Clusterfrag

Doc lowers the rifle, heart still pounding a speed metal drum solo.

< Okay Tyros, get that guy over here. We might be able to salvage this plan. >

Max wipes sweat from his brow and breathes a sigh of relief,

<You gotta be fraggin' kidding me. They didn't hear that? One of us must've done something right in a previous life, and it certainly wasn't me.>

Max watches as the team resumes its original plan before the bike gangers had arrived, asking,

<Doc-- your drones on the inside have a bead on where those new guys went? They seemed a little more lively than the others you described to us.>

Val slips out of VR and takes a deep breath.

<"I swear, Max. If the Virgin Mary herself came down from heaven and offered you salvation, your first reaction would be to shoot her in the face.">

< That's not a guess, Val, that's pretty much a guarantee > Doc comms.

Max smirks,

<Shooting her might be a bit of an overreach, but she definitely wouldn't reascend a virgin.>

Still mildly annoyed, but unable to help himself, Val takes his turn to smirk.

< Ah. Yet another situation in which you'd be inclined to shoot prematurely. >

Breakoff turns towards Doc and runs to him, sheltering behind the rover so that he is out of sight of City Hall. Opening up his coat to expose his inside pockets, he says "strap me up, I want to go boom".

As he watches his fellow elf jump up and down like an excited puppy as he begs for explosives, Max suggests,

<Maybe clean him up and stop the bleeding while you're at it-- we don't want them to question anything when he strolls on inside.>

Doc finishes rigging the brick of explosives with a radio detonator.

Handing it to the disturbingly excited ganger, "Here you go. Now let's take a look at you."

(( Okie dokie, two it is ))

Doc rigs another detonating cap to the second brick, and keys it to the same radio detonator as the first one.

"Here you go, have some more boom," he says to the glassy-eyed ganger, slipping each brick on opposite sides of his coat.

Keeping low, he takes a few steps up the stairs, and lays a line of foam explosive on the front side of the top step, to keep it out of immediate view of anyone exiting the building. Another cap goes into the foam, and he keys it to another radio detonator.

< Max, grab the turret from the rover, and bring it to the east fire exit. I'll have the lynx cover the west side. We have three exits total, so we should split ourselves among them, and take out the survivors when they come pouring out. >

Doc commands the Lynx to release, and make its way to the west fire exit, traveling in a wide circle around the building to keep out of sight.

Max hefts the turret to the South East corner of the building, giving it perspective on both the front entrance and East fire exit. The elf smiles to himself as he begins imagining the carnage that is going to ensue once things get busy.

With the drone in place, Max turns around and moves for the building on the Southeast corner of the T intersection where the city hall resides. The elf slings his shotgun and climbs to a second story window overlooking the front of city hall, breaks the glass, and climbs inside to set up defensive position.

Breakoff buttons his coat closed and sticks his mangled hand in a pocket. Walking swiftly, but not running, he climbs up the steps to city hall and enters the building with a look of purpose, heading for where Roman was previously observed.

Doc looks with surprise as the ganger strides into the building.

Breaking into a run, < get into your positions now! >

He takes cover behind an abandoned car near the southwest corner, and views the scene inside from the lens of the fly-spy drone. He flips the safety off the detonator.

(( 3 gangers down, 27 to go. ))

Breakoff shuffles up the stairs towards city hall's main doors. He makes an awkward half-leap at the last second as Tyros remembers the explosive foam. Swaying slightly, the possessed ganger throws open the twin glass doors and marches inside.

Max hefts his pack ahead of him through the broken window and rolls in after it. Taking a chair from a corner, Max jams it under the door that leads into what appears to be a little girl's room. There's a small ed with pink sheets and stuffed toys all over it. The toy chest next to the dresser reminds Max of the one his daughter kept all valuables in so they'd be safe from the world outside.

Not right now.

Max shakes all consideration of his family from his mind-- he needs to be wearing his gameface.

The elf makes his way back to the window through which he crawled and sets up his grenades on the sill. Splaying out reloads of armor piercing slugs all around him, Max sets Marlowe's barrel just on the window to steady the shotgun, and spies out from his perch just over the scope. He hardly breathes in the tension.

