Summary:Heroes end the reign of the Silverfang Gang. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Silence.
It's eerie at the fringes of the Disaster Zone. Streetlights still shine down in sullen orange cones, but it's blatantly clear where electricity ends. Silhouettes of gutted buildings still standing rise like tombstones against the clear cold of the night sky. Sluggishly-running water can be heard beyond immediate sight, but it's either a broken pipe or reservoir of rain-water slowly draining. Slopes left behind after the devastation of the attack years ago host pools of low-lying mist. There's no sign of life — no proof of drifters anywhere to be seen off the bat — no pigeons holed up and roosting with their soft litany of cooing.
It makes the fine hairs on Steve's neck stand on end.
He's in his stealth-suit of navy-blue with white star-and-bars spangling his chest, shield at his back on its mount — and currently human. If there's any sweat at his temples, it's hidden away beneath his helmet.
"Tracked the injured werewolf to here before I came back," he continues reporting. "This's gotta be home base for them. I can smell they've walked through here recently." How creepy, Steve. "There's gonna be more'n a handful of 'em, so everyone watch their six. We'll go in weapons hot, use lethal force where necessary." The Captain does have a handgun at his waist, its ammunition appropriate to cause some serious damage. "I'll take lead. Questions in the comms."
With a gesture motioning them to move forward, Steve then slips into the shadows of a nearby long brick wall and begins to track the faded bloodstains further into the ruins.
"I've got one. Are we sure they will be hostile?" Koa knows werewolves well enough to know that they probably WILL be hostile but he feels the need to ask anyway. After all Steve MIGHT be able to talk them down. Or, well okay he might be able to do that IF he were still one of them. But he's not. So…
The WAND agent is a bit changed. He's clearly been through some shit. He's got some bandages on him where there were burns. And his eyes are metallic silver which is ever so slightly unsettling in ways that are somewhat difficult to define.
Also the fact that part of him - a ghostly bestial part - keeps emerging out of his body to do things like look in a different direction or growl at someone nearby.
Yeah. He's had some… issues in the recent past.
Kwabena's head has been the only part of his body not concealed by the dark nanosuit; black when the light does not strike it, gunmetal gray when it does. He's armed only with a sighted AR-15, which he's using more as a flashlight than anything else. It's anyone's bet how long the weapon will last before he loses or destroys it.
Once Steve gestures for them to move forward, the nanosuit closes up around his face, completely concealing him in darkness. Only the soft color of silver sneaks through where his eyes are, for the tech is thinner there, so as not to obscure his vision. The effect is altogether haunting whenever a stray light source catches it, for otherwise, he's a moving shadow.
He takes up the rear, keeping an eye on the others as they descend into the ruins.
"You've all got the souped up the Dendrotoxin in your ICER's." Jemma supplies as she moves through the Zone near Koa. Wearing her SHIELD armour, the biochem really isn't sure it will save her if one of the Werewolves decides to get toothy.
"There is a least one Pack of hostile wolves, Agent Turner. And I'm sure we got all of Steves pack the last time." Yes, Steve had a pack. There's a nagging question in the back of Jemma's mind about whether Steve will be able to resist another Alpha.
|ROLL| Steve Rogers +rolls 1d20 for: 5
"So far as I can tell, none of 'em want to play nice," Steve replies quietly to Koa in the comms. He ghosts down a set of stairs still bricked off on the left by the wall. It brings them down to an abandoned street; the Captain is still certain to stay well within the heavier shadows slung by the distant street lights and the half-moon in the sky above. Bright squares and pockets of silvery light are to be avoided on the asphalt of the street.
Pausing, he glances back over his shoulder to do a headcount. All are present; those who work better at a distance are in position. "Might be more than one pack at this point, dunno. They don't think like normal wolves. Remember the smart ones're still human inside. More like units."
Great, furry velociraptors.
Suddenly, in the distance, a distant howl rises. It's not a mournful dog — no, this is a sentry having spotted or scented something odd.
It takes little time for back-up to arrive. Five sets of nightshine-red eyes wink into view as they pour from a side alley. It's an immediate flashflood of fangs and fur running dead at the group!
With a grunt, Steve's sprinting off to one side in hopes of pulling some of the initial assault away from the group.
Koa pulls his sidearm. He rarely carries anything more than that, Jemma and Kwabena may have noticed. Clearly he doesn't feel the need for even a carbine by way of an upgrade. Why quickly becomes apparent when a green glow surrounds both his left arm and the weapon it is holding.
