't being comedic enough, and ignored it. "I got more methods of doin' 'arm than the North Korean NHS! Said that if I joined the army, the other countries'd all shit their pants and surrender and make our army redundant!"
MAGES. shook her head at his very close impression to your average British plasterer. "The problem is, once they were kicked off the battlefields, they were quickly rebranded by Avenir for the civilian market. The noise upstairs in consideration, I have reason to believe our adversaries may have found and deployed some of these drones."
Jack shrugged. "How hard can it be?"
The instant reaction of Josh, James, and Luke was to flash back to the amount of times that Jeremy Clarkson said that, and how often it foreshadowed massive cock-ups.
A few minutes later, on floor 100...
"Holy shite, you weren't joking about fucking them up..." Luke whistled, poking Jack's chainsaw victim with his boot. As a welcome back gift from when he'd last been there, the rather repugnant smell of blood and intestinal juices hit Jack's nose, prompting him to grimace, but shrug nonetheless.
"Yeah, you know I don't lie much," he said calmly, before gesturing all around. "Besides, there's a bunch of guns on the floor if you want them." Luke tilted his head side to side, crouching down to have a look at an M4 rifle.
"Eugh, Yankshit..." he murmured. "'ere, James. Come have a look at this one. Who the fuck paints and puts stickers on their gun?" The Welshman wandered over, crouching next to his friend and eyeing the rifle in question.
"Oh yeah, you're right..." he murmured, inspecting it whilst stroking his chin. After a moment, he put his lower lip out and shrugged. "It's fuck ugly."
"Yeah. Bet this dickhead paid a few hundred over the odds for this thing, too. The fact he ruined this rifle with a shitty paintjob and stickers is just Globally Offensive."
Meanwhile, MAGES. had already gone pale, covered her mouth to stop herself from being sick all over herself, and dropped her staff in horror, before running over to a nearby stand to vomit behind it.
Jack looked worriedly at the direction she'd gone in, then glanced at Falcom. "You...you alright with this?" he asked hesitantly. The woman looked only a tad upset, then nodded.
"I already knew you like to do this kind of thing," Falcom sighed, leaning on her sword whilst the pleasant harmony of MAGES. heaving loudly and Josh squealing in fright after Luke chucked a piece of brain matter at him rang out behind them. "I mean...the nightclub was pretty harsh, and this is a whole new level of just...nah...but...you made it pretty clear from the start that you're not a 'talk-it-out' kind of guy." Jack thought about it for a moment, leaning on the nearby stand that had been flipped onto its side and thrown. Near his foot, he could see someone's head split open like a melon where the metal market stand had landed on them and crushed their skull.
Fuck. He needed to get more of that STR stuff. Good shit.
But regardless, he wasn't sure if Falcom was entirely right. Like, literally the first thing he did in Gamindustri was stop a war with his tongue. And of course, the sense of satisfaction that came with knowing he'd stopped it was great. But the fact he was a good fighter as well probably meant nothing.
As he thought, he cast his gaze over to MAGES.' legs. He could see them trembling behind a stall, and in front of them, there was a pile of brown slop. "She gonna be alright?" Jack asked, not taking his eyes from MAGES.' location. Falcom sighed.
"...I dunno. Probably best if you go talk to her."
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply and trying to block out the smell of human blood and gunsmoke.
'How'm I meant to calm MAGES. down after this?'
Eventually, he slowly exhaled, bending down to pick up the magician's staff that she'd dropped. "Alright." Without a further word, he stepped over the meaty red brain paste coating the floor in front of him, and made his way over to where he had seen MAGES. standing.
After vaulting one of the desks, he moved a set of boxes out of the way, and made his way into the 'alley' between the different stalls. There, he was greeted by the sight he had been expecting. MAGES. had removed her hat and coat, placing them onto some boxes. She was leaning against that stack of boxes, breathing heavily, shaking, and teary-eyed. He slowed as he approached, finally stopping when he was about eight feet from her.
"Ah...MAGES.?" he began carefully, before cautiously offering out her staff. "You...you dropped summat..."
The magician offered him no response, instead continuing to stand and breathe heavily, staring at a pile of her own vomit with a horrified expression plastered on her face.
Slowly, Jack leaned the stick against a nearby crate. "I'm...I'll be over there...if you wanna join u-"
"How?"
Jack froze.
