Half-Life: Memory^2

[hk47fan]

So the entrance post to the half life 2 rpg.
Current characters include a combine assassin controlled by JA, Sheppard controlled by MNDF and a Vortigaunt controlled by Mando.










G-man - Current time - Earth - Unknown location

"Hello Mr. Sheppard. It has been many years since a bidder has requested your service."
Sheppard blinked, around him darkness, with a white slit in front of him, a known figure standing in it, holding it's office case.
As the figure came closer, it's gaunt, slightly pale figure and business suit began to show.
"It has come to my attention, that it is once again time for your...employment and use of special attributes which have made my choice a few years past. Or was that in another lifetime?
I have invested much in you and it is time to reap the first part of your payment.
Look around Mr. Sheppard, look around and see..."
At this, the darkness subsided a grim sanitary clean room taking it's place. Sheppard found himself lying on an operating table, his weapon placed next to his hand, his vest on.
The suited man gave a slow, if somewhat sad and calculating smile and the slit of light that dissappeared moments ago alongside the darkness came into existance once more.
The man stepped back and just before entering it turned back.
"I believe we shall see each other very soon once more Mr.Sheppard. Until then, as some might say, I wish you a fortunate statistical outcome."
At this he stepped into the slit and dissapeared.


Assassin - Five years ago - unknown combine procession facility

Pain, searing pain and clamy coldness, but mostly pain. That was almost everything the young woman felt. Her sight was obscured by something cold and dark across her face and she hung suspended in some sort of a craddle, something piercing her back. Visions, voices and impressions all came from the dark device attached to her face.
She was not aware how long she hung there, or who she even was, the only three things in the world being the pain, the device and herself.
Words, she didn't understand in her current state, yet which she picked subconsciously up trickled in.
"The combine is strong, you shall serve the combine, the benefactors are untouchable..."
All this poured in. She was being processed, changed, worked on, conditioned.
There was no way she could fight it. And then the laser cut into her body and she felt almost nothing, nothing at all, maybe, just maybe the squirt of some organs being taken out and other things added in...

GM: Junk Angel

[MyNameDidntFit]

As the white line of light disappear Shepard looked around the bleak room, it was empty bar the table on which he sat and a somewhat shattered mirror on a wall above a standalone sink. His gas mask still covered his face and he was still wearing the same uniform and P.C.V. he had when the suited man had talked to him after Black Mesa.
Next to him sat a military issue M9 handgun, he picked it up and slipped it into his holster, noticing his knife still in his belt as swung his legs over the edge of the table and got to his feet.
He moved to the wall with the mirror, he watched himself slip the mask from his face.
He recoiled in shock as he saw his face, not changed even the slightest bit. He hadn't even formed a beard or stubble.
But that guy said it had been years...
He turned the heads up display on from his P.C.V. and put the mask back on.
The date display was missing.

He cleared his head of thoughts of the date and moved towards the only door out of the room, his gloved hand touching on the cool metal knob, he hesitated for a second, not sure of what was beyond. He turned the knob and pushed the door open, stepping out into a desolate corridor.
To one side it stretched until a corner, to the other it opened into a lobby with massive glass doors at the front with woods beyond them.

After a moment of indecision he took the M9 in both hands and moved quietly towards the lobby.

[Junk Angel]

Assassin - Twelve months ago - unknown city

Target in sight. Surrounding necrotics eliminated. Combine biotic units will arrive in under ten standard time units. Mission requirement - eliminate local militia leader in order to sow confusion and thus facilitate low casualty combine victory.

The assassin was stopped inside one of the duct vents, watching the man below her. He was the leader of the resistance in this city, a resistance that was slowly failing, a resistance that was discovered. Still the amount of firepower the rebels amassed in their base was impressive and on top of that, it was all but unreachable trough any other location but the sewers, the sewers which were easy to defend. She was to kill him in order to brake the morale of the rebels here and thus make it so muhc simpler for the combine to move in.
When he was turned she silently, soundlessly jumped out and came to a halt two meters behind him, he didn't notice anything, anything at all.
This was a knife job and as she prepared to slit his throat without him even being aware there was an attacker, something hard and solid connected with her head, the helmet absorbing most of the impact, yet still dazing her.
Before she managed to get her bearings, there were more crashes at her head. She barely managed to turn around to see a rebel, who was previously silent as if dead and standing beyond her field of vision. He hald a large crowbar in his hand and hit her again and again until there was just the darkness of a comma.
The rebel then pulled out his pistol and drove a number of shots trough her body.