And then the green glow lashes out like a giant asp and smacks the werewolf as it charges him aside. That buys Koa time but not much, the thing is back on it's feet with alarming alacrity and soon enough he's engaged in a dangerous dance with it, slipping blows with inhuman fluidity while trying to pin the furry thing down long enough to get in a knock out punch. His gun barks now and again but he hasn't found a good shot quite yet.
The two of the are ranging all over, some of the things they do - if anyone has time to look - looking like shots out of a wuxia movie.
Its smart that they didn't issue Kwabena an ICER. Not that he couldn't handle one, but it would be a sad waste of resources. It's in his file: 'high propensity for losing or damaging weapons'
When the wolves arrive, he remains near Simmons. His attention is split between her, the wolves, and Koa's charge forward, firing bursts from the AR-15 whenever he finds a clear shot. However, he's not revealing his full hand yet. Should any of them draw close enough however, things are bound to get ugly.
"We'd prefer not to shoot to kill but to try and save them." Jemma murmurs into the comms though she's not going to quibble if it comes down to tin tacks. She'd rather the people she's with to be alive and … human-ish … when this is over. So there's that.
As the wolves descend on them, the biochem raises her ICER at the one that bears down on her. She doesn't yelp, the targetting programming installed in her implants puts the crosshairs on the beast and her finger squeezes the trigger.
Just once. Please let that hit and be enough.
Dr. Banner isn't here to shoot guns. That was not on the list of possible outcomes that anyone would want. However, here he is, with the ICER he was loaned, shooting mostly in the direction of the werewolf that Jemma is firing at.
Hopefully, her aim is better, because Bruce's shot was way off, up and to the right, from the anxious tension in his shoulders and arms, and the fact that he's squinting with one eye uncomfortably. All of that created an amazing miss. Because he wasn't ready: he hasn't even taken his shoes off yet, the sudden assault wasn't expected.
So yes, Dr. Banner does make a little noise, trying to straighten out his shot, and calm a little bit, to try to squeeze off a second — which is also going to be a miss. Bruce stands his ground at least, even if it is not the right shooting position. A gun range is different than the field: which doesn't involve guns (at least not in HIS hands).
Koa's werewolf is tossed heavily by the supernaturally-green attack, but not out of commission. It comes back for him in a welter of snapping teeth and broad swipes with its silvery claws. Its next lunge places its head in place neatly for any form of physical contact.
Two werewolves continue baring down on both Kwabena and Jemma.
The young woman's shot slams home with some force; a yelp, and the creature threatening her goes down under the influence of the ICER formula, now squealing and flailing about as the admixture burns to begin a slow-forced return to humanity.
Kwabena still must worry about his, the werewolf leaping at him with mouth agape!
Steve drew the attention of one werewolf, yes, but didn't expect the second to follow. He ducks the leap of the first one, but the second one takes him straight in the chest with the force of a professional linebacker. Dusty plate-glass windows shatter as he goes through it, taking the werewolf with him.
The werewolf who initially missed Steve now aims for the poor, unfortunate figure of Dr. Banner with his ICER at least lifted and aimed. My, how white the teeth are coming right for him now in fury!
Koa drives downward the moment he has an opening, literally bouncing off the werewolf's head and spinning midair for a shot at his back. Rather than a regular bullet it shoots a green bolt. The same color of green that surrounds his arm. The magic projectile impacts the wolf's center of mass and hopefully puts it out of the fight. Because if it doesn't Koa doesn't have too many other options that don't involve a significant chance of killing the target.
"Turner here." His voice is almost snarly in the heat of the action. "Everyone still up?" He can hear - and sometimes see, fighting still going on around him. His question is really 'is it handled.' "Anyone have eyes on Rogers?"
The AR-15 drops to the ground amidst a cloud of smoke.
That was fast.
The black tendrils of biomatter swirl around the werewolf, leaving those fangs nothing to grasp hold of. Kwabena reforms behind it, in midair, dropping toward the back of its neck with an elbow extended, hand straightened, creating a dangerous combination for the inevitable strike.
Regardless of whether or not the strike lands, the mutant transforms into smoke again before striking the ground. It sneaks between the werewolf's legs, and when he reforms underneath, he's granted a worm's eye view of all the hairy glory. Belly up, he throws arms and legs violently to each side, bent on tripping the monster off his feet. "I have eyes on something," he quips.
