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Lilian Rook	It starts with a simple message. A communication sudden, unbidden, untraced, unsigned. Who is the author, at least, isn't much of a question for those of good memory and solid pattern recognition. The only person with means and necessity to contact this specific constellation of people, over this matter, in this place, and the ability to get something to them thirteen steps removed like this. It has to be Damien Kent.     "Caelton. There's a Warpgate they didn't build. The access code follows. You'll be watched. I've enclosed a transmission decryption key as well; it's only good for an hour. Get there in ten minutes or don't go at all. The longer you take, the worse danger you and everyone else will be in."     "Whatever you do, don't let the light touch your eyes. Don't open them for anything. Don't look no matter whatever you hear. No mirrors, night vision, no scopes, no cameras. No drones with visuals either. If it sees, consider it gone. If you look, consider yourselves dead. Yes, you too."     "I said before I'd kill anyone I had to, so that we never see Hell again. Don't let them get away."     Lilian left somewhere without contact five minutes prior. There's no double checking with her. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------     Twenty three hundred hours. There's damp grass under your feet. The air is cold and clammy. Crisp air fills your lungs. The night is alive with screams.     You must be near to the eastern edge of Caelton, as you remember it, close to the mines and that pocket of nature surrounding it. You can tell because the sound of wind rustling the grass and the chirp of grasshoppers surrounds you, and the ceaseless ghastly echo of terrible screaming pours forth from the west. Dimly, you can make out the misty chatter of extremely distant gunshots, and an occasional, dissonant keening, but they seem to have no correlation on the waves of hysterical shrieking that carry on the cold, still, night air. It rises and falls in countless overlapping layers with no pattern, rhyme or reason. A white noise of frenzied human terror, over the dusty clatter and crash of massed violence against inanimate streets.     All transmitters fizzle, screech, and snuff out all at once. Ninety seconds later, radio transmission comes back on line without apparent cause, though the airwaves are afflicted with a constant, crackling drone. Something about its sound signature drips with unease.
Gawain	As soon as the sitrep message is given, Gawain's moving from his apartment to get to the situation. He's fastened a blindfold on - eyes locked shut under it - as his armor is summoned and the knight is moving through the warpgate. Once actually there, the collected sounds cause a sharp, angry growl from the normally cheerful Gawain. There are no words. He crouches to the ground as radios briefly go down, extending his senses outwards. Hearing, magic detection, and even scenting are all immediately being used in an attempt to get an idea of what the hell is going on and where all the commotion is most focused. He's also hoping he still hears human breathing. People he can still save. He starts moving in their direction the moment he gets confirmation.
Tina Natsumi	Once again, Tina's gotten in over her head. She knows barely anything about this region, about this place, about who 'they' could possibly even be. Her only connection to any of this is tenuous at best through knowing Lilian as a friend(?), but the rest might as well just be blank spaces for her. That's just the way she likes it. Going with her gut has never failed her before except for all those times it did, but this time should be different! This time, she's actually thinking things through for once (maybe) and going in without her phone broadcasting everything she's doing, heeding the warning from the communication as well as giving herself a break from having to maintain that on-screen persona all the time. Her Persona, however, is already hanging around her, ambling along like a giant protective gorilla or something. She's taking the warning of not allowing light or sight in rather seriously, although getting where she needs to go without being able to see anything is proving rather difficult. "Sure is a pain moving around like this, isn't it? wish I had a seeing-eye-dog right about now!" She laughs, purposely using her loudness as a sort of 'this is how close you are to her' radar. "Or not. Maybe... What's it called when bats do the screaming echo sense thing? I remember reading this one... Book about a couple of people that could do it by clicking their tongues a lot, but I never thought it'd ever really come up. Sooo..." She clicks her tongue once, then frowns in disappointment. "... Nope, didn't work. So I'm gonna start heading towards..." She waves vaguely in the direction of the gunshots, only remembering that nobody's supposed to be looking at things a few seconds after she's already started moving. "Gunshot place."
Tony Stark	NEW YORK CITY, The Usual Spots... Tony Stark reclines in a high-backed swivel chair, spinning while tossing a stress ball into the air. Around him in a concave are an array of holographic data readouts, world news, currently ongoing interventions, and, of all things, an emulator for the Avengers Assemblage mobile game, where Tony owns every single version of Iron Man. There are many, many versions of Iron Man for obvious reasons, as the game is produced by Stark Enterprises. A classic Model 1 fistfights the Super-Skrull on auto. The alert comes with a voice narrating, but the first word is all Tony needs to hear to sit bolt upright and start typing on soft keyboards. "Jarvis, how far out is Friday?" "Sir, the young miss is currently in Rio De Janeiro--" Jarvis begins, but is cut off by a quick handgesture. "Party girl is too far out for a recall. Bastion, you're up. Jarvis, spin up the foundry." Tony announces, reaching for his wrist to pull off the bulky watch he normally wears - then a belt buckle, cufflinks, collar pin, and a whole host of other small metal tchotchkies he wears or carries individually no larger than a watch or wallet. As he does, they grow small repulsor jets or spider legs and conglomerate, plates interlocking into a head-sized red and gold cube with a thrumming blue core. "Reconfigure the active Prime suit for max reflective white, no faceplate." The pile-cube scuttles to a cylinder across the desk, a glass door opening as it approaches to settle inside the matrix area as small sub-arms drop from the cieling inside the tube to begin spraying down the cube with a thick coat of shiny white paint. Two orphaned optics scuttle off of the cube's mass, two different identical-save-for-their-coloration optic fills joining the mass instead. The process takes belabored seconds, but Tony doesn't pay direct attention to it. This is why he built things. "No visuals will be a problem. Solutions?" "Conclusion: Assisted Subjectivity Synch Module, Attack Mode will suffice for this purpose. Loss of color differentiation due to lack of photonic input will not decrease combat efficasy." Tony, startled, cracks a smile. "Now you're definitely my child. ASSMAN?" Bastion's harsh, robotic tone does not respond for a moment, before: "Standard naming scheme across arsenal reduces chance of failure." CAELTON, Just Before The Screaming Stops... A white-on-white and opticless Iron Man emerges under powered hover, landing just past the warpgate's aperture with a thunk. Inside the helmet, the darkness is nearly complete, only the dulled HUD illuminating rings around Tony's eyes and across his cheeks. "Still need something to go on, bud." Bastion warbles slowly: "Establishing Battlefield Control - Please Stand By." A slow-pan scan sweep of the area washes Tony's fully contained vision first with broad shapes, then vectors, then energy patterns, each wash of analytic system providing one more set of data points. After the third wash, Iron Man resumes movement towards the city in a powered hover, joining Gawain and Tina on the ground as if he could see just fine. "Echolocation or sonar. It was one of my first ideas. If you need something to see with:" The suit's wrist pops up with Enough pairs of blackout shade white ''plastic'' eyeglasses that, when put on, provide a similar if far more basic 'don't have to wander around Blind the whole time' effect.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Follow     Arthur never met Damien Kent and his Letter Agency, nor got the lowdown on the pull between ruthless modernity and the disconnected ancient elders, admittedly, but it's not as though he urgently needed to. Not for this, some brand of emergency. "This is gonna be REAL FUCKIN' BAD," Arthur says as he ties off a long strip of god-hood fabric around his eyes, leaving liberal blindfold material above and below. Weaving it with the space-warping means he can truly isolate his eyes from any light whatseoever. "It's gonna be REAL FUCKIN' BAD because I've NEVER LISTENED IN MY LIFE, and so it's gonna be SHITTY to START NOW."     He applies a pair of ECHO-EYEGLASSES over the top of his blindfold. Whether this even works is something that will remain ambiguous. >Arthur: Maybe head for the sounds, where you remember people were?     His mental acuity in matters pertaining to space, and his light magical senses, might be able to help him navigate a little here. He brings out a simple broomstick from his STRIFE DECK and uses it as a cane like a blind man while he heads for the noise. He worries when chatter cuts out, but he speaks up almost instantly when it comes back online. "WHAT UP. Anyone got EXPLANATIONS or DETAILS to work with up in this? That NOISE got me WORRYIN', we got some ELECTROMAGNETIC SHIT up in this. YO! Anyone got DISTRESS CALLS or somethin'?" >Arthur: Let's scan.     He tries to expand some of his limited magical senses. Were he a Seer, perhaps he might supplement his lost and limited vision with magical senses, but all he is is a Mage, so he can only scan for ongoing magical phenomena and other similar energies. This is... unnerving, to say the least. The harshness of the invitation and the absence of more coherent cries for help and other things like that make him concerned for the wellbeing of basically everyone here.
James Bond	MI6 - 'Estate'      "If it sees, consider it gone," says Bond, already on his way out the door of the underground complex. "I have to assume that means sonar's the only thing that works."      There's a frustrated huff from Q, the old man uselessly shuffling after the secret agent. Behind him a small squad of scientists test other contraptions, on ballistic dummies, targets, each other. "007, what am I supposed to tell--ugh, we haven't even finished miniaturizing it yet!"      "No time, Q." There's an informal wave. The clock is ticking. Caelton - 'Warpgate'     Bond steps through to darkness. His means of averting his eyes is something new which Q was testing. A blocky visor, wrapping around all the way to cover his ears, the design of which screams 'late eighties prototype.' Despite its unsightliness, it forms a seal which protects his eyes from the light. The earphone portion of the visor bounces soundwaves from the obstacles in the area, allowing him to navigate by echolocation rather than sight.      Also on his person: the standard-issue watch for 00 agents, a suppressed MP5 (more for his own comfort than for stealth, now that he's 'seeing' through sound), a kevlar vest, the usual PPK and a combat knife. In other words, subtlety is second to preparation, this time around.      Where are the gunshots coming from? That's where he'll head. "Echolocation," says Bond to Tina. "Looks like Stark and I had the same idea." The sound of his voice allows him to check the safety on his gun, and the sights. "I'm headed for the gunshots, too."
Tina Natsumi	At Gawain's suggestion, Tina and her Persona start following his voice, adding to the group's overall bulk. When Tony and Bond arrive with the same answer to her vague recollection, she lets out an 'ahah' noise. "Echolocation! That's the one. Sonar's the same thing but not as cool sounding, right?" She's pretty sure that's what it is. She also takes the offered eyeglasses, slipping them on and secretly hoping she's not wearing them upside down or anything. "Thanks! Remind me to ask you later if this makes me look smarter. I might need it for... Reasons." She says that in her usual joking tone, but there's a hint in her voice that she isn't. Tina still manages to laugh at Arthur's boast(?) of never listening, though, holding one fist out towards him as if expecting something. "Sounds like we're almost on the same page there, guy. Eh, almost. You gotta be good at listening so you can talk louder and with more authority later, right?"
Mack	Mack has not been involved in the previous capers (his word, not the briefing's), but he's gotten a run-down of what's going on and offered his help nonetheless. Paladins looking for things to do quickly get given them. The occasionally foreign elements of the sitrep -- like the fact that there is a unified America and also simultaneously some kind of apocalyptic events, for instance -- drew chuckles and sounds of mild wonder. There are no such things out in the field, though. Mack is a short, scrap-covered shape moving around in the dark. He keeps low. His standard optics have been deactivated for the moment, after the warning they were given, making the normally amber-colored glow from his sunken sockets go dark. Instead, his bionic sensor suite goes to work filling in the gaps: 360-degree radar, sonar and motion detectors provide him a perfectly adequate view of his surroundings, and his own psychic sense of the presence of other minds nearby pinpoints friends. Hopefully, foes, too. "Keep in radio contact," Mack says, voice low. He swivels his head on his long neck, this way and that. "Do we have an operator in the house? Something's up with my comms." He starts forward, creeping towards the sources of shrieking and misery. His fingertips flex, the ends lengthening into claws.
Maya	Maya had got the warning she's left Runner behind, she'd also got her hands on good blindfold. Fighting blind? This was going to be a hell of a thing she thought and something' she'd never really done before. The warning was clear, even her normal means that might help with sensory issues are a bad idea. So no use of her scan spells either. She makes sure her blindfold is secured. She's also used some means to keep her eyelids closed. Blind fighting with magic would be easier than her rifle even with the smart systems it had, those would be the last option she mused. She will follow right after Gawain and Tina through the gate. So it's pretty might sound, smell and maybe touch for finding her way now. She'll keep with Tin and Gwain noting. "I can get started with the support magic, also I can heal anyone we find...baring whatever is this fatal issue with the light." Maya will gladly take the offered glasses from Tony as well. "Thank you." She'll fall in aggain with Gawin and Tina making ready to give a go of it.
Tamamo	Tamamo is not entirely convinced of the trustworthiness of the source. However, if Gawain is heading in, that's more than enough reason for her to at least investigate, and if Tony is taking the warning seriously, she won't be the one to immediately disregard it. She arrives wih her face covered in a white mask with painted eyes, starkly red lips, and the clashing impression of black hair. (Hers remains a red closer to pink.) The sunken cheeks and blackened teeth don't really look like her, either, though they do look like something.     Getting around while blinded isn't wholly impossible for her. Those tall, high-set ears aren't just for show. She accepts a pair of eye(not)glasses from Tony, but keeps ahold of them for the moment, stepping about with neither caution nor hurry. "Oh, thank you. I believe I shall remain a bit behind, and so, do not tarry on my account."     As she said, she doesn't use her ears to head toward any of those sounds, but seats herself not far from the warp gate, and begins her scrying. Without knowledge of what has here occurred, her first step isn't even to find the correct path toward an objective, or even to find what her objective must be, but to search out the presence of what has invaded the territory. She has a clear idea of what it might be, an opportunity with a motive, but that first guess doesn't go as far as identifying a weakness. Looking through the lens of how the leylines here have been used or disrupted, the magic in the ground (and perhaps the air), should give her a useful perspective on what's unfolding.
