Pain is the only true sign you're alive

Wolf woke up with a pounding headache. Seeing only pavement in front of him, Wolf quickly surmised his mech had ended up face down in the streets. The controls were entirely dead.

Stabilizing gyro must have been fried... Wolf thought. trying the egress hatch, he found it jammed. So with one nano-augmented punch he knocked the hatch off and climbed out into the streets of Beverly hills. Behind him and the mech was what was left of the hotel he had smashed through.

Wolf scanned the mech with his PDAP, downloaded all the data, and mailed it off to Knight for analysis. Something he might want to look over... he thought to himself.

Looking down the street, Wolf could see a crumpled heap of metal that was the remains of the First Order mech that brought him down.

Wonder if the assassin survived...

He began to walk over towards the mech, keeping the GMR (Golden Magnum Revolver) drawn. As he got there, he saw no sign of the assassin. However, there was a trail of blood leading away from the cockpit. Following the trail at a distance, Wolf realized that the drops suddenly vanished.

Well of course, he or she must have healed...only question is, where is the assassin now?

Then he suddenly felt a shift in the wind, and knew all too well where the assassin was hiding. He spun around and brought his fist up to hit...nothing.

Well, nothing that could be seen anyway. His fist contacted with the cloaked assassin's chest, stunning him for a second, but recovered almost instantly and knocked the revolver out of Wolf's hand with a kick that would've severed a normal man's arm.

The assassin remained cloaked as he launched his attack on Wolf. However, Wolf was keeping his mind clear and his senses enhanced, able to pick up just how the assassin was affecting the air around him, and reacting accordingly to parry the attacks.

"What's the matter?" Wolf said to the spectre, "Afraid to let the wolf see his prey?"

The assassin attempted to make a sweep kick, but Wolf jumped it and kicked the assassin right in the face. However, the assassin managed to grab Wolf's outstretched leg and throw him into the side of a building.

The assassin laughed, the voice echoing through the abandoned streets. "It seems that you are the only prey here..."

Wolf shook off the pain and adopted a Dragon stance. The assassin's voice scoffed at his actions. "Nothing you do can stop me."

Wolf felt the assassin coming at him, and he ducked down, reached out, and plucked the cloak generator seemingly out of midair. The assassin materialized, looking very confused, and left himself open to a quick punch and legsweep combo from Wolf that left the assassin on the ground facedown.

The assassin got up and prepared to fight Wolf again. "Well, it seems I have underestimated your skills, heretic. No matter, I shall still kill you."

Wolf changed stances, drawing his sword and taking an offensive position.
"I doubt it...but you're welcome to try."

Wolf began slashing away with the blade, attempting to strike down the assassin. However, the augmented zealot simply moved too fast. Dodging each slash effortlessly, the assassin caught Wolf with a roundhouse kick to the head, expecting to drop him. Instead Wolf simply spun with the kick, and brought his sword around, slashing the assassin across the chest.

"Argh...second time today..." the assassin said angrily just before getting his legs knocked out from under him with a sweep kick. Wolf then tried to impale his opponent, but the assassin rolled away from the downward strike, kicked the katana away, and then flip kicked Wolf in the chin.

Wolf managed to right himself in midair, drawing his .45s as he did. Sighting the assassin still on the ground, he opened fire with both guns, expending the 7 round clips in only 2 seconds. Landing back on the ground, he realized he he might as well have just shot at air. Only 3 rounds had not been dodged by the assassin, and those wounds were quickly sealing up.

The assassin laughed softly and drew a Desert Eagle. "You ever read the Bible?" he asked Wolf.

"No..." Wolf answered as began to inch backwards.

"Well, there's this favorite passage of mine, Ezekiel 25:17, that I like to quote at times like these. It feels kind of appropriate. 'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men..."

By this time Wolf had taken the opportunity to run down into a dead-end alleyway and implement his plan B. Furiously typing on the PDAP, he could hear steps approaching.

"'Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon'-OH SHIT!"

The force of the black Trans-Am hitting the assassin at 300 mph sent the assassin flying backwards and through the front windows of Sak's 5th Avenue. The impact had shattered the femurs and ribcage of the assassin, while doing absoultely nothing to the near impervious shell of Wolf's car.

Wolf got out and walked towards the assassin's location. "I'm with Allstate, who are you with?" he asked.

The assassin only managed to let out a string of garlged curses as he slowly stood up, his broken legs and ribs slowly mending.

"You know, I think we've seen the same movie," Wolf said as he primed an EMP grenade. "However, since time is short I think we should abrige the plot here. Now in a second you'll probably feel a little sting, but that's just pride fuckin' with ya."

