Bailey O'Reilly's Story

Cassidy had no idea what had just happened. One moment she and her sister were singing a song playing on the radio and then there was a loud noise. Everything turned into a jumble of images and noise. Oh God, the noise. There was roaring in Cassidy's ears and everything hurt.

The white sedan was upside down on the highway. There was glass and twisted metal everywhere she looked. There was a puddle of blood, too.

"Oh God... Bailey? Bailey!" Cassidy screamed. She couldn't see her sister. There was only blood. Blood everywhere.

"Help! Someone help! Please, oh God my sister!" Cassidy yelled out.

Something alerted all the agents in the area that were working with Iso. A man's voice, accent standard, city American. It was commanding.

"Remember, Godrage, you're covering Iso. She's going to lead them out and you're going to pick them off. Do your best to clear the Carrier first. The Invictus are tough. Be careful."

The rest of the teams received various orders. There were thirty other agents apart from Iso and Godrage. That was all they needed.

Iso stepped off the roof, and in a blur, vanished as she fell. She was then seen landing atop the carrier, drawing out a long sword that had not been apparent before. She reached to stick it in the top of the vehicle and open it like a can.

A black sedan screeched to a halt on the highway just behind the NPA vehicle as the explosion went off, its rear end spinning out slightly and hitting the lane divider in the centre. "Oh, bullshit." the elderly female driver cursed, her voice more resignedly peeved than shocked or angry. "Sometimes I can't believe this fucking city."

Catherine threw her car into gear and hit the accelerator, turning about to start driving back the way she'd come, only to find the road totally blocked by a small pileup. "Really?" Hitting the switch on her window she stuck her head out to yell, "Get your hunks of junk out of the god damn road before you get us all killed, assholes!"

Being dressed down in such a manner by a woman in her fifties - even if it was a sharply dressed and snarky-sounding woman - probably wasn't the proudest moment of the drivers behind her, but it didn't change the fact that they weren't moving any time soon. "Christ almighty..." Catherine muttered to herself, throwing her door open and grabbing the gun she kept in her passenger seat before stepping out onto the road.

"Can't you fuckers wait till after god damn rush hour?" she shouted off in the direction of the attack angrily.

Things seemed to be picking up fast. The traffic had stopped, the crowds were panicking and getting out of their cars, and it looked like there were already injured civilians. Still, it couldn't be helped. They had chosen to do it during a high-traffic time, after all. Now they had no choice but to see it through, while Godrage planned to keep as many innocents alive as he could. A reputation to be upheld was not a reputation taken likely, and his reputation for avoiding unneeded collateral was becoming legendary.

"Ready," he simply said, knowing that the others would hear him through his ear-mounted communicator. The moment someone got out of that carrier, he would be ready to shoot them right in their CBM.

The sword digging through the top of the transport was a bit unsettling at first, Jacob, who was waking up after taking a haymaker, wasn't really enjoying the ssight. "What the fuck?" The Englishman shouted, pressing his chained body against the inside of the vehicle.

"Masks on." Riley ordered, his team reaching below their seats. Almost simultaneously they were putting on gasmasks. They didn't know if their attackers were going to be using tear gas or any kind of poisons. They had to be prepared for both. "Don't I get one?" Jacob asked, a soldier forcing a mask over the young man's face.

"Prepare for flashes." One of the soldiers told the others, the group aiming their weapons with one hand at the roof. Their free hands went to the foreheads of the soldiers on their lefts.

"Be ready to head out of the back. Driver, cover us when we move." Riley ordered.

The top of the vehicle would open up, then flip off onto the road with a clatter. The woman, half her face covered by a cowl, the rest of her in slick, light body armor, looked down on them with pale blue eyes, sword in hand, red hair framing her face. Then, just like that, she disappeared.

"Now's your chance, Godrage. They're in clear view."

The girl landed on the ground with hardly a sound, waiting for the driver to step out from his seat. She was ordered to kill, but if she could avoid it...

Rick managed to get to his feet slowly, peeling the helmet on his head off. His back burned and his right leg felt like it'd been struck by a baseball bat several times. He looked at the helmet in his hands, there were scratches and gouges where it had made contact with the asphalt.

With a sigh he tossed it over his shoulder and took a step towards the source of the explosion.

He got a few feet before something slid into his ankles causing him to tumble over back onto the road.

Rick's landing was softer than it should have been when a body hit asphalt. A body was laying beneath him. It was a pale skinned woman with fiery red hair and pale blue eyes.