Lilian Rook	Were it not for the sound of boiling mass horror crashing in from the distance, the spatial map of your surroundings, necessarily colourblind and low-definition as it is, would be especially peaceful. A narrow gap between ancient clay-bearing hillsides, fissured apart by age and water, and populated by the winding roots and weeping branches of old willows. The fact that there's a barely man-sized warpgate nestled in a fifteen foot clearing at the bottom, rapidly draining something car battery-sized, should tell of its intent to not be here for long.     Gawain honing his senses is first to pick out several details, only Tamamo's fox ears notwithstanding. Rendered normally inaudible by the screaming, he can hear human voices talking as well. Yelling, loudly, but forming words. A lot of them. Large mobs. He can hear banging against doors and breaking windows. He can smell burning as well, but not a large scale fire. Blood, but not much. Not nearly enough to account for so much wailing. Gunsmoke; not the ozone scent that military firearms here give off, so it must be the old surplus equipment from the colonists themselves.     Tony's specific preparedness is well-advised. What at first appears to be an error in his energy pattern analysis --a white 'shadow' around him-- turns out to be entirely consistent. Though he detects no exo-energetic reactions in the area, he himself appears to be radiating some unknown quantity of one. Rather, reflecting it. The light bouncing off of his white and gleaming, eyeless suit, enters some compromised state. Other than that, two radio signatures are active in the area. One is being broadcast from the appropriate tower in Caelton itself. One is encrypted.     The gunshots come from far to the south. Outside of the colony's developed limits by a couple of kilometers. The veteran of many firefights, James can pick up the irregularity in them by ear. Long pauses followed by bursts of sustained automatic fire, varying between too short to have an advantage over burst fire, and too long to maintain any kind of accuracy, broken up too much to be effective for suppression. Like five or six people are just choosing random times to hold the trigger. He can hear a muffled hiss and the far distant sound of an explosion.
Lilian Rook	The highest density of noise, as well as that of biosignatures and mental activity, comes from the satellite colony itself, two kilometers to the west. Even taken at high speed, taking the empty, dusty roads used for hauling to and from the mine, under the open night sky, feels not just oppressively eerie, but somehow unsafe, like some reflex is trying to tell you to get in the shade already. A steady trickle of signatures have exited the borders of town, and have scattered widely out to the south and north, but it's a tiny fraction of the total. For whatever reason, they don't appear to be able to advance past a certain distance.     Tamamo's scrying confirms portents of terrible danger in both of those direction. And death. Almost exclusively outside of town. Looking for the presence of 'an invader', however, is nearly useless. A compass needle spinning out of control, pointing everywhere and nowhere. If she isolates her queries much, much more, they'll guide her northward, to the opposite end of the sounds of gunfire, and towards that of the dissonant keening sounds. Sounds of physical commotion and violence. A whiff of magic on the air. Also, much further to the south, well beyond the gunfire noise.     But the sense of magic for miles around is the most terrible of harbingers. Not the presence of some horrible curse of tremendous magnitude, but rather, the opposite. An absence of it, where there should be. Though they had been largely very basic, maintained by those of no particular magic potential, Caelton's boundary had been demarcated with layers of wards that had surrounded the territory. This is no longer the case. Fragmentary points of concentrated magic exist on the horizon, like small fires, but the harmonious flow is gone.     Arthur's spatial sense detects that most major warding points have been broken in all directions. It isn't random, as if caused by some storm scrubbing it all out at once. Only key confluences and major geometric points have been wiped out. What he and Tamamo can both discern is that this is not quite the case to the east; parts of the ward hold there, but seem to have been hastily reconstructed, very recently, and moving clockwise.
Tina Natsumi	What's Tina to do when there's only one of her to head in any given direction with so many options available? Break things down by talking to herself, for starters. If nothing else, it'll help keep herself from freaking out too much and getting struck with indecision. "Sounds like... Gunshots really far one way, a lot of... Generalized something or another the other way?" She shakes her head lightly, still trying to get used to those glasses without relying on her eyes. She hears talk of the wards, the shields, the stranger things coming from other directions, and she bounces arund those thoughts in her head for a while longer before starting towards the WEST. "Sorry to say I won't be much help with reconstructing any magical stuff. All I've really got is bullets and beef on my side here, so..." She taps her knuckles on her Persona's metallic surface. "Well, light, too, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be adding to any of that with all those warnings we got. Just in case. Best I can come up with is just providing some physical aid to the folks over in town and the mine, so.. Uh." She clicks her tongue again, then sighs and keeps moving. "Holler if you need me to come over somewhere else!"
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Converse with Tina     "Nah, I just do the TALKIN' LOUDER while doin' the NEVER LISTENING." Arthur mutters in something that sounds like his normal bragging tone, but which is infused with an uncontainable tension. "But... Guh. Got NOT A LOTTA CHOICE but LISTENING right now." He continues forward, holding his broom handle-first and tapping the ground as he goes. It helps locate him -- as if his bluster didn't already do that. >Arthur: Try to analyze what you're detecting.     That warding has been broken. From the inside? It would only make sense, after all. Perhaps something from the mines broke it, that dire and awful risk Arthur had been made aware of? He tries to analyze the break-patterns or other aspects of the defensive geometries around here, though the likelihood of finding a fruitful result are low.
Lilian Rook	Racing to town is safe. Too much so. The noise growing swiftly ahead is miserably nerve-rattling. The more you hear it, the less real it sounds. Piercing sounds of genuine fear are halfway to outnumbered by similar shrieks and wails that lack the same kind of coherence. Human exclamations of something lacking content. Terrified and exultant in a way that blends together into screaming for the sake of it. Passing into the shadows of outlying storage yards, greenhouses, truck yards, and radio and weather masts, you become swallowed up by the sound of thousands in the streets. Running --no, sprinting, in every direction.     Not just in the streets. Indoors, too. The clatter and scrape of hastily rearranged furniture. The tromp of hurried packing. The raucous thumping of multitudes hammering on doors from outside. The crackling of window plexiglass fracturing from furious impacts. People trying to get in. People keep them out. The sounds of flight from the edges of town sound as if they're being chased.     It looks that way too, through the monochrome smears of motion available to paint the picture. Even with the most sophisticated modelling of your surroundings you can get, it's hard to make sense of. Throngs of people pack the cramped, barely paved streets, assaulting flimsy prefab architecture in vast mobs, attempting to climb the sides and reach those inside the top floors or on the roof. Individuals and small groups carrying bags trying to cut behind buildings, or else biking at full speed down what clear roads there are, being chased en masse by sprinting colonists.     There are people being dragged into the street. Wrestled to the ground, screaming for help. Separated and hauled out on the backs of crowds. You hear a shotgun go off. The trampled injured seem only to be participating in fleeing or mobbing as best they can. The dark and grainy world of suggested places and anonymous people is hostile and violent. A maelstrom of sweat and adrenaline and smeared blood.     Arthur, openly into town, is approached before he can do the approaching. He feels hands grab his robes, then gripping his face. It takes a moment to recognize that someone else behind is clawing at his blindfold. He can hear them shouting in his ears, trying to make sure he can hear them over the chaos. "Quick! Quickly! Take it off! There's no time! This is your only chance!" Maya is immediately piled with several more. The weight of ten people all heaped onto her back, rushing from a blind alley. Tiny, sweaty fingertips grabbing at her glasses that can only belong to a child. "You're going to miss it! Come on! Come with us!" She can hear them. A gradeschooler, female, deliriously excited.     Gawain is tackled straight from the front. The mob's ability to manhandle him is considerably insufficient, though they don't really have to; only scratch and claw at his face. "Please! We're trying to save you!" He hears a man yell next to him, spittle hitting his face. "If you don't now, you won't have another chance!" tearfully pleads a young woman. Attempts to circumvent his stoic physique come in the form of sneak attacks with crowbars and cinderblocks, trying to knock him to his knees, or at least stun him, even at the same time others beg him.     Mack, in his creeping around, is spared for the moment. None of the buildings here are large or very solid, and they're covered in large windows. The roads don't even have sidewalks, and there's almost nowhere to park a vehicle anywhere, so his options are very limited. A door caves in near him, and is followed by the sounds of a screaming and struggling woman, crying children, and a man yelling at the top of his lungs, wildly flailing his fists around. A crowd is babbling over itself as it works to drag them outside. "Don't listen to the radio!" "They lied to you!" "You have to see it!" "Trust us!" "Don't believe them!" "Just open your eyes!"
Tamamo	Tamamo frets about for a bit before deciding on a course of action. Since she does this quietly and everyone is blindfolded, she can be indecisive without embarrassment, apart from the 'something' that is watching her. She isn't convinced that it's a people, so she won't consider it.     Finally, she turns about and heads East, honing in on those rebuilding the wards. Whether she stays to help them, she'll at least learn something from whoever still has enough presence of mind and resources to be doing something about the situation.
James Bond	Bond pauses. The gunfire to the south is... unusual. No one who's trying to hit something shoots that way. Plants, or amateurs. Either way, that makes it more dangerous. Plants, for the obvious reason. Especially if they weren't 'plants' before all this happened. Amateurs might also be dangerous, because they might not know friend from foe. There's also the issue that by the sound of it, that gunfire is happening a few kilos outside the colony's limits. <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "The wards are broken. Ah, but that much I should have guessed without looking. They flee toward... oh, oh no. Those who have run from town would do well to turn back. Or is it that their doom follows them? I am not yet sure."     Kent had mentioned a vested interest on the part of his people to keep this place from succeeding. This must have been their move. He'd have the connections, maybe even the knowledge, certainly the tech, to get that temporary warpgate set up. Bond sets his jaw.      He doesn't trust that he'd be able to drive, relying on an entirely new sense--especially not with the noise of an engine clouding that sense. So. SOUTH, then. It'll take some time to get to the source of that gunfire on foot. The closer he gets, the more effort is made towards stealth, attempting to keep his profile low, reduce the sound of his boots (yes, boots. this is not a Suit occasion, this is a Combat occasion) against the grass.      The ideal goal here is to get the jump on one of the people firing. From there... he imagines he'd strip the weapon first, naturally, get them into a hold, make use of the knife to get them talking.
Lilian Rook	Heading south puts the skin crawling commotion to one's back, but a familiar atrocity to the front. Here is where the coppery smell of blood originates, rising from wet ditches in rippled wild grass fields, strewn with pockmarked boulders of ancient ice sheets. The cracking rattle of automatic weapons fire comes from a very broad line, comprising a shallow section of an arc geometrically miles around.     Yet, though it is the dead of night, even stray gunfire is a tremendous threat. Without the ability to pick up visible light in any form, and infrared likely being as dangerous, muzzle flash is right out of the question, as are any signs of tracers. Bullets are invisible wasps that whine uncertainly through the pitch blackness that is anything but the ground, causing dirt to burst at random in grainy blurs. Creeping through boggy divots and running between cracked old stones is the only way to maintain a facade of safety.     At first, Bond finds a handful of bodies littered out in the open. The moans and wails of the wounded are seemingly irrelevant to the shooting parties, but when he can creep within range of his sonar, he hears them quickly become screens as he sees sprinting figures descend on them and grab hold of their heads. Not much later, he can pick out the vague suggestions of others hunched behind rocks and in dips like he has to be, huddled up and pinned down by the bullets in the night. He can see one creeping slowly, low in the grass and cold water, towards a child's hand outreached from under a dead body; an adult who'd shielded them from a spray of bullets.     Yet, he doesn't find his enemy until he is far too close. When he does, it takes no searching; they're right out in the open. Low, shrouded tripods, bolted into the ground, and weatherproof drums of half-expended ammunition. Whirring cameras and pinging sensor poles. The clatter and clink of sporadically sprayed brass. The whine of electric motors. The firing comes from a long and deep line of computer-controlled guns, no doubt acquiring targets by lasers he can't see and thermals he can't use, mercilessly gunning down any targets that approach their fields of fire.     Judging by the way they were set up, they were put here by the residents at least a few years ago. Yet now it seems they exclusively fire at certain kinds. Rather than gun down every blot of warmth, they respond automatically, yet selectively. None of the figures sprinting to descend on the wounded are acquired at all. Since he can see their wire bundles and lack of antenna, he knows they can't be wirelessly connected to anything either; each one is a standalone system. This shouldn't be possible.     His targets, as they could be, aren't difficult ones, though they are heavily armoured from the front, and well-entrenched. No doubt they will acquire and blast him immediately upon exposing his body heat to their cameras. Worst, he sees a cleared site for what is clearly a surface to surface missile launcher, set up like an automatic mortar. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be designed to turn, or can't acquire anything so close, but the sound of an explosion earlier is an ill omen.
Mack	Mack's creeping is reasonably effective, given the state of things, but he's rapidly running out of sources of cover. If he can just stay hidden long enough, he can spot places to move to, and then use his psionics to conceal his approach -- Something breaks nearby. Mack's head is on a swivel. His sensors render a picture of what's happening: the crowd has broken their way into a home nearby, and is trying to drag people out. Mack is in motion before he makes a conscious decision to do something. His stealthy approach is rendered totally moot by his sudden rush, metallic feet slamming home against the surface of the street. He leaps clear over the heads of the crowd, diving into it with a reverberating bellow of, "BACK OFF!" He lands on the lead rank of the mob, then slams a wave of telekinetic force outward in every direction, a sudden wave of energy with the look of molten glass rushing outward from his body and trying to forcibly separate the screaming family from the pleading maniacs. The mutant plants himself in front of the door. He projects a bubble of telekinetic force around him, blocking the access to the building. "Alright! I'm gonna need everybody to /calm down/, so nobody else gets hurt!!" He doesn't expect them to listen. Mack really hopes they will anyway.
