Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Priscilla     By now, everyone has fully engaged in a headlong blitz into the avionics research facility, either through their own means, or straight down the main elevator after it . . . sort of disappeared, in the Maid's wake.

    In Hiromi's case, it is an all out rampage. Even a surgical strike from a crack military time would be stopped cold here, if not forced into retreat, by these unknown foes, but in this case, it's the other way around. No matter how badly she crushes and mangles them though, the mystery soldiers only grunt at best. Launching them feels like they weigh two or three times what they really should. A couple of times, a soldier she thought pretty thoroughly obliterated staggers up punch drunk behind her to resume shooting, or attack her with a kabar, while others simply fire from the ground, including one with a jagged piece of metal smashed through his bloodied visor.

    Shortly after, the reason for full face helmets is revealed, as she ploughs all the way up to the end of the intersection, and spots a suite of utterly terrified men in suits behind foot thick bulletproof glass (which those pressed to it now hurriedly stagger away from) and a bulkhead door, sindie a lovely little furnished presidential room. Every other 'fire extinguisher' nozzle in the ceiling begins spraying gas. Because this is not, somehow, a James Bond film, it is not the legendary 'knockout gas'. It's heavy and sickly yellow and rapidly blisters and melts skin. Also lungs, if breathed in. A handful more shapes --probably a secondary team-- lumber down the T section from both remaining ends, audible by the rasp of their respirators even before the red gleams of their laser sights and the sound of gunfire.

    Candy's continued disruption campaign (potentially with Featherman in tow) blinks him in just in time to see the scientists and military types Hiromi had sent running (to fetch their leaders, unbeknownst to him) in different directions from the stairs overhead. Predictably, warning sirens are blaring, and all the doors have been locked down. The plexiglass window strips around him mainly lead to engineering clean rooms, a machining shop for what actually does look like aerospace parts, server rooms, conference rooms stuffed with schematics and math, and a radio room. He can chase down either of those groups with ease, explore, or follow the rampage he can hear ongoing; Hiromi's or the Maid's.

    The Maid's is . . . something alright. The last time she'd been here, it'd been weird and concerning (someone???), but ostensibly dedicated to tidying up storm debris, and changing a ruined suburban district into something else. The level of 'terraforming' was surreal but impressive, however she'd had only rudimentary combat abilities, and had been chased off by Elites in part due to her clunky movements and frequent pauses.

    It's unfortunately possible her partner(?) that 're-tuned' her learned from that encounter that, clearly, optimal violence is vastly more important to allegedly helping than 'building nice things' is. She is a monochrome, eerily silent (when it comes to her footsteps anyways) blur down the corridors, taking ninety degree hairpin turns like nothing, and moving with an intense purpose. Where she encounters bulkheads, they're swept away with deft flourishes of the new broom. Where there are inconvenient windows in the way of a speedrun, wiping them down causes them to dissolve away. When gas shoots from the vents, she summons a hand vacuum from nowhere and somehow sucks it right out of the hallway in moments.
Priscilla     But more importantly, the constant influx of soldiers from every intersection, stairwell, and personnel elevator, is dealt with even faster. She uses the walls, rails, steps, windows, and everything from 'wet floor' signs to dustbins as impromptu parkour prompts, weaving around fire and handling the odd rifle grenade or marksman rifle with those barehanded 'parries' --hitflash and all-- sending them back. The halos fan out and provide cover from the flanks and behind her like there are eyes in the back of her head, creating shields, casting slippery floors, expulsions of what looks like toxic bleach, forcefields of cleaning tape, and firing more of those purifying beams. Stray bullets that hit her are patched up immediately with healing sparkles. Rings of light wash over her to enhance speed and strength. Where she collides head on with squads, she chains between them relentlessly, a single whack of a broom or duster sufficient to turn them into a puff of white dust particles, occasionally using a garden rake to tear apart a gun emplacement, or hurling a kitchen knife at a runner, deflecting around corners to hit would-be snipers.

    The trail ends up charging straight through a double sided, three-layered bulkhead large enough to drive a couple of jeeps through, side by side. There are, in fact, jeeps down here, at the bottom floor. As well as trucks and APCs. Endless scaffolding and massive braids of wires. Huge floodlights from a warehouse-style strutted ceiling, and stainless steel steps leading between levels. An expansive region of tarmac, dominated by crates and pallets of what mostly looks like parts and raw materials, a box-shaped command deck attached to the far wall, full of lights, mini forklifts hurriedly carrying things back and forth, hard-hatted and rubber-suited technicians (now running away as fast as they can), a forest of robot arms, mostly around huge power transformers and cable nexuses, rapidly plugging and unplugging things. And a small army of soldiers lined up for a last stand, including several clearly having hopped into their APCs and trained heavy weapons on the door.

