[X] Slow and steady.
"Stick to the plan," you order professionally. "I'm not risking lives because we decided to rush and got careless."
"...fine," Teshima reluctantly agrees, something unreadable in his tone. "You're the boss."
"Yes, I am." The statement is deliberately pointed: you don't know what games the kitsune thinks he's playing, but you weren't about to tolerate screwing around when there were people at risk. "We proceed as planned."
Of course, that meant you would have another eternity of utter boredom on your hands as Leka slowly creeps closer in her colossal suit while Gold drifts overhead and the others carefully place strips of plastic explosive at the designated entry points. Morvand, in his usual over-eagerness, had managed to secure the blueprints for the building from the police, and Leka had instantly identified the areas that would be the easiest to breech without causing any structural damage. She'd also identified the areas to target if you wanted to collapse the place, but you were holding onto that as a last resort.
After three losing games of solitaire, Leka is finally in view of the building and Morvand and Teshima are putting the finishing touches on the charges. From their current rate, you have a few more minutes before the fun started, so you get up to go stretch your legs...which is when everything decides to go to hell.
"Target on the roof!" Gold hisses, and you snapped your attention back to the screen. You couldn't see anything, but that was actually a good sign: if Leka could see them, they could see her. "Get to cover!"
"I can't!" Leka whispered back quickly. "It'd make too much noise!"
"Shit! Alright, hang on!"
There was a tense pause when nothing happened in the camera feed, and then a furry orc head poked over the edge of the roof with its jaws open. The figure seems to be taking in some fresh air, judging from his smile and heavy breathing, but both of those vanish as he sees the approaching battle suit and his piggy eyes suddenly became the size of saucers. But before he can shout a warning or even react, a golden-brown blur smashes into him from behind like a comet, the momentum carrying both the orc and his attacker over the edge of the roof.
As you watch the screen in shock, Gold rides her luckless victim all the way to the ground with her talons locked onto the back of his head. The orc lands face first with the harpy literally standing on his head, and from the way Gold's knees bend as they hit she made sure his skull would absorb the entity of her weight. The crunch of the impact is almost sickening.
"Told ya I could take 'em," the raptor remarks with a vicious grin before hopping off, kicking the fallen orc over, and placing a claw against his neck. She chuckles softly. "Son of a bitch-he's still breathing."
"Leave him then. Good work getting him off the roof, but they others still might have heard that," Morvand whispers urgently from his position near the wall of the building. "Even if they didn't, we have at best minutes before he's missed. We're out of time. Four, we need you back in the air. The second someone comes up to check on this guy, shoot them. Three, get in position as fast as you can without alerting them: we breech as soon as you're there."
You were surprised to see that Gold didn't give him any lip and instead threw herself upward with a heave of her powerful legs and began flapping to gain altitude. You couldn't see Teshima in the limited feed coming from Leka's helmet, but that was a good sign: he was supposed to be getting ready to break in on the opposite side of the building. As the cyclops moved forward, you could see that Morvand was definitely ready: a thin line of explosives had been placed on the wall beside him in the outline of a door. He already held the detonator in one clawed hand, and his other hand clutched a flash-bang. His wings were actually bound behind him, something he had assured you was standard protocol for dragonewt combat forces. Their scales might have been bullet-proof, but their wings certainly weren't.
Leka continues around the side of the building, and you catch a brief glimpse of Gold circling overhead, her wings still pumping as she climbs. A broad box has been sketched on the back wall in plastic explosive. As Leka's request, the charges here had been considerably smaller than those elsewhere: breaking through too violently would risk catching the hostages in the blast. Teshima had confirmed their locations before he placed the explosives, so if nothing had changed they would still be on the exact other side of this wall.
"Three, in position," whispers the cyclops softly, and you see the barrel of her grenade launcher poke into the bottom of the screen for a moment before she holsters it again.
"Two, in position."
"Four, in position."
"One, in position. Lead?"
You swallow. Well, here went everything.
"All units, commence breech. Go go go!"
All four walls of the building explode inward at once, sending plumes of dust in all directions. Your feed is lost in a haze of floating white particles for a split second, and then the camera is showing a closeup of the nearest wall. The charges hadn't been enough to collapse it, but that was by design. The safety of the hostages was the first priority, and Leka has her own way off getting in.
An armored gauntlet smashes forward to bury itself all the way up to the elbow in the bricks, and a second follows. With a groan of effort, the cyclops grabs two of the hidden studs she'd identified in the blueprints and heaves.
Weakened by the strategically placed charges, under the force of Leka's muscles the bricks tear away like papier-mâché. The camera adjusts to the shadowed interior of the building almost instantly, and you smirk as you see the terrified faces of the hostages staring up in awe at your engineer and her suit. You can't really blame them: it's not every day you get to see someone rip through a wall with their bare hands.
The orcs are equally shocked to see Leka, their beady eyes going wide as saucers when they see the huge battlesuit standing over them. That proves to be a mistake. Teshima and Morvand are already in the building and are taking no prisoners. Rolling over the fallen body of an orc with three neat bullet holes in his forehead, the dragonewt's tail snaps out to knock one of the gawkers off their feet before firing a burst of automatic fire directly into the chest of another. He isn't even bothering to take cover, but that was also part of the plan: keep the orcs focused on obvious targets so they didn't think to shoot the hostages. Between his scales and body armor, Morvand claimed he'd be fine and you had believed him. It was his life, after all.
"Run!" Leka bellows to the captives at her feet, unslinging her grenade launcher and pumping out skunk rounds as fast as she can pull the trigger. Her aim is spot on, and you see one of the noxious explosives smash directly into an orc's face before releasing its nauseating payload. "Come on, move!"
