Adrenaline Phenomenon [Closed/Amadeus]

It wasn't every day that Amadeus Edge, the well-respected Grandmaster of the Templar Order himself, approached one of his subordinates with the intentions of personally grading their capabilities within the broken and desolate realm of Inferis, Satan's kingdom. He was a busy man; surely he had more important matters to attend to than to serve as an eyewitness to the skills of one of the many thousands of fine warriors and technicians under his command? It seemed as though today would be an exception to this general assumption, for he had approached Knight-Templar Matthias Hildebrand and requested to conduct a personal assessment of his capabilities on the field. It was an offer that the humble German certainly couldn't refuse.

Crimson storm clouds rolled overhead, letting off the occasional peal of thunder as chains of scarlet lightning crackled and sparkled in the sky. A rain storm—or, more appropriately, a blood storm—was on the horizon. It was moments like this one where Matthias had wished he could have requested Research and Development to engineer some kind of car for him. Well, he could do that, but that would be stingy of him. Plus, where would he park the thing? Nevertheless, he had desperately hoped the Grandmaster wasn't too uncomfortable back there; in spite of the gracious amount of room for a passenger's posterior, the Tempest was only able to appropriately seat one person. It was a motorcycle, after all.

"I zinzerely apologize vor ze lack ov an additional zeat, Herr Edge!" The blond-haired Templar called back out to Amadeus over the sound of his vehicle's noisy engine as he gently tilted his weight to the right, steering the Tempest in that direction as he easily avoided a cluster of craters filled with blood. "I hope zis doez not affect my ratingz!" He used a hand to push his sunglasses further up the bridge of his nose, the lenses slightly darkening to a vivid orange as light hit against them. His bright red duster flapped furiously in the wind as his mechanical steed propelled the two of them across the wastelands.

Several minutes later, and Matthias would ease up on the foot pedal so that the Tempest gradually decelerated itself until it had reached a slow enough speed for him to brake using his feet, bringing the motorcycle to a seamless halt. He propped the kickstand up with a sharp thwack, then dismounted so that the Grandmaster could do the same. Lord knows he was probably hating it back there; his gluts must have desired breathing space. "Okay! We haf arrifed to ze dee-zig-nated tezting area." Choppy English aside, Matthias was certain Amadeus would get the gist.

He touched a smooth-looking panel on the Tempest's frame, instinctively ignoring the neural receptors that registered the sensation of pressure against his artificial fingers; having grown used to his prosthetic arms and legs and the synthetic nerve fibers and chips within them, they had almost felt like the real things at this point. With a dull clunk and a hydraulic hiss that followed, the left half of the motorcycle's frame seemed to pop open, revealing a slew of various firearms which he kept stored within during these kinds of excursions. For now, he would withdraw his two "children", his custom .44 Magnum hand cannons, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, choosing to leave the other weapons behind for now. Under normal circumstances, he would have brought along his gigantic, cross-shaped multi-weapon, Odysseus, but the addition of an extra passenger—the Grandmaster of the Templars—forced Matthias to prioritize him first, hence is absence.

With a downward snap of both wrists, the Templar in the flamboyant red duster broke the revolvers open and briefly eyed the barrels to confirm that they had been loaded prior to disembarking. Six hollow-point rounds each. He closed the guns with another flick of his wrists, then turned to his Grandmaster for further instructions, his pallor fixed in a stern and astute expression while his green eyes practically burned with a longing to show Amadeus Edge what he could do. "I avait yohr orderz, Herr Edge."

"Alright." Behind his composure, beneath his face that displayed nothing but respect and solemn integrity in the face of his Grandmaster, Matthias could hardly believe his eyes. So this was what Amadeus Edge looked like before the age of fifty? Even his voice sounded significantly younger. Either he was extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time, or he was being granted special privilege to see him in this state. It was highly probable that it was merely coincidence; after all, Grandmaster Edge rarely used his reputable age-cheating Augmentation, the Fountain of Youth, to regress beyond fifty. He didn't need to. Well, most of the time, anyway. "Now we need to attract some creatures. I'm sure the noise brought a good number towards us, but we need more."