He whipped the grenade at the assassin's head, staggering him. The assassin was still halfway through healing from his injuries when the grenade went off, robbing him of his augmentations, and suddenly introducing him to a world of pain that very few people can experience without dying almost instantly.

The assassin staggered forward, howling in pain as his legs gave out from under him. Wolf walked forward, a reloaded .45 at the ready, to where his opponent was writhing on the ground.

Wolf leveled the gun at his head. "I'm Wolf. I solve problems."

Then Wolf fired and the assassin stopped moving.

Well, that takes care of him. I even got his cloaking device out of the battle. Not bad.

Wolf heard an explosion behind him and turned around. He saw a burning recon buggy fly through the air, disappearing down the street adjacent to the one he was on. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of tank treads coming towards him. Rounding the corner was a MacArthur battletank.

Wolf stood transfixed as the tank rolled up to him and stopped no more than 5 feet away, leveling the barrel of its railgun at his head.

"Um...peace?" Wolf asked the tank.

The hatch opened up, revealing that Kaitiln was the driver. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Well, apart from recreating the Battle of Macross Island and blowing up part of LAX, I've been here...testing some theories of how well nano-augmentated humans stand up to being hit by a car."

He pointed over to the assassin's corpse. "As you can see, not very well. Anyways, what have you been up to?"

"Killing people with a tank, what does it look like?" she grinned maniacally again. "Wanna come along?"

"Sure," Wolf hopped into the tank, and looked around.

"What's with all the beer kegs?" he asked

"Oh, I ran out of ammo so I took a page out of MacGuyver's book."

"I see, what about all the 6 packs?"

"Got thirsty."

"Ah, of course, silly me."

The tank rumbled off deeper into Beverly Hills.

"Colonel now!"

Wraith yelled to Jade as she let lose a stream of fire that took out most of the soldiers. The others were either cut down by Wraith's knives or another spray of bullets from Jade. They were taken care of in short order and before the last soldier could hit the floor, Jade was already at the central processor attempting to hack in. A giant keypad was in front of her and she was typing on it as well as on her PDA.

"Shit! MM is already here, we might be too late unless I can override him." Jade continued to work for a moment, but her PDA soon began to spark and then broke with a hiss. A large random grouping of code flashed before her.

"I'm afraid you're too late Ms. LaFleur. Your eforts were noble but it was all for naught. I have the codes and the Javelin, and you and your pathetic planet will soon be mine. Do be a dear and get out of my system." The code dissipated and more MM soldiers appeared. Using her CODEC, she contacted Knight. "The mission just went to hell! Get us to Cyber L.A." With a flash, both Jade and Wraith were gone.

In a battle-scarred Cyber L.A, Jade and Wraith appeared inside a warehouse. Immediately ade activated the CODEC. "Wolf we have a problem. Wraith and I were too late in getting to the Javelin. MM already had control by the time to the central processor. I don't think he can fire just yet though, it seems that the mirrored satelites need to be calibrates exactly to the degree and the laser itself needs time to charge. What's your status and do you need backup?"

OOC: Lalala *pushes the story along*

Angel slipped ahead, then jumped over a railing, landing in a ruined courtyard. He almost signalled to Scrya but he heard a single pebble fall. That was all the warning he got.

Next thing he knew, some crazed human in a tattered black and red cloak was flying at him with a large scythe. Angel ducked the first blow, then snapped upright and shifted his weight left and right to dodge the next two. Then he unleashed a brutal punch followed by a pair of kicks that had him spinning. As he spun around, he saw he was surrounded. Not good.

The kicks hadn't beaten down the strange man with a scythe as Angel had intended. Instead, he jumped backwards and then snapped forward with his scythe arcing at Angel's face. What the scythe met was one of Angel's katanas. Angel used the block to halt the cloaked man, then he wristed his wrist around the scythe and used the blade to rip it from the attacker's hands.

Then Angel's second sword entered play, with the butt smashing into the attacker's face. As the man bounced away, Angel had a realiztion. Crazed cultist=Religious nuts.

He glanced around and the First Order cultists glaring menacingly. "Hey, Scrya? Keep going. I need a workout."

With that said, he watched them all pull throwing knives out. Angel smiled, and jammed the butts of his katanas together. With a shink the hilts joined and Angel was the proud owner of a dual-bladed katana. The cultists threw the knives.

Angel whipped the sword around much in the same fashion as one would expect people to use nunchakus. The blades neatly deflected all the incoming projectiles. Angel spun the sword around and dropped into a fighting crouch.

"Come on. I expected better."

The first cultist rushed him, and Angel stuck his hand out. The cultist stopped. Angel sneezed. Then he pulled out his PDAP and set it to play "Angel's fight mix."

Angel grinned, then reversed his position with a flourish of his katana(s.)

