--Steel Canyon--
The Longbow Comander in charge on the ground was furious. His men had just completed a sweep of the area, and found nothing. No trace of the four men that had laid seige to the region, taking out several PPD officers in the process.
"This is inexcusable. How could you let them get away?" He'd shouted over the radio. The troops feebly appologized. Appologies wouldn't help him track the gunmen though.
"Alright, get cleanup crews in here and have Chasers 1 and 2 do a full sweep of the zone. Tell them to contact me if they see anything out of the ordinary."
"Uh sir," the rookie on the other end of the radio replied rather sheepishly, "we may have a situation brewing on the East side of Steel Canyon."
"What kind of situation exactly?" The commander retorted.
"A break in at Omicron technologies. A group of heavily armed men stormed in and shot the place up. They just wiped out the PPD response team."
Cant anything get done right around here? "Okay, send Chaser One over and as many Eagle team members as we can spare. Also send a message out to any and all heroes in the area. We may need all the help we can get on this one."
--Elsewhere--
Frankie from 7th street gave a grunt as his team of technicians gave his armor a final looking over. "Everything looks normal boss," one of them said with a smile.
"Good," Frankie snarled, "how much further we gots to go?"
"Not much further boss."
"Who's stupid idea was it to put Jimmy and he's boys out here in da firstplace?"
No one dared answer him, becuase they all knew that it was Frankie who had given Jimmy his orders. Of course, if you told the boss that it was his fault he'd probably break your legs. Freakshow tankers had a nasty habit of doing that.
The delivery truck rounded the corner, nearly overturning in the process. Some of the tools the technicians had been using slid around in the back of the truck and Frankie felt his body sliding as well. "Hey careful up there you dolt!"
The truck stopped about a block away from where Jimmy had said to meet him. "Stay here, and keep the engine runnin'." The truck lurched as the tank jumped off and landed with a soft thud on the ground.
The Freak slowly made his way through the neighborhood, walking with the kind of stride that told people that he owned the place. Or at least, that he thought he did.
He reached the barricade a few seconds later.
"Jimmy!" he boomed. "Where are ya?"
"Jimmy's dead, and you're next." a cold hearted voice intoned. Frankie tried to turn to face his opponent, but it took a while to do so with all of his thick armor.
"You killed Jimmy an' all his boys, all by yer lonesome? I'm gonna enjoy breakin' you boy!"
((OOC: Hi ya'll. Once again I've been stricken with the sudden and strange urge to write. These stories will basically cover the backstorys of my various characters and some of their more important exploits. Feel free to critique this as you please, I'm always open to comments.))
--Paragon City, Rhode Island--
Police sirens blared throughout Steel Canyon. Traffic throughout much of the area slowed to a crawl. Spandex wearing heroes were seen everywhere making a mad dash after the cops. It was pandemonium. It was also the perfect distraction.
On the opposite side of Steel Canyon, two armored security trucks pulled up in the back of a ten story office building. There was a brief pause after they stopped, and then the back doors of both trucks opened up.
The men that exited the trucks looked like something out of some sci-fi show. Encased in sleek opaque armor from head to toe the men moved with a grace that came from years of experience in the field. Not taking any time to sit around they instead made a dash for the open door of the loading bay. They were almost noiseless, their padded soles bouncing off the concrete floor. The two groups split up, each one heading in opposite directions once inside the loading bay.
There were two security guards at the far end of the room, dressed in light blue shirts and black slacks. Neither one of them was very imposing. Far from it. The two heavily overweight gentlemen were too busy playing cards to notice the twelve man team enter the room. They had no idea the danger they were in.
"Hah, I win again. Pay up man."
"You cheated!"
"Quit being such a sore loser dude. I won fair and square."
The loser reluctantly pulled out a crumpled up twenty from his wallet. He was about to hand it over to his friend when something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. His buddy noticed his reaction and was about to turn and see what the loser was looking at when his friend's brains were suddenly and forcefully ejected from his skull and spread across the adjacent wall.
A few seconds later the same thing happened to the winner.
"Loading bay cleared, bring in the package."
--Elsewhere--
"Look out! Grenade!"
There was barely even time for the Freaks to process what their comrade had just said, before the grenade detonated, sending a handful of Freaks airborne. The others dived down to avoid the hailstorm of shrapnel that shout outwards.
Over the deafening roar of the grenade came the roar of an assault rifle. There was the distinct metal pinging sound as the bullets hit against one of the old beat up muscle cars that the Freakshow was using for cover. One of the Freaks leaning against it cried out in pain as a bullet hit his exposed knee. As he dropped to the ground there was another roar as the gun went off again, this time hitting him in the side as he dropped. The guy hit the street a few seconds later, blood pouring out of him like a ruptured water baloon.
What had once been a nice neighborhood was now a warzone. About thirty Freaks were assembled in a sort of blockade of beat up cars and just about anything else the crazies could find. Most of them were just juicers with submachine guns, but there were a few others mixed in for added firepower.
"Come on! It's just one guy!"
"If he's so easy to kill, why don't you do it?"
"[censored] this is crazy, we gotta get the hell out of here man!"
"All of you shut up!" Roared a Freak towards the center of the blockade. "I was just on the phone with Frankie and his boys. They'll be here any minute now." This news immediately dismissed any attempts to escape. Even amongst such a ramschackle bunch of hoodlums, there was a chain of command. Unless you wanted to get shot, you did what the guy with the pointy metal claw told you to do.
It was rather incredible actually that the one guy had been able to cause this much damage. One man, armed with an adaptable assault rifle and a good supply of explosives.
The guy was wearing a brown trenchcoat over his bulletproof flack jacket. Dark black sunglasses and a brown fedora shielded his face from the sun. A well trimmed beard and strong facial features gave the impression that this guy wasn't messing around. As he dropped down under his own shelter he heard the Freaks rally together. Suddenly a storm of bullets impacted against the van he was using as refuge.
"You can't win hero! We got 'tchu outnumbered fool!" The Freak leader boomed, his Uzi clattering off round after round into the van.
Got me outnumbered do you? All the better for me...
Basic mob mentality. Strength in numbers. The Freaks really thought they could just fire off a ton of bullets without aiming and kill him, a man who had spent his entire life training for situations like this. A man who could kill you a million diffrent ways. That was the kind of man they were dealing with, and yet they foolishly held onto the notion that they could scare him away by beating their chests and holding up a few machine guns.
It was time to show these punks what real firepower was.
The hero extracted his empty ammo clip and replaced it with a fresh one full of 5.56mm armor piercing rounds. He also opened the grenade launcher section and loaded in two more grenades.
He calmly waited for the gunners to take cover again and then popped out. He didn't even aim at the troops themselves. Instead he pointed the rifle at one of the cars that formed the barricade and fired.
There was a massive gas fueled explosion as the car was torn apart. He did the same with another car seconds later. The explosions took out five more Freaks and wounded three more.
The hero the let loose with the armor piercing rounds. He cut into the cars, taking out those foolish enough to take cover on the other side.
There was minimal return fire as he launched his onslaught. The Freaks were trying to avoid getting caught in one of the explosions that came as a result of a chain reaction of exploding cars. Several of them were hit by the furious fire of the lone gunman. Others hunkered down and prayed that the fire passed over them.
The hero didn't bother taking cover before reloading. He instead walked out from his cover and began walking down the street towards his targets.
The hero's glasses gave an eerie reflection of the blazing fires in front of him, giving him a sort of inhuman stare. How fitting that it would be the last thing the Freak leader saw...