Scene #7998: Slipped Leash

Owner	Pose
KNK	It's not even that the city is 'built vertically.' It's just been built over top itself, so many times, that the web of streets spanning it go up and up. This place isn't quite at the bottom, but it's close enough to get more sunlight off the reflective windows of the mid-layer, what should be called skyscrapers, than directly. Electric lamps make up the difference, but adjusting to low-light conditions is close to necessary, either way, resulting in blinding neon glares for those with baseline eyes checking out the advertisements. And there are a lot of those, even down here. The city is full of life, in the sense of being full of people who are moving about. Someone must be stocking all those vending machines, digital displays showing low-res models drinking brightly colored soft drinks -- and hard drinks, at higher prices. Some promise whole meals to have been reduced to a squeeze-tube without sacrificing taste, while others offer batteries, lottery tickets, electronic chips of unclear purpose, the clearer being recorded media that won't be useful to many people without the right kind of device to play the movies back. A substantial portion would be considered, broadly, unsafe for children, but no one is liable to card either Rita or Hibiki, here. Violet does not currently look like a ninja. She looks like a raver, complete with fluorescent green hair in double buns and a decorative gas mask. She still has violet eyes, but the hologram is otherwise an effective enough disguise that no one is bothering her, apart from the regular pedestrian jostling. The oversized jacket is real. Following her normally, and following through any of a variety of other paths, is pretty easy. The streets here are all spanning bridges, and complex enough in shape that some would not find it too difficult to move underneath them, though there's another layer of streets and shops and unmarked buildings crossing below. Gladly, hardly anyone ever looks up, on this world as many others. The doctor's place, Violet indicates, is ahead. Rose is uploading street and building plans, for anyone able to view electronic delivery. The path takes everyone away from the relatively bright, relatively 'main' streets, down a winding path that could never have been part of urban planning, away and down a few partial sets of stairs and into a disconnected basement of a building that's become a clinic. There are, as promised, hiding spots everywhere around there, with Rose marking the ones she knows about on the map. By accident or purpose, some materials that are useful for temporary shelters are also good for fouling broad-scope scanners, and people in need of 'temporary' shelter often also find they can live longer by not being noticed.
KNK	Relevantly, the floor plans show a 'front' door, reception area connected to a living space, a large operating room off from the reception with several tables and a lot of heavy machiner, a back storage, and a back door in the storage room, that opens up to a larger area disconnected from the front door's alleyway. The back area is marked 'abandoned' and the door marked 'always barred, from inside.' There's a signboard outside, but it's unpowered, giving no indication of what it usually says.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak's hoverbike does tend to call attention to itself, much like the knight himself. For a mercy to the ears of everyone, he only uses it to get to the meeting point. Without his armor, any resemblance to a knight is gone. Looking instead like a huge green biker as he dismounts, Bercilak smiles wide and offers Violet a wave. The sunlight which streams down from those skyscrapers makes the green tone of his skin and undercut mohawk impossible to miss. No vulgar shirts today--today's a band shirt day, coupled with an olive drab vest, black jeans and thick-soled motorcycle boots. While still on the main street, Bercilak makes a stop at a vending machine to pick up the cheapest of the hard drinks--though to his credit it's dissassembled by his nanites, stored away rather than immediately broken into. The lag behind Violet is only momentary. "Gramercy," he thanks Rose, upon receiving the map upload. Overlaid upon his red irises are the tiny, minimized lights of an AR display. His brow furrows, at the sight of all those hiding spots. Bercilak heaves a sigh, knowing full well his size and appearance are intimidating even without his equipment--and knowing that people in need of places to hide are often hiding from people who look like him, green or otherwise. "Thy cirurgien shalt we ifind," he says. He'll just have to put the effort in not to scare people who don't deserve it. Accordingly, he follows a pattern in checking those hiding spots Rose has marked. "Rose, if thou wouldst, ofsend me purtraie of him that befauten thee." A light (for him) tap on the door or closest door-adjacent fixture of each shelter. Wait a few seconds. "Ani-bodi hom? 'Tis Bercilak, of the Wacche." Maybe there's a cell here? Each shelter, he pauses after the announcement, waiting and listening for signs of movement. If anyone bolts, he uses his height to peer over the shanties, or else climbs atop them, to be certain they aren't the doctor.
Karlan Nobles	With the misunderstandings of the past cleared up, the siblings from the mountains are eager to aid their new ninja-y companions in finding the doctor responsible for that mishap! One of them is, anyway, as Pramanix's expression keeps shifting from intense focus and excited glee at random while SilverAsh looks like he wants to do anything else at present. It probably has something to do with Pramanix finally getting a chance to sneak around from spot to spot, slinking in the shadows while following that map provided by Rose to evade detection while SilverAsh just follows further behind her at an unhurried pace. The only time he hurries up is to make sure Pramanix doesn't get too close a look at those vending machines with questionable media inside. Should he spot Rita or Hibiki nearby, he'll also loiter to do the same for/at them as well. Upon reaching the doctor's place, they linger at opposite sides of the block and wait until more of their friends have arrived before regrouping and heading further in from different directions for as long as they can. Pramanix circles around the long way, looking for a path to the back storage rather than going in right through the front. She's curious about that abandoned area, likely guessing that it might not be as abandoned as indicated, and she's going to try her damndest to wriggle in there when nobody's looking to get a better look at it all herself. SilverAsh, meanwhile, opts for the reception area up front. Someone has to make sure any escape attempts can't be made straight through the front, after all, and he's going to play the part by looking for a receptionist! With any luck, he'll try to see if he can't set up an emergency appointment with the doctor. He doesn't look injured, though, but he is dressed rather garishly in the way of the archetypical fuckboy raver: Sideways cap, white tanktop, gemstone rings across each hand, and big shades that are clearly the sign of someone trying way too hard. He says it's 'for a friend'. He also sounds rather convincingly like an older guy trying to sound young and hip, but surely it's just an act, right? Right.
Rita Ma	The painfully bright neon signs are, for Rita, a welcome distraction from the terror of "looking down". The vast majority of her life has been spent within fifty feet of sea level; having that much empty space below is clearly unnerving her to think about. Accordingly, she sticks near the center of the walkways and clings dangerously tightly to Liza's arm. Even though she ought to know better, Violet's hologram fools her. "Oh. Is that what you really look like? I'd have thought, with the hair..." She catches herself before saying Violet's name in public. The data transfer comes up on her phone, which she busies herself with looking at instead of contemplating altitudes. "Right," she murmurs on arrival to the basement, eyes still on her phone. "All of that's directly above us, isn't it?" A glance upwards. "If that's so, I might just be able to..." Step one: Rita gathers a crimson energy into herself, stolen from an Antegent. It turns her ghostly-crimson-translucent. Step two: Rita begins, unrelatedly, turning invisible. Step three: Rita hops up to the ceiling, grabs onto it, and pulls herself 'through' with only moderate resistance, into (if she's read the plans correctly) the living space adjoining reception. The net effect should be that she pulls herself, quietly and invisibly, up through the floor without leaving a trace. From there, she can have a look around. This is where the doctor resides, right?
