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Shaito Kills

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Underbridge

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« on: <12-21-15/2053:11> »
This little number is about a much more advanced character whose backstory was published in this entry. Enjoy!
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Shaito sat in the darkness.

He sat beneath the long-since-burned out lights atop a hotel in the Puyallup Barrens. The name didn’t matter, he wasn’t there for that. He was there because his zaibatsu, his master, had decreed that someone should die, and that someone was in the building which he was watching. The target structure in question looked like a normal slummy apartment building, but the inside was far from slummy. The vision-magnifying goggles he wore allowed him to zoom in from his position to the Yakuza drug lab below. Inside, nearly 50 or so people crafting some noxious substance for the discerning junkie. Shaito also didn’t care about that, either. He was here to kill. His target was a servant of his own zaibatsu, but a servant that had failed. The Yakuza underboss was not only skimming from the extortion dues she was assigned to collect; she was also using those funds to finance the operation below. The profit from the novacoke deals were being selfishly pocketed.

Two guards stood by the front door, pretending to be locals hanging out on the stoop of the apartment building. Shaito didn’t care about them, however, his plan of ingress was via the roof. He had a levitate spell cast on himself and stored in a fifth-degree sustaining focus so he could “fly” across the gap. A quick assensing check told him that there were not any watcher spirits nearby, however he could not see through the mana barriers in place. That meant his target had at least one mage on staff. Good to know. Closer inspection revealed that the mana barriers were deeper inside the building, likely around the lieutenant. The walls, being made of brick and mortar, made assensing fuzzy and indistinct, but not impossible. Shaito stood, then charged the bolt on both of his FN P-93 Praetors. The SMG’s were loaded with stick’n’shock rounds, he was under specific instructions to kill only his target, the servants were to be left alone. Shaito did not understand why, in his mind all metahumans between himself and his target were also targets, mercy was simply a notion he did not understand. Shaito was not cruel, he did not engage in acts of torture or murder for enjoyment, he simply always killed. He did not particularly enjoy the act, he was trained in lethal combat, not in subduing enemies. Hence, the sub-lethal rounds. He set them for three-round burst and clicked the weapons back into their holsters against the sides of his combat load vest.

Something was nagging him, so he reflected on his feeling and realized it was the no-kill order. He considered consequence. If he killed the traitors, the Yakuza would be deprived of metahuman resources. The traitors were likely not aware of their crime; naturally the fault rested with their master. Shaito knew well his zaibatsu did not waste useful tools; his own existence was evidence of that. Sure that any distracting thoughts were clear from his mind, he honed his focus and made the single leap across the street to the top of the target building. His path landed him atop an air-conditioning unit. Just then, the roof-top access door opened and a guard stepped out, cigarettes in hand. The goon propped open the door with an old paint can, and set about filling his lungs with cancer. Shaito stood from his crouch and hop-flew onto the roof of the access, landing soundlessly with his Light Steps power. He noted the irony that smoking kills, just before he lowered himself to his belly and grabbed both sides of the smoker’s head with shock-gloved hands. Several zaps and a gurgle later, the guard dropped to the roof. Shaito slipped into the building, gently setting the paint can aside.

He pulled one SMG from its holster and triggered the ultrasound in his helmet. The inaudible ping told him there was someone farther down the stairs. He let the door close with a bang, aimed, and waited with the safety off. “That was a qui—herk!“ the guard’s words were cut off as she received a three-round burst of shockers to the sternum. Shaito glided down beside the awkwardly collapsed orc and picked up her comm. There was no one asking why the orc’s vitals suddenly dropped into a depressed state, so he thumbed the volume down to 1 and slipped it into a pouch on his right shoulder. The device might be useful if security checks or troop movements were called out. He continued his ingress down one floor, waiting in the shadows for a roving patrol to pass before crawling into a laundry chute. Thanks to the levitate spell, he dropped smoothly in the tight chute, normally he would have had to climb the two floors down to where the mana barrier was. On the 3rd floor he ran into a problem: the chute was jammed or locked shut from the other side, so he clipped the SMG back into its holster and made the finger-knitting gestures to cast Shatter. A crackle of red “electricity” appeared around his hand as he summoned forth destructive energies and placed a single finger into one corner of the hatch, burning a ¾ inch hole through the metal. Shaito released the spell and concentrated on his body, willing it to turn into a black, swirling vampiric mist so he could flow through the hole and into the corridor.

