Suicide Squad: Minotaur's Descent

March 18, 2017:

Task Force X is sent out on a training mission to Belize on behalf of the DEA. Mayhem, mischief, wholesale death, and bikinis happen.

Belize

Characters

NPCs: Briscoe the Sheba Pilot

Mentions: Amanda Waller

Plot:

Mood Music: Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones


Fade In…

TIME: 0220 Hours Local
CAYO DISTRICT, BELIZE

The softly clipping blades of the Sheba, Task Force X's stealth helicopter, flies over the trees of jungle of Belize. Black sky above and even darker pitch beneath the landing struts of the helicopter, the pilot keeps the final flight path to the landing zone clear of the tiny huts and clumps of houses, where porch lights in the distance are being eaten alive by all manner of insects.

A training mission, Waller had told Taskmaster and Agent Danvers. In a bit of quid-pro-quo from a contact in the DEA, one Mateo "Touro" Salazar, a low-level drug kingpin, has gone back on deals with the Drug Enforcement Agency, leaving one agent dead and a small fortune in dirty DEA money disappearing into the ether. The mission offered to the team leadership was so simple: Do the DEA a favor and end Salazar's reign as an up-and-comer in the South American drug trade and retrieve a black, hardshelled suitcase filled with millions in DEA pay-off money before the taxpayers notice. The dozen or so sicarios surrounding Salazar's estate? Expendable. Salazar? Expendable. The members of the team who aren't able to make it through a simple training scenario? Expendable.

Now, in the final minutes before landing in a swampy glade less than two miles from a square, mission-shaped hacienda with lookouts on all four corners and Latin American music blasting out into the night from the top floor bedroom, the red light flips to green, and Task Force X is handed over to Agent Danvers…

*

As Sheba descends, Danvers adjusts her kit and regards her squadmates. "Ok," she says briefly. "You all got your assignments already. You should know what to do. The clowns will play distraction with the Lady, here," she thumbs towards Regan, "backs them up with the appropriate mental fireworks. Deathstroke has the east flank, and Bane the west. Disable any resistance. Take out Touro. I'm going in for the package."

As the chopper sets down, she's out of the machine and into the swamp. "Move out!"

*

Slade could not look more bored with this entire charade if he put real effort into the attempt. He doesn't wait for the chopper to set down at all and as Danver's is in the middler of her speech he just rolls his eye, opens the door, and steps out into thin air, dropping the thirty feet to the swampy ground with little more then a splash. Despite the terrain he's already at the LZ's edge before Sheba's rails touch the grass, and he's entirely out of sight before the team has disembarked.

Seriously? A drug raid. He brings down /armies/. In the jungle? He was born of jungle warfare. If this was a bigger cake walk for him he'd at least have made it interesting by going blind folded or something.

*

Joker and Harley aren't on the craft. They're some miles away at a small overlook, in a sports car that's rocking. "We have a mission, Harl.." the Clown Prince manages between breaths and finally pushes her away. "Later! Mission!" he says with a laugh and a small frown as he starts up the car to head down towards the compound once the team is in position. The car slides sideway to a halt, and Joker is the first one out before the guards.

He's dressed in a pair of bermuda board shorts that show off those oh so pale and scrawny legs, an open Hawaiian shirt that shows more pale skin than is allowed by law, a camera around his neck, a sun hat, a large smear of SPF 1000 on his nose, flipflops.

Going around to the other side, he opens the door for the bikini-clad Harley, and stretches. "Here we are darling! I always promised you a tropical vacation. Cabanas, drinks with umbrellas, the works! No beach, but you know that sand gives me a terrible itch in places I don't want itches!"

*

Sitting in the Sheba, Bane meticulously but firmly checks his intake system on his left forearm, adjusting the bracer and then tightening the grip over his palm and between his knuckles, before fastening the band beneath his elbow. He adjusts a knob a degree, before he is satisfied. His thoughts drift to a time unseen, when his mother fought in this land, for freedom from the Americans he now serves. He was never told of his father, that ominous form that haunts his dreams at night, a ghost that once pulled him away from the bat, that force that haunted him until he avenged his childhood with the symbolic crippling of the Batman. And now, in his dreams, merely rooms, sometimes a cathedral, other times a prison, and sometimes, after he has been wounded, a psychiatric facility or hospital. But never another soul inside. Not since the Venom. Looking at the others in the chopper, his cleanshaven face briefly apparent before he pulls his mask down and over his distinctly noble face with the broadness of a native brave, he sees the faces of his phantom father. The man his mother once loved, and told him was a betrayer for leaving her to die in Hell. Heaven was for him, but it would be a labrynthe to escape his chains and find the path out of damnation. And every time he got close, he was vexed, merely by his legacy. It was his father that did this, as all fathers do, the Jesuit priest once told him. And now?