Hibiki Tachibana	'Giving talking a chance before bloodshed' is what Hibiki is all about, and that's what she's here for. Rose's predisposition to things seeming like they're destined to get messy probably has very good grounding, but if /she/ has anything to say about it, it hopefully shouldn't have to come to that. Translator's note: It still usually comes to that. While her usual casualwear of tanktop-jacket-shorts-big shoes isn't /exactly/ the chic of the towering city, it's close enough that she likely won't draw any eyes herself on the way in, and also probably won't be recognized at a glance. Transforming magical girl privilege. Her own eyes, currently, are scanning over the shining advertisements flickering by with various levels of squinting both from content and the fact the light around here is seriously kind of crappy in comparison. It's a good thing SilverAsh is being a good older brother...figure. Just a figure, yeah. Your secret is safe Pramanix. Looking at the uploaded plans is way easier in more ways than one, which she does as they head down basementward. Hibiki briefly considers trying some sneaky stuff in the same vein as the saintess, to get somewhere she shouldn't--but since that's not really her forte and she might mess up someone else's plots, she instead ends up wingmanning for Bercilak. Quite literally. If anyone ends up trying to flee in terror from the Green Knight (currently not very knightly), she steps out from behind him to make a few calming gestures, and otherwise adds onto his attempts to non-threateningly get information. She's just a teenage girl, after all. "Yeah, we're just here looking for some info. Someone who you'd probably see upstairs..."
Liza Grier	Liza walks with Violet on the lower level. She'd be almost equally at home as fire support with Rose, but ultimately she decides that her self-professed unkillability will be of more direct use to Violet (whom she may secretly be considering vulnerable) than a second rifle will be to Rose. For the time being, she's put on her chameleonic jumpsuit, having disguised herself in appropriately asymmetrical and neon-streaked punk raver girl chic, but she feels the need to remark on Violet's holographic camouflage anyways, because right now Liza is just having faith in the assumption that someone in this dump will assume her fucked up mutant albinism is a bold physical fashion choice. "Pretty sure not." she says to Rita; trying to keep her mind off the drop, no doubt. "If she fits in here then it's obviously a disguise, right? But looking like a--" she sighs, remembering the bionicle lore against her will "--'kunoichi' is a personal stylistic effect. No tactical value. Makes sense that the one that blends in is the convenient one and the one that stands out is the real self, right?" She makes a little frown at Bercilak stopping for drinks, but then says "Coulda just asked you know." before reaching into the interior of her currently semi-fake clothing and pulling out a flask of something undoubtedly both much better and much harder, hitting a third of it herself and handing the remaining two thirds to Bercilak. It tastes like double hard sweet vodka mix with a slightly medicinal tint. Getting close to where they need to be, Liza puts on the portable version of her helmet optics, strapping the meson eyepiece to one ear and quickly scanning the back alley with a sweeping, asymmetrically acid green-glow gaze, before making an irritated noise. "Well, if he's got help smart enough to hide in the blind spots, that just makes it pretty predictable and a lot more fun." She stops to underhand chuck a '''suitcase''' so that it slides to rest a bit outside the door, off to the side. Then she checks the front door. If it's locked, all Liza intends to do is scoff, pull up her sleeve, break out her multitool, and bust it right open. Provided nothing interesting happens upon entry, it'll be to the back area, meeting 'always barred' with a sarcastic "Yeah, it always is." and the x-ray scanner and slicing torch next.
KNK	Rose takes a small delay to figure out what 'purtraie' means, before sending Bercilak a mug shot of a tired, overweight man with thin, scraggly hair. It's not very enticing, but it probably wasn't made for a dating app, either. There's no additional personal information. In particular, no known surname. Just 'Freddie.' Bercilak finds no one at home, or else, no one heeding his knocking. Was that a sound, inside, of someone suddenly moving, then stopping? It could just be his imagination. The background noise of the city makes it difficult to pick out something like steps or breathing, through a barrier, for both him and Hibiki. Violet responds to Rita, "Huh? You've seen what I look like, remember?" It's not clear if she understood. Her voice is the same, but it's only coming through the radio, not from her mouth (presumably still existing beneath the toothy-grin-painted gas mask). Violet takes the next few moments to walk all the way around Liza as they move, vocally admiring her outfit. SilverAsh takes the front, and Pramanix the back. Just as the signboard outside was dead, the reception area is vacant. There's a computer terminal behind a desk, still powered, but not logged in. There's a closed door to the living area, and a slightly open door to the operating room. The area behind the clinic isn't entirely empty, as Pramanix finds. It's got emptied-out crates, having once been a warehouse loading area. Though the rows give some longer aisles to look down, there are plenty of hiding places here. There's a suggestion of motion, up on top or just around things, gone by the time she can look. Rita is the first to find, definitively, that this is an ambush. The armored, heavily armed figures in the sparsely furnished, messy living space are prepared for going out into the reception area, at someone else's signal. Or maybe at the displays that only they can see. They do, though she remains invisible, respond immediately to her presence in the room, sweeping to laser sights to look for her. She can just catch, "No opening" and "sealed" and "wrong targets?" and "tripped pressure" through the muffling of their helmets. There are four of them just in this room, two standing to either side of the door out. There's a window and a tiny air vent, but both have been sealed over with something like a spray-on putty. Freddies furniture has seen better days, though the computer terminal here might be relevant, too. Pramanix is not the first to spot an ambush, but she is the first to be put under attack. Deciding that anyone coming around the back way must be part of the operation they were waiting for, she's allowed to get up to the door, if not turning to run before then, before half a dozen sniper posts zero in on her. The gunfire is loud and automatic. The operating room is clear, but the storage room itself is locked, and resists Liza's opening. Her torch will serve her, here, though she might not have a chance to use it, since the room just beyond is packed with troopers, and they react immediately after the gunfire outside. The spots Bercilak's been knocking on will join the fight last, but present the same danger.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak glances at Hibiki, his eyes asking the unspoken 'did you hear that?' Those red eyes flick suspiciously towards the shanty, and he turns to face her fully, back to the entrance. The Green Knight mimes a few instructions, something that would have no doubt amounted to 'stay here and I'll cover the back.' It would have, had the bustle of city ambience not been violently broken by gunfire. Bercilak's field of nanites swarms around Hibiki, both preparing to knit any wounds and speeding up her reflexes. Those same nanites retrieve the towering knight's armor, enveloping his body in a rapid-constructing wave of blue. Bullets rip through his shirt as he charges forward, poking holes in the graphic of a looming demon and staining its shadowed form red. The haft of the axe has formed by the time he takes to the sky. By the time he lands with a pavement-cracking impact, the blade is formed, too. Fighting split up during an ambush is bad. "Quell theim," calls Bercilak to Hibiki. "Thanne assame to the otheres, wi whippe!" Bullets spark from the armor, bouncing off as he begins his work. Fighting surrounded, the butt of the haft strikes out at kneecaps, elbows, weapons, each one made with his full strength to discourage any desire to fight back. Those insistent enough to try anyway find the axe's blade, gracefully directed with his shoulders and hips. It's startlingly swift despite all that immense, thick armor. The weapon's oppressive reach allows the tall axeman to snag would-be retreats or repositions by limbs or necks. It's all an effort to clear a path back to the office--if he and Hibiki can funnel the assailants as they give chase, that much the better.
