Pacific Ocean

[shakku]

A loud noise, much like a door being kicked in, was heard while the door to the laundry room was being kicked in, and it truly was unexpected. Shakku couldn't help but take an immediate dive for a cover spot behind one of the washing machines, but on the way he was blinded by a large flash engulfing the room so suddenly, and his ears could hear a very slight ringing. His gun had been dropped against the other side of the wall where his pay check, Tom, was laid, with his hands spread against the floor. Of course he wouldn't try anything stupid, but he is tom so...

The man had issued an order on entry. In response shakku shouted "Who are you?" even though he truly had no leverage in this situation. He could tell the person had military training from somewhere, and didn't want to make any slight movements. These types of people had an itchy trigger finger, and he knew it too, after all he was one of the jarheads.

[InsanityIsCool]

"SLIDE YOUR WEAPONS TO ME!" John ordered the 2 survivors, they sure didn't look like people who would attack a ship, too much civilian clothing and not enough gear, but he wasn't taking any chances, they could have been helping the attackers on the inside.

the one who didn't ask who he was started sliding over the pistol on the ground near him, then took another pistol out of a pocket and slide that over.
he eyed the one who did ask.

[shakku]

"Goddamn it Tom. See, now we've been captured. I want double my pay." said shakku as he sat on the floor leaning against one of the laundry washing machines. He held his hands up slightly as if he no longer cared, while starting to speak. "You've got our guns already, so stop pointing that thing at my paycheck." From behind the washing machine he slowly walked forward presenting himself to the man.

Observing the man's equipment he couldn't help but comment, "Your a bit heavily armed to be on a cruise ship, and I doubt the government would send any dogs to inspect a ship wreck like this. You must be BSAA" The fact that the man had a patch to distinguish he was BSAA helped to determine that as well. "Look Tom, I have no quells with the BSAA, so even if you paid me to kill this guy, I wouldn't do it. They've done more than the government has, especially for people recovering from past B.O.W incidents."

[InsanityIsCool]

"A scared man with a knife is very dangerous, plus since your survivors I dont want to risk any reason for shooting you."
dropping his kriss, it was on a single point sling, he pulled out his pistol but held it at his waist.
activating his radio, "Sam, Ive found the heat signatures, 2 survivors, probably passengers. one very likely a bodyguard to the other."
"roger John, should I prep for passengers?"
"affirmative, Ill guide them to the top deck for pickup."

deactivating his radio, he pulled out 2 heavy duty ziplock handcuffs.
"Im going to take you to my helo, but your going to be going in cuffs. I don't know you and I certainly don't trust you."

[shakku]

"No, you can't. You don't understand what those...things are. We will need as many hands as we can get, and i'm sure as hell trying not to die in cuffs." said Tom very squeamish like. It seemed to have no effect towards the man's resolve of arresting them. Tom glanced at Shakku hoping he would speak up. "You see, John, was it? My equipment is a few stories down, far beneath where we possibly are headed. I mean, you must understand, even scared men without knives are just as dangerous, but a knife would be efficient." said Shakku. He wasn't purposely trying to provoke the man, but rather convince him to not leave just yet. The next moment Shakku could remember and account for was being zip tied, as John was transporting both men towards the upper deck. "I thought you were gonna pull some tough guy stuff, threatening him and all that." whispered Tom. "Look, I'll bring a knife to a gunfight any day, but that's because I have the knife. Plus this guy has big f**king guns."

They were making their way through what used to be a decent cruise residency, the halls smelled of wet decay now, as well as bodies and/or limbs were scattered generously around. In the background the sound of a fully working heli could be heard. It did for the moment sound like freedom, and salvation but even still, leaving behind his equipment was like leaving behind a piece of him, he thought.

