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Timekeeper     The Storm ended, as linear time dictated it must, and the next day remained cloudy.

    The Foundation didn't have the authority to force every Elite released from Vertin's suitcase to stay and give a report, but neither did they insist very hard on trying. Lilian, in direct contact with Arcana, was quarantined and put through examinations; the Foundation employees went back to their jobs without delay; the rest could simply take the LSCC warpgate back home to recover from the harrowing events of the past forty eight hours.

    But this Storm didn't end with a celebration of victory, or even the complicated relief that followed the Storm of 1966. Instead, the low pressure cell lingered like a held breath, the days of silence afterwards feeling like the herald of some new disaster rather than respite. The news comes in, straw by straw upon back: Vertin has been put indefinitely into a coma for Artificial Somnambulism care under Mesmer Jr.'s watch, reportedly as a trauma treatment and transparently as punishment. In her absence, the arcanists of the suitcase were lured out one by one, pressured into joining the Foundation and isolated in holding apartments until they agree. The suitcase itself was taken away and put under lock and key somewhere, sealing off every exit besides through the Foundation's paperwork.

    Many of you already know what has been planned to come next. A rock thrown into the holding pattern of precedent, the choice Vertin asked of those in her care was to say 'neither' to a choice of 'either-or'. Even while unconscious on a hospital bed, Vertin's machinations work their way through the carefully constructed intentions of the Foundation, but she's wholly reliant on everyone else's cooperation to see them through. Those words of hers, sprawled out on the ground after Schneider's disappearance in the rain and in the twenty-four hours following thereafter, are the last ones she'll speak for a long time, and the only control she has over the events in the intermediary are how you all interpret them.

    The building that Regulus, APPLe, Druvis, Sotheby, and Bellwhistle are in is far away from the center of the Foundation campus, where they ideally won't be able to cause any trouble. Four stories of concrete and marble, the building that could hypothetically have hundreds of employees working in it instead has only a few dozen due to personnel attrition, and a significant fraction of those are set to guarding the rogue arcanists. The rooms are comfortable, if spartan, cold marble floors and lonely open air, three meals a day and little conversation besides what centers around 'joining the Foundation, or continuing to delay'.

It's in everyone's best interests, they say;
Vertin sadly won't be available until long after you've made your decision, but this is what she'd want you to do, they say;
After all, she *is* only an extention of the Foundation's own will;
And really, what other choice do you have?
Regulus First, there was word that Vertin would be undergoing Artificial Somnambulism under Mesmer Jr's care, and there were also the visits. Foundation personnel dropped by with offers, requests, and demands for the unregistered arcanists to ultimately be pulled into the Foundation's fold. So far, the unregistered arcanists have dodged this demand with requests for times and other dodges, but it wouldn't last forever.

During the couple days that Regulus was stuck in her room being innocent, she sent an invisible APPLe out under the guise of peaking outside her room in order to get James Bond intelligence he had asked for. Because Regulus wasn't sure where she and the others were going to be held, she needed to wait until everyone was back at the Foundation to get James everything he needed but Regulus's phone wasn't confiscated so staying in contact wasn't hard. Peering through the cracked screen, she sent out the photographs of the building and surrounding area she and the other arcanists were being held out, focusing on the entrances and exits, windows--Bond has the opportunity to ask for more information as well because that's as easy as Regulus being annoying again so APPLe can do more investigating. James Bond should have a solid understanding of the area
5rDue to not being 'made of phones', Regulus couldn't hand out any preemptive form of communication but she told everyone she could in the Suitcase that she'd give out a pretty difficult to ignore signal.

Still, Regulus has established the following immediate goals: Securing and barricading the building they hope to hole up in and securing the Suitcase. The second part of this goal is easier than it sounds because the Elites (outside of the locals who are being held in the building already) will have to go through the Suitcase to get to the Foundation in the first place. But they'll still need to hold ONTO the Suitcase since surely the Foundation will want to take it back, so Regulus has explicitly asked Tamiel to handle that part until the area is secure. This is a lot to ask of someone she's not sure she can rely on, but well... Vertin wanted to move forward with more trust in others and Regulus is inclined to follow her captain's example.

As a timer ticks down on her phone, Regulus opens the door and asks again like she has been so consistently to make it predictable and boring to her guard, "Can I pleeeasee just go to the library, I'll be so good, I'll even be under guard!"

"No way," The guard looks over to her. "Aren't you bored yet?"

"Fiiine...." Regulus uses the door as cover, turns invisible, and slips out carefully before closing the door shut behind her, carrying her bag on her shoulder. She slips away from her room, making her way through the what ended up being the Rescorla-Wagner Administrative and Media Center, heading towards where APPLe had spotted the Suitcase during one of his many hidden excursions (Bond got a nice picture of the place in question), practically held on the opposite end of the media center as her room as if to just make Regulus work that much harder for it. She waits for doors to open as needed to avoid drawing attention to herself and slips into the room where the suitcase is being hidden.

Don't breathe too loud, she tells herself as she carefully avoids bumping into Foundation guards and makes her way to the suitcase. She reaches for the clasps and carefully and quietly flips them up before stepping AWAY from the suitcase shortly after. Now that the Suitcase is open it's only a matter of a time before a guard glances over and notices, so she gets some distance away before reappearing in plain view of the guards.
Regulus <Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "Warning warning! The Suitcase Rebellion begins today!"
<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "You won't remove us, we won't be banished or imprisoned!"
<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "We demand the return of Vertin, and we demand freedom! And we call all like-minded souls to come to the Foundation Rescorla-Wagner Administrative and Media Center building through the Suitcase!
<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "But we've got snacks, we've got music, and most importantly our back's against the wall! Better hurry before we seal the entrances or you'll miss the party of a lifetime!"

That's the signal for go-time and Regulus has clued in the Elites as best as she could. Regulus draws out her record player, places the needle on and lets it play as she shouts in full view of them, hoping to distract the guards for a few more seconds away from the Suitcase. The music blasts louder than the record player has ever before due to continued illegal musical enhancements to the Portably Record Player, now officially in it's Mk III state.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbmS3tQJ7Os

"o/~ Ooh a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Ooh yeah, I'm gonna fade away! o/~"

Regulus, who so often puts her foot in her mouth, sometimes just has to let the music communicate for her. And what better song than this? If it wasn't for Vertin, her own world would have become the most alien out of all the worlds in the multiverse. She was the one who offered her shelter without a price tag attached. She was the one who gave her a home. And now that home was at risk.

All throughout those final twenty four hours, Regulus had to endure. She had to endure Sotheby's tears as her home was ransacked and the continued assault on her home. She had to endure as the Manus saw through all her tricks and as they unleashed a crowd on her friends. She had to endure as she was separated from them and she had to endure Sonetto's stress and worry and tears as she was reminded that even the hyper competent arcanist who memorized, followed, and believed in all the rules was still a person who needed love. She had never seen a human explode before. Lilian's story was as awful as any she'd ever heard. And it shook her.

And despite all that endurance. They lost. The second Storm wasn't any easier than the first. It was worse. And Regulus found she could endure no more. And what she could endure least of all was the world that told the people she loved that you could either serve the cause that taught you to martyr yourself for those that would throw rocks at you, or you could accept the warm embrace of those who would burst open the stomachs of children, or you could die.

So it isn't just with love and hope that Regulus sings with today. Because rock and roll is descended from the blues and the blues is born from freedom, right down to the syncopation used to give the blues its groove. And that means, in the heart of rock and roll for all its talk of peace and love, there is also rage. The rage at time spent not being free.

"Waaaarr children!" Regulus sings. It's a misconception that this lyric refers to children being sent to to war or children raised in war time--you can just use the word 'children' for that and Regulus certainly knows the meaning of the term, but the accusation is clear: These arcanists the Foundation raised are still, despite the martyrdom and suffering and adherence to principles, not truly seen as the Foundation's people.
Timekeeper     The room the Suitcase is in, and therefore the room the assisting Elites will arrive in once they pass through the warpgate in the manor's basement and climb the stairs up and out, is a sparse storage room for the least-dangerous relics of the Arcanum Containment Department. Granite shelves line the walls, some cabinets labeled with names of other arcane devices that have been confiscated, and guards in checkered uniforms and blank white masks sit in office chairs or lean against doors.

    One of the clasps that holds the Suitcase shut is *broken*, snapped by Vertin before she was separated from it, so that her irreplicable incantation wouldn't be necessary to open it. The starry black void that shrouds the staircase opens up into bonking the first Elite out's head on the shelf above, causing the suitcase to clatter to the ground, and coinciding with the hell Regulus unleashes with her record player.

"Woah-!"
"Hey!! What are you doing here?!
"Regulus has escaped and is attempting to incite a riot! Calling backup, backup!"
Riku Asakura <Q-Conversation> Riku Asakura says, "Wha..?  Um, right, I'll be there..."

Riku had few details about a rebellion besides the statement that one was going to happen. He's a little caught off guard by this, especially with what happened to Vertin and the Suitcase gang.  He enters the suitcase through the warp gate that he didn't know was there.  He gives a wave towards Regulus and her record player.

Then it's up through the suitcase, a head bonk, and rubbing his head as he enters the Foundation through the suitcase.  So it was a rebellion, but uh...

What next?  He looks around.  "So um... I'm helping with the rebellion," he says, looking at the guards.  "So I'd ask for you to /not/ get back up or try and stop us," he says, pulling out the Fusion Riser, but hesitant on actually using it.  

<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "The plan is 'get here, get the Foundation people out, barricade.'"

"So I'll ask you politely to leave."
Odette Raskins It had taken Odette a while to start working again after this most recent Storm. It had taken longer after that to start talking to people again, aided somewhat by having a task to focus on with putting pieces of Flamel's mind back where they needed to be. That's all she's really had time to do, and coping with the events of the past few days still hasn't actually happened yet.

Even now, long after Regulus talked to her regarding Vertin's confinement, Odette is still in that mental fog that hasn't quite dispersed yet. Hearing of the situation regarding Vertin has obviously struck a nerve for the medic, though, and it didn't take long for her to get her things ready for what could be a drawn out...

Battle? She really hopes not. She's voiced her misgivings, sure, but what is there to do if it really does come down to blows? She can only hope for the best and trust in everyone else joining in on this with the preparations she's made, emerging from the suitcase behind Riku with her fancy-looking medical case in hand.

"So I'll ask you politely to leave."
<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "Use the device noises!"

There's already a wrinkle to all this, but Odette's still has one thing going for her: Playing off how scared-as-shit she can look over anything. She moves away from Riku rapidly to give him some space to transform while gesturing frantically at the guards present. "G-get out of here, before he changes! I can't fix you if you're paste!" She shouts with wide-eyes and trying to look and sound about as scared as she often does in a battle.

