as written by Saarai, Lialore, and Ronin
The changes in terrain after leaving Windcrest necessitated a change to a vehicle that could handle it for Hesh, Jacob and Freja. The van they were in was dump, probably left to burn and then be buried in the snow.
"We're close." Their driver said, "About thirty minutes to an hour." He told the others.
The Hessian nodded, pistol resting on his lap. Jacob assumed Hesh was paranoid, considering what they had just left. In truth, Hesh was a little paranoid.
He'd been around the block too many times not to know when something was up. What that something was could be anything.
Or anyone.
____
“This thing will keep moving for another hour?” Freja murmured from the corner where she sat with her legs propped up, examining her hands. Her previously playful mood was deteriorating with each mile.
The ride hadn’t exactly been a smooth one. She was uncomfortable, still half geared up. But something told her that was for the best. Perhaps it was just by the look on Hesh’s face. Which, she still found ridiculously difficult to read, but there was something behind those eyes. She felt it too, but obviously not accurately enough as she was much more relaxed.
The idle conversation had slowed and settled into a comfortable silence. Freja made an agitated noise as they went over a bump and repositioned herself, crossing one leg over the other.
Another sigh; one that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a spoilt teenage girl.
“Anyone for ‘I spy’?”
____
He watched them from a distance, camouflaged in the snow. His heat and psionic signatures were masked, his cloak blended to the terrain. He'd followed them from the city - knew who was in the van, their seating positions - even whatever weapons had been visible on their persons when they entered the vehicle. The trap was set.
Stock was taken - inventory managed. Aluminum throwing knives, some set with charges. Ceramite armor, fitted over nanomesh. His grappler, re-enforced plastic this time, specially fitted with a spiderlink cable. Smoke grenades. Behind a rock off to the distance, a camouflaged cache.
He flexed his fingers, taloned nails jutting out of his gloves. Injections of liquid aluminium. He was ready. He'd waited for too long. Thousands - millions were dead because of his carelessness. Tonight there would be reckoning - theirs or his. Either way, justice would be done.
He crept up from the white, bringing out a long rifle from the snow. The stock fitted to his shoulder and he leaned close, peering down the barrel from behind the black slits of his mask. He marked the van - maybe five hundred meters away, trudging through the boughs with slow, heavy rumbles. There was little snowfall, he didn't need his thermals to see it.
A nearly silent pfft. An aluminum round planted a centimeter directly before the right tread of the moving vehicle. As it passed - a boom. The projectile exploded under the weight of the vehicle - not enough to send the machine flying, but more than enough to ruin its wheels. It might have been left immobile at once, halted in place. The hunter rose from his hiding place. He abandoned the gun, leaping from the ground into the air, gliding on the wind.
Smoke ushered from the exploded bomb, consuming the truck. He flew over it, cloak wingspread, a shadow in the snow. His hand went to his belt and he unleashed five throwing knives which whirred through the air and embedded themselves in the snow in front of every doorway - the driver's, passenger's, back and rear exits. Then, he dove - rolling into a snow bough not fair from the crippled truck. He looked up. He waited, thermals piercing through the haze of fog into the heat signatures of his targets.
____
The truck slid a moment after the explosion rocked it before it came to a grinding halt. Inside Hesh sat, pistol now in hand, in silence. "What the hell?" Jacob asked, beginning to panic.
"Any tools for going up?" The driver asked Hesh, high-powered assault rifle cocked and ready. "Don't move." Hesh told Jacob and Freja, "Windshield." He then said to the driver.
The driver began to use the butt of his rifle to bust out the windshield. It would be done soon, but before it was Hesh took the time to peer out through a window into the snow and tundra.
"Got it." The driver said, two more swings knocking the windshield out.
"Wait for my order."
____
Freja didn’t panic until after the initial chaos. She was poised, guard up, hands beside the straps around her thighs and a coin floating curiously before her – a bullet waiting for the trigger which would be her own split-second decision. The fact that this wasn’t making sense didn’t take her immediately.
She was searching. Desperately. But there was nothing. Her ability showed her the rifle held beside her, the belt buckles; each individual metal component of the vehicle they were sat in. But there was nothing. Nothing to explain what had just happened.
Her shield went up quickly, though she began to guess it would be useless.
To the sound of smashing glass, she panicked. They were under smart attack. And when it started to get smart, she started to get hurt – easily. When it got smart, it was time for her to move on. It always happened this way. She liked the easy life. The first thing to come to mind that this was someone seeking revenge. But the revenge she had in mind, however, was on a much smaller scale to the truth.
