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Big Boss HOUSTON, ARES-SPACE COMMAND CENTER

The sun has started to go down over the AresSpace Command Center in Houston. An actual factual space center, and one of the few in the world due to most companies not having a stellar market, the campus is much larger than one may suspect - an array of buildings inside a walled complex. The walls have two main steel gates - north and south, both manned by armed guards and a small contigency of hovering mono-eyed drones, with security cameras fanning the area over. But that is /far/ from the only security, as one could suspect. As Big Boss had said, there is physical, social, magical, and technological security in spades around here.

Getting past the gate is probably a challenge in itself, but one the group can likely clear easily with some thinking, whether going around through the side walls (less guarded, but not security-clear due to the patrolling drones) or finding a way through the gates themselves.

The group possesses an aerial map of the surroundings, gathered by Outer Heaven's intel team. The campus spans eighteen buildings, many being storage, training, or miscellaneous labs. The most important of these buildings that have been filtered out are the Administration building, which is a large white blocky building close to the command center, the round Command Center itself, which communicates with the men and women in space and coordinates their launch, the Central Storage, and whichever lab deals with the station they're targeting specifically, which is unclear.

The group's goal is specific: locate the coordinates for whichever orbital station possesses Thor Shot capability. There's one problem.

Outer Heaven isn't sure which station that is. They've narrowed it down to two of Ares' stations: either Icarus or Daedalus. Part of the operation will be figuring out which one has Thor shot capability.

Suspected persons of interest, though identities aren't clear, are the Head of Security, the command team in charge of the station, the administration chief, the Head of Research for that station, and possibly the cargo chief. None of them are required to be questioned, though it'll likely be extremely helpful to find out what information they might know.
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris is starting to get the hang of this, he thinks. With enough practice as a spy, he might actually have the capability to DO better in this crazy environment! It's really not his natural pool, to be sure, but sometimes you've gotta diverge into new directions.

     A supply truck approaches the AresSpace Command Center, Huston area. It is large, it have clear Ares Corporate markings on the sides as it slowly rumbles up to the alleyway leading to the entrance of the complex. Amelris himself is at the driving seat, wearing a full head cap with some makeup to hide his traits, making him less recognisable. He's wearing a RECOGNISED Trucker's Outfit, denim vest, shirt of Ares Corp, long denim pants and firm, strong AMERICAN boots, not that part is really visible. On his mouth a cigraette as old as the last recession, crumbled and twisted, hangs half-lit at his lips. He clears his voice, waiting for his turn to be 'inspected'.

     And hopefully, everyone else will do their part to make this entrance all that smoother.
Danzo Katou      Though the kunoichi known to history as Katou Danzo has many exploits under their belt, she has never been to a space station. Though this is a mission -- one handed down by Big Boss, the Lord of the Watch himself -- and thus demands all of her focus, neither her speculation, imagination, or emotion, perhaps if she were not here strictly on the grounds of a ninja, she might like to know how it is in space. How one gets there. What the journey is like.

    Those thoughts aren't productive; No, those ideas aren't necessary, and so they shouldn't be thought. The walls are the first obstacle. Then how she is going to reach the command staff. Having done her initial reconnaissance to confirm the maps (the basics for any shinobi relying on external intelligence), she considers her approaches.

    Drawing the guards away with distractions or illusions is out, as the same won't work on the drones, nor will the cameras see them. Disguising herself to walk right through a checkpoint is leaving a great deal to chance, and those gates will be the most heavily watched, no doubt for biometrics and signs of magic as well. Breaching a hole would be found far too quickly. Starting a fire within the walls from outside to draw all of the base's attention would work fine, but the minute the security staff returned their attention elsewhere, it'd be easy to tell it's a distraction; it might damage the necessary launch equipment as well. Those meandering thoughts about what it must be like to live amongst the stars dwindle away to nothing while she plans.