Dead, pale blue eyes.

It was the body of Bailey O'Reilly, Cassidy's sister. There was nothing but a torso. The woman's body had been crushed beneath a white sedan. Saving the woman was beyond possible. Bailey stared up at the sky with her mouth hung agape in a pool of congealing blood.

"Bailey, oh God, Bailey! Someone help, please! I c-can't move! Please," Cassidy cried from inside the wreckage of the white car.

Cursing under her breath, Catherine began to move away from the ensuing confrontation and towards one of the nearby wrecks that had caught the worst of the blast. She grimaced at the sight of the dead girl crushed under the vehicle, muttering something about wearing seatbelts. The older woman glanced at Rick.

"Get up," she instructed curtly, "You're alright. Keep moving before you aren't."

Then she moved onto the interior of the sedan. The vehicle was upside down and the doors were jammed shut. Thankfully, the back window remained easily accessible, since the weight of the vehicle had tilted it forwards onto its hood. Catherine moved around to the car's rear and waved a hand over the device on her wrist. The omni-tool flickered into action, holographic display lighting up as she adjusted a few settings on it before hauling herself up towards the window.

From there she surveyed the damage. There was just one more occupant of the vehicle, trapped upside down in her seat by her seat belt. "Hold tight, kid. We'll get you out of there before this gets any worse."

That was a promise she knew she couldn't keep in full. Things tended to escalate pretty quickly around here. But still, hopefully she could live up to the first half of the promise.

Returning to the ground, she gestured at Rick again. "I'm going to need your help. Get up. Try not to look at what you landed on. You can freak out later, right now I need you running on focused adrenaline."

"Negative," he replied, holding steady to his trigger. "I can't quite get them in my range. The moment I have a shot, I will take it."

He kept surveying the area, especially his own flanks. He didn't honestly expect that they could have possibly known about the ambush, but there was certainly no harm in taking quick glances to make sure everything was running smoothly without a nasty surprise on the way.

Below, he could see some sort of rescue operation taking place - a figure that had climbed up against an overturned vehicle, presumably to find a trapped passenger. In a way, he felt bad for them, but he would never allow such thoughts get in the way of the task at hand.

"Drop the weapon?" An NPA agent yelled at Iso, he and a few others creeping up behind the woman. "We have backup en route. You won't get too far before we get you, just give up now." The officer commanded, assault rifle kept on the woman as he crept just a little close to close the distance and make sure if he fired a shot it would hit.

The others on the street took cover, searched the rooftops for snipers or attended to the wounded. They weren't as much of a fighting force as they could be until backup arrived. With the traffic stopped on both sides of the highway, the only backup that could show up was by air. Their attackers would see that coming and aircraft being shot down over a highway was bad for the people down below.

Within the truck armored truck, which was now similar in looks to a sardine can, the Invictus soldiers began to remove Jacob's cuffs. Two of the soldiers moving to the back doors to push them open when given the signal.

"Sunny, you and I will go from the top and peacock." Riley said to one of the female soldiers, "The rest of you move Jacob, use the vehicles stopped on the road for cover from snipers and enemy fire. Link up with the NPA, we'll have air support soon to at least keep us apprised of the situation." Riley continued.

"On three." Sunny said to the team, "One... two..." She began, the group simultaenously moving at a silent three. The back doors shot open, Riley and Sunny climbed upwards out of the truck. They made sure they were obvious targets, "Look for flashes. That'll be our sniper." Riley told his comrade.

The rest of the soldiers moved as soon as Riley and Sunny were out in the open, pushing and pulling Jacob towards several vehicles that had crashed due to the sudden stop in traffic.

The group spotted Catherine and the overturned Sedan, "Looks like they need help." One of the Invictus solders said, "Riley, this is Temple, I'm sending a few guys to go help some civilians. Link up when you get our way and regroup." Temple said, "Pillsbury, Danny, go help them out. We'll keep on going." Temple ordered, two of the male soldiers sprinting away from their comrades to assist the trapped Cassidy.

"If only we got paid extra for this." Pillsbury said as he and Danny moved, "You might get your picture on a wall in a bar at least." Danny responded, "We can only hope it's not put up posthumously, man." Pillsbury said.

"Right on."

Iso turned her head as the NPA agent came closer. A thin, red brow rose at him.