When the last shard of glass fell, her coin also dropped, hitting the floor with an unimpressive sound. The next noise was more exciting, as she unsheathed her own custom knives. Despite the sudden nervousness, the look in her eyes was still hard.
She peered out into the white before looking at her companions.
“This is very personal” Freja said.
____
Front windshield out. The smoke from his explosion should obscure their vision into the tundra. He could hopefully approach without being seen.
That's what he did, dashing through the boughs, loosing a projectile from his belt as he neared the vehicle. It soared through the shattered windshield into the car - another smoke grenade - exploding in a maelstrom of blinding, suffocating gas. He rounded to the right, thermals projecting the movement of everyone inside. Plans formulated, executed - a surgeon at work. Always go for the largest threat first. Threats with supernatural powers. In this case, that threat was Freja.
He crossed to her side of the van, visage obscured by the smoke, taking only half a second to time his strike before thrusting his clawed hand through her window and slamming his taloned fingers just above her sternum, attempting to inject a vial of liquid aluminium directly into her digestive tract. The exposed hand risked being cut by her knives, but a few slashes were a small price to pay if he could neutralize her allomancy. Breaking the window would also give away his position (blinded or no, the mercenaries could still hear), and to this end he put his body behind the frame of the tough snow-cruiser, allowing only his arm and shoulder to be exposed.
It was very personal.
____
"Smoke, Hesh." The driver said, "Moving." He said as he quickly threw himself out of the broken windshield into the snow. Hesh was following close behind.
Jacob planned on doing the same until the smoke obscured his vision, he was starting to panic. The last thing he wanted was to die. He hoped Hesh would save the day. Jacob was trained for combat, but his hard partying and riding his father's waves dulled any combat instinct that was drilled in him.
The driver moved around to where Paragon was based on the sound of him attacking the van. He wasted no time in firing at Paragon, backing away and strafing to the side carefully as he did.
This was a soldier, he was cool under pressure and his shots were precise.
____
The next eruption blinded her. Her senses screamed and she cringed away for all the good it would do. She began to burn more strongly, planning on blowing out the roof of the van for a quick escape. Her concentration settled and was then destroyed by a smash beside her head. Her reactions were quick, but not quick enough to stop the flare of pain that suddenly pierced her chest. Yet, quick enough to prevent some damage.
It was instinct to push away. And so she did, using her allomancy to throw herself away from the attack using the frame of the van. She hit the opposite side with a force that winded her slightly. Her calculations were done before seconds passed. She continued to push, concentrating on the hinges of the door from behind which their attacker had struck. Having gained leverage by planting herself against the heavier weight that was the rest of the van; the door gave. After a single shot had rang from the driver, the door ripped away from the body of the car, hurling into the wilderness at immense speed without a drop of mercy for what stood in its path or what was entangled.
She breathed out what was left in her lungs as she twisted and blew out the lock of the door she was now leaning against. With a hard shove, it swung open, creating another exit that Jacob could hopefully scramble out of. Though, the van might be offering a more appealing death. She rolled backwards into the snow. Into the haze. Here, she still couldn’t see the blood nor the silvery liquid that was soaking her chest. She still couldn’t see whatever monster had done it.
But she could feel it. And she felt light headed. But that could be the gas. So Freja told herself.
She was silent. Not used to working with others.
A coin anchored itself into the snow as she prepared to head skyward.
____
He nearly growled as Freja narrowly escaped his trap, using her allomancy to exit the van and shoot out into the snow on the opposite side. He was keeping tabs on the driver with his peripheral thermals - timing the exact moment he rounded the front of the van to place his shot. Paragon was positioned at the back rear door of the car; for the driver to get a shot after exiting through the windshield, he would need to be in proximity to the adjacent driver's door. As soon as he raised his rifle, the hunter activated the first of the five explosive throwing knives he'd positioned around the five exits of the vehicle in his initial pass-over - the one nearest to the driver. A flash of blinding light, sound and concussive force exploded out of the snow into his body. There was enough force in the blast to drive him to the ground and render him unconscious.
As the door he was next to began to groan under the weight of Freja's allomantic influence, Paragon withdrew and stepped behind the vehicle's frame just as the hunk of metal shot off its hinges into the snow.
On the next breath, he focused on another knife - the one planted near the door that Freja had escaped out of. She was a bit farther away from the charge than the driver had been ... she could, ostensibly, escape a good deal of the damage. Still, he had to try. As the mercenary prepared her coin, she would be assaulted by a shockwave of sound that detonated from the direction of the vehicle and slammed into her with the force of a charging linebacker. She may be deafened, unless she were wearing protective earwear, and would likely be thrown violently off her feet.
