Stalker's Story

"SLEEP. YOU OF ALL MEN DESERVE REST."

The blade slid put effortlessly, and yet barely stained; a special coating ensure that blood slipped off the sword easily. And yet it still cascaded as the suited businessman, hoarse voice trying to cry for help as his lungs emptied, groped at Stalker's neck, trying to strangle him in vain. Finally, the squirming subsided.

Stalker sheathed his blade and listened. Yes, footsteps were approaching. ArmuCorp Sentinels, no doubt.

He turned around, putting his back to the businessman's desk, and gripped the hilt of his sword.

Focus.

When the door opened, Stalker glided forward at high speed, amputating the first Sentinel as soon as he opened the door. The next Sentinel raised his rifle, but his stomach was already penetrated by Auranium. As he fell, a third tried to call for backup; a quick jab at the radio and a slice slightly below the jawline, and he was on the ground, blood pouring from his neck. All in the space of five seconds.

His escape now unobstructed, Stalker returned to the businessman's desk. One last thing to do.

Minutes later, he was out the window.

---

"Sir."

"Yes?"

"All of them are dead."

"As if it wasn't obvious..."

"What's, uh, more, sir, is that we know who did it."

"..."

"Have a look at this."

"A lotus brand. So this is the same fucker who hit the Corpus and OrionTec?"

"And now he's onto us."

"As if we didn't have enough problems..."

Stalker had been walking the empty streets for about ten minutes, getting as far away as he could from the ArmuCorp Citadel as he could, when the gunshots started.

They started, along with the screaming, when Stalker was approximately fifty metres away from the source. Railguns, certainly; he could feel the magnetic pulses lightly fondling his exosuit. Something was amiss.

Stalker drew his handgun out of a coat pocket, the trusted Zenith, and looked around for a place to elevate himself to a position where he could view the situation at minimal risk. Failing that, his only choice was to advance forward, slowly cutting through alley and side streets until he could smell the blood. Finally, he was there.

By now the magnetic pulses were like waves breaking against a beach; the sheer amount of firing going on was nearly insurmountable. They were incredibly powerful railguns, too; almost certainly corporate. No one else could afford them, surely.

Turning a corner, the battle was finally visible: a group of corporate security guards, fighting some members of the criminal underworld. A curiosity, but one that required observation; could these criminals hold off the corporates? If so, Stalker was impressed; but not enough to prevent him from killing any survivors at the end anyways. That's what they got for making such a disruption. Stalker remained within the shadows, taking an opportunity to shoot out a nearby neon sign that exposed him somewhat; no one would hear the shot off to the side here.

To say they lacked discipline would have been.. generous. As far she could tell, their "training" - if one wanted to call it such - probably amounted to little more than: "This end is where the shooty stuff happens." They had no control, and their trigger fingers were much too itchy. Popping off round after round in rapid succession in the general direction of the target. Sure, Amada had heard the term "spray and spray" before, but never actually encountered it. Mildly amusing, for sure. Leading shots also appeared a foreign concept, she imagined they simply pointed and fired, because all their bullets ended up just behind her. Even with the extreme velocity of a railgun slug, travel time was still a thing.

They were spread out, and scattering as the corporate troops thinned their ranks. That made getting up close even easier, and she took every opportunity. A gun provided a false sense of security. It presented a hypothetical comfort zone, allowing you to hold your enemy off within a certain perimeter of your effective range. Unfortunately for them, that only worked if you had the awareness to enforce it. All it took was a basic distraction. Their eyes veered off, locking onto someone or something else, and then she was behind them. She could not help but spare a quick, "'Sup," right before breaking a windpipe. He dropped his gun, clutching his throat, eyes bugging. His buddy swung around to meet her, and for his trouble he got a knife straight through his wrist. She wrenched the knife down, forcing him to his knees, and executed him with a single shot. The slug passed out the back of his skull, burrowing through the pavement below.

Up ahead, another group was just taking notice. Four of them had ducked into an alley. Her angle gave a perfect vantage of three, the last was just a head poking out from around the corner. Sidestepping apprehensively, she raised her sidearm and squeezed the trigger. The top of the fourth punk's head turned into confetti and a chunk of the wall beside the others shattered, spraying them with shrapnel shorn off by the force of the impact. The least affected went down first, and she dropped the others before they recovered.

