Monday, August 29, 2011

FC2: PERMADEATH Chapter Ten: All the Live Long Day

I speed past a checkpoint, resulting in a small jungle car chase before I return to Pala. When I get there I find that now the APR are the only ones offering me work. I sigh. You pull one job behind the back of the guys who saved your life, and they get their undies in a bundle. They need to lighten up.

Kouassi and a british dude tell me that the UFLL have been trading natural gas with the country to the west in exchange for medicine, so it's up to me to blow up the tanker of natural gas that they have sitting in the railyard to put a stop to that. After I leave, Michele (of course) calls me again and tells me to meet her east of the railyard. It's at this point I stop in the middle of the street and realize something: I never gave Michele my phone number. How the hell did she figure that out? This lady's got machinations going on, I'll tell you that right now.

I take a bus to the northwest, and as I'm cutting across the plain to the meet up, a zebra head butts my car. It actually does enough damage I have to climb out and repair the engine. Stupid creatures.

I continue across the plain and come across a shack in the middle of it, guarded by a couple of sentries. I find the case of diamonds inside the shed, then move up the hill behind them and deal with a sniper on the perch. Apparently, he was guarding another one of the jackal's tapes.

Walking towards the safehouse I get turned around a bit and accidentally discover an excellent approach to the railyard. I'll have to remember that. I make it to the safehouse where Michele wants me to kill a UFLL lieutenant holed up at a cattle ranch. That'll make his colleagues panic and mobilize a troop train, which Michele will derail so she can kill the train's commander, who apparently has made a fortune "selling little boys". I accept the offer.

I head down the road to the gun shop and buy both upgrades for my AK, as well as the reliability upgrade for my PKM. I've decided not to bother with stealth but to hit the enemies fast and hard, starting with the checkpoint en route to the ranch.

I draw out a jeep which barrels down the road into the one I took from the gun store. I bail out of mine and drop a grenade as I run off into the brush. The explosion takes out both cars, along with my aggressors, and starts a fire in the grass, allowing me to finish off the rest of the panicked sentries with ease.

I sneak up the main road to the cattle crossing but give the main entrance a wide berth, due to the pair of machine gun nests flanking it. The ranch itself isn't that big, but there are still quite a few guards there, which actually works in my favor. If they can't spread out, it'll be easier to take them down quickly before they can overwhelm me with return fire.

I sneak through a hole in the fence, but I can't move any farther thanks to the two guards in front of the target building. No choice now but to go loud. I mutter "I am the firestarter" to myself and chuck a molotov into the tree I'm hiding behind. Not the best start to things.

I do eventually manage to get one going in the middle of camp, and after I take out the two guards closest to me, I manage to accidentally hit a propane tank on the porch of the ranch, which flies around in circles before exploding. I move around the back of the porch, confident that I haven't managed to take out all the hostiles yet, and plant a charge on the ammo dump I find there, just in case. I move inside to find the lieutenant holding a gun like it's an oversized insect and talking into his cell phone about how no, of course he doesn't know how to shoot one. Which is fine by me, because I totally do, which makes shooting him in the face a lot easier.

I run back outside and leap over the back porch as someone starts taking potshots at me with his shotgun. I run behind an old wagon in the back field to take cover, then detonate the ammo dump, resulting in a massive explosion and the end of any hostilities towards me from the ranch.

I head the exact same way to the railyard as I did from the bus station, this time avoiding the guards by the shed, and take the alternate approach I found earlier. It deposits me on a ledge high above the facility, an excellent vantage point I use to scout things out a little, noting a sniper on the roof and a good approach through the old train cars directly below me. For a second I consider going in stealthy, but that would mean I'd have to swap the charges I'd need for blowing the tanker out for my silenced pistol, and I didn't have an RPG. I shrug again (I've been doing that a lot lately) and decide to go in now.

I drop down the ridge, and not only don't get hurt, but no one spots the old dude hopping down a cliff at them. I sprint past a patrolling guard and hide inside an old passenger car before he even thinks to investigate what he just heard, and luckily I'm still undetected. I move into the open then into a caved out boxcar, and according to the chatter, I think I've been spotted. Just to be sure, I chuck a grenade out there. It takes out one of the guys edging towards me, but then I take out the other four (!) with my AK a lot easier than I thought I would. I move out of the boxcar and edge around the main building, pausing to take out the sniper on its roof.

I take out a few more dudes, then steal some ammo and set a charge on the stockpile. Time to blow this thing and go home. I place another charge at the tanker and then move behind another car to detonate both of them. I steal a large truck near the periphery of the yard and follow the tracks to the north, where Michele is ambushing the train. I pat myself on the back for figuring out an easy route that will let me bypass all the checkpoints, but then I lodge the truck on a rock. I climb out and head on foot, looking around for sticks and a rag so I can make a hobo bindle and whistle mournfully, as is tradition.

When I finally make it to the site of the wreck, I arrive just in time for Michele to finish off the last of the UFLL attackers all by herself. Well, then why'd you drag me all the way out here, crazy lady? She's skilled, sure, but how long until she decides she could take me? As soon as I see her making those shifty eyes, she's gone.

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