The Accumulation of Capital (Syndicate/MCU)

[prometheus110]

Vote Tally : Crossover - Sci-Fi - The Accumulation of Capital (Syndicate/???) | Page 2 | Sufficient Velocity [Posts: 34-40]
##### NetTally 1.9.9
[x] Take the right corridor.
No. of Votes: 2
Nevill
Death and Faxes
Total No. of Voters: 2

Making an executive decision based on the logic that more sensitive areas would be located further into the facility, you silently order your team to advance down the right-hand corridor as quickly as possible. With Asha guarding your rear with her modified Kusanagi, and Niall and Johansen taking turns to advance and cover, the rest of your team move swiftly and silently down the spartan corridor; each of you acutely aware of your relative vulnerability as you move into the open air. It's only thanks to years of dealing with the Syndicate equivalent of a pool of piranha that you're able to hide how tense you've become, and you can almost hear your nerves fraying as you strain for any hint of detection.

Slowly, as you pass by one blank section of corridor wall after another, a feeling that's been bothering you ever since you arrived crystallizes into concern and you look around more closely as you move.

You know the Church of the New Epoch. Not very well, admittedly, but enough to know that they're the closest things to expert marketers that exist in the apocalyptic cult world and that they can't go anywhere for any length of time without leaving behind some sort of hastily scrawled parable. It's… odd that they haven't done this yet. Especially for a group of cultists as large as this.

Dismissing the thought as extraneous, you refocus on the mission at hand and continue moving down the corridor before sliding into place next to the junction's entrance and beside Johansen. Almost as one, the two of you crouch and cover the door opposite you with your rifles as Niall, Shaw, and Asha all move into position.

With your team in place and the area seemingly secure, you take the chance to peek around the corner. Unlike your own corridor which is lit —albeit somewhat dimly— by strips of bio-lume lights set into the top and bottom of the walls, this one is lit by barely-there splotches of dull amber which fade and brighten seemingly at random. If you had night vision equipment it wouldn't even be an obstacle, but this mission had been put together so rapidly that if anyone had thought to send them, they were probably sitting in Nairobi or Pretoria or something.

"Infrared guide lights", mutters Johansen, "it's probably only meant to be used by delivery 'bots."

For a moment you pause to consider how you'll clear the corridor before remembering that Shaw's EWAR gear might have something handy. With a flick of your eye, you bring up the accompanying list of contents and break out into a grin made feral by your borrowed body's gaunt face. Turning to face Shaw, you tell him your idea and with a silent nod, he sidles past you, calmly drawing out a loop of hair-thin fibre optic cable from his webbing with one hand. As he stops beside the shadowy entrance to the corridor, he feeds the cable around the corner and as he does so you open a display via you DART.

=====

Could someone roll 1D6?

 

[prometheus110]

5 versus 4 = Success

Unsurprisingly for a cable this thin, the infrared feed is both grainy and washed out, and the once dull amber lights now burn brightly enough to drown out their surroundings, but the image is clear enough for you to see that nothing lurks in the corridor's shadows that aren't either invisible or too far away.

Instantly, relief floods your body, and muscles you didn't realize you were tensing relax. Turning back to the others you order them to:

[] Advance down the corridor
[] Move to the door, breach, and clear.
[] Split up, guard one and advance down the other (which ones?)
[] Write in.

(I swear you guys pass all the rolls I want you to fail . Let's see if you can avoid turning the world into a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk wasteland during the tutorial).

Edit: Also, sorry for the short length today but I went to bed late last night and felt pretty bad this evening. Hopefully, tomorrow will better.

 

[prometheus110]

Rolling.

Meh. Slightly below average.

Click to shrink...

9 versus 8 = success

=======
Suddenly, from out of the shadows ahead of you, a soft shuffling and padding sound comes echoing down the corridor, and with a quick gesture of your hand, you order the team to halt its advance. Instantly, the five of you stop and listen, and presently you're rewarded.

*Slap, slap, slap, slap*

It's quiet, barely loud enough to be heard even with your augmented senses, but somewhere up ahead of you something is moving around.

*Slap, slap, slap, slap*

Whatever it is, it's also getting closer….

Short-term vote - 30 minutes till resolution: What do you do?
[] Advance to contact.
[] Wait here and meet it.