"Eh?"
MAGES. shot him the dirtiest look he'd ever seen her give anyone, and he shifted uncomfortably. "How could you do something like this to other human beings?" she repeated. Jack thought for a moment, then slowly shrugged.
"Them or me. I had to subdue them, or they'd've killed me."
"Mr. London, as hard as this might be for some trigger-happy oaf like you to comprehend," she snarled, "There's a difference between 'subdue' and 'murder'. What you've done here is the latter, and it's sickening." Jack glanced at the pile of vomit on the floor, and gestured to it.
"I can tell," he replied flatly. "Now listen-"
"No, you listen," MAGES. snapped, standing up and jabbing a finger at him. "Monsters, I can handle. Armed terrorists, I can handle. You nearly dying, I can handle. What I cannot handle is you committing a massacre of this scale, and not even showing a hint of remorse. If I had to guess, you didn't even try to negotiate terms of surrender with them, and just outright opened fire. You're...you're just...you're inhuman."
"I'm efficient," Jack corrected, folding his arms. "I took four STR boosters at once and killed an entire platoon of the world's most dangerous soldiers, single-handedly. If I didn't waste those motherfuckers, you wouldn't fuckin' well be here, would you?" MAGES. opened her mouth to retort. "Don't you fuckin' cut me off, I've got more to say."
She narrowed her eyes and bit her tongue to avoid lashing out.
"Accordin' to Luke, they shot down a civilian helicopter earlier. Innocent people have died, and you think I want to negotiate with these cunts? They're scum, MAGES.. They're scum that I'm going to take pride in wiping from this tower, with or without your help." MAGES. shook her head, but before she could make a comment, James called out.
"Jack! Radio chatter sounds like they've figured out where we are!" At the sound of this, Jack began to leave.
MAGES. sighed, rubbing her forehead. "In this situation, it's difficult to tell if you're the villain, or them."
Jack paused, and faced her again. "This isn't about heroes or villains. This is about me and my guys takin' on Sergei and his guys. You wanna talk heroes and villains, then fine." There was a hesitation as he stared right into her eyes. Finally, he spoke after a few seconds. "You wanna talk hero?" MAGES. set a serious expression onto her face, and nodded.
"More than anything."
"Then you've got two choices. One, you stay here, hide, and I'll get Chaz to come pick you up and take you to ground level so you can run home like nothing happened. You made it out alive, and you can tell the world what the heroes were doin' when nobody else would act." MAGES. folded her arms, snorting slightly.
"And two?"
Jack stared flatly at her.
It just occurred to her now that she'd never seen Mr. London being this serious about anything.
Jack grabbed MAGES.' staff, and offered it out to her. "Two. You take this staff, help us fight our way to the top, and you be a goddamn hero. No middle ground here, MAGES.. You comin' with us?"
She hesitated, and stared at her own staff.
She had never been so reluctant to take her weapon's weight into her hands. And yet here she was, debating whether she could do it, now that she knew just what she was getting into.
Just as she reached out to grab it, a loud bang smashed the silence. The fabric back-cover of the stand they were behind suddenly ripped, and Jack was forced to step back as a bullet pinged off the metal crate beside him. At this point, he chucked the staff at MAGES., turned and jogged out of the alleyway, drawing his minigun as he went. The sound of the device spinning up came as a steadily increasing whir, before a second later came the deafening bzzzzzzzt of it spewing out bullets like crazy.
MAGES. stepped back slightly in response to catching her staff. Her heel stepped in her vomit, causing her to yelp loudly and stagger back, barely catching herself on a nearby box. She wasn't even in the fight and she was struggling to breathe.
Ahead of her, at the alley's exit, she could see Jack, Luke, and James, holding an effective line against the incoming enemies.
Jack was occasionally flinching on receipt of bullets, but Luke and James weren't doing as well; The former of the two was diving in and out of cover, breathing heavily whenever he received a shot. Eventually, he placed down one of the healing boxes from earlier, but he remained behind cover.
James was doing very well in not-being hit, but eventually he took a single shot, which knocked him over and forced him into cover. It was in cover that she noticed how fast he reloaded; He had his pistols reloaded in a split second every time he went behind cover.
Maybe he'd been trained to do such things in a short Time during a Crisis.
