Transmission |TAG: BLY|

[Nick LeCroix]

It was a simple job.  Not one he was incredibly thrilled with, simply because it seemed pretty boring and had him hanging around in a LAB watching scientist-type nerds playing with shit that he didn't want to be anywhere near, but he was getting paid surprisingly well for it.  Seems this guy pissed someone off, someone important, because he wasn't sparing much expense in paying for a bodyguard.  Nick wasn't cheap, especially when he played bodyguard.  He didn't like hanging around for hours on end when he could plan something out, sneak in, kill someone and get home to Skye and his baby.  Obviously, this was a pretty good deal, even if it was boring.

He was standing off to the side, watching his charge work with some virus that Nick didn't know anything about (and really didn't care about, since shifters couldn't get sick) in a sterile room that he wasn't entering.  It was pretty straightforward.  He waited outside and kept anyone from entering, pretty much, but the basic deal was that his charge didn't die.  End of story.

He could handle that, even if his job was usually to make sure the guy DID die.  He didn't mind changing things up a little, though, and had in the past.  Too bad this guy wasn't making his job easy in the LEAST, what with the glass that left their locations this obvious, and the windows on the other side of the room.  At least he'd have warning if attack came from that direction, but it still wasn't pleasant.  He'd have preferred less in the way of windows.

[Scott Payne]

What a stupid job. Stupid yet lucrative. One characteristic was far more important than the other, naturally...which was why Bly was fluttering around like an idiot outside the perimeter of the CDC center, trying to get a good look at the interior of the structure-- no easy task, with twilight setting in on top of the hot, dead, and stale air he had to fight with in order to keep aloft. Flying wasn't exactly his forte.

He was supposed to kill some sorta scientist. Stupid. Whatever. Whoever wanted him dead was a bigshot, if the entailed imbursement was any indication, and that was his prerogative: if that's how he wanted to spend his money, fine. Long as I get it, he thought to himself with a mental grin, flying down to investigate what looked to be a cracked window. With daylight hours drawing to a close, there weren't too many people left working here, and according to what he'd been fed, his target would be working in some second-floor lab of sorts. Not too many candidates left that fit that description. Fuckin' window better'd be open, it was only one corridor over from who he figured HAD to be the guy...

Aw, hell YES. He flapped inside, landing on the cool floor and pausing to catch his breath and settle his racing little bird heart. How out of place he must have looked...had anyone actually been in the hallway to see him. Not gonna get any better in a sec, he sniggered to himself, then shifted back to human form. His long, black leather coat flapped around him as he whirled back and pushed the window open to its fullest extent-- if this was going to be a potential escape route, it had better be a decent one.

And NOW for the fun part. He strolled down the hall towards the double-doors that he knew led to the outer room just beyond the glassed-in laboratory itself, huge boots clunking, chains jangling, reaching under his coat as he went and drawing out his dual Micro Uzi submachine guns. Sneaking in like that had been infuriating, to say the least: SO not his style. But this was the CDC. Government stuff and all. If there was EVER a time that he needed to be subtle about an entrance and an exit, this might be it.

However, that didn't mean he couldn't do whatever he damn well pleased about the task itself. He casually kicked open the doors, shouted "HONEY, I'M HOME!", and opened fire.

[Nick LeCroix]

'Whatever he damn well pleased' was something that Bly was quickly going to find to be rather...difficult.  Since Nick was on the opposite end of Bly's intentions, he was going to have to disagree, and that was never pretty in a situation like this.

Unfortunately for Bly, he was up against a feline, and felines have damn good hearing.  Those clunky boots and chains may have been dramatic, but they were also loud, and Nick wasn't an amateur.  He heard that, knew it didn't sound good, and tapped the glass behind him rather quickly.  All he had to do was look in at the guy and gesture for him to get on the floor, and everything was cool.  The charge was out of the line of fire and already crawling for cover, and Nick ducked around to put himself in a position less likely to get shot.

Unless you're a FREAK who busts open the door and screams 'HONEY, I'M HOME' as he sprays the room with bullets.

Glass shattered, Nick hissed as a bullet connected with his side, and that was IT.  He twisted around, let loose a roar that SHOULD NOT have been able to leave any normal human's throat, and returned fire.  This idiot was messing with the wrong damn merc.

[Scott Payne]

His Uzis were belching a barrage of bullets and glass was essentially shredding apart under the assault, cascading to the ground in a symphony of crashes, tinkles and chimes. Music to Bly's ears.

He only had a split-second to register that there was someone else in the outer sanctum with him, a moment to realize that it sure as hell didn't look like a scientist, before an extremely unwelcome sound interrupted the harmonious composition he was enjoying. The feathers on the back of his neck stood on end as what could only be described as a ROAR ripped through the air, drowning out the sound of his guns to the point where he might as well have not been shooting any longer. And after THAT sound, he wasn't. For a moment he couldn't even BREATHE. What the FUCK was that?!?!

