TORG Eternity - Dead Legion
The Angel Descends
Cairo - Nile Empire
It was impossible to miss the shining black car, even in the thickening night. The driver opened the rear door and a man in an outrageous costume stepped out. A white loincloth, sandals, gold-colored bands around his forearms and collar around his upper chest. His head couldn't be seen, hidden by a headpiece with gold and blue stripes like an ancient Egyptian death mask, except that the face had the fanged maw of a cobra.
Strangest of all were the weapons holstered at his belt. They were like guns, but the barrels were coils of blue metal humming with pent-up electrical power.
A sinister car that belonged to an even more sinister man. Exactly what was to be expected in the Nile Empire.
Two broad-shouldered men in suits, overcoats and fedoras got out and framed the man in the outrageous costume as he went inside a warehouse. The two were dangerous men who knew their job well. That included noticing other dangerous men, which one of them stopped and looked around for before following his boss inside.
Still, he failed to spot the pair hiding in the shadows, who'd tailed them to their clandestine meeting. Two who knew better than most the value of stealth.
"That's the Hooded Cobra. He used to be one of the pharaoh's main flunkies," she said.
"Used to be," the second repeated.
That got a slight chuckle out of her. "He let an important discovery slip through his fingers. Because of that some neophyte Storm Knights probably beat the pharaoh to some powerful artifacts."
"That would displease the pharaoh greatly."
Again a slight chuckle. "Greatly. But you have to be more careful around the ones trying to prove themselves, like Hooded Cobra. They're meaner, and they take more daring risks, than the ones who are already on top. The ones on top get comfortable. Sloppy."
Then her amulet started to glow with a life of its own and she was hovering out of the alley to the roof of the warehouse.
Hooded Cobra's entourage wasn't the only one in the old building. Three Egyptian men, their eyebrows and mustaches greying with advancing age, were sitting at a wide round table with suited bodyguards behind them. Two next to each other on one side, and another alone across from them. They both looked up as the masked villain entered too, then took his seat at the third point of the table.
"Thank for coming tonight, my friends," Cobra said. "Jabari and Jahi Famzy, and Msrah Sayed. I'm well aware this is not an alliance called together lightly, some of the most powerful syndicate leaders in Cairo." He was parroting what the Gaunt Man had said to the other High Lords, but what was wrong with copying from such an obvious success?
"We're well aware of who we are," Jabari Famzy said with measured but unmistakable annoyance. "If you know this is a meeting of the city's elite, show it by respecting our time and telling us what this is all about."
Hooded Cobra's expression was impossible to tell thanks to his mask, but he responded with a sharp grunt. "To negotiate terms of tribute," he replied.
"Then why weren't we called to meet with Wu Han himself, instead of one of his masked stooges like you?" Msrah Sayed grimaced. The Famzy brothers nodded along, severe expressions twisting their faces.
A soft mocking laugh. "So much power, but so few brains," Hooded Cobra chortled. The ganglords scowled and their bodyguards reached for their weapons, but Hooded Cobra didn't seem worried. "This is a secret meeting to discuss better arrangements for you and your people, my friends. I have a few tricks in mind that'll let us all keep a bigger percentage of the proceeds."
The gangsters fixed him with icy glares. "And what tricks are those?" Jahi Famzy demanded.
Hooded Cobra looked up then. "Oh, of course! The first one is cutting the dead weight from the syndicates."
All of a sudden the doors on the warehouse walls burst open and men in loincloths and striped headdresses came rushing in.
Shocktroopers of the Nile Empire. Who all carried Schmeisser MP-40 submachine guns and had them trained on Sayed and the Famzy brothers.
Everyone at the table grabbed their weapons at once. Sayed and the Famzy brothers moved with impressive speed for such tenured criminals, but the shocktroopers already had their weapons out and started firing. Bullets filled the air.
The three gangsters raced into the maze of crates toward the rear of the warehouse, their bodyguards covering their escape and returning fire. One guard went down when they were halfway to the stacks. Another clutched his chest and slumped to the ground just before his bosses disappeared into the shadows between them.
All through the mayhem, the Hooded Cobra sat at the meeting table with his arms folded over his chest, cackling to himself while bullets whizzed through the air around his head.
Yet he was as surprised as any other criminal in the room when the skylight suddenly exploded and a woman in a white leather jumpsuit flew in. Attached to the front of her outlandish outfit was an amulet glowing fiercely with golden light.
She made such a spectacle almost none of the criminals saw the other intruder swinging in through the shattered skylight. Dirty brown khaki pants and a button-up shirt that had once been white, now tinged permanently tan from constant exposure to the sands. A gray fedora topped his head and a matching gray domino mask covered his face.
Clutched in each hand was a Colt .45 automatic. He squeezed their triggers and the guns of two imperial shocktroopers fell silent.
"The Angel!" Hooded Cobra gasped in a mixture of surprise and horror. He kicked over the meeting table for whatever cover it would give him and drew his bizarre pistols. He fired and a bolt of electricity sizzled across the room at Angel, singing one side of her suit as she darted out of the way. Angel held up her hand and fired back with a ray of heavenly light.
"Ghost, neutralize the biggest threat first!" she yelled over her shoulder.
"I am!" the masked man who'd jumped down with her yelled back. Ghost pulled the triggers and his guns spewed lead. Two more shocktroopers fell.
Angel shifted her focus from her protégé back to Hooded Cobra for a second and fired another ray of light that hit a bolt from his gun. Both shots disappeared in a terrific flash. "You're focusing on the small fry and letting the masterminds get away!"
