The soldiers were inexperienced shock troops, barely fit for serving in Arachnos' listening posts dotted throughout Kings Row and Overbrook. Most were only armed with pistols, others with assault rifles. Fulkerson didn't have the clout he thought he had.
A couple grenades, venom and explosive both, followed up with a spray of assault rifle fire cut down the clusters of Wolf Spiders before Taylor would disappear into the shadows and move on to the next group. Group by group, he took them down, making each soldier realize the error of toadying to a thug like Operative Fulkerson. He made their trips to the Arachnos Reclaimators quick, efficient and as painless as possible. Not all of them made it, unfortunately, but Daniel was past caring.
A few Crab Spider soldiers rounded out the ranks, but even they weren't experienced enough to handle a warrior trained to be a Bane Spider... Much less a former Arbiter. These soldiers, Daniel took care of personally. He crushed one's head under the spiked end of his Nullifier Mace, another got blasted through an upstairs window by the toxic energy spray of the weapon's gemmed tip. The last Daniel worked over slowly, by crushing each of his arms before sweeping his legs out from underneath him at the knees (breaking one of his kneecaps in the process). The soldier wasn't done screaming by the time he was staring down the barrel of the renegade soldier's gun. One squeeze of the trigger and it was over.
"Fulkerson!" Operative Taylor shouted, "Show yourself!"
---------
Shadeheart pressed the button on the Ballista's collar, sending him to Agincourt's Reclaimation facility. There was a time when she would have preferred to kill the thug, but after recent events and revelations, she didn't have the heart. Longbow troops could be hypocritical opportunists, but not all of them were. At least this one didn't have a group hiding in the shadows to ambush her when she struck. He didn't give her any of the trite crap about "doing this for freedom." He just fought her, and put up a damn good fight.
"They need people like you," she whispered as the toxins on her blades sapped the strength from him, "So you go back to them, try to fix them..."
He smiled as he faded away in a red haze. It didn't look defiant or like a promise of future retribution. She couldn't feel anything from a Ballista's mind, but she liked to think she knew enough about human behavior to figure that his smile meant he understood.
"Well done," she heard Null call out from the shadows.
Null. She didn't know why the peculiar thing had befriended Daniel. She didn't know why he had such a pivotal position in Arachnos as an Exterminator (a special brand of Bane Spider that few even knew existed). She didn't know how the man had such a peculiar insight into just about everything going on, but she did know one thing.
Daos had put a hit on her Daniel. Like some sort of assassin's guild, they were sending his best friends to put him down. She'd received the order from the smirking Nocturne. She didn't know where Null had received the order, but she knew why the man was here.
"I won't let you do it," she croaked.
"I and my friends are merely here, taking a stroll through picturesque Saint Martial," came the calm reply, "Besides... It's not like you're really in any condition to stop me. Not after that fight. Thank you for getting rid of Ballista Hector, by the way. He wasn't something I'd taken into consideration for this plan and would only have complicated matters."
"And what's your plan for me?" Shadeheart hissed.
One of the men to Null's side pulled a pistol and fired. She felt the projectile strike her in the abdomen and Shadeheart doubled over in pain. She grasped at the wound... She'd been shot before and her specialized uniform had always resisted the impact. The bloody hand she brought up to the light of the streetlamp, however, indicated something was very wrong.
"Wait..." she whispered, "This... This isn't..."
She slumped to the ground and Null chuckled. He nodded and two of the soldiers with him stepped over to drag the body into the dark. As a Crab Spider Longfang was hurtling through an upper window to fall two stories to the pavement, Null and his troops had receded into the alley from which they came. The Exterminator chuckled as he watched the groaning man fumble for his manual Reclaimator switch.
----------
"It's over," Fulkerson announced as he stepped into the light.
He'd been hiding from the fight. He'd been watching as the troops he'd finagled into his control battled a vastly superior opponent and were unceremoniously destroyed. Like a coward, he had tried to get others to wage his war.
"Finally learned that bravado won't get you everywhere, huh?" Taylor growled as he stepped toward his enemy, waving the Nullifier Mace from hand to hand, "Of course, now you've embraced cowardice..."
"Cowardice... I prefer to think of it as tactical awareness. I led these men, and if they had taken you down, I would have succeeded in leading them to victory!"
"You led many of these men to their demise. The rest, to an inglorious defeat."
"I prefer to think of it as... Getting revenge for your brutal, inhuman slaughter of loyal Arachnos soldiers."
The cybernetic "legs" on Fulkerson's back waved agitatedly. Their tips glowed in a similar fashion to how the Nullifier Mace did. Taylor leveled his weapon, twisted it, and fired. Streams of toxic energy lanced out at the Operative and collided with Fulkerson.
Despite his rage, Fulkerson was still an average Crab Spider soldier. He had cybernetics, mutagenic chemicals, and Gods knew what else in his system. Still, none of this was able to help his withstanding the energy blast that struck him.
Three of the cybernetic "Crab Spider" legs were decimated by the blast. His armor was punctured and his helmet was clipped. The useless items fell away, and Fulkerson stared angrily at Taylor with his human eyes.
"I knew you didn't need the visor to tell you I was the enemy," Taylor grumbled as he tossed his assault rifle aside, "And I don't need your legs lancing cheap energy blasts at me. Let's settle this like men, Fulkerson. My fists versus your fists."
