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Owner Pose
August Kohler LATE EVENING
PARIS OPERA HOUSE

In a version of Paris, a dangerous businessman known as Alexander Romero has finally left his privacy to go see an opera. Fidelio is playing at the Paris Opera House, a show by Beethoven about a woman who disguises herself as a prison guard to free her husband from a political prison. A renowned fan of the opera, Romero has waited to see this show in person for quite some time.

Too bad it'll be his last show - the Watch has deemed it his time to go, for the gross crimes his company has done - environmental destruction, disappearance of whistleblowers and dissidents, and bribes everywhere.

The Paris Opera House has two main entrances: the front door, and a guarded exit to the backstage., guarded in that there's security taking smoke breaks out there. The backstage is crowded and doesn't give a clear view of the target, but the front door is also crowded, as people flock through the lobby to get their tickets and prepare to head to their seats.

The lobby consists of lush carpets and shining decorations, with a reception and coat check booth to the left, next to a bathroom. Through the crowd, it's clear that there's still stagehands and workers heading in and out, heading from the lower level understage area that leads to the rafters and lighting.

There's also a red carpet staircase leading directly forward and up to the target's booth. It's guarded by both two visibly armed men, and a keycard door, though balconies nearby may allowing sniping inside, as would the rafters and the stage, though difficult.

The rooftop is boring, if anyone checks. No skylights. Two bricks of C4, meanwhile, have been handed to the group, in case they want to use the explosives for any way. Radio earpieces have also been tossed to the group, for a direct line to their handler, Firebrand, aka August Kohler.

"Alright, gang. He's already in his booth. You can wait a bit for the opera to actually start if you want, or you can just begin. Collateral is 'fine', and expected. He's a big enough target that we can't let this opportunity go to waste."
Nameless      The Nameless mercenary doesn't care in the slightest.

     He doesn't care about the opera house. It's beautiful. It's marvelous. It's utterly wasted. He doesn't care about the opulence of the people around him. They're magnificent. They're wealthy beyond reason. They're utterly insignificant. Every step he takes down the carpeted aisle is one without a hint of attention for the spectacular surroundings save for one specific thought running through his mind.

     That thought is the break points. The places he can do the most damage to the most people the fastest in order to corral them, move them in a certain direction or otherwise cut off Romero's escape.

     The people don't notice him. His nearly-pitch-black skin. His short white hair, spiked up. The gold highlights of his black jacket. The red cloth wrapped tight around his arm. He stands out like a road flare and yet nobody seems to care. They treat him like an operagoer. Maybe a few women make a pass at him. Maybe a few men. He ignores all of it, save a moment to stop and grab a cigarette from one of the attendants and have it lit by someone else. The smoke curls around his throat. It can't hurt him. He's already dead. And the smell reminded him of someone from his past.

     Nameless has elected not to take any C4. He has his own explosives. He can make them out of thin air. He really doesn't need any help.

     "Understood," is all he says as he heads into the back way. He's going to cut Romero off. Minimal casualties is a bonus. He expects it to be maximized.

     But it's a critical mission. What's one more sin on his shoulders?
Abigail Barton Going in guns blazing isn't Abigail's forte. No, she's the sort to usually sneak in, eliminate her target, and get out while looking like a scared janitor or fleeing audience member or something. When she hears of a CEO that's done irreparable damage to the earth for his greed AND that someone's paying to have him known for his crimes, though...

A change of pace isn't such a bad thing. Abigail's even changed her hair for this occasion, donning blonde hair and wearing a revealing white dress that's just a bit too fanciful for anyone with enough financial awareness to /not/ pay for overpriced seating up somewhere nice and high. It's fine, though, since whoever actually did pay for this getup and the seats wouldn't be able to appreciate it from the back alley they've been left in, anyway.

For now, she'll go in like she actually belongs upstairs. Coat check can take her fancy fur coat, and she's going to beeline for that red carpeted staircase while chuckling along with whoever's talking nearby. She needs to reach the target first, and she goes right for the front doors, not worried at all about drawing attention towards herself. She'll need to turn heads if she wants to get in that booth, after all!
Maricel Thorne      Maricel's sitting on the roof, dangling her feet off the edge. Her fingers run over the metal plunger of an old-timey syringe in her labcoat pocket. She's made her preparations; made her peace. It's going to be terribly difficult to let a man die- not morally, of course, but viscerally, smothering that little voice in her head telling her to fix everything. But she'll make do.

          "Alright, gang..."

     Python-like tendrils of red meat push out through the dimensional scar on her upper back, sliding through the pre-cut hole between the shoulderblades of her labcoat. They grab the edge of the roof, lower her down so she can drop on her feet just out of sight of the front door. She walks in, looking- save for her unnaturally vibrant yellow eyes- like a very normal doctor who got off her shift just a little too late to change.

     The guards by the keycarded door: that must be the booth she's looking for. Maricel walks towards them, waving amiably as a shard of esoteric tech buried within her brain spins up to speed. It reaches out with artificial psychic tendrils, caressing and feeling out their minds.

Subject:      The two guards by the door.
Scan for:      Codewords, passphrases, and security protocols.
Impose:      Emotions: Forgiving and gregarious. Memory: "Mr. Romero requested a physician, and is expecting Dr. Thorne. He doesn't wish to be otherwise disturbed, so there's no need to check in with anyone else."

     "Dr. Thorne, ADD, DA, SD, OD, GMO here. I'm given to understand you boys have been expecting me." She gives them a winning smile and fishes a slightly-bent ID card out of her pocket. "Shall I head right in?"
Staren     A little worrying that August claims collateral is 'fine' -- but if he really believed that, he'd have just bombed the building. Staren would prefer to try not to hurt anyone else, in any case.

    Yes, Staren's not Watch, but it's clear that the future is better off without this person in it, and as Elites have the power to remove him, they should exercise that power.

    Staren's considered the problem of how to get into an opera house and assassinate a guy. He's not much for sneaking, himself -- He could just go in, try to find the guy, and shoot him, dealing with the security and panic, but that feels like more of a 'plan B'. So what's suitable as a 'plan A'? Well...

    Staren's on top of the next building over, behind the opera house. He's a robot in full armor (in case he has to use plan B, or he can drop the armor and enter looking normal for some other plan.) And he's assembled a heavy railgun on a folding tripod. Plan A: Use spy drones and other party members to locate the target, then shoot through the walls.