    All of this room, all of its materials, and all of its power flow, seem to be dedicated to a machine the size of a three storey house, mostly composed of steel cylinders in concave formation, like a miniature nuclear plant as viewed from outside, bristling with antennae and skeletal masts, some still flickering with arcs of electricity, some visibly burnt, most simply darkened by Candy having cut the power. It's covered in markings, panels, stenciled names and diagrams, has multiple consoles around it, is connected to massive, bubbling water tanks and their cooling hoses, and seems thoroughly dangerous to work on. Emergency diesel generators rumble all over, but seem to be unable to bring it back online. The peak of it runs a thick conduit of segmented chrome cables through the ceiling, seemingly all the way to the surface. It is very definitely not related to avionics.
Candy      The moment that Candy and Featherman encounter those fleeing scientists and military types, he blinks away, giving a grinning two-fingered salute as the pump action rests against the opposite shoulder. He has no idea where those people are running, but he does know that there are plenty of people here to drag the people in this bunker out before their constituents and take them to task. Let them--he's going to make their work easier, make resisting them more difficult, and dismantle this place one piece at a time.

     After blowing those transformers outside, the next most obvious place is going to be their communications. Candy presses his back to the door, shotgun at the ready. One hand on the handle, he quickly pushes it open, then checks his angles, making sure no one is still in there trying to get any messages out. Blinking inside, he is quick and forceful in the application of the butt of his gun if necessary, and entirely willing to pull the trigger if forced.

     In truth, though, whatever calls for help might've been sent from this room have likely already been sent. It can still be of use in locking down the local communications, however. Once he's certain he can do so without getting shot, Candy tosses a card onto the nearest bit of free table space. When the smoke of his magic blows away, there's a box constructing itself.

     Tubes, a horn, a turntable--it's a gramophone from his world, a hand-crank model designed for consumer use. If he can figure out how to use the admittedly more modern radio equipment in here, he'll flood the local channels with some of his favorite tunes, to drown out attempts to coordinate.
Hiromi     While a natural storm of active carnage, Hiromi isn't beyond the needs of precision in motion. Every moment of slowness, whether by (unlikely) hesitation or (more likely) injury, she punishes, stomping knees when they attempt to stagger to their feet, leaping out of the limited firing angles of those still on the ground, grappling an attacker from behind by twisting around his arm and pushing him into the line of fire, and taking his knife, in the process.

    They can hit her, and in some cases she lets them, but a frame-by-frame analysis would reveal how it's only her limbs she sacrifices, every time. By the time she's stabbed the claws of one hand through the visor of one opponent, increasing her applied force as she adjusts to these more determined obstacles, she's already healed the damage to her other arm, and stolen another knife, and is using is to peel pieces of armor off her next grappling target.

    A new team appears to fight her, but they're not in the direction of her goal. Yellow gas descends, but caustic environments and a lack of breath have little immediate effect on Hiromi, even to her exposed skin. She isn't going to give either long to act on her.

    Hiromi jumps to one side of the corridor, plants her feet on the wall, and tears it to scrap with the force of her liftoff, and smashes into, and through, the foot-thick glass, taking the impact on some soldier's pilfered chest plates. The armor survives, her Shizendo having ensured that its parameters would briefly match her own. The same cannot be said for anything that stands as an obstacle.

    Absently picking bullets out of her wounds between two claw-tips, and presently ignoring that the poison that will assuredly follow in behind her, she looks at the men in suits, and affords them an excited, sharply toothy grin.

    "Among you, who wishes to live?"
Tomoyo Daidouji     Closely on the heels of the Maid as she character-actions her way through the facility with thematic powers is Tomoyo and her bodyguards. The latter have since discarded the guns Candy gave them, having run dry on ammo shooting these strange, seemingly unstoppable soldiers. Tomoyo however, carries only her camcorder, and keeps it fixed on Maid with all the focus and skill of a seasoned wartime reporter. Not a single action is missed, not a single display of incredible skill or stylish tactic.

    "Ma'am, how far do you intend to follow?" one bodyguard asks Tomoyo. The four of them have figured out a tactic on dealing with the soldiers, mangling their fingers so that even if they manage to get up somehow, their ability to actually pull the trigger of a gun is compromised. "Until the end," Tomoyo replies. "Speaking of which, it looks like we're there."