Lilian Rook	Tamamo, heading east, is granted the mercy of getting further from the sound, and with it, danger. She ends up in deep woods, grown up around the mineral rich hills that mine is nestled somewhere within, fed by the faint seeping into that deep and thin connection to the Otherland within. She arrives at the edge of the warding field, past which the ground parches and turns to sand, and then that alien grass she knows to be stealth matte black.     She finds a stone shrine, violently broken into many pieces and scattered in the loam. Near it, the ashes of torched herbs, wreathes, and wicker arches. Pieces of broken incense vases are mingled in with them like bones. The long lines drawn by blessed waters, censers, and runes, that stretch into the distance, are only haphazardly broken or scuffed, outside of a few potholes likely caused by explosion, as if the attacking party couldn't be bothered, or didn't have time or reason, to do such a thorough job as to permanently remove miles of enchantment.     A fresh array of runes so thick with magic that she can feel them glowing, even if she can't see it, has been drawn all over the broken focus point, taking the shrine's place, splashed with large quantities of blood in a deliberate fashion. The bounds that have been broken have had their characters filled in precisely, in much the same way. She can still feel the metaphorical heat on them. Done in the last ten minutes at most.     She recognizes two things in particular. One, that she easily recognizes it as Lilian's work. Two, is that there are a number of bullet holes and shallow craters, inside the boundary, having come from the outer.     Arthur's judgement is similarly easily weighted. The destruction is so targeted, so deliberate, so focused, and so intentionally violent, that two things are very obvious. The wards have been broken in a way that has paid no effort to being able to quickly put them back up again later, and they have been broken by mundane methods, in multiple places at once, from outside the circle.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Take it off! There's no time!     Hey, what?! No!! No, STOP!! Arthur shouts out suddenly, feeling the unexpected hands on his face. Violence is, fundamentally, a violation of boundaries. In a battle, competition between boundaries in specific ways is expected. In a rescue operation, grabbing and clawing and violating autonomy isn't as much. "No! No, fuckin' get off!!" He shouts, his already-brittle bravado giving way just a moment. >Arthur: Get them away from you     Mack's got a good strat, and Arthur decides that the best way to do this is to mimic it. Gravity tends to be the best bet: Zero-gravity with a small layer of antigravity a few feet up is the only good way of dealing with mundane people in a mental state like that. Could help with the trampling too! But, mostly, it's a panic response. Emotionally, he's not liking the look of this at all. A threat too abstract - no convenient nose to break on a face of responsibility. >Arthur: The wards need to be restored     He needs to figure this out. He needs to head... East? That's where that remaining thing was. It's Tamamo he winds up near, whether he has to fight through the people or whether they succumb to his gravitational disabling. He's only able to recognize her in the scrambled sonar through her distinctly fuzzy look. "Holy fuck." He elucidates quickly to her. "Holy shit, what the fuck." He expounds. "You know wards, right? Like, magecraft shit? Can you replicate a ward like this in some kinda artifact thing? I could Alchemize more for the other focus points, fill it in. *Maybe*." He sounds really uncertain, and a bit shaken by the previous encounter.
Maya	There is some idea of what's going on, there's a quick bit of chatter on the radio. A basic plan is hatched, she'll use some of her magic to help bring the people under control. Well, that's the thing as the blotches of smears move about it does help her place where things are. It doesn't however let her figure out who is who. Some ideas can be got given people being dragged she's going to assume those people are the ones who are not affected the next thing Maya knows is she's being assaulted as several pile on to her back from a bind ally son here are fingers upon her, it's a child. She can hear the child's voice the delirious excitement in it she's going down from the impact, she's got enough gift to get a fate card ready, namely the one she'd been planing for riot control. "... do you know what it is?" She'll struggle to fight with one hand to keep her protecting in place, the other? She'll use her Fate card, it's alien tarot-like design unknown on this world to most. She'll attempt to cast the spell a blue fire will bleed out of her into it. The mana transferring from her into the card in a visual fashion she's still struggling though as she casts the spell. The spell work is formed using the card as a template she but needs to fill the mould and the spell will go off with Maya focusing on those about her trying to paralyze them for the moment. It won't stop them from talking but moving yeah it should hopefully stop that. Who knows what the horror that has seized hold of them has done?
Tony Stark	"ASSMAN system functioning at 82% expected fidelity. Observation: Negative exoenergetical reaction in area causing loss of field resolution." Bastion beeps in Tony's ear, and tinnily echoes from the passed-out white un-glasses. "Fine. Well. Let's fly towards the danger. Filter out that damn noise on approach, I don't need evil tinnitus. Fork a containment line to monitor and dump it if the data gets froggy." "Understood. Firewalling partition." That settled, the Stark White does exactly the stupidest thing to do, apparently, and rocket towards the source of the noise - the dark signal from town, the second radio broadcast. Context from the people - screams of 'Don't Listen To The Radio' et al, and the religious zealot-fervor which others attack blindfolds and eyeprotection. "Reflected light emissions returning unknown reaction-state. No advisory at this time." Bastion beeps, again mirrored to the sets of un-glasses passed out. Tony, simply, bites his lip and thinks. "Mack, James, there's two sets of signals here. I'm going to make a beeline for the x-ray signal. Mack, if you can help Tamamo and whomever else repair the wards, I'm sure something you know will be useful... or at least slow down whatever's happening. 'Drained of exoenergy' is the hallmark locally of Antegent activity - they may have tapped a ley-line and turned it into some hallucinatory light. If someone can find where a ley line *should* be, we may have a chance to reverse the effect. Anyone got better ideas?" Stark White bids up higher over the city as he vectors towards the dark radio signal. "And they said video killed the radio star. I'm feeling a comeback, and I don't like it."
James Bond	Naturally, things aren't that easy. A bullet invisibly zips past, grazing his leg and drawing blood. "God damn it," he hisses under his breath, hitting the deck. The knife won't see any use here. The MP5 is his best option, and even that isn't great. Because it isn't actors, or amateurs, but automated defenses, and armored such that simply shooting them won't work.      The submachine gun is held forward as he crawls on his stomach through the bog, clumps of damp earth and grass smeared on his kevlar vest. The sonar picks up a cairn a few yards ahead. The bullets can't be seen--only the impacts, the brief sprays of dirt.      But the burble of water as someone crosses through it... that's a different story. Getting closer to one of the people approaching the wounded will be difficult. But if he listens to the ways that they're moving... he might be able to keep from the worst of it.      Stark says he's heading to the x-ray signal. "Understood," he murmurs into the radio on his vest. "But I could really use air support, if you can manage. Automated defenses. Lots."      He listens again for the burble of the person crossing through the water. To the whining of the cameras. Bond rises into a kneel and takes off like a marathon runner at the sound of a starting pistol, the moment he believes he has an opportunity. The surface to surface missile shouldn't be a problem... yet. But the cascade of fire that will surely follow him on the way to those cracked stones will be a problem now.      He just has to get close enough. The stones are close enough to have a conversation, at least. They'll serve as cover, from the guns, and somewhat less optimally, from the person attempting to recover the child, in the event they're not friendly. Or more likely, take him as not friendly.      Against his better judgment, he announces himself... but he does turn off the safety on the MP5, holding it at the ready. A new wound is there. "Who do you work for?"
Lilian Rook	Mack leaps to the rescue of the family home, for the moment, and for a moment his efforts are successful. The wave of force throws the crowd back, knocking people over like dominoes, who struggle to crawl over each other and get back at the door. The efficacy of his barrier depends entirely on how well it sustains being attacked by scores of frenzied people with their fists, then pipes and bricks and whatever else they can find.     Behind him, he can sense the four people, obviously a family, he'd just rescued. "Mummy! Where are you?" "Right behind you sweetie! Just follow my voice! Back inside! Come on!" "Get the kids back inside. I'm going for the tools." "No! Just get back inside with the children!" "Daddy who is that?" "Don't worry, he's on our side." "Tell him not to look!" "Don't worry, he knows. Back inside. Listen to your mother."     The opposite side of his barrier is nothing alike. They aren't focused on the family of four anymore at all. They've turned their attention entirely to Mack. "Don't listen to them!" "They don't know! They just believed the radio!" "You have to do it! Just open your eyes!" "You'll understand as soon as you see! You don't have much time!" "They all lied! We didn't know! We're *supposed* to see it!" "If you don't look, you can't be saved!" "Open your eyes!" "If you're scared, we can look together!"     The frenzied townspeople lack any ability to get at Arthur either, though they retain the creative capacity to attempt hurling things at him to try and get him to let down his guard. These are people who had previously had no real knowledge or exposure to people with powers, and generally mistrusted them. The fact they're trying to challenge him with zero hesitation is unnatural in of itself, aside from their freakish, desperate insistence he take off his blindfold. They also, however, have no ability to chase him when he flies off. He hears a gun go off again, but it isn't aimed at him. Somewhere at the street, from a window. People inside have resorted to shooting blind at the crowd, failing to disperse anyone.     Maya's mass paralysis spell is likewise something they have no defense against. In the depths of the colony sprawl itself, there seem to be no true menaces beyond its hysteric civilians, and the potential of being accidentally shot by someone trying to defend their home. The fact that none of the mob have taken to using lethal weapons rather stands out. The voices indicate that the number of victims has risen into the thousands by now, though. Far more than she can paralyze with magic.
Gawain	Gawain makes it to people, but this isn't a tangible fight he can have, having put on the Starktech glasses. He moves as if he's going to argue with the crowd, jerking his head back, but they won't listen. He knows it. Memetic hazard. Crowbars try to knock Gawain down, stun him. But he's extending his senses, and he's pissed enough to use full force. an arm moves to batter the crowbar away, as he starts smacking people away with strength. He can't stay in the brawl, though. Too dangerous. So, he leaps, moving to haphazardly aim for a rooftop. Senses go out again. Any more survivors, now that he's in the fray? That's all he cares about, because if this is permanent... There needs to be people to tell the story.
Tina Natsumi	Too many people. It's hard to differentiate who's who in the tangled mass of body-shaped things, but it's enough to give Tina a vague idea of what's going on. She doesn't even have to 'see' it to know what's happening, either, as she can very much feel them bashing those heavy tools and chunks of masonry against Uncle Sam, as though trying to break through his arms and legs to get to her underneath it. Some of those thrown objects even manage to bypass the Persona's protective limbs, drawing a pained grunt from her in the process. <<"Whole lot of people getting real handsy around here... Ech. What the hell's even going on around here?">> She mutters to her allies while trudging along, having her Persona curl around a bit more defensively around herself to let it filter through most of those blows. She'll probably come out of this with a bad headache later, but it's still better than getting hit directly in the face with a sledgehammer. She seems some of those shapes go down, and there's a brief reprieve from the bashing. <<"Good thinkin', Maya. If they're not going to listen to reason, then maybe...">> Misdirection is hard. She racks her brain for a potential solution, eventually deciding to start projecting her voice with the power of a Persona-based megaphone. "Hey! Listen up! Your prayers have been answered, folks. Behold! To the... That way!" With a giant sweep of Uncle Sam's arm (which may or may not end up hitting a few people inadvertently), Tina and her Persona point towards the southwest-ish area, away from where the WEST group is and ideally west-enough away from gunshots to the SOUTH. As she points, a giant illusory angel made of pure light springs into existence, glowing with an unnatural radiance. Rather than a humanoid angel, however, it appears to be a series of four burning wheels linked together, covered in eyes and bearing small wings at the top and bottom of each wheel. It's also somehat oddly shaped due to being drawn entirely from memory without Tina being able to actually see it as she whips up that illusion, but it's certainly otherworldly. It's also not really doing anything besides floating and glowing ominously with very little depth to it, but Tina's aiming to just buy herself and the TOWN group enough time to keep moving instead of having to fend off so many people at once without resorting to outright violence.
Lilian Rook	In the air, Tony is beyond the reach of the crowd, despite their best attempts to hurl things at him indicating that they can see him. Filtering the white noise from the airwaves works in a systematic sense, but it still interferes with the two signals going around. Scanning both of them turns up very different results.     One, the radio tower is emitting on period loop. CLASS SEVEN EVENT IN PROGRESS. ALL CITIZENS ARE TO REMAIN INDOORS. COVER ALL WINDOWS. TURN AWAY ALL SCREENS AND MIRRORS. BATHROOMS AND BASEMENTS ARE PREFERRED. DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. DO NOT OPEN DOORS. DO NOT LEAVE TO SEARCH FOR FAMILY. DO NOT LEAVE TO RETRIEVE BELONGINGS. STAY IN PLACE UNTIL ASSISTANCE ARRIVES. THIS AUTOMATED MESSAGE WILL REPEAT EVERY THIRTY SECONDS UNTIL CODE WHITE IS LIFTED.     The other frequency is heavily encrypted. Enough that it'd take a significant amount of time to crack with what he has. The specific way that Damien's key can decode immediately. The grainy crackle of anonymous voices, male, cold, carefully enunciated, fills his speakers on three channels, two engaged in measured chatter and a third on high alert.     "--trackers picked up their entry." "Exfiltration gate?" "Reads negative. Must have flown in." "Locate where they're coming from. --- comms should be jammed. We still have --- up." "You think it's --- ?" "Negative, ten minutes delay." "We have their profiles. Go to plan bravo for all visible contacts. Nobody will be surprised if they go missing." "What about --- at the --- ?" "The profile is garbage! We know --- was all the way in Scarborough! That's way outside --- range!" "I'm coming up on the east breach now; can confirm --- been restored. --- heading clockwise south-southeast." "Already? That's impossible. Those countermeasures should take at least fifteen hours to --- " "Shit! Fuck! I've found --- eight men down! Breathing but --- need to pull out or --- bleed out." "Negative. Apply survival gel and pull back to --- position." "Interdiction?"     "Got him sighted. Grid coordinates Hotel 55 by Sierra 21." "Have visual on two more, isolated at eastern breach." "Sol Gold isn't with --- It's her and Nova Green." "Take shot on --- Move to eliminate Nova Green. Sol Gold is a --- alive; dissuasion measure for --- Black." "Nobody's going to believe one of Apex Red's stars went out on MM fever, and our intruder density is way lower than expected." "Doesn't matter. We can make it look like any number of them attacked the border after the fact. This dump won't be checked until the next delivery a week from now." "Draw --- to the southern --- killbox. Need I remind you, do *not* cross with the north sector. The intruders are not our allies. They'll kill you just as readily as the commie-runners." "Maintain distance. Stay under cover of --- systems. No brass. Prioritize --- scramblers; if they go out, you stay behind. You know the rules."     The radio signals of these bounce back and forth between the far, far south, beyond the gun line, a northwestern position atop a terraformed overlook, and in the southeast forest partition. They're followed by a powerful impact from due south, to the front of the suit, aimed at either center mass, or the arc reactor, depending on what Tony would prefer to suspect. Without a flash to see, or a projectile to see in flight, any capacity to ping and flag the projectile is far more limited than he can react to. Ballistic diagnostics flag it as a high-power armour piercing projectile(?) and trace the origin point a whopping three kilometers in that direction.