More Demons to fight? The Knight-Templar scanned his surroundings, past Amadeus, scoping the scene like a hawk for signs of Infernal life. Fortunately, the bloody mist that poured from the sky did so lightly, and was hardly an impediment on his vision. Though the smell it left behind was something else entirely; cleaning his belongings was going to be a pain in the butt after this was done and over. "I zink ze Blutsturm ought to draw zome of Lut-zee-fur's minionz." Merely conjecture, given his limited experience in the Regal Necropolis, though some of the stories he picked up from the other Templars hinted that a large majority of its population fed on blood. It was currently raining the substance, therefore it only made sense for the monsters to come out and drown themselves like domesticated turkeys.

"Imagine that you need to create a diversion by taking the aggro of several different creatures." Nearly a minute or two of idle surveying later, and the Knight-Templar's eyes would land on a rather large group of Demons. All of them, six in total, were vaguely humanoid in body structure, though four out of the six were hunched over what appeared to be their latest meal, mangled and scarred beyond recognition. Two of them wore what appeared to be regal-looking overcoats, black fabric with exquisite trimmings, yet their lavish apparel did nothing to conceal their grotesque, inhuman visages. Four Bloodlurkers and two Nosferatu. Rough distance away from them? A couple dozen meters, give or take. "Show them that you're the bigger threat, they will move to you instead and remove some pressure from your allies." With Rosencrantz in his left hand and Guildenstern in his right, Matthias cocked the hammers on both revolvers and took aim at the Devil's spawn. The Grandmaster's knuckle's crunched against one another as he pounded his fists together, the aural cue he needed to get the ball rolling. "Begin."

Matthias' eyes sharpened into a threatening glare, directed at the blood-sucking creeps as his fingers looped through the trigger guards. "Let's get dangerous." BLAM! BLAM! Two hollow-point bullets, one from each revolver, were loosed with consecutive pulls of their respective triggers, sailing through the air at breakneck speeds until they penetrated an arm and a leg belonging to one of the Bloodlurkers with a nasty squelch, producing a hideous screech of pain in response. Wasting no time, the Templar enacted the will of his Grandmaster and entered a quick but powerful walk toward the enemy party, firing two more rounds at the group to draw their attention as Amadeus instructed. Four shots gone, eight more left.

Both of the vampires howled at the approaching Templar with a scream no human nor animal could produce, lunging into a four-legged sprint while the Proboscis Demons, including the injured one, followed in hot pursuit. Matthias continued his intimidating stride toward the advancing creatures, lifting his hand cannons until he felt confident that his next two shots were lethal ones. Arms parallel to one another, he fired twice more without a second thought, projectiles whizzing through the air until they penetrated the sensitive blood sacs on two of the Bloodlurkers in the apex of their sprint, one of them being the injured one. The unicorn-like creatures yelped as a hot, bloody mess burst from their backs in mid-air, and in moments they tumbled uselessly to the ground until they moved no more.

Two Demons down, four to go.

And the fight had only just begun.

Three rounds remained in each gun, and plumes of gray smoke billowed from the barrels of both revolvers as Matthias pretended to spit in disgust. It took half of his ammo to kill just two Demons? He was getting too sloppy, a careless mistake. Carefully, he studied the enemy party's incoming approach. All four of them were gaining distance at a frightening pace, but they were no different than feral animals; mere beasts in the presence of sentient lifeforms. Of the foes left over, only the two Nosferatu posed any considerable threat to him and the Grandmaster, as they were far more cunning than the mosquito demons. But that mattered little in the blond Templar's book; they may have emulated the mannerisms and etiquette of long-dead aristocrats, but at their core, they were just like any other thing that roamed Inferis. Monsters. And fortune just so happened to be on their side today; these particular bloodsuckers weren't of the elite ranks. And it would be their undoing.

Matthias zeroed on the two mosquito-like monsters and watched them veer off to the sides in synchronized unison as if they expected their usage of pack tactics to throw their next meal off kilter and lower his defenses. Instead, it only served to help the Templar gauge his next course of action; one of many strategies had formed in the depths of his psyche, and any of them could have been employed to their fullest efficiency had events came and passed a certain way. In this case, the Scarlet Trigger would have to take a more unorthodox approach to the problem at hand. He was getting close to having to reload, and he couldn't afford to waste any more time nor shots.

