Kitty sighed, looking between the door and window before glancing at her phone. Her eyebrows raised slightly and she looked around the room again, hands on her hips. “OOOK…Les, Gadot…window please. Counter snipe as you can. Boner, JimJam, secure the place for me darlings. The Company will be knocking down that door in five or less. Seriously doubt we’ll be done in here by then.”
Godless and Gadot moved to open the curtains as everyone else sidled away from them. Each sniper took one corner of the curtains and crawled away, staying low and out of sight. Gadot then took a position in the corner of the room, leaning slightly out of the already smashed floor to ceiling window while keeping the majority of her body out of sight. Her lever action rifle had no mounted scope, so she produced a monocular and peered through it instead.
“Looks like…three snipers, across the deck. No, four, last one is on the roof. Other three are posted on the top floor, in cover on balconies.” She paused as Godless stood and stepped out into plain sight on the balcony, beginning what appeared to be a strange dance. He moved from one side of the balcony to the other in quick jerky motions, holding his rifle to his shoulder and attempting to aim through the scope on top. “What…ah…what is he doing?” Gadot spoke over a shoulder to Kitty, who huffed and pursed her lips.
“He calls it an ‘Emergent Strategy,’ claims all players who snipe will be doing it soon.” She leaned against the door to the next room, crossing her arms as Godless continued his absurd looking motions. He darted from one side of the balcony to the other, firing and cycling his weapon as he went. “I call it the ‘wiggly sniper’ and happen to think it’s intensely stupid.”
With a shrug, Gadot brought her lever action 45-70 rifle to her shoulder and leaned around the corner, taking aim. “Les, knock it off, you’re not hitting them like that.” She attempted to fire a few times between his erratic bursts of motion, frowning when she couldn’t hit her target.
“Don’t hate.” Godless was already out of breath from the exertion, and bullets from the opposing snipers were raining down across the balcony. Bonecrusher and Jimmy had both stopped their barricading efforts to watch the spectacle, leaning on the large table they had been shoving up against the entrance of the elevator.
“I’m not trying to oppress you or something, I just can’t hit anything with you being in my line of sight.” Taking a quick breath and holding it, Gadot leaned out and took a shot at an enemy sniper. She leaned back behind cover, slipping four oversized shells into the gun one at a time.
Godless grunted as he took a round to his armor. In response he increased his back and forth motion. “Sounds like you just suck at sniping to me.”
Gadot took a deep breath through her nose and held it for a moment, pressing her temples with one hand. “Ok. Sorry Kitty.” She drew her large black handgun and shot Godless in the back of the head. As he dusted out on the balcony, she leaned around the corner and fired four times, cycling the rifle with its lever and taking down an enemy sniper with each shot.
After finishing up with the enemy snipers, Gadot turned to look at Kitty. To her relief, the other woman had a huge grin on her face. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” She moved to the balcony and picked up the guns, clothing, and armor he had dropped, tipping it over the balcony. With that, the Pirates leader turned to give Bonecrusher and Jimmy a withering look. “That elevator isn’t gonna blockade itself boys. And I’m busy.” Stepping back towards the door to the next enemy infested room, she drew a flintlock and blew a hole in the thick wooden door. Once the return fire had stopped, she leaned over and peeked through for a second before dodging backwards with a light giggle.
Waving at the rest of the crew, she beckoned them over to her. Kitty then began sorting them, moving Rouge Worrier and Kurt to stand next to the double doors, with Gadot and FingerNels directly behind them. Bonecrusher and Jimmy were busy shoving the table into the open elevator doors, ensuring that it would remain on their floor and hinder any NPC police breach of the penthouse. “Ok, here’s the plan. Gadot, on my signal, grab the door. Nels will cover you, while I cause a little chaos so Rouge and Kurt can slip in. The room is a kitchen, so there’s a counter that will provide cover just to the left of the door.” She looked up for a moment. “…yeah, we wing it after that.”
Kurt nodded and gripped his Coonan magnum, crouching into a runner’s stance. “Of course we do.”
Rouge raised an eyebrow at him and shook her head. “And I didn’t believe you knew her.”
