[SlicesCustoms]

Part 11

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr

The others might tease him about the knife-wound, but they’d be forced to acknowledge that it had been he who had done what they couldn’t. A few stitches in the side were well worth the accolades that would come with being the man who killed the legendary Firefly.
Black Out snatched the Desert Eagle from its holster. His eyes went wide as he raised it; somehow, Firefly had already brought his Glock up. He wondered if his armor could stop a bullet at this range.
It didn’t matter. Firefly’s shot passed straight through his throat. Black Out tried to squeeze his own trigger, but he couldn’t feel his gun in his hands anymore. He fell backward and temporarily lost sight of the world.
When he regained his vision, Firefly was standing above him. Black Out tried and failed to draw a breath. He felt as though his throat were filling with thick syrup. It seemed as though parts of his body were on fire.
“Never half as good as you thought you were,” Firefly repeated.
He held the Glock a few inches from Black Out’s forehead.
Black Out heard one last clap of thunder before oblivion took him.

*******

For a time, Firefly stuck to the rooftops. Though he understood that his enemies knew where he was and would be tracking him, he also accepted that his movements would be less hindered as he leapt from the top of one building to the next. For now, he was willing to sacrifice stealth for speed.
He knew that the Plague was tracking his location the same way that he knew that they were close: the drones that hovered above him and dogged his every step. Scrap-Iron was undoubtedly still sitting in his protective little cubicle, directing the airborne spies and relaying Firefly’s every move to his allies. Firefly knew that each of the drones carried two missiles with enough firepower to potentially level one of the buildings whose rooftops he was scampering across. The operator of such a weapon didn’t even need to rely on one of the closest drones to eliminate a target. Once a lock had been established, drones such as the ones Scrap-Iron was using could fire off a missile from miles away and assassinate a target or decimate a piece of the enemy’s artillery or armor.
That Scrap-Iron hadn’t resorted to using such a weapon, for now at least, told Firefly that he was showing uncharacteristic restraint in trying to avoid accidentally killing any of his allies, which meant that they were close. As long as Firefly remained visible to Scrap-Iron’s airborne spy network, he had to play a very dangerous game: remain far enough away from the mercenaries who were hunting him to remain alive while lingering close enough that Scrap-Iron remained deterred from using his own arsenal of long-range weapons.
The solution was to vanish, and though the sun continued to sink below the horizon, there was still enough daylight that he couldn’t hope to disappear into the shadows and sneak out of town. Whereas that might have been an option in the early days of his career, advances in technology meant that his foes could track his heat-signature or create high-resolution feeds that looked as clear as if they had been taken at midday.
Firefly understood the stakes of the battle. Retreat was not an option. This could only end in one of two ways: his death or the Plague’s total annihilation.
At last, Firefly leapt across a chasm between what looked to have been a bank and a hotel. He scurried along the edge of a rooftop pool and made his way toward the door that would lead him into the building. Gaining entrance into the structure enabled him to avoid the ever-present gaze of Scrap-Iron’s drones, but he now faced the same problem that he had when the Plague had converged on Scrap-Iron’s warehouse. Though he had more explosives now on account of having retrieved his bag, he was confident that he couldn’t use the same ploy a second time to find a way out of this building.
He would just have to come up with another solution.
The stairwells were not an option. The hotel obviously assumed that most of its guests would take advantage of the elevators and provided only a couple of escape routes in case of fire. With the Plague converging on the hotel, those routes would be cut off before he could reach the ground floor. Even if the elevators were working, he knew better than to trap himself in an enclosed space whose location could be tracked by anyone in the building.
The service ladder that ran alongside the elevator shaft, however, might be the last place that his pursuers might think of.
Firefly pried open one of the elevator doors and peered down into the darkness. He estimated that the building had six stories, but as he gazed down, he could see nothing of what might await him below. The elevators could have been parked in the lobby or awaiting a floor below him for all he knew. He might as well have been staring into the abyss for all that he could see.
One of the pouches on his left hip held a flashlight. He drew it out and ran it down the shaft until he saw the rungs that he was looking for. Leaning out over the edge, he wrapped his hand around one and swung himself over so that he could begin his descent. Though he might have appreciated knowing just how far he had gone or how close he might be to the ground floor, he stowed his flashlight back in its pouch before beginning the climb down. It had been a long time since anything in the darkness had frightened him.
He assumed that he had descended three floors when he heard the sound of one set of elevator doors being pried apart. Firefly froze instantly and pressed himself as tightly as he could against the wall. It had been the fourth floor doors, just a level and a half above him, that had been separated, and Firefly could see someone peering into the shaft. He could not see who it might be, backlit as his pursuer was, but whoever it was stood within fifteen of where Firefly clung to the ladder.
Firefly knew that he was in a completely indefensible position. His nemesis was perfectly framed by the elevator doors; though Firefly would be unable to work his M3 into position, he could easily draw his Glock and put three shots through the Plague member’s center mass without difficulty. Doing so, however, would bring every other member of the team bearing down upon him. He would instantly be cut off, with no room to maneuver and no chance of escape.
Whoever loomed above him drew a flashlight from his belt and began to run it up and down the elevator shaft. Careful not to make any quick movement, Firefly with his right hand released his hold on the ladder and let it drift toward his sidearm. The beam of light drifted closer and closer.
It ran across his leg. Firefly was careful not to twitch, not to provide any movement that might catch his enemy’s attention. He studied the light as it floated by, looking for any sudden movements that might alert him to the fact that its user had noticed something out of the ordinary. The cone of illumination wandered away, then lazily drifted back and passed over his thigh.
Firefly quietly let out the breath that he had been holding and readied himself for action.
The light stopped moving and remained fixated on his upper-leg. Sweat began to bead up on Firefly’s forehead. He studied the silhouette above him and waited for the inevitable reach for a weapon.
It never came. Whoever it was who had been searching the elevator gave a grunt. A moment later, he turned off the flashlight and turned away. The doors that he had been propping open came crashing together; the force of their meeting shook the ladder that Firefly clung to. He had to count to twenty and let some of the adrenaline work its way out of his system before he could take his hand away from his Glock and begin his descent once again.
Firefly knew better than to exit the shaft via the lobby; he did not stop until he had descended as far as he could. When he forced the elevator doors open, he found himself peering into a hallway that led to what looked to be the building’s laundry area. He heard skittering and breathed a sigh of relief. If his presence was suddenly upsetting the rats that had taken refuge here, that meant that nobody else had yet ventured down this far.
A couple of minutes searching yielded the result that he had hoped for: a small set of concrete stairs that were not attached to the main stairwells. He crept his way up in the darkness and hoped that they would lead to an unoccupied room.
The level immediately below the main floor housed the kitchens, and as he passed, Firefly did hear movement. He considered trying to ambush whoever was on this floor but decided against it. He wasn’t sure how many adversaries he might find, and he hadn’t survived this long in a business whose life-expectancy was often measured in weeks rather than years by seeking out battlefields whose odds were not skewed in his favor.
When he got to the main level, he cautiously peered past the doors and found that he was looking into a ballroom. Enough light was filtering in through the lobby that he could see that the tables had been unceremoniously tossed to the ground and smashed; had he not known the circumstances, he might have believed that he was looking at the aftermath of the wildest wedding reception that had ever taken place.
What he did not see, however, was any sign of his enemies. After studying the room for a moment to confirm this, he slid past the doorway and began to creep toward one of the room’s exits.
Firefly was halfway across the room when he heard them.
“Thought he’d show up here,” a voice said. “Didn’t I say it? All we had to do was wait.”
“You sure did,” replied another. Firefly could hear the smile as he had spoken, but it was gone when he then said, “Turn around.”
Firefly raised his hands slowly and did what he was told. He found himself facing Grim Skull and Bayonet. Both had their weapons raised and trained on him.
“You didn’t really think that we were going to let you just stroll out of here, did you?” Grim Skull asked.
There was more than just professional pride lacing his words; genuine anger bubbled to the surface. Firefly wondered whether the man had actually felt something for the Plague teammates that Firefly had already dispatched.
“A Sand Viper.” Firefly put as much derision in his voice as he could muster. He turned to regard Bayonet. “A Snow Serpent. You’re both a little out of your element, aren’t you?”
It was a foolish thing to say; both men would have had to establish themselves as elite soldiers even to have been recruited into one of Cobra’s specialized divisions. They must have excelled within those divisions to have gained the attention of Guillotine and have been recruited into the Plague. Still, Firefly had detected something in Grim Skull’s voice that suggested that he might be taking this mission personally. If he could get into his head, he might survive long enough to find a way to escape the trap that he had fallen into.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 12

