OPERATION MORBID BELL
0417, 4.17.2015
Toronto, Canada
The squad deploys on a street intersection, with serious obvious bomb damage to the buildings nearby. It's a wonder anyone is still alive to abduct here. Burke moves forward behind a red sedan and spots a canister on the roof of the nearest building. Taking the high ground isn't a half-bad idea anyway.
Thin men and sectoids can be heard. Burke moves up to the roof, spotting no resistance, and continues to the canister. Tanner moves up there with her, the rest are too far away to follow immediately. Mason spots a trio of sectoids, hiding behind vehicles on the opposite side of the structure. Here we go! Most of the squad just hunkers down as we've just got burned-out vehicles here which won't help much.
Burke grabs the canister. It seems the sectoids had the same idea as one hunkers down, another looks for reaction fire, and the third we can't really spot. Burke drops in on the one inside the building, almost literally, dodging it's fire, and executes it at close range. Still on the roof, Tanner can't spot the third enemy ... not sure where it might be, but Mason moves in for an easy shotgun blast.
Maybe there were only two? Either way, Brodie and Hodzic move up top to give us more options in case there are more nearby. We can still hear more of them out there somewhere, along with the thin men. We'll move carefully, three up top and three below, spread out to cover any possible approaches as we sweep the AO. There's an alley beyond this building, and another canister on the next roof. That seems to be where more of them are at by the sounds of things.
Moving forward, the noises keep coming but we can't see anything. Moment of truth as the squad reaches the far side of the building. Can we cross the alley safely? There's no choice but to try. Naturally it's Burke first. She spots nothing, the others cautiously join her. They pause to listen .... thin man and a seeker just outside the left of the building! Reaction shots miss except one which bounces off the seeker's hide. The canister on the roof has expired, unfortunate but one must be careful.
Mason uses a flashbang on the thin man, Hodzic gets a pretty good shot off at the seeker but misses. The others move in and shift that direction, setting up defensive fire in case they advance. The thin man misses a shot, seeker snags Burke up on the roof while our fire is just absorbed, and three sectoids are set to join the fight from the rear. This is not good. Mason shows off her skills, dashing up to the roof and explaining to the seeker why that wasn't a real good idea. Execution.
Endo maneuvers for a good shot at the thin man and nails it, but it's still alive. Hodzic can't finish the job, so Tanner is forced to with his high-explosive charge. Unfortunate that it had to come to that, but that thing had to die so we could focus on the sectoids, and it was far too close for comfort.
One of the sectoids supplied mind-meld support while the others moved in for psi panic attacks on Endo. Those worked, but this made them vulnerable to a counterattack. Even at a fair distance, Mason was able to drop one from the roof with a shotgun blast. Brodie was able to get just in range, also up top, and dropped the melder who was exposed, injuring the final sectoid. Burke dropped her flashbang on that last injured foe to make sure it couldn't do much. It fired at Brodie on the roof, missing -- that might have saved her.
Endo was too shaken to go for revenge, so he just healed up. The other newbie, Carl Tanner, moved into position to flank but didn't get quite enough and only left the sectoid badly wounded. Hodzic missed as well, and so it was left to Mason's shotgun to notch another.
Post-Mortem
Even Endo suffered no long-term effects, not a single injury and seven aliens killed. He wasn't promoted though, but three were including fellow private Tanner and
Lily Brodie who becomes XCOM's first full Corporal, taking the moniker 'Axle'.
Artifacts
5 Sectoid Corpses
1 kg. Alien Alloys
5 Weapon Fragments
6 g MOG
1 Seeker Wreck