[quote=@nitemare shape] With the Hounds disarmed; Lyger leapt into action taking on several Hounds at a time. After hitting the first with a stiff shot to the face, another of the Hounds grabbed him from behind and held him for the others to get their licks in. However, Lyger twisted and spun to the left, getting free from the Hound’s grip, then planted him with a reverse kick to the chin that snapped the man’s neck back and sent him reeling. Before the Hound could recover, an open hand chop to the throat left him writhing in pain as he struggled to get air into his lungs. Suddenly another black clad man jumped into the fray right out of nowhere. The man was dressed differently than the rest of the Hounds, he didn’t appear to be wearing the body armor that the others had been wearing, and his face was covered by a balaclava. As the new arrival turned to face Lyger, the young hero it him with an open palm thrust to the chest, and as the man was knocked backward, a hard right hand that sent the man crashing to the pavement. However, the distraction was all that the Hounds had needed. When Lyger turned to face his enemies, he found that several had been able to reclaim their assault rifles and were leveling them directly at the hero’s head. [/quote] ...Suddenly the fallen man in black took Lyger down with a leg sweep and jumped on top of him. The rifles remained silent. “Yeah! Kick his ass!” a sole Hound called out. A grapple line shot out from between the pair, and before the pack of Hounds could realize what exactly was happening they had begun to swing away. [b]“Thanks for the cheap shot.”[/b] Grumbled the Vigilante’s voice synthesizer. “How was I supposed to know it was you?” [b]“I’m sorry I don’t wear easily identifiable cat ears…”[/b] The staccato of rifle fire began and Isaac felt the heat and pressure of a single shot embedding itself in the back of his shoulder. The Vigilante emitted a low growl as he suddenly found himself having to support his own weight as well as the feline hero’s with only one good arm, and dropped the black cat down an alleyway mid-swing. [b]“For the sake of his reputation I hope he lands on his feet…”[/b] Isaac tucked his shoulder into the strap on his grapple gun and hit the button to Fast-retract and shot upwards rapidly towards a highrise building comprised of offices. Spotting the glass, the Vigilante tucked his body behind his good shoulder to brace for impact with the glass and clattered against the outside of the window. Tempered impact resistant high rise glass. Isaac swung back and jumped on the glass. Still nothing. He took a giant leap, and a volley of automatic rifle fire from below did the job for him and shattered the window, as he swung through the broken glass, hit the grapple release and landed flat on his back in the office on a floor covered with broken glass. He rolled onto his front with a grunt and then the light hit him, brighter than the midday sun. Searchlights from a helicopter as it hung just outside the window. Squinting around the helicopter he could make out armed personnel with automatic rifles. He sighed and got to his feet, using a hand to avert the light. How did it even come to this..? [hr] [h1]2 Weeks Before the Present Day[/h1] Isaac steps back and looks at his pinboard, instant coffee in hand, in a sparsely decorated house. Paperwork containing locations of 4 different known S.T.R.I.K.E facilities - including schematics for two - newspaper articles on numerous attacks by this new group called the Hounds of Humanity all adorn the board. [b]“It’s ballsy. Even for me, it’s ballsy.”[/b] He mused whilst stirring. [b]“I should tell someone what I’m doing. Maybe Big Blue?”[/b] He stirred whilst musing. And then talked the conversation through in his own head. “You’re going to what..? [b]I’m going to break into a classified government facility, devoted to this country’s defence and snoop around…[/b] What? Why..? [b]Because I don’t trust that they’re really gone. I know they still exist later in the universe where I’m from and it doesn’t jive with me that they’re gone…[/b] Your universe..? [b]Yes, don’t get sidetracked. I think they’ve either been taken over by an extremist splinter group within their own ranks or…[/b] Or..? [b]Or they’ve faked their own destruction and are running a false flag operation against metahumans and the supernatural…[/b] Do you have any evidence..?” And that’s what it always came back to. [b]“No. But it fits and it's exactly what I would have done. Fake my own death and attack when they think I’m gone.”[/b] He took a big gulp of his rapidly cooling coffee. [b]“Shit.”[/b] He scowled. [b]“I either implicate him in my own Federal crimes, or I risk getting myself killed and having nobody know why.”