Liza Grier	Funny enough, Liza had toggled her mesons in the cynical expectation of finding a booby trap crudely strung or adhered to the door if forced. It'd hardly be the first time a locked back room or safe owned by a suspicious asshole had been designed to blow up in her face. Approaching it with her torch held ready, Liza notices a tactical charge through the doorframe almost just as easily. The door blows off. Liza dives out of the way; habitually towards the hinges, where the initial swing will naturally cover her, the weak bulletproofing of her chameleonic jumpsuit repelling glancing shrapnel. There isn't time to dial in her hardsuit in the golden seconds of a dynamic entry, so she makes do with what she has. Liza takes the hingeside flank as the armed men open the room, flat against the wall, working inside the arc of the visual slice covered by the commensurately placed soldier, and then lunges out in the instant before a weapon can be trained on her. The torch hisses. Bright blue plasma flares. Liza elbow bars the firearm and twists her arm around her unlucky target's, kicking her heel against his to take him to ground, and then viciously plunges the welding torch into the eyes of his helmet, aiming for no less than burying the hot metal into his grey matter while holding him against the floor. Between the period of debilitation and death, she makes certain to seize his weapon and empty it directly into whoever was next to him before they can fully react. After fighting Violet and Rose, she's already presumed superhuman reaction times, and factored it into her flow. Rolling over and hauling the first soldier's armoured body up will be her best shot at bulletproof cover at this range. Piercing the armour one way is likely at point blank, but not the entire body and the armour on the other side too, or so goes her logic. Her radio interactions are necessarily terse. "ID on hostiles? Leos? PMC? Mercs?" followed by "Waiting for a clapback. No way that doc hired them all himself. Someone extracted him. Maybe whoever paid for his sabotage job." and then "Take them out Rita. They're corp. Leave one alive for me."
Karlan Nobles	With not a soul in sight to try and get a more subtle in with the doctor, SilverAsh relays his findings to the team regarding the lack of people at reception and the presence of the computers. He decides against risking a lockout by trying to just guess the password, and he instead turns his attention to the doors. The closed door, being the more appealing target, is the first one he approaches. He doesn't touch the door, however, checking in with Rita and confirming that she doesn't need a distraction. Against his better judgment, he moves for the open door with Liza instead. He waits until she's already breached the door to the next room over and counts to three before rushing in after her, sword drawn to get to work immediately. While she's heading for the gunners on one side, he covers her from the other side: Thrusting his blade at exposed limbs, slicing at/through arms and midsections alike, and leveraging what little element of surprise he might have as someone coming in so (comparably) late to Liza's initial entry. SilverAsh: "The front is unmanned, but there's a computer here if any of you have skills with a computer." Pramanix: "It's very manned over here!" Pramanix, meanwhile, isn't having a particularly good time in her second attack ever out in this region of the world. The snipers get some clean shots at her before she's able to dive behind cover and call up some waist-high ice barriers around herself, drawing blood even if she hasn't taken any shots straight through a limb just yet. She doesn't call the ice up just around herself, though, as she pulls herself up and starts getting into the snow-summoning ritual proper. "Hibiki, Bercilak! This should help!" She calls out without elaborating as more of those waist-high and even some Bercilak-high ice platforms start forming out of the ground to provide them with additional cover and maneuvering room as well. With all that snow swirling around, meanwhile, visibility may be dropping in that not-so-abandoned back area. If it's not the copious amount of snowfall, then it's the outright ice stones flitting about with so many gusts of wind, hammering at the snipers with a wide-area carpet bombing to compensate for Pramanix's inability to really figure out their positions just yet (beyond guessing the directions she was shot from).
Rita Ma	<Tac-Watch> 4 KNK. Rose says, "If they're here to kill us then they won't be relying on EM to spot you." <Tac-Watch> 3 Liza Grier says, "Take them out Rita. They're corp. Leave one alive for me." <Tac-Watch> 3 Hibiki Tachibana says, "That'd mean whoever's behind this is /really/ good at covering their tracks...! Damnit--" <Tac-Watch> 4 Rita Ma says, "Ah- will do, Ms. Grier!" But invisibility has uses even if they know you're there. People believe what they see over other information; it's axiomatic. Rita, accordingly, makes their eyes lie to them. A perfect replica of Violet appears in the middle of the room, brandishing her sword, and is presumably immediately ventilated with bullet-holes. Rita is nowhere near it. In the confusion, she crosses the room, grabs a gunman by the head, and slams their helmet into the wall hard enough to crush one or the other. The ensuing blizzard of violence is deliberately hard to follow. Fingers hook through metal, flesh, and bone, pulling insides outside. Guns are neatly bisected by an invisible cutting force before they can fire, followed momentarily by their wielders. Rita "appears" and disappears, never where she looks to be. The conclusion, almost certainly, is that one of the soldiers is bound in 'chains', and the others are in pieces, with Rita completely unharmed. Getting the drop on them in an enclosed space is thoroughly unfair. She eyes the computer, but lacking any hacking skills of her own, can only keep it in mind for later. The door to reception is promptly opened, or knocked down if it's locked. If there are no further obstacles between her and Liza, she jogs down the hallway to rejoin her gal pal. She's spattered with blood, but wouldn't look so perky about it if any of it were hers. "Ms. Grier! Are you okay? Do you need me to help you get your suit?"
