| EVENT: Outside Interference 1 | ||||||
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| What: HYDRA investigates to uncover what elite force has taken over AIM's New Jersey base. What they find are The Outsiders. (Mild language) | ||||||
Just another day at the Den, on the whole-- nothing remarkable can be said to be happening, which is normal for an old missle silo on the middle of Nowhere, New Jersey. Small town problems exist, of course, but they don't typically need superhero intervention. It's one of the nicest things about the location of this particular secret base, arguably.
Of course, the problem there, is that it's both isolated, and the matter of the previous occupants having been AIM. People in certain quarters are bound to take notice, and that's how it comes to be that a trio of silent shadows detach from the wooded area and ghost across the perimeter toward the main house. The alarms fail to trigger, largely because these specific intruders know a great deal about the base and are trained in exceptional infiltration techniques anyway. A device pops the lock on the back door, and the shadows cross inside.
It would, in fact, be a textbook operation, if it weren't for one little errant security detail they could never have accounted for--
"INTRUDERS MUST DIE!" Is a new one for the Doomba, the Outsiders' strangely-programmed little robot vaccuum cleaner with a genocidal streak. But it is also loud, obnoxious, and nearly impossible to miss as it bangs against one black-clad ankle with suctiony fury. "EXTERMINATE ALL HUMANS! START WITH THESE THREE!" it declares in a shrill mechanical voice as the lead infiltrator tries to shake it off of his leg, banging it against a wall.
And it was shaping up to be such a nice night, too. Even if Spider-Girl feels weird about a) having guests over, and b) wandering around doing mundane stuff in full costume. But. Secret identity. Whattaya gonna do. She cranes her neck to peer up the hall when the Doomba's shrieking comes bouncing off the walls and she makes a bit of a face. "Somebody needs his batteries changed," she asides to Sam, dropping down from her perch on the ceiling. "I'll go check it out. It's probably nothing." And off she goes.
...and back Spider-Girl comes a few seconds later, sailing head over heels up the hall until she meets the kitchen counter with her face.
Okay. Maybe it's not nothing.
Well, it's not EX- yea, yes it is Exterminate. Oh dear. Why can't it ever be MASTICATE or PROCRASTINATE? But Rain was unaware of this whole business when she decided to visit with the kittens. And here she is, in the kitchen with the others. Kittens need milk, adoration and at least one set of photos for the internet each. And there goes Spider-Girl flying by not entirely under her own power. Well, she's not planketing at least. Rain looks horrified, eyes wide. "Does - do they normally do that?" Her eyes widen as the Doomba has gone all Skynet.
"It's not the Doomba." Sam's already over the counter--he's not checking on Anya, he's tearing back up the way she came, energy blasts clearing the hall ahead of him. Anything that hit Anya that hard needs to be addressed with extreme prejudice. He hopes Rain will tuck the kittens somewhere safe before all hell breaks loose. "Silo, identify intruders!"
Wandering around in costume is no big deal for Spoiler, on the other hand--mostly because the 'costume' she wears around the Den is only a domino mask away from street clothes anyway: black jeans, a purple tee with a nametag reading 'HI, MY NAME IS' followed by a black bar, and a backpack full of... well, /stuff/.
"Yes!" she exclaims when the Doomba first begins shrieking; a triumphant fist is pumped into the air. Looking to Spider-Girl, she begins to rebutt, "Either it's nothing, or all that training--" but before she can finish that thought, she pauses for a moment, then slowly lowers her fist and gives her departing teammate a solemn nod. Or, at least, she /tries/ for solemn; the remnants of a prideful grin linger on--right up until Anya goes flying past her.
"Ho-holy shit!" she stammers, staring at Anya even as she starts heading after Sam; after a few steps, she turns her eyes completely to the front and swings her backpack around to start digging through it.
The hallway SEEMS clear... witht he exception that something black and roughly human-sized gets slammed into the wall at the end with a quiet grunt. But these are not AIM goons or even HYDRA's footsoldiers. Infiltrators are elite soldiers, and darkness is their best environment.
"No intruders detected," the Silo helpfully supplies, as a shadow drops behind Sam from above, sweeping a kick for his ankles as the Silo computer adds, almost as an afterthought: "ALERT: HYDRA overrides active."