    Spy drones, robotic insects the size of flies, start flying into the main and back entrances, as well as searching the exterior for other points of entrance (vents?). Staren staggers their entrance, maybe one per entrance per minute or so, so that hopefully they won't attract undue attention. Once inside, they make their way to the theater and try to get eyes on Romero's box.

    Staren's offered glasses or more subtle spy cameras to anyone who feels like helping with this plan.
Nova Terra     Nova is bold. She enters the opera house through the front. Following in close behind Abigail.

    Of course, it doesn't hurt that Nova isn't currently decked out in her usual equipment for this mission. Instead she's wearing a beautiful silver dress, complete with heels and purse. By all appearances, and any security she encounters on entering, she looks to be unarmed.

    While her fellow operative is trying to actually draw attention, Nova herself just blends in to the crowds. She follows the flow of the crowd, recalling the building plans in her head. And once she reaches a certain point, breaks off as she starts to head for the backstage. Her objective is to reach the rafters for a good angle into the booth. She informs her coworkers of as much as she quietly radios, "Making my way to the rafters."

    Meanwhile, in orbit, a distorted section of space slowly closes in on a communications satellite. It slows to a relative stop once it reaches the orbiting equipment and soon enough something appears from within it. An SCV. The construction mech ignites its thrusters to boost up to the satellite, laser cutter coming to life as it slices into the maintenance panel. Gaining access to the interior, tiny manipulator cables slide out and towards the delicate electronics, beginning to alter them.

    Inside the stealth warship, Nova's second watches through the windows as the SCV works on the satellite. As it does so, he radios his progress in to Nova, "Target reached. Beginning reconfiguration."
August Kohler Nameless heads upstairs, as do Abigail and Maricel. Nameless is ignored, but he gets a glimmer that the guards at the do or are more aware of him, and are going to say something if he gets too close. Or, they are, until Abigail approaches. Eyes wander from head to...lower, as they speak up. "M-miss, this is a private booth. You can't be here. Please return do wnstairs."

This and Nameless's inherent stealth give him time to continue towards the balconies down the hall to get an eye on the booth.

Maricel (and Staren's spy drones), meanwhile, get inside. As soon as Maricel speaks up and flashes her badge, the two guards look kind of 'uhhh', but this /was/ what they were told. "Right, go on, Doctor." They take a keycard and slide open the door for Maricel. The passcode is 'zombie'.

And then, as soon as she's past, one of them takes his radio. "Rogen, the doctor is in. Make sure not to disturb Romero."

The booth is a big chair, a table for drinks, a sandy blonde haired man in his fifties at the table, and a large white-haired man listening to his radio and staring at Maricel. "Who the /hell/ are you?" Romero doesn't speak up, yet. It seems that he's reading a book and has headphones in, while he waits for the opera to start, cocktail in spare hand.

Staren's drones can slip in either through the balcony or through the open door and get a good view of However, the drones will certainly be noticed quickly if Staren isn't fast, since they're not expected and this is a private, sealed booth.

Nova heads down to the understage. There's a guard patrolling. He only notices her after she enters into teh backstage, and starts trailing after her, right when she'll see the staircase and ladders up to the rafters. "Miss! Miss, you can't be back here! Please allow me to escort you back to the front stage." She can easily get up to the rafters, but she'll have to deal with the security guard first.

<"Alright, police chatters are quiet. Seems you haven't started yet. Let's make this something they'll remember this scumbag for.">
Maricel Thorne      "'Zombie'," Maricel immediately responds, keeping her tone perfectly controlled in that ineffably Doctor-Like Tone. "I'm Dr. Thorne; Mr. Romero solicited my presence earlier. He needs his medicine, you know." She pulls a glowing syringe out of her pocket and flicks its side with her fingernail as that machine in her brain ramps up again, extending her mental tendrils...

Subject:      Romero and the guard.
Scan for:      Names of medications that Mr. Romero takes.
Impose:      Emotions: Calm and at ease. Memory: "Mr. Romero is overdue for a shot. Dr. Maricel very graciously agreed to come on short notice with a new, more effective formulation."

     If the pair don't attempt to stop her, she'll very calmly glove up, find a vein on Romero's arm, and inject him with the monster-transformation SUPERSCIENCE MUTAGENS. If they do, or hell breaks out prematurely, she'll just stab him wherever she can and shove in the plunger.

     "BEHOLD, THE MONSTER THIS MAN ALWAYS WAS! BEHOLD, ALEXANDER ROMERO!"
Abigail Barton Taking care not to look towards Nova for too long, the Stand user instead focuses her attention on the guard before her. Abigail's not so prudish that she's not willing to charm them into submission, and she crosses her arms daintily at the waist while pouting dramatically. "I know, but it's so boring watching one of these shows alone."

She presses the back of her palm against her forehead dramatically, swooning for a brief moment before approaching a guard with a clear invasion of personal space. "Come on. I can make it worth your while later." She cracks a slow, sly smile and pats one guard on the forearm gently while looking towards the other. "They /are/ the best seats in the house, aren't they? Perhaps you could come along, too."

That's all part of the distraction, of course. As she not-so-subtly flirts with the guards, those touches to the sleeve leave specks of JAM Project's orange slime that seek to slip right into their clothes and stick to them directly. When she hears the talk of making things memorable, Abigail chuckles again before tilting her head towards a hallway. "Or do you want to start the show somewhere else?"
Nameless      Abigail takes their attention.

     "I am the bone of my sword."

     Gold light traces out a pair of heavy machine pistols. One is black and silver. The other is black and red. Wicked, large, and cruel-looking blades jut from the bottom of each of them, more sword than bayonet. As the guards turn to deal with Maricel and Abigail, the Nameless gunner swings the pistols up.

     All the while he's idly talking about taking in Abigail's dress.

     Blam. Blam.

     They're quiet shots, but silencers never *really* are. Dull thuds. As muted as they can get. Two shots, efficient, right for the back of their heads. Bullets lodged into the wall like knocking. There's a nonzero chance Abigail will suddenly be covered in blood and brains.

     August wants it to be memorable.

     August is the client.

     "A thousand blades wasted without purpose."

     Gold light cracks along his skin. Gold circuitry runs up dark skin to the guns. He swings one up to the left and one to the right. One of them into Romero's booth. The other into another booth next door.

     Bang bang.

     "Lost Aias."

     The bullet shoots clean through the booth. It passes Doctor Maricel, Abigail, and Romero. It stops at the end of the booth and expands like a flower, blossoming into a sevenfold flower.

     Maricel is turning Romero into a monster. Abigail is leaving orange slime. Nameless...

     Nameless is just giving Romero direction.

