In Service: A Science Fantasy Quest

The ride to the staging ground is a silent one. The two IFVs rumble over the nettle-ridden surface of the road, branches crunching under the heavy tires of the eight-wheeled machines. The turrets — 25 mm rotary cannons armed with an array of various, hotswappable rounds — scan the treeline for any hint of an enemy scout watching the road.

Kill Team Woodsmoker is split in half, six Troopers in each armored vehicle. While each IFV can easily carry the entire Kill Team plus a selection of extra personnel, having multiple machines with multiple cannons improves the odds of mission success or — if worst comes to worst — a successful extraction should the mission turn south.

In that situation, the Service will descend like the hammer of god and authorize the deployment of their 'problem solvers'. Each division has a group of problem solvers, unusually powerful or competent individuals that normally serve in other roles and jobs. An example of one of these problem solving individuals is your mentor, Senior Special Agent Damien Rhodes. Another example is KT Captain Daniels, the android who picked you up from the park all those months ago.

If things get really, really bad, then Service High Command will put Article 1 of their founding charter into effect, authorizing the Service to take over the entirety of the federal government as well as all the nation-state governments in order to deal with the threat. And if even that isn't enough, Article 0 gets activated and The Director enters the field.

Article 0 has only ever been put into action once. It takes an event the caliber of the Calamitous Years to even start considering the activation of Article 0 and the deployment of the most powerful man in the world.

Of course, Article 0 isn't going to be activated because of this raid. The most that'll happen is that the problem solvers get to go to work, and that's only if you screw up a ton.

But that doesn't help your racing mind as you silently ride in the IFV. What if things go wrong? What if people die? You've been on adventures before, sure, but those were small group things where the only risk was your parents kicking the bucket. The Troopers around you doing last minute checks of their gear only remind you further of the risks at hand.

"Think there's gonna be any robots?" One of the Troopers, an S-Trooper, nudges his rifle-bearing comrade sitting next to him. "Love me some robots. I can't wait to see how their motors run! What kinda coolant do they have? Do you think they'll use oil-based for their lubricant or some other?"

"Leo, just 'cause you have a weird hard-on for robots does not mean the rest of us do." The other Trooper shakes his helmeted head, the mirrored lenses flashing light.

The apparently named 'Leo' sputters, the wall-mounted straps keeping him from falling off his seat. "I-I do not have a fetsih for robots!" He denies fervently.

"We don't give a shit what you're into, just don't bring Kill Team Daniels into it. Like you always end up doing." Another KT Agent interjects from across the aisle as the Troopers descend into a bickering squabble. While you don't really care for the noise, you do appreciate the welcome distraction from your own internal debate.

Captain Woodsmoker sits next to you, silently watching from her — it turns out that the Forest Fire Elemental is a woman — position by the door. She has her arms crossed as she is wont to do as faint smoke floats from the ever-burning embers atop her flat head.

And then, all of a sudden, you come to a sudden, jerking halt and are nearly flung from your seat. Fortunately, the straps securing you save you from a nasty tumble.

You along with the rest of the Kill Team pile out of the back of the IFV and group up with the other six members.

"Blue Team, with me." Her voice is like a crackling fireplace as the team you rode along with form up on her — their previous lighthearted behaviour replaced by a wall of cold professionalism. "Red Team," the other IFV's team perks up, "sweep left through the woods."

"Special Agent Williams." Woodsmoker's hiss sounds like a burnt out husk of a log, if such a thing were to have a noise. "You may decide which team to follow."

