The eerie atmosphere the night brings with the city is in full effect. Cold, isolated and quiet, the various members of the crew sit in silence as the wind calmly blows around them. The only thing going through most of their minds at this point is... violence. This is an all in situation with everything at stake and they know it. Their chrome, their eds… what they're owed is now finally for the taking.
BugBear and Carter at their point of attack sit crouched down behind cover as they assess the security situation at this quiet, isolated warehouse. Carter, in full focus takes a deep breath and quickly slams the spacing between each of his fingers against each other ensuring his leather gloves are tightly secured on... a ritual habit of his. He gets antsy while psyching himself up in his head, BugBear's whisper grabs his attention.
"Usually get nervous like this before ops?" She whispers playfully. Her demeanor calm and confident.
"Adrenaline doll. Heh… definitely the type of question I'd expect from a runner. Not much in the business of gettin' your hands dirty…; No no, These are the nerves of a solo about to get to work." He mutters with a smirk looking over at her. She returns the smirk.
In that moment they hear heavy footsteps on pavement past the cover they're hiding behind. Carter motions her to wait and hold her position.
3 scavs passing by and chatting hear the sound of quick footsteps approaching from behind causing them to react quickly by ducking and turning around. Carter shoots 2 of the scavs in the head with a suppressed pistol.. the first in the back of the head and the other in the side of the head as he ducked to turn around... dropping them instantly. Before he can shoot the third, the scav shoves the barrel of Carters pistol upwards causing a misfire as the scav grabs his wrist. The scav tries to shank him with a 6 inch bowie knife he was flipping with his free hand and attempts to stab carter directly in the throat. Carter catches the scav's knife wrist as the two quickly glance down at each other's tied up hands in a dead lock, instinctually searching for the next best technique. Carter quickly headbutts the scav hard.. dazing himself and barely stunning him before he shifts his footing in an attempt to toss the scav to the ground to free his gun hand. Instead it causes the two of them to go tumbling down to the pavement with a hard impact kicking up dust. The scav begins to overwhelm Carter in the ground scramble with his strength... raining down punches.
He frees his knife hand while pinning down Carter's arm and raises it to stab him in the face... he's then quickly snatched by the neck from behind by BugBear's neon pink monowire. The force of the yank puts him on his back, sinking the monowire in deeper and causing BugBear to stumble back slightly from the weight. She places her foot on his shoulder for leverage and yanks even harder... gradually piercing his chromed out neck and severing his head... causing blood to spray out of his neck hole like a fountain onto the pavement as the tension releases. The excess synthblood shooting out of his neck coats her legs below the knees in yellow.
She offers her hand to help Carter up… assisting him back to his feet.
"Dirty hands means sloppy work." She whispers with a smile on her face, looking him in the eyes.
Carter smiles back completely turned on. "Thanks doll... I owe you one." He says as they finally let each other's hands go. The pair then make their way into the warehouse through a side entrance with iron drawn.
"Place is fuckin' huge." Brian whispers to Audrey as they both scan the area while tucked away hidden.
"Looks pretty dead too… weird… think they're out somewhere?" Audrey asks
"Not sure… guessin' we must've did a bigger number on em than we thought."
After several more seconds of checking out the area, Brian glances at Audrey. "Hang back here."
"What!? No!" Audrey whispers aggressively
"I don't need you gettin' hurt out here." He insists
"I'm NOT just going to sit here Brian!"
Brian pauses for a bit and turns his full attention over to her... lowering his iron... briefly detaching himself from their current situation.
"Fine… If you're gonna run with me on this... then you're gonna tell me what happened back at the Pistis Sophia choom."
Audrey pauses with a serious look on her face... frustrated at his audacity and nerve to bring this up now. Brian returns the look unwavering.
She eventually breaks... growing upset.
"What. You want to hear that they slowly stripped me..? Tied me up..? Cut me..? Put a rope around my neck and drug me around like a fucking dog on a leash? They were… they were gonna-" She stops as she gets choked up...
Brian gently places a heavy hand on her shoulder... causing her to look him in the eyes.
"Stay close." He says in a deep tone. The pair of them slip their way into a cracked window on the bottom floor of the warehouse.