     The other shot, lodged in a wall, erupts into another flower. This one dies almost instantly. It's just there to give Romero a path into the next booth. To steer him. To guide him.

     To get him to go in a beneficial direction and make him the problem of the guards.
Staren     Staren listens through a spy drone as someone gets inside and opens the door for him. He's pretty sure Attention Deficit Disorder and Genetically-Modified Organism aren't degrees, but she's clearly using magic or something the way she just fast-talked that guard so perhaps her actual words don't matter. The little drone zips in while the door is open for the good doctor... and Romero's bodyguard objects. Staren deploys the tripod and starts lining up his shot. He's willing to give Maricel a few seconds to do this quietly -- but if the bodyguard stops her, he'll open up with the railgun, sending metal at hypersonic speeds through walls and, hopefully, Alexander Romero's center of mass.
Nova Terra     Nova finally gives in to the guard's insistance to stop. She turns to face him as he offers to guide her back, but initially she says nothing. Instead she looks at him closely, head tilted a little as if studying him.

    Finally Nova smiles at the guard, "Sure, we COULD do that. Though I'd make a detour by the coat check booth first to speak with that pretty red head..." She stares for a few moments more before clarifying, "Carmen, right?"

    Nova leans in to whisper to the guard, "Does she know about your wife?" She smiles a little more as she continues, "Better yet, does your wife know about her?"

    Nova leans back again, suddenly turning very serious, "Or. You could turn around right now, walk away and forget everything you've seen."

    That should be enough to discourage the guard from blocking her progress any further. Though if he presses it any further, Nova can get physical. Either way she's out of time. The others are making their move.

    However she has to handle the guard, Nova quickly climbs up the ladder onto the rafters. This should give her a good view of the booth that Romero is in, along with the other booths. She reaches into her purse... And pulls out the pair of spy glasses that Staren had provided. Putting them on, she turns her view towards where the action is starting. And into her radio, she simply says one word, "Go."

    Up in orbit, Reigel watches the SCV fly away from the satellite, changes complete. Just in time too as he receives the word. He announces to the bridge crew, "We are go." Several large monitors lower down from the ceiling, each one coming to life and showing a view of what's happening down on the planet below. Specifically, the view from the spy glasses and even some of Staren's drones.

    Reigel types into his console as he says, "Establishing connection to the satellite. Beginning broadcast." He hits the final key.

    The communications satellite comes to life, beginning to transmit the pirate broadcast. A live feed of the mission in progress starts to stream out, not only going live to numerous streaming sites online but thanks to the boost from Dominion tech, also attempting to override a number of local TV channels.
August Kohler Nova gets the security guard pausing instantly. "H-how did you...I...I didn't see anything." He cares nore about his privacy than his job, and quickly leaves. Nova has a quick path up to the rafters, turning on the spy glasses. The stream starts. Everything's live.

The security guard buys Maricel's mental imposition (and her pass code) immediately. Romero is a bit dazed as he looks up. He's calm, but he starts mumbling. "Maricel? I've never heard of a Dr. Maricel. Shot...I..." She'll probably be too delayed to actually get to do it calmly, as he starts to struggle, but she'll be able to jab the shot in right as Nameless fires.

Meanwhile, Abigail is trying to convince the guards. It's kind of working. One of them is sweating nervously, and about to say something, when...bang.

The gunshot causes a panic, and also flowers. Flowering walls build up, as Romero screams. People down below start to panic. People across the booths look towards his. It's too late. They're not fast enough to escape.

Bullets fly at Romero. It's not fast enough. They pierce into him, but the mutation is already starting. He begins regenerating. He begins changing.

Romero's muscles ripple out horrifically, flesh building and expanding, blood-red meat of a massive body with vicious tentacles emerging from his shoulders, limbs, and sides, as his face is that of Romero, in an anger. The hulking mutant howls, grabs his former bodyguard, dashes through the now open hole, and leaps. He smashes into another booth, ripping through the wall, and tearing into the couple inside, throwing his bodyguard at them,, tearing them to shreds with his tendrils and then leaping up and down until the booth moves to crash into the seats below. If nobody interferes, it'll crush several audience members below.

"Miss, get down!" The guard calls to Abigail, as he draws his gun and moves into Romero's former booth. Guns are pointed at Maricel by the two. "On your knees!" They're not dealing with the monster. ...why?

"Cleanup will be here soon. Goddamn Elites..." Oh, that's why.

Staren will notice outside that sirens are blaring through the streets, and helicopters are starting to pick up and head towards the opera house. Looks like there's going to be a problem Imminently.

<"Okay, I didn't think this would be relevant because I thought it was disbanded, but it seems that I missed the part where they got started back up. Romero has a special anti-Elite task force, ever since a terrorist attack several years ago. They're called the Kamikaze Brigade, and they're moving in. With everything live...">

Another person is crushed by Romero, on the screen. He screams again.

<"They'll know exactly where you are. Get ready, take out Romero, and get out of there!">
Staren     Staren lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding as the doctor assassin injects the target with what is obviously poison because anything else would be reckless.

    And then everything goes wrong. <"What are you DOING?!"> He fires, but the Romero-monster regenerates. He winces at it tears two potentially innocent opera-goers apart, although Maricel says she can fix them so... he won't throw stones through THAT glass house.

    He will keep sending automatic railgun fire through the opera house (and into the monster!) though. Maybe he can slow its rampage, at least.

    The spy drones that were looking for alternate entrances rise up, trying to get an aerial view of the surrounding streets, looking for vehicles that might contain this 'Kamikaze Brigade'.
Maricel Thorne      Maricel watches Alexander's rampage with brief starry admiration, before being brought back to earth by the guns being pointed at her. Right. The tedious practicalities of fighting. Two python-sized tentacles of red meat erupt from her upper back and curve in front of her to absorb the bullets while she jabs herself in the shoulder with a green syringe, accelerating her natural healing to where she'll be able to absorb a bit of high-velocity lead poisoning comfortably. "If you gentlemen can't tell, I am about to be extremely busy."

     And with that, she's gone- the tentacles launch her off of the balcony at high speed and swing her along the rafters before she drops back down in the mutant-beast's path. With a surgical tool in each hand and a suspicious syringe in her mouth, she works over the people he's crushed, mending flesh and bone in a dizzying flurry of motion: she can't fix "dead", but she can fix damn near anything else, and crushing and tearing are quite unlikely to kill outright in under a dozen seconds. Bisection, flattened organs, shredded limbs, lost blood- all take her a handful of seconds, at most, to clean up, even under gunfire from the guards.