Which team do you attach yourself to?
[ ] Red Team as they move up through the trees
[ ] Blue Team as they move up through the pathway

~~~~~~~

GM's Note: I realized that I didn't give you an opportunity to choose your loadout for the mission, so you can do that now.


[ ] 'Normal' Loadout (Service Pistol, Service Knife, Handcuffs, Investigation Equipment, Lockpicks, Rubber Gloves, Evidence Baggies, One MSB 10 Can, Infragoggles, Cutter Rounds)
+In the car, or IFV in this case: 2 flashbang, prybar, 2 MSB 10, 3 Anti-Plant Spray, tool kit, first-aid kit and candies if allowed.

Or you can pick from here, standard loadout options. (12 Tiny Items-6 Small Items (2 Tiny Items=1 Small Item) and 2 Medium Items. You can carry one Medium-Large Item in your hands)

Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST, thanks for watching!

You elected to go with Red Team as they went up and around through the trees.

You breathed in, held it, and then released it as you slowly crept through the pine trees. It's impossible to avoid every fallen branch or nettle, but that doesn't soothe your nerves as you crunch down on a pile of dry nettles.

The Team Leader, Trooper Max, leads Red Team as you make your way towards the objective. He has his rifle shouldered as he hunches over, stepping quietly through the nettle-covered forest floor.

Red Team has three S-Troopers, one of which is the Team Leader, two G-Troopers, and a sole M-Trooper. As well as you, of course.

A flash of light from up ahead in the darkness of the forest alerts you to the presence on a facility guard. The guard has a flashlight in hand, a basic combat vest, and a heavy pistol on his hefty belt as well as a radio.

The flashlight beam dances through the trees, missing you and the rest of Red Team as you hunker down in time for it to pass over head.

Seeing nothing, the guard turns around and says something into the radio. Trooper Max takes this opportunity and orders another Trooper, Trooper Gary, to take the guard out.

Trooper Gary creeps forward, slinging his assault rifle across his back and drawing his knife. The guard sighs and places the radio back on his belt just as Gary lunges.

The guard doesn't have a chance to react as Gary grabs him by the shoulder, spins him around, and sinks his knife into the hired man's neck. All in one smooth motion, like he'd practiced it dozens of times before.

The guard sinks to the floor, his suddenly weak knees no longer supporting him as he is gently laid on the nettle-scattered ground. Trooper Gary helped him down, cradling him as he carefully set the guard to his final rest on the cold surface of an Illinoisian forest floor.

You move forwards, carefully as always. While moving, you find and take out another pair of guards.

Soon, you reach the edge of the forest and the clearing that contains the security station, your goal for this bit of the mission. Take out the security and you'll have relatively easy access to the rest of the facility.

Trooper Max crouches before a fallen tree and pulls out his communicator. "This is Red Team. We are in position. On your command."

"Roger that, Red Team." Captain Woodsmoker's burnt voice hisses through the communicator. "We encountered a strange thing, but took it out without much diffi- wait." You could hear a pin drop in the silence that follows. And then you do hear something: a wet crunch on the other end of the line. "Take it down!" Woodsmoker shouts after a beat as the line cuts out.

The thunderous sounds of gunshots rumbles in from the direction of Blue Team. Bullets fly in bursts of light from beyond the trees.

Red Team has a choice to make: divert to support Blue Team or continue the operation.
[ ] Divert
[ ] Continue


~~~~~~~

GM's Note: Not super happy with this one, nor this section in general.

I was watching the Expanse, which is why this is late

Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST

"This is Red Team, we're moving to assist." Trooper Max declares into the communicator as he hefts his rifle. Nothing comes over the other side, the KT Troopers too absorbed in combat to communicate back.

Following the rest of Red Team, you divert from the Security Station and head towards the Garage.

The trees pass by in a blur as you hustle through the woods. The gunfire grows louder in your ears as you draw closer and closer to the battling agents of the Service.

The first thing you see as you clear the trees is a line of deployed cover and Captain Woodsmoker engaged in melee combat with a flesh-grafted abomination.

One Trooper sat behind the wall of ceramometallic material. His ballistic plated back pressed against the wall as he unclasped the blue-gray armor on his calf, a can of medifoam on the ground next to him as he revealed the half-dollar-sized bullet wound along his muscular calf. Filling it up with foam, he straps the armor paneling back on, grabs his rifle, and starts sending slugs towards the garage.

The garage shoots back, facility guards firing from concealed positions in the building and the surrounding trees. A large StarCorp-brand pulsar turret sits on the roof, seemingly deployed from a hatch in the garage. However, its controls sit empty.

A balaclava-clad corpse sits slumped in the turret seat. Smoke billows from a dinner plate sized hole in the dead man's chest, the edges of the wound melted and molten from the heat of the blast.

The abomination that Woodsmoker's battling is a massive thing. Standing at about eight feet high, its shoulders are at least two feet thick each. Its skin looks stitched together, mismatched colors only add to the unsettling aura emanating from the creature. Its limbs look mismatched, like they were made by grafting multiple limbs together in unnatural ways. It glares from a head made of at least three faces, its sunken eye sockets are filled with dozens of eyeballs each.

All in all, it's an absolutely stellar piece of the Frankensteinien Process that leaves you slightly envious.

Woodsmoker side steps one of the abomination's meaty, barrel-sized fists and coats her right arm with a shroud of fire. She steps forward, twisting on her hip and driving the lance of smoky fire into the monstrosity's armpit. It buckles, stumbling back with a spine-tingling scream of fear as its skin darkens from the scorching heat.

Unfortunately, that's all it does as the fire seems to have little other effect. Other than scaring the creature, that is.

Woodsmoker frowns, a piece of her wooden face splintered from a stray bullet. Her armor seems damaged and warped, like its taken heavy hits and kept on trucking. Hits likely from the abomination before her.

She advances, laying blow after flaming blow into the beast. The smoke trailing from her head grows heavier and thicker. The once-thin cloud is now a veritable bank of smog rolling out from her 'skull'.

