| From: | "Brian E. Angliss" <ANGLISS@***.PSU.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Camera Downloads, Denver Safehouse #12 |
| Date: | Sun, 6 Feb 1994 15:17:51 -0500 |
physically last night and the systems automatically put this on the back burner.But here
it is. Some of the stuff has been edited to remove static, compress
the data, or satisfy security requirements.
*****Begin Safehouse Camera Upload*****
Moriarity has apparently decided to give you an overview of the aftermath beforeactually
transmitting the camera feeds, kind of a before and after shot of the
place. Before you is a perfectly normal one story house, with a larger garage
than most the neighbors and a nice white picket fence. It is the same almost-
battleship grey as all the ones around it, advertising the house to be one of
the hundreds of almost assemblyline homes raised in the years before the turn
of the century. It seems to have aluminum siding, a few nicely tailored bushes,a well
manicured lawn, and a double door entryway. The fence raised around it
is a standard wooden fence, or at least looks like on. The shot from the back
yard shows a couple windows and a back door and some more small trees and bushesthat seem
well cared for.
Then the view changes drastically to the front again. The house is gone.
Totally. There is still smoke rising from the hole that looks like a basement.
Jagged peices of concrete, some that look like small boulders, rise from the
foundation above ground level, apparently in a single peice. Something not
totally edited out in the background shows a shadow where you assume a Central
vehicle rests, probably the one that carried the individual who took these phots and is
resting to take him back. You also notice that the official pictures
shown on the trid not too long ago(Titled "Residential Area Rocked by massive
explosion") forgot to show a rather large and nearly destroyed Winnebago that
appears to be in the process of being towed. Where, you don't know, but can
only guess. Bodies are strewn about, some so badly mangled by the explosion
that you can only guess as to what they were before. Three houses nearby are
suffering from the explosion as well, with holes punched through them(flying
concrete?), some sagging in the odd angles that speak volumes for how many
structural members were shattered by collateral damage. People are beginning
to mill about as the camera again switches to the back yard. The fence, once
looking like wood, still looks like wood but couldn't have possibly held up to
the explosion if it had. Indeed, a couple of broken slats appear to show the
distinctive color and break marks of steel reinforced ballistic composite.
The small trees and bushes appear to have been whipped by something snapping,
not an explosion. Those of you who know the effect from either using it or
having it used against you recognize it as monofiliment. Lots of it. Enough
that you wouldn't have liked navigating through it to get the back shot. And
then the cameras change again...
A phone, inside the house, is ringing. An individual, labled for the time
being as AJ, runs over to pick it up, and a voice comes on: "AJ, spirit down.
Be....zzzzzzzzz beeeeeeeeep..." and the voice on the other end(Moriarity
maybe? You're not sure.) gets cut off in the unnatural manner of a decker
breaking the connection. AJ seems to recognize the sound as well and begins to
shout. "EVERBODY!!! BASEMENT NOW!!!!" and all hell breaks loose.
You thank your lucky stars that the editor cut down the gain on the internal
mics at this point, because it is now that you hear a very large explosion and
the wail/scream of the internal building alarms breaks through the near silence
of before. Coming from the right side and the front door you hear the booms
of violent explosions and the cameras record the locking and sealing of the
blastshutter(that looked until now like normal vertical blinds) and the inner
security doors to the garage and the front door. The camera views then split
to about a dozen pictures of people scrambling for weapons, armor, getting out
of bed, all trying to get to the basement(why, you wonder...).
The cameras at the garage also notice several people tearing in to get at the
inner garage door after having literally blown the main door off its tracks.
The front door cameras track the movement of a very large human wearing heavy
military armor and carrying what looks to be an assult cannon right up to the
point that it records the muzzleflash, then nothing but static. However, on
another area of recording the inner door seems to still holding, even though
you see it getting repeatedly rocked and dented. Not a standard door if it
can stand up to that battering...
Then someone just appears in the middle of everything, manifesting as a very
tall black man with a cane and top hat. Labled Micheal S. Baron, Free Spirit,
you assume that it has been hanging around with Diana for a while and is
now running astral overwatch. Until he begins to thrash wildly at nothingness
with his cane. Oops, he's gone again and the rooms of the place begin to glow
violently in colors not meant for human or metahuman eyes to see, somehow
powerful enough to overcome the astral/physical barrier and imprint itself into
optical chip. Elementals and spirits are appearing all over the place when the
ceiling falls in.
Following the ceiling is a rather large group of armor clad mercenaries, barely
titled at all except as "physical adept 1?" or "mage 3". Again you
are glad
for the damping of the editor as magical power and bullets begin to fly.
Luckily you notice that almost all of the people inside the house seem to have
aquired weapons if they weren't wearing them at the time(and most were). That'wwhen the
front door and the garage door both decide to blast in. You begin to
wonder what's been happening to the team trying to come through the side wall
and windows.
AJ, standing the closest to the front door when it blew open, is caught and
thrown violently aside, landing in an awkward fasion that shows his left leg
to be broken, rather badly. The garage door, hanging askew on one hinge, has
at least 3 people standing behind in the relative dark or passing through the
door, as does the front door. And now there are around 5 people through the
hole in the roof and firing.
That is when one of the merc's head seems to decide to depart from his body,
and another manifests three holes, perfectly centered on the eyes and one on
the bridge of the nose. You don't see them exit, and he falls backward, very
dead. Apparently one of the two of them was a mage of somekind because this is
where about 4 fire elementals appear, converge on the headless body, and
consume it in a rage. Another explosion rocks the outside of the building,
this time near the kitchen window, sending armored glass flying. Through the
camera you see a rather large rotodrone rising again. And then you also see
a scaled down(slightly) version of a Doberman drone rolling in through the
Garage door, only to stop as the finally active automatic guns start tearing
chunks out of it. You doubt that they went active until now because no-one had
been in the security room to activate thier batteries. BIG mistake...