Even if she knows Riku isn't the sort to actually do that doesn't mean she can't pretend that he is.
Riku Asakura <Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "Use the device noises!"
<Q-Conversation> Riku Asakura says, "...Are they going to shoot us?"
<Q-Conversation> D: Regulus says, "Do you wanna find out after they shoot you? Just be careful, man."
<Q-Conversation> Riku Asakura says, "...That's a fair point..."

Riku takes a breath.  "You go..." he says, pulling out an Ultracapsule.  It activates and summons the image of a giant of light.  "I go..." he does so again; this time, a giant of darkness forms next to him.  "Here we go!" He scans each Ultracapsule, causing the double helix glass light on it to first glow yellow, and then a dark purple.  "It's time to get ready!" he says, holding the Fusion Riser overhead, before bringing it down over his heart.

"GEEEEEEED!" Blue-white light starts radiating off of Riku while he transforms.  

FUSION RISE!
ULTRAMAN
ULTRAMAN BELIAL
ULTRAMAN GEED PRIMITIVE

The lights fade away, leaving Ultraman Geed standing there in front of the guards.  He speaks, pointing to the door.  "I'll ask that you leave, peacefully, again."
Ein Sotheby had left early, from the suitcase, and was placed in one of the Foundation's finest (slightly dressed up normal) rooms - which was less grand than her room by far and her room in the suitcase by at least two bounds. She counted them, very scientifically! Or, since they were 'across the pond', would it be long leaps or short leaps?

Nevertheless, the good Lady Sotheby had persevered on the prison rations she was delivered! Valiant, when faced with stews of mysterious origin and cuts of strange meat and sides of unseasoned potato! Indefatigable! Whatever father means by that! Having politely requested a series of beakers, burners, and a worktable be added to her room since it was *clearly* missing from her domicile, by the time the Foundation complies with her quite reasonable demands...

She had already been hard at work, having cleared off her study desk and unpacked her own beakers and burners and vials, stringing up more by tinselwire and others stuck by affixations of crystal to the wall like rack shelving.

"Oh, marvelous!" Sotheby had told her confused '''captors'''. "Just put it over there, will you? I'm in the middle of an experiment right now and it's not to be agitated, so, really, just leave it--" She had dismissed them. "--over there!"

Then the days had dragged on, and she had cooked through the materials she had brought to entertain herself with, burning through a month's supply of reagents in three days filling out her journal on combinatorics just on unsupervised time and no interruptions but for being delivered the meals she preferred cold and stable so she could dissect them for science.

Thankfully, she had her nutrition potions and a few stashed scones to tide her over until she was returned to *proper* living conditions!

Surely!

---

Druvis III had been escorted out of the suitcast 'last' among the arcanists, presented with Vice-President Constantine, and shown terms and papers.

They had negotiated. Druvis had bought time. At the end, she won a tour of the foundation for listening, and counted her blessings. Returned to a secured Foundation room rather than the suitcase, fetched only by Madame Z for a tour of the grounds, Druvis had a single particular question for the administrator:

"Where is Vertin? May I see her?"

As their tour had wound through the gardens and green spaces of the Foundation, some quite pleasant if manicured and contained, Druvis had considered the value of domestication and consulted 'those that had been domesticated'. Spending time touching hand to stem and branch and trimming, where growth was blunted by blade and where it had been let flourish, Druvis learned of the Foundation in her own way - though Madame Z was helpful.

Madame Z allowed Druvis to see Vertin, and the reality of what shape their struggle would take reflected in the window - the pensive expression of Z, and the flat resignation in emerald of Druvis' own eyes as she saw Vertin attached to machines and in a helmet -- sleeping, perhaps peacefully.

She would be a soldier, aggressor and sieged both.
Ah, there was nothing new under any sun in any time sometimes.
Ein ---

Now, Druvis III faces her final deadline to decide. The papers, and a pen besides, sit lit on a desk added to her stock Foundation offset checkerboard room, turning on promptly at dawn. Druvis had been up before, observing the moon through stone slat vertical 'windows' on her accommodation, cross legged at the end of her unmade and rumpled bed. There is a firm knock on the door, and the authoritative voice "Miss Druvis? We'd like to hear your decision."

Standing up from her seat, Druvis walks to the door, wand floating in her wake and heeding to hand as she steps into the frame.

"I am here," She begins, and touches the door to open it.

As she does, to open the door, she pauses as she hears the blessedly distorted chords of rock and roll. Building up and building up and building up to it, growing steadily, she had still lost in pace to someone who had to perform to live.

Ah well, Druvis smiled wistful-faint, Regulus may have that one.

All across the Foundation, the plantlife erupts with a stage of explosive growth that fills and occupies space with heaps of new matter, and then an animate aggression into that new territory to control it. As one, the hallways fill with forest corridors of wood and root and shrubbery, the garden-spaces become neutral-hostile territory, and kudzu spreads like a living carpet along floor and ceiling and any fool enough to wander in and wonder what's going on. Little cracks - locks on doors, vents and crevasses, and the like - are burst through by new growth, and Druvis steps through her own entryway with an escort of room-filling branches as her entire domicile spreads with the moon-drunk expansion of oaktree and hawthorn, and pushes out the guards near her with a wave of wood and shrub.

"It's nothing personal. I am re-opening negotiations." She states, waving with hand to say 'goodbye' and wand following to eject the door-functionaries into a kudzu-encroaching hallway with the options to 'report back (run)' and 'fight (kudzu)'.

MEANWHILE...

Boredom had gripped Sotheby terribly. She had almost become cripplingly, light-dousingly, soul-breakingly *bored* that she knew her great big little heart would just break.

And so she had started to cook, heedless of all else. Her fingers created not gold, but something grander - something from the 'not for Gwendolyn yet' section of her codex of alchemy! But, you see, what truly defines 'yet'? The adults had said time had ended, or some such, and so... Really, wasn't everything on time for her now? She was as old as she would be! She was. . . an adult too!

"Ten parts... clearbrew oil..." She measures out, consulting her recipe. "And then, for the stabilizer to the Poly-Shifting Potion, I'll need - what's this? One drop unicorn blood? Fresh drawn?"

Scoffing while lowering guard, Sotheby wipes her brow. "Now where am I to find a unicorn? I have horn to shave..." Would it substitute?

Her quest and questions is cut short when there's shouting from down the hall, and she jumps while bumping her lab desk with her knee when seeing the expansion of roots down from the ceiling into her vials and beakers!

Backing off into the doorway, Sotheby peeks from behind the doorframe into her room as two Foundation guards enter, looking for her.

Quite consideringly, Sotheby points into the room and shouts a brave "Well, watch out!!", obviously causing both her minders to turn towards her.

It also causes one of them to become a hat rack, as glass beakers and spread of materials crash and crunch, strange flowers bloom across the root that becomes a branch, and further objects are crunched into.

"Ohh, and my Grow-Grow Green Thumb plant jump-up juice too! I hadn't tested the dosage on that!"

Events proceed apace, with Sotheby breaking out of her room while her 'bodyguards' give what chase they can.
Veronica     Veronica spent the few days it's been since the Storm of 1929 at the Faded Print, since it's a fair shake closer to a warpgate than Firefly Dam. She's pressed the Yurodivye's leadership into redirecting some personnel to Firefly Dam for the near future, which she'll owe them for big-time. For Veronica, the freedom to stay with the rebels at the Foundation for a long haul is worth it.

    Riku, on emerging from the Suitcase, all but apologizes for his role in the rebellion. Veronica has a different idea. As she clambers out she quickly notes the location of guards in the room and launches herself at the nearest one.

    She's not the peak of street-fighting ability but she definitely knows her way around an unarmed scuffle, and with the aid of her telekinetically-empowered (and concrete-durable) left arm she pins the guard against the wall and wrestles to tear their key-ring free from their belt. The other guards will have to be someone else's problem, Veronica's concerned with securing access to the rest of the facility.
Holly Asturias     Time spent home brought only a bit of relief to Holly. What she needed, right now, was to do something productive, to turn effort into results, something her Sanatorium can't much do at the moment.

    Having sworn her help to Vertin, and Regulus for that matter, meant that when Regulus was assembling the troops, she freed time on her schedule just for her. Much to Nicole's dismay, the doctor is once again *out*, and not explaining why or where, only that this time she wouldn't be gone as long.
    ... probably.

    When the Suitcase bursts open, Holly pops out. Golden ichor and a frosty sheen coat her hands, and though she has to do a little hop and a 'wuh!!' at the sudden uneven footing, she manages not to look like a complete fool, and flares out with wide blasts of ice to intimidate the guards. She aims for hands, she tries to push the guards out with the ice impacts, she makes sure there's scary-looking jagged icicles in the way so they don't get the brilliant idea to charge into melee.

    Nothing dangerous. No attempt to freeze them to the blood and risk extra injuries or frostbite. Just ice to scare and immobilize their hands. Give them a reason to consider an immediate retreat.

    A few guards shouldn't be a problem between the lot of them, especially when Regulus is already distracting them with MUSIC.

    "I'll heal or treat anyone we injure, so please don't be afraid to fight. Vertin knew this would be bought with a struggle, the important part is that we neither kill nor cripple anyone." And besides, she isn't the only one present who can patch people up, that much she knows.

    This isn't directed at anyone in particular but it's important!

    As the jingling chains of her golden hat-brim-crown settle, one might notice she's added a little golden feather, amidst what was mostly stars before.
Tamiel Luxis     Tamiel'd been waiting.

    She'd cleared her schedule for the next week, taken a room in a remote Watchtower with an active gate, and tuned it to the Suitcase's signature. Checked and double-checked and triple-checked her supplies.

    And finally, fretting, on this poorly furnished bunk, by a porthole looking over a landscape wide and arctic. All of her problems felt so...Frivolous, right now. Sonetto had told her once, that she was lucky. And Tamiel knew she was. So much. And Vertin wasn't. But somehow, Tamiel was the shuddering, shirking violet. And Vertin...and Sonetto...All the arcanists...Were pushing through, day after day. Even as their world washed away in the rain.

    "At least, I can do this." She muttered, for the hundredth, time, feeling like she was made of fracturing glass, nervous, giddy and something else flickering up and down her spine. "One thing...ONE thing, that really matters...!"

    When Regulus's announcement came out over the radio, Tamiel slapped her hands against her cheeks, and then thrust herself up, grabbing her bag as she pulled shadows over her head, and setting the gate to spool up the connection.

    
|                                           |

    A shadow SLAMMED out of the open suitcase and into the ground, where it squirmed, while Tamiel got her bearings and realized the door had opened into the floor. Quickly, she rose out of th e floor, lifting the suitcase to give anyone after her an easier entrance, while staying down and low.

    "I'll be after the last of you." She murmurwed, hushed, letting Regulus' troublemaking distract the Foundation security long enough to, hopefully, get everyone out and ready to rumble. "Go on."