The creature backs away, the heat warning it away. For now, that is. How long until it realizes that the fire can't hurt it meaningfully is anyones' guess.

Red Team takes a firing stance from the treeline. A grenadier lobs a choke-gas grenade at the fortifications, but a flash of red lightning zaps the grenade from existence midair. The smell of burnt ozone fills your nostrils as you frown, staring at the glowing red orb embedded above the garage door — the source of the anti-ordinance energy blasts. Taking that out would allow the Kill Team to smoke out the facility guards. Blue Team seems to have realized that as well, if the bullet holes in the brick of the garage surrounding it are anything to go off of.

The concrete ground of the garage lot is stained with blood, the defenders' blood. While a few Troopers have been wounded in the firefight, like the agent who sealed his wound up, none are suffering from anything serious.

For the defenders, however, it can't be said that it's the same. Several of the facility guards lay dead and dying on the cold concrete floor, well-placed shots had torn through their comparatively flimsy armor with ease. The deaths in the defensive line leaving some positions open, perhaps you could sneak through?

That pulsar turret could certainly put the hurt on that abomination, but it would require getting to it in the first place. And that is certainly easier said than done, what with it being on the roof and all.

If you could take out that anti-ordinance energy caster, then the grenadiers could definitely take out the entrenched defenders.

If, if, if, just a whole lot of ifs. The only question is, what are you going to do?

[ ] Write in a battle plan

There are about 7–9 guards still standing and combat capable, but they're entrenched pretty well in scattered positions around the garage and trees.

~~~~~~~

GM's Note: I was starting to feel some burnout, which you may have picked up on in my writing. While it isn't gone now, I am feeling better about it after writing this update.

If you need assistance with the plan, I can help out.

Voting will be closed tomorrow at 5 PM CST, thanks for consuming.

Bullets flew overhead, their ricochets flashes of light in the darkness of the forest floor. You huddled by a thick tree stump, gun in hand as you peered towards the garage. The defensive line that had been formed by the guards of the facility was holding, for a given definition of 'holding' any ways.

They must be paid lots and lots of money to do this. Or perhaps they've been lobotomized and turned into fleshy guard meat puppets for the facility to use. Either way, they're still shooting back with very real bullets.

The longer you dally here, the longer the facility has to secure the hatches and shore up its defenses. Which you cannot allow. But how to deny them this?

Your eyes dance across the battlefield as bullets light up the darkness like fireflies, searching for that opening you saw earlier.

There! By that fallen tree! A Trooper had just nailed a guard and splattered the tree with their blood, marking it in your sight.

From there, you can make your way to the emitter and take it out. After that, you can climb up to the roof of the garage and commandeer the pulsar turret.

With a plan in mind, you breathe in and breathe out.

"I'm taking out that emitter." You inform Trooper Max, who was crouched next to you.

He looks from you to the emitter before looking back with a nod. "Got it." He taps the shoulder of a grenadier and points down the ways. "We'll cover you."

"Thanks." You whisper back as the pair of Troopers spring up. The flare of their gun barrels lights up the darkness as you race across the open field, a hand covering your head.

The guards keep their heads down, allowing you to make it to the garage without trouble. You slam into the garage door, moving too fast to slow down and having to rely on the hard door to arrest your movement.

It hurts, obviously, but you are alive!

Now then, to take out that emitter.

You point your gun up at the red orb embedded above the garage door and, after a moment of aiming, pull the trigger. The orb shatters in a shower of red sparks and crystalized glass as the bullet absolutely demolishes the delicate internal workings encased inside.

One problem down, one left to go.

As the Kill Team arcs grenades into the defensive line, you begin to climb the garage.

You struggle your way up, using the bullet holes in the brick wall as handholds to hoist yourself up.

But you make it up without too much trouble. Well, if you classify trouble as bullets being shot at you, then yes, you didn't have much trouble at all.

Regardless, you push the warm body of the guard from the seat of the pulsar turret and climb on. The controls of the turret seem relatively simple with just a joystick with triggers and some targeting panels. Easy enough to understand.

You raise your eyebrows as you test the controls, noting the sensitivity of the operation sticks as you center the crosshairs on the back of the flesh-grafted abomination.

Thumbing the power-up button, the energy coils contained within the barrel start spinning up and fill your ears with a repeating whir. Pale blue light peeks through the gaps in the barrel as the whir reaches a crescendo.

You pull the trigger with a deceptively quiet click and the turret bucks under you. The sound of three blindingly bright blue energy diamonds hissing through the air rocks your eardrums as the trio crater into the broad back of the abomination.

Flesh warps and bubbles as the heat of the miniature pulsar stars flash boils through the monstrosity. It roars, a thunderous cry of pain tearing through its throat as its left arm falls off and slaps the ground with a meaty whap. The shoulder and part of the chest it was connected to now nothing more than a warm pink mist.

It gropes at its missing limb, confusion clear on its face. It rears back as Woodsmoker approaches, falling on its ass and scrambling away. Its far too long legs carry it away from the battle.

With the abomination gone, the Kill Team clean up the rest of the facility guards without any trouble at all.

You pat the humming pulsar turret's power cell as you collapse into the chair. It's over, phew.

Hang on, just how does the pulsar turret work in the first place? Because it not only has to power the generation of three miniature pulsar stars — which is a process all on its own — but it also has to shoot them out with at least a certain degree of accuracy. You reckon that it's something to do with magnets, but fucking magnets, how do they work?

The battery, however, is definitely understandable. Probably. You'll just stash this battery for later study. It would be pretty nice to get a better battery than what you're working with right now. Double-stacked batteries are nice and all, but they are expensive!

Regardless

With the Garage secure, do you want to search it or just torch it?
[ ] Search it
[ ] Torch it and move on

After you finish with the Garage, where to next?
[ ] Security
[ ] Guest House/Employee Barracks
[ ] Main House/Facility
[ ] After the abomination!