As they enter, they notice 2 scavs working on a Chevilon Emperor with its hood up searching its interior and stripping it for parts. Brian grabs the bigger scav from behind and wraps his forearm around his throat slowly choking him to death... causing him to drop his tools to the ground with a hard clunk. This shocks the scav next to him causing her to turn and gasp... reaching for her iron before being quickly grabbed from behind and stabbed in the neck by Audrey. The ganger shrieks... gurgling with blood spraying out onto Audrey's chest and jaw. The woman lets out a muffled whimper as Audrey covers her mouth.. gripping her tightly from behind. As Audrey struggles to maintain her grip on the deathfall of the scav, the pair of them slowly begin to lose balance.
The gurgling scav falls on top of Audrey before Audrey shoves her off and gets on top of her... continuing to stab her wildly with force.
Brian scans the rest of the room with his iron pointed before realizing what shes doing.
He looks on with confusion and slight disbelief as Audrey's stabs on an already motionless corpse grow in unnecessary strength and brutality... He bares witness to a side of her he never even knew existed as her grunts begin to build into low screams... triggering a familiar memory of his.
He recognizes the woman but not the actions... he grabs her arms from behind, forcing her off of the mangled, unrecognizable scav and shushing her. He grabs her face in attempt to calm and refocus her... bring her back to earth. She snaps out of it with only anger and rage waiting at the other end... its clear a side of herself Brian was unaware of has been re-awakened.
She aggressively swipes his hands away and wipes the blood off of her jaw while looking down at the twitching muscle reflex of the dead booster ganger. They then look at each other and nod... ensuring shes gathered herself.. before pointing iron and slowly moving forward deeper into the warehouse.
"I'm going to need you to wait here." Zaunya whispers to Netty as the pair of them look on at a group of eight gang goons standing in a circle intensely discussing the Pistis Sophia events deep in the warehouse compound. The group is clearly not just some civilians loitering around outside of a fuckin' Jingugi... it's a well built, well equipped group of soldiers on home turf, ready for anything to pop off. Almost like they're geared up to head out somewhere.
Netty looks at Zaunya with his digital black mask on, altering his voice. The yellow pixels being used to illuminate various facial expressions connected to his neural synapsis shift to a yellow pixelated expression of disbelief.
"What…? Are you crazy? Hold on a sec, lemme-" Before Netty is even able to finish his statement and begin quickhacking, Zaunya triggers her sandevistan... flashing toward the group.
With expert efficiency, she uses her mother's combat knife to either stab or slice the throats of each of the eight gangers one by one before any of them can even react. The momentum of her kinetic energy sending everything from their clips to their kevlar flying in various directions with lean squirting blood. Netty looks at the eight of them standing there before they each drop in a blink as blood comes spraying out of each of their necks and glops to the floor like the sound of a cut open water balloon. Smoke from their shredded implants calmly wafts into the air out of their various wounds.
Netty bares witness to the nearly impossible to track speed and devastating capabilities of a military grade piece of combatware... used by an expert in the art of killing. Seeing chrome of that level used up close... so effortlessly... intimidates the shit out of him... making him feel the true vulnerabilities he steps outside into those streets with everyday.
With a lifetime steeped in living amongst the daily use of cyberware... this was different... this was scary.
As Zaunya looks back over her shoulder at each of them dropping, she hears the working mechanics and air compression of a Militech Centaur turning around behind her. Before she knows it shes face to face with a chromed out merc powering up the centaur exo-skeleton and pointing the thermal cannon right at her alongside the sounds of thermal energy being built up.
"Shit!" She grunts through her teeth with eyes wide open as she instinctually reaches for her iron.. completely out of position and out in the open face to face with this thing. The after effects of her sandy bare down on her at the worst time... a shriek escapes her mask as she feels a wave of exhausted pain pierce her entire back and hips... the after effects are so inconsistent she just never knows if or when they're gonna take hold.
