Sin city was not Bjorn’s type of place. Loud noises and bright lights and a person on every street corner trying to get your attention were all annoyances that could distract a man on a mission. So far, he’d been approached by six prostitutes, a pickpocket and a guy who wanted a ‘night of fun’ with Thora. Thankfully, Thora had her headphones in: otherwise the guy might be minus a finger or two. The objective was clear, and currently the pair walked along the stretch of busy road known only as ‘The strip.’ Bjorn relished the business of the street as it gave him time to think about the mission: the variables, the ethics, the connotations of the entire debacle. If he were honest, Bjorn had distrusted this ‘Lizard’ figure from the word ‘go’. It was hard for him to trust a man who ordered you to kill without as much as a face to look at. Combine that with a name like ‘The Lizard’ and the only images that were conjured into the Norseman’s head were that of a slimy-fucker. However, as Thora had pointed out: rules were rules, orders were orders and a mission remained a mission. A.R.M.O had accepted the shady fucker’s right to authority and Thora looked forward to hunting down the bad guys. Yet when the bad guys were asylums… On a brighter note, Bjorn was glad to be clashing against a Sniffer, at least. It would be an interesting challenge, because of the tactical renown that was attached to the name. Bjorn would probably have ended up a Sniffer, were he not given the chance to attain Hybrid status. Thora, on the other hand, just wanted to kick ass and complete the mission. As always, she was hungry for success and a chance to redeem the Matthews name. She was much younger when their parents died: she just remembered the good stuff: none of the deterioration that came with alchemy addiction. Bjorn looked at his watch again, smiling as the hands struck the appointed time. He nudged his sister’s arm, prompting her to remove the headphones with a grumbly pout. “Time to go to work.” Thora’s face turned to a grin as she put her headphones back in. The fun began soon. --- The Nevada desert is a hell of a place, compared to Sin City itself. Ever since they’d arrived in Vegas twelve hours before, Bjorn had decided to monitor any patrols that were coming out from the bunker. Team Valkyrie were not foolish enough to dive into the fray alone, and they knew that the Lizard had procured multiple teams to undergo the task. As such, Bjorn decided that thinning out the ranks was the best bet for survival, and had spent time establishing the routine of switch over. After three patrols, Bjorn knew that the patrolling team switched every hour and a half. The forth team had been left alone, as Bjorn wanted time to prepare for the upcoming battle. Team number five was not going to be so lucky. Team Broken Pendulum, not that the pair of Nordics knew who the team were, started to move across the desert in a jeep: patrolling a set path and seemingly keeping an eye out for danger. What they saw was two people standing in the direct path of the jeep: one holding a large shield. A man in a lot of pink stepped out of the driver seat, looking at the mysterious pair with an eccentric scepticism. “Can we…help you? I think you went the wrong way for the LARP-ing convention, big man.” Thora took a step forward, seeing the lips of the pink stranger move, but hearing no words due to the muting effect of the headphones. The step was enough to prompt the other woman out of the car: Vail Hyson. Bjorn cleared his throat, trying to appear as friendly as possible, despite what came next. “Hyson and Delacour-Team Broken Pendulum: Under A.R.M.O decree, as set out by the agent codena…”Bjorn got no further chance to speak as Miss Hyde went on the attack. Her physical augmentation had her in Bjorn’s face nearly instantly. He only just had time to raise his shield and block the first punch: which sent him hurtling across the sand on skidding feet. Thora’s grin was broad as she stepped forward and jabbed a fist in Vail’s direction that fell a good foot short. “Thun-der!” As if answering the strangely chanted word, Thora’s fist crackled and in a half-second following, A bolt of lightning shot towards Miss Hyde, narrowly dodged by the quickened Asylum. “Thun-Der!” Thora chanted again, broad grin on her face as she grinned down Hyde. In the meantime, the pink-suited Alistair had realised the extreme situation, and was preparing to fire his weapon at Thora. Every so often, a loudly spoken “Thun-der” punctuated the near-silent desert. Alistair nearly had a sight on Thora when a hammer flew through the air: a maul the size of a small child that the Asylum narrowly dodged. The seventh ‘Thun-der’ punctuated the air as Alistar looked down at the maul buried in the sand, confused by the projectile and wondering where Bjorn had gone. With a sudden force, Alistair was thrown to the ground after a slab of shield smashed into the side of his head. Alistair grunted and swore loudly, following the blow. “Where the fuck did you come from?” Bjorn flashed