Apex Predator [Damon/Matthias]

10:03PM, BARCELONA LOCAL TIME
FEBRUARY 27TH, 2012
PARALLEL OF ST. RAPHAEL'S
15 MILES WEST OF THE STADIUM
BLIGHTSCAPE, INFERIS

The two-storey clinic was, perhaps, in reality, a quaint little construct on the fringe of the lower-class western areas of Barcelona proper. The surgical units and towering multi-floor standard "city-tier" hospitals were all located dotted around the city's epicentre, never a few miles from anywhere of importance; but the further and further out you got, as was the way with any major metropolis, the hospitals got further and further dispersed. There was a wealth divide in the Spanish city; perhaps not as gravitational and gapingly obvious as the gap in, say, Rio de Janeiro, or Kingston, but it was present, as it was everywhere. The impoverished lingered far beyond the control radius of the business executives in the centre who had healthcare at their fingertips.

So it must have been something short of sixty years ago this place had come to exist. It was small; undersupplied; but all the same, it had character. It had... use. The children nearby could have very much called it a place of solace; somewhere they appreciated, somewhere that was neutral ground, somewhere that they unwanted and the rejected always centred around in moments of pain or in moments of little faith. Religious idols contradicting one another sat in little rows upon the mantles; prayer beads, crucifixes, statues of Moses or Mohammed, the Talmud, the Qur'an, the Tanakh, the Testaments Old and New; this was a place of healing above all else. On Earth, at the very least.

A drooling plague zombie missing half of its mouth, strings of indiscriminate bodily slime swaying to and fro idly without cease or end from the rotten, blackened few contorted teeth that did remain, snatched up an ironically fallen carrion bird and regarded it with an empty, hollow, gurgle. "Plughhhhh..." It looked on at the thing, clutching it in off-coloured, grey-green fingers contorting around the matted, bloody feathers of the tiny demon avian. "Pluggghhhhh! With a groan of exertion, it greedily rose the little feathered snack up to its mouth - bottom jaw missing all the same - and made the motion of scraping it in some feeding-type manner against its cavernous, salivating, hanging upper mouth.

At least, it would have, if at that point in time its head still remained some rough semblance of the human visage.

A single revolving five-and-a-half inch copper-jacketed .50 calibre Browning Machine Gun round spiralled through the air. Approximately nine hundred metres away, upon a rocky outcrop that jutted out from the gentle downward incline of slope, not one tenth of a second earlier, a great, illusory wreath of flame had been birthed forth from the barrel of a scopeless AW50 rifle and from within the fire had roared forth this progeny of metal and gunpowder. Travelling at speeds formidable enough that they could even consider to later break the sound barrier, the round sheared through the air with first the catastrophic roar of the rifle combined as it reared backwards like a fearful stallion, and then just a whistling of wind as the bullet sheared through the morbid, infected, sickly Blightscape atmosphere and met its target dead on, spattering an off-green conglomerate of brain matter, remaining skull fragments, and some indiscriminate, diseased, bodily ooze over the closed front door of the parallel clinic.

"Tango down." The rifle's owner bolted himself upright and spoke mechanically in his mother tongue. And it had indeed been the only target that they had seen in their initial though comprehensive scan of the building's exterior. Between the flash compensator, the range at which he'd fired, the natural ambience of Inferis and the diminished intelligence of the majority of Blightscape Demons, the silent consensus he'd come to was that firing an unsuppressed weapon wouldn't compromise their stealth just yet. The operation could go on as planned, unimpeded. The sniper began to surgically remove the three-parted framework of his rifle - the barrel still warm - and in a matter of moments fold it back down into the convenient carry case.

Looking up at his exuberant partner to scan him for the approximately fifty-third time he had since they entered Inferis, he made no notion of judgment and no outward signs save for that unnaturally cold, unnaturally clean, ironclad stare of his, embedded in a freezing grey permanence, rings around his two sharp pupils. The "Scarlet Trigger", a moniker the man had adopted, was a countryman of his. For most this would have been a point of common ground and camaraderie. The Eagle Eye did not care, and wouldn't have if he'd have served alongside this man in the Gruppe; he was a decorated KSK commando, irrespective, only a couple of years his junior, and the senior Templar officers had praised his uncanny marksmanship. Had Damon Ruger been a jealous man, this would have incited an envious spark; fortunately, he wasn't. He just knew that his aim was better than Matthias Hildebrand's could ever be by default.