This was the most critical point in the plan. The gas would take a second or two to fully take affect, and the hostages would be fully exposed during that time. If even one orc decided to shoot the hostages instead of Morvand or Leka, everything would go to shit. So naturally, one does.
You see him in the corner of the increasingly obscured and chaotic camera feed, bellowing in rage at the escaping hostages and raising his gun to shoot them. But before you can even shout a warning, the orc drops as one of his own comrades empties six rounds point-blank into his spine.
"Wha-coughcough-what are you-!" roars a third to the traitor,hacking on the horrific smell of the skunk. In answer, the offender's face warps and twists into something resembling Teshima's, delivering a wink and a half-dozen bullets directly into the orc's torso. He falls instantly, but he apparently still has enough strength to call out a warning as he collapses into vomiting and flailing. "Shape-shapesifter!"
By the time the others can react, Teshima is already gone, vanishing into the gas that now fills the building. While Leka's suit was air-tight and Morvand wore a gas mask as protection, the kitsune needed no such help: according to him, assuming a form without functioning nostrils was easy. He moved through the room like a ghost, showing himself just long enough to fire in a random direction before vanishing and reappearing with a new body to do it all over again. The tactic was horrifically efficient: by the time you see Leka throw away her empty launcher and begin picking up the last of the hostages to physically drag them from the building, the orcs are too busy shooting at each other to even notice their captives getting away.
The hard part was over, but you weren't quite out of the woods yet. With holes blown in every wall and the entire building filled with the most vile stench scientists could whip up, it was only natural that any orcs able to do so would try to get into the open to escape the sensory torture. It wouldn't help, of course, but they didn't know that. Once they were out, they'd have a straight shot at the escaping hostages. The gas would probably keep them from hitting the broad side of a barn, but it only took one lucky bullet. That wasn't a chance you were willing to take.
The camera spins as Leka checks behind her, and true to prediction a pair of orcs have staggered out of the chaos and gunfire consuming the structure behind them. They are gasping and heaving, and as far as you can tell they haven't even noticed the captives right in front of them. They don't get the chance to either. A set of rapid headshots dropped both orcs almost instantly, the second orc not even realizing his partner had been shot before his brains were decorating his shoes.
"...and that's three!" called Gold triumphantly over the radio. "How are the rest of you doing?"
"The building is secure. All hostiles have been disabled or eliminated," reported Morvand. "All units, report status."
"You do realize I'm standing right in front of you, right?" Teshima answers, his tone wry. "Thanks for almost shooting me that one time, by the way."
"I feel I should remind you that the idea to sow chaos by impersonating our targets was yours, and that I pointed out the increased risk of friendly fire when you suggested it. If you require an apology, please take it up with me once the safety of the hostages has been confirmed. Three?"
"I've got 'em!" Leka reports cheerfully, the camera in her helmet scanning over the assembled civilians. The mix of gratitude, dumbfounded surprise, and suppressed nausea on their faces makes your lips curve upward in a smile again. Maybe you could make this a wallpaper or something. "Everyone's accounted for, and we've got no major injuries I can see."
"Excellent. Get them to the medical tents immediately, I want full checkups on all of them. Four? What's your status?"
"Infinitely glad I'm not covered in that stinky shit like all of you," answers the harpy. "Seriously, it's making me want to heave, and I'm all the way up here. None of you are coming near me until you've had about three dozen showers."
"Yeah, you're fine," you remark, rolling your eyes. "So! Hostages are safe, bad guys are taken care of, and best of all no one on the team go hurt! I'd say that make our mission a rousing success!"
"I concur, ma'am. Despite some initial friction, everything seemed to go exactly as planned," Morvand responds.
"Well, not everything," Teshima points out. "If we had taken advantage while they were distracted, we could have been inside before that guy on the roof even showed up. Still, it all worked out in the end, I guess."
"It did, and who knows how many other problems charging ahead would have caused?" you point out calmly. "Worrying about maybes is a suckers game. What's important is the mission is complete, and everyone we care about is just fine. Come on back and get that shit washed off of you, so we can move on to what comes after every successful mission!"
At this, everyone on your team talks at the same time.
"Affirmative. I've been looking forward to going over the operation with everyone so we can improve in the future."
"Read you loud and clear. I should warn you though: I'm not a cheap drinker, and the first round is on you."
"Sweet! Victory dinner! ...or maybe victory lunch, I guess? I saw an IHOP up the road, can we go there?"
"Oh yeah! Kill counting time! That first guy should count extra, since it saved all your asses and I did it barehanded!"
There is a pause as they realize they've spoken over each other, and you smirk as they all object at once.
"WAIT, WHAT?!"
Time to savor the sweet taste of victory! But how?
[ ] Morvand's suggestion. Boring though it might be, everyone does need to learn to work as a team. Might as well make them start now. Maybe you can duck out the back or something...
[ ] Teshima's suggestion. It's five o'clock somewhere, damn it, and you've been feeling the need for a stiff drink since the moment you woke up. If he thinks you're gonna foot the bill though, he obviously doesn't know how little they pay you.
[ ] Leka's suggestion. Not counting coffee (and coffee does count, damn it) you haven't had anything to eat all morning. Besides, you wanna see the wait staff's faces when this crowd walks through the door. It's going to be priceless.
[ ] Gold's suggestion. A bit of healthy competition might be nice to make sure everyone is at the top of their games. It's definitely not because watching them all bicker over who did the best will probably be a laugh riot. Nope, not at all...
[ ] YOUR suggestion. Um, what was your suggestion again? (Write in)
