[center][h2]Nicky[/h2][/center] A second shot echoed around the yard. Steve Jacobs was tense. The commander had told them to hold off sending anyone else in until they could figure out what was happening inside. Listening to it, standing behind the cover of one of the three armoured vans they had parked outside, had not been pleasant. And from what he could hear, no one was answering their radios inside. “Damn it!” came crackling over the channel. Jacobs recognised the sound of Frank's voice, the man with the sniper rifle in the next building. “This stupid little monster won't go down!” A third shot rang out. A fourth. Jacobs, only a volunteer with an ex-military background, glanced up at the body of the policeman they had shot entering the place. That guy alone had wounded two and put up a hell of a fight to stop them. [i]Protecting monsters and freaks wasn't your job, man. But something about this doesn't feel right.[/i] A sudden burst of automatic fire, punctuated by another sniper rifle shot and a scream. The commander yelled for a status report. Frank didn't respond. A minute or more of tense waiting. Jacobs wiped away some of the sweat from his cheek. Out of the ruined front door, through the haze of smoke, they saw a teenaged girl walk out, tossing an assault rifle onto the ground as she did. Everyone raised up their weapons, including Ozzy, who had the crossbow with a bolt tied to the winch on one of the vans. Steve heard the man next to him mutter, “I don't recognise that one.” They had a had a field report before this mission, a briefing on what to expect inside and what loadouts each team would need to handle the various things that were inside. But his colleague was right, this girl hadn't been on any of them. Her black hair was streaming in the breeze, and she looked- “Jesus! It's her! Look at her shirt!” Steve's eyes narrowed. The girls shirt couldn't really still be considered clothing, more a system of bullet holes held together by tattered fabric. But she was moving as though she was completely unharmed. His gaze travelled up her skinny body until he saw her face, and suddenly Steve Jacobs, combat veteran and devoted follower of the Hounds of Humanity's stated goals, felt his bladder let go. He had seen anger before. Rage, unconstrained violence. But this was not something he could recognize. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl so hard she resembled a dog or a wolf, though she didn't look like she was a shifter. As her hair swept free of the top half of her face, he had seen her eyes, though. Pain and vehement, titanic hatred lived there, and nothing else. Her nostrils flared, jaw clenched so hard she should have broken her teeth. The cords of muscles and tendons in her jaw and neck clearly stood out, even across the thirty metres between them. And then the crossbow bolt hit her square in the chest and knocked her back two steps and bowled her over. Steve almost let go of a sigh of relief, but he knew from those holes she wouldn't- She stood back up. Easily. She had the deformed crossbow bolt in her hand, staring down the length of cable tied to it, then her glare flickered back to the line of men behind the vans. Someone fired a round and made her stumble back another step. She switched her grip on the bolt and ran forward, into what swiftly became a hail of gunfire. Jacobs emptied his magazine, and, like he had been trained, calmly swapped the empty box for the full one on his belt, snapping it into his weapon without taking his eyes off the girl. [i]Why won't she die![/i] The ground around her was exploding in gouts of turf and rock, and the force of the bullets hitting her was driving her backwards. But she had begun reeling [i]herself[/i] along the cable, fighting the forces tied against her. Jacobs heard someone shout a warning, and three grenades bounced down close to her. She didn't even blink, instead lashing out with her foot and kicking one back, through the open side door of a van. All three went off as Steve ducked down below the line. The van rocked with the shock wave and an impact, and two successive blasts afterwards let him know that the targeted van was destroyed. Several of their men were down behind him. Cautiously, checking his rifle, he and the man next to him peeked over the hood they were hunkered down against. He heard it before he saw her. She was [i]growling[/i] but more high pitched, like a scream that went on for too long. And then her hand slapped onto the hood in front of him. The man next to him reacted quickly, stabbing down with a combat knife on the vulnerable limb, before Jacobs could stop him. [i]If bullets do nothing, then...[/i] The man's wrist was impaled by the bolt, and then that delivering hand snatched up his knife as her terrifying visage rose up into Jacobs view like a wrathful avatar of some long forgotten god. The wounded man cursed, pulling his pistol and firing wildly into her face, but the second he stopped, her head snapped back and she leapt at him, driving the knife through his goggles. She was [i]still[/i] doing the keening, wailing growl, and as Jacobs hands lost their grip on his rifle, she turned to look at him. He spun on his heels and made to run, until he felt the knife plunge into his calf, and then three seconds later, Steve Jacobs was dead. [hr] Several minutes later, Nicole stood in the middle of the street, staring around her. Bodies were every where. Two vans were smoking ruins, and the third had no usable tires left. Several men were groaning. One even was attempting to crawl to the safety of the surviving van, leaving a bloody trail from the stump where she had blown off his leg at the knee with a shotgun. She threw the empty pistol in her hand at him contemptuously as she stalked forward. He had some sort of insignia on his back, unlike the rest, so he might be important. Reaching him, she gripped him by one shoulder and hauled him over onto his back. The whites of his eyes were clearly visible in terror. She screamed into his face. “WHY!?” “Oh God please no.” “Don't you fucking talk to me about God, you fucking murderer! Tell me why!” Sirens were echoing up the street, apparently Patricia had called for back up. She need to have a target and be gone by the time they showed up, or she'd never be able to get these bastards. She picked the man up by his shoulders and slammed his head back against the asphalt several times. “Because you're not human.” Nicky stopped, looking up, at a man standing not ten feet away, holding what appeared to be a taser and pointing it at her. He was dressed in a full body suit, and was obviously not one of these basic soldiers. Nicky dropped her victim and stood up. He fired the taser into her chest, but it just bounced off and fizzled. Though it did let her know that she would need a new shirt. The man's eyes narrowed. “Even if you've got some sort of freakish armour, that should have stuck!” “Yeah, well, guess you're not perfect either.” “What the hell [i]are[/i] you, bitch?” Nicky smiled, striding forward. The man drew a sword, and she thought, [i]Really, a fuckin' sword?[/i] It bounced off of her skull uselessly. He backed up and thrust it into her eyes, which was a [i]really[/i] weird perspective for her. Her head got knocked back, but she was getting used to the idea that it really didn't matter what they had. So she kept moving. “This is a mono-edge blade! What the [i]fuck[/i]?” He stepped sharply to the left, but Nicky was ready, and leapt forward, catching him around the waist and tackling him into the ground. She caught his blade as he swung wildly at her, then wrenched it from his grasp. Not bothering to shift her grip, she plunged it through his rib cage four or five times, then stood up, getting back to her feet and holding the bloody blade just as the headlights of the police cars swung around the corner and illuminated her. “Damn,” she muttered, and tossed the sword down. And as her brain caught up with her, she covered her chest with her arms. The fact that she still was naked and coated in blood in the middle of what equated to a war zone was [i]probably[/i] not going to make this go any smoother.