 

[prometheus110]

Vote Tally : Crossover - Sci-Fi - The Accumulation of Capital (Syndicate/???) | Page 2 | Sufficient Velocity [Posts: 44-45]
[x] Wait here and meet it.
No. of Votes: 1
Nevill
Total No. of Voters: 1

Deciding that it's best to fight in the terrain you know than to wander into a trap, you order your team to pull together and get ready for whatever it is that's approaching. For agonizing minutes you wait pressed up against whatever shadows you can find in the cold and the dark of the service corridor, rifles trained on the path ahead and eyes open wide.

"What the hell is that?" asks Shaw suddenly and before you can ask, you smell it too.

Like a physical blast, the smell hits you. Warm and thick, it hangs in the air like the fevered breath of a sick man and smells of rotten meat and stagnant mud mixed with something mechanical like engine oil and hydraulic fluid.

"Oh god, what is that?" you manage to gasp out.

"It smells like… a hyena?" replies Asha.

========

With a sound like thunder, machine gun fire bursts out of a distant copse of trees to your right and stitches the earth in front of you with the fury of a demented sewing machine. As abruptly as it starts, the thick stream of tracers in Cayman-Global gold ceases and you take an experimental step toward the now-revealed machine gun nest. Immediately the fire resumes, this time sending a rope of deadly rounds straight at your chest as they find their zero and joined moments later by the staccato bark of assault rifles and the whip-crack of sniper fire.

Before you can even think to flinch, your armour eagerly responds to the challenge. With a deafening bark and a flash of light, three reactive cells detonate and send a deadly wall of shrapnel out to intercept and deflect the rounds. With the manic grin that comes only from the knowledge of your own invulnerability, you watch as the deformed rounds slam into the ground or go shooting into the sky with the sound of a snapping rubber band. Ignoring the storm of fire that whips all around you thanks to your slowly depleting plates, you calmly raise your own weapon in one hand and point it towards their redoubt before gently squeezing the trigger.

With a whining roar accompanied by a jackhammer-like recoil, you open fire, your own light machine gun spewing out a thick stream of red tracers toward the trees. A fraction of a second later, the dense copse of trees lights up with a dull *whump* as your incendiary tracers detonate. With an almost bored leisure you start to walk your fire across the entire section of trees, the brightness of your tracers making DART assistance unnecessary as you slowly drag the torrent from end to end and back again.

To your left and right, your DART tells you, Drake and Van De Meere are doing the same with their own targets, the jackhammer-roars of their respective weapons mixing with your own to beat out a murderous tattoo For a moment, you almost feel sorry for the cultists.

*New Threat Detected*

Startled, you release your hold on the trigger and your LMG spins down with an almost pleading whine. Turning as fast as your armour allows, you catch sight of a figure in the distance wearing the distinctive white and gold armour of Cayman-Global. With visible effort, they shoulder an awkward, barrel-shaped load and point it at you.

====
I need a 2D6

 

[prometheus110]

With a shriek that's piercing even from where you're standing, the rocket leaps from its tube and plunges straight for you. For what feels like an eternity you stare at the football shaped object as it hurtles toward you before icy clarity floods into your veins and with a shout of fear and effort, you leap to your right and pray for deliverance.

With a thunderclap boom, Vanadium Tech Solutions delivers as every cell on your armour's left flank detonates in an attempt to save your life. With a feeling not unlike that of a truck hitting you, your world turns black and red, and moments later you feel yourself crash to the ground in a heap.

God damn it, you think as you roll onto your side and raise your machine gun toward the frantically reloading soldier.

"Cultists my bloody arse," you continue before squeezing the trigger and calling your boss.
=========

With a cheerful tone that only you can hear, your DART alerts you to the fact that the leader of the distraction team wants to speak. Before you can respond, all hell breaks loose.

With a shout of panic and surprise unlike his normally cool exterior, Johansen opens fire on something up ahead. Even suppressed, his weapon is almost deafening in the tight confines and once stifling quiet of the corridor, and its strobe-like muzzle flash is blindingly bright. With each flash of yellow-white light spewing from the barrel of Johansen's gun, you can just make out something dark and man-sized charging towards you on all fours; the rotten meat stench of it getting stronger as it does so and the sound of snarling suddenly rising up and breaking its otherwise silent approach.

