Mandrake’s squad of Counselors eagerly stood by while their captain worked on picking the lock on the back door of the abandoned mobile phone store that a group of Martyrs were using as a temporary base. As most of the squad prepared an assault through the back door, sharpshooter Slinger escorted rookies Rodeo and Fisher to the front door to flank the Martyrs. They squat down next to the front door of the building.
“You’re clear on the plan, right?” asks Slinger?
Rodeo and Fisher both give a nod.
Slinger responds “Alright then” though he seems completely unconvinced. “We hold until Mandrake pops the cork, then act on my mark.”
Mirage, Luna and Solis join the grunts in the main room who’ve been inventorying their stolen equipment and packing it away into boxes. Everything is already packed before the transport truck arrives.
“Everything is ready to be loaded once the truck gets here” says Golem, the muscle for this small cluster of Martyrs. “What’s all this stuff for anyway?”
Solis responds “I could explain it to you, but you wouldn’t understand. So why bother. Just do your job.”
Golem turns to Solis as his skin turns gray and jagged, taking on the look of granite. “I don’t like being talked down to, little man.” He walks over to Solis, towering over him by more than a foot.
“Oh calm down you brute. You shouldn’t be so thin-skinned.” Solis quips back.
Golem walks away in a huff, but leaves his skin in its armored state. This altercation between the two distracted the Martyrs from noticing the nine Counselors who had quietly slipped in through the back door.
A gas grenade flies from the back of the room and pegs Golem in the side of his rocky head. The room quickly fills with yellow fumes causing the Martyrs to gag and cough. Luna raises her hand and makes a twisting gesture, which sucks all of the light out of the main room and turning it into a pitch black void.
“Its just a matter of time before you’re all lying sick on the floor” shouts Mandrake from the back of the room. He turns to his team and utters “while that darkness is up, we have no idea who’s in there, so sit tight and let the roaches cook.”
The Martyrs were trapped in a room full of choking fumes, but for the time they were safe as long as Luna could keep the room draped in darkness. Martyrs recruit Migraine takes this chance to telepathically reach out to Jason Webster, the driver of the transport truck. “Jason, you need to get here fast! The Council has us pinned down in the base and the room is full of riot control gasses!”
Jason was only a few blocks away at that point and thanks to his psychic connection with Migraine, he could see what was going on inside. He accelerated toward the building, entered the alley behind and smashed the transport truck through the back where the Counselors were holding their position. By the time Sight sensed the truck was headed for their location, it was too late to warn the team.
As the truck crashed through the back of the old mobile phone store, it drove right through where Mandrake’s squad was positioned. Most of the team could hear and feel the truck coming and managed to dodge the attack, however two Counselors weren’t so lucky. Harpoon and Lightstorm were crushed by the massive truck and killed instantly. The rest of the team was either disoriented or thrown to the ground.
As the dust cleared, Mandrake stood up and screamed “Dammit! Where did this asshole come from?” He hopped up to yank the driver from the cab, but he had already slipped inside the black void where the Martyrs were held up. What’s worse is the hole created by the truck sucked all the riot gas from the room and the Martyrs were starting to recover.
Mirage chimes in “Jason, how many of them are there?”
“Uh, I…I counted 5. I think.” Jason nervously utters back.
“Damn.” Mirage pauses. “OK, I think I have a plan.”
Meanwhile, Slinger tells Rodeo and Fisher to stand down and stay out of sight. “The operation is compromised, so we need to sit tight for now. They don’t know we’re here, and we need to keep it that way.”
Rodeo and Slinger respond with a simple “Affirmative” and stay ducked down out of sight.
After a few moments pass to allow the Martyrs to shake off the effects of the gas, Solis steps from out of the darkness to addresses the Counselors. “Sorry about that, but parking around here is a bitch.”
The Counselors all turn to face Solis and stand ready to attack.
Solis continues “but in all of this, there is a BRIGHT SIDE!” At that moment, Solis bursts with a brilliant and intense white light. This flash of light stunned and blinded the entire group of Counselors, allowing Jason to slip back into the truck and drive it forward into the black void ahead.
Once inside the darkness, the Martyrs quickly load the truck with as many boxes of stolen tech they can manage, hop on the truck and start driving away through the front of the store. Mirage casts an illusion over the darkness, making it look like the black void containing the Martyrs is still there as they escape.
As the truck drives through the front of the building, the three Counselors out front dive out of the way. Slinger whips around and fires several electrical stun charges at anyone hanging off the vehicle. He manages to hit both one of the grunts and Luna, who struggled to hang onto the truck through the spasms caused by the stun charges.
Slinger yells “Pull them down Fisher!”, at which point Fisher jumps to his feet, reaches out with both arms and makes a pulling motion towards the two targets. Both the Martyr grunt and Luna are violently yanked from the back of the escaping truck and quickly pulled toward Fisher. He disengages his invisible hold on them and they drop the ground in front of Slinger, still incapacitated by the stun rounds.
As the truck full of stolen tech speeds away, the illusion fades and Mandrake’s unit learns that they’ve allowed the Martyrs to escape.
While Mandrake's unit suffered heavy losses and failed their mission, at least they managed to capture some Martyrs that might provide useful intel to The Council.
One thing is for certain. Mandrake is not looking forward to explaining this bungled operation to General Hastings.
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The SteemHeroes Story
Prologue (complete):
Episode 0-1: The Discovery of Olympium
Episode 0-2: The Olympium War
Episode 0-3: The Splintering
Episode 0-4: The Rebellion
Episode 0-5: The Ravenwood Agency
Episode 0-6: Zenethen
Episode 0-7: The Discovery of Dimensional Fissures
Season 1:
Cover Image: Freepik