[/b] He finished the mug. [b]“Guess I’d better not get dead then…”[/b] [hr] [h1]One and a Half Weeks Before the Present Day[/h1] The man in black kept to the walls, silently traversing the subterranean S.T.R.I.K.E facility looking for answers. Once again, navigating the darkness to find the light. It was abandoned, but that didn’t mean such a thing was safe. He’d have to be careful, but with any luck he might be able to turn up some kind of data point and… ...he felt a tug on his leg as he stumbled forward further into the darkness and into a wide room filled with office cubicles. Little red lights winked alive, like the eyes of a beast. A beast that was protecting it’s home. First a half dozen, then ten, then a full score. [b]”Shit.”[/b] Isaac quickly took three steps and darted into a cubicle. Grabbing a heavy table he turned it on it’s side just as everything seemed to burst into flame. Isaac was fired backwards into a wall along with the table, only the legs of which prevented him from getting crushed against the wall. He felt the air pressure change palpably and flicked a switch by his mouth, before the darkness engulfed him. [hr] [h1]Present Day[/h1] The light was blinding, but he couldn’t just stand here waiting to be shot. He ran forward in a serpentine fashion, expecting gunfire and leapt over the edge. He soared through the open helicopter and brought his boots up, kicking a robot out the other side and sending it plummeting to the street below. He found himself flat on his back in the helicopter - an increasingly common trend when he’d jump places - with a woman’s rather... robotic foot on his throat and looking down the business end of a large battle rifle. [color=a400ea]"That wasn't exactly very nice of you to kick one of our passengers off our ride."[/color] The dark-skinned woman, complete with a robotic eye and a West African accent, glared angrily at him. [color=a400ea]"That robot cost more than your pitiful life’s worth, Houndshit.”[/color] [b]“Hound?”[/b] the Vigilante gurgled. [b]“Oh thank fuck I landed in the one good guys chopper… I’m with the guy in the catsuit and the one with the pale blue cape flying around out there. They’ll vouch.”[/b] They conferred for a moment before letting him up. [color=a400ea]“I’ve got a supposed friendly with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, could use a hand patching him up.”[/color] The woman spoke to seemingly no one in particular, calling for morphine, which the black-clad hero waved off. [color=a400ea]"You know what to do. Quickly, now."[/color] A robot soon rushed to the aid of the Vigilante, and worked on getting the bullet out from him. Metallic tines quickly found and extracted the bullet. The robot then applied the gauze than poured it on and taped it down. [b]“And I’ll grab one of those syrettes of adrenaline…”[/b] he said, as his eyelids had clearly started to fall heavy. He stuck himself and wheezed from the influence, his eyes widening immediately. [b]“Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Sweetbabyjesusonajetski!”[/b] [b]“Cheers. And I’m off…”[/b] he grabbed a rope and swung out from the helicopter, neglecting to show any technique in fast-roping. The woman looked out over the side, he was already gone. Back inside rested a roll of $5,000 in one hundred dollar bills, presumably for the robot. [color=a400ea]"Well, nice knowing you.”[/color] The woman sighed, rolling her eyes before taking the cash wad and closing the doors of the Black Hawk. [hr] [h1]One and a Half Weeks Before the Present Day[/h1] Isaac stirred from the darkness seconds later to the scent of his own flesh cooking. He leant on the table to push it back and give him space only to be met with the sound of his flesh searing on the metal of the chair legs. He stopped in reaction to the sound and chose to push it forward with his shoes instead. Stepping out from behind the desks he could see that fire lit the underground office space. All of the tables were clear. Even if he hadn’t stumbled into the booby-trap rigging that had been left behind there was nothing here for him. What little air remained that could be funnelled into his lungs from his mask was hot. His skin was scorched and burned, for the most part it wouldn’t scar… eventually. This was due to his condition. But for now he was much the worse for wear. He hobbled away from the facility to consider his situation. As he sucked fresh air when he reached the surface he was surprised to discover that there was no sign of the disturbance that had just occurred less than 3 minutes before. [hr] [h1]One Week Before the Present Day[/h1] Isaac stands in front of a pinboard again, a fresh mug of instant joe in his hands and his face full of more bitter disappointment than the tall mug contains. What had he learned? Since that day, another S.T.R.I.K.E facility had been looted by the Hounds who were growing in reputation and ranks. Who knows what they could have their hands on now. He’d gone on a “fact-finding mission” to the previous base and found it empty and booby-trapped. Isaac furrowed his brow. It wasn’t the first time Isaac had snooped around a S.T.R.I.K.E facility – abandoned or otherwise – and it occurred to him that there was a hell of a lot more explosive and security measures than he was used to seeing when he’d done this kind of thing before. Tripwires, numerous motion detectors, and quite frankly a ridiculous amount of explosive used to booby trap their abandoned facility. Especially since it was empty. More than empty… completely cleaned out. He scrawled on a fresh sheet of paper in an almost illegible, infantile script “Overkill in empty building” and began to think what it could mean. To him there was one of two conclusions, which he laid out with the next sheet. [i]“One: S.T.R.I.K.E used extreme defensive measure, Hounds disarmed, looted facility, then re-activated booby trap.”