Immediately the rest of your squad joins Johansen in firing down the corridor, assault rifles pumping round after round down the corridor towards the dense shadow that's getting closer and closer by the second.

Spoiler: Shooting rolls

You: 11 versus 8 = hit!
Asha: 10 versus 12 = miss!
Shaw: 6 versus 14 = miss!
Niall: 6 versus 15 = miss!
Johansen: 10 versus 20 = miss!

Spoiler: Wound rolls

You: 10-8 = 2 damage!

Somehow, the creature manages to dodge the hailstorm of fire thrown at it with the grace of a dancer stepping from place to place. Again and again, your team throws everything they have at it and again and again it moves just a moment too quickly. As the creature gets closer, you can feel panic start to seep into your soldiers as the fire around you becomes less disciplined. Forcing yourself to ignore your own mounting fears, you cease firing and focus on the motion of the creature as it advances. With a monumental effort, you force yourself to slow down and breathe in and out, in and out, in and...

Squeezing the trigger, you send a short burst of fire into space where the creature wasn't and shouldn't be, and yet suddenly is.

With a meaty thwack of metal on flesh, your rounds plunge into the shadowy figure's centre of mass and a maddening screech of rage and pain sounds out. With a vicious snarl, you see a shudder run through the creature's body and in a flash it leaps through the air towards the five of you.

Spoiler: Melee to hit

GE-Hyena: 15 versus 10 = hit!

Spoiler: Damage roll

GE-Hyena: 18-17 = 1 damage!
Johansen gains one stress point (2 more points until rolling for stress is necessary)

In a flash of white light, Johansen's liquid armour flares into life as the shadowy creature slams into his chest and forces him to the floor with a contemptuous snarl. In the near-blinding light, you get your first good look at the thing and freeze.

It's big, easily longer than a man if it stretched out its hind and front legs, and covered in threadbare, spotted fur that's sickeningly stretched over bands of muscle that look like they belong on a wrestler and not an animal. All over its misshapen body, you can see swollen bands of no-doubt gene-modified muscle stretching and relaxing over palm-sized plates of something buried just beneath the surface of its skin. Here and there, scattered across its body seemingly at random, are open wounds which leak something that flows too easily to be blood but too slowly to be water.

It's head, though, is the worst. The upper part of the animal's face, from the base of its eyes to the back of the skull, has been covered or replaced by a plate of gleaming black metal with all the angles and menace of a stealth fighter. Its teeth, too, have been replaced. This time with things that gleam silver in the dying light of Johansen's liquid armour.

As you see the misshapen muscles around its jaw start to tense, you can only imagine what the machinery inside its head is thinking.

What do you do?
[] Open fire with your rifles.
[] Throw a frag grenade at it.
[] Have Shaw throw a viral grenade.
[] Attempt a breach.

Edit: You may have noticed the existence of something called a stress point. To learn more about this feature, please go to the miscellaneous section of the information guide.

 

[prometheus110]

[x] Have Shaw throw a viral grenade.
No. of Votes: 2
Nevill
Death and Faxes

Total No. of Voters: 2


"Viral grenade, now!" You bark at Shaw as you drop your rifle and push Niall aside. Before your EWAR specialist can baulk at the order, you throw yourself at the monstrous Hyena-thing and with a bone-jarring crunch, you shoulder-check the cybernetic beast before it can strike at Johansen once more.

With a shriek of anger and pain, the beast goes skittering down the corridor in a tangle of grossly muscled legs and spark-raising claws. Instantly, it leaps back to its feet, it's vicious snarl growing more demented and more demented as it turns its blank metal stare towards you and tenses to leap at its new target. You.

Stepping between Johansen's prone body and the Hyena-thing, you look first at him and then at the slavering beast before you. Then, without warning, a dark cylinder sails over your shoulder before clattering to the ground and spinning to a halt.

Here we go, you think to yourself as you decide what to do.

Short vote - 30 minutes
[] Grab Johansen and throw him toward the others.
[] Meet the Hyena mid-leap.
[] Write-in.

 

[prometheus110]

[x] Get ready to use the Hyena's own momentum against it once it leaps, slam it into the ground.
No. of Votes: 3
Asmodemus
Nevill
Pyro Hawk
Total No. of Voters: 3

[x] Get ready to use the Hyena's own momentum against it once it leaps, slam it into the ground.

