[Violence Warning]
Jackal woke up, his eyes flying open and darting around sharply as he absorbs his surroundings and his own status. Chains wrapped around his wrists. His armor is gone (he was naked), but it’s not like they knew about his bones. The room was dark and devoid of much in the realm of decor frok what he coule scarcely make out. The place wreaked of death, and not something of anything like just fresh blood. No. There was a lingering, stagnent scent of decay mixed in with a pungant smell of human excretion. The faint scent of blood Jackal could detect was overpowered utterly by feces, urine and the rip, sour stench of an unwashed body. He looked around the room, and his eyes confirmed what his nose had gathered.
Least they cleaned up enough for them to be able to come here. Sheesh.
His eyes close, and he could hear activity down the hall. The way the sound came in, it wasn’t from much of anything but that one area. He tapped the wall behind him with his head and knocked his feet on the sandy ground.
I’m in a cell in a cave. Their bunker.
The room was barren and with sparse decor. Adobe brick and cement walls held only a chair, a table and a single light that hung dimly in the overhead. He jerk his hand forward, in some effort to get the chain or the wall to give, but the chains were thick. Made to contain superhumans, he could tell. Some of the best you could come across in a country like this, probably.
How the **** did I get in this mess? Oh wait. Now I remember….
Earlier
(Incoming Transmission)
*Beep beep…*
*Beep beep*
(Jackal) Alright. Who’s trying to take over the world this time?
(Moya) Oh just your friendly neighborhood Iraqi jihadist.
(Jackal) Really? No Brahma Brotherhood? No post scarcity super nation army bent on shoving their holier than tho ideals on the world? You gotta be yankin’ my chain here.
(Moya) Our division in the country tracked them down to a bunker, where we have gotten word “off the street” of an impending attack on an Iraqi National Assembly representatives. Of course, we are to stuff this attack before it gets anywhere near off the ground and in the city as anywhere else.
(Jackal) You know this is kind of refreshing really. Pale ashy guy sinking peninsulas. No crazy ice mutants. No city shredding magnetic mad men. Just a couple boys in the hood trying to take on the world. Ain’t too often job like this comes around to a guy like me.
The way Jackal saw it, fighting normal terrorist and the average run of the mill rampaging metahuman or all of a sudden empirical maniac were different things with some similarities. There was little in realm of any pre-emptive approach usually possible with metahumans. Their powers were random and inconsistent, with the only consistency being in the kind of people who launched them. Powerful, but less than savvy in their straightforward approach. Make big moves against a high priority target or something important enough to get them attention. Only difference is that they could just lash out from within the crowd, run up on a guy as bullets bounced off and beat him to bloody paste. Like conventional terrorists, most have the same tendancy to exploit leniancy of the law. It was “immoral” to register metahumans and prepare for them or even be aware of what they did. Wrong to scan them or to outright ban them from events otherwise. They abused the moral obligation to privacy the government felt that it had to enforce, at the cost to forsaking security, safety and order.
Meanwhile, security, safety and order were what Maverick sold. They were an international private military corporation that answered to no one nation. A superpower for hire that shirked beaurocratic inefficiency and all forms of uniform codes of military justice who was more so bound by the laws of the nation they were in and by general international law. America and the local government have hired various private firms to operate in the middle east for a ever since the U.S. army pulled out in 2001. So contractors took their place and the seemingly hyper-competent personal of Maverick find another place for their diverse skillsets in tandem with advanced. With every member of the the company was simply, bound by the laws of a lawless country in conjunction with the fact that the U.N. refuses to acknowledge private military contractors as mercenaries, then they could do whatever the Iraqi government allowed them to do. All in the name of security.
It was these sort of freedoms that the “violence personified” as he had reveled in. No press in the part where he was going. There are people with free education who didn’t know what the hell the Geneva convention was, let alone some series tribes who live off the land and want nothin’ to do with the rest of the world. He was a trained attack dog who could be pointed in the direction of whatever unfortunate prey were deemed the most effective use of the Apex Predator’s talent’s. And in knowing this fact, he was completely and utterly content. He looked down at the land, the sun beginning to set and the time of their movement according to their informant being nightfall. His natural snow white hair rippled in the breeze, carmine colored eyes looking down from the rooftop upon the seemingly quiet town as the moon shone dimly on a supple forest that rest near oasis. Idle philosophy spinniing from his mind ever since his realization to the nature of his life.