____
The driver had put a decent amount of distance between himself and the vehicle, his shots meant to be nothing but a deterrent to his enemy. But still the explosion knocked him off of his feet. His fortitude and training helped him retain some composure.
He hoped to recover fast enough to finish his task, which was to force Paragon away.
At least until Hesh could get close.
From beneath the vehicle came Hesh, rifle in hand and aimed up at the Paragon after rolling out. He pressed his finger down on the trigger, firing off every shot in his rifle at the figure.
____
Freja was in no state to appreciate the soft landing. Everything was white. Her body struggled against senselessness in the snow of its own, shocked and panicking accord. It didn’t get far. Just off its back, now twisted, resting on an elbow, a hand, and a knee; a forehead close to touching the ground as it struggled to draw in breath.
She didn’t hear the shots or see the red that stained the ground beneath her chest.
With a single lungful, she began to regain some of herself. She clambered to her feet. The movement was undignified and out of character. In her own personal silence, her hands went to her thighs to draw out the knives that she already knew would probably be redundant. Freja narrowed her eyes, trying to make things out from her still slightly wavering vision. She set her allomantic grip on the van.
____
The driver was stalled, Freja was struggling to her feet, Hesh ... was underneath the van, rifle aimed upwards. Paragon jumped just as Hesh pulled the trigger, counting on the ocean of smoke engulfing the inside and outside of the van to cover his dodge. He landed on the roof, feet slamming against the re-enforced hull. He found Freja with his thermals, staggering into balance, hands moving for her thighs. With two swift motions he loosed a pair of aluminum throwing knives from his belt - one dulled, one sharpened. The first went for the side of her head, packed with enough force to knock her unconscious if struck. The second for her upper ankle. If he couldn't incapacitate her, he could at least hinder her escape.
Hesh would be on him. Rather than stay in one place, Paragon dove over the back of the car, clinging to its frame along the side and keeping his body off the snow. His thermals projected inside the van and found Jacob cowering. The driver was a ways away, still regaining his sense.
But Hesh. Where was Hesh. Where was the threat.
The changes in terrain after leaving Windcrest necessitated a change to a vehicle that could handle it for Hesh, Jacob and Freja. The van they were in was dump, probably left to burn and then be buried in the snow.
"We're close." Their driver said, "About thirty minutes to an hour." He told the others.
The Hessian nodded, pistol resting on his lap. Jacob assumed Hesh was paranoid, considering what they had just left. In truth, Hesh was a little paranoid.
He'd been around the block too many times not to know when something was up. What that something was could be anything.
Or anyone.
____
“This thing will keep moving for another hour?” Freja murmured from the corner where she sat with her legs propped up, examining her hands. Her previously playful mood was deteriorating with each mile.
The ride hadn’t exactly been a smooth one. She was uncomfortable, still half geared up. But something told her that was for the best. Perhaps it was just by the look on Hesh’s face. Which, she still found ridiculously difficult to read, but there was something behind those eyes. She felt it too, but obviously not accurately enough as she was much more relaxed.
The idle conversation had slowed and settled into a comfortable silence. Freja made an agitated noise as they went over a bump and repositioned herself, crossing one leg over the other.
Another sigh; one that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a spoilt teenage girl.
“Anyone for ‘I spy’?”
____
He watched them from a distance, camouflaged in the snow. His heat and psionic signatures were masked, his cloak blended to the terrain. He'd followed them from the city - knew who was in the van, their seating positions - even whatever weapons had been visible on their persons when they entered the vehicle. The trap was set.
Stock was taken - inventory managed. Aluminum throwing knives, some set with charges. Ceramite armor, fitted over nanomesh. His grappler, re-enforced plastic this time, specially fitted with a spiderlink cable. Smoke grenades. Behind a rock off to the distance, a camouflaged cache.
He flexed his fingers, taloned nails jutting out of his gloves. Injections of liquid aluminium. He was ready. He'd waited for too long. Thousands - millions were dead because of his carelessness. Tonight there would be reckoning - theirs or his. Either way, justice would be done.
He crept up from the white, bringing out a long rifle from the snow. The stock fitted to his shoulder and he leaned close, peering down the barrel from behind the black slits of his mask. He marked the van - maybe five hundred meters away, trudging through the boughs with slow, heavy rumbles. There was little snowfall, he didn't need his thermals to see it.