     The pain and the traumatizing memories won't disappear as easily as the injuries themselves, of course. But Maricel, immersed in the rapturous glee of practicing her sublime craft, doesn't seem to care. That may very well be the point.
Nameless      Actually, this is fine.

     Romero's been directed into the human traffic. Sirens outside are a mix of cops and also some kind of specops forces under the command of the formerly-human Romero. The whole thing's being broadcast, which means it's effectively an advertisement. People of various means and interests will see his skills. They will hire him. He will get close to them. He will kill them.

     This is more than fine.

     But first he's going to execute the Kamikaze Squad.

     Nameless falls back towards Abigail and her guard friend. She's the only person here he actually knows (besides Maricel, who has gone completely out of control), and so she's the only one here he knows can handle herself. The two guns in his hands meld together into a long anti-materiel rifle with a hellish black-and-red-and-silver halberd blade on the end.

     "I need as many of the Kamikaze Squad dead as possible," he says to her, "You work best with a distraction. I'll distract them."

     Ch-chak.

     The rifle ejects a heavy, armor-piercing shell to the ground. It disintegrates. He's reloading it.

     He's probably reloading it with a nastier bullet.
Nova Terra     If the smile on her face is any indication, Nova is clearly enjoying this more unusual assassination mission. Normally she has to operate quietly and without notice. Like a ghost. This is a nice change of pace.

    Nova is thankfully spared from initial confrontations with security thanks to her isolated position and distance from the actual event. But, however good her view from the rafters though, she's not going to be able to follow the monster Romero's movements for long before she loses sight of him.

    Nova brings each of her legs up to tug the heels off her feet, letting them drop to the stage floor below. She takes a few steps back, for dashing forward. She jumps, planting a foot on the railing and launches off it. Reaching out, she grabs hold of a rope suspended from the ceiling, no doubt used for some part of the show or something. Using her momentum she swings down and around, before reaching the wall beside the main stage and pushing off it to soar throught he air.

    Landing gracefully on one of the balconies, Nova quickly rises and begins to run. She follows the trail of destruction that is Romero as she tries to keep her camera glasses focused on him.
Abigail Barton That's one way to do it. Abigail flinches for only the slightest moment when the guards are summarily executed right in front of her, turning her white dress into a white and red dress that looks like... Well, blood and brains. She picks up one of the fallen guards to get something to wipe her glasses off with, then sighs as the orange gel returns to her.

No sense dropping the act just yet, especially with the guard moving to defend her. She takes cover in the booth proper, diving 'clumsily behind a couch while staring at Romero as he turns into a hulking monster. Not willing to put herself in the line of fire yet, she instead calls upon JAM Project to fly right for Romero to try attaching bits of it to him. As she does, she nudges the guard while pointing at Romero anxiously.

"There! that's the show I wanted to see! Please, sir, can't you take me closer? I'd get up, but it's looking so much more dangerous now and..." She rubs her leg lightly, faking a wince in the process. It doesn't actually hurt, of course, but if she can get JAM Project attached to the beast, the 'injury' will give her some cover to start sapping at its legs!
August Kohler Railgun fire blasts on Romero, who is slowed enough to allow Maricel to start working. She blocks bullet fire for a few seconds until the guards give up and start running away, and then, she springs forward and gets to work. The couple and the bodyguard are dead - torn to ribbons - but the people crushed by the booth aren't. They're /almost/ dead, but that almost is enough for Maricel to start stitching them back together horrifically and help people, instead of dying, live with PTSD.

In the process, Romero's tendrils lash out for her, trying to throw her against the wall. Additionally, the railgun fire coming through the wall gets Romero to turn towards the hole, in Staren's direction, and leap again. A tendril lashes out - it stretches extremely far, and moves to /redirect/ the railgun fire back at Staren. The monster will be hard to fight at a distance without getting directly involved.

Nova has perfect footage of Romero. However, as she moves on the balcony, another tendril moves up to try and grab the balcony by its awnings and pull it down, to the fleeing crowds below. Most of them have evacuated. Not all of them, though - some are trapped, or looking for loved ones.

Abigail shouts to the guard. "A-are you crazy?" But she seems injured. The guard thinks. She wantsw to be closer to ROmero. But sadly, his instincts of Being The Hero and Saving This Damsel will probably not be in Abigail's favor. He moves to grab her, as the orange goo flies at Romero's legs, and moves to try and carry Abigail out of the theater. "Come on, miss! I need to get you out of here!"

Staren will see it, probably right as he's hit by railgun fire. A helicopter flies really fast over the opera house, and eight people freefall out without parachutes. They never hit the surface.

They disappear, and reappear inside the building.

The Kamikaze Squad all appear in different locations, in teams of four. A leader and three operatives. Four of them appear near the front door, while the other four appear near the stage. Explosives, somehow planted in the rooftop near their entrances, suddenly detonate, dropping rubble in front of the exits and preventing Easy Escapes, which also risk a lot of civilians.

They're all wearing black powered armor and masks. Kanji symbols on their shoulder read 'kamikaze', as they bear actual machine guns. The ones near the stage have a man wearing sunglasses instead of a mask, and instead of a light machine gun, he has a pair of submachine guns, one in each hand.

The other group, near the front door and approaching the booth, are similar, except one of them has no hood over their mask, and instead reveals their long black hair. This agent's wielding a katana.

The minute either team spots any of the Elites (besides Abigail, who hasn't made her presence known), they begin firing on them. They teleport to weave in and out of bullets, though they're not invincible. Their masks also sense for magic and other supernatural phenomenon, scanning the area for signals of where to go. Nameless will, if he's actively using his magic circuits, probably be focused on immediately.

<"That's two teams...their leaders are Gunshow and Katana. They're highly dangerous. Be careful!">
Staren     The monster suddenly remembers it can deflect railgun bullets. What the hell did Dr. Thorne DO?!

    A couple slam into Staren's armor, denting and cracking it and sending him stumbling back as the helicopter comes in over the building. And the enemy is teleporters. Great.

    He doesn't SEE anyone teleport onto the roof with him yet, though. Could they be focused on the others? Hmm... He drops a smoke grenade to make himself harder to pinpoint. His sensors can see through it.

    Then he turns his tripod-mounted railgun upward. That helicopter is both an eye in the sky and potential reinforcements for his enemies. Better to encourage it to scram or crash.
Nameless      This is very unfortunate for them.

     The rifle would've been better through the outside. He dismisses it. They've entered the battlefield directly rather than waited or tried to punch through in a siege. Suits him. He prefers a more direct approach.