    The massive bunker, loaded with crates and wires and cables, and that giant, ominous machine. "Some kind of supercomputer? No... what on earth is it?" Abusing the zoom function of her camera, Tomoyo takes in as much detail on the device from as far back from that last stand as possible. "These crates... start opening them. Maybe their contents will clue us in." Her guards, seizing whatever tools are available, or just brute-forcing them with their batons if none are, start cracking crates to examine what they contain.
Featherman Neo Featherman Neo, down the elevator shaft, briefly following Candy, quickly splits up to start refollowing the Maid. With Featherman Engarde at his side, they rush forward, moving to try and see the Maid's target and what she'll do, because that's Featherman's goal today. Any lingering gas is avoided mercilessly, because Neo does notl expect it to be knockout gas

Right before he heads through the massive jeep-capable bulkhead, he summons some of those lockets he uses normally, puts them in the slot, and goes through the process of activating them.

SNAPSHOT

GARETH - CHIVALRY ARMOR
CANDY - NITRO GAUNTLETS

The power of Justice and the Tower flow through Featherman Neo, as a massive suit of Featherman-themed armor manifests around him, making him bigger and bulkier, with two dynamite-empowered gauntlets for fists. Once finally at that bulkhead, his first action is for Featherman Engarde to throw down another directional barrier, especially to cover Tomoyo while her guards work. The military will tear right through it with those guns, but it'll buy shouting time, and a second to look for the Maid's location.

"Stand down! Whatever this facility is, does it matter more than the lives of your fellow man, suffering in the streets over it?"

Words won't do anything, probably. His specifically will likely aggravate. But he needs to try, before he starts slinging toku blasts at people. Featherman Engarde remains behind the barrier with him, lance at the ready for the second they burst it.
Karlan Nobles As Pramanix and SilverAsh follow behind the maid's path of destruction alongside Tomoyo and her bodyguards, they're greeted with a familiar sight in her 'cleaning' everything in her path. They've seen her work in the town quite some time ago, but seeing her level it against people is a little more unnerving than expected when she just turns security personnel into literal dust.

Pramanix: "She seems more prepared than last time."
SilverAsh: "We did not witness the full extent of her power last time. She may still be holding back even now."
Pramanix: "You think so? Hm... It's a good thing we're not her enemies, then."
SilverAsh: "For now."

It certainly doesn't look like the siblings are going to stop the maid from moving deeper into the avionics facility, preoccupied as they are with seeing what's actually going on in this facility that had so many people up in arms about defending it or getting into it.

Things start to become a bit clearer, then, when they wind up in the massive bulkhead. Convinced that this isn't merely an avionics facility, they wait until she gets sufficient camera footage of the computers before getting their hands in on this stuff themselves. Just because neither of them are computer experts doesn't mean they can't try to bungle their way through the consoles, although it's more along the lines of Silverash trying to find useful information on the screens while Pramanix watches the generators for signs of fire with her bell ready for snow summoning in case she needs to stop a meltdown or something.
Priscilla     'Foot thick bulletproof glass' is about so much 'blah blah blah shut up' to Hiromi. It's maybe a novel sensation, to feel glass stretch and fray and then crack in half, rather than shattering, but that's about it. She has, probably, thirty seconds or so until the followup teams reach her. She can deal with them, but stray bullets and ricochets may kill her new friends faster than the gas, which is now crawling in across the floor.

    Now in a right panic, some of the men are climbing up on tables and chairs to get away from it, several are crowded around Hiromi, trying to yell over each other about how they only work for so and so and they're just here for such and such, 'it' is someone else's fault, and a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, while the rest are just yelling 'gas!' over and over, pointing out the window, and arguing with each other about what the fuck the emergency procedures were again, being *pretty* sure there were at least masks.

    One is smart enough to run for an emegency phone at the back. He picks it up, then freezes.

Cuando tú me besas
Me siento en el aire
Por eso cuando te veo
Comienzo a besarte
Y si te despegas
Yo me despierto
De ese rico sueño
Que me dan tus besos
Suavemente
Priscilla     Tomoyo's squad has crates right near the entrance to pry open. Sorting through the pile, they find a huge number of replacement parts for power junctions and cables, implying a tremendous amount of wear and tear, as well as freezers for compressed hydrogen and nitrogen tanks, what look like capacitor blocks straight from a power plant, electromagnets, and huge stacks of what are labelled as tritium and palladium pellets for some reason. There are environmental warning stickers all over them, registers of import from overseas, and strict warnings about how the government will end your entire career if you take it anywhere.

    The Karlan pair, however, are not free to make a run at the computers. As soon as they do, someone from the command deck grabs up a speaker to the local PA, and screams the order to fire on them so loud that one could easily imagine unsightly veins bulging. Between scores of soldiers, multiple pintle mounted machine guns, and even a couple of automatic grenade launchers, there's no way they're getting all across the tarmac.