"Medic team, move in. One to collect. Use the restraints that WAND provided us." Jemma says into the comms, flinching as Bruce's shot goes wide and high. "Perhaps, Doctor Banner, you should spend some time in the range." It's said with a smile, though in a very English way.
"Simmons here. I'm clear. Two down to collect." The biochem approaches her wolf, carefully, observing as it tries to revert. "I'm sorry. We'll make you as comfortable as we can." She tells him. Who this is, or was, she doesn't know.
"I heard a noise to our left. A struggle." Turning, to watch Kwabena and glance in the direction she thinks Steve went.
Oh. Doctor Banner is having a problem.
Unfortunately, Banner doesn't have a lot of wit to use at present to reply Jemma's comment; he gives a soft, embarrassed laugh, and an honest answer: "It doesn't usually come to me firing—-" he cuts himself off. Because Dr. Banner is, as Jemma noted, having a problem.
"NO," Bruce answers Koa, "there is one right here——righthereinfrontofme," Bruce replies quickly in an anxious ramble; the scientist hardly the most calm of people even on a good relaxing day. No, he's got a werewolf coming at him, he's now backpedaling and moving sideways automatically away from the wolf, and also somewhat away from his allies.
Close proximity does mean Bruce might actually make the next shot at the werewolf this time, as it comes at him, unless someone else does him a favor and picks it off.
With a yelp, Koa's werewolf is indeed down for the count. It might as well have dug a small furrow of asphalt upon its face-planting to the cracked road. Down for the count, this one, seeing stars and very, very slow to get up.
Kwabena's werewolf is a tumble of disoriented, discontented, and demented fur in seconds. There was nothing to bite! And there's still nothing to bite — except the pavement after the thing also eats turf when its legs get tangled. It continues onward and bounces dead off a half-broken streetlamp's pole with an audible CLANG. Down for the count too.
Bruce's werewolf must be a youngling or perhaps not fully aware of its insane ability to dodge — or maybe Bruce is lucky. The doctor's shot nails it in the chest. It tumbles off to one side and too begins wailing as the ICER admixture gets to work.
Where is Steve anyways? Plate-glass still hangs broken in the window he went through a minute back and there's no sign of a scuffle, though a sudden upkick in thuds and muffled sounds can be heard deep within the dark of the abandoned hardware store.
Jemma might want to call off the medics…
…because even while the initial scout group is dealt with, they've kicked the hornet's nest. From the windows of the nearby buildings crawl werewolves — at least twenty of them.
And around the corner on his hind legs, down a city block, comes a very, very large werewolf in what appears to be oversized SWAT team chest armor and ragged jeans…with an RPG launcher on his shoulder.
Koa adds a punch to the back of the head for good measure. That would normally be fairly brutal and uncalled for but he really doesn't want this thing getting back up while he's busy.
And he is about to be busy. Koa turns, takes a knee and opens up on the werewolves. It's suppression fire. He doesn't actually want to put any of them down. He's not even really aiming except for at a general area. He just wants the uncoming pack to break up and slow down because sure as anything if they hit this group in a mass the SHIELDies are all going to be furry by the next moon. And that's if they're not just dead outright.
"Guys! We have a problem here!"
He doesn't see the RPG. Hopefully that does not bite him in the ass.
Scrambling to his feet, Kwabena snatches the AR-15 off the ground and aims it at his felled werewolf, but at the sign of no movement, he instead chooses to reload. Considering a bandolier to be foolish, he instead has spare clips attached to either side of the body of the rifle. Clearing one, he slaps the other into place while scanning the area for signs of Steve.
"Dere," he says, pointing with a hand toward the broken window and the sound of scuffle. "Rogahs, at my nine-" O'clock? Not quite.
"-o'fuck!"
Kwabena takes aim with the AR-15, but he doesn't fire. A curse in Russian is uttered, and he throws the weapon to the ground in favor of charging the pack. Stray rounds are not to be concerned with; he charges right into Koa's firing, but it's in his file. Friendly fire is no issue. The rounds go right through him, leaving little tufts or black smoke that become sucked right back into his body with every strike.
It still hurts.
Growling through it, he vaults onto a slagged car's roof, then bounces from it and into the air. "Flash coming!" he alerts over the comms.