~~~~~~~

GM's Note: I'm not gonna lie to you, I completely blanked on writing for, like, several hours. Total War called to me and I am but a humble servant. But still, apologies for being late.

Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST.

I am visiting a friend tomorrow, so keep that in mind.

Alrighty, I've got some bad news.

I just got word that my ADHD meds are currently out of stock, so I will be getting very little writing done in the time it takes for it to restock

I am sorry for this, but it is entirely out of my control

Hopefully the company that makes the meds won't go bankrupt, again

While the Kill Team secures the bodies, you swipe a ring of keys off the belt of the man who used to sit in the turret.

His cooling corpse stares blankly at you as you reach down. The gaping hole in his chest leaks steaming blood as it pools on the ground.

That's… not natural. Blood steams when hit by a high-intensity heat attack, of course, like the one that killed him. But it doesn't tend to last that long. Usually it cools down a few seconds to a minute or so after death. This guy's been dead for at least a good couple minutes.

So why is his blood still boiling?

Could be many reasons. He could just have strange genetics or a mythological ancestry to him. He could also have gone through arctic weather gene therapy at some point, like if he was born in a very cold place. His parents could've gone through it and it might've passed down to him as well. Of course, it could also be a biological attack method, where he'd squirt boiling blood out at attackers or prey.

There's something about it, though, that really draws your attention. Specifically, it draws the attention of the super-scientist in you. Because, well, you don't really think that this is natural. Not in a place like this, not with the employers the dead man had.

Regardless, you've got some looting to do!

Hopping down from the garage roof, the ring of keys jingles in your hand as you land in a bouncy crouch on the smooth concrete driveway.

The garage itself is fairly simple. A large box of red brick and mortar with a smattering of doors. On the back side of the vehicle storehouse is a single door while the front has the twin of the door in the back and a large, rectangular shuttering garage door.

They're all locked, of course. But that's what you grabbed the keys for in the first place!

You run through the ring, trying each key on the garage door lock securing it to the ground. After a few moments, you slide in a key that fits and a sharp click signals the unlocking of the mechanism.

With a flexing of muscle, you hoist up the shuttering garage door and, with a final push, you slide it into place over the now open garage.

You hear a sharp whistle from next to you as a trooper peers into the garage. You can't see his face or eyes through the mirrored lenses of his armor, but you can tell that he's ogling the vehicles stowed away all the same.

And they are nice looking vehicles, don't get it twisted, but they're not the kind of vehicle you'd see at a race track or a rich man's house. These are purpose-built transports. The kind of machinery used to haul extremely precious and/or delicate things long distances. The sort of vehicles used to convey things you want to keep inside the bounds of the machine.

Along the back walls are a slew of workbenches and tool cabinets littered with, you guessed it, tools. Tools of all shapes and sizes, wrenches, screwdrivers, hyperastic converters, and hammers, oh my.

You give each locker and workbench a quick glancing once-over, to see if there is any desirable loot to take with you.

After a few minutes, you frown and slam the flimsy metal door of the locker shut. Nothing, once again. Well, that's not entirely true. You did nab a few sets of quality tools, though, as well as some power tools that you didn't have until now.

However, there is one thing that you found that does seem to be useful. You found what appears to be a form of compression battery! Specifically, you found a basic form of Augerbattery.

Augerbatteries are a type of compression battery that are capable of storing about twelve times as much power as your standard store-bought grocery store battery thanks to compression and density techniques utilizing advanced augerwire from the Upper Realm. Specifically, technology from the Augerspire.

