Re: The Great Belligerency [Round 2: New Shambhala]
06-05-2011, 09:15 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.
Phil made a beeline to the VIP escape shuttle, holding Julia in an iron grip the entire time. They reached it within minutes; fortunately, the diner (which had been well inside the human sector, and was quite close to the VIP shuttle. Phil shoved a protesting guard aside and pulled Julia on board, looking for a good place to sit down. The shuttle was crowded with important-looking people, most of whom looked seriously worried.
A helmeted grunt edged up to Phil and nervously called out to him. Phil looked at him bemusedly, and the soldier whispered something in his ear, to which Phil nodded in return. He turned to Julia. "Stay here, stay safe, I'll be back shortly." He then made his way to the shuttle exit, stepping back out onto the city ground with a slightly bouncier step than usual. That's not good, he thought uneasily. We're getting closer to freefall. He was about to hasten towards the headquarters for the human sector when he felt a hand on his left shoulder.
Phil instantly crouched slightly to center his mass and spun his body around to grab at the unfamiliar hand with his right hand, but to his surprise it had vanished by the time he got there. A sharp jab from his left caught his eye, and he threw up his arm to block it, then swung around on his left foot to make a kick with his right. His opponent just barely danced out of the way, and threw out a kick of his own in return. Phil reached down with his right arm to block it, planting his right foot back on the questionably stable ground, and swung his left forward in a rapid punch, catching his opponent squarely in the shoulder and throwing him off balance. Pressing his advantage, he swung himself around on his right foot, bringing his left leg into his foe's left side, knocking him to the ground. By the time Phil had swung his gun out and brought it to bear on the man, he was removing his helmet with one hand while holding the other out vertically with the palm towards Phil. Phil brought his gun down in disbelief. "Russell? Russell Evans?" He laughed and shouldered his gun, reaching down with one arm. "You crazy bastard. What the hell are you doing here?"
Russell accepted Phil's hand and pulled himself up. "If I..." He paused, breaking into a slight coughing fit. "Yowch, I'm gonna be feeling that one in the morning. Still as strong as ever, eh?" Phil raised an eyebrow, and Russell sighed. "Right, why am I here. Well, to make a long story short, I had a little...disagreement with the military regarding your disappearance, and I found myself shipped off to an Alaskan cryogenic prison. Top of the line, new stuff. You know, one of those secret projects the military was working on. Well, they had enough baskets for all of us when I got there; just a little food for thought." He began pacing in front of Phil. "Well, they put me in the deep freeze, and when I woke up, it was to the Minotaur, who said he had a job for me."
Phil held up his hand. "Hold on, who's the Minotaur?"
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Julia waited until Phil left the shuttle, then, after a few moments, quietly got up and stepped out after him, zipping behind cover before he could notice her. Just as she was about to leave, her ears picked up the blunt collisions from the fistfight. She hesitated, biting her lip, then slowly peered around the edge of the wall at the fight. She sighed with relief when Phil came out victorious, then looked on confusedly as he welcomed his opponent as an old friend, laughing and helping him off the ground. She focused closely on their conversation, just in time to pick out a key phrase that made her glad she had dallied to eavesdrop. There's that Minotaur figure again. Who - or what - is he?
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Russell rubbed the back of his head with his hand. "To be honest, I don't know. He mentioned something about being placed the 'Grand Escape,' whatever that is, or was. Anyway, he said he had managed to escape with another contestant, although he didn't mention a name; I doubt I would've recognized it even if he had. The way he talked about it, it sure didn't sound like an easy job." Russell shook his head. "But the Minotaur strikes a rather intimidating figure. I wouldn't put escaping an inescapable battle to the death past him."
Phil nodded thoughtfully. "If he could spook you, he must've been something fierce. Anyone who could save my life must be one tough nut to crack." He gave Russell a light punch on the arm. "I still haven't forgotten about that debt I owe you, by the way."
Russell shrugged, embarrassed. "Look, it was just a routine mission, Phil. Any of our other squad members would've done the same for you, or for me if I were in your position."