    Her job was to stay out of the way and not be seen, along with the most precious thing any of them had to manage. This, she'd bet her life on.
White      White, in all her well-meaning, had been late to catch up on the events that followed her split from the other Elites. After delivering Marian to those who could be assumed to take care of her, White had precious little to negotiate further presence with. It had ultimately come down to her voluntary presence in a sealed room, in exchange for being able to visit Marian for the next few days and be certain she was cared for. A holding cell regardless of decor, which regardless was more of a suggestion and a gesture at peaceful intentions more than anything. She could manage most of her affairs through her agents afar, at least for that long.

     It wasn't until a mere couple of hours before Regulus began to take action that she'd been invited to come for a room visit and become aware of the reality that took place in her absence. It was almost a blessing to have something she could haphazardly connect to her original goals, so she could pretend for a little longer that all her efforts with Schneider hadn't gone to waste.

     Schneider cared about Vertin, and even others in Vertin's circle. Some of the Elites besides, too, it seemed. Until White could speak to Vertin again, and hear everything that happened, hear what might have been Schneider's remaining wishes...

One obstacle at a time. Everything else could wait. She just needed the proper signal.

     That signal- Regulus's announcement- wasn't *strictly* aimed at her. She was in the unusual position of having total, free access to the building on her own volition, albeit under the malus of 'not actually being familiar with the layout' and having only had the opportunity to visit a few places. She could expand that access in time, but for now...

     All it takes are half-decent directions for White to find her way from her holding room to the area outside of the suitcase's storage room. Teleporting from where she starts to a nearby hall, she uses her wall-piercing sight to spot Foundation staff, guards, or anyone else in advance of taking any corners, teleporting past groups to garner as little suspicion as possible beyond her unscheduled absence from her room. Just like back in the labyrinth, only she's powerwalking on her own human legs instead of sprinting through on a set of eight.

No fights, no violence, yet. It's all about getting her bearings, building her mental map of the facility, and reaching the area where the others will be emerging.

     She figures there's a chance that guards and such will already be present by the time she arrives, given Regulus's loud announcement and her own unfamiliarity with the building, but her appearance behind them should inspire at least a fraction of a second's worth of hesitation and surprise, right? Kind of like-... Like over there. Like what's happening with that fancily dressed girl?! The shattering of glass had drawn White's attention even as she noticed noise elsewhere nearby from the unseen efforts of Druvis, who White had only heard recently was here.

     White has no benefit of knowledge about who Sotheby is, really. She only knows that glass broke, her guards fell prone to fates straight out of a rubberhose cartoon, and now the billow-dressed young woman was dashing away from further pursuit, and *most importantly* that White could recall her for both her striking voice and telltale sense of fashion. She was there, when White last saw the raid team! Which means... She's an ally? Or a, uh, ward maybe??
White      Lurking at the corner for a little too long to keep her original pace out of both surprise and indecision, White finally grits her teeth and groans out acceptance. Okay, just a *little bit* of violence. If it's aimed at people chasing a little girl, that makes it okay. That's her story, anyway. First from afar, she lifts a boot and claps sole-against-floor, orange glyphs ordering the stone of the floor to surge up and across in front of Sotheby's pursuers; for an extra trick, the stone spears that extend to block the guards are wreathed in invisible webbing, turning any momentous crash into a lasting restraint, at least until they can pull free of their own clothes or a few layers of skin, or find a sharp enough blade besides.

     That done, she darts up alongside Sotheby, giving the smaller girl a wide-ish berth until she can see White to recognize her in turn; White doesn't want to have anything shatter-y and questionable thrown her way! This is the first time in days that they've met, after all. "Let's go... To see the others." is delivered tonally more like a question than the instruction that her phrasing makes it sound like. It'd be dangerous to leave a young girl associated with Vertin's crew *alone* at a time like this, even if she hadn't just broken out of her own volition, so a short escort quest isn't unthinkable.
James Bond PHONE: James Bond says, "You understand there's no coming back from something like that. Once you've done it, you can't undo it."
PHONE: Phoning James Bond, Regulus says, "Well I should've died in that first Storm and I managed to survive the second. You only live twice you know?"

    James is among those who did provide a report, though he'd asked for use of the facilities to freshen up first. That report isn't flattering. It paints a picture of an operation with a promising beginning cast into disorganized chaos. Vertin's team ran into a much more organized outfit with better intelligence, better security and better tactics. Rather than retreat and regroup with the rest of the team, Vertin in particular is blamed for exacerbating the operation by insisting on isolating herself and Lilian to rescue an enemy asset which the Manus had evidently decided to burn well in advance, and who had little actionable intelligence to provide. The help which Schneider could provide was only useful in the context of mending an exfiltration which never should have been botched to begin with, and which was very nearly disastrous anyway thanks to the characteristically high level of advance planning he's come to expect from the Manus. Their superior force, which by all rights should have won, lost not because of some 11th-hour Herculean effort, but because of the near-miraculous dive into defeat from the jaws of victory orchestrated by Forget-Me-Not.

    The best deception involves an element of truth. Bond's scathing after-action report leaves little suspicion as to his feelings about who is to blame, and is easily interpreted as taking the Foundation's side. His sour demeanor is like the final stroke of a signature, and so, having cemented his allegiance against Vertin in the eyes of those who punish her and call it treatment, he makes his departure.

    At least, that's what anyone who sees the Warpgate would think. Bond's ring snaps surreptitious pictures of the LSCC, corroborating details with what Regulus has already sent him, but, more importantly, analyzing data on personnel--whoever appears to be security personnel, to be specific. After a number of angles and individuals are covertly photographed, the ring sends enough data to his watch for a fabricated uniform in his size, perfect for blending in with anyone on guard duty for the arcanists.

    The hard-light fabrication of himself projected from a mobile emitter isn't much of a talker, but it matches his dour expression and bitter gait well enough that no one will likely question his whereabouts after it disappears through the warpgate and fizzles out on the other side. Having ducked into a secluded corner of the campus to review the information from Regulus, he changes into his newly-spun-up uniform, holding last piece--the silver mask in his hands with newfound contempt. Straightening the checkered tie and smoothing the black vest, he emerges with a 'wand' clipped to his dress pants and his watch now taking the form of golden pocketwatch resting on the vest like a badge.

    It takes him less effort, thanks to in part to Regulus and in part to his own reconnaissance, to find where the arcanists are being kept, and to worm his way inside as part of the security detail a little in advance of everything going down. An American accent isn't difficult for someone with his training; if anyone asks, he's a transplant from the Chicago branch. He is one of the ones engaging in those depressing conversations, as sparse and inhospitable as the accomodations. He is part of the chorus advising them to join--except, a small detail added in passing with another guard, for Regulus' benefit. "You only live twice." Though his expression is stony, especially behind the mask, it should prove as enough hint to his identity.
James Bond Aren't you bored yet?

    "I'm surprised *you're* not," says Bond to the guard. "I heard they made some roster shifts around here, but I didn't think it'd be this bad. It's like a ghost town in this building. Plus, she's not exactly my idea of great company," he says, thumbing at Regulus dismissively. "Anyway, they're using me as a floater while they figure out what to do with me, so I'm your relief. Try not to have too much fun."

<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "Warning warning! The Suitcase Rebellion begins today!"

    That's his cue. Before the guard can turn around, he jabs his wand between the shoulderblades. An electrical -zzt- discharges, followed by the -thwap- of Bond's leg against the inside of the guard's. Having driven the unsuspecting guard to one knee, he finishes the takedown with a second prod of the stun-wand.

    His next immediate concern is being made--prematurely, at least--and he squeezes the handle of the wand, sending a jolt of incapacitating energy towards the guard calling for backup, before they can raise an alarm about an infiltrator, but pointedly not before the call for backup can be made at all. From there, he backs away, stun-rod pointed at any standing guards, making to lose them in the bowels of the building if only for a few valuable moments.
Timekeeper     The guards, in fact, *are* inclined to shoot at you. They're armed with LSCC weaponry and gadgets, strange asymmetrical things with unpredictable effects from their forms-- except for the ones that are basically guns. Proximity to Mesmer would familiarize you with the K-tope Calibrator, a sort of stunning raygun that two of the guards draw and immediately level at you before even processing the announcement of the rebellion.

    With the element of surprise, they won't even manage that. Veronica tackles one of them, and the man in the white mask grunts in surprise when he can't wrest his arm free from her grip. Tension on his wrist forces the raygun out of his grasp, and writhing against the wall, he slams a knee up into Veronica's gut to try and break free.

"Ghh-- enhanced strength! These must be the Timekeeper's contacts from off-- hhhrk--!"

    His opposing hand is fended off by Holly's ice, and Veronica can snatch the keyring right off of him. One of the other guards, disarmed now by Holly, tries to tackle Regulus and force her to the ground, pulling the needle on the record player to scratch it as he does.

    "Hey! This is St. Pavlov Foundation property! This building is being surrounded as we speak!" He wrenches Regulus's arm behind her back, threatening her as the supposed representative that planned all of this. "Put down your weapons and place your hands on your head! Whatever the pirate's told you, it's not worth it!"

    He jerks his head towards the fourth guard while holding Regulus hostage. "Go on! Get outta here and activate the shutdown! I'll keep 'em here!" This guard, unfortunately, is Bond, so his hopes of a building-wide defensive maneuver won't ever come to fruition.

    The beep-crackle of a walkie-talkie goes off in the chaos, and a hurried but professional voice speaks into it with incomprehensible static coming from the response. "Security, we've got a situation in Rescorla-Wagner. Multiversal hostiles on-site, repeat, multiversals--! Hey!"

"So um... I'm helping with the rebellion,"

    The last guard, with a weird boxy weapon on his hip but only a radio in hand, raises up both of his hands placatingly and takes a step towards Riku. "Hey, hey. You seem like a good kid, alright? Whatever this business you've gotten tangled up in is, you don't gotta go through with this. There's no rebellion, see? Just an arcanist and a terror attack in the middle of Foundation campus. No one's gotta get hurt, as long as we all settle down and make this easy."

"I can't fix you if you're paste!"

    "Nahh, I've heard of you. Yeah, it's coming back to me. You're that one transforming hero, ain't you?" Like approaching a feral cat, the guard keeps his voice even and calm, trying to not alarm Riku while keeping himself between the Elites and the door. "You wouldn't do something like that. Really, all this, it ain't the kinda thing you're interested in at all, is it? Hey, c'mon, just....--!"
Timekeeper "GEEEEEEED!"

    The guard recoils, mouth opening in fear. Immediately, his demeanor changes, unclipping the box from his hip to drop it on the ground and turning tail to run from what he believes will turn him imminently into paste. The box flashes as he fumbles with the doorknob, and then with a cl-cl-cl-click, its metal panels all reshuffle and explode outwards. Cables from within shoot out in a sphere of directions, latching onto the walls and ceiling, and then lighting up with crackling blue electricity.