Hibiki Tachibana	No luck. But gunshots, from up at the back. More, from another spot. And here-- Hibiki meets Bercilak's glance with furrowed brows and a silent nod, the instant before things to hell and armored troopers spill out of the hiding holes. "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron!" The hasty, resonant chant shouted out to echo off the walls comes just in time for a golden shine to surround Hibiki, resolving into a spherical barrier surrounded by runic characters and musical notation. The initial burst of gunfire coming in from all sides barrages against it without breaking through, only shaving off flecks of energy before it explodes out. Leaving Hibiki fully armored up in her Symphogear, where she immediately ducks low with fists brought up to her chin to avoid any further fire, and sprints forward. Especially with Bercilak's nanite aid, she's able to weave out of the way of shots or deflect them aside while following behind him, keeping pace and only occasionally pushing a little further ahead to help plow through. Rushing kicks after that'll send their adversaries flying back into walls, elbow strikes that'll try and knock all the wind out of them, and passing hooks packing way more power than they should while remaining on the move - and when Pramanix sends in some icy aid, she uses them as springing boards to flip off of and come down from above to blow them over with descending boots. As ever, non-lethal even if they might smart in the morning. Sneaking around wasn't her forte, but clearing a way? That, she can do. "They've got snipers, too...!"
KNK	They're popping out of their hiding spots now to chase Bercilak and Hibiki down, but put another way, the pair are getting to the more defensible position of the reception room without much trouble. Possibly more defensible, in being a choke point with some actually quite sturdy walls, though there is the issue of it being very much surrounded. Tripping up the soldiers with his axe, Bercilak can quite easily do, though actually getting through their armor is a touch harder. Some go down, to him or Hibiki's kicks, but they're likely to get up again. They're outfitted much more heavily than KNK, clearly intended for ceding ground, where necessary, rather than letting themselves be cut apart, or in trying to avoid by scrapes. Ceding ground, still, lets him get to his destination. Vision is a lot more immediate, and higher resolution, than whatever anti-cloaking measures are being used in the room with Rita. Her decoy works as expected, with the subsequent fire swapping from 'Violet's' to her position being sprayed wildly -- so long as she keeps moving. There's plenty of light from muzzle flashes, but not enough to catch her. Then the signboard does come to life, scrolling 'CHEAP FAST QUIET', while a panel in the ceiling of the reception room opens up. A column drops down a few feet, unfolding gun barrels on one side and a row of spikes on the other. It's the spikes that shoot at Bercilak, trailing wires and electrically charged, while the security turret's guns track Hibiki, and then Rita. The computer terminal is now logged in, with windows opening and closing as if it's in use. Outside, Pramanix is reducing visibility, which helps a lot with the snipers. However, the previously barred door of the clinic is opening, and heavily armed fellows are marching out to fill her full of holes. She has a few moments before that becomes a problem, but not before some guy jumps down from an implausible height, crashes into the ground in front of her, and aggresses with a long knife. Rose had mentioned poison. The most dangerous happenings, arguably, are in front of Liza and SilverAsh. Relevant to their objective, there's one person in that storage room who isn't in armor. He's an overweight man, except for his bodybuilder-like right arm strapped with tiny cutting devices, with scraggly hair and a face that can't be seen from this angle, as he gets shuffled out the back door. Liza's first target goes down, together with the second, and SilverAsh's first, if only to forceful, precision violence. Though return fire does come, their reflexes aren't as quick as fighting Rose and Violet had been. Smaller, efficient movements, but not quite fast enough. Their aim is still dangerous, but the main problem isn't automatic fire. It's the frightfully masked samurai with the neon cyan glow for eyes, wielding a horsekiller-style katana to cleave through Liza, SilverAsh, and her corpse shield, all at once.
Rita Ma	The wooden door between the living quarters and the reception area becomes an explosion of splinters. Rita steps out in time to see Bercilak and Hibiki- and the turret unfolding from the ceiling, barrels pointed right at her. Anyone slower would be perforated. Rita is not, though the floor and wall behind her are. She's already across the room, braced against a wall cracked by the impact of her leap; then another, faster than the turret can track her. Fading ghostly-red again, she finally dives through an exterior wall and outside the building, flickering back into tangibility with a dull 'thump' just in time to wall-run along the exterior. Once she's sprinted around to the back of the building, she kicks off the wall and lands on the walkway connecting to its back door, cutting off the doctor's escape. It reverberates with the sudden impact. She raises her hand towards the doctor, fingertips beginning to glow- No, wait. Think. We needed him alive, didn't we? I don't know how tough he is. What else do I have here? The glow fades. In its place, her hand becomes rimed with frost. A beam of freezing cold lances from her palm; she sweeps it generously over the doctor's vicinity, covering surfaces in slick ice and turning its targets into human popsicles. Of course, someone could rescue him from her attack, but that's unlikely to go well for the brave rescuer.
Karlan Nobles	Pramanix, ever the aggressive one despite her general lack of close-combat prowess, is still ringing that bell and continuing her steps rather than focusing on defense even with all those snipers still around shooting at her outside companions. It's not until the guy jumping down from on high that she finally attempts to step back, but not before his knife slices cleanly through a sleeve and nicks her arm. Even that small touch is enough to get the poison in, and it forces Pramanix to readjust her strategy on the fly once again. Rather than trying to make herself harder to hit, she instead focuses her efforts into raining down icicles. They don't come straight down at the knife-wielder, however, but all around him and Pramanix, almost as if she's trying to enclose them both inside some kind of big icicle-filled cage made of yet more icicles. "So that's what she meant... How troublesome. But you'll need more than poisons to take down a... To take me down!" She boasts while already sounding somewhat worn down from the poison hitting her considerably harder than she expected even with Rose's warnings. She's used to moving in such a weirdly icy space, however, as icicles within the impromptu cage start lifting out of the ground and whirling about haphazardly, some threatening to stab right into the knife-fighter with their spear-like ends while the wider tops of others might as well be like a flurry of wild baseball swings at the speed they're going. Further inside that storage room, SilverAsh catches wind of the overweight man with the single suspiciously jacked arm. He's about to give chase, but has to shift to a defensive stance when the masked samurai comes in to start taking swings at him and Liza all at once. He manages to deflect it just enough with his own weapon on reflex that it only lands a shallow cut across his side before he charges right back in to move towards the inside of the masked warrior's slashing range. "How much are you being paid, I wonder?" SilverAsh asks with an even tone, studying the mask briefly before starting to test the samurai's reflexes with slashes of his own. "Is it enough for your equipment? Food? Lodging? A comfortable life? Something you can retire on?" Each question is followed up with another stab, another slash, each one aimed at testing his opponent's reflexes and focus without following any clear pattern or timing. Although his attacks are clearly telegraphed in theory, there could be an entire second before he lashes out again at a leg, at the wrists, at center mass, and the fifth attack is aimed squarely at the samurai's mask to try and break it right off of them.