Making your decision, you step over Johansen's prone body and plant yourself between the two of them. With a deafening bark the Hyena charges forwards, bloody foam spraying from its jaws like the rabid animal that it is. With wordless shout you echo the move and charge toward it, muscles straining and heart pounding as you lunge forwards.

Three meters…

From here you can see the Hyena's fearsome muscles bunch and release with each powerful step it takes.

Two meters…

The animal's hooked, silver teeth gleam wickedly in the dull half-light of the corridor. Even this far away you can make out the jagged saw pattern that tops each tooth and which speaks of ripping and tearing.

One meter…

In a single, sinuous motion, the muscles of the animal flex for a final time and with a snarling growl, it throws itself into the air. With an equally vicious grin, you suddenly drop low and slide toward the beast, at the last moment rising up again to grab at its legs.

===
Could I get a roll of 3D6?

 

[prometheus110]

4 versus 11 = failure

In a single smooth motion, you reach up to grab one of the creature's flailing legs only to have your grasping hands snatch air as the animal, sensing your intent, pulls away and continues to sail through the air. A split-second later, the world bursts apart into a kaleidoscope of colours as Shaw's viral grenade activates and your DART chip is assaulted by hundreds of self-modifying viruses.

With the suddenness of lightning, turquoise, crimson, and jade green lights flash into and out of existence around your head as visual processors are corrupted and repaired at the speed of thought. Meanwhile, deafeninng thunderclaps flare into being with the regularity of a ticking clock as aural filters crash, reboot, and crash again. Instantly your slide, once powerful and controlled, slips into a tumble and with a bone-rattling crack, you fall to the ground in a cloud of pain.

A heartbeat later the world returns to normal as your DART chip starts rebooting, and you find yourself lying flat on the ground in a disorienting haze of nausea and pain. After what feels like hours of aimless confusion, you remember the murderous animal with a start, and the icy clarity of fear and adrenaline floods into your veins and banishes the haze. Slowly rising to your unsteady feet, you turn around and catch sight of your team pressed against the walls of the corridor —guns hanging forgotten on their straps— and shaking their heads as if trying to get water out of their ears. Before you can call out to them, some dark, shapeless mass twitches in the dark gulf that lies between you and your team, and you realise with a start that the same counter-viral process going on in your head must surely be going on in the Hyena's.

What do you do? - 30 minute vote
[] Try to kill the Hyena-thing now while it's stunned.
[] Go to Johansen and make sure that he's alright.
[] Wait to get your strength back and then kill it.
[] Wait for your weapons to finish rebooting and then kill it.

 

[prometheus110]

[x] Wait to get your strength back and then kill it.
No. of Votes: 4
Asmodemus
ALanos
Navarque
Nevill

Winner total: 4

Propping yourself up against a nearby wall, you watch the Hyena-thing warily as its barrel-like chest rises and falls in time with its ragged breathing and occasionally spasming as the tortured animal shudders powerfully, a keening whine sounding out every time it does so. As time passes, the rest of your team recovers from the debilitating effects of the viral grenade and check on Johansen's prone body while eying the Hyena for any sign of movement. With an encouraging thumbs up to you, and apparently satisfied that the hyena isn't just playing dead, Niall and Asha grab Johansen's prone body before retreat further down the corridor until they've cleared a wide gap between them and the thing's twitching body.

With glacial slowness, you feel strength begin to return to your limbs and presently they stop shaking quite so embarrassingly. After a moment of feeling sorry for yourself and with the hyena's shudders and whines steadily getting weaker, you decide that you've waited long enough and push yourself away from the wall with a half-hearted exhalation before cautiously picking your way towards the animal and arriving beside it.

Now that you can get a close look at what's been done to the animal's body, you almost feel sorry for it. Everywhere you look you see electrical burns, long ribbons of scar tissue from countless surgeries, and oozing lesions. Given the single-minded aggression it showed toward you, you're also pretty sure it has a DART-derivative plugged into its brain, stimulating the part responsible for the fight part of fight-or-flight, and giving it directions like a laser guided bomb. Since New Epoch cultists probably couldn't afford half of the things you're pretty sure are plugged into its body and brain, let alone get their hands on a hyena, you're pretty sure that Cayman-Global are responsible for this god awful mess of a weapon. Sighing, and with a feeling like something doesn't add up, you kneel down and finish the job before it can wake up. It's neither pleasant nor clean.

