{ MISSION ORP } Countdown to the End Part 1 - PAGE 6

[Saliru]

Jess nodded at Dave, "yes sir."

She moved closer to Dave's back. Raising her rifle and began peering around at the shadows. Almost expectantly.

She didn't know what to think. She had never been in a subway before - let alone an abandoned one. It was daunting to say the least. Every little distant sound setting her on edge. Worse yet, they seemed to be more sinister than one might expect.

Jess really hoped if something was going to happen that it would happen soon. The wait was the worst part for her. It was suffocating, maddening. Her gaze quickly darted back at Dave.

"Should we go back to back sir?" She asked in a very soft hushed tone as if the enemy were listening.
 

[Baneful]

Dave nodded, replying in the same quiet tone, aware of the way sounds echoed in this confined space and not wanting to throw both of them off with their own resonance. He hefted Argyll up onto his shoulder, her glow reassuring in the dark blanketed with ancient cobwebs and dust. Eyeing one of the old railway tracks, he gestured with his handless arm. "That way? Looks dusty enough we won't be hit by a train." he gave her a brief friendly grin, determined to keep his own spirits and by extension hers, up. "Like my granny always used to say Que sera sera. I'd sing it, but I don't think whatever's down here would appreciate."

He headed along the tunnel, waiting up for her a little way's in, standing back to back with her as much as it was possible to do while still moving. "If it gets too dark, you can hold onto my free "hand"." he chuckled and gave her a wink "I won't be offended"


 

[Trundlebug]

Well, s**t.

Before he had much time to react to Em-- and boy was he reacting-- his flushed face gained a fearful, ashy pallor as he looked at their unexpected guest. Hundred of unexpected guests. Kyanos whined in the back of his head, somewhere between anger and fear, but he dared not move. Not when his division lead was giving them the signal to stay still. He trusted Liam perhaps more than he trusted himself.

And then came the signal to flee, and following the others, Isaac grabbed his pendant and warped out of that hellhole as fast as he could.

---

It was a bit chaotic when he reemerged-- from the dark, silent, oppressive labyrinth to the myriad of lights, sounds, and screeching of Times Square. He stumbled, briefly overwhelmed; his brown head whipped back and forth until it caught sight of Liam. Isaac drew over like a moth and followed his division lead quickly. He didn't want to think about what had happened to the people that might still be in that hellish maze, if any were... he hadn't seen.

The screech of the subway deafened him; unconsciously he tensed, his grip on Kyanos tightening, until it died away to a more familiar sound: that similar hissing, reminiscent of what they'd heard in the labyrinth. He could just begin to feel Kyanos prickle in the back of his mind.

But first, before he started on his mission, his head whipped around the enclosed area again. The shadows made him uneasy; not for himself, but for his friends, which he hadn't seen since he'd warped away. Zoey? Cliff? Adam?
His headset seemed to crackle to life, and Isaac was never more grateful.

Ol-j-man

Headset: Zoey? Zoey! You're safe... I'm coming, don't worry.

Relief was palpable in his voice as he set off for the tracks, towards a familiar orange glow that he hoped he recognized. He still wore Cliff's hat, and as he spoke into the headset, his free hand still subconsciously pressed to the other earphone, as though it would port him closer to those talking with him.

Rabid Ice Weasel

Headset: Adam... you out? I didn't quite catch you last time. Please God tell me, you're out.

He switched the channel on the headset-- one last person he had to contact.

x_Nata_x

Headset: ... I have your stupid hat, and nothing happened to it.

Isaac shifted the pack on his back, which still held the bandages, thinking himself lucky. He'd never used them, though he had seen several hunters who were not so lucky. He'd need them soon enough.

(( OOC: I won't be here for a good portion of the day guys, but I get your texts! Feel free to godmod Isaac around if need be. ))  

[Carhop Cavalier]

Jared's smile at Heidi's response had hints of mirth, as he held Sloan out for her to hold. "Try it yourself." He grabbed one of her daggers, however, as he held out the obsidian claymore. "It's a comfort for me, holding Sloan. He and I are friends, which is something to be said, I think. We're always pushing each other, driving one another towards glory."

His eyes got glossy for a second, remembering all the battles they had been in. Then, he went right back to reality. "Though, my first time holding him was odd. An uncomfortable weight, with some strange voice in my head. Plus, you know, I had just been given him by my dying team captain." He shrugged the last part off outwardly, but cringed inwardly. The image still haunted his dreams.

"Keep your guard up, now."

Eight

 

[Kaiyumi]

The one good thing about being separated from the other groups was that Aaron had (mercifully, in his opinion) been separated by that strange man. The one who had, not only thought that he was a child, but also a trainee and had thrown him over his shoulder. Aaron, who had a bit of an overactive imagination, shuddered to imagine what would have happened had Liam not divided the groups. However, this wasn't to say that he was entirely happy: there was something else that was bothering him now.