The third infiltrator, a slender female form in a green so dark it's nearly black, and subdued gold accents around the faceplate at the front of her suit's hood, appears briefly at the doorway, raising some sort of pistol weapon at Spoiler and Rain that fires a pair of crackling electrical shots, like some sort of long-range taser or EMP gun.
"I'm okay," Spider-Girl croaks, hurriedly picking herself back up off the floor. So she has a bloody nose. Big whup. The counter gave her that, not the guy who hit her into it, so she's still winning. Right? Right. "This does not normally happen," she asides to Rain. "We're good at protecting kittens, don't worry."
After she's cracked her knuckles, Spider-Girl goes sprinting back the way she came. She does /not/ make it into the hallway before the goon appears in the doorway with a gun. She also does not slow down and simply raises an arm to roughly clothesline them at full-sprint-speed on her way. "SKADOOSH. What the hell's a hydra?"
Protection of wee, fuzzy, innocent creatures is paramount. Rain blinks as Spider-Girl explains that this isn't a normal thing. Rain has tucked the kittens safely into their kennels and has tucked them safely into a safe spot(TM). Likely a cabinet in the far part of a room or under something EXTRA ONE HUNDRED PERCENT STURDY. She'd - start to offer a hanky, but - well, fighting time is upon them. "Hydra's a thing with lots of heads, but I kinda figured it was more dragonlike..." Rain offers. Only to yelp as she's nearly zapped. "Don't taze m-- is that even a taser?" There's no time to think about it. But yes, full kitten protection mode is -on-. She keeps out of the way for now, uncertain on if she should pull out her twin pistols. For now, actually, she just summons her broom and takes a swing at someone's knees. She's got kittens to watch and aiming takes time, dangit.
"Well, make 'em UNACTIVE, Silo," Sam shouts at Silo as he turns around and drops a shield around the man behind him, using his power to shove the man backward even as he contains him. Why hit something when you can catch it and see what it is first? He'll just wrap this jerk up so he can head upstairs.
"And what the hell is HYDRA?" Not that Sam doesn't know what it is in mythology, mind you. Just. Seriously. What the hell? He's in full shields himself so he's not worried about anything hitting him--it'd be a feat to get something big enough to hurt him down into the Silo.
"This isn't oh sev--" a confused Spoiler calls to Rain just before Lord knows how many volts of electricity enter her body. /That'll/ teach her not to look where she's going while she's runn--
Well, alright, let's be honest, here: she'll probably do the same thing again the next time she's in a fight, but hopefully, nobody /then/ will be packing a taser pistol.
Regardless, in the here and now, the shot stops her in her tracks, and for a few endless moments, her body is locked in twitching, electric agony as the energy courses through her; when she finally crumples to her knees, she takes a few deep, gasping breaths, picks her head up to see if she's in any /immediate/ danger, and then commences with bracing her hands on the ground to try and catch her breath.
And recover her balance.
And maybe stop her limbs from twitching periodically.
You know, evil organization or not, that infiltrator lady was just doing her job, and getting clotheslined and broomed was just not very cool. No, actually, she totally deserved it and goes down in an undignified fashion. All's fair in war and so on. Sam chucks the infiltration lead in a hamsterball and all that excellent training and years of experience go completely to waste. It's unfortunate.
"Affirmative-- rebooting security countermeasures," the Silo chirps happily. "Please wait..." The good news is that these three, at least, seem to have the fight taken out of them for now.. and the logo on their sleeves seems to indicate that the mythological beastie is almost certainly part of the idea, here.
Go team. Spider-Girl looks back over her shoulder and /scowls/ when she sees Spoiler hit the ground all a-twitchy, so she does the only logical thing: she grabs the infiltrator she just clotheslined by the front of the uniform and hauls her up off the ground with /far/ more strength than a normal girl of her size. "That wasn't very nice," she notes lowly, bringing her other hand up to try and yank the mask off the infiltrator's head. Since the others seem to be down for the count, it's time for an audience Q&A. "Start talkin', snakey. What're you doing here?"