And then a new sound-- gunfire. That was enough to snap him back to reality, and to galvanize him into action. SO. Scientist hired muscle. Scary-as-fuck muscle, judging from the roar that had just deafened him. But hey, couldn't let that deter him; he had a job to do and cash that would only present itself if he DID it. If that meant taking out some bodyguard, then...well, that was that. Jangled nerves be damned.

He leaped to one side, towards the lab, training one Uzi in the general direction of the other man while keeping the other aimed at the laboratory, and pulled the triggers again. He could risk taking a bullet or two as long as he managed to hit his target...wherever he was. DAMNIT, this isn't hide and seek!

[Nick LeCroix]

So much for being bored.  Nick wasn't sure if he preferred the quiet or the excitement at this point, but the fact of the matter was that he didn't have the time to think about it.  For the moment, his charge should be safe in that secondary room, as long as the freak with the funny colors in his hair and the chains didn't do something stupid, like leap in there.  Obviously, it wasn't a guy who'd had much experience with some of the bigger, scarier predators the world had to offer, considering how rattled he seemed by the roar, and Nick fully intended to take advantage of that fact.

First, return fire, though. 

Nick had brought some firepower along, considering the kind of cash he was getting out of this, and he was pleased to realize that his attacker had a pair of Mini Uzis.  Sure, the Uzis had a larger round than what he was carrying, but the rate of fire and the accuracy wasn't nearly as good.  This kid was also spraying bullets around like he had an unlimited supply, so he was bound to run out soon enough.  The Uzis could hold anywhere from 30-50 rounds per clip, and then he'd have to reload.  Nick just had to avoid taking any streams from one of them in the meantime, since the shot he hadn't manage to avoid had definitely not been something he enjoyed. 

With the longer style of suit jacket he'd been wearing, not to mention his size, it hadn't been too hard to keep the FN P90 he was carrying hidden under his arm, and now, he had it on the little punk that had busted in.  Bad news for Bly, since Nick didn't waste rounds, and therefore used his better accuracy and rate of fire to knock off short, better aimed bursts.  Once you've found yourself stuck in a hostile situation with limited ammunition, you learn not to waste.  You also learn to move your ass, push your advantages when you can, and use your environment to your advantage.  He had to keep himself between the assassin and his charge, preferably without revealing the man's location. 

God, he hoped none of the ruined research equipment had anything to do with nasty diseases, otherwise that man was going to end up in trouble whether a bullet found him or not.  He'd have to worry about that after killing this little freak, though.

[Scott Payne]

WHOAkay, time to get moving. Bly knew he wasn't going to last long out in the open, and unless he could quickly get some cover in the lab itself and just as quickly take care of his target, he was screwed. No time to think about it (which was just fine, thinking wasn't one of his policies), he just had to act. NOW.

It all happened in a matter of seconds:
Bly stopped firing, possibly instants before he would have run out of ammo. He wasn't exactly counting the bullets. The silence that followed was shortly interrupted by the other man's gun firing a short, measured burst in his direction, not quite point-blank, but with frightening accuracy. Something sliced past his thigh (accompanied with a flash of stinging pain) and through his coat as he leaped sideways as far as he could manage, further into the room, as if attempting to dance around the bodyguard. The moment the other man shifted his position (presumably, hopefully moving to get between his opponent and the scientist), swinging his gun as he turned, Bly charged.

Perhaps it was just THAT unexpected: tiny punk of a man hurling himself at giant brute. Whatever it was, it worked, at least for a moment. Momentum carried the two over the threshold and into the laboratory, and, more through luck than by design, Bly tore himself away from Nick and promptly rolled onto a countertop-- and kept going, tumbling over the opposite side and dropping to the floor beyond. SAFE.

Too bad he'd rolled right over an assortment of shattered beakers and chemistry set paraphernalia.

Hissing through his teeth, he scrambled on his hands and knees around the corner of the next row of counters, putting as much distance as he could between himself and that fucking ASSHOLE back there, and leaving an infuriatingly copious trail of blood. Damn glass wounds always bled so much, and there were little nicks â€"and larger pieces embeddedâ€" all over his bare chest. Shoulda buttoned up, he though sourly to himself as he rushed through the reloading process, still keeping low and moving forward as he fumbled with the magazine.

And spotted a foot darting around the corner ahead. Gotcha.

He rushed forward, staying below the level of the countertops.

[Nick LeCroix]

It DID happen fast, which wasn't usually a problem for Nick.  He knew that as long as he didn't take a bullet to the head or heart, he could keep going, so he was sure to intercept the little punk in his mad dash for the scientist that Nick had been hired to protect.  The kid had stopped firing, which meant that he was either out or conserving what remained of his ammunition, and that was fine with Nick. 

