"With base camp compromised, I don't think that we can afford to stay here," Rosa says. "We need to pack up and move as soon as possible. And I still hold the rank of officer second class. If you didn't bother to learn what police rank means, It's two steps below sergeant, or the same as a Private First Class. Being SWAT instead of military doesn't mean I didn't earn my stripes."
Borax shakes his head in seeming annoyance at the news from the Lt., half speaking to himself. "Damn. I didn't think it'd go down like this."
Borax kicks over the remains of the armored aliens.
"If the base is overrun, then there isn't going to be anyone left to come and pick up what we found and there's no point in staying here. It's a safe bet that what's going down here might already have been broadcast globally, so containment is no longer a concern. Seems our best option is to get ourselves and these civilians to an extraction point."
Borax puts one of the sectoids in a body bag, hefts it over his shoulder, and prepares to roll out.
Jackalyn is already following Gavril's lead, constantly keeping an eye out.
Kris nods at Rosa I mean no disrespect. Bomme. I do not know your...SWAT. Please forgive.
Kris follows Jacob's lead and begins moving ahead
Rosa shakes her head. "It's fine. I shouldn't worry about it when we should be moving out to try to stay ahead of whatever those things are."
You don't spot anymore movement as you continue to travel, however as you head towards the coordinates given to you by the lieutenant, you do notice another location that could likely hold survivors; moreover, it appears as though someone has moved through the area recently, as you spot some footprints heading inside the building.
Borax pauses and puts down the body bag.
"If there are more civilians in the area, I vote we check it out. Let's leave the non-combatants here. Have them hide, and the rest of us go have a look."
"I have to agree. Leaving someone here when they could be trapped or injured is dooming them to be killed by whatever those things were. We can't let that happen if we can help it."
Borax examine the footprints.
Someone stays with Civilians yes? Three go in and find new civilians, three stay and protect. We use radio, regroup if contact with enemy. Kris says Gavril, myself and Sgt. Chase can stay yes, Rosa, Borax and Jacob go in. Rosa's the medic. Nyttig if you run into casualties. Or Gud forbannet things...
"Aye, sir"
Borax's response feels laced with approval at having been selected to engage.
Jackalyn nods tersely. "I'll keep an eye out."
"Yes sir." Rosa checks her weapon and moves carefully forward, keeping a close eye out for the source of the tracks.
As far as Borax can tell, the footprints do look to be human. They lead into the house, and no other tracks appear to be present. Inside the house, the source of the tracks are easily spotted; two emaciated looking men, both quite tall, are crouched towards the back corner of the house, with one standing up to peer out a window before crouching back down. As you enter, they both turn to face you before putting their hands in the air as a sign of surrender. The building itself appears to have suffered from whatever leveled the city, as a large part of the ceiling apepars to have collapsed, leaving several holes in the structure.
"من فضلك، لا تطلقوا النار ! نحن لاجئون ، مجرد محاولة البقاء على قيد الحياة !" One of them begins speaking wildly in Arabic, before catching the confused looks on your faces. "Do you... do you speak English? Please, don't shoot at us; we're refugees, we've been hiding out here, trying to stay alive." He and his compatriot both slowly stand, straightening their clothes. "The city was leveled so quickly... we still don't know what happened. It's been such a blur." Both of the men keep their hands raised, and don't appear to be armed.
Rosa keeps close to Borax as he leads the way to the building, sticking to the shadows until the civies come into sight. "Huh, they look like they're in surprisingly good shape," she comments, half to herself as they spot one man looking out the window. "Come on. Let's get them out of here."
"UN Peacekeepers," Rosa declares as they enter to building. "No sudden moves. We're here to extract any survivors and report on the situation. You're the first uninjured civilians we've found. Have you run into anyone or anything else nearby?"
"No, no one else. We saw something once, but it wasn't human." The man keeps his hands raised, obviously aware of the danger of setting the group off. "Do you know what's going on? My brother and I have been on the run since whatever happened. This is the first building we came across that seemed stable enough to hide in."
"I was afraid of that. You're lucky that the thing didn't notice you. You'd probably be dead. Or at least wish you were."
When Rosa mentions the condition of the strangers, Borax raises an eyebrow and focus more intently on them.
"It spotted us once, but I think it found someone else before it decided to come after us. We made a break for it, ended up here."
"For your own safety, I'm going to search you. Do I have your permission?"
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Somethings fishy about this... too clean, too slim, no accent, too simmilar... I don't like this s@%~. thinks Jacob, after the few exchanged words. When Borax speaks, he sees he's not alone in his suspicions and just to be safe he remains quiet, his weapon ready, while the rest interact with the pair.
"S-search us?" The man takes a step back, and his compatriot does the same. "That... I don't think that's necessary. We're just... just refugees, trying to--" The man cracks his neck, and lets out a distinctly serpentine hiss. "--Oh, forget it, they've figured us out. Kill them!" The man's jaws open wide, and a cloud of gas shoots from his mouth, the color a noxious green and purple. While Jacob's hiding place keeps him out of the cloud's burst, Borax and Rosa are caught in it. As it billows out, they can both feel it fill their lungs as the coughing starts. "We've found them! Take them out!" The two shout, apparently signaling to others nearby.