I like my job. I get off on seeing the white of people’s eyes fade. And I used to think that one particilar kind of race or species deserved more punishment than the other. But you look around and you see in a way we’re all the same. Abrupt power in the wrong hands. Circumnstance. Nature. People around here get raped and killed by people who were just born better. Might makes right, and they don’t use their power better than any metahuman. Some piece of shit who was turned into shit by6 being born into shit. Give him a gun? He may as well be a metahuman to people who don’t have guns. It’s all the same, really. Power in the wrong hands. Beliefs shoved down your the throat.
He stands. Looking down as the truck starts up.
Just a different coat of paint.
---
The men looked around,ushering the cargo and people in as he went to the front and took the wheel.
<”Are you ready brother?”>
<”Always.”>
The laided their AK74s underneath their seat and out of sight, and the driver lightly pressed the peddle backing the car up as he drove outb into the main road of the area. Eyes trailed about as the supply truck’s lights dimly illuminated the lampless road of the town they knew well, for this was once their home, and still is, for what some skeleton structure and piles of wood and rock were worth.
Something slams into the car hood, a figure too dark, that blended in too well to the shadows for proper perception, and in some whir of motion it was gone. The last thing the driver saw was his own decapited body slump limply forward from the perspective of his severed head on the ground.
*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*
The truck to and fro for a second before it bashes a wall, inertia sending occupants forward following the sudden stop. Men swarmed out, running to front of the vehicle as they saw the body laying on the car wheel, the truck’s horn honking continously and uneasingly. Freshly melted steel sizzled from what they could tell were cuts too clean and too hot to be a normal and the hood had two oddly feet shaped dents in it. Second driver was gone with no trace.
Not gonna lie. I can’t really say I enjoy this as much as tangoing with a bunch of metas. Not as personal. Not as poetic.
*BUNK* *THUD*
Heads spin as they see the second body bounce off the truck’s roof before unceremoniously and messily sliding off to thump against the sand.
I just feel like a bully. But hey, all part of the process of being a monster. Of becoming whq4 you hunt. Everything has it’s purpose. For instance, that move. Inhumane. Not necessary, but effective. They’re panicking.
They all take a moment, staring at the corpse, investigating the wound. Stab wound that penetrated his stolen flak armor like a hot knife through butter. Another thump and they spin around, seeing an alley stumbling, his eyes growing pale as his upper torso slowly slides off his lower torso and he falls in two pieces, prompting one to take the first thing that comes to mind and to try to take charge. He yells out, telling them to gather as they aim around and cluster together in a group. Silence.
I got nothing but time.
Figure moves in the shadow and the dark town lights up with every shot like a strobe light at a rave club. Nothing. Something falls, more noise. Little bit of light. They looked around rapidly, eyes swerving over every siholette and detail at two quick a pace for proper processing. Thump behind them, in the middle of the group and they turn as they hear a subtle and distinct metallic clink, and a few feel a tug on their belts. They whip around and….nothing. Few of them wonder why their friends are running and they find out a few seconds later as the grenades in a few belts go off, the blast ripping the sods too close into pieces as shrapnel flies with body parts.
Too easy.
They scatter in all directions.
Silence.
Yelling. Gunfire. They start dropping like flies, shooting up the shadows as teamwork and tactics go to shit. A guy sees a figure running at him and lights it up, muzzle flash revealing his friend full of holes and falling to the ground. Panting. The shock sets in and he stands there, trying to calm down, his heart pounding through his eardrums. He looks down and he sees a blade poking through his chest cavity, an ominous arc of electicity sparking every now and against. He wanted to lash out, he wanted the power of god, of Allah to free him from this sensation, but he couldn’t be more tense, as his body no longer obeyed him. It obeyed the sword. The sword, told his body to be so tense that his muscles crushed his bones. The told his heart to explode. It ordered his capillaries and blood vessels to send vital fluids jutting out his every orifice. The blade left, and he began to fall, his spirit swallowed into nothingness, perhaps soon to ask Allah why he had forsaken him on his holy quest. Jackal spun around, already assuming a stance seeing an RPG already mid-flight.
Not bad.
His suit hardeneds at the joints, and the carbon nanotube muscle fibers, instead of contributing to strength, compress and turn denser as the fibers press together. He becomes like a statue as his stance is pursued. Impact, and his feet adhere to the sand.*Klink* The rocket smoothly slide along his forarm, bouncing off path and flying behind him to blow up the barely standing building behind him. In an ensuing fire, his siholette stands unfazed by the briet inferno behind him. A demon masquarading as a man in armor, two swords in hand serving as his fangs for him to sink into his prey.
But not enough.
