Let me be completely clear about one thing right now; Tyler's extraction plan was piss poor to start with. They would have been better off with ski masks or some shit. The fact they got ratted out didn't help anything, but the approach was all wrong to start with. For one thing, the use of an EMP was bound to start a shitstorm; I'm not sure if that was really a problem or possibly a help. I suppose they could have used the chaos created by the inevitable looters and vandals to hide their activities, but for that to work they would have been better off making themselves to look like part of the crowd.
By the time I caught up, the Brightstone troopers or whatever they want to call themselves had the Brujah held off, and the building was well locked down. As should have been expected, it didn't take a lot of time for the looting and general assfuckery to begin. The smart play here would have been to don ski masks or something and wait for the shit to really hit the fan and then jump into the fray; they could have hidden their efforts by looking just like the rest of punks raising hell. Since they were now in official looking uniforms, the only play they really had was to engage in crowd control. In its own way, this helped me out; some of the guards chipped in with the crowd control, and that made an opening for me to slip into the building undetected. As reinforcements flied out the door, I easily slid in behind them unseen; my obfuscation unbroken and made all the more convincing in a blackout.
If the scene outside the building was a mess, then the scene Tyler and his two clowns had going on was a total shitshow. I just hoped we could count on Fenris to have her act together better than this.
Let me lay the scene down for you:
By the time I got into the Brightstone building, one of those Brujah clowns had taken three shots from three different angles. From the report of their weapons, I'd say the Brightstone goons were packing .45's. Those things hurt, even if you happen to be a big badass vampire. The other one that went in with Tye – I don't remember their names – was fending off three thugs of his own. Well, I guess it was more like two; he knocked one of 'em cold before the other two pretty much fell on him. From the look of it these guys were just a little bit stronger than your garden variety mortal thug, but I figured he'd be okay for the moment. Since Tyler rushed the guy I pegged to be the commanding officer with a shoulder tackle like some kind of football lineman amped on crank, it was pretty clear to me my priority should be the goons with the guns. One of them, the one farthest from me, took another shot and tagged the Brujah again, and the one closest was getting ready to take another shot of his own. The third one was looking to get a clean shot on Tye without hitting his boss.
Moving in on the closest goon, I grabbed his shooting arm by the wrist and snapped it backwards. That's the thing with Potence; you can do that real convincingly. I damn near snapped his hand clean off. Still holding on as he screamed in agony, I dropped obfuscate and pulled him in close so he could get a good hard look at my beautiful smiling face. Much to my satisfaction, his screams of pain turned into shrieks of terror as a head-butted him, smashing his nose flat as a pancake and shattering his goggles.
"My eyes" he wailed, "oh sweet Jesus, my eyes!" I took a moment to glance at his face and saw that a few tiny shards from his goggles flew back into eyes. The thought crossed my mind that the poor sap might be permanently blind, the last he saw being me. I'm not sure if I should feel good about that or not, but part of me did. Not all of me; there was part of me that figured nobody deserved that.
Yep, the beast and my humanity were at odds tonight.
The goon looking for a clear shot switched targets. Tye was doing a good job keeping his guy in the path of any available shot as they went at it. There was that, at least. Clean shot goon was taking aim at me. Hoisting wailing blind goon overhead, I tossed him across the foyer, him landing on his partner in a cross-body fashion. With luck, one would try to attend the other's wounds. There was another report from a .45; our last remaining shooter must have figured his first target was done with four slugs in him. His shot winged me; knocking me off balance for a fraction of a second. It seemed this guy was a crack-shot. If he wasn't dealt with double quick, he'd be real problem. Seeing Tye was proving to be a match for the boss – I wondered vaguely why these mortals were proving so tough, in particular the boss, this ain't no video game, after all – and that Tye's buddy was down to one adversary, I turned and leaped at the crack-shot.
The look on his face as I cleared the room to land right on top of him, snarling through my bright and shiny perma-grin suggested to me that he was in the process of making fudge-brownies in his shorts, but he still managed to get another shot off. This one nicked my ear. I had to hand it this one; even when panicked that a Nosferatu in all my glory is about to drop in from the sky into his lap, while making them brownies, he was still able to hold steady enough to damn near hit a moving target; the target being the source of his terror. As I landed, he crumpled under my weight and the momentum of my descent. His .45 clattered away on the marble floor. Still, I had a modicum of respect for the crack-shot; as we struggled a little, I pulled his goggles off before mashing my fist into his face, knocking several of his teeth cleanly out of his mouth before his lights went out.
I got up and turned to view the scene. Tye looked like he was finally getting the upper hand on the boss, but the second shooter was a cold-blooded bastard. He left his own guy to wail and moan in favor of moving in on the Brujah that didn't get pumped full of lead. Instead, he got the stake. He dropped, torpid. The cold-blooded bastard and the thug that was still standing by then had decided to rush to their bosses' aid. I managed to intercept one of them; but cold-blood gat all the way to Tyler, who greeted him with a back-elbow. I'm not sure if that was deliberate or a fluke, but it was effective; the blow landed right on the button. That was when the thug I caught up with revealed he had a piece, too. He nailed me, point blank, in the gut. It was just enough to lurch me over just as a fine mist started to fill the foyer and the elevator doors started to get pried open manually. About a half-dozen more guards started to spill in.
"Well, I guess we're really screwed now," I muttered, dropping to one knee and nailing the thug in front of me with a low blow. The thug doubled over, out of the game for the moment as I healed my wound and got ready for the next round.