Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Westeria City: Hagan Avenue

as written by barney_fife

All around them, aside from active signs of the evacuation. Hagan Avenue was completely desolate. Wrecked cars lined the streets of this once vibrant quarter of Westeria City.

Disruptor scoring lined the buildings on both sides, the decaying bodies of Imperial Aschen soldiers, War Adepts, and the corpses of Celion's machines littered the streets, along with wrecked burned out cars, and the obvious signs of battle.

Many of the bodies had decomposed, or had been consumed by carrion eaters, leaving only their weapons, clothing, and armor behind.

Several hundred feet down the street, a destroyed Myrmidon Heavy Battle Tank sat between them, and the large bombed out edifice of Tech Con headquarters. Chunks of concrete and shards of glass littered the street around it.
 
as written by Saarai

"This place is desolate." One of the soldiers said, "That's an understatement. Look at this place." Another said as the team began to pass the tank, "This must be where that thing hit. It must not like the Aschen."

"Can you blame it?"

Two of the soldiers branched off to grab weapons, never knew if you might need them. Could always trade them for safe passage if the sewer system became unusable.

"Pack-four, take point." The lead soldier ordered, "Understood." One of the women responded, moving quickly to get to the front of the group. "On me." She said, leading the team into the Tech Con HQ. It wasn't their first time in a war zone, but this all happened so fast. Celion was a force of nature.

The Aschen had learned that the hard way.

"Clear! Moving!"
 
as written by barney_fife

Around Hagan ave, weapons were plentiful, disruptor rifles were found clenched around the decayed remains of the men who once used them in combat.

When the soldiers moved to pick the up, they would find more often than not, the weapons were inert. The controls to activate and arm the rifles didn't respond, while others whined to life but indicated that their power cells were nearly depleted. Micro fusion cells littered the streets, but it was likely any microfusion cell found on the ground was also depleted.

The heavy magnetrons the War adepts carried were quite heavy, each heavy rifle weighed at least thirty pounds, having been designed to be carried by someone in power armor.

Though weapons were depleted, it was likely fresh microfusion cells could be found by searching the dead.

As they neared tech con HQ itself, they would find the front doors open, and the lights inside out. Papers and debris strewn about on the once polished marble floors of the lobby.
 
as written by Saarai

"Look at this place." A soldier said, flicking a switch on their weapon to turn on a flashlight. "Think we'll actually find anything here?" Another asked, "Maybe not, but our mission is to try." Another soldier said, "Split up into pairs. Pack-seven, Pack-nine, watch the area. Pack-ten, what's your status?"

"Still searching the street. Gathering ammunition, trying to find working weapons. They really unloaded out here. This was a war in of itself."

"Going to try to get some power in here, temporary at least." A soldier said, she and her partner heading off to find a power source.
 
as written by barney_fife

Much of the inside of the Tech Con building was bombed out office spaces, with desks, papers, and computer parts strewn about the inside. The building was without power, so much of the more sensitive places were inaccessible.

The team outside scavenging for weapons would find ammunition plentiful, and disruptor weapons that weren't too badly damaged powered on with relative ease once a fresh microfusion cell was loaded into the weapon. Each active weapon indicated with lights, holographic sights powering on, and an audible whine as the prefire coils heated up.

Inside the building however, the team would meet office after office of destroyed computer equipment. Much of which appeared to have been either burned with thermite, or shot with disruptor weapons. Much of the computer equipment was reduced to semi-melted slag on the ground.

In the west wing of the building, a long hallway was blocked off by a pair of firmly shut blast doors, the doors were a white color trimmed with blue, and Anquietas text on the door itself.

http://i.imgur.com/hYvWK15.png
"Investigatio et Bifröst."

The door itself appeared to have been sealed shut, both because the door had been locked when Tech Con evacuated, and because without power, the door would not open anyway. Whatever treasures lie beyond that thick blast door would only be revealed if the men managed to open it. There was also a blast door on the east wing of the large building which read.

http://i.imgur.com/2PGgvQX.png
"Industria productio et sustentationem."