"Okay. Continue."

The cultist charged, and a second came from behind Angel. Angel grinned, and waited for the first cultist to reach him before using his tightened arm to spin the sword around and sever the scythe blade from the handle, then Angel reversed the blade and turned around.

The back-blade cut off the cultist's head in a flurry of...sparks? Shit. The equivalent of First Order priests. They had minor nano augmentations. However, Angel focused on the man coming at him. Angel started forward, twirling the blades, and then intercepted two lightning fast strikes before using two altering of the blade's spin to bounce the scythe away.

Put onto a backfoot, the cultist pulled dual handguns and sighted at Angel. Then his hands came off, followed by his torso entirely. Angel whipped the sword around and got it into a leather-belt loop sheath, followed by a shnik noise as the blade's returned to knife size, and caught the guns.

Then he spun, and crossed his arms over each other before firing off a flurry of bullets. Except, intead of bullets, little spheres of light came out. Angel ejected the clips, and saw a little meter filling back up.

"So...MM's got theoretically limitless ammo. Interesting."

"Don't" CRUNCH "Stop" CRASH "Thinking about tomorrow!"

Wolf sang in sheer lunacy as the tank mowed over the enemy roadblock. The few soldiers that weren't crushed were quickly mowed down by a spray from the 50 caliber machine gun that Wolf was manning.

"The next nearest enemy forces are 5 blocks from here, and painfully oblivious. Ready to go after them?"

Wolf noticed his CODEC beeping. "One second, let me get this call."

Answering it, he got Jade's comm call. Upon hearing the news of Javelin's fall into Mastermind's hands, Wolf felt as if a knife had been rammed into his chest. Still, he knew that he still had a job to do here first, and that only then could they try and stop Mastermind from unleashing doom.

"Well, let's see. Kaitiln and I are in the Beverly Hills area, cleaning it out in a battletank. The other unit commanders are slowly turning back Mastermind now that he's no longer sending troops into the area. Devin, Angel, and Scrya are currently..." he checked the CGPS map. "Blazing a trail through Mastermind's command units, and doing a damn good job at it too. Still no sign of Monk though...which is beginning to worry me-"

"Jason you'd better hurry this up, I've just picked up a large number of troops being redirected towards us."

Wolf cursed. "Uh...Jade, I'm about to get rushed here. So any help you and Wraith can deliver would be a great help here."

Wolf disconnected and slammed down the tank hatch as he got back inside.
"This is bad. On top of this battle...it turns out Mastermind has seized the Javelin meta-satellite control system. Right now we're in a race against time before the mirror systems are fully operational."

"'Bad' was the only descriptor you could think of?" she said.

"Fine. How does 'horrible' sound?" he said.

"Well...we are talking the fate of the world here...and how much in Jeopardy it is."

Wolf put his hands on Kaitiln's shoulders. "Kaitlin, listen to me. Yes, Mastermind may have the Javelin. But we have his base location, we have the capabilities to attack him. And as soon as this city is no longer under seige I will do just that. He is not going to win under any circumstances. I will not let it happen."

Kaitlin nodded slowly. "You're right. Sorry I got so worked up."

"It's no big deal, now let's get back to fighting."

The tank aimed downrange at its oncoming attackers, determined to take down as many as possible.

Angel looked back up and saw the priests coming towards him. The song on his fight mix switch to "Ready, Steady, Go."

Angel started nodding in time, and twirled the guns. Then he fired off a series of bullets, then jumped onto the shoulders of a priest and jumped off. While in mid-air, he turned upside down, guns to the ground, and spun. Then he started firing, sending bullets flying into the priests, and making their half bionic faces twitch angrilly.

The guns slipped into his belt as he drew his double-sword, and landed with a spin that hamstringed or removed alltogether the legs of priests around him. He rose, one handing the sword, and spinning it around. Then he brought it around with a hook from the back blade, followed by a slash that decapitated a defending priest.

Two throught they were smart by attacking him at the same time. Angel split the swords and parried both scythes at the same time, gave indentical parries, then identical ripostes that impaled the priests.

They both gnashed their teeth and said, "Glory to our Omnissiah."

Angel smiled. "Angel will do." Then he pulled the swords out through their sides, and turned to the remaining cultists. And then he started glowing. Code whipped about as he changed to his "Undelete" form.

It had changed a bit though. While he still had a shining silver breastplate, and golden hair, the long flowing robe had changed to a sleeveless trench-coat like adornment that sat over the armor. On his legs were a roman style tassel covering and multi-jointed silver leg guards. And the old broadsword was an obscenely oversized claymore with a hilt that was shaped after a pair of angellic wings.