Just as she considered how she could possibly help them, there was a sudden metallic scrape beside her feet. Looking down, she noticed that a floor grate was moving, a disturbing green glow emanating from it as the panel shifted.
Slowly, MAGES. stepped back, gripping her staff tightly. Finally, the vent cover was kicked straight upwards, flying from its mount and coming to rest just to the side of it. After a hesitation, the escapee rather quickly pulled himself out, revealing himself to be a man clad all in black tactical gear, with a pair of night vision goggles that emitted an ominous green glow. Clutched in his hands was a small rifle, and clipped to his belt was a baton similar to Mr. London's.
For a moment, he stayed in a crouch, staring ahead at a wall. Then, he turned to face MAGES., looking almost blankly at her.
She had no idea what to do, and so she did the same, the sounds of battle raging around the two of them outside their alley of (near) tranquility.
MAGES. noticed that her phone was emitting an unusual buzzing sound now that this man was present. Was he jamming her mobile phone?
After another few moments, the man turned to look back down the alley at where MAGES.' male companions were making their stand. His gaze seemed to linger on Jack, who was still firing the minigun like nobody's business. In the direction he was firing it, the sounds of the bullets' recipents seemed to indicate that the other side was not doing so well.
The tactical green goggle man looked at the floor for a moment, almost as if he were considering something.
But what was he considering? Attacking London?
The vent man finally decided to remain in a low crouch, turn around, and crouch-run in the other direction, still saying nothing as he tottered away down the alley, eventually disappearing from MAGES.' view as he reached a vent in a distant wall, pulled it off, and clambered into it, before picking it up and replacing it in its original position.
MAGES. stared at this in concern.
Did she just have one of those random encounters where it doesn't affect gameplay and is just there as an easter egg?
Because if she did, she really hoped it wouldn't come back and bite her posterior.
Sighing, she looked back at Mr. London, who was beginning to show signs of injury; His stance had shifted, as though he were barely keeping himself stood up with his right leg. Luke was on his knees, vomiting up a thick foaming jet of sick, gore, and what was probably his lunch from earlier, before he leaned back against cover and feebly wrapped bandages on his wounds. James was trying to plug the three holes in his chest using coins.
MAGES. huffed, narrowed her eyes, twirled her staff, and pulled her hat lower.
Mr. London wanted her to be a hero?
He would have no idea of heroism until he saw what she was capable of.
Slowly, she began to pace down the alley, keeping her head down and ignoring the bullets zipping past her head.
"Such pathetic weaponry..." she mused, finally stepping out of the alleyway. Within a few seconds, the thugs at the other end of the room would open fire on her, too.
She put her plan into action.
Raising her left arm towards the enemy, MAGES. channelled her inner energy into her most dangerous move: The Blasphemous Theoretical. Inhaling deeply as the ground began to shake, MAGES. made sure to plant her staff into the ground for extra dramatic effect.
"Behold!" she cried loudly, twirling her staff as the enemy gunfire suddenly focused on her. "The ultimate combination of science, and magic!"
Jack listened to her words and beholded what she was doing, but still did not stop shooting rounds downrange. Multi-tasking was one thing British people were good at by default, as well as conquering lots of countries at once, and drinking lots of lager then shitting in a bin.
Somewhere along the line, a number of purple rings had formed in a protective shell around MAGES., causing the bullets that approached her to simply disappear in a flurry of data. Yet, in spite of the combined firepower of at least thirty men, MAGES. was just as calm as ever, slowly swiping her hand across her face as she began to hover.
The winds were picking up, Jack noticed.
But how was there even wind?
They were indoors...
Before Jack could even quiz MAGES. over this, she snapped her arm forward again. "Utter your final words!" she shouted. Across the room, the large cluster of men was dragged together into the center of a large purple pentagram-covered circle, their cries of dismay and confusion quickly turning to yells of pain, mixed with the deafening roar of something utterly inhuman that was probably something to do with MAGES.' oddly satanic ritual.
At this point, Jack let go of his minigun's trigger, and placed it on the floor. When his ears stopped ringing, he noticed the incredibly low hum that accompanied MAGES. magic, and just how much the floor was shaking.
He turned his bewildered gaze back to MAGES., who had extended her staff out to her left. A huge, dark ball of energy appeared at the end of it. "You will be forever trapped between dimensions!" shouted the wizard, before she cast the sphere towards the group of enemies. Within a moment of its impact, the ball had turned into a huge black hole which began to suck in everything that was near it; Market stands, some dead bodies, and most importantly, almost every single one of the men who had been firing on them.
