The Penthouse Disaster

[Slayer]

Well this report is overdue, and I am sorry if I made anyone nervous. Things at the penthouse did not go according to plan. Well, they went according to plan right up until we entered the place, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I was grouped up with the mob guys, and what a crew they had. Well organized, well informed and well armed. They reminded me of Nemesis. Their leader Frankie, approached me after Hannah had made the team assignments.

“So lad, it seem we will be workin’ together, so maybe we should get to know one another. Me name’s Frankie and these here are me lad’s.” With a wave of his hand he gestured to a group of four other men, each silently checking over their gear away from the others. “So tell me boyo, what’s you plan of attack? Since you’re tha one that seems to be in charge of us then you must have a plan to make sure me an mine get out alive?”

Frankie’s eye bored into me with an intensity I didn’t know could come from a human. I shouldered my sword into it’s sheath and looked back him with a sure gaze.

“My plan comes in two parts, you and me will breach in through the front door. The rest of your men will breach through the windows, letting some good natural light into the room. After that it’s a standard sweep and clear through the penthouse, and if anything in there moves, we shoot it till it stops. Simple enough for you?”

A slight smile crossed the Irishman’s lips. “Well let’s see how it turns out boyo, cause no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”

We loaded into the van the mob boy’s had brought with them and headed out. The building we were going to was one of those high rise, black glass towers that have been springing up lately. We parked in the alley out back of the building and split up from there. The roof top team broke into the building’s service elevator and headed up to the roof to prep for their breach of the penthouse windows, while Frankie and I took the front door route.

We walked past the front desk, not even bothering to respond to the squeaky little man behind the desk as we entered the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. When the doors refused to close it was then that I realized that we needed a key to be able to access the top floor.

[Holister]

Don't ya' hate it when a plan hits a snag.

[Grace]

No offense Slayer,

But the combination of orange and green really makes my eyes want to puke.

[Slayer]

Sorry Nemesis, I will only color the speaking next time. I have seen someones eye's puke before, it's not pretty.

[Slayer]

Yes Ben I really do, but not everything that goes wrong is catastrophic.

[Holister]

Thats why its called a " snag ". But please continue you tale, Im interested in seeing how this plays out.

[Slayer]

"Well now boyo, what's your plan for this then? Gotta key on ya, or did you not do your homework on this bloody building?"

I reached into my coat and came out with a set of lock picks. "Never fear, this isn't my first time having to get into somewhere I wasn't supposed to." I started to work on the key mechanism while Frankie mutter something about amateurs under his breath. It only took me a few seconds to get it to activate
and with a quiet hiss the doors closed and the elevator started to move upwards.

We broke out our weapons in silence,Frankie checked his radio and contacted the roof team. They were setting up in position and would wait for his signal before they would breach. The elevator chimed as we reached the penthouse, and we brought our weapons to our shoulders as we waited for the doors to open.

When the doors parted we found ourselves looking at a short hallway leading to the floors only door. Outside were what appeared to be two men. I activated the optics in my face plate and saw them for what they were, skeletons in suits with machine pistols that were being aimed in our direction.

Frankie fired first, his rounds cutting the one one the left in half, as the one on the right dumped a few rounds into my armor to no real effect. My shotgun quickly put the second one down, and Frankie turned to me.

"Smarten your ass up boyo, cause a rotten pile of bones just got the drop on ya." He shook his head and moved up to
the door, with me following closely behind. We stacked on either side of the heavy wooden doors, Frankie covering back down the hall as I worked the lock open. Once it was ready, he gave the signal to the roof team as we crashed through the door.

What we saw next was like something out of a horror movie. Every stick of furniture in the main room was made from bone, human bone. The lighting was low so detail was difficult until the roof team came in through one of the blacked out windows. As we scanned the room we saw nothing in sight, no Khavick, no skeletons, nothing.

It was then I heard a voice talking to me inside my own head. It sounded like nothing I have ever heard before, and it definitely was not friendly. In what I can only assume was a mocking tone it said, "Welcome to my parlor little flies."

[Holister]

That sounds like Special K.

[Slayer]

You would think that Ben, but you would be wrong.

We all converged towards the sound of the voice, thinking we had found him, or at least had been trapped by him. Frankie's team took the lead as we approached the door way. "Stay tight boy's, don"t give the leech room to run." Frankie controlled his men well, but none of us were prepared for what came next.

As we breached the room we were confronted not by a man, but by a demon. It stood ten feet tall, it's skin was jet black and it's wings were massive, easily six feet across while the were folded. One of Frankie's men summed up our reactions perfectly in one turn of phrase. "We are so f@#$ed."

It began to laugh, the sound of it cut through my mind like a knife. "Am I not the one you were looking to find? Or did you fools actually believe the He would live in a place with this much light? You truly are fools, and your deaths will do little to please me, but so be it. You may provide me with a few moments of distraction, it has been rather dull here lately."

It began to chant in a tongue I have never heard, and as the words escaped from it I could feel confusion creep into my mind. I shut my eyes to summon the will to resist, but I was thrown to the ground as something pounded into my chest. I flew into the doorway that we had entered the room by, and through the pain I could hear yelling. I stood back up and saw the beast, it was going after Frankie. I opened up with my Spas and emptied my magazine into it. It fell to the ground in a heap, still laughing as if nothing were wrong.

