The guard who most recently sprayed Urso with ineffective gunfire flees to the safety of the pyre, ducking down behind the fuel-soaked planks to slap in a fresh magazine from his belt.
Spyros levels his taser at the same man as before, popping off another round of the jolting electrodes. They strike the man in the chest as he turns to face his attacker and deliver a debilitating shock to his entire body. The rifle clatters to the ground and the man falls to his knees and curls up, twitching spastically .
Therese rushes out from behind the safety of her cover, bounding over the intervening rubble with relative ease, and attempts to grapple the rallying youth as he races to pick up a length of wood. Steeling herself, she grabs ahold of the young man's wrist but he twists and flails, leaving little opportunity for the novice martial artist to get the leverage she desperately wants. Still, she feels something pop in the young man's wrist and he snarls in pain.
Urso, hoisting the bullet-riddled corpse of the shotgunner he had grappled, bellows a judgement to the gathered crowd and tosses the body in the direction of the man hiding behind the pyre. The man, however, appears unphased by the South American's bravado as he slaps the clip in and pulls the slide back, hammering another round into the chamber with conviction.
Fred manages to get himself out of harms way and pulls a spare clip from his belt, slapping it into place and discarding the empty one on the ground. His hands shake a bit, but he manages to pull the slide back and lock a round in place.
The badly wounded shooter lying atop the downed preacher commits to his shot, pumping the gun and chambering a new round before firing a buckshot blast wildly in Spyro's direction (the cover having been recently vacated by Therese). It is poorly aimed, but the sheer number of projectiles hailing the area manage to score a hit across Spyro's cheek . It is a grazing flesh wound, but it forces Spyro to instinctively take a knee behind the cover and touch his fingers to his wound. They come away wet with fresh blood.
The other combatants take up arms, grabbing lengths of wood and metal bars to use as bludgeoning tools. The one Therese is engaged with grabs her gripping hand with his free one and twists her thumb back, forcing her to release her grip on him and eliciting a wince of pain from the Clairsentient .
The bystanders continue scattering, leaving the hangar grounds all but clear of their presence. Meanwhile, the woman atop the pyre begins thrashing violently and wailing, screaming out "Gabriel! Gabriel! Why God, why?!? Take me into your arms, Lord! Let me suffer no longer!!! TAKE MEEE!!!" She then collapses, dangling from her restraints and sobbing uncontrollably.
Urso scoops the shotgun at his feet and pumps it to chamber a shell. In a deep, rumbling voice of pure malice, he intones, "Time to die, sinner" and moves forward to get a clear shot on A3, firing once he does.
Therese whips around to fire at the crazed assailant approaching from behind. Her laser blast strikes true, causing a substantial smoking wound on her target's hip . She then turns to face her more present attacker and assumes a defensive stance.
Spyros stands back up from behind the low wall and pops off another shot with his taser, this one aimed at the flank of the machinegun-toting guard Urso is engaged with. The shot nails the gunman in the shoulder and delivers a substantial jolt to his system, causing him to drop his weapon and spasm uncontrollably .
The fanatics rush out with weapons in hand, intent on taking down their perceived enemies. The first is the enraged one wounded by Therese's shot. He races forward with a furious battle cry, but Therese subtly shifts her position at the last second and forces his swing to overextend... right into the fiery youth's face .
The two fantatics near Urso both close in on his exposed back, hitting him solidly in the spine and hip with rebars and lengths of wood. The big man registers the hits and feels a numbing sensation as his suit's chemicals mitigate his injuries .
The fiery youth barely registers the hit he's taken and quickly delivers a solid kick to Therese's hand to knock her weapon away. She tries to pull her hand back but just isn't fast enough and the youth's boot connects with her knuckles. She maintains her grip on the weapon, but her hand is sore from the experience .
Urso, uncaring for the meager wounds he has sustained, sweeps up the shotgun at his feet and pumps a fresh shell into the chamber. Striding up to the far side of the pyre, he happens upon the twitching gunman that Spyro had tasered. He places the barrel of the shotgun to the helpless man's temple and pulls the trigger, sending bits of skull and brain matter scattering all over the ground .
Fred, despite his injuries, peeks out from behind his wall and spies the remaining gunman leveling his shotgun in Therese's direction. He reacts by popping off a short burst from his autopistol, scoring a few hits across the man's back and sending him to the ground face-first .
With all the gunmen down, the woman on the pyre begins screaming again. "ENOUGH! ENOUGH!" Her voice carries strongly in the night air and booms loudly, especially given her relatively small stature. The magnitude of her voice even gives the fanatics pause as they lower their weapons and stare, wide-eyed, at the woman. She stands straight, still shackled to the pyre's metal frame, but she is no longer sobbing. It is quite evident, in fact, that she is seething.