    Danzo picks out a space on the wall nearly equidistant from both gates, thus the furthest from both heavy guard presences. With the correct hand signs, her genjutsu causes her to disappear completely, as the air works to enshroud her with its perfect transparency. There's no use destroying any cameras, and so, from a distance, she crouches to anchor herself whilst the ground roasts beneath the flame that licks from her heels, muffled by the concealing air, and then lets go to launch herself in a tremendous parabolic arc over the walls -- and the vision cones of the cameras -- entirely, sailing through the air and directing her fall to take her gliding back down to earth directly at the command center, landing on the roof, for being the space least watched, with no more sound than disturbed leaves.

    She needs to move more slowly to maximize the strength of her invisibility, yet also not run her elemental reactor down too low, and so she spends only the minimum time scanning the scene. Tiny mechanisms behind her eyes click and whirr like old-fashioned camera equipment. Her pupils dilate and the light reflects on he iris. She scans around for both heat trails left by hands and feet, and the blobs belonging to the people themselves, though she won't be able to see through more than the top floor. She is also looking for any residual heat from fingerprints on keypads used to bypass any doors, and tuning herself to pick up the faintest of noises as she goes, looking to absorb the local workplace chatter as a first step to locating the command staff.
Damocles Damocles, dread sorcerer of chaos, sits in the back of the truck, wrapped in a blanket.  Not because he's cold, but because he's huge and conspicuous, and because he has a part to play in this deception.  Honestly, his plan involved excessive force.  These mugs can't contend with the kind of firepower the Watch can bring down on their heads, but apparently 'kill them all and let the Emperor sort them out' is more a Plan B flavor around these parts.

So instead, his magic lends itself to the more subtle spectrum today.

So, he has two parts.  Firstly, he has woven a delicate illusion over the back of the truck.  A carefully designed wall near the front, his illusion hangs like a drape hiding what's really in the back of the truck under the image of the most mundane of holdings.  As long as nobody actually tries to cross through the illusion, it's near perfect.

The next part of his role is more subtle.  As they drive, he projects Chaos magic throughout the area around him.  The magical effect is wide and subtle, and over such a large area that even were it detected, it would be impossible to pinpoint where it's from.  The effect is equally subtle:  It is not a targeted attack, but a gentle malaise.  The spell finds the discontent within the hearts of the employees, and shines it to a polish.  It chips away at loyalty and raises apathy in a very slow boil, making everyone around increasingly lax and rebellious, and less likely to actually care about doing their job properly.
Selene     Sitting in one of the back seats of the truck is a teenager playing with a toy phone that's a little too pastel-colored and weirdly shaped to be a real phone. She's tapping away at the screen with a bored look on her face, occasionally tapping a finger against the little things sticking out of its sides that are nearly as wide as the red vaguely thumbtack silhouetted thing. She has a sideways baseball cap on over what looks like little red bobbles underneath it, a floral shirt that looks like it might have been picked out of someone's closet during a Hawaiian phase, and turqoise green shorts that don't really match with anything she's wearing.

    Except... It's not a toy phone, but Selene's Rotomdex as she uses it to try detecting important gates and power supplies around the facility that she can mess with. She's not going to actually set anything off just yet, though, instead using the opportunity for some strategic prep time and also to make Amelris' supply truck gambit look a bit more convincing the only way she knows how.

    "Are we there yet? I gotta pee." She blurts out the moment a window opens or a drone lingers uncomfortably close to the truck, whatever comes first and not even bothering to look up. Today, Selene will be reprising the role of a bored niece!
Nova Terra     Nova sits on the floor of the truck's storage compartment, leaning up against the wall rifle cradled in her arms. Her eyes are closed, but she doesn't seem asleep, her head tilting and turning in multiple directions as if she's trying to focus on something but it's not working. This fits with the mildly troubled expression on her face. It might have something to do with the medical patch currently stuck to the side of her head.