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	[Vicinity] Pramanix: Hibiki, Bercilak! This should help! [Vicinity] Bercilak: Gramercy, Pramanix! The haft of the axe is planted into the ground, and Bercilak vaults the first of Pramanix's platforms. Alpine trees and thick, wiry tundra shrubs sprout up to slow down on-foot pursuers and cloud sight lines. "Ward-rere," he warns the saint, pointing towards the approaching adversary. As he crosses the platforms with Hibiki, mixing up pure physical leaps with armor-mounted thruster boosts, Bercilak's nanites pass over Pramanix, providing both minute augmentations to heighten her reflexes and a suite of specialized microsurgeons to further assist her against the dropping assailant. They only last for a few moments, seeing as the Green Knight is on his way in--but it ought to be enough to matter. [Team] Rose: That's him. Marking the objective. Check your maps. I'm moving locations. I'll be five blocks down his probable route. Low intercept chance. Don't count on it. [Team] Hibiki: So we weren't too late...! Alright! [Team] Rita: Marked... I think I have a path. Bursting into the reception area prepared for pursuit and battle, there's a confused moment in which the glowing signboard is reflected in the pitiless black expanse of his visor before he glances at Hibiki. The ceiling panel is what ultimately clues him in. As it descends, he chokes up with one hand and releases with the other, holding the axe just behind the beard, cheek facing outward in preparation for a block. The head of the axe is massive, easily comparable to a heater shield in surface area. Spikes were decidedly not what he was expecting. They're embedded in the weapon's cheek, electrocuting him and causing his grip upon the weapon to tighten. Rita bursts in, splintering the door, but he's unable to accompany her or Hibiki at the moment. [Team] Bercilak: I shalt assist as son as I am abled. Idwell not for me. Suit internals flicker erratically on the helmet's display, the Green Knight's advance continuing with dogged determination. Even as electricity dances across his armor and ignites his cloak of rye grass and hyacinths, one boot tromps after the other, his nanites working to keep him moving despite the voltage. With a bellow of defiance, the armored fighter wraps the cables around the haft of the axe and yanks with all his might, intending to pull the enttire apparatus from the wall. Having been slowed up by the electrocution turret, Bercilak summons that massive, armored hoverbike of his, prop wash blowing chairs, loose papers, and magazines alike as it makes a deafening entrance into the reception area. Rather than attempt to catch up, he instead makes a distraction of himself, taking to the skies to draw attention from (and discover) any snipers still posted up.
Hibiki Tachibana	The troopers getting back up is fine, since Hibiki wants to keep them alive anyway--though that armor is going to be annoying. Violet and Rose taught her that she can't afford to hold back on the punches when it comes to fighting here. But as long as they're out of the way, for now, she can make something work. The important thing is that they get where they're going. "Rita! Are you oka--" The brief meeting as she steps in and their paths intersect (violently) is cut short by power seemingly fully returning to the reception room, and a glance back to her companion...followed by the turret activating drawing her attention upwards. Oh, she's going to be the one not okay. Just barely, she crosses her arms up in front of her and lets the bullets impact Gungnir's gauntlets - ricocheted metal and shrapnel flies off in all directions, almost all of it from the rounds themselves, though a few slip past to slam into non-vital points. Bercilak's aid and her Symphogear's barrier takes off some of the edge, but not all of it. The news hits her, and a map ping accompanies it. They found their man. Rita is on her way right through and out. It's handled. That means she... "Then I'll make sure nobody else interrupts!" She kicks backwards out of the line of fire, into a roll back out the way they came. Bercilak has the turret under control, and going that high should take some pressure off of Pramanix. But the whole building is still surrounded, and they might get in the way of the others too. The ones chasing them see the magical girl tumble out into the open, before springing back up. With a leg rising up with her, kicked up into a nearly-vertical position by the time she's back to a standing position. Her grounded heel cracks down into the concrete, twists, and she spins her body back around to face them--bringing down the heel of her boot into the ground with a heavy impact, creating hairline cracks spreading out from it that extend forward most of the route they took to get in here. Then she abruptly twists that foot in as well, and all of the cracked material suddenly and violently collapses. Anyone caught up in it is going to find themselves tumbling a story down below, whether into more basements, whatever passes for the sewage system in this level of the city, or otherwise. She's going to get some ground level attention /and/ take out as many of the gathered-together soldiers who were still coming after them as she can, in one go.
KNK	Unfortunately, for both Rita and the corporate soldiers, there are too many of them in the way to get a clear shot from any angle. It's bodyguard tactics, and effective. Her freezing beam hits the two in the way, who stick where they are in the middle of Pramanix's growing blizzard, the joints in their armor frozen shut. It's unclear, from here, how much damage got through their suits, but they're removed as a threat. SilverAsh hits, ultimately breaking the mask -- though it proves to be another part of the heavy armor suit, if more heavily decorated. He can see half the face behind it, a hard man of indeterminate Pacific heritage, with light seeming to shine from his eyes. When it blinks off, they're brown. "Why, jealous? But no. Not that I expect your type to understand honor or principle." In the reception area, Bercilak tears out the whole security turret, disconnecting it from its power source and network. The guns on it look like they might be slotted and screwed rather than welded in, if he has both some way to take advantage and the need for more firepower. Getting to 'the sky' is difficult, considering the next level of cityscape isn't that far above, but this particular building does have a roof someone can narrowly fly over, above completely unused second and third stories. He gets plenty of attention from everyone marching in toward the front of the clinic, while the snipers in the back are more bothered by Pramanix's blizzard. Despite that, there's still a group charging in to take the room he just vacated -- only to scatter, those not quick enough screaming as they fall through the ground that collapses at Hibiki's attack. It's about a hundred feet down, but their armor is built for that much. Liza's shotgun works, and her dagger, as difficult as it is to find anything vital. It's a safe bet that her opponent doesn't feel pain from limb damage, at a minimum, with the advantage of both cybernetic augments, multiple layers of armor, and worse, a lot of training in 'not being disarmed of his fancy sword.' She still gets it, but after wrenching it out of his magnetic grip, its power shuts off, locking with an "Unregistered User Detected" beep. It's more practically a chunk of steel as it smacks the corp officer in his raised neck armor, throwing him into the back room. He kips up while ignoring his numerous wounds. Violet was already invisible, but she's disappeared in both senses, at around the time Liza grabbed the sword.