There are worse weapons than broomsticks. And Rain has decided to keep the guns away. Delicate kitten ears. She winces, seeing Spoiler crumple. "Hey! Don't tase her either." Though, she'll at least offer a hand up. She's crouched by the hidden kittens. This HYDRA business confuses her. She is quiet, for her part, watching a fellow in a hamsterball. Well, watching him get hamsterballed. Almost might be fun in a way. But either way, she peers to the kittens. They're safe, if wide-eyed and bewildered, crouching in their blankets. Stealth Kitten Fields, activated. Loaf Formation Complete. Wide-Eyed Defense Systems On. She looks to the others. "The kittens are okay..." She will move over to poor Spoiler. "Um." All she's got is a box of kittens. Well, carrier. But it worked on that one show? Maybe not. They stay tucked away for now. "Are you - okay? I can, um..." First aid for tazigns is a bit limited.
With things quiet for the moment, Sam follows the trapped HYDRA agent--leaving Spider-Girl to do her own interrogation. Rain's a healer and she's with Spoiler, so he leaves that be. Can't be everything to everyone all the time; oddly enough, that's something being dead has taught him.
Skin-shields glowing hot, energy sparking out of his fingertips and from the tips of his hair, Sam reaches into the shield around the agent. He grabs him by the collar, then yanks him forward hard enough to bounce the guy's face off the inside of the shield.
"Who are you," Sam asks, holding the man up against the shield. "And what are you doing in my house?" There are remnants of that black part of Illyana lurking in him, memories of how he'd been that come in handy at times like these. Sam's killed before, he's been dead before, and he has no trouble inflicting that on someone else if the situation calls for it. Whether he wants to or not, he might even enjoy it.
"I'm fuh--"
Spoiler is clutching her chest in one hand while trying to use the other to help herself up despite the trembling of her arm; a tight grimace overtakes her features when she cuts her reply to Rain short, and it doesn't begin to fade until she's managed to work her way up to a weary hunch.
"--fine," she mutters, leaning a hand against a wall for support. Now that her whole world isn't on fire, she manages to get a look at Spider-Girl with her attacker, and offers a weak, "Punch her in the face if she doesn't talk!" along with a little shake of her free fist.
When Anya pulls the woman's mask off, it's all short-cropped dark hair and sharp cheekbones and-- most notably-- crazy, fanatical eyes. Whatever HYDRA is... this is a completely different level from what they've dealt with before. She smiles, and her lightly-accented voice is echoed in near-perfect unison by the team lead Sam's got his hands on, although the latter's muffled by the mask. Neither of them bother to answer the very reasonable questions.
"Cut off one head, two more will rise in its place," they bite out, and their jaws each work with a quiet crunch noise. "Hail HYDRA!" Each shudders, and in the unmasked woman's case, her eyes roll back and a little bit of foam rolls out the corner of her mouth. Yeah, these guys are made of WAY sterner stuff.
As if on cue... the Den's security comes back online with a cheerful notification from Silo... and the perimeter alarm promptly goes off as a handful of WAY less-stealthy VTOLs swing down over the treeline outside. "Multiple unknown air vehicles detected," the computer informs them all helpfully.
Spider-Girl is drawing her fist back, still holding the woman's mask, to do just as Spoiler asked -- and then the infiltrator's eyes roll back, and there's foam. Instead of punching her in the face, Spider-Girl actually lets out a startled yelp and drops the lifeless body to the ground, backpedalling away several paces. Superhero yes. But still: seventeen. "What the /f--"
Mama Guthrie won't need to be mad at Spider-Girl today, because the next three letters don't come, thanks to the alarm. Aw, crud. She gives Rain and Spoiler an alarmed look before she goes sprinting for the door to see what's coming, the mask still clutched in her hand. Hell. "Basement," she snaps over her shoulder, pointing back at Spoiler and Rain. "Bring the kittens, get downstairs where it's safe." Rain isn't an Outsider, not yet, not officially, but times like this? Anya is okay letting someone into the silo proper. |"Hayseed, we got trouble outside."|
Rain pauses. Rain is a healer, but there's not a lot she can do for tazings really. She nods. "If you're sure." She keeps the kittens nearby. "Yeah, tazing peple is really mean," Rain offers quietly. She looks to the others, watching quietly. She is unaware of Sam and the agent he's dealing with. She blinks, watching all of this unfold before her. "Um. "... that's... disturbing." She feels a bit guilty for not being better at interrogating or smashing, but watching kittens - and it wrenches her heart to think of it, and making sure Spoiler's not going to continue twitching like Charlie Sheen at a rave is enough for her. "That's - still really freaky thirty seconds later." She blinks. "Are they airbombing us?" She seems alarmed. Rain is also a guest here. She'll bring the kittens downstairs with her, clutching them close.