    But as the truck pulls up to the checkpoint, Nova opens her eyes once more. There's probably some decent security to get past. A check of the truck's contents at the very least, if Nova was the one in charge. Thus the Ghost turns herself invisible, her cloaking device sending causing a light to wash over her as the quickly vanishes. That's one less person in the back to find.
Gaonoir Using a supply truck to sneak into a massive facility in pursuit of information on a supposed superweapon for the Watch to undermine to their own purposes in cracking the megacorperate death grip on this world. It had Erika's little conspiracy theorist heart racing giddily... which is one of the reasons she got dragged into waiting in the back of the truck instead of helping the cab.

That said, she's still dressed for the role, wearing the sort of generic jumpsuit you'd see some wage-slave techie wearing, plinking away at a tablet computer going through order reciepts and requisition forms and inventory manifests like they were the most important thing in her life. Definately the most important thing to her 'job'. Trying to look a little grumpy that was stuck bumping around in the back because some rich brat was tagging along with the driver.

Gaonoir hunched down in a corner of the cargo area, in his base and more compact form so it was easier to take advantage of dark coloration and his shadowy abilities to stay stealthy out of sight. He could of probably gotten himself and his Tamer in with his more intrustive capabilities, but that would of left them hanging if the rest of the team failed to enter somehow, so for now it was to keep low and let his human play along with the act.
Big Boss Danzo has absolutely the skillset to be a master Shadowrunner. As she takes a side wall, likely waiting for the drones to just be out of range, the ground burns lightly and sends her up and over to the command center. There's no sign of an alert when she lands - they don't have sensors on the roof.

The basic keypads are easy to get the intel on to get inside, though more secure areas seem to require keycards instead. Se can hear the chatter of the various missions, watercooler talk, the fact that one of the guys' wives is cheating, and all that sort of sad nonsense that happens when you're worked to the bone. She can make out the workareas of the two teams - Icarus and Daedalus - by paying attention to their call-ins to the stations. But it's not clear which is the target, and there's a clear problem.

There's a /lot/ of people inside.

A raid would put quite a few workers in jeopardy, should anyone care about that, and absolutely get security mowing in. There's also a variety of sensors such as olfactory and heat around the building, though as this is the most travelled through building, the primary security here is social and physical.

The truck group, meanwhile, gets approached. Damocles' spell starts, but will need time to truly take a strong hold. As they talk to the guards, a blonde an sniffles, glancing a flashlight around the interior of the cab while another goes out for back, several hold the gate, and drones watch over. The back is completely clear, but...

Selene.

"I'm sorry, did you bring a /kid/? This is a restricted area. We can't let her through." And, since they're not babysitters, they can't just dump her outside the gate and let the truck through, either, and they haven't even done security checks yet.

But the start of Damocles' spell starts, so he doesn't radio it in like he's supposed to. "Please turn around. You can't make your delivery."

Selene, at least, finds something for the trouble. There's a /load/ of energy going on underground, apparently. Enough that there has to be an expansive site beneath the base. What's going on down there?
Gaonoir Erika looks up as the back of the truck is opened and the guard waves a flashlight around. She does her best to keep that slightly sour expression, and frowns a bit more as she hears the conversation about the kid up front. "Ugh, I know right? I told them this wasn't proper protocol. I told them it wasn't in the statue of regulations for delivery operations. But noooo." She rolls her eyes. "Someone with a pay grade well above mine thinks his spoiled booger goblin wants to see a bunch of 'space stuff'."

Between his own abilities and the space taken up by the covered form in the back of the truck Gaonoir has little issue with avoiding being spotted by the flashlight. The subtle spell, Erika acting up her annoyance, and the bigger attention getter that is Selene probably helps too.

No one asks to see any forms, likely due to the spells effect, so Erika just keeps the tablet to herself and ready.
Amelris Belthrone      "What? Aw, c'mon." Amelris speaks, taking in a thicker accent, muffled by his cigarette squeezed between his teeth. His window rolls down, leaning against the door and waving vaguely in the direction of his 'niece'. "This ain't just no fuckin' average kid, bossman, she's my apprentice 'n partner. Y'gotta start teachin' em all if you want 'em t'have some senses in the ol' Truckin' world, chummer. S'nasty lot of secret in the bissnezz."