    The guard throws the door open, and just then, there's Druvis. Outside, the vast concrete center floor is open from ground level to the very roof, and both the hallways that ring its upper levels and the shining marble tile surrounding a statue are exploding into fireworks of green. Stone cracks and crumbles where wooden trunks push through it, turning the brutalist flat angles of the Foundation's architecture into a lumpy overgrown mess, lively and not sterile.

    As White gets closer to the Rescorla-Wagner (Administrative and Media Center), it becomes harder and harder for her to stay out of sight. There's a somewhat open walk along paved paths through flat lawns to get out to the very edges of the territory the Foundation claims, and though she can teleport through large chunks of it, she's not the only one headed in the direction. Even from the outside, Druvis's declaration is made known; branches of leaves and flowers smash out through glass windows and coil in protective grip around concrete.

    The guards outside Sotheby's door are running in pursuit of her, and from the fourth-floor vantage point of the Arcanum Containment storage room, the Elites can see her being chased on the balcony. By one, and then two guards when another sees the commotion, and trailing behind them is an indignant hopping coatrack that thwaps White in the face with a dangling hat when she runs past. Sotheby's shoved to the ground, caught by the superior athleticism of a hostile adult, who then whips out handcuffs for her.
Regulus "I escaped! Consider how helpful a crack team of arcanists that can pop up out of a suitcase would be for helping the Foundation's mobility and response time in moments of crisis!" Regulus shouts, now that people are piling out of i and doing what Regulus mentally calls 'Elite Things'. Regulus may have some Swindle in her. Not that this is a scam, it's something she actually believes, but it has the general texture of 'and it can be yours for only 19.99!' Regulus cannot turn people into paste and she also does not take well to being shot. Bullets are dangerous to Reguluses and that's why you should never shoot your Regulus.

Regulus didn't give Druvis much forewarning due to her not having a phone but, well, she figures that between Bond and Druvis she doesn't need to strictly plan everything out to the last detail. She hadn't had that much time to plot in the less than twenty four hours in the suitcase, and had too much time to herself in her room which she is now complaining about since her choice of music didn't get the Foundation operatives to say 'Oh no you're right we ARE the bad guys in the situation, here let's just throw down our guns!'. Hey, she can always hope.

Wondering if the Foundation operatives will notice that Odette came out of the Suitcase along with everyone else and thus may not be entirely trustworthy, Regulus also didn't clue Sotheby in on the mission either because she's fourteen years old and maybe she shouldn't be in a situation with live ammunition now that she's found safe-ish harbor so she's presuming all the distant clattering and massive plant growing noises in the distance to be solely Druvis.

Regulus instead sends bursts of light to disorient guards and make them easier pickings for the others to deal with though this is also to discourage them from spraying gunfire around. She is distracted from doing too much because as she sees Druvis arrive she is wholly distracted for a moment as she gapes at Druvis's look. "Daamn sister... That hair color is far out on you." Fortunately as her breath is taken away, she's allowed a moment to catch it again as her friends and allies keep her from getting bathed in Stunnergy.

But unfortunately one of the guards is able to catch Regulus by the arm and painfully wrenches it back. "Abuse! Abuse of force by the authorities!" This won't work but Regulus does try to kick back with her foot and shoot stray light blasts that she's having trouble aiming with before ultimately settling on summoning musical notes to fall on the guy's head from above, but this will be 'annoying' not 'defeating' so someone should help poor Regulus! Save her!! Save the kitty!!!

APPLe materializes near Bond, hovering near him as Regulus accidentally drops his invisibility when trying to free herself from the guard. He says, "That might not be a bad idea, my good man." Mr. APPLe tells Bond."Before the backup arrives. If you need assistance, I'll be your apple for the job."
Holly Asturias     Suitcase, keys, immediate perimeter...

    If there was any doubt that they'd secured their entrance, they'd be cast aside completely by Druvis causing green to overtake white, in a way that looks like it could be much more destructive if she meant it to be. Holly has to wonder if there's any risk of the building's Storm-proofing being affected by wanton destruction, but even if there was...

    Surely they've got *quite* some time before the next one anyway.

    "Good work!" she intones towards Veronica and Tamiel specifically, before looking out the door fully and trying to take in the scale of the commotion. Is that-- that little alchemist girl? And White!

    "White!!"

    Oh Holly could not be happier to see someone she knows right now. There'll be time to be dour and sad later.

    She hops, towards the balconies, and noticing that White already has most of that situation under control, only sees fit to fire another half-volley or very large icicles, more likely to puncture the ground than guards - but certainly capable of creeping along the ground and freezing their feet in place, that White's run for Sotheby is not interrupted.

    "You won't mind a hand, yes? I quite like the little miss," she indicates Sotheby, with the best smile she can manage right now.
Ein Sotheby manages to make the cartoon pace of 'what's that over there? what's this over here?' with swoops and scampers look coordinated, intermixed with quite genuine noticing and scurrying off around corners and along with the spread of the kudzu through the hallways of the habitation area. When confronted with the sweep of hands, she ducks! When confronted with tackling arms, she skips! And when confronted by someone snapping up her hat and leaving her to tumble free of the neckstrap, the free-haired Gwendolyn wipes her chin and reaches into her bag surehandedly.

"Alright, *mister*." Sotheby begins, head full of steam and fist drawing free vials. "One should know it's *rude* to take a lady's hat without permission. So your punishment is testing batch one!"

Hucking the 'unstabilized' shapeshifting potion onto the lead Foundation member, the sizzle and fizz of twisting form makes a broad-chested man in jacket and tie and mask become a tall armoire, the large man does not stand *still* for her! Spilling polymorphic juice like a floor trap with glass, Sotheby expects nothing and instead sees a rune!

"O~h my!!" Gasps Sotheby, peering around the large man to the symbol glowing behind. "A new alchemical reaction?" as marble turns to spears and webbing both, clearly spider-riffic and heavily themed. "A reaction from Arachne gum? An--" But while White effortlessly and so-cool drops out around the corner to trap a good group of the chasing Foundation guards in web-bound stone spears -- others slip through, or join from another junction, shouting, pointing, racing towards! Armed with Laplace electroblasters and truncheons and security tough bulk, more pile in, and Sotheby, half handcuffed, squirms in a perilously damsel'ed way.

"Ah -- bodyguards? Where are *my* bodyguards?? I don't like this at *all*!!" Faint-whines the child as a hopping hatrack struggles to breach the stone-and-webbing cordon and get at White. For treason? For invasion? For the ineffable reasons that only a coatrack with a Foundation pin on can hold?

It will remain a mystery. The semi-animate furniture keeps its secrets.
Riku Asakura Riku sighs at the last guard, but he doesn't stop his transformation, especially with the others aiming to sock some of the guards in the face.  He doesn't feel /great/ about this, but he also can't stand by and let the Foundation do what they're doing to the Suitcase people and Vertin.  

Ultraman Geed would frown if he could, as the guard panics and runs away.  He already said what he wanted to say over the radio, but he still feels sore about it.  

However, this leaves the box that he activated as a problem.  The panels shuffle out as cables lock into the ceiling and walls.  This doesn't look good because of the electricity they're sparking.  He doesn't try touching them, because that'd be dangerous, so instead..

Geed brings his arms together, releasing waves of energy that form into crescents.  These threaten to cut through cables and panels, aiming to try and stop the box before it can do whatever it's about to do.  Simply put, a box can't electrocute you if you cut all of the cables and panels, right?  

He hears Regulus' call for help, and can't turn his head to look at her and the guard who has her.  "Can someone rescue Regulus?  I'm dealing with this thing."
Odette Raskins Hearing the explosion of Druvis' plantlife in the halls before she can see any of it, Odette briefly glances back at Riku. It's both to make sure he didn't actually grow way more than anyone had expected, and also to offer him an apologetic smile at having used his size as a potential threat. "Sorry...!" She mouths, even, trying not to be overheard by the guards before spotting Veronica going right for another guard.

Odette's definitely not going to stop her from doing that, even if she does feel kind of bad about it. Not too bad, but a smidge. The false threat, bolstered by Riku transforming, does seem to work quite well, although the guard dropping that box does pose a new problem for the rebellion: Creating a foul new door trap!

That earlier smidge of bad-feeling doesn't stop her eyes from briefly flaring up in anger, either when one of the disarmed guards goes after Regulus, and she goes straight for the guard herself with a well-measured syringe of...

... No, no syringe. She's just tackling the guard herself, trying to haul him up onto her shoulders and let momentum carry them both into the electrified wall. It's a lapse in judgment, to be sure, but Odette's had practice picking people up in mid-run to get them out of dangerous situations. This time, though, it's less to get the guard out of danger and more to get him off Regulus, risk of self-electrocution easily ejected from her mind in that moment of haste.
Veronica     Veronica is content to leave her target guard pinned to the wall by Holly's magical ice. Pocketing the keys, she stances up ready to fight the other guards as well, only they're fleeing from the already-transformed Ultraman Geed. She feels a little outdone, so it's time to suit up herself!

    As the strange boxy contraption one guard dropped begins to unfold, Veronica is already enfolded in the arms of her EGO. Expecting the device to be some variety of grenade, she hurls her brick-shelled body to cover the explosion, knowing perhaps only she and Ultraman could make it out of such a confined blast minimally scathed.

    She's consequently surprised when it instead latches onto her with electrified cables. The hissing wires score burn marks across Baker and Seventh's body, but they're only 'skin' deep - ensconced within a shell of psychic energy, Veronica herself is unaffected.

    However, she now has the problem of having all her limbs stapled together, a problem which keeps her mostly tethered to the floor. She could tear free, but that would leave electrified cables snapping around the air - little better than the live grenade she thought she was sparing the others from. "Somebody shut off this device!" she calls, rising to one knee for easier access to the cables tying her to the floor.
James Bond While the dreams of a shutdown won't be realized by that particular guard, it doesn't mean someone else won't have the same idea.

If you need assistance, I'll be your apple for the job.

    "You've had time to scout this place out. If you know where that shutdown console is, lead the way. If not, you can fill me in on what else you can do on the way there." He does a double-take, then, realizing the invisibility has dropped.

     "Wonderful," he exasperatedly intones. "I suppose now you'll do it as my 'prisoner,' then." He motions in front of him with his 'wand,' holding it at chest level. "Let's go."
White      The surge of plants and noise nearby, if nothing else, gives White a strong hunch about where to go. The problem is... Her escort-quest target isn't particularly fast. The barricade White whipped up in a hurry wasn't all that large, and there are more people encroaching than she can reasonably expect to hinder and disable without getting a lot rougher. So...

     Kicking off her original stride to leap back toward the being-restrained Sotheby, it begins to look like she's going to wind up a big stupid football punt for the man doing the handcuffing but instead she jumprope-leaps over his head, looping glistening silk from her fingertips in a loose arc around his chest and shoulders on her way over. Her footfalls draw up a fresh, flat new stone wall from the ground nearer than the spears, and with a great grunting heave she *wrenches* the man away, up, over her head, and throws him bodily and upside-down against its surface.