KNK	Starting from the front of the shop -- Hibiki and Bercilak are more than holding the line, but they're also putting themselves out there. Every spot that had been hiding someone now has them out in the open, relative to Bercilak's altitude. Not just fire from LMGs, their inaccurate bursts raking the front of the shop and shorting out the signboard, mini-rocket launchers streak up through the air on smoke plumes to reach his bike. Hibiki is saved from any of them getting too close by her city terrain deformation tactic, but for most of them, their guns are still more dangerous, and there's more of them out here than still standing on the other side. With Freddie already outside, the only couple of survivors inside start backing toward the same door, while firing, maintaining strict discipline to move with certainty without taking their eyes off their targets -- SilverAsh and Liza. The officer sneers, or maybe that's a grimace of unhappiness at losing his weapon, as he makes a cutting gesture in the air. He's raising his sidearm to fire while also retreating, but more importantly, the power cell in the sword Liza took is now releasing all of its energy at once. The blade itself will survive in the form of a spinning projectile liable to head toward SilverAsh, but the hilt components won't, with Liza as the most likely target. Out the back, the snipers have reduced visibility, but still have Pramanix and Rita surrounded. They close in far enough to open up with SMGs, a couple slipping in in a coordinated maneuver to attack from multiple side throwing knives that are both envenomed and electrified, discharging their one-shot power cells on contact. It would take some pretty good eyes to spot someone exiting the building moments before the last three armored men have a chance to make it out, cloaking field active, just a faint distortion in a chaotic field rapidly crawling beneath the intersecting lines of gunfire, circling with the expectation of an opening.
Rita Ma	Ordinarily Rita would reposition or maneuver for advantage when under heavy fire like this. But as it is, she's directly in the way of the doctor's expected exfiltration route- a position she's loath to give up, even if she can't get a clear angle on him yet. Besides, she's taking eyes off Violet as long as she's in the open. Bullets fire at her are deflected or sliced apart in dramatic sprays of sparks. It would seem as if they're impacting a solid invisible wall, except the depth at which they're intercepted keeps changing; some are deflected twenty feet away, others get within a couple feet of her skin. Poisoned knives are similarly invisibly caught by the handle and returned to sender at whipcrack speeds, punching through body armor, into flesh, and possibly out the other side. Sonar might reveal the flurry of tentacle movement around her, but that's not helpful in actually landing a hit. Rita herself stares straight ahead, perfectly still, spine rigid and expression controlled. It's how she looks when she's quietly terrified. The defense is neatly holding, but she is not at all confident that it will continue to. Ten feet ahead of her, a copy of 'Violet' materializes, visually perfect in every respect. It's a trick she's used before, but everyone who witnessed it last time has been neutralized. The copy sprints along the walkway towards the doctor and his bodyguards from the opposite direction of the real one, leaping over them with sword brandished as if for a swooping strike. "There you go, Ms. Violet. Good luck."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The Green Knight's ascent is made, with the turret hooked in the beard of his axe--rather than bring it to bear in the traditional sense, he hurls it across the collapsed lobby at the largest group of scattering soldiers, gunning the ignition to let the bike add extra force to the swing of his arm. Once above the building proper, difficult flying seems to be no problem for Bercilak. The Wraith is an agile vehicle, but its strength is assuredly in its durability. What the large, milsurp hoverbike can't maneuver past, it can certainly barrel through--and Bercilak's remaining armor still confers some degree of protection for him personally. It's exceedingly difficult for the LMGs to do much even when they strike. The micromissiles, however, do enough damage rapidly enough to menace the plating and outpace his nanites' repair capabilities. Fist-shaped indents ringed with red-hot metal scatter across the angular, thick armored plating. They mend themselves, but it's clear that most of Bercilak's swarm prioritizes him. Battered in such rapid succession, it's only the unique combination of axemanship, pilting skill, and plain stubbornness that keeps him in the air. Rolls and loops redirect impacts to non-critical areas. Where the micromissile's turns are too tight for him to avoid, Bercilak makes use of the axe's immense reach to swat them away or blunt their impact. A bellowing, inarticulate roar of challenge is hurled from a flaming, but still running vehicle, as he guns the ignittion to go on the offensive. Weaving in and out of buildings, above and under walkways, skirting the bottom of the next level up, Bercilak is relentless and methodical, willingly taking trades in order to remove soldiers from the field. At its top speed, the bike is a startling study in momentum--as are the full-strength swipes from the blade of Bercilak's axe. Where a limb or a neck is out of place, the edge of his axe snaps out with but a seemingly minor adjustment from the battered, shrapnel-scored rider's arm. At times, he even uses the bike itself as a weapon, turning the white-hot exhaust into a deadly lance, or slamming with crushing force. So it goes, winding across the perimeter of the densely packed impromptu arena. If nothing else, it should make for a very demanding distraction.
Karlan Nobles	"Understanding such basic tenets should be a trifling matter even for someone such as your employer. Following them at the cost of letting victory slip from your grasp, however..." SilverAsh flicks his sword around briefly as he gets a better read on who's still left inside while using his eagle to scope out the situation outside, using that brief moment to catch his breath without looking like he's getting worn down through the battle. "... If it helps you rest better at night, I will not shame you for it." The shots from the sidearm have SilverAsh moving again to pursue the officer, but he doesn't notice that they're a distraction from his true attack until it's too late to evade anything. The spinning blade comes at SilverAsh faster than he can bring his sword up to deflect it, and he's forced to twist himself around so it slices into and through a large chunk of his midsection and shoulder rather than his head or neck. He still falls forward, looking like he's about to faceplant, but instead... SilverAsh starts sprinting. At that low angle, he's able to gain a massive burst of speed as well as remain to the ground as a precaution against further attacks. He approaches the officer rapidly while sliding his sword into its sheathe, then flicks it forward at the last moment with another burst of speed (and a more hidden sweep to the legs, honor be damned) to try and remove the officer's legs from his body in one giant slash. Pramanix doesn't fare much better in the face of so many SMGs and electrified and poisoned knives, largely because her ice walls can only come up so quickly. She's actually forced to abandon her ice-calling ritual just to try and not get hit by literally everything, although the focused barrage still has her toppling over sooner rather than later. "Just how important is this... This fake doctor to all of you?!" She snaps at the snipers from behind the cover of an ice wall, hissing painfully while getting that bell going again to form a hasty barrier around and above herself once again. It's not the sturdiest thing, but it's a stopgap to buy Pramanix a little more time as she gets back into a slower, but just as steady rhythm as she usually does. The ice continues build, but around her barrier this time. It grows in size, not quite pulsating, but becoming a denser wall of icy plates and frozen chunks. It builds rapidly until Pramanix flings her bell upwards with a louder, final ring that explodes the entire thing outwards, launching all manner of frozen shrapnel and debris at the snipers in the area while the winds swirling around the area conveniently protect Rita from the crossfire.