"Eat lead, freaks." Bringing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to eye level, Matthias narrowed his gaze as he pulled both triggers in perfect harmony, unleashing two more bullets from the barrels until they whizzed through the air and firmly embedded themselves into the skulls of the sprinting vampire Demons; one of them yelped like an injured dog while the other simply crumpled over mid-sprint, causing the other freshly-killed Nosferatu to comically tumble and flop to the soil as though the two were a pair of rag dolls thrown outside of a moving vehicle. All that remained of the enemy party were the last two Bloodlurkers.

The needle-domed freaks of nature were now charging in on Matthias from opposite sides, the left and the right, shrieking furiously as they closed in on the seemingly outsmarted human. His sharpshooter technique would hardly come in handy here; the cyborg in the red duster could only focus on one target at a time, regardless of how uncanny his targeting prowess was, and they could easily strafe to avoid getting aimed at while the other could lunge for the kill. The classic fork-in-the-road conundrum. But these creeps weren't smart enough to realize that Matthias was far above their petty scraps of intelligence. He could escape a sticky situation without too much trouble, and this one was no exception.

In actuality, this scenario was hardly challenging to the Scarlet Trigger.

Matthias stepped forward several paces, the heels of his boots digging little grooves into the Necropolis soil as he pivoted one-hundred eighty degrees while the tails of his iconic duster swirled around in a dance of scarlet, stretching both arms out until his revolvers were held at an obtuse angle, like they were poised and ready to take up someone in a loving embrace. A glance to the left, then the right; the needle noggins were right where he wanted them. BLAM! BLAM! With two final pulls of the triggers and a narrowing of his unfeeling emerald gaze, the bullets that were birthed from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had found their way into the blood sacs on the mosquito monsters' spines, popping them like crimson water balloons as they emitted a dying shriek before they, too, collapsed to the ground without a shred of life left in their cursed bodies.

A sigh escaped from the blond man's mouth. Inspecting the aftermath, he picked up the locations of the two Nosferatu, then swiftly moved his way over to one of the corpses. Stepping on its neck gently, the Scarlet Trigger aimed Guildenstern straight down, and pulled the trigger once again. BLAM! SQUELCH! What was once the vampire's head was now reduced to little more than a pile of indiscriminate goo and brain matter, merged into one another with jellylike consistency while the contents of its vessels seeped and poured from the destroyed body part, forming a messy little pool around the corpse. Matthias repeated this process once more with the second Nosferatu body, except this time, he emptied Rosencrantz of its final round. Six enemies dead, and with exactly twelve bullets.

Not his personal best, but it will do.

"I apologize, Herr Edge, but I muzt lee-load before I continue ahnverd." The Scarlet Trigger glanced in Amadeus' general direction as he tucked the black revolver underneath an armpit, using his newly freed-up hand to undo the clasps on several straps that hugged against his arm. After a couple of seconds, he tugged and pulled the leather-like sleeve upward, revealing the existence of a highly advanced cybernetic prosthesis, courtesy of the Order's medical division. With a stoic look on his face, as soon as he flexed his fingers, his entire forearm appeared to segment itself as it popped open with a few metallic clicks, revealing two rotating carousels housed within. From within his own arm, Matthias retrieved two speedloaders containing standard hollow-point cartridges and manually clicked the plates together until they reformed the distinct shape of a human arm once again.

Fortunately, his hand cannons made use of a top break reloading mechanism, which made discarding empty shells and inserting fresh ones with the handy speedloaders a breeze. The distinctive metal plink of cartridge casings emanated from below the Templar's feet as he renewed his guns with six more bullets apiece, returning him to peak ammo capacity.

"Round two." He spoke in his native German, reaching beneath his duster and undoing the clasp to a leather pouch he kept clipped to his belt line, and retrieved a small, spheroidal object colored red like his coat. A Cherry Grenade; more specifically, it was a concussion pellet, predominantly designed to inflict damage to personnel units and was far more effective in smaller spaces. But Matthias would be using it for a different purpose this time. With a powerful motion of his arm, he chucked the tiny ball skyward, and after a couple of seconds passed, the object exploded with a great flash of light and a resounding BOOM!

And now, Matthias and the Grandmaster would wait. Wait for more enemies to rear their ugly heads to them. Wait until he would be presented another chance to prove his skills to his esteemed leader and mentor. For now, the Scarlet Trigger would simply wait.