[SlicesCustoms]

Hey Guys,

This is a gift to the tank.

“Firefly 2096
Is a story about Cobra being divided internally into civil war. Everyone loyalties are tested including the main character, Firefly”.

this has been a project I’ve been working on for a long time.
About a year ago, I reached out to different artists, and writers, to brainstorm a new story , continuation rather , for GIJoe lore expanding “what if” possibilities.

This is clearly non canon , just a fan who loves Joes.

This was pieced together for us as a whole. By each artist , Writer and Designer of F?refly’s reimagined concept .

I gave Bill (wedge) bullet points , my non negotiables which were Fireflys looks, weapons, and dark/ gore writing and let the man have free range to express his craft.

I gave each artist similar bullet points. I wanted their own interpretation free flowing. Unrestrained .

Bill you are a fucking legend my man. This story kicks serious ass!

This story is 98% Bill and 2% me. The character 2096 is just my reimagining of a fan favorite. This is all a gift to the Tank and fans to escape for a couple hours into GI joe imagination.


I?ve attached a read along app as this is a long story that I will break up in parts .

https://ttsreader.com/player/ - simply copy and paste. It?s read for you
I hope you guys enjoy.


Firefly 2096

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr

Story By Bill (Wedge) figure By Slice

Some people, Firefly knew, would take in the surroundings and say that it looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic zombie film.
He supposed he couldn?t have blamed them. The broken windows of the buildings that lined the streets were so coated in grime that even the most direct rays of sunlight struggled to illuminate what might lie within. Within the buildings themselves, one could find the scattered refuse of lives left behind: a child?s stuffed animal lying amidst a pile of broken dishes, torn and soiled clothing kicked into a corner, a flat screen television dropped and abandoned during a hasty retreat or lying in pieces where it was dislodged from its place on the living room wall.
The apparent lack of life for miles in any direction.
He wouldn?t have blamed anyone for drawing such a comparison, but he would have held him or her in contempt. It was easy for civilians to turn to fanciful comparisons to help explain things that were well outside of their experiences, but professionals like Firefly knew all too well how to read such things.
He had stood amid the rubble of too many villages and towns that had been abandoned during wartime to fail to recognize the signs.
Firefly wasn?t sure what conflict had led to the mass exodus of this town?s residents; he wasn?t even truly sure whether he was in Darklonia or Trans-Carpathia. It didn?t matter, neither the reason for the village?s abandonment nor what border he might or might not have crossed to get here. All that concerned him was the knowledge that he was not as alone as he might appear.
Someone else was here. If the carefully camouflaged and deceitfully broken-looking cameras that he had identified as he made his way toward the warehouse in the center of town were any indication, that person was watching him.
To an untrained eye, the building that he was approaching might appear to be like all of the others; the same rusted locks, crumbling steps, peeling paint, and overgrown landscaping that characterized the rest of the town were on full display here as well. Primary among Firefly?s skills was infiltration, however, and he had lost the ability to glace at a building without sizing it up and finding at least three points of entry and two means of egress that might suit him should a job go sideways. As such, he couldn?t help but see the things that the warehouse?s owner might prefer he not observe. The fact that the windows in the upper levels appeared to be cracked only because they had been painted to appear so. The security cameras that appeared to have been dislodged from their housings and hung haphazardly but still to a fault remained fixed on the building?s most likely avenues of approach or entrances. The subtle thrum of the air beneath the abundance of electrical lines that ran to the structure?s fifth floor and betrayed the fact that despite the absence of any visible light, someone within was using copious amounts of energy.
An overhead garage door in the back of the building, beside what had obviously been a loading dock in the early days of the warehouse?s history, best suited his needs. Firefly wore his typical gray and black camouflage outfit, complete with balaclava, and he trusted the outfit to keep him mostly invisible in the waning afternoon light. He had made it to the door within minutes of leaving the protective darkness of the alley across the street in which he had been skulking. It took him half that time to disable the lock that would have otherwise barred his entrance. The long-unused door squealed in protest as he lifted it up, but he quickly rolled beneath it and gently set it down before it could send too much noise echoing through the complex?s winding corridors.
There was no light on this level. As Firefly?s eyes quickly adjusted, he saw the outlines of pallets of material, machinery, and forklifts. Piles of tools lay on workbenches that lined the perimeter of the room. All of this sold the lie of the building?s owner, that this was merely another abandoned factory in a neighborhood full of similarly neglected businesses. Firefly couldn?t help but shake his head as he ran a finger across the seat of the forklift to his right. Even in the sparse light, he could see that the gesture had left no dust on his glove.

[SlicesCustoms]

