Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Gideon Kaspar     In a continued change of pace from jumping from hot battlefield to hot battlefield, the ongoing attempt to track down the rest of Anti-Rain Team without drawing Sangvis Ferri into open warfare over it advances apace. Despite the compounding mystery after discovering the military outpost in the area completely emptied and its hardware subverted, and the loose end of the presumably Sangvis agent discovered hijacking milsat imagery to follow the same lead, nothing of severe importance happens since then other than a report making its way to the west theatre general's desk and an immediate military police investigation and army coverup of the area.

    G&K's Sector SO9 personnel and Elite attache are still technically-not-operating in the quadrant, moving beyond the edge of Sangvis Ferri's contracted extraterritorial borders, in pursuit of the special T-Dolls S-2, A-15, and M-16, apparently successful in likewise escaping over the border and into dubiously government-owned territory. The idea is to hit up a nearby small urban center to make use of their telecoms array, independently owned rather than part of any company's network, avoiding G&K and military protocols that Sangvis Ferri will be looking out for, using mundane short-ranged radio beneath general notice, to contact the two members of A-RT that are known to be in the area. It's a simple job involving going to town, flashing some badges, and sweet talking civil services, making sure they aren't followed or spied on, and then picking the right road from there.

    Except when they roll into town, small enough to only really have an economy from shipping, yet excessively modern and vertical, there doesn't seem to be anyone to talk to at all, never mind flash money at. The streets are dead silent, cars still in place, electricity still on, lights still flashing, payphone booths still heated, traffic cameras still rolling, water still spewing from little fountains in the quaint public corner parks nestled between small shops meant for passer-throughs. Once again, somewhere there should be people appears to be completely vacated in the most eerie manner. Someone had put it before that the hallmark of Sangvis Ferri appears to be 'absence'. This is well outside their territory, so if the pattern holds . . .

    Once again, the radio equipment is easily visible across town. It appears to be a constant in this world that every base, town, city, outpost, factory, and even observatory or lighthouse, comes equipped with powerful comms equipment. Nowhere seems to rely on cellphones, highways, neighbouring towns, or any other hallmarks of a developed nation's connectivity infrastructure.
Raziel     Raziel walks into the city with those who was sent here to work with. He was more or less muscle, and a means to an end in an unexpected way should things go south. His body a loathesome vessel, looking more like a walking corpse of some sort of clawed beast, with two flaps of flesh on his back that might more look like wings, and two orbs for eyes that glow with a baleful light. He was told this should be a simple mission, something he could easily stay out of the way for, come back when they were not being watched, and then go from there.

    'The city was futuristic compared to the world I was used to, strange vehicles littered the roads, poles with wires who's functions are beyond comprehensible. Light came from the interier of homes, and on the streets in the form of poles. While different...there was one more thing that stood stark beyond the differences in these cities compared to Nosgoth's...the lack of people. The city was empty...dead. While I have seen ghost towns before...they were often decayed and ruined. No normal catastrophe had happened here...something happened to cause the citizens to flee or die without bodies, without damaging any of the buildings or infastructure. My instinct to slip into the spirit world to see if there was any ghost to see decided by me to be the best course of action.'

    "Pardon me a moment," Raziel says, calmly. "I will disappear, and reappear."

    Raziel holds his hands out infront of himself, abandoning his physical body, and becoming etherial once more. His eyes opened, once more looking a look around him in the realm of the dead. Those who remained in purgitory that could not move on, or were lost. He looked, just to make sure there were no ghosts to speak to, to try and figure out what was going on here.
Gordon Freeman     There's never goddamn anyone around. It's like people just evaporate into thin air, Gordon thinks, as he hastily suits up. He headed here with his armor packed up instead of worn, but the moment he sees the telltale signs of the site being abandoned, he immediately gets suited. He's full of the urge to see who used to be here -- and if they've turned up missing, or turned up refugee, at neighboring sites. For now, though, he'd better head towards that comms building. He's one of the first on the way there, his helmet already set out of worry of snipers or ambush; his body is still burned a bit from the last encounter with the mysterious Plasma Ghost.

    But with an absence of other concerns visible, and with Gordon himself being the essence of the Test Subject, he decides to Test the area ahead by heading towards all that good radio equipment. Though he sticks close to the sides of any open areas, just in case; he rather dislikes spaces that are too open, after all.
Nova Terra     Taking it upon herself to move ahead of the group in order to scout out potential threats, Nova finds it all clear. Literally. There's no one. On the one hand that makes her job of identifying threats much easier. On the other... It's weird as hell!

    The air ripples for a moment before blue light washes over Nova's decloaking form. Walking up to the group of elites she shakes her head, "No signs of anyone in this area." She shoulders her rifle, looking a little concerned, "There's definitely something not right about this... I wouldn't expect a population center like this to be empty."

    Nova appears to ponder the situation for a moment, before closing her eyes and tilting her head to the side. Hoping to save some time searching, she opens up her mind and focuses, reaching out to try and sense if there is anybody here... Anywhere.
Alexis Maaka     It was the first time Maaka was gonna get to see this Raziel bloke in action. From the description he gave himself as some kind of vampire-turned-wraith, it was a shock seeing him in person. The gangly corpse-like figure set Maaka on edge, but at least they were working together for the time being. She was on alert, clutching a black rifle of German make that would be recognizable to those who'd purchased the G36 model family of T-Doll, specifically a KV variant with optics and suppressor.