The leader turned to the man, "We have to move out, they know where we are. And thank you for saving my life. It's the first time, I've ever seen one of these combine troops, and I sure wouldn't want it to be my last."
The two men hurried away, leaving the apparently dead assassin on the floor bleeding.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Shepard moved silently into the lobby he spun around twice, one thing caught his attention. A large black canister of foreign design sitting in a crater near the centre of the room; the roof above it was collapsed, apparently it had fallen through.

He walked quickly towards it, his footsteps echoing quietly around him with each step on the bleak tile flooring. As he reached the canister he saw an opening in the top and leant over it; empty.
What the hell is this?
He stood straight once more and a loud hiss caught his attention and he spun quickly one-hundred and eighty degrees. A small black creature leapt from the floor at him, he sidestepped it and it hit the floor behind him and took another leap. He dodged it again and fired three shots into it as it turned back to him. It went limp and he walked over to it.
Oh shit... Headcrabs.
His thoughts turned to Black Mesa where similar creatures had... Possessed the personnel and mutated them beyond recognition. But this one was different, the ones from Black Mesa were off white, larger and far less nimble. He straightened once more but didn't have time to move, a second headcrab leapt onto his face, its beak clicking wildly at his mask.
"Bloody thing." he almost laughed as he spoke.
He wedged the gun's barrel under it and fired a single shot before shooting it once more as it lay on the ground. He began searching his vest to see if the G-Man, as they had dubbed him before Black Mesa, if it was the same weird guy, had left him with any more ammo.

A low moan interrupted him and he turned to see one of the zombies shambling slowly towards him.
Ah, fuck. It looks like they didn't clean up Black Mesa successfully.
His thoughts turned to the outside world as fired a few and he emptied the pistol into its chest and watched it continued staggering forward. At only a few paces away Shepard dropped the M9 and drew his knife, ducking its swing before cutting easily into the side of its head and slicing up through the headcrab. The zombie fell forwards and he stepped out of its way as it hit the ground.
He sheathed his knife and retrieved his M9 before walking towards the doors, the sparse woods and bush across the road and car park beyond the glass ominously drew him forwards.

[Mandalorian]

He moved effortlessly through the thick Vortiessence, he felt through the cords of the space its binding weaving everything together. He sensed him moving again the ones the Humans called the "G-Man" he knew what he was doing could be of no good. He moved through the cords until he felt the man closer. As he drew near him he felt another presence another Human that he was interested in Is this man, like the Freeman? He feels similar, He as well has severed cords, but helped us. as his thoughts spun in his brain he left the man turn his presence to him Get away miserable Slave! the thought slammed into him like a wave and he felt himself pull away from the Vortisence.

"hey slouch, whats wrong?" he glanced up at the man standing over him "you just fell over" Slouch stood up and looked at the man "It matters not, we must get back to work repairing this base, the Sheppard comes."

[MyNameDidntFit]

(OOC: SHEPARD has ONE p not two, not three, not zero. ONE, and only ONE. Kthxbai)

Shepard moved over to the glass doors and jammed his knife in between the doors and pried them apart just enough to get his fingers into the gap then pulled it open enough to slip through into the warm sunlight.
The car park and road were in a state of severe disrepair; weeds and plants grew through the cracks in the concrete and asphalt and derelict cars scattered the area.
Beyond the road to the front lay bushes and sparse forest, to the right the road continued into denser forest until it disappeared into the distance, to the left it opened out into a massive canyon covered by a bridge of equal grandiosity. Shepard jogged towards the bridge just as the sharp sound of radio static cut through the still morning air.
He was in the open and he didn't like it. He burst into a sprint and slid down behind the first massive metal pillar of the bridge's superstructure just as he saw an armoured man come around the corner on the far side of the bridge.
His first reaction was to check the Beretta; empty. He finished searching his vest but found nothing.
Shit, shit, shit!
He leant his head against the pillar and unsheathed his knife.

[Junk Angel]

Combine trooper S193C - Patrol Duty - Outer Area of City 19 - Now

"S193C reporting to control. The old hospital building is silent. No sign of biotic or biological movement. Necrotic movement minimal...
Hold command, I think I heard something, moving to engage and check out."
The trooper heard Shepard (one p ) accidentally let a few small rocks loose. He utterly unaware what might have done so, but he would check it out, even if it were a headcrab and nothing more.
The trooper slowly began to advance over the bridge.


Assassin - Twelve months ago - a few hours later - unknown city

The rebels long gone, the combine forces had almost nothing left to engage. They made a routine sweep of the area, confiscated some material, but they never discovered the room in which the assassin lay wounded.
The combine wrote her off as deceased, just another statistic. But for the assassin something had changed, as she lay there on the ground, her skull probably broken, memories of a time before the combine emerged.
Apparently the trauma from the hit sparked some left over memory centers in her brain, which feverishly began to work in her unconsciousness. It was not much, but it was enough for her, not to make contact with the combine after she woke up. She had no idea who she was, what she was before, just that something was not right. Her conditioned faith in the combine faltered.
She was still in agony though, and every step was a labour beyond imagination, every step felt like someone drove nails into her temples.

