DAYS AFTER〔M〕〔IC〕「Hoef & MidKnight」

[Dire Hoef]

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The military humvee tore through the inner-city streets of Atlanta, as fire rained down all around them. The entire scene, alone, would cause any rookie to incur PTSD, but this was nothing for Darius. In fact, he had white-knuckled the steering wheel and was cutting corners like he was F1 driver. And Darius barely drives as is.

The team was on a timer. They only had a handful of minutes to clear the outer-city limits. Why? Because driving through molten hellfire was bad for public health. So FEB command was capable of giving them a window of time to drive through charred streets.

Thus, Darius kicked the vehicle into gear as he cut around a corner. "Jade, get that gun spinning," he shouted over squad-radio, "Everyone else prepare for tag-alongs!"

《Christy: And here I thought we weren't going to have to fight our way there!》

《Rodriguez: Ha! You say that every time, and every time it gets worse. Let's see how bad it is this time!》

The vehicle tore through yet another intersection before coming upon what appeared to be a group of M-killers loitering around in the next intersection. Darius accelerated and shouted, "BRACE!" Everyone in the vehicle pressed themselves up against the interior as it bowling-pinned several of the M-killers.

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[MidKnight]

Jade quickly reached for a rag in her pocket and made a mask, tying it around her head to cover her nose and mouth from the firey smoke. She could see how bad the situation was getting and how intense it was, though it made it feel like home for her. Jade's ears perked up when she heard Darius on the radio.

"You don't have to tell me twice!!" She said with a smile. She pressed one button to start the spin and kept her grip on it. When she sees the group, she pressed the fire trigger. The mini-gun started shooting rapidly at her targets. She braced for impact when she heard Darius shout and also he didn't slow down when they rammed into the group. She noticed a few were on the hood, as they climbed up, they made themselves easy targets. Jade pelted them with bullets before falling off the vehicle. She looked up ahead and sees more M Killers. "HEY RODRIGUEZ!!!! HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR MEAT?!" She yelled with a smile. "ROAD KILLED OR RIDDLED WITH BULLETS?!" She pressed the trigger again and the mini-gun fired off rounds at her targets, she started screaming but also sounded like laughing.

[Dire Hoef]

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As Jade was spraying and engaging the M-Killers with pure killing intent, Darius kept the vehicle steady. He took a quick glance at his watch, and saw they were running out of time. But, he didn't allow that to stop him. Instead, he kept his foot pressed down on the gas as much as humanly possible and leaned in.

He was tight on his corners, being nearly inches from every single wall he zipped past. All the while the fog of M-Killers got thick, turning the already rough terrain into a nightmare.

Again, this didn't stop Darius as he took every precaution he had to insure that the vehicle wasn't going to flip as M-Killer viscera splashes onto the windshield.

Eventually, however, they came upon the final stretch of road. Thankfully, the fires of destruction did not stretch out this far yet. So they still might have thirty, or so, extra seconds before the firebombs reach their position. Thus, Darius shouted over comms, "We're on home stretch people! Lock-in, we're about to get a whole lot more turbulence!"

He, then, spotted, overhead, the dark shapes of bombers flying into the city's airspace. Rodriguez and Christy start taking potshots at on coming M-Killers trying to keep the way clear for the vic to maintain speed.

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[MidKnight]

Jade continued to laugh insanely as she kept her finger on the trigger, bullets spraying into her targets as they continued to drive at a very high speed. She leans with the turret as the Humvee tossed and turned around the corners of each building.

She saw one of the M-Killers jumped on the hood but couldn't stay latched. The M-Killer flew over the roof and flies into Jade and turret. Jade managed to flip the body over her and sees the M-Killer latching on the rear, she spat out and wiped her face quickly as she noticed it was blood. "HEY!!!" She yelled and turns the turret to the rear, "THAT FREAKING HURT!!!!" The mini-gun starts up again and fires on the M-Killer, riddling it with bullets before it finally lets go of the Humvee.

She immediately learns forward and vomits. She quickly recovered and wipes her mouth. "Holy fuck that tasted ugly!!!"

"We're home straight people! Lock-in, we're about to get a whole lot more turbulence!"