Why were they, the Sun division, following Liam? More importantly, where was Ferdinand? The last time they had seen (or at least, in Aaron's case, heard) the man, it had been when they were retreating. Surely their division leader...surely he was alright, right?

Maybe. Hopefully.

With this sense of uneasiness, Aaron found himself doing something he rarely did--approaching another group. To be fair, one of the group members was a familiar face.

"Hey," The young man stopped beside Damien, flashing Gabby and Jamisson an uncertain look before his gaze settled back on Damien. He lowered his voice. "Do you have any idea what happened to boss?"

Poke Mattix

Huni Pi

Miliardo Kason

 

[Pales]

Reuben followed when he was told to follow he was a good sheep that way. He reached a free hand up to ruffle through messy hair as he gazed around thoughtfully for a moment. Search unused routes? He could do that. He can search like a pro.

The large Hunter shifted his footing a bit before starting to go forward and for the most part he wasn't paying the shadows too much mind at the moment - they were just distractions at the moment. Distractions sent to lead him astray.

Then something came through on his headset - a message from Julien. It made him pause as his eyebrows rose upward in confusion. He put a hand up to his headset as he quietly responded.

ktqueen

"A...A'ight, Brother. If that is what yeh think is best..."

He wasn't sure what to make of that. Did something happen? Certainly it was one worry off of mind but still...  

[Grey Dragon]

Stephen had hovered near the back of the group, watching with stern displeasure as they wandered into the darkness. It was a perfect place to be snatched and attacked, a fact he knew very well. Often he had kept himself safe only through vigilance in uncertain surroundings, because FEAR creatures thrived in uncertain surroundings. But even if he had picked the middle, there was no guarantee any of them would come out alive this time.

The small group of the hunters immediately in front of him were laughably hopeful.

He leaned forward, his scraggly, dark blonde stubble visible in the glow from their weapons. "Probably dead," came his gruff answer to the young man's question. The sooner these hunters learned that death could come at any moment, the better. "Don't hold your breath."

Kaiyumi

Poke Mattix

Huni Pi

Miliardo Kason

 

[Saliru]

She looked where he had pointed and then gave him a face that rather easily said 'No ******** way am I going down there'. A look which softened a bit at his abrupt subject change.

"I certainly wouldn't for one." She smirked at him.

"I mean it, no singing Sir." She chuckled very softly before frowning slightly again at him walking off. She followed. Hesitant. But still followed.

Once down there she pressed her back more properly into his. One hand holding her gun up and the other reaching around to try and grab his stump. She walked backwards, pressing her back more into his as she urged him onward down the tracks.

"Just. If you see something horrible ahead. As long as I don't need to shoot it. I don't need to see it. Got it sir?" Despite the cowardly message, her tone came off rather playful as if she were trying to come off as if she wasn't serious. Even though she was.
 

[Zoobey]

Even the flashlights did not help, there were just too many potential dead ends that simply lead to nothingness. The Labyrinth played back in his mind, at how they had been so easily fooled. They needed to take precautions. "We will need a Runic Hunter to set up an exit portal in case things go very wrong." Later on, he could only blame the fact that he was thinking of that one thing he did not want to think about during the entire time. Another regret. "Caelius, if you would begin the setup."

The Sun Hunter stiffened, saying nothing, though the sharp look he gave Liam was enough to permeate through words. "Yes sir."

Several Hunters, the ones who knew how awkward things had suddenly gotten shifted slightly, a couple coughing as if to suggest fighting the actual Horsemen may have been more favourable at this point. Liam could not agree any further - there was no point in making the situation any worse. A Hunter was a Hunter, they took the words of their leads, no more, no less, regardless of who they were. "The rest of us will continue onwards then."

The Death leader tried to put himself in the shoes of the horsemen. They would want a larger area for the artifact to activate. The largest tunnel then. "This way."  

[medigel]

For a moment she thought if was Cliff coming back, having seen the hat emerging through the darkness. But the face was wrong for him - and then totally right for someone else. Zoey moved forward at a brisk walk to meet Isaac, though if the hand torch hadn't been on she would have ran. "Freaking hug me," she ordered in a quiet manner, her free arm wrapping about him as best it could. "Cliff'll be on his way soon, we were doing Plan Bacon, like, a minute ago." Isaac could probably recall that plan being the one with Cliff using his lasso to keep a creature down and Zoey smoke-flavoring it with a torch. "So, how was the maze? Did you guys find anything? W-Was Adam -"

And then her headset crackled to life, and her eyes seemed maybe to look a little shinier in the firelight. Damn it, this was not what she wanted to hear right before her group went into the hellish dark! She clicked the button and almost shouted into the mic.