He faces a minotaur and his forces.

Bane drops out of the chopper with a light step and a heavy landing, his boots sinking into the flickering night shades of green grass. He takes a look at Deathstroke, watching him from behind red goggles, before Slade breaks. And Bane does the same, matching his pace, before he fades into night time himself. He breathes slowly, coolly, methodically, as he moves through the brush like an elegant beast, merely listening to the sounds of the jungle before the distraction draws out his quarry. He is a hunter with hands, the true way to remove another man's soul.

*

Taskmaster drops from the Sheba unslinging the techbow off of his shoulder, toying with the sight on it he looks at the others present. "The usual qualifications to activate the Squad if designated location cannot sustain human life, there is zero chance of escape, it is heavily defended, target is out of this world unstoppable or we face overwhelming odds. I got no word on what it is on any of these fronts, Waller say anything to anyone else? Because a small army drug traffickers are something one of us should be able to handle." A grin, "Maybe." He teases looking around, "I suppose a warm up round… "

*

Out of the frying pan and into the flame of sticky, tacky humidity. Wearing her dark, purple leathers, Regan was happy enough to be given her kit back, complete with her dual pistols dangling from each hip, but the sheen of sweat to her once perfectly cut blonde hair has left her feeling swampy and ragged. The muggy air hits her like a cloud when she hops out of the Sheba, tapping her earpiece with a nod to Agent Danvers.

"Next time, I totally want to ride in the sports car." Regan hisses quietly to the others as she drops low, sneaking forward into the heavy foliage towards where Joker and Harley have parked. At the last few feet towards the plant-life, Lady Mastermind disappears into a puff of smoke, going invisible.

*

Harley pouts as Joker pushes her away. It was his idea to stop the sportscar and take a pudding break! She sits back in her seat and smiles at him coquettishly, chewing lightly on a fingertip. As the car starts to race down the rest of the way to the compound, Harley throws her head back and laughs, the wind flying through her blonde pigtails.

Stepping out of the car in just a red and black string bikini, Harley holds a beach ball against her hip. Skin that is not as pale as her bleached out boyfriend, is pale enough that if she had any tan lines, they would be noticable in how little she is wearing. "Oh Puddin! I love it! The trees! The drinks outta coconuts! The nude beaches! Wait… no beaches? But Puddin! How can I go topless if there are no topless beaches?!"

(http://fashionablygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/harley-quinn-bikini-4.jpg)

*

—GM POSE

"Touro" Salazar's hacienda peeks through the heavy underbrush, and what the estate lacks in palatial mansion size, it makes up for in pure teeth. The walls, a smooth tan color, square around the estate with lookouts sitting on lawn chairs on each of the four corners. AK-47's strapped around their shoulders, with flood-lights swaying the four corners of the estate, they are the first line of defense.

The front gates? A white and yellow striped security checkpoint with sandbags and a heavy machine gun on a turret. Two there. With walkies.

Then? Sentries. Two patrols of two sicarios each are walking around the perimeter. With handheld radios and assault rifles, they're having a boring night so far, smoking cigarettes and speaking in Portugese, they're far from professionals, but if the facial tattoos mean anything, they're killers.

Then, somewhere within, the sounds of at least ten others can be heard, laughing and enjoying drinks in the Spanish tile of the courtyard. A mixed-martial arts fight is being replayed on a plasma television, and money is being slapped down on a coffee table. By now, so late in the evening, purple light and loud music blast from the top floor of the estate, where the sound of a few women laughing can be heard alongside the worst, most barkable baritone of a laugh can be heard.

Touro is entertaining guests while his goons protect his empire. All that's left now…is the big surprise of Touro's last night on Earth.


*

Deathstroke has been murdering men in the darkness of the jungle since he was 16. That was a loooong time ago. He flits through the shadows like one of their own, eating up ground at a pace no ordinary man could match. He doesn't even bother slowing as he nears the wall and with a faint push of his feet simply sails up and over the wall in a flicker of shadow. There's the sound of two falling bodies, soft against the background noise, a knife hilt protruding through each of their left eyes.

Landing on the otherside of the wall he doesn't even break stride, landing directly between the two men on patrol his body twists slightly as the waist, one of the men takes an armored toe to the base of his skull, shattering his spine and killing him instantly while the second is lifted eight inched off of the ground by the force of the blade rammed up beneath his chin, it's tip protruding from his head. He's gone before their bodies drop. He snarls behind his mask and heads towards the sounds of the party. After he murders all of these people he's going to have a talk with Waller.

*

Alex lingers a moment to see the rest of the squad set off to their assignments, hoping that Joker and Harley are actually doing what they're supposed to, and not making out in the bushes somewhere. "Briscoe," she says to Sheba's jockey, "Do a sweep and keep me posted on what you see."

