Lycaon
Lycaon stood hesitating before Belle's bedroom door, Belle overtly inviting him inside for an entire evening and night of heaven on earth. He took a step toward her…
His security sensor system went berserk. Red exclamation marks flashed over the HUD display on the inside of Lycaon's eyepatch. He froze, his eye quickly calling up the feed from the alerted sensors. It was three of the silhouette scanners on the front of Random Play. They advised that the city-scape scenes they monitored had experienced a change in outline. In this case: the addition of a vaguely humanoid shape on a balcony, and it was holding something of a vaguely firearm shape.
Most commonly this indicated some civilian on their balcony holding a broom or duster in a strange way, but Lycaon was impelled to confirm the false positive. His eyepatch pulled up the sensor data quickly, revealing the vague black-and-white outlines of the city horizon that the sensors could see. A computerized yellow square helped guide Lycaon's eye to the anomaly of concern. Lycaon zoomed in on it.
Yes, it was a humanoid on a balcony with some kind of stick…
But people generally didn't hold a broom over their shoulder...
Lycaon leapt at Belle, her eyes opening in surprise and a smile growing on her face. That expression turned to shock and confusion as he snatched her up into a bearhug and spun her out of the bedroom door. Nothing immediately happened.
"Lycaon! What-?" Belle was saying as Lycaon continued his momentum and ferried her three steps towards the bathroom door before-
Belle's bedroom exploded into a storm of broken brickwork and fragmented steel plates. The building shook under Lycaon's feet, a wave of superheated air searing into his back. Belle screamed and clutched onto Lycaon's arms. His eyepatch went berserk again, this time advising him that half of the sensors on the front of Random Play had just gone dead, as well as all of the sensors in Belle's bedroom and on her steel-plated windows. Not exactly a news flash!
Lycaon regained his feet and found himself unharmed, no stray shrapnel had come through Belle's bedroom door to strike him or her. Dust and the orange light of sunset streamed into the ruin of Belle's bedroom, broken stone and debris lay about in huge piles. Her couch was on fire, burning slowly.
Lycaon was not an expert in such matters, but he thought that the weapon had been an anti-armor rocket. That was military tech from the Outer Rim. Who could possibly have smuggled something like that this deep into the city?!
"My room!" said Belle. "Wise?! Is Wise, okay?!"
She tried to rise and perhaps head downstairs to where Wise was minding the storefront, but Lycaon took hold of her by the base of her neck and shoved her down and forward, stuffing Belle into a couching ball which he then hovered over like a shield. Lycaon's arms, legs, and tail splayed out to intercept any potential flight path of bullet, shrapnel, or debris.
"Be silent and wait, Belle," said Lycaon.
With Belle secure and as protected as he could get her at the moment, Lycaon used his gear to send out a general distress call to Victoria Housekeeping and to PubSec. But he couldn't trust anyone would arrive in time to stop the next phase of the enemy's attack. There was surely to be another phase.
How many attackers were there? Was there a safe way to escape? Or was the anticipated failure of the first attack simply a ploy to flush Belle out of the building and into the line of fire? That seemed likely, as the attackers would have no way to be 100% sure Belle was in her bedroom at the moment of that explosion.
Lycaon called up the final images of the dead silhouette sensors to try and see what the single confirmed threat was doing now. The scanners had provided a useful final gasp of information before their destruction: they had noted with computerized diligence that the silhouette of the city had changed again, this time the square of suggested focus was clearly outlining the onrushing projectile, it growing larger in each successive image frame. Lycaon ignored that and shifted his attention to the humanoid origin of the projectile: the figure was hunched over, adding another stick to the stick it was already holding.
They were reloading, Lycaon realized. He suddenly remembered an Outer-Rim Proverb he'd heard once:
One breaks the shell; Two cooks the meat.
Lycaon snatched up Belle, shoved open the bathroom door, slammed it shut behind them, and stuffed Belle down into the bathtub and flopped atop her. An instant later, the door of the bathroom exploded inward, striking Lycaon on the shoulder. If not for his thick muscles there, it likely would have crunched his shoulder socket- as it happened, the door served as a lucky shield- shielding his body from a lot of the flying debris that flew into the bathroom following the door. A wave of intense pressure and heat hit Lycaon, his ears felt stuffed with cotton, his lungs tightened, it felt like something was shoved up his nose. Mild pain rattled through his entire body. He heard Belle scream distantly under him, faint and distorted to his hearing.
Lycaon coughed against the super-heated air, but a cooler wind was fast to rush back to him. The second floor was clearly not safe. A third missile could be on the way, or- Lycaon looked outside the destroyed bathroom door to see clear sky. Half of the building's roof was just gone, turning the floor into a sniper's gallery. He tested his eyepatch. It was still working. The sensor suite had survived the blast, it being made of tough material and in the opposite corner of the floor from Belle's bedroom. A mercy, that.