One of Urso's attackers points to the woman with his rebar: "The witch is possessed! We must burn her now!"
Urso will collect the other shotgun, giving the woman and armed fundies a wide berth. He slings one over his shoulder and gestures Fred away from the woman. Keeping a shotgun trained on the woman, he takes a couple steps backward toward Therese. His aim is to put himself between Therese and the woman, out of arm's reach of either while still remaining within "point blank" range for the shotgun.
To Therese, in Portuguese:
He will then address the "firey kid" and demand, "What in the name of the Maker is going on here?"
Thérèse turns pale, and her gun moves slowly toward the woman on the pyre. "Not a witch, non..." she whispers, but even so her hand is rising to point at the woman's head.
In Portguese:
But it's clear her heart isn't in it.
"This woman has been part of our congregation for years. Her husband was my brother! He went missing only a few days ago... and she led us to his blackened body in a fit of tears, claiming that the Devil had overwhelmed her and destroyed her husband with hellfire and brimstone! Now again the Devil comes and you fools have let him take hold of her again!!!" The boy muscles his way past Therese and flicks a Zippo from his pocket, striking it in one fluid motion and tossing it towards the pyre.
"LET HELL RECEIVE YOU, DEMON!"
The fuel ignites abruptly, sending flames twenty feet into the night sky and utterly immolating the metal frame where the woman once stood. At first, there is a cry of pain... and then, as the flames crackle ferociously, the sorrow turns to laughter. The woman writhes in the flames, her clothes falling to ash about her form... and leaving unblemished, naked flesh behind.
"By God's will... what have we done...?" the youth stammers.
"Where is your God now?" the woman cackles. "He has forsaken you... to be my pleasure!" The manacles restraining the woman glow white hot and begin to warp and twist as the woman's wrists rock back and forth against their grasp.
** spoiler omitted **
Therese:
Urso sighs and whispers under his breath, "Why is nothing ever easy?"
He will bellow "Get to cover!", unload two shotgun blasts into her, and then hustle for wall that Spyros is/was hiding behind.
Urso's shots pepper the pyre with buckshot, the woman writhes and snarls, suggesting discomfort, but it is difficult to see if she's sustained any real injury through the raging inferno.
Frederick is not enjoying life. Already having trouble reconciling the cold-blooded execution of the preacher and the shot-in-the-back tactics used to down the last gunman he was just managing to dismiss it as a cold, hard necessity of the situation. He is nothing if not practical and with the instigator and firearm-toting guards out of commission he had hoped reason could be employed to calm the remaining combatants.
And now this.
Some quick digging and he slams a hand against his mouth and tosses back his head, dry-swallowing one of the pills from his portable pharmacy with a wince he's immediately grateful for the fast-acting properties of the pain medication. The symptom treated, he picks his gun back up and holsters it, turning to look just in time to see Urso and Thérèse making a gallant stand against the nude woman writhing suggestively in the fire.
"Are you insane!?" He shouts, hiding as he was on the outside of the opposite wall the other three now hunker down near. "Get out of here!" He thrusts his arms through the air, pointing back the way they came before heeding his own advice and starting off at a run.
"Oh s#*#!" is the only thing that comes to mind when Spyros sees the "victim" unharmed by the fiery aura building around her. He scrambles out from behind the wall grabbing the dropped assault rifle and turns back to yell at Therese, "THERESE! We have to go NOW! RUN!"
Spyros sat through lectures in his Orgotek training, briefings with Trinity... hell he watches the news occasionally. One thing he knows is that four psions with light weaponry cannot defeat an Aberrant. He has no intention of finding out if this time things will be different.
Therese levels her laser at the woman, firing off two shots in rapid succession. They strike perfectly, one in the gut and one in the chest, and would've certainly killed any normal person. The woman's skin shows no sign of harm from them, however, and she laughs as the handcuffs binding her warp and melt.
The Clairsentient calls out to Urso for his spare shotgun while Spyro runs forward to secure an assault rifle. Fred emerges from behind his cover, wide-eyed with shock and amazement at what was happening, and moves across the hangar to join the others in their flight away from the inferno. Many of the other cultists who had been scattered by the initial gunfight join the group in their retreat, intent on making the motorcade and bringing some heavy weapons to bear. Still others simply fall to the ground, sobbing and crying out for forgiveness.