a wide, shit-eating grin at the Pink-man’s confusion. He was hardly going to give away his secret, now, was he? It would be daft to let him know that Bjorn had muted the sound of his approach: he’d be shooting his own element of surprise in the foot. He picked up his maul, watching the foe all the while. Thora, on the other hand, was starting to be pushed back. The two silencers were equally deadly and while Thora remained confident of her superiority: she respected the Asylum’s potential for taking someone out. She was still speaking in that same musical tone every so often though. For the ninth time, she uttered ‘Thun-der’ and each time, Miss Hyde looked confused. The target had the upper hand on Thora though, as she had been able to pressure the woman enough that she wasn’t firing more lightning bolts or something. Bjorn surged towards Alistair and refused to allow the man to abuse his powers. Bjorn had made sure to read any notes he could get on their targets before they left: reading reports and mission evaluations in order to figure out the powers of their targets. A few of them caught his eye, and the Pink-shirted man was one of them. Such an ambiguous power left a lot of variables to be worried about, so the best bet was simply crushing the foe before he could develop a stratagem. What he hadn’t read about was Alistair’s second weapon of choice. He was aware of the umbrella, which Bjorn was managing to bat aside with either Maul or shield. The bracer-gun was something altogether more unknown. The pink-suited man got a half-clean shot through all the pressure, and suddenly a stream of bullets was coming at Bjorn. Thora was also being pressured, but now she was fighting to dodge the gauntlets of Miss Hyde. “C’mon, Red. Show me that fancy power of yours again! Stop singing and fight me!” The physically augmented Miss Hyde swung an overhead chop at Thora, fast and strong. The red-haired Asylum managed to block the chop with both hand: her gauntlets absorbing the force. Metal touched metal and Thora was brought down to her knees by Vail’s might. It looked like a winning blow for Vail, until… “Thun-der.” The tenth utterance: suddenly a huge voltage of electricity was dumped into Miss Hyde: The two women’s gauntlets forming a deadly circuit that, after a few seconds, had Vail twitching on the floor. Her muscles reduced to numb, useless piles of flesh. Thora pulled out her headphones from her pocket and popped them back into her ears, the loud chorus of AC/DC blasting out. She sat down on the paralysed Miss Hyde’s chest, a finger on the crippled woman’s forehead. “Hey, Hey bitch. You’ve been…Thunderstruck!” A burst of white lightning fled from Thora’s finger and into the body of Miss Hyde. It was a fatal explosion of electricity that first fried her brain and then caused her head to pop, like a balloon. For Thora, it was immensely satisfying. Bjorn, on the other side of the battle, had to block a constant stream of bullets from an unforeseen gun. His foe was clever; it seemed, to have thought of such an ingenious weapon. It was a shame he fought one of the only Asylums who regularly made use of a shield, or he might have won the fight with that move. Behind the shield, Bjorn was using one hand to trace symbols in the air. Motem preparations combined with Vocum incantations that would make his next move the last. Satisfied with the work, he threw his maul at Alistair again. The angle was awkward, and it looked as if Bjorn was going to miss by a few feet… Then the maul hit the sand, and an explosion of sand rippled through the desert. Amplifying the crash was an easy enough feat, and he’d supercharged the sound enough to burst Alistair’s eardrums. The sniffer grasped his ears, unable to deal with the pain and stopping the stream of bullets. Bjorn charged forward and gave Alistair no quarter. In a second, the Nordic bear was upon the pink Mr Jekyll and slammed a shield into the man’s wind pipe. There was an audible ‘crunch’ and Alistair dropped to the floor, throat crushed and neck snapped. Bjorn looked down at the broken corpse, sighing heavily. “Targets eliminated.” Reaching down, Bjorn closed the eyes of his opponent, symbolic to many a culture as a sign of respect. It was a stark contrast to the desecrated body of Miss Hyde. Thora wandered over to her brother, punching his arm lightly. “C’mon bro, let’s go get some food or somethin’, you seem bummed.” Bjorn patted his smaller sister on the shoulder, pulling the headphone out of her left ear intentionally. “No can do. We have to deal with the others.” He pointed towards the jeep, before walking towards the driver-side seat. Thora’s face lit up at the prospect of more. The fight she’d had was a little on the lame side. Her opponent had been mechanical…unimaginative…boring, even. Maybe they’d meet someone exciting in the next scrap. She flipped the other headphone into her hear, skipping towards the passenger seat of the jeep. When she sat down, the pair drove to the bunker, intending to be the first of the Lizard’s hit-squad to arrive.