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr



As Firefly made his way deeper into the facility, he had to make a conscious effort not to draw the pistol that was holstered at his side. He reminded himself that he was not here to fight.
He just hoped that the building’s occupant felt the same way.
A large metal stairwell led him to the second floor, which like the first was littered with industrial supplies designed to give the impression of an abandoned factory. He didn’t bother to stop and look for the clues that would tell him otherwise but instead made his way toward a more narrow set of stairs that would take him to the third floor. He crept cautiously up the darkened stairwell until he reached the next set of doors, which he found were locked.
This, he knew, was an anomaly. The stairwell would have served as an emergency exit in the case of fire or elevator malfunction. There was no rational reason why the doors leading to and from such a route would have needed locks, which meant that they had been added after the facility’s newest occupant had taken control of the building.
For the briefest of moments, Firefly considered bypassing the lock, but he quickly dismissed the notion. The impulse had been borne of pride, the desire to demonstrate his superiority over any barrier that might keep him from completing a mission. What he sought, he reminded himself, was most likely to be found levels above him. He had no time to waste in appealing to his vanity.
Firefly was the world’s most skilled saboteur, a man whose name was spoken with envy among allies and whispered in fear by everyone else. He was long past the days when he had to prove himself to anyone.
He paused at the fourth story landing just to confirm that its door was locked as well, then crept up to the building’s top level. Firefly was not surprised to find that this door, too, was set to bar him from entry, but he was a little shocked to see that here for the first time all of the pretenses of the complex’s function had been stripped away at last. The keyed lock that had been ubiquitous on the previous two doors was here as well, but the digital panel that was recessed on the wall beside the two swinging metal doors could not have been original to the factory. It was the type of security system that most civilians assumed existed only in popular fiction; one that would require the scan of a person’s palm and retina to bypass.
Firefly had encountered a similar system in a secure part of the Pentagon. At the time, it had taken him almost four minutes to disable the device.
He bypassed this one and picked the lock on the door in less than three.
Light flooded his eyes as he slowly opened the door and made his way to what awaited beyond. The room in which he found himself could have been described as opulent, if one’s definition of opulence was predicated on the presence of as much material dedicated to the ending of another man’s life as possible. He saw missile casings, pieces of artillery systems, racks and racks of explosives and ammunition, and circuitry and wiring whose purpose he knew would be to direct ordinance toward hapless fools blindly serving one doomed cause or another. There were enough gathered munitions before him to reduce a small city to nothing but sand, and Firefly might have found himself pitying the residents of such a place had he not suddenly had problems of his own to contend with.
That problem came in the form of three red dots that had suddenly appeared in the middle of his chest.
Firefly was wearing Kevlar, but he knew enough about the man whose weapons were trained on him to know that whatever was about to be fired wouldn’t just penetrate the armor.
It was likely to disintegrate his entire torso.
“Don’t move.”
Firefly made a show of raising his hands up. His voice did not quaver when he said, “Turn that thing off. It’s me.”
“Keep your hands up. Take three steps forward.”
“Scrap, I’m not going to…”
“Keep your hands up. Take three steps forward.”
Firefly sighed and did as he was told. As he did, a small room, one whose walls appeared to be made out of Plexiglas, came into view from behind a massive piece of machinery whose lethal purpose the saboteur could only guess at. There was a small cot in the room, which was otherwise filled with computers and monitors.
Scrap-Iron’s head could be seen peering over a bank of monitors.
He gestured with one hand at the walls that surrounded him. “You’ll never penetrate it,” the weapons designer bragged. “It’s designed to be impenetrable to even the highest caliber bullets.”
Firefly let his eyes glance over the weaponry that was spread throughout the open floorplan of the loft. “It’s a good idea. I’d want a safety room to run to if anything in here malfunctioned as well.”
He turned back just in time to see that his words had had their desired effect. Though the visor on the helmet that Scrap-Iron always wore hid his eyes, it could not block the flush of crimson that rose to his cheeks. The weapons designer took great pride in his work, and he bristled at the suggestion that something might go awry in his experiments.
This, Firefly noted to himself, in spite of the scars that lined his face and told the tale of previous disasters that had befallen him.
Scrap-Iron stared at him icily.
Firefly let the frustration that he felt creep into his voice. “Scrap, you can drop the theatrics. You can see that it’s me. We’ve been allies for years.”
“Allies,” Scrap-Iron repeated in a whisper. More loudly, he asked, “To whom do your loyalties lie?”
“To whom do my…What kind of question is that?” Firefly retorted. “You know the answer. I’m loyal to whoever is paying me, but for the last several years, that has been Cobra Commander.”

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 3

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr



“Cobra Commander.” There was a hint of derision in the way that the weapons designer said these words that surprised Firefly; whether they counted themselves allies or foes, few people spoke of Cobra’s leader dismissively. To hear Scrap-Iron, who had never shown himself to be one of the organization’s bravest operatives, do so let Firefly know that something was amiss.
“Scrap, what’s going on?” he demanded.
“What do you know?” Scrap-Iron wanted to know.
“I’ll tell you what I know.” There was a hint of anger beneath his words now. “I have a safe house in Novye Cheryomushki. I know that two men found it and tried to kill me there. They were members of the Crimson Guard.
“Why would the twins want me dead, Scrap-Iron?”
Scrap-Iron’s chin dipped. Firefly could hear the sound of his fingers tapping at an unseen keyboard. After a few moments of silence, he looked up again and said, “What were you doing in Russia?”
“I’ve been on an assignment there for months,” the saboteur explained. “I guess one of the self-destruct protocols had failed on a B.A.T. The Oktober Guard had recovered something that would have enabled them to reverse engineer the technology. I was sent to shut down the project.”
Though he could not see the other man’s eyes, Firefly could imagine Scrap-Iron’s eyebrow raising up as he asked, “It took you months to complete this assignment?”
“Sabotage isn’t just about blowing things up. There’s an art to it. It’s about finding your target, researching the scope, determining what has to be done. I had to find what the Oktober Guard had done with the recovered material and who was involved with their efforts. I had to infiltrate the facility and learn how many people had become affiliated with the project. There could be no loose ends. I had to discover how the Russians had compartmentalized their efforts to replicate the work that was being done so that it couldn’t be resumed once I had done what I had been hired to do.
“I am a professional, the best who has ever lived. I was hired to make sure that nothing would be left of the Russians’ efforts, and I did just that.”
His words were spoken with pride, but whether or not they had any effect on Scrap-Iron, Firefly couldn’t be sure. The same dead gaze regarded him from behind the opaque barrier as had watched him since entering the room.
“I completed my mission,” Firefly continued. “I did what I had been hired to do. There is no reason why Cobra Commander should be displeased with me.”
“You think Cobra Commander ordered the twins to terminate you.” The statement was not a question; rather, it sounded to Firefly as though Scrap-Iron was drawing a conclusion. Firefly took a step forward.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he demanded. “What do you know?”
“Cobra Commander is dead.”
Firefly was careful not to react. For the span of several heartbeats, the room was silent.
“How do you know?” Firefly had to ask. “Did you see it?”
“I wasn’t there,” Scrap-Iron told him, “but the Baroness confirmed it. There can be no dispute. Cobra Commander is dead.”