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr


He knew that he had to find it soon. There was enough light in the room to see that Grim Skull’s finger was twitching on his trigger.
When he heard the click in his ear, Firefly knew that they were not alone. Still, it took him a few moments of scanning the room to locate the strange shimmering that he found in the corner past Grim Skull’s left shoulder. He smiled beneath his balaclava.
“Come on,” Grim Skull demanded. “Put down your weapons.”
“These?” Firefly gestured at his M3 hanging from his webbing. “Don’t you worry. These aren’t going to be the weapons that kill you.”
Grim Skull leaned in close. “Is that so?” he growled. “What in the hell do you know about what weapons are going to kill me?”
“I know because they’re right behind you,” Firefly answered.
Grim Skull wore a mask that resembled the one Gallows wore; as a result, Firefly missed out on seeing the look of surprise on the man’s face when he heard the voice behind him say, “This is true.”
“Oh, shit,” Bayonet cried out. “He’s got the Wr…”
Firefly couldn’t be certain whether he got the last word out in time or not; the sound of Wraith’s FN P90 drowned out his voice and the startled cry of his companion as they were both gunned down. Grim Skull managed to get a lone burst of gunfire out before bullets riddled his body and sent him sprawling to the ground next to his companion.
The shimmer against the wall resolved itself into the image of a man in a suit of gunmetal gray armor. He looked somewhat like one of the Battle Android Troopers that Cobra sometimes deployed, but when he stepped forward, he lacked any of the mechanical lack of fluidity that characterized the automatons. Wraith lifted his faceplate to reveal what was very clearly a human with a dark goatee.
“Just in time,” Firefly remarked by way of thanks. He turned toward the room’s exits. “The lobby?”
“At least four of them,” Wraith said in a thick French accent.
“There’ll be more if we wait,” Firefly remarked. He placed his hand firmly on the back of Wraith’s suit. “I’ll provide us with some cover. You’d better vanish again.”
“Where is…?” Wraith wanted to know, but Firefly was already drawing two grenades from his belt and making his way toward the doors.
“Never mind that now,” he insisted. “We stick to the plan.”
Before his accomplice could protest, Firefly had thrown open the doors and hurled a grenade into the lobby. He ducked back into the ballroom, waited for the explosion, then immediately threw the door back open and hurled a smoke grenade in the first explosive’s wake.
He had crossed the threshold a second later; though he could not see Wraith, he knew that his companion was beside him due to the barrage the man laid down as they raced through the lobby on their way to the street. Firefly likewise laid down a volley of suppression fire as they ran. Through the smoke, he saw the shadows of members of the Plague and heard their own bullets whiz past his head, but he stumbled past the main doors and out into the street unharmed.
“They’ll be on us in just a second,” an incorporeal voice warned.
“Take the right side of the street,” Firefly advised. “I’ll stick to the left.”
The Plague spilled out more quickly than expected. Firefly had run past approximately three buildings and assumed that Wraith had done the same when some intuitive warning told him that his time had run out. He ducked behind a set of steps that led up into what looked to be a former grocer’s storefront just in time to see Guillotine, Munitia, Infrared, Vector, Body Bags, and Gallows race out of the hotel. Firefly was too far away to hear the orders that Guillotine barked, but the outcome was clear. He, Munitia, and Infrared headed in the opposite direction while Vector, Body Bags, and Gallows began to make their way toward him and Wrath.
Firefly scanned the area. The steps that he was hiding behind would provide him with some cover should he need it, but he recognized that he would be a fool to engage the three men who were making their way toward him. Even with Wraith by his side, he would be hopelessly outgunned, and that didn’t take into consideration that the other three members of the Plague who had just split off from the group approaching as well as another two who were as of yet unaccounted for would rush to their teammates’ aid the second the shooting began. As things stood, making a stand would be to court a death wish.
Running was likewise not an option. Firefly would be gunned down the moment he stepped into view.
He looked across the street. In the faint light, he could just see the shimmering outline of his ally’s suit. Wraith, confident in his armor’s ability to render him virtually invisible, stood by the entrance to an alley. He was no doubt watching to see what Firefly might do.
Vector, Body Bags, and Gallows were now cautiously making their way past the building next to the one whose stairwell Firefly crouched behind. He had to act fast.
He looked again in Wraith’s direction. In one instant, he saw the subtle wavering of the air that marked the mercenary’s outline.
Then, a second later, he could clearly see his ally.
Firefly saw it before the Plague, even before Wraith had realized that something was wrong. “Around the corner,” Firefly whispered into his headset. “You’re visible.”
Wraith did not immediately comply. Firefly saw him startle and then look down. By that time, it was too late to do anything. Vector cried out to his companions, and all three of their weapons turned immediately toward him.
Wraith never raised his own rifle. As the first rounds of the Plague’s barrage fly past, one clipping his left shoulder, he wheeled about and fled into the alley. Vector, Body Bags, and Gallows raced off in pursuit.
Body Bags reached the aperture between the two buildings first. When he saw what was laid out before him, he didn’t even bother to take cover.
Wraith was trapped. The alley was a dead end, without even so much as a dumpster to hide behind or a doorway to try to force open. With no other alternative, Wraith had dropped to a knee amongst the garbage that littered the space and opened fire, but his aim was immediately throw off by the combined salvo of Vector, Body Bags, and Gallows. His armor turned away a few rounds, and he had the satisfaction of watching one of his own bullets pass through Vector’s arm. However, a second later, he felt white hot pain lancing down his hip and knew that it was over.
Long after the body had fallen, Vector, Gallows, and Body Bags continued to pump rounds into Wrath’s lifeless corpse. Vector stopped first and was just about to complain about the pain that was radiating down his shoulder and up his neck when he noticed something rolling between his legs. He stared dumbly at it and didn’t realize what he was looking at until a second one bounced into view and struck the side of Gallows’s foot.
“Grenade!” he bellowed out just before the world turned white. He was conscious of movement and of pain, but where the latter was located, he could not identify. It seemed to consume his body. Only when his head struck the pavement did he understand that his helmet had been thrown off in the blast, and he tried to roll around and find it. Then, something kicked him in the jaw, and he heard the sound of a Grease Gun being fired again and again and the death throes of his teammates. For some reason, he could no longer see. Neither his arms nor legs seemed to obey him, and he felt pain in every nerve in his body.
His last thought on earth was one of comprehension. Though he knew not how, he understood that somehow the saboteur had bested them and that nobody would leave the alley alive but Firefly.