The Revenant Ronin became a blur as bullets flew. It was a little harder in the dark, to see where they aimed, but most bullets didn’t hit anyway, and his movements made him all the harder to hit for particularly the crowd of terrorists who consisted of people like “that guy who was just a farmer a week ago.” One bullet almost hit, before Jackal batted it away and turned his attention. The psycho swordsman takes one his swords, Raiden, and throws a slash from where he stands. It extends, the carbon nanotube muscle blade responding to electrical commands to extend, hard3n and simultaniously, flatten itself to a molecular edge. The result is that Jackal slits the man’s throats from over twenty feet away with an electrified, almost invisible sword. The guy stumbles, and by a will of his own, hoists his loaded rocket up, about to pull the trigger. The psycho swordsman could see in between the seconds, and couldn’t help but admire such tenacity a bit, even from some terrorist, before his motion reversed and he sliced the man’s leg, throwing off his aim as he fires into his friends down range, blowing a good chunk of the remaining group to high hell.
The surviving men start to gather themselves, trying to assess what is going on and what the damage was. All too late because he was already cutting them down in a flurry of fluid, casual carnage. One swipe of Raiden decapitated numerous of them. He sprinted, numerous strikes in all directions in a two story building barely standing from what action's it's seen and it came down in seconds.
Jackal walked through the rubble, allowing his blade bloody for only but a moment, as residue flashes into mist within moments.
“You know, I’m impressed. You actually landed a couple shots on me. I guess this new body has a few kinks to iron out.”
Two. To the chest of course, the hardest part of his body to move. This body was slower than his last. Weaker. In a way, it was thrilling. If his armor ran out of energy, it still was bullet proof, but it was thin and flexible enough for bullets to dent the elastic portions armor and functionally pulverize his body with concentrated force that the 1400 pounds an AK offered at point blank could give. But he was far from out of energy needed for his armor and blades. They hadn’t pressed him enough. But the thought of him remaining in some way, grounded and able to he touched in such a way by mortals, made him feel less like what he hunted.
More like a man.
You know, with more guys and some better training. Better guns. Tactics. You know, like the guys who overwhelmed that one SEAL team. Maybe you could have won. But you were born in the wrong place. On the wrong side. Bred up with the wrong beliefs.
His swords whirled as he strafed them. Half the rounds simply missed, and those worth paying attention to where intercepted by blades that noved everywhere they aimed before the shots had a chance to lineup. Then the pause, the gap in between shots. Magazines hit the ground and he seized the oppertunity, appearing on top of the car.
Peakaboo.
One swipe. A head came off. Another backed up, dropping his gun and Jackal brought his B.N.N.T blade down and it bisected the man and his armor, from the crown of his head to the bottom of his crotch, cleanly….Too clean. The man was cut in two, but the cut went through so easily that he was still alive, alive enough that his eyes half lit up with a will of newfound fire that didn’t give two ****s about biology. As the man began to fall in two, a nervous system fired in his brain like lightning, reaching the other side of his body as he began to fall apart, the senew that held muscle and bone together giving way as he clicks the detonator.
Normally, a single grenade will have about half a pound of high quality RDX and TNT mixture. Two pounds could blow up a car without an engine. Three pounds of semtex of semtex could bring an average sized two story building The guy, had a vest full of over 20 pounds of ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil) detonating from range of perhaps six feet. About as far away as he could get before the boom. It was cinematic, with a fierce rush of air accompanying a building sized burst. Wasn’t really like the movies where the hero was roughly shoved by some hurricane like wind that accompanied the inferno. No. Shockwaves hit him faster than the noise it made and the two Talibs next to the guy got a more decent death than cinema showed. No pain registered at all through the bodies of his allies as the blast tore them to pieces instanteously.
Jackal on the otherhand, was fortunate to have an armor made of boron nitride nanotube with carbon nanotube muscle fibers, with a conductive diamond dust suspended in fluid within. All came together to make the armor like a statue, rigid and inflexible all around, enabling for at least an even distribution of impact. Didn’t stop his body from undergoing a little over 200 Gs from the impact, his body, musclr and bone for a short period of time weighing over twenty tons as he flew spiraling through the air like some doll, smashing through wall after wall until he slowed down enough to simply dent a sturider structure a bit, as he fell to the ground like a doll, face first in the dirt. His vision, and he moaned a bit, smiling beneath his mask. He could taste his own mortality, as blood sputtered through lips and trickled down his chin. His teeth shone under his mask, white now painted with a coat of crimson.
And he was out.
Now…
Couple broken ribs. Ruptured something. Liver maybe. Cracked bones. Hearts fine. Skull hurts like hell. Some internal bleeding all around. Prolly have a concussion. Lot of bruises all.