[InsanityIsCool]

when they got to the top deck the helo was waiting for them in the center gap where the garden was 8 floors down, low enough that they could step off the ledge into its passenger bay.
"pilot, when the survivors are aboard, head back to base for refuel and offload."
"copy that."
just as he was about to get the 2 survivors into the helo, he caught something in his peripheral vision. when he looked, he blanched.
"RPG!!!"
tossing the two survivors onto the deck, he threw himself protectively over them while the pilot tried to evade the incoming rpg.

he failed.
the rocket propelled grenade hit him in the tail rotor section, causing him to lose control.

"MAYDAY MAYDAY IM GOING DOWN!!"
spinning like a spin top, the helo dropped down and crashed into the garden below, a fiery explosion soon followed.
getting back up, John looked towards where the rpg was fired from, nothing, the perpatrator must have moved as soon as he or she had fired the rpg.
looking down at the flaming wreckage he quietly swore.

turning back to the 2 survivors, he took out his goliath knive and cut the bindings off the 2.

"looks like we'll be spending some time together. where did you leave your equipment?" he asked the bodyguard.

[shakku]

Right as they were to board the Helo for capture, the group of three were all victim to watch their transport be shot down.
The man who was once arresting them, now threw his life over theirs. It was quite the display of character, thought shakku. The man who had fired the RPG was probably long gone, and since they were each laid on the ground, there was literally no chance of catching the man or men, let alone see where they were at. Maybe there was a smoke trail from the fired round? If we had time to inspect the lower levels we could check for explosive residue, or empty casings, containers, etc, he thought.
"looks like we'll be spending time together. Where did you leave your equipment?" said John. "Ah ah ah." said Shakku as the man cut Tom and himself loose. "Our guns. We officially have two factions against us. The living individuals who blew up the heli, because i'm damn sure a B.O.W can't used explosive weaponry....at least I hope to any god they cannot. We also have B.O.W's on board, the living embodiment of hell."

He stood up gazing around from above at the lower levels from high up. He couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Dead bodies and a few loose infected attracted to the noise like moths to a flame. There were a lot of them. His gaze soon traveled to John before eyeing the man's weaponry. "Of course, I wouldn't mind if you gave me the gun that actually had ammunition in it. I'm not too sure my employer would know how to operate any weapons."

His eyes shifted to Tom before uttering, "No offense".

[InsanityIsCool]

"these are my weapons, and they're going to stay that way."

after cutting their bindings John went over to the nearby deck bar, and quickly found a suitable kitchen knife.
He put the handle into the hands of the bodyguard, "you can use this as a last resort, your under my care after all. come on."

shouldering his kriss, he started back to the stairs, and went down.

[shakku]

(ooc: holy crap. I just forgot that we left the pistols a few posts back D:, gotta go in with dat kitchen knife )

His hands being opened forcefully, only to have a kitchen knife placed in them. Shakku was ready to go and get back his armaments. The knife wasn't even fairly sharp. The dried blood that stuck around it, from the tip down had probably been responsible for that. With a deep sigh he kept going. "If I remember correctly, there is an elevator that way." Pointing to the hall east of where they stood. He would continue walking forward expecting the rest of the party to follow. "I know the steps are inhabited by things to not be spoken of, and the elevator shaft, whether the elevator was working or not, could still be used."

At the end of the hall it was a lobby area, with an office to the left of the central elevators. The door of the office had blood marks on the outside akin to the elevator doors, the source being the few bodies lying outside them. This office seemed to have been virtually untouched on the inside, and by Shakku's thinking "If this ship was mainly reserved for those in a criminal type underground, their is no doubt an employee would want to defend himself." Testing the door knob, it jingled to each turn of the spherical door handle. "John, you take point." said shakku sticking towards one side of the door, under handing the knife with another hand close behind, wrapped in cloth. It would definitely protect him from the bite of an infected and probable normal person. This thought caused him to test it by bite down a bit hard on the cloth. He could barely feel a thing. He gave the signal to John, to start doing a count down before they both ran in to inspect the room.

