A mere moment after making his last move and tagging Luigi in, the other side of the arena began to tremor with concussive force, drawing Fox’s attention away from the fight that hopefully found its way to a prompt halt. Violently bursting forth from the wall was a comically proportioned, oversized beast bellowing orders from the opening where solid concrete used to be as his minions--smaller, dumber, weaker, inferior versions of himself brandishing appropriately primitive weaponry--flooded into the already crowded underground establishment by the hundreds. They immediately went to work knocking down and trampling over every hapless civilian in their way at their master’s command. Such narrow, oblivious indiscretion wouldn’t stand, and if he came expecting he would get his way at the careless expense of the innocent, he was due to be sorely disappointed by a full house of heroes ready to prove him wrong.
Fox jumped back from the arena, holding onto the top rope as he dropped down and planted a foot to the side of its base. He pulled the rope just a little tight before releasing his leverage to launch himself into a high arc over the invading horde, coming almost within reach of the ceiling at the height of his trajectory. As he started to descend, so too did a hail of rapid laser fire upon the ranks of the unsuspecting ogrelings. He forcefully landed feet-first on the face of one of the unsuspecting minions, using them as an improvised sandboard on which to slide along the ground while he gunned down several score of its allies in every direction. He dismounted the gnorc with a fading corkscrew kick to send it bowling into more behind it, followed by three shots for good measure.
Fox hit the ground striking, transferring his momentum into a wheel kick that struck the nearest by gnorc across the head with force enough to lethally dispatch such an inadequate creature, and that wouldn’t stop there. The next gnorc behind him took three blindingly quick strikes to the torso and the muzzle of a sidearm to the chin along with a single laser shot through its head before being toppled by a missed club strike to the face. Fox ducked under the blow that was meant for him, swept the attacker’s legs out from under it, and carried it into the air with a flurry of kicks that ended with one to send it crashing into an encroaching assemblage of its comrades. Even by the standards of most trash mobs, the heroes’ opposition was unusually fragile and pathetic, as at least one or more of them went down with every shot and hit. Though, their numbers weren’t depleting as fast as the Fox would have liked. He was about to find himself surrounded, which, in this case, would have been more of a mild inconvenience than a threat, but he didn’t want to waste any more time on them than he had to.
Fox doubled back with a butterfly kick that drove one unfortunate gnorc’s head violently crashing to the pavement. He then led into two consecutive scissor kicks to break up the forming encirclement and proceeded with a double front kick to the chest of one gnorc to push himself up and over the head of another. He completed his inversion with a hard twist to send himself skyward, snapping the aforementioned gnorc’s neck in the process. This entered the pilot into a full nine-hundred degree spin as he let fly a relentless volley of omnidirectional blaster fire that penetrated head, torso, and appendage on virtually every invader within his vicinity, leveling them by the dozens before touching the ground again. There couldn’t have been more than a handful left standing amongst them after that, and thankfully so, because little did he know, Fox was about to have a greater sense of appreciation for his own good work in reducing his share of the enemy forces as quickly as he did.
Gnasty caught the mercenary’s attention when he started undergoing spontaneous mutation. Sickening black energy and the gross distortion of his already absurd features pointed to the worst: he was an m-virus host, and by the looks of it, he was intent on sharing that with everyone else. The sable spines that lined his form rattled with tension, clearly ready to burst out like shrapnel, so Fox dodged toward the closest of Gnasty’s minions, deflected its club swing, and pivoted around it to shield himself behind its fat frame. Luckily, he didn’t decide to use his reflector instead. Better that he didn’t rely on it when he didn’t need to at the risk of redirecting the infectious projectiles into stray evacuees and causing undue casualties. The remaining gnorcs, however, weren’t so lucky. What were once merely dull toad-like creatures inadvisably conscripted against the ranks of veteran heroes were now feral, demonic, ghoulish shells forcibly stripped of their sentience by the will of some malevolent parasite like the valkyries from before. At that point, ending them was a mercy to which Fox would willfully oblige. He kicked out the left knee on gnorc that took the hit for him shot it in the back of the skull before it could completely turn. Afterwards, he began delivering strikes and shots in unison to every infected gnorc that came his way, as they came. It was then that Varrock called to his attention the matter of what to do about the still susceptible heroes and the bystanders they were looking after.
“Then they can lead them out,” he answered after knocking down the last straggler in his way.
“Right now their job is to get the civilians and themselves to safety.” As he continued giving his order, Fox looked to his right and put a red beam through the forehead of a downed m-gnorc as it tried stand back up.
“Get up top and cover their exit. Make sure nothing leaves behind them,” he issued to the sniper, knowing he was the best equipped and suited among them to do exactly that. Those who remained would need his help.
He took off toward the rest of his team, leaping forward at an angle and using Fire to charge through a line of feral minions that stood between them and their master, and before the flames that surrounded him could completely dissipate, he spun in Gnasty’s direction and whipped out his sidearm to deliver three impact shots to his face. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but perhaps it would at least stun, push back, or even topple the top-heavy gnorc leader. Either way, it should buy those that were staying a moment to regroup--and time to escape for those that weren’t. He didn’t expect that he would find Robin there among them, but he wasn’t exactly surprised. Naturally, without having to be told to, he was already on top of crowd control duty, rallying together the unvaccinated members of their company to clear out the civilian population along with themselves. Their host, however, opted to make himself an exception to this by joining in on the fight, which he probably started doing before the situation escalated.
“Go. We’ve got this,” he offered reassuringly to the British boxer, hoping he wouldn’t protest or take offense to the otherwise reasonable request. With that, he was left with Naija, Cloud, and Slayer at his side, with Varrock on lookout, so he could confidently trust that their gathered battle party would be more than enough to bring down the corrupted boss. Fox couldn’t help noticing something rather…
peculiar about the beast’s transformation earlier; something
obvious, really. It occurred to him that it was perhaps worth sharing with the council’s science and research division later, as the information may prove vital in the future. For now, they needed simply to focus on putting him down first. Fox took his position and stood ready for battle… for which Slayer would make the opening move.
Member
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