Val sprints over near to Doc and finds cover behind a low wall at a point where he can cover both the front entrance and the western fire exit. He sits down with his back to the wall and squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to think about what's about to happen. Sweat beads on his forehead. Facing the moment in which this hare-brained plan will be set in motion, he realizes something important yet surreally inconsequential at the present moment. This plan won't last a New York minute. Just like all the others. He idly wonders whether the first sound he hears will be Breakoff's delivery, or Marlowe's roar. Val figures it's an even bet.

As Breakoff enters the building Tyros inverts himself and flies down to hover so the his eyes peek through the upper edge of open of the windows into the main hall. With some trepidation, Tyros closes the visor to his helmet in case he can't get away in time from the anticipated shards of broken, flying glass that will come with the anticipated explosion. Keeping line of sight to Breakoff, he orders the elf to march towards Roman.

(( Roman is nowhere to be seen. ))

The dragonfly continues to surveil the main foyer from its vantage point amidst the rafters. Doc patches the video feed through to the team's comms.

Breakoff strides through the foyer, adopting a bit of a limp despite Tyros' firm commands not to do so. The derma-plast that Doc put on the ganger's cheek conceals the impact from slamming into the tarmac, though it won't pass a close inspection. His hands are in his pockets, clasped firmly around the twin bricks of plastic explosive--as per instructions from the mage controlling him.

Gringo, opposite the foyer from Breakoff, addresses the elf. "Did you find them?"

The strung out, sleeping, or otherwise occupied gang members on either side of Breakoff seem to pay him little mind.

< Tyros, keep him moving toward the center of the room > Doc comms, his thumb hovering above the detonation switch.

Breakoff moves towards the center of the room angling to where it seems the gangers are clustered thickest. Motioning Gringo over, "Yes, I did, let me show you what else I found."

Max comms out to the team,

<After pop goes the ganger, we should get those grenades of Sinjin's in there-- who knows how many more we can drop with some gas before they all come piling out.>

Gringo walks towards his subordinate.
He stops, just in front of the ganger. "Well?"

"Gotcha," Doc says.

His thumb jams down on the detonator.

A crystalline explosion of glass dazzles in the sunlight as every window on city hall is blown outwards, reduced almost instantly to smithereens. A millisecond later, the sound follows--a hearty thunderclap that is not so much heard as felt in the sternum. The force of the blast knocks Doc and Val flat on their stomachs and propels the airborne Tyros several meters from the windows.

A troll ganger staggers through the steel skeleton of a front door and collapses on the entrance stairs, consumed by flames.

Tyros cartwheels through the air as glass pelts his armored form. Closing his eyes, Tyros gives up on the rest of the world as he concentrates the entirety of his mind on maintaining his levitation. As he feels himself slow in the air, he snaps bal to reality and rights himself, noting with a frown all te small rips in his leather coat. Flying back above the doorway, he switches to astral vision to better identify any enemy mages and waits for all hell to break lose.

Another ganger--this one an ork, stumbles through the entrance doors, coughing.

Max comms out,

<Give it a moment, boys. We want as many of them to head for the front door as possible before we blow that too. Hold your fire unless he sees you.>

Oh, how many trogs must have just died. Max smiles.

A group of 5 gangers emerges from the Western fire exit. At the same time, 4 more gangers emerge from the Eastern exit.

From the corner of the intersection, a voice bearing a distinctly militaristic drawl belts out, "What is your major malfunction?"

Then, the smart firing platform known as The General opens fire on the gangers.

[ Max = 44 ]
[ Ganger 2 (West) = 40 ]
[ Ganger 4 (East) = 40 ]
[ Ganger 3 (West) = 38 ]
[ Ganger 2 (East) = 38 ]
[ Ganger 3 (East) = 37 ]
[ Ganger 5 (West) = 36 ]
[ Tyros = 35 ]
[ Ganger 1 (East) = DECEASED ]
[ Doc = 31 ]
[ Ganger 4 (West) = 31 ]
[ Val = 29 ]
[ Ganger 1 (West) = DECEASED ]
[ Steel Lynx = 25 ]
[ Sinjin = 22 ]

The General fires a full-auto spread on the first unlucky ganger to emerge from the fire exit.
(( 13P DAMAGE! ))

The first ganger to plunge into daylight does a strange sort of dance as his body is riddled with machine gun fire. He flops over backwards--dead.