Imanhu's Story

The first down the ropes was Xolani, the hunter hit the sandy floor and stated to rub and coat himself in the virtual sand and lowering himself into a small crouch as he thumbed a button on his gauntlets and his pack shot off a small burst of fuel, shooting him onto the ladder and launching his legs over and onto the roof.

The second was Zola with her dogs held by their scruffs, hitting the ground and whipping back and forth as the harrying shots whipped past, her head following the impact points. They were using the paint rounds too, at least. Whoever shot at her wasn't a bad shot either, if she'd been a little hastier, she might not have had the chance to even deploy her dogs.

Uzochi slid down the rope till a half-point and then shot forward with his sunbird pack and grappled onto the side, heaving himself onto the roof and jamming the stock of his rifle onto his shoulder and advancing across the roof. The hunters maintained complete radio silence, the two on the roof communicating completely though hand gestures.

The viewers weren't getting much it seemed.

Zola slammed the door open with her shoulder, keeping ready with her shotgun and ushered her dogs forward with a slap. The dogs lulled their tongues and sniffed the air. "Rook dit, Uzochi." Zola muttered on her radio, eyes peeled. Zola then doubled back and kept an eye on the side of the building, her red helmet peeking around the corner.

The final combatant left the ship, hand on the grip of his rifle and zipped down, bending his head down to avoid the shots whizzing past his head. Imanhu made a hand gesture to Zola and pulled back the bolt on his rifle. Imanhu stacked up on the door and swung into the room, keeping the .50 on his shoulder to return fire.

Spook, like Packmule rappelling in perfect form, though at three times the speed on the way down. She never slowed either, until the ground met her feet, though the heavy impact didn't seem to bother her in the least. She hit the ground running and darted forward to join the rest of the fireteam, stacking up behind Packmule.

Octavian's voice came over the teamspeak, completely inaudible to the outside of her helmet,"Knight elements, Knight actual. Comm scratch, brevity go." Everyone sounding off in order.

"Check."

"Fit Knight, Kard. Three-one split, HQ my pos. Hammer, Mule, Spook, breach and clear. Firecracker."
"Roger, hammertime in three."

Having cleared the small room at their end of the larger complex, Hammer gestured for the two stacked at the door to enter, pointing to the corners furthest south in turn to indicate their positions. Once they were in place, he pulled a pair of poles from his kit, peeling the coverings from one side and sticking them to the wall between the two potted plants. He placed a small disc in the center and thumbed a red button on the top of it, activating a red LED light in the middle of the disc. Red lights flashed at the tops and bottoms of the poles, each pole about a foot long. After a moment, all of the lights blinked green and stayed solid amber in unison, and Hammer quickly moved across the room to the doorway, taking a knee and facing away from the wall. Three seconds later, he popped the breaching charge, the explosion sending vibrations through the whole structure and leaving no doubt that something had exploded. When the dust settled a moment later there was an uneven hole, roughly circular, about a meter and a half in diameter, leading into the building's interior. He pointed at Packmule, raised a finger, pointed at himself and raised a second, then pointed at Spook and held up three, then gestured into the hole. Packmule went first, slightly crouched, and moved forward to rest his shoulder against the bookcase directly across from their new door, immediately to the right of a wooden door.

"Set."

Hammer moved next, clearing the breach and taking a knee to the right of it, next to the potted plant. He placed a hand to the 'ear' of his helmet and sent out another comm, gesturing with his other hand for Spook to set up facing the other door.

"Actual, Mjolnir. Breached, set, first room clear. Two doors, egress, deeper. Direction?"

The two dogs ears perked as the explosion shook the building. Imanhu made a face, running down calculations in his head as he slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Muur, verbreek dit." The sniper whispered into his helmet, doubling back and slamming the door behind him.