Hibiki Tachibana	"Phew...that actually worked." You can't see it, but Hibiki has the smallest of grins beneath her perpetually mouth-covering scarf. Putting those training hours in really does pay off sometimes. Just don't ask how she learned it. Unfortunately for her, it'll take a little more than sending some of them on a hundred-foot (non-lethal) drop to get out of the woods, and she has to snap back into full alertness a moment later. For reasons like 'superior numbers' and 'right, they all use guns'. And with the sheer volume of fire being razed across the building now, there's nowhere to run even if she wanted to. Better them than the ones going after their objective, though. She turns and sprints, sidestrafing relative to most of the fire as if to stay ahead of their aim--which doesn't get that far, when it's all flying /everywhere/. She's soon overwhelmed by bullet after bullet smashing into her body, only kept from doing the kind of damage they should by her armor's barrier system and her gauntlets shifting a mile a minute to batter as many as she can aside, ricocheting them off to unintentionally cause more environmental destruction. What does get through hits hard, slowing her down and leaving her open to catching more. So she takes the only out she has: leaping off and down into the hole she just made. Except instead of going down, she catches the edge and flips to the underside, taking advantage of the city's leveled layout by sprinting across the bottom of the 'floor' and using her Symphogear's thrusters to make that ridiculous gravity-defying action even possible. Out of the line of fire, she dashes right underneath where she remembers one of the denser concentrations of soldiers are--then rears back her fist and punches upwards. The ground beneath them erupts in a shower of debris to try and blow them all straight airborne, and Hibiki comes up with it, immediately seizing the element of surprise to unleash a flurry of strikes, kicks, and elbows between them. She moves fast and strikes hard, now having a good idea of just how stupidly durable their armor actually is. She doesn't have to hold back, since at worst they'll just be sent flying and out cold. Though she also doesn't have any qualms about using one of them as a springboard to launch into new attacks or right into the thick of her next set of targets, apparently having the same mind of Bercilak in that full offense is the way to go - if they're going to try and gun them down, she's just going to /rus/h them down as fast as possible and disable or disrupt them before moving onto the next group, a blur of motion and physical violence. There may or may not be some more collateral damage to the poor environment by the end of all of this.
Lilian Rook	Beep-beep vwooooop. Click. Click. "Are you fucking kidding me?" Liza shakes the deactivated sword in her grip. "Sword DRM. Sword. DRM." The barest second goes by where she thinks about Syndicate firing pins and the inexorable reach of capital coopting the tools of the revolution, before she remembers she is trying to kill someone and he is shooting at her, and also-- Beep. Beep. Beep beep beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-- That's her meson eyepiece going off. Having the specialist equipment used by space station engineers to diagnose reactor problems set to scan electronics on the way in has paid out. Liza hurls the useless chunk of sword garbage in utilitarian fashion strictly counter to the cyber samurai's clever and calculated use of his hacking skill points. It explodes well away from her hands and probably still hurts someone else anyways; it's not like she stopped to calculated the blade vector in her head with an unknown charge. The reason she's lived this long is both idiotproofing and luckproofing what it takes to stay alive. The corp soldiers are retreating out into the streets. Good. Liza is the only one of her allies throwing tech on the ground save Violet, and her suit isn't even on. In lightning swift fashion, she pinks the purple shinobi with an expanding red ripple indicator on her minimap, showing her exactly where to be clear of, then primes, charges, and hurls an electrostatic canister out the back way. The energy drink can-sized explosive skips off the hard concrete floor, bounces off a back alley wall, and then airbursts fairly close to where she'd pinged, a gigantic blast of soft radiation scrambling unshielded electronics alonside enemy sensors and scopes; including the visual environment sensors needed to make active camo function. The drum drops out of her shotgun as the grenade flies, a fresh one slapped into place on its second rebounding ping. While enemy eyes are down, she opens up into them. Even the snipers, if she can get telemetry. It's not a videogame shotgun. Being that far away just means the buckshot is distributed like a pie plate into someone's chest.
Liza Grier	Beep-beep vwooooop. Click. Click. "Are you fucking kidding me?" Liza shakes the deactivated sword in her grip. "Sword DRM. Sword. DRM." The barest second goes by where she thinks about Syndicate firing pins and the inexorable reach of capital coopting the tools of the revolution, before she remembers she is trying to kill someone and he is shooting at her, and also-- Beep. Beep. Beep beep beepbeepbeepbeepbeep-- That's her meson eyepiece going off. Having the specialist equipment used by space station engineers to diagnose reactor problems set to scan electronics on the way in has paid out. Liza hurls the useless chunk of sword garbage in utilitarian fashion strictly counter to the cyber samurai's clever and calculated use of his hacking skill points. It explodes well away from her hands and probably still hurts someone else anyways; it's not like she stopped to calculated the blade vector in her head with an unknown charge. The reason she's lived this long is both idiotproofing and luckproofing what it takes to stay alive. The corp soldiers are retreating out into the streets. Good. Liza is the only one of her allies throwing tech on the ground save Violet, and her suit isn't even on. In lightning swift fashion, she pinks the purple shinobi with an expanding red ripple indicator on her minimap, showing her exactly where to be clear of, then primes, charges, and hurls an electrostatic canister out the back way. The energy drink can-sized explosive skips off the hard concrete floor, bounces off a back alley wall, and then airbursts fairly close to where she'd pinged, a gigantic blast of soft radiation scrambling unshielded electronics alonside enemy sensors and scopes; including the visual environment sensors needed to make active camo function. The drum drops out of her shotgun as the grenade flies, a fresh one slapped into place on its second rebounding ping. While enemy eyes are down, she opens up into them. Even the snipers, if she can get telemetry. It's not a videogame shotgun. Being that far away just means the buckshot is distributed like a pie plate into someone's chest.
KNK	More of the poorly maintained alleyway is destroyed by Hibiki's efforts, sending more of her opponents falling. They don't seem to be equipped with the kind of 3D maneuvering gear you'd want to pull off this kind of thing, and besides that, their suits look heavy. Heavy enough that, though she cracks and bashes and shatters rigid plates with her strikes, it's true that they're very likely to survive that first hit, after being thrown far back and away and out of reach. It's harder for them to fire the same weapons on her when she's right in the cluster of their own troops, too, prompting more of them to switch to sidearms rather than try to track her with the big guns -- and by that point, she's already away to a new target. Bercilak's path is perhaps the deadlier, for his great willingness to take on fire, himself, and the nature of axe and engine exhaust. More try to avoid him entirely, some successfully, but within the goal of focusing attention on himself, he's wholly successful, and finds more than a few swipes hit true. Taking a limb doesn't put any of these fellows entirely out of commission, but it does give them a hard time with either pursuing or using their longer weapons. Inside, chasing down the rearguard, Silverash takes the hit, but his return strike lands as intended, when his aggressive speed surprises the officer. (He'd expected a dirty mercenary hitman to fall back and patch himself up, after taking that.) Cutting through his legs still doesn't kill him, revealing the cybernetics below his thighs, but it does stop him from continuing, and the two others with him aren't enough of a hindrance on their own to be worth mentioning, at this point. Thanks to that, and to quickly disposing of the explosive sword, Liza has little trouble tossing her EM present. Though most of the systems are well hardened, that's not generally true of the sensors, the closest all going blind in that critical moment. Between Pramanix's ice, Rita's projectile counterattacks, and Liza's shotgun, the further-out enemies are forced down, either neutralized or taking cover.