     He taps the side of his door, then stopping to grunt at Erika's explanation of things. The disguised Miqo'te shakes his head, keeping his voice lower.

     "Okay, look, 'space shit' been like the only time I've seen her actually takin' interest into something so I just had to give it a try. Y'surely got some kids and some damned jaded nieces and nephews, don'tcha, bud? C'mon, help me out here and let's just get this shit done." He taps on the back of his van. "Besides all that shit's perishable and turnin' back gonna cost a pretty penny t'all, ain't my hair."
Damocles Damocles continues to focus in the back of the truck.  The contents, including anyone hiding here, are still hidden by his illusion, and the illusion is great, completely masking what's really in the truck, as long as the inspector doesn't decide to climb in.  Even if he passes a flashlight over, the illusion will still look perfect, things looking exactly as they should, while whatever is hiding inside remains completely masked. 

Just as long as the guy doesn't actually climb in and try and physically cross through the illusion itself. 

For that, Damocles maintains his spell. Unfortunately, this kind of subtle influence can't be rushed.  It is channeling the energy of the Chaos Gods directly into the minds of people, and if done too fast, they will develop whispers and visions which will clearly let them know they're being effected.  Greater Daemons can do this to entire worlds, causing whole planets to fall to insurrection and corruption in days or weeks, but Damocles have actively avoided making the kinds of deals with deamons that would grant him that level of control.  He can project the spell over the entire base, but in the short term, it will just make them care less about doing their job properly.  Skipping steps that don't seem to matter, that sort of thing.

If the illusion is broken, it will pop in a wall of fog, which will, itself, obscure the view of the truck for a few seconds longer, granting them a moment to act, but no more than that.
Selene      "What's the hold up?" Selene mutters aloud as she keeps messing with her 'phone', squinting a bit at it when she notices that energy source. She can't quite put her finger on what it is exactly, but she can at least relay the discovery to her allies.

     When Amelris starts speaking up again, though, she has to adjust her approach just a bit to make it a little more believable. "... Huh? Oh, we're here! Is this the pla-" She looks slowly over at the guard, staring at him for several long seconds as she puts on the most awed expression she can.

     "... Space guard. Hell yeah." Selene says just loudly enough to be audible, then tugs on Amelris' sleeve. "... Still gotta pee, though."

     And then she's back on her 'phone'. At Damocles' request, she tries to follow the path of the energy, either towards a plausible source or destination for all that power, or simply an empty spot that hopefully isn't a wall that the Warp-user might get himself stuck in trying to teleport into it.
Big Boss The blonde man sighs to the two. Erika gets a squint, while Amelris gets an understanding but ultimately useless answer. "Sorry. I don't care whose kid this is, I cannot let you pass. This is a /restricted/ area." The subtext is 'I would literally lose my job, and possibly die', the latter part being the big resistance to Damocles' spell from simply just saying a yes. He still hasn't called it in, though, which is good! That would probably get more security on alert.

Additionally, the guy in the back would usually check the cargo, but he doesn't care enough. The illusion doesn't break.

The energy is 'a shit load of electricity'. They're using a LOT of power for whatever they're doing. Selene is able to find a location for Damocles relatively easy. He'll be able to blink down there and out of the truck, though hopefully it doesn't dispel his illusion before the guard leaves.
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris rubs his eyes with his thumb and index. This got way more complicated than he anticipated and he's half-tempted to just grab them inside the truck and take their shit. Unfortunately, this wont work. 'cameras' are well about and it's not only them keeping watch on the front.

     "Annnnnd thaaaaat's the same thing fooor me." Amelris spells it out, leaning a little bit closer. "Y'aint the only one with a guilliotine over yer head and right now y'got two choices, 'cause if this shit aint going inside by the next hour I'm losing my head and by direct conflict when it's reported that this didn't go through it's gonna be a bunch of others, because them jerkasses don't give a shit. They don't need to know, neither does yours and mine, we'll hide her, I'll stove her into the glove compartment if I need to."