Uzochi felt the explosion and it prompted him to make his own. Uzochi hand signaled as he pulled the small hand mortar out of his bag. Xolani retracted his blades and stuffed a hand into Uzochi's backpack and pulled out a small canister, popping the cap off it and sliding it into the mortar and holding up his right hand in an L gesture, a pale blue hologram forming up on between his fingers that looked like rather like a rangefinder.

Uzochi followed Xolani's rangefinger and slammed the trigger with his thumb. There was a small popping noise as the mortar shot out the other end into the sky and came whistling down. "Verlaag nie, ons wil 'n mooi punt van die inskrywing, dit is 'n ge." Xolani shouted, frustrated.

The mortar came whistling down, taking out chunks of the roof and causing some of the double bedroom to crumble. Uzochi had overcompensated in his rush and his guess of where they were was probably off too. "Hou dit stil, slaan hulle en vlug." Uzochi hastily replied.

Zola bolted though the gap between the market stalls and the main building, sliding to a halt infront of a market stall and propping her shotgun, bending her knees to keep her profile low and laughed. "Wadiya, lafaards ek is reg hier!" She shouted, throwing up her hand and giving where she thought they might be a view of her index finger.

Imanhu stacked up the corner, stepping to the side and pulling up his rifle, grabbing his shoulder and balancing it on the crook of his elbow. The hunter lowered his breath and waited for a head to appear.

Spook flinched at the sound of a mortar hitting the building, but she didn't turn back or hesitate in her movements, as she moved to just right of the breech and put her back to the wall. A quick glance told her what had happened, and stadium light now filled the room that Hammer and Mule were in. Great, she was willing to bet good money that this would only set Hammer off.

"Actual, Spook. Got rain here. Three doors."

In the dim of the building, Spook had already become less distinct in appearance, her very form having blurred and faded until she looked to be little more than a smudge on the wall. Coupled with her armor's camo, which had shifted to match the walls in color and texture, Spook might as well have been invisible.

"Roger Hammer--"

His next orders were cut off by the sound of a mortar impact, and the resulting rumble of debris settling. Apparently they were going to play hardball, which suited him just fine. He pulled his pistol back from around the corner and holstered it, swapping back to his rifle again. He loaded eight shells into the breach of the over-barrel shotgun, working the bolt to put one in the chamber.

"Hammer, swap firecracker for Steel Rain. Spook, deeper. Mule, door number three."

"Heh. Steel Rain."

Hammer, who was in an excellent position to see all the rubble come down just a few feet in front of him, dusting his already concrete colored armor in more concrete dust and chips of the walls, swept his sights over the brand new skylight the opponents had so graciously put in, and took to the skies, raven wings spreading from his back and carrying him up. As he cleared the breech in the roof, he swept the direction the mortar had more than likely come from, spotting the targets on the roof. He fired a single air burst round, nicknamed a 'cheeto' round for it's wide spread of orange powder to simulate a burst radius, and carried himself ever higher on his wings, counting on the bright stadium lighting at his back and above to make him a harder target, with his armor switching to white to match.

"Roger."

As Hammer moved up, Mule darted into the hole in the wall, keeping his weapon up as he scanned the double bedroom for signs of enemy movement. He took up position crouched behind one of the beds as he waited for any signs of enemy movement or continued attack from above.

"Set. No contact."

Xolani broke off from the group, sliding across the concrete and holding out his arm to protect his face as the orange powder splattered across his left arm. "Run boy, run!" The African shouted, tearing off his gauntlet and priming his Sunbird and using to boost his slide across the roof, propelling him off the roof and in the direction of Zola.

Uzochi swung his bodyweight to the side, dodging the round and ditching his mortar off the roof and into the market stalls. "Wadiya, wadiya. Na na pit du sha." he whispered into his helmet, his bare legs jutting still and he begun to fire his rifle in short bursts, hoping to tag the flying demon out of the air.

Zola stood up from her place behind the market stall, slinging a large cylinder off her shoulder, putting her foot on the lower cylinder and pulling the launcher to it's full size. The launcher was aimed to bare on the wall separating the street from the double bedroom, there was a brief pause as she aimed a little behind it and then fired.