    She's on edge, considering their surroundings. The place is extremely desolate, giving her plenty of reason to be wary of snipers and traps strewn about where you last expect them.

    Her futuristic combat armor shimmers as the camo-tech adapts to terrain, grays and blacks being the primary colors for today. Not fashionable, but they make decent camo for urban combat. Maaka's optics turn to thermal for a moment, scanning about. If allowed, she'll go on ahead with Dr. Freeman, following the HEV suited theoretical physicist closely. For a scientist mild of manner as Gordon, he's proved himself awfully well adjusted to the battlefield. The man's a natural, so Maaka's hardly worried for his safety even if that armor seems a perfect aegis against anything from lab hazards to artillery.
Riva Banari Riva doesn't panic at the sight of Raziel this time. In fact, she gives him a big thumbs up.

Maybe having a living corpse is a good thing to have on your side when you deal regularly with massive numbers of combat robots with particle beam uzis. She might be a tank but that doesn't mean she's a /masochist/.

That said, the whole 'everyone is missing' thing is just another sign that something stupid is going down. When Riva looks into a storefront and notices there's no people inside, she sighs, and simply produces her shotgun again, drawing it out of Agartha storage and thumbing the safety off. "Someone's made the people here disappear. This doesn't just /happen/." She says aloud. As Raziel heads out to go to Ghosty Things, she looks back to Freeman and gives a wave. "Okay, let's get you to the radio gear and let's see if we can get this done. Stick with me." The decloaking Nova gets a blink, though. "Wow, that's... really cool. How did you /do/ that?" She asks the Ghost (as opposed to the Wraith). "Anyway, looks like we're doing this SOP. Keep an eye out, I'll take point."

Just as she said, she advances down the street, taking the most direct route towards the radio equipment and keeping an eye out.
Tony Stark Go to the place, do a little PR, pass out some lanyards...

Normal Sunday for the Holler Holler Ex-Military Industrial Dollar Man Himself.

And so, when he arrives in his private helicopter, Tony Stark in a three-piece royal blue tailored suit and large-framed aviators slides out of the side door with an extra-large Stark Industries brand cooler filled with swag and alcohol, which rolls on four terrain-adapted wedge rollers. It's very nice.

"Excuse me, but..."

Stark gestures around. "Where is my thunderous applause?" He wonders to the rest of the party, the dry humor obvious - he's just as put off by the lack of people as Doctor Freeman. "I'm about to be shot by some plasma sniper, aren't I?" He frowns, checking his watch with a sigh. "Nobody here. Nobody anywhere. It's like beyond the amazing Walking Balance Sheet and her greasy superior, humans don't exist in this world. Man, it'd be nice if that was the case in any given burough aliens or chasers or HYDRA decided to settle up in."
Tomoe The job seemed simple and straightforward to Tomoe so she was happy to take it, she'd started out here and seeing things through to the end with Sangvis Ferri seemed like something she ought to do unless something crazy happens on her employer's part. So here she was using her Eisen skin as once again it was less noticeable than her normal one. The town seemed modern enough to her she'd check something on a smartphone again as she'd does not use its remote functions but is checking some notes that she'd stored on its interal apps. She pockets it after reading it given she has no real signal there's no further use for it, for the moment.

"Not much activity here."

She was not going to make any reference to how quiet it was, she'd long become supertisous to that sort of thinking with her history in the multiverse.

She looks to Raziel whose a new face on this series of hjobs gives a wanring about he might vanish and appear.

"Thanks for the heads up."

She'll fall in with Gordon heading for the raedio gear, hopefully it's just a lull in the small settlment's day that they have run into...hopefully.

"So shall we Gordon?"

after all she can take hits for the good doctor who in her mind is far more imporant to the operation than she is.
Gideon Kaspar     Raziel phases into some kind of netherworld in the middle of the street. This is made infinitely easier and more painless for the fact that there aren't people around to see that (or him in general). Cruising around the area, he doesn't see a whole lot different. It's mostly just the same sights and sounds painted with his 'ethereal' visual and sound filter of choice. Drifting through town, it mostly seems the exact same shade of eerily abandoned yet intact as before, until he progresses far enough southwards, roughly towards the radio setup, that he gets the slightest of pings.

    There are ghosts. Possibly the last thing anyone would expect to be a thing here, but there are, just out of sight. There is no legion of damned and howling souls, clinging to this earthly realm of the grave injustice of their death, but the amorphous white spectres he catches sight of through windows and on stairs, flickering like the infamous 'orbs' often caught on amateur cameras or cold spots on infrared set up in haunted houses overnight, are unmistakable as ghosts-in-the-making. People have died here. Not a lot of them, but recently. Ironically, it's something one wouldn't figure out easily without magic.

    Nova has essentially the next best thing, in the fuzzily different category of psychic powers. Just as predictably, she senses no presences. No humans, but thankfully also no weird, confusing fractals, like the time recently she'd focused down on the nameless, faceless agent that'd atomized Staren. Once again, that changes as she heads southward, where she eventually picks up the faintest trace on a northward divergence from the radio tower, up to a street intersection that looks mysteriously fine, inside a corner boutique. If she had to guess, they'd be unconscious or asleep, not 'hiding out', which makes it more than a little fishy.
Gideon Kaspar     Tony gets cut a break in that nobody gets shot in the chest by a jaeger so far, and that if they haven't, there are no jaegers present. The notorious S.F. model snipers are way too good at fiding points from which they can lock down whole districts, and are exceptionally bloodthirsty. If they were here, they'd have taken a shot by now.