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 4




Firefly studied the man before him in an attempt to discern Scrap-Iron’s thoughts or feelings. As usual, he could read nothing in the man’s body language. Major Bludd had once remarked that Scrap-Iron was the most soulless sadist that he had ever met. Firefly had understood instantly what the mercenary had meant. Scrap-Iron typically had the demeanor and about as much personality as one of Cobra’s Battle Android Troopers, and Firefly might have thought that the man lacked any emotion whatsoever if he hadn’t once seen him on the battlefield. There, on the fringes of a skirmish and far away from any real danger, he had seen the weapon-designer unveil a missile system that he had designed and the cruel look of joy on his face as he had sent half a dozen rockets speeding off on their errands of death.
“Success,” Scrap-Iron had uttered as he watched through binoculars as the missiles decimated several tanks. The word and the accompanying smile had sent chills down Firefly’s spine, uttered as it had been like a benediction.
It was apparent that Firefly would glean no intelligence from Scrap-Iron nonverbally, and he didn’t seem intent on offering any further information without prompting. Taking as much care as he could to ground his voice in neutrality, Firefly asked, “What now?”
“Civil War,” Scrap-Iron declared. “Without Cobra Commander, the organization is at war. Different factions compete to determine who will reign.”
“The twins against the Baroness and Destro?”
“That is partially correct,” Scrap-Iron confirmed. “Xamot began the bloodshed.”
The fact didn’t surprise Firefly; Xamot had always struck Firefly as the more impulsive and violent of the twins. Tomax would be more focused on what a prolonged period of strife might mean for Cobra’s finances, whereas his brother would be blinded by a desire to seize upon Cobra Commander’s empire. Their joint resolve would last only as long as the latter could convince the former that the profits to be made once Tomax and Xamot fully controlled Cobra would outweigh whatever they were losing while the fight for dominance played out. That they might see those costs in different terms was a schism that could be exploited if necessary, Firefly noted.
Of course, even if his assumptions about them was correct, he had to acknowledge that they had formidable might behind them. Firefly knew that they had sleeper agents embedded in governments, financial institutions, industries, and organizations all over the world, and he was intelligent enough to acknowledge that his understanding of the scope of their influence was probably a fraction of the true nature of their enterprises. As soldiers, Crimson Guardsmen were just as formidable as the average Cobra Trooper and were fiercely loyal to the twins, yet their true value lay in the ways they quietly and insidiously shaped the course of policy and the flow of money.
“Who have they allied themselves with?” Firefly wanted to know.
“Major Bludd,” Scrap-Iron stated. “He’s brought a contingent of foot-soldiers with him. Skull Buster is among them.”
None of that surprised Firefly. Major Bludd would go where the money was, and Tomax and Xamot’s war-chest would potentially rival the GDP of many small and several midsized nations. Those members of Cobra with a more traditional military background would ally themselves with him out of a respect of the chain of command, which made him well worth whatever Tomax and Xamot were paying him to support their cause.
A thought occurred to him. “Tombstone isn’t among them?” he wondered. Tombstone was a newer addition to the Cobra hierarchy but was a respected battlefield leader and immensely popular with the rank-and-file soldiers.
“He is a believer,” was Scrap-Iron’s response. Though his words were spoken in their usual monotone cadence, Firefly thought he heard a sense of condensation in the last word. “There is a group that remains huddled on Cobra Island clinging to the belief that Cobra Commander will return.”
“Why?”
Scrap-Iron actually shrugged. “Some, because they did not see his death themselves, refuse to believe it. I imagine that he falls into that category. Stiletto is another. They hold the island in anticipation of Cobra Commander’s return. Others believe the fantasies that Doctor Mindbender perpetrates.”
Firefly cocked his head to one side in query. Scrap-Iron shook his head subtly. “Doctor Mindbender wishes to resurrect Cobra Commander. Our spies inform us that he has acquired the commander’s DNA, as well as the DNA of past military leaders and warriors. He wishes to create a clone who embodies the best qualities of all of these leaders to serve as Cobra’s new emperor.”
Firefly saw no reason to comment on or even react the outlandish story. He had never understood why Cobra Commander had allowed the so-called scientist to indulge in his eccentricities, but it was apparent now that Cobra’s founder’s death had completely unhinged the deranged inventor. For his own part, Firefly was content with knowing that Doctor Mindbender was no threat to anyone while he attempted to carry out his mad schemes, which left him with one less potential enemy to contend with.
Regardless, he was much more concerned with Scrap-Iron’s recent use of the word ‘our’ and what it meant for his host’s allegiances.
He wasn’t surprised to learn that Scrap-Iron had allied himself with Destro and the Baroness, for surely it was the Baroness’s spies who were keeping her informed on the events taking place on Cobra Island. Scrap-Iron had, after all, designed weapons for Destro since well before Destro had allied himself with Cobra Commander. If Scrap-Iron owed any loyalty to anyone or anything, it was to his own research and development, and it was only through Destro’s sponsorship that he would be given the resources and the ethics-free mandates that would enable him to continue to develop the most sophisticated and deadly weapons that the world had ever known.
“Destro is backing the Baroness’s play for power, huh?” Firefly said aloud. He studied the man before him carefully to see what, if anything, might be revealed in Scrap-Iron’s naturally stoic expression.
He was shocked to see a frown as Scrap-Iron admitted, “Destro seems to be absent as of late. Nobody has seen or heard from him since Cobra Commander’s assassination. The Baroness has assumed control of all of his affairs.”
This was a startling revelation; Firefly wondered if the Baroness had done away with Destro completely. He doubted it, as their affection for each other appeared to be more genuine than feigned. Firefly had spent enough time with the Baroness to know, however, that nothing that she said or did could be taken at face value, and he wouldn’t have put it past her to learn that she had been manipulating the arms-dealer for years so that she could one day seize control of M.A.R.S. Industries for herself.
From a practical perspective, it changed little. Whether or not Destro still lived, it appeared as though the Baroness was controlling all of his resources. These included his personal army, the Iron Grenadiers, as well as the two men who commanded its forces. General Mayhem and Voltar were both extraordinary tacticians whose experience rivaled if not surpassed Major Bludd’s. When one considered allies like Darklon and Metal-Head as well as other operatives like Scrap-Iron, it seemed as though the Baroness could field an army just as formidable as the one the twins had at their disposal.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 5

Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr

Firefly mentally ran down the list of other Cobra allies or operatives that he had worked with throughout the years. Most of the important ones were accounted for, had loyalties that could be easily surmised given what he had learned, or were irrelevant, save one. “What about Zartan?”
The sneer that appeared on Scrap-Iron’s face told the tale of just how much disdain he had for Cobra Commander’s favorite assassin. “You never really know where Zartan is, now, do you?” He shook his head in distaste. “Rumors are that he’s holed up in the swamps of Cobra Island, surrounded by the ruffians that he tends to hang out with. They say he won’t leave.”
Firefly knew why. Zartan had been loyal to Cobra Commander, but much of that loyalty was predicated on the fact that he believed that Cobra Commander was the only one powerful enough to save him from the wrath of Storm Shadow, a ninja of the Arashikage Clan whose uncle Zartan had murdered in the early days of Cobra’s formation. Firefly knew enough about the clan and Storm Shadow himself to know that if Major Bludd took even a fourth of the forces that normally patrolled Cobra Island with him when he defected to Tomax and Xamot’s cause, then nothing could prevent Zartan from facing Arashikage justice. He and his Dreadnok allies were as good as dead.
He ran through the roster of warlords, contractors, and mercenaries that had at one time or another been in Cobra’s employ. Scrap-Iron’s intelligence had accounted for a majority of them, or at least the important ones. Overlord was undoubtedly out there somewhere, nursing delusions of grandeur and trying to build a base of power that might make him a contender for Cobra Commander’s vacated throne, but one of the major players would snuff him out just as soon as he showed his hand.
None of this, however, told him what he really wanted to know.
Feigning apathy, he turned his head and began to study the room. Taking a casual step to the right so that he could get a better view of a rack of parts that stood by a shuttered window to the right of Scrap-Iron’s safe-room, he noted that the red dots on his chest were late in tracking him. Scrap-Iron was controlling whatever weapons were trained on him manually, and it seemed as though he was more interested in using them as a threat than anything.
“That’s all very interesting,” Firefly said after a period of silence. “It doesn’t explain why Tomax and Xamot sent a wetworks team after me.” He turned his head and met Scrap-Iron’s gaze once again. “What’s this all have to do with me?”
“There are a few mercenaries whose whereabouts have not been confirmed,” Scrap-Iron intoned. “None of them have the history with Cobra that you do. None of them have the reputation that you do.”
Firefly saw Scrap-Iron’s eyes flicker to one of the monitors before him. Suddenly, that same feral smile that Firefly had seen on the battlefield long ago appeared on the weapons-designer’s face once gain. As before, it made the hairs on the back of Firefly’s neck bristle against the balaclava that he wore. This time, he understood why. He recognized the look. It resembled nothing so much as an alley cat staring down upon a mouse that it had backed into a corner just before it pounced.
Firefly heard the words coming out of his mouth before he had made the conscious decision to utter them.
“Scrap, what have you done?”
“You’ve been gone too long,” Scrap-Iron explained. “Even if you were to be offered a contract, nobody can be sure that you haven’t already committed to the other side.”
Firefly took a step forward and squared his shoulders. “I’m a professional.”
“You can’t be trusted.”
Scrap-Iron’s eyes flickered to the monitor before him again. Intuitively, Firefly understood. Slowly, he crossed the room and made his way to one of the windows.
The pane beyond the shutters was filthy. It offered a distorted and somewhat surreal view of the street below. Still, even through the haze of muck and grime, Firefly saw clearly the two black vans that had pulled up to the entrance of the facility.
Worse, he recognized the passengers who were disembarking and already circling around the building to seal off any points of egress.
He felt the blood drain from his face.
Firefly turned back around. Scrap-Iron was still staring at him with the same merciless smile.
“You didn’t,” Firefly said.
A curt nod was his only response.
Firefly knew that time was running out. If he intended to survive the next few hours, he had to move.
The Plague had come to kill him.