Zola opened her mouth to avoid shattering them and shouted loudly in Afrikaans. It brought the dogs right out of the room they had first entered and straight past their sniper. Imanhu slapped a charge on one of the dogs as they tore past, activating the primer with a flick of his thumb and resumed his vigilant overwatch, lowering his pulse to a shallow heartbeat.

The wall was obliterated sending forth chunks towards the team inside and the backblast set one of the market stalls on fire behind Zola as she discarded the used launcher and signalled for the dogs to charge in, and so they did, gnashing their teeth in preparation for whoever's neck was still in the wreckage.

"Roger, Tavi."

Spook ducked into the room, taking up the position the Mule had occupied, at the same moment he was leaving it, her shoulder pressed to the book case. She then threw open the door to what seemed to be a tiny hallway, with another door on the opposite end. A quick sweep told her there were no invisibles there, so she stacked against the next wall, and threw open that door too.

"Set. No contac-"

The very end of her call was cut off by another explosion, and Spook found herself sighing with irritation. These guys were more bomb-happy than Hammer. Well, maybe. She peeked around the corner, finding the room to be empty, aside from the dust and smoke that had blown under the doors.

Perfect,"Actual, Spook. Going ghost."

As if she were sinking into pudding, Spook slipped from the prime material plane, only to return inside of the small building closest to the enemy starting point. A quick glance from the window, showed her Zola sending her dogs in after Mule, and it was pretty clear that she wasn't expecting Spook. She made the most of her surprise element, throwing open the door and firing a few of the wax rounds at the other woman's back,"Contact!"

Mule was braced against the bed when the window into the room exploded inward, sending fragments of glass and a shockwave his way. If he hadn't been on one knee at the time, most of the shrapnel would've found his chest and hips instead of just the top of his helmet. The blast shattered the flimsy wooden frame pretending to be a bed and sent stuffing, sheets, and splintered wood in all directions. Packmule dropped flat on his belly, partially covered by the bedding, and brought his weapon more or less toward the window, firing low for the wall beneath it, and fired a pair of CS teargas rounds, quickly filling the air with a white haze of debilitating gas. The gas would irritate the skin like a severe sunburn, and cause blindness, as well as severe irritation to any mucous membranes and a subsequent evacuation of said mucous in a fit of forceful coughing. The dogs, with their sensitive noses and ears, would have a terrible time of it, and would need to be treated before regaining their senses. He fired another pair of rounds out the window, aiming for the wooden market stalls and hoping to catch anyone outside in more CS gas.

Meanwhile, Hammer was soaring ever higher on his feathered raven wings, growling as a round grazed his wing and sent him in a spiral for a moment. It wasn't enough to take him out of the air, but the rounds were getting closer, furiously buzzing by him in a constant flood. His retaliation, of course, was to swap his shotgun to automatic and send out a burst of the remaining Cheeto rounds before swapping to his main weapon, a stream of automatic fire propelling the plastic tipped wax rounds at anyone he could target.

"Brother, I am pinned here!"
"We'll send more."

Kard rolled his eyes and pulled a pair of cheeto grenades from their pouches, one in each hand, and primed them, holding onto them for a second before chucking them both around the corner. He scooped up his rifle and shouldered it, running sideways for the building in the corner, which seemed to have some sort of table and chairs set up, and opened fire, having no trouble seeing the red armored foes even without the ultraviolet, infrared, thermal, electromagnetic, and sonar-enhanced vision types. His accuracy would be decreased by the fire-while-moving tactic, but he was just a distraction anyway. Or rather, a second distraction, with Hammer raining explosives from above. Once to the building, he would leap backwards, propelling himself through the window in a backwards roll, shattering it and landing inside at a crouch.

"Spook, let's play Virtuous Mission. Copy?"

Imanhu stepped around the corner, the muzzle of his gun tracking the shots fired from behind the door. The sniper steadied his legs and hazarded a guess at where her head might be. Imanhu made a concentrated face beneath his red snake-like helmet and pulled the trigger, sending a paint filled .308 flying though the door and towards Spook's head.