People are appearing at the kitchen window now, adding another two marcs to the
fray. The camera recording this also shows what you think are two more bodies,
lying face down in the grass. You suspect that the very same monowire that
destroyed the bushes in the after shot is responsible for their deaths as well,
especially since on seems to be missing half of his head, cleanly cut off, andthe other is
short both legs and seems hung up on something, hanging where the
wire caught on his bone lacing. But the two now in the kitchen are not carryingfirearms,
but a katana for one and nothing in the hands of the other.
Back in near the hole, AJ is up again, his leg appearing to be totally normal
again, and running. Gawk and WHAT are fighting for thier lives with two mercs,
one a Troll and the other an elf with no weapons. Gawk is doing rather well
against the elf, even though you suspect that glow around the elf's hands isn't
phosphorescance or a trick of the lights. And then WHAT falls as the troll
gets a chop in at his side and begins to pull a laser axe. Until WHAT fires a
dart into the trolls neck. He goes down almost instantly, eyes wide, screaming
as the quadruple strength Hyper load takes effect. Looks like Slash might have
changed loads on WHAT without telling him. Which reminds you, you haven't
seen Slash, Diana, Roxey, or the two shamans yet...
Scanning the screens you find them locked in combat in the basement, all but
Slash(who is in the security room, you see, making sure people will be able to
get into the basement without being gunned down by thier own security). Roxey
is slumped over, seemingly drained heavily. DragonEyes is out astral somewhere
while Diana is locked in combat with something astrally(you guess she's
percieving). And that's when several holes appear beneath Roxey and two e
earthen arms reach up and just kind of engulf her. Until, that is, her ally
MaxiMillion appears and attacks the elemental in hand to hand combat, disappear-ing into
astral space again.
At this point, AJ is at the top of the stairs and running down them, gun out
and stopping at the bottom of the stairs to offer cover. Gradually, one by one
people appear. Gutterrat, wounded badly and hyper as all get-out, literally
dives down the stairs and crashes, his body unable to take that extra
punishment. Another merc, this one with a smile on his face, almost seems to
teleport on camera and he's armed only with(huh?) wooden stakes. AJ and he go
into melee, spurs against wood and skill.
Upstairs again, Gawk, with his SMG, is showing his expertise and has put down
several more with bursts to vital body parts and there are blood spatters all
over his clothing, not all of which is attacker's. For the first time you see
Midnight, apparently concealed with some kind of invisibility, heading over to
help WHAT, who is still down and apparently in shock. Until you realize that
his body weight is the only thing holding the handle on a live grenade. You
see Midnight reach underneath his back and grab the grenade, just in time for
him to reach up and deflect a rather large laser axe swing. Unfortunately, the
deflection takes a bad bounce of the wall(that looks like layered ballistic
composite under the sheetrock) and into his shoulder. Still, what would have
been a decapitation strike on Midnight turns into severe shoulder wound for
WHAT.
When all of a sudden Gawk gets hit with a blast from what could only be the
very same cannon that blew open the front doors. The hit literally takes him
clean off his feet and throws him hard into a wall. Until, that is, another
friendly neighborhood Baron appears again, looking slightly injured and with
various wounds showing on his face and missing the toe of one of his
alligator skin cowboy boots. Then the human with the cannon himself becomes
something less than human, and not much more than a puddle of rapidly flowing
multicolored liquid. Then you see the entire room turn into a large area of
flame, centered on the Baron, who screams in an agony that only a spirt could
know of, sounding like ultimate suffering from the bowels of hell and reverbing
off the vault of heaven, with all the pain of a million souls added in for good
measure, and then the Baron disappears. The merc mage who just fireballed the
good Baron now turns his attention onto Gawk, until Midnight's grenade rolls
up beside him, turning him into a ballistic trajectory--in several different
directions.
Gawk you see get up and stagger toward the door, doging bullets somehow, and
yet another figrure from outside joins the picture, labled Drubar. Carrying only a pistol
right now, he enters from the outside, almost getting cut down by
the automated gun trained on the front do...hole. His first target, a merc
about to back shoot Gawk, goes down screaming from a hole in his right shoulder,unarmed.
But again, whoever was controlling the drones decided to play with
his lovely RV and you see about 10 missiles streaking down from above the house
and smacking the ground and the RV. It'll need some major repairs if not to be
totally replaced. The force of the multiple explosions throws Druber forward into the
wall just outside the stairs to the basement. Luckily for him as a
burst of assult rifle rounds rip through the air where his chest used to be, striking the
wall just over the wounded merc's head. Gawk, falling forward, grabbsDruber and drags his
stunned form down the stairs as you also see a hole in the
diningroom floor open up with Slash's form popping out, gun in one hand and
the other holding something you don't recognize.
Midnight and WHAT, recognizing Slash and the trapdoor to the basement, turn to
follow only to have Midnight get stiched in the legs with bullets and falling.
WHAT, in no shape to even notice her wound, continues and muscles himself down
the hole while Slash throws whatever it was into the junction from which the
bullets came. Slash, grabbing Midnight, drags her over to the hole, drops her
through into the usable arm of WHAT, and then dives headfirst as the thing
he threw explodes. Flame arcs through the area as what appears to be a chunk
of raw thermite with a detonator blows up. You hear several screams as the
thermite literally burns through skin, but the cameras in those areas are no
longer operational.
*****End Camera Upload*****
After all this, I figure you'll need a break. I'll be back with the rest of it
shortly.]<<<<<
-- Moriarity(15:19:30/02-06-55)