[InsanityIsCool]

the smell of death was as familiar to John as it was to any front-line fighter. dead and infected get pretty rank, people lose all bowel function when they die, so you almost always get a whiff of a noxious blend of **** and s***, blood and rot when you are close to them.
and the smell only gets worse over time.

and the room they were in, had the smell.

several infected were already dragging themselves towards them. and more were getting up.
time to clock in.

his first shot took out the closest infected, the bullet entering through its left eye and exploding the rear of its head.
he continued servicing targets from closest to furthest, staying near the door, letting them come into his kill zone.
8 seconds and 20 headshots later the room was clear. John switched his depleted mag for a full mag and put the former in his depleted mag pouch for later.

"search quickly, keep an eye on bodies that still have a whole head."

[shakku]

As each body fell back to the ground, Shakku had peeked around the room. The lights were a bit dim, truly illuminating the walls and only the things that moved, or looked as if they were moving. Each round from John's gun was followed by a flash which briefly gave the room a bit more luminescence, and during the flashes a desk could be seen towards the back with filing cabinets to the right of it. A plant, possibly a mini cactus stood firm on one of the cabinets surprisingly untouched. "Roger." Shakku replied. His eyes thoroughly scanned the rest of the room, mainly the bodies on the floor. Things such as what they were wearing and if they had anything valuable inside their pockets were important as well. A captain might have keys, security pass, identification, security guards and armed staff might have Kevlar, Ballistic Vest, ammo, arms, anything to help really.

With a burst of speed he dashed pass the cadavers laid out on the floor. Each steps almost always trampled some type of body part without second thought. If anything were to get up, he would expect John to have his back. It seemed that John had enough experience and skill to lay these things down for good. His first few steps, he could feel limbs and even an abdomen underneath his feet. The last few steps were spaced out, as he no longer trampled over any bodies the floor had gotten soaked, making a pit pat sound when running. No more than two steps after entering the far end of the room where some type of liquid had covered the floor, he slipped while trying to keep balance. Falling backwards, his feet had flown forward with the back of his head hitting the floor boards with a loud thud. One of the undead, had slowly crawled towards the downed man. It had probably chosen not to get up with the rest of the crowd.

Tom had moved past John, rushing through the door way to extend his help to the fallen bodyguard. Just as he had gained enough momentum to where shoving, or jumping on the decayed body would have been enough to kill it, his feet gave out causing him to slip and fall in the same manner as Shakku. Both were writhing on the floor in pain. The undead made a slow advance towards Shakku, clicking his teeth quickly, eager to taste and rip flesh. With his hand covered in cloth he purposely let the corpse bit onto it unable to break through. "Hold on tight." he whispered. With his cloth wrapped fingers free to move inside the mouth, he gripped its jaw, driving his fingers through the tongue and muscle underneath, reaching around while touching his thumb. Altogether his hand was a fist balled up around the undead's jaw, shakku leaned onto his right shoulder with his head leading the rest of his body. With the head not detaching as easily as he had thought, instead he chose to hold it into the air. Tom had a haste-y recovery, quickly trying to scrape the knife up off of the floor before running over to sink the kitchen knife into the skull of the infected, all the way to the handle. "Nice job." relayed shakku. He was surprised that the knife hadn't stabbed through to his hand, in actuality it barely missed one of his fingers. "You search that side, and the bodies. Keep the knife close, and if it looks dead stab it in the head just in case." As he pointed to the filing cabinets while shouted orders to Tom. The back of his head was still ringing with a bit of pain. He tried to hurry behind the desk, where the pool of blood led to. A body, dressed in full staff attire sat with a small exit point in the side of his head from where a gun was fired at the other side.