The dogs found their way though the wreckage ably, sinking low and tearing off the pins of the trickster grenades with their teeth, the gas only serving to cloud their senses and make the two hounds angrier, howling and baring their teeth with violent force, drawing blood from their gums as they tore into whoever was closest to them in the cloud.

The grenades they had loosed started to transmit bursts of squad chatter around the cloud, random segments of African voices calling out shots to their left, right and middle and footstep noises inside the cloud.

Uzochi activated his sunbird, twin metal wings shooting out from either side and the pack spewing out blue flames as he spiralled into the air, narrowly dodging the automatic fire, shaking the paint off his boots. The leader was shooting towards hammer, peppering the soldier with single fire shots.

Zola swung herself beneath the market stalls as the cheeto grenades went off and she took fire, rubbing her sore back as she slumped down, her suit optics told her she was out of the game, she threw the shotgun into the dirt and slumped to the ground, taking upon the assumption that she was meant to pretend to be dead, for the crowd's sake. "Wadiya."

Once Hammer started peppering the place with orange dust explosions, Spook decided to get the hells out of there, dropping prone, and sinking into the darkness again. This proved to be incredibly lucky, as a sniper round splattered on the wall where her head had just been. That would have sucked. She returned to the first room they had entered, still prone, just to the left of the hole Hammer had made for them at the start.

She had to roll her eyes at Mule and Hammer's back and forth, wondering for a moment, if those two ever were serious. Her main concern was Kard's orders, however,"Roger? I think..." She had no idea what he wanted her to do, but she did know where that sniper was, now. Again she slipped into the shadows to pop up in the opposite room of the main building, glad that the place was in fact mirrored as she had guessed. Coming to a low crouch, she popped her head out of the building, just long enough to take a few shots at the sniper who had shot at her, before ducking back in and trying to vanish again.

Hammer, finally pegged with half a dozen rounds, grunted something impolite in a dialect nobody understood and let himself drop back to the rooftop, where he sat down.

"Hammertime over. Brother, I am hit!"

Packmule, meanwhile, swaddled in his new concealment of bedding and hidden in the rubble and CS gas, briefly glanced around the commotion, his gear detecting nothing. Since there were no thermal, IR, UV, EMF, or motion signatures to coincide with the squad noises other than the frantically self destructing dogs, he basically ignored it, extending his motion tracker range to maximum, about fifty meters, and increasing the sensitivity of most of his VISR modes as well, looking for something to shoot. His only movement was to slightly adjust his position into a prone rifleman's stance, shouldering his weapon and flicking it back to the 5.56 underbarrel rifle.

"No, you have failed! As a SPACE MARINE!"

No, they really weren't ever serious.

Kard, meanwhile, seemed to be mostly unmolested, and as such backed up against the wall of the building he was in, flicking his sights to maximum magnification and scanning the small field of view afforded by the broken window across the room.

"Knight, Kard. Posreps on enemy, distance and cardinal, base my pos."

With that, he pinged his FOF locater, showing everyone on his team an AR arrow over his head via SINCGARS data. With that done, he waited for the team to point directional IR lasers at anyone they could see and send him their locations. Of course, while the enemy wouldn't necessarily have access to this information, the crowd would, and would shortly have a clear picture of where everyone is in the chaos.

Uzochi hit the ground hard, sliding across the roof and slamming his armoured wrists to stop him from sliding off the roof. The leader looked to his feet, frowning at the orange paint he'd picked from sliding across the roof. That didn't count, right? It better not have counted. The leader took a few seconds to catch his breath and check his ammo.

Xolani looked at his hands, glancing towards the cloud and made sure to redouble the application of the Aberash warpaint, smothering it across his bare chest and helmet. It'd nullify his skins senses enough to not be effected by the demon smoke, and it might give him an upper-hand inside it. He swung up a hand and did a few nonsense-looking hand gestures.