Rising up from the animal's cooling body, you join the others around Johansen and breathe a sigh of relief as he twitches back to life in response to an adrenaline shot from Asha. Carefully, you listen to Asha as she tells you that the hyena broke his shooting arm in two places when it bit him and that its charge probably bruised a good number of his ribs. If you're honest, it could be a lot worse considering that liquid armour wasn't made to stop an animal that can crack giraffe bones with its jaw before it's modified. Still, Johansen's broken arm is a problem and with a curt order which he gladly follows, you send him to the back of the team and take his place up front before continuing your interrupted advance.

Suddenly, the bright blue interface of your DART chip springs back into life with a musical tone and a moment later, to your great annoyance, the too-cheery tone of an incoming call follows it. Opening it, the haggard face of Collin Florence, the Scottish leader of the distraction team, pops into view in the top right of your vision and his thick brogue starts flowing before you have a chance to ask for a report.

"We've got a problem, boss," he says so quickly that his words flow into each other.

"We've taken out the original guards but more guys keep popping up like weasels from below. Every time we think we've beaten them back with more men and-" For a moment he seems to squint at you before swearing loudly.

"Hold a mo'." He says, and an instant later a long burst of tinny fire jackhammers into your head before cutting off as quickly as it appeared.

"Sorry boss, they tried to pull a fast one on us. Anyway, like I said they keep coming back with more men and heavier gear, and it looks like they've got a patrol coming around behind us. I dunno how long we can keep them distracted like this before we start dropping. I think we've gotta pull back, ya ken?"


How do you respond? - 30 minute vote
[] Order the distraction team to pull a fighting retreat and fall back from the base. It might piss off your superiors, but your team is the only one that can stop whatever it is these bastards have planned.
[] Order them to stand and fight. This is too damn important to let things like sentiment get in the way. You don't know what'll happen if you fail here, but you know that it won't be good.

 

[prometheus110]

Distraction Team:

collin florence

Weapons: Takoshi Light Machine Gun, APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol.
Armour: Reactive Armour (40% effectiveness remaining).
Special: N/A
Status: Active.

simone howcroft

Weapons: Kusanagi ACR-10 Assault Rifle, APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol.
Armour: Liquid Armour (80% effectiveness remaining).
Special: EWAR gear (2x viral grenades and 1x EMP grenade remaining).
Status: Active.

jessica li

Weapons: LTB Thermite Gun, APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol.
Armour: Reactive Armour (50% effectiveness remaining).
Special: N/A.
Status: Active.

eddard sampson

Weapons: EMWS-56 Gauss Gun, APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol.
Armour: Liquid Armour (70% effectiveness remaining).
Special: N/A.
Status: Wounded (sprained wrist, bruised ribs).

shaun tan

Weapons: Takoshi Light Machine Gun, APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol.
Armour: Reactive Armour (65% effectiveness remaining).
Special: N/A.
Status: Active.

Infiltration Team:

asha idowu

Weapons: Modified Kusanagi ACR-10 Assault Rifle (Silenced), APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol (Silenced).
Armour: Standard issue EuroCorp Enforcer armour
Special: N/A
Status: Active.

shaun johansen

Weapons: TAR-39 Assault Rifle (Silenced), APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol (Silenced).
Armour: Liquid Armour (70% effectiveness remaining).
Special: N/A
Status: Wounded (broken arm, bruised ribs).

kylie niall

Weapons: TAR-39 Assault Rifle (Silenced), APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol (Silenced).
Armour: Liquid Armour (100% effectiveness remaining).
Special: N/A
Status: Active.

leopold shaw

Weapons: TAR-39 Assault Rifle (Silenced), APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol (Silenced).
Armour: Standard issue EuroCorp Enforcer armour
Special: EWAR gear (3x viral grenades and 2x EMP grenade remaining).
Status: Active.

you

Weapons: TAR-39 Assault Rifle (Silenced), APP-3 Semi-Automatic Pistol (Silenced).
Armour: Standard issue EuroCorp Enforcer armour
Special: N/A
Status: Active.