[/i] He stepped back. It still felt incomplete. He added [i]“And then added more explosive after looting”[/i]. Then on a fresh sheet of paper he gave his alternate theory. [i]“Two: Inside job. Everything already looted. Extreme measures taken to ensure anybody snooping would tell no tales.”[/i] He stepped back. He knew which theory he felt held more water. Everything was happening so fast too. The second S.T.R.I.K.E raid, wide spread public acts of violence against magical and metahuman people and known places of interest, just this morning there’d been an attack on Lost Haven University – his own school. If not for the Hounds already being a problem he may well have been on campus, since he’d involved in a lot of classes with heavy online weighting which meant he seldom had to attend lectures and classes in person. So much was happening so fast. A bomb wouldn’t keep people out of S.T.R.I.K.E facilities forever… these were still crime scenes, even if the pandemonium left few people high ranking enough to investigate since the crimes involved the Government organization S.T.R.I.K.E. He stepped back to his alternate theory sheet of paper and added on the end: [i]“Until it’s too late to stop them.”[/i] [b]“I need intel. Not S.T.R.I.K.E, this group themselves. The Hounds. I need an ‘in’. And fast.”[/b] He looked to the rest of his pinboard. He had articles and photos of raids from the past week. Targeted incidents. He noticed a recurring trend. [b]“Supporting vehicles.”[/b] He pulled a photo off the pinboard. [b]“With serious antennaes.”[/b] He returned the photo to the board and downed the coffee and sighed deeply. He knew exactly what he had to do, but wished he had more time to plan it. This was the second time in only a few days that he’d have to act on very limited information. Too limited. The last time he went out this blind it left him with skin as crispy as a roast chicken and apparently somewhat scorched lungs. But he knew there was little choice. Time would be at a premium. [hr] [h1]Four Days Before the Present Day[/h1] The Vigilante stood atop a roof and looked out on the mayhem below with a sullen expression. He hated this – prioritising the van over the poor bastard the Hounds were tormenting below, but that van could have answers which mean they’re the last people to suffer. After all, they’re doing this everywhere, even if he stopped them from this atrocity, countless more were happening in the city which he could do nothing about. He couldn’t be everywhere. The justification sounded right in his head, but it still tasted like ash in his throat. …or maybe his lungs still just hadn’t finished healing from last week yet. He heard a scream, then a burst of rifle fire. He closed his eyes briefly in self-disgust and then it happened. The Hounds watching the van went to support the others in the building. If nothing else he was in the right mood to deal with any resistance he found in the van… He grapple-lined down and hugged the stayed close to the side of the van. The getaway driver was looking out the passenger side window in interest. It was the final opening Isaac needed. The Vigilante went to open the door and found it locked, he swiftly shattered the window and grabbed the driver by the head and neck, dragging him out of the driver’s seat. The driver managed to fire off two aimless rounds, which got the attention of the others in the building, but he had time now. He disarmed the driver, flipped the lock and forced compliance from the two Hounds in the back of the van under threat of the pistol. He quickly turned the key in the ignition and got to work putting space between the other Hounds and the van. He took a right turn at the first intersection he came to and opened up the engine. Starting to feel desperation, the Hounds tried to jump him at the next set of lights. Isaac kept the pedal down, and swerved violently to keep them off balance. The first attacker wound up in the passenger seat, where Isaac shot him in the shin, elbowed him in the face, before opening the passenger door and pushing him out. He glared at the remaining Hound in the back and levelled the gun sight on him. The Hound flinched and raised his arms instinctively to protect his face. Isaac quickly pulled over to the side of the road and jumped in the back, pistol-whipping the final Hound into unconsciousness and dumping him out onto the street. [b]“Must be a tech specialist,”[/b] he thought. [b]“Soft.”