    The Maid comes to their rescue barely in the nick of time, swiping the ground with her mop in front of them, which turns polished and bleached marble white. The floating halos blast the boundary with criss-crossing sweeps of grid lines, and the two could probably be pretty sure they saw math for a second, before a tall, shiny chrome fence, and what looks like a white concrete yard shed, shoot up in front of them. The ground under their feet now feels like rubbery astroturf with bits of silvery grass in it, smelling like scented soap. Like a copypaste from a chunk of the half-finished suburb from before.

    The Maid is hit a few times incidentally, but doesn't seem to suffer properly localized injuries, instead briefly flashing red across her whole body, and splattering blood against the barricade that fades away after a few seconds. The halos shower her in white sparkles.

    After a few seconds of pounding a lot of metal and concrete with combined fire, the intercom yells at the soldiers to stand down for a moment in the lull where most of them have to reload. The voice, from a shadow hunched over the instrumentation desk up high, is apparently replying to Featherman. "Stand down? You're telling *me* to stand down? Do you have any idea where you are, son? Do you have *any* idea, the powers you're crossing? The streets are for the coast guard. The red cross. The fucking U.N. or something. *My* job *here* is to protect state secrets as a matter of *national security*! You'll be lucky if you ever see the light of day after this! On the phone *right now*, I have the supreme general of--" The speakers screech.

Tus labios tienen
(Suave) Ese secreto
(Suave) Yo beso y beso
(Suave) Y no lo encuentro
(Suave) Un beso suave
(Suave) Es lo que anhelo
(Suave) Un beso tuyo
(Suave) Es lo que quiero
(Suave) Dámelo


    During that period of useless comms garbage, the Maid talks to Featherman. "But it does have to do with them. I understand from seeing it now. She said that this would be the cause. 'Aerospace'. Domination of the skies and beyond. I can read a shopping list when I see it; most of these items are from well outside this world. The appeal of-- what is it? Yes. 'Atmospheric pressure and ionic charge regulation for establishing aerocraft dominance'. That storm coming so far inland could only be unnatural. But to admit it, no, to participate at all, would risk outing their master's hand in everything involved. And so the house is left to decay."
Candy      Next up is whatever those big, towering racks are--with all the blinking lights. He's got no eartly clue what they might be, but people don't put that many little blinking lights on something unless you're meant to pay attention and interpret them. On his way to check that doorway, he glances towards the machining shop and scoffs.

*Well, shit. Maybe they -are- flying spaceships out of here!*

Time stops.

*There we go! Could hardly hear myself think with all the piggy alarms going off.*

    Candy strolls into the server room, status lights frozen mid-report. The coolness of the room relative to the others gives him a momentary pause. Despite the cacophony which will shortly resume--klaxons, gunfire, shouting, he might have even heard Featherman's belt callout from deeper into the facility--he's still careful to open and close the door quietly. Old habits, maybe.

    In the quiet, he calls forth a familiar tool: a bundle of dynamite, fuses entwined. A little goes a long way.

*Now, gotta do a little reading. Hopefully them papers in those rooms with the tables have the normal people words on 'em...*


Time resumes.
-Copper wire winds itself down the hallway.
-A ratcheting series of clicks.
-If anyone was on their way up, they'll have precious little time before the server racks are so much useless slag.
-The whipping around of several sheets of paper.

    Candy, having read the schematics in the conference rooms to the best of his ability, is now heading, shotgun at the ready, towards the machining shop. Do those plans he looked through give him any better idea of what's being built in there?
Featherman Neo The speakers screech before Featherman can probably make things worse. That's good. The Maid explains what's going on, as Featherman peers through the door. Instead of marching through, he hums.

"The machine needs to be wiped out. I can distract them long enough for you to erase it, without casualties of the soldiers on the ground - in exchange for an exit to safety afterwards, or else I'm as good as dead, haha!" Featherman's voice is confident, but some of it is an act. That's a LOT of guns.

And should the Maid agree, he'll have Featherman Engarde begin to charge his lance with energy. Not firing just yet, though. Hopefully, the Karlan Nobles can provide backup across the tarmac.
Hiromi     Hiromi looks from one side to the other in sharp motions, smelling the air, but not for poisons.

    "Disappointing," she announces, when no one steps forward to claim their authority, followed by a barked command, "Point to the one in charge."

    Through the wholly democratic process of counting the greatest number of fingers of blame, she'll select that person to pick up and carry elsewhere. 'Elsewhere,' immediately, means through the nearby bulkhead, which she steps forward to rip off its mounting, and toss into the opening she'd made through the bulletproof glass.

    "Nor are you in charge, yes? Of soldiers, behind. Or you'd tell them 'halt,' yes? Your 'responsibility,' explain it."