Kitty chuckled at them and nodded, looking back at Gadot while reaching into her coat. She produced a bottle with a rag sticking out of the top and grinned while she lit the rag on fire. “Ok, go.”
The team exploded into action. Gadot yanked the door open, FingerNels stepped in front of her and began to selectively fire his rifle, Kitty crouched low and leaned around the corner. “Catch!” She shouted with glee as she threw the Molotov into the room. Kurt and Rouge sprinted to the counter, avoiding the flaming patch spreading from the middle of the room, sliding into cover, and managing to stay out of each other’s ways. Kurt turned in time to see the door swing closed behind them, and blinked with concern. The armed and armored NPC enemies in the room all wore black suits under their armor, and had a variety of weaponry. Most of them opened fire with MP5 submachine guns, but at least two of them had shotguns of some sort or other, evident from the chunks of counter and tile that erupted above Kurt’s head. He flinched away from the edge of the counter he was hiding behind and bumped into Rouge.
“That’s very sweet Kurt, but some cover would be appreciated instead. Spray them down, I’ll flank.” Rouge turned and crouched, waiting for her chance to relocate and glancing back at Kurt.
“Umm yeah sure.” He switched his guns, drawing the Glock and making sure a stick magazine of 9mm+P was in place before peeking around the corner. The kitchen had a counter set up along one wall, with a large round table in the center of the room and a bar situated near the window. Kurt and Rouge were stuffed up against the edge of the counter, both crammed into a tiny space. He could see roughly twelve armed guards in cover throughout the rest of the room, and could hear more encroaching from behind the counter. He attempted to blind fire the Glock, but was immediately fired upon from multiple angles. “Alright, screw this. Rouge, cover your ears!”
The flashbang he tossed bounced against the table once before erupting in midair. He stood and drew his magnum again, firing into any guards he could see. Rouge scurried around the corner and took down three dazed guards with her Tokarev before repositioning behind a refrigerator at the end of the counter. As they moved, the doors behind them burst open again and their team entered in formation, Jimmy and Bonecrusher at the lead. Now flanked, the remainder of the NPCs attempted to mount a halfhearted defense, but were quickly shutdown. A concentrated eruption of gunfire had them turning to dust on the expensive looking tiled floor.
Kitty reloaded her Raider and began picking through the guard’s leavings as Jimmy found another fire extinguisher and went to work with it. She frowned at the lot, but started tossing guns and the occasional vest over the balcony anyway. She paused midway through, adjusting her phone for a second. “Right on time.” She paused, clearly listening to someone talking in her ear for a moment. “No Les. I mean…yeah, she did kill you.” Another pause, this time with a frustrated look on her face. “Ok, shut up for a minute. Once you were down, she took out the remaining snipers in like two seconds. So, no I’m not kicking them out of the raid, she was right and you were holding up shit like the asshole you are. Yes, you can rejoin if you can get to us, and no, we won’t wait for you no matter how much you whine.” She paused again, openly scowling at this point. “You know what, go help with the Company defense crew, I’m not listening to you cry all night.”
She turned back to face the team, a forced smile in place. “So Les is pretty pissed at you Gadot. I’d warn you to watch out for him, but something tells me he’s not much of a threat to you.” She mo
ved over to the next door. “Anybody can have a place in the Pirates, but we are primarily a meritocracy. I like how you guys get shit done.” She tried the handle and slumped with a fake cry of despair. “So who wants to open a locked door for me?”
Kurt shook his head and stepped over to the door, producing his lock pick gun. Kitty gleefully clapped and sat down on a nearby stool, giving it a spin with one foot. Gadot moved over next to her and peered out the curtains at the chaos on deck below them.
“So. Jimmy tells me you’re at MIT.” She directed the question at Kitty.
“Ha! No. Well…I was.” Kitty grinned back at her new-found friend.
Jimmy stepped over, concern on his features. “What happened Kitty?”
“Well, you guys remember that totally minor explosion at MIT that was kind of all over the news a couple days ago for no good reason?” She scrunched up her face a little, looking at the floor.