I could see Frankie's mouth moving, but I could not focus on the words that he was saying. That was when he ran over and slugged me. I flew across the room as if I had wings. I crashed over a sofa and landed in a heap. The pain in my chest told me Frankie had at least cracked a few ribs.

But the pain helped me clear my head, and as I rolled to my feet I reloaded the Spas. I came up from behind the couch trying to figure out how and why Frankie would have hit me like that, when the scene before me answered all my questions. The demon was gone, and in it's place on the floor lay one of Frankie's men.

He had been torn apart by shotgun blasts.

[Cybermancer]

Friendly fire, isn't.

[Holister]

I hate demons. Specially demons that are clever.

[Hannah]

I hate being foolish enough to send people into something like that.

[Holister]

That is why the drinkin' age is 21 and not 16. Kids don't make the best decisions cause they lack experience kiddo.

[Slayer]

Hannah, you made the best decisions you could at the time. I hold nothing against you in terms of what happened in the penthouse. As the old saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

And Ben stop being an ass, the plan was solid, it was just for the wrong kind of monster.

[Hannah]

I divided the teams up though. If we had gone as a big group we could have got it sorted out without so many of us getting hurt or injured.

It's not like Khavik was in any of the places anyway. So we didn't accomplish anything.

[Doctor Boggs]

The day we can truly prepare for the unknown is the day... oh right, it'll never be that day. It is what it is Slayer, you ran into a Demon and are alive to talk about it, that's a win. Please continue your tale.

[Cybermancer]

I divided the teams up though. If we had gone as a big group we could have got it sorted out without so many of us getting hurt or injured.

It's not like Khavik was in any of the places anyway. So we didn't accomplish anything.

Just because you missed a primary objective does not mean you should so easily dismiss the secondary ones.

[Hannah]

The sole objective was to find and end Khavik.

[Slayer]

Look Hannah, it's like Doc said, it turned out all right in the end because I am hear to write about it. We all knew the risks going in, and we accepted them. Besides if we had not split up the only thing we would have effectively done was make a huge target. You made a good call kiddo, so please don't beat yourself up over it.

As I tried to get over the shock of what I was seeing, a bolt of lightning came out of a shadow and struck one of Frankie’s men. He convulsed and shook like Luke SkyWalker getting hit by the emperor. He fell to the ground smoking and unmoving. Shot’s were being fired into every shadow, and it took a second for me to hear more chanting over the din of gunfire. One of Frankie’s guy’s knew magic and decided to put a small sun in the middle of the room.

The demon shrieked as it came into view. Everyone turned on it and started to drain ammunition into it’s skeletal form, and with the extra light most of the rounds found their target. The thing roared in anger and attacked the mage that had foiled it’s hiding spot. We continued to pump bullet’s into it, but it did not care. It grabbed the mage and tossed him through a window like a child discards a broken toy.

“Enough of this, attack slaves!” the bat winged demon cried. That was when things went from bad to nightmare.

You all remember when I told you that the furniture here was made from human bone? Well as it turns out it was for a purpose, since at this thing’s command ALL of the furniture animated and began to attack us. Our rounds were starting to run low, so I had to switch to my sword as my last shotgun round blew a dinning room chair into shards of bone. I was starting to get surrounded, and as I looked around I could see Frankie backing towards me, blasting a sofa with an Ingram Mac 10. Frankie’s last team member was completely surrounded, and we could do nothing but watch as an armoire engulfed him into itself. It took a full fifteen seconds before the screaming stopped.

Frankie and I stood back to back as Hells’ Ikea came at us, The demon watching and smiling the whole while. I turned my head to Frankie and said “I have a plan, but I need to get close to this thing to do it. On three I need you to open up a lane for me using one of those grenades I gave you ok?” Frankie simply nodded and primed it.

“One… Two…Three!” Frankie’s aim was true and when the grenade blew, it cleared a straight line between me and it. I charged it, calling up in my mind the power that has run in my family for generations. It didn’t even try to get away, it was so sure that nothing I did would harm it. My hand landed on it’s chest and I released the power of my bloodline upon it. It shrieked in agony as the water in it’s monstrous body began to evaporate through it’s skin. I yelled in triumph as it buckled to it’s knees, only to be hit by it’s powerful arm and thrown across the room, where I promptly was swarmed by a couple of end tables. The last thing I remember before it all went dark was watching this thing start to stand again, not downed as I had hoped but more pissed off than ever.

“Hey boyo, wake up.” As my swollen lids opened, I saw Frankie kneeling over me.

“How are you still alive?” I asked him, not able to figure out how one man could have survived, let alone won against those odds.

“Luck of the Irish lad. That and shoving a grenade down the blasted thing’s throat.” He smiled and helped me struggle to my feet. As we headed to the elevator, we could hear sirens getting closer. We climbed into the elevator and went to the second floor, taking the stairs the rest of the way down and going out a side door by the van. As we turned onto the street we saw D.C.’s finest pulling up to the front.

[Slayer]

There, edited the first post to prevent eye puking. Cause that only ever ends in tears.