"How am I supposed to get to the masterminds through a hail of bullets?!" Ghost demanded, cutting down four more shocktroopers then dropping from the stack of crates to the floor and running behind another stack for cover. "Not all of us can fly!"
"You're supposed to work with your partner, to begin with!" Angel yelled back.
"How dare you ignore the mighty Hooded Cobra?!" the masked villain shrieked and fired both of his electro pistols at once. Angel gasped and dropped closer to the floor of the warehouse to let both rays burn holes in the roof instead.
Angel launched another ray of her own at Hooded Cobra that made the villain scamper back. Then in quick succession she fired another ray that looped across the room and downed every shocktrooper in sight. She called over her shoulder, "Think you can get to a couple gangsters intact now, Ghost?" At least this way he'd be clear of the serious action. He could handle a few aging gangsters.
Without a word he saluted and jumped off the stack before running into the darkness, making no sound as he went. There were things Ghost still had to learn, but Angel thought he still had reason to be proud of some of the skills he'd developed, like his stealth. That left her free to focus on the villain.
Who'd been focusing on her the entire time, as one of his electric pistols ripped into Angel's torso.
She held in a scream of pain. The agony broke her concentration and made Angel fall to the hard cement floor, landing right on her shoulder, only making it even worse. But Angel didn't make a sound. She couldn't let Ghost hear it and come running back to help, and let the gangsters get away. Besides, she wasn't about to let a two-bit villain have the satisfaction of thinking he'd hurt her.
So as Hooded Cobra stomped closer to deliver the finishing blow, cackling with every step, Angel waited for just the right moment.
"You thought you could measure up to me, the pharaoh's favorite! The Hooded Cobra! My rise is inevitable! Come one, or come all! I will rule this miserable world at the side of—"
It was the right moment.
In a flash she lifted both hands and blasted Hooded Cobra with all her firepower at point blank range.
Hooded Cobra didn't even get the chance to make a sound of surprise before he was blown across the room and his head smashed through the front wall of the warehouse. Angel's head was still swimming too badly for her to fly after him, but she ran across to where Hooded Cobra's legs were sticking out. She loosened a rope tied to her belt to secure her prisoner, amazed their little raid was going to end so quickly.
Then the wall seemed to exploded. Shards of debris peppered Angel. After a second she chanced flying up out of the way, and when she was hovering at a safe altitude wasn't surprised to see what had happened. Standing in a hole in the wall was a massive man of strong European stock, almost as strong as his thick sideburns. His sleeveless shirt showed rippling muscles in his arms, his fists covered by heavy boxing gloves with a stylized cobra emblem. Angel recognized him at once; it was Brick-Knuckle Branko, an ex-boxer and Hooded Cobra's muscleman.
"Don't hurt the boss," Branko grunted. "He yells at me when he gets angry."
"He'll be plenty angry after I catch him," Angel retorted.
Branko shook his head sadly. "Then I gotta stop you." All of a sudden he jumped, and to Angel's surprise he got high enough that his punch was actually about to connect. She shot backward and the side of Branko's glove still grazed her body, feeling like it was stuffed with a metal bar.
"You're in a bad place, big guy," Angel said and shoved her palm over Branko's face. "Let me enlighten you."
He bellowed from surprise as she fired a light ray right into his face. Branko fell hard enough to leave an impression in the floor, but right away he started getting back to his feet. He looked straight at Angel even with his eyes squinted almost shut from the flash he was still waiting to clear. Then he ran at her, fists swinging.
Angel thought fast and zoomed between the stacked crates. If even one of her light rays from point blank couldn't stop him, she'd have to improvise. The crunch of cracking wood told the heroine Branko had followed her, and was itching for payback.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five stacks of crated valuables had passed by Angel's vision. She slowed, clutching her head and groaning. Branko's steps came faster when he saw his opponent weakening, like so many brutes Angel had fought before. Just because she was a woman, she had to be weak. Fragile.
Like the crate stacks she blasted with her light rays while she flew up to the roof of the warehouse as fast as she could. A sound like the entire building collapsing followed her up when the weakened bases sent the entire stacks crumbling down on top of Brick-Knuckle Branko. She hovered to observe the scene of destruction underneath to be sure he didn't get up from that; the piles of toppled boxes didn't shift an inch. Branko was out, at least for the moment.
As fast as she could, Angel flew back to where she'd left Hooded Cobra. Not to her surprise, there was nothing there. Only a sandal with shredded laces laying on its side on the street, left behind in Hooded Cobra's haste to be somewhere else.
Sighing, Angel cruised to the back of the warehouse, making sure Branko was still buried on the way. When Angel cleared the back of the piles of cargo and got to the loading area she saw Ghost, finishing handcuffing the three gang bosses Hooded Cobra had been trying to double cross. The three were chained together in a circle to make running away as awkward as possible. Angel smiled. Looked like the kid was learning something after all.
"Good work, Ghost," she said. "This will be a real blow to organized crime in this city."
Her partner nodded. "What about Hooded Cobra?"
"He got away," Angel said with disgust. "At least I knocked out Brick-Knuckle Branko."
"Branko?! What are we supposed to with an ape like him?" Ghost asked in shocked disbelief.
Angel shrugged. "Doctor Frest will think of something."
Jabari Famzy spat on the floor, his expectoration landing on Msrah Sayed's shiny black shoe. His fellow gang boss gave him a deplorable look, but Famzy's attention was focused on the pair of masked heroes who'd captured them. "You think this is even going to slow anything down?" he demanded. "You think Wu Han, or gods forbid, Pharaoh Mobius is going to take any notice of what you did tonight? Those two conquer whole worlds together!"
"We've got to start somewhere," Angel replied. "Might as well be with you."