    That doesn't mean it's inadvisable for Gordon to suit up though. Patrolling ahead, he ends up in a four way crossing where there has been a tremendous vehicular pileup. There are unfortunately a few victims of car crashes and a jacknifed shipping semi, and a lot of abandoned suitcases and bags scattered around and mostly burst open; a lot, as in way more than people typically carry around in their trunk. The power lines and traffic lights appear to have been cut down, along with windows and doors around the area smashed and broken, though nothing appears to have been correspondingly looted. The very common street corner cameras have been broken here as well, ostensibly shot out, though some more thoroughly destroyed than others. The situation appears to spread a few streets down, with evidence of several fires that burned themselves out. It's a shame that the first people they'd see here would be dead ones, but it's not a bodies piled high in the streets sense, like a chemical attack.

    Because it's her team, Clover is along, predictably enough. "They do, and it's important we protect them." she says a little poutily to Tony. "It's your fault for going places and taking on jobs that are normally left to Dolls." She picks over the wreckage on the road, scanning around with her tactical sensors. "I don't see anything that looks like shelling, or particle beam fire, but there is alpha residue. Do you think it's safe to use the equipment here? It's a civilian area, so the cloud network would be even easier to compromise than the base."
Raziel     Passing into the spectral realm, the sounds of the area are even more quiet than the material realm. No animals, no wind...just emptiness, and not even the images of specters or the living there. Raziel looks around again, looking eventually towards the south. There, he can see the forms of spirits forming, or perhaps weaker ones forming. It was hard to say, and Raziel decided to investigate. Climbing up the side of one building he moves to get to the roof, and start jumping from roof top to roof top, hoping to get enough height so he could glide down towards one of the souls themselves. He looks again, checking to see if there were any more intelligent undead...before he tries speaking to the forming spirits.

    "I am Raziel, I am here to find out what happened to you. I can hear you, though they can not. If you can understand me, let me see what happened." He speaks to them.

    'Here I found a empty spirit world as well. Nothing but the forming spirits of the recent dead. Something violent must have happened, as only the most despirate, or tied to life chose to remain after death. Still...something was wrong here.'
Riva Banari Riva advances through the area, continuing on her direct path. The sight of the pileup in the street, however, gets her to frown. She looks over the situation, her frown deepening. "This is messed up." She mutters. She doesn't seem to offer anything about how it is messed up, though. With the lack of immediate assault, this only puts her more on edge. "I have a bad feeling about this." She looks to Clover as the T-Doll makes her own commentary, and brings up an important point.

"Are we sure that they're not waiting for us to try to contact the team so they can try to get a lock?" She asks the others. "Anything you guys can do to try to forestall it or buy us some time if so?" She asks Team SCIENCE over there, consisting of Tony and Gordon. "I'd really hare for all these people to have died just so some jerks can play us."

That said, Riva steps around the mess and continues towards the radio systems. The goal hasn't changed, just the context. And it's a bad one. It's not her job to be the smart one, however, just to make sure the smart ones stay alive.
Alexis Maaka     Maaka clears corners and sweeps the area, leaping up onto the semi's side. "Riva's right about that." She concurs, hopping down from the trailer as she heads towards the radio systems' location. Every now and then she keeps scanning, keeping an eye out for snipers.

    Call her paranoid, but there is no way in hell that they're the only people here still. SOMEONE has to be ghosting them, right?
Tomoe Tomoe keeps moving in time with Gordon Freeman, she's well aware of Jaegers and how dangerous they are. Given the savage beatings, they have given her in the past. She does not forget that event at all it's keenly on her mind. As they keep going she sees the signs of the fires that have gone out, bodies, dropped suitcases and the like, as she grimaces.

"Looks like something made them run and killed at least some of them.

"I'm here to take hits for the rest of you, I'm not a tech but it's something I think we should keep in mind. Still, we need to get this job done, right."

Riva is a fellow tank and immortal, as far as Tomoe sees it she will trust her on point while she keeps to Freeman as they continue onwards.

"Tell me about it, Riva, that reminds me of some people I knew back before I met you who would pull something like that. Keep alert there is the possibility the bodies might be booby-trapped." Or hell the gear we're here for might be too. They might be more interested in offing us."

She Notes back to Alexis as the group keeps moving.

"Gordon do you have any thoughts on the local network security here?"
Tony Stark Tony Stark doesn't INSTANTLY DIE to a sniper because he tried to roll out for a social call. That's fine. Tony Stark doesn't go anywhere without a suit - fashionable or otherwise.

As he walks down the street, one eye glued to his high-tech watch and the other to the situation around him. "I'm getting nothing and nobody, and barely any sign that people were getting ready for lunch, much less a massacre. Alright." Stark begins to unbutton his jacket, with his left thumb and forefinger as his right tugs loose his tie.

"Done doing this with glasses and a watch. Friday?"

The case rolling behind him slides apart in half, the entire lower cavity of the rolling party favor unit filled with - you guessed it - an Iron Man suit.

The Mark XLIII's eyes light up as Stark starts folding his tie into his jacket and pulls off his aviators, tossing them over his shoulder - which the 43 catches and places in the crawler's now-empty cavity, before stepping forward and opening up in the front.

With a practiced quarter trust-fall, Stark steps back into the open suit, the front closing around him and the helmet falling into place over his face.

Ensconsed in the safety of his armor and light blue HUD, Stark begins accessing data from nearby.