The Augerspire is a gargantuan tower in the Upper Realm that stretches all the way from the nullflats at the bottom of the realm to the firmament at the very top. The Augerspire is said to innovate simply out of a desire to innovate, which leaves you with mixed feelings.

What is the point of innovating if the technology is never used for anything? Why strive to make new things when the goal is only to further make new things? You can understand the appeal, but… seeing the technology you make in action is so very satisfying as well. Especially when it works!

Regardless of your feelings on the subject, you still have an example of one of their creations — even if it's a, quote-unquote, "crude" example of their tech. The Augerspire is known to auction off their 'lesser' creations in order to fund some of their bigger projects. Which is likely how these people got their hands on this battery in the first place: buying it from somebody else who bought it at an auction. Or however many middlemen were in the process of the Society acquiring it.

Once you reverse engineer this, you can power some more advanced tech. Nice!

(Gained Better Tools: +10 to Super Science Rolls)
(Gained Research/Reverse Engineer topic: Augerbattery)

~~~~~~~

The security station is a hive of bustling activity.

Guards rush to and fro, entering and exiting the building with an unusual fervor. Small ballistic turrets sprout from the corners, the automated weapons sweeping and scanning each guard. The turrets seem to have a strange antenna attached to them, which is pointed at each guard one at a time in quick succession.

The security station itself has guards in the windows, watching the surrounding trees as the majority of the guards move towards the main facility. There seem to only be a few guards still stationed here, at minimum five and at most eight.

The building has two floors and is rather thin. Two barred windows on the first floor, on either side of the solid iron double doors. On the second floor are three windows, these ones not bared. Each window has a guard in it.

If you wait, the rest of the guards will trail out and enter the main facility. There are about thirteen, fourteen, fifteen guards rushing there now. If you give them a minute or two, you won't have to deal with them while taking the security station. However, you will have to deal with them later.

What do you want to do?

[ ] Ambush
The Kill Team will launch an ambush on the rushing guards.
Pros: Taking out the rest of the outer guards
Cons: Fighting them all at once+the turrets and window guards

[ ] Wait it out
The Kill Team will wait for the rushing guards to clear out.
Pros: Not having to fight them all at once+the turrets and window guards
Cons: Having to fight the rest later.

If you want to detail what actions are taken or anything like that, you can write it in.
[ ] Write in


~~~~~~~

GM's Note: I got word that a pharmacy a few towns over had my meds in stock, so I drove over there and got a refill. So everything's good for about a month.

Also, I will now be taking breaks over the weekends. This is in an effort to combat burnout and to give me time to work on other projects that I have.

Voting will be closed tomorrow at 5 PM CST.

One by one, the guards milling outside the security building leave. Hoisting a large array of armaments in their arms as they seem to move almost… robotically? Definitely something weird going on here.

What sounds like a growling noise grows in the distance. The animalistic roar seems to come from the direction of the main laboratory, which sets you on edge a bit more than before.

It doesn't take long before the rest of the guards clear out, leaving the facility guards in the windows and however many are inside the building as the only remaining guards in the security station.

"What do you think about EMP-ing the turrets? If we've got any, that is." You whisper in a crouch next to Woodsmoker as a thin, ethereal trail of smoke rises from her had.

"Good idea." The Kill Team Captain hisses out. She reaches over and taps the closest grenadier on the shoulder as she directs a charred bark-covered finger towards the turrets. With a clench of the fist, the grenadier loads a dark, steely cylinder into the tube-shaped grenade launcher hanging from their belt. Blue LEDs light up along the sides of the presumed EMP grenade as the projectile drops into the grenade launcher.

"Blue Team, pick your targets. Once the turrets are down, drop them, two shots each. Red Team, split into Green and Yellow. Sweep along the forest path and set up ambush points along each side." As soon as Woodsmoker finishes her orders the Kill Team silently explodes into motion like a well-oiled machine. Blue Team sets up along the treeline, rifles and carbines resting on fallen trees and branches. Each of the five Troopers points a weapon at one of the guards in the windows, with Woodsmoker taking the spot of the grenadier.

Red Team, now split into Green and Yellow Teams, creep through the trees in the wake of the passing facility guards. Weapons at the ready as Green takes the left side of the path and Yellow takes the right. What feels like seconds later, they've set up disguised positions using holograms and flash-cloned foliage.

Woodsmoker holds up a hand, fingers splayed out. Slowly, she counts down five seconds. Each second's passing is marked by a finger falling. Once she hits zero and her hand makes a fist, all hell breaks loose.

The grenadier, already set up, pulls the trigger on the grenade launcher and fires the cylinder with a Thoomp!

The glowing blue grenade sails through the air in a seemingly lazy arc as you hold your breath. It seems to hang in the air forever as it lackadaisically falls in between the turrets. It bounces, once, twice, before erupting in a sphere of blue thunder.

