[Center] [h3][color=4863c0] Lethal Developments, Part 3: Never Gonna Give You Up-[/color] [/h3][/center]
[hr]
[Hider]
Whip took up the rear, nervously walking near silently behind the others, while string began following from her wrists akin to her moniker. She was careful to keep them away from the others, as they were already ridged with razor edges hard and sharp enough to be leaving grooves in the ground they walked on.

The tunnel opened up into a large, open, cavern like room complete with stalagmites and torches. Pillars of stone were placed across the area, and the place was a disaster. Tables, crates, machinery… Countless objects made the place almost like a maze. They couldn't see anyone, but Mantis could feel that the room was teeming with confidence and anger. And floating directly across from the opening, in plain view, was a bloody figure Mantis and Farce were well acquainted with:

Limbo's ghost. Complete with an appearance of rot and decay strong enough to make one shiver in disgust.

The last couple steps forward would lead then properly into the room. What were they going to do?

The feeling in the air of a multitude ahead, or perhaps the hallucination of one in her mind, and the vision of someone that seemed ghostly struck a very strong chord at her survival instincts as she got glimpses of her. Adrenaline poured into her body at a rapid pace, heartbeat skyrocketing as her senses seemed to become a bit more keen whilst the fight or flight response was fueling her body right now. Her gut feeling even seemed to scream at her as she froze in place. 

[color=pink]”Oh shitshitshit. All the alarm bells are going off, guys. We need to get outta this trap, and NOW!”[/color]

She didn’t care if she sounded scared right now, or looked like a runner. If she was gonna be a hero sometime, they needed to stay alive first. At that, all natural instincts were crying for “flight” rather than “fight” in this “dungeon encounter” they had seemingly delved into. This felt like a trap. A damn trap….nuts.  

Mantis’ eyes widened when he saw the figure. He raised his weapon instinctively toward it. However, realizing it was just an apparition, he lowered it again. He felt repulsed and almost threw up at the sight of her. Mantis then released feelings of calm and peace into the surrounding area and sensed those same emotions. This effectively cancelled out the sensations made by the apparition. His allies would feel the same thing as himself. 

When Mantis recollected himself he spoke out, [color=green]”We've come this far and who is to say there isn't a trap waiting for us behind? To make it out we have to press on..”[/color] Then he began to step into the room and hoped there wasn't some deadly trap waiting for him. He could tell if there would be other feelings emanating nearby from other areas. However, it would be harder due to the amount of them going on in a small area.

[color=fff200]”I-I’m with Excal right now. Fuck Limbo.”[/color] As much as she wanted to run, though, Farce let out a hearty sigh. [color=fff200]”... but there’s still a chance that our behinds are blocked by an army or something. Let’s just… get this over with.”[/color]

Farce shoved past the people in her path as she stepped out beside Mantis. Well, if this wasn’t a warm welcome? Limbo sitting there like a smarmy motherfucker and all that. Farce couldn’t stomach the sight of her, period, but she needed to suck it up here. She looked up at the apparition and simply spoke to it. One word. [color=fff200]”’sup?”[/color]

Limbo looked at Farce, a smirk playing across her face as she waggled a finger at her. [Color=brown]”Naughty, Naughty.”[/color] Her voice was rough, eerie upon the ears. She's floated towards the group, passing through everything between them as if they didn't exist, before circling the four. [Color=brown]”I could keep you…. But, I think not.”[/color]

A single gunshot rang out, the wall behind Mantis blowing dust just a few inches from him.

[Color=brown]”Kill them.”[/color]

Whip reacted with the gunshot, building a barrier of their own to hide behind. “Reinforce this, will you Excal?” Mantis’ influence hadn't changed her emotions, she saw what they were up against and knew that such feelings were not going to help her. 

Eight goons started moving from cover to cover to get closer, all wielding various melee weapons from knives to a wooden bat with nails in it. Across the room others took up positions with handguns, looking to get a lucky shot off.