In larger letters, the word "EnPro" Could be made out under the Anquietas text. The facility's Deuterium fusion reactor was located beyond that blast door, and restoring it would be critical in accessing the other parts of the facility.
 
as written by Saarai

"Veritas." A soldier said, approaching the first door. "I'm going to send you an image, need something translated." He said, slipping a small camera from his pocket. He snapped a quick picture, the flash lighting up the room for a quick second.

"Got that?" He asked, "Translating now."

"Found something over here too." Another soldier said, snapping her own picture to be translated. "Received. Standby, Pack."

As the team inside waited, the two outside began their jog to the facility. They had found several working Aschen weapons, enough to work as both currency and extra firepower should either be warranted.

"Investigation and Bifrost." A voice said to the soldiers, "Bifrost? Like in Norse mythology?" A soldier asked, "Correct. In this case, it refers to the portal-like Aschen tech." The voice explained, "The other door reads as Energy Production and Maintenance."

"This is where we need to be. We need temp power to this door. Anyone?"

"Coming." A soldier said, jogging over towards the door that lead to a power source. The soldier dug into his pocket, slipping a flat piece of metal. He tossed it onto the door where it stuck.

It began to course with energy. It was a localized power source. Too small to do anything but open the door or jumpstart a car. It was clearly meant for being out in the field.

The door began to open, the soldiers wasting no time in slipping through to other side and flashing their lights on the area.

"Okay. If I was an energy source powering a big building and all kinds of tech, where would I hide?"
 
as written by barney_fife

Once they reached the other side of the door to maintenance, they would stumble into a large room with a raised platform in the center. The room itself appeared empty, with the raised circular platform and a control panel besides the platform. The control panel was offline, as were the lights in the room.

However, at the very back of the room was a small access door, that read "Maintenance Access." in Anquietas on the door itself, in white reflective text. The door itself was locked with little more than a simple key and tumbler lock, and dead bolt. Once the soldiers managed to get the door open, it would reveal a verticle corridor, and a ladder that descended down into darkness. A small plaque on the wall next to the ladder read the levels. There were thirty sublevels, with EnPro and Power Regulation on sublevel thirty.

The Invictus would have a long climb down a dark ladder if they wanted to reach EnPro.
 
as written by Saarai

"Got a door, breaking the lock." A soldier said, approaching the locked door. As she began working on picking the lock, the other soldiers took a little time to explore. "It's weird." One of the others said as the comrades came to join them, "What?" Another soldier asked, "Not long ago this place was alive."

"Yeah. It took less than a day to kill it."

"Ghost town."

The soldiers jumped at the sound of a small explosion, turning towards the locked door as it fell from it's hinges. "Sorry. I think my charges are a bit overpowered." The soldier working on the door told the others.

"Let's go. Pack-Five, take point." The squad leader ordered, his team moving forward up until they found the ladder down. They all peered down into it cautiously.

"This is how my favorite horror movies always start. That or with a group of teenagers heading to a cabin for sex." One of them joked, "This is why we wear anti-gravity boots. Make the jump." The squad leader said.

One by one, the soldiers stepped out and dropped. Their descent being slowed with each activation of their boots, "How far do we go?"

"Just go."
 
as written by barney_fife

The jump led them roughly a hundred or so meters underground the service hatch, and through a second door that wasn't sealed. Through the door was a long hallway, that was once again completely desolate, save for trash and paperwork that was scattered about in the evacuation.

At the end of the hallway was the main facility power plant, a massive deuterium-tritium cold fusion reactor that could easily power every city on Terra for the next hundred years.

The reactor door itself was a powered blast door, not very difficult to get through, as it only required a power source and a break on the electronic lock. Once through the door, the main control center would be through it, a large window that held the reactor itself, controls for the heavy water pumps, controls for the centrifuge systems, and finally the master boot switch, which was set to off, and missing a key of some kind.

Along each door through the hallway were various substations for the master reactor system. Half way through the hallway was an intersection, where the facility's laboratories were being held. As the Invictus made their way through, they would find computer systems scuttled, or burned to slag with thermite.
 
as written by Saarai

"Got another door!" Echoed the voice of one of the soldiers as the others continued on their descent, "Already open." Another said, "Pack-Six, take point." The squad leader ordered, "Five at the rear." He continued, the group of soldiers making their way down the hallway.

"Again, how horror movies start." A soldier quipped.