Mack	"Listen to your parents, kids," Mack says warmly over his shoulder. Frenzied people batter at the telekinetic field while he speaks reassurances. He has the calm tones of an emergency responder, trying his best to keep the situation from escalating any further with words that promise safety. "Sit tight just a little longer." Meanwhile, the exterior of the bubble sharpens, glows, casting a dim, watery light as the boundaries of the shield crumple and crater. It's contracting, very, very slowly. Sustained fire is fine, but the sheer number of attackers... He gets on the radio, subvocalizing into the implanted comm set. The almost creepy feeling of a third party observing him, like he was talking on a phone line with someone else on the handset upstairs, persists. A ping goes up, broadcast to identify his position. Mack grinds his feet into the ground, stabilizing his stance, and presses his hands together with his head bowed. He looks like he's meditating. He is. Mack's shield will last as long as he continues to have the inner strength necessary to withstand the assault. He does nothing else but focus on maintaining it, streaks appearing in the glassy surface of the barrier like someone was buffing out the cracks and craters the crowd is definitely pounding into it. He loses another three inches. Mack's brow knits in harsher concentration.
Tony Stark	SPLIT ACTION: Tony, with a real request for close air support, dreams up a way to paint a target without optical confirmation. The man with a gun and a radio *must* have a radio, right? All he needs to do is crank a spare up real high, toss it at the problem, and Tony could make a whole bunch of high-explosived tipped Freedom Delivery Systems turn whatever was bothering poor James into The Artists Formally Known As Fixed Automated Defenses. This is complicated by friendlies in the ay-oh. It's never simple. "Does the satellite we have overhead have a Sigma Heavy pattern on-board?" "Confirmed." "Pull a Legion suit off the dock, paint the Sigma white, disable optics, interface and slave the drone to ASSMAN system, and deploy." "Working." In the sky overhead, far above, a cloaked satellite rotates container systems into place, a white Iron Legion drone climbs out EVA from a main body container, and transitions towards a large red metal flower that service arms spraypaint bright white hastily. Not using the advanced materials, the 'repair grade' white paint was more meant for re-detailing busted up sub-suits, not for fully covering all the greebles and bits of the Sigma Heavy system, but... They work quickly. In this case, it may be the best money he had spent in a short while. About two minutes after his call -- long, long minutes in a firefight, there's a meteoric descent in the vicinity of James Bond, as an enormous white giant broader and taller than the Incredible Hulk himself (this detail, perhaps, lost on the MI6 agent) with the optics removed from the head. Inside, the still-just-visible-as-the-suit assembles form of a cheery-faced Iron Legion unit bobbleheads as the helmet seal works over it. From the overpowered voice monitor, through absorbing interception fire on the enormous armored form like a big man in a stiff rainstorm, comes the split voice of a very confused drone spliced with the more aggressive tones of Bastion: "H-h-h-hello. The Iron Legion is here to help. Please remain calm and Designate Targets For Elimination, Mister Bond" As an afterthought, the massive three-fingered left arm levels at one of the automated defenses shooting at the Big White actively and VEEEEM-s a brilliant orange repulsor beam in return fire.
Tamamo	"One has begun the work, ere we arrived. It is..." Tamamo obviously cannot see through the solid mask, but she still appears to look closely at it, reaching for them, slowly grasping without touching, "...most familiar."     She straightens, and turns. Brightly, "Fortunate, it is, Mr. Lowell, that I go nowhere without some means of protection. Less fortunately, my preparations are not so closely in tune with those used here. Some moments, then, if you please. I shall take such precautions as combat disharmony, and hope the melody persists in your own rendition."     Copying magic from another school is far harder than merely practicing it, but Tamamo refrains from calling herself a master of her craft only because braggartism is crass, and she's had the opportunity to walk these lines with Evald, one of the Pendragon's sorcerers, time and reason to consider how she might build her own wards to the same purpose, and a good deal of closeness to these runes' practice and practitioner. If all that were true and she still could not perform, she'd take quite the hit to her pride.     Though this might be far enough from danger not to need it, working by touch produces no particular problems in this case. If she has to do it with her eyes closed, then that's just what she'll do. Talismans, ink, brush, and tiny cloth bags all come out, a few at a time, as she sits and overwrites her work, making tiny adjustments, only to swiftly sweep away the result and scatter it to dust. She begins a second time, lengthening lines and making space for a suggestion of additional, foreign writing, only for this second attempt to be likewise discarded. With the third, layers of differing ink meld together, characters written atop each other, carrying two languages at once, one closely familiar to her, ciphering to the other, only apparent in what must be written by having examples both close and distant, but remembered, to draw upon.     Tiny bags are opened, and the fragrance of spice immediately fills the area. Tamamo makes her selections based on those she sees were once kept here, rolling them together with the paper into another tiny but tougher bag with a drawstring, completing the handheld charm. All her other materials are put back away.     She offers it to Arthur. "To be buried after every auspicious point, though not so deeply its scent cannot reach. It shall function well enough, I think." She faces toward the northwest. "I shall go and hear for what enemy as may be present, I think. You shall handle this well enough without my aid, no? It should not be so difficult to find where the wards need reinforcement. Good fortune to you, Arthur." And with that, she goes.
Lilian Rook	Getting as close to the south line as anyone has managed to so far, James manages to panic the person crawling through the blood-slicked mud, and the whole group huddled behind a heap of dried river rocks twenty feet away. "Don't shoot!" he hears them hiss. "If you've got time to talk, try helping! I can't leave him! Anyone who gets left out here, they'll find, and they'll force their eyes open like the others! Better dead by gunfire than that!"     That is not the case with all of the figures rushing for the wounded though. Those who move at top speed, freely, without vicious automated aggression from the turrets still overflowing with unspent ammo, fall on the injured like zombies. Even those in a very bad way summon up the energy to kick and struggle, screaming until the runners can force them to sit still, faced up at the sky, and then abruptly falling silent.     Bond's stony cover halfway disappears in the next moment. It can't be a turret. It zeroed him by voice, not heat. It also pulverized a smooth hole through a foot of solid rock, showering him with bluestone dust.     The iron legion megadrone, landing nearby, screens him, and a second shot doesn't follow. Its energy beam instantly annihilates the autogun most closely covering him, the military surplus, advanced as it is, not being up to the task of fending off exotic heavy blasters. Only seconds later, the missile launcher fires off into the distance --the wrong direction, just right up at the sky. After a second longer, it suddenly curves back around, turns, and falls on the automated suit as if flown by wire.     The encrypted radio crackles:     "Have audio confirmation of Crown Black." "No joy on target. Translocating to another angle." "Iron Gold --- convergence-type in play. Painting . . . --- fucking coating. Can't get tone on --- Slave missiles to my --- " "No can do. Remember, we don't own those guns. That's all MM's doing. Don't expose yourself to MM compromised machinery either. Herd Iron Gold Two into killbox three." "Uploading Crown Black's position." "Profile confirms no significant countermeasures to MM event. Don't make it too messy. We need a few bodies for ---." "Confirming."
Maya	<<I hope this works out Tina, I can't get everyone but I can help take some people out of action meaning we have less to worry about for the moment.>> This sort of hazard though is the stuff of nightmares. It's something that twists people like this. She will be able to help thin things out a bit and she'll look around trying to find more areas where an application of her magic, could do the most good. Well look is a strong work given the situation she and all the responders are dealing with. She makes note of Tina's actions and will try to focus on using her magic where Tina can't bring her persona into play hopefully between them both? They can make a further impact on this to take the pressure off the people who are not infected. Also giving the rest of the team better suited to somehow stopping the source of this more room to act.
Lilian Rook	Gawain is essentially unimpeded climbing to the rooftops. The capacity for the crowd to follow him is limited. From his vantage, he doesn't gain much additional distance; line of sight isn't a phrase that applies to him right now, and with so much ambient noise, the townscape fades to fuzzy, unnerving void after a few streets.     From what he can tell, he and the rest are here much earlier than they've ever responded to any of these calls from before. It looks like this disaster has rapidly spread out of control, and is getting worse by the minute, but he knows the population to be roughly fifteen thousand, and there definitely aren't nearly that many in the streets; the number of dead and wounded to the north and south can't be more than a few hundred so far either. Most people are still inside. Following the announcement. Waiting to be saved.     Radio: "Visual on Knight White." "Stand down. Wait for the target to enter the crowd. We don't have the gear to take him out the old-fashioned way. --- team will mingle with the mob. Leave it to MM." "--Wait, psychic signature just spiked. Unknown, grid Foxtrot 3 by Echo 91." "Repeat, psychic?" "Yeah, not ---" "Target is only holding position. Home defense? May have relations with local family. Currently surrounded by mob." "Hold him there until intruder wave arrives. They'll be breaking the picket in two minutes, tops."     Mack can, just barely, read the biosigns of someone moving swiftly through the crowd --far more swiftly than the others-- towards Gawain's position. He cannot, however, read a psychic signature at all. A total blank void. They cross by Tina and her illusion play without stopping, and then disappear.     That illusion isn't gaining much traction. The people she's dealing with, for whatever reason, no longer care for even the sight of angels. It's not as if they'd never heard of one; this is in the middle of Catholic England and all. But her display distracts them only for moments, before they must confirm its many many eyes are open, and chant in jubilation "It sees!" and resume attacking her. It's just enough time for Maya to lock down the street while they're distracted. It's a clear space where they can't be easily approached in, and can probably pull out of the colony from there, but there's no way they can clear more than a block or two like that.
James Bond	"I'm not going to shoot *you.*"      A hole is promptly punched through his cover, just as the drone arrives. The explanation is enough for him to act. The MP5 is suppressed, but if voice is enough to pick him up, then it likely won't matter. He pushes with his legs, landing on his back, and blasts the spot where he'd last heard that disturbance.      The clack-clack-clack of the suppressed submachine gun is quiet-er. It is not 'quiet'--these things don't work that way. After aiming for the center of mass, his next words are an order, addressed to the drone. Bastion's blunt, unsubtle entry is good for drawing fire.      "Forget designation--weapons free, cover us."      Working off of the momentary mapping-out of his surroundings from the suppressed burst, he rolls across the ground, coming to a stop just short of the water. "Move. Yesterday. I'll get the kid."      The dead body is kicked free, after some shuffling on the ground, the MP5 clipped to his vest, safety on. With one arm, he scoops up the child, hefting them over his shoulder. The other procures the PPK.      There's less time to watch the emplacements with a missle on the way. Keeping his profile low to place his back, rather than the kid, in harm's way, he hurriedly begins crouch-walking his way out of the line of fire, keeping an ear out for more approaching hostiles. "Move, dammit," he hoarsely commands. "Move!"
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Deploy Gates     Mack is calling in what they have. There's direction from Tony Stark. Arthur raises a new broom -- one that looks more like a rifle -- and calculates in his mind. Ignore everything but the locations, and maybe the wind. Think, think... Fire. Lime-green bolts blast out of the rifle's end, arcing high like an artillery shot, before landing as close as Arthur can get to the evacuation points being sent to him. Shot blind, he can't stop them from landing in inopportune spots, but this pseudo-orbital-drop is the best he can do right now! >Arthur: Captchalogue TALISMAN.     "Yeah bro!" He calls out, already mustering new Gates. "I got my own ass covered. Lookin' like it's 'everywhere' needin' cover. But these assholes don't got aerial cover, so I can hit the skies and work from there." Arthur does not, it seems, know the current situation vis-a-vis dangers and their sources. Too bad! He's blasting off. >Arthur: Plant them where things are broken, and model it off of the restoration that someone else made over there!     His PUNCHCARD ALCHEMY machines are floating around him like mechanical Bits for some strange mecha, already trying to use a series of west/south/north elemental associations to craft up fresh varieties of the wards to plant as Tamamo instructed, and using his senses and geometric thought-patterns to find the exact right spots to plant them, rocketing from spot to spot with his broom and blasting them down with gravitational impacts.     Here's hoping that whoever is addressing the matter of the operators that Arthur hasn't noticed yet can manage them before they intercept him.
Tony Stark	BASTION: This was what the AI was created for. Cut free from the constraints or needs or even nature of a 'social AI', Bastion was a ground-up full spectrum strategic defense and tactical AI without the bells and whistles of something for civilian use. He had no control over thermostats that weren't necessary for pilot medical assistance, no weather data that wasn't relevant for ballistics, no algorithms for determining the best places to get a drink or meet interesting people. Bastion was the first child that Tony Stark had created from the Sangvis Ferri core he had acquired long ago, a warrior-son who would keep the world safe alongside him... or in his absence. Tony, both because of his skill and hubris, thought that he could bring to heel that code with his own hands and create something beyond the learning computer power of the early 2000's. In computer time, forks of Bastion's AI consciousness controlled individual segments of the Stark White Prime Armor, observed atmospheric data, and made best-fit analysis of the battle going on. Largely silent unless spoken to, the AI spent those cycles ensuring that there would be no force greater on the battlefield than Iron Man. An atmospheric disturbance rippled through space. In thousandths of a second, the AI determined the path and velocity of the object, determined it to be a credible threat, and began to advise the suit operator -- 'his father' -- that evasion was necessary. But his father, brilliant for a carbon-based life form, still did not react in the same way as an onboard AI could. As decimal places races towards a full integer-- Bastion adjusts the flight profile of the Stark White, dropping power output by a few fractions of a percent in the left thruster array, a breastplate piece adjusting over the main central reactor as-- STARK: Evade. Evade. Evade. plays in Tony's ear. Swinging wide, the talented pilot feels his suit respond, but with the deadtime between neurons firing from even that simple alert when it was given and the active window for evasion -- cut short by a lack of line-of-sight target acquisition -- Tony just gets shot. What should be an instantly-coring attack, however, smashes into the right upper chestpiece, some of the hardest and most shielded parts of the Model Prime, and shatters metal and crackling shields in one blow, sending the Stark White spiralling out of the sky. Dead stick, Tony... BASTION: Once more intervening, the AI flares the left flight array-- TONY: Miraculously recovering from what should be, unironically, a one-and-done anti-armor shot to the core, the Stark White halts just above the rampaging crowds and immediately bids for hard bulding cover in the terraces of the residential area. "Son of a bitch..." He gasps. "Internal bleeding detected. Suggesting evacuation of this area." Bastion drones, as Tony chuckles. "And leave everyone else with this dance card? No way. Everyone: we've got some tactical operators operating tactically all bloody over. Some coordinating anti-armor sniper position in the boonies, three-plus klicks into nowhere, and at least two more full teams of balaclava boys and girls pulling shit. I've got the audio logs already. Arthur, if you can get to these coordinates--" Bastion starts sending Arthur coordinates as a best-guess from where Tony Ate Shit from. "--Really really fast you may catch the ringleader. James, Maya, if you see anyone looking not-local directing people, firing on you, or operating at all, take them alive if you can. Tamamo, Mack, I called it wrong: It's not the Antegent. The TOOTs probably sabotaged the wards to make it look like an accident. Use the alphabet boy's code to tag into the channel."