In this form he moved slowly, but he also could pass through gaps that would bar even mice from entry. Once in the corridor he flowed across it and reformed by the stairs. There were three doors in this hallway; one across from him and two farther down and to the right. Looking to his left he saw that another doorway was open or lacking a door. By flipping through the various vision modes in his helmet, and using his own natural & supernatural vision senses, he was able to ascertain that the heat coming from inside the room opposite likely meant a server room. After a moment of careful listening, he recognized the hum and click of electronics. It also had the mana barrier around it, but the size of the barrier indicated that several interior rooms had been contained within it. Here is where he would most likely find his target. He moved down the corridor the the left, recognizing the sound of some trideo playing inside, and two chuckles as well. Two guards, or workers at a rest station. Shaito brought forth his weapons and clicked the fire selectors into full-auto mode. As he turned the corner he used his helmet’s smartlink to tag both targets: leather-clad Yakuza sitting on a dilapidated couch and watching TV and not their surroundings. They were seated so that they were facing the open doorway, the door having been removed and turned into a table of sorts before them. A holo-projector was centered on it with some bottles and detritus of fast-food. One of them noticed Shaito in the doorway, and started to shout “Hey!” as he took aim at their groins and depressed the firing studs. The holographic display of the show rippled with passing of twenty shockers as the muzzles of his weapons coughed out twin long, narrow bursts that raised them a scant half-inch. The rounds hit the gang members in their guts, sternums, and the shorter of the two got one in the throat. They both spasmed erratically on the couch and went still. The attack took .34 seconds. The sound of a coffee-mug hitting the floor and shattering punctuated the silence, as a troll standing to the right of the room recovered from gape-mouthed surprise to exclaim “Oh, DREK!” just as twenty more stick’n’shock rounds lit him up. He recoiled, perhaps as much from surprise as from the arcing rounds slamming into his torso, and stumbled backward into the dresser and smashed the coffee pot with an elbow. He wasn’t quite down, though, and had time to pull an enormous pistol from beneath his lined coat. He didn’t get a chance to shoot it, however, as Shaito leaped across the room and dropped an axe-kick onto his wrist, breaking it and driving the weapon across the floor. A follow-up knee to the troll’s face was more than the massive enforcer could stand, however, and his bleeding and scowling face went slack as his head bounced off the dresser.