In a flash, she was gone, out of thin air. The next she would appear, she would be behind him, sword slashing in the air to tear at the tendons in his arms, to cause him to drop his gun. She would then disappear again, whether she had landed the hit or not.

She would reappear once more high in the air, free falling, assessing the situation from above. She would not be there for long.

The other agents had swarmed the streets, now, shooting at Invictus and the NPA, trying to down as many as possible.

Rick barely had time to process he had fallen onto a corpse before some old coot was rambling off orders at him. Looking around he found that the entire highway had become chaotic....he even heard gunfire.

Ok, let's take this one step at a time shall we?

First, he decided to not take a nap on someone's dead body, rising to his feet slowly, he turned to face the young woman trapped inside the car and begging for help.

"Uh, right, just stay calm. I'll help you out of there as fast as I can." He nodded to her as he stumbled over to the rear of the vehicle.

He reached for the revolver in it's holster on his waist. "Hey cover your ey-" he stopped mid sentence as his nose caught a familiar odor. A glance over to the driver side of the vehicle confirmed his fear.

Gasoline from the vehicle's fuel tank was spilling out onto the street...and towards the other wrecked vehicles, one of which was already suffering from a fire in the engine compartment.

Well, shit, better make this quick

He decided to forego the gun in favor of removing his shirt. He quickly wrapped the cloth around his hand before he slammed his fist into the rear window as hard as he could, shattering the glass. In a couple of moments he crawled through the window, accessing the inverted interior.

"Is anything broken?" He asked Cassidy as he reached her seat.

As gunfire broke out in the street, Catherine cursed under her breath. She followed Rick's gaze to the trail of gasoline and stepped forwards with a sweep of her arm. The kinetic-manipulation functions of the OmniTool kicked in, and she forced the trail back a few paces, before sweeping a small pile of debris in the way to stem the tide. As the attackers opened fire on the NPA officers, including those moving over to help her and the girl trapped in the car, she raised her own pistol and fired back in retaliation to provide them cover as they moved across towards their small group.

A small kinetic shield from her OmniTool deflected a few bullets that came her way, and despite a bead of sweat running down her forehead, she maintained her calm as she backed away again, then ducked back behind the vehicle.

Cassidy was trying to get her seat belt undone so she could crawl out of the sedan. It was jammed and it made her panic. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes and her heart was pounding like a hummingbird's wings inside her chest. She stopped screaming for a minute.

Cassidy looked at her palms. There was glass embedded into her skin and blood everywhere. She looked at her legs and then her feet.

"Oh God. No, no, no, no, no," said Cassidy. Her ankle was snapped and bone peeked out of her skin. She drew in a lungful of air to scream but it was choked down as a voice came into her ear. Cassidy's panicked eyes looked over Rick as if he were the most beautiful sight to be seen in Wing City.

"I-Im... stuck. Please help me. My sister. Have you seen her? She's pregnant. Oh God I don't know where she is, please... get me out of here," Cassidy cried out as she twisted to grab a hold of whatever she could of the man.

"Let's keep this quick," he told Iso through his communicator. "We can do this in two minutes if we work fast."

Figures broke out from the back of the armoured truck, and he quickly aimed the cross-hairs of his magnified scope over them and held his breath. As Riley and Sunny climbed out of the truck to make themselves targets, he considered taking a shot but decided almost immediately against it. He didn't want to waste any time or ammunition.

"Spotted the target," he quickly said, scope zooming in on the other soldiers as they pushed Jacob towards several cars for cover. The window of his shot likely hitting anything was brief, but he was going to exploit it anyway. Adjusting for range and movement speed, he pulled back on the trigger, sending a suppressed, yet deadly round straight for a center of body mass. He had had to aim quickly, and there was no guarantee of even hitting anything, but hopefully even if he didn't the sudden impact of a sniper round by them would distract them just enough for Iso to get the VIP.

The rifle itself would be a little difficult to spot, considering the muzzle flash wasn't as bright as more conventional marksman rifles, but it was definitely there and could be spotted by anyone with a good eye looking for just a thing.

"Moving to second overwatch soon, I'm too exposed here. Hurry it up."

The NPA Agent took the cut to the arm, his weapon falling from his hands. But, it didn't take long for him to draw his sidearm and turn to aim at Iso. The only problem was that she was already gone by the time he turned around, all he could see were his comrades who were just as confused about where she had gone.

"We can find her another time. Let's fight off these assholes shooting at us." The agent said, he and the others taking cover at the armored truck with the driver to open fire on the possible terrorists attacking them.