Before he's able to fire the cannon, the exo-suit begins to short circ as the merc tenses up and screams loudly in pain.. echoing throughout the warehouse and causing various scavs throughout it to raise their already high strung attention. Zaunya glances back and sees Netty's eyes glowing red as he confidently steps out of cover and quickhacks the exo-suit sending sparks flying throughout it and the merc's chromed up body. The merc fights through the quickhack and raises the bright orange thermal cannon toward Netty as the high pitched whirrs of heated charges fully engage, causing Netty's yellow, pixelated eyes to open wide in fear on his mask. Zaunya raises her Nue firing a single booming shot and sending a bullet through the merc's skull sponge killing him instantly. The thermal cannon launches a high-pitched beaming shot as it drops to the floor, causing Netty to dive out of the way of the strafing beam melting everything in it's path. He slams into a shelf filled with metal tools and equipment that rain down on top of him.
The loud booming shots, one after the other, echo throughout the entire warehouse causing the lower levels to shake... blowing the entire crew's cover. Every street tough ganger within the compound grabs or loads iron as they begin to frantically scramble in confusion.
=We're made!!= Zaunya shouts into the comms of the entire crew.
=NOW!!= Brian immediately shouts into the comms right after.
You see the entire crew simultaneously stop in their tracks... close their eyes... and take a deep breath.
They hold it in for several seconds before letting it out extremely slowly... they open their eyes back up while raising their weapons. The entire crew executes the break on Brian's command perfectly.
They each then continue at an extremely slowed pace... making each step they take calculated... allowing them to hear the frantic stumbling... the vibrations... the poundings of each footstep from the scavs rumbling throughout the compound. The lights abruptly cut off due to BugBear jacking directly in to a terminal she finds while Carter watches her back. This causes the emergency lights to unexpectedly engage giving the warehouse extremely dim, sparse lighting and leaving most of it pitch black...
One by one, as the crew slowly positions themselves, various scavs come flying out of various doorways in a frantic panic pointing iron. Brian drops one racing out of a doorway with a single shot to the chest from his Nue. The scavs running momentum slams him up against a wall leaving a splattering of blood behind that streak drags as he slowly slides down it lifeless. He steps toward him and places another shot in his head before stepping over him and slowly continuing forward.
Carter, exiting out of another room right behind Brian, headed in the opposite direction shoots another scav dead with a clean headshot right before he can raise his gun to shoot Brian in the back. Carter continues to clear the floor as he steps over the dead scav he shot... continuing in the opposite direction away from Brian. BugBear then comes around a corner and walks past Carter in a different direction down a long hallway. A scav pops out from behind a wall at the end of it and fires at her causing her to flinch and duck down slightly before returning three shots and dropping him in a thick cloud of debris and gunsmoke. She slowly approaches and places a final round in the scav's masked face before stepping over him and continuing to clear corners.
The crew continues to flow like this through the warehouse… staying close, and continuing to cover each other from various unorthodox angles with slow confident efficiency. Flashes of light from gunshots occasionally spark through various windows as they drop various well armed scavs and you hear them squealing in fear and pain... panic spraying their various iron before being silenced by single shots and double taps. The crew... is locked in.
Zaunya and Netty, now on the third floor of the compound back to back enter a large room after she kicks it open. At first glance its clear… suddenly Zaunya's sharp reflexes are triggered as she looks to her left to see a Militech proximity mine flipping toward them through the air. She instinctually points her iron at it.. however, soon after, she hears the safety of a gun click off and sees a smiling merc, wearing sunglasses pointing it right at the mine flipping toward them. Her eyes open wide as she gasps deeply... immediately turning her back toward the mine while wrapping her arms around Netty shielding him.
The loud explosion booms on impact of the bullet...
A short while after, Netty suddenly jolts awake in the room... now filled with flames, cloudy dust and debris... nearly impossible to see.
With blood leaking out of his high pitched, ringing ears.. he slowly staggers to his feet as pooled blood is pulled out of his mouth by gravity.
He sees his DR5 Nova on the ground through his blurry vision and falls to his knees on top of it... slowly clasping it in his hand while he chokes for air. He rolls over onto his butt.. sat down in a painfully stunned daze with high pitched ringing ears... his head spinning from the concussive explosion. Through the clouds of debris he sees the merc slowly crawling toward Zaunya layed out on the ground incapacitated. He regathers himself as he sees the merc reaching for a chunk of concrete like a rock.