    May as well talk while trying another room. She'll find someone actually useful at some point, and it means security will have to take more time catching up.
Tomoyo Daidouji     Tomoyo, in her capacity as a tailor, is familiar with all kinds of materials. You never know what might be the next big look, or the thing that might make an outfit boost the capacities of the wearer. As such, when she sees those containers of tritium, she immediately snaps at the guard who opened the crate, "Don't touch it!" While not quite on the level of say, plutonium or uranium, it is a radioactive material, one used in the construction of nuclear weapons.

    But the pallidum is throwing her off. That is not something that goes into nukes. Usually, it's a catalyst for chemical reactions, or a component in electronics. But considering the pre-manufactured devices they pulled out, it's unlikely they're using it for that. So what is it all for?...

    Time to ask the source.

    "Excuse me!" she calls out to that figure in the window looking down at them all. "You have a lot of tritium here! Are you manufacturing nuclear weapons this close to a civilian settlement? I, personally, don't think you are, but that's the first conclusion I can make from looking at the contents of these crates. But you also have raw pallidum, which makes me think this big machine is powering or controlling some kind of large-scale reaction. That will probably sound much better than 'manufacturing nuclear arms,' so why not come out and explain?!"

    It's quite possible with the cool Spanish beats coming over the radio that he can't even hear her. But the fact that she just admitted to having recordings of this highly classified base has painted a massive target on her back.
Karlan Nobles So much for that plan. When the order to fire comes out, they split up to take cover behind whatever they can find. With the sheer level of firepower brought to bear against them, however, they're not given much time to breathe or formulate a proper plan on how to do much more beyond 'not get shot too much' as they scramble from box to pillar to easily overturned desk.

There's only so long they can keep running, however, and they find themselves boxed in when they wind up behind the same desk that's quickly getting shredded by more and more gunfire. Thankfully, the Maid arrives, and her actually-attacking everyone gives them enough time to start turning things around as they join her in actively striking back as well as providing Featherman with the cover he seeks.

Pramanix: "If it's that important to them... Yes, let's blow it up!"
SilverAsh: "For a good cause, I'm sure."
Pramanix: "... W-well, yes! That, too."
SilverAsh: "You should really start wearing a mask when you're out like this..."

A grenade lands nearby, but SilverAsh is quick enough on the draw that he flicks it up with his foot before batting it back with his sheath right back at one of the grenade launchers. Pramanix brings up an ice wall to give them some sturdier cover, then starts rolling blizzard-like weather conditions around the interior of the bulkhead. That wind whips snow around in a frenzy, buffeting the guards and their machines alike with blinding snow and brick-sized hail all while the religious head rings her bell to the beat.

SilverAsh: "... What is that music?"
Pramanix: "I kind of like it."
Priscilla     Candy may not know what a server is (besides a low wage worker at a restaurant), but blowing them up is going to prove pretty fortunate. The schematics he can scour are way beyond his level of education, but do indeed depict a lot of flight math, and what appear to be launch diagrams. Columns and orbits and trajectories. Something being fired from the ground at regular intervals, high into the sky, and carried on specific wind currents to specific places, with tables of formulas for desired 'patterns'. It definitely has to do with all the junk in what is probably a repurposed hangar room elsewhere. It's also probably very valuable in general, and implicative on its own.

    On Hiromi's end, most of the room points at the guy, ashen-faced, on the phone. It's unfortunate, in these situations, that the 'leader' looks the same as everyone else, and is roughly equally as weak. They declare that he is 'deputy chief liaison to something something air force'. He is promptly yeeted out the window, and immediately spends his time both yelling at the mystery soldiers to stop (as Hiromi intends), then to give him a mask (which they do, and gloves), and then he begins frantically pointing at the rest of the room and ordering that they arrest everyone inside for something called 'treason'.

    'Trying another room' is easiest by pretty much walking through the back wall, because there's an ~extra special~ bunker for a bald, old human, sitting at a desk full of papers and a big, locked briefcase, swearing and slamming on the phone. There's some kind of company badge on his suit. When Hiromi comes in, he at least seems to immediately realize he is well out of reach of help from security, and then asks, at least somewhat calmly, what it is exactly that she wants. He makes a suggestion at 'lots of money', which he seems to have no faith in, but settles on 'whatever you want to know' as 'primary executive of chief design' and claims that he is entirely willing to go with her if she can 'make it look good'.
Priscilla     The dude on the command deck has to pick up a separate speaker and yell through a different system --namely the tinny little speakers mounted near the doors-- to be heard over smooth Latino tropical beats. "Even if we were, little missy, that'd be the purview, prerogative, and privilege of the government in the interests of national defense! I don't have to explain anything to you! National security is national security! You will be judged! Harshly!" She can hear him slam the receiver, and then distantly see him storm out of the control room. They're probably not gonna grab him at that rate, but it's just the *freest* recording material.