[SlicesCustoms]

part 6


Untitled by Slice's Customs, on Flickr

Firefly had surmised that Scrap-Iron would be loath to actually use any of the weapons that were pointed at him. Now, he had to gamble that his assumption was correct. It would only be a matter of moments before a couple members of Cobra Commander’s personal assassination squad would be in this room, and if Firefly was still here when that happened, Guillotine, the leader of the Plague, would force him to his knees, put a weapon against the back of his head, and send a bullet through his skull before Scrap-Iron could object to the mess Firefly’s brains might make as they splattered across his workshop.
The door that he had used to enter the room was approximately fifteen yards away in a straight line, but Firefly’s first move was not in that direction. A satchel on one of the shelves to his right had caught his eye as he had scanned the room, and he dove in that direction first. He was relieved when he did not immediately hear the sounds of gunfire, though Scrap-Iron’s lack of a reaction made sense. A majority of the objects in this room were designed to cause very large explosions; safe-room or no, it made little sense to risk setting anything off, especially since the Baroness had provided him with a baker’s dozen assassins to carry out the dirty work for him.
Scrap-Iron had always preferred to do his killing from afar.
He scooped the satchel up from the shelf on a run and weaved in and out of workbenches and racks of equipment as he made his way toward the door. Scrap-Iron let out a cry of surprise at the theft of his property but otherwise made no move to hinder the flight. He undoubtedly counted on retrieving the pilfered supplies once Firefly’s life had been brought to an end.
That was exactly the outcome that Firefly intended to avoid. He had left his M3 stashed outside. He had wanted to avoid spooking Scrap-Iron, and it was hard to avoid looking intimidating with a meticulously serviced Grease Gun in your hands. However, he hadn’t been willing to relinquish the Glock 35 that sat in his holster on his right thigh and drew it now. He wasn’t sure whether the door had locked when he had entered the room, but even if it had, that was nothing that a few well-placed rounds couldn’t handle.
He needn’t have worried; he threw his shoulder into the door and felt it burst outward as he stumbled into the landing. He was already slipping his sidearm back into the holster as he stumbled toward the stairs. Firefly knew that it would do him no good in the building. If it came down to shots being fired here, he was already dead.
He had to get out.
There were thirteen members of the Plague. Firefly had identified three viable means of entering or exiting the building. Guillotine would have had the entire team study the layout of the facility and would have assigned two-man teams to each entrance while the rest of the unit formed a perimeter around the building. To further complicate matters, Firefly knew that Scrap-Iron had cameras scattered throughout the warehouse. He was undoubtedly communicating with whoever had been sent inside to flush Firefly out and telling them his exact location.
The only advantage Firefly had was the unkempt condition of the bottom floor of the building. Littered as it was with equipment, pallets of material, and other hazards behind which a potential enemy could hide, it would slow down the members of the Plague who had breached the complex. Even with Scrap-Iron assuring them that Firefly was nowhere near them, a trained soldier would be hesitant to rush through a combat site that offered defenders so many opportunities to ambush their would-be attackers. Even in the absence of armed resistance, the Plague would be slowed by their fear that Firefly had placed booby-traps in his wake. For the moment, his reputation was helping him stay alive.
That would only take him so far. He knew that he had to reach the second floor before the Plague did.
He took the steps three at a time in his mad scramble. As he ran, he listened for the sound of the stairwell doors being thrown open. He had four grenades strapped to the bandolier that he wore, but he knew that they would act as a deterrent at best. Members of the Plague had been hand-selected from Cobra’s various elite units, and they wore the armor of their respective unit. That would protect them from whatever shrapnel a hastily thrown grenade may produce even if they were careless enough to put themselves in a vulnerable position, which Firefly doubted given their training and experience.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 7