As this went on Sunny and Riley took whatever shots they could from their high ground, trying to keep their allies moving Jacob covered. "Sniper!" One of the Invictus soldiers yelled as a bullet slammed into the armored chest of another. "Sunny, look for flashes again. Anything." Riley ordered, climbing down from the top of the truck.

"NPA, this is Packmaster. Can you get someone from Fort Veritas under the highway with a vehicle? We're too exposed up here." Riley said, "We have vehicles to use for cover from enemies on even-ground, but skyscrapers from inside the city are a problem when the enemy has snipers." The American soldier continued.

The rest of Riley's team were pinned down behind a truck delivering BDSM toys and a few cars, between the sniper and the opposition forces shooting at them they had nowhere to go. If they kept Jacob, that is. He was slowing them down, holding them back from doing what they would usually do in a firefight.

"Thank Regis for money to buy and build good armor." The previously shot Invictus soldier said as he stood up, though the visible pain on his face indicated that the force of the shot or the force of hitting the ground had caused an injury regardless. "We need to start moving!" Riley shouted, sprinting towards the group while laying down fire at their attackers.

"Pillsbury, go." Danny said to his comrade, pushing him along towards Rick and Cassidy while Danny himself moved to join Catherine. "And I'm just one day from retiring." Danny joked.

Pillsbury in the meanwhile had reached Rick and Cassidy, "Here, dude." He said to Rick, removing the combat knife from it's holster to give to Rick. "Cut her seatbelt off. I'm going to be doing something stupid." He told Rick, dropping his gun and getting down on his back.

The soldier crawled on his back, trying to squeeze into the totaled vehicle, once his body was halfway in he raised his legs. Pillsbury pressed his knees to the area of the car above him, placed his hands against the area above himself as well and then he began to push.

It was combination of stupidity, bravery, and empathy that prompted the young soldier to put himself into harms way and use nothing but brute strength to channel his inner jaws of life. And it was working, the twisted metal creaked as it was pushed to give Cassidy and Rick more room to breathe.

"Copy that Packmaster, we are inbound," a comm squawked back back to the NPA/Invictus troopers pinned down on the highway. A moment later, three Seraphim carrier descended onto the streetways, dropping three SC Cruisers near the damaged battalion.

"Load up! Load up!" one of the drivers shouted, "get him inside NOW! Once we reach Veritas we're set!"

Once their cargo was dropped, the Seraphim would turn next to the building housing Godrage, the energy dispersion from the assassin's sniper shots more than evident on their scouters. A squad of guardians, hooked to the hovering Seraphim, took aim at the hostile, running a quick scouter check over the surrounding windows to ensure that there were no innocents about to be caught up in the crossfire. Once clear, they would unleash a barrage of armor-piercing Gauss rounds at the assassin, attempting to stop his brutally-efficient sniper work once and for all.

"Godrage, move. We're retreating," said the voice that had contacted them earlier. "Get to Iso once she gets the target."

And, just as he spoke, Iso disappeared as she accelerated toward the ground. Iso never could control or stop her acceleration when she ported, but she could utilize it. When she next appeared, it was right beside Jacob, reaching out to grab him around the waist. The speed of what previously had been a fall turned into an accelerated, angled rocket into the sky. That is, if she had succeeded in the action.

And if she had, she and Jacob would be rocketed to the side, off of the highway, towards a rooftop.

The rest of the agents threw bullets towards the enemy, some closing in with swords and excellent training with both the weapon and their ability to close the distance swiftly enough, using cars and debris as cover, to get right up on their targets.

"Miss just try to keep calm, I'll get you ou-" Rick was genuinely surprised when the soldier appeared next to him, handing him a large knife. As he glanced back at the trooper, he noticed the man was somehow managing to bend the vehicle around them.

That was impressive....but kinda weird as well.

Right, back to the task at hand.

Knife in hand, Rick quickly made short work of Cassidy's seat belt, gently lowering her from her upside down seat. Thanks to the soldier, there was just barley enough room to lay her across the ground, the center console, and both the driver and passenger seat above her.

"With her leg like this I can't pull her out the back." Rick said to the trooper. "I'm gonna drag her through the rear passenger window."

Rick thought about using his gun to shoot out the window...but he wasn't sure of how the soldier would react to him being armed. So instead he just slammed his foot against the glass several times until it gave way.