[/b] He quickly looked at the equipment and paperwork in the back of the van. Undamaged and all present. He had the keys. Now he could see everything these lunatics had planned. A smile finally crossed his face, for the first time in days. Things had gotten even worse in the last few days. It was spiralling, and building momentum. But finally he saw a patch of blue sky over the horizon. He drove the van to the parking garage where he had a waiting car. He loaded paperwork and computer equipment into the car, taking care to copy down the URL of the dark web site that was jumbled across the top of the browser in case it didn’t survive the transit. Less than an hour later the car was in the driveway of one of several safehouses he had scattered across Lost Haven. All rental properties paid by direct deposit accounts under numerous pseudonyms, the money filtered into those accounts by numerous tributaries set in countries with no extradition treaties to either the United States or his other home. Isaac moved quickly, pulling reams of documentation and electronic equipment from the car and rushing it inside. This was the vulnerable point… but it wouldn’t last long at that. He grabbed the last of it and rushed it into a closet, with all of its walls painted orange. He rushed out of the closet and into the kitchen pantry. He heaved a number of 20 kilogram sacks of sugar into a small walk floor-to-ceiling cupboard, sweat starting to bead on his brow. This was the final precaution. Any tracking devices were about to be rendered moot by what would follow. He walked back into the orange closet, checked one last time that he had everything, and feeling confident that he was indeed prepared he flicked the switch… 5 seconds later Isaac was taking the paper and computer gear out of a walk in robe – all its walls painted sky blue – halfway around the world at his large home in Cooktown, Terraria. He sighed at the discovery that the laptop computer he brought was wiped, having not survived the transit, but felt reassured that it meant any little tricks or devices the Hounds may have hidden also wouldn’t have made the distance either. Still… that’s why he brought the paper. And that’s why he wrote down the URL. Given enough time, he had some tech on-hand that could hack and crack fairly sophisticated encryption, and worst case scenario he even had some connections who could dig even deeper and further than that. He had no idea if he had the time for that though… Looking to waste no more than necessary he booted up his own computer and turned on his VPN scrambler. Whilst he wasn’t the most tech savvy person himself, he had… confiscated… some high end gear from a rather pasty looking individual who called himself The White Rabbit. The White Rabbit laundered money electronically for many individuals of ill repute, not only in Terraria but in a surprisingly large number of nations right across the world. The White Rabbit also didn’t like being punched in the face very much. The two came to a mutually beneficial arrangement. The White Rabbit “disappeared”, the Vigilante kept his name quiet – the man was a loose end for a LOT of dangerous people – the White Rabbit didn’t go to prison. And the Vigilante received a lot of wonderful new toys that could help keep an identity concealed over multiple countries. Isaac was surprised to realise just how simple and user friendly a lot of these devices were to use, which just happened to use algorithms, electronic data transfers and concepts that he could barely wrap his head around. He had figured that in some ways the man must have his own kind of mental “superpower” which would allow him to operate such brilliant cutting edge technology… …truth was the genius was in creating the technology in the first place and just simply letting it do the job it was designed to do. Sometimes these things were just a whole lot simpler than you would think. Having now finished booting up, Isaac opened the browser and clicked in the URL bar; pulling out the now wrinkled piece of paper with the website. Staring down at the paper and copying the URL digit-for-digit at a slow, methodical pace and hoped his VPN scrambler would be up for the task. Even though he suspected the Hounds were indeed an off-shoot of S.T.R.I.K.E, they certainly weren’t operating as a Government based organization. As a result they may work off book and not care about numerous global treaties and information trading agreements he often relied upon to conceal himself. Would this organization care about encroaching on sovereign nation’s spaces in the virtual sphere? He finished typing the URL and looked up. And a communication message board on the dark web for the hounds loaded before his eyes. He was now logged in. He stood up and his chair flipped and crashed to the floor. He was logged in. And not to the account that was in the van. The tech guy was logged in under some kind of registration number; H#18377. His computer had logged straight into the dark web site, and his