So, some/most of you have probably already picked up the fact that this battle was supposed to be coming around sooner or later. Well here it is, I won't waste too much words on it.
Malacal lost interest and motivation for the battle a few weeks back and declared that he'd be giving up on it (As might be apparent through the fact that he's made a new character and had a battle with them already). I'd honestly say I'd let this one slip past for free, but frankly I've put quite some effort into my piece (albeit after Mal told me he'd give up) and will be claiming the victory by forfeit. (The poll is purely for me to know how many people have actually read the story, please leave a vote if you have ;) ).
For those confused with the battle's setting. Those who have followed Omega's storyline would know that Omega has allegedly been gathering up resources and manpower (he's been recruiting his victims for a reason) for the sake of stealing a spaceship from The Organization's facility. It is also the reason I specifically had to come last in his gauntlet. How Omega's plan fares you can read bellow.
That's about all you folks have to know, I suppose, so without further ado here's the battle ;
Gladiators :
Omega
Gamma
Battle
[spoiler=Battle (spoiler format)]
The Breaking Point
“Hey”
Her voice was soft and light, and ever so familiar. It crawled over his entire body, every muscle shooting back into action until it finally reached his ears.
Nathalia
Slowly his eyes opened, only to be met with the burning white walls of the hospital. His eyelids drew together again, and sluggishly his hands reached for his eyes. He let out a mixture of sighing and grunting and tilted his head sidewards. She’d sat herself down next to his bedstead.
“Hey” he responded in kind, but his voice was feeble and raw. It’d felt like an eternity already, but he’d only spent two months in the hospital so far, recovery still was nowhere in sight.
Gamma blinked slowly. Although she made an attempt at hiding it, he could discern the concern on her face. She caught his glimpse and forced a faint smile for a moment as she stroked a lock of hair out of her face. A strong silence hung above the both of them.
“I…. I’ve done some thinking, and” He began hesitantly. “...and I believe my apologies are in order for holding you at knifepoint earlier. So yeah, sorry about that.”
She chuckled softly. “Thanks, but I already forgave you after the first time you gave your apologies.”
“I’ve said that before, have I now? It must’ve slipped my mind that I had”. He sighed as his hands reached to rub his eyes. His limbs felt heavy, his entire back ached and his head felt like it was floating.
He tilted his head and looked her in the face again. Something else was troubling her.
“I’m here to tell you you’re gonna have to get back in the fray. I told them you still needed time to recover, but they told me they were displeased with your performance as of late, and that you’ll have to make some more sacrifices.” Her voice was distant, her hands slowly gesturing as she spoke, her eyes refusing to look up and meet his.
“You know that’s classified info right? You’re not supposed to tell me this.” He responded, raising his back and leaning on his arms.
She looked up and threw him a glance. “I, well…” she stuttered, before abruptly going silent and looking away again.
He grunted for a moment before slowly throwing his legs out of the bed.
“Well, no use in waiting around then, is there?” He remarked bitterly, his voice grave and low.
His feet touched the cold, pale tiles on the floor and slowly he stretched his muscles to get up. He rose out of bed, but his knees began to shake and he stumbled forward. Nathalia quickly caught him before he hit the ground.
“You alright?” She slowly helped him stand up again.
He waved it off and closed his eyes as he turned his head away. “Haven’t gotten up in a few months, don’t worry. I’ll hold up.”
She let go off him and he almost fell through his knees again, and she reached out to support him before he regained his balance. The door slammed open and a nurse rushed in. Seeing Gamma out of bed, she quickly turned her gaze towards Nathalia and gave her a crushing glare.
“Excuse me miss!” She bellowed heavily. “The patient’s not supposed to leave his bed yet, what do you think you’re doing?!”
Immediately she let go of him and he stumbled towards the walls. She shrunk a bit when she heard his stumbling, turning around with a face seemingly saying “sorry” before proceeding towards the nurse. Casually she walked her outside as she began rambling off an explanation of sizeable proportions she undoubtedly had to learn by heart for this very occasion.
Their voices died off in the distance. Not that he had paid any attention to what they’d been saying anyways.
His mind was elsewhere. He tried to remember something, though what that was seemed to slip past him. Every part of his body felt as if it was going to cave in at any moment, but he knew he had to keep going.
Remember why you fight, Gamma, know in your heart that the cause is true and right.