Imanhu signalled a thumbs up to Zola, swinging his head back into cover as the shots came his way. The sniper lowered his rifle, digging the stock into the dirt and removing the scope with a slide of his wrist. He peeked around the corner once more and then leaned back around the corner, pulling down his helmet and twisting off the gorget.

The sniper held his helmet carefully, peeking around the corner with it and then copying the motions that it would take for a soldier to go prone, putting the scope infront of his helmet and leaving a tasty target of himself. Imanhu then slid his sniper rifle onto his back and unsheathed his faraji knife, sliding his thumb though the blood groove.

Imanhu finally noticed the hand gestures and pulled open a pouch, dipping a hand his hand into it and pulling out a handful of pale blue beads, squeezing them tightly they begun to flash with painfully bright flashes. The sniper held a hand infront of his eyes as he ditched a handful of them infront of the stalls.

With that, Xolani swung his legs over one of the stalls and begun to roadie run into the CS gas, keeping his hands over his head to soak up any shots that came his way if they relied on more than their eyes.

"Hammer's down? Dammit, I had twenty creds on Mule."

Spook had expected Imanhu to have rushed in, or checked something after her, but nothing came, and she was able to slip away again popping up in the only room that she knew for sure was safe. She nodded to Kard as she popped out of the ground at a crouch, about the time that Xolani charged into the cloud of gas. With expert practiced precision, Spook switched her weapon's firing mode, racked it, and peeked out the window with just her scope.

He could make note of where two people where: the sniper and the charging nutcase, but she was missing someone else,"Eliminated one, and you see what I see."

Mule grinned at the man charging in full view through the haze and switched his weapon back to shotgun mode, engaging the sound suppression integrated into the barrel. He still had four remaining CS rounds in the tube before he had to reload, and he intended to use them on this obvious target at nearly point blank range. The rounds themselves were steel capped and low velocity, not enough to kill, though they'd still hit with bruising force, and where he was aiming that'd be more than enough.

Red Death personnel were trained to acquire one of three 'killzones'. The T-box in the head, the three inch kill circle in the chest, and the pelvic girdle, the largest target. The pelvic girdle, while it wouldn't kill a man quickly, would cripple him, shattering his pelvis with a normal round and taking away his legs. The pelvic girdle did however contain one major convergence of blood vessels, and that was what he was targeting.

He fired all four rounds, silenced, at the man's crotch, nearly point blank range, and grinned maniacally.

Kard, meanwhile, spotted the helm and scope on the ground, and decided to show off a bit. He fired a burst round for the corner, calibrating it to burst about a foot beyond the wall, so that the explosive splash would be around the corner, maximizing the damage on the body around the corner. The explosive had a splash range of about four meters, and everything within it would be drenched in the orange 'cheeto' powder.

"Allcon, continue posreps."

Mule hit his target, not exactly on the dot but it caused the maniac to flip around in the air and collide with the ground. The crotch guard that he wore took the brunt of the damage, the armour had a anticlimactic dent in it. Xolani curled his hands into fists, exhaling his rage and anger, ignoring the painful bruising around his junk. For this, he'd draw blood.

The charge on the two fighting dogs finally detected something and burst out of the ruined bedroom, gnawing and biting at their ears and clawing at their eyes. Zola opened her mask and rubbed her blue eyes, she wasn't a supporter of animal cruelty, but it was her choice to bring them in. Somewhere deep inside, she felt the bubbling anger.

Fireteam Knight might not have taken it serouisly, but the Uduak squad had taken their rapid casualties to heart and so had some of the members in the crowd, booing and shaking their fists. They'd come to see warfare, instead they'd seen a lot of smoke and explosions. It hadn't been the greatest show in the world for the adrenaline junkies.

