mogget_cat | OOM: Who ya gonna call?

"They were taken unawares," he grins at Axel as he fries the room's computers. "They may have gotten word to the other locations, so perhaps they'll put up some fight when we get there."

It's not fun if things are too easy.

"How are things progressing elsewhere in the building?" Yrael notes vaguely to himself that minions might be a good investment.

Axel tilts his head slightly as he gets the 'report.'

"Clean."

"Computer systems down and out?" he says, flinging a piece of melted plastic away from his fingers. "All suits and lab coats accounted for?"

Axel nods, and flashes his friend a grin.

"Ready for the next one?"

"Like I'd ever say no," Yrael grins.

Two figures soon disappear into the dark portal, leaving a darkened, dead building behind.

"Which one next?" Axel asks, as they stroll through the dark.

Yrael briefly thanks Bar for whatever other-worldly material his pack is made of, as he pulls out his helpfully un-fried laptop.

"Paris."

"Paris it is. You know," Axel says conversationally, as he leads the way. "I've never been to Paris, but I read a report once, from some former coworkers who had, and would you believe it? The world turned them into cats."

"As in housecat-sized cats?" Yrael chuckles, following swiftly. "Well, I suppose if there's one that turns everyone from off-world into lions and suchlike, there might as well be one for cats."

He points to a particular part of the screen. "We need to enter here."

"Yeah, housecat-sized cats," Axel affirms, as he peers over Yrael's shoulder.

"Offices here, here, and main labs here," Yrael says as they continue through the dark.

"You want the offices, or the labs?" Axel asks, pausing before he opens the way out.

"Oh, the labs, are you kidding?" Yrael grins, teeth shining white even in the darkness. "All that expensive machinery?"

"Works for me," Axel agrees, and he pulls open the portal out.

When he steps through, he doesn't waste any time, heading straight to the top floors, slashing, stabbing, and burning anyone and anything that stands in his way.

With the quiet dispatching of whatever guards he finds on the way, Yrael actually reaches the heart of the labs before the other technicians realize that the white-haired person in a slightly-too-white labcoat isn't anyone they recognize (another peril of working for a company with such a large workforce). And by then it's too late.

Sparks fly, screams are heard, machines fry and monitors go dark. Powerful computers are hurled after fleeing lab techs, before Yrael goes himself to hunt them down, laughing.

Axel slaughters his way through the suits, and then, as a coup de grace, detonates the top three floors, incinerating everything, and melting to lava anything that won't outright burn.

His laughter can probably be heard all the way down to the lowest basement floor.

It can be; the sound makes Yrael's bloodied grin spread just a little wider as the last of the guards (hired grunts with guns at best, the lab workers having been finished off earlier), fled through the glass shards of the shattered atrium from the laughing death behind them, towards the street and years of expensive therapy.

Axel meets up with Yrael again, when they're the only things left living in the whole building, and brings them back into the dark.

"Where to next?"

Brussels, Belgium.

--------

"[Don't move!]" shouted the apparent leader of the eight heavily-armed guards surrounding Axel, guns pointed and fingers on triggers. "[Keep your hands where I can see them!]"

True to orders, Axel didn't move, keeping his gloved (and blood-spattered) hands aloft. He didn't even move to wipe the splash of blood off his cheek, though the dark red was clashing with his hair.

"[He was armed a minute ago, Captain. I know it,]" offered one of the guards, exceedingly anxious about this tall, too-thin man with the unlikely hair and the all-too-comfortable demeanor for one caught and surrounded while unarmed - this man who had until a few moments ago been slicing through their numbers like a deadly dervish.

"[Then find where he stashed his weapons!]" roared the captain. "[Hell, search him too, and make sure he hasn't gotten anything else hidden up those sleeves.]" One of the guards moved immediately to obey, searching the prisoner with efficient, practiced movements. The captain wasn't in the best of moods; he had been getting only radio silence from too many of his squads around the building for the last ten minutes. And while information was scarce, what he had heard about the other departments was causing a sick, angry knot to form in his stomach.

A call came from down the hall. "[Sir!]" A guard, clearly shaken, came to a winded halt before his captain. "[Sir, the labs. All of them are out. Most of the tech's been fried and- and the technicians, sir... well, them too.]"

"[What about Admin?]"

"[No one's heard from Lambert's group for the past-]"

"[Hey! What is this?]" The surprised voice of the guard searching the prisoner made the captain and the newly-arrived guard turn to see what had been found.

A cat?

The searcher gingerly pulled the remarkably clean, white cat from the pocket of the prisoner's bloodied black coat, like some horrible parody of a magician pulling a rabbit from a top hat. Anger surging, the captain stepped forward, opening his mouth to ask the prisoner what kind of stupid, sick joke he thought he was playing-

-just in time to see the cat fix its bright green gaze on the guard that held it. The cat was growing, impossibly, its lower jaw dislocating as it opened its mouth and lunged forward with the speed and motion of a snake striking, closing its jaws on the guard's neck with a sickening crunch as the sharp, ivory teeth met in the middle.

The guards could only stare in horror, and that's why, by the time they noticed the fiery chakrams that had manifested in the prisoner's hands, it was already too late for them.

Rio de Janeiro is hot at the best of time, sweltering at the worst, but today, is something else altogether; a building the size of a city block is blazing in the setting sun, sending waves of heat out for miles.

Later, no one was really able to say what happened; investigators found no trace of evidence one way or another, but when questioned, several witnesses swore they heard laughter coming from the inferno, and one little girl swore that it was a cat that did it.

Yrael laughs as they head through the Dark Paths, blood fading from his white clothes.

"You'd like Rio, Axel. It's always hot there, and down nearer the beaches, the humidity isn't nearly as much."

"Think we should stay a while then?" Axel asks.

"Well," Yrael considers it. "Let's get this done first, then we can take our time on the way back. Nikola lives only a little ways out from Rio."

Axel flashes him a grin, bright white in all that black.

"All right," he agrees easily.

"So, Dallas next," he grins. "Then only... five more, and we're done."

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