| Mongo - Disruption Tactics |
| Summary: | The SHIELD away team executes their first off-world strike. (Language, violence) |
| Date: | IC Date (2014-12-12) |
| Related: | http://ageofheroesmux.wikidot.com/log:2014-12-09-mongo-shield-arrives |
| NPCs: | Various caravaneers. |
| Scene Runner: | Hawkeye |
| Social/Plot: | Plot |
| Players: |
 .. .. .. .. |
Our intrepid team, having infiltrated the city a day or so ago of the Eastern Desert ruled by Gundar, a bandit chieftain that has, in the somewhat recent past, taken up his fight against Ming. All things need is a little shove.
That shove is in the form of SHIELD agents (and subcontractors) from Earth.
A day has given the team more than enough intelligence in terms of movements, of small bits of unrest even within Gundar's people. Some believe that their battle against Ming moves too slowly, others believe that perhaps they should live well enough alone.
Time to give a nudge because timing is everything.
Luckily, there is trade, and there is something of a caravan coming in from the Capital City; all manner of food items, wine, women, song along with a set of 'diplomats' that are arriving to replace those departing. It's a mix of vehicles/conveyances, from old, worn hover-cars to animal-driven carts to everything in between!
Mission: Take out the trade caravan and make it look as if it's Gundar's hand, setting him up. (Time to put up or shut up, Desert Hawk!)
It's dark; the fires dot the streets, giving an eery glow while shadows dance. (It's probably only eerie simply because it's not home.) Caravan's a couple of hours out and it's time to set up a reception for them just outside of town.
Low to the ground, Hawkeye moves reasonably quickly now that he's worked out the 'lower gravity thing' as he marks out a large area on the ground before he points out a couple of cover that he, at least, has identified as potentials. He's dressed now in 'local' clothing; caftan, something on his head and neck- all over his regular stuff, of course. "Trick is, we don't want to kill everyone. We need to let at least one or two escape to get back to give word." He's more than aware that this'll force hands and Gundar isn't going to be happy. (In fact, chances are good that if they're caught doing this, they won't be seeing Earth for a -very- long time. So no getting caught!)
"If this is anything like Earth, some group in town will claim it even if they didn't do it. That means we might actually mobilize this place."
*
Blackout has done his best to maintain the appearance of a local. He keeps his armor active beneath the flowing robes of the region and does not wear a mask. His posture is that of Hawkeyes. He wants to maintain ambush positioning and will follow the lead when Hawkeye shoots. Blackout has also stolen a local weapon (through teleportation) that will give him the means to appear even more local so he doesn't have to overtly use his powers.
*
"Come to Mongo, he said. We want you for covert operations, he said."
Ghostly white fingers silently roll one of the turrets along the riflescope, met with a few soft clicks.
"Explain to me what part of this translates to 'covert,' Barton? Because what I'm seeing is a broad-scale imminent massacre on a bunch of unsuspecting targets."
Not that Domino's opposed to the idea, hunkered down beneath a sandy tan colored cloth which is already half dusted over from her perch along one of the dunes a healthy distance away. She didn't pack a particularly large rifle for the trip but she's got a knack for making do with whatever's available. Besides, it's still NATO-spec.
"I've got eyes on more than a dozen Tangos, and by 'Tangos' I mean 'vehicles.' If any of you kids packed an air strike now might be a good time for it."
The faint red glow of the crosshairs trail the lead vehicle in the convoy, gauging their speed across the desert.
"Some of their powered rides are lookin' a bit rickety, this could get interesting. And by 'interesting' I mean 'awesome.'"
*
Sneaky ninja, covert, Kurt is all over it, been practicing his sneaky crawl, the crouch walk he can do on all fours. Perfecting it even, seeing that his indigo fur blends with shadows somehow. All the same, he's following the current group Barton has out, keeping to his own, they need him on this mission, he was all in.
Then the trick …. to '/not/' kill everyone. Suggesting they want to kill them, lots of them, leaving a few to escape and report. "Most of them? You want to kill most of them, including the women just brought along cause the other guys wanted to bring women?" He sounds absolutely dumb founded, his feet stopping as he questions that, a slight hint of dust going up, more exagerrated cause of low gravity. Did the german ceiling elf do that on purpose, or is he really that stunned. He just seems to agree with Domino, not signed up for this, cause a rebellion ya, not slaughter people.
*
While Hawkeye doesn't have any local weapons, he does have a couple of explosive arrows, which means that most of the evidence will be shredded and mixed in with the targets. From all accounts, so far, forensic analysis isn't a strong suit. So, without having to worry overmuch about CSI?
"Hey, this is a perfect covert plan. You tell me of one overthrow that didn't use this as a tactic." Barton pauses before a quiet laugh sounds, "And I'll neither confirm nor deny its use in the field. Or success." Or failure.