"They would've tried," Phil replied, a slight smile on his face. "But only you could've succeeded. I owe you my life, Russell, and I intend to repay that debt, one way or another."
Russell coughed. "Alright, alright, enough with the touchy-feely junk. You know I hate that stuff." Phil chuckled, earning himself a mild glare. "Now, where was I? Oh, right. I woke up from cryo to see the Minotaur in front of me. As soon as my hearing had begun to work again, he told me he had a job offering for me. I was skeptical at first, but when he mentioned it involved you...well, I have to admit, my curiosity was piqued." He sighed. "Little did I know that all this was several thousand years into the future."
"The Minotaur said he wanted me because I knew you. Knew how you worked, how you fought...how you thought. And while I generally try to wave that sort of thing away...well, you're not a hard person to predict, Phil. Once someone's got your motivations down, they can pretty much plan out exactly what you'll do." Phil opened his mouth, and Russell put up his hand to quiet him. "But that's neither here nor there. I broke the rules the Minotaur laid down and made direct contact with you because I needed to tell you about something important...and warn you about something much worse."
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Balance frowned. Somehow he had managed to get off track. He had been attempting to make his way to the evacuation shuttles, but the city layout was less than optimal. He still had a lot of alien deaths to balance out with human ones, and the evacuation shuttles would most likely be crowded with humans due to Reinhardt's methods of operation thus far. He drifted across the city, striking down the occasional human who had the misfortune to happen upon, until he reached what was quite clearly an evacuation shuttle. However, a ways beyond it, he could see other shuttles clustered together, with a large number of civilians clustering around them. He could have checked with his powerful vision to ensure they were human, but he had little doubt they were, and did not feel like giving away his presence to them just yet.
He returned his gaze to the shuttle below him and noticed a single individual in distinctive blue and white armor disembarking from it. A shape moved off of the shuttle's roof, armor abandoning its camouflage and the colors of the shuttle roof fading, leaving a black suit with lines of red across it. The figure in black put his hand on Phil's shoulder, and a scuffle ensued; Balance watched with some amusement as Phil quickly trounced the interloper, then dropped the pretense of fighting and helped him up. But amusement aside...Phil Girnham, you would make an excellent target to balance out the deaths of these aliens, having caused so many of them yourself. He pointed his hammer at the white-and-blue-clad commando below, light gathering at its tip.
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"Now, the first thing you must know is that you have great potential, Phil. Greater than you can even imagine. That much the Minotaur made very clear; it's why he needed someone who wouldn't provoke it from you. And I should warn you that--" Russell looked up, then without warning dived at Phil, knocking him out of the way, just as a beam of light lanced from the sky. It collided with Russell, and he immediately burst into flame for less than a moment before his clothing, skeleton, skin, and other assorted bits were reverted to ash, creating a small cloud of the stuff.
Phil bent forward in disbelief. No. That can't have just happened. He brushed trembling fingers through the ash and held them up to his face in shock. ...that just happened. The edges of his helmet HUD glowed blue, and a series of new icons appeared at the bottom. He was suddenly aware of Balance, flying high in the sky, of the council members on the shuttle, watching the show in various states of shock and astonishment, of Julia, hiding behind cover - what was she doing there? He put her out of his mind for the moment and turned up in the sky to Balance, pulling out his gun. Everything else seemed to be moving in slow motion, and Phil knew in the back of his mind that there was something strange going on, but it was buried underneath an avalanche of ice cold logic and combat awareness. He lifted his gun towards Balance, casually flicking it to the sniper rifle setting and watching the barrel slowly extend outwards. He saw energy being drawn towards Balance's hammer, but he was unconcerned; he carefully lined up his shot, taking aim at the hand the hammer was being held in.