The Invictus soldiers came to a stop at the reactor door, taking note of it's lack of power. One had to wonder if the power was shut off deliberately, this whole building couldn't have been put off the grid by the fighting alone.

"Get us through." The leader ordered, "On it." A soldier said, placing another of the batteries on the door. "I need a hack." He said, a soldier approaching with small device that resembled a coin. The soldier stuck it to the lock, blue lines coursing through it.

"Give me a second." He said, holding our his palm. A holographic display shot up, the soldier using it to monitor and control his hack.

The door opened after about a minute, the team continuing on to their possible final destination. The sight of the reactor was enough to let them know that they were where they needed to be. If they could turn the lights on things could become easier.

Or harder if it attracted the wrong kind of people to Hagan Avenue. The city wasn't exactly stable just yet.

"Start working on figuring out how to get the power on, the rest of us will keep going." The squad leader ordered, "Taking point." He said, leading the remainder of his team towards the laboratories.
 
as written by barney_fife

The entire reactor control system was in Anquietas, the buttons, dials, and everything else. The key would need to be bypassed in the master boot controls, and the secondary controls would also need to be activated to start the reactor. Additionally they would need to ensure there was fuel getting to the reactor.

The hallway leading to the laboratory wing, was like the rest of the facility cloaked in darkness, with the lights of the Invictus team being the only things keeping the halls illuminated.

Inside the laboratories themselves, the team would find more destroyed computer hardware, charred piles where paperwork had been burned, but the most disturbing sight was in the Xenobiology wing of the laboratory. From the looks of it, several individual laboratories would hold the remains of test subjects. People from all across Westeria, and many different species. Vampires, elves, werewolves, all could be found, their mangled, vivisected corpses laying on operating tables. But the most disgusting sight yet was a large room where a dozen people had been lined up and shot, their bodies revealing wounds from plasma weaponry, as opposed to the more common disruptor weapons.

At first glance, it appeared Tech Con was abducting people all across westeria for horrific experimentation. But the records had been destroyed, and the only evidence this had gone on at all, were the mangled remains of various people, creatures and the like. There seemed to be a focus on the supernatural types, as their bodies were the most common.
 
as written by Saarai

"Split up, see what you can find."

The order prompted the soldiers to break off and start searching the individual labs. Not everyone seemed to like what they found. It was hard to believe that anyone would do these kinds of experiments.

"Jesus-fucking-fuck-Christ." A soldier said, "These guys are monsters." He continued, "That's the Aschen for you." Another called out, "Stay focused." The squad leader ordered, "Sir, the translations say we need a key, that or we do a strong arm hack." A voice echoed in the leader's head.

Upon finding the room with the executed people he paused. Maybe one of them had the key. Maybe not. Everything stopped being a horror movie and suddenly became a war crime.

"We'll find one." He said, stepping out to searching corpses for anything at all useful to the team in the reactor room.
 
as written by barney_fife

No one among the dead inside the laboratories was likely to have the key, given that they were test subjects at the mercy of the tech con scientists. However of the team looked a bit harder they would find the key inside one of the dozen or so technician consoles, either hanging by a lanyard or in the desk itself.

As the second team delved further into the laboratories, they would be. Greeted by even more gruesome sights, especially when they reached the weapons testing ring. There was a dead werewolf, it's fur caked in blood and covered in disruptor burns. It was chained prone to the floor. There was another dead westerian inside what looked like a gas chamber. The most gruesome however was a young male, his entire body had been petrified into a brittle ashy substance, the plants scattered around the room were the same way. The notations in the room had been burned however, and there were no traces of residual chemicals. Whatever killed these people did so quickly, painfully, and efficiently.
 
as written by Saarai

"Packmaster, they got one of us." A soldier said, kneeling down beside the dead werewolf. "They're all one of us. This is eugenics at it's finest. It's darkest." The squad leader said, patrolling the labs to check up on his people. Each thing he saw in each lab prompted a permanent snarl on his masked face.

Even with the balaclava on it was easy to tell that what he and his team stumbled upon was much worse than their expectations.

"This might be the key. Coming back to the reactor room." One of the Invictus told the others, jogging back to the reactor room to pass off the key they found.

As the team in the reactor room continued to make sure they could get it up and running, their squad leader was lifting his mask up above his nose. He kneeled down near the pile of ashes that was once a living person.