Folding his eyepatch back down and deactivating his first Augment, he hoisted up the case and slung it over his shoulder, the tight black-grey material of his ATLORS suit clinging to his body as he rose one of his selective-fire suppressed Glocks from his left holster, Weiss, and inclined his head sharply towards the man he'd been partnered with. The objective was simple; Knight-Templar standard. They were given a location and a directive; the dilapidated parallel of a Barcelona clinic, and to eliminate every target within and inspect the fluctuating and suspicious signs of demonic life - though without making too much noise to attract the local populace. A horde of the Blightscape's special own regular troops was... never a pretty sight.

There was no superior officer in this mission, no chain of command, no delegation; Damon and Matthias were of equal rank as regular Knight-Templars and dispatched with an understanding that they would already know the right decisions to make from their exaggerated training, and that their encouragement for team cohesion would mean there almost always weren't inner conflicts; and in truth, on small two-man assignments like this, there seldom were. There was always an unofficial chain of command when you were on the field, however; those your senior were the elder, the more experienced, the more battle-hardened. He knew many his superior, position or otherwise; the Reverend, Knight-Commandant Magnus, Paladin Vladimirovna, and Grandmaster Edge: but for Knight-Templar Hildebrand, he felt as if he knew this man deserved to be his inferior. He was far too exuberant and... just... happy. It was sickening. It allowed a margin for error.

But he would not so swiftly assume command. First, for any mission reports, it would shine a bad light on his otherwise impeccable service record. And secondly it meant that, if he ended up clashing with Matthias, he would be essentially undermining the Order's intentions; and his stalwart loyalty made that an outcome that he considered essentially abhorrent. "Let's go." Damon spoke, gesturing with a swift two-finger direction from his temple that the pair of them were to continue down the slope and up to the dilapidated, ruined clinic's front door, before breaching - quietly - and beginning to clear the building, room-by-room. Probably just lesser Demons all in all. This had seemed a fairly nondescript assignment if for a first chance to prove himself against another marksman. The Eagle Eye was ready. Was the Scarlet Trigger?

"Perfect shot, Herr Ruger!" Hmph. If he wanted a companion to stand-by and chirp praises of his success he would have taken a trainee into Inferis, and if he wanted someone to lick his ass, he would have taken a dog. Sycophants may have gotten far in the military and a good deal of respect to your superior never went amiss in the Templars, but, on paper, Hildebrand and Ruger were, though shakily, considered "equals". So there was no need for this. His grunt in response was trumped only by the cold and consistent stare he kept as his "fellow" soldier revealed that he still, infact, had to prepare himself. "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm taking this with me."

Damon's signature disapproving grunt came in return. "Hurry up, Herr Hildebrand." The title he gave Matthias should have been one reciprocated; and it was indeed, but it was more in sarcasm than anything else. It was becoming swiftly clear that he was not overly fond of this man. He was loud; his attire was boisterous; he was overly exuberant; he was slow; and above all else, he was a Templar. And he was German. And a marksman. Which meant, all-in-all, people could view the pair of hem highly similarly. Which made him... competition. "We do not have all night." And competition meant there was going to be an essence of dislike thrown in between the pair of them.

It quickly became apparent as to what his Knight-Templar comrade had to ready. Hauling a great, covered, hulking shape from the back of his motorcycle with relative ease. "I'll be with you in a moment. I'm taking this with me." Damon stared at him with a cold and disbelieving glare. What... was that? It looked like the thing the Reverend used. Just... different. As if it was far more mechanical. And lighter, through some impossible feat of physics. And Knight-Templar Smith was not a man of stealth. "We might need it later."

The steely retaliation came not moments later. "Hildebrand, that looks to be a large melee weapon intended for blunt force trauma." He hoped it wasn't some form of explosive variant. "This is a covert operation." Damon blinked coldly and continued with a semi-insulting remark about the nature of the imposing crucifix. Had this man trained under the Reverend or something? "How, in the name of the Lord, could you possibly think we could need it?" His voice was a patronising half-growl; but retaining the mechanical tones of which the sniper was so renowned for all the same.