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Curses. Missed. A minor inconvenience, of course, but still an irritating one. Balance hefted his hammer again, taking a moment to survey the scene below. Girnham was simply kneeling there, rubbing his hands in the ashes of the other man. A strange gesture, but Balance was not all to concerned, and aimed his hammer back down at the commando in preparation for another disintegration. Even as he did, he noted that the blue lines in soldier's armor lit up, going from cyan to neon electric blue. The commando drew his gun and aimed it up at the god impossibly quickly, lining up and taking his shot in less than a second. Even more startling was the fact that the shot was perfectly aimed - Balance felt the impact upon the back of his hand, right in a spot that would cause a spasm of pain in a regular human. Although he was not actually harmed by it, in the interest of fairness, he dropped his hammer, as Girnham undoubtedly expected him to.
As the hammer fell, it released the energy the god had focused into it as a slightly weaker disintegration beam. To Balance's amazement, the commando moved away from the point of impact in a blur, leaping behind cover almost faster than a human eye would have been able to follow. Fortunately for Balance, his eyes weren't human.
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Phil zipped behind the cover Julia was hiding in. "I told you to stay on the shuttle."
"I--"
"No time to talk now. This time, just run for the evacuation shuttles as fast as you can." Phil dashed back off towards the shuttle, centering himself in front of the control panel once he was inside. Although he didn't understand the layout, his suit was somehow able to correctly identify the ignition switch, which was all he needed to know. The shuttle had already been prepped for launch, and the one button press was all that was needed to launch it.
Phil hit the button and the shuttle rocketed off into the air. He darted over to a window and opened it, waiting a moment before leaping out, firing his magnetic grappling hook at a nearby building and swinging down and around it, releasing its grip at just the right moment to allow him to land in a thick hedge bush. His armor absorbed any minor scrapes he could've gotten from the bush itself, and the bush absorbed most of the moment from his fall. He knew in the back of his mind that he should've been badly bruised from that fall, if not maimed outright, but with the ungodly amount of adrenaline pumping through his veins he was completely unable to tell if he was injured. He shakily got up and, deeming himself able to move, began to make his way to the shuttle bay to meet up with Julia, at least until a few moments later when he saw the state of the shuttle bay.
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Balance watched the shuttle fly off without the commando on board respectfully. While he was able to sense Girnham's deceit without even a whit of effort, such a valiant attempt deserved a reasonable result. The fact that there were important humans aboard the shuttle may have also factored in, of course.
Balance's hammer leaped back into his hand, and he lifted it to point it at the shuttle. He followed it on its path up for about a minute. Then, without warning, one of the thrusters burst into flame, sending the shuttle spiraling down. Coincidentally, its path ended at the main evacuation shuttle bay, where it collided with another shuttle. The volatile fuel in the thrusters apparently did not agree with being violently crushed by another shuttle, and a chain of explosions ensued as each shuttle set off the ones next to it, until the entire shuttle bay - and the only route of escape available to the citizens of New Shambhala - was utterly destroyed, along with most of the civilians in it. Balance felt a sense of peace within himself as he more or less repayed the debt owed to the aliens. Now, he only had to finish off Girnham, before he enlarged the debt.
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Phil looked on as the carnage ensued, unsure what to make of it. He felt a slight worrying for Julia, but the cold logic convinced him that she couldn't possibly have made it to the shuttle bay already. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the rush of adrenaline died. His HUD died completely as his suit did a full reboot, and Phil stumbled around drunkenly, feeling as if he had just come off a massive high. Feeling flooded back into his bruised legs; they hurt to move, but by some miracle his suit had repaired the major damage within minutes. He collapsed on the ground and stretched out on his back while he waited for his head to stop spinning. He knew that if Balance took chase any time in the next few minutes he'd be a sitting duck, but he also knew he wouldn't even be able to get to his feet until he could see straight again. I'll just have to hope he thought I was in that decoy shuttle.
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The god paused. He felt a non-human presence nearby, one that would have to be extinguished if he were to balance out Girnham's eventual demise. For a moment, he was caught between the need to even the future scales and the desire to finish his fight with Girnham. The non-human presence quickly began receding, and he decided it would be more efficient to finish off the commando. He began to float leisurely in the direction Phil had swung from the shuttle.
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Cole breathed a mental sigh of relief as he passed unnoticed by Balance. He hadn't expected the god to be so close to Reinhardt. He flew onwards towards the tyrant's main administrative building as fast as he could, an odd sense of urgency coming over him.