At its zenith, he transforms into a cloud of smoke, but it's sparking with energy. A blink later and he explodes into a streak of blinding, superheated gas that goes on an arc through the pack, low to the ground. He might burn through some legs, but at least he's not aiming for heads.
In his altered brain, he's counting. One chimpanzee, two chimpanzee…
"Shit, shit, shit. Hold back…" It's all said in Jemma's quite british accent, so might not have a big impact. "We're under attack." The medics are going to have to wait till they clear.
"This is an ambush …" Of that she's sure. "It's like we were herded." She doesn't see the RPG either, the view blocked by a mass of … furry chests.
Ahem.
"I have four magazines of Dendrotoxins. That's not going to be enough." Jemma takes up behind Koa, on her knee as well - targetting software up. One target, the triggered is squeezed. The next, another shot until that magazine is empty and needs to be changed.
With Kwabena's warning, Jemma does the only thing she can think of. She closes her eyes.
With a heart feeling like it's going to pound OUT of his chest, Bruce breathes, forcing breaths. "Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. Beryllium. Boron. Carbon," murmers Dr. Banner, carefully skirting around the fallen werewolf that he managed to shoot, with an empathetic, uncomfortable look.
"Steve?" Bruce calls towards the broken window, adjusting his sweaty palms on his gun, and side-sidling. He approaches the window and quickly tries to look in around the edge of it, using a foot to kick some glass out of the way on one edge.
"Steve Rogers?" One never knows, there might be some other Steve in there. If a target presents that isn't Steve, though, Banner will try to shoot that. He /might/ hit something again.
Spreading his shots does earn Koa at least a breath's grace of pressure relief. Some of his shots land to make the werewolves drop to the cement like flies, still moving if disabled for the near future. It's an inflammatory action: the low-volume chorus of growling becomes far more than something akin to a swarm of bees. It sounds thunderous now in all pitches.
However, Kwabena's two-fold elemental assault leaves most of the initial rush of werewolves blinded and scalded. Very few manage to avoid their vision affected; those who receive burns yelp and dive for the shadows, fur singed and smoking.
Nothing like the smell of burnt hair — stings the nostrils.
Luckily enough, Kwabena's bright burst of light also blinded the true brute of a werewolf with the RPG launcher. It's growling and rubbing at its eyes, the weapon aimed off to one side for the moment.
Bruce? He finds Steve fairly quickly — when the wheat-gold werewolf in the spangled suit ROARS at the top of his lungs in the confined space, his eyes gleaming like hellish fireflies from the shadows within. A limp werewolf body, the one who tackled him earlier, gets flung out of the shop and out onto the asphalt, knocked cold.
However, the collective of Jemma and Koa are quickly targeted by a handful of werewolves not blinded who rush them! Kwabena is chased despite his gaseous state, as if they'd harry him from the area.
"I love the smell of plasma in the morning. Smell like victory." Koa murmurs. Then he's falling back and pushing Jemma to move. "Did you just CLOSE YOUR EYES?!"
While shooting? Oy.
He fires two shots and then something is in his face and his weapon has been knocked out of his hand. It's a very near thing that he avoids getting mauled enough to put him out of the fight and he DOESN'T avoid getting hit. Getting bit, yes, but not getting clawed. He suffers several cuts, one nasty one along his shoulder, before he finally gets clear and spins out a heretofore unseen length of rather thick chain in his fist. Chain which extends as he whips it out to wrap around the legs of one of the werewolves. Then he yanks. And spins. Very improvised flail coming up.
"Kwabena! Catch!" Fling! There 'e goes.
twelve-chimpanzee, thirteen
Tests are still unclear on just whether or not his plasma limits are cumulative or not. The streak of plasma reverts into the man shrouded in black; the nanosuit withdraws from Kwabena's head, revealing a vicious expression upon his face. "Clear," he reports over the comm, before facing off against those coming after him.
"<Come on!>" the African yells in Russian; Form Three requires anger, and he's got enough of that in reserve. Form Three isn't as strikingly visual, but what's happening within his cellular structure comes close to defying the laws of organic biology. The cells transform en masse, adopting a super solid state akin to reinforced titanium.
Oh, look! A weapon!
In his super-solid stare, Kwabena is far less agile. He is, however, far stronger, and one hell of a catch. Bracing himself, he reached out and grabs the flying werewolf by each leg, and then swings it fully around himself, letting go once he's aimed the throw at the incoming horde.