A nearly silent pfft. An aluminum round planted a centimeter directly before the right tread of the moving vehicle. As it passed - a boom. The projectile exploded under the weight of the vehicle - not enough to send the machine flying, but more than enough to ruin its wheels. It might have been left immobile at once, halted in place. The hunter rose from his hiding place. He abandoned the gun, leaping from the ground into the air, gliding on the wind.
Smoke ushered from the exploded bomb, consuming the truck. He flew over it, cloak wingspread, a shadow in the snow. His hand went to his belt and he unleashed five throwing knives which whirred through the air and embedded themselves in the snow in front of every doorway - the driver's, passenger's, back and rear exits. Then, he dove - rolling into a snow bough not fair from the crippled truck. He looked up. He waited, thermals piercing through the haze of fog into the heat signatures of his targets.
____
The truck slid a moment after the explosion rocked it before it came to a grinding halt. Inside Hesh sat, pistol now in hand, in silence. "What the hell?" Jacob asked, beginning to panic.
"Any tools for going up?" The driver asked Hesh, high-powered assault rifle cocked and ready. "Don't move." Hesh told Jacob and Freja, "Windshield." He then said to the driver.
The driver began to use the butt of his rifle to bust out the windshield. It would be done soon, but before it was Hesh took the time to peer out through a window into the snow and tundra.
"Got it." The driver said, two more swings knocking the windshield out.
"Wait for my order."
____
Freja didn’t panic until after the initial chaos. She was poised, guard up, hands beside the straps around her thighs and a coin floating curiously before her – a bullet waiting for the trigger which would be her own split-second decision. The fact that this wasn’t making sense didn’t take her immediately.
She was searching. Desperately. But there was nothing. Her ability showed her the rifle held beside her, the belt buckles; each individual metal component of the vehicle they were sat in. But there was nothing. Nothing to explain what had just happened.
Her shield went up quickly, though she began to guess it would be useless.
To the sound of smashing glass, she panicked. They were under smart attack. And when it started to get smart, she started to get hurt – easily. When it got smart, it was time for her to move on. It always happened this way. She liked the easy life. The first thing to come to mind that this was someone seeking revenge. But the revenge she had in mind, however, was on a much smaller scale to the truth.
When the last shard of glass fell, her coin also dropped, hitting the floor with an unimpressive sound. The next noise was more exciting, as she unsheathed her own custom knives. Despite the sudden nervousness, the look in her eyes was still hard.
She peered out into the white before looking at her companions.
“This is very personal” Freja said.
____
Front windshield out. The smoke from his explosion should obscure their vision into the tundra. He could hopefully approach without being seen.
That's what he did, dashing through the boughs, loosing a projectile from his belt as he neared the vehicle. It soared through the shattered windshield into the car - another smoke grenade - exploding in a maelstrom of blinding, suffocating gas. He rounded to the right, thermals projecting the movement of everyone inside. Plans formulated, executed - a surgeon at work. Always go for the largest threat first. Threats with supernatural powers. In this case, that threat was Freja.
He crossed to her side of the van, visage obscured by the smoke, taking only half a second to time his strike before thrusting his clawed hand through her window and slamming his taloned fingers just above her sternum, attempting to inject a vial of liquid aluminium directly into her digestive tract. The exposed hand risked being cut by her knives, but a few slashes were a small price to pay if he could neutralize her allomancy. Breaking the window would also give away his position (blinded or no, the mercenaries could still hear), and to this end he put his body behind the frame of the tough snow-cruiser, allowing only his arm and shoulder to be exposed.
It was very personal.
____
"Smoke, Hesh." The driver said, "Moving." He said as he quickly threw himself out of the broken windshield into the snow. Hesh was following close behind.
Jacob planned on doing the same until the smoke obscured his vision, he was starting to panic. The last thing he wanted was to die. He hoped Hesh would save the day. Jacob was trained for combat, but his hard partying and riding his father's waves dulled any combat instinct that was drilled in him.
The driver moved around to where Paragon was based on the sound of him attacking the van. He wasted no time in firing at Paragon, backing away and strafing to the side carefully as he did.
This was a soldier, he was cool under pressure and his shots were precise.
____
The next eruption blinded her. Her senses screamed and she cringed away for all the good it would do. She began to burn more strongly, planning on blowing out the roof of the van for a quick escape. Her concentration settled and was then destroyed by a smash beside her head. Her reactions were quick, but not quick enough to stop the flare of pain that suddenly pierced her chest. Yet, quick enough to prevent some damage.