Phil made a beeline to the VIP escape shuttle, holding Julia in an iron grip the entire time. They reached it within minutes; fortunately, the diner (which had been well inside the human sector, and was quite close to the VIP shuttle. Phil shoved a protesting guard aside and pulled Julia on board, looking for a good place to sit down. The shuttle was crowded with important-looking people, most of whom looked seriously worried.
A helmeted grunt edged up to Phil and nervously called out to him. Phil looked at him bemusedly, and the soldier whispered something in his ear, to which Phil nodded in return. He turned to Julia. "Stay here, stay safe, I'll be back shortly." He then made his way to the shuttle exit, stepping back out onto the city ground with a slightly bouncier step than usual. That's not good, he thought uneasily. We're getting closer to freefall. He was about to hasten towards the headquarters for the human sector when he felt a hand on his left shoulder.
Phil instantly crouched slightly to center his mass and spun his body around to grab at the unfamiliar hand with his right hand, but to his surprise it had vanished by the time he got there. A sharp jab from his left caught his eye, and he threw up his arm to block it, then swung around on his left foot to make a kick with his right. His opponent just barely danced out of the way, and threw out a kick of his own in return. Phil reached down with his right arm to block it, planting his right foot back on the questionably stable ground, and swung his left forward in a rapid punch, catching his opponent squarely in the shoulder and throwing him off balance. Pressing his advantage, he swung himself around on his right foot, bringing his left leg into his foe's left side, knocking him to the ground. By the time Phil had swung his gun out and brought it to bear on the man, he was removing his helmet with one hand while holding the other out vertically with the palm towards Phil. Phil brought his gun down in disbelief. "Russell? Russell Evans?" He laughed and shouldered his gun, reaching down with one arm. "You crazy bastard. What the hell are you doing here?"
Russell accepted Phil's hand and pulled himself up. "If I..." He paused, breaking into a slight coughing fit. "Yowch, I'm gonna be feeling that one in the morning. Still as strong as ever, eh?" Phil raised an eyebrow, and Russell sighed. "Right, why am I here. Well, to make a long story short, I had a little...disagreement with the military regarding your disappearance, and I found myself shipped off to an Alaskan cryogenic prison. Top of the line, new stuff. You know, one of those secret projects the military was working on. Well, they had enough baskets for all of us when I got there; just a little food for thought." He began pacing in front of Phil. "Well, they put me in the deep freeze, and when I woke up, it was to the Minotaur, who said he had a job for me."
Phil held up his hand. "Hold on, who's the Minotaur?"
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Julia waited until Phil left the shuttle, then, after a few moments, quietly got up and stepped out after him, zipping behind cover before he could notice her. Just as she was about to leave, her ears picked up the blunt collisions from the fistfight. She hesitated, biting her lip, then slowly peered around the edge of the wall at the fight. She sighed with relief when Phil came out victorious, then looked on confusedly as he welcomed his opponent as an old friend, laughing and helping him off the ground. She focused closely on their conversation, just in time to pick out a key phrase that made her glad she had dallied to eavesdrop. There's that Minotaur figure again. Who - or what - is he?
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Russell rubbed the back of his head with his hand. "To be honest, I don't know. He mentioned something about being placed the 'Grand Escape,' whatever that is, or was. Anyway, he said he had managed to escape with another contestant, although he didn't mention a name; I doubt I would've recognized it even if he had. The way he talked about it, it sure didn't sound like an easy job." Russell shook his head. "But the Minotaur strikes a rather intimidating figure. I wouldn't put escaping an inescapable battle to the death past him."
Phil nodded thoughtfully. "If he could spook you, he must've been something fierce. Anyone who could save my life must be one tough nut to crack." He gave Russell a light punch on the arm. "I still haven't forgotten about that debt I owe you, by the way."
Russell shrugged, embarrassed. "Look, it was just a routine mission, Phil. Any of our other squad members would've done the same for you, or for me if I were in your position."
"They would've tried," Phil replied, a slight smile on his face. "But only you could've succeeded. I owe you my life, Russell, and I intend to repay that debt, one way or another."