Clint's got some cover and is doing pretty much the same in terms of actual 'cover', cover. Sand colored cloth partially obscures his own spot, and only the keenest of eyes could probably make out his own little red lights on his bow. "Tango for 'target', right? Not Victors for 'vehicles'?"
"We're disrupting trade; putting the hurt in both people and money for Ming," Clint explains evenly. His tones hold that undercurrent of 'this is what it means to get the job done', and he's looking for insurrection. "Prime targets are the traders and there's a diplomatic envoy coming in."
*
"Then we take their shit." intones Blackout over the comm. "If it's in the favor of our group not to use lethal force, then I've a suggestion; Use your explosives to drive them away, scatter them. Strike with a few wounding shots to the legs, ass cheeks, maybe shoulders. I'll loot the vehicles. We can make this work and give them something to go running back to Ming crying."
*
"Uh huh. See, I think that you're trying to make nice with me. You knew I'd love to start the festivities with a bang. But dammit, next time I'm bringing a bigger loud gun instead of a plinker." Then Domino is being corrected about her use of codewords. "Oh c'mon, 'Tango' is so much more fun to say than 'Victor.' That just makes me think we've got fifteen guys all named Victor strolling about. See, Tango makes sense because we're about to get this dance started."
"Don't think about it too much, Wags. It's not all gonna go down like this. We've just got an attack of opportunity here." Not that Dom's expecting her words to calm his nerves any, but he is kind of her responsibility during this trip. It'll be up to him whether he listens or she has to turn on him in order to not compromise the mission.
Third rule of survival: Never get emotionally involved with anyone. Ever.
"Victors, right," Dom lightly sighs as she shifts her crosshairs onto the lead vehicle, itself. Some part that looks nice and meaty, and vulnerable to high velocity rifle fire. "That's a copy. Hold onto your asses, I'm goin' loud." (Drop it like a stone. That should stop a convoy in a hurry.)
The bullet hits the driver square in the shoulder before the *CRACK!* can span the desert from the rifle's muzzle to the ears of the target.
"Shit-! That's a-"
The driver/pilot violently twists about, wrenching the vehicle's controls with him and smacking more as he tumbles to the deck. The unexpected course adjustment causes the vehicle to whine in protest as it suddenly spins about and starts to lean at an unnatural angle, tipping onto its side and slicing a path through the sand as the bottom edge starts to drag. This means that the engines which allow it to hover are now pointed away from the ground.
And toward the front of the caravan.
People and animals are flung off of their feet. Wood splinters and cloth tarps tear away from several carts before they, too, are sent rolling in a destructive tumble of goods and grit. Another hovering platform tries to evade and gets tossed onto its side, causing the two skiffs to fly away from each other like a pair of giant magnets repelling one another. One collides with a nearby dune, rolling through the dust. The other collides with another cart like a hammer striking a tin can, blasting the cart to rubble on the spot.
"That's..a hit..!" Domino comms back in a stupefied tone, staring with wide eyes over the top of her weapon. "Uh..do remember the slightly lower gravity here, kids."
(Whoopsie.)
*
Looking between them all, discussing options, Barton ready for full assault, Blackout considering less lethal if possible. Kurt is dumb founded, its so cavalier the way its discussed. Then the crack of a weapon from Domino, and he turns, literally jaw drop at her. "But …." he says, and isn't sure what all happens again as chaos literally erupts. Then he just drops to his knees, saving the earth is coming at the cost of other lives. Not a few just to tip the boiling pot over just a little, but quite a few and they all have guns and will probably use it. "No, no, this is unreal …" He looks down at the ground, then at his own hands, like he had something to do with it. Then ponders, why was he even with them now. Did they plan on having him and Blackout porting Barton and Domino around to other points in the city to start more chaos …. his brow furrows, some suspicion.
*
Clint smiles at Blackout's addition and nods, even if no one can see him. "Then we take their shit. Some of it'll get left in town to get picked up by someone or other, and the really useful stuff we'll keep for our use." A veritable Robin Hood with not so peaceful motives! "Nothing like planting evidence." There's no extra comment regarding lethality; they have their mission, and their parameters.
"You know, I never signed up for ballroom dancing. They have that listed as 'continuing education' back at the headquarters. Never know when you need it, I guess." And SHIELD is anything but unprepared for any and all instances.
What the black and white merc says is true. All of it. Opportunity. If it wasn't the caravan, it might have been the town watch. Or anything else that presented itself. -This- is why SHIELD agents are here; trained for stuff like this- Being able to take advantage of near anything and have it work in their favor.
"Wagner, think of home."