Meanwhile, Belle was curled up under him, holding her head, and crying in the base of the tub. A perfectly reasonable reaction to surviving her first high-explosive shockwave. Lycaon gently gathered her up in one arm, her hands clutching desperately to his arm and chest. And with the broken bathroom door against his other side like a giant tower shield, Lycaon sprinted out of the bathroom and across the short distance to the stairwell.
BAM!
A projectile hit the door and passed through it, opening a clean hole near Lycaon's hip. Luckily unhit, Lycaon dove over the stairwell railing, abandoning the door as he did so. He curled himself around Belle like a furry ball and landed on the lower stairs, hard, the small of his shoulder blades crunching painfully to the ground. His rear thumped into the wall, and he had to quickly shove Belle away from him in order to right himself and regain his feet.
"Belle! Lycaon!" shouted Wise, his voice trembling slightly.
"Von Lycaon!" said the groundskeeper foreman.
Lycaon looked up. Wise was wisely on his hands and knees behind the shop counter. The groundskeeper crew was much less wisely standing about the lobby of the video store with fearful faces. These were not combat personnel but tradesmen. They were all distinctly out of their element now.
"Wise! Thank god!" said Belle, who started to get up and head for Wise again.
Lycaon pounced upon her, driving her to the floor by shoving down on her shoulder blades. "Stay down, Belle!"
Meanwhile, Lycaon's ears were rotating to a new approaching sound. An engine. And a powerful one. Straining at heavy load. Then there was a sudden metallic crunch and screeching, heavy metal scraping quickly over pavement, and then relative silence. Only the engine noise whirring up into super-high RPMs and whining.
None of Lycaon's roof sensors were operational, but a few on the front of the store were still up- one being a simple visual camera. Lycaon called it up with his eyepatch even as he snatched up a fistful of Belle's t-shirt, inadvertently revealing a significant portion of her butt (her undies were like a thong, but Lycaon didn't have time to really notice at the moment).
Through his eyepatch, Lycaon could see that the street outside was empty of pedestrians, most likely everyone having fled from the first explosion. An armored vehicle of some kind was on its side in the middle of the street, smoking, one front wheel spinning uselessly in the air. If Lycaon had time to speculate, he would think that the vehicle had attempted to ram through the anti-vehicle pillars at the near end of Sixth Street- but the driver clearly had underestimated the resiliency of those deep-buried barriers.
But Lycaon had little time to speculate because armed and armored men were slowly climbing their way out of the wrecked vehicle. Men in military-grade hardsuits.
Blast!
"Everyone! Into the office and get on the ground!" snarled Lycaon as he lifted Belle like a bundle of clothing, sprinted forward at a crouch, opened the door to the Random Play staff room, and unceremoniously tossed her inside. Belle made a small, indignant screaming noise as she went airborne.
Wise was again wise enough to move towards the same door, scrambling on hands and knees across the ground, and as soon as he was close enough, Lycaon snatched him up and tossed him inside, too.
The groundskeepers were running over, fully upright. Meanwhile in the image from the security camera outside, Lycaon saw three armed men with assault weapons line up and take aim.
"Down, I said!" shouted Lycaon, but at that moment, dozens of tiny holes appeared in the Random Play storefront and the air filled with flying bullets. The groundskeepers twitched in various places where bullets hit them and they all fell to the floor, still and bleeding profusely.
Lycaon slammed the staff door shut and activated the doorstops he'd installed. Belle and Wise were now locked in the final secure location in the building, but with the kind of weaponry the attackers seemed to have: stone walls and a steel door didn't seem to amount to much protection at all.
He flattened himself to the floor behind the counter. It wasn't much protection, but it at least hid him from view of the front door. His eyepatch once again became essential, he switched view to one of the cameras inside the lobby, it was the one above the backdoor- and it gave Lycaon a clear picture of the three soldiers entering the video store. He could even see himself flat on the floor in the same image.
The soldiers fanned out into the room, all guns focused on the closed staffroom door. Luckily, none of them seemed keen to get too close to it, so Lycaon was able to keep hidden and quiet for now. The soldiers cautiously kicked at the bodies of the groundskeepers in order to roll them over.
"No women. We didn't get her. What about that thiren? Is that the wolf?! Did we get him?!"
"...Naw- this is just some mutt. It's not the wolf."
"Duane, check the second floor. See if Taka got her with the rockets."
"Taka said she saw them jump downstairs."
"Oh, right. And no one's gone out the back. So the wolf must be in the office there with the girl. We don't have time to flush him out. Let's put the satchel on that door and blow 'em all."
"Ok! Gimmie the satchel."
"Uh.. I thought you had it."
"No, I don't have it! Duane! Satchel!"
