[center][h2]Tiamat[/h2][/center][hr]

The portion of warehouses in the middle of the Industrial district were all almost universally abandoned or condemned -- their previous owners abandoning them for more favorable positions offering easier access to other districts and areas along the edges of the industrial district. This was a veritable wet dream for Tiamat, as few people traversed the streets. The area was too trashed and polluted for the homeless to wish to take up residence, and more well-off residents plain had no reason to go there. She knew, however, that it would be the first place a search party would check.

And it seemed she was not incorrect in that assessment. She had climbed into a large stack to get a superior view of the area, and she had almost immediately spotted the small squad of men going from warehouse to warehouse. When she had zoomed her vision in on them, she counted a total of five men, one clad in the armor of a REAPER mercenary. Looking over the others, they all appeared to be local thugs, presumably well-paid to get them to follow along. They were clad in whatever they could put together, local civilian-grade guns.

Tiamat didn’t judge them too hefty a threat: the main issue would be the mercenary. They were carrying a particularly distinctive weapon, some form of anti-tank rifle, perhaps. It looked like a new model, and Tiamat figured it had been designed specifically with her in mind. If that was the case, she could not afford to let the mercenary get a shot off. She needed to take out all of them quickly and cleanly, then get them out of sight.

If she failed to keep their presence and their death hidden, REAPER would have a lock on her location. She waited until the squad entered into another empty warehouse, before climbing down the stack with an extreme rapidity. She jumped across the densely-packed rooftops, getting a much closer position on the opposite side of the street from the warehouse they were searching.

She took cover, and peeked out a small mirror on a stick. She had made it earlier, as seeing an area without being seen from that area was always useful.

“You heard that too, right?”

“Of course I did. How could I miss it?”

There was a pregnant pause as the two thugs taking point, one armed with a shotgun and the other with a poorly maintained AR styled civilian rifle continued bantering with one another.

[i]Nerves.[/i] the agent thought to herself. Paying little mind to the conversation between the rather disposable people in front of her. A nudge from her side drew her out of her thoughts when the man to the left of her began to try to get her attention.

“You never told us what we’re tracking.”

He had been quiet this whole time, not asking many questions and keeping mostly to himself. He was eying her firearm cautiously and the thumping sounds from earlier had likely set him off. The thug behind him piped up before she could answer.

“Something big, obviously. You don't carry a gun like that for a driveby.” 

She opened her mouth to quiet the lot of them, as talking was both unnecessary and problematic. But stopped when she saw the glint of a mirror in an odd place above them. The agent whistled, getting the attention of the rifleman in front of her. She pointed up at the oddly placed mirror and the rifleman, having put two and two together raise his gun and fired two shots, soundly smashing the mirror and then knocking it away from its resting place further than it already had been from the first shot.

Tiamat moved into action, knowing she’d been spotted. With a roll, she slammed out of the cover, going into the open on the rooftop as she grabbed hold of her pistol. The agent barked out to the thugs, “Keep it down! Don’t let it get any shots off!” She proceeded to emphasise this by lifting her rifle and taking a shot at the robot. It whizzed by Tiamat, and the agent began to cycle the bolt.

Tiamat, by this time, had left her roll, and had her pistol out. Her first priority was to line up a shot on the agent, and she did so with eagerness. A massive crack filled the air as a slug was propelled from her pistol, and in less than a second, the slug landed home.

The slug slammed into the faceplate of the agent, and, ionizing the metal, travelled into the agent’s head proper. Her brain also ionizing, the massive influx of heat created a gruesome result -- her head exploded violently into gore intermixed with rapidly cooling plasma.

Several more shots rang out from what remained of the search party, two of them hitting Tiamat in her torso. One thug scrambled for the firearm that the agent had been carrying, diving to her body in an attempt to use her weapon- thinking it might save them. A second shot from Tiamat’s pistol ended his hopes, and Tiamat then holstered the pistol.

She unsheathed the polearm that rested on her back, and flicked a switch on the panel centered on the handle. She jumped off the roof as the blade began to violently glow, and she charged into the last three thugs. They shot wildly, many of the bullets going wide from the unexpected charge.

The blade met the first thug, and it swiped through him like a hot knife through butter. His clothes caught fire, and before he fell Tiamat was to the next thug. She executed the same maneuver. The last thug began to run, firing behind him.

Tiamat turned to him, and picked up the AR that had been dropped by her previous victim. She fired the rest of the mag with one hand into the last thug, a synthetic scream of anger coming from her mouthpiece.

The area fell silent. Tiamat stood in place for a moment, turning off and sheathing the polearm, as she relaxed slightly. She looked around, thinking, [i]I made too much of a mess. Too loud. Fuck![/i] 

Now she had to get them back into the warehouse. She continued to give glances all about her, deathly afraid that somebody would come running to see what the noise was about. She grabbed the first two bodies she saw, the agent and the thug she had cut in half. The thug’s intestines sloughed out and dragged across the ground, leaving a streak in their wake.

She looked at it and suppressed panic. She had to get it clean, one way or the other, and fast. She’d deal with the streak later.