     Then, there's something shiny on the side of the window. A credit chit. A whole 1500 (which is presumably a lot?).

     "My last argument."
Selene      "Fine, fine, I'll just use a bush and go get eaten by bears or wendigos something." Selene mutters with an annoyed grunt as she prepares to start clambering over the seats to get to the door, stopping when Amelris tries to use his words and bribery again. She also shoots him an annoyed look at the thought of being crammed into the glove compartment, but if that doesn't pan out?

    She'll commence with climbing on out of the truck to feign walking back towards wherever she came from. She'll have to figure out her own way in from that point onwards, but the mission must continue!

     Besides, it'll give her a chance to keep probing around from the outside. With the shitload of electricity discovered, she relays the location easily enough, and then she starts her next project: Messing with the cameras! Is the Rotomdex even capable of pulling that sort of stunt off with such wild differences between it and the tech Selene's trying to interface with? Even she's not sure, but the trainer's going to give it a shot!

     Turning the cameras off would be too obvious, though. Looping the footage, though... She's never done it before, but she'll just have to try and do it right the first time around!
Damocles Teleporting into walls isn't a big worry for Damocles.  He shifts through the Warp, which is connected to realspace, and can feel objects if he tries to move back through into them.  More of a worry is being detected, or worse, spotted.  He can move down there, but if it's into the middle of the action, he'd almost certainly be seen, and that would set off alarms all over. 

Still, that's a possible plan, and one Damocles keeps in mind.  He really does want to get down there, and likely the only way to do so is going to be to teleport.  If it's an underground bunker, then all the entrances will be heavily guarded.  That's why you MAKE an underground bunker.  But still, timing is everything.

Speaking of which, there isn't anything Damocles can really do to help now.  He continues channeling his spell, but that's about all he can do.  If things do get violent he has a few options there, but for now, he stays quiet and plans for his next move.
Gaonoir Once no one is looking around the back of the truck Gaonoir scoots back closer to Erika. He's still willing to grab her and teleport to the opposite side of the gates and wants to be ready, but not unless they're certain this isn't gatecrashing isn't going to pan out.
Big Boss As Amelris offers the bribe, the man's face turns into a grimace. He'd like to accept it and let this move on, but he absolutely cannot.

Accepting a bribe would guarantee his death if something happened, and the cameras are right there. They don't stop Selene from leaving, though, though they keep an eye on her.

"Last warning. Leave the facility, before I report your attempt."

Selene hacks the cameras. This involves the Rotom inside her Pokedex jumping into a secure 'matrix' of sorts, going as an avatar through a labyrinth, fighting programs, and getting to the camera node and hijacking it, putting in a loop. It's absolutely awesome, and for such a simple task, decently easy with her level of skill, though she gets several harrowing close calls with a defense program.

The cameras start looping outside the gates. She'll have to spend more time on it to loop them inside the whole facility - it's huge.
Danzo Katou     Icarus and Daedalus. From what Danzo knows of mythology, the latter is the crafter of the famous labyrinth, and the former is a man who plunged to his death for flying too close to the sun.

    So, by her estimation, the former is definitely more likely to be an orbital weapon, unless someone is utterly atrocious at naming -- and corporations tend to be all about spending tons on naming, as well as logos and jingles.

    Danzo hangs around the inevitable fire escape for the time being, taking in the sounds, mechanical bits behind her ears gently ticking as she focuses on sound, sweeping the area with parabolic hearing. More importantly, she accesses her Mystic Code to scout the area for magical energy. Wards. Sensory pings. Active enchantments. Traps. Summoned guard creatures. Really anything that'd register as magically active and buzzing. She wants to plan out which of those to avoid most of all, being anything like an alarm field which would fill a whole corridor, or multiple overlapping sensors with no gaps in their timing (albeit she has doubts about that level of magical mastery).