Netty raises the DR5 Nova, pointing it directly at the merc.
With his hand shaking... he again hesitates to shoot in a panic... hearing and watching Zaunya get beaten... he freezes.
The merc smashes the chunk of concrete over her head crumbling it before immediately switching to punching her full force with his prosthetic steel fist.
In the midst of the cloudy smoke and debris, Zaunya grunts in pain through her black leather facemask as she continues to get punched taking serious damage… Her vision begins to fade as she gradually gets knocked unconscious. As she goes out... it triggers one of her combat failsafe implants installed in her neck. It emits a powerful electric shock with a neon green hue lighting up the surrounding smoke and debris plumes... triggering a modified dose of adrenaline crossed with Black Lace... injecting it directly into her bloodstream. The shock blasts the merc's hand off of her that was pinning her throat down and sending the gun flying that he was in the middle of raising with the other.
The shock causes both the merc and Netty to shout in intense but fleeting pain... wrecking their motor functions briefly.
Soon after, Netty attempts to dive on top of the merc but overshoots it and is easily shaken off as he goes tumbling. In this moment of distraction Zaunya punches the merc hard in the face before kicking him off of her.. sending him flying across the room. She does a quick kip-up as the merc reaches for his iron on the ground that he landed next to. As he goes to raise it, pointing it at her face; Zaunya raises her right arm... quickly engaging the sleek working mechanics of her projectile launch system. The high polished, jet black chrome of the PLS system fires a small, steel cased missile at him... exploding his body into a red mist and shower of guts and viscera. The concussive force of the explosion sends Netty, behind Zaunya, tumbling and smacking up hard against the back wall on the farside of the room and sending blood flying. She turns her head away from the viscera shower, covering her masked face with her forearm as it rains down... the long tail flaps of her Black leather Kuomori flutter in the heavy breeze of the explosions aftermath before re-settling.
As the excessive kicked up debris finally begins to settle, she looks at the giant red splotch on the wall where a person used to exist. She then looks back to see Netty in a stunned daze on the floor completely overwhelmed and nearly unconscious... his second taste of high level chrome being used in such close quarters.
She helps him stagger back up to his feet with an overwhelming level of guilt on his face while Zaunya looks over her wounds, gear, and implants... catching her breath pissed off.
"Im- I'm sorry… I didn't know what-"
"-Lets go." Zaunya snap responds in a feral tone as she yanks her Nue out from under some debris and wipes blood off of her face... wincing in pain. They exit back out into the hallway together through a hole in the wall.. continuing to flow through the compound with the crew.
A brief time later, we see a scav Netrunner jacked into the net. She lays still in her runner chair surrounded by quite an impressive high end setup. The quality of the gear shes using's a real testament to their success being long standing. Its clear that some serious investment has been put into it from her organization as we hear the low, mellow rumblings and tones of all the tech.
The various equipment being powered by the compound's reserve energy slowly begins to power down and shutoff.
BugBear safely jacks the woman out of the net… she opens her eyes wide and gasps deeply as if resurfacing from underwater after nearly drowning. BugBear slaps her in the face with force lightly to help her come too before walking off to the side. She slowly sits up and glances at Brian's crew standing before her... planted silently in various positions of the dimly lit room in a very intimidating fashion.
She first glances over at Netty, squatted down with his black digital mask on... a face made of yellow pixels staring right at her while tilting his head slightly.
She looks over at Audrey with her arms crossed... one leg posted on a stool with her black jacket and white tanktop covered in blood.
She sees BugBear lighting a smoke with her arms crossed stood next to Zaunya while Zaunya wipes blood off of her face and tends to her own wounds.
Carter off to the side stares directly at the scav runner while sat in a chair... his elbows rested on his knees.
Her gaze fixates on Carter as she looks at him with confusion... in complete disbelief that he's actually here.
The crew remains dead silent as the heavy, weighted thumps of Brian's boots slowly step out in front of her from behind her runner chair... grabbing her full attention.