Bolts of lightning snake across the turrets. Sparks shoot out of the now disabled auto-turrets as they fall limp, hanging from their wall-mounted sockets.

In unison, the very moment the turrets fall, a duo of echoing shots ring out around you. So close together are the shots that it takes you a second to realize that each trooper shot twice and it wasn't just a pair of gunshots.

The windows shatter outwards as blood explodes against the panes. It reminds you vaguely of the fruit you shot when your Uncle Mike took you shooting once and how they erupted in geysers of red fruit flesh and sticky juice.

And then, all of a sudden, silence. The sudden movement of the Kill Team leaves you scrambling after them as they rush to the security station.

Woodsmoker reaches the door first, her head now billowing in dark, heavy, cloying smoke. Her carbine sweeps up and she puts a quintet of rounds through the comparatively flimsy metal of the door. In a flash, she raises an armored boot and hits the door with a fire-enhanced kick.

The door flies off its hinges, tumbling down the hallway and hitting something wet and meaty on the far wall. She moves in and you get a half-second glimpse of her aftermath before another Trooper moves in and blocks your view of the door embedded in the far wall, a red splatter of gore surrounds it.

Blue Team piles in after their Captain. Six agents split into pairs as they move in practiced motions. Two take the door on the left of the hallway, two take the right, and Woodsmoker and a grenadier take the hall. Woodsmoker and the G-Trooper slam deployable cover into the walls, dragging the shuttering sheets of thick metal and reinforced ballistic plating out to cover their bodies.

The weapons of the agents sweeping the side rooms give sharp retorts as they make doubly sure that the guards in the bottom floor windows are good and dead. Footsteps thump down on either side of the far end of the hall, a quartet of facility guards round the stairwell only to have their bodies punched full of holes by the ready and waiting Woodsmoker and her grenadier partner's LMG.

Their residue falls back against the ground. What little remains of their bodies are nothing more than a pile of limbs and gore, with the occasional part of a head and a hole-filled torso lying around.

The Troopers in the side rooms pile out and meet up with Woodsmoker and the grenadier as they collect their cover and place it back with the rest of their kit on their backs.

"Search them for anything that can be of use." Woodsmoker orders you as she leads Blue Team up the stairs. Her words leave no room for argument so you find yourself knee-deep in the gore and viscera of the dead, shifting through the butchered bodies for anything that looks to be useful.

Your boots squelch as you step in a particularly juicy pile of blood and guts and you're thankful for the liquid-phobic nature of your clothing as otherwise, you'd have a lot of questionable stains covering the hem of your uniform. You knew that Kill Teams didn't play around, but, well, their showing during the garage battle didn't fill you with much hope. After all, they couldn't all be hyper-competent, could they?

It's clear now, however, that Kill Teams are, as they say, — typically the few zoomers still somehow alive, the old farts that they are — 'built different'.

You frown, grimacing as you hold up a red-stained wallet by the corner with your thumb and forefinger. A thin string of chunky viscera hangs from the brown leather, which you flick off with a gloved hand.

With a flick of the wrist, you unfold the wallet and reveal the contents. The contents being twenty-three dollars and thirteen pennies. What a haul.

Other than those, however, you do see this guy's card stash, where he stashed his cards before, you know, dying. Inside the pile of cards — which seem to bulge the wallet — you find a blue ID keycard. In fact, amongst the piles of dead men, you find three more! That is actually a good haul.

Of course, they only seem to allow you into places that would otherwise allow security to be in in the first place. They're not all-access, after all, but they should get you into many places.

Footsteps alert you to Woodsmoker coming down the stairs, her armor smeared with red liquid.

"You find anything?" The Captain asks, her voice a smoking hiss as always.

"Yeah." You nod, holding up the quartet of keycards as her ever-stoic face nods. "These keycards're security cards. They'll get us into most places, but not all."

"Good work." Woodsmoker takes three cards from you, leaving you with one, before asking you a question. "You have access to your AI, STEVE, yes?"

"Yeah, why do you ask?" You question while trying to clean your gloves off.

"There's a camera panel, but it's locked. Figured that an AI would be able'ta crack it." Woodsmoker offers an explanation, gesturing you to follow her, which you do.

She leads you up the stairs, past Troopers as they mill about, doing their post fire-fight jobs. Gunfire rings out from the surrounding, the sign that Green and Yellow Teams are engaging the facility's response team.

Before you lies a many-monitored viewing station. The station that, presumably, guards would use to view the facility's camera system. The screens are currently on, though there is a splattering of blood dribbled across some of the vaguely CRT-ish monitors. A Trooper drags a corpse from the chair, which has a bullethole through the backrest.

"You said it's locked?" You query Woodsmoker and co and receive a round of nods in response. "Alright then. STEVE, can you break it?"

