X-Com's Finest (An X-Com 2 play through)

Operation Frozen Pyre (Elsa)

While everyone had been warily watching the GREMLIN, Van Dyke had kept her eyes on the pair of grunts. She finally had enough, "How about this..." She walked forward and began unloading on a large propane storage tank right next to where the two aliens had been keeping watch. The resulting explosion was astonishing. There wasn't enough left of either alien to identify, and there was a nice huge entrance to the first floor of the building if it were needed. It also officially announced the presence of the squad to the rest of the aliens stationed in the area.

There was a quiet silence before Pubentz chirped in, "Alrighty then, let's go, let's go!" There wasn't a whole lot of cover, so the squad decided to traverse the area via the roof. Pritchett was very excited at the prospect. Sniper shots from the roof tended to be much more fun. The factory was a large building, and the squad made decent time, leapfrogging across it to ensure there weren't any nasty surprises.

Pubentz was the first to make it to the far side of the building where she spotted the now familiar Sectoid / grunt combo. They both garbled at her threateningly in their alien language, but she wasn't impressed. Van Dyke, rolled up beside her, glanced over the parapet wall and tossed a grenade, killing the grunt. It wasn't even worth the effort of loading her launcher this time. Zalewski rolled to the far side getting a clearer shot on the Sectoid and fired, hitting it, garnering its attention.

Now, these Sectoids used to be the low man on the totem pole when the aliens first landed. They had definitely have risen through the chain a bit, and X-COM was quickly learning that irritating the Sectoids was not a good idea. All kinds of bad things could happen. Such was the case here.

It turned and garbled before running into the safety of light cover right in front of the building. It then turned to Zalewski and stared straight into his mind with those alien eyes.

Suddenly Zalewski was in another area. The Sectoid was now behind a car, and the squad was on the street, handling the invasion when suddenly, the Sectoid commanded one of the dead soldiers to rise. The risen slowly made its way over to Van Dyke, and despite the valiant efforts of the squad to take it out, it managed to make it to Van Dyke and launch itself onto her, ripping into her neck and leaving her lifeless corpse on the ground.

The alien then ran around the car, jumping on top of it and smiling confidently at Zalewski. There was no way to miss the message in its eyes, "You're next." Zalewski ran a short distance, then turned and fired. He missed badly, but he managed to hit the truck the alien was sitting on, and the truck blew up killing the alien...

Zalewski blinked his eyes. He was aiming at his teammates and couldn't figure out what was going on. The smoking remains of the alien were on the ground below, and Pritchett had a satisfied smile on her face. Zalewski grunted. Nobody said anything about aliens getting into your head when he signed up for this. He was going to have to recheck his contract, and asked Bastion to make a note of it when he got back. Bastion chirped back in reply.

On the other side of the roof, Pubentz had already prepped to drop to ground floor to the objective when she spotted another Silicoid / grunt combo. The grunts were like shooting fish in a barrel. The electric bolt sent the grunt into a spastic dance of death before finally burning itself out. There was one thing about the bow-caster that bugged her. The smell. All of her targets ended up smelling, really, really bad. She'd have to talk to the engineers about that when she got back. The Silicoid teammate slipped quietly out of view.

Having regained his senses, Zalewski quickly slipped down to the ground floor and crashed into the server room of the factory. After a minute of Bastion trying to line up the data-port with the receptacle, Zalewski finally laughed and grabbed the GREMLIN in order to keep it still and make the connection. The connection was made and the data was successfully transferred.