She looked over her shoulder and sees the M-Killers getting in the way again, she quickly turns the turret and starts up the barrel, once she had the mini-gun in sight, she pressed the trigger. The sound of the mini-gun sounded like a chainsaw. She focused her fire in the center in front of the Humvee, her eyes caught the stealth bombers flying towards their direction. "Uuuh Darius?" She said over the comms, "I don't mean to rush you or anything but...CAN YOU FUCKING STEP ON IT!!!!"

[Dire Hoef]

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Darius' eyes trained up and spotted the bombers beginning their strafing runs. Times up.

"Shit," was all that was uttered as he forced the gas pedal down as hard as he physically can.

In that same second, a firebomb dropped nearby and lit an entire building ablaze. The heat swept their way through the city streets straight to them giving the entire team a hot warning as to what's to come. But, Darius was going to beat the odds.

To do this, he used some the side streets to skirt several firebombs that had been posed as obstacles. After gaining some distance from the first several seconds of oncoming inferno, he shouted to Jade to fire forward.

As she did, Darius drove the vic straight through a glass wall that contained a mall on the other side. The entire team found themselves crashing through a central plaza, but it did not end here. The Captain hit the handbrake on the car and, whipped around to reorient their escape.

Thus, Darius kicked off again seeing the inferno was right on their tail. The vehicle narrowly missed several pieces of architecture and furniture that would've slowed them down. And, eventually, the team flew out the other end of the mall as Jade continued her chaingun volley.

The vic landed out in a deforested field before correcting, and veering off onto their destination. "You can't say I'm not a bad driver."

《Rodriguez: Bullshit Captain! You totally had no idea what the fuck you were doing there!》

Darius let out a small chuckle at that, realizing that Rodriguez was never a fan of his driving.

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[MidKnight]

Jade kept her pressure under wraps once she saw the bombs dropping to their targets, a few of them were in their way and she managed to aim up towards the sky with the mini-gun. She fired at her targets quickly as possible, seeing a ball of fire in the air from each hit but the flames continued making it's way down. A few she missed since there was quite a lot of bombs dropping.

Her ears perked up when she heard the captain to shoot forward, she looked ahead and sees a glass wall in their way. She starts up the mini-gun again and fired directly as the wall but spread the bullets which helped the Humvee breakthrough. She covered herself up from the broken glass and quickly positions herself back into fighting mode. Keeping her grip on the handles attached to the roof, she felt her body being tossed like a rag doll.

When she realized where the Humvee was going, she quickly grabbed onto the mini-gun. "OH SHIT!!!" She yelled as she fired rounds at the wall and once again the Humvee proved it's worth to be a ramming vehicle. Once they pulled through the streets of hell and found themselves in a clearing area, Jade sighs softly while lowering herself into one of the seats.

Darius: "You can't say I'm not a bad driver."

Rodriguez: "Bullshit Captain! You totally had no idea what the fuck you were doing there!"

Once Jade was in the seat, she didn't realize her face was covered in black charcoal from the fires. "You should have seen what he did to a tank once." Jade said, "We dropped on top of a building by helicopter because of a stripped wire and crashed through every fucking floor." Jade smiled "All two hundred floors."

[Dire Hoef]

Rodriguez stared at Jade for a moment before looking over at Darius with an equally stunned reaction. "You've got to be shitting me! WAS THAT WHY THE ABRAMS WAS FUCKED UP WHEN YOU CAME BACK ON THAT ONE MISSION!?"

Darius almost burst out laughing at his shouting. It had been months since he genuinely laughed at something Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez only huffed at this realizing that he was alone on this hill, and resigned himself to his seat; staring out the window in frustration.

Darius only shook his head, "I remember that mission like it was yesteryear.. I think the Empire State building still has the tank-sized hole in it."

Christy leaned forward and asked, "So where are we going from here??"

Darius pointed ahead and said, "We're heading to an old heritage site deep in the Georgian wilderness. Apparently, the government loves secret bio-projects."

Rodriguez raised a brow at that, looked at Darius expecting an answer for that insanity. But, Darius wasn't going to give him one and only smirked at that.

[MidKnight]

"I remember that mission like it was yesteryear.. I think the Empire State building still has the tank-sized hole in it."

She smirked when Darius mentioned the building and chuckled softly. "Yeah, we made it to the basement and somehow got that rig out of there. If it weren't for that ceiling turning into a ramp for us, we would have been stuck for hours." After Christy asked what was their heading, Darius pointed their next location.