Rabid Ice Weasel

Headset: I-It wasn't - Well I mean - Damn it, Adam, you don't break up with people over the phone, and you don't say goodbye to them neither like that! When this is over, you owe me a date.

Huff. She covered her head in Isaac's shirt for a moment, then sighed and straightened up. And then wordlessly she began to go after the group; she wasn't worried about losing either of them, as the torch managed to at least light a little of the hellishly dark subway.

Trundlebug

x_Nata_x

Rabid Ice Weasel

 

[Zoobey]

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The noise pervaded through the silence. As the Hunters continued to walk, those called forward, they would feel a change in the atmosphere, a dank almost decaying smell, and the wet slosh of their shoes, as if they were walking through a water-coated tunnel. A few Hunters flickered their flashlights in panic towards the ground: yet, the ground was simply covered in water. Black, thick, oily water, nothing more, nothing less.

The smell however, seemed to gradually increase, and so did the thickness in the texture of the water, the liquid now up to their knees. Liam pushed them forwards, with nothing more than his flashlight navigating what lay ahead, flickering back and forth to illuminate the tunnel - though his weapon did a good job of that too.

He suddenly stopped. Not even two feet ahead of him lay strange, long and narrow pillars, each one ranging from five to six feet high. Hesitantly, his focused his flashlight towards the closest pillar.

An ashen-grey face stared back, pupiless eye whites gazing directly at him. The pillar was a poor construct of a person, they body entirely rigid, skin pale and clammy, hair wet and thinning. And the smell, oh there was that smell, even inhaling close to them could not help but trigger a gag reflex. They did not move, not even budge, but they eyes seemed to stare at the Hunters as the team took another few hesitant steps forward. Circe hummed as the Death Hunter lead walked towards and past the closest rigid body. Nothing, no movement, they were for all purposes a human-shaped pillar. He pressed on, past the second and third, fourth and fifth, stopping only for a second as he audibly heard a few footsteps come to a halt. "Move on, we don't have time to specula-"

- The sixth body was what really made him stop, his weapon covering its face in a pale ghostly blue. He hadn't meant to step so close to it - he had been too concerned about the remaining Hunters in his team to -

- Liam Innis was twenty-six when he was assigned his first mission as a Hunter. There had been five on the team for a simple mission, a rescue one to save a family who had been literally trapped in their house for weeks.

There were five of them. Samson, James, Kiera, him and-

- Curtis. Curtis, who looked exactly like he sixth body, the sixth pillar damp and cold and staring right at him was none other than the same expression Curtis wore when he had died. The same blank expression, neither painful nor spiteful but simply of a man who accepted his time.

There were shouts from the other Hunters behind Liam as well. They had seen them too, some had recognized those faces. This was a forest of the dead.

OOC

Forest of the Dead

- There are at least thirty "pillars" that stand in the makeshift forest, comprised solely of dead bodies: Hunters who had died on prior missions. Some your Hunter themselves might recognize, maybe through a past mission failures, maybe even through seeing them, training with them, before they passed away. Feel free to make your own semi-flashback scene from where you recognize them (on a mission, etc etc).

This is a "forest" of dead Hunters, simply standing there, staring straight forwards. Mimicries of when they were alive, still, unmoving.

 

[Baneful]

Dave noticed the rest of the group of hunters coming the same way as he and Jess had set off in and fell back obligingly into line with them, quite happy to settle for strength in numbers, though he still made no move to shake off her hand, it put his mind at ease to have her beside him, where they could watch out for each other's wellbeing more efficiently.

The water though spooked him as much as it spooked many others, relieved at it being just that, water. That was right, right? Subway tunnels got damp with condensation, fact of life. He tried to soothe his raw nerves, not normally strung out on missions at all, proud in the past of his cool and collected demeanour, but not tonight, not here in this closed, dark space.

I don't like it either. This is a place for rats and worms.

It was only at the hurried and quickly hushed intakes of breath up ahead that Dave became truly anxious, as they caught up spotting the grusome pillars, the source of the cloying smell finally unveiled to them.

He became aware of people here and there spotting familiarities in the bodies and it was like someone dropped a stone into his gut. This was every hunter's worst nightmare. It was one thing to lose a comrade, you could always try and remember them as they were when alive, try to forget the ineptitudes, misjudgement or failures that led to their death. Faced with this there was no way to sugar coat anything. This was raw, uncloaked death.

"s**t." was all he could say as he tried to turn his face away from the pillars and move along the line through the "forest", but it was a reflection caught in the faint flash of torch on the water that made his blood run cold. The expression to him was that same shocked disbelief he remembered. He could only look up as everything seemed to become mere static noise in the background. He'd never been able to forget the man, he'd only known him for a short time but they'd been good friends on the mission and in the outpost prior. His name was Paul, that at least he could never forget. And his own carelessness had walked them both right into an ambush. It cost Dave his hand, but had cost Paul much more than that.