Looking near the mans feet a small gun could be seen. One round was expended, with the casing standing solid within the pool of blood. The gun, as he gripped it and analyzed it, by grip, trigger, and barrel of course not looking down the barrel. Upon closer inspection, he was actually able to tip the barrel up, staring at it from the rear. Knife markings could be seen near the right side. Pushing a button near the lower left corner of the grip unloaded the clip. "Ooh, we seem to have found a goodie. But what's this? Seven rounds in the clip, one chambered. One dead employee. The crime has solved itself yet there is something a bit wrong." He stopped to think about it, but also remembered the current situation. He patted down the dead man with the crew liners official clothing on, only to find nothing. Turning to the desks, he opened each drawer starting with the two on the left side, before reaching the two on the right. The papers and trinkets inside the first two were scattered or slightly broken, with nothing of particular interest. The next two held an empty box for ammunition chambered in .22 short with three rounds laying inside. "Hmm, still nothing." he said grabbing the three rounds to instinctively load one of them into the gun's rather small clip. One large difference he had just noticed about the weapon he carried was the primer of the rounds. It was easily distinguishable from the rounds within the earlier held pistol; from which point he assumed it was a rimfire round. The engraving on the side of the gun's grip read "Beretta", and beneath it laid another engraving which read ".25 Jetfire".

Returning to the doorway he explained in detail what he could observe. "This small pistol is known to mercenaries and gun nuts or just people who have used it before as a gun that jams slightly more than any other, but it requires the shell to be pried out afterwards. Not only does it generate small blowback pressure and does it lack a shell extractor, the rimfire rounds loaded inside don't help with it's range and accuracy. The marks on the barrel prove that after the only round was expended, someone pried it out of the jammed gun. Also meaning, since they didn't take the gun, they probably didn't need it, planting it here with the round to make it seem as of this man killed himself. It also seems as if it was fired from a distance, though I could see if someone who would commit suicide didn't aim the barrel at their temple." Tom made his way over looking at the room from a distanced perspective. "You got all that from this room? It seems I haven't made a mistake with you as my bodyguard so far, huh?" He presented a metal zippo lighter, three leather belts with slim metal buckles, and a mini flashlight as he finished his sentence. "Well, you hired Shakku and Shadow, and even though it may sound crazy to my employers about the whole two personalities thing, it also means I can use twice the thought formation, and deduction skills. I'll always have another opinion and always have suggestions long after i'm out of ideas"

[InsanityIsCool]

"it also means that you can be unpredictable to an enemy. will you follow standard tactics and procedures or will you be reckless and charge headfirst into the breach. will you attempt to use stealth and sneak into a compound, or will you smash the gate down, assaulting with massive firepower. It can be useful, but only up to a certain point."

looking around, john walked the scene, searching carefully.
spying an off angled air conditioner, he went over and after prying off the cover, found an almost invisible security camera, built into the aircon itself.
it had been wrecked.

"2 options." he said as he revealed his find. "one, this was an inside job or 2, the one who did got hold of security plans or was just thorough. one thing we do know however, is that this guy is profesional, and cold. he took the time to screw off the cover and screw it back on after wrecking the camera."

"come on. we got to get to your equipment."

[shakku]

Shakku felt a bit insulted by Johns remark. Of course, sneaking was never an option. By the time a stealthy man could sneak past all the guards or take them out silently the place being infiltrated would have been emptied by shakku, and not a single body found. The evidence shortly provided, suggesting this person was a professional could be true. It was evident that this guy had some skills, being able to take out a room full of possibly armed staff and big shot crime bosses. "I wouldn't be surprised if he just shot them all point blank, but he must truly have some training and skill to have done it distanced like that." he remarked to himself. "Maybe they just took themselves out, and he watched from afar." he thought. They never truly examined the wounds of the other bodies, and it would be a little hard to determine now that they were filled with more holes. As soon as he heard John talk of getting equipment, Shakku was absolutely ecstatic. Not exactly the right type of mood to get at this moment in an exact situation as such but, it was better than that of a depressed, no hope-r.