"Okay, okay, okay," Mercer mumbled through the comm. "Finally got some overhead, that gives us a nice spectrum. Don't think you really need it, at this point. Looks like the festivities are dying down."

"Hey, I'm not complaining." Amada watched the IFFs as they bobbed around on her HUD, a map of the small section of the city the fighting occupied gave her their exact positions. "I don't think we're getting overtime for this anyway, so fuck it." Just as she was starting to feel like she could relax a little, another bunch that had been cornered pushed back. Slugs whizzed by into the street, and Amada went for cover before returning fire. To her surprise, gunshots rang out from behind her. Rifle rounds pounded the hostiles, but all the inflicted wounds were nonlethal. "Oh, great," she rolled her eyes. That could only mean one thing.

Once they had been thoroughly.. decommissioned.. Amada stepped out tentatively, warily searching for any more surprises. Spying nothing, she looked back to where the shots had come from. The gunman in question stepped out from behind a car, hands slightly up in a peace offering. "You mind not killing the ones that aren't already dead? It would be nice to see what kind of bounties they have." Her eyes swept over him in a cursory analysis, and then briefly hopped to another man a bit behind him.

"Shoulda known the gunshots would have the rats scurrying. Afraid someone's going to screw over your claims?" Amada flicked her knife, casting any lingering drops of blood onto the ground, before sheathing it. Her pistol stayed in her hand as a precaution, but it lingered at her side. "Look, I don't have anything against saving a few bullets. If you wanna get to scavenging, you're more than welcome to," she sneered, momentarily glancing aside to check her peripheral. "Just try not to do anything overly stupid, would you? Gonna have enough paperwork to file, as it is." She shifted her weight, sliding her right foot back a few inches.

With the corporates victorious and the last dregs of the gangsters' forces in flight, the situation was clear. A small number of militarily-equipped corporates, the leader being the almost disturbingly efficient woman who had almost singlehandedly butchered the gangsters. Not a threat, assuming Stalker could get the jump on her, and the corporate soldiers themselves would be easy; he had survived hundreds of them in the past. Two heavily-armed men who seemed somewhat unaligned, crouching behind a car. They were slightly more unpredictable; one of them with a rifle was looking in the other direction and would take a while to turn it around, but he appeared to have telekinetic PET powers which presented a danger. His companion was armed only with a wrench, but the fact that he had charged into such a crossfire with it and survived guaranteed that he had some form of PET powers. Some distance away, an unarmed man with a notebook was behind a car, but he would be no threat at all.

Stalker shook his head; why was he considering butchering these anyways? What would he do with them at all? The corporates would most likely kill him should they recognize him, and as for the others, he had no vendetta against them.

Further observation was a must; Stalker had already bloodied his hands tonight and there was no reason to bloody them yet again.

"Shoulda known the gunshots would have the rats scurrying. Afraid someone's going to screw over your claims? Look, I don't have anything against saving a few bullets. If you wanna get to scavenging, you're more than welcome to. Just try not to do anything overly stupid, would you? Gonna have enough paperwork to file, as it is."

"Well, I like to think of myself as a better scavenger than a rat... maybe a hyena, or a vulture." Huey took the jab with good humor as he walked over to the people he downed. As he heard Guy's comment, he responded, "Save me a seat old man, I will be right there after I am done with this."

Looking down at one of the people he took out, he pressed a finger to the side of his glasses. His shades were custom designed and state of the art, but it was only thanks to Eva that he could do this. A box formed around the face of one of the men at his feet and, after a brief pause, displayed connected to it his name, bounty, rapsheet, and all sorts of other things about his life. Really, it was amazing what you could get when you crossed cutting edge facial recognition software with the power of the internet.

In the end though, they were all pretty much small-fry. None of them was worth the trouble of waiting around for, so he went over to take a look at the ones that had been killed next. He glanced at a few of them, til he glanced at the one missing part of his skull.

It took a moment for the software to identify him, but when it did, he let out a whistle of appreciation. "Damn, this guy was worth quite a bit. Also says there is a reward for turning in something he stole." Patted the guy down, found what he was looking for in a pants pocket, and turned around to the women. He threw something small at her in a soft arc. "Well, your kill, your spoils. Don't spend it all in one place, Miss Amada Rubi. Man, I can't believe people still use jump drives in this day and age."