“Oh my God, YOU blew up MIT?!” Kurt started laughing from his position in front of the door, waiting for the unusually long lock pick to finish.
“No, and I’m more than a little offended Kurtis. I blew up an offsite facility, thank you very much. It was totally un-manned, and nobody got hurt. It’s just like…owned by MIT.” Kitty spun her chair again. “Antimatter reaction research requires sacrifice, and my containment designs almost worked. It’s just too bad the stuffed shirts over there didn’t see it that way. Fortunately, I’ve had a ton of offers, and I’ll be going to work with a firm in China soon. It’s actually why I’m transferring to the Mirage server. This little war will be my going away party, I fly out in three days to start my training in Shanghai before transfer to a remote testing facility.”
“How remote? I’m not sure I feel safe with you spearheading antimatter research.” Kurt scoffed, pocketing the lock pick gun after the door clicked.
“Uhhh, pretty remote. It’s in orbit.” Kitty grinned back at their incredulous stares. “So when all people, all countries have unlimited energy and can do away with silly concepts like money or war, you’ll be able to thank me personally.”
Jimmy stepped over to her. “Cat…that’s incredible.” He spread his arms for a hug, which Kitty was only too happy to accept, hopping down from her stool for the embrace. He looked troubled for a moment. “I’m sorry we left things so shitty. I hope you know you can always call me.”
She smiled at him, before shoving away and moving to check out the next room. “Oh hush.” Kitty paused, hand on the door handle. “My communications are going to be pretty tightly controlled, so I probably WON’T be able to always call you. I do appreciate the sentiment though.” Smiling widely, she clicked the door open and flinched back to avoid the storm of gunfire that immediately poured through. “Rude!” Kitty’s face scrunched in annoyance as she grabbed another bottle from her inner coat pockets and lit it, grabbing a second and lighting it from the first.
Kitty threw both Molotovs into the room blindly, tossing one after the other around the corner of the door. She stood and drew a flintlock with a wicked grin, motioning for cover with her head. Jimmy stepped up with a sigh and took a low combat position, hunching slightly over his shotgun. Deciding to be proactive, Kurt stepped up against the door with his Glock and clicked another extended magazine of 9mm+p in place. Kitty turned and chuckled before tapping Jimmy on the shoulder.
They charged into the room, trying to ignore the sounds of screams coming from NPCs on fire and beginning to take down any of them left able to fight. Jimmy’s shotgun ran dry and he dropped it, letting the sling catch it while he drew his double barreled sidearm and fired it from the hip into a heavily armored NPC hiding behind a king-sized bed with a ceiling high backboard. The starburst round left a trail of colored smoke as the NPC dropped.
The room they had breached was a bedroom, and had very little in the way of cover. The NPCs in suits and armor had shoved an armoire and vanity desk into the middle of the room to hide behind, but Kitty’s Molotovs had caused their cover to become an inferno and the survivors had scattered around the room.
Kurt went right as Jimmy went left, and Kitty walked casually into the center of the room, stepping around the flaming furniture pile. She unapologetically grinned as she fired her flintlock and dropped it, drawing another with her other hand in the same motion. Any NPCs who turned to face her received a blast from the flintlocks that knocked them off their feet and sent them to dust on the carpet.
Jimmy used his shotgun to draw the attention of the main group of NPC defenders left in the room, blasting the three who were rolling on the ground, screaming while on fire. He absorbed a few rounds of return fire before raising his Super 90 towards them with a glare while Kurt sprayed down the group and the men finished them off together, a cacophony of gunfire drowning out any remaining screams.
Stepping lightly over a pile of dust and moving towards the window, Kitty casually dropped her last empty flintlock and drew the blinds in a quick motion. She began the work of gathering up all the weapons and armor drops again and tipping them over the balcony. When she saw Kurt looking at her in confusion, she rolled her eyes. “Every bit helps Kurtis, I have a LOT of baby pirates to feed, and these guys don’t tend to stay alive like one would hope.”