"Batter up!"
Someone's been watching American baseball. On replay, of course.
"Only when Shift went bright. I wasn't shooting then." Jemma says somewhat huffily, stumbling as Koa pushes her. "And I hate the smell of plasma, it gives me a headache." Then again, so does being set on by werewolves as well.
As Koa is attacked, Jemma is hit from the side - her back automatically going against Koa's. "Get off… you walking carpet." It's not delivered anywhere near as well as the original line, unfortunately. A werewolf flies at Jemma's face, her cybernetic arm snapping up and fingers closing around the creatures throat.
She's so short, she can barely keep the fangs from her face.
"You need to sleep now …" And the only way she can do that is to cut the wolves breath off. Because her ICER is on the ground at the moment.
Bruce jerks back away from the window in time to not be struck by the werewolf Steve just threw at him, rotating around to slam his back against the extrerior brick outside of the window. He was turned away from the blast of light (and warned), so there's mostly just a flinch of one hand up towards his face, palm raised to the pulse of light. A lot is going on.
"RaaaaaaaHHHH," Bruce says over his shoulder at Steve towards the end of Steve's howl, in a frustrated but controlled tone. It's a way to vent some anxiety. Sort of. "Nitrogen, Oxy——" Bruce pauses.
"Um, hey," Bruce suddenly adds, looking over the skirmish's heads. "There's an Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher pointed at us." He swallows hard, and fires a few times in that direction, trusting his gun will make a nice sparking target, and heads to his left down the building, running away from the window and Jemma. A suicidal move, possibly, but making himself a good shot for someone with a rocket launcher if the alpha cares at all about his own wolves by crouching just behind the shell of a car. "Come on," he murmurs. Shoot the guy that clearly thinks he's in cover.
The tension of it is already starting green veins to erupt on Bruce's neck. "Okay. Okay. Not yet." Shots are fired from his ICER, as Bruce makes an attempt to use up his ammo. It won't be useful in a bit.
None of the werewolves have seen their brethren be so bodily thrown like this — manhandled by weak fur-less humans?! — and it's a bit of a moral break. While the ones involved in immediate melee continue on, the others along the fringes, down to about ten or so, slow or come to a halt, ears pinned back even if teeth are still bared.
It could also be the smell of burnt hair clogging up their noses. I mean, it's rank.
So is werewolf breath and Jemma gets clawed at by the creature fitfully even as its vision begins to fade from lack of air.
The bulky werewolf with the RPG gets tagged by one of Bruce's shots in the thigh. It's not disabling, but it is enraging. The RPG is aimed at the shell of the car that Bruce hides behind and the trigger is pulled. A hollow whump of a sound, hiss of ammo flight, and KABLAM — the shot hits the shell of the car.
And here's Steve, just like out of the Shining! Except he flies out of the hardware shop and into the scrum, lashing out left and right with cuffs of clawed hands. Yelps and flying bodies ensue where he fights on the fringes of the group still surrounding Koa and Jemma. Kwabena is rushed by two werewolves now despite his sturdy state!
Koa really, really doesn't have the room that he needs to maneuver and Jemma really really doesn't. So he pulls on one of his gambits of last resort. Or at least, last-ish resort. He did last resort recently and shockingly survived doing so.
The ground beneath them rumbles as Koa lays hold of as much water as he can and in a tremendous effort yanks it up into the air roughly twenty feet to Bruce's right. The water just sort of hangs in the air and collects rapidly.
Until it resembles Cap's shield. Only fifteen feet around. Then he hurls that rather heavy mass at the werewolves in front of Jemma, trying to carve a hole so that they two of them can make a break for it.
"Steve! There you are! Did you get bit? Bark once for yes, twice for no!"
Okay so the inner predator might be a liiiiitle out of control.
The werewolf in his arms is unleashed at his attackers, but Kwabena doesn't expect it to do much more than slow them down. "Incoming!" he alerts at the sound of an RPG being fired. Gotta get to the big guy, somehow.
Growling, he rushes toward his attackers, hoping that his modified body is impervious to their fangs. It should be. Only the rarest of metals, right?
The ground is dented beneath every footfall. A zig to the left, and he rushes at them with full intend of throwing his body into them.
Jemma's cybernetic arm is strong and can hold that wolf right there - but that's all she can do. Well, she can grimace at canine breath in the face. "Remind me to have you scheduled to have your teeth cleaned." She tells the quickly fading wolf.