Mantis instinctively turned his weapon at the goon that the shot came from and fired off a quick burst. Then he yelled out, [color=green]”Give us some cover, NOW!”[/color] The urgency in his voice was clear. If Excaliblast couldn't build them an adequate form of cover in time they could all be wiped out in an instant. After firing his burst, Mantis reached for his smoke grenade, pulled the pin and threw it directly in front of the area people were shooting from. It would hopefully blind them from firing accurately on Lethal Force's  position. It would also give the team more time to get their cover constructed. 

[color=fff200]”So… uh… correct me if I’m wrong here, but if a parahuman uses force meant to murder another parahuman, does that mean that we can fight back in self defense?”[/color] Farce asked Mantis as she cocked her revolver. [color=fff200]”It makes sense to me, so please tell me it makes sense to you.”[/color] Farce considered shooting for a moment, before a mental bug told her not to. Specifically, he said that it’d be more likely that she’d waste ammo, so she held off on firing just yet.

Allison nodded to Whip and began rapidly trying to form long, wide blades, sticking them into the ground like fence posts, or perhaps “planks” to make parts of a proper fence itself. Though panic surged in her veins, the “fight” response was currently taking over as the “flight” became more and more unreasonable….or at least potentially so. However, a calming aura seemed to begin to take hold of her as she was building, allowing her to better focus on making her fence. She had no idea if this would work, though Mantis’ involvement in her new mood seemed likely, but at the same time she was not going to take chances. 

She would make the barrier, placing the blades as close to each other as possible, and as strong in the ground as she could plant them. 

But if they were unable to handle “this” much, or things got notably worse where they needed to go, she felt the idea of shooting blades out at top speed might be able to hold back attackers for a time. Unless it was this ghost chick, who looked kinda cute, but also had scared the hell out of her not too long ago. Ugh. Now was not the time for her libido to kick into action, seriously…..

The wall was being built at a surprisingly fast pace. Between the metal posts and the woven string it was incredibly durable at that. Already bullets build be heard pinging off of the solid surface, but the two girls had placed them carefully. And nothing broke through.

Mantis’ shot, meanwhile, managed to clip the original shooter in his arm before he could fully return to cover, the fall of his pistol noticeable to anyone looking.

These goons were obviously trained, dealing with a surprise visit (that didn't seem very surprising anymore) incredibly well, and were keeping the pressure on Lethal Force to remain defensive. All the while Limbo was making passing remarks at their expense, commenting on 'poor technique’ and giving heads up to her guards whenever Lethal Force moved to attack.

Whip turned to Farce in irritation once the wall was finished. “Of course it makes fucking sense. Kill them before they kill us.”

The longest piece of string they'd ever seen from her snaked around her before she stepped outside the barricade and began swinging it like a whip. Her attack stuck upon the wooden crates like they were butter, slicing through three men in her dedication. She was far enough back that all of their shots were phasing through her as her face scrunched up in anger.

The bodies she left were bloody and cut into pieces.


[color=fff200]”Welp, that’s all the confirmation I needed.”[/color] Farce confidently said as she drew her magnum and aimed it towards the attackers. She breathed deeply before she took aim, firing it off towards an assaulting crook, him hardly having enough reaction time to stop reloading and fire back. Farce’s hand immediately swung to aim at the guy to his left, firing a shot into his arm before she crouched down behind cover to protect herself.

Not having been told more, and not being accustomed to an actual battle yet, Allison began to make a secondary barrier above the archway of where they had just come in. Something to reinforce and enhance their cover by protecting from above attacks or causing a thrown grenade to hit this “roof” for the barricade and bounce just to roll back toward the enemy throwers. Not that she knew if they had grenades, actually….ugh. She wasn’t trying to cage her and Whip and others in, not at all, but whether her idea currently was good or not was up to how well she was handling all of this whilst on her feet. On occasion she’d poke an ear out toward where they had come from, just in case anything could be heard from there...er, anything coming their direction. 