The team makes it to the shelter of the ruined hangar to the north before they hear the woman break free with an ecstatic sigh and chuckle. Peering through the rusted holes of what remains of the hangar's corrugated steel walls, the party sees the woman step off the pyre, having become one with the inferno. Her entire body is wreathed in flames, embers drifting off of her surprisingly flawless figure. She is both entrancing and terrifying to look upon as she extends her hand in the direction of one sobbing cultist still cowering in the hangar.
"Poor creature. I shall give you the salvation you seek," the woman leans forward and blows a kiss at the cultist... resulting in a column of white-hot flames issuing forth from her lips and immolating the pitiful target who screams and writhes violently for an instant before expiring. The monster, for it can be called little else, simply smiles.
Urso will toss Therese the 6-rounds-remaining shotgun , unlimber his rifle, and chamber a round while hauling ass toward the pair of buildings to the west. He should have enough movement to get behind the east-most building, and will gesture for Therese, Spyros, and Fred to follow him.
His field training nothing if not basic, Frederick will opt not to risk falling on his face because he was trying to run-and-gun. His arms and legs pump through the air as he leans forward into a full run, glad for the tingling feeling obscuring the pain of his wounded limbs.
He hops a small pile of rubble and stumbles to a quick three-point kneel before righting himself, hardly missing a beat but taking the moment to glance about-- making sure that his three companions are still with him.
"We need one of their vehicles-- to get back to the Duskwing." He growls, his perpetual composure starting to crack under the strain of the situation. "We won't outrun it on foot."
Urso peeks around the remains of the building, watching the progress of the Aberrant. When he speaks, his accent is almost entirely absent and his vocabulary seems markedly increased.
"We'd never make it to either a serviceable vehicle or the Duskwing. We have no choice but to make a stand and try to take it out. Who else had the foresight to bring conventional weapons? Or is one of you, perhaps, a sniper in disguise?"
Urso is more than willing to lend out his rifle to someone more skilled in its use.
"Come on man!? We need something heavier than these," he raises the assault rifle he grabbed, "to take that thing on. No way! But you are right- I don't think we can outrun her all the way back to the Duskwing. I wonder..."
Spyros taps into his minicomp while taking shelter behind what may have formerly been a maintanence shed. He spends a few seconds making some quick modifications to the link that had been established to the Duskwing and then taps directly into the ship's on-board agent.
"Spectre, we need you to follow the roads to our current position as quickly as you safely can," the veteran technician speaks into his HUDset.
"Systems onlining. ETA... 2 minutes." Spectre's droning avatar responds. Spyros taps in a few additional commands to hone the agent's data processing and closes the input on his minicomp.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the congregation flocks towards the motorcade, pursued by the smirking and laughing Aberrant. She cartwheels and somersaults as she avoids debris and crosses the intervening distance. Occassionally, when she catches up to a straggler, she pauses to incinerate them in a pillar of white-hot flames, touching herself suggestively as they burn. Her grace is alien and purely inhuman. Her gait is even and steady. It is clear that, while she is keeping pace and even gaining on the fleeing congregation, she is in no way moving nearly as fast as she is capable of. She's playing with them.
"We'd never make it to either a serviceable vehicle or the Duskwing. We have no choice but to make a stand and try to take it out."
Frederick doesn't even have his flechette pistol drawn, so convinced is he that weapon would be useless, and too busy is he with tossing Urso an incredulous glance. "I thought the preacher was mad as a hatter but here you are seriously suggesting that we stand and fight what is obviously an Aberrant."
The Neptune Agent tears at the bottom of his tattered shirt and uses the scrap to wipe some of the blood from his hands and forearms, tossing it away once he's done and never quite letting the floating woman out from his field of vision. His pupils are dilated, likely some side effect of his self-medication, but the obvious wounds to his extremities don't seem to be bothering him any.
"Look-- it's occupied now with tormenting the civilians. We can use that to our advantage and make our way along the perimeter of the camp and to the far side of the parked vehicles. Spyros is bringing the Duskwing to us so we shouldn't have to travel the full distance in a vehicle that might not even work properly.
"She might be able to fly faster than the car-- she might be able to fly faster than the Duskwing-- but trying seems a great deal more sane than making some suicidal last stand."
Thérèse shakes her head. "There is a third option. One of us can divert it with attacks, hopefully at a long enough range to avoid immediate counterattacks, while the others flee for the Duskwing. Those," and she gestures at the rifles that Spyros and Urso are carrying, "might make such a plan workable. She felt your shotgun blasts, Urso. She might feel bullets." Thérèse takes a deep breath. "Based on our dossiers, I believe I am the most skilled sharpshooter amongst us, and this plan would only work if the shots were enough to actually hurt her."
She looks around at the others. "I can stay while you reach the Duskwing and can bring its weaponry to bear, or flee, if the situation seems to require it. Spectre can get you home, if not comfortably."