    "That is agreeable." the Maid says to Featherman. "But destroying it will not be enough. I said, simply, that I am here to Purify this Corruption."

    As large as the chamber is, it's still a contained space, deep underground, that is barely ventilated, and thus works only to reflect the unleashed blizzard from its walls, swirling at intensified speed and density inside like a shaken snow globe. Visibility immediately becomes complete crap. Machinery loudly groans and pings as it contracts, freezes over, and shuts down. Flashes of dangerous rogue electricity are the main landmarks, and hollering soldiers are forced to grab on to each other and shoot almost blindly. Featherman has no trouble simply bowling them over, charging into each group, and blocking fire, especially with the grenade launcher immediately taken out.

    The Maid beelines straight forward instead, even using him as a stepping stool to launch from. Gaining the maximum height she can, she descends into the eye of the blizzard like a comet of skirts and three glowing rings, and smashes into the machine's chrome spine, running circles around its many cylinders, often horizontally along the walls, and thoroughly 'cleaning' it with sweeps of her broom, sprays of breach, the flinging of cloths and sponges, and at the end, the whine of a sander.

    Where she goes, instead of disintegrating, the apparatus blanches. The markings disappear. The writing fades away into nothing but blank space. The panels are wiped away. Even hard, mechanical details, are rendered into something almost 'low poly'. The electricity ceases arcing. The robot arms and power transforming parts are swept into bottomless dustbins. Soon, what's left is just a generic cluster of simplistic, geometric shapes, that someone couldn't even be bothered to colour in.

    There are noticeable effects. On the papers Candy is holding, large tables of instructions important diagrams of working parts are bleached right off the page. In the halls where Hiromi is, directional signs disappear off the walls. The lights turn on all at once as emergency power switches off, because all the power that was being drawn, then blown up, is simply no longer routed there, like it never was. All across the facility, 'things that make the project work', and 'things that indicate how the project was made', are simply erased from existence. Things that 'document it existed' seem to be fine, as Tomoyo's tapes attest, and the remainder of Candy's schematics. Even the command deck just stumbles back from their instrument board, now simply a white plastic slate, and begin asking each other what exactly they *do* here.

    The attempt at an escape route seems to be simple; climbing the chrome spine that links to the surface, and dusting a tunnel on the way up. How people are going to *follow* is their own problem.
Featherman Neo There's a quiet tone to Featherman's voice, before they get to work. "Of course." And then, he snaps back to reality, and charges in after the localized blizzard.

With his big dynamite fists, he charges in, punching APC turrets, smashing into soldiers, and taking a whole lot of bullets that smash into his durable armor, starting to crack it with sheer numbers. Once the Maid is done, though, he makes sure no one has died due to his actions, and starts running doofily in his dorky armor towards the upwards tunnel.

If anyone needs a lift, he offers one (1) person a ride, then he clicks his big boots together and fires off a grappling hook from his wrist. The other wrist fires a dynamite blast at the ground.

With the explosion sending him upwards like this is Team Fortress, jumpjets on his boots kicking in, and the grappling hook and his parkour knowledge working together, Featherman Engarde finally boosts up from the bottom too, sending just enough force to get Featherman Neo to the surface.

And then, once making sure his fellow partners in sabotage are safe, he's going to move to escape the site to the nearest warpgate.
Karlan Nobles The mysterious giant machine is rendered inoperable, details are scrubbed away, and those acting as its security seem to be unable to fight. Only when Pramanix can actually see that the command deck is basically useless does she stop ringing her bell, allowing the blizzard to die down. The wind stops, and whatever snow is left drifts downwards gently while the snow leopard people look upon what's left of the console-turned-basic shapes.

"Very good work, friends. It appears that our work here is done!" Pramanix announces proudly, breathing a relieved sigh moments later as she glances around at the damage. "It certainly looks much cleaner now than before, but... Wasn't it more ominous earlier?"

"You can thank our friendly maid for the cleanup." SilverAsh explains, looking up at that upwards tunnel after sliding a finger over the Maid's handywork. "Impeccable... Ah, but we should probably leave before the press arrives. They're sure to question us incessantly about things we might not even know about all this..."

He doesn't finish that statement, instead just gesturing at the machine shapes.

"Right, right, I suppose we should be going, then. Come, friends. We'll be up and out of here, so gather round!" Pramanix taps her bell against her hand as an icy platform forms beneath herself and SilverAsh, waiting for anyone else that needs a ride up to get into position before pushing them all up through the tunnel like a frozen slab of deodorant.
Candy      The information on the papers in Candy's back pocket may as well be Greek, for all that he understands them. But--there are people in this very base who will certainly understand them.