At least it's body is shielding the attacks from the others.
The water shield pushes the passed out wolf from her hand, the biochem falling back with the WAND agent. Jemma does manage to recover her ICER, holding it in front of her. And there's Steve …
"Please don't make me shoot you again, Steve…" The scent of fear and adrenaline rises from her. "And Agent Turner, please don't incite the Wolf over there."
The force as the grenade detonates the car's shell flings Dr. Banner backwards into the wall behind him, cracking him bodily into the concrete. He's shifting, though, entirely, as he drops to the ground, squatting. He growls in his low squat, as his body twists and erupts. Hulk doesn't howl, he roars, and it is a mighty battle cry for vengeance that rips out of the arriving Hulk.
Clothes are shredded and he claws across himself with one expanding hand, pulling the last threads out of the way, and then has a brief tantrum. The tantrum involves smashing down the wall behind him, part of a lamp, and a piece of cement in a flurry. The cement chunk is hefted and bodily hurled towards the wolf with the empty RPG cannon: and that's just the first round, because Hulk is coming for him: with two bounds (directly through some wolves, they don't matter, one gets a palm to the face, the other an elbow), and a leap, barreling down onto that RPG-wielder.
There will be smash.
No one expects a giant patriotic Frisbee of water! Werewolves are bowled over left and right and left yelping, soaked to the bone in the cold near-winter night. Those with burns on their legs are soothed but still bedraggled, like giant half-drowned rats.
Kwabena gets tackled and the werewolves bounce off him like pinballs. Their teeth land and don't make a dent; swipes damage fingers rather than him. Very quickly, they're knocked butt over tea-kettle and retreating a good number of feet now without disengaging, bruised and battered.
Never mind the RPG cannon! The bulky werewolf wasn't expecting that stringbean of a scientist to come at him in wrathful green vengeance! Kwabena gets the cannon's frame thrown at him with an extreme amount of force — better duck — and then the largest werewolf pulls a grenade from the back of his jeans! Its pin is pulled and it's lobbed towards the nearest remaining pillar keeping a three-story building aright on the far end of the block.
Three seconds to move or else the whole thing is coming down!
Koa, for his sass, gets snarled at by Steve, the vision of the Captain wicked and toothy between swats of smaller werewolves. Jemma, interestingly enough, ignored for now. Must be the burnt hair smell covering everything.
"Take that as a yes then." Koa says as he turns to push Jemma again. Kwabena and the slightly less than Jolly Green Giant have the big one handled. They need to create space and ideally make sure Steve does not go running off again. "Jemma! Talk him down. I don't think he much likes me."
Koa will provide some cover. Which he does, gathering up the water from the shield again and turning it into a huge aqueous baseball bat which he swings repeatedly. From a safe distance.
Because he can stand over here while controlling the water and that sounds like a really good idea right now.
Not fast enough in his super solid state for a dodge, Kwabena is caught by the weapon and thrown clear, with a horrible sound resembling a wrecking ball striking a building. He goes flying, tumbling through the air.
Mid-flight, he reverts to human form.
His body collided with the shell of a building, immediately sublimating into gas. It roils around angrily for a moment, before launching itself back at the big guy.
Where were we… thirteen?
The cloud makes a beeline for the beast's maw, and makes a violent effort at forcing itself into the creature's mouth and nose.
"Stop pushing me. I'm moving." Jemma grumbles a bit at Koa. Someone has a spine when she's riled, it seems.
"Do what, exactly? He normally tries to …. " Jemma blushes bright red and doesn't finish that statement. "It would help if you weren't so aggressive, you know." Poor Koa, getting an earful from the prim biochem.
Jemma puts her ICER away. Someone's been reviewing the tapes of the previous encounters. "Steve, stand down and return to us. we're going to help you." Not quite like Peggy but it might be close enough, right?
Jemma is praying, silently, that Koa's shield holds and Kwabena and Bruce manage to stop the other one.
Ignoring Hulk might not be healthy. Hulk's given free rein to leap up and attempt to crush the werewolf group that he's pretty sure shot at him with the RPG: but just about anything that looks at him in the same vicinity is getting the same ire: meaning, the two directly next to the bulkiest werewolf get reached for, in two lashes of arm: a punch, and another backhand.
Black stuff up the target's nose? That's not even taken into account: it's weird, but there's smashing to be had: it's quite possible he'll create a great opening for Kwabena's black mist, since the goal is to hold the wolf down and beat him into the ground.
