P
Palonis
Guest
-Subway Tunnels-
While all this unusual activity was going on far ahead in the tunnels, the Crusade group and Lars were still straining to hear the noises. Advancing more slowly than they had done before, they stopped periodically to make small sweeps. They had long ago left the mangled corpses behind them and didn't wish to become more of the same.
"Visual contact, in the water," piped one of the soldiers near the front. Looking over the edge of the platform, Lars also saw the bobbing figures of two men, both of which looked limp. The man with the technology pushed past him and took a look at his scanner before nodding and making some sort of sign to the captain.
"Do you recognize them?" Lars asked quietly, having never seen the two men before.
"Their identity is none of your business, lieutenant," the squad captain said irritatedly, "so be quiet and keep watch while we-" The cyborg suddenly staggered to the side as something long and hard slammed into him and kept on going. Other squad members quickly dodged the odd hanging object, but one of the members near the back still took a hit in the face and fell over.
Staring after the strange protrusion, Lars looked up higher on it and saw the outline of something that he was certain had only existed in books up until now, flying down the tunnel in the opposite direction that the squad was heading. "That...that's an alligator!" he exclaimed in shock and surprise, causing the other squadmates to hold their ears.
"Quiet down, you idiot!" hissed the captain in pain. "We're whispering for a reason!"
"Sorry."
"Captain?" whispered one of the other squad members. "Do we move on?"
"Two of you, stay behind and secure these men," the captain replied, already back in professional form. "The rest of you, with me." Lars couldn't help but notice that candidates for staying behind were remarkably swift in responding. The rest of the group, Lars included, continued on down the tunnels.
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Unbeknownst to them, the target they were seeking after had already stopped once more following the little escapade with the alligator. This time their interruption was in the form of the local militia. They were approximately a mile out from the Underground City, so encountering a patrol was only to be expected. If Zion had seen the warning signs, perhaps he would have just charged on through them and kept running until his feet had fallen off.
"Hey there Zion!" spoke the militia's commander. "Catch anything good today?"
"Hi Victor," he replied. "I kinda lost my rod, actually."
"Well, that's no problem. Looks like you caught yourself a girl just fine without it." Giving an appraising glance across Sahar's ruined clothing, he added, "Heh, looks like you already had some fun with her too. Wish I coulda seen that."
"What? No! It's not-"
"Hey, a man's business is a man's business. Who am I to judge, right?" Turning again to look at Sahar, who was already beginning to favor him with a nasty look, the militiaman asked, "So, if you ain't underage, wanna stay with a real man?"
"Man? You aren't a man. You're just stupid," she replied. "You'd make a lousy toy."
Before Zion could stop him, Victor lunged forward and slapped Sahar across the cheek. "Nobody calls me names, bit-"
The words died in his throat, possibly because his windpipe had suddenly been crumbled inwards. Her face livid with anger, Sahar bent backwards both the man's legs and his upper torso, folding them into one another, before slapping him against the floor and the ceiling until the man was a fine paste. Staring in shock initially, the remaining militiamen raised their assorted guns and fired at this young woman, to which she responded by having their guns suddenly reverse themselves, resulting in them shooting themselves in the stomach or the arm or in the legs.
There was no play to Sahar's antics anymore. There was only anger, like a kid taking a tantrum, she was determined to break every single thing she could get her hands on.
Levitating one whimpering man in front of her face, Sahar lifted his pistol out of his side holster and hovered it in front of his face while screaming, "You're all idiots! All of you! You hurt me, you drag me, you take me from my mom, you never let me sit down and rest, and you know what? I'VE HAD IT! I'M FINISHED WITH ALL OF IT! I HATE YOU ALL, AND I'M GONNA KILL YOU!" At that last word, she discharged every single bullet in the pistol's magazine into the militiaman's skull and then threw him away into a wall.
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"Gunshots confirmed! All weapons armed!" Having sped up their approach, the remaining squad members (and Lars) were now close enough to hear the noises of the carnage up ahead. Lars was finding it hard to keep up, what with his leg, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on through the pain. Whatever was up ahead was no doubt going to have the home court advantage.
As they closed in on the source of the noise, the squad could see that there were working lights farther ahead. As they came further, something slid in front of their feet, which a quick glance showed to be the bottom half of a man. It was a testament to their training that they didn't vomit right here.
The closer they came, the clearer a certain noise became. It sounded familiar, but the acoustics of the tunnel made it rather unclear, but as they were a few hundred yards away from the sound's source, it suddenly took on its proper form: a horrible shrieking laugh, a higher pitch than Lars had ever heard. And the instant the noise became recognizable, the lights up ahead exploded in a bright flash which, amplified by the nightvision, was enough to turn the entire squad's vision temporarily white.
And in the midst of that whiteness, the head of a young woman loomed, her face spattered with blood. With a wide grin and eyes open as widely as one could imagine, she said four simple words, sufficient to make Lars almost paralyzed:
"I CAN SEE YOU!"
(Summary: The squad continues on into the subway, leaving behind two soldiers to contain 02 and Setem, who had beforehand been cooked into insensibility by Sahar increasing the temperature of the water. Meanwhile, Zion encounters one of the Underground City's militias, and the leader acts mean and disrespectful towards Sahar. This turns out to be a mistake.)