     Before he can go looking, though, there's the matter of that machining shop. If anyone with skin in this game managed to slip past the others, this level is probably where they'd head. They might try and radio for help, or else do something with those space-adventure looking boxes he blew up--or maybe try to salvage whatever they could get from this unusually spacious workshop.

     With the papers in his possession, the radio handled and the weird boxes blown, only the last part of that equation is a concern, but that's no reason to slow down. This time, no plunger--delayed fuse, ninety seconds. Individual sticks, one for each piece of heavy machinery he can get to in the time he has. A little flick-open lighter takes care of the fuses. He starts at the far end of the room, idly wondering as he works how much time and effort went into making what amounts to an underground hangar this far out in the sticks.

     When the last fuse is lit, he's out of there, and on the hunt. It's going to be harder to find the scientists he initially saw run past him, with the time that's passed. They may even have bunkered down somewhere. But there are always people who don't one-hundred-percent buy into what goes on, in these sorts of places. Be they cowards, or survivors, or realists, there is usually at least one--a straggler, hiding out, hoping that all of the chaos around them will blow over, or fade away, like a bad dream. Hoping that tomorrow, everything will be back to normal, if they can just outlast it.

     That's the person he's looking for, checking blind corners, maintenance waystations, supply closets, unused conference rooms, and break lounges on his way down. Whatever else you can say about them, it's often those people who are the most willing to play ball.

     With alarms going, chaos all around, and comms down, it's easy to get cocky, especially when you have a group of people ahead of you that cleared most of the way. Even if he's grinning from ear to ear thinking of the flustered shouting that's going on behind whatever polished table runs this place, Candy doesn't let it get to his head. Even as he looks for stragglers able to decipher those papers of his, he's meticulous--always checking lines of sight before he commits to a path, keeping his footfalls light and his gun ready, double-tapping bodies with a boot to avoid any spiteful last-breath sidearm reaches.

     The flavor might be a new one, but he's done something like this once or twice before.
Tomoyo Daidouji     The Maid cleans. It's what she does.

    Tomoyo records it all as the machine is scrubbed-no, Purified. Those etchings cleansed like cheap graffiti, those intricate connections smoothed into nothingness. By the end, all that is left is those blocks in baby toys for them to learn shapes by passing them through appropriately shaped holes. And then... the staff seem dazed and confused. Like they don't understand what they're supposed to be doing here.

    Tomoyo is not magic. But she knows magic, all too well. Immediately, she's rewinding her recordings and checking them on the little flip-out OLED screen (only the best will do). No, the footage seems fine, the big machine still shows up on it. How bizarre... oh, the Maid is leaving.

    "Ma'am, we need to go. Before these men realize we're still not supposed to be here," a guard cautions Tomoyo. She looks around, considering hijacking a forklift for a moment, before seeing Pramanix and SilverAsh on the icy platform. "Excuse us! Room for five more?"The tailor is lifted on to it first, followed by the guards clambering on. The four women in suits look very relieved that this is all over.
Hiromi Previously:

    Why is Hiromi here? To begin with, she was tracking Featherman Neo, who had escaped her at Mount Featherman. On accepting his excuse for not having yet rechallenged her, she'd gone to be distracted by -- that is, to investigate Candy and the blockade.

<J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "'City leaders,' of these. Their strength, does it lack? Your opinion, I'll hear it."
<J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "They're hiding in a bunker, and behind the soldiers, while the people they're supposed to be helping are squatting in office buildings. That don't sound strong to me, no."
<J-IC-Scene> Karlan Nobles | SilverAsh says, "Considerably. A leader must be able to maintain proper control, even in trying times such as this. If they can't even pretend to look like they have any control, or if their people have no faith in their ability to fix anything, then how can they expect anyone to follow them?"
<J-IC-Scene> Lyrically Tomoyo Daidouji says, "This town is in a similar state to the one where the Maid last made her apperance. Damaged from a natural disaster, with no real relief effort in sight. The leaders are... lacking, yes."

    Hiromi would have gone to fight the Maid, but she's been kept sufficiently busy since, and hasn't seen where that mystery creature with the definite article has gone off to. Resolving problems of leadership do take precedence over pleasurable pursuits, besides.


Now:

    "Not treason," Hiromi informs the first-class under-secretary aide to the subcomittee of the secretariat of the central defense counsel's liaison's military attache, or whoever he was. "They obeyed greater Authority, as should be." She dumps him to the side on finding a better-defended and more socially important target to focus on.

    "Is now the time for explaining? Can excuses be made? Too late, maybe. I am Hiromi," she says, and the full weight of her name is impossible to miss in all its shape of meaning, though whether it can be understood still depends on whether there is space in a mind to comprehend it.