It was instinct to push away. And so she did, using her allomancy to throw herself away from the attack using the frame of the van. She hit the opposite side with a force that winded her slightly. Her calculations were done before seconds passed. She continued to push, concentrating on the hinges of the door from behind which their attacker had struck. Having gained leverage by planting herself against the heavier weight that was the rest of the van; the door gave. After a single shot had rang from the driver, the door ripped away from the body of the car, hurling into the wilderness at immense speed without a drop of mercy for what stood in its path or what was entangled.
She breathed out what was left in her lungs as she twisted and blew out the lock of the door she was now leaning against. With a hard shove, it swung open, creating another exit that Jacob could hopefully scramble out of. Though, the van might be offering a more appealing death. She rolled backwards into the snow. Into the haze. Here, she still couldn’t see the blood nor the silvery liquid that was soaking her chest. She still couldn’t see whatever monster had done it.
But she could feel it. And she felt light headed. But that could be the gas. So Freja told herself.
She was silent. Not used to working with others.
A coin anchored itself into the snow as she prepared to head skyward.
____
He nearly growled as Freja narrowly escaped his trap, using her allomancy to exit the van and shoot out into the snow on the opposite side. He was keeping tabs on the driver with his peripheral thermals - timing the exact moment he rounded the front of the van to place his shot. Paragon was positioned at the back rear door of the car; for the driver to get a shot after exiting through the windshield, he would need to be in proximity to the adjacent driver's door. As soon as he raised his rifle, the hunter activated the first of the five explosive throwing knives he'd positioned around the five exits of the vehicle in his initial pass-over - the one nearest to the driver. A flash of blinding light, sound and concussive force exploded out of the snow into his body. There was enough force in the blast to drive him to the ground and render him unconscious.
As the door he was next to began to groan under the weight of Freja's allomantic influence, Paragon withdrew and stepped behind the vehicle's frame just as the hunk of metal shot off its hinges into the snow.
On the next breath, he focused on another knife - the one planted near the door that Freja had escaped out of. She was a bit farther away from the charge than the driver had been ... she could, ostensibly, escape a good deal of the damage. Still, he had to try. As the mercenary prepared her coin, she would be assaulted by a shockwave of sound that detonated from the direction of the vehicle and slammed into her with the force of a charging linebacker. She may be deafened, unless she were wearing protective earwear, and would likely be thrown violently off her feet.
____
The driver had put a decent amount of distance between himself and the vehicle, his shots meant to be nothing but a deterrent to his enemy. But still the explosion knocked him off of his feet. His fortitude and training helped him retain some composure.
He hoped to recover fast enough to finish his task, which was to force Paragon away.
At least until Hesh could get close.
From beneath the vehicle came Hesh, rifle in hand and aimed up at the Paragon after rolling out. He pressed his finger down on the trigger, firing off every shot in his rifle at the figure.
____
Freja was in no state to appreciate the soft landing. Everything was white. Her body struggled against senselessness in the snow of its own, shocked and panicking accord. It didn’t get far. Just off its back, now twisted, resting on an elbow, a hand, and a knee; a forehead close to touching the ground as it struggled to draw in breath.
She didn’t hear the shots or see the red that stained the ground beneath her chest.
With a single lungful, she began to regain some of herself. She clambered to her feet. The movement was undignified and out of character. In her own personal silence, her hands went to her thighs to draw out the knives that she already knew would probably be redundant. Freja narrowed her eyes, trying to make things out from her still slightly wavering vision. She set her allomantic grip on the van.
____
The driver was stalled, Freja was struggling to her feet, Hesh ... was underneath the van, rifle aimed upwards. Paragon jumped just as Hesh pulled the trigger, counting on the ocean of smoke engulfing the inside and outside of the van to cover his dodge. He landed on the roof, feet slamming against the re-enforced hull. He found Freja with his thermals, staggering into balance, hands moving for her thighs. With two swift motions he loosed a pair of aluminum throwing knives from his belt - one dulled, one sharpened. The first went for the side of her head, packed with enough force to knock her unconscious if struck. The second for her upper ankle. If he couldn't incapacitate her, he could at least hinder her escape.
Hesh would be on him. Rather than stay in one place, Paragon dove over the back of the car, clinging to its frame along the side and keeping his body off the snow. His thermals projected inside the van and found Jacob cowering. The driver was a ways away, still regaining his sense.
But Hesh. Where was Hesh. Where was the threat.
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