"You got it, boss," he says, lifting off almost before everyone's out and off. She stays with Regan, a neural dampener on her own brow to keep from being addled by the mutant's abilities, to give the woman armed back up until the advance squad has done its part. "C'mon," she says to the purple clad woman. "No sense standing around here waiting for the mosquitoes to land."

*

"Harley, you can be topless anywhere you want!" Joker says, walking by the woman and giving one of her blonde ponytails a playful tug as he goes to the trunk, looking at the guards at the gate and their guns. "Oh, consierge!" he says, opening the trunk of the vehicle up. "We reserved the Honeymoon suite, under the name Yoass. Kill Yoass?" See what he did there?

Because that's when he pulls out the rocket launcher with a big smiley face painted on the end of the RPG round. "Baggage check!" he says, firing the missile into the nearest tower and sending it up in a massive explosion as Joker does a little jig and dances.

After all, Harleys in a bikini, she's probably got the best armor here.

*

Bane sees the floodlights stretching over the expanse between the walls and the swamps and jungle, frowning faintly. He watches the guards outside the corner he's circled around to, chatting in Portugese and smoking cigarettes, considering them quietly. He is not aware that Deathstroke is turning the other flank so rapidly, which would be a concern to him if he was one of the operatives charged with a central duty. But he is the other flank, so it is up to him to fold apart the other corner of the compound. Softly, his fingers grasp a tree, the men with AK-47s pausing as a distant creek is heard, the spotlights flashing into the darkness of the jungle to identify the source of a noise, as Bane pulls a small tree from its roots with careful precision, as if he was a dentist to a child, no sadism meant in a business where such a trait is rumored to be an attraction.

And then, the explosion.

As the guards get out of their chairs, unshouldering their guns and shouting in Portugese, the tree comes swinging out of the jungle, hurled sidelong by Bane with immense precision and incredible power, playing shotput with Latin timber. It slams into the guards, and soon after, Bane comes barrelling out of his cover, silent but jaw steeled and baring his teeth as he runs at the soldiers confused by the tree. As an assault rifle is swung around to face him, he hurls himself forward, as if a football player taking flight like a hawk, and he slams into the momentarily frightened hardass mercenary.

There's a scream in the distance to the other team members, and not Bane's, following by shouts and gunshots, before there's silence at Bane's flank.

*

Taskmaster doesn't actually go in, he is going to playing cover fire and overwatch. Hanging out just outside the immediate range of floodlights and immediate LOS. A arrow will fly by here or there, he'll move, relocate and take another shot. Swift shots, successive fire arrows that are blindingly fast can be thanks to one Roy Harper aka Arsenal. Longer trick shots that hit an eye, an ear, the neck, middle of the forehead or even the mouth are a lot of Hawkeye's action.
The man of moves is cycling through them, rememorizing while just playing coverfire, if someone misses a stray mook, Taskmaster picks them off.

"No one, eh? That was at you, Alex. Or did she send her new pet in blind?"

*

Hunched over, Regan's sweaty, blonde hair hangs over one shoulder while she skitters through the jungle. The gravity-defying corset top she wears is nothing near resembling armor, even less so against the millions of mosquitos trying to land on her skin. After a few swats in the air, she looks back to Alex and reaches down to her hip, eyes flitting to the Psi-Dampener her leash-bearer wears. Is that a brief moment of decision? The buckle on the holster snaps free and Regan pulls one of the pistols free and…

…points it towards the ground.

"I'll watch your back all of the way to the cheddar, boss-lady." Regan whispers, clicking off the safety and jabbing her heels into the dirt to pick up the pace once the dying starts. Regan is first out of the clearing and in view of the chaos as two more guards spill out to the front, AK-47s ready. Skittish, Regan smirks and a sicario yelps and turns his AK-47 towards his friend, peppering him with bullets, then begins to sway the weapon wildly.

Regan ignores the front gate guards. The clowns can handle them.

*

Harley sits on the edge of the hood of the sports car, smiling over at the guards as she tosses the beach ball up in the air and catches it. Now, anyone that knows the pair of clowns knows enough to realize that the beach ball is not what it seems, but for now…

The blonde grins as her Puddin' talks about their reservation and then brings out the rocket launcher. She feigns surprise, a hand to her open mouth like a 1950's advertisement for Comet. Is that soap scum on your shower wall? Oh no! Better use Comet!

After the explosion, Harley pushes herself off of the car and starts to sashay into the compound, heading towards the laughing voices. As another guard starts running towards the chaos, Harley finally does more then act like eye candy, launching the medicine ball painted like a beachball at his head with all the strength her Serum amped system will allow.

