[hr][color=dimgray][h1]Sam Clarke[/h1][/color]

[@Mr Allen J] 
[@He Who Walks Behind] 
[@SepticGentleman] 
[hr] 


The moment that the meeting adjourned, Sam stood up and stretched as largely as he could. God, did he hate meetings. He looked around as some of the corporates left the room, a few giving him dirty looks. He didn't really care; he wasn't under their jurisdiction, and at this point, they needed him here. He looked over at the notepad on the table (he had taken notes of each lieutenant under a doodle of a stick-figure Lihua terrorizing a city like Godzilla). Each lieutenant was a walking fortress surrounded by an army. It wasn't going to be easy to take them down. 

Looking down at his phone, Sam saw that it was about 4:40, nearly Happy Hour. Considering that he had no assigned tasks as of yet, he figured that now would be a good time to hit up the bar. He looked in the direction of CONDOR and Nightingale. Condor had just donned his blazer and was absentmindedly flicking lint off of it. 

"Damn, I need a drink," Sam said. "You guys wanna hit up the bar? I'm sure we can deal with the mooks later." He caught the flickering Carl and Michelle out of the corner of his eye, and looked over his shoulder. "Hey guys!" he shouted. "Carl, Michelle, we're heading out to grab a drink. Wanna come with us?" 



[hr][h1][color=DarkSlateGray]PLAGUE[/color] v. [b]NEST Taskforce[/b][/h1][hr]


"Then come on in," he shouted "and stare upon the face of true horror!"  Outside, the agents were fed up. If these imbeciles weren't going to come quietly, then they were going to leave in hearses. The taskforce commander nodded to one of the two agents standing on either side of the door. The agent took a large, flat object, a breaching charge, peeled off the backing, and stuck it to the door with a loud slap. In his other hand was the detonator. As he prepared to pull the trigger, four other agents walked up to the steps and took positions, their rifles primed and ready. Up above, three agents had fast roped down from the helicopter above and were standing on the roof, ready to swing down and smash through the third-story windows. In the back, four agents crouched at the sides of the glass sliding door, ready for action. 

Inside, Plague cracked his knuckled and smiled under his mask. He looked over to two mercenary-looking Fiends sitting to the side, and they began to walk up the stairs, their submachine guns at the ready. Daniel had his eye trained on the door. He handed Plague a red detonator. Talia, another one of Plague's chosen, took position on the steps leading to the third floor, a shotgun cradled in her arms. As she touched the cracked and peeling wallpaper that lined the steps, her skin color changed to match it. Active camouflage. Plague generated two more phages. Now eight and all stood at the landing above, ready to strike. They shivered with anticipation. In the room below, the Fiends found places to hide. The first floor was a kitchen and living room, with the living room in the back and the kitchen adjacent to the front door. Couches were flipped and furniture turned into barricades. The fridge was shoved out of its place in the wall and moved into the line of fire to act as a shield. Three men hid behind the counter. One hid in the closet. As the breaching charge was slapped onto the door from the other side, the whole building seemed to grow quiet. Then the door blew and all Hell broke loose.  

[hider=Nightmare by Avenged Sevenfold][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drBquEuEvNw[/youtube][/hider] 


As the door blew into pieces, the first floor exploded into chaos. Shouts and gunfire filled the air as six NEST agents ran in the front door wielding shotguns and assault rifles. The back doors exploded as more agents rushed in from the other side. Up above, the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass could be heard. Daniel fired the RPG; one of the agents shouted as he was suddenly blown into pieces. He dove down a hallway as one agent turned his gun on the second story landing. Plague ducked down and fired at the man. The phages soared in to attack, flying through the air like a swarm of horrible wasps. They slashed at the agents with their metallic claws and swarmed around them, attempting to find a good entry point for their probe to be injected. One found a fleshy spot on an agent's upper thigh. It dug its legs in and, lowering itself, fired a needle from its abdomen into the man's thigh. It injected a full dosage of disease, and then disintegrated. 

