IC: Chasing the Prize, We always get our mark Options

[BishopMcQ]

Helios:
By sheer luck or perhaps a higher power, your leap clears you from the path of the incoming bullets. You feel the inrush of air as explosions rip through the wall behind you and decimate the chair you land next to.

[BishopMcQ]

Graves slowly moves up the stairs, each step carefully placed. He takes up a position flanking the door behind JT and Bishop. Weapons held low, there is a disconcerting sense of movement in front of him as the shotgun with grenade launcher waivers in and out of view where Bishop's hands grip it.

[Bastard]

Still concentrating on the invisiblity spell held on Tigger, JT works with some more mana around him.

[BishopMcQ]

Team:
JT's features are covered in the mask of Dog and you hear Kane howling in the distance. As the ex-Lonestar Mage exerts his will on one of the Society members, the gunman's body is enshrouded with mana forming a hybridized man and hound. The magic doesn't settle in and the sound of a short burst exploding at point blank range shakes the room.

The Marquis de Lyon collapses to the floor in his bedclothes. His head is mostly missing, splattered against the ceiling and wall.

[Bastard]

"oops"

[HeySparky]

Edana's steps up the stairs are steady in spite of the fear that has her stomach in knots. Two... She takes a deep breath... Oh don't let this end b-- gunfire and a spray of blood and brains. What was the Marquis' head is splattered on the wall and the shamaness can't help but gasp at yet another sight she'd never thought she'd witness outside the trids.

I can't, I can't. They'll kill him... The Sword!

Sturmdottir, they serve a higher master. I can smell their obedience. They will not falter.

I have to try.

"Wait!" Edana calls out, her voice is high and tight, accent heavy. "Show them," she says to Herne. She lowers her bow slightly. Come on... just move the gun a little... just a touch.

With a menacing growl, Herne lowers the bow and pulls the sword from behind his back. He holds the blade out flat facing Ballefour, so the Society men can see it plainly. He blinks golden eyes impassively, though the surge of hunting lust across their link makes Edana want to pant.

[HMHVV Hunter]

Helios hears the Society member's gun go off, and he knows that it can only mean one thing: their target is dead.

Great. There goes our hope of ending the HMHVV plague in Seattle. It's gonna be frickin' zombie nation back home.

Gritting his teeth, Helios prepares for his next move...

[BishopMcQ]

Herne kneels and slowly draws the greatsword over his shoulder. Spreading it openly and non-threateningly across his arms, the spirit shows the blade to the Society members.

Closed helmets stare back at you, but the assault rifle does not falter.

"Leave woman."

"Your price is paid."

"Take your hound."

[Buddha72]

Tigger remains loose and focused. The air thick with tension makes his skin crawl but he waits.

[HMHVV Hunter]

Helios gets up from the floor and runs out of the room, into the hallway he came in from.

He presses his back against the wall immediately to the side of the door, out of the mercs' LOS, and triggers the commlink.

"SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED! REPEAT! SHOTS FIRED IN THE UPSTAIRS BEDROOM!" he yells over the commlink.

Dammit...I did NOT sign up to deal with heavily armed and homicidal mercenaries!

Knowing that nothing he's carrying will even scratch a bunch of armored mercs, Helios tries a novel approach, at least for him: talking.

"Who are you guys and what the hell do you want?!" he yells from the hall at the Society members. Maybe if the price wasn't too high, they could get out of this alive.

There's no way we can win in a fight when they're willing to kill and we're not, Helios thinks.

[BishopMcQ]

And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

Synapses fire, muscles begin to move and time stands still. Three of the Society members telegraph their intention to attack, initiating a reprisal from Tigger and a bloody instant. The thought itself, enough to trigger a deadly action.

A lone hunter standing amidst the blood and broken furniture lashes out at the man he knows is a heartbeat away from attacking him. Magical forces ripple through the air coalescing into immaterial claws that puncture and tear the suit of heavy armor. Tigger steps in close, denying the Society member the use of his heightened reach. He takes a cleansing breath and shoves his fist through the protective plating. Blood seeps out of cracks, mixed with the rancid scent of bile as the holy warrior stumbles back again.

Heightened hearing is barely able to separate out a quiet prayer in Latin from the echoing cacophony of assault rifles reporting. One shooter tracks Helios as he runs for cover and opens fire, the other takese aim at the space just below the phantom shotgun. Both take obvious pains to keep Edana clear of their line of fire.

Before the dust has a chance to settle, you see the reason that you were on this continent perish. Knees buckling, the man described as a genius and a murdering sociopath crumples. His neck torn from the space between his head and shoulders by a spray of explosive ammunition. Blinking, a look of shock fills his face as he locks milky eyes, with his would-be saviors.