*

-GM POSE:-

One moment, it seemed to be a pretty good time. The next, the sounds of screaming, the staccato of assault weapon fire, and the SKR-FROOOOOOM of one corner of the building exploding in fire dominates the Latin soundtrack. Little chunks of mortar from the exploding tower wall peppers the surrounding area as mayhem settles in. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in exotic real estate, go up in smoke, in seconds.

The besieged hacienda comes alive with the sound of ratcheting assault rifles and tables being kicked over, as the final defense of Touro is staged. Bottles crash and liquor sloshes over the tile, as many of the remaining sicarios inside slide behind cover and point their weapons at the front entrance, ready to fight with their backs to the wall.

The few who have spilled out into the front are a mess. One is thrown backwards, head first, with the weight of the medicine ball cracking the wood of the guard post as he goes down for 'forever sleep'. The other, caught between confusion and terror, stutters back and falls onto his ass, firing wildly at Harley and the Joker with his assault rifle. B-B-B-B-PTANG!

The other, yells for the guard fighting the clowns to get inside, fast, and steps over the body of the friend he's just murdered, pointing his weapon towards Regan and Alex.

Dark shadows along the wall rush to find cover, stumbling over and dying their little silhouette deaths with arrows sticking out of their bodies.

Bane's newly dead gurgles his last breath, crushed and destroyed, his fingertips slipping off of the massive man's boots in his last effort to keep the mercenary from the walls.

…and Touro, clear as day through the expensive blinds to Slade Wilson, has slipped into a pair of black, ADIDAS-brand basketball pants. Massive, he's covered head to toe in rippling muscle and extensive tattoo work. With an M-4 assault rifle at the ready, he shoves a lingerie-clad woman over his bed, then grabs another, tugging her in front of his body as a human shield.


*

"Keep your eyes open," Alex says over comms, now that the 'fun' has started. "This might be a smash-and-grab, but rumour has it the newest shit on the block has a dopamine substitute in it that can temporarily give its users a an adrenalin rush on par with Bane's Venom. Touro was toady to one of its chief 'investors'. If there's any around here, we want a sample. Burn the rest."

That likely answers Taskmaster's question… and explains why the Suicide Squad, a bunch of metas, gets sent in to a 3rd rate drug lord's cakewalk mission. 'Cause who knows what's floating around that party, right? Odds are a couple or more of those 'girls' may soon become 'gorilla ladies' or something, nevermind any of the apes with guns.

She sets pace with Regan, circumventing the occupied gate guards and ignoring Harley's walk to the 'pool'. Her destination is into the mansion and its office, where the black briefcase and, unless she misses her guess, the drug catalyst formula, may be found.

*

"Fucking clowns." Deathstroke snears as he once more picks up speed. No. Seriously. He picks up /speed/. He crosses the remaining bit of the courtyard in the time it takes Harley's medicine ball to hit it's target and pulls his pistol as he moves. It barks four times and four men drop just as they were managing to stand, fumbling for their weapons. He lifts his feet off of the ground and crosses his arms before his face, letting his momentum carry him the rest of the way. His breath hisses out through his teeth and, for him, time slows to a crawl.

He hits the window with the force of a cannonball, the frame, glass, blinds, all shatter on impact. He lands inside in a balanced slide, the pistol sliding back into it's place on his hip, "You are a coward." he says in perfect spanish as he stalks towards the large man fearlessly and with clear violent intent.

*

For the briefest of moments, Joker considers. That formula.. could be so much fun in his hands. But, Harley's rather firm and shapely ass does have a certain appeal and a demand for puddin he can't really deny at the moment. Tossing aside the expended tube as he hears the bbrrat of machine guns, the clown prince hoots in amusement. "Hang on, sweetheart, they didn't send a valet!" he says as he moves to jump behind the wheel of the car, even as bullets permeate the side of the vehicle.

Starting up the sports car, Joker drives it right into the main compound, smashing through the gate, up the front steps, and into the lobby, where the air bags depoly and he slams forward into them.

"Oooh, Harley, they're so firm…" he says, before he stagger out of the vehicle admists the gunfire. "Oops, I guess I forgot my room key!" he responds, looking down at the black dress socks he wears with his flip-flops and pulls out a pistol to start firing back, hooting the entire time as a trickle of blood runs down his forehead.

*

Bane inhales slowly, looming over the dead and broken, before he straightens his back with a low exhale. He raises his left arm before him, with an idle step off a dead man and back onto the grass, turning his knob upwards. And then, he flicks the switch. A red liquid is pumped up to tube of off his left arm and into the harness on his upper back, the stimulation agent for the Venom stored inside the tank on his harness. There's a slow whirring noise as the activation vector mixes with the steroid, and then Venom is pumped into the back of his skull, and throughout his body through his brain and his arteries, pumping him to life. His mind surges into primal focus, as his lungs surge with air and his heart pounds to deliver oxygen throughout his body, adrenaline hammering his senses into overdrive as a mild pituatary stimulent floods his muscles and glands and bones and nerves with teenage vigor. Venom, she is his mistress, a woman that he can't see, but who bites his neck like a lover from the grave. His flexing muscles surge as veins bulge and he arches his back like an angry ape out of a cryptozoologist's fantasy, roaring.