name was apparently Vaccinator. His custom title claimed that he innoculated the people from the scourge of the unhuman and godless. His signature had a bible verse, and as he dug deeper into his own recent posts he became increasingly horrified. This universe’s version of himself was something like a drill sergeant for these fundamentalist nutbags. Training them in combat. And maybe something even higher ranking than just a drill sergeant. He stumbled onto schematics, layouts and concept-designs for the spires which were being planted in the attack at Lost Haven University. Suddenly he thought back a few months to when he first decided to enroll as an alibi for his “extracurricular activities”. His friend and business advisor Tony Morris had told him he was already enrolled… He dug deeper through the recent posts and stumbled upon a diagram for the blast radius on the attack on Philadelphia, a city he’d been to in just the last month! He remembered what the aliens had told him… about how he was pulled to this universe because despite his own lack of a destiny, he might find a pressure from this universe trying to force its own path. He remembered standing in the Dean’s office not understanding why he agreed to coach a new rugby program for the school. A rugby program that would send him to the city that would be attacked for an annual tournament. A city where he would be given a device that would allow him to teleport between locations, which would give him the safe place to investigate these Hounds after he’d stolen their intel. A Dean that wouldn’t survive the LHU attack… Isaac felt he could almost see the invisible strings that bound this universe, pulling him this way and that to bring him to this exact point. He looked around the house, the house so similar to his real home back in his own world and started to notice the small differences he’d skimmed over in his desire for a place to live his own life. He picked up a picture of this world’s version of him and his father. Smiling, happy. He looked closer and saw he was wearing a crucifix. He’d never paid that much attention to the photos because the smiling faces reminded him of what he’d never have. Not only because his father was dead, but because he’d never had a good relationship with his old man even when he was alive. When he first saw these pictures he’d felt pleasantly warmed by the thought that at least in this world his old man was a decent enough person that he wanted to be close to his son. Perhaps they’d bonded over religion. It was conceivable, Isaac himself had walked away from his father’s efforts to get the son to buy into religion. Because it seemed like it rested on a bed of guilt he should feel for his mother’s passing. Or perhaps father and son had bonded over shared beliefs of another kind. Perhaps they saw eye to eye in many of the ways that made Isaac feel his father was really a very cold man. Still photographic smiles could often mask that. Then he noticed something else. The pair of them were in every photo in the house. Isaac’s father had died when he was 18. That means he’d been living in a state of arrested development, where there was no image of the man since then. About a decade ago. Almost like he’d been trying to live in a memory. A boy who never grew up. Isaac returned to the recent posts and saw lesson plans for training Hound soldiers. He saw his own styles and techniques being bastardized and taught to a fundamentalist army. He kept reading on and found it fortunate that this world’s version of himself did not seem to be as advanced as a fighter. Perhaps because he was a teacher? Maybe as a communicator he spent too long trying to figure out how to explain how to do what he learned that it hurt his own development as a natural fighter. It still bothered him to see his own methods being taught - he even saw blatant mimicry in the equipment they and gear they took and used, with similar clothing and flashbang ordnance, which he had always favoured. He thought back to what gave him his initial hunch that S.T.R.I.K.E and the Hounds were related in the first place. [i]“It’s what I would have done.”[/i] He hadn’t wanted to hit someone this badly for a long while. His hatred boiled over with the fervour that can only come when your anger is directed at the man looking back at you in the mirror. [b]“At least I’ll know what I’m walking into…”[/b] Isaac spent the next two days scouring the dark web board for whatever Intel he had access to. He loaded up his pack, stuffed more sugar in the wardrobe and swapped his Cooktown home’s sky blue closet for a lime green one. He was in his French Quarter safehouse on Lafayette. He now knew what he was fighting. He knew his enemy, and he was finally ready. [hr] [h1]The Present Day[/h1] Isaac swung down from the helicopter with his one good arm. The light from the helicopter helping him find Lyger again. [b]“I trust you landed OK… Whaddid I miss?’[/b] [hr] [hr] Lyger c-o- [@nitemare shape] Cypher and Eagle Eye c-o- [@AbandonedIntel]