[color=pink][i]’I hope we don’t all die here….ahhh….‘[/i][/color]

With the barrier up, Mantis felt like they could gain ground. His shot had disabled an enemy while Whipstitch had made mincemeat of three more. He would press their advantage. Taking cover behind the barrier, Mantis sent the thought to his allies, [i][color=green]”Throwing a flashbang, get behind the barrier.”[/color][/i] Then he took one from his belt and lobbed it above the largest group of the Community. It would explode in a flash and disable the eardrums and vision of all who would be in range. Then Mantis would pop out from cover and fire another burst at whoever was closest to them.

Whip laughed, a maniacal sound, as bullets continued to pass through her harmlessly. She cut through two more men, but no one else seemed willing to get close enough for her attacks. Farce's shot clipped her target in the arm, but the man proved capable of firing from his other hand accurately. His shot pinged off of the barrel of her pistol, ricocheting harmlessly away from the group before Mantis’ flashbang detonated. Very few of the enemy seemed to be affected, Limbo getting a warning out in time for them to safely get behind cover. She seemed to be directing them confidently, mostly content to let them handle the intruders.

As Mantis popped up to shoot, a waiting shooter got a lucky shot off that grazed his shooting shoulder. A shallow wound, but it would still hurt.

Things were quickly reaching a stalemate, but would Lethal Force have enough firepower to outlast the entrenched goons?

“Any time you feel like fucking attacking would be great, Excal!” Whip shouted in the momentary lull from behind a small barrier of string as she waited for her eyes to be able to see clearly again.

[color=fff200]”Agh!”[/color] Farce yelped as her revolver fell out of her hands. That was a hell of a shot, and it did knock away Farce’s gun, but she wasn’t out of the fight yet. Not by any sort of long shot.

She grabbed her nightstick, Carlotta, from her bag and held it up like a gun. Within an instant, the twin was replaced by her male half, shouting his cape name as the nightstick was replaced by a 1911. He began firing his shots at any goons he could, staying silent as he did so. He didn’t have anything to say, nor did he want to say anything anyways.

Jolted by Whip’s curse-laden and harsh words, Allison stopped trying to further fortify the group in this position of theirs. She had to keep the nerves from manifesting, even with the soothing aura she assumed was Mantis’ doing right now. Lightly shaking her head to clear it in a sense, Allison popped up with her wrists down, firing a quick but rapid spray of blades toward some of the goons before ducking back down again as she had seen the others do. Did they expect a college student to have proper combat training here?! To her she felt like they did to some extent, but now was not the time to say a word. 

She wasn’t an idiot, after all. Yet she had to try to help them stay alive, the will to survive being a rather good motivator at the moment for her personally as it were.  

Mantis grimaced in pain at the shot. His adrenaline was already kicking in which made it much less painful then if he had been hit out of combat. He took cover behind their barrier. Then Mantis slung his weapon around his shoulder. He looked down and picked the grenade from his belt. [i][color=green]Now is the time. I'm throwing a grenade. TAKE COVER![/color][/i] He sent the thought to the group. Then Mantis sent out the thought to their attackers that in order to dodge the grenade Mantis was throwing, they would have to take cover near a certain barricade. The idea was to get them clumped in one spot and do maximum damage. With that done, he pulled the pin on it. Taking it in his unhindered  side's hand, Mantis threw it at the area he was manipulating the enemy to gather. It was risky, but they were running out of options.

Suddenly everything changed. No longer was it a fairly even fight, but Lethal Force was spreading chaos. Whipstitch had cut a goon's legs off, Excal had impaled and eviscerated several people, Sparce was landing shots with an almost mechanical precision, and Mantis had just shredded nearly half of the living with a single grenade.

And all the while you could hear the insane laughter coming from Whip as she started to advance.

And then everything froze. Everyone stopped, not that there were many living that could move to begin with, and the ghostly Limbo disappeared.

All of LF fell to the ground at the same moment, overtaken by visions of two incomprehensibly large creatures and strange flickers admist a rapidly changing view.

And it was over as soon as it started.

LF regained consciousness, the images already gone from their mind, as two figures rose from the bodies in a shimmer.
[/Hider]