"I don't have it. It was in the car."
"Fuck!"
Lycaon's ears went flat. He was apparently very lucky that these people were so stupid. Well equipped, but stupid. Or perhaps the wreck of the armored vehicle had frazzled them out of their plan of action. Either way, it gave Lycaon a better chance of successfully defending Belle.
But what to do? Even if these three idiots had left their explosives in the car, they still had three assault rifles all pointed at the door just over his head. If they saw him, he'd be full of bullets before he could do anything. Did he have any useful gadgets on his person right now? Anything that would work? Smoke bombs would be great! If he had any!
"Hang on! Hang on! I'll go get it."
"Hurry up, you dumb fucker!"
"Fuck you! I'm going!"
Lycaon's eyepatch watched one of the soldiers turn to leave, the other two remained in opposite positions with their rifles leveled at the staffroom. They were really being careful to not let 'the wolf' get out. Lycaon would rather they had less respect for him, so maybe they'd drop their guard and come over and let him ambush them…
He continued to watch through the security camera, and he saw the fetching soldier step out into the street. But something small, red, and two-tailed zipped by the doorway immediately after the man had exited. Lycaon only saw the figure for an instant. Meanwhile, the running soldier screamed loudly, falling to the pavement. He was bleeding profusely from wounds to both ankles. Something had sliced right through the man's body armor.
The screaming gained the immediate attention of the two soldiers still inside. Their guns rotated away from the staff door and instead pointed at the front door. Lycaon readied himself to spring, but as he did so, sensors in the parking lot began screaming warnings. A humanoid figure was rapidly approaching the backdoor of Random Play. Lycaon's eyepatch showed him a man with a red coat and two large pistols sprinting across the parking lot.
Reinforcements were already here!
The backdoor burst open, the stiff leg of Billy Kid preceding him into the building. The android stepped forward, red coat flaring behind him with the momentum. He raised both pistols upwards on stiff, straight arms- aiming one handcannon at each soldier.
"Random Play reserves the right to refuse service to anyone!" shouted Billy.
Meanwhile, the two soldiers had turned back around to aim their rifles at Billy's arrival. Everyone pulled every trigger. Gunfire erupted in the small room, bullets whizzing in every direction as projectiles sparked and bounced off combat hardsuits and Billy Kid's body- the android being entirely made of metal and advanced ceramics. Lycaon rolled over close to the store counter, the furniture decent protection from ricochets, at least.
Four guns went empty. All three combatants still standing and unharmed- Billy's red leather jacket the only visible casualty. They stared at each other in shock and silence for a half-second and then everyone simultaneously began frantically reloading.
The soldiers didn't see Anby sprint in through the front door behind them. She brought her sword around and caught the first man in the neck, the blade biting halfway through the armor. He made a gurgling sound and clutched at the wound, then falling to his knees immediately after Anby yanked the blade back out. She then leapt at the only survivor, hem of her skirt billowing in the air. The second soldier saw her coming, but with one hand holding an empty rifle and the other holding an unseated magazine, all he could do was raise a desperate forearm up to block Anby's descending sword cut.
The blade sank halfway into the man's arm, again somewhat stymied by the combat armor. But then the blade sparked forth with blue electrical energy and the man screamed, his body going stiff and twitchy as the current flowed through his soft parts. He collapsed to the ground, smoking slightly. Anby wrenched her blade free of the body.
"I deserve credit for one of those, Anby!" said Billy, still shoving rounds into one of his revolvers.
Andy took a calm pose and sheathed her blade behind her. Lycaon rose cautiously to his feet. Both Billy and Anby spun towards him, startled to see him suddenly appear.
"Hey, wolfman! You're okay!" said Billy.
"The proxies?" said Anby, urgently.
Lycaon indicated the still closed and intact staffroom door behind him. "Safe. But there is a gunman across the street."
Anby nodded. "Nicole got that one already. There seems to be no one else."
Lycaon sighed in relief but checked his surviving sensors. It was true: no other indications of enemies. The attack did seem to be over. He turned and knocked at the staffroom door.
"Lady Belle? Lord Wise? The danger is passed."
The door opened and Belle and Wise peeked out, Wise looking concerned and tired, Belle with the lines of dried tears on her dusty cheeks. The door opened wider and they stepped out into the ruins of their business and home. Both were wide-eyed at the damage and the carnage of bodies.
"Whoa!" said Billy, "Proxy Belle! I didn't know you were like a swimsuit model under your clothes!"
Belle looked down at herself, having forgotten she was still just wearing a tight t-shirt and a lacy black g-string. She blushed and darted back into the staff room. Everyone else glared at Billy Kid.
Anby frowned. "Don't be a pervert, Billy. Nicole has told you that. Many times."
"What?! How is that perverted!? I was just giving her a compliment!"