Lilian Rook	Firing his gates into the townscape, though some of them land on rooftops or awkwardly inaccessible bits of architecture, Arthur benefits from the fact that none of the mob seem intent on going through them, blocking access to them, or paying much attention to them at all. Noticing them seems to be the exclusive purview of those who are still obeying the broadcast, but only if they're extremely close; they, after all, have no means of seeing even the most elaborate glowing green spirographs, given their own makeshift blindfolds. The street cleared by Tina and Maya is easily the most opportune place to put a main gate, easily able to funnel out people from that held intersection.     Up in the air, he's in prime position to be targeted like Tony was. Bastion's damage diagnostics piecing together a ballistic profile tell him right away that what came at him far exceeds what should be man-usable, never mind man-portable, in any sense. No amount of brilliant design can deal with the fact that the net physical forces are just plain unsurvivable to be on the operating end of unless you're sitting in a connected chair, and there certainly isn't a matching physical profile to anything that large and stationary.     Radio: "Positive hit on Iron Gold. Confirming structural damage. Target still operational. --- reactive countermeasures. Need to swap ---." "Matching visual on Nova Green, up 130 meters at --- ." "No line. Need twenty seconds to recharge before firing. Keep him there." "How? Profile has --- ability. It's not like we can --- " "Plan gamma green then. He won't react to this one."     "Delegating responsibility for Iron Gold to team Sigma. Now that we've taken a shot, we *cannot* under any circumstances allow Iron Gold to leave. The damage profile alone is too much brass on the floor. Repeat, prevent Iron Gold exfiltration at --- all costs." "Alpha one! Picked up --- spatial --- all over! They've put up an evacuation plan!" "Doesn't matter. Civilians evading MM vector aren't going to be able to --- evidence. Keep it clean and keep your eye on the prize."     He has those twenty seconds, plus two more, before an identical shot comes at him, from three hundred meters away from the first, orbiting towards the western direction. There's no real cover out there, but then nobody can use their eyes from the air. They're exploiting that. Even if he's late to get to the first place, he'll be quickly reacquired. If he can survive being fired on by that weapon, and is quick on the gate trigger, he might just get there.     Until then, his program of seeding Tamamo's wards goes well. It should, after all. She'd literally been here in person, and asked the Pendragon specialist to show her exactly how it's done. As he approaches the outer boundaries at the west, he comes under fire from the automatic weapons in those directions as well. No citizens of Caelton had fled that way, but it seems they've been compromised in the exact same way. They don't target any of his talismans, but they do spray the air with a good quantity of lead, and menace him with a pair of tracking missiles. Missiles that really shouldn't track him. Which don't explode when they get into mere proximity like they should.     Radio: "Shit, I'm reading --- western edge. Reconstructing the border. All three of them." "New ETA?" "They might have the whole area re-done in five minutes at this pace. Get them *now*." "Acknowledged. Moving in on Sol Gold as we speak." "Have visual on Fatal Black. Firing . . . No joy. Location doesn't --- but I'm out of her ability range. Moving to--" "Repeat Kappa five." "--compromised--Black--on me--backup!--" "Sigma?" "Nothing. Confirming Fatal Black at picket line. First and second wave of Beast-class Intruders is down, now engaging two Spirit-class pack leaders closing in." "Confirm, Kappa. Kappa. Kappa come in." "God fucking dammit." "On Sol Gold now." "Confirming within range of Knight White."
Tony Stark	BIG WHITE AND RUSTY: With Bastion pre-occupied entirely making sure Tony doesn't get pasted by an enormous fuckmothering rifle straight to his no-no reactor, the primary processing power of the Big White is... An Iron Legion drone. The missile, built to handle large armored targets and clusters of smaller, stationary threats arcs up and then descends to explode violently and rain shrapnel down across the domed head and broad shoulders of the Big White's enormous frame. The Big White, built to handle threats on the scale a few notches higher than 'advanced tactical missile', largely doesn't react. "Please Step Back From Danger Area." The massive monster-robot announces stutteringly as it levels both palm blasters and starts backstepping in time with James' retreat, hosing down emplacements with beam fire and clearing his way with sheer girth when that fails. The entire area is filled with plentiful sound as the thunking footfalls and pauses to crouch and absorb chatters of automatic turret operation. "Do Not Panic. The Aven-Aven-Aven--We are Here to Help." drones Big White as it does its level best to absorb every bit of attention and weapons fire to cover James' retreat, bringing up his rear a few paces behind like a loyal if enormous guard dog. That's nearly a story tall and made out of dozens of tons of armor plate. So, it's a *really good* guard dog.
Mack	"Something without a psychic signature headed your way, Gawain," Mack subvocalizes in a whisper. Focus. Focus. Focus... The rhythmic thumping Mack is hearing in his head is a different kind of tone to the dull sound of fists, pipes, and what-have-you impacting a field of force. It's his heart beating in his ears, a sound almost foreign, the vital organ reinforced by esoteric technology and left stronger than the pitiful flesh that it gives life. His concentration wanes as thoughts of worry for the family creep in, and thoughts of concern for the afflicted. How is he going to stop them without killing them all? Someone else must have a solution. He doesn't. Not yet. Maybe Tony -- Tony delivers some not-so-great news. A flash of anger and a pang of alarm rips his near-trance apart at the seams, scattering it to the winds. His shield deforms visibly under the impacts, now, battered inward like plastic packaging instead of the bulletproof wall he normally erects. Mack lifts his head, straightens his stance and backpedals to the door, half-turning to speak into the interior: "I'm going to get you out of here. Hold onto one another. You might feel a weird pressure; that's just me, alright? Deep breaths and calming thoughts, now." Mack steps back towards the door. He raises his eyes to look at the others -- and then the glowing amber rings of his optics turn on, as if he'd suddenly been able to see. He gasps. "I can see! I can see!" He cannot see. Mack triggered the visual indication of his bionic eyes through software trickery, not by actually activating the hardware. It's the same kind of trick laser-wielding gunfighters back on his world use all the time: laser guns don't actually make any noise, but they have some kind of speaker to mimic what the user expects to hear nonetheless, so learning to disable that is a pretty basic survival tool for the stealth-conscious. Nevertheless, the telekinetic field collapses. Mack takes a steadying breath -- and then a stronger, more compact one wraps around the four people in the building, yanking them harmlessly through the front door, and propelling them up to the nearest rooftop that he can register a spatial distortion from. An exit. It leaves him vulnerable to being jumped. He doesn't *think* there's anything to worry about -- but he doesn't know if that weird blank spot has friends.
Lilian Rook	With the Iron Legion at the south end, a hole punched in the auto-perimeter, and James Bond hauling ass, his voice carries over the absence of gunfire in the immediate area after the missile's explosion fades away, and seems to stir up activity all amongst the rocks. Hurried panting and panicked yelling ripples throughout dozens of hiding places, and soon he has a hundred civilians at his back, sprinting across the boggy flats as hard as they can, pursued at high speed by those affected by whatever 'MM vector' means.     Radio: "Shots fired from Crown Black. Status?" "I'm fine. I'm well outside his effective firing range. But he landed a few near me. Zeroed my position. Relocating." "Negative. MM mechanicals on the south side are *down*, I repeat *down*. Paint Iron Gold 2 for support." "Still can't with that radiant effect on it. Do something about it." "Not possible at this time. Let him through. Readjusting the Tuner. Sending third wave of Intruders your way. The runners should meet up with them in forty-five. Confirm again, it's *just* Crown Black and civvies?" "Negative, Iron Gold 2 is moving to cover." "Thirty-odd Beast-class circling around. On open ground ---" "Offsite team, pull in that Giant-class *now*. Fatal Black is holding the north picket. Can't --- support south."     Bond makes it past no man's land. He makes it past the line where multiple turrets have overlapping views of each other, as the giant Iron Legion drone hoses them down with wasting, steel-melting fire. Its armour is a more than effective bulwark against the sprays of bullets, and a second missile, before that emplacement, too, cooks off.     It's that dissonant, whooping keening sound in the distance, as he moves past the broken wards, that is now cause for concern. It'd been audible from a distance at the north end, but he can hear it circling south. Loud, irregular, loping footfalls. A loud, horrible, electric-like screech. Light stabs even through his closed eyelids, off-green-blue-white, and the ground vomits itself inside out beneath him. Red hot dirt and flecks of melted rock shower down on him from all over. He can't see the attack; just the way the ground is churned up in crazy grid-lines of narrowly vapourized trenches. Sonar pings a herd of blurry shapes, each the size of a car, swerving out in front of him at five hundred meters. There's no cover but the suit.     For now, at least, it seems to be occupying attention. More discordant shrieking assails Bond's eardrums, and causes survivors to wail in panic and audial agony somewhere behind him, but the wave of eerie lights that next lands near him is a popping, crackling hailstorm against the big white bulk of the remote controlled suit. Squiggly trails of retina-searing vectors that flash like pinpoint stars.     *Now* is when Bastion can ping the big exoenergy. Lots of it. A small stampede of signatures moving at high speed to cut off Bond. Obviously not even slightly human. Evidently, by the radio, not really under human control either. Baited out. Lead on. If they tear through his drone with more sustained energy fire, at least before he can cover the survivors to one of Arthur's gates, they'll plough right into the escapees and begin slaughtering them freely. Then, from there, they'll rush into town. Their movement pattern is consistent with pursuing the closest human targets, followed by the highest concentration.
Gawain	Gawain, as he realizes people are still sane inside, is going to move to save them. Mack gives a warning. Incoming. Gawain stands up on the roof. Nothing to track. He calls out anyways. "Talk to me! You think I'll let you get away with what you've done here?! You're wrong. Face me! And if you want light..." Gawain summons his sword and traces it in a circle around him, partially activating his Noble Phantasm. He points it up, as an artificial sun comes into existence, the miniature sun giving him full power... And alerting Everyone of his presence. Even those who can't see can feel the heat. Arthur and Tony get solar radiation signals. "Face my wrath!"
Lilian Rook	Reiterating that Tamamo had already been here and asked for demonstration on how to do this one precise thing, her progress in shoring up the ward-line is swift and efficient. In the eastern direction, there are no signs of Antegent tresspass, nor human saboteurs lurking in the shadows. Moving quickly from point to point, she makes steady progress towards the north side, currently the one left untouched by allied forces. Or so it would likely seem to everyone but her right now.     Those awful, gratingly alien sounds grow harsher on her sensitive ears as she approaches, but there's nothing to be done about that. Little points of light pop faintly against the blackness of her blinded vision, showing her roughly where the horizon is by the fuzzy streaks of 'having stared at a ceiling light' that cross her lack of sight. Her sharp nose picks up plenty of blood in this direction, though all of it reeks with the lukewarm acerbic bitterness of fluids inhuman. She almost stumbles over a severed, jointless limb, almost jellylike, and tipped with a still-winking point of that unpleasantly coloured light.     There are sounds of a pitched battle here. They hadn't been much audible at a distance, because someone has selected for the quitest of them possible. No blasts of magic or strobes of muzzle flash in the dark. The pounding of feet and whoosh of rapid movement easily drown in the frenzied churning of scores of limbs in the dirt, and the wet chop and splattering gush of rent flesh and broken cartlige comes too late to target by.     Radio: "Confirming all of Kappa unit in critical condition." "Find out *how*." "Fatal Black hasn't left picket line. Giant-class inbound." "Knight White, Tarot Teal, newly designated Freedom Blue and Glass Grey are all accounted for." "No fire from Iron Gold or Nova Green." "Intruder crossfire, maybe?" "Tuner has moved south. Intruder fork B is in pursuit of Crown Black. Kappa is way outside of his firing range too." "Check the fucking monitors Beta." "Still nothing! They're avoiding using magic so we can't get a fix on them. Whatever spell it is, they aren't the source." "Fucking natives probably set it up." "Pendragons?" "They won't use traps." "Clear. I'm moving in on Sol Gold."     It's right about that time that a bolt of ice cold numbing lightning strikes at Tamamo from behind. The kind simultaneous with its sound, rather than a flash then roll of thunder. It has no magical signature to give off, though neither is it ostensibly lethal. It causes all feeling and coordination to completely disappear from the region hit, and furthermore, all movement of magical energies through that region as well. Straight to center mass would more or less be total paralysis below the neck, and no use of non-sensory magic at all.     Only after that, does she hear an individual coming up on her. She can't smell him at all, and can only hear a footfall every thirty feet or so.
Tina Natsumi	The people like the false angel's eyes. They don't like that Tina's visibly not seeing things. She will have to remember that even as there's a short respite from the swarm of people, although her attention shifts elsewhere once Tony reports on the existence of tactical operatives. <<"Tac ops? You mean like... Ah, shit. That'll make things more complicated, but at least it gives us someone else to watch out for. I've got my eyes...">> Wait. That phrase doesn't work here. <<"... Ears open.">> Close enough. Pulling out isn't an option for Tina just yet, though, especially with Arthur bringing up the possibility of more injured and more ringleaders along with Mack actively working towards securing those yet to be affected by the strange light/sight-based phenomena.  But how's she supposed to keep attention off the potential evac point when she knows there's going to be people targeting said evac point? More attempts at diversions, clearly. Tina dismisses that first illusion of the eyes-open wheel angel, already starting to picture a new one in her head that might be a little more convincing and infuriating to the addled populace: a whole squad of blindfold-wearing angels (conventional/modern). They're still just as flat and overly bright light like the one from before, but the blindfolds are rather conspicuous, and  they're all headed towards the northwest in a fan-like pattern. Hearing Gawain's proclamation gives her more ideas. She vocalizes a few 'ahs' into her hand to make sure her voice is ready for some yelling, then... "... Good plan, big guy! Keep 'em busy, then meet up with us later! They won't expect us to pull out from all the way out there!" Tina shouts back towards Gawain, even going as far as starting to head further westwards, albeit at an incredibly slow pace as she makes a show of ducking behind cover and (presumably) watching out for incoming danger. It does mean making her own task of getting back to the real evac point harder, but that's precisely why she's taking it so slow in moving westwards at all.