Dismissing it with a grunt, the Templars' equipment was specialised to each and every man. If Hildebrand compromised their stealth during the engagement he could approach him with regards to it as and when; though it would probably on somewhat less "brotherly" terms. With a silent gesture to the door, the pair of them began their descent down the gentle incline towards the clinic beyond. A few minutes' silent travel later and Matthias found himself on the right side of the door, with Damon on the left. Gesturing that the red-coated Templar should hold his position, the marksman skirted along the broken, grimy, blood-spattered wall - and carefully around the headless corpse of the first zombie he'd taken out - and pressed his eye ever-so-slowly against a gap in the shattered, grubby glass of the nearest window.

He took a quick analysis of the room and mentally snapshotted it before returning to his position. It was on Matthias to breach - and he swore to his almighty God if the man did not use subtlety, he would be after his brains - and enter via the way they'd ended up, the door was closest to him. With that, he began to mouth a set of prompt instructions in their native tongue. First he gestured to the Scarlet Trigger, and jerked a thumb to the tiny slit of dim, pale yellow light that protruded out into the darkness from within, a ray of incandescence shearing through the diseased atmosphere of the Blightscape. The translation was simple; his countryman was to move through first and clear the room.

Then he followed up and jerked a thumb towards the window, silently moving his lips - and slowly - to indicate the number of Demons within. "Vier." Four. In truth, there were five. The Eagle Eye's silent, vindictive nature made this as much an observation as an operation; he didn't want to be partnered with Hildebrand if his life depended on it, but he wanted to see if the man was truly as obedient and skilled as the higher-ups said he was; and loyalty to the Templars was paramount - but any Knights who couldn't handle an extra Demon were in their own right unfit for service. Not his judgment call: but all the same, he figured a little test in pseudo-controlled conditions was worth it. Hey, for his own twisted nature, were he not the man he was, he felt as if he could have actually smiled.

The signal came to him and swiftly enough Damon sidled into the room, remaining silent and objectively scanning the fallout that Matthias had left behind as he checked his equipment. With a grunt he looked through; bullet wounds up and down every body, a veritable pile of cartridge casings forming a neat, brass, smoking ring around his feet. Multiple perforations on every target. This was not the work of an accurate or precise man. This was the work of a man who valued overkill and the "double-tap" technique over anything else. The Eagle Eye looked to the Scarlet Trigger and grunted. "It will suffice." His words were cold; it was by any Templar standard a perfect room-breach - and he'd taken care of the unwitting fifth target without so much as breaking a sweat - but the Hamburg native had slightly higher standards than the Order's training officers.

Crouching and stepping neatly around the five strewn bodies, he moved to the next door to their left. Damon blinked and pressed an ear up against the rotting wooden frame; the acquired clinic blueprints had given them three rooms on the ground floor and one large on the first used as a "ward" of sorts, lined with hospital bed upon hospital bed, he imagined, and then a basement below. They had cleared one of five, it seemed. They could rely on the Blightscape's natives taking to the cool, damp, musty air of the locked-off cellar below - and it would probably be where the bulk of their forces had taken up refuge, and additionally there would only be one entrance which doubled as an exit - which meant they should have cleared the rest of the building first by protocol. "Check weapons and reload." He "advised"; as much as it might have sounded like an order. The next room was his show.

Propping Jaeger's carry case up against the wall behind the door and safely out of range, he pulled from behind him, hanging at the small of his back, a black-painted light fabric quiver, pulling it around to sway gently at his hip. He then removed from the clips on the back of his ATLORS suit the weapon which gave him so much of his reputation as the Eagle Eye; and his designation as Archer Three-Actual above all else. Pandemonium. It was the bow; the Hoyt CRX-32 series painted and modified entirely in black. "I will clear this next room." He stated, before inching the door open, keeping his body compacted, as he drew an arrow and nocked it against the wheel-bound bowstring of the compound weapon, the alloy wheels simply sitting there in the frame, imposing as ever.

Pushing through and immediately taking cover on the right behind a nearby inlet in the wall, he poked his head around and scanned the room. There were another five of the mechanical husk-types in here - and then a door which lead to the next room, and a staircase to the first floor. It was an elongated room; he was at the thin end of the bland, dilapidated, simple grey rectangle, but it was present all the same. With a light whir from the bow's wheels, he drew back the nocked arrow, furrowed his brow, and rose his frame slightly. His elbow raised and pointed in the air and the eyepatch already covering the unnecessary side of his face, Damon Tomasz Ruger gritted his teeth before loosing all control on the bowstring.