Nodding his head in agreement, Shakku made his way out of the room back into the hallway previously entered. The elevators were right there. Of course, nothing would be able to stop them from reaching their goal now. This however did not include hazardous occupation of time. If the engines were damaged or any other system, who knows how long the ship will stay afloat. Just in front of the elevator Shakku manned one side, gripping an elevator door tightly while signalling for John to grab the other. "There could be hostiles so, be ready to shoot." Once the door was fully open, inside the elevator were two hostiles clothed in mainly blue jeans, white shirts, and checkered scarves, commonly shown by news articles and the like, as an article of clothing terrorists wear. Of course the real terrorist were the ones who don't make it obvious or give reason for others to be suspicious. People like Shakku, who the government would rather have other people believe him to be a serial killer, child molester, murderer, any name up under the sun. Once you've got them doing that, you'll know that your the one who strikes real terror within their hearts. For some reason they weren't exactly hostile, but no one, not even Tom was fooled by their sedated state. "More like, docile." said shakku while peering down at them. Their guns were both scattered near the elevator entrance, both being some type of suppressed weapon, similar to a sub-machine gun's design. Next to one of them was a small baggy with, presumably cannabis, and a small black comm. radio on the other side of the man.

[InsanityIsCool]

John frowned, this was strange, and in these situations strange was almost always bad.
He looked closer to the baggie, there was something wrong about it. The stuff inside looked like shredded cannibals or tobacco strands except for the colour.

It was slightly glowing blue, and the baggie was open.

And the 2 hostile hands and lips were glowing slightly.

"Back away slowly," he told shakku and Tom, "stay where you are." He ordered the two hostile.

As soon as Tom started moving back, their heads shot up, revealing glowing blue eyes.
As one they screeched loudly, and moved towards them.

Before they moved more than a foot between them, John shot both in the head.
As they started to fall, they began to pulse with blue light.

"MOVE!!"

He shoved shakku and Tom back down the corridor as quick as possible. Several seconds later they were blown off their feet by a concussion wave quickly preceded by 2 loud explosions.

Looking back John was shocked. The elevator was gone, along with several meters if corridor.

"Well ... that's new."

[shakku]

"What, I was just gonna smoke what they weren-" Replied Shakku before the two hostiles had shot straight up from their slouched position. He was so close, almost about to actually touch the baggy but his hand had an almost instinctive jerk back reaction when John yelled. Quickly turning around he reached for Tom's clothing and dragged him around the corner of one of the elevator's walls. He could hear two gunshots, before seeing John start to run back down the corridor as if he wasn't going to stop and hide with them, as if John knew of a far bigger threat to come. Grabbing Tom once again he sprint while Tom was semi-drag running. Before they knew it John was right on their tails, as if he was able to move faster than both of them--he seemed trained well enough for that to be possible. A sudden push was felt as all three of them were sent into a dive and a sort of concussive echo was felt, much trembling could be observed as well. The waves of sound seemed to echo clearly and clean like as they resonated within and throughout the three bodies.

He could hear John say that this was..."new"
Pulling his gun close, he stood from the spot on the ship's floor trying to refrain from giving John a suspicious look and instead looked back to the hallway previously entered and exited knowing at least they could take another elevator. Turning his head back to what would be the mechanical doors, they were gone--each one blown and lodged into the walls they previously sealed from entry. Either that or the entryway was guarded sound like by crisp flames and sparked metal. The floors and walls spanned out for a few meters were charred and the fancy designs they formerly adorned were barely recognizable. At the most you could distinguish the ashes of the corpses which once laid around the waiting area. Makes you ponder if they died from the virus that infected them or from waiting too long.

In a second, Shakku started chuckling at the joke he made internally, which he would have shared but first he intended to find out John's secret.
With a vague tone of disinterest he shouted an order to the others, "I guess we take the stairs." Halfway through his sentence the tone changed to something more interesting but frightening, being that the stairs probably held flesh eaters, whatever the things in the elevator were, and who knows what else..."Sh*t, that's a bit terrifying" he finished.