Maya	Arthur comes in and seems to be making good use of the street sweeping that she and Tina did. Good people are getting out or at least contained, till they can be assessed it's quite the madhouse. Maya's going to start trying to survey the area now are there more packs that need her to disable them. She'll start searching for ones that are trying to break into places at the moment. Then come the thundering words and tone of Gawain. She knows that sort of tone well and is going to brace herself for what's about to come. She was almost going to add to the challenge issued until Tina put her plan into action. "Aye got it, Sir Knight, they will never know what hit them." She like Tina then makes a move to try and get into a post to watch for more inbound trouble and hopefully make it a double ambush.
Lilian Rook	Mack, performing his grand deception, is so successful --for moments-- that his ploy of moving the family up to the roof goes apparently unnoticed. To their credit, all of them manage to remain completely quiet whilst he lifts them, and begin clambering to the neighbour's roof, and so on from there.     Instead of being tackled, however, Mack finds the mob press up to him, and *embrace* him. He hears gentle voices in his ears. Hands on his face. "Let him in." they say. "Don't fight." "He'll save you." "We can all be safe together." "When the sun rises, we'll all go." "He'll show us the way."     "The man in the moon."     Gawain has to bellow his challenge to the darkness. Though the light of his sword shines so hotly and fiercely that it drives the crowd back on its own, recoiling in hate, screaming in belligerence, it is invisible to him in every sense but its heat. A void above himself, in the dreary and vague world before his eyes, that he just has to trust is filled with a miniature sun.     A pair of gunshots. Nothing like the building-busting firepower that'd been leveled at Tony, then Arthur, but still faster than the sound behind them, and the muzzle flash ahead of them is invisible. Both are aimed at his face. Pistol calibre. Quiet. Absolutely not capable of blinding him. But perfectly capable of breaking his visor, and making him flinch. That alone is far more deadly than a proper weapon. It forces him to fight against his every combat instinct not to react to it in a way that will let the light into his head. He can hear the shots from down on the street. Practically next to Maya, yet he can't read any person in that space.     Tina, down on the street, can hear the shots behind her too. The mob filling the street over has successfully been convinced to chase her next batch of illusions, though they'll quickly be finished with those unless she can make them move faster. Should she just keep running away, this is the end of it. Should she flinch, pause, reflexively look back, or intentionally stop to help Gawain, there's a quiet *fwip fwip* and a pair of steel-tipped darts seek her soft flesh, loaded with obscene amounts of barely human safe tranquilizing agents. Six more are fired into Maya's back.     Radio: "Have Freedom Blue and Tarot Teal on lock." "Pick one and pull out. No guarantee Knight White --- Just need one to ascertain how they ---" "They're responding to us too well. Significant risk of intelligence compromise. Enemy may have access to plan of attack. Scenario may be rehearsed. Execute current tactical step then scramble."
Arthur Lowell	>==>     Swerving and darting about, Arthur takes a spray or two of lead, but can blindly spam his dodges and maneuvers without sight. As long as he focuses on the positions, which he can keep crystal-clear in his mind...     Arthur's called. Get to the ringleader *fast*?! >Arthur: Take a shot     Arthur can't take a shot because he just *took* a shot. Namely, while rolling with the impact of one of those missiles, he takes takes a shot to the midsection. This is the anti-armor shot, the Freedom Delivery System, the railgun-equivalent or whatever it may be, likely designed to down a target armored more than Arthur is or ever will be. It blows a thin, clean line straight through his chest and comes out the other side. Only a fraction is taken off of his HEALTH VIAL, but what remains in it suddenly goes a weird pitch-black as the instant-death damage just takes him out.     Arthur spirals and slams into the ground on the boundary outskirts, limply bouncing once in the dirt, unambiguously dead.     If you're particularly attuned, you might hear a clock ticking somewhere. And if you were particularly prone to anthropomorphizing timepieces and their totally regular function, one might even feel as though its ticking were somehow rushed at its maximum speed.     TICK     TOCK     TICK     TOCK     TICK     ...     CHIME!
James Bond	On assignment, Bond is usually checked out, in survival mode, a cold blooded killer. He is usually tasked with gathering information, investigating, lying in wait, striking a handful of very specific targets, and leaving, before anyone else can figure out what happened. Certainly, it doesn't always go that smoothly. But this is different than anything he's ever had to do.      He'd thought that perhaps a handful of other civilians might have made it past the emplacements. He hadn't expected a stampede of them to follow in his wake. As the keening picks up, grows more distant, he begins to feel something.      As red-hot rocks pierce his dark blue fatigues, his legs give, momentarily, his body falling in a protective heap over the child's tiny, unconscious form, arms scooping up pre-emptively, elbows cut and burnt by the sudden eruption. He wanted to know, wondered, in the back of his mind, what it would be like to protect something worth protecting, instead of surgically cutting strings to proactively eliminate perceived threats. This is what that looks like. It's difficult. It's harrowing. It frays at the nerves, even as his shut eyes squeeze tighter in vain.      "Keep your eyes shut," he sluggishly shouts, as he forces himself back to his feet, hefting his charge once more over his shoulder as singed skin screams in protest. "Stay down and close to us, but keep moving!" Is that the right decsions? Should he have told them to disperse? To stand up and keep running, full tilt? He will agonize over it, later; with his current means of 'vision' it's near impossible to know at present. The panic, the uncertainty, is beaten back, for now.      His watch is adjusted. The increments on the case, just below the bezels, open to reveal five small ports. From these ports, a small flurry of micro-rockets, rated for light vehicles, is fired in a protective arc around the outer perimeter of the sounds of screaming. It won't be nearly enough, for what he hears. For the blurry shapes appearing on his sonar.      "Keep quiet! Call out if one's on you!" Is that going to work? He has no idea. He doesn't interface with These People, he avoids them, by necessity.      Bond staggers through the crowd, having ordered them to stay down and move towards the town. He's attempting to save the most possible by making use of his sonar (and however successfully, to get the civilians to aid in this). There's no time for fancy shooting, and the handgun's ammo is limited. Two pops per target, center of mass.      If that isn't enough, and he has a dangerous feeling it won't be... he's certainly strong enough to keep the MP5 steady one-handed, flicking the safety back off with his thumb and holstering the handgun in the slot at his thigh. <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "Civilians on me. Lots. Need an exfil route."     The source had said to get here in ten minutes or don't bother coming. That man-made warpgate is assuredly out of juice by now, as far out as the southern killzone was. So while he's assuredly herding them all towards the town at this point, it's all instinct--he has no idea where he's going to lead them, once they arrive.
Gawain	The proclamation is made. The battle begins. Two shots to the face. It's a killshot, if it succeeds in making Gawain open his eyes. It'd be so easy to open his eyes. Proper reaction, right? Instinct. But then he dies. That wouldn't be too bad. He's had a long run. But it'd be failing Caelton. Failing another golden city in the making. Failing the knighthood. Failing himself and his own wants and dreams. The visor shatters, but the knight moves, roaring in anger. His eyes are closed shut, as he moves at max speed. Practically too fast to perceive in the sunlight, blurring. "Your Letter Agency fucked up. And now...this is war." Gawain is battling a ghost. He can't perceive them in any way. He can't even be sure he will get feedback. The sword cleaves at the space next to Maya, radiating golden light. He's executing the target, right here, right now, if fortune favors him.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Go ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |                KING BROOM SYSTEM                |                          | |              SETTINGS AND FUNCTION              |                          | |                                                 | [ ] POSITRON THRUST      | |                                                 |                          | |                     ,gM00@M~'                   | ------------------------ | |                  _g000~                         |                          | |                 p000'                           | [ ] PURGE TO NEXT        | |                p00P                             |     ROCKET STAGE         | |        _f     j00F        _pg00000&g_           |                          | |       _#      000       p000000000000&,         | ------------------------ | |       0f      008      0000@~`     ~M00&        |                          | |      j0      j00f     000~            ~M&       | [ ] BLACK PROTOCOL       | |      00      J00f    j0F                "&      |                          | |      00c      00f    40       __         ^Y     | ------------------------ | |      00&      #00    4f   _p00000&g       ^     |                          | |      #00       #0&   4I  g0M~~~M0000g           | THRUSTER MODES           | |       000       "00g  # #^       "0000g         |                          | |       "000,       `~@*-|ag,        "000g        | [ ] DASH                 | |        "000&,        p'l  ~0&g      ^000        | [ ] CRUISE               | |          M000&g,_,gg0' J6   M0&       00&       | [ ] CHARGE               | |           ^M000000M~   4#    #0&      400       | [ ] SPRINT               | |    `          `~`      #0     00f      00       | [ ] ESCAPE VELOCITY      | |     #,                j08     00&      00       | [ ] UNSTOPPABLE FORCE    | |      0g             _g00'     00&      08       | [ ] PLAID                | |       M0p,_      _gM000'     j00f      0        | [ ] UP A GODDAMN NOTCH   | |        "00000MM000000@       #00      j'        | [ ] LET'S DO THIS SHIT   | |          "M0000000@~        j00F      !         |                          | |               ``           p000      '          | ------------------------ | |                          _g00@                  |                          | |                        ,g000'                   | BLENDER MODES            | |                   .qgM00MP^                     |                          | |                                                 | [ ] STIR                 | |                                                 | [ ] CHOP                 | |                                                 | [ ] MIX                  | |                                                 | [ ] PUREE                | |                                                 | [ ] LIQUIFY              | |               WARP RELEASE CODES                | [ ] CRUSH ICE            | | ----------------------------------------------- | [ ] CRUSH BONES          | |   ACTIVE   |    DANGER    |      CRITICAL       | [ ] RIP/TEAR             | | ---------- | ------------ | ------------------- | [ ] ATOMIC DISASSEMBLY   | |            |              |                     | [ ] ANNIHILATION         | | ********** | ************ | ******************* | [ ] LET'S END THIS SHIT  | |            |              |                     |                          | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arthur Lowell	Here's hoping six seconds isn't too much time to get there. Because when that flash of surreal rainbow light blasts out of Arthur Lowell's corpse, it's a warning that lasts only about a quarter of a second before a streak of black, white, red, and raw gravitational violence surges straight towards Tony's designated location, screaming wildly.     Half the thrust is to get him where he needs to go as fast as possible. The other half is a shining corona flare of retro-thrusts designed to keep the ensuing impact from being too all-or-nothing lethal. He crosses the distance in speeds faster than human reaction time, kicking up enough backblast to shatter every window near his takeoff point.
Tony Stark	There's a lot of radio chatter. It sussurates in Tony's ear as his breath labors in his chest. He felt the warm stinging wetness in his chest from something - probably a rib - having punctured something else. If his suit hadn't started applying field surgery right at that point in time. Dropped low into the terraced hills of the Pendragon residential area, Tony feels like he's cut his profile. Bastion has no such relief. In a state of computational overclock, the tactical AI processes datapoints into an ever-evolving map of everything going south all at once. From the expected vector, three hundred meters displaced, another round tears through the air. There's no time to explain. Going through the motions again, performatively handing the choice to the operator, and waiting for the failing ability of neural pathways to connect and respond, reflexive or otherwise. There's no time. His life, and thus, every life everywhere, is in danger, because they are all just too slow. Tony's screen cuts and his inputs go dead. All there is, in his vision, in dim red, is simply the Bastion spin-up algorithm and the words, in cardinal: Trust Me. I have you. There's a choking gasp in Tony's throat as he sees these words, his eyes white and wide. His fingers do not move themselves. His legs work on their own. The suits were always AI-assisted, but not once before did Jarvis or Friday take over for Tony while he was in the armor. They couldn't, due to biometric overrides. Bastion did not have these things. He was cut down and clean, free from all of the shackles that slowed thought and dulled response times. Narrowing the Big White's flight profile backwards as Arthur closes on the shooter, there is a narrow passage between buildings that makes the shot-- THE SHOT: A building-tearing nightmare of a hero-killing thing, the cannon shot bursts through a retaining wall and the house behind it and, undeterred, carries on right into-- Bastion controls the Stark White at a level that is far beyond simply 'man-in-a-suit' human. The suit dances in the air in micromotions as the shot cracks across the lower chest this time -- The angle does not 'have to be perfect'. There is no doubt to the calculation. Without a break angle or an evasion corridor, all that Bastion had to work with was math, angles, and penetration theory. The railgun shot impacts at an oblique angle and deflects off the rolled lower chestplate, skidding a golden shower of sparks and defense screen failure inducing tearing as it rips past Tony's chest and into the six buildings behind him. The mere force of the deflection sends Stark White groundways with a violent flare of every flight lower flight surface just to bleed force off the hard landing. Even then, Tony lands hard, his head cracking on the inside of the suit. Even shelled in the bleeding edge of his technology, you simply Do Not Take hits like this. Doing so twice is nothing less than mathematically improbable -- never mind humanly impossible. Tony, bleeding from his temple, does not have any comment on the matter, as he is unconscious. MEANWHILE...