And then, the wall collapses beside the tower, after shaking with a flurry of fist blows. Stepping over the wreckage is Bane, looking at assembled cartel thugs who were not expecting that means of ingress. He merely stares at them, for a long moment, as his body like an inhuman monster, rippling with psychic force that lacks the psionic element of a Mutant or otherwise. Merely the suggestion of something darkly sexual without the act involved. A brigand overman, like Nietzsche envisioned.

And then Bane is running, straight through a sentry's gunfire at him, the bullets plugging into his inhumanly hard body too late to save him. Bane's hand claims the side of his head, and he swings around into a lift, the perimeter guard lifted into the air as Bane spins about like a male ballerina lifting a swan dancer, before the sentry is sent sailing into an impromptu barricade. There's shouts of panic as the wood actually splinters from the force of a human body, all of them slammed into the stucco behind them. Bane runs forward at them, ignoring the pain of the handful of metal rounds lodged in his torso and abdomen. He leaps forward, this time leading with his legs, slamming into the remains of the upturned table and swinging his arms out at his sides, slamming a guard into a corinthian pillar, before grasping his assault rifle by the barrel and swinging it about, slamming it into the faces and skulls of the other sicarios.

He doesn't even flinch as Joker sails past him in a car and smashes into the lobby, but he is certainly aware, as he turns about and follows the car through the ravaged arch, walking behind the Joker and leaning down to wrench the passenger door off with his bare hands, fingers clawing into the metal as the fine motor joint screams beneath the stacatto battle.

*

"Hey, Danvers didn't put the optional insurance on the rental, Bane!" Joker calls out from the wrecked auto as Bane rips off the door and laughs for a moment to shoot some more.

*

Regan stalks forward at a clipped pace, not bothering to dodge, duck, dip, dive, or dodge any of the random gunfire. Really, the walk is bouncy, leggy, and unconcerned for the sicario staring down the sights of his AK-47 at herself and Alex. "Nope. Nope. Nope." Regan scowls and the sicario blinks, waving his gun around trying to find where the two seemingly have disappeared to. He can't see the two approaching. Sweating and terrified, he snaps his eyes to the ground and starts to back away, seeing something that isn't there.

The guard empties his clip into the dirt at his feet.

Regan empties the chamber of her pistol into his forehead.

"It's absolutely bull that I'm not getting a cut of this." Regan gripes in a sing-song voice as she hop-steps to the edge of the rubble-filled doorway the Joker has just made. She counts to three, then waves for Alex to follow in a rush. Sweaty, blonde hair bounces as she uses the Joker's great, Italian battering ram for cover to cross into a nearby hallway with an office at the end. A guard skitters out, rushing towards Regan, and he goes down in a pair of bullets. Huffing, Regan turns to walk backwards, planting her hand between her exposed cleavage. "You know, you guys could have called me ages ago. All things considered, honey, I could have been you, leading one of these things. I don't come cheap, but, hey, they could have just put my fee in the NASA wrench budget."

Regan shoves her back into the hallway next to the door and kicks, hard, against the door, swinging it open for Alex. She waves the gun for her to go in, then presses a finger to her ear.

"Hey, Jugga-Lady? Is that 'kini by Prism London?" Regan's voice scratches over the line. "Because I'm jealous as hell. I hate you. Seriously."

*

Harley scoots out of the way just in time as the sports car speeds beside her and into the main floor of the hacienda. Her wedge heels delicately step over the destruction of the front window.

Smiling at the destruction of the car by Bane, the bikini clad clown girl opens the trunk to get out her toys. She slings on a shoulder holster, diamond studded pistols ready to go. And no fashionable clown would be seen out and about without their trusty candycane coloured baseball bat. The trunk slams closed and Harley waggles her brow at the men. "Ready to rock. Shall we?"

Harley perks up at the voice over the comms. "Oh! You recognize it? Yes! Isn't it gorgeous. I got it for a steal! No. Literally. I stole it."

*

-GM POSE:-

"E melhor voce me matar, estupido!" Jibberish to many, when Touro spits the works out at Deathstroke the Terminator, they're a statement of defiance. 'You'd better kill me, stupid', it rolls so well off of the lips belonging to a face tattooed so that no one would mistake him from anyone else. The woman being held like a human shield screams as Touro jerks her body against his in a backwards step, lifting the rifle in one hand and pointing it at his attacker.