*******

Firefly spent a few hasty minutes rigging the bodies of his latest victims. He had expected the remaining members of the Plague to come rushing to their allies’ defense and worked frantically to turn the corpses into traps that might help further thin down the squad’s ranks.
It was when nobody came that he knew that he was in trouble.
Night had finally chased away the last rays of the day’s sun. He made his way quickly to the salon. It was to have been the site of his final snare, but a cursory glance of the place let him know that those plans would never come to fruition. The establishment had been disheveled when he had last visited it. Now, it was completely ransacked. He spent a moment studying the blood on the walls and wondering whether any of it belonged to members of the Plague.
Something caught his eye. He knelt down and picked up the weapon. It was a shuriken, half of it blood stained.
That, he was certain, answered his question.
Firefly continued to search. After twenty minutes, he knew. The bag was not there.
He could take the gamble and do it right now. Firefly was tired, and he had just lost his final ally. If he could end this with one stroke…
He shook his head. Guillotine, he knew, hadn’t risen through the ranks of Cobra to head the Plague by being careless or stupid. One of the first things that Firefly had learned upon entering the business was to always assume that your enemies were competent and plan against that eventuality. If you thought of them as being as omnipotent as possible and could still put together a plot that gave you a reasonable chance of success, then you would never be disappointed or caught off guard when they failed to live up to that standard. It was a maxim that had allowed him to build the reputation that he had and survive for so long. He wasn’t about to abandon it now.
Firefly studied the trail of blood. Tracking wasn’t his specialty, he thought with dark irony; still, it wouldn’t take an expert to deduce where the remaining members of the Plague had dragged his accomplice. The sporadic drips of blood that led into the business’s backroom and out into the alley told a tale that wasn’t hard to comprehend.
He followed the trail up the block, around the corner, and to the front of a church.
Firefly hung back across the street and studied the edifice. He didn’t like what he saw. All of the windows were made of stained glass, and the ones that had been smashed were too high to allow him a view of what may be awaiting him within. Two large wooden doors swung outward in the front; there would be no sneaking into the building via that entrance. He was just about to circle the place of worship in search of another means of gaining access when he heard a sound behind him.
“I’ll put a bullet straight through your skull if you twitch in a way that I don’t like,” a voice assured him. Firefly knew that it was no idle boast. Crimson Guardsmen were no mere cannon-fodder. He could picture Infrared behind him, his black uniform blending in with the shadows and his rifle aimed squarely at the back of Firefly’s head.
“Put your hands up,” Infrared commanded. Firefly did as he was told. Within seconds, the Crimson Guardsman turned Plague assassin had removed Firefly’s M3 from his webbing and plucked the Glock from his side holster. Firefly felt the man’s bayonet poke him in the back, and with his hands still raised, he marched across the street and mounted the steps that led into the church.
The doors squeaked in protest as he yanked them open, and as he crossed the threshold, Firefly saw approximately fifteen rows of dark wooden pews before him. Some had been thrown aside to create a space in the middle of the church, in the center of which knelt Shadow Tracker. He still wore the ghastly amber ski-mask that had become his trademark, and his hands were bound with rope and were folded behind his head. A cut on his forearm leaked blood into his thick dreadlocks, which hung down past his shoulder blades.
Before him stood Munitia and Guillotine, the former only looming over her captive by about a foot despite the fact that Shadow Tracker was on his knees and she was standing. In all his years of freelance work, Firefly surmised that the only other mercenary who could have competed with Shadow Tracker in terms of height and power was Kwinn, and Firefly suspected he would have given a few inches to the massive soldier of fortune before them.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 13