KNK	Pramanix doesn't get her answer, whether because no one present wants to have that discussion, or because they're all busy with the simultaneous goals of murder and survival. All except the doctor, himself, who is tight-lipped on the matter, desperately scanning for an escape route, and not at all paying attention to what's behind him. Rita's distraction is better than either ninja had hoped for, even before Liza's grenade toss. Any kind of careful analysis would reveal that that 'Violet' can't possibly be a high-performance cyborg, but the first tier of wired reflexes are triggered by visible light and sound, without waiting for the deep scans from shoulder-mounted cameras that would reveal a baffling lack of the expected structural or electrical weaknesses -- all of which are still seeing radiation static. The real Violet rushes in, still invisible until a fraction of a second after she reaches Freddie, while nearly all the nearby guns turn enough fire on the fake to give it hundreds of perforations, instead, and the remainder turn hastily on Liza. When Violet does become visible, she's already jabbing the doctor's neck with a needle deployed from her wrist, and a wire is stretching out from below her thumb. It strikes a mechanical, skin-colored but metal-outlined port on the side of his head like a snake. His eyes roll up and his body sags in the same moment as Violet grabs him, and in what looks like still the same moment as that, she's backing out again as if pulled by strings. In fact, she is being pulled by strings, thrusters on her legs acting in concert with the zipline she'd anchored before sprinting in. With the target in hand, she hops backwards over a railing, and disappears to the level below. Hibiki can maybe see her, if she's still using the underside of the road for maneuvering, as Violet flips into a landing on another building, then vaults off it, parkouring like she'd practiced this particular route a hundred times for competitive speedrunning. The few enemies down there who are getting up aren't in any position to stop her.
Rita Ma	Though it seems from the outside like Rita could deflect bullets like this forever, from her internal perspective she firmly disagrees. The instant as the illusion has done its job and Violet is clear, she fades into invisibility and sprints to somewhere less exposed, obviously not eager to test her defenses any further. She reappears next to Liza, slightly out of breath, and extends her hand for the teleport out. Judging by the way her pupils have gone pinpoint, the blood lightly sprinkled on her clothes is having its predictable effect, but it'd be unwise to linger here and solve that. "Ready to go, Ms. Grier? I can help you patch that cut up back at home." Probably unnecessary, but it'd be a soothing activity for Rita anyway.
Karlan Nobles	With the bulk of the doctor's bodyguards taken down and Freddie himself subdued, SilverAsh knows before hearing it that their job is done here. He eyes the fallen bodyguard and his legs with a curious raise of an eyebrow as he pulls himself up, swiping his sword sideways once and raising it overhead as if poised to finish the man off. Instead, SilverAsh sheathes his blade and leaves a business card on him in a single motion (somehow). It's glossy, embossed, double-sided with color ink baked in, and his company's logo even has a little plastic bit on it. "Should you seek a more worthwhile employer, my lines will remain open." He declares before sweeping his hand over dramatically to the injured side, pressing down against the wound while starting to fall back towards Pramanix. The snow pope, for her trouble, is... Actually just lying down. She's still within the relative safety of cover, but she's going to be laying there until someone (possibly SilverAsh) picks her up and hauls ass out of there. She's not too worried about getting an answer at this point, largely because the adrenaline is starting to wear off and all the poison coursing through her system is making it easier to realize just how much everything hurts right about now.
Hibiki Tachibana	For a little while there, Hibiki is totally focused on what she's doing - there's not really any time to pay attention to anything but moving, attacking, and avoiding getting shot somewhere she shouldn't. Not needing to hold herself back too much when fighting human (despite however much cybernetic enhancement) enemies make things flow much easier, and she can confidently knock their blocks off and not have to worry before moving onto the next. But, amid her frankly absurd way of getting around keeping her out of firing lines, she catches sight of Violet on her way down. Upside down, she turns her head 'up', and watches her and their target making their escape. "They got him! Alright, breaking away shouldn't be too hard...! --Eh!?" Oh, yeah. She's upside down. And she lost her focus for a second. She goes falling down and away from her footing on the bottom of the walkway, tumbling briefly through the air out of control before she swings her body to right herself and fires her thrusters to help angle her landing in an alley between a pair of buildings the next level down. Her feet catch the side and create some sparks as she skids down to slow her fall. About half a minute and one flash of golden light later, she's stepping out into the crowd in her casual clothes, rubbing at /several/ very pained spots on her body beneath them. "Ugh...okay. I'll just take the 'hide in plain sight' route back out of here..."
KNK	The beaten officer still has his sidearm, but does pause when SilverAsh tosses him a business card. He'll take it with him, out of respect, though it's less certain whether his company loyalty will be cracked by this defeat to the point of later contact.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak's flaming bike (and height and general presence) makes a retreat like Hibiki's difficult bordering on impossible. He elects to leave exactly in the same way he'd been attacking--throwing subtlety to the wind. Smoldering metal slowly un-warps and cools itself, armored plates loudly pop back into position, but the trail of smoke still follows the Wraith as Bercilak brings it up alongside Pramanix and SilverAsh. Wash from the bike's lifter blows loose snow and city detritus about. The Green Knight reaches behind him to stow his axe in a special compartment along the running board, beckoning to SilverAsh. It's meant to be a one-rider craft, but the vehicle is large enough that each of the siblings could take one running board for themselves. If, that is, they can both stand. In the short time that Bercilak is near her, Pramanix is able to fight the effects of the poison, if not purge it. Stimulated adrenal response and heavy application of microsurgeons to repair damage in real time should allow her to stay standing long enough to ride to safety.
Liza Grier	Liza remains in cover for the period it takes her to really focus and psychokinetically purge the surface poison from her blood barrier and let her implants scrub the rest. She stays glued to the radio, chattering to keep apprised of the tactical situation and update on their plans for the doc. When everything seems satisfactory, she slings the gun over her torso, and then presses X to interact with the freshly arrived Rita. A nondescript little throat noise is timed with Liza lightly rubbing Rita's face with her sleeve, then saying "Change and shower, okay? It's all carbide down here." She calls for the Pramanix salvage team. "I don't have equipment to treat her on me. If you can't handle her yourself, bring her to me. Teleporting out in thirty." She sticks exactly to that timetable before taking anyone touch her in a beam of red light.