All odds aside, Touro manages a sweaty grin. After all, he has a shield, and Deathstroke does not.

Touro's finger jerks hard against the trigger…

MEANWHILE…

Crunch. Crack. Scream. The main belly of the hacienda is littered with the dead and dying, with still a few more lives to take before the day is done. Piles of twisted bodies mark a path in which Bane has traveled, and a pair of tennis shoes stick out from beneath the mangled sports car.

The yowl of fury is blood-thirsty and cuts loud over the sound of gunfire. Four tattooed sicarios rush at Joker, Harley, and Bane. Each have red-rimmed eyes and are foaming at the mouth. A trickle of blood from a nose here and there, and the guilty of using this new drug make themselves known.

Two rush to Bane, one wielding a fire axe and the other, chemically bold, snarls and tries to get his hand around Bane's massive neck.

The other two? They're down to clown, and they've brought to the big top with them a pair of knives and empty holsters, having long since lost their precious ammo supply.

AND MEEEEEANWHILE:

The door to the office claps open. Pale lighting fills the room from the popular operating system's locked screen on a laptop. The lavish office features a center desk on which the laptop rests, and on the side of the room is a large table upon which a black case rests next to a collection of cell phones, memory sticks, a manilla folder, and four kilos of what would look like cocaine, if not for its eerie, orange tint.
--

*

Alex gives Regan a tight smile at her commentary on leading the team. "Next time," she says, "we'll send you in here on your own. Chances are, it'd be a helluva lot quieter." And effective. Alex knows her capabilities. The problem would be getting the loot back from her later.

The DEO agent swings around Regan and enters the office, weapon raised. The only thing that moves is a white parakeet in a cage in the corner, who squawks in protest, in portuguese: 'Polly got no bullets! Polly got no bullets!'

"Clear," she says to Regan, as Harley chirps proudly about the bikini. Alex just grimaces. Then, she's over to the desk, checking the briefcase and assorted sundry beside it.

"Anybody want a pet bird?" she asks as checks the briefcase for boobytraps and then opens it to confirm its contents. "It talks," she adds on comms, conversationally. Then, satisfied the briefcase holds what it should, she clips it closed and sweeps it and the rest of the electronics and paraphenalia on the desk into a black canvas bag she'd been carrying on her back. Drugs, cell phones, memory sticks, the briefcase… everything is shoved in and zipped up tight. She tosses the bag back on her back and actually crosses to the bird cage to open its door. "C'mon, Polly. Touro's a dead man. Be a shame for you to starve to death."

*

«No, Harley, we're not adopting a bird!» Joker already knows. Harley will bring it home, and he'll teach it to curse up a storm - or it will tattle on him. Just no.

As the pumped up guard comes at him, the clown prince realizes he's out of bullets and drops his gun. "Err, whoops! Looks like I'm out!" he says as he puts up his dukes and eeps a the large man swings at him and he ducks aside. "Oooh, too slow! Let's try that — OOOF!" There's a sharp sting as the other guard, preparing to go for Harley, blindsides the Joker instead, and the two men start to pile on the green haired clown. "Hey, ow! ow!"

"That tickles! Ow! Harley, a little help?"

*

Deathstroke moves before the trigger can be depressed all the way, just a fraction of an inch to one side, an almost stutter like motion. Then his shoulder tilts, his head turns a bit, his arm lifts, each motion is like watching the most graceful of dancers or gymnasts in their routine, no effort is wasted, never to far or to little. And every single bullet wings past him, hitting nothing but air. Deathstroke crosses the room this way, his odd little stuttering shimmying walk with it's stop motion animation quality, until he swats the barrel of the rifle aside contemptuously with one hand while the other taps a knuckle against the screaming woman's temple, rendering her instantly unconscious and dead weight in Touro's grip. The sudden lack of support drags his 'sheild' down just the couple inches Slade needed.

"That's the idea." he says as he twists into an effortless spin. There's a squelch noise and then silence. He emerges from the house, severed head in one hand and bastard sword painted red in the other. He glances around and sighs, "I don't know how, but this is your fault." he says into the coms, though who he's speaking to is anyone's guess. Prolly Taskmaster though, Deathstroke seems to blame that guy for a lot of things.

*

"Life is a series of challenges, Mister Joker," Bane grunts, as he surges with artificial confidence and focus. "And a challenge is a series of sacrifices."

As the two sicario come at him, he swings the door up to the sideways swing of the fireaxe. The door slams into the fireaxe with incredible force, but the nature of a Venom-derivative on the untrained is that one commits too readily. Without the reflex to release the axe, the thug is sent spinning around to face away, and Bane is perfectly positioned to lift his arms up with the door above him, held in both hands, and shove a foot upwards, smashing into the back of the man's lower pelvis with his huge steel toed boot. There's an inhuman scream from the man as he drops to the ground, completely crippled by the wound, before the other thug manages to climb the mountain that is Bane and wrap his hands around Bane's neck.