"Of course, Mistress! Your ever eager servant would love nothing more than to do just that!" STEVE's maniacal voice joyfully yells over the line as he virtually plugs himself into the security system.

Lines of code trawl down the screen in blindingly fast blurs as STEVE does battle with the fire wall of the facility. Minutes pass as STEVE's code probes and prods the static lines of the facility, but eventually, you hear his voice once again.

"It's wide open for you, Mistress!" As soon as you hear STEVE's voice, the CRT screens swap from the blank glow they had before to displaying dozens of cameras. Each screen displays a different camera in a different section of the facility.

"Good work, STEVE." He squeals in happiness as he fades into the distance, returning to wherever it is he disappears off to.

Cracking your knuckles, you slide into the chair and get to work.

Turns out, the cameras don't show you the entirety of the facility. They only show you the basement of the old manor and the hallways, as well as the various 'all access' rooms, like the kitchens or cleaning closets.

The basement itself seems to be, well, full of cages. These cages, of which there are at least a dozen of them, all have something inside that you recognize: things that look like the abomination from before.

"Well, shit." Woodsmoker utters from behind you.

"Well shit indeed." You remark, falling back in the bullet-ridden and blood-stained chair. Surprisingly enough, it's an unusually comfortable chair. Especially for a place like this.

The inner facility guards are dressed in much heavier armor and are carrying heavier weapons. The kind of weapons that you'd expect to see on a containment team. Which might be why they're clustering near the basement, now that you think about it.

What do you do next?
[ ] Main Facility!

[ ] Employee Lodgings!


~~~~~~~

GM's Note: I wrote this one in a blurred haze of words and typing.

Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST.

The main facility loomed like a fortress rising through the trees as you moved over the forest path. The Kill Team hustles over the concrete pathway, weapons shouldered and ready at a moment's notice.

The mansion-cum-research facility is a large, L shaped building fashioned in the style of the old, Edwardian manors. The structure itself is two stories tall, with a high peaked roof that likely contains an attic of some kind. Strangely enough, there don't seem to be any guards on the outside of the building.

"The guards are all inside, right STEVE?" You whisper to the AI currently manning — AI-ing? — the security system.

"Yes, Mistress." The ever-loyal machine man responds. "There are exactly twenty-three guards inside. Each are armed with RP-Stun Guns and are wearing Underpowered Exo-Armors. The armor seems to be oriented for bludgeoning."

You frown in contemplation. Rapid Pulse Stun Guns are top shelf non-lethal weapons — at least, from the commercially available shelves — and, as such, they are not cheap, not in the slightest. To outfit twenty-three people with them would cost one pretty of a penny. And that's not even counting the exoarmors. Sure, they're Underpowered models, but those are still expensive!

Exoarmors are a powerful tool, even Underpowered brand models. They both provide extra strength to the wearer and additional armor. These exoarmors are built for melee, it seems, the features in the armor make the wearer functionally immune to blunt and bludgeoning damage.

The RP-Stunners are primarily non-lethal, though that doesn't mean that they can't kill, far from it. You'd have to turn the power up to the maximum setting first, and then you have to repeatedly hit the target in rapid succession, but you can do it. Eventually, the nervous system will give out from the stresses of the stunner's electricity.

It's obvious that the guards are here to contain the abominations. However, the abominations have shown resistance to heat attacks before, even going so far as to be functionally immune to fire. That means that, unless the guards aren't actually meant to contain the abominations, that electricity-based weapons have an effect on the monstrosities. Perhaps they're weak to lightning? Well, there's only one way to find out!

"Woodsmoker." You whisper to the Kill Team Captain. "I figured something out." The walking forest fire regards you with a smokey look, urging you to continue. "The guards are armed with stunners, RP-Stun Guns to be specific. My theory is that the abominations are weak to electricity."

A frown crawls across Captain Woodsmoker's scorched, bark-like face as she considers it. "I'll take that into consideration," the Kill Team leader hisses out, "any further advice?"

You nod. "They're wearing exoarmor, Underpowered exoarmor." Woodsmoker's frown deepens, giving some definition to her otherwise flat face. "Fortunately, it can be overloaded. Underpowered is cheap, but it comes at the cost of combat endurance. It overheats, it runs out of power, and/or it draws too much power. Regardless of the reason, it will eventually be disabled."

"And if they're still inside…" The wooden woman flicks her wrist, a teeny burst of flame sparking from her wood-like fingers.

"They'd be sitting ducks, Ma'am." You confirm with a grin and a nod.

"Good. Any advantage is a good advantage." You can see Woodsmoker looking at the other members of her Kill Team. Specifically, she's looking at the more wounded members, like the one who you saw patch himself up near the garage. Apparently, Leroy — the Trooper — had been shot in the process of taking out the turret on the roof, which definitely saved some lives.

Some have already been wounded but none have died, so far at least. Kill Teams are dangerous jobs, but there aren't exactly many jobs in the Service that aren't dangerous, they're just dangerous in different ways. You deal with belligerent suspects and the occasional active combatant, Kill Teams deal with the worst there are, the kinds of people that would willingly damn humanity to eternal slavery in the hopes of receiving a choice spot in the heirarchy once it's all over.

Fortunately, people like that aren't very common. Or else Kill Teams would have a lot more work to do and they wouldn't be available for back-up or for raids like this.

The manor-cum-research facility has three entrances. They are the main entrance, the 'L'-side entrance, and the back entrance. None are heavily guarded, but each will definitely have something on them.

The main entrance has two guards on the balcony of the stairwell. These guards have mounted weapons on the railing of the banister, machine guns to be specific.

The L-side entrance has a force-field of some sort. It doesn't seem to be an offensive force-field, just stopping you from getting in. You might be able to disable it somehow.

The back entrance doesn't seem to have anything defending. However, unlike the rest of the entrances, there aren't any tracks leading to or from it. So there's definitely something there, something that scares people away from using it.

What's the plan?

[ ] Sneaky-beaky-like
You will stealthily move through the facility. They know you're here but they don't know where you are, especially with the security system commandeered by STEVE.

[ ] Shock and Awe
Hit them hard, hit them fast, speed run this thing and don't give them time to react. They know you're here, so it's time to ring their bells.

-[ ] Write in
This is in addition to the plans above, so you'll choose one above and then add this in, if you want to add it in. This is so you can dictate specifically what the plan is, if you are so desired.