If Sam was angry before, he's livid now. |"I'm going up."| He drops the HYDRA agent and takes off for the great outdoors at full blast. He clears the cabin and catches sight of the VTOLs. He's got zero thought of letting anyone walk away from this if they're coming at him right now. He opens up on the VTOLs with all the firepower he has, doing a good imitation of a high-quality plasma cannon. He's also an excellent target, of course. The first VTOL goes up in a ball of flame before it has time to take any evasive action.
|"Don't we have guns or something?!"| Spoiler wonders as she jogs--walks--shuffles after Anya. She doesn't want innocent kittens to get hurt any more than the next girl, but dealing with the diehard terrorist invaders is a more satisfying solution, to her mind.
|"Did--"| She casts a glance over her shoulder as she works her way outside, then just shakes her head, lowers her eyes and focuses on making it out. The girl's from Gotham; she's seen a dead body or two in her life time. That this particular one was tasing her a few seconds ago takes some of the sting out of it.
The first of Sam's targets topside goes down easily to his blasts... but HYDRA came ready for a fight with an unknown but presumed-elite force... he doesn't get a chance to take a second VTOL without a fight. The half-dozen remaining nose cannons starts spewing blue energy bolts that sizzle through the air. Two of the craft tilt back to half their forward momentum, spreading out to the sides for a better feild of fire on him, while the rest take a few more potshots at the flying Guthrie before setting down hard on the Den's front lawn. Boots pound down ramps, and troops in dark green combat gear with gold-colored harnesses storm the doors, weapons in hand. While these are clearly not as formidable as the infiltration team, they are more numerous, and smart enough to practice actual assault tactics when they come in through the doors.
|"I think we still have some AIM rifles down in the armory,"| Spider-Girl says thoughtfully. She doesn't go for one, though. No time. As soon as it's clear that the transports are landing, she takes off for the nearest one at a dead run, and the ramp has barely even touched the ground before she /launches/ herself right into that dropship's mass of troops.
The element of surprise is useful. And very few paramilitary groups expect near-suicidal levels of stupidity, right? RIGHT.
While the other transports are mercifully Spidey-less, her chosen target is... not. The fists start flying and the only thing missing is a cartoon dust cloud, and the arachnid is completely hidden in the sea of uniforms until she manages to suckerpunch her way out the other side. By the time she's there, she has a new gun and rounds on the remaining goons. "WHO GAVE YOU DIRECTIONS TO MY HOUSE?!" she bellows. "I WAS NOT PREPARED TO ENTERTAIN ADDITIONAL GUESTS THIS EVENING. RUDE."
"... are you sure you don't need healing or anything like that?" Rain peers over to Spoiler, as she carries the kittens down alongside the others. She has them close. She's a bit lost and startled to deal much with vengeancy things. "It might help a little." But either way, she's going to do her best to keep out of the way, kittens held close to her chest as they huddle for cover. Rain sometimes kicks herself for not being slightly more awesome or having eye lasers or fire breath or being the William Wallace, but it can't be helped. Not really. Either way, these freaky jaw wonky Hydra people? Totally freaky, rude and kitten hating. She stays in cover and out of the way. Harry Potter would do the same, but maybe with an exploration montage.
Sam's willing to take the heat for the moment, allowing his natural mutation to do what it does best: react. Every shot that hits his shields sends another burst of energy right back where it came from, returning fire. At the moment, he's got another concern with the troops headed for the cabin. He turns some of his fire on them, blasting them as they reach the cabin. He doesn't like racking up casualties in front of his friends but this is not AIM they're playing with, not some mean ol' bikers. This is a private army trying to invade his home.
"Save the kittens!" Spoiler insists as she steps out into the moonlight. "I'm alright, I--"
A hand goes back to clutch the doorframe when she sets her left foot on the concrete and nearly tips over, on account of some jerk tipping the whole world on its side.