"Well, Banari, the radio building's got some - we'll call it weird - stuff going in, but besides that... I'm not picking up anything."

"And Clover --" Stark trails off. "Well, it's a living. What's alpha residue? Remind me, my particle physics mostly deal with things exploding creatively."
Nova Terra     "Psi-reactive light refracting cells."

    Nova doesn't skip a beat as she answers Riva, still focusing on checking the city for signs of life. After a few moment more she opens her eyes again, "Nothing. No one. Not even the weird feeling I got from that SF agent on the last mission." That seems to fit with what they can see... Though it's still a little disconcerting. An entire town, empty, with no signs of what happened.

    The group heads off in the direction of the radio equipment and Nova follows, bringing her rifle down into both hands again as she sticks to the rear. As shey come across the pileup at the intersection, Nova moves over to take a quick look. She walks up to one of the open bags and looks at it, then the others, "A lot of luggage... Leaving town? An evacuation would account for the lack of bodies." Present company excluded.

    It's at that moment that Nova does finally sense something. She spins her head towards the north. It might be worth checking out... "I'm picking up on something... You guys go ahead to the radio. I'll check it out." Nova splits off from the group, beginning to make her way towards the source.

    Homing in on the normal-looking intersection and then the boutique, Nova quietly enters. Taking careful, deliberate steps through the store she sweeps her rifle left and right as she tries to identify who, or what, she's feeling. There doesn't appear to be any hostility to it, but you can never be too careful.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon's first reaction is to quickly move to check that the victims of the car accident are dead. Looks that way, after a quick check of pulses, unless someone's hiding something. As Riva speaks, he shakes his head. Not at her assumption that there may be an ambush activated by an attempt to contact their allies, but rather, at the idea that much could be done to forestall it. At least, not by him. He gestures over to Tony when Tomoe asks about network security, giving her a silent, sheepish shrug. Not intending to avoid trying though; he does tap at his armor's wrist, eliciting a quick synthed "Communications interface online." He should at least check if the comms equipment has a signal; was it shut down?

    With little else to do about this, though, he picks over the crash site briefly, full of curiosity and concern. Is this a failure of evacuation? Were people getting out before SF forces arrived? It /seems/ like that, but is there more to this story? As for the matter of alpha residue, Gordon intends to put more of his own experience to work. He knows exotic particles, so he intends to get a reading of the area with his suit's sensors, and relay it back to the Lambda Team -- and of course, link in Tony Stark, who will no doubt appreciate some helpful Black Mesa team members giving him some of the same data that comes back for Gordon.

    Unless there's something crucial, though, he intends to head right back towards that comms site. He doesn't intend to stay, and while he can imagine all sorts of ways to prevent ambush -- perhaps wiring up all the left-behind antennas throughout the town into decoys to throw off any pursuit, or other suchlike! -- he can hardly justify spending all the time he'd need, or monopolizing all the skillsets from his allies that would be required to make all that work. Sadly, it looks like the best solution will be to just get right into the radio structure, if he can get up to whatever seems like the nearest entrance.
Gideon Kaspar     "If they are, then they've already thought too far ahead of us for it to be worth worrying about. We have people here that should be able to stop them, right?" Clover replies to Riva, her M4 rifle held in a low ready stance as she climbs over car debris and light rubble without looking at her feet. "Ah, I meant alpha radiation still lingering in the area. It usually doesn't last for very long, and doesn't penetrate very much, so that means it must have been very recent, or being left by something still in the area. Sangvis Ferri weapons usually function in the beta or gamma range, though, save for a couple of low-cost models." She looks back for a second. "That's still stuff exploding violently, though."

    Nova checking out the suitcases seems to find what'd validate her suspicions. Most of the car trunks and backseats are stuffed with assortments of things people would need to hurriedly leave town. If an evacuation order were sounded, these people would have been the ones to suffer from the early panic. It'd also be recorded somewhere, though it's also telling that it seems the traffic direction and civil services monitoring and announcement equipment appears to have been deliberately destroyed. Gordon confirms that the victims are exactly what one would expect, not exceptionally gorey, but certainly dead.

    He also has the data sent to the two 'actual for real' particle physicists in the group, who can make better use of it than Clover, whose equipment is largely for threat profiling. There is indeed a fair amount of radiation that will have been fully evapourated in a matter of one or two days scattered about, mostly beamed into the more conductive electronic objects around, as it's already leeched out of the pavement. Mapping it out, they can find that higher concentrations are all found near the doors, or directly inside, of buildings, rather than out in the empty streets. There are obviously plenty of heat and electric signatures, which could all be anything from personal computers to radiators to holographic signs to toasters here, without a fair amount of time to sift through them, or visual confirmations.
Gideon Kaspar     The comms hub is in working order. It's not much bigger than a small public library, with automatic glass doors and an empty check-in booth, having a visitor's lobby filled with small stations for rented personal use, but otherwise mostly dedicated to government work, doubling as air traffic radar and satellite uplink. There is a significant quantity of clutter inside, with chairs tipped over, papers scattered around, laptops left running, and once again the security cameras have been meticulously destroyed in this borderline mini-panopticon. All of the personal stalls still work, as does presumably the stronger and more secure, but possibly more obvious military channel. Climbing onto the roof to jack into the dish directly wouldn't be terribly hard either, for its pros and cons.