Russell coughed. "Alright, alright, enough with the touchy-feely junk. You know I hate that stuff." Phil chuckled, earning himself a mild glare. "Now, where was I? Oh, right. I woke up from cryo to see the Minotaur in front of me. As soon as my hearing had begun to work again, he told me he had a job offering for me. I was skeptical at first, but when he mentioned it involved you...well, I have to admit, my curiosity was piqued." He sighed. "Little did I know that all this was several thousand years into the future."
"The Minotaur said he wanted me because I knew you. Knew how you worked, how you fought...how you thought. And while I generally try to wave that sort of thing away...well, you're not a hard person to predict, Phil. Once someone's got your motivations down, they can pretty much plan out exactly what you'll do." Phil opened his mouth, and Russell put up his hand to quiet him. "But that's neither here nor there. I broke the rules the Minotaur laid down and made direct contact with you because I needed to tell you about something important...and warn you about something much worse."
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Balance frowned. Somehow he had managed to get off track. He had been attempting to make his way to the evacuation shuttles, but the city layout was less than optimal. He still had a lot of alien deaths to balance out with human ones, and the evacuation shuttles would most likely be crowded with humans due to Reinhardt's methods of operation thus far. He drifted across the city, striking down the occasional human who had the misfortune to happen upon, until he reached what was quite clearly an evacuation shuttle. However, a ways beyond it, he could see other shuttles clustered together, with a large number of civilians clustering around them. He could have checked with his powerful vision to ensure they were human, but he had little doubt they were, and did not feel like giving away his presence to them just yet.
He returned his gaze to the shuttle below him and noticed a single individual in distinctive blue and white armor disembarking from it. A shape moved off of the shuttle's roof, armor abandoning its camouflage and the colors of the shuttle roof fading, leaving a black suit with lines of red across it. The figure in black put his hand on Phil's shoulder, and a scuffle ensued; Balance watched with some amusement as Phil quickly trounced the interloper, then dropped the pretense of fighting and helped him up. But amusement aside...Phil Girnham, you would make an excellent target to balance out the deaths of these aliens, having caused so many of them yourself. He pointed his hammer at the white-and-blue-clad commando below, light gathering at its tip.
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"Now, the first thing you must know is that you have great potential, Phil. Greater than you can even imagine. That much the Minotaur made very clear; it's why he needed someone who wouldn't provoke it from you. And I should warn you that--" Russell looked up, then without warning dived at Phil, knocking him out of the way, just as a beam of light lanced from the sky. It collided with Russell, and he immediately burst into flame for less than a moment before his clothing, skeleton, skin, and other assorted bits were reverted to ash, creating a small cloud of the stuff.
Phil bent forward in disbelief. No. That can't have just happened. He brushed trembling fingers through the ash and held them up to his face in shock. ...that just happened. The edges of his helmet HUD glowed blue, and a series of new icons appeared at the bottom. He was suddenly aware of Balance, flying high in the sky, of the council members on the shuttle, watching the show in various states of shock and astonishment, of Julia, hiding behind cover - what was she doing there? He put her out of his mind for the moment and turned up in the sky to Balance, pulling out his gun. Everything else seemed to be moving in slow motion, and Phil knew in the back of his mind that there was something strange going on, but it was buried underneath an avalanche of ice cold logic and combat awareness. He lifted his gun towards Balance, casually flicking it to the sniper rifle setting and watching the barrel slowly extend outwards. He saw energy being drawn towards Balance's hammer, but he was unconcerned; he carefully lined up his shot, taking aim at the hand the hammer was being held in.
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Curses. Missed. A minor inconvenience, of course, but still an irritating one. Balance hefted his hammer again, taking a moment to survey the scene below. Girnham was simply kneeling there, rubbing his hands in the ashes of the other man. A strange gesture, but Balance was not all to concerned, and aimed his hammer back down at the commando in preparation for another disintegration. Even as he did, he noted that the blue lines in soldier's armor lit up, going from cyan to neon electric blue. The commando drew his gun and aimed it up at the god impossibly quickly, lining up and taking his shot in less than a second. Even more startling was the fact that the shot was perfectly aimed - Balance felt the impact upon the back of his hand, right in a spot that would cause a spasm of pain in a regular human. Although he was not actually harmed by it, in the interest of fairness, he dropped his hammer, as Girnham undoubtedly expected him to.