Domino's initial strike is, well… remarkable. Truly. One bullet that breaks the sound barrier gains Barton's attention, and the ensuing chaos that is born is worthy of being described as the 'domino effect'. "Okay," the archer says softly, "that's im-"
Down goes the hover-car, skittling and dragging its hind end, only to drop its engine where there are more in the caravan. Chaos turns to mayhem that quickly leads to vehicle carnage with more than a couple of victims tossed into the mix.
"—pressive…" is finished in a whisper than almost echos that stupified tone of hers.
"Blackout, any way to keep the fires from being seen before we want them?" As it is, sound may travel a little faster through the lighter gravity pull. All of that? Oh yeah… flames begin to lick at the 'accident' (on purpose) sites.
It may be shock, but the other vehicles begin to spin out; those not caught up in that circle of damage. Now, Hawkeye brings a bow up, and as a hover-vehicle begins to fly up and near where Kurt is set up, an arrow is loosed. The arrow arcs just a little more, perhaps, than Clint expects, but the shot still is true and *thunk*, it lands, embedding itself in the metal. A little red light flashes down, and Clint counts with it…
"Three. Two. One."
*BOOM!*
Parts of the vehicle blow every direction and some of its cargo rains down. Fruit. Grain.
*
"Affirmative." states Blackout in response to Hawkeye's query. "You all will need to switch to thermals." With that, Blackout slips through a portal and appears atop one of the vehicles. No sooner does he appear than the entire convoy is covered in darkness. Perhaps 130 x 130 yards in area and approximately 30 yards high. The darkness can be pentrated by thermal vision, but not normal light. Sound is not dampened.
*
"Don't flake out on me now, Kurt," Dom radios back while guesstimating the necessary scope adjustments. "You told me you were ready to follow my lead. This run's fairly tame. If you want to keep the kill count down then start disabling vehicles and taking their stuff, there's more than one way to see this through."
It's clear enough what her way is, the albino watching another person go flying through the air flailing her limbs about. (Eight points.)
"Shift a little ass guys - nice shot Barton - sweep and clear! Don't give 'em a chance to organize!" Yeah, she's telling the Agents what to do. It's all within the parameters of the mission, right? She'll worry about the chain of command later.
Shot two catches one of the guards while he's frantically readying his weapon, throwing his aim off and causing an involuntary twitch of just the right muscles to bump off a shot. Like a large bore shotgun going off into a crowd dozens of tiny fragments pelt a generous area in a sudden flash of light, instantly drowned out in complete darkness as the shot further damaging goods, creatures, and morale.
(-Vehicles,- girl, vehicles!)
"Copy that." A flick of the optics puts her onto thermal. Easy. Her third shot strikes a vehicle's decaying fuel cells -just- right to trigger a spark across a ruptured container, detonating the skiff in a flash of concentrated energy. With Blackout's area of effect in play it's nothing more than a flash of white in the scope and a distant *bang!* which confirms the hit.
"This almost feels like cheating. Too damn easy. Oh well, we're only saving the world and a couple billion people, right? End, means." (We can worry about the rest later.)
BLAM!
*
Vehicle coming to his location, Kurt would choose to just quick exit out, only being here for eyes in case other bodies on the 'good' guy team needs to move around rather quickly. So, it blows up, then rains down, its fruit and grain sure. But to a blue fuzzy elf, its blood and gore. He's not new to action, to be sure, he did go to Genosha while that was happening, but doesn't make him happy when he thinks its the blood of some innocent. He can't differentiate between good target versus someone accompanying.
Take out vehicles, Domino makes since even as the fruit (blood) rains down on him. "Roger," he simply says. Turning back to look at what remains and what doesn't. So he bamfs into the scene, to the first vehicle still moving that he can see, and touches it, bamfing away, trying to pull half of it away, to dump onto another vehicle. Then away again. Seems he is going to try and start doing damage to vehicles, hopfully explosions and gunshots makes what he's doing seem like part of logical action for the eyes that report back on this.
*
And that, boys and girls, is why Blackout is named 'Blackout'. While Clint didn't technically know, call it an educated guess?
"Roger that…" and now the archer actually has to take out goggles and put them on. Maybe a little bit of mumbling about that, sure.
Clint doesn't actually have to rise from his position in order to get another shot off. He starts a lead on the woman that is succumbing to gravity before he switches off onto another target. Before he gets another shot off, however, Wagner is teleporting in and out of vehicles and Clint ends up calling his shot. Just in case.
"Small escort at 60 dash 4. Mine." It's a little thing, looking capable to hit upper atmosphere- 80 years ago. But from the darkness, Clint can se that the pilot is desperately trying to break free from the all encompassing black, the thrusters pushed hard forward. Through that void, an arrow flies, and the moment it hits, the entire ship lights up as a mass electrical field lights it and the pilot within begins to 'dance' and smoke only seconds later. With no pilot to guide its path, it careens down to land nose first into the compact dirt, flames now lick up from the crash site.
