[center] [img]https://vgy.me/weS5zP.png[/img]

In

[h2][u]Target Locked #9: Target: The Hounds of Humanity #6[/u][/h2]
[b]Location: Sherman Square
Time: Evening - Day of Hound Attack[/b][/center]

The gunshot wound on her leg was making the entire area sore, which in turn was forcing Fletch to adjust her stance to ease the pain. It might not be much, but it was enough for her to need to compensate for the irregular body position in her shot sequence. Fortunately for her, she wasn’t killing any of the incoming Hounds, but the regular place in their shoulder was going all over the place. So much that she was deliberately slowing the time it took between each shot to make sure the next arrow didn’t cause another fatality like earlier. With the dwindling numbers of the enemy growing smaller, she was having to use fewer arrows. [I]Hopefully, I will have the time to collect them all before I have to leave this place,[/I] she thought. While she had the accuracy to pull off the shots she was doing now, she only has so many arrows to do them with.

After firing another shot, she turned towards the Hound Iron Knight was fighting. She was disappointed when the dust cleared to see that he was unaffected by the explosive arrow. While she didn’t see it activate during the time the arrow made its ‘impact’, the energy shield was visible to her. She gritted her teeth when he made the obvious observation that the arrow didn’t work. [I]I definitely need to work on arrows that could cause problems to electronics,[/I] she concluded, watching as the two suited fighters exchanged words. However, when the hero announced something about breaching the firewall in the other’s suit, she smirked underneath the makeshift cowl. [color=e38c2d]”At least my toothpick did something more than damage you, asshole!”[/color] she jeered. However, when the Judicator mentioned the ‘dark side’ of the heroes, her mind went back to the dead Hound she had killed moments ago. With Iron Knight wanting to deal with the dead Hounds issue, she had to think of her explanation to him when that time came. After all, she didn’t mean to kill the Hound then. [I]Right?[/I]

As the hero took the Hound away, Fletch turned her focus onto Blacklight. The woman began to address her after her other comments. [I]At least she isn’t scolding me for my words to the pair of them,[/i] Kayla thought as she listened. In a sense, the woman was right. The only reason she was shot was that she wasn’t in a vantage point to rain down arrows on the Hounds. The archer nodded towards the meta, [color=e38c2d]”Good call. Just checking to see if anyone needed help. Will head to the Center to give further support.”[/color] With the last arrow fired, she began to head towards the Sherman Center, getting ready to reach one of the lower-level rooftops to start her work.

As she hobbled over, she saw something shoot up into the sky from the corner of her eye. Kayla stopped in her tracks to see what it was. She managed to catch a glimpse of Icon, the hero of Lost Haven, beginning to head towards where she assumed was the satellite’s location. She had heard the announcement Iron Knight had made about the satellite and had assumed that it was now beginning its firing sequence to decimate Lost Haven. Her mind had thought about reaching to her bike and getting the hell out of the city for when that happened. But the combination of her seeing Terra Firma making a word to the armoured hero that he (through her assumptions) that he was joining in the hunt for the satellite, noticing Voyager darting off after Icon and her heart thinking back to everyone that would get caught up in the blast. After a brief moment, she sighed. [color=e38c2d]”Well, if the city does get destroyed, I wouldn’t live with myself if I left all the innocent people behind.”[/color] With that, she carried on towards the Sherman Center.

As she drew closer to the building, she heard a machine gun go off dangerously close to where she was. Looking in the direction it came from, Fletch watched in horror as Nemesis fell to the ground. The archer certainly hadn’t forgotten the great lengths from the moment the drones destroyed the block with both Nemesis and War-Pulse to track her down. She even got some help from the mouthy mercenary himself and the plant-based meta Evergreen to track her down to Midas’s building and kitting her out with new things to help her out as a vigilante. But that would have been for nought if the woman she had tracked down ended up dead in the centre of the city due to the Hounds. 

[color=e38c2d]”Oh hell no,”[/color] the archer blurted out, starting a mad dash towards the fallen body. Adrenaline kicked in to make the pain in her leg disappear as she rushed headfirst towards danger. Grabbing an arrow from her back quiver, she hurriedly fired a grappling arrow towards the rooftop of one of the nearby buildings and began the winch mechanism on her arm. Her speed towards Nemesis shot up as she skidded along the tarmac. As she drew closer, she noticed one of the mechs in the huge pile started to clamber over the remaining bodies to try and finish the job. As the machine gun was aimed at the fallen woman, it began firing. However, not before Fletch managed to snatch her up off the ground. Her right glove got torn up on the back of the hand from the road rash across the ground, but it endured enough to not affect her hand. With the woman in her right arm, Kayla kicked off the ground to begin her ascent to the rooftop. All the meanwhile, the bullets from the mech’s machine guns trailed behind her as the pair of them launched safely over the top of the building.

Landing and rolling with a thud, the archer’s bow was sent skidding across the rooftop out of her finger-slinged hand. But that was the least of her worries as she began scrambling towards Nemesis’s limp form. Turning the woman over, she looked at the damage on her torso. [color=e38c2d]”Shit,”[/color] she exclaimed, looking on the rooftop for anything to help with the bleeding. Seeing bedsheets on one of the clotheslines, she dashed towards it and ripped it out of the pegs. She bundled the sheet into one huge ball in her hands and, once back by the woman’s side, pressed down hard on the torso. [color=e38c2d]”This is not good at all.”[/color] It wasn’t long before the sheet was saturated in the black blood. Kayla’s mind wasn’t on the unusual colouring of the blood. Instead, it was doing all she can without the first aid kit that was handed to Voyager earlier. [color=e38c2d]”Come on, Nemesis! Stay with me!”[/color] The adrenaline in her system was slowly going away, the pain in her leg slowly coming back. [color=e38c2d]”I’ve spent all this time trying to find you to keep a promise to Evergreen! Your friend from before the explosion. I’d be damned if you die on me now to make me fail that promise!”[/color] There was nothing much she could do now except for hoping that she wasn’t fighting a losing battle.

[@Fallenreaper]