     The webs are still attached, and he finds himself effectively glued to flat-shaped marble, the blood running to his head and his legs dangling in the air.

     From there, there's no more time for the hands-on treatment for the Foundation's forces. The lesser of two evils it is. White prays deeply in her heart that this young lady is not the same kind of brat as Sophia, while immediately turning to scoop her up off the floor in her arms and carry her off at a crisp dash. She'd normally have a bit of an issue with navigation at a pace suitable for escape, but-

     Holly, from nearby, helps orient her and give her somewhere to go uncritically toward. Under cover of icetip bolts, she twists, digs her heel down, leaps from floor to wall and hunches in to keep Sotheby more or less upright in her arms while she stomp-trods straight up to the balcony where Holly has perched herself. She's getting better at carrying people, at least! Sotheby isn't slung over her back like a rolled up mat, and once she's spider-stepped her way up to the revenant's side, she finds just enough time to spare on glancing down for Sotheby's cruelly stolen head-topper, teleporting the hat up to join them, rescued and gently squished back down atop the girl's head.

To ablate the possibility of a pampered girl's tantrum, if anything, but it's still a nice thing to do.

     In any case, it's not for any physiological reason that White sounds vaguely winded when she says to Holly, in complete earnestness and urgency that supercedes pride... "... I don't know... Where we're going. Is it toward the plants..?"

     Maybe Holly is the one with an escort mission, now.
Holly Asturias     "Towards the plants, and the rock 'n roll," Holly confirms helpfully to White, although that last one is contingent on Regulus keeping control of her overboosted record player.

    "And how are you, Sotheby? They weren't too rough with you, were they?" By all appearances Sotheby is the one being rough with the Fondation! "Quick now, if we fall behind it's going to be very difficult to catch up, considering the plan." This would be a lot more true if she weren't saying that to White, who is probably the best equipped amongst them to disregard falling behind.

    "I believe Regulus said she had snacks?" This may motivate Sotheby.
White      White is relieved that she hasn't gone off course! It was hard to tell whether Druvis was the diversion or the proverbial stone wall of the operation, from afar. It certainly didn't seem like she was at all shy to be either.

     With that confirmation she glances down again at the foundation staff, particularly the ones restrained by ice, but takes care not to brandish Sotheby out over the ledge where she might get hit by some strange beam or blast or zapgun. "... I had worried about fighting... On the way here. In case they used the Concord as an excuse... To say this was instigated by the Manus." The unspoken part seems to be 'I guess we're past that point now.', going by context, but she doesn't sound especially put out by the realization. "Let's go. Once we're close... We can teleport past the entrance. I'll check in... Before hassling anyone outside."

     While not fully understanding, White latches on to mentions of snacks, like they're planning provisions for the siege. "I have some left. Most... Are at my house... But I can get them soon."
Tamiel Luxis     Once Holly was through, Tammy shut the suitcase with a 'click,' brief and businesslike, and pressed the suitcase down, vanishing into her shadow, which gave Tamiel and the rest of the elites a thumbs up. "It's secure..."

    Tamiel is spooked by the sound of something roaring, and a building ripping apart...but finds herself smiling, in spite of herself, when she sees a tendril of a vine coiling around the side of the door and feels the push of the magic driving it. To think she'd be relieved to see that magic, after how it ended last...!

    Geed, Holly and Veronica tank the encounter with the guards while Tammy puts the suitcase away, and she watches, half-sunk into the ground, while the one left treats Riku as a cornered animal, betraying the hollowness of his own words the second he goes running. Tamiel slips back, a smooth, quicksilver motion, more of glide, toward the rear of the room, but Veronica has already jumped on the bomb...Literally.

    "That was reckless," Tamiel scolded, once it became obvious that Veronica wasn't going to be electrocuted by the thing, only to immediately undercut it with a "...Thank you."

    While Riku cut the power, Tamiel held out her hand, only got a dark protrusion to extend into a knife in her grip. Between the two of them, they could cut Veronica free fairly simply...She hoped.
Timekeeper "Abuse! Abuse of force by the authorities!"

    Teeth gritted with the effort of holding a wriggly Regulus in place, the guard still has the breath to spare to scoff. "Tell that to the tribunal. You'll be in front of them soon anyway. Really, I insist; Hayden, employee ID SF-quintuple-zero-60261. Fuckin'-- brat, turn that music--"

    As a physical specimen, the guard-- 'Hayden', apparently-- seems like he should be able to practially pick Odette up with one hand, but he's already offbalance from wrangling Regulus and his attention isn't on her. Stumbling backwards at her impact, Regulus is freed (if pulled unpleasantly around before he releases her), but in return, Odette has his full focus now. He slips and crosses an electrified cable at his midline, but it courses through him and *into* Odette too, locking up both of their muscles. The sizzle of getting burned only comes off of Hayden though, with a black line charred onto his grey and white uniform.

    The inertia of the shove carries through the electrification, and he teeters over to break contact with the wire. Once he can, he pushes back at Odette to reassert control of the grapple, and drags her around when he does. Still disarmed, he fumbles with his back to a filing cabinet, yanks it open and throws the first thing from within it that his hand wraps around.

    What flops into the center of the room is what Sotheby would be able to recognize as a petrified mummus respiratory trumpet, a weird tangle of stony canals with a funnel that, upon hitting the ground, starts spewing out thick white smoke. It fills the room, blocking sight and smothering the sound of Regulus's music and the shouting coming from the Elites. Hayden lets go of Odette and tries to scramble towards the door.

    Not being able to see the cables would make them much harder to navigate around, if Geed and Veronica hadn't covered them already. In Veronica's case, quite literally, as the latch-snap-retraction of the cables hits her a dozen times in the chest and reels her down over the box. Laplace's machinery is often unstable or unpredictable, but in the case of the Surge-coil Coffer, it's quite carefully calibrated to not punch through concrete, only bite into its surface. Being made of urban constrution materials, Veronica only has to be careful to not accidentally brush an unprotected part of her body against the many cables wrapping around her, until Tamiel can cut her free.

    Which Tamiel can do, but not before nearly dooming the rebellion! Her failure to clamp the Suitcase shut was planned in advance by Vertin, breaking the metal clasp on her most precious belonging to prevent anyone from closing it, because with Vertin unconscious, it'd be impossible to open it again. Thankfully, it pops a little bit open again, and just holding the two halves close together in her shadow is enough to make it easy to carry around.
Timekeeper     The animate furniture poses next to no real threat to White, even though they could potentially bully Sotheby with their solid wood construction and sturdy-like-they-used-to heaviness. The man on top of Sotheby wipes his forehead over the white eye-hiding mask, exhausted by the chase, and tries to calm the wiggling girl down while clicking handcuffs around her wrists.

"Ah -- bodyguards? Where are *my* bodyguards??"

    "Little lady-- we *are* your bodyguards. See the pin, sweetheart? The St. Pavlov Foundation's your friend-- we've been *trying* to get you to understand that this whole time. Now you've gone and..." Muttering to himself, it's less and less towards Sotheby and more towards himself. "Arcanist brats... slow in the head, all of 'em. How the SPDM works with a crop of--"

    He's yanked, silkfully, away before he can clamp the second cuff down, and sticks to the outside wall of one of the offices upside-down. Like this, his vision over the balcony wall is blocked-- on account of seeing the floor mostly-- so the panic of being nearly blinded to the source of the sounds of plants and violence immediately overtakes him and causes him to kick at his bindings. A panicking guard can be calmed by being turned into a lamp or ottoman!

    Now comes the point where the reinforcements finally start coming in. From the ground level, the smoke-filled Arcanum Containment room is aimed at by a scattering of masked guards firing raygun bolts in its direction. They all shout over each other to be heard, and most of them give different instructions, but the unifying sentiment is 'stop that!!! right now!!!'. As is, though, even with Druvis's plants grappling them and Holly's ice creeping over their feet, there's still a wide open door for more reinforcements to arrive through, and some of them have flamethrowers and bottles of draco draught to set fire to the defenses they've already set up.

    APPLe knows the security room for this building is on the first floor, by the entrance, and he can guide Bond to it easily. The only problem is that to get there at all, Bond has to go down several flights of stairs, in the no-mans-land between the Foundation guards and the rebels, and then hope that he can cross through Druvis's sea of kudzu and through the reinforcing security while reading as an ally to both of them. APPLe is the only way his allies can know who not to fire on from their position at the balcony, and several floors down, the tiny apple is hard to make out in the ruckus.
Regulus APPLe says, "Erk--! Well, aha, I am happy to help, Mr. Guard, but please keep clear of the trigger incantation, I'm in no hurry to be Wililam Tell'd. Come with me this way." As they move along, and only when he is sure there is nobody to listen in, her continues on, "From what Regulus and I could tell, to activate the shutdown sequence you need two punchcards simultaneously activated to unlock the password console. Input the password and the facility will shut down."

Regulus is freed, though the grimace she makes indicates that it freaking HURT! Still, this is the second time in as many weeks that Odette has come through for her in a pinch. "Well done, Odette! Good show!"

Regulus rolls her wrist around, grimacing at the pain, hoping her shoulder wasn't seriously injured. She extends her other hand, firing a small light blast at Hayden's general direction to encourage him to get outta here even faster.

Then, she takes a moment to try and get a feel for the current situation so she knows what to do next. She hears Sotheby's cry for bodyguards, so she's...around? She actually wasn't sure she'd be put in the same building by virtue of having Ms. Moissan to vouch for her and also fourteen. Holly and White DO count as bodyguards, though, so she just lets herself be relieved for a moment for her fellow alchemist. Bond is going with APPLe, Odette's with her...

She hesitates a little, unsure about bringing Bellwhistle into this now when she could have the nice cover story of not involving herself but they might just assume she's a part of this anyway. She shakes herself. No rules, only will. She'll apologize to her if it comes to it.

"We need to check on Bellwhistle, break her out of her room." Regulus says. "Make sure everyone whom we want out is out and everyone we want in is in. Let's see..." She looks around, recalling back to APPLe's photographs before saying, "Second floor and... Uh..."

The smoke is rapidly smothering sound and sight and she can't exactly point out where to go. Regulus pats around for the device hoping to throw it out after Hayden before it makes everything truly impossible, but maybe Sotheby can disarm it.

Regulus says, "Let's...move carefully." Regulus says, unsure if she can be heard, she can barely hear the sound of her own voice after all as she tries to make her way down to meet up with Bellwhistle. Hopefully someone can clear away the smoke or otherwise disable the device that Regulus can no longer see.

Meanwhile, APPLe starts to notice the issue. "Sir... it may be difficult to move through all these obstacles ... ah, but I can do something to help."

He activates Disco APPLe mode as he suddenly brightens up in several flashing colors, making it easier for people to recognize his presence as a hostage and/or ally of Bond.
Ein Meanwhile...