    Raziel speaking to the dead has mixed results. Almost all of them are too new to have much conscious realization of who they are or that they are dead. The few that seem 'awake' enough to even be cognisant of him talking to them don't possess the faculties to communicate effectively, being barely blobs of light. The best he gets is that one flies up to a car on jacks in an auto shop, passing through its radio and dash-cam in a way that makes it static-crackle in that supernatural white noise sort of way.

    Nova finds someone alive instead. Further east, she finds sections of street more obviously damaged, with corners of buildings caved in and potholes in the streets as if by light shelling, though power poles, street lamps, and various other blockage has been caused by being cut through. Underneath a collapsed section of overpass, she finds several dead civilians, and one who reads as unconscious, albeit with a piece of rebar through them that has narrowly missed their diaphragm. The radiation concentrations are especially high around them, and many look as if they've been badly burnt.
Raziel     'Not willful enough in life to make strong ghosts, or at least, not quickly, I found my questions falling on deaf ears. I might as well be asking an infant what a basic math problem was. Even though one of the ghosts seemed to respond by trying to transmit white noise through a nearby radio. Strange, but what was he trying to say? Was he trying to communicate through the radio...or to warn me about it? Still, I have stayed here overlong, and should return to the group.'

    Walking through buildings now, Raziel made a more direct line towards the main group. Once he would be in sight, he would take the time to force his mind to focus on his physical body. In the real world, Raziel would slowly seem to appear from the immaterial, slowly forming a physical body again...though as loathsome as it was before. Walking towards the rest of the group to make pace with them, and not be stranded on his own.

    "I assume our search is going according to pace?"
Alexis Maaka     There's definitely signs of conflict here. Maaka keeps her G36KV in the ready position, moving toward the comms hut as she kicks down the door and clears the inside. Circumnavigating the security check-in booth, she makes her way upwards toward the rooftop. "Found the roof, gonna poke about this." She says, stowing the HK carbine and producing a wire she attaches to the back of her neck. Maaka goes to work hacking away, trying to find any info assuming this hardware still works.
Tomoe Tomoe gets the idea from Gordon's reaction to her question, he doesn't know and fair enough to her. She then speaks on the comm there's another thing to check out there. She takes the warning that Raziel got from the ghost seriously. She will presume something else is work still.

"It is Raziel and thanks for your help so far we'd not even have that information if not for you."

She doesn't have the skills to help with the survivor and she knows it.

With Maaka going to hack? Tomoe's going to sweep the building maybe there's some sort of computer system left maybe the attackers didn't get the security systems recorders in this mess? It's a possibility and for the moment she searches, for any systems like that or other signs that might help give them some answers.
Riva Banari "Of course it's weird. It's always weird. These assholes always seem to gather around computer centers and radio systems." Riva sighs. "All right, let's get on this." She doesn't respond to Nova's answer immediately, mainly because it goes /right over her head/. Sometimes the direct answer really IS the quickest way to get someone off your back. Nova then bails, and Riva waves. "All right. Keep us posted." She calls to Nova as she leaves.

"I feel like I'm getting half a puzzle shoved at me." Riva comments to no one in particular as they head in. Thankfully, it's not her job to solve it. Maaka reminds her to keep an eye out, and Riva looks around, trying to keep from focusing too hard on something. Tunnel vision kills. "You know some real assholes, Tomoe. Hope you kicked their ass." She says as they move.

Everything is clear to the radio station. Riva pokes at the door and looks back. "Well, we're here. What do you guys want to do with it?" She asks, before she turns back to the doors and basically works to get access.

Dead people don't need access cards, after all. "Let me know if you guys want to go high. Otherwise, I'm going to work on getting us into the control room."

Worst case scenario... She has explosives.
Tony Stark Stark doesn't like this one bit, marching (well, slow-flying) down the center of the street and dismisisng the rover back to his helicopter. Data security. Networks. Weapon radiation outside of the normal spectrum. It was a murder mystery.

Alighting on the comms hub building, Stark elects to fly up, moving to the roof of the building and scanning the area quickly before checking the access points.

"Friday, start pulling trajectory analysis from tall white and leggy's grid."
"Already on it, Boss. Telemetry coming in."

Stark begins checking the wiring, still with his helmet down. "Scan for patches and cable jacks. If someone wants to log in and bring the tower on-line? Check the physical equipment for modifications, and..."

Nobody but Gordon has a shared feed. "I don't know, Banari, take a picture with your phone. Eyes on a swivel, too, we don't want Speedy Gonzales to ice anyone who doesn't have computer backups."
Nova Terra     Nova continues her search, which leads her east. The structural damage suggests an attack of some kind. Though no evidence as to who or what. It could have been local military, though that doesn't make much sense at this point. Whatever happened though, it's since passed.

    Feeling like she's getting close to the mind she senses, Nova homes in on the collapsed overpass. She stows away her rifle, attaching it to the back of her suit, then begins to climb over the debris. She glances at some of the bodies she passes, before finally dropping down between two large pieces of concrete to find the survivor. The environmental display on her visor is warning her of the radiation levels, but they're not lethal at this point. Nova examines the survivor's injuries as she reports on her find to the others. But unfortunately she's not a field medic, lacking both skill and the equipment to assist. So unless someone else on the team can assist, or reinforcements arrive soon, there's not much Nova can do.

    Except. They still need to know what happened here.