As the hammer fell, it released the energy the god had focused into it as a slightly weaker disintegration beam. To Balance's amazement, the commando moved away from the point of impact in a blur, leaping behind cover almost faster than a human eye would have been able to follow. Fortunately for Balance, his eyes weren't human.
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Phil zipped behind the cover Julia was hiding in. "I told you to stay on the shuttle."
"I--"
"No time to talk now. This time, just run for the evacuation shuttles as fast as you can." Phil dashed back off towards the shuttle, centering himself in front of the control panel once he was inside. Although he didn't understand the layout, his suit was somehow able to correctly identify the ignition switch, which was all he needed to know. The shuttle had already been prepped for launch, and the one button press was all that was needed to launch it.
Phil hit the button and the shuttle rocketed off into the air. He darted over to a window and opened it, waiting a moment before leaping out, firing his magnetic grappling hook at a nearby building and swinging down and around it, releasing its grip at just the right moment to allow him to land in a thick hedge bush. His armor absorbed any minor scrapes he could've gotten from the bush itself, and the bush absorbed most of the moment from his fall. He knew in the back of his mind that he should've been badly bruised from that fall, if not maimed outright, but with the ungodly amount of adrenaline pumping through his veins he was completely unable to tell if he was injured. He shakily got up and, deeming himself able to move, began to make his way to the shuttle bay to meet up with Julia, at least until a few moments later when he saw the state of the shuttle bay.
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Balance watched the shuttle fly off without the commando on board respectfully. While he was able to sense Girnham's deceit without even a whit of effort, such a valiant attempt deserved a reasonable result. The fact that there were important humans aboard the shuttle may have also factored in, of course.
Balance's hammer leaped back into his hand, and he lifted it to point it at the shuttle. He followed it on its path up for about a minute. Then, without warning, one of the thrusters burst into flame, sending the shuttle spiraling down. Coincidentally, its path ended at the main evacuation shuttle bay, where it collided with another shuttle. The volatile fuel in the thrusters apparently did not agree with being violently crushed by another shuttle, and a chain of explosions ensued as each shuttle set off the ones next to it, until the entire shuttle bay - and the only route of escape available to the citizens of New Shambhala - was utterly destroyed, along with most of the civilians in it. Balance felt a sense of peace within himself as he more or less repayed the debt owed to the aliens. Now, he only had to finish off Girnham, before he enlarged the debt.
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Phil looked on as the carnage ensued, unsure what to make of it. He felt a slight worrying for Julia, but the cold logic convinced him that she couldn't possibly have made it to the shuttle bay already. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the rush of adrenaline died. His HUD died completely as his suit did a full reboot, and Phil stumbled around drunkenly, feeling as if he had just come off a massive high. Feeling flooded back into his bruised legs; they hurt to move, but by some miracle his suit had repaired the major damage within minutes. He collapsed on the ground and stretched out on his back while he waited for his head to stop spinning. He knew that if Balance took chase any time in the next few minutes he'd be a sitting duck, but he also knew he wouldn't even be able to get to his feet until he could see straight again. I'll just have to hope he thought I was in that decoy shuttle.
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The god paused. He felt a non-human presence nearby, one that would have to be extinguished if he were to balance out Girnham's eventual demise. For a moment, he was caught between the need to even the future scales and the desire to finish his fight with Girnham. The non-human presence quickly began receding, and he decided it would be more efficient to finish off the commando. He began to float leisurely in the direction Phil had swung from the shuttle.
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Cole breathed a mental sigh of relief as he passed unnoticed by Balance. He hadn't expected the god to be so close to Reinhardt. He flew onwards towards the tyrant's main administrative building as fast as he could, an odd sense of urgency coming over him.
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