     He starts walking to the window. "Trace, on." Gold spider-webs crack along his abs. Along his chest. Along his face. He's glowing a dim gold light, a silhouette with a spotlight in his heart. He's pouring power into his body. Reinforcement. Reinforcement. Reinforcement. Legs, augmented. Speed. Arms, augmented. Strength. Body, augmented. Durability. Body, augmented. Regeneration. Eyes, augmented. Sight. Ears, augmented. Hearing.

     The world is an open flower. He can see every petal.

     He can see them through the crowd. He can pick them out in an instant.

     He does not care about collateral. He has been told that it is irrelevant. He has been told to make a spectacle. And he is going to kill every single member of the Kamikaze Squad he can find.

     They focus on him. He wants them to focus on him.

     "I am the bone of my sword."

     Gold light spreads along his shoulder. He brings his arm up. It's like an artist sketching into the world.

     It is a rocket launcher.

     This is not his style. But it is the most efficient means of distraction.

     He fires it.

     The rocket streaks forward. It is not meant to hit anyone. It is meant to scatter them. In the very next instant, along with the rocket, he is running. He can keep up with the rocket. The rocket launcher is already gone.

     Kanshou and Bakuya are in his hands. Blades on the end of guns.

     The rocket hits the ground. There is an explosion.

     Nameless brings his gun around to the leader's head. Cut off the head and the rest will get scared. If they surround him, it's fine. He has support. Or maybe not. If not, he'll probably be fine. He's that kind of dangerous. The kind of suicidally dangerous where he just doesn't care.
Nova Terra     Nova is getting some excellent footage. But unfortunately all good things must come to an end. As the balcony she's on suddenly falls out from beneath her feet, Nova cries out in surprise.

    The Ghost crashes down to the floor of the main hall, hitting the broken balcony again and bouncing off it to hit the ground and roll behind a row of seats. She groans as she picks herself up, looking around to get her bearings and seeing the Kamikaze group near the stage. She swears quietly as she ducks back down behind the seats. She whispers into her radio, "Reigel, send me the care package."

    While she waits for assistance from her subordinate, Nova keeps herself behind the seats. She reaches out with her mind, gripping some of those around her and ripping them free of their boltings. The seats float up into the air briefly before launching at the squad led by Sunglasses with quite some force.
Maricel Thorne      Maricel's reaction to the three corpses isn't to immediately give up- instead, it's to split open their skulls with her bonesaw, extract their brains and the first few inches of their spinal cords, and shove them in jars full of futuristic preservatives before stowing them in her spatial rift.

     The monster that used to be Romero doesn't faze her in the least- she CREATED him, dammit! She might not have known exactly how he'd react to the serum, but she recognizes those tentacles well enough: her own whickering bone-tipped appendages extrude from her back to swat them aside, clinical expertise reading the patterns in the instinctive behavior. She moves towards the piles of rubble where there are more delicious injured civilians, but not before turning her psionic implants on the mutant's tortured mind one last time:

Subject:      Mutant Romero.
Impose:      Emotions: Focused rage. Memory: "The men in black armor are your enemies."

     "Have fun with that, kiddoes!" She's already lost interest in the fighting again- her tentacles lift her up like a spider's legs and heave the rubble out of the way, exposing the people trapped underneath. She looms over the victims, a crackling mad-science vitality beam in one hand and a syringe in the other. "Don't worry, everyone. There's a doctor in the house."
Abigail Barton Being taken out of the theater is actually just fine for Abigail's purposes. She can't make that obvious of course, and she looks behind the guard wistfully as she puts her arms around his neck to steady herself. "But it's so exciting over there! Ah... But it's very kind of you to worry about me like this. How brave..." She pretends to swoon, and her legs do legitimately go limp as she keeps JAM Project's sapping effects going as long as she can. With the distance between herself and Romero increasing, though, she can already feel the Stand's effects weakening on herself.

That might be a problem, especially if there's an armored squad coming to throw their own gunfire into the mix. What's an assassin pretending to be a damsel in distress to do about this sort of situation? The distance grows, she can already feel feelings returning to her legs...

"... Oh no! Sir! My sister's still inside. Please, let me down, and I'll find her in there!" As she glances around frantically, she lets JAM Project back out. Its new targets: Kamikaze Team. She's not aware of their ability to sense anything yet, so she simply launches the orange glob at the nearest ones to try and attach it to them. Should they make contact, Abigail's next move depends on her would-be rescuer's actions.

If he lets her down, she'll breakaway from him and start running around to look for objects she can use to hurl at them. Fire extinguishers, chairs, prop swords, whatever works! If he doesn't, though, she'll start thrashing around and 'accidentally' landing on her head. It's not a subtle way of attacking them, but with JAM Project's damage reflection property, she's hoping to take them down reflecting the damage from her head to theirs!
August Kohler Staren fires at the helicopter. The first shot damages it. The second shot...bounces off an electromagnetic shield. It's not coming from the helicopter, but from someone else, who immediately returns fire on Staren. A sniper, with an anti-material rifle. The smokescreen makes it somewhat unlikely that it'll actually impact him, but that's not the problem.

<"Wait, shit...they're sending in a missile strike? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SITUATION?!">

A missile comes at Staren's building. It could demolish it. That's not actually the problem, though.

The problem is the massive power-armored man riding the missile, wielding two miniguns. "KAMIKAZE FOUR, BIGGIE, HERE TO PLAY! YOU'VE PICKED THE WRONG BOSS TO MUTATE, LITTLE GUY!"

He fires all throughout the smoke cloud and the area, moving to impact Staren's shell with the minigun bullets.

While the insanity happens outside, inside is also a problem. Abigail has to struggle with her rescuer, hits her head, and reflects the damage to a member of Katana's squad. The others notice the orange goo and immediately ebgin firing on her, though that's one of four down immediately. Katana waits to see if Abigail can withstand that - if they can, Katana moves to disappear, reappear next to Abigail, and slash at her!

Nameless, meanwhile, deals with Gunshow's squad. The missile scatters everyone, but the bullet does not take off Gunshow's head. It blasts past his ear as he suddenly tilts his head away, with superhuman agility and speed, blowing off his ear, and causing him to scream. "Holy shit! HOLY SHIT! FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!"

The machineguns are fired on Nameless. He'll be able to tell it's not just random firing. There's style and skill to it, as each bullet, even when automatic, is angled precisely for his vitals. The light machine guns are also focused fire on Nameless, trying to rip him to pieces.