The assassin routinely checked her weapons, the knife made of unreflective material, the two pistols, and even the larger compact version of the AR2 rifle, shortened in such a manner as to provide heavier firepower when needed, without taking up too much space.

Slowly moving back into the same shafts she was in before, she crawled upwards in one. There collapsed again for a few hours.

[MyNameDidntFit]

The slow, steady, methodical footsteps of the man approaching belied the fact that he knew something was up.
Shepard looked frantically around for somewhere to hide, or at least to make a run to. He gazed over the cliff and something caught his eye, a metal platform stuck out from under the bridge about three meters below him and maybe two meters out. It ended abruptly in a mangled snarl of twisted steel as though something had caused it to break away. Shepard thought quickly about his chances of making the jump, it was very precise and a fair distance... It would hurt.

The footsteps of the man were only meters away. Shepard nodded to himself and stood, taking three steps back he caught a glimpse of the man, he wore a large dark blue uniform that looked like riot gear and he held an MP7, his whole head was covered by a gas mask.
Just as Shepard had seen the soldier, the soldier had seen him and opened fire.
The bullets flew past Adrian as he took his run up and leapt from the cliff...

His feet impacted the hard steel and he rolled forwards involuntarily, his body sliding from the edge of the metal. An outstretched arm caught hold of the edge and held him suspended above the massive drop. He swung his other arm around onto the causeway and pulled hung limply, his shoulder sent searing pain signals to his mind and a autonomous voice echoed inside his mask.
Epinephrine administered.
It was his P.C.V.'s automatic medical feature dosing him with adrenaline through the intravenous line that connected it to him.
It was only seconds before the pain was shoved from his mind and a new energy spread through him, his heart was beating faster and his breathing became fast and shallow. He hauled himself onto the walkway and glanced to the cliff just in time to see the soldier aim down the sight on his MP7. He swore and quickly sprinted along the metal, his footsteps booming through the canyon that lay ominously below. The sounds of his footsteps were soon joined by the rat-tat-tat of the SMG's fire and the high pitched twang of the bullets ricocheting around him. A few steps later he was out of sight of the strange soldier and safe for the moment.
The scene that lay before him was one that both lightened his heart and put a drape of foreboding over him; the walkway could be followed to the other side of the bridge wear it appeared one could enter the superstructure... But the causeways were broken and dilapidated.
Oh for fuck's sake!

[Mandalorian]

Slouch stood infront of a fairly large artillery piece, a human stood next to him "so Slouch, what do you thinks wrong with it?" Slouch moved his head slightly in a gesture that almost appeared to be a shrug "What I think doesn't matter, What is wrong with it... How could I know with a glance?" the man shook hsi head "well... alright could you take a look at it and see whats wrong?" Slouch bobbed his head up and down "Of course, however I will do a little more then looking." the man shook his head again and walked away saying "damn Vortigaunts"

[MyNameDidntFit]

A loud crash shook the platform and Shepard spun to see the soldier lying on the platform, slowly getting to his feet. Shepard's eyes locked on the MP7 that teetered on the edge of the walkway.
At the same moment he started running the soldier looked at the gun and dove, his hand grasping it by the barrel.
Crap! Desperate times...
Shepard slid feet first along the metal, the tread of his boots colliding with the soldier and sending him over the edge. As the soldier slipped away he grabbed Shepard's ankle and pulled him along. He kicked at the hand but it held fast, he frantically suck out an arm and wrapped it around the guard rail. But it held for only a second before it snapped and Shepard slid over the edge, leaving him hanging by his fingers once more.
Sweat beads formed on his brow as he held himself and the soldier suspended above the deadly drop that lay below them.
"Fucking let go!" he kicked at the man's head but hesnapped his neck to the side avoiding Shepard's boot.
His fingers we slowly slipping and Shepard knew he'd have to take a risk; releasing his grip with one hand he retrieved the knife from his belt. Grunting under the strain on his arm, the adrenaline allowing him to continue. He stretched down but with the knife he could only manage to nick the soldier's hand which drew no response.
Fuck it.
He spun the knife so he was holding it with the blade facing down and threw it with all his force. A muffled scream came from inside the soldier's mask as the knife plunged deep into his shoulder blade and he let go, falling away into the depths of the canyon.
Shepard pulled himself up onto the walkway and rolled onto his back; his heart beat rapidly as he lay panting, arms at his side and head resting on the hard steel of the causeway.
And I thought my luck couldn't get any worse after Black Mesa...