"--just--need--a second," she finishes in a murmur before trying to shake the dizziness off. After taking another moment to recover from /that/ mistake, she finally manages to jog towards the site of Anya and HYDRA's not-quite-fight cloud, where she scoops up a fallen gun and joins the webhead in aiming at the goons.
"Put your hands up!" she demands. "And--open your mouths! And stick your tongues out!" To punctuate that last decree, she stumbles on her feet a little and her aim goes wild while she tries to stabilize herself.
|"Oh is THIS what that dude meant by 'flash mobs'? I thought they were supposed to sing or something,"| Aura asks over her comm, appearing in a flash of light somewhere between the VTOLs and their buzzing infestation of HYDRA mooks and the entrance to the Den. |"Wait, no, they have guns--!"| she yelps, throwing her arms up in front of her face and flinching back, erecting a magnetic shield with a recognisable ionization of the air to anyone who's ever faced Magneto or Polaris or whoever.
Unfortunately for her, this works great against bullets, but is really total crap against rayguns and lasers and whatever. And: the half-sunburst on the back of her hand? Disappears in a much smaller flash of light than the one she came in with. (Not that she'd ditch her teammates in the middle of /this/. Honest.) |"GUYS! WHAT THE HELL!"| she yells as she practically standing-turtles.
HYDRA's goons are really not prepared for a crazy girl in a black spider suit with superhuman strength and such to charge into their midst and start pummeling. They try to get a bead on her with their weapons, but all it really succeeds in doing is A) hitting each other with them and B) letting Anya see that they're not firing bullets or the weird energy blasts. They're not much better-prepared for Sam, either, but there's at least the obvious solution-- get inside. Which some manage to, but they're taking pretty bad losses doing it. Their willingness to accept those losses and continue the mission is... impressive. Worrisome. One can take their pick. Any lesser force would have fled by now, and these guys are hanging on. Even the agressing VTOLs haven't broken off of Sam-- the pilots are instead seeking angles from which the reflected bolts are less-troublesome in hops the guns can overload his shield. Curiously, the landed craft don't seem to be opening up on the rest of the Outsiders.
Rain can hear booted feet in the hallway outside her hidey-hole, and then the heavy sound of someone trying to force the door open. They even manage it, with the brief glimpse of a weapon coming up to cover the room before something that looks like a black-haired girl in a hoodie tackles into their side and the sounds of a serious close-range fight breaks out for quite a few seconds before one of the HYDRA troops calls out above the noise. "All right, get out of here and back to Base Tango!" Fewer boot sounds than a minute ago, and they're retreating up the stairs again.
|"Aura! Do YOU know what the hell a HYDRA is or why they're breakin' in? Because asking them is NOT HELPFUL."| F'real. Least helpful mooks /ever/, and Spider-Girl left a crazy foamy-mouthed corpse in the kitchen that proves it. It isn't until she actually fires her stolen gun at one of the remaining, unhelpful HYDRA mooks that she notices it is not a laser-pew-pew gun, and she blinks. Wait. |"Tranq darts? They came at us with /tranq guns/?"| This is stupid. So, so stupid. "...for shame, Doc," she notes, flipping the rifle around in her hands to hold it by the barrel before wading back into the mess. BATTER UP. "Huntin' wabbits with an elephant gun!"
Rain freezes, hearing the booted feet. She puts a finger to her lips, as the kittens turn their head to follow the noise. Sssh, quiet kittens. Quiet kittens. They mew. Aw nuts. She keeps her broomstick up, though she's well prepared to blast them. She just has to be careful of the kittens, the wood and all that. Wouldn't do well to defeat her enemy and then immolate herself. Regardless, she stays quiet and - pauses. A hoodie girl. "Okay, thanks!" She'll follow and head on out. Kittens and all. "Man, you guys are heavier than before." Mew. "Nono, not fat. Just adorably plump."
They really have to give guests comms. Because Sam's worried about Rain--doesn't need to be, but he is. He doesn't hear the stuff about Base Tango but when he hears abou thte tranq guns, his feelings about the situation shift gear again. Drastically. And not in the direction you'd think when one discovers that someone is coming after you with less than lethal force.