The three guys with Gunshow don't get a chance to surround Nameless, though, as chairs fly at them. They're knocked back, and then, Romero screams, and charges as them, pulling them into his terrible grip with tentacles and starting to tear them apart. Gunshow's submachine gun fire dampens a bit, focusing one hand on Nameless, and one on Romero, trying to force the monster back.
Staren     A split-second after Staren starts shooting the helicopter, it stops working. "Oh come on!" Forcefields can be worn down, of course, but that's not the problem...

    A bullet ricochets off the roof near him. And a missile is incoming. Staren's not worried about himself, he's worried about whoever might be IN the building underneath him! Sheesh, this kamikaze squad is crazy!

    He weathers the storm of bullets and does his best to shoot down the missile!

    Whether that works or not, he ends up fleeing the rooftop in battered armor and surrounded by his own forcefield, flying on thrusters and energy wings as he heads to reinforce...

    Hmm.

    ...As he heads to land somewhere Nova has a clear shot at in the Opera House.
Nameless      This is actually going all according to plan.

     The leader fixates on the Nameless gunman. Superhuman agility matches superhuman agility. The other man has a style and a skill, and that means he can be predicted. He can be read. He's shooting for the vitals - heart and head can be protected. Torso can be mostly left untouched.

     He can be predicted, so he can be countered.

     The Nameless gunner's display is nothing short of absurd. The machine-gun is focused on him, so he is focused on the bullets. He is shooting bullets out of the air. His own bullets punch through the normal, every-day bullets two at a time. He clears the arc around his head and heart. Bullets hit his stomach. Bullets hit his chest. Some of them are stopped by the sheer force of his Reinforcement. Some of them actually get through, digging in, punching into supernatural organs.

     And then Romero shows up, and that gives the Nameless gunner a chance.

     He surges forward, directly into the machine-gun fire. He eats shots in the mouth, bullets blowing out the back of his neck. He eats shots in the chest, narrowly avoiding a fatal wound to the heart. He plows straight forward with superhuman speed the instant Gunshow's eyes turn on Romero, and he turns it from a gunfight to a swordfight.

     In the blink of an eye, the two pistols come swinging for Gunshow. One goes for the knees with superhuman strength. The other goes for the arm holding the gun pointed at the Nameless gunner.

     Cut the problem off at the knees, cut off the arm, and execute him with a stomp to the face.

     Solutions.
Maricel Thorne      With Romero attacking the Kamikaze, Maricel is left relatively unmolested in a theater full of the wounded and dying. Red tentacles of neoplasm wrap around the rafters and lift her up to the very center of the room where she hangs, radiant, like an abattoir angel. She holds an oversized syringe of glowing green liquid over her own chest- then, with an ecstatic smile, drives it into her own heart and depresses the metal plunger. The liquid immediately surges through her alien extra limbs, covering the crimson flesh in veins of viridian.

     Her tentacles shift and adapt, growing hollow spines and bifurcating until there are enough of them for every casualty in the theater. Then they seek out the wounded- some dripping with excess blood and superscience healing juice, others clutching clean metal implements to stitch and reassemble, still others worming and digging through the rubble to exhume the buried. Maricel closes her eyes, focusing her formidable mind on directing a dozen different reconstructive surgeries and lifesaving procedures. She looks beatific, utterly in her element- and a stationary target for sniper fire.

     "More," she calls out, echoed by the rattling of her neoplasm's hollow spines and the cracking of synaptic bioelectricity. "Bring more to me! YOU SHALL ALL BE HEALED!"
Abigail Barton She was bound to get caught at the rate things were going here. Abigail just wasn't expecting that gunfire to come her way, and it takes a lot of scrambling to not get shot in the face. As the first of four goes down, Abigail's quick to start sending JAM Project around to try attaching to the other members. She's not sure how many of them she can even get JAM Project onto, but snagging even one of them should help immensely in lowering their damage output.

Not with leg or arm disabling or anything like that, of course. No, she's going to need her body in working order. Rather, she's angling for reflecting the shots to the side she is taking onto whomever her unlucky victims are! She's already taking quite a couple of shots, both grazes and clean shots through the sides, so why not? When Katana comes in right in front of her, though, she chuckles quietly at the appearance of a new target.

Also, she flings her top half backwards and catches her hands on the ground behind herself just to not get sliced in half. When she comes back up, it's with a handful of pens aimed to stab right into Katana. The pens are functionally needles with the steel hidden in them, though, and JAM Project trails along her arms to start leaping onto Katana for yet more potential damage reflection. Her aim is somewhat off, though, thanks to that hard head landing from earlier and the lingering pain in her side from getting shot so many times!

"You've fought people like myself before, protecting people like him. Why?" Abigail asks not with an accusatory or indignant tone, but an inquisitive one. She truly is curious about the Kamikaze Squad's motivations after seeing them in action, and what better way to try and find those out than plain old dialogue in the middle of trying to kill each other?
Nova Terra     Nova keeps her head down as bullets whiz all around and a hulking Romero joins the frey. But soon enough she receives a confirmation on her package, coordinates included, "Got it!"

    Nova jumps to her feet, no doubt drawing attention as she makes a mad dash towards the closest of Gunshow's gunners. As he recovers from the chair hit and opens fire on Nova, his shots are well aimed. But he'll find them missing her anyway as their trajectories are altered mid-flight. Nova uses her telekinesis to force the bullets to pass to either side of her as she closes the distance.

    Nova reaches out to grab hold of the machinegunner's weapon as she reaches him, twisting it to the side to aim at one of his fellows with a few bursts while she proceeds to smash her palm into his chest. She adds in a blast of telekinetic energy to hit to send him flying.

    The third of Gunshow's men has the drop on Nova... Until something drops right onto his position at high speed!

    Is that another missile!?

    No!

    A Dominion covert ops drop pod creates yet another hole in the ceiling of the opera house, crashing right down near the gunner's position. The resulting impact shakes the floor and sends a number of rows of chairs flying.

    Nova quickly makes her way over to the pod, opening it and going for the equipment inside. She doesn't have the time to change into her full suit, but she can at least put on the boots and gloves quickly. She then reaches for a Canister Rifle, expecting she'll need it after the warning about an enemy sniper.
August Kohler The missile detonates partly midair, blowing up chunks of the building, but not taking the entire building with it. People might be injured in there, but that's a risk of the operation. Staren moves towards the opera house to reinforce Nova, and the sniper and Biggie continue. The sniper lets off two shots - one for Staren, and one for Nova, both devastating, while Biggie leaps through the air and comes spiralling down into the opera house.

"SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS! I LOVE THAT MOVIE! AHAHAHAHA!" Biggie fires the miniguns at Everyone. Romero, Nameless, Staren, Nova, and Maricel are all focused on by minigun fire that could swallow the room. Cover is recommended.

The three gunners are all torn to bits by Nova's various tactics, and are down easily. They're not going to be a problem.

Nameless tanks bullets and dives in to the submachine gun fire. Two shots go out. His arm is torn off. His knees are crippled. He's dropped to the ground. Before Nameless can continue, he speaks up.

"You're like us...a monster. I can see it in those dead eyes...you have nothing to call yours, do you?!"

And then, Nameless's super strength can execute Gunshow, shattering his sunglasses and leaving him in the dust.

Romero, meanwhile, tries to escape, as more and more of his meat is torn apart. He moves for the big hole in the roof, leaps up, and is trying to get to it. This is Mission Failure if it occurs.

Pens jab into Katana, as Jam Project comes lashing out, latching onto and taking out the other guards with Stand reflection. Several of the pens are deflected by katana strike, sent flying back at Abigail, but one impacts in the shoulder, causing a grunt. Katana speaks up. She's a woman.

"After the terrorist attack, we had nothing. No one wanted to deal with freaks like us. No one except him! He pays us, shelters us, gives us meaning. As long as we live, we'll die for him. We'll fight for him. Over and over. Do you not have anyone you can be dedicated to? Do you even know what dedication means, assassin?"

The sword slashes at Abigail's stomach. Katana disappears and reappears behind Abigail, moving to try and stab Abigail in the back. But there's one thing in Abigail's favor.

JAM Project is on her sword arm.
Nameless      The Nameless gunner's jaw is knitting itself back together. It's horrifying to watch. Maricel can get the best look at it, being as she is a doctor - he's quite literally recomposing himself with blades knitting flesh back together. It's like watching a billion tiny swords made a billion tiny sweaters out of bone and blood vessels and meat. It's more than a little disturbing.

     The man says that he's just like them.

     "That's right."

     It's the last words the man hears before he's shot in the head clean through. The gunner turns away. Romero is trying to escape. Everybody dropped off containment of that.

     The gunner will solve it.

     "I am the bone of my sword."

     He lazily fires a single bullet up into Romero.

     "Lost Bolg."

     The bullet starts digging into flesh. It is a burrowing killing machine. It is going right for the heart. It will punch through the heart and come out the other side and Zombie Romero will drop dead without some kind of genuinely supernal intervension, an enormous luck score, or any of the other methods of avoiding a supposedly perfect killshot.

     The Nameless gunner will then go about executing the other downed soldiers. If nobody else solves the mission and Romero somehow avoids Lost Bolg, he'll just go after Romero.
Staren     This time, the sniper's shot bounces off Staren's forcefield. See how YOU like it, guy! (The forcefield is visibly damaged, though.) Biggie's attack sends him diving around a wall, though -- that kind of attack can chew through his forcefield alarmingly quickly!

    But he doesn't just hide. His forcefield drops just long enough to fire a half-dozen anti-tank micromissiles which swerve around the wall to home in on Biggie. Staren has just begun to fight! Although now the sniper probably knows he has to drop the field to fire.

    Is... is that lady shouting her backstory? "Lady, don't give me a 'no one cares about people with superpowers' shpiel! You coulda walked into a faction recruiting office at any time! Or gone basically anywhere in the Multiverse! The world is better off without him... and if all you care about is causing destruction and calling it 'meaning', the world is better off without you too!"
Nova Terra     Nova is grabbing her rifle and bringing it around at the very moment that the Kamikaze sniper is turning his sights on her. Sensing this, Nova raises her rifle to aim and the two snipers fire at the same time. Their respective bullets streak through the air, before impacting each other and ricocheting off into harmless directions.

    Totally intentional.

    This buys Nova enough time to take cover behind her drop pod moments before Biggie starts to unload with his miniguns. Nova stands her ground behind the pod as it is ripped apart by repeated fire. It'll hold, for a short time and Nova waits patiently for an opening to get off another shot.

    But as Nova waits, she notices Romero trying to escape through the roof. Her eyes shift to a bunch of cable rigging above the stage. The wires begin to move, whipping up to wrap around Romero and try and drag him back down. Or at the very least keep him from escaping.

    Nova alerts the others to the situation, "The target is trying to get away!"
Abigail Barton A terrorist attack? That actually gets Abigail's attention, although Katana's words for the Stand user have her chuckling further even as she erks back to narrowly avoid getting gutted. It still cuts into her midsection and absolutely ruins that dress, but... Well.

Wounds can heal. The dress was stolen, anyway. "Is that really how it is for all of you? Hm. A shame we're not working for the same person, then. If things had been different, perhaps..."

It's a cliche, but it's an oddly fitting one considering her own past. Speaking of cliches, when Katana disappears, Abigail is already drawing an explosive pen and thrusting it behind herself without looking. Her timing is off, though, and she hisses painfully as that blade finds purchase in her back. Luckily, she's twisted just enough to avoid getting stabbed in the spine or run through where her ribs or heart would be, but she's still getting stabbed in the back.

At least JAM Project reflecting all of that back at Katana might help stop Katana in her tracks before she can go all the way through. If not, she may need a little bit of help getting out of here alive. Then again, she might need that help regardless..
Maricel Thorne      Maricel is so intently focused on her surgical ministrations (and, to tell the truth, the Nameless man's bizarre demonstration) that she's completely flatfooted by the big guy's attack. Minigun fire saws through the tendrils anchoring her to the rafters, sending her plummeting to the floor while her body's aerated with bullets. A surviving tentacle wraps around something solid backstage and yanks her behind cover, where she examines her wounds with a detached and clinical eye- her augmented flesh prevented it from perforating her organs too badly, but she's still out of the fight for a good few moments while she does a hasty patch-job on her diaphragm and aorta.

     Once she's scooped back in enough of her blood and regained the ability to stand, she swoops into the theater once more, using her regrown tentacles to propel her off of the ground and swing from the rafters and balconies until she's moving almost too fast for the eye to track. One of them crystallizes into a hedge of ballistic spikes dripping with corrosive acid. Romero might be the logical target here, but her neoplasm has other ideas- it vengefully lashes out at Biggie, launching a fusillade of spikes with a whip-crack motion in a biological parody of his minigun barrage!
August Kohler Gunshow is dead. Nameless fires Lost Bolg at Romero. In some rare cases, people have survived Lost Bolg's horrible effect.

