"What the hell is going on here?" demanded Nick Fury as he entered the room, "C'mon people, I don't have all day!" Following Salis' attack on the UN headquarters, SHEILD was taking over an investigation to hunt him down. Director Fury and several other operatives were meeting at their base in New York to try and make sense of the mess that had been made. Several people were sitting around the table in the conference room the Fury had just walked into with such grace. All were on computers and pulling up what info they had on the situation.
"Looks like we're dealing with a highly trained and deadly super with portals sir," replied one of the men, "We don't have any feasible way of tracking him so it's anyone's guess where he went."
"Anything else?' he inquired Mr. Fury, "I assume we would have something on someone powerful enough to barge into the UN General Assembly and dismantle the security force without breaking a sweat!"
The man blanched slightly at Nick's loud and accusatory tone, then quickly typed away at his keyboard to try and pull something up. "W-well we do have a bit on him," he said after several desperate keystrokes, "he wore a mask, so no solid ID, but we have seen someone in this getup before sighted near sights of several thefts from prominent bio-tech companies and a few high profile murders. His MO seems to include sword wounds and people found killed by their own guns based off ballistics."
"Well that would be him, wouldn't it," said Nick as he rubbed his chin, "pull the footage up on-screen." Soon tapes of the UN incident were playing on a large flat-screen installed in one of the walls. "My, my, we have a big one," he muttered as he watched Salis dispatch the security with ease, "Has he sent any demands besides his message at the General Assembly?"
"No si- wait, something just came up," said one of the men as he stared at his screen.
"Well spit it out then," said Fury in an annoyed tone.
"He's giving us an address," responded the man, obviously confused.
"What?! Put it on screen!" demanded Fury. Soon a short clip of the front of a building appeared on screen. The camera was flipped to show that Salis was holding it. The masked man quickly listed off an address.
"Anyone who is for me, come. Anyone against me, good luck making it through the door." The clip cut off.
"Should we send in Iron Man?" asked one of the men.
"No," replied Nick after some contemplation, "he has his own problems, and if we're going through with contingency plans and registration the I want to show the anti-reg's that supers aren't needed for every damn problem we have. Send in a SHIELD team. We do this our way."
Salis looked down from the top of the abandoned construction site with a scanning eye. He had expected them to send someone before now, but it seemed that they were just arriving. Several vans had taken position a few blocks away after driving past the site and there had been activity in one of the neighboring buildings recently. It seemed that they were setting up shop now. The cool breeze blew stronger up in the air where he was, causing his hood to flap into his face slightly. Faint noises of the city continued as he waited for them to make their move. All was still, most people already home and not eager to roam this part of the city at night. Then there was a flash of movement from where SHIELD was positioned. Salis hefted a sniper rifle to rest on a beam as he scanned the area. There it was again. Several things were moving through the dark. He put his eye to the scope, ready now for the next flash. His breathing slowed as he prepared his shot, counting the seconds. 1... 2... 3... 4... BAM!
The OP lead threw his headset to the ground in anger as the last monitor went to static at the sound of a seventh sniper round. Following standard protocol for a hostage situation, they had sent in several state of the art recon drones that were a bit larger than soda cans. Somehow their mystery man was able to pick them all off with sniper rounds and their team now had to go in blind of any explosives, ambushes, and without any confirmation that the hostages were even there. It was a complete tactical nightmare and their chances of success were looking slimmer by the minute. "This is gonna be a long night," he said to himself as he rubbed his forehead. "Send in the teams," he called out for everyone to hear, "they're going in blind. We can't let this bastard go without a fight."
An hour later, three teams of of five were assembled with full body armor, grenades, assault rifles, and any other equipment they might need. "Operation Pincer is a go," buzzed a voice over their comms. Like shadows, the teams moved in from different directions. No sound was made as the moved from cover to cover, helmet cam's giving the operation booth a live feed of what was happening. "No movement yet," said team leader A over comms, "approaching the main entrance. Keep an eye out for traps," he said as he turned to his team. The leader silently poked his head out from behind cover before moving forward, his team following across thirty foot stretch of no cover as fast as they could without making noise. They were past the halfway point and it seemed they would make it when, BAM! A shot rang out as their leader fell over, his face a reduced to a bloody pulp by the high caliber round. The group sprinted quickly towards their entrance, all semblance of stealth gone as two more men keeled over at the sound of a sniper rifle. Suddenly there was a click as the lead man ran into cover. An explosion blasted him to oblivion along with his other team member as the landmine went off, a small plume of fire erupting from the ground. In their haste to find cover, they hadn't stopped for traps, and paid dearly. Team B and C were shaken by the sounds of their team dying over comms and the echo of an explosion across the site, but they pressed on. The UN delegates had to be saved.
Team B was the next to reach the building, taking a route with much denser cover to try and climb up a support beam at one of the corners of the unfinished buildings. The men aimed the grapple attachment's on their guns and lodged hooks into the floor of the roof before attaching ropes to their belts and pulling themselves up. "Team B is head up," said the team leader into his comm.
