Tracy [i]shrieked[/i] as the uzi's burst recoil caught him offguard and all-but flung the gun into the air to harshly clatter against the concrete floor of the overpass. Hastily bending over to pick the shoddy replica up, Tracy miraculously evaded Theron's return fire - although, as perhaps the Hunter had intended, the armor-penetrating rounds sending chips and small chunks of concrete and rebar flying through the air and causing Tracy to go prone on the ground, dropping the gun a second time as he clutched at his own head in a panicked, reflexive attempt to shield it from harm.

He lay there on the ground for several moments, his body trembling and shuddering as though an arctic gale had come and sucked the breath and warmth from him. He drew in several deep, tearful and panicked breaths as he slowly levered himself back up to a sitting position against the edge of the overpass with his left forearm. He heard additional gunshots in the distance and flinched, but immediately realized they were not directed at him or from the poser in the alleyway below. The retaliatory rattle of Golemeth's return fire from his oversized machinegun could only mean that more gangers had arrived on-scene, which meant Tracy's window of opportunity had just been flushed down the drain along with his tenuous nerves. The entire situation was awful - if the poser below alerted the new arrivals to the shooter in the overpass, Tracy would suddenly [i]actually[/i] be dealing with the same problem as Golemth, but with approximately eight-hundred pounds less in the way of cybernetic augmentation and materiel hardware. Tracy turned and risked a peep over the ledge of the overpass to see what the poser was up to - and saw him darting back behind the rears of the street's buildings and alleys, and from his own looks both above to where Tracy was seated and to the other end of the street, was making a clear break for the stairs up to the opposite end of the overpass.

Tracy grimaced and awkwardly shifted his weight to get up onto his feet in a crouched position without getting up and exposing himself, picking up the replica once more and crab-walking back towards the upper street level he had gotten onto the overpass from, which was when things got even worse. A small group of gangers rushed down one of the upper streets, yelling amongst themselves before splitting up in small groups or individually, doubtlessly to get various vantage points where they could shoot at Golemeth at. One of them - a grotesque fellow with tribal tattoos over his face along with what looked like bio-grafted spines running across the backs of his arms - was heading right for the overpass ramp, hefting some kind of rifle Tracy did not recognize in both arms. The following mental calculation was not complicated. Even if Tracy made himself scarce, once this thug and the poser below met each other on the Overpass, one or the other would doubtlessly get back to the main posse and alert them all that there was another side present, which would make any possibility of linking up with Golemeth even more impossible and potentially fatal than that cheery prospect had been to begin with.

Unless...

Tracy steeled himself, sucked in a deep breath, and drew on his training. The key to convincing anybody of anything was to harness whatever common ground you had. Right now, apart from his duffel-bag, Tracy was dressed in ratty clothes and carrying a knock-off replica uzi. He looked like shit, was probably pale and shaken as hell, and all of that could be turned to his favor as long as this random brute was not wirelessly hooked into the net - which was a fairly safe gamble seeing as his head did not have any obvious signs of datajacks or biomonitor ports.

So tracy deliberately peered a little too incautiously around the edge of the overpass ramp, locked eyes with the ganger, and feigned a look of relief. "Hey you, get over here quick," He made a hasty beckoning gesture. The thug's eyes narrowed - he was suspicious. He did not [i]recognize[/i] Tracy, and the man with the duffel-bag did not have any of the obvious gang-marks on him - but his weapon [i]was[/i] the sort of thing the others might use, and from the way he was shaken up he must have been part of the firefight with the titan down below and must have recognized [i]him[/i] from his own gang-marks - right? 

"That chromed-up shithead below, he's got some asshole friend who has been taking potshots at us from the cover of the alleys." Tracy gestured uselessly towards the edge of the overpass dramatically as he treated the ganger to his very best practiced scowl. "Guy in a leather jacket, no ink or mods, he's coming right up the other end of the overpass now. I'm low on ammo, I'm going to go meet up with the others and come back with some of them so we can get a line going up here on the overpass - I need you to just hold this asshole off until we get back. Think you can manage that?"

The ganger snorted as he hefted his rifle - which Tracy [i]vaguely[/i] recognized as some kind of semiautomatic. "Down this lane with no cover? He'll be dead by the time you all get back, little guy."

"Then once he's dead, start layin' it on the freak downstairs. Slammit man." Tracy growled in a low falsetto as he got back up, descended the overpass ramp onto the high-street, and started booking it down the road in the direction the other gangers had gone. He was totally confident that even if this thug got rid of the poser, the chances of him being able of so much as [i]scratching[/i] Golemeth was near to zero. One catastrophic turn of events averted.

...Leaving Tracy to deal with the present zero-sum game that was making contact with Golemeth without getting cut in half by machinegun fire. But one problem at a time. Banking a hard right and ducking into one of the high-street's brick-and-mortar-and-asphalt back-alleys, Tracy took a deep breath and then collapsed on the ground, hyperventilating and trembling from head to foot as he sank up against the nearest wall as he tried to settle his nerves from the stunt he had just pulled. He just was not made for this kind of stuff...

Meanwhile, back at the overpass, as Theron broke over the crest of the last steps of the stairwell up to the overpass, a trio of shots whizzed through the air around him, one of the shots causing a loud metallic [i]twang[/i] as it hit the chain-link barrier immediately behind him. There was a shooter at the opposite end of the overpass, huddled just beneath the floor, probably lying prone on the connecting ramp from the high-street - and he was using some kind of burst-fire semiautomatic rifle. Not the most ideal of situations...

[@The Harbinger of Ferocity]