The ship groaned in that moment, a long shudder passing through the massive vessel’s bulk. The lights flickered out as the group moved out onto the balcony to watch a massive fireball lazily rising from the deck below them. After ducking to avoid the behemoth wave of flame and heat, they leaned over to assess the damage. A huge chunk of the deck below them was simply gone, the inner mechanisms and below decks exposed and mangled, flame licking at the edges. As they stood on the balcony, the deck beneath them started to move, slowly listing to one side as the cruise ship began to slowly sink.
“You wanted to know what would happen if he set off the bomb, right?” Rouge glanced over at Kurt, her eyebrows raised in concern as the crew moved back into the room, away from the flames and smoke. Each member of the team flicked on their weapon’s flashlights, causing Kurt to remember his own and turn it on with a movement of his thumb as he looked back to Rouge.
His response was cut short by a series of sparks erupting from the roof above him in a large square shape, roughly the size of a small door. Jimmy slammed into him from the side and knocked him out of the way as the roof blew inward and a team of heavily armed police NPCs dropped in on lines. From his position on the floor beneath his friend, Kurt could see a few dozen police helicopters moving into various positions over the cruise ship. Almost all of them were host to police NPCS, dropping to the deck from cables. There were several Coast Guard ships in the waters as well, all sending boarding parties.
Scrambling into a crouching run as Jimmy rolled off from him, Kurt dove under the bed. The rest of his team began to fire their weapons at the police as they desperately sought cover of their own. The room was sporadically lit by muzzle flashes, and persistent beams from weapon mounted flashlights. Jimmy, Bonecrusher, and Kitty slid into place behind Kurt, hiding behind the partial cover of the bed while aiming over it and taking down police with carefully aimed or sporadic wild shots. Kurt shoved and scrambled his way to the other side of the bed, aiming from his prone position with the magnum and starting to do his share of the work.
“Nobody noticed the nine bar Heat creep up on us?!” Kitty was not happy, firing her Raider over the bedsheets before dropping out the empty magazine. She slapped a fresh one in and flung an unlit Molotov at a group of police clustered near the doorway. It shattered against a helmet and dowsed them all, and she took careful aim, firing once at the clustered group. One police NPC ran screaming towards another group, his soaked armor covered in flames and Kitty was quick to capitalize, another unlit Molotov smashing into the wall behind them and setting the new group ablaze as well. “All Pirates, all crew, abandon ship, abandon ship. Repeat, ALL crew abandon ship. We sunk her again gang! Get to your turn ins, safehouses, and hubs. Officers, report your takes to Jerome once all
crew is safe and sound. Good game all, and good luck with your escapes.” She scowled after finishing, turning to squint at the aft of the ship. “Oh, will somebody please unhook the Tug? Do not want to replace that thing again.”
With most of the NPCs down or rolling in agony on the floor, Kurt slid his way out from beneath the bed and took stock of the room while reloading. Three police NPCs were left alive, but wouldn’t be for long, as Jimmy was moving to put them down and stop their screams. “I’d actually managed to forget what it was like to run with you Kitty.” Kurt spoke softly, his eyes wide as he took in the scorched and blackened room, fires still licking at the walls.
“Naw, you just repressed traumatic memories. Happens all the time.” Kitty reloaded her Raider again, a fresh magazine of what was clearly incendiary ammunition clicking into place. “Also, were you just hiding under the bed?”
Scowling slightly, Kurt shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it hiding, but…kind of. I took cover under the bed. Different thing.”
Jimmy spoke up from his position across the room, covering the door they had come through. “If you practiced shooting a bit more, you probably wouldn’t NEED to use so much fire, Kitty.”
Kitty shrugged, hefting another Molotov as she nodded towards the other door, which had begun sparking in a pattern like the roof. “Oh who has time for practice?!” The door blew in and another squad of police NPCs started swarming into the room, only to be splashed by Kitty’s throw. She hip fired her Raider into them, catching the heavily armed NPCs on fire and turning away with a shrug. “Fire beats armor, so I don’t HAVE to be a good shot.” The ship shuddered and they experienced the gut wrenching feeling of it shifting beneath their feet as it continued to take on water at a frightening rate.
The Life- Illusion Page 29