(... Fucking hell.)
Currently regretting his choice of saw that was now filling up most of his extra large backpack and weighing about 12 kg (without ammunition, extra barrels and a 'special' surprise) Tom glanced at Lisa, who's slightly glowing eyes were glancing back at him.
"Tom, are you really sure about this?"
"Yeah, sadly. I've examined the entirety of the outer wall and this is the best entrance."
Seeing his pupil not entirely convinced, Tom laid it out flat, partly to get it over with, but also partly because he also didn't really like the current option, and this was one of the times he would be ecstatic to be proven wrong.
"West, north and east gates are reinforced hardpoints, south is an obvious trap and the repair work on the wall south-south-east isn't even something I want to address."
As Tom pointed out, the north, east and west gate were way too hardened, which left the way too open south gate and south-south-east repair in the wall that were both obvious traps to draw in attacks… With all those options left out, the only place to enter, except for scaling the walls, which would be a pain with the extra gear, was the city of Yalha's impressive sanitation tunnel network.
… The sewers… The only option left was the sewers.
"... Fuck me."
Already smelling it from the considerable distance they were at, Lisa felt her eyes start to singe.
"Yeah, I agree, but you want to get your mom back, yeah?"
Being one for seeing the bigger picture, Tom, who was already wearing his gas mask successfully motivated Lisa in just a few sentences who also put on her mask with an annoyed eye roll.
"How are we getting in?"
Approaching the sewer drain that was large enough to fit a medium sized military truck, Tom and Lisa found it gated off like a prison cell.
"Hmm."
Setting down his back of holding on a solitary, somewhat dry patch Tom pulled out a halligan bar.
"Is that?"
"Yeah, clear me."
Given that they were most likely moving into a clusterfuck, Tom had been teaching Lisa more about CQC, specifically entry tech, so Lisa quickly recognised the vaguely crowbar shaped tool Tom had and acted accordingly. Putting her rifle back up against her shoulder, Lisa took a few steps back away from the wall and scanned the top of the walls and the sides before she moved up next to his shoulder.
"... You're clear."
"Ye, clear… Go for entry on one."
Placing the halligan tool in the lock, Tom gave it a few good taps and jammed in before he started to use all that strength he was given by the most merciful lady of the hunt.
"Hm-"
"... Now I understand how you broke that guy's head so fast."
Seeing the metal gate effortlessly flex as Tom slowly wrenched the metal door open without making much noise, Lisa understood how Tom could turn a man's head into paste with just a few punches. It was one thing to break a metal gate open with just a bit of leverage, but even more so to do it slowly so it didn't make much noise.
"Well, my body is quite literally a gift from god… See what I did there? It's like a gift, like the saying-"
"Whatever, the door is open, let's go."
Pushing past Tom with an aggressive eye-roll, she dismissed his blasphemous pun and took point as her eyes adjusted to the dark sewer as they started glowing.
"1-2, going dark."
Placing a hand on Lisa's shoulder after stowing his halligan, Tom relayed new rules of engagements as he pulled out his suppressed pistol.
"Rog."
Following Tom's command, Lisa stowed her M-503 by its sling and pulled out her own silenced pistol, its mat black metal coat now sporting an etched picture of a flower.
-
"Urg, fuck… I'm so glad I can't smell all of that."
Seeing a bundle of way too large rats, doing unholy things in a puddle of assorted biowaste on top of a fatberg, Lisa tried very hard to ignore that she was boots high in the same kind of waste and she just felt something scurry past her leg.
"Yeah…"
Just like his disciple, Tom's eyes looked more dead than usual as he firmed up his throat and pushed down his afternoon snack, again.
"…This should be a good place."
Having followed his position from above, and with a partial deep ground scans from the Albatross, Tom figured he and Lisa were now underneath a sparsely populated residential outskirts on the west side of town. Finding a manhole access, Tom left his backpack with Lisa and started slowly ascending the ladder with his pistol out and pointed at the metal cover above. If anything even touched the manhole cover at the top, Tom was going to drop down, hence why he was doing the breach with Lisa well and clear.
(Please be clear, please be clear, please be clear… Good.)