Swing left, werewolves yelp and fly — swing right, werewolves yarp and arc away! It's an excellent way to clear space around them. The uncanny manipulation of water gains both Koa and Jemma space about themselves and knocks a good number of werewolves clean out as they bounce from building walls and car shells. There's only one scrawny, scrappy brown werewolf now, absolutely damned sure it's going to take down Koa despite the blinding light, burning attack, green gun of doom, chain whipping, and this supernatural water bat. It launches itself at him fearlessly!
With a very human-like side-kick to knock another werewolf away and into the side of a dumpster, Steve then whips around to snarl at Jemma in particular. Pointed ears flick back and then forwards…then his lips fall. He gives her a hard stare and then crouches to sign quickly at her in ASL, «I am fine. I changed on purpose. No one is making me do anything I do not want to do.» Even as the kicked werewolf is getting to its feet at the base of the dented dumpster, he hears the movement and turns to roar at it. It yelps and scoots away rather than engage with him further.
But he's nowhere as loud as the sound of the grenade detonating and then consequential grinding rumble of the building beginning to collapse down the block.
Nobody's stopping the Hulk on his approach. Any werewolf who tries fails profoundly. The bulky werewolf is busy clawing at his face and trying to forcefully exhale the shadowy gaseous mass clouding it.
The shadow of the building looms and then half of the block clouds in a brief storm of dust thrown up!
It's the skinny ones you have to watch out for. Steve could have told Koa that, if Steve were of a mind to say anything other than 'raaaagh' at the moment that is. Koa gets knocked down and knocked toward the building. He kicks the thing off him but as he stands the whole edifice comes down and obscures both him and the scrawny werewolf in dust and debris. It's not clear what happened. Not in the least.
It is an ugly fight, and not only for the werewolf; Kwabena does not particularly enjoy being in these situations. His body may transform, and while his senses do as well, they are still senses. He's well aware that what he's engaged in is, well, disgusting.
For another few moments, the living biomatter fights to force its way into the creature's face. It's hard to tell whether the bends and turns are nostrils or trachea, but it doesn't matter. This won't last much longer, so he makes his final move.
Arcs of electricity form within the nanotech that is bound to each gaseous molecule, and then, the mutant's smoky form explodes into plasma. Some of it in the werewolf's face, and if he's lucky… inside of its respiratory system.
No one ever said that Kwabena was particularly nice in a fight.
Nothing wrong with being a scrappy fighter. Jemma could tell people that. It's saved her a couple of times, after all.
"Steve …" Controlled change. That's … different and not something the biochem had expected. Well alrig—- "Koa!" Jemma's ICER comes up as she backs away. With Koa gone, the shield is gone. The biochem is making her way to the edifice. Walking backwards, shooting anything that comes at her.
The boss werewolf isn't up for a fight with Hulk, clearly. Which means Hulk's lost interest in him. "Stupid: not breathing," Hulk informs the bulky werewolf. It is, indeed, very dumb to not breathe normal air, to breathe in the black stuff like that.
And then the building collapses, giving something new for Hulk to be annoyed at, his huge green body shielding those directly next to him: such as the boss and presumably the cloud that is Kwabena.
"Not bury Hulk!" Hulk informs the building in a grumpy way, extracting himself by hurling pieces of the building away in large swipes. Hopefully those chunks won't hit allies, but there's a lot of dust and anger, not a lot of aim. Hulk ditches the area he was in, and comes exploding out of the dust towards Jemma, snorting dust from nostrils and rubbing his face with a palm.
Needless to say, Hulk is not wrong. Breathing in plasma is a terrible idea. At least the rising dust cloud obscures the worst of the writhing to follow as the bulky werewolf succumbs to the attack — that, and an errant block of concrete thrown by the Hulk — THUNK.
And with that, the remaining conscious werewolves all fall to the ground and begin to writhe madly, including Steve himself. It's a brief, otherworldy chorus of pain and when all's said and done, there's a lot of loose fur drifting around where the dust hasn't spread and settled yet.
It looks like someone shaved the largest, hairiest goldendoodle this side of the Mississippi River and at least Steve has his suit on! That's not the case for a handful of other folks. The Captain lurches to his feet, one hand against his face, and grabs for the nearest dented light pole. "…oh god, my head…!"