He drew his sidearm again as he barreled into the stairwell door that would lead him to the building’s second floor. A quick scan of the vast space suggested that he had outraced his opponents. This assessment seemed to be confirmed when he heard the first-floor stairwell door creak open just as the door that he had rushed past clicked shut.
They would be on him in moments. Firefly navigated his way around the machinery and equipment that littered the room as he made his way to the far wall. Assuming that he hadn’t gotten turned around during his mad flight down the stairs, he was approaching the wall that faced the front of the building, a fact he confirmed via a quick peek past the shutters that kept the windows from spilling in any of the day’s waning light into the facility.
He was, he saw, just above the vehicles that had borne his enemies to the battlefield.
Perfect.
He was already crouched down behind a huge industrial machine that looked solid enough to offer some degree of cover when the second-floor door burst open. Nobody immediately crossed the threshold, and in the darkness, he couldn’t see who it was who was hunting him. A second later, however, just before the door swung back shut, a figure in a black Crimson Guard outfit slipped into the room. He was followed by masked figure lugging around a mini-cannon.
Infrared and Gallows.
Firefly could hear them cautiously advancing. They undoubtedly knew that he was there. When he heard the door open again and two more members of the team enter, he did not turn to see who else was hunting him. He was too busy concentrating on what he was doing.
Firefly and Scrap-Iron had performed very different roles for Cobra, but there was one way in which their expertise overlapped: explosives. Firefly wasn’t sure of the exact contents of the satchel that he had stolen from Scrap-Iron’s laboratory, but he knew enough to know that he had what he needed. Firefly had been working with bombs for most of his life; it wasn’t hard to figure out how to rig the components that he had before him into something that would detonate.
It occurred to him, as he worked the last piece into place and started the countdown, that he should have been concerned that he had no idea how much destructive power he had set into motion. Firefly was an artist, and he was usually painfully precise with his work. Given Scrap-Iron’s proclivity for building ever increasing weapons of mass destruction, it should have worried him that he might be about to destroy half of the building with his hastily built bomb.
He set that concern aside. Something about four elite assassins bearing down upon you had a way of driving all other worries from one’s mind.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 8



Still, that didn’t mean that he planned to be anywhere near the detonation when it occurred, which would happen in about fifteen seconds. Firefly had intended on using the machine behind which he had been hiding as cover from the blast, but his uncertainty now suggested to him that he might benefit from more distance.
The only problem with that was that it was the course of action that would send him scurrying right in the direction of the enemies who hunted him.
Keeping low, he ducked around one piece of machinery and began to scurry toward another.
“There he is.”
The statement was calm, but what followed was anything but. Gallows had been a S.A.W. Viper prior to his recruitment into the Plague, and he couldn’t recall working alongside a member of that division who believed in lugging even so much as one round home with him from the battlefield. Bullets filled the air as Firefly dove to the ground, and the building came alive with a cacophony of concussion as the mini-cannon hurled round after lethal round in his direction. The room took on the semblance of a dancehall as tracer rounds sporadically added a strobe-effect to the madness, and Firefly heard malevolent pings as bullets glanced off equipment and ricocheted back in his direction.
Firefly was pinned down. To move was to die. All he could do was hope that there was enough between him and what was to come and wait.
He was sure that fifteen seconds had passed. Had he somehow, in his haste, made a mistake in rigging up the explosives?
Firefly was conscious of movement before he registered the sound or felt the heat. Something struck his shoulder, and he felt as though he were being dragged by some unseen beast across the floor. Pain shot up his right thigh from some wound about an inch above his knee, and his left elbow crashed into something that refused to yield.
His ears rang, and he tasted copper in his mouth. When he opened his eyes, everything before him vibrated, and he wasn’t sure whether the problem was with the room or with his equilibrium.
He knew that he had no time to settle the debate. Firefly rose on unsteady legs and took two hesitant steps forward. The explosives had blown a hole in the side of the building, just as he had intended them to do. Before him and below, he could see the two black vans, now covered in rubble. Beside them, his legs pinned by a chunk of masonry, lay Vanguard.
Firefly risked a look over his shoulder and back into the room. Infrared had dropped his rifle and had both of his hands around his Crimson Guard helmet. Gallows was still on his feet with his weapon in his hand, but for the moment, he appeared too stunned to use it. The left half of the faceplate that he sometimes wore had been shorn away by flying debris, and the blood flowing from a gash beneath his eye complimented the crimson paint on the remaining half of the helmet. Bayonet, the former Snow Serpent, had been knocked to his feet by the blast but was already attempting to get back up.
Munitia, however, was on her feet; she looked as though she had hardly taken notice of the explosion that had otherwise devastated the room. She offered Firefly a feral smile as she raised her two custom pistols.
Firefly had done jobs alongside both her and Black Out; she was one of the few professionals that Cobra employed whose skills he considered to rival his own. Had it been anyone else standing on the other side of the room, he might have tried beating her to the draw.
Instead, he turned and leapt.
Even then, he barely escaped. One shot whizzed past his ear. Another struck the left pauldron that he wore. Firefly understood that he had to move the moment his feet touched the ground.
Munitia’s third shot, he knew, was not likely to miss.
Firefly’s boots came crashing down on the roof of one of the Plague’s vans, the impact sending what shards of glass hadn’t been dislodged by the rubble than had fallen upon it cascading down upon Vanguard, whose eyes went wide at the sight of Firefly suddenly looming above him. He stopped struggling with the rubble that he was pinned beneath and reached for the XM5 rifle that lay beside him. Firefly was faster. As he leapt from the roof of the van to the hood, he drew his own sidearm and put two bullets directly between Vanguard’s eyes.
As he hopped off of the van, Firefly heard Vanguard’s radio crackle to life. “Black Out, where are you?” he heard over the frequency. Firefly scanned the rooftops and thought he heard the distant retort of a shot being fired, but he couldn’t afford to remain motionless for long. Only a couple of seconds had passed since he had quit the building behind him, but he knew that Munitia would be wending her way through the wreckage of Scrap-Iron’s warehouse in an attempt to get him in her sights. The others who had followed her into the building were likely already making their way down the stairwells to begin their pursuit, and there were still eight unaccounted for enemies already on the ground who were undoubtedly circling back to join the hunt.
With that thought in mind, he scooped up Vanguard’s weapon, lowered his head, and ran.