"We'll pick out the goodies, Dom. Sheesh. Pretty sure there aren't any cool weapons caches in there. But I promise, if there is, you get first pick. Okay?"
*
Inside the darkness Blackout coats himself within his own inky blackness. An armor that will make him invisible to thermal detection and won't make him a target. Then Blackout begins his plan of moving from vehicle to vehicle to steal the stuff. HIs first stop is the vehicle he stands upon. He doesn't bother with the occupants within. They'll be moving along at any time and they surely cannot see him. He moves to the rear and starts opening portals beneath the items he wishes to steal.
*
The good news is that Domino's words of 'encouragement' seem to have reached through to Nightcrawler. There's some very peculiar blips coming through her scope as the blue meta teleports across the battlefield, occasionally disappearing and reappearing with much larger blips. Blips which used to be in other locations, and twice as big. "Is he really..?" she mutters under her breath in disbelief. "Holy -shit.-"
The flipside is that she's already starting to wonder what this is going to cost them once they evac. From standstill to vehicular armageddon, most people don't have a simple switch for these kinds of things. Is this operation going to break him before they'd even make it back to Earth?
"Try not to catch one of my shots," she says in the same tone, just above a whisper as she squeezes the trigger again and again. From within the darkness there's a rhythmic chime of a slug skipping off of various surfaces before punching through a windshield and striking the operator, causing the throttle to suddenly go wide open. For a few seconds it plows through everything in its path before colliding with the ship Hawkeye just grounded, flipping it over in the sand like a hastily discarded toy.
"Gonna hold you to it, Barton. Think we're about done on Victor detail here, I'll cover you boys whenever you're ready to pull back. Assuming y'all don't just teleport right outta Dodge."
*
Kurt will mix it up, not all vehicle parts falling on other vehicles, nothing wrong with porting to the side of a vehicle to touch the driver and port them out. He'll work around the vehicles he can get to, and see with Blackout porting/moving around the convey as well. Of course, after their last fiasco, Blackout will probably keep portals away from Kurt - unless Bamfs on Mongo is a good thing. "Ya, ya, avoid bullets, that's what I do best." He calls into the com, less emotional, just focused. The less bloodshed here, the better he will feel. As its dying down, he'll port back to his vantage point, fruit splattered and all, to reassess and recoup after the porting he's done so far.
*
"Meet back at our little hovel," Clint advises. "We'll start the distributing tonight. Make sure we get some of the good stuff into important hands by morning." That way, if the teleporters don't pick them up, he and Domino still know where they're going. Easy enough to get back, after all.
The entire scene is messy; exactly the way it needs to be. Produce is spilled, which could mean something of a difficulty for the desert town. (Poor things. They might have to fight for food?) Pilots, drivers killed. And that envoy?
Oops.
Animals are scattered, those not grieviously injured or killed in the attack, that is. Carts are burning, hover-cars and other transports are decommissioned, to put it gently.
Now, the archer is rising from his little hidey-hole and is pulling up his cover. A couple of strides means the distance is crossed between Clint and a man lying bleeding on the ground. Crouching, the agent checks the man before he pulls out a small hypo, and fixing the saline with a small squirt, injects the man in the thigh. Standing, Clint calls into his com, "Tracker's in place. I'm going to wait until the gazelle wakes up and scampers off. See you back at the site in a couple."
*
"Roger that." States Blackout.
Blackout will clean them out. Dropping crates into portals is easy and fast. He'll deposit it all into the Darkforce Dimension for later retrieval. He's happy doing this as he's soured on killing people. It's the reason he's in SHIELD and would rather not revisit the feelings of guilt or entrapment. When he is done, he will open another portal and step inside to find himself back at the hideout.
*
"That's a copy," Domino reports back while flicking the scope's power off. Finding replacement batteries while off-world sounds like an exercise she doesn't want to attempt. Ever.
The camouflage sheet gets pulled aside and bundled together before she reaches back for her rifle. "Sandcrab's out of the burrow and searching for a portable hole." Pause. "That means I'm looking for a ride out of here, one of you jumpers mind?"
*
Not taking supplies, not knowing what the plan to do by planting so much, or what they mean to keep for personal reasons. He lets the SHIELD people do their thing. Instead, Kurt turns to look away until Domino says she needs a ride. "Ja, I'm on it," and bamf, he goes to her spot. "All the way back," he asks her when he's there. Seeing if she's not going to pilfer as needed for the current mission. He seems dead pan, not shocked at the violence so much as still thinking it unecessary, but he's in it now, vacation time over it would seem. The elf is not smiling.