The combined essence of a metallic thud and a visceral splatter resounded through the room; and as inept and stupid as these creatures were, their sensory abilities were not completely impeded. With the serrated-edge arrowhead perforating the back of the Scrap Corpse's transmuted skull, it slumped immediately to the floor with a dull, mechanical grunt, and the four at the other end of the room feasting on some sort of indistinguishable carrion all turned towards him at once and unleashed a tinny, gurgling howl, the off-green salivated acid and red blood intermingled and drooling from their gaping iron maws.

It was barely a moment before Damon drew another arrow from the quiver and nocked it again; perhaps his heart was beating faster than usual within, but the cold, wrinkled pallor of the dark-skinned European wasn't letting it show for shit. He took aim at the far right of the four walking dead that were converging on him and loosed an arrow that met the disgusting abomination in the top of its forehead, though at such an angle that the jagged edge of the arrow protruded out from the crown of its metallic skull with a burst of off-white hydraulic fluid, slumping to the floor in but a moment to join its singular comrade in this room. Another shaft nocked and another arrow loosed and but a second later a third had fallen with the flight protruding with a dull black from the back of the third fallen husk's head. Seemed he had a fairly good accuracy ratio to live up to his moniker.

His body became, when tensed, a machine; a machine, just like these five. Well; two, now. Though whilst they became a mechanism built solely for devouring - and converting, so he'd heard, when it came to more organic Demons unlucky enough to happy upon a bulky patrol in the Blightscape - he was a system built for one thing and one thing alone. He was a finger of divine wrath and a servant of a higher power's will; but not the "God" he pledged allegiance and undying fealty to in life and in death every morning, but the Templar Order. He was a construct built entirely for killing. He was fluid; he was barebones; he was bearing nothing of a rough coat around the edge and little of the fat on the cut of the meat, so to speak. He was all he needed to be and nothing more yet nothing less. He was fluid; he was efficient; he carried only what he could need and left no delay, no lapse. Every arrow he drew now went from quiver to hand, hand to bow, bow to air, air to skull. No fumbling. No fucking about. An object of concentrated precision.

A vindictive snarl drew upon his lips as he realised that timing would not allow for four clean ranged headshots; the fourth arrow loosed met the neck of the fourth husk as it was barely five metres from him, but had been fired at such an angle that it protruded upwards and pierced the lower "lobes" of whatever semblance of a brain remained; and when the fifth descended upon him, a mechanical conglomerate of flesh and steel with its eager metal talons ready to shred skin and sinew indiscriminately, Damon leapt back to avoid the strike. And alas another arrow was held in his offhand; but he'd never intended for it to meet the bowstring. Perhaps the advantage of range had already been relinquished here but there was no reason for him to forsake precision.

The Eagle Eye did in his very nature dislike close-quarters combat, but there were times it became a necessity, and he'd been trained in it to survive. His black-clad foot struck out like a blade to catch the mechanised shinbone of the last standing husk and dropped the unexpecting machine to the floor from a humanoid skeletal and muscular reflex, be it one of synthetic or organic origins. Skirting around, he pressed forward and lunged downwards with his knee, pinning the gruesome Corpse to the floor as it screamed and wailed in a mechanical overtone, before in a deadly, downward arc, he brought down the arrow he'd unsheathed - and with all the might of his conditioned physique, no less mechanised than that of the Demon below his knee, brought the head of the arrow down into the base of the creature's skull and sheared through its unprotected spine, protruding straight through and catching whatever vital systems remained at the front of its neck.

A ghastly mixture of white hydraulic fluid and green, lightly-corrosive acid seeped out from the creature's neck and mouth as Damon rose with a sigh, letting his body return to its natural state; battle was not so much a situation for him but a mode he could trigger, something he could evoke or summon, something that disappeared in a flush of reversion the moment combat would complete. A wild glint in cold eyes perforated through the sliver of light remaining as his gaze met that of Matthias Hildebrand, and the Eagle Eye turned back with a grunt and let every aspect of his body fall back to his precision as he lowered to retrieve the unscathed, intact arrow shafts he could from the bodies of his targets.

"Precision, Herr Hildebrand," The sniper spoke icily and matter-of-factually, with almost a gentle breeze of unfettered superiority in his tones. "It is the watchword of the Order we belong to, and you would do well to remember that."