Druvis III walks with the same near-silent grace as she had in the Walden but put to new purpose, leading in stride and wand heeding motion of hand besides. Arranged around her is a tunneling roil of growth, spinning in constant progress about her in falling waves. When threats are sensed - the point of guns, the charge of feet - a choking and overwhelming force of nature reaches to greet that threat. Within that walk, her expansive working drinks deeply of the smashed quarters Sotheby had occupied and blooms throughout on the consuming of nutrition potions and plant growth elixirs and even the dregs and mixings of the transformative.

The mixture advances the growth even further, giant branch-causeways opening between floors on the interior to the habitat the arcanists had been housed at, stretching between rooms and hallways and spreading with a carpet of falling tiers of flowering vines. The world shifts towards green and brown and Following the sounds of violence and seeking with the same wandering-into-sight alert phase as before in the Walden, this time Druvis is less omnipresent and a lot more zonally directed, joining and gathering the command of her attendant wave of green with the local bounties seamed by the extension of hallways and skyways, which instead become carefully interwoven with her passage. Gunfights leave walkways interjected with new wooden partitions and woven root-barriers and hallways scattered with young blooming trees where 'spears' of wood had landed and taken shape.

She works her way towards the sound of the music, the mosh pit of violence, appearing at the end of a hall at the head of her terrain and looking down the hall at the milling violence Regulus and Tamiel is involved in.

'Daamn sister... That hair color is far out on you.'

"My - what?" Druvis asks, reaching free hand back to touch hair, only to realize her *plants* aren't the only thing that had transformed or had grown. "... It's new." She returns, back over the crowd, somehow managing to carry that on flat tone over risen tone. Guiding with wand, she claws fingers through air to point and sends a trio of small treetrunks in to grow into mid-sized trees on the morons trying to harass Regulus, and starts walking their way. She'll be there! Soon! She really does take her time, though, moving at her own pace and followed by a whole growing corridor-wake of greenery.

"Has everyone been gathered?" She asks, looking around and realizing obviously not. "If not Vertin, the others."
Regulus ''Has everyone been gathered? If not Vertin, the others.''

Regulus moves towards Druvis to meet up and touch base because it'll be pretty hard to communicate with her otherwise. And also, like, she is stopping gher from getting shot or clobbered. Good to stay close. "We're missing Bellwhistle and Sotheby, I think." She has no idea where Sotheby is anymore or where Holly went to. "Bond's got a special mission going so we shouldn't wait up, I can summon Holly with a coin she gave me too so we shouuuld be good to go. They're in the building at least."
Riku Asakura The box that was becoming a larger box with cables is no longer a threat.  Geed offers a hand up to Veronica before turning to see the thing land in the center of the room.  The white smoke fills the air and damps the sounds coming from around them.  Fortunately for Geed, he doesn't need to breathe in this form.  He still has to see, however...

It's impossible to stay here, so Geed moves through the door only to be hit by ray blasts.  He reflexively holds his hands up, and a shield raises in front of him to block the blasts away from him as he pushes through.  Sound was still slightly muffled, and words were confused by the incoming reinforcements.  

Geed moves forward to get a better look and sees where the reinforcements will come from.  He can't handle that right away, so instead he starts rushing towards the guards who are shooting at them.  He drops the barrier right about at melee range with them, and starts tackling them.  Throwing himself on them, roundhouse kicking them, and genuinely using luchador wrestling tactics to try to subdue and scatter the guards.

Geed himself can be a huge disruption, but with more reinforcements probably on the way, this is just a drop in the bucket.  
Holly Asturias     "They might regardless. We've barely had time to have the conversation, I... struggle to picture the Foundation being ahead in having figured out where we stand. But that'll make it all the more critical to prove our intentions here. Vertin... knew this would be violent, and is putting her entire agency in our hands." A bit more serious than Holly tends to be.

    But she beams her smile to White.

    "Let's not fail her, yes?"
    The her... isn't Vertin.

    The thick smoke and the wide open archway behind them could be a problem though. More than a bit of one actually! Holly has to mind very carefully that she doesn't get separated - and she trusts that White has awareness of where they need to go, much like she did in the Walden.

    Which means she can...

    "Ah, one second, please. They're preparing fire, so I'll have to cut them off a different way."

    Ice won't cut it.

    Holly stands her ground, and golden blood gushes out of her arms to form into two massive weapons in her hands. A pair of massive golden triple gatlings, the MK Rosenritter, her family's pride. Don't ask.

    "Thankfully, she said nothing about property damage."

    Holly opens fire. Not at the guards, but the walls and the ceiling, to cause a partial collapse behind her, White and Sotheby, before the Foundation can send anyone else through that door. It doesn't take very many seconds of hellish cacophony from those cannons to do that, and she'll be right behind White the moment she can be again.

    By the time they clear up the debris they should be gone.
Veronica     Veronica's just been cut free of the Coffer's hooks and clamps when the room begins to fill with smoke. The heavy boombox speakers on her EGO's shoulders emit a soft click-click-clicking as she echolocates to regain her bearings in the chaos. She may not be able to clear the smoke easily, but at least she knows where everyone is.

    Making for the door, she crushes the petrified mummus respiratory trumpet (not that she knows the name) under one of her concrete-block feet, hoping that stops the smoke production rather than accelerating it. It's a bit of a gamble, but she's impatient for results.

    She marches forward, her EGO-clad hands in front of her face to meet the barrage of stun-gun fire with her heaviest armor. The energy bolts pit and char the brickwork of Baker and Seventh as Veronica stoops to pass through the doorway, still shielding her face (even though that too is encased within her EGO). "The door's this way!" she calls back through the smoke, "but stay behind me! They're weapons free!"

    Facing the barrage head-on is something she *can* do, but that doesn't make it *trivial*. She grunts in exertion with each volley as her psychokinetic powers regenerate the physical form of her EGO from the damage. Something has to give, and soon. In a snap decision, Veronica turns bodily toward the entrance through which guards pour and tunes her EGO's super-speakers to emit a bassy hum, confined in a telekinetic 'channel' which both amplifies and contains the vibrations to a specific line of fire.

    This line centers squarely on the floor *above* the building's main entrance, durable concrete which begins to rumble and crack. Gritting her teeth to focus, Veronica modulates the sonic power to make the breakage slow and loud, shaking waves of concrete dust free before any large pieces begin to fall. All the while she weathers the barrage of shots, trying to give the guards enough time and warning to decide whether they want to be IN or OUT when the ceiling finally caves in completely.
Tamiel Luxis     A much different future briefly flickers into possibility and is crushed, as the suitcase props back oopen. Tamiel remains blissfully unaware of how close her lapse of thinking had come to ruining everything, as the suitcase pops back open again. Her shadow, at least, isn't prone to such a thing, keeping the Vertin's suitcase shrouded and safe.

    And good, too, because the smoke was coming off in a cascade. She pulls her scarf out of the air and over her mouth to try to filter it, but it's a feeble attempt to keep back the tide. Everyones' words are half drowned out by the flood of gas coming from that...WhatEVER it was that Hayden had just tossed onto the floor.

    But luckily, Veronica's voice, shrouded in her ego, came through loud and strong. Taking heed of her warning, Tamiel makes herself two-dimension, sliding along the floor following the sound--and feeling--of Baker and Seventh's heavy footfalls.

    She emerges behind Veronica, putting her hands to Baker and Seventh and letting her own light runs through her, and into the other Watchman, her own Light bolstered by Tammy's own, in the moments between when they're all under heavy fire and when Veronica and Holly bring the entrance down!
Odette Raskins Even if Odette knows what getting electrocuted feels like from training and past experience, actually getting electrocuted on the spot still takes a lot out of her without any real protective gear to handle it. Ramming herself against the guard and just hoping she can pin him down with body weight at that point isn't the best/any plan to work with, and both she and the guard know it by the time he out-grapples her from and off the ground. She doesn't seem to be in any state nor mood to chase after him, at least, although she does shout a word of warning to her allies when he chucks that thing into the room.

"Watch out! That's a..." She's not sure what that is, actually. She hasn't worked with Sotheby nearly enough to learn what a lot of the reagents from here are  just yet, and she's saved from having to admit that out loud thanks to the smoke blocking her shouts from making any sound.

Still, that's one room cleared, and Odette sits up with a sharp grimace at the bruises from rolling around on the ground like that. By the time she gets her head back on straight and the smoke's handled, she glances around quickly before sighing in relief at seeing that Regulus is back on her feet before she is. "Hah... Y-you okay, Regulus? Ah. Is everyone good?" She calls out, sniffling briefly before bringing out a small bottle of chewable pills.

"These won't taste great, but they'll handle minor bruising well enough." She offers to the group, popping one into her mouth and chewing it up with another brief grimace while stepping out of the room. "Miss Bellwhistle, Miss Sotheby, and Miss Druvis... Y-yeah, let's make sure they're all okay, too. Then-"

As she comes out, Odette spots Druvis at the other end of the hall, and she raises her hand in a high wave for whatever little extra help that'll be. "Okay, one out of three... Are you hurt, Miss Druvis? We're just getting started, so we're doing good on medicine if you need anything. And once we find Miss Sotheby and Miss Bellwhistle..."

Odette pauses, then she looks back at Regulus as the leader of this rebellion. "We'll need to set up a triage station in our real spot. Then-" She takes out several bottles full of some kind of clearish liquid, offering one to each rebel present. "I put these together after talking to Regulus... We can turn any approaches into mass tripping hazards with these, and a hallway wouldn't be out of the question if we really pile it on."
Ein ... In the fairy realm of Typhon...

Gripfully grabbed by the handcuff man, Gwendolyne Vera Sotheby is - in the great tradition of authority-based procedural law-ordination - presented with a badge. A shiny pin!

Blinking at it, she looks up at the guard, one fist on hip while other hand is cuffed. "Now *see* here. You may call me 'Lady Sotheby' or 'Young Miss' but none of that coarseness undue to me!" Sotheby demands, frowning deeply. Oh, she knows. Worse?

"If you're my bodyguards, then for that language I have no patience! Good-bye, sir!"

Sotheby points with her hip-fisted hand towards the exit, fully expecting the man handling her to just leave.

She's saved entirely by white, gathered up more-or-less upright because there is only 2/3rds of her due to lacking hat-height! Shepherded by White, Sotheby makes an astounded +_+ with hand over mouth at the gathering up and disappearing upstairs-ward.

"Mar~velous!" Sotheby announces, plopped down seamlessly up a balcony and set besides Holly with her golden arsenal! "Rough? Well, besides that bull of a man at the end, quite fine! Really, he wanted to wrestle and wouldn't take 'but that's un-la~dylike!' for an answer!" She protests lightly, already refinining her story with extra exciting details. Just as soon as she's about to spin up how she imagined it went down, White deposits her prized favorite hat atop her head, and Sotheby takes a silent moment to ribbon it back to chin.