Jackal assessed his body, pain aching flowing him as a whole. He didn’t react to pain the same way a “normal” human did. He felt it just like any other person, maybe a bit more because of his more sensitive body. Only difference was it didn’t really feel like something that caused him to experience suffering, more it felt good after. A bit of analysis and it was found that his body released endorphins in response to the aftermath of any such sensations. It was considered a wonder he was still alive. A lot of people who lack pain die from a lack of ability to properly respond to injury. Though he did have problem with cutting himself as a kid, the psycho soldier had developed an intuitive way of assessing his body’s state of well being. He knew his limits, and knew how to breach them when necessary.
*THACK*
The ping of the crowbar as it collided with his ceramic foam bones rung throughout the room, a bruise finally beginning to form on his rather delicate features. Blood trickles through his teeth and drenches it jaw, and he laughes. He pulls in air, and snorts loudly as he spit out a large glooby of bloody and oddly...beeping spit.
A tracking device.
The barrel is brough up to his head, and he greets the gun with a gory grin.
*RATATATATA*
Fifteen minutes later…
*Clink*
Sound of metal in tile. The explosion unleashes light brightsr than the sun. The noise is at a frequency to completely disrupt any notion of balance as the inner ears of all within rupture. The few that contemplate retaliating find their bullets pinging off the armor of their aggressors as they are simply beaten over head with a rifle butts and cuffed rather than killed. A faint rumble constantly eminates all around, providing a constant map of the underground bunker to all with acoustic mapping technology in their goggles, leaving nowhere to hide. All escape routes sealed. The insurgents saw men who were well known for the systematic destruction of entire superhuman armies, and they thought all of what they faced nothing but beyond the realm of any natural human.
For a conventional force of any kind, this venture into a dark, booby trapped bunker that the Jihads spent god knows how long learning, would be considered nothing short of a suicide mission.
“This is Agent Hawkins, requesting a sitrep.” Moya walks up, a Maverick standing off to the side walk among the squads standing by, mannes on radio, briefs. Still in corporate casual with a body armor over her suit and a helmet. She has a meeting scheduled in twenty.
“Ms. Hawkins. No casualties. We count around half a dozen deathes on their side and we have ordinance guys clearing the area.”
“And our asset?”
“He actually is there.”
Jackal walks out from the cage’s entrance, moonlight greeting him along with the flying dust of a the VTOL aircraft. His naked form greeted all who regarded him, blood on his hands and spattered on his body with no wounds to allude that any of it was his. He wipes his face as he walks, clearing the blood from it as he makes his way over to Moya, his casual and utterly umbashed demeanor being expectef
Cat call.
“****ing Prima donna over here.” “Dayum gurl!” “That form though” He whistles, the shit pouring on after that. “Ey yo Jackie, that’s a nice firm ass you got there.” “Yeah. Real firm!” “Damn. Didn’t expect to be catchin’ a glimpse of any ass in Iraq of all places.”
He feeds off it, meeting up with Moya, as she rolled her eyes.
“Somebody, get him a blanket.
The psycho soldier smiles, raising his arm to stretch a bit. “Drafty out here, ain’t it boss?”
His head twitches noticeably to both Moya and the guy on the radio, both exchanging glances briefly to confirm wordlessly that they both saw that, before they looked back at him. He lowered towel, the man recoiling back, and Moya taking a moment to find appropriate wording to reply to Jackal’s missing. Her astute eye immediately infers it to be a bullet woune, given the shape of the cavity. Likely a 7.62. His skull was bullet resistant to bullets but it looked like a direct impact. She walked forward. Grabbing hold of his head, her fingers pressing into his chin as Jackal face remains unmoving, his grin having faded.
“I know. It looks bad. But chill out boss. Don’t get everyone riled up.” He speaks as if trying to calm her down.
Scarring along the eye socket indicates he scooped it out himself. Bleeding stopped, with only a tear like trail of blood down his cheek. But his eye, or more appropriately his eye socket, remained vulnerable to infection or otherwise. He eye socket had been stripped to the bone, and that portion of his face looked like a literal skeleton of it’s former self. Peering into that eyehole was looking into an abyss.
“Take a seat right now. How is your eye? How do you feel?”
He smiles. Silent, as ge takes a seat on crate. A guy runs up with a blanket.
“Don’t give me that.” Moya spits.
“I couldn’t see clearer than I do now.” He says simply.
Another twitch. And he smiles wider. Moya sighes, pinching the ridge in between her nose.
“We’re leaving now. Prep the VTOL. We’re making a detour.”
Men help Jackal up, a medic bringing a first aid kit. Hastily walks on, flicking out her cell phone and making. Looking at him she sighes.
“Looks like I'm gonna be late again. I don’t know how you do this. It’s not natural.” She says.
*Ring ring. Ring ring.*
“What is now-a-days?”
His smile returns.
Ironic.
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