Wait.

The idiot charged him, and Nick had a choice.  He could either attempt to shoot him and wait for the kid to break off to the side so that he could put a bullet in his head and end this, or he could shift.  Shifting would likely get messy.  Messier.  He wasn't planning on the idiot actually smashing into him, and that might have been the fact that he was bleeding pretty heavily from that bullet, but the last thing he'd expected was for that little dude to actually attempt to tackle him, and he'd have been fine if he had a wall behind him or room to back pedal and tear the punk apart.  No, he had a portion of wall about as high as his knees, with jagged glass at the top, and that's what he fell over and cut his calves to shreds on.

This kid was dead.  DEAD.

He got away, DAMNITHEGOTAWAY, but Nick rolled and shot off another burst of gunfire as the punk was rolling over the counter, and he shoved off the glass-strewn floor to land on the counter himself.  He'd have gone over as well, if not for the fact that he ran the risk of getting a face-ful of Uzi, so he had to hover in whatever liquid mess was on that counter, hands bleeding from the glass, while he established where the kid was.  He could hear him, but he couldn't see him.

Oh, fuck that, the kid was reloading.  He knew that sound.

He wasn't playing this game, at ALL.  Sliding off the counter as quietly as he could, he let the FN P90 come to a rest against his body, ignoring whatever had come out of the beakers onto him in the process of getting off the counter (shifter, after all), and gave up on the damn gunfire.  If the punk wanted to play, they could play.

He shifted to his lion form, let loose a TRUE roar, and was off after that trail of blood like a rocket.  A very heavy, fast, and teeth-filled rocket.  When he found that asshole, he was going to tear his legs or arms off, whichever was most convenient first thing.

[Scott Payne]

Bly was just arriving at the corner where he'd last seen the shoe when the ROAR returned, reverberating through the air and sending his feathers straight on end yet again. That was only the tiniest fraction of his reaction THIS time, however. Bly would have been loathe to admit it, had he been thinking clearly, but this was without a doubt the most horrifying sound he'd ever perceived, SO much worse than the first time. A shudder shot straight down his spine, gooseflesh chased up and down his body, his heart and his stomach felt as though they'd traded locations momentarily, his knees experienced a little engine failure, and--

He suddenly found himself gripping the countertop for dear life, halfway through a collapse, one of his Uzis discarded on the floor and the other threatening to slip from his fingers. Discombobulated, he turned his head...

LION. FUCKING LION. RUNNING. STRAIGHT. AT. HIM.

For once, his credo of "not thinking" served him well. A flood of adrenaline helped, in this case, as did the quetzal's exceptionally rational instinct: FLY.

He shifted and flapped like a lunatic, letting out a peal of panicked chirps, putting as much distance between himself and the floor as possible...and several feet OFF the floor, for that matter. FUCK THIS SHIT. His Uzis were lying back on the floor and he wasn't gonna get his money and each wingbeat ached like a bastard, but he was not about to play tag with a fuckin' LION! No, he was going to keep on flying, a battered bundle of pretty green feathers soaked in red, keep flying right through those double doors and right down that hallway and right out that window into the deepening night and GO. HOME. ...No. Nah. Onyx. He'd get someone to put him back together again and someone else to dump this retarded job on.

If a bird could limp in midair, he was doing it. Yeah. Juuust pissa. Fucking lion. Stupid job.

[Nick LeCroix]

Yeah, a lion's roar can be heard from miles away, and in a small space like this, it was hellish, and he knew it.  He was counting on it.  He wasn't exactly expecting the kid to freak out and turn into a bird, but it made a lot of sense with what he was smelling when he thought about it.  He just hadn't bothered to pay attention to that little factor before, because it really wasn't important.  So the bird was going to fly away.  Big deal.

He actually stood on his hind legs to bat at the annoying thing, but Bly was flying in a fairly irregular fashion due to injuries, so he was ducking out of the way and in funny directions without really even trying.  Nick could smell the terror on him, so really, was it necessary to follow?  No, because if he did, he'd eat the guy, and that would be the start of something bad, especially if he was supposed to be protecting the other living creature in the area.

Yeah, not a good idea.  In fact, he shifted back to human as soon as he was certain the assassin had taken off for good.  Leaving his uzis.  Awesome, Nick got a prize for being scary.  That was always fun.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked his charge, peeking around the corner to find the guy sitting with his back to the wall, looking terrified.  He reeked of piss, which was just so very pleasant.  "Ugh, change your clothes or something, and I'll call the police.  Be quick about it," he instructed, and then he was off to make that call, then try to clean himself up.  There was a lot of blood, and a lot of glass, that he had to take care of.  Damn that kid.