Bane takes notice, but does not panic and allow himself to lose an advantage, which perhaps was not the entire thought of his assailant. Such a drug as Venom takes a special individual to cohabit with, and even Bane is imperfect at times, thanks to the presence of a maternal figure to protect him in his prison childhood. If Bane panics, the Venom hose could come undone, thus sealing Bane's fate. But Bane is a delicate hand as well as hard fist.

Bane lets himself be choked as he stares at the man and drops the hunk of metal, his muscles rippling but refusing to consent to fear, and then, his arm swoops around the man and scoops him up under the shoulders, pulling him to his right side and away from his back, where the Venom feeder is located. Bane slowly, monotonously, swings around with the man being placed across his upper chest, and then flips about and slams him into the ground with his left hand lifting the man's hip to pull his feet off the ground a split second before Bane falls. And like that, the man is smashed into the tile floor, with enough force to crack the expensive mezzanine against the now helpless cartel member's back. Bane rises, leaving the man on the ground, spasming.

Bane flicks a switch on his gauntlet, and a blue chemical is fed through the narrower tube into his Venom unit. A faint line of yellow liquid is pumped into the back of his neck, and Bane's Venom ends at the proper timing, wonderfully arranged through his battle to leave him at optimal mental levels. His body visible deflates, as he grunts in pain now that he can feel the bullets in him.

*

Regan slips into the office behind Alex nonchalantly. Pistol in one hand, she walks to a bookshelf and traces her gloved fingertips over the titles on her way to the side of the desk. "You know, so far I think you might be my favorite." Regan says to Alex with a demure smile. She plucks the metallic clacking sphere from the popular desk toy and sends it clacking. With a toe, she sends the desk chair spinning in place. "Is that a positive review? By all means, tell the boss. I'm going to tell her just how great a leader you are, too, and when one of the gang inevitably goes apeshit and tries to murder you, you're gonna need a bestie." Regan smirks. "Think it over."

And then Regan's back to pressing her finger to her ear and watching the action from the doorway. She waves her pistol from side to side, checking the hallway. "So, hey, guys? This bird is adorable; you should see this thing." Regan chirps over the comm with a slight hint of a mall-girl accent. "We've got everything covered in here and I'm about to ask the boss if we can get some fried plantains for the ride home. How's that sound?" A beat passes. "Oh, and princess? If you get killed, try not to get too much blood on that bikini top or those guns."

*

Harley is just opening her mouth to say she will take the bird, when Joker pre-emptively tells her no. Pouty clown girl. Of course, the drugged up guards are on their way. Harl grins wide, time for some fun. She pulls back with the bat, ready to give her attacker an upswing to the jaw when he changes his mind suddenly and attacks her partner.

She stands there, looking more then a little offended. "Seriously? I'm standing right here!! And don't try and tell me you ain't willin' ta hit a girl." She throws down the bat and pulls out one of her diamond encrusted pistols instead.

"Get!"*BANG!*

"Off!"*BANG!*

"My!"*BANG!*

"Puddin!"*BANG!*

…she says through gritted teeth, firing into the heads of Joker's attackers with each word. She then looks down to Joker, splattered in the blood of the pair she just shot. "Please, Puddin?! They say he's a really cute bird."

*

Taskmaster us running low on targets. His overwatch position having been compromised twice he is now out in the open, no more arrows being slung. A sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, magazine still full, he hasn't fired a round. "The comm chatter, we seriously have bikini talk?" At least he thinks thats what it was. "So pro." His commentary is to no one in general, a low chuckle is in there because frankly he finds it amusing. This entire bag is amusing but he doesn't feel the serverity of their missions has been felt yet, they can likely count themselves lucky. Otherwise Waller is greatly underestimating them.

*

-GM POSE:-

All of the sudden…the last round fired from Harley's gun leaves the hacienda in a demolished, eerie silence. The last of the dead lay at the feet of Harley, Joker, and Bane, twitching out their last few seconds of brain functionality. The damaged electrical wiring makes the lights flicker all around them, and after a few seconds of swaying…

…a chandelier sqeaks, rips free from the ceiling, and crashes onto a barely-alive sicario crawling across the floor.

"~BRAWWWWK! Livin' La Vida Loca!~~" A bird-like voice screeches into the darkness.

Upstairs, the steady blood-drip from Touro's severed head splatters across the hardwood flooring like a leaky faucet. It's quiet, but only slightly more quiet than the sound of a diminutive female in skimpty lingerie sniffling and clamping her hand over her mouth. Her mascara is streaking down her cheeks and her fingers, slick with tears, as she tries her best to mask her presence from Deathstroke.