Lastly, the Society member who lays nearly eviscerated, twitches in agony and executes a final mental command to his rifle. The grenade launcher belches out a grenade which skitters across the room, hitting walls and finally coming to rest in the ruined remnants of an armchair.

[Ecclesiastes]

Drek... so much for turning the tides.

Bishop levels his shotgun at the grenade and launches a freeze foam canister at it, hoping that the hardened foam will help muffle the impact of the blast. He then turns his launcher on the mercs and fires another canister.

[BishopMcQ]

The room fills with white foam as it expands out from two mini-grenades obscuring vision and bogging people down.

[BishopMcQ]

Graves advances slightly to get a clear line of fire, two short bursts grind into the white foam and security armor. In the corner of his vision, he sees Helios collapse to the floor, bleeding profusely from the chest and abdomen.

[BishopMcQ]

Under the sordid shroud of invisibility, JT ducks low and moves as quietly as he can over to Helios' body. The ex-Lonestar cop's body comes to rest firmly interposed between the Society and his dying companion.

[BishopMcQ]

Tigger:
One second you had been fighting, then the sound of a muffled explosion behind you and the world went white. The foam begins to melt away from your body as your very aura turns acidic and begins to eat at the restraining compound.

You see that the foam is holding down the Society member that had been harassing you directly. Most of the furniture is enshrouded in the same binding material that coated you. Turning your head from behind the couch that helped block part of the blast, it is clearly obvious that someone from the doorway just blew a large chunk of the freeze foam off of the body of one of the Society members. His armor has a few cracks in it from the explosive ammunition and his legs are still trapped.

You can hear the minor movements and smell the plastic artificial scent of the heavy armor, but with the exception of the one bounty hunter that you ripped apart with your hands, the other scents are all blocked from you

[BishopMcQ]

Team:
The sound of vat grown muscles stretching and chemically reinforced joints popping comes through on the edges of your heightened hearing. You can see the one Society member that had most of the Freezefoam blasted clear of his body bend back with the flexibilty of a gymnast constrained by steel and ceramic. He slowly begins to work free of the foam, but it will be an arduous process.

[Ecclesiastes]

Bishop smiles a bit as the foam keeps the mercs busy. He takes a shot at the two remaining, his shotgun blasting off a round at each.

[toturi]

Seeing his previous target still standing, Graves leans out from cover and fires another 2 bursts into the same target.

[BishopMcQ]

There is a similar feeling to shooting fish in a barrel as Bishop and Graves both press the advantage and fire. The Society member that was almost free, falls back in a heap as explosive rounds chew through the soft joints of his extended body. One leg snaps free of the foam with the other twisting at an odd angle obviously hinting that the bone has broken.

Heavy capsules filled with paralytic toxins slam into the foam casings of each of the two remaining Society members. DMSO flourescing on the thermographic level with the chemical interaction between the various compunds. With luck the payload will still work its way into the bloodstream of the European bounty hunters.

[Buddha72]

Tigger takes a deep cleansing breath and strikes downward, looking for the most vulnerable point of the foam holding his body captive.

[BishopMcQ]

With a speed and power built from long hours of training and internal clarity, Tigger drives his fist home through the foam. It crackles and sizzles as the acid coating his arm burns it away. After a second strike, the hardened foam crumbles and breaks, cohesion giving way to the disharmonic waves rippling through it.

[Buddha72]

Tigger steps free of the freeze foam and sends a quick message out over comms. "What now?

[Ecclesiastes]

"I hit them with some Gamma Scope, that should put them out for a while. Lets grab what we need and get the heck out of here."

[BishopMcQ]

With little effort, the team concentrates fire to gun the Society members down in cold blood. The Freeze foam absorbs most of the blood, taking on the deep red color of iron rich fluids.

The scent of cordite and body fluids fills the air washing over those with any sense of smell and slamming with the weight of a Mack truck into the unlucky ones to have a heightened sense. After the echoes of gunfire have quieted, the calm silence of death and emptiness fills the house. The only sound to be heard is the team's own breathing. At your feet lay a dead noble, your bounty, and a duly-authorized team of bounty hunters and paranormal threat experts. Below you on the lower floors of the mansion, the house staff and chateau security have been laid to waste.

All in all, heightened recall gathers a total of about forty metahumans who have died tonight.

The question remains, how did the Society know where to find Ballefour? A known quantity, expected to be efficient and ruthless, moving with a higher purpose behind every step, how did this team end up here, tonight?