He turned and started to walk away. He went to flip of his facial recognition (it was funny what you could do with that), then, out of habit, flickered his infrared vision for a second. While he didn't make any obvious signs of surprise, he did raise a deliberate eyebrow at shady spot he passed, before he walked by the writer. He called out in passing to the poor guy, "You might want to get a drink too man, you are as pale as a ghost." And with that last comment, he slipped by him and straight down to the Stallion.

He took a seat next to his old acquaintance at the bar. He flicked his hand up to look at what he had stashed up his sleeve. It was a small electronic device, one that had been designed to do one specific task; copy the contents of an electronic device. He stored it back up his sleeve as quickly as he had taken it out, then turned to the scruffy mechanic. "Well, what a way to meet up again, huh?"

Amada snorted, the corner of her lips quirking into a minute smirk at the bounty hunter's remark. He had guts, and she wasn't one to fault somebody for that. That depended on how exactly they used their nerve. Her eyes rolled to the other guy, the one with the.. wrench. He was quick to excuse himself from the proceedings, something she was a little envious of. Until they got an all clear, she wasn't going anywhere just yet.

"Cleaners are on the way, and the PR lackeys are going with them. Preliminary reports will be coming in soon after." Mercer relayed, sounding more worn out every time he opened his mouth. Now that all the action had passed, they were starting to feel the weight of the night bearing down on them, along with the rest of the day before it.

"Real glad they're the ones handling it. Shooting people's simple, easing their minds isn't really my forte." She watched the gunman check out the downed hostiles, living and deceased. He did not seem particularly excited about any of them, which was not a surprise. Most thugs on the street had little more than pocket change to their name, if that. Going out of your way to hunt down the big names just felt like too much work; especially annoying when everyone else would be targeting them, too. She preferred having a steady source of income, as opposed to the occasional big payday.

"Damn, this guy was worth quite a bit. Also says there is a reward for turning in something he stole." Her interrupted her thoughts, and started patting down the corpse. She was about to comment on the matter, when he suddenly tossed her something. She snatched it out of the air, and furrowed her brow. "Well, your kill, your spoils. Don't spend it all in one place, Miss Amada Rubi. Man, I can't believe people still use jump drives in this day and age." According to her history class, privacy had used to be a thing. Then the internet happened. Still, she was marginally piqued at how casual he was about spouting her identity.

"How altruistic of you." Amada kept a steady eye on him as he headed over to a nearby bar, where his buddy had trundled off to before.

"You might want to get a drink too man, you are as pale as a ghost." The gunman called out to somebody hiding behind a car. Who in their right mind would be stupid enough to hang around who was not some bounty hunter or corporate security?

Tucking the unexpected reward into an interior pocket, she strolled slowly over and cocked an eyebrow at the kid. She had the answer the moment her eyes fell on his pad. "You know, using freedom of the press as an excuse to sensationalize this shit is pretty low. You about done, or am I gonna have to find someone to escort you out of the area?" Amada gestured around with her pistol. Never aiming it at him, but showing it off to let him get her meaning. If there was one thing she had learned from the bureaucratic dropouts responsible for the company's image, it was that subtlety and suggestion were preferable when dealing with someone not pointing a firearm at you. Mostly because it permitted deniability. No, officer, I was only asking if he wanted protection while leaving a potentially dangerous district.

Glancing around reflexively, she noticed a busted sign. Earlier it had been casting an ugly neon light over the immediate surroundings, but it looked like a bullet had punched through it. Gaze drifting, she spied what looked almost like a figure standing cloaked in darkness. Blinking rapidly, she readjusted her position, and turned her attention back to the reporter.

As the woman's gaze passed over him, Stalker tensed up instinctively, his hand twitching towards the holster he kept within his jacket. He scanned her facial expression; she was obviously suspicious, but without anything to reinforce it, she had obviously decided to leave him alone. All good.

The issue was escaping without notice; Miss Rubi, as Stalker had learned her name was, had no lack of good eyesight. One small untoward motion at this range and not even a repolarization of her weapon's firing rails would stop the bullet. Kevlar was only so effective as a lifesaver.

But then, was escape even necessary? If he was fast enough on the draw, he would easily be able to disable her long before anyone else could get him within his sights.

But first, a distraction.

Stalker's suit, so blessedly equipped with the ability to modify magnetic fields, had come in useful so often; from repolarizing the firing rails of railguns, changing their bullet's trajectory completely, to the movement of small and simple metallic objects, it had saved his life more often than not; and now, the tiny shake of a small object conveniently located within a garbage bin near Miss Rubi, would serve as the perfect distraction.