"Team C is entering the building, traps have been disabled at the east side entrance. Moving up now," buzzed the team C leader. Team B continued it's ascent as team C slowly made their way through the inside, using stairs and scaffolding to make their way up. Several explosive devices were found and disabled along with some rigged firearms. Besides the landmines, the traps seemed pretty amateur and badly concealed. The tripwires were easily seen when actively looked for and the firearms sometimes visible from the door they were meant to fire at when opened. It seemed that traps were not this man's forte. As such, team C started to let their guard down a bit. Then there was a silent click as one of them walked to the center of a room and felt a section of the floor give way a bit more than normal. As he called out to the others, bulletproof glass fell down at the doors and windows to create a prison of sorts. The men tried firing through the glass and knocking through walls, but both were heavily reinforced to avoid such breaches. They had been expertly routed and mislead and now were paying the price as gas started to seep through hidden holes in the floor and ceiling. Within minutes the last one let out a choked gasp as he fell to the ground, dead.
At this point team B was near the top floor of the building, but paused as the dying cries of C came on over the mics. "Op lead, should we continue?" asked team lead B.
The Op lead kneaded his forehead with his hands as he thought over what to do. Already two men were lost and sending team B in could just be another waste of lives. They were already there though, and sending them back would probably yield the same result considering what the man had done so far. No, running would only lead to death and not even have a chance of salvaging the Op. Maybe if they came face to face with him they might win. "You have the green light," he spoke into his comm, "go in team B."
The team lead nodded to his men, and they grappled up the last of the rope length up to the top floor. Swinging into the building, this floor was completely open to the elements. No walls had been set up in the spacious area and it was completely empty besides a few steel beams lying on the floor and a ring of chairs in the center with tied up and keeled over silhouettes sitting in them. "We have eye's on the target," said team lead, "going in for rescue." The men made it halfway across the space when Salis finally decided to intervene from the roof above. A portal appeared on the ceiling of the room and he dropped through with his sword draw and ready for combat. "Open fire!" called the lead as the figure came into sight. Salis quickly dodged into a portal and appeared behind them and redirecting their bullets with another so that their barrage pounded them from all sides. Several fell with a cry as bullets found gaps in their body armor. Salis slashed through the remaining three, whirling like a tornado as they attempted to pull closer ranged weaponry. The first two fell easily, one being stabbed in his belly by the blade going up and under his armor. The second had actually drawn his sidearm when the sword slashed across his neck. The last one managed to pull a combat knife and briefly engage in combat with the assailant, but quickly fell after a mere two blocks to the superior reach of his opponents weapon along with his skill. Two more lay on the ground in various states of being wounded. One pull his pistol and attempted to fire on Salis, only to have his own bullet finish him off as it blew through his forehead. The other had received a shot near his stomach, crippling him with too much pain to react to the man standing above him. Salis quickly slashed his throat to finish him off before disabling all of their helmet camera's. As he turned off the last one, he raised it to point at his face.
"I told you it was pointless," he said coldly, and then shut the camera off.
The Op leader was furious. Papers and headphones flew as he raged on at the complete failure of the op at the hands of a single man. Fifteen men had been lost and there was nothing he could do about it. They couldn't use explosives or excessive force in fear that it would collapse the buildings on the Assembly members, and trying to use pure numbers to beat him would only result in him killing some of the hostages and taking a select few with him as he fled into a portal. The entire situation seemed hopeless and he knew he would be to blame for it. "What the hell was that?!" he yelled, "How, the literal, fuck did he know what we were doing?" This continued for awhile until he finally collapsed into a chair exhausted. "Pack up," he said dejectedly, "we're leaving and reporting to Director Fury. It's is problem now."
Back at the construction sight, Salis leaned back in his chair and smiled as he listened to the man's temper tantrum. Due to the more tech inclined branch of the Demon, Salis was able to easily get into SHIELDS comms and figure out where they all were. From there it was simply using pre-set traps on whatever path they took and routing them in the right direction. Now he just needed to finish off the last of them. He walked past the tied up dummies he had set up in the chairs as he created a portal and walked through it. The hostages were safe and sound in a cell that Salis had a remote surveillance on. There was no way he would risk them getting to the Assembly members if his plan had failed. Salis emerged from his portal inside the Op room that the lead had just trashed during his fit. The men had just started moving to pack up when the started in horror at the masked terror that walked in. Salis cocked his head slightly as he observed them, then ran forward and impaled the Op lead on his sword before he could react. A slaughter ensued that was completely one sided. Few of these people could wield a gun competently and all they had were small firearms. Even if they had been given the chance to fire it would have simply been stopped by Salis' Kevlar. Soon there was only one man left, a techie who cowered in the corner as Salis approached him. He was roughly picked up by the front of his shirt and brought eye to eye with Salis.
"Tell Fury what happened here," he said menacingly as anger burned in his eye's, "and tell him that if he wants those delegates he'll need to do better than that." The man was thrown to the ground roughly and ran to a van before driving off with a screech of burnt rubber. Salis pulled out his phone a dialed a number. "It's done," he said, "now we wait for phase two."