"To sweets!" Sotheby commands with a pointed finger to a curl of kudzu growth and deeper within, despite White clearly having an idea where to go.

"The Concord? Well, why would they think that? Beyond miss Druvis, of course, seeing as it's her plants and all." The young alchemist notes, before looking up to White, and then Holly higher.

"Oh, really, anywhere with snacks is fine. I don't want to use my Critter tranquilizers on these poor folk, as they're not critters! And I don't... know the interactions of a full dose with humans. It's fume-safe!"

She dips, disappointed at not being quite as able to help. "Do things like this... often happen? It feels like it was just yesterday everything else happened."

She's not given too long to be introspective and thoughtful. Smoke billows out in the lower floor, filling the area underneath their balcony with a floor of smoke that Sotheby can't help but stare into. She only turns when she hears Holly's grand aureate transformation and then immediately shields her eyes from the big firepower the Revenant brings to bear, wincing while looking to White.

"Do you think. . . they'll think it's the Manus Vindictae? Would that be, ah, 'bad'?" Sotheby asks White, a little concerned.
James Bond From what Regulus and I could tell, to activate the shutdown sequence you need two punchcards simultaneously activated to unlock the password console.

    "Then as long as we have at least one of those cards, we can guarantee it stays off until we need it turned on."

Sir... it may be difficult to move through all these obstacles ... ah, but I can do something to help.

    "You can do more than that," Bond says, keeping up the American accent. He waits until he's in the no-man's land--particularly, in an area where the flashing lights are only a suggestion, obscured by the blind corners of a stairwell. In the relative occlusion, he removes his Foundation 'badge,' flipping open the pocketwatch to reveal an analog face. It winks away to reveal an idle audio waveform. "Get on the broadband, tell them where we're headed. Tell Druvis to let us through without making it too easy. Or tell whoever is close enough to her to pass it along. If you have to mention me, just call me a friend on the inside and keep my name out of it. I don't want any chance of the Foundation picking through the wreckage and discovering my involvement." After that, he presses the stop, which shows a red 'LIVE' icon.

    Having given APPLe enough time to deliver that message, and enough time to hear a response (and then promptly turn the radio down after--nothing is more disastrous than an inopportune squawk during an infiltration) the only thing to do is to make his way down. Neither the kudzu nor the reinforcements Bond is particularly thrilled to deal with. At least the reinforcements he's got some experience in. The kudzu he has a gadget for--but he only has the hope that if Druvis can tell it's being tampered with, she can also tell that it's being tampered with in the wrong direction for it to be the reinforcements. Either way, the 'wand' he carries emits a bright blue laser, cutting methodical James-sized holes to step through, one stairwell at a time. "When we get down there, follow my lead."

     When he finally reaches the ground floor, he presses the wand to APPLe's back, enough to cause some discomfort and, hopefully, appear convincing to the reinforcements. "Okay, cut the light show, bozo. No funny business or I let you have it." Towards the reinforcements, "SF-quintuple-zero-62070, Rogers," he says by way of introduction. "Transfer from Chicago." He says the word like only a local can. "You guys have a real shitshow on your hands. There's *sympathizers* up there. They let out the arcanists, let in the Multiversal guys and started passin' out Calibrators like candy. Was all I could do to grab this guy to keep 'em from blasting me." Sowing doubt about who's with 'them' could be useful.

     Mixing in truth with lies is also useful. "Hayden up there had me run to the shutdown, but he left out the part about the punch cards. Don't suppose one of youse has it on ya?"
White      Druvis's proper arrival with the group, accompanied by spreading green and brown throughout the space, isn't something that White takes as an immediate and obvious relief herself. First she has to be sure that no new problems have followed Druvis here, then to cautiously watch the plantlife to be sure that she isn't at risk of being attacked by it. White would prefer to be seen as a friend of the forest... But to be fair, she's had to help slay and decay more than a handful of supernatural trees in the last couple of years. If trees could hold grudges, she wouldn't want to meet the ones whose roots she helped carve through back at the Walden, either.

     Sotheby's earnest energy is a relief from White's worst-case brat-assumptions, at least, albeit hard for her to properly reciprocate. "He said some... Very rude things." she adds to Sotheby's own complaints, like she's worried that somehow her own response would be seen as excessive despite the younger girl's defense. It's while shuffling forward that White distracted-slowly tries to answer, no thoughts given to whether Sotheby might be better off not knowing any given thing, "This happened... Because the other things happened. And... Yes. That might be bad." More tensely, vaguely frustrated at how often she's in this position, "We have to... Fight gently. Or we'll just be 'the bad guys'."

     The best measure, in any case, seems to be giving the plants space, being mindful not to stay still long enough for the growth to snag a foot, and gingerly stepping around while restraining the urge to use the plant-matter as a platform, instead micro-teleporting when needed to bypass the odd obstruction. Following loosely in Druvis' wake with the others like this, she uses the proverbial ripples on the pond's surface to scrape attention off of their three person group, only to close more of the distance as Holly decides to gun down part of the building and add to the physical chaos of their rearward angle. She does, however, scrunch around Sotheby a bit and try to place her palms over the girl's ears when the overbearing guns begin firing.

     This approach, unintentionally, probably presents a feeling for Druvis almost like a sneak attack if not for the way Sotheby is walked behind and presented like something between a badge and a wet cat to disarm any reflexive retalations. Gaps in Druvis's plant-built walls are carefully supplemented with drawn-up and molded stone courtesy of White's own magic, to ensure that their approach and passage are thoroughly shielded against weapons-fire, and she addresses anyone who tries to break through the obstructions personally by twisting to beam them with the Evil Eye of Panic, urging them to recoil away and let the gaps be filled. If there's a thick enough wall between them and the enemy, even a wall of guns isn't going to completely stop them from making their approach and slowly parting the sea from behind, breaking their formation around the doorway. Riku seems to be disruptive enough to keep any concentrated focus off of their steady and protected advance, at least.

     It's during this enforcedly somewhat sluggish walk that White finally manages to limply greet Druvis, most of her attention still aimed outward to paranoiedly ensure any gap large enough for a gun barrel is soon plugged. The most she can really conjure is a "Nice to... See you again." while contemplating far worse things the two of them could be talking about. For later. Veronica can collapse what she needs to, and White will prevent anything rocky and harsh from falling upon their group as needed, holding the path apart until Holly has caught up as well.
Timekeeper     From APPLe's scouting, Regulus knows that Bellwhistle's on the second floor, in pretty much the one room that hasn't already had its door blown open. It's easy to identify which too, knowing approximately where to look-- the Foundation-masked guards who haven't made the decision to stomp up the stairs or chase down some girl or another are flocking around it, pleased to have an objective that's currently in a stable state. As long as Bellwhistle's door remains closed, *they* have done something successfully, and so an entire cluster of a dozen has become insistent on doing just that.

    They're just about the only thing in the whole building that's staying still though. Some of the guards on the ground are setting up a tripod-sat launcher, chrome on the outside and gleaming red on the tube's interior, with rings of LEDs glowing to life inside as it charges up. Both Holly's ice and Druvis's plants contend with splashes of alchemical fire, rapidly melting the pillars of ice that were creeping frost across the floor, and warding the kudzu away from getting any closer.

    This is not the full might of the Foundation brought to bear, however. The only material they have on them is what they had for quickly grabbing in case of emergency, and a mere hour of rebellion hasn't gotten close to waking up the sleeping giant of a bureaucratically deployed military police. It's not ten minutes before they're straight up out of draco draught, and with no forest fire to show for it. It's maybe a hundred strong from the Foundation's army that came to reinforce the couple dozen already here, which is a lot of firepower, but only streaming in piece by piece and not punching a meaningful hole through the rebellion.

    Holly's gatling guns elicit cries of alarm from the handful of pursuing guards chasing her, White, and Sotheby across the balcony. When she tilts it up to aim at the walkway above, some of them still dive for cover and have to be dragged away by their compatriots to avoid getting squashed by the falling concrete. Coatrack-ified or armoire-d others don't have the situational awareness to retreat behind the crumbling blockage, but when it falls and the rubble cuts them off from their allies behind, the transmogrified guards go still and quiet like they're now trying to pretend to just be furniture.

    The entryways on either end of the building's central plaza are both huge and narrow. Double-doors in width, but nearly the full four stories tall, they're little more than crevasses into the 'cavern' of the Foundation's architectural design. The brutalist salt-crystal-like framing of concrete around them splits off with Veronica's sonic vibrations and falls down to block the entry, but the guards get right to work clearing the rubble just as they would after an earthquake or hurricane. The LRAD-type attack causes some to collapse and heave with discomfort, but the 'invisible' weapon doesn't catch them by surprise, since Laplace makes gadgets just like it.

"You guys have a real shitshow on your hands. There's *sympathizers* up there."

    The guard down on the ground floor with Bond rubs his stubbled cheek in chagrin, K-Tope Calibrator discharged and slowly recovering. "Christ on the cross. For the Timekeeper's mess? Guess we were asking for it though, huh?"

    "Holcombe over there's sec head for the building. Grab it off him." He jerks his head towards one of the guys aiming the launcher at the dense tangle of trunks supporting Druvis. "I'll take the Awakened off you, Rogers. Word's to relocate anyone we neutralize to the guardhouse for temporary holding."
Riku Asakura Ultraman Geed scatters the guards with Veronica.  They can move down, and it was about this time that Veronica noticed two problems.  A lack of rubble to block entryways, and a cannon being set up on the ground floor.  Geed turns his head to try to look for a way to solve the problem, but right now, he only knows of one way to solve the cannon.

Geed jumps off the stairs they were on to take flight in the open area of the plaza.  Once he's right above the cannon, he starts charging energy throughout his body.  Red and black energy seems to course through his body, while his blue eyes seem to emit a fierce glow of their own.  

Eventually, that power settles, channeled throughout his body and then through his arms.  He brings his hands up and forms an L shape.  Aimed directly down towards the cannon, before a beam of that same red and black energy fires down from his arms.

"Wrecking Burst!" he shouts, holding his position in the air as he fires towards the cannon, aiming to destroy it before it can be fired on.  Hopefully, this gives them enough time to get to Bellwhistle.
Regulus APPLe says, "Yes, Mr. Guard." APPLe is holding up his stick figure arms in the air like a proper hostage and with the way he lightly bobs from side to side it's almost like he's dancing in the air but don't worry he's being a good hostage. "As you wish."

<Q-Conversation> APPLe says, "Miss Druvis--ahh she does not have a radio does she ... Captain, could you pass a message on to Miss Druvis for us?"
<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "Yeah yeah I can do that"
<Q-Conversation> APPLe says, "We're headed to the shutdown console, could she let us through without 'making it too easy'?"
<Q-Conversation> Regulus says, "Sure thing! Radio-hug!"
<Q-Conversation> APPLe says, "Radio hug, Captain."