~~~~~~~

GM's Note: Alrighty, back on track.

Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST, thanks for sticking with it through these weird times.

"Can you get us through that force field?" Woodsmoker hisses out a question, smoke drifting over her shoulders.

You consider it, quirking your head to the side as you tap your chin in thought. The force field generator is behind the projection, yes, however… If you can slip a signal in there…

"Yeah, yeah I can." You nod, wringing out your hands as you get ready to do some work.

With that, you hustle on over to the L-side entrance. Getting through said entrance would allow the Kill Team to slip in unnoticed and would help them achieve their objectives far easier than if they get bogged down in some ambush or defensive line.

The L-side entrance is a smaller thing than the main. Instead of double doors with a grand design to them, this entrance only has a single white door with a trio of low, shallow steps leading up to the door.

Of course, unlike the main entrance, this entrance has a large blue, glimmering, curtain-like shield covering the doorframe and stopping anyone from entering. Force fields, depending on what kind you're using, are very potent tools to halt movement. They can also be used as an attack, wrapping around someone to trap them in place if you calibrate it correctly. Some have varying effects, such as burning anything that crosses the field into cinders or bouncing any attack back at the enemy.

However, all defenses have a weakness or flaw — there is no true total defense and anyone trying to peddle one is lying — and force fields are no different. While it varies from model to model, from method to method of projecting fields, this force field you seem to recognize as a Zetamax DC-12, the DC stands for 'dissuader collective', which means it stops the movement of whatever happens to touch it.

The DC-12 has a fatal flaw, however, in that the method it uses to deploy shields is interceptable. The power generator shoots wireless waves of electricity to the projector. All one needs to do is hijack the transmission and you can send all sorts of signals through it.

You've got a couple methods of doing this. One is that you simply ignore the force field and go through the wall, bypassing the projector-generator situation entirely. That would, however, be very loud and sort of defeat the whole purpose of going in through this entrance in the first place.

Another is by feeding a wire with a makeshift antenna on the end around the edges of the force field. Get it in the right spot and, with a jolt of electricity, you can shut the whole thing down. Of course, this does take some trial and error until you get the right spot. Which will take some time to get done.

A third method is bombarding the area with wireless signals, like by shooting a tv broadcast at the general area. You'll overwhelm it quickly, forcing it to shut down after a few seconds of that hell. This does come with some cost as you don't have anything that could do that on hand. However, you could definitely rig something up with your Infragoggles. You'll need to take it apart for that and there's no guarantee that the Infragoggles' parts won't be damaged by the process of launching a broadband broadcast at something.

So, what do you do?
[ ] Wire Zapper (Will take between a couple minutes to a couple hours, depending on how lucky you are)

[ ] Broadcast Barrage (Will cost you the use of your Infragoggles for the rest of the mission, but you'll get a new set at the end. There's also a chance that you can put the goggles back together)

[ ] Through the Wall (Go through the wall and ignore the force field problem, will defeat the purpose of being sneaky, though)

~~~~~~~

GM's Note: Sorry for lateness and for shortness, life got in the way for a bit.

Voting will be called tomorrow at 5 PM CST