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr


Firefly studied the scene more as he was marched down the aisle. Scattered about the floor were all of Shadow Tracker’s primitive weapons: his bow, his spear, numerous knives, a machete, bolos, a mambele, three daggers, and a kukri. Shadow Tracker, as far as Firefly knew, never used firearms in the field and preferred to hunt his quarry using more traditional weapons such as the ones he had brought on this mission.
Now, it looked as though they were about to be used on him.
Or rather, on them both.
Firefly continued to study the tableau before him. What he did not see was the bag that he had entrusted to Shadow Tracker’s care before setting off to speak with Scrap-Iron.
Guillotine offered a sadistic smile as he watched Firefly approach. The former Eel, like many members of his crew, often wore a helmet on the battlefield, but it had been set on one of the pews behind him.
“You’ve given us quite a bit of trouble,” he pronounced once Infrared had marched Firefly close enough. “The Plague has never suffered a casualty before today.”
“By my count, your little club is down by about eight members,” Firefly boasted. He saw a flash of anger in Guillotine’s eyes. “It’s going to be pretty hard to replace some of them. I hope it was worth it.”
Guillotine stepped forward. Firefly took a step back and a little to his left in reaction.
“It’s true,” the leader of the Plague said coldly. “We are going to have to recruit all new members. It’ll take a while to train them and get them working as efficiently as the others. Those of us who survived will get a greater cut of the profits, but you’ve still proven yourself to be more trouble than you’re worth.”
He gestured to the numerous bladed weapons strewn out on the floor.
“I think we’re going to make you, both of you, pay before we kill you,” he added.
Firefly shuffled nervously to his right. He made a show of studying the instruments of death before him, but he let his eyes wander to the pews behind Guillotine and Munitia as well. Was that a strap he spotted hanging down?
“You’re thinking about this all wrong.” Firefly tried to make it sound like he was bargaining, but it was a plea. He allowed a little desperation to creep into his voice. “I can join you…”
Munitia barked out a cold laugh. “As if we could ever trust you,” she sneered. “Let’s get on with this.”
Firefly cocked his head to make it look as though he was directing his gaze past Guillotine and at her. In truth, he was trying to get a better look at what might be attached to the strap that he had spotted. It looked to be the right color.
“We’ve worked together before,” he beseeched. “We made a good team.”
“Part of that team was Black Out,” she snarled. “Did you think of that before you executed him?”
Firefly’s hand came up. Infrared had stripped him of his firearms, but he had not taken from him the shuriken that Firefly had recovered from the salon. He swung it up now, but Guillotine reacted quickly and ducked back. One of the blades caught a part of his chin and neatly bisected his soul patch, but Guillotine otherwise escaped the sudden attack unharmed.
That suited Firefly just fine. The feint had bought him just enough space to flick his wrist and send the throwing star hurling at Shadow Tracker.
The throw was true. It struck Shadow Tracker in his right wrist; two of the blades cut deeply into his skin and embedded themselves just below his hand. The giant howled with pain and rose up.
Munitia stood before him. Her eyes went wide as she realized that Firefly’s maneuver had not only cut Shadow Tracker’s wrist but the cord that had been wrapped around them. She raised both of her guns, but before she could fire, her opponent had slammed his massive left palm into her face. One of her shots grazed Shadow Tracker’s left side, but Munitia fell backward to the floor.
Firefly had leapt into motion the second the shuriken left his hand. He wheeled about and delivered a knifehand strike to Infrared’s neck. Infrared fired his weapon, but the shot went wide. Firefly reached forward and grabbed at the Crimson Guardman’s weapon.
Infrared jerked the weapon free from Firefly’s grip and swung it so that the bayonet passed within millimeters of Firefly’s eye, which was exactly the reaction Firefly had hoped to elicit. Bunched up as they were, nobody would survive a firefight if more rounds continued to be expended. Convincing his opponent to turn his rifle into a melee weapon was Firefly’s only chance to escape the current skirmish alive.
Guillotine apparently didn’t feel the same way. He was reaching for his own machine gun. As Firefly sidestepped Infrared’s attack, he whirled about and struck Guillotine in the side of the head with both of his hands folded into one massive fist. The Eel let out a grunt and stumbled a bit.
Firefly risked a glance at Shadow Tracker out of the corner of his eye. He was giving ground to Munitia, who had recovered from his initial attack and was swinging her two handguns, both of which had massive curved blades that resembled scythes attached to them, before her. Shadow Tracker had scooped up his mambele and machete and was using them to deflect her blows, but Firefly noted that the behemoth was retreating beneath the slight woman’s assault.