*******

Firefly made it to the next block and ducked around a corner, but whatever notions he might have held concerning finding safety by putting a little distance between him and his attackers was banished quickly by a burst of gunfire that came from above and chewed divots into the concrete of the pavement beside him. He dropped to one knee, shouldered the XM5 that he had acquired, and sent a burst of return fire at Velocity, the ex-A.V.A.C., who rocketed by overhead before vanishing out of sight as he flew between what looked to have been an office building and an apartment complex.
Firefly knew that whatever respite was being offered while Velocity turned around would be short-lived; already, he could hear the whine of the Plague member’s jet-pack. It was imperative that Firefly reach the gear that he had stowed before making his approach to Scrap-Iron’s base of operations, not only because he longed to feel his own weapon in his hands, but because of other equipment that he knew that he would need to survive the next half an hour. Unfortunately, the hiding spot that he had chosen was still another two blocks away.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 9



He knew that he would never make it out in the open. Velocity had honed his dogfighting skills in a Firebat before trading the small craft in for the jetpack that he now wore. Through him, the Plague dominated the skies, and Firefly’s chances of knocking him out of the sky with the XM5 that he held were only a little better than he might have of hitting him with a thrown acorn. Velocity was just far too maneuverable and quick to mount a successful counterattack from where Firefly stood.
His only chance of survival was finding cover.
The window of the storefront across the street had already been smashing in during the looting that had preceded the city’s abandonment. Firefly ran toward it now and was only ten feet away when Velocity sent another spray of bullets in his direction. Firefly listed a little to his left in an attempt to avoid the barrage and then leapt into the air. A few rounds chased him into the building, and he dropped to the ground and rolled until he was certain that he was deep enough inside the store that Velocity would be unable to target him without landing.
Though he doubted the pilot would quit the skies, he could neither rule it out, so he sprang to his feet once again, snatched up the gun that he had dropped, and began sprinting deeper into the retail space. He leapt over the counters in the back of the store, ducked past the doors that led to the space’s storage areas, veered to the right, and threw his shoulder into the outward swinging rear exit.
It burst open, spilling him into an alley. He wasted no time in turning left and making for the next street over. Firefly was certain that Velocity would be soaring overhead, like some sort of mechanically enhanced bird of prey, but there was nothing that could be done for that now. All that he could do would be to hope that he might time his emergence from the alley at a point in Velocity’s flyby that would prevent the member of the Plague from gunning him down immediately.
Firefly emerged into the street almost at the same moment that Velocity sped past. Knowing that his enemy could maneuver with an almost supernatural degree of precision, he sent a volley in Velocity’s direction that he hoped would at least buy him a few seconds to cross the street unhindered.
He almost got what he wanted. Velocity pivoted and retreated several yards before launching his counter-attack. By that time, Firefly had crossed the street, sprung from the sidewalk to the concrete steps that led up to the entrance of an apartment, and begun pumping rounds into the lock of the door before him.
Velocity’s shots whizzed past, and he realized that his efforts to bypass the lock would be in vain. In a panic, he shifted his aim and fired a burst into a window just to the right of the entryway. When his magazine finally ran dry, he hurled the rifle through the shattered glass and then launched himself into the air in its wake. Broken glass shredded his uniform and tore his skin as he came smashing into an unkempt and filthy living room.
His body ached, and he was sure that he was bleeding from half a dozen places. Still, while none of the wounds would prove to be fatal, he knew that inaction would be. Dragging himself to his feet, he staggered away from the street and went in search of the door that would lead him into the apartment building’s hallway.
His gear, he knew, was stashed on this block. It would take him a moment to get his bearings and figure out how to retrieve it without being spotted by the enemy who hovered above. Firefly knew that he had to act fast. Even with his detours through the buildings, he knew that he could have scarcely covered the ground he had much faster. Still, the rest of the Plague would be hard on his heels, especially with Velocity tracking his every move.
Ignoring the stitch in his side, the blood running down his arm, and the fact that he no longer had a weapon more powerful than the pistol at his side, he limped on.

*******

Firefly crept out of the shadows and ducked into the alley just before Body Bags rounded the corner. Though members of the Plague were now spread out and patrolling the block, he hadn’t seen Velocity circling overhead in a few minutes.
He thought he knew why; now that he wasn’t running for his life, he was able to listen to the telltale sounds of gunfire that came from above. Black Out, the Plague’s sniper, wasn’t the only one on the rooftops, and Velocity had been dispatched to investigate just who was challenging the kill-squad’s domination of the high ground.
There was nothing that Firefly could do about it without the equipment that he had stashed in this alley. Dropping to one knee, he reached beneath a dumpster and slid out a worn duffel bag. He unzipped it and drew forth his M3. For a second, he relished the weight in his hands; though there wasn’t a rifle nor machinegun that he wasn’t proficient with, there was something reassuring about holding your own weapon in times of crisis. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to emerge from the mouth of the alley and empty an entire magazine into whichever member of the Plague happened to be closest.
Resisting the urge, he set the weapon down and drew something else from his bag. The headset slipped over his balaclava, and he heard the words being transmitted even before the microphone was in position before his lips.
“I’m pinned down,” the voice said. To the speaker’s credit, there was no discernable trace of fear in the statement. “It isn’t just that damned idiot in the sky. There are drones all over the place too.”
“Those’ll belong to Scrap-Iron,” Firefly said. He began to study the alley’s fire escapes and tried to picture where he was in relationship to where he suspected he needed to be. “What’s your location?”
“I’ve moved about two blocks west of Scrap-Iron’s facility,” came the reply. “I had to…”
The rest of the response was drowned out by a barrage of gunfire. Firefly was already zipping up his bag and hoisting it up over his shoulder when he said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m not that far away. Stay put.”
He scrambled up the fire escape as quickly as he could; there was no time to try to muffle the sounds of his boots clanging against the iron steps. He had just reached the roof when the Laser-Viper, Vector, appeared in the alley below him, but Firefly was able to duck out of harm’s way before the member of the Plague could fire a shot in his direction.
The rooftop that he stood atop was one of the highest in the neighborhood. Ducking low so as to avoid making himself a target, he peered in the appropriate direction and saw Velocity circling over a building half a block away. Crouching, he made his way in that direction and continued to study the other rooftops. When he had reached the edge of the building, he saw distant movement.
“Take a shot at Velocity so that I can pinpoint you,” he ordered.
“I won’t hit him,” the voice in his ear told him. “I’d have to expose myself to Black Out to get a clear shot.”
“I just want to see where you are,” Firefly explained.

