2012-10-14 Don't Dump Your Pets

Bethany is out in the early morning hours but, oddly enough, she's not out for a run. She's in fatigues and a military jacket, hunting something down by the river. The small park she's in is usually a busy dog park, even in the dawn hours on a day this crisp. Today, it's vacant. People have reported their dogs going missing and sights of large black things in the storm drains.

The reports from the drug cartel bust across the river suggest that this might be something to worry about. Bethany's thinking she's just going to follow some tracks, take some pictures. She makes a small figure down by the gaping storm drain, her red hair the only splash of colour against the concrete and morning mist.

Of course, what she thinks is going to happen and what does happen... they're always so far apart. The frost has made the angled concrete sides of the drainage area slick and, while she keeps her balance, she slides down into knee deep water. The air exhaled from the storm drain is strangely warm and as she's pondering that, something comes out of the shadows like a train--maybe three hundred pounds, pitch black, fast, and hissing. Bethany gets out of the way by throwing herself back into the water and comes up with her gun in hand. Her first shot breaks the morning quiet.

Snake Eyes was dispatched as backup, but told to keep his distance for whatever reason. It's something he's good at, staying out of sight even in the middle of the day. He's trained his entire life for it. So, while he's there, the black smear that he usually represents in his matte black armor is absent. It's not until the gunshot rings out that the lump of clothes that was, because everyone over looks them, a homeless man flings aside and he darts the few yards towards the opening of the storm drain.

The flat black blade of his katana whistles out of it's sheath on his back in his right fist, the grip of his machine pistol in the left swung up on the strap holding it tight to the side of his body. When they send a ninja, they don't send him for conversation. Even his foot falls in thick murky water is barely a patter, wall hopping and cartwheeling over obstacles in his way to close the distance ont he flashing light of Bethany's gun.

Good thing there's more than one person out there because there's more than one of these things... and these are the kids. The one Snake-Eyes is about to run down turns and swipes with a massive hand that ends in ugly black claws. The gaping mouth is fully of spiny teeth and a lashing blue-black tongue. It's humanoid, not human, and reptilian. It's fast and relatively agile, and its skin is like armour. Bethany's bullet hit it and it's barely bleeding. However, the eyes, oddly set in its head, are dull.

Bethany turns when something splashes behind her. She fires at the first glint she sees--morning light on teeth--and unloads six shots into the open mouth. That slows the second one, but there's more movement behind it.

Snake Eyes is a streak of black against the equally black tunnel, crouched low to push his center of gravity forward and build momentum. Use his position to add the weight of his entire body behind his light splashing feet. Behind the black visor, the low light vision enhancers bath everything in IR green, but it's enough to let him see clear in the gloom.

Enough to let him read the flex of musculature beneath armored flesh. Enough to respond quickly.

His left foot juts to the side, never losing speed, and hurls himself in a corkscrew side flip over the swiping claw. His back archs and carries his feet over pattering up the wall in a straight run carried by his speed and forward momentum.

The machine pistol snaps 'ratta-tat-tat' into the junction between the creatures neck and shoulder and his sword comes up and around near the medial surface of its huge clawed hand, just proximal of the metacarpals on the ulnar surface of its wrist.

The blade doesn't dig through the armor, but it does deflect the blow and the bullets only serve to piss it off. Bee stings. It's enough. Distractions.

His weight goes low out of his run and his knees uncoil to spring him forward between the creatures legs towards Bethany with the pistol held out flashing white with the rapid fire concussion against the flat of the creatures back, while his presses to the other agents.

The first caiman is starting to bleed. The hail of bullets break through its thick skin and it splits along the weak points, red, wet flash bulging out. It roars and charges. As something formidible, it has no real strategies. Top of the food chain weakness. Simply being what it is is enough to stop its enemies.

"They've grown," Bethany manages to say. The second one that she shot in the open mouth is thrashing around, spewing black blood. "Try under the jaw. Incoming." She empties her clip at the barest gleam of the eye of the third that's charging, then goes for the long knife she has at her side. She can expend it on the first soft point she finds, then reload.

Snake Eyes turns them, hooking Bethany with a finger curled into a belt loop, spinning her down out of the way of a swiping claw. His body carries through, turning over in his grip so the blade runs out the bottom of his fist and stabs it in through the softer flesh near one of the creatures knees and uses it as a lever to swing his feet around in a cartwheel kick that leaves his feet planted on the wall. Counter point brace for another quick vault with his machine pistol's barrel pressed in against the bulky monsters neck when he pulls the trigger and holds it down until blood starts to splatter against his armored face.

Far too many bullets required to drop one of these things. It's immediately apparent that he didn't bring enough ammunition. His eyes snap towards the sound of movement further down the tunnel, katana yanked free of thick muscle and flung out to the side spraying the wall with blood. His head turns just enough to look back at Beth, cocking over to the side questioningly.

Beth managed not to be so surprised by the turn that she dropped anything. She's used to working with Ling, who is far smaller than she is. She rams her knife up through the jaw of the charging caiman, pinning its mouth shut, then kicks it in one thick knee. It's not as effective as it would be on a human, the bones don't shatter, but something pops and the creature staggers. She keeps going until her back is to the curved wall and she can reload. She's about to flip some spare ammunition to Snake Eyes when she's interrupted.