Slowly approaching the top, the Albatross circling far above finally regained his precise location, from there it was easy to confirm that there was nothing of threat near the alleyway he would emerge from, so Tom dropped a glowstick to signal to Lisa, exited out from the manhole and waited for her.
"Are we good?"
"Yeah, hold here, I'll get my equipment."
Quickly descending the ladder again, Tom was about to haul his backpack up with him to the street when a pair of dead guards dropped head first down in front of him.
(Welp, I guess we're on a timer now.)
Tom didn't blame Lisa for ending the guards when they had spotted her, but he acknowledged that their operational situation had just shifted.
(Optimistically we have 2 hours before these guys start to be missed, then it depends on how competent the guards are…)
With the 5 hour operation now shortened to half that, Tom and Lisa needed to be a bit bolder in their tactics.
"Good shooting, we're moving to plan F2."
"Roger."
Quickly cleaning themselves off and hiding their gear underneath leather cloaks, Lisa and Tom started moving through the back streets and alleys towards the centre of town. The first of two targets was the guard captain's residence, to have a 'chat' with him… Only there was a slight problem.
"... Seriously?"
Finding the mansion surprisingly quiet when they arrived, it wasn't long before Tom and Lisa found a lot of stray blood spatter, but no corpses, or people for that matter.
"I don't like this."
"Same, but we need to figure out what's happening here."
Given that the entire city wasn't on alert, Tom figured they still had time to figure out what was happening, so while Lisa pulled out her rifle, Tom continued on as point man with his suppressed pistol. As the pair continued through the mansion, they found more blood, enough that Tom assed multiple people had died, but still no corpses, or people for that matter. There was so much blood that Tom started considering pulling out all together when he found something else.
(Hold.)
Raising a hand and signalling to Lisa to hold position, Tom glanced at the blood splattered hallway for a bit as he noticed that someone had been dragged through the hallway, and judging from the scratch marks, and ripped off fingernail, Tom judged that whoever had been dragged along was probably who they were after. Following the drag marks to a double door, Tom signalled for Lisa to breach before he kicked the door in.
"... Clear."
"Clear."
Finding a single mutilated corpse bound to a chair inside the office, Tom quickly assessed it was the guard captain, and judging by the documents all over the place it was clear someone had been looking for information, the same as Tom and Lisa.
"... Seems like we were late to the party."
"Yeah… His blood is still fresh, This happened less than an hour ago."
Making a quick assessment of the situation, Tom pulled out a X-91 Lance incendiary grenade.
"We move to the second target, on the double."
Whether it was intentional information denial (unlikely) or someone else also gathering intelligence same as Lisa and Tom, he figured their next target was likely the same. Leaving the guard captain's mansion as it started going up in flames, the pair of borderline terrorists headed for the lord's residence.
"In under half an hour this entire city is going to light up with activity, with no time to spare we're switching ROE."
"Weapon's free?"
"Weapon's free."
Confirming the new rules of engagement as they ran along the side streets with weapons out, Tom managed to just about get his words out before a pair of guards stepped out in front of them.
"Wha-"
The first guard barely got a single word out before he was tackled by Tom and smashed his head open on the stone paved road, while the second was quickly ended by a burst of rifle fire to the upper torso from Lisa.
"We're blown!"
"You think?"
Feeling like he was stating the obvious, Lisa couldn't help but comment as she continued sprinting alongside Tom.
"Not the guards, there's another of those flying golems."
"Fuck…"
With activity picking up all over town as the guard captain's mansion had caught on fire, Tom's neural uplink informed him of a hostile UAV operating in the area. Faced with a sudden addition of their still unknown antagonist also getting involved, Tom considered pulling out entirely, but in the end he chose not to.
(I've made enough precautions, stepped up Lisa's training and gone over everything with her… We need to face this shitface directly at some point, so why not on my terms rather than his?)
"So, what are we doing?"
"Proceeding, first and second wave Wasp's have just launched, third wave is on standby and all contingencies have been armed. This is for real now."
"Roger."
Running through another few guard patrols on the way to the lord's mansion, it didn't take an expert to figure out there was something going down at the mansion when Lisa and Tom arrived.