The words echoed through his head. Even now, after all these years, he could still recall them. The voice he remembered wasn’t his though, and no matter how he tried he couldn’t manage to put a face on the voice.
Not that it mattered anyways. It had been a long time ago, and he wasn’t who he used to be anymore. That much he knew.
One step at a time he began making his way out of the hospital.
~
He tumbled and crashed into the facility’s wall again. All the sprinting and hand to hand combat had taken a heavy toll on his already weakened body. He sat himself against the wall and allowed himself a moment to catch his breath again as he tried to recall how this all came to be again.
It wasn’t long after they’d left the hospital that he started to notice Nathalia wasn’t taking them back to headquarters. He’d inquired what was going on and she’d finally explained everything to him. She’d told him about the facility, the attack, the mysterious robed figure, everything. Not much later he found himself here after having had to change his attire while in the car.
Occultists had assaulted their facility out of the blue, that had been neatly disguised as a corporate warehouse. The handful of Guards holding the facility had quickly been dispatched by the copious amounts of attackers and now they had to fight to take back the facility.
It had been nothing more than a trivial mass-clearing mission to him so far. The attackers were under equipped and undertrained, they fell to him like wheat to the scythe. But fighting went heavy on him. He’d felt nauseous for quite a while now and he knew that he was pushing himself to the limit of a blackout.
He got back on his feet again, barely managing to keep himself up. So far they’d managed to drive the invaders back fairly easily, all that was left was to recapture the hangars. Then it’d be over.
~
The metal hinges creaked as the door slowly swung open. A nearby robed man turned his gaze towards the doorpost and raised his gun, but saw no more movement. Step by step the occultist approached, curious for what had opened the door but ever so careful and vigilant.
Suddenly something took a hold of him from behind. He tried yelling for help but found his voice muffled by something he couldn’t even see. Then all he felt was cold metal sliding across his neck as his eyesight went black.
The body went limp in his arms and clumsily Gamma dragged the corpse back with him through the doorway. In the blink of an eye he had swung the man’s robes over his own suit. He picked up the rifle and with a flick of the switch the bluish haze around him dissipated. He closed the door and another man in the distance yelled at him.
“Everything alright there?!” he inquired, hands itching towards the trigger of his rifle.
With a gesture of the hand he waved it off. “Everything clear, it was just the wind, nothing to worry about.” He answered casually.
“Alright!” the other robed figure yelled before continuing on his way.
He chuckled internally.
Heh, classic.
The disguise worked in his favour. Slowly the agent glimpsed about, carefully scanning his surroundings. The hangars were riddled with catwalks, crates, supplies and vehicles of all sorts. The room was humongous, steel and concrete stretching as far and high as the eye could see. Armed and robed men and women littered the entirety of the complex. Ready to defend this position to the last drop of blood, it seemed.
Something in the distance seemed particularly interesting. Dozens of the goons were busy at work lifting what appeared like a spacecraft on top of a big truck. One individual in particular caught is attention, towering above all of the others in his exceptionally well decorated robes. He reached for his earpiece.
“Nathalia, I’m in. There’s too many of them in here. Any breach made by the Guards will simply turn into a bottleneck slaughter.”
“I figured as much from these thermal readings. I’ll need a moment to do a few calculations, stand by.”
The line went dead again. He could hear a metallic, hollow voice bellowing in the distance. Something about it seemed ever so familiar to him, but what was it? He shrugged and walked off to a more discrete location before opening communications again.
“It seems that they’re packing whatever they came for. If we want to get them, we better do it fast.”
“I know, I know!” She answered frustratedly. From her tone he could judge the calculations were tougher than she’d anticipated. He’d gotten used to her getting frustrated whenever something doesn’t go the way she wanted it to.
“I can see the hangar’s door from the window of my van here anyways. When they leave, we’ll know.” She stated. The line went silent again for a while before she continued “Now, I’ll be needing you to plant explosives on the following locations ; …”
Briefly she explained to him the exact positions he’d have to plant his bombs and discreetly he went to work. It was a trivial, menial task, but he was glad to get a break from all the fighting for a bit. Not much later he already found himself en route to plant his last explosive charge.
Halfway through his head suddenly grew heavy and his eyesight grew feeble. He stumbled and barely managed to keep himself standing, leaning against the wall with his right arm. A heavy pain shot through his chest, his throat growing rough as he caught a serious cough.