Regulus was primarily concerned with getting hold of the Suitcase and sealing the building but she has time to aside to Druvis, "Sounds like APPLe's got a friend helping him out, they asked if you could let him and APPLe through the kudzu without making it too easy for them. Guess they don't want it to be easy to follow them...?" She's not really sure hte reason. Bond's a superspy though so he probably knows what he's doing. She honestly has no idea if Druvis is even capable of 'making it easier' but message passed on! She's doing great. She feels into her jacket to confirm the gold coin is still there. She's just going to assume the Suitcase is safe in Tamiel's shadow.

''Odette offers a pill!''

Regulus takes one and pops it into her mouth. She wasn't exactly getting picrasma candy in her room so she's just going to have to avoid relying too much on her arcane skill until she can make it back into the suitcase. Then she takes the bottle. "What exactly does this do?" She asks. THis isn't exactly what they talked about but she can't worry about that now and who is she to complain about some improvisation.

"Good to see you again, love." She tells White, rubbing at her arm.

''A dozen Foundation soldiers.''

"Ah, crap, there's so many guys." Regulus says. That's like three whole waves! She lifts the needle on her portable record player and flips the record over before placing the needle back down.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4irXQhgMqg

"Alright this is too many guys. So give me a sec."

She draws out the coin that Holly had given her, kisses it, gives it a squeeze and FLINGS it down towards the guards on the second floor. "Now!" She shouts to the others, rushing down to the second floor through a combination of stairs and well timed Druvis structural plant support, and well placed rubble sending waves of light crashing down upon the group--largely as cover for what the coin is about to summon right on top of them.

Meanwhile APPLe assures his 'captors. "Rest assured, I have no intention of resisting. I am but one apple." But really he's willing to act as an impromptu flashbang for James if he just gives the word, but he's not sure how long he's hoping to keep up the disguise.
Holly Asturias "Rough? Well, besides that bull of a man at the end, quite fine! Really, he wanted to wrestle and wouldn't take 'but that's un-la~dylike!' for an answer!"

    "How dreadful!" Holly keeps up with the Gripping Tale, because she really does like Sotheby and her spunk! But she's also grimly curious how far the Foundation goes to keep people in line. Thanks Lilian!

"Do you think. . . they'll think it's the Manus Vindictae?"

    Holly, who is almost dressed in Manus colors and just caused Significant Damage with golden artillery, makes a sort of face that's somewhere between 'oh, huh...' and 'oh no'. "P-Perhaps more than before, now."

"We have to... Fight gently. Or we'll just be 'the bad guys'."

    "Right, of course. No killing. No grievous wounding. And if we wound accidentally, it's paramount one of our healers get on it." That seemed like such an easy plan to follow at first.

SUMMONS.

    Holly visibly goes ?!, and then hurriedly to White and Sotheby: "Oh, Regulus is calling! Go on and regroup, I'll be there already!" Without explanation, she liquefies and disappears, scattered gold flakes and droplets that vanish without a trace.

    And then pop! She reforms, out of the coin she gave Regulus... in the air, unsteady, and confused. "Regulus???"

    She didn't say THROW THE COIN!
    Oh there's GUARDS. Crap!

    No time to pull her guns out. She impacts the floor, one hand outstretched, and blasts a huge wave of ice across the hallway, knee-high. Lock the guards in place, let them have to bludgeon their way out of a foot and a half of ice, it's plenty of time to bail out!
James Bond Guess we were asking for it though, huh?

    'Rogers' shrugs, as if to say it's not his judgment to pass.

I'll take the Awakened off you, Rogers. Word's to relocate anyone we neutralize to the guardhouse for temporary holding.

    "Sure thing." He nods, giving APPLe a shove towards the guard, then turning and nodding towards Holcombe. "Hey! Holcombe, right?" 'Rogers' addresses, casually. "Toss me that punchcard, and let's put the kibosh on this crap." He lifts a hand to catch it, and flexes his fingers in a display of readiness. He catches it, slips it into the pocket of his vest, and clicks his cheek at Holcombe in thanks. He makes a few steps towards the security office, then--enough for APPLe to worry that the friendly guard is actually the Foundation's friend, rather than his--before he turns around, blasts Holcombe with a stun bolt, and wraps the nearest guard in a chokehold in one smooth motion.

     "START RESISTING!" Impressively, he maintains the accent even mid-shout, as he fires incapacitating stun bolts from behind his human shield. Right when it seems like he'll be surrounded, he shoves his hostage into the firing angles of the nearest non-stunned guards, rolling around his stumbling former hostage to strike at their wrists with audible -zzts- of applied voltage, followed by a standing roundhouse to send each of them to the ground. A third is hipchecked and thrown bodily. Rolling to avoid the retaliation from the rest of the reinforcements still with weapons at hand, rises to one knee, prods a stirring, freshly-downed guard with the wand, then braces it against the opposite arm and fans the room with it. Jolts of shocking energy leap towards any APPLe hasn't blinded and then work their way to those he has.
Regulus At Bond's cue, APPLe's flashing colors suddenly brighten, sending a burst of myriad lights and colors out of him, threatening to blind the guards by Bond, hopefully before any of them get a good bead on him! He also flies up and off for a bit to stay out of the totally sick action sequence Bond is engaged in, having contributed his part in keeping him from getting lasered or shot. Sometimes it's important to lower the to-hit of enemies even when you're helping out an evasion build. That's just how it is!
Timekeeper     The 'cannon' isn't quite a cannon, because the Laplace Science and Computing Center can't do anything in a normal way. To those in the know, it's actually an Infrared Maglev Rail Feeder-- which is to say that the rod they insert as ammunition into the launcher absorbs the arcane energy radiating inwards, then non-combustively fires like a javelin towards Druvis's trees, aiming to cut the legs out from under the budding rebellion's biggest pillar.

    Geed's laser fires faster than the muzzle-loaded launcher, and the guards manning it to aim and fire scatter in a panic. Its aim is thrown off, and the rod veers away from Druvis to smash into the concrete wall of the building instead, releasing a pulse of red-tinted heat that propagates through the stone like vibrational energy. The rod clatters to the ground; where it hit splits and steams, and the cannon itself is mangled by Geed's Wrecking Burst to be unable to fire again.

"Go on and regroup, I'll be there already!"

    None of the guards outside Bellwhistle's door are prepared with any fiery-type alchemical tools or Laplace gadgets like some of the reinforcements are. Holly is met with a barrage of K-Tope Calibrator shots that feel like branding irons punching into her, and one guy whose antenna-like metal wand gestures to surround her with a skin-crawling aura, that rapidly starts draining her reserves of Ichor. Not being informed of the effect this would have on a Revenant besides making it difficult for them to use their Formae, the guards are all subsequently stuck waist deep in ice, struggling to escape or repel Holly somehow.

    And then, behind the closed and locked door, however it's opened, lies the last member of the rebellion. Set up in one of those cold and vacant rooms just like Regulus and Sotheby, Bellwhistle's not just not surprised to see the rebels come to join her, but transparently grateful. But looking around...

    "Goodness! Ahoy, folks! I was wondering if you'd never come!"

    'Bellwhistle' is nowhere to be seen at all at first. The professional young woman with the red-gold hair would stick out against the grey and white monotone, so it's striking that the room seems empty at a glance. On the bed, though, is the weird portable switchboard she always carried around, plugged into the microphone horn that's attached by a hook, which bounces slightly with each word she says.

    "Are those scoundrels outside taken care of already? Oooh-!" She makes a frustrated noise, switchboard wobbling on the bed. "Now, I've been rerouting their calls, but that's only slowing them down. If you've got a moment off of roughing them up, could you be a dear and take me to my body? I remember it's somewhere on the upper floors...?"

    The switchboard cables unplug and cross over each other like embarrassedly folded arms, slotting into jacks diagonal from each other. "Oh... and if you'd be a dear, bring a sheet to cover me?"

    The man Bond had talked to was ready enough to accept the idea of sympathizers within the ranks of the Foundation military that, upon 'Rogers' betrayal, he's still ready to believe that Rogers is one, and not that he was lying from the start. CQC and shocking bolts wreak havoc within the ranks of the reinforcements, and when their attention is turned inwards and dazzled by APPLe's arcanum, the pressure is off the rebels on the higher balconies.

    Holcombe, once he's staggered back to his feet, finally makes the call for everyone who can to pull back. The rebels could certainly pick off the retreating guards if they wanted to, but they're not here to *eliminate* the Foundation forces, so it's really their choice. The now-rebel bunker is surrounded by Foundation territory, with only the Suitcase for support, but once the guards have scrambled over the rubble pile and out the door, it's successfully claimed as theirs.
Holly Asturias     The branding irons are one thing. That's 'pain', that's 'awful, but manageable'. The Ichor drain is something much worse and much more awful. Holly has barely fed since the Storm, so that bar is already recklessly low for a Revenant getting into a fight situation.

    It feels gross. The Ichor is burned right out of her bloodstream, and when she tries to bring out Snowdrop to defend herself, the sputters and splashes of blood out of her palms are more red than gold.
    The rifle doesn't form at all.

    That's her first hint to get the hell out of there.
    The second one is briefly considering using the Jail.

    Mercifully she isn't alone, and so the guards are dispatched, and she can shamefully pull back. Regroup, wind down. If anyone's lightly injured, she might have the fumes left to handle it. Heavy injuries... not without feeding. And she's not going to ask anyone present.
Tamiel Luxis     Tamiel adds her own perspective to White's own, little black animals watching discretely from around the area. "They keep coming," she muttered, biting at her thumb in the moments of calm--as scarce as such moments were. "I hope your fortification plan is good..." She worried aloud at Regulus, her wings twitching.

    As they rapidly scaled the stairs, Tamiel sank into the ground, out of sight. Gone, Holly was summoned in the middle of a crowd of foundation guards. One of them, quick on their draw, pulled their weapon on Holly, racing her to the first hit--

    --a dark hand came out of their shadow, giving their ankle a sharp backward tug--a half-dozen others added their hands to the array, trying to break their focus--or at least give them something else to shoot at--until Holly had the space to freeze them.

    "I can do this part." Tamiel rises from the ground, once they reach the locked door. She holds out her middle and index finger together, a thin strand of shadow stretching out from between them. Closing her eyes, she let it slide into the locking mechanism.

    Easily, in moments the shadow found and assumed the shape of the lock's key. She gave her wrist a sideways turn--and open went the door. For a distressing moment, Tamiel thought that Bellwhistle wasn't there. Panicked, she made ready to send out more eyes to look, and...

    Oh. Relief twined rapidly with outrage. "They took your body?!" Obviously, it wasn't her...self. But, to just have that ability to move taken away from her, just like that? On...Good behavior? Signing herself off to the Foundation? "Right." She managed, looking away. "We'll get a sheet."