    Nova softly places her hand on the unconsious survivor's head and says, "Sorry..." She closes her eyes and then dives deep into the survivor's mind, going beyond the vacant surface thoughts and deeper into the memories. Nova tries to focus on just those memories of what happened here in the lead up to the survivor's current state, though navigating a person's mind is never so clear cut.
Tomoe Tomoe says "I sadly do and yes, Riva, most of them were killed by the clearer guilds the ones we took alive were successfully locked up by the Army Guild. I'm only aware of a handful of Laughing Coffin who are at large." She frowns Death Gun was out there somewhere along with the leader of the Guild. There were also likely a few others who'd slipped through the cracks and that ate at her a bit, she had to bite that down and deal with the mission here, still? The sort of baiting tactic if she was right? Spoke of how these AI's operated.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon heads in. Inside! Thank goodness. He hates those wide open spaces. Tony and Maaka have wiring, Riva and Tomoe are handling the local records and access, Nova and Raziel are handling the matters of the survivors and the dead, which leaves... Actually getting onto the radio and talking. Which, uh, Gordon has to do, apparently! He heads over to one of the civilian stalls, intending to head into the military one if he can't get a good signal or nothing comes up. He sits down and tries to open a channel to the Anti-Rain Team, though he's fine with a one-way broadcast to them on whatever encryptions G&K might have provided.

    "This is Dr. Gordon Freeman. I'm here to help any friends of VZ-61 and M4. My allies and I are doing the best we can to secure your safety. Respond if you are able. This place may be dangerous, but we still want to get you out of this nightmare. We need to find some way to help you. Message repeats." He specifically keeps himself from mentioning names that likely haven't been stricken from automated search patterns for anyone besides the Anti-Rain Team -- after all, SF has no reason to seek those names now, and machine intelligence is less inclined to do so. He also refrains from mentioning or implicating G&K, or even mentioning which of the AR-T he's looking for. He'll leave that going for just a bit, hoping that at least some of the radio equipment might get it out there.

    That, and using a /surprisingly/ trustworthy-sounding voice. It just /drips/ with dedication and altruism. No wonder he barely ever talks, apparently he's charging up all the time like some kind of shounen psychic energy guy.
Gideon Kaspar     The orb Raziel plies for information makes several more laps through the radio and dash cam before eventually settling down in the driver's seat and going quiescent. Tomoe's search for intact monitoring equipment is about as fruitless. Despite the uncharacteristic lack of damage to the center in total, someone has been quite meticulous, if casual, about blowing up anything that would be taking in, rather than putting out, data. Riva's rifling around for keycards and fiddling with logged-in computers for door codes gets her where she wants to go, and finds that the employees-only room hasn't had its doors broken down, and thus cannot be trashed inside either.

    It's not a big one. The equipment here has been properly powered off before everyone left as well, though it's not hard to turn it back on for air traffic, radar, and security purposes, though all the camera feeds are black. Of course, just because the cameras aren't recording, doesn't mean they haven't recorded anything previously, and the computer still works, for Tomoe's purposes. Blessedly, nothing shows up in regards to air traffic, nor hostiles outside of city limits. No vehicles either, save what are probably wrecks along the west highway.

    Maaka goes to jack into the antenna itself, and finds an access panel up on a tiny mesh platform at the top of a free rung ladder. Tony thoroughly scans it, and finds that the comms equipment has been aligned more recently than the disaster, sort of like the military outpost had, though it hasn't been left jacked, tapped, or monitored. On request, Gideon provides the satellite uplink to reference with his telemetry, and it confirms Nova's suspicions of artillery, likely from perfectly flat ground outside of town, having no convenient rises or stealthy spots to set up, likely contributing to what appears to be a largely successful evacuation. Gideon digitally circles the spots on the overhead map, after checking the imagery of the destroyed streets. "Looks like field mortars. Guided munitions. Something a small group could easily carry with them. They didn't aim at anything especially important, and they weren't firing random, inaccurate shells. It's not like what we've seen from Executioner or Scarecrow." Tony can likely paste the radiation paths over the map as well to follow trails.

    Unsurprisingly, Maaka finds that the dish has been set up to zone in on the same urban center the military database had been interested in, then tracked it a considerable degree east, according to its logs, through miles of country and into a neighbouring city, very far apart for a developed country, apparently being close enough to monitor and track a signal, rather than just spy with satellite footage. The coordinates are in its logs.
Gideon Kaspar     Pulling psychic memories out of a seriously injured man are something that Sangvis Ferri are extremely unlikely to have been prepared for. It pays off for Nova. The memories she gets are fitful and unsteady, coming in lurching flashes and impressions from a clear panic. Contrails streak out of the air and impact the surrounding buildings with powerful explosions, scattering rubble and steel across the streets, which are packed with cars, and pedestrians running past them on foot or bikes to the city limits beyond. Electric cracks and whines can be faintly heard over the panic, and acid flashes can be dimly seen moving up the street.

    The man remains rooted to try and push traffic through, staying by the side of the road to guide pedestrians past, but a guided mortar hit to the overpass collapses it on top of him and many others, crushing several cars beneath it. During the period he remains conscious but pinned to the ground, he can hear the whirring and clicking of lightweight mechanical steps moving at extremely high speed, splitting up and swarming the intersection, as well as the bark of unfamiliar Sangvis weapons low to the ground. He sees bodies crumple left and right, and are then dragged away by assailants he can't make out, apparently indoors. Shortly before he passes out, he catches sight of a pair of grey heeled boots and the trailing edge of a long coat entering his vision. A flat, inflectionless, female voice begins speaking.