As the priests saw this, a few stepped back and dropped their scythes. Two more charged. Angel blurred as he drove forward, sword extended, and slammed into the first cultist at a high enough speed that the priest was impaled, then thrown off the sword from the impact of the hilt. He landed roughly after smacking into a wall.

Angel turned to the second cultist and stepped back, letting the scythe barely miss. Then he did an underhand swing that knocked the cultist into the air, and Angel jumped up after him. Then he unleashed a flurry of heavy slashes, and they both actually hovered in the air. Blood and hydraulics flew out, then Angel did a massive overhand slash that snapped the man in two just from the impact.

Angel stood from the broken concrete, and saw a group of First Order priests on their hands and knees. They were...praying to him?

He fired a message to Wolf and Jade, "Hey, commanders? I appear to have a group of priests believing...that...I'm their messiah. They appear to be worshipping me....this wasn't covered in training! What do I do?"

Then he spun his sword and let it mysteriously hang attached to his back, and then twirled the pistols and stuck them into magically appearing holsters.

The army of birds devastated the island base. there were to many to battle effectively, and they were to close.

(ever see "The Birds")

"Didn't know you were so popular amongst the homicidal frenzied fanatic population, Angel."

Devin folded his arms, holding his Patriot in his right hand still.

"That said, is there a way we can make them work for us?"

OOC: Yes, yes I have. Unfortunately it is not quite time for Mastermind's base to fall just yet. I do this for the sake of batgirl's plot!!!

BIC: Mastermind could see the swarm of ravens ripping apart his defenses. He didn't like this one bit.

"Smith, recall all reinforcements that are inbound to Cyber LA. I need them to rebuild the defense grid here. Also, activate the Duck Hunter Grid"

After issuing the recall order, Smith hit a few switches on a control panel nearby.

***

Beneath the surface of the island, over 40 automated flak cannons popped up from the ground and began to fire into the thick cloud of birds. The flak shells burst overhead, taking down numerous ravens each time.

***(OOC:Now back to the city)

The railgun thundered again, sending a keg of Michelob right through a platoon of soldiers and then into the side of a light tank, pulverizing it's armored crew compartment.

Still, the enemy kept on coming, and Wolf knew time was running short. Enemy soldiers were already massing around the tank, clambering over one another to get a shot at it. Wolf had to spin the machine gun turret a full 360 degrees in order to repel the attack. That didn't stop one of the enemy soldiers from placing a timed satchel charge on the tank and activating it just before a hail of bullets perforated him.

"Oh shit..." Wolf said he shouted down to Kaitlin "We have to get outta this thing! It's gonna blow in 15 seconds!"

"Damn...just when I was having so much fun," Kaitlin quickly placed a beer keg on the gas pedal, keeping it headed forward, and then she allowed Wolf to pull her up and out of the tank. The two leapt off, and ran like hell, shooting their way through enemies as they did.

The tank continued onward as the detonation timer ran out, blowing up the tank and a whole armored column with it as its fusion core detonated.

Wolf took a round through the left leg as he and Kaitlin ran into a small hotel and took up defensive positions on the second floor.

Thank you, augmentations, he thought. Then Kaitlin gave him some news he didn't want to hear.

"We're out of ammo. And Mastermind has hacked this area of the city preventing us from getting more. All we have is our katanas and any knives I have left."

"Shit," Wolf said. "Well, looks like we're really going to need help now." He contacted Jade. "Jade, Kaitiln and I are holed up in a hotel on Rodeo Drive. We have no more ammo, and bladed weapons aren't going to be much use against an army for long. Please get here soon and bring guns...lots of guns."

Suddenly the door flew open and a MM soldier leapt in, gun ready to fire. Wolf impaled him with the katana and tossed him down the stairs.

"DID YOU NOT READ THE SIGN?" he shouted, "IT SAYS 'DO NOT DISTURB!'"

Angel glanced at Devin.

"You ask this like I know what the fuck is going on. Personally, I want them to go into a hole and die. Obviously they think I'm the end of humanity."

One of them crawled over and grabbed Angel's leg. "Please Omnissiah, show me the way to greatness! Submit yourself to Our God and become the salvation of us all!"

Angel whipped out a pistol and yelled, "I'M FUCKING NOT YOUR FUCKING SAVIOR!" and then shot the man twice in the head.

The others jerked back, then fled, crying, "THE OMNISSIAH IS COME!"

Right after they left, Angel put his face in his hands. "Twenty twenty hindsight. MM wants the Aegis program. I AM the Aegis program. 'Submit yourself to our God and become saviour of us all'? MM's preaching that I'm a Jesus for them. And I think MM wants the role on Pontius Pilate."

Then Angel glanced up. "Let's just hope we don't have a Judas."

"Hope not either. And how do you do that... angel transformation thing?"