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Pandora's Flight

Post 1

recrash

-Scene 1-

Monday, 1:23 PM.

The city was a living being.

People, just finished with lunch, walked in step back to the offices. Waited for the green lights to cross in surging masses, past gray cars and yellow taxis that waited also for the lights to change. Punctual, methodical. The living corpuscles in a great asphalt animal.

Of the oldest and finest hotels in the city, the Arietta is the oldest and finest by far. Built during the great boom of cheap steel and labor, it stood flanked by its modern brothers, dwarfed and gray next to their mirrored sleekness. Yet inside it was still the 1920's, and the brass still glowed, and the carpets were thick as ever.

Mincing feet padded across. Big, clomping feet followed.

The little man and his two huge bodyguards boarded the elevator and pressed for the top floor. No one else was on as one guard checked his teeth for signs of lunch -spinach- while their charge, as usual, kept his suitcase tightly to his chest.

Second floor. Third floor.
Fourth floor. A drunken bunch of tourists thought better of boarding.

Fifth floor. Sixth floor.

Seventh. A little old lady with a poodle on a leash got on and went to the rear.

Eighth floor. Ninth floor. The dog began barking. Wailing.

"Huh?" Spinach said as he noticed a tall shadow behind him. Long hair. Black suit, pinstriped shirt. Solid red tie. Shades.

"What the-" They made for their guns but before they could draw, something grabbed spinach's left arm and twisted it behind him, turning him to the side to slam him with another hand into the -WHAM!- mirrored wall. Bodyguard 2 got a snapping back kick that pasted him into the next wall. Crunch.

They dropped. Glass tinkled. The poodle cringed.

The man let go of the leash. Looked to the little man.

"The briefcase, please." He said, very quietly.
"I c-c-can't," he chattered, pressed against the unyielding elevator doors. He tried for the alarm button but a shattering kick took it out.

"You'll be helping your own freedom!" Glass breathed. Moving now to grab it.

Ding. Top floor. The doors slid open.

"FREEEZE!"

-Scene 2-

Police cruisers, cherries and sirens blazing and blaring, nearly piled into each other to stop before the Arietta. Lieutenant Michelli got out, stretching his eyes to the top floor.

A starched government type in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, dark glasses, earpiece, and the shiniest shoes he'd ever seen walked up from a nondescript black car to glare at him.

"Lieutenant, you have men up there?" Perfect English. Accentless. They really sent these feds to classes.

"Right," he answered. "An entire SWAT team. They'll get your man."
The agent almost chuckled. "I'm sorry for you, lieutenant. Your men are already dead."

Crash! A top floor window exploded in glass and bodies.

-Scene 1-

Milliseconds after he scoped the commandoes in gray and black webbing, he was moving.

WHAP! He kicked out the cowering courier's legs and caught him as he fell, holding him sideways as a-

TADADADADADA! POW! POW! BOOM!

-Shield. Grimaced as some of the blood got on his suit. Brass tinkling as the SWAT began to realize they'd killed the hostage, he retracted the arm, raised a leg and-

WHOOM! Kicked the courier!

Flew from the elevator, slammed into two cops, and together they burst out the window.

Ripping open the bullet-ridden case he grabbed the sheaf of papers, rolled them, and stuck them into his jacket.

"FIRE! FIRE AT WILL!"

Time to move.

Blazing nine-millimeter death erupted around him. He somersaulted away and out the elevator, running unbelievably fast, always ahead of zipping furies as the SWAT men's bullets took out the windows on all four walls-

"AAAAAUUGH!"
"I'm HIT!"
"Friendly fire, friendly fire!" He was still running.

Flipped and ran the ceiling, dropped down to slide a couch into three men and out the windows-

Dodging one shotgun-man, grabbing weapon, -KOOM!- blasting it into another cop, smashing gunner's jaw -wHAcK!- with elbow, leaping, firing shotgun.

The dog kept barking from under an ottoman.

He was a spinning dervish, smashing, kicking, grabbing men to use as shields before he threw them out the windows. Strike, smash, swing, block, strike-!

Silence. Room cleared.

Movement. He looked to the elevator and saw he needle climbing.

DING!

Full of men!

"Get him!" The agent roared. Turning, the longhaired man dashed for the balcony, then launched himself off in a brilliant dive.

"Well, don't just stand there," the agent growled -grabbed two cops and threw them- "Go after him!"

-Scene 2-

"Get some more men up there! Clear these people!

Michelli looked up to see the terrorist jump. In horror, he saw some of his best men come flailing after, dead and moving, and there was nothing he could do.

Strange. Was that the fed falling? Didn't seem like that earlier.

-Scene 1-

Glass sensed others falling with him. In a flash he flipped around and -BOOM!- drilled the agent right through the eye. Too late, he saw another cop become an agent-

BOOM! BOOM!

Twisting, firing, bullets flying up to find the agent wherever he appeared among the falling human flesh. Ten times he succeeded, he ran out of ammo and the agent, in the last surviving man, the others falling bloody corpses, closed in, arms outstretched.

Glass smiled.

-Scene 2-

The strangest thing, Michelli thought. Of all the bodies recovered, none were of the federal agent or the unknown man. They found cops, a mangled courier, and what used to be a little old lady.

-Scene 3-

Elsewhere. A cramped little room piled full of surplus electronics and a ratty cot. A rumpled form lay sleeping over one terminal. One blank, blinking terminal. Suddenly not blank.

Wargamer.

Wargamer, wake up.


Pandora's Flight

Post 2

Wargamer (The Wanderer)

Okaaaaay... Is there a point to this massive piece of writing?


Pandora's Flight

Post 3

recrash

Play along, bud.

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Pandora's Flight

Post 4

recrash

... Or not. Anyway, whaddaya think?


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