From a distance, a sharp muffled CRACK of a shot into the dust as a final point to be made. That bulky werewolf is dead as a door nail.
"Hulk…? Banner," the Captain says as he tries to walk over towards the big Green Guy. "Hey, buddy, time to wind down, please." A hand lifted towards him in a gentle stopping gesture is accompanied by a grimace of a headache. "Where's Agent Turner? Odame?"
Koa has, somehow, managed to keep anything from falling directly on him which is a good thing because he can only be temporarily superhuman and even so he's not VERY superhuman. He has apparently taken another good knock though and is in the process of pulling a chunk of piping out of his arm. Ow.
"I'm here." He calls out. "Gonna need a patch job though." His silver eyes are gleaming. Yeah he doesn't like the pain. But at least it tells him he's alive.
"Everyone else okay? Simmons? Odame? Banner?"
There's a lot of rubble around, but rubble isn't a problem for someone who can fit into all sorts of tiny cracks.
The black smoke rises out of the rubble and reforms into Kwabena, perched precariously atop a large chunk of demolished building infrastructure.
"I am here," he reports over the comms (thank SHIELD for hacking his nanotech, he's never really off comms anymore). "And I don't want to talk about it."
He can smell the… smell. It's everywhere, and even though it's likely all in his head, he feels as if his body is covered by scorched werewolf mucus.
Certainly all in his head.
Oh Hey… someone call the local yarn club. They can spin all this fur into something fantastic.
It's odd the thoughts that go through Jemma's mind sometimes. Someone is sharing those thoughts as well - it's bound to raise some questions sooner or later.
Jemma's attention turns to Steve as the man staggers, she's by his side fairly quickly. "Easy there, Steve. Medics, come in now. We need triage and airlifts for the injured." beat "I'm ok, Koa. I want you, Doctor Banner and Kwabena in the infirmary when we get back. You're all going to be checked over."
"Steve's changed back. One of you killed the … sire."
Not sire, Jemma. These weren't Vampires.
Hulk gives Steve the same look a petulant toddler might when told it's time to go take a nap. "No," Hulk grunts back at Steve, with a resoundingly huge sneeze. Hulk sneezes are strong enough to send fur up in a brief cyclone around them. Jemma's direction about Dr. Banner does not apply to Hulk, either, so that doesn't get an answer.
The situation around them has sure gotten surreal, though. People collapsing, the fur! "Dog people are naked," Hulk comments flatly, irritated, as he saunters away from Steve, as if making a point about how /not/ winding down he's going to be. It's a slow, stomping pace, narrowly looking for more surprise opponents with RPGs, but it isn't hugely aggressive at the moment. Hulk's just going to walk a circle around them and chill out.
"Yuck," Hulk does say at Kwabena, with one pointed giant finger clearly at Kwabena. Hulk's face then breaks into a very large smirk, as Hulk walks onward, laughing at his own funny joke. "Hulk very funny. Also, yuck."
Hearing the familiar voices on the comms and then seeing both other members of his unit, Steve relaxes enough to slump in his upright stance. Jemma, despite being shorter, does manage to keep him upright even as dizziness arrives and recedes.
"Fine, Banner, take a lap…" he murmurs patiently. A sharp inhale…and then another…and then the Captain sneezes as well, likely set off by the small cyclone of building dust and werewolf fur — or maybe Kwabena's desperate need for a shower.
Everyone else dealing with rapid-shift hangover remains sprawled where they are, easy clean-up for SHIELD triage and agents on the arrival to the field of giant werewolf woozies.
Koa winces briefly and starts to clamber out of the pile of rubble. "Well. This was entertaining. I think that's the word." It's so not the word. But he's glad to see that the situation is well in hand and they'll be able to take this lot into custody.
"If anyone needs me I'll be with medical when they arrive. Getting stitches."
He REALLY needs to find himself a healing artifact.
"Hulk takes best laps," Hulk points out, insulted, to Steve Rogers. Dr. Banner takes terrible laps, clearly! Hulk growls, but moves out of easy earshot, finding some rubble to pick up and throw. He smashes another window with the soccerball sized piece of rock, from down the street. He flung that HARD.
There aren't any obvious targets, despite the irritation Hulk still feels, though, so he just prowls around: hopefully he's given enough space to revert on his own. And he will. For once, he won't be the only half-naked person confused by what just happened.
They can be a club. Maybe they can have shirts.