    "Yes . . . yes . . . no . . . Dreamer has already confirmed they've moved on. If they were here, they'd have shown themselves by now. . . . that would be inefficient; total human casualties are unnecessary to draw them out . . . do you think they- . . . yes, that is possible . . . Agent said as much . . . I will update my position and begin data transfer to Dreamer . . . no, don't bother, I will have finished before Executioner is back in action . . . yes they know, I will be thorough . . . I assess them at class ultraviolet, I was able to terminate one of their number, but do not intend to engage in direct combat; it is an inefficient waste of time . . . confirmed. I will know by my next scheduled report. Over and out." Green light strobes rapidly with a prolonged sequence of loud rapid shooting, and several cars can be heard detonating as the speaker opens fire on the jammed crowd, before the man loses consciousness.

    Gordon just outright uses the public communications stalls. Clover hurries up behind him, nervously asking "A-are you sure that's a good idea? These would be the easiest terminals to tap. Besides, the others are trained not to respond to unsecured frequencies like this, they wouldn't be careless enough to-" Then the terminal flashes with an alert for an incoming call, and the videophone screen fills up with an obnoxious closeup of a girl's face, with red eyes, blonde hair, and a bright red streak through it in the same place Clover's green is. The feed shakes with audible camera fumbling noises as someone no doubt tries to wrestle her away from it in the background, but the speaker is undeterred, yelling in in a slightly unnervingly upbeat voice. "Hey! Heeey! It's M-4! Yaho! I knew you'd be fine! Did you make it back to HQ already? I'm going to be real mad if-" "S-2 . . . get off the . . . put it down." "Who's this guy anyways? Is he your friend? He sounds nice! I like his outfit! It's orange!" "Ugh. You never listen."

    Clover immediately wedges herself in to share screen space with Gordon. "S-2! A-15! You're alright! No it's- it's a long story, just know that we have allies now! We're working together with a Griffin commander in the area and some new friends who helped me out! We'll be on our way to find you too! Where's M-16?"
Alexis Maaka     Maaka combs through data, finding that the dish has been set up as noted. She begins sending every piece of intelligence she can to Tony's personal files using the address provided. SHIELD? Who names these outfits in Tony's world anyways? Tacky titles aside, the cyborg keeps sending over data before she jacks out of the antenna and stows her wire. "Stark, data's sent." She reports tersely, before she heads back down to the first floor.

    Juuuust in time to see Nova doing some freaky psionic stuff with an almost dead person. Yeah, there's no way she can reallyreact to that. So she focuses on whatever Clover and Freeman are up to.

    "Sooooo where've you been up to?" She asks, poking her head into the discussion as her helmet opens up to reveal golden eyes and red hair, etc.
Tony Stark Tony begins to get data - a lot of data, from various people - and his HUD gets immediately full of pictures, which Friday then sweeps away for analysis. "There's no obvious taps, and no foul play... So what's the point? Why would they do all this, get field artillery in here--"

Gordon Freeman has the voice of a public radio god. Tony Stark recieves the news from Lake Wobagon. Is this... the power of a silent protagonist?

Shaking his head after his reveric moment with the sexual chocolate of Gordon Freeman's pipes, Stark realizes something else.

"Gordon, Clover, you're gonna need to tell your friends to get to artillery cover, and hunker down. The ringleader we're after can outrun combat flight from me on foot - and now she knows where your friends are. Spin it up people, and maybe hotwire a car, because we probably want to get to those two before the ringleader wipes them out."

"We're damn sure not beating her there. Wheels up yesterday, finish up!"
Gordon Freeman     Gordon looks to Clover at puts a hand on her shoulder in a positive, uplifting way, with an expression on his face that's just sort of "everything will be okay" when she points out the ease of tapping the consoles. Admittedly this is because he comes from an Earth that developed towards 1980s-era and 1970s-era ideal high-technology super-science, and he isn't one hundred percent sure what a "trojan" is besides a kind of fake horse and the kind of protective equipment Black Mesa isn't in the business of testing. It's quite possible he doesn't 100% understand the vulnerabilities of these sorts of computers. Honestly, Gordon is a lot more Positivity and Hope than he is, uh, entirely sensible decisionmaking. That's sort of the mindset of any destined revolutionary, really.

    But what he does understand is the video call, which he gets onto fast. "This place has been massacred. They're probably going to monitor this. We need to find a way to meet with you, or at least help you. We'll get you out of this, I know it." His voice and face are full of equal parts hope and determination, urged on by the well-aged vintage thoughts of SF's T-Doll torture and the fresh memories of corpses he saw in the street. Then he tilts his head, hearing something on his comms suite. "We need to move. Do you have any emergency OTP encryption keys shared with her that you could use to give coordinates?" He gestures to Clover, hopefully. That's the only truly monitoring-proof way of getting through this! And also thankfully the kind of high-tech infosec stuff that a cold-war-inspired research associate would know. If they can get coordinates -- recovery coordinates, coordinates of a site to attack to open a gap in SF containment defenses, /something/ -- then this will have been worth it.
Riva Banari Riva doesn't have much to say back to Tomoe as they part ways. She isn't familiar with much of what Tomoe was dealing with, that wasn't her deal when she was active in the Multiverse last time.

No, instead at this point she's splitting her attention between doing the low-level gofering stuff Team Science needs, and keeping an eye out in case she needs to blast something with a shotgun. By all accounts the SF troops have moved on, but you never know...

Then Stark comes to a realization. Riva's already bolting out of the room, running for the nearest vehicle to try to try to get it going.