Sam takes being taken prisoner--especially when it comes to people in his care--pretty damn personally. Trying to kill people is one thing. Drugging them and dragging them who-knows-where? Another game entirely. He'd like HYDRA to simply not come back. With that in mind, he turns his fire power on the VTOLs trying to get through his shields, blasting one, then the other, mercilessly. Stay off his property.
Tranq darts?! Spoiler glowers at her gun, then up at the HYDRA forces, then back down at her gun; like Spider-Girl, she flips the weapon around with every intention of giving it back to its owners in spades, but after a jogging a couple feet towards the fracas, something brings her to a screeching halt.
No, not dizziness--although she /does/ wobble a little as she plants her feet. Turning the gun over, she transmits, |"They came at us with /tranq guns/! And /suicide pills/,"| raises the weapon, and furrows her brow in concentration. Trying to account for a friendly like Spider-Girl is /tough/, doubly so for a girl with almost no practical firearms experience.
At least all the goons make for a target-rich environment; after lining up a couple of shots only to have them ruined by the chaos of the melee, she just starts spraying the crowd with darts, trying to stick to the parts of the fight that don't have an arachnid bouncing through them.
|"Watch out!"| she calls mid-spray, |"This is only my second time doing this!"|
A rain of tranq darts aimed at Aura! --and every last one of them catapults off her shield, noses bent. She peers between her arms at the still-approaching (some of them) and running around her (?!) toward the inside HYDRA thugs, and at the same time, Anya's voice comes over her comm. *Now* the Hong Kong native just looks unimpressed. |"What, really?"| she asks unnecessarily, relaxing slightly and peering down at one of the downed darts littering the ground. |"Well I'm not going to complain /practically speaking/ because that's kind of helpful, right? Less to patch up later? But it *is* kind of insulting. What the hell, suicide pills??"|
Aura doesn't bother with the guns, she keeps her shield up but much closer in. She starts shoving through the mob, in fact. And yanking upward, hard, on the metal parts of their belts. Every belt she can find! It's a lot of belts. "*THIS*," she announces icily as she wades, "is what you GET if you condescend to US, gentlemen. You will be picking your underwear out of your teeth for a month. I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE THIS AS A LIFE LESSON." Wedgie here, wedgie there, wedgie wedgie everywhere. And then she yanks someone's gun out of his hands and starts using it as a club, Spider-Girl and very nearly Spoiler style. Because nothing gets a point across better than the fostering of a noggin-egg, and hands-on violence is way more cathartic than telewedgies. "And FEEL FREE TO TAKE THIS PERSONALLY. BECAUSE YOU'RE ALL STUPID AND YOUR MOMS ARE STUPID." She takes a breath. |"Did you say these guys call themselves Hydrant? Or Hydra? Because if it's the latter, sorry, it's all Greek to me."|
The hallway Rain steps into is... eeriely full of the remains of recent violence on a massive scale. Very little blood-- just a half-dozen or so motionless HYDRA uniforms heaped up against the walls and not a sign of anyone that was there a scarce minute before.
And there's a good reason for that, because HYDRA is apparently pulling out finally. The men tangling with Spoiler and Spider-Girl are doing a decent job of only getting gobsmacked a moderate amount when Aura's mass wedgie takes hold, and there are a few high-pitched squeals that pick out the soldiers that did NOT properly outfit themselves with their more subtle forms of protective gear. The rest, after a moment to figure out how that just happen, do the expedient thing-- they slap the release on their equipment belts and let them and the harnesses fall. Smart mooks? Unfair!
A man in a much more elaborate HYDRA uniform and no helmet steps partway down the ramp of one of the idling VTOLs and yells in a thicker germanic accent than the infiltrators had. "HYDRA! We have what we want! Withdraw!" This... actually does not result in an immediate cessation of hostilities. Most of the men that can still stand break off and flee back to the VTOLs. A handful stay where they are to keep the Outsiders busy, attacking with renewed fervor and fanatic shouts of "HAIL HYDRA!"
A group of four burst from the Den, high-tailing it back to the nearest VTOL, which is already prepping to take back off in a hurry. One of them is carrying something-- no, actually, it's some*one*, over his shoulder. Long black hair, and about a dozen or so tranq darts sticking out of her back-- possibly more unseen. They've barely hit the ramp when the vehicle lifts.