A second later, both of the men perform an enormous leap, their bodies rocketing up to the second story of the building, disappearing from view. In the second before they leap, Jacob pops from his hiding place, his rifle pointed at the creatures before they get away.
Borax - Two of Diamonds
Gavril - Six of Diamonds
Kristophe - Two of Spades
Jackalyn - Five of Diamonds
Jacob - Seven of Hearts
Rosa - Ten of Spades
Thin Men - Six of Spades
Rosa coughs and hacks, clearing the cloud from her lungs as she stumbles out of the noxious smoke. "What the f*cking hell was that?" she gasps. "Come on! We need to get back to the others. Quickly."
Borax, anticipating the worst, quickly covers his mouth, avoiding the worst of it. Borax nods at Rosa as he quickly exists, coughing and spitting, "Bastards speak our language! Not good."
As the two make a move to jump, Jacob pops up from his hiding place and catches one of the two with two bursts of gunfire. While the first merely stuns the creature, the second blows off the creature's head and paint the walls green with its blood. The other dashes across the second floor before jumping to another building, a rifle-like weapon now in its hands. A moment later, two other creatures with the same eerily similar look stand up from their perches atop another building, before raining down fire on Gavril and the others. Both Gavril and Kristophe take bursts from the barrage, but no direct hits capable of wounding the two of them.
Inside the house, both Borax and Rosa manage to cover their mouths fast enough that their systems can deal with the toxins they breathed in. However, both of them still feel weak from the poison as it courses through their systems, sapping their energy.
Jackalyn snaps a shot at one of the creatures, her Barrett's retort echoing in a resounding boom.
Kris snarls a curse in his guttural mother tongue and dives for cover. He trys to lay off some fire at the creatures that fired on him and Gavril.
We have contact. Contact. Rooftops. We gotta get outta here.
AP2
Borax takes cover and takes aim...
"The speak our language and they have some sort of poison cloud attack. Keep spread out.."
Gavril curses as more shots rain down, and he quickly tells the civilians to get inside and keep down. He himself covers their fall back, unloading a burst of machine gun fire at the creature that shot him. The big man scowls as most of the bullets whiz past, but at least one clips the creature.
As the two others appear from the rooftops, Kristophe's burst of gunfire takes one of them down immediately as it catches the creature in the chest and sends it tumbling down onto the street. As the creature hits the ground, the weapon it holds shatters into pieces, much like those of the creatures you fought earlier. Borax and Gavril focus their fire on the other man-like figure, and Borax's shot causes the figure to twist out of the way, right into Gavril's hail of bullets. It screeches in pain before falling dead, much like its companion before it.
Gavril: Ten of Hearts
Kristophe: Joker
Jackalyn: Seven of Spades
Jacob: Queen of Clubs
Rosa: Jack of Spades
Thin Men: Queen of Diamonds
Kris grunts into his radio Report. One bad guy down off the roof.
He then aims and fires at whatever pokes its ugly head out
29 Damage, AP2
As the creature who spat the poison cloud at Borax and Rosa makes a leap across the rooftops towards cover, Kristophe manages to blast the creature through the chest mid-leap, and its body instead crashes into the side of the building and drops to the ground. Much as you noticed before, all the creatures look uncannily similar with the same emaciated body type, as well as physical features. Taking a closer look, you can see that their "human" appearance is not universal; their clothing hide patches of scaly, green skin beneath it, and the eyeglasses obscure what look more like the eyes of a snake than a human being.
With the two creatures dead, Rosa digs into her medical bag quickly. She quickly pulls out small bottle of a clear liquid and a syringe, along with several needles. She attaches one of the needles and draws a small dose from the bottle, then gives herself a shot in the arm. "Generalized antidote," she says, replacing the needle and drawing another dose for Borax. "Figured I'd be using this on snake bites or maybe a bio-weapon if this sh*t got bad, not some freaky snake man's toxic breath, but it should at least make sure that... whatever it was... doesn't do any more damage." She moves over to examine one of the strange men and frowns. "Looks like their tech breaks when you kill them too... this is getting freaky." She pulls out another body bag and offers it out. "But if someone wants to grab one of them, we might as well. We're already bringing the grey one after all."
"Nice shooting, sir." Borax compliments Kristophe's effectiveness at bringing down the aliens. Borax examines the guns before accepting Rosa's aide.
Borax wraps one of the snake men in Rosa's body bag and carries that one as well.
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Jacob exits the building swearing and spitting. He approaches the rest and eyes the civs they have been escorting til now "For f*@~s sake, these damned mucked things can pass for humans. How the hell can we know those aren't things too." he says as he points to the family "What are we supposed to do? We shoot on sight? We wait and die like fukken idiots? We distrust everybody?"
He spits a last time and calms himself "I don't like this s~$+. Not at all, holy s#&+."
Jackalyn shakes her head wearily. "I'd be surprised and concerned if anybody liked this s$%+. And from what I've seen, even from a distance, these things come in one model. We see anybody that looks like them, we shoot. We just need to focus on surviving long enough to get out of here with as many people as possible."
Something that may strike people is that Jackalyn, through all of this insanity, has stayed completely calm. Like a bloody rock. It seems like nothing can faze her.