Firefly knew what was to come next; he had worked alongside Munitia long enough to understand her modus operandi, and sure enough, with the next upward swing of one of her guns, she pulled the trigger and fired a round directly into Shadow Tracker’s shoulder. However, instead of putting the man down, the wound seemed to enrage him even further. He surged forward, and barreled into her with a massive cry of pain and rage.
Four blades were caught somewhere between the crash of bodies, but Firefly had no time to assess how much bloodletting was taking place in that combat because he had to worry about his own. He had forced Guillotine back enough that he was able to kick the pew upon which the Eel had placed the machine gun that he had been reaching for. It fell to the ground and landed beneath the next pew over, which would make it that much harder for anyone to recover in the next few moments. All he had to do was make sure that Guillotine lacked the time to reach for it while simultaneously remaining close enough to the Plague leader that Infrared dared not discharge his weapon for fear of hitting his commanding officer instead of Firefly.
As often happened in circumstances like this, everything became a blur. He dodged, pirouetted, made no move that wasn’t defensive as he searched for an advantage. Though he didn’t remember picking it up, Firefly found Shadow Tracker’s spear in his hand at one point, but he had to immediately toss it at Infrared, who had at some point in the fight lost his own rifle but was diving for Firefly’s M3, which he had apparently set down upon entering the church.
More shots were fired; Firefly couldn’t be sure at this point from whose weapon they had come. All of the combatants were bunched up. Firefly suddenly found himself on the other side of Shadow Tracker and closer to the altar than the entrance. Shadow Tracker was bleeding from half a dozen wounds. The Plague had stripped him of the vest that he usual wore into combat, and the gray t-shirt that he wore beneath it was soaked with blood. Firefly himself was aware of a sharp pain coming from his left thigh, and when he looked down, he saw a four inch gash in his leg.
Guillotine, Infrared, and Munitia seemed to be faring much better. Munitia’s headdress and googles had been knocked off of her by a blow from Shadow Tracker, and the left side of her face was swollen and purple. She was bleeding from several gashes in her body, but Firefly had no time to assess the extent of her injuries. Infrared had been struck in the back by the spear that Firefly had thrown, but the wound was not deep. Of the three, Guillotine remained the most unfazed by the brawl, a fact which worried Firefly. Munitia might have been the craftiest and most sinister of all of the members of the Plague, but Guillotine was surely the most skilled and powerful. In close quarter combat like this, it was harder for anyone to land a killing blow, which was all that had thus far kept Firefly alive but also worked in someone like Guillotine’s favor in the long run.
Guillotine now had his sidearm in one hand and the custom sword that he kept at this side in the other. He swung the blade at Firefly, who ducked away and then pivoted and grabbed Munitia and swung her before him so that Guillotine could not follow up the stroke with a round from his handgun. In doing so, he maneuvered Shadow Tracker so that the giant was facing the Plague leader.
Just as he had hoped, Shadow Tracker charged Guillotine. Munitia swung both of her weapons at Firefly, and he felt two channels get carved into his chest. He heard shots being fired, a scream of rage, and the sound of bodies colliding. He had no time to look, but he imagined rounds striking Shadow Tracker’s chest as the larger man came crashing into Guillotine.
In his peripheral vision, Firefly saw it.
Munitia tried to take aim with one of her own pistols again. Firefly slapped it away and turned to his right. Three steps led up to the sanctuary. He ran.
Now that he was separate from the others, Firefly could not count on being shielded from gunfire. Infrared had retrieved his weapon, but his first shot passed straight through Shadow Tracker’s forehead. The next came just as Firefly was leaping over the altar. It passed through his left palm, and he cried in agony as he fell to the ground.
Firefly heard a groan and a body thud to the floor. A second later, he heard Guillotine call out, “It’s over. There’s nowhere else to go.” He could hear the exhaustion in the other man’s voice, but it was otherwise confident and clear.
It had every right to be. Though wounded, Guillotine, Munitia, and Infrared still lived, as did two more of their allies that Firefly had not yet seen but was sure remained somewhere in reserve. None of the wounds that Firefly had sustained were necessarily fatal should he find the time to tend to them, but he had to survive the next few minutes to do so. That wasn’t a guaranteed proposition.
He looked at the altar. It looked to be made of granite and thick wood that had petrified long ago. He was willing to bet it weighed more than two-hundred pounds. He set his back against it and sucked in deep draughts of air.
“I’m putting an end to this,” Munitia snarled. He heard her stepping forward.
Then, a roar drowned out her footsteps, and for a time, all was lost in the ensuing blaze.