[SlicesCustoms]

Part 10



For a moment, nothing happened. Then, he saw the shadow that he had been studying shift. A second later, he heard a shot being fired. A second, this one coming from the spot that Firefly had been watching, sang out in response.
“I’ve got you,” Firefly said. He leapt across the chasm that separated the building he had been perched atop and the next. “I’m going to need you to take out the one in the air.”
“I told you,” came the protest. “Black Out…”
“I’ll take care of Black Out,” Firefly assured him. “You don’t have to worry. Just take out that flyer.”
For several seconds, no words came across the airwaves. Firefly leapt from one building to the next and waited.
Finally, he heard a single word response.
“Da.”

*******

Black Out begrudgingly had to acknowledge the truth.
Ghost Bear was good.
Low-Light, Shooter, Cross Hairs, Snow Job, Stalker: Black Out had served with some of the military’s finest snipers when he had been a member of the G.I. Joe team. Ghost Bear could have held his own against any of them. Black Out had never met the mercenary’s father; Kwinn’s time with Cobra had long preceded Black Out’s defection. Black Out figured that Ghost Bear must have learned something from his old man, however. The only soldiers Black Out had ever met who were that good at their jobs had had a rifle thrust into their hands just about the time that they had learned to walk.
Of course, comparing Ghost Bear to all of the other snipers on the G.I. Joe team was no threat to Black Out’s ego. He knew that he was far and away a better marksman than all of them combined. This included the incredibly talented kid with the stupid patch of orange hair sticking out of the top of his garish purple ski mask on the rooftop across from him.
Somehow, Ghost Bear had almost gotten the drop on him. When Black Out had set up on the roof across from Scrap-Iron’s facility, he hadn’t considered that there might be other combatants in the area. The mission had been to eliminate Firefly, and that was what Black Out was focused on doing when the first round struck the air conditioning unit next to his head. He had gone after him immediately, nominally because he had wanted to eliminate any threat to himself and other members of his team, but also because he wanted to personally end the life of anyone who could tell the tale of having come that close to ending Black Out’s illustrious career.
His greatest fear now was that Velocity might get off a lucky shot and do the job for him. He knew exactly where Ghost Bear was and had the slightest fraction of his shoulder in his sights. If Ghost Bear so much as moved a quarter of an inch in the wrong direction, Black Out would finish him. It was only a matter of time.
The only question now would be whether he or Velocity would land the killing blow, and if the honors went to Velocity, then Black Out would never heard the end of it. He was genuinely considering moving up and flushing him out just to make sure that that didn’t happen.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Ghost Bear rose up. Time seemed to slow down as Black Out shifted his aim slightly and began to squeeze the trigger. He was aware of Velocity, on the periphery of his vision, pulling out of a dive in surprise and trying to bring his own weapon up. Ghost Bear’s rifle fired a split-second before Black Out’s, and even as Ghost Bear’s head disintegrated into a mass of brain matter and bone fragment, Black Out understood that his victim had killed Velocity in his dying moments. He lowered his rifle just in time to see Velocity’s lifeless body come crashing down on the side of the adjacent building before toppling over the edge and into the street below.
“That sucks,” he muttered to himself. “That son of a bitch never paid me the fifty he owed me.”
He didn’t feel the pain immediately; Black Out simply became conscious of the fact that he was struggling to breathe. Then, the acute pain that had materialized in between two of the ribs on the right side of his body shot up through his arm and down to his hip. He looked down to see a knife protruding from his side.
Black Out spun quickly and tried to get his weapon between him and his attacker, but it was knocked out of his hands with far more ease than he would have imagined possible. He wondered how his strength could be failing him so quickly. Every breath was suddenly torture.
Firefly stood before him. As always, his eyes, the only thing that could be seen, were inscrutable. Black Out forced a smile and nodded.
“We were always the best, you and I,” he croaked. “It makes sense that it would come down to the two of us.”
“You were good,” came Firefly’s response, “but never half as good as you thought you were.”
Black Out glanced at the saboteur’s hands. They were empty, though his Glock 35 sat in his holster. Black Out understood; Firefly was giving him the opportunity to prove just how good he was. His own Desert Eagle was holstered just beside his right hand. With one swift movement, he could put an end to Firefly and complete the mission single-handedly.