She picks a truck. Because there's a lot of heavy metal involved here.
Raziel     Raziel can't quite follow what is going on, there is a lot he was not here for and a bit that he doesn't understand because it's concepts he is unfamilar with. However, there are some unidentified bits on one of the highways...though they could be wrecks, it doesn't pay to not be complete with making sure everything is what it is. Raziel moves off, once more aiming to find a building to climb, and leaping off of it, uses his wings to glide towards the west.

    Once he can get close enough, he drops to the ground, landing with a crouch and starts moving along the highway. Ploding along the road, he moves to check the readings one by one.
Tomoe Tomoe finds well that even someone went to the Command Centre before it and blew anything that might be taking in data that still does tell her something, a lot. A key is located and the employee only room is now able to be accessed. With this? Things are in better shape for the group now they do find something in the employees only room and tomoe make a beeline for the computer, she finds information that is interesting, so far.

"Looks like it's clear on Air Traffic and anything else the only vehicle look like the likely wrecks on the west highway."

Still it's something of use so her time wasn't wasted here. Looks like things are clear at the moment...though we can't rule out stealth technology."

She will react to Tony's order by running outside as fast as possible and flaring out her bright red wings as she'll take flight and fly as fast as she can to get back to the chopper and not split the part too much, she recalls what hte Jagers did to her the last time she she ran off on her own here.
Tony Stark TONY STARK'S HELICOPTER

Flies itself, as if a GHOST was at the sticks! It's just Friday. In fact, she greets people who clamber into the Starkcoper.

"Hello, everyone. If you'd like some lemon towels and complimentary beverages, due to SHIELD operational guidelines, I cannot RECOMMEND you drink during an engagement. However, the full bar is also available."

The Swag Rover pops open its top-top, revealing a cooler filled with glasses and various top-grade alcohols, a few liters of Coke, Barqs, and Mountain Dew, and warm towels in a little compartment pleasantly smelling like lemon.

People can also take a STARK INDUSTRIES brand blue lanyard with white text. The universal clip at the end has a button that looks like an old-model Arc Reactor. Very geek chic.
Nova Terra     Nova recalls the last memories of the survivor. Unable to separate the emotions of the event from the sensory information, Nova is unfortunately subjected to the fear and panic of the event. It's not until she reaches the point in his memories, where he slips unconscious, that she pulls back. Her hand jerks away and she moves it to hold her head. She rubs her eyes for a moment, then shakes off the residual feelings and stands. She looks down at the man, suspecting he won't last until help arrives. So she says with some sadness, "Thank you."

    Nova pulls herself up onto the top of the fallen debris and then jumps clear. Hitting the open street, she quickly shifts into a dash, leveraging the enhanced speed her suit provides to make it back to Stark's helicopter as quickly as possible.

    Pulling her rifle out once more, Nova climbs about the helicopters and sits near the edge, ready to provide air cover from above if it comes to it. While impressed with the AI's ability to pilot the craft, Nova does politely decline her off with some amusement, "Thank you, but maybe another time."
Gideon Kaspar     "Wait what? Who's Clover?" "That's . . . me." "Whaaaat! No way! That's such a pretty name! I want a pretty human name too! I-uwah!" The other girl's hand comes into view, pushing itself over the first's face and forcing her out of frame, so that a more serious expression with purple eyes and hair streak can get a look in, dour and concerned. "M-16 is fine. She split off from us, but I had to stay here with this idiot or else-" "I'll get those bastards for this!" "-she'd go and get herself killed. M-16 is the most resourceful out of all of us. You were the one I was worried about."

    She tilts her head slightly in looking at Gordon, then gives incredibly blatant and easy to track coordinates, ending suddenly with "-zeroed from where Persica forgot her sugar cubes.", rendering the whole sequence suddenly useless to anyone who doesn't know what the hell that means. "We can secure transit. If it's who I think it is, then-" "Dammit let me at them! And wait, hey! I didn't get to say-" "-I can handle it. Don't use this frequency again." The call is abruptly terminated from the other side. Clover stares at her reflection in the dark monitor for a second, then lets out a sigh of relief. "I think I know where to go. You're right. I think A-15 probably knew she was being followed, and that our call was being monitored from her position. We should get there quickly."

    Riva finds there are no shortage of working ground vehicles, for the fact that many people have simply abandoned them after realizing going on foot would be faster than trying to get through the traffic jam. A concerning number of them have very large holes put through them, melted bumper through bumper to bumper, including the engine block. Razier going west finds that several vehicles have been run off the road or tipped over by mortar fire, but the collateral doesn't extend far from town. The attack obviously came from the other direction, but nobody was chased very far. Once again, there are conspicuously no bodies killed by weapons, but the conclusion should be obvious by now, at least from what Nova has seen; against such slow moving targets as human civilians, none of the S.F. forces had missed, leaving no weapons marks, and using particle weapons, there'd be no blood splatters either. For what reason the corpses were removed, and by what exactly, hasn't been discovered.
Alexis Maaka     Now's a good time to get to da choppa, yes.

    Maaka makes no delay in getting aboard the helicopter, leaping on and covering the others before she sees fit to lower her carbine. Stowing the G36, Maaka takes the complimentary lanyard and clips it to her belt. Drinking can wait until after they're out of the AO. "Whatever you say, Friday." She comments dryly, grabbing a towel to wipe sweat off her face. The luxury is awfully...surreal, given what she's used to dealing with. No helicopter she's been on before was this lavishly stocked.