*******

Firefly wasn’t sure for long he had sat there. For several moments, he simply concentrated on breathing and cataloging the injuries that he had sustained. After a while, he removed the glove from his left hand and did his best to wrap a clean cloth around the gaping hole that had been made in his palm. He wondered how much blood he had lost and how much more he could afford to sacrifice.
At last, he rose and turned to survey the damage. Many of the pews had been turned to kindling; blackened shards were embedded in walls and protruded from the bodies of Shadow Tracker, Guillotine, Munitia, and Infrared. Munitia’s body had been thrown forward. It lay on the steps before the altar, the skin blackened and shredded by the blast. Guillotine, who must have been closest to the explosion, was missing half of his face.
He knelt down beside the body of the former leader of the Plague. The man’s sword lay by his side. Firefly retrieved it. It had a two-handed grip of ivory with a skull carved into the pommel. Firefly examined the craftwork in admiration.
“Don’t waste your time,” someone advised. “It is an inferior weapon.”
Firefly heard a sword being drawn from a sheath.
“A katana is the only worthy blade,” Incision said. He crept out of the shadows holding his sword in his right hand. “Of course, it makes no difference unless it is in the hand of a master.”
Firefly studied the man before him. Incision had once been Aleph, the leader of the Night-Creepers, a ninja sect that had allied themselves with Cobra Commander after Storm Shadow had left Cobra’s service. Firefly had never learned the circumstances of his banishment, but he knew that Incision had been excommunicated from the group prior to his alliance with the Plague.
Firefly’s hand throbbed, and his knees felt weak. “I knew that our paths would cross at some point tonight,” he said. He used Guillotine’s sword to gesture at the shuriken that lay beside Shadow Tracker’s body. “I assume it was you who captured him?”
Incision nodded.
Firefly gestured at the carnage around him. “You should have been here,” he suggested. “You missed a hell of a battle.”
“I don’t care about that,” Incision told him.
“What do you care about?”
“Collecting the bounty that has been placed upon you,” the ninja replied. “With my allies dead, the fee will be mine alone.”
Firefly raised the sword he held before him in a two-handed grip. He leaned forward and slid his left leg behind his right.
“You’ve watched too many movies,” Incision sneered. “I’ll make this quick.”
He strode forward and swung his weapon once, twice, three times in rapid succession. Firefly parried them clumsily. With each blow, he gave ground.
Incisor stopped and cocked his head. “You’ve had some training,” he remarked. “Your form is terrible. Your technique is sloppy. Still, this isn’t the first time you’ve held a sword.”
“It won’t matter,” he continued. He gestured with his blade at Guillotine’s dead body. “You aren’t fighting some thug who thinks wearing a sword at his side makes him a warrior. I belong to one of the oldest ninja clans in the world. Few remain alive today who possess the skill to even challenge me.”
He unleashed a series of blows. Firefly parried them, but with each stroke, Incisor’s blade came closer. Firefly gave more ground, but his enemy did not relent. Firefly’s responses grew more and more sloppy.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 14

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr

At last, Incisor saw his opportunity. He delivered a slash that might have cloven Firefly’s head clean off had Firefly not dipped his shoulder and raised his own blade just a fraction of a second before it crossed the plane of his shoulder. His blade met Incisor’s at just the right angle to send the ninja’s sword continuing on a path that allowed Firefly to duck beneath it.
Firefly continued to drop to one knee as he passed Incisor’s right side. As he did, he brought his own sword around near his left shoulder. Then, taking the blade in his right hand, he slashed down and backward.
The sword sliced across the bottom of both of Incisor’s calves. He dropped to his knees in agony and howled in pain as both of his Achilles tendons severed and rolled up the back of his legs.
Firefly got to his feet and walked around his opponent. Incisor raised his weapon up, but Firefly swung his own blade and cleanly separated the man’s hand from his wrist. Incisor screamed in pain and brought his bleeding stump to his chest.
Firefly removed the man’s helmet and regarded him silently.
“It’s impossible,” Incisor whimpered. “I studied with the finest masters. The Night-Creepers…”
“Are amateurs,” Firefly finished for him. “We spoke of them with derision.”
“We,” Incisor repeated. His lips trembled. Finally, his eyes grew wide.
“Arashikage,” he muttered.
Firefly nodded. He dropped the blade he held, bent down, and retrieved Incisor’s discarded katana. He studied the blade carefully.
“For a time, a studied alongside the Arashikage,” he said at last. “During that time, I became known as the Faceless Master.”
He turned his attention away from the edge that he had been admiring and saw the look of wonder and fear in his enemy’s eyes. Firefly took a step to his right so that he could study Incisor’s profile.
“Those days are long over,” he explained. Quietly, he added, “Perhaps, I should bequeath the name to you.”
His stroke was an uppercut. It caught Incisor beneath the chin before coming up through the lower jaw. It continued on, through the skull behind the nose, before passing through the eyes and coming free.
Incisor’s lifeless body fell forward. Firefly knelt, cleaned the katana on its former master’s tunic, and then went back out into the night.

