[h2]Raymond Haywood: Trainyard[/h2]
He could have taken the shot at the white-robed girl with the glowing face. He should have, and yet he hadn’t, because just as he was about to scope in, his power deserted him again. He’d been slow, and that had left him vulnerable - and by the time he’d stepped back, [i]something[/i] had burst through the wall, something of metal and concrete and hate, and who knew what else?

‘Doesn’t matter. Run,’ he half-muttered in response to Thunderbolt’s yell of what was likely terror. His own voice was notably at its loudest since he’d first met Jason, closer to regular speech than his usual whisper, and with that in mind, he chose to duck behind the nearest set of crates, retreating toward the back of the warehouse as he kept weaving between the crates. He had Chatterbox’s speech to listen to, as well as Heartless’ own attempts to put off the little girl up top… though he had to say, he didn’t think what he was doing was necessarily a good idea. When he’d said “deal with her”, he meant knock her out, not insult her. Who knew what her power was, after all…?

As it turned out, her power was the ability to turn into a dinosaur, as demonstrated by her transformation shortly after the actual exit came back in sight.

‘Heartless, what the [i]fuck[/i] did you do?’ Headhunter asked. He spoke at a normal volume, but the tone of his voice was for once mildly shaken, the volume indicating what would be a panicked yell in anyone else’s mouth. And then the jackass just LEFT. How dare he.

Either way, he had a cross between a T-rex and a velociraptor bearing down on him, and he had a feeling the FN P90 wouldn’t suffice to kill it. Stop it. There was technically a human under all of that muscle mass, unfortunately. That in mind, he flicked his gun over to its M16A4 setting, and set himself up at a gap between the crates, ready to open fire on her knees the moment his power prepared for it.

[i]Aim at left kneecap. Shatter kneecap, no permanent damage. Avoid blood vessels and ligaments, ensure bone shrapnel does not strike-[/i]

He was drawn out of his planning by a sudden burst of gunfire striking him in the back, dragging him out of his state with a pained grunt. With no time to scope in and redo the calculations, he promptly leapt to the side just as the giant lizard-girl charged past him, in turn barely avoiding being crushed under the weight of so many crates and winding up at the opposite wall of the warehouse in his frenzy to avoid being killed off-handedly.

In fact, it had been a dual burst: that of Margrave’s announced attack, the announcement unheard within the deafness of Raymond’s scoping in, and a second more accurate spray aimed by Corporal Johnson. Not that Raymond himself knew this; he was simply preoccupied with the throbbing pain in his back. His armour had absorbed a lot of the force of those rubber bullets, but wasn’t exactly getting rid of it, just distributing it all evenly. He’d be sore tomorrow, for sure.

And moreso, with the arrival of another soldier: Private Skeetz had shown up round the back, apparently taken one look at the situation with Lillian and decided it warranted no input from him, and moved to handle whatever was on the other side of the warehouse instead. And that was Headhunter, who was promptly shot at from the front, forcing him back behind the fallen crates.

Towards the dinosaur, as it happened. No way was Raymond about to have anything more to do with that. Quickly, he flipped the gun back over to the FN P90 setting, scoped in without a particular target in mind, then quickly span himself round the side of the crate he’d hidden behind whilst designating Skeetz as his target.

[i]Target: enemy soldier, skull. Induce unconsciousness for one minute at minimum, avoid permanent brain damage. Shoot.[/i]

He’d admit, he wasn’t expecting to be aiming left of the soldier when he shot. However, he’d also admit that the resulting ricochet off of what appeared to be something solid in the crate the bullet hit did indeed knock the soldier out as intended, the bullet striking the man in the back-left of the helmet and apparently lodging in there as the target fell to the floor face-first.

And that about summed up the matter. Heartless was off with the package, Chatterbox and Sofia were doing whatever they were doing, and Thunderbolt was a big boy who ought not to need his assistance. And if he did, well, he’d shoot down these folks from a distance later on. Until then, he began to run out of the warehouse, ready to try and take on anyone else who followed on after him.