Dave. DAVE. Snap out of it. Focus. The past is the past, you couldn't have done things any other way. Argyll's reassurances were enough to make him tear his eyes away from the body, from the stark reminder of his past. To look to the outline of Jess. He had to keep his wits about him.

He couldn't lose another friend to distraction.

"S..sorry. ******** hell. These are hunters. " he added. It was stating the obvious but in mad times, people said trivial things.

 

[x_Nata_x]

It wasn't hard to tell that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. The FEAR hunters had started to return just as the creature they had been fighting dissipated, their faces drawn and somber in the pale blue light emitted by the portal they stepped back through. Some of them looked panicked, their eyes blown wide as they glanced over their shoulders, moving faster to try to get away from an unknown assailant. All of them seemed shaken, far beyond what a seasoned veteran hunter should have been experiencing. Then again, it was a suicide mission -- they expected things to go wrong, planned on it, told them to say goodbye and sing their own funeral hymns as they marched into the belly of the enemy. But even for a suicide mission, it seemed things had suddenly gone to hell in the labyrinth, something shaking the very core of not only the mission, but the entirety of the Hunter establishment.

For one thing, two of the division leads hadn't returned.

Cliff had given Zoey a squeeze and a murmured 'I'll be right back' just as Liam had started to give orders, wanting to grab some bandages before whatever hell broke loose. It ended up not mattering anyway -- by the time he got there, the supplies were gone. And by the time he'd gotten back to where he'd left Zoey, she too was gone, already following after the Death and Sun hunters that had started filing into the abandoned subway system. He'd have to find her after he got in.

~~~~

Compared to the bright city lights and old, flickering streetlamps, the abandoned subway was a silent black abyss. Every step downward sank them deeper into the metaphorical belly of the monster that had crossed his mind earlier, the cold, clammy air feeling wet in his lungs. The shuffling echo of the hunters' feet and soft, uneasy whispers against the concrete didn't help -- the sounds just reverberated against the walls, coming back to them distorted, setting him on edge. By the time the last step came, they had been plunged into complete darkness, the only light being their own weapons glowing an eerie pale blue, illuminating their own unsettled expressions like the faces of a room full of ghosts. Cliff straightened a little where he'd stopped at the base of the stairs, completely unmindful of the hunters behind him who filtered around him like a rock breaking the flow of a river. Green eyes sweeping over the abandoned station, he narrowed them a bit, as if trying to focus on the faces he could see, trying to spot Zoey.

As if by some divine intervention, the sound of his headset crackled to life against his ear, a feminine voice filtering first a little shakily, then more steady into his ear. Lifting his hand, the southern boy tilted his head down as he pressed two fingers to the headset at his ear, his eyebrows furrowing. Seemed like she was far more on top of things than he ever was -- and a good thing too. She seemed to be the only one keeping their team together. Psh, even between the three boys working together, nothing got done unless Zoey did it. Nodding an affirmative to her command, he grinned a little, despite how she couldn't see either.

Ol-j-man

Headset: Yes'm, on my way.

When he straightened, the flood of hunters had turned into a mere trickle as the others began to spread out, searching for their friends and for the artifact that Liam had been referring to. Little teams had sprung up, already filtering off from the rest, making it easier to find someone specific. Cliff slowed his breathing as things grew quieter, trying to keep his own boots from making too much noise as he turned a corner -- somehow, it felt like the quiet was even worse than the cacophony the other hunters had drummed up. The sound of screeching, of sparks flying as metal ground against metal, drew his attention immediately to one side as a train raced through, the whoosh of air blowing his hair a little out of his face, and he let out a little sigh of relief as he noticed the warmth of a yellow flame about twenty feet away. The silhouette of a tall man in a cowboy hat obscured the light for a second, and Cliff paused for a second, feeling another little swell of relief as well as something he couldn't put his finger on.

Isaac was alright.

Grinning ear to ear, now, the blonde shoved his hands into his pockets as he approached slowly, hearing his name just as he began to get close.

"I'm here."

Coming to stand next to Isaac, he gave the other man a little smile as he brushed shoulders with him, giving him an a gentle, soft look. "Hey," he muttered, greeting him with the same sort of tone he was giving him with his eyes, meeting the brunette's gaze for a second before breaking it, purposely breaking the moment and making a teasingly annoyed face as he grabbed his hat from the other man's head. "Don't be callin' my hat stupid -- I love my hat," he scolded -- whether or not he was actually referring to his hat anymore, it was hard to tell. Clearing his throat a little, Cliff glanced around a bit, as if looking for someone.

"Where's Adam?"

Of course, that's when he heard Zoey's headset crackle to life.

(Not adding any reaction to forest of the dead just yet -- POST IS FAR TOO LONG)

Trundlebug