His towering, imposing frame blocks her view of the entire crew briefly as she comes face to face with his signature trench coat... seeing the lava like veins gently course throughout the length of it alongside stray bulletholes. Her gaze is drawn directly to the eye in the center of the jacket where these lava orange veins seem to meet... it gazes back at her with an intense lava orange glow.
He finally turns to face her… standing before her with the passive posture of someone who has done this countless times before. She first sees the deep scar running up from his neck to his jawline... a scar worth at least a dozen stories that she'll never know.
Being unplugged, surrounded by a group of strangers wasn't what she was expecting to happen after jacking in for a deep dive surrounded by her people. Too busy squirming around some corpo subnet in search of suitable prospects to pay attention to her own warehouse security. Typical Night City booster gang netrunner... confident and careless.
Brian takes a deep breath while looking up at the ceiling and loosening his shoulders and neck to subtle creaks and cracks. He interrupts her while the rest of the crew remains dead silent.
"Wha-? … Who the fuck are yo-"
"-Y'know… i've never struck a woman in my life... i'm very proud to be able to say that."
Brian interrupts in a deep, calm tone with a smile... a tone and energy unfamiliar to us... but all too natural to him. This running theme of awakened mentalities once laying dormant... brought about through forced, traumatic events continues permeating throughout the crew... the woman in fear listens on silently. Brian crosses his arms.
"Though… I gotta be honest with you… I can't help but have a fondness for..-"
He looks over at Audrey.. signaling her to punch the runner in the face. Audrey steps forward, cocking back and punches her as hard as possible... putting all of her weight into it, throwing herself off balance. The loud impact of the punch matches the runner's grunt of pain in a beautiful way... echoing throughout the spacious hallway. Blood gets sent flying out of her mouth and splatting down onto the cold concrete as the momentum almost knocks her out of the chair.
Brian with his arms crossed and a hand on his chin winces in pain before raising his eyebrows with a dirty smile.
"- Now THAT…. is somethin' I struggle to get myself not to enjoy." He says with a light giggle. "Don't know why… never have."
"What the fuck! Fuck you gonks! I!...i... please... I haven't done shit to anybody!!" She desperately shouts feral... filled with pain and fear.
"Oh.. no no no… you haven't done shit to nobody right... right... You just tell em where to find all the people they gut and slice and rip and fuck, hm?" He responds deeply... looking directly into her fearful kiroshis before a brief pause. "How many S.O.S shards do ya got stacked somewhere in here huh? Heard you scavs have a real hard on for who can collect the most."
"We're not fucking scavs asshole!!" She shouts cracking her voice with heavy emotion almost near tears... crying in surrender.
Brian leans in and places his hand just above her head causing her to flinch and tense up in fear... silencing herself.
"You're gonna give me…. everything." He whispers in a deep tone... squinting deep into her eyes before he takes a few steps back. BugBear, Audrey and Zaunya then step forward silently past him.
Zaunya and Audrey pin down each of the runner's arms as she flails and screams... desperately struggling to resist.
"GET THE FUCK OFF OF MEEEEE!!! NOOOO!!!" She screams in a familiar tone...
BugBear flicks her smoke and silences her by snatching her the throat... pinning her to the runner chair while she jacks into her neuroport. The woman's shrieks and panics become muffled and distorted as she squeaks in pain and surrender… Netty forces himself to watch. While this is happening Brian turns and slowly steps to Carter.
"Where is it." He mutters looking him in the eyes. Carter looks at Brian before slowly leading him out of the room as the sounds of the runner's struggle and pain slowly fades.
Brian and Carter are next seen headed down a steep staircase into a basement area. It opens up to a pretty spacious storage area housing various weapons equipment and tools that a scav may have everyday use for. They clear the various corners and search the place.. finding the remnants of a packed and busy operation abruptly left behind thanks to their work. The two stand before a steel vault that looked to be about the size of a small bathroom. They glance around it noticing the annoying front of opulence throughout as well as the denseness of the steel.
"Needs a passcode.." Brian says looking at it.
"She had it." BugBear says as she makes her way down the stairs with Netty and Zaunya behind her.
They stand before this vault with anticipation as BugBear enters the passcode... A subtle confirming beep rings out with a green light... the vault slowly creaks open.