Shaito’s PAN told him his Praetors were running low, so he clipped them away instead of taking a second-and-a-half to reload them from the smart-ammo pouches on his lower back. The decision likely saved his life as the door leading to the security room burst outward, another troll shouldering through and using the momentum to bring a nasty minigun with him, left-handed. Shaito immediately charged the lieutenant and quick-drew the fifth-rank-enchanted swords across his back as the troll began to spin up the weapon. Not even Shaito’s regenerative abilities were quick enough to out-heal the damage that thing could do, so he darted to the troll’s right and slipped his right-hand sword in between the barrels. The motor snapped it tight and the troll looked down with sheer surprise as the minigun jammed against the melee-hardened weapon. Shaito didn’t hesitate, using his dash’s momentum to bring the left-hand weapon into a tight thrust, depressing the small red button that activated the monofilament sword’s vibro-function, turning the already deadly weapon into an armor-piercing nightmare. He plunged the point square through the troll’s diaphragm, twisting slightly as he did to maximize the damage. With a horrendous roar the troll responded by back-handing Shaito so hard that he staggered back a full meter. Had he bothered to assense he would have noted that the troll was high on novacoke, even if the blood-shot eyes and swollen veins hadn’t been a dead giveaway. Furious, the troll hurled his useless minigun at Shaito, who easily dodged it. Despite the sword still hanging from his guts the trogg ignored the pain and charged the ninja with both fists raised, ready to smash them on the puny elf that had hurt him. Shaito didn’t have much time to react, so he executed a back-flip and saw his first sword--jammed into the minigun--had crashed into the back of the sofa, no longer behind him and now just a few steps to his right…he had to duck a left haymaker from the troll and dive below a follow-up right hook, rolling across the littered floor and ratty carpet to the weapons. With the spin-up motor no longer jamming the minigun, he rolled to his feet and withdrew the weapon from it. A quick glance across his right shoulder gave him a target, and he executed a quick-turn with his footing, snapping his right foot behind and across while turning from the waist and ducking to one knee. Finishing the move would leave him vulnerable, so he whipped his sword around hard with two hands and hacked the troll directly in the left kneecap. The big fellah, charging after Shaito’s roll, ran right into it with a fully extended leg, which had less armor on it than his ballistic-plate-clad torso. His deafening roar of rage turned into a horrible cry of pain and surprise as the blow removed his lower leg and he plunged down on the bloody stump. His momentum carried him adjacent to Shaito, who completed the turn on one armored knee, rose, and swung down a powerful blow to the troll’s neck, hacking through the carotid artery two inches above the collarbone. The wounded troll clutched his throat and gurgled in furious agony as his life’s blood gushed through his monstrous hands and soiled what was left of the room’s only rug. Shaito reversed the grip on the weapon and drove its point down into the troll’s chest twice, the first gouging a hole in the armored plate and the second time penetrating four inches into his opponent’s chest, shredding heart and lungs. The dying troll arced his back as Shaito withdrew the weapon, spraying an arc of dark blood a full three meters across the room, the final drops landing like a dotted line directly to the open door. The entire fight took 3.28 seconds.

Shaito collected his left-hand weapon and looked across the room: his target was standing in the door to the security room, just behind the mana barrier. “You’ll die here tonight, assassin,” the Yakuza underboss said. Her eyes were glowing with a pale blue light that matched the glow about her hands. If you manage to break my barrier, I’ll fry you like the insect you are!” electricity crackled across her knuckles, accentuating the threat. He had three options: attack the barrier with his swords, summon forth destructive energies and blast through, or shoot her. He opted for the latter, dropping his swords and quick-drawing the SMG’s. Unfortunately, they were loaded with stick’n’shock rounds instead of something more deadly, but the taser shots would have to do. He emptied the magazines in the doorway, the mage only getting hit a few times as she dived to her right. Shaito reloaded with APDS rounds, and suddenly he had a better idea. Hoisting the minigun, he triggered ultrasound again. The ping told him his target was just behind the wall and breathing hard. As he span up the ridiculously deadly weapon he heard an “oh, frag me” from beyond the wall as he pulled the trigger and launched a few dozen rounds through the plaster and into the area where the mage was crouching. BBBRRRPPPTTTT!!!! was the only sound as the minigun screamed like a demon through the security room, blowing apart servers, furniture, and the traitor alike. A most unconventional method, mused Shaito, but highly effective. He strolled over to the doorway, still spinning barrels, and looked down at the mangled orc, curled into a fetal position inside the security room. She was doing her best to hold her lungs and guts in place, somehow still alive after the burst. “Fu*cough* F*cough-cough* ‘uck you, ass—“ BRRRPPPPTTT!!! cut off her dying words as Shaito aimed the weapon low and pulped her with a stream of bullets.

Mission completed, Shaito made his way over to the troll and collected his swords, and also scooped up the spare ammo drum clipped to the dead troll's side. As Shaito walked unmolested to the roof, he thought to himself I think I’ll keep this thing.

« Last Edit: <12-21-15/2142:37> by Underbridge »