    "Your soldiers have some strength, yet you don't 'keep order.' Sacrifices are made in war. Is this your excuse? 'To survive, we must.' Name your enemy, I'll listen. The one who moves to kill you, who is it? If none, why ignore, sacrifice, those above? This proves your failure. Blame your 'priorities,' in your broken mind."

    Hiromi isn't allowing any escape, whether physical or verbal. "Make no fool's excuse. 'Responsibility' is avoidable, only by submission. Accept it, or name your master. Care for your pack," unmistakably, one's people, extended family, and those for whom one holds obligations, and outside of whom authority is transient and questionable, at best, "or pass your authority to another. 'What do I want?'"

    Hiromi leans in close enough for her teeth to be counted. "I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to be better."
Priscilla     With the hangar room in chaos, absconding through the new hole in the ceiling is easy. It follows that spinal apparatus up and up, through layers of concrete, cooling channels, and narrow maintenance crawl spaces until it emerges into a dense forest of struts (with an already cleared 'tunnel' out), and what had at first seemed like a weather mast looming over the escapees, now fairly obviously connected to the machine below. Going by what Tomoyo had unboxed, and by Candy's papers: an enormous electromagnetic mass accelerator, for flinging things into high atmosphere, if not low orbit.

    Candy himself is now stuck contending with many halls filled with 'defensive' mustard gas, sealed behind emergency doors. He catches up to his scientist quarry, now just looking confused about what he's doing. Holding him at gunpoint, of course, causes an immediate panic. Blubbering out loud, he confirms he is not, in fact, an aerospace engineer, but a physicist, brought in on a lucrative contract from a certain aircraft and weapons manufacturer, for a secret project in relatively plain sight. However, though he can explain what's on Candy's sheets, he cannot for the life of him remember how they actually built it now. Mysterious. It's about as good as he'll get, though. The last remaining parts are detonated behind him. There's not much to stay for, and hunting more goons won't get him anything new; sadly, the big suit has probably stormed off in his personal helicopter by now.

    "Excuses, is it?" replies the old guy to Hiromi. "It's always the same excuse. Defense. Security. National interest. Just following orders. Need to know. War isn't my thing, you know. Three arms of the state converge here, and I'm afraid war was *their* job." He probably means the freaky guards-- no, he means someone or something above them. Responsible for them. "I get find things. I get things. People too. I make things happen. Whoever they plan to use the damn thing on isn't my business. The Chinese maybe. If it ever even gets used. I had to trickle the parts and labour in from ten different worlds over two years to avoid suspicion, and now for what? I assume if you're here, then my investment's gone. That's a shame. Every major advance starts in the military. A paranoid crackpot dreams up a better way of killing someone, and the basis of it trickles down into other fields, enriching everyone's lives. So much for that."

    He considers something for a second. "You don't really look the type, but if you're interested in it yourself; in the promise of a 'magic sky machine', as they put it, I can do it again. But I'm afraid my master is the government of this nation and the almighty dollar. I don't do science, and I don't do war. Funny that, next to the general, I get the nicest safe room, right? Like I'm the most important. Well, I'd like to think I am."

    At the surface, the Maid gives the group an extremely maid-like curtsy. "Thank you very much. For your assistance, and for not getting in the way this time. I'm sure you've ascertained now, that those 'civilian concerns' are nothing of the sort. Fabricated summons for those who mean well to get in the way of others who mean well. I've learned this. And now She has learned many things from this as well. The creative power of the Sun is limitless, so I'd like to see where this leads too."
Priscilla     She gestures towards the city limits to the west. It appears, despite everything else, the power is suddenly and inexplicably back on. After all, it's somehow never been rerouted. The impurity of malicious goals scrubbed away so cleanly that it leaves no stain on the city at all. "Please, if you have the means, summon those who can be trusted to finish tidying up here. If you have the means to silence the men who made this mess, or a your own volition, properly expose it to sunlight, you may find you are kept out no longer."

    Then, there's a grating and *loud* electronic noise, and rings of light wash up from under her feet, abruptly distorting her shape and whisking her away.
Hiromi     "'Dollar' is no one's master," Hiromi tells the man. "Frequent lie, only." An untruth, but told also to oneself, an excuse for one's behavior, externalizing one's own flaw. But that's not important.

    "This government has failed." It is entirely possible that she now intends to go and destroy it, its fate sealed by someone passing the buck, though perhaps she won't do that right away. First, she has to see if she can't find that mysterious maid.

    "Clever tools of war interest me little. Warriors I seek. Tell me of them, and I'll accept your excuses. Uncommon bravery, for humans." She'll accept just the directions to more information on that subject. And if there's an opportunity while she leaves, she'll grab one of those soldiers and forcefully remove the helmet, to have a better look.

    No special considerations are required for Hiromi leaving the compound, just as none were required for her entering it.