Jack felt an unstoppable pang of sadness as he contemplated just how many of their guns he would never get to steal, watching the screaming soldiers disappear into the abyss.
A few seconds passed, and the black hole died down, MAGES. slowly descending back to Earth.
Across the room, Jack heard an American shout "Fall back!", accompanied by cries of panic and a few dozen footsteps that steadily became quieter. A thick bank of smoke was pouring from what looked to be a damaged portable generator, obscuring a section of his sightline directly across, but from what Jack could gather, at least 75% of the market stands that were originally in the room were now drifting between dimensions.
The room had a huge empty patch in the middle of it. Lying all around, there was a number of things that didn't look to have been picked up by MAGES.' unstoppable singularity; Potions, a few bits of body armour, and ammunition, all arranged in neat lines and spaced evenly about.
Jack stared at the scene in utter shock, rubbing his forehead. "What...what the utter fuck was...?"
He paused, and looked at MAGES., who was smirking in what looked to be self-satisfaction. "...I...I don't think you realize just how fuckin' awesome you just became," Jack said finally. MAGES. just grinned.
"It was their own mistake in crossing the Mad Magician," she said smartly, twirling her staff.
Before Jack could profess his love for her and her insanely destructive powers, MAGES. frowned. "Do you hear that sound?" she asked suddenly, looking out over the arena. Jack was confused for a moment, but then he noticed it.
Humming.
It was different from earlier.
This time, it was much louder, and was occasionally intersected by a heavy smashing sound.
Jack narrowed his eyes, and picked up his minigun, limping steadily into the open arena. As he went, he swept a nearby HP potion up and drank it in one go. Whilst he initially winced at his wounds being forcibly pulled shut, he simply bit his lip and stuck with it. Now that he wasn't on the verge of death, he could walk upright.
After a moment, he stopped, and stood in the center of the wide open hall, aiming his minigun around the sides of the 'ring'.
The humming and crashing became louder.
It was originating from behind the smoke.
"Those sound like footsteps, MAGES.," Jack called back. "I thought you said it was a gravity generator or summat."
"I did," replied the magician. "Though it is entirely plausible that Avenir used the technology for something else."
Jack kept his gaze ahead on the smoke as a silhouette began to steadily appear in it.
Said silhouette was roughly twenty feet tall, and some elements of it were glowing bright red. It was humanoid...kind of. That didn't count the massive horns atop where Jack figured its head was, and the fact its left arm looked to be one solid object rather than having fingers.
Eventually, the smoke from the generator gave way, and Jack grit his teeth, pushing his sunglasses up his face.
Slowly stomping towards him was what used to be an Ancient Dragon. Judging by the amount of metal on it, the thing had probably been captured, and had a whole bunch of Avenir cybernetics equipment grafted into its body. Its left arm, however, was entirely gone, replaced with some fuck-huge blaster cannon of likely immense power.
Not only that, but it was easily four times taller than Jack, meaning it probably used to be an Alpha Ancient Dragon.
MAGES.' jaw dropped completely. "A-A beast...fused in unholy matrimony of dragon and machine..." she stuttered. Jack steadied himself.
"Don't need your William Shakespearin' right now, MAGES.!" he yelled, cutting her off as the giant creature stopped in front of him. "Get the others out of here!" After a hesitation, MAGES. began nodding, then turned and rushed over to get James and Luke healed and headed for the escape.
Jack glared up at the creature. "One of the only things standin' between me and Sergei Smashyournun is you."
The behemoth just bared its teeth at him, raising its arm cannon slightly in preparation. A glance into its mouth showed a large amount of blood and fabric, as well as a set of dog tags hanging limply from the creature's lower canines.
Jack grinned.
"I'm gonna hazard a guess and assume the Yanks tried fightin' you."
In response, the monster stepped forward, taking a wild swing at him. Jack barely dodged it, but the strike had hit his minigun and thrown it clean across the room. He stared at this for a moment, then looked back at the Cyber Dragon.
OK, that was a line crossed.
"That's it, I'm gonna turn you into fuckin' glue," he said firmly, withdrawing the rocket launcher from his disk and levelling it with the dragon.
He hadn't used it before, and now was as good a time as any.