"We're heading to an old heritage site deep in the Georgian wilderness. Apparently, the government loves secret bio-projects."

While Darius explained their next destination, Jade was prepping her rifle and some of her equipment. Attaching a suppressor to her rifle, she looked at the window and noticed it was still dark. The big red fiery light was dimming behind them as they continued to drive.

Checking her night vision googles, she looked at Christy and gives her a shoulder nudge. "Stay on your toes." She said softly with a smile. Jade leans forward and grabbed a box of ammo and stands back up to the turret.

She kept her Night Googles on her side and placed the box next to the mini-gun. She unloaded the previous box which had little ammo inside, she rather stay prepped in case of emergency situations. She loaded the gun with the new ammo box and sighs softly.

She banged on the roof and pressed on her comms. "Turret fresh and loaded."

She reached for her Googles and turned it on and used it like a telescope, keeping an eye on their surroundings while headlights shined the front.

[Dire Hoef]

Christy nodded as she encourage to stay sharp, which Darius only reinforced. The rest of the car ride was uneventful outside of occasional sights that were far more unsettling than Diamond Team would've liked. But, when they arrived at the heritage site, it was well out of the way of any major road.

And so Darius parked the vic on a dirt road just out front of a wooden gate that had a no trespassing sign on it. Darius grabbed his rifle and piled out saying, "We're going on foot from here.. Chances are, there's patrols walking the woods between here and the site. So we'll need low visibility to slip in undetected."

Rodriguez disembarked saying, "The element of surprise! Ahah, I like that. Not often we get to do that sort of thing."

Christy clicks her tongue in protest, "That's because you never really shut the fuck up when we need to be sneaky.. You always blow our cover!"

"That was one time Christy, and you saw that there was no way I could be sneaky in that shit," Rodriguez almost raised his voice in protest. But, he saw how Darius was about to step in and stood down after that.

"Let's not fuck it up again, alright?" Darius stared at the two before checking if he was weapons were ready, and began walking past the wooden gate. "If you're ready, follow me."

The team followed in behind Darius as he led them down the dirt path a ways before cutting off into the Georgian forests. Here, the team trekked for several hundred yards and then stopped at the edge of a clearing where monument was set up. The statue, itself, is dedicated to some fallen civil war general, but that wasn't the focus.

An entire field hospital and headquarters had been set-up around the monument, and was filled with unmarked men armed with US combat rifles and black-khaki equipment. These armed men were patrolling the clearing in twos, stopping every-so-often to check the foliage around the clearing.

"Fan out, but stay close. When I give the word, you drop all the sentries closest to the trees. Understood?"

There's a collective affirmative from everyone.

"Good. Now move." Darius readies his rifle as he watched the two sentries begin their patrol path toward him.

[MidKnight]

Jade was checking her equipment before they arrived to their destination, attaching suppressors to her weapons, checking her ammo, eating a MRE bar and gives the remaining half to Christy. When Darius stops the Humvee, she looked around the dark before getting out with the others. Grabbing her night vision goggles. She took the rear of the team to keep an eye on their flank, using the goggles to look around the open field for any surprise attacks.

When they got closer to the facility, she begin lowering herself in a stealth position. She sees the target's location and noticed the statue of a Confederate General, she look baffled at the look of it. "Huh...General Robert Edward Lee...thought that thing was suppose to be in Richmond?" She said quietly "The hell is that thing doing here?" She looked around the hospital field and notice the patrols on their routine.

"Fan out, but stay close. When I give the word, you drop all the sentries closest to the trees. Understood?"

She softly replied back "Copy that." She moved in her own path while aiming at the patrol teams. Keeping her goggles on to see what was ahead of her. "Watch your footing." She said softly on the radio, "These guys look like pros, trip wires can be anywhere." She kneels down and aims at one of the targets. She observed her targets for a moment. Face masks covering everything but the eyes, Kevlar equipped with ordinances, flash bangs, grenades, ammo. Dressed entirely in black for night purposes so they could be hard to see when in combat situations, but their boots give them away due to being so heavy. Their weapons looked basic, assuming these men are only cannon fodder for the horde.

She gets on the ground when she sees the flashlight lighting up the area, looking around. "Target marked." She said softly as she aimed.