The caiman Beth downed first isn't nearly dead enough. It had been lying face down in the water, the light almost out of its eyes, when it surges up for one more attempt at killing Snake Eyes. It's the last reflex of a dying reptile, the brainstem firing without the threshold of pain to hold it back.

Snake Eyes surveys their surrounding with a quick turn, turning his sword over in his hand as he spins and is just about facing Bethany again when the creature lurches out from the water at him in a dying rage. One last fit of animosity intent on rending flesh beneath thin armor.

The ninja is quick. His weight shifts laterally to his right, pulling him bodily from the path of the springing creature and creating an angle on it's out stretched neck as it lands near to him on it's claws and knees. The blade whistles around so the hilt is in both hands and comes straight down point first between the first and second spine, severing it's spinal column. The empty machine pistol hangs down at his side, but he's certainly not without tricks. Those remaining are faced and he's put himself between the reloading agent and the creatures with his katana up and his stance low, giving her those extra seconds to get her weapon situation situated.

Bethany doesn't just load the gun, she snaps a laser sight--one she almost never actually uses on the gun--under the barrel. It gives her a better shot over Snake Eyes' shoulder as the last caiman is swinging around, stumbling over the body of its brother. The ear is nothing but a hollow in the side of the massive head but she hits it with one shot.

The bullet does something ugly in the thing's skull because its eyes bulge and it jerks reflectively. Enraged and on autopilot, it barrels toward them. Bethany's next shot goes into its mouth and blood fountains but it doesn't stop. It launches at both of them still hissing wildly.

Snake Eyes is like a statue, even with bullets hissing over his shoulder. The bright flash of white temporarily illuminating the creature's horrible mawl as it lurches towards them. One bullet tears through its skull and bulges its eye, the second pops its head back and sprays blood, but still it comes.

The Ninja is a sudden well of motion, like he was waiting for a precise set of circumstances to act and everything finally clicked into place. His foot plants on a bent knee and uses it as a springboard to stomp the other in a straight kick aimed at the bridge of the creatures nose, pushing off with all his strength to throw himself into a summersault backwards and add a little counter momentum to the monster's charge. His sword whirls defensively, around himself, slicing at clawed fingers that try to claw at him and ducking his body downward as the honed blade cuts through the air above his own shoulders and switches hands in mid twirl to slice upwards across the tendons inside the monster's other arm.

All of the agents weight turns on the ball of his foot and he steps backwards to stab the blade back behind him through the bulging eye with a quick run up one wall to get him at height with the beast and lands in a low crouch with the bloody blade laying against the back of his shoulders, his other hand out infront of him in a tripod in the water... eyes straight forward like in all those black and white ninja movies where the two combatants run at each other in the moonlight.. All the wounds finally catch up to it and it stumbles a few more steps and crashes against the wall.

"So. Apparently these things get bigger than the ones my people reported," Bethany says conversationally. "Guess New Yorkers have dogs with high calorie counts. Damn Columbians. I need to find out where they're breeding these things. Not only are they putting toxin-laced drugs on the streets that kill people, they're losing track of their grunts. Their... juvenile grunts." She shakes her head as she goes to fish her knife out of the water where it ended up when the caiman got it loose. "It's a problem." Weirdly enough, she seems downright cheerful. Limping a little. Her CMS jacket slashed from a swipe from a caiman. But she's happy.

The katana whirls around in one hand and the other anchors the bottom half of the sheath extending out from his left flank as the blade slides down into the top half above his right. Snake Eyes is listening, but he's also watching, and offers Beth a nod when she finishes explaining 'what' these things are and the need to find out 'where' they're coming from. Seems logical enough, as far as his demeanor suggests. The Machine pistol comes up, clip dropping down into his hand and disappearing into one of the many pouches around his belt. Another slides home and the weapon is left to hang back down at his side, extening a hand now empty in the direction they came from. Two fingers point at his visor and back down the other way..

"Yeah, we should check it out, but maybe we should get some bigger guns before we do," Bethany says, frowning a little. "You might be able to see in the dark, but my night-vision gear is in the truck. And I'm starting to get hypothermic. You're not going alone either," she adds, as though anticipating whatever Snake Eyes has to 'say' next. "I know how you are. Get your people down to take care of the area, I'll get Farah to give us a map of everywhere this sewer section leads."

Snake Eyes glances back up the tunnel and nods, turning back the way they came. His hands go out like he's holding some sort of machine gun.. or bazooka and jerk slightly with imaginary kick. If he's laughing, which he kind of is, it's more like a snicker. But in the dripping quiet of a drain pipe, that might as well be deep gafawing. Just as his entrance, he's quiet on the way out. Planting his feet deliberately to keep from crunching on anything without first feeling it out with the heel of his foot. Taking point, though it is unlikely anything or anyone is going to come up that way, what with the ruckus down in the darkness a few moments ago. He's got a report to give and a clean up to call in... can't have some crackhead coming up on some hulking monsters and letting the media get wind of this, afterall.