Tina Natsumi	There it is. There's gunshots ringing out, and they act as Tina's signalto get herself ready to fight. She leaves the illusory angels to their own devices, the winged beings flying forwards until the light magic holding them together fizzles out or the crowd just overwhelms their existence, whichever comes first. She's not too worried about that at this point. She's more worried about actually making sure Gawain and their rescuees get out safely. Good timing, too, because when she slows to a stop to shift gears, she doesn't have enough time to think about or react to the strange sounds behind her. Uncle Sam's existence is theonly thing between her and getting stabbed by the pair of darts, although one of them does get past the giant hunk of patriotic-themed metal-esque whatever the hell the Persona is made of. Even that brief stab/graze and subsequent removal of the dart has the Persona user reeling considerably, forced to rely on that Persona to stay on her feet. "I was wondering when you'd show up. The whole plan's a mess thanks to you taking so long!" She slurs in her speech somewhat as she blurts that out, doing a 180 calmly as though this, too, is part of some plan. She's also slurring in her speech a bit, but... Well. Good thing the Persona's there. She needs a moment to try and actually get a STarktech-assisted detection of whoever just shot her, and Tina keeps trying to buy herself some time with that act. It seems clever enough in her head, at least, even if it's entirely nonsense otherwise. "But we can work with this... You got that thing I sent you? Not you. Yeah, you!" She waves vaguely as if gesturing towards somebody else. If she can even manage to identify her shooter, that's when Uncle Sam flips a shotgun out from its forearm and fires off a scattershot blast of projectiles at said shooter's legs to try and bring them down. If she can't identify a shooter-y blob by then, however, she opts instead for the Persona to carry her and start running right back towards the evac point. Yes, the one that she just tried to draw attention away from. She's not dealing with these tranquilizers that well.
Mack	Once the family is safely underway towards the Gates, Mack feels his tension meter lower one, maybe one and a half notches. It is not helped whatsoever by the presence of the huge crowd pressing in on him, talking about... "The man in the moon..." Mack's tone is dreamy; ecstatic. Memories of the clan shaman leading the other mutants in his neighborhood in reverence of the Lady comes to mind. He mimicks the remembered poise and sound and motion, blending it with the desperate eagerness of the mob. He just needs to keep them off his back long enough to get clear. He turns his head skyward, though it is a useless motion with his eyes actually deactivated. He pays attention to his sensors, and to the signals coming through his comm. He hunts for weapons discharges, unusual movement patterns, audio signatures approximating that of a non-influenced actor. The only thing Mack wants more than the ability to free these people from whatever has overcome them is the chance to prevent more from getting overtaken. That's what the spike is for.
Lilian Rook	Radio: "Confirmed hit on Green Nova. Target down. No vital signs." "Finally. Move negative mass to --- Begin systematic sweep of --- on plan ---." "Understood." "Clearing Iron Gold as well. Unit 2 is up and running, but at failure tolerances." "Well done. Accelerate to stage --- " "Reporting good tone on Crown Black. Intruder wave has arrived. Vanguard down, but it's clear he doesn't have the ammo to take them on." "Move the Tuner back to the north. Sending a marksman down to your position to exterminate Crown Black if he breaks from the group." "Acknowledged." "Attack on Sol Gold engaged." "Freedom Blue and Tarot Teal in subdual procedure." "Glass Grey has succumbed to MM Vector." "Good. Now we can get around to clearing up Iron Gold, Knight White, and Fatal Black. Transition to step two emergency elimination procedures, then start mopping up. Move in on the line; we have numeric superiority." "Charging complete in five, four--"     That tactical advantage is celebrated for an extremely short time. A lot of things happen at once.     Radio: "NEGATIVE! NEGATIVE! NOVA GREEN VITAL SIGNS RESUMED! CLOSING IN ON YOUR POSITION OMEGA ONE! BREAK OFF!"     It's far too late for that. Arthur's descent shockwave flattens the ground wide enough for a softball diamond, bending sickly trees in half with the blast of wind. He pings a human shape being physically hurled hard away from him, hitting a tree at a backbreaking angle, but managing to sluggishly action roll from the landing. He pings the shape of an enormous weapon in its arms, and up close, he can feel a *spatial distortion* involved. Any configuration of broom bludgeoning and graviton blasting at this range is enough to put his target down in incredibly short order however. Without eyesight, it's hard to tell, but he should be pretty sure he hit a lot of metal bodyparts before the shooter tapped out. There are wires connecting his chest to the weapon.     Radio: "Knight White is-- FUCK!!!---"     The operative on Gawain has even less time to act. Tina takes him out at the knees; he can't run. Gawain feels something collide with his face, and something splash over him head on, around the moment he hears the gunshot, but the space of time is just too small for anything to stop him. Galatine crashes down on the street. Sunfire follows him. The adjacent empty houses across the street are slashed through, and slump over like candles melted through with red hot wire. Though it isn't fast enough to help Maya or Tina, the obliteration of his chosen target is essentially instantaneous. There'll be no chance to recover anything that might have explained how he moved around like that, but the threat is gone, and the intersection is safe, now rigged up with Arthur's gates and cordoned off from further mobs.
Tamamo	Tamamo recalls the 'alphabet man,' though she had not, personally, met him. She'd instead looked through his papers, learning what they had learned of her. Tony said to use the decryption key. She knows what the term means, more or less, but she hasn't the faintest idea how to use it, and he sounds rather too busy to ask. As if he were just struck, even. It's concerning.     Concerning like nearly tripping over a piece of a monster, which carries two points of worry. First, it gives the presence of monsters. Second, it underscores her own blindness. Though she'd already known she was approaching a combat zone, the reminder is enough to get her to pause and focus her scrying on herself, passing a few gestures and talismans to ensure her immediate defense. Blessings of fortune, healing, fortitude against curses, rot, disease, and clumsiness -- her efforts, in this area of expertise, are thorough. Something like 'constantly looking into the future' is largely impractical, but any sort of lasting harm ripples backward in the fabric of Fate, and she can feel for the texture of those threads, thus avoiding the first step in the direction of a trap.     'Lasting' is an operable word, in this case. Purely nonlethal harm by someone intent on leaving her alive doesn't begin to qualify. The bolt strikes her, penetrating her defenses, feeling disappears, and she stumbles to the ground--     Or not, as Tamamo is unable to stumble. Her invulnerable defense against clumsiness makes that impossible. The only possible timeline is one in which, half-turned mid-gesture, she is struck on the arm, and so, that is what happens.     Having already been struck, finding the connection back to that close-by opponent, the threads that connect from her numbed arm to 'something else,' shouldn't be difficult at all. Being the injured party provides the perfect vector for a curse, one that takes and reflects the same harm and animosity. The low words she speaks, nigh inaudible, and the soft glow in the eyes of her mask, are enough to trigger it. Though she chooses to speak of it less often, this, too, is an area of expertise. Lightning reverses, though hers does carry that clear, magical signature. It probably won't hurt too much, lacking that murderous intent, but the coldness of a professional never made a wound any less harmful.     After that, the mask falls from her face. One-handed, she slips on the glasses she'd taken from Tony, and goes to have a look, such as she can, at whoever it was. She can find just what manner of thing struck her, and cure its effects, along the way.
Tony Stark	Big White is overwhelmed not by interception fire -- something it is uniquely designed to Fucking Ignore, missiles and all, a completely immovable barricade for solo walking at absurd gunforts and laughing. The strongest armor, the toughest shields, and every point defense trick in the book to say a firm and resolute 'No. In Fact: Fuck No.' to such things as conventional weaponry. The local variety of 'conventional' though was a bit spicier than normal, built to tear the asses of things that defy logic, magic, and science to smithereens, and it had been worn down simply by attrition. And, of course: a whole swarm of Antegent are not 'Conventional Weaponry'. "Please Evacuate In An Or-or-orderly fashion." The Legion unit announces, backstepping ponderously and laboredly over damaged limbs as it attempts to cover the tide of civilians. In every single one of these circumstances, the exact last thing you want to hear is the very next thing vocalized by the lesser VI: "Help Is On The Way" Long moments pass in the new No-Man's-Land as the Antegent forms race forward, some deterred by James' determined defense. But this -- this is something that has exoenergy within it. The Antegent are known. The aerial caddy that had deployed the enormous Sigma Heavy armor begins spitting precision-guided missiles that send up thunderous explosions as the hovering platform begins to fall apart and detach into components. All around the civilians, Antegent forms are crushed by falling bits of the spent caddy used as metal fists if nothing else. The main unit - what carried the whole thing down from space, shifts back towards where everyone came in and like some egregious, absurd grabbycopter... It lifts the man-made warpgate, long-since de-activated, and starts moving it. "Please Remain Calm. Help Is On-on-on the way." The Legion VI repeats, determined-for-a-drone at every sound to direct guttering beam emitters at Antegent for more attention. Near James, the large suit opens at the back and the VI, 'naked' and skeletal compared to a full Iron Man suit, drops to the ground, its single cut-down RT not necessary for the operation of Big White. It approaches James Bond and, with deliberance... Punches itself in its blue chest with a tearing sound, tears out its own 'heart' and, wordlessly, jams the still-warm reactor against his chest before falling over. Without a 'pilot', the Big White still carries forward, lurching and unbalanced internally as it marches into certain tearing death, overloading all its reactor cores just to draw more attention. The sky caddy lowers the man-made but unpowered warpgate right into that battle zone. Now James Bond is a man with a gun, a radio, and several trillion dollars of military technology pressed into his hands as the shortest path to save 'some number' of people. Any number of people. If he wanted, he could run. Leave them all here. Take the Arc Reactor, even the lesser one, back to the British Crown and ensure English superiority forever. Or he could do something else.
Maya	The enemy had laid out a very good set up all things considered. Maya has not been crippled thanks to what Tony gifted her but she's not at full form having to act like this. She hears the sound of the shots she start to shift. The Jacket she's wearing is fairly thick leather, the jacket takes one dart, she evades two more, but the next one catches her. She's not out of it but she's going to be very groggy and likely unable to maintain the focus needed to cast her magic very effectively. the fifth one hits as well but the six ends up going wide as she staggers she's looking pretty out of it now as she turns slowly trying to still react to the attacker she does catch sight of Tina and Gawain's actions which have bailed her out of further trouble. When she's less out of it she will have to think of a way to thank them later. For now she's fumbling to try and get a card from her Fate Deck which might help. "hold...on I gots something here that might help. I owe...you one." her words a bit slurred but she's might need a moment to get the spell off for herself and Tina, if Tina lets her.
Lilian Rook	Radio: "What the hell just happened! Status report *now!*" "Omega --- Kappa --- through --- down. Lost negative mass --- and null mantle." "Translocation marks are still active! They've secured an evac route!" "Where the fuck is Beta?! That's our third unit to drop off the fucking band! Find out what they're *doing!*" "How is Nova Green still up?!" "Get out of there! Enemy travel speed vastly exceeds our measurements!" "Knight White has deployed --- Retreat to safe distance of --- Approach is no longer possible!" "Acknowledge Alpha; Sol Gold is --- ability --- I--!" "We *need* Sol Gold! Get her in!" "------"     Tamamo's assailant falls over on the spot, thoroughly electrocuted. Removing her mask and putting on the spatial processing glasses handed to her by Tony, she finds a large, male figure slumped over only a few paces away from her, shrouded in the remains of some kind of mantle and cloak. Something bulky and wired is strapped to one arm, though entirely mundane zip ties spill out of an opened hard case around his waist. Left here, he's probably Antegent food.     Radio: "Reporting --- is out! Pull all units back out of range! Fall back to exterior line!" "That's it. Omega two, break concealment and take the shot on Fatal Black now before --- regroups with Sol Gold --- too close in the AO ---"     There is a tremendous, earth-ravaging impact, not too far from Tamamo. Not only does she feel the ground shape, but palpably ripple and contort, turning upwards a few degrees under her geta and leaving her on a shallow incline where there wasn't one before. The area around her is littered with the charred remains of Antegent corpses, though they were already in pieces to begin with. She has the means now to see a large number of those, strewn about the area, in places where many large impact holes are not. There is silence . . . and then the silence drags on. Clearing dust shows her the form of a much larger hulk, collapsed on its side some hundred meters away.     Radio: "The f-- no read on --- Black at all! Omega, adjust by point two. Omega? Omega two." "That doesn't make any fucking sense! Sol Gold is in the area, did ---" "We can't keep the Tuner in play now. Intruder risk is too high with half our men down and --- magic in play." "Lead the Giant-class in first, then fall back." "--Giant-class is--! Where is-- that's not possible!" "Report it *in*!" "The Giant-class we were tracking is --- consistent with --- Black Extinguisher class ability --- Way outside profile parameters!" "--- team, did you catch it?" "Negative Alpha! Still no magic at all! --- hasn't left the picket!" "Located --- unit. One hundred percent casualties but --- need evac --- same method as --- double amputation and --- "     Tamamo is abruptly tapped twice on the shoulder then grabbed around the waist. Unfortunately, this means her clothes are in contact with gore-spattered bodysuit (which her glasses cannot make out the colour of). "I knew something was up the minute I had all that light and noise in the sky, but I'd still dared hope you hadn't come with those lunatics." says Lilian. "I'd have said something, but my comm cut out as soon as I got here. If yours still works, I'd like to borrow it for a minute." There's a pause, then a soft, seething sound. "Your arm. Stay with me for now. We can talk about it after."     On Mack's end, the tactical chatter seeming to believe that he has 'succumbed to MM vector' means there is movement right past him which isn't hidden at all. Rather, a blink of intense, extremely psychic energy, that pings down the whole street and all of its corners, quick as thinking. He can hear a faint, stressed whining of servos, indicating unplanned mechanical strain, and perceive a figure moving at tremendous speed across the rooftops. The biological signature is very weak, and he smells burnt plastic and flesh. It's heading out of town towards the west waste, where most of the remaining radio chatter is now concentrated.