Hopefully.

Before her new "friend" could respond, something caught her ear. Her head whipped around, eyes narrowing warily. It had sounded metallic; hollow, even. A brief, dull echo. Nothing stood out in the least. It was just an empty, spottily lit street. Willing herself to relax a little, Amada focused again on the journalist.

"Ah, sorry about that." The kid said, obviously trying to act chastened. A good way to not get a bullet in you, that. Depending on who you were dealing with. As she stood, Amada was feeling somewhat humanitarian. The corners of her mouth quirked. "Sensationalize may be the wrong way to put it from where I am standing though. Someone is gonna talk, I may as well make a living out of it and get the facts straight. Leave it to the big news guys to 'sensationalize'" He smirked, maybe in an attempt at looking endearing. He was not about to win any awards with that route, however. "But I hear ya. My work here is done so I'll get outta here so you can do yours. I think I'll be fine finding my way out of here though. I'm just gonna head over there to get a drink first. Maybe it can stop my throat from tasting like shit. Have a good one." He started moving away cautiously, and she took slow steps to match his trajectory, but in the opposite direction. She was on the lookout for anything sudden, but it never came.

Nearly holstering her gun, Amada thought better of it and decided to keep the weapon at her side. The unexpected had the potential to do far more damage than a threat you already knew about. With the proper intel, you could raise your defenses, draw up contingencies and plan your defenses accordingly. The unknown - oldest of human fears, as it were - offered a game of chance and instinct. Right then, her gut was saying to keep the pistol firmly in her fist for as long as she was in the area.

After making sure the kid followed up on his word, she started on her way back toward the bulk of the security personnel. Some of them were performing sweeps, hunting for any tucked away pockets of their enemy. So far everything had been quiet in the wake, so the general assumption was they had all been cleared out.

"ETA on when we'll all be going home?" Amada queried, fishing for a cigarette case concealed in her coat. She hated staying on the job late. She preferred to keep a very strict divider between her work and personal life, and had long realized the necessity of balancing exposure to either. Too much work would make her angry, conversely enough down time was debilitating. Already the night had veered well into what were typically her hours. She really did not enjoy having her schedule tampered with, especially when there would not be any extra incentive to go along with nothing but a vapid smile.

"Nope," Parker immediately relayed.

"If I'd wanted the bush league bullshit, I would have specifically requested it. Mercer." Her request came out as a flat, but firm order.

"The first detail's set to arrive in a few minutes. A couple of birds, and one car. No telling how they're feeling. We might be off in ten minutes, or three hours." He was disgruntled, and it sounded like he was sinking deeper into his chair. Settling in for the long haul.

She made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. "I swear to Christ, if I hear the words 'exorbitant' and 'force' in the same sentence tonight, I'm putting someone through a wall." Amada lit her cigarette, taking a deep drag immediately. Through a combination of psychological and physiological stimuli, it was already working. Her tightened nerves began to slacken, her head started to clear. She was walking along the sidewalk, eyeing the buildings, battered pavement, and ruined bodies scattered haphazardly. Her shoulders were loosened, gait fluid, eyes drifting aimlessly. Any sense of urgency had sufficiently faded, and nothing about her surroundings was of any real interest. "Let's just get this over with, already," she sighed.

It was obvious the corporates wouldn't clear away for quite a while.

Stalker stood, concrete-still, and observed his surroundings. Miss Rubi had let her guard down, but not sufficiently to subside in her manner of posing a serious threat. She would have to be the first one dealt with.

Secondly, the corporates. Many of them, as noted before, were fresh and survived only because of their fancy gear and the skill of their leadership, but said fancy gear were major cause for concern. Thus, they were threats as well. Stalker had heard chatter about reinforcements, but that was the crowning issue: if more men came, then Stalker's chances of escape would be made miniscule. Unacceptably so.

Thus, the only concievable plan was the one which involved a loud and potentially bloody escape. Something Stalker specialized in.

Stalker waited for one of the corporates to walk within a few metres of his position until acting, reaching out and seizing the poor man by the neck, broken by a swift twist. Holding him up as a shield, Stalker unholstered his handgun and began firing somewhat wildly; he had little control over the weapon when employing it with one hand while using the other to carry a dead man with heavy armour.

Slowly, he began backing himself into the alley even as the shots came flying.