Touro's hacienda now belongs to Task Force X.

It's a fixer-upper…and it's probably haunted, now.


*

Rolls her eyes as Taskmaster complains about the lack of professionalism on the comms. "//Tasky, when did you get so… boring? I am rockin this bikini! Besides, if you really wanted professionalism, you wouldn't have invited me and Mistah Jay along for the ride. Hello?! Killer clowns?!/"

*

Covered in blood and brain bits, Joker looks up at Harley. In her bikini. With those guns. And that wild grin and pleading eyes. And this.. this is why he made Doctor Harleen Quinzel mad for him. "Baby, you're the greastest!" Reaching up, he pulls Harley down by her bikini bottom, and the noises that come next may be unfit for radios. "Of course you can have a parrot!" he says with a wild laughter that permeates the halls of the Ha-Ha-Hacendia.

*

As the silence is broken by a flight of birds in the distance, Alex glances to Regan and gives a low chuckle. "Yeah. I'll think it over." Probably not. Polly scoots out of its cage and flutters off through the door. There's a *sploot* somewhere out there and the head of Tuoro suffers a greater indignity.

"Come get us, Briscoe," Alex says into comms, now. "I think this party's over."

That said, she checks the fastenings on the bag and heads for the door, pausing by it. "After you," she says politely to Regan, ushering her ahead with a gallant sweep of her hand.

Time to go home. To tell off and get told off by the Wall, no doubt.

*

Deathstroke is standing outside, head in one hand, sword in the other, and looking around at the mayhem. He shakes his head in disapproval at all of this. As soon as Alex is in sight, there's a wet smacking around and something roundish bumps against her foot, dead sightless eyes baring a confused look stare up at her, or rather just over her left shoulder. "Add it to your goodie bag. You'll need proof of death for the mission report. Waller will require it." he flicks his wrist and the blade in his hand sings a soft song, the blood coating it splattering down against the concrete, leaving the grayish metal unnaturally clean again. He sheaths it with a practised motion, "Lets get out of here. I have a meeting in Dubai in sixteen hours." he's pointedly ignoring the crazy people making out amid the carnage.

*

Bane slowly turns his head towards the amorous Joker and his questionably ethical psychological consultant. "Tragedy happens in pairs, you know," is all Bane says, with a hard edge to his otherwise soft pronouncement. He turns about and slowly trundles out of the front of the mansion, a sheen of perspiration on his exposed arms from the strain of the Venom, and a bit of subtle trepidation to his steps, courtesy to the metal slugs screaming inside his guts and lodged against one of his ribs, burning his nerves every time his lungs move. But otherwise, he ignores the damage, neither pushing the pain away nor accepting it. The pain merely is.

*

"This was too smooth for a first mission, Agent Danvers. Push the button! Pick one of the clowns." Taskmaster encourages while looking on at the others as they gather around except; those two. "I'm joking but seriously, this was too easy. There has to be a catch." A grunt noise escapes him and he doesn't give in to the obvious jokes about Slade carrying around the decapitated head. Too easy. "Maybe I am just being paranoid." He doesn't add anything extra, his talkative nature can wait for touch down at HQ and the debriefing.

*

Harley Quinn is easily pulled down amongst the debris and the blood onto her white skinned paramour. She had mentioned going topless before and keeps her promise, ignoring anyone else in the room. There is a playful giggle as she and Joker raise the rating of this scenario to an R rating until Taskmaster makes his request. "I heard that!" she yells out before going back to kissing Joker.

*

Regan slinks her shoulders back and places three fingertips to her sternum. Her brows, manicured but not recently manicured enough for her standards, lift as she slips ahead of Alex. Mouthing 'how sweet of you!' to the woman, she slyly flits one eye closed in a wink on her way out of the door, sashaying after the parrot. It's a knowing wink, of course, the kind of wink designed to let Alex know, that Regan knows, that it's safer for Alex to not turn her back on any of these psychotic criminals.

"In my defense, Task, I only needed half of my brain power at the time and," Regan winks and makes a gun-hand to Joker and Harley as she walks into view. Ka-pow. Her fingers flick. "It just kind of came out." Without missing a beat, Regan glances down to the rolling, severed head and steps over the globby trail of blood. Safety on, she reholsters her pistol and is the first to leave through the destroyed front doors on a one-way course for the Sheba, landing for pickup in the distance.

The team loads in.

The door begins to slide shut.

Polly, freed from her life as a drug kingpin's favorite bird, flaps as hard as it can and sails through the door of the Sheba before it closes.

The Suicide Squad left Belize with a severed head and a parakeet, that day.

—END

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