He turned the Nullifier Mace to the floor and activated it. A stream of energy burned a hole into the concrete. Fulkerson stripped off scorched pieces of armor and tested the remaining functioning attack leg. When the Nullifier was done firing, Daniel raised it upright and dropped the weapon, handle-first, into the hole it had just scorched into the floor. The blades on the weapon's head stuck up into the air, the red gem glowed dangerously.
"Alright," Fulkerson grunted, "I'm gonna kick your puny ***. I might not kill ya... Daos will get the pleasure of doing that himself. Hell, the Arbiters need a good kick in the *** to show 'em what happens when they fail."
"Shut up and fight..."
They closed with a fury. Fulkerson tried to tackle his target, but Taylor sidestepped and kicked him in the hip. They were still wearing enough armor to cushion the blows, so the best he did was change the bigger man's direction. Fulkerson swung the cybernetic leg about to try to lacerate the smaller man, but the swing was avoided.
The brute followed up his attempt with a punch to Taylor's face, which connected. The smaller man fell away, his cheek reeling from the contact. When the big man tried to follow up, however, his fist was batted away and he received a similar blow.
They continued to trade blows. The big man tried to corner Taylor and wrap him up in a bear hug. For his successful efforts, he received three hard forehead smashes to the nose. Dropping his foe, Fulkerson felt a slight case of delirium as his legs were swept out from underneath him.
The big man rolled away as a Daniel's heel came crashing down on the floor. The cybernetic spiderleg lashed out again, this time lacerating the front plate of the rogue Bane Spider's armor, and the smaller man fell away.
Laughing, Fulkerson pushed himself off the floor. Daniel was crawling away backwards toward the center of the room again. The big man slowly strode toward him, firing the leg at random intervals. The beams missed repeatedly, however. They lacked a targeting system and couldn't lock on the fleeing prey.
"I think we're done here," the large brute said between hoarse chuckles, "You ain't got no guns anymore, but I still have this bad baby..."
The spiderleg fired again, and a bolt scored the ground next to Daniel's leg.
"All I need to do, is practice a little... And I'll damn-near kill ya. You're finished, little man, and I'm gonna make my career with your demise!"
"You haven't beaten me yet," Daniel growled as he scrabbled toward his assault rifle.
Fulkerson lunged forward and kicked the weapon aside. It clattered across the floor and settled next to some crates. Daniel rolled up to his feet and launched himself at the leering man. The cybernetic leg aimed down to fire, but the small man pushed it back. The mechanisms driving the limb groaned and the weapon fired futilely, at one point scoring a hit on Fulkerson's own arm as he reached up to pry the small man away.
As the big man shouted in pain, Taylor took a step back and reached his arms around his enemy's neck. Stepping forward again, he drove his foot into the plate that protected the Crab Spider's ankle. He then lifted his other leg and drove it into the other leg's knee, causing the big man to buckle to the floor. With a desperate shout, Taylor wrenched the big man around and slammed his face into the floor...
...Or he would have. With a sickening wet sound, Fulkerson's face struck the upright end of the Nullifier Mace still jammed into the concrete. The razor-sharp blades lacerated his face and punctured portions of his skull. As the big man gurgled in surprise, the red gem glowed brighter.
Daniel rolled away as the toxic energy flash-fried his enemy's face. There wasn't even time for Fulkerson to scream or thrash in agony. When the smoke cleared, his body lied limply on the floor, his face still skewered by the energy weapon's blades.
Taylor didn't waste any time. He rolled the corpse off his weapon and pulled it out of the floor. He then retrieved his assault rifle and made for the exit. Once outside, he would find some place with clothes, change his outfit and disappear from Arachnos forever.
"Where do you think you're going?" Exterminator Null asked as he ran out the door, "And why, of all places, would you run out the front? You should have sneaked out one of the windows, tried to find a secret tunnel, or, at the very least, you should have blasted a hole in the wall as a distraction!"
"I'm leaving, Null," Taylor said quietly, "I'm done with all of this."
"You know there's a warrant out for you, right? Sands either can't save you anymore or isn't, and Daos wants your blood."
"Shadeheart has first dibs," he growled, "After all..."
"She wasn't going to do what needed to be done," Null sighed and gestured.
Two soldiers came out of the dark alley. They dragged between them the purple-uniformed Night Widow. She had red dripping from her abdomen.
"I do, however," the Exterminator finished, "Now, we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard, painful way. As your friend... I'm giving you the chance to make the decision."
Daniel swung his assault rifle around with a yell.
"So be it," Null nodded and the soldiers he brought with him, the soldiers who already had the entrance surrounded before Taylor left the building, opened fire.
Daniel dropped the rifle when the first bullet struck him in the forearm. Another slammed into his shoulder and another in his thigh. After that, it was like he was being pelted all over his body. He felt one slam into his head and he collapsed to the ground.
Not everything went dark like he expected. He watched Null's boots step toward him. He couldn't hear what the man was saying, just a light muffle. The boot kicked him in the face and that was when everything went black.
((Exterminator Null FINALLY used with permission from DeviousMe/@Acid Zero. This was actually more fun to write than I had been dreading it would be. I was worried it would feel like a chore.))
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Seriously don't know why you are getting so much **** from ppl. I don't think you deserve it.
they are dumb for neg repping you
We'll probably do it anyway. Just for the fun of it. j/k
)