"Welp, at least that's less trouble for us to go through…"
While the main gate into the mansion still remained intact, the private guards next to it had expired a bit ago, their throats cut clean with surprise and horror etched onto their frozen faces. Glancing at the surrounding wall, Tom saw small scratches into it from climbing equipment.
(... No more than 4 perps, given the ease they climbed over this wall I have to assume that's how they entered the city too.)
"About 4 skilled assassins did this… And no more than 15 minutes ago."
Updating Lisa on his findings as he removed the silencer from his pistol and switched ammunition, Tom updated the ROE.
"We don't wanna antagonise these people, but at the same time we need the lord alive to get our own pound of flesh… If they object to that we end them."
"Mmm, this might be demihumans too, so take care."
Sensing strange traces of mana around the place, Lisa warned about the involvement of mana as she leapt over the 3 metre tall wall without much effort. Following his disciple with a bit more effort, given all the shit he was carrying, Tom took point and entered the mansion with his MPX-11A2 pistol in one hand and the halligan bar in the other. Passing dead servants and guards alike inside the mansion, Tom and Lisa could clearly hear screaming when they closed in on the 3rd floor main office.
(Hold.)
Signalling for Lisa to hold with a hand movement again, Tom listened to the screaming and muffled voices coming from the office for a few seconds.
"ARRRGH! I DON'T KNOW! I SWEAR!"
"That's *** **** enough."
While not catching every word of the conversation from outside the door, it was clear to Tom there was some kind of interrogation going on.
(Breach, stack up, but hold fire.)
Slowly and quietly setting his backpack down after giving his disciple instructions via hand signals, Tom crept up to the door together with Lisa and waited for the guy on the other side to start screaming again as he tried the door handle.
(Locked… Well then.)
Resisting the urge to scream 'room service!~' at the top of his lungs, Tom took half a step back and kicked the double door in with most of his weight. As the doors nearly flew off their hinges quickly hitting the inside wall, Time slowed down for Tom as he assessed the situation with lighting reflexes he had honed over countless no knock raids.
(3 mobile, 1 stationary. Low dead space.)
Finding the office occupied by an older man wearing fancy clothes, most likely the lord, bound to a chair and 3 beastmen in dark clothes, Tom raised his pistol, but decided not to fire.
"HOLD!"
Telling Lisa to hang back and hold fire as he used his halligan tool to block a throwing knife aiming for his eye, Tom also limited his violence and fired a single warning shot right past the beastman closest to the presumed lord, grazing his cheek and cooling the mood in the room at the same time.
"Evening, gentleman."
Feeling Lisa stack up next to him, Tom addressed the silent room as he kept his pistol aimed at the beastkin closest to the presumed city lord.
"... Good evening. We're kind of in the middle of something here."
In response to Tom's somewhat polite greeting, the beastman Tom had grazed with a bullet bloomed a fox-like smile as his eyes remained cold.
"W-what are you doing!? Kill them!"
Misunderstanding the current situation as Lisa had her ears hidden and Tom seemed human, the fat guy in the chair cried out for help before he was punched in the gut by the beastman with the fox-like smile.
"Quiet now, the adults are talking… Take a step and the pig gets it."
Putting a knife to the lord's throat, the assassin with the fox-like smile wiped his blood off of his cheek with his free hand, revealing that the wound underneath had already healed.
"Sorry to break up the fun, but we need some answers from the fat man in the chair."
"Really? And why the fuck would I allow that?"
Seeing that the beastkin man clearly didn't trust him (which was understandable, in all honesty) Tom changed his approach.
"... Lisa, if you wouldn't mind."
"... Fine."
Undoing her disguise as she still held the closest treat in the sight of her rifle, Lisa saw the beastkins expressions change.
"Why the hell are the elves interfering in our business? We have a non-interference treaty."
"Thrust me buddy, under other circumstances I would love to take a step back and watch you skin this pig, but as you already killed the only other guy in town that would have the answers I need, I need my pound of flesh from the guy first."
"Hmm~ Okay then."
Finally lowering his knife from the lord's throat, the beastmen's fox-like smile and cold eyes didn't disappear however.
"But I ain't your buddy, human."