Xolani quickly disengaged the sunbird off his back with a flex of his spine, priming it before he threw it off and threw it towards the noise of the gunshots, the aerodynamic jetpack shooting off with enough force to take someone's head off if it hit at the wrong angle, instead it had been thrown extremely low. Xolani then rolled on the ground, holding his junk and propped himself up against the wall, going back to his training as a hunter to stay still and consider things, wait for the perfect time to strike in his injured state.

Imanhu flinched as he saw the glint of something in his scope, diving to the ground and behind the open door. The powder coated everything but the sniper himself, even if it had tipped one his right shoulder with a light sprinkling of unfairness. Imanhu spun his faraji knife in his hand and radioed in with his helmet. "Hulle het 'n skoot op my, wes, dood te maak die roes."

Uzochi briefly considered going up to Hammer and drawing a knife, threatening to scalp him in order to get access to the man's gear, but that would be against the rules of the game. The leader cocked his weapon and chased after the sniper's direction, regretting his decision to throw the mortar off the roof. Uzochi stopped short of stepping off the roof and scoped down with his gun, if he saw any targets, he'd start his standard potshot procedure.

Spook only nodded her affirmative to Kard, as she sunk from existence again only to pop back up in the same room she had left, though this time Imanhu was in there. Yelling into her helmet and firing at the same time, even before she had fully emerged from the shadow, she unleashed a .25mm cased wax round with enough force to kill an unarmored target, despite the round being designed to be nonlethal. She had fired for center mass, but due to the weapon's kick, it went a little higher than intended, instead aimed toward the man's face.

"Contact!"

If she tried to retreat though the shadows again, she would just be a sitting duck, so instead, she quickly closed the distance between them, in case she missed. But at that distance, how could she possibly miss?

"CrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapCRAP!"

Dalgarei wasn't too different from Chukwuma. It still had the shifting sands, the lone palm trees and the plains of wild brown grass. It was here that the Uduak had come to claim a new home without the corrupting hand of corporations and the men with mysterious agendas.

Imanhu was crouched on a sand dune, one hand in the warm sand and the other holding a pair of red binoculars. The hunter wasn't equipped in his signature red and yellow armor, instead he'd opted for a stolen pair of trousers and brown wifebeater; accenting it all with a ludicrous amount of white warpaint.

He'd spotted a small passive animal lurking around a patch of grass, he signalled to someone near him about it's placement and just as he was about to give the ahead to take it out and bring it back for food, a pack of even wilder animals took the more passive creature out with a swarm of bites and growls in a mere five seconds.

Then there was even louder pitch tone, a thundering growl and the signature vibration of one of the Gargantua coming their way. Imanhu winced and the pack of predators twitched their ears and looked up, their heckles standing on edge and begun to edge back away into the sand.

Imanhu winced and took up his rifle, lowering the binoculars. "We have to leave, Akua. If our best warriors haven't killed one, I don't think we can." The hunter said, but his face didn't seem to match well with the emotion of his words. "The elders would kill us."

The woman that stared back at him did so with disappointment and extreme loathing. Her large lips, bronze and chapped from the dry air, angled downward in a deep frown. Her eyebrows were flat above her ever so slightly slanted eyes.

"You need to stop being a little chicken-shit, Imanhu. We are faster than these things, and if we do not bring food home today we are skinned. I also am not fond of going hungry for the night. That is my main concern. That is the only real concern."

The tiny-waisted woman shuffled in the sand in a similar outfit to Imanhu's. A brown headscarf was drown over her head, braided tightly in corn rows. She reached for her spear. "How hard can it be, anyway? I think our best warriors are being overrated and stupid. They probably underestimated it the first time. They didn't exercise enough caution and intelligence! How big is it?"

Imanhu grunted, turning his rifle over and raising his body into a kneeling position. "Huge." He replied, taking the binoculars off his eyes and holding them out for Akua to take. "You take a look and tell me, even if we kill it, how are we meant to get that much meat to Amadi?"

The sniper moved his rifle to his eye, bracing it with his elbow. "You think we could kill it then, maybe drive it closer to the village?" Imanhu turned his face towards and Akua and gave her a grin.