The lifting craft lay down a spray of energy cannon fire into the ground, throwing up massive geysers of dirt and plant bits to help keep those on the ground out of their hair. Sam's assault on the already-airborne VTOLs bears fruit, though they don't go down as easy as he might like, as the pilots are surprisingly skilled. They do go down, though, while working to cover the VTOLs that are making good their escape.
Spider-Girl shoots an alarmed look towards the shouting man as she clobbers another goon with the butt end of the rifle. Bad guys having what they want is never good. She starts to shout something when one of the mooks takes advantage of a) her distraction and b) the way she's holding the rifle, reaching up to yank the trigger. Spider-Girl lets out a yelp and eyes the dart sticking out of her shoulder before she drops the rifle entirely and nails him with a hard left hook, instead. "...ass."
Spider-Girl has just long enough to see what the retreating group is taking with them before she sways unsteadily on her feet. A groaned "Double-ass," is all she can manage before she lands face-first in the dirt in amongst the sea of uniforms she and Spoiler had been so effectively kicking the crap out of only moments before.
Oh dear. She blinks and looks around. Rain pauses. "Huh. Guess they were showing Gigli again." Damn you, Maria Carey! She shrugs and does her best not to step on anyone. "Or - I dunno. But who tries to invade a base lopsidedly...?" She peers here and there. She strains to hear what is going on if she can. "... Hey?" Are they taking prisoners? What's going on? She hugs the kennel of kittens and just moves to keep under cover. "Oh no." Oh geez. "Are they taking someone...? Who am I even TALKING to?" She looks left, then right.
Have what they... It's only when Sam catches a glimpse of the person being carried on board the VTOL that he realizes that he's underestimated what they wanted. Maybe they wanted something from the base or maybe they wanted it for themselves. He hadn't considered that they'd be after Laura. After all, he knows what the Weapon X Agents look like and they aren't HYDRA.
He takes off after the VTOL carrying Laura, pushing himself to keep up. When one of the remaining VTOLs starts firing on him, it hurts, but he's not going to give up. He's not counting on what they do next. They hit him with an overload of their disintegration ray. The ship comes apart in the process, raining burning metal down over the woods beyond the cabin, but they get what they want. Sam goes down in a fireball somewhere in the woods.
Spoiler only just manages to get a glimpse of the dart sticking out of Anya's arm amidst the fighting, but that glimpse is enough to take some of the wind from her sails; apparently, it's all fun and games until someone gets accidentally drugged. Luckily, the HYDRA guys are pulling out as she falters, giving her an opening to toss the gun aside and try to sweep in under one of Spider-Girl's arms to keep her from hitting the ground.
When she instead staggers drunkenly past her falling teammate, she winds up having to bend over and plant her hands on her knees to maintain her balance, and it's from there that she sees the terrorists' cargo. "H-hey!" She yells, sretching a hand futilely towards them. "Hey!" |"Hey, we have to--"|
A geyser debris shoots up into the air not so far away, cutting her off and prompting her to hurl herself to the ground on instinct.
Falling, she can /definitely/ handle right now.
That is something undoubtedly SCATHINGLY FOUL Aura yells in Cantonese when Anya goes down, and the fecal matter really starts splatting those rotating blades with a dedicated fervor. The fervor of HYDRA zealots being left behind as a distraction, in fact. Who will probably suicide all over the place once the VTOLs take off. She leaves off the clubbing and the wedgie-ing and takes to the sky, diving in to extract Spider-Girl and preemptively kidnap Spoiler, each slung by the waist by her very own stylish arm. |"CANNONBALL! They're all going to gack themselves once their bosses get away! Should I bother to stop them? And who the *&^^#&* do they have!! Did they steal our zombie?!"|
Sacrifice for the mission is part and parcel when you're a HYDRA stooge-- it's part of what makes the group terrifyingly effective. As soon as Sam and the escort VTOL fall out of the sky, the remaining pour on more speed, vanishing into the night and leaving the Outsiders to clean up, lick their wounds, and plot their next move.
One thing is clear-- this is a whole new level of confrontation for the team, and the only thing clear is that it cannot go unanswered.