Romero is not one of them, as Nova pins him for the bullet to impact, as spikes jut through his heart and the bullet goes through it, leaving the hulking monster dead. Mission accomplished.

As Staren drops the field to fire micromissiles on Biggie, the minigunner deflects a bunch of them, but most of them blow him open, and force him to drop one of his miniguns. "AAAAAAAAAGH!" He takes the other with two hands, barely since he's injured, and focuses fire on Staren when he fires. The sniper does too, firing in between barrier drops to damage Staren's shell.

However, Maricel's spikes fly at Biggie. They impale into his body, and pin him to a wall. "Aaah...I just wanted to be loved..." And then, he dies.

But things go south. Katana is disabled by JAM Project, frozen in her tracks and injured, sword dropping to the ground. Knowing she's about to die, she reaches her other arm for the sword, slowly. "You think it's that simple? To get out of this life? You think we can just abandon our world for another? You know nothing. You know nothing of bonds, of tragedy, of hardship. You have everything you've ever wanted, Staren Wiremu!"> He's famous and broadcasting, so they know who their target is.

Katana takes her sword, and then, kills herself with it. She's not going to let you kill her. Too much pride for that.

Only the sniper is left, and he's attempting to escape, helicopter pulling away. One last chance to take him down, before he gets away! And then, it's time to escape, as police are absolutely surrounding the building.
Nameless      The Nameless gunner is content. Romero is dead. Gunshow is dead. Katana is dead. Most of the Kamikaze Squad is dead. He'd go after the sniper, but he's already low on mana. His arm is starting to bulge in awkward and uncomfortable-looking ways, the red wrappings spiking outwards, as if something is trying to come out. The gold glow dies. He shakes his head, and walks over to the group.

     "We have thirty seconds," he says calmly, "I can make an exit if you need one."

     He was most definitely not holding that grappling hook a minute ago.
Abigail Barton Abigail doesn't move to try finishing Katana off. She doesn't even come close. Rather, she turns around slowly to face the dying woman, she drops to a knee to look her right in the eyes. Or... As close as she can look at the eyes, anyway. She listens intently to Katana's dying declaration, not even cracking a smirk or commenting to just give the woman her moment. Once it's clear that Katana is dead, Abigail reaches over to close her eyes, withdraws JAM Project's substance back into the main mass, then starts lurching over to where Nameless is.

"If you could, please. I'll get lazy at this rate, but..." She glances back at the carnage they've unleashed on this poor theater, then shrugs. " I could use the break."
Maricel Thorne      An exit? Maricel takes a deeeeep breath, casts her eyes around for anybody else she can 'fix', comes up empty for the time being, and lets it out in a rattling, decompressing sigh. "Right then. I can self-extricate, but..."

     First, she extends one more red tentacle from the rift on her back. It bulges and bubbles, then casts a dozen malformed shapes from itself like grapes growing from a vine. They drop off and sprout shiny little claws and oversized toothy maws, knee-height gremlins made of bright crimson meat and drippy gore. Immediately, they scuttle off towards the entrances to buy a little more time- won't pose a real threat even to the mundane cops, but they'll slow down intruders a little bit through sheer grabby annoyance and spook factor.

     Then she reaches behind her back as if pulling something out of a backpack, grabs the edges of the rift through her labcoat, and pulls it around herself. For a brief moment, Maricel's surrounded by seething rainbow static- and then she pops out of existence with a quiet "whoosh" and sizzle.
Staren     Romero's taken care of. Good. Staren's cover breaks up and he's facing sniper and minigun fire. Not good. Biggie is soon dealt with -- as long as he's careful, the sniper shouldn't be able to finish him off before he escapes.

    Staren flies across the theater. "Maybe your world didn't deserve you!" Katana's dead, so his words are for anyone in the audience her words reached.

    He lands next to her. She talked -- perhaps she can be reasoned with. He grabs her, then blasts his way through a wall and into an alley, and once he's no longer under sniper fire, beams up.
Nameless      Nameless hooks an arm around Abigail's waist. The grappling hook goes shooting upwards of its own volition. They are reeled up by a mechanism that he most assuredly did not have.

     His hand glows gold.

     Her dress self-repairs. Cloth grows back, as if being knit by tiny blades. It tightens it in. It cleans itself. In a matter of moments, before they've even hit the ceiling, the outfit is repaired.

     Nameless drops her off on the ceiling. "I told you it was no trouble."

     Then he's gone.
Nova Terra     Assassination Complete.

    Nova's glasses catch monster-Romero's death on camera. Maybe she should change careers to television? ... Nah. Time to make her exit. And there goes her transport now. Nova turns to look as the sniper begins to retreat in his helicopter.

    Nova sends one of the cables she used against Romero zipping towards the helicopter, wrapping around one of its landing skids. The cable goes tight and the other end is ripped out of the wall where it was attached.

    Nova takes one final piece of equipment from her pod before stepping back. She leaps, landing on top of the pod, before leaping again to grab hold off the trailing cable as it rushes past. Nova is quickly pulled up through a hole in the roof, flying off behind the helicopter. She looks back, tapping a control on her gauntlet and watching as the pod and everything inside proceeds to disintegrate and leave no evidence.

    Dangling from the helicopter, Nova begins to pull herself up one hand at a time, her hair and dress whipping about in the wind. Once close enough, she takes the device she grabbed and throws it, using her telekinesis to boost the throw so the device flies up and attaches to the helicopter. Nova then lets go of the cable, falling some considerable distance before hitting the roof of a tall building.

    Nova softens her fall somewhat with her psychic power, but still bounces across the roof a few times before rolling to a stop. She's a bit bruised, but still able to stand up and look towards the fleeing helicopter. Once more she taps a control on her gauntlet.

    The attached device explodes.
August Kohler All enemies are down, except for the sniper. The group prepares their escape - Maricel teleports away, Staren takes Katana and beams up, Nameless disappears, and Abigail gets to the roof and can escape from there. Nova fires off, planting an explosive on the helicopter. It goes down.

The sniper is an Elite, so he survives the crash. The police capture, on the other hand, he surrenders himself to. He's absolutely looking at the death penalty, after all of this.

When Staren eventually interrogates Katana, she's surprised she was brought back. She was never given a second chance by anyone besides Romero...and she's willing to have a new goal, if it means repaying that debt. Staren can tell she's a bit of an obsessive when it comes to stuff like this, but she's genuine - she's willing to try her hand at doing good in exchange for what she's been given.