*******

In the earliest moments of the battle, when Firefly had first escaped from the ambush at Scrap-Iron’s facility, half of the members of the Plague had chased him down on foot. Another group piled into one of the two vans that had borne them to the battlefield and driven a few blocks in an attempt to get ahead of him and cut off any chance of escape.
The van was battered and missing all of its windows, but it remained where it had been haphazardly abandoned in the middle of the street. Given the way the town had been abandoned, Firefly suspected that aside from the one which had brought he and his allies here, which was hidden in a garage in a hamlet a good ten miles away, it was the only working vehicle within fifty miles.
This was, of course, why Interrogator, the last surviving member of the Plague, was slinking his way toward it now.
He stopped when he saw Firefly standing some fifteen yards away, leaning up against a long-dead streetlamp with both of his hands resting on his belt.
The two men regarded each other silently.
“How did you know?” Interrogator asked at last.
“What?” Firefly wanted to know. He tipped his chin in the direction of the van. “That you’d come for this?” When Interrogator nodded, he added, “You’re a coward. Always have been. You’re plenty tough when you’ve got some poor soul strapped to a table. You love pain, as long as you’re the only one who can administer it. A fair fight, though? It was never your style.”
Interrogator sized him up. “You don’t look so good,” he remarked.
Firefly didn’t flinch. “Make a move for that pistol, then,” he suggested. “Let’s see what happens.”
Neither man moved. After a long pause, Firefly said, “That’s what I thought.”
“So what now?” Interrogator wanted to know.
“You get out of here,” Firefly suggested. “Get in that van, hit the gas, and don’t look back.”
“That’s it?” Firefly was sure Interrogator hadn’t wanted to put that much excitement in his voice, but it was there. “You’re just going to let me leave?”
“I never wanted this,” Firefly reminded him. “You attacked me.”
Interrogator wasn’t convinced, though he did take a step toward the van. “No hard feelings? You aren’t going to try to do anything to me as a leave?”
There was a hardness to Firefly’s voice when he spoke. “I promise you that I will not raise my hands from my belt until you’re gone.”
That was all Interrogator needed to hear. He leapt into the driver’s seat of the van and brought the engine to life. He risked another fearful glance in Firefly’s direction to confirm that the saboteur had not moved in any way, then threw the van into drive and tore off down the road.
Firefly watched until all that he could see of the vehicle were the taillights in the distance. Then, without moving his hands from his belt, he depressed the button on the detonator.
The van erupted into a fireball. He smiled as he watched the flames rise up into the night.

*******

“That was a mistake.”
Firefly turned his head toward the sound. One of Scrap-Iron’s drones hovered above the street a half a block away. Apparently, he had outfitted them with speakers so that he could broadcast his voice through them.
This probably meant that he also had microphones on them as well.
“Why is that?” Firefly ventured.
Sure enough, he soon heard Scrap-Iron’s voice responding. “They were all that was keeping you alive,” it said. “Now that they’re gone, there’s no reason to hold back.”
“Goodbye,” he added. The voice was already sounding distant. Scrap-Iron was no doubt pulling his drones back so that they didn’t get caught up in the blast that he would soon be sending Firefly’s way. Knowing Scrap-Iron, he probably intended to level the entire block, and he could do so from as far away as three miles.
At least one of the drone’s payloads, possibly many more, was probably inbound, but Firefly felt as though he had to try.
“Scrap, you don’t want to do this,” he cautioned. “Do not launch.”
There was no response. Firefly pulled the balaclava from his head and craned his neck. He wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination or not, but he thought he heard the shriek of an incoming warhead cutting through the air. He closed his eyes and awaited what was to come.
He heard the blast, then felt the warmth of the explosion envelop him.