Up on the third floor, the NEST agents roped in to find themselves set up. Before they hit the ground, gunfire was upon them, and they didn't last long. One of them skidded along the ground and kicked one of Plague's men in the gut, slamming him into the bookshelf. He turned to swing at the other's face and found the barrel of a shotgun pointing at his head. 

The Fiends on the floor below did not fare well. They were surrounded on both sides with men much better-trained than they, and thusly they dropped like flies. The fighting on the floor below soon degraded into hand-to-hand combat, with Plague and Daniel firing pot shots into the seething crowd. Plague didn't care if any of the men were apprehended; they were all infected, all but his chosen few, and they would die soon anyways. The phages did their work well, tearing away at vulnerable spots in the agents' armor and severely wounding two of them. The one who had been injected was writhing on the floor. Plague could hear his breaths coming in rasps. As the last group-level Fiend or two fell, the guns began to train themselves on the second level, where Plague and Daniel were. As soon as the first bullet grazed the railing, Plague pulled the trigger on the detonator. The building shook and roared as remote explosives under the first floor floorboards activated. The floor collapsed in a mushroom cloud of smoke, taking with it the kitchen, the first-story steps, and most of the house's facade. The agents fell to their deaths. Plague nodded, but before he could enjoy his victory he heard more shouts from outside. One of Plague's men jumped down from the third-floor landing onto the second floor. 

"National Guard outside," he said. "We've got to go." Plague and Daniel ran for the stairs as soldiers began to file into the room. They found the floor to be surprisingly absent. Up above, Plague and his chosen walked into a closet on the third floor. Plague nodded to one of the men, and they kicked the back wall. It fell apart effortlessly, creating a passageway to the next row house. They would go through the houses all the way to the end, where they could climb down a fire escape to safety. Plague had this exit plan perfected. The only hitch would be that it would have to be done in broad daylight. He would have to think on his feet if he wanted to make it out of this alive. He had three more phages; those would come in handy, but they couldn't stop the National Guard. They were simply too strong. As Plague heard shouts from behind him, he decided that he would figure out where to go when he got there. 

[hr][h1][color=gold]Carole Elias[/color] and [color=PowderBlue]Taylor Pierpoint[/color][/h1][hr] 

This could not have been a bigger disaster. Just hours before Carolina Elias was about to leave for her photo shoot for the next edition of Teen Vogue, a terrorist attack trapped her inside for the rest of the day. Taylor was with her at the time, luckily, so she wasn't completely alone, but when the streets are filled with hallucinogenic smoke and bodies, it's hard to be in a good mood. At this point, Carole just wanted to leave, but the photographer promised her that he would reschedule somewhere safer and would get on the phone with a few friends of his to get her in Playboy within the next few months. 

Taylor, of course, thought this was absolutely ridiculous. The moment that Carole told her with excitement that the photographer promised to get her in Playboy, Taylor was once again reminded of the true measure of Carole's utter narcissism. "I understand that you like it when people look at you, cherie," Taylor said "but do you really want your breasts in magazines and on web pages all across the world?" Apparently, Carole's answer was yes. 

The two friends were now in Knightdale Rows, sitting at a cafe by the beach. Both were wearing two-piece swimsuits under cover-ups of some sort, and one of Taylor's sandals hung off of the edge of her toes as she looked at the menu. Carole's Versace swimsuit was a bright scarlet, and she had the cover-up lowered below her shoulders. She had done this after she noticed a very attractive boy sitting a few tables over gazing at her, and occasionally she stole fleeting glances at him from over her Tom Ford sunglasses. Taylor sighed. 

"Isn't he adorable?" Carole muttered to Taylor, trying to make it seem like she wasn't talking about the boy who was staring at her. 

"Unless he has a twin brother, I'm not interested," Taylor replied, sipping at her cappuccino. Carole hadn't touched her iced tea since she had first spotted the boy. As a joke, Taylor froze it solid to see if she would notice. Thus far, she had not. After another minute or so of Carole having a staring contest with her boy, she got up and walked over to him. Taylor sighed and, paying the bill, walked out across the boardwalk to the beach. She sat down on a bench and crossed her left leg over her right. She could be waiting here for a long time.