He glimpsed the drops of blood on his fist and realized he’d been coughing up blood. This was bad news.
A nearby robed figure approached him and distantly asked him if he was alright. He waved it off and gave him a smiling nod before going back to coughing. The pain in his chest intensified. It went on for a while until he finally managed to recollect himself. He momentarily sat himself against the wall, throwing the busy robed figures in the distance a glance.
Not a second later his whole body shook as multiple explosions made the entire hangar tremble. In the blink of an eye the eerie silence was broken by the sounds of gunfire as Guards emerged from the smoke of the breaches, systematically gunning down dozens of the occultists. It wasn’t long before they returned fire, and soon the entire building rang with the sound of gunfire.
Gamma snapped back on his feet and immediately reached for his earpiece.
“What’s going on here?!” he yelled.
“I have no clue!” Nathalia responded in kind.
He found himself caught completely off guard. Why’d the assault start now?
The peculiar, towering figure suddenly threw their magnificent robes on the ground to reveal a tall, black, metallic body, eight tentacles sprouting from its back. Immediately four of those pinned themselves to the ground and slowly the monstrosity rose into the air. The remainder of his tentacles shot everywhere, piercing and throwing Guards around left and right.
Before he could even react to the situation, Nathalia’s voice rang over the line again. A frantic worry possessing her.
“Gamma, I don’t know why they began the assault, but something about this whole situation’s off. The higher ups just told me that if we fail to take down their leader-figure, they’re going over to ‘plan B’, whatever that might be.”
It was cryptic, but he’d be deluding himself if he’d tell himself he didn’t know what it meant.
“Turns out we were the backup plan all along, then.” he relayed gravely. He hesitated briefly, pondering on his words, before finally adding “Thank you, Nathalia” to his sentence.
He wasted no more time. Swiftly he threw off his cloak. He whipped out his pistols and expertly he dispatched two stray goons that had noticed him, before flicking the switch on his suit and loading in his explosive ammunition. From the safety of his invisibility he began firing at the alien behemoth in the distance, small explosions beginning to riddle its metallic body.
It simply shrugged off his attack as if it were a mere nuisance and turned its empty crimson gaze towards him. Before he could even properly react, one of its tentacles swat him across the room like a little fly. His body crashed against the wall and everything began to hurt as he struggled for air.
The bluish haze around him persisted, however, and it seemed to have momentarily lost track of him. It proved just long enough for him to get back on his feet. Swiftly his feet carried him forward, away from the danger behind him. The behemoth swept its large metal tentacles across the floor a few more times, yet hit nigh but the pale air. As soon as it had lost sight of him, he stopped to consider his options.
His options were bleak, to say the least. The explosive ammo barely scratched it and he’d already used all of his other explosives. The thought was ironically amusing.
Heh, what am I thinking? Not as if explosions would at all hinder that colossus in the first place.
A sense of helplessness overcame him. The more he searched for alternatives, the more it dawned on him that there were none. He lacked the proper equipment to fulfill his task. Why? Why in God’s name had they sent him out without the proper equipment? He couldn’t get his mind off of it.
Everywhere he looked, Guards were falling by the dozens. It’d turn into a bottleneck slaughter, just as he’d anticipated. In an odd way, he began to feel responsible for their deaths. For it was his lack of creativity and options that was driving them all into the arms of death. And for what? He can’t stop the monstrosity. The whole building’s gonna come down on them anyways.
Helplessness made way for a peculiar feeling of determination. He didn’t know what had gotten into him, but he couldn’t bear the thought anymore. The thought that through his failure, he’d condemned them all. No, the best option, the only option he had, was to buy them as much time as he possibly could.
He glimpsed to his right and saw a group of Guards pinned down behind a stack of crates, not too far from the smoldering remains of a breached metal door. Their assailants had tactically positioned themselves in such a manner that anything that left the confined area of the stack of crates would immediately be gunned down; It’d only be a matter of time before they’d get flanked.
The goons naturally didn’t pay any attention to Gamma. How could they, even? With his knife in hand he snuck up on them and he made quick work of them all. By the time the last one noticed his comrades fall, it was already too late. Now that the goons were dispatched he hurried over to the others, who still dared not even peek.
Carefully he flipped his switch and the blue haze dissipated. The jumpy guardsmen raised their weapons, though lowered them as soon as they noticed his beret.
The eldest of them, presumably serving as their makeshift leader, spoke up.