He inhaled deeply, shaking his head immediately after.

"This is new. I'll remember this." He said, thoughts racing through his mind as he tried to make sure he wouldn't forget the uniqueness of what they came across. Someone needed to remember, at least for Tech Con's victims.

"Packmaster, we should, hopefully, have the reactor on after we make sure it's actually going to work. Half an hour, maybe less if it wasn't damaged."
 
as written by barney_fife

The reactor was largely intact, only requiring a turn of the key for it and it's subsystems to come online. Once that was done the lights would come on one by one, and what was a dark complex became brightly lit, and the true extent of the facility was evident. Doors opened up and cycled, and computer terminals- those that were not destroyed came online, holographic displays flickering to life.

The austere hallways gave way to laboratories on either side, weapons research, Xenobiology, and many others became apparent.

The hum of the consoles began to fill the room next, and should the team continue down the hallway, a large door that read "armory" would greet them on the left, alongside a door that read "concourse - Bifrost and Astrometrics Laboratory" and a second concourse that lead to the executive offices.
 
as written by Saarai

When the facility began to roar to life, the more tech-savvy soldiers rushed to make sure it wasn't just false hope. No, they had light in the darkness. Finally.

"Packmaster, this is Pack-seven, we got light upstairs. Your doing?" A soldier said over the team's comms, "That's us, keep an eye on the streets in case we attract any unwanted attention. There are people out there that want the Aschen dead, don't need them assuming we're Aschen ourselves." The squad leader said.

They were Invictus soldiers, but they had gone on this mission without any identifiers to make sure that if anything went wrong no one would know they were involved.

Like having to defend against angry civilians, or being at the scene of an explosion.

"Bifrost, that's their portal stuff or something, right?" A soldier asked, gesturing towards the door. "I think so. We should probably destroy it, honestly." Another suggested.

"Or use it."

The team began to gather together, all silent at the proposal.

"We get a nuke or two and send it straight to them." The soldier continued, "That's not how we roll." The squad leader said, "Riley, the Invictus hired us to do dirty jobs. Crippling the Aschen is a dirty job."

"No. It's not what we do." Riley told the soldier, "Get down there, shut it off if it's on. I'm going to report to Munroe."
 
Riley made his way back up to the ground floor of the facility, the rest of his team eventually joining him. They took up combat positions watching the streets and every entrance into the building they could.

They weren't planning on being caught off guard by anyone or anything.

"I'm saying, we can nuke them. No one would ever know." A soldier said, "Think about it, Riley. Let Munroe know the possibilities." She continued.

Riley remained silent, looking through the sight of his gun at the dark Westeria street.

"Wouldn't even need to let the other leadership know. It's way too easy." The soldier told the others, "No more talk. We're here to recon, not strategize. We'll wait for Munroe." Riley said to the soldiers.
 
The truck drew into Hagan Avenue at a slow pace, weaving around abandoned vehicles and debris as it trundled towards the abandoned aschen facilities located there. The journey across the city had thus far been uneventful, but now they were diverging from their scouted routes; there was no way of predicting what they'd find. Talys scanned the rooftops and alleys ahead as they drove, vigilant for any sign of trouble that their own forward scout had missed. Not that he expected that to happen. The ifrit spared a brief glance back at Rune. The summoner's eyes were swallowed by pitch black shadows that danced like flames, his senses directed elsewhere.

Ahead, Nyu slipped along the street silently, slinking from shadow to shadow without so much as a whisper to mark its passing. The shadow eidolon's eyes carried the same dark flames as its master's, for it was through it that Rune was viewing the way ahead, to spot potential danger before the group itself drew too close.

"Any idea where to start?" Talys glanced at the others. "I'll be the first to admit to knowing nothing about this part of the city."

He was almost interrupted by Rune. The fetchling spoke while his eyes were still elsewhere. "There are soldiers in one of the buildings. They don't look Aschen, though. They seem to be guarding it."
 
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"What shall we do about it?" asked Esti. "Are we taking them out, or slinking past them? I'm not as nimble or as agile as the rest of you, but if I can get my hands on those soldiers, I can make sure they don't wake up for long enough to get us in and out of the facility. Assuming they're hostile."
 
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