James Bond	Ammo's getting low. He can feel the hum of the reactor, 'see' it for the noise generated by its processes. His mind flashes back to what he'd told Kent, upon his last visit to this place. You've got to be getting tired of that. Of there always being a reason why you should have to travel across the world to kill men you've never met. You haven't meaningfully changed at all, except to double down on what you were doing before.      He could bail, now. With the reactor. He could even take it to the government of this world's England, instead of his own. Keep playing the game, the same old way.      The rules are changing. Does he want to change with them?      There's more than just the weight of the reactor, held awkwardly in his free hand. Beneath a tiny shoe. There's something on his shoulder. The MP5 is thrown to the dust.      Having just been unceremoniously ripped up, and previously, essentially powered by a car battery, this is a simple job. Both clamps have contacts still dripping with acid. He removes them, tosses them aside with thoughtless urgency. They're affixed to the reactor.      The child is the first one through. He makes sure of it. And then... the parent. Singling him out in the crowd, "This way." Grabbed by the scruff of the neck. Hurled through. A louder call.      "This way! Through the gate! Follow my voice!" He yells until his throat is hoarse, stands his ground until the pistol and the submachine gun are out of ammunition, retrieving the latter from the damp, muddy grass.      The watch is out of micro-rockets. That's fine. There's still the vault-cutter. A blue laser, unfit for combat use. It's used anyway, as a crude precision weapon, until the battery runs dry. No more laser, no more micro-rockets, no more handgun or submachine gun ammo.      Until the last living civilian is gone, he'll even resort to the knife, at risk of grievous personal injury, his shouts of rescue given quickly to roars of anger.      It isn't directed at Kent, or his people. That would be hypocritical, for all the things his work has enabled. It's directed at himself, knowing now he was capable of this all along, and chose not to, to 'keep his head down.'      Maybe, it's even directed at the world, for making him believe that 'life isn't fair' and that no one should fight to make it that way. He doesn't know. But by the end of it, he's bloodied and exhausted, staggering towards the warpgate with the last of his strength.
Tina Natsumi	Even without being able to see it, Tina can tell the shotgun to the leg worked. She'd be surprised if it didn't, all things considered, especially when she feels something blowing up nearby. She hears Gawain blowing up, too, and there's a strong temptation to just stare at the knight in disbelief, but her self-preservation instinct is stronger! Barely. Also, the tranquilizers trying to steal her consciousness probably helps. The horror of realizing she indirectly contributed to someone just not existing any longer will have to wait for later, though, as Arthur's gates are secured, leaving her to accept whatever it is that Maya's offering as support and to get onto higher-ish ground. "Good job, Gawain. Let's.. Uh. Let's get these folks brought in and out of... Out of here, yeah." She shakes her head quickly to try and steady herself, then brings out Uncle Sam's megaphone again. Through it, she starts shouting barely-coherent words of encouragement at those hurrying towards the gate to make their escape, bolstering their general movement capabilites with the power of vague AMERICAN encouragement! Also, magic. Somehow. She never understood how it worked before, and she's definitely not going to understand it now.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: STRIFE!     Back and forth, Arthur's disoriented, dazed, breathless state ends with him standing over the mysterious cyborg. "Hhhhhh..." He wheezes, hand against his chest. Just because he revived doesn't mean that chunk of his Health Vial isn't gone, a chunk corresponding to a very important segment of his torso. >Arthur: Focus. Get him to Maya and then get back to the wards.     Stumbling a little, his breath racing, he works one more Gate -- this one, immediately under the man he just disabled, trying to drop him somewhere near Maya. And then he's taking off again, deploying those wards! Gotta get that up, gotta get that up... Why is the *moon* apparently a threat here?! If there's any way he can use this magic and the geometry of the wards to guard against **the sky** more quickly, he's gotta try to do that particularly!
Lilian Rook	Radio: "What the fuck. There's-- reporting ward reformation from seven to twelve o'clock." "When and *how?*" "We don't have the ops anymore to verify --- while engaged in --- maneuvers. It could have been at ---" "This scans --- set up. Check the outside hire. Get me status on Crown Black!"     In the chaotic rush to safety on the south end, James' voice cuts through the violent crash of battle and the howl of the alien wolfpack blindly swarming to the smell of blood, carrying with a very different and timbre than the Iron Legion's warnings. The people hear him. Yelping and shouting and screaming still reaches him, with each near miss, with each explosion, with each brilliant repulsor and missile blast, but heads down, feet pounding, hearts hammering, the crowd forms up in his wake, at first on blind trust of the only voice of reason, then on instinct, and then herd mentality. He hears a call, and the report of a shotgun right after. He hears someone scream for help as one of the deranged colonists catches up from behind, but then they're dragged free by their fellows, the chaser viciously beaten. They're doing it     So he has to. Up front. He can't see what he's facing. 'Beast-class' is a low rating. They don't seem to be heavily armoured. But there are a lot of them, the terrain is awful, he has almost no cover, they can see him, and he can barely see them back.     Micro rockets turn the spearhead of the charging pack into flying clouds of gleaming lights, little points of stabbing brightness landing all around him, leaking slightly through the solid visor. The charging mass behind them staggers and breaks, curving around to both sides. Handgun rounds find soft, gelatinous flesh, causing flinches and stumbles. Blasts of automatic fire tear one down. Then a second. Streaks of killer light scorch past him and land dangerously close, fired wildly around the bulk of Big White. The close fire support --the flash of repulsor fire and even the sweep and stomp of giant limbs-- chases the aggressors off each time they make a run for him, but only for so long.     Radio: "S-still going Alpha. He --- " "Are you shitting --- not in the profile. What the fuck is he doing with civs --- on --- " "I still can't jam Iron Gold line two. The protocol on his suit is operating completely differently." "Wait-- Exfiltration gate is --- confirming new location at --- "     There's not nearly enough ammo between a PPK and an MP5 to deal with this. Bond can land his shot groupings all he likes, but he's trying to bring down creatures the size of horses, unable to clearly see them or guess at vital points, which are uniquely suicidally hellbent on killing him. An unconscious small child on his back slows his movements and prevents him from taking risky maneuvers. It feels like he's just doing enough to hold them off. Blinding, stumbling, driving them back, pinning them down for Big White to trade with, beam for countless return flashes. One dies. Two. Three. Big White has eight. But there's no way he can handle another twenty like this. It's a matter of time.     Until the orbital drop arrives. Falling debris crushes the fresh wave of bloodthirsty attackers forming out of the mists of digital grain all around him, and physically block the wave of disintegrating fire that came over them. Fresh robotic reinforcement hoses the aggressive crowd with lethal precision and vehement overkill, finally turning the open terrain to an advantage. The slim, portable, fold-up mini-warpgate spins to life the second Bond plugs in the Arc Reactor cables. The intense roar of machine versus monster almost drowns out his ragged rallying cries, but the noise in of itself is enough to spur those people on for the last sprint. As the multitudes rush past him, he feels three people form up on his back, and huddle-push him through before he can collapse.
Mack	Mack quickly downloads and skims the audio transcripts while he's faking rapture. He goes through it quickly, operating on zoned-out autopilot to make the throng of infected lay off him with the grappling and smashing. Touching, urging, sure; grabbing, holding, no. He's as clear as he's going to be. Which is why the not-at-all-hidden movement proves to be a tiny bit unwise. Psychic energy enters his sensorium. Mechanical stresses register on his augmented audials. A combination of radar, sonar, and motion detectors pick up the figure moving across the rooftops, extrapolating its position and displaying it as a definitive feeling attached to his body's proprioceptive sense while his optics are offline. Mack reaches into the deep well of his own inner strength -- Let's not worry about Mack for a second, actually. He's not here right now. The mob is pressed up around a column of clear glass in the shape of a person, and they have been the whole time, right? The strange metal man -- what strange metal man? If there was one -- and we're not saying that there was! -- he's vanished entirely from sight and mind. Nobody pays him an ounce of attention. Or, well, nobody would, were he present to pay attention to, which, as has been established, he most definitely is not. Ignore the divot in the ground, as if from liftoff. Pay no mind to the dent in the rooftop. Let your eyes slide off the metallic gleam, hanging in the air -- -- He comes from the figure's left. He was not there a moment ago. Reflexes wired to react at superhuman speeds surpass their own mechanical limits to let him get this close, this quickly. A psychic impulse to ignore, to forget, provided invisibility. The squat, ugly figure is up there with the astoundingly fast figure, an obstacle on an intercept course moving to side-swipe it like a car coming around a blind corner onto a highway. He leads with his left arm, fingers curled into gleaming claws, and the strange apparatus affixed to his forearm unfolding, unfurling -- Strike. Mack aims for center mass. The hydraulic stake driver unloads on impact, firing a spike of tungsten meant for piercing powered armor or dragon scale, backed by bionic strength and telekinetic power. He behaves like a fixed point, a telephone pole for a speeding car to wrap itself around. Mack dimly imagines folding a human around his extended arm at these speeds, and mildly regrets the almost inevitable mess. It's going to be impossible to blend in again.
Maya	Maya's still pretty dazed from what happened. She does have a somewhat concerned look at Tina, however, Arthur is on the way with the prisoner Arthur had managed to capture. She'll find him arriving with the subject. She'll pull out another fate card and starts to focus. It's fortunately she adventured with several cyborgs back in the day on her home would so she has some idea how to handle this. She'll start to cast the spells as need, The glow from the card is pink, that's right pink heals for this Junker. She should hopefully be able to keep the prisoner stable and out of danger. So they can be pumped for information.
Tony Stark	There is data, in the air, of all sorts. Bastion controlls a failing puppet whose strings are cut, one by one. An intruder knocks on the door. No-one is let in. No-one is allowed. Bastion has Control. Big White, lumbering and labored, sparking and crackling, torn in hundreds of places and missing most of its right limb through the shoulder in a part-shed mess of things that still work, things that somewhat work, and twisted scrap that uselessly hangs off of it. The entire mission was suicide at first blush. A hasty slap-together with a primary mode of sensing threats torn out just to put the biggest, loudest, heaviest gun Stark had onto the field like a slammed fist. As the civilians make it through, Bastion forks a process just to watch a number: Confirmed Allied Lifesigns (Local, Sigma Heavy): 12 Confirmed Allied Lifesigns (Local, Sigma Heavy): 11 Confirmed Allied Lifesigns (Local, Sigma Heavy): 5 Confirmed Allied Lifesigns (Local, Sigma Heavy): 1 Confirmed Allied Lifesigns (Local, Sigma Heavy): 0 The digital zero is reported back to the main processing unit. Bastion pauses. He queries another type of sensor. No allied lifesigns. A fork-process spins off to metaphorically turn sets of keys on the remaining 7 of 12 arc reactors on the Big White, the rest torn off, lost, or nonresponsive. Is he sure that there are no allied life-forms? Seismograph, medical sensor, heartbeat sensor, voice modulation detection... No. There's nobody. A sigh shared in the same thousandth of a second between operating presence, fork process, and shorn metal frame is the only herald of what happens next: Bastion finishes using the last active weapon in the operational zone, and the Big White detonates in a blue-white fireball of atomizing destruction as the power of seven power suit ultratech reactors all are pushed to criticality together. Entering this world white, the Big White leaves it as well, taking all those son of a bitch Antegent horse-maruaders with it, and washing out the area in cleansing fire.
Tamamo	"Oh, now, how could I abandon them? I am becoming fond of some of 'those lunatics.'" Tamamo's defensive enchantments are still active, and she's quite good at maintaining barriers. There are a few reasons why someone might catch her from behind, unawares, but fewer to explain how they managed to touch her body with anything approaching a casual motion. For example, they could be on the very short list of names allowed to walk through without even realizing the barrier existed.     "My Lilian," Tamamo names her, "I did recognize your work." Then, remembering that there are matters to attend to apart from their reunion, "Oh, of course." She has a radio. And a decryption key. Lilian, surely, would know how to use it, though the logs sent by Bastion might be more interesting, overall, by this point.     Her arm has yet to regain feeling, hanging limply at her side, but that's purely a temporary issue. Strange and foreign though their technology may be, restoring and realigning bodily energy is one of Tamamo's strong suits. Lilian said they could speak of that later, so she mentions something else. "No matter how one hides from the world, to act on another one must be acted upon. The tides pull the Moon, and even humans draw in the Sun. Beneath sky, sea or soil, motives cloaked in loyalty to lord or nation, the most cunning shinobi still opens himself to a return of any curse he flings. To react in equal measure is nature in motion."     Somewhere in there is the suggestion that she doesn't hold any further ill will toward her would-be kidnapper. She'd already returned any directed at her. In any case, she's not leaving the man to die, and if there's the time for it, she'll seal his equipment in a similar, though more hurried, way than she'd prevented that other Alphabet Man's secrets from being ordered to destroy themselves.
Lilian Rook	With Arthur's gate deployed in the main intersection held by three allies, directing the civilians caught in the streets out through it is a pragmatic and efficient strategy, whilst the last few holes are plugged. Assessing the ward line around Caelton geometrically, Arthur can be pretty sure his work is largely done. In fact, it seems *most* of the warding is there to shield against the celestial bodies, though completely useless unless one is within a closed perimeter. The talismans he'd slapped all over the west, with Tamamo handling the north, and the work done on the east and south, is just now closing it up. He can actually pick up the last few focal points fizzling into being and allowing power to cycle through the whole, pulsing array, while he hovers there.     Radio: "The whole thing is back up already!" "Gate signature is running again!" Do they have visuals?! Were those shitbags *sandbagging* us?!" "We're two thirds down on agents and the gate's fucked! This whole thing is FUBAR! Get back to the fucking --- and broadcast kill codes. No brass." ". . . Affirmative."     Except those kill codes are on the highly encrypted secure tactical frequency that the computer genius and his war-AI had access to fifteen minutes ago. Trivially blocked from reaching the handful of fallen agents the group has gathered. Beyond that though, a number of small explosions crack off in the night, littered throughout the no man's land outside of town.     This includes the man who is abruptly impaled on Mack's piledriver spike, unfortunately. He doesn't even hear a reaction from him; just the breaking of spine, the slosh of ejected blood, and the crunch and creak of so much hulled ceramic and alloy. After dangling like a high-speed shishkebab for a second, the body ignites, and then literally blows up, right in front of him, consumed by an intense, implanted shaped charge of some kind, quickly burning down to carbonized skeleton.     However, the sheer speed and surprise angle he'd struck with has ensured that a magnetically sealed case full of gear has flown down the street and skid to a halt up against a light post. His metal senses tell him the insides must be very complex. His psychic senses light up all around it.     Around the same time the wards are fully reinstated, the horrible white noise dies from the radio. A fizzle-pop later, and Tamamo's frequency transmits Lilian's voice. "Got a working radio, finally. Not a lot of time to explain. I've already called the line for the people who handle this. The best thing you can do now is hunker down and wait for them. Apply medical attention if you need it. You should be fine to look around now, but stay away from affected civilians."     "In an hour or so, I'd like to know how you knew to be here even though my comm shut off, I can tell you how stupid it was to come, and then after I can get you something nice for doing it, and we can talk about getting even."