"I can stay while you reach the Duskwing and can bring its weaponry to bear, or flee, if the situation seems to require it. Spectre can get you home, if not comfortably.
"Your overdeveloped sense of martyrdom aside, I'd rather not return to the New York office short the agent that I personally greenlighted." Frederick responds after giving Thérèse the longest look that the situation will allow. "We can all make it through this-- we just stay away from the main throng, keep our heads low, and move quickly. The congregation is waving their arms and screaming loud enough to keep its attention until there aren't any of them left."
"If anyone can suggest some further distraction that isn't a nice way of saying 'suicide' I'm open to suggestions... but we need to start moving quickly." He grunts and shakes his head, digging out the bottle of pain pills and offering one to any who might seem especially wounded.
As the group debates strategy and lays low, the Aberrant continues it's pursuit of the congregation. Amidst the screams of the fleeing, the monster punctuates the night with cackles, raising small walls of flame with a wave of her hand and herding small groups of people into "kill zones" for her malicious inferno.
It appears, at least so far, that the Aberrant doesn't even care to hunt the team down, likely because it takes sadistic pleasure in murdering the unarmed and defenseless.
"It's going to take two minutes for the Duskwing to power up, then driving time. I don't know how armored it is, or even if the mounted laser will have any effect on this thing. Honestly, fire doesn't seem to be causing her any discomfort and lasers do essentially burn people. But once the Duskwing gets to us, we are really banking on its armor to see us through. We won't be able to fully turn around and take off right away because of the debris on the street. We'll have to clear that again before we can fly. So we can either hide, or keep cover and move toward it or the convoy. Maybe they have some conventional mounted weaponry on their armored rigs. But us, here, with the gear we have?! No way man. No way."
Glaring briefly at Frederick, Therese asks, "The armored vehicles?"
Urso shakes his head sadly. "The flock is heading for the motorcade, so we would need to outrun them and the Aberrant with enough time to spare that we could bring the guns to bear before she turn them into slag. Unlikely to work.
Our best chance is to get a few headshots in. I expect the training films we were shown were different, but we Norça operatives are taught that very young Aberrants can be killed by weapons such as ours. Otherwise, we flee for the Duskwing and hope we can find another landing site somewhere."
Giving the group a brief look before turning back to watch for a clear shot on the woman. "We should try to save some of them."
The party, hardly able to take their eyes off the creature, sees the youth that had addressed them before pick up a length of rebar and slam the weapon into the monster's knee. It moans, recoiling in such a way as to suggest that the weapon has actually caused it some discomfort.
The youth steps back from the monster, the rebar glowing orange from the heat, and he shields his eyes from the blinding flames. The creature rears back, hissing, and prepares to strike. The youth seems determined to stand his ground.
Urso shoulders his weapon and fires at the Aberrant without hesitation, whispering a prayer under his breath.
Urso's shot hits the creature, who twitches and snarls, looking over her shoulder to glare back at Urso, still holding the smoking rifle. In that moment of distraction, the youth swings high with the rebar and connects solidly with the burning woman's jaw, sending her to the ground with a shriek.
The boy looks amazed for a moment, then seizes the opportunity to run. The burning woman, stares after him with murderous intent and picks herself up from the ground.
"Don't die--" Frederick manages after some rapid-fire curses aimed at Urso but lost under the rifle's report-- "we're getting a car!"
His weapon still holstered, the former Aesculapian rolls to his knees and tugs for Spyros to follow him as he breaks into a run towards the car lot. He keeps his head down and tries not to think about the irritated organism dedicated to corruption and murder that's getting back to her feet only a handful of yards to one side of him.
He's infinitely grateful for the narcotics running through his system but the excitement of the moment and the physical exertion of the situation already has him breathing heavily-- a rational part of his mind he does his best to ignore is reminding him that adrenaline can only last so long.
Spyros' eyes go wide when Urso fires, thereby revealing the group's position. "Son of a b*@$~!"
The tek scrambles after Frederick, but keeps his attention partially on the aberrant. Only thing to do is keep her attention divided... Gripping the assault rifle while running, Spyros is ready to take a shot if Therese and Urso get too much of her attention.
"Merde!" whispers Therese in frustration, watching her team scatter and the situation go to hell. After a second's hesitation, she turns to Urso and says, "We have no choice now. If Frederick is to have a chance to find and use a car, and those people are to survive, we must keep her attentions on us." She lifts the shotgun demonstratively. "I'm going to have to get closer. Coming?" And with that, she heads off in the opposite direction from Falen and Spyridonos, circling to get behind, and closer to, the burning Aberrant.