"Did you hear that?" Dietz hissed at her partner, her grip tightening on the MP5 in her hands as echoes of muffled gunfire filtered up to them from the ground floor.
"I heard it," Carson nodded as the first burst of gunfire was followed by several deeper reports. "I don't like it."
"Kristos, what's happening?" Dietz demanded over the radio after the gunfire ceased. "Boss, come in. Talk to me."
"I really don't like it," Carson remarked as their commander failed to reply. "This is so not good. What are we gonna do?"
"I say we get out of here," Dietz suggested. "We have to report this and come back with a larger force."
"No arguments here," Carson agreed. "Let's go."
"Leaving so soon?" Ranma drawled in a tone full of mock-hurt, causing the two black-suited figures coming down the stairway to freeze. "But you just got here."
The two turned their heads to the door on the wall opposite the steps in unison to find they were staring down the barrel of Ranma's 12 gauge. Motoko stepped out of a doorway near the foot of the stairway with her SMG.
"I guess it is true what they say about gaijin not having any manners," Motoko observed in her best patronizing sneer from behind her shouldered MP5/40.
"And I was having such a good time too," Ranma mock-pouted.
"Well, you know what they say," Motoko pontificated. "It's all fun and games until someone loses their head."
"But until then..." Ranma added with a wicked smirk, "it's all fun and games."
"Who the hell are you?" the female figure demanded, her voice distorted by her mask. "You're clearly not Lycans."
"Oh, she's good," Motoko quipped. "We were...guests...of this facility—at least until our gracious hosts got themselves torn apart."
"Guests?" the female asked and then her voice hardened. "What have you done with Kristos and the others?"
"They lost their heads when we greeted them," Ranma smirked evilly.
"You killed them?" the man asked incredulously. "But you're vampires. Why would you kill your own kind?"
"Vampires? Please. We are nothing like you loathsome creatures," Motoko sneered. "Now, unless you wish to end up like your friends, I suggest you put down your weapons and surrender."
"Oh shit," the woman hissed to her partner. "I know what they are. They're the test subjects R&D was working on here."
"You mean they are the spawn of the traitor Selene and her pet abomination?" the male asked.
"Geez, talk about the pot callin' the kettle black," Ranma commented to Motoko before addressing the last remaining members of the strike team. "So are you guys gonna surrender or do you want a personal demonstration of just how badly you blood-sucking freaks screwed yourselves when you took away our humanity?"
"Sorry, Carson," the woman said softly. "One of us has to get away to report this."
"Huh? Dietz, what the hell are you doing?" Carson squawked as he felt himself hoisted up by the back of his combat webbing and pulled in front of his partner.
Deitz reached around him with the hand not holding Carson up in front of her and grabbed his MP5, opening fire on Ranma and Motoko.
Ranma immediately returned fire, his first shot sending nine .30 caliber silver balls slamming into Carson's head and neck. A good portion of Carson's head vanished, blood and brains spraying across the wall and his partner as she retreated up the stairs. Ranma rapidly cycled the pump action of the Mossberg and sent another round of double-ought buckshot into the now dead vampire's chest.
Meanwhile, Motoko opened up with her MP5/40, aiming low and hoping to score a crippling hit to the woman's legs as she fell back using her partner's body for a shield. However, she was forced to duck back out of the way as the suppressing fire from the woman's MP5 came her way.
Ranma dumped another three rounds into the dead vampire's torso, shredding it, but they still failed to penetrate to the woman as she made it to the top of the stairs. As she did so, she let go of the SMG and fumbled around, pulling the pins on three of the silver grenades Carson carried attached to his webbing. Without a word, she tossed the body back down the stairs and ducked around the corner just as another round of buckshot slammed into the wall behind where her head had just been.
Abruptly, it registered in Ranma's mind what the woman had done before tossing the body back down the stairs.
"Grenades! Take cover!" Ranma roared, stowing his shotgun back in hidden weapons-space and tackling Motoko further into the room she had ducked into when evading the vampire woman's SMG fire.
Ranma's momentum carried them into the room and over the back of a couch to land on the sunken floor of the room. Ranma had rotated them in the air so he took the brunt of the impact with the floor and then immediately rolled them so he was on top of her. Before Motoko had a chance to complain about a male invading her personal space so forcefully, a series of deafening explosions sent shrapnel and debris from the shattered walls flying through the room they were in, showing them with splinters and dust. The overpressure shattered the windows in the room and momentarily stunned the pair as it wrecked havoc with their inner ears and forced the air from their lungs.
"Shit," Ranma hissed, as he recovered his wind. "You alive, Motoko?"
"I don't know," came a groaned reply. "I'm a vampire, so maybe undead would be a better description."
"I meant, are you hurt?" Ranma clarified, rolling his eyes. "This ain't the time get all philosophical on me."
Ranma felt Motoko's body quiver intriguingly as she giggled slightly. He picked his head up and turned to look at her. His storm-cloud gray eyes met her eyes of gold-flecked sienna and they locked together for an eternal moment as their souls connected. Simultaneously, his hand moved up to tenderly brush a lock of hair from her face while her hand found his waist under his coat. Slowly, their faces moved closer together, their lips moistened for the anticipated moment of contact.
The moment was abruptly shattered by the sound of glass breaking from upstairs followed by a thump of booted feet hitting the ground outside. Ranma hesitated for a moment, torn between continuing with Motoko and going after the vampire bitch.
"We have to stop her," Motoko said with a hint of regret in her tone. "We can't let her tell her superiors about us."
Ranma nodded, closing his eyes and reluctantly getting to his feet before moving to the shattered window. Peering outside, he winced at the brightness of the day, some half-remembered reflex telling him he'd burst into flames if he went out in the sun. However, a more vivid if equally as foreign memory told him he wasn't any more vulnerable to the sun than the average person with pale skin so he jumped out onto the lawn, gripping the pistol grip of his shotgun.
Ranma spotted the vampire woman sprinting across the grounds headed for the trees. Shouldering his shotgun, Ranma put the glowing dot in the Mossberg's reflex sight on the woman's retreating back and pulled the trigger. Absorbing the recoil with his shoulder, he cycled the action and fired again before repeating the process twice more. The last pull of the trigger yielded only a click as the firing pin encountered an empty chamber.
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(Posted Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:02)
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