*******

When dawn came, Firefly was sitting on the curb. His balaclava lay on the ground beside him, and he was finishing the breakfast he had salvaged from his bag. He was sore all over and a bit woozy due to the blood that he had lost, but he had tended to his wounds as best as he could. He knew that they would not pose a serious threat to his life provided that he got professional help as soon as he vacated the area.
He couldn’t do so yet, though. He had one more piece of business that needed to get attended to.
In the soft morning light, he began to climb through the rubble of Scrap-Iron’s warehouse. The flames had died down in the early morning hours, and whatever stray ordnance had been lying around had long since detonated. There was a danger of having the wreckage shift while he was rummaging through the site, but he deemed it worth the risk.
He spotted Scrap-Iron’s protective chamber within five minutes. The Plexiglas walls were cracked and no longer intact, but they appeared to have sustained the blasts that had destroyed the warehouse only to get battered apart during the building’s collapse.
Scrap-Iron lay sprawled within. He looked equally abused. Both of his legs were pinned beneath the equipment that had shared the room with him, and the unnatural angle from which his left leg protruded from the knee suggested that numerous bones had been broken in the fall. Scrap-Iron lay in a pool of blood, though Firefly could not see clearly enough to judge what wound was leaking the ichor.
Firefly regarded his former comrade in arms for a moment and then pounded on the clear barrier that separated them.
Scrap-Iron groaned. Firefly leaned in so that his voice could be heard.
“It’s over,” he pronounced. “Do you hear me? We’re done.”
Scrap-Iron moaned again. His head lolled to one side, and his helmet slipped from his head. When he opened his eyes, they rolled about before swimming into focus.
“It’s over,” Firefly repeated.
“Your allies are dead,” Scrap-Iron whispered.
Given the man’s injuries and the loss of his weapons factory, Firefly couldn’t believe that this was Scrap-Iron’s first concern. Still, he knew that if the events of the past evening were to amount to anything, he had to be absolutely clear.
“Of course, they are,” he explained patiently. “I planned it that way. I hired them for this job, but I never had any intention of paying them. They were expendable, and I made sure that none of them survived.”
“You?” Scrap-Iron croaked.
“I ordered Ghost Bear to take out Velocity knowing that Black Out would dispatch him,” Firefly explained. “The others were on comms, so I had to make it look like he was a casualty.
“Wraith’s suit failed the moment I needed a distraction. Did you really think that Destro was going to make a suit that renders its user invisible without building some sort of failsafe to cancel it out? I slipped the disruptor onto the back of his armor in the ballroom and set him up to lure our enemies into position so that I could take them out.
“Shadow Tracker thought he was carrying around a satchel of explosives for me. He just had no idea that they were primed. The plan the entire time was to set them off when they would do the most amount of damage, to him and whoever he thought he was fighting for me. I just had no idea that I would be so close when I had to detonate them.”
Scrap-Iron stared directly ahead for several moments. Firefly watched the unsteady way his chest was rising and falling with each breath and wondered just how much of the man was damaged. The entire point of the battle had been to send a message, and it would be most effectively delivered if Scrap-Iron lived.
Still, Firefly considered as he studied the wreckage about him and thought about the bodies strew about the city, the point he had been trying to make would seem pretty clear to anyone who came to investigate what had happened here.
“How?” Scrap-Iron finally asked. It had been the question that Firefly had been waiting for, and he smiled.
“I told you last night,” he began. He gestured at the destruction around them. “It isn’t about blowing things up. It’s about the art. Sabotage is finding your target, learning, deciding what has to be done.
“Are you so arrogant as to believe that I would just wander into your lab last night? I’ve been here for a week, right under your nose. I had infiltrated this warehouse no less than four times before you ever saw me. Once I knew you’d use the drones against me, it was child’s play to reprogram them to target this building.”
He leaned in close so that his face was almost pressed against what was left of Scrap-Iron’s safe house walls. Firefly didn’t want any of what he was about to say to get missed.
“I want you to think about that, Scrap,” he cautioned. “I can get in anywhere, and I’ve already had access to all of it. Cobra Island. Destro’s manor. Extensive Enterprise offices. The safe houses, the submarines, the castle, Springfield: I’ve been inside it all. I’ve spent years exploring basements and side passages and crannies that most of you don’t know about. You have no idea what I’ve set up or what I can get to.
“If you all want this war, you’re welcome to it. Kill each other off for all I care. Someone will rise to take Cobra’s place. If the pay is right, I’ll keep on doing what I’ve been doing and not look back.”
He let the hardness that he felt creep into his voice. “Know this, though. You’ll all lose. Every one of you.”
Firefly straightened himself out. Despite his wounds, and despite the exhaustion that had settled on him in the wake of the evening’s battles, he felt good. He squared his shoulders and studied the battered form before him before saying the one thing that he knew to be true.
“Last night was a message,” he declared. “I’m through. Leave me out of it. You’ll all lose this Cobra Civil War.
“In the end, the only person who can win it is me.”

[wedge1968]

Man, I have been waiting a long time to see the art and customs that you have been assembling, and they did not disappoint. I know you have been pulling this together for a long time, and the results are breathtaking.

[Long Shot]

Outstanding read! Thanks for sharing. Really enjoy the writing to instill what is taking place mentally.

[SlicesCustoms]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wedge1968

Man, I have been waiting a long time to see the art and customs that you have been assembling, and they did not disappoint. I know you have been pulling this together for a long time, and the results are breathtaking.

It truly is a legendary story for Firefly. The details for every single thing are incredible. Atmosphere, character, environment, mentalities, everything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Long Shot

Outstanding read! Thanks for sharing. Really enjoy the writing to instill what is taking place mentally.

Preciate it! It?s all Wedge man. He?s a wizard with the words

[CG23]

Just awesome. Outstanding in all regards

[SlicesCustoms]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CG23

Just awesome. Outstanding in all regards

So glad You like it bro!

Wedge’s writing is truly remarkable.