    From there, she navigates her way to the Icarus control center. She does so by continuing to live up to her nickname, by swinging underhand from a railing and attaching herself to a corridor ceiling, extruding tiny grip pads and smoothly crawling along the halls and down staircase corridors completely upside down. It may be crowded on the ground, but someone's head would have to brush the ceiling to find her now.
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris lets out a shrug, taking back his credit chit without saying any other words, lifting up the window and starting to back away the truck, something shouting off to the 'kid' to get the hell back inside as he start to back up the trucks to start to turn away. For now, anyway.
Selene      After the harrowing cyberbattle, Selene breathes a heavy sigh of relief as she looks up at the cameras, then at her Rotomdex. "Hah... Good work, Rotty. Alright, now to..."

     What /is/ she going to do at this point, anyway? With the cameras covered, it seems like the next logical course of action is to just get in there before anyone notices! Probably. <<"Pretty sure we're forgetting something important, but it can't be that important if I'm forgetting it, right? Right.">>

    Surely there's no other defenses to worry about. Satisfied with her own sense of accomplishment, she turns her attention to those drones floating around. They'll need a solid plan to take those down as well, and she's already got something up her sleeves! Or on her belt.

    She'll have to wait for Damocles to do his thing first, though, before she lets loose. Hearing Amelris calling, she heads back towards the truck, one hand on her phone and the other toying with the small green ball on her belt.
Damocles Welp, Plan A didn't work out so well.  Maybe with another day to undermine the will of the workers, they could have slipped through, or maybe this guy just has a strong enough will that he would have overcome it.  Even at best, only like seventy percent of people fall to this kind of thing. Anyway, time for Plan B.

What was Plan B again?  Oh right.

Violence.

Damocles suddenly vanishes from where he sits in the back of the truck.  The illusion he left there is static.  It doesn't change, and so it doesn't require him to maintain.  As long as nobody touches it, it'll remain there forever. 

Meanwhile, the sorcerer appears, about 100 yards away from the outer barrier, a decent distance from the front entrance.  He teleports the opposite direction that the truck turns, so that he draws all attention away from it. 

Now, all he has to do is create a distraction.  And it needs to be big enough to create enough magical energy to cover up any spells that the others might use to slip inside.  Fortunately, Chaos is very, very good for this. 

The dark, cyan-clad sorcerer strides forward, Eye of Tzeentch raised in front of him.  He channels power through it, using the staff's ability to enhance magic in order to rapidly expand the energy is pours into it.  He waves it into the sky, and red fire blooms out of it.  This fire dances into the sky, forming in a second into a vortex of bright red flame.  This vortex of fire spins around like a miniature flame tornado, and then a few seconds later, balls of flame are thrown out.  They seem at first to be cast in random directions, but it turns out each one is carefully aimed at cameras, drones or vehicles that are nearby.  While each fireball is aimed at a target, the target selection does seem to be random, leaving the vortex of flame to spew fire in all directions while Damocles maintains it.
Selene      And there's the signal. Picking that green ball off her belt, Selene presses a button to expand it, then rolls it forward. "Reginald, keep 'em quiet." She murmurs with an unnervingly bright grin as a fat green lizard thing with a flowering bulb on its back pops out. The green thing has a mask painted on, of course, looking vaguely tribal in that way that someone who just did a quick internet search to imitate it would manage.

    Said green thing promptly flings out vines to start grabbing at guards' faces, trying to wrap said vines around their eyes and into their mouths to try keeping them from shouting alerts before slamming them into nearby objects, the floor, or each other.
Big Boss The group in the truck turns around. The guard is about to turn away, when Damocles strides forward, and the fire tornado blasts out. Fireballs come surging out.

The guards are /prepared/ for specifically this sort of thing, so there's no real panic besides 'the standard amounts of panic', their game isn't thrown off. One of them kneels, trying to signal an alert on their compad, when they get silenced by vines and thrown into a wall, making it absolutely unclear to anyone inside why fireballs are spraying or if it's flamethrowers or sorcerers, but entirely clear that fireballs are spraying because heat sensors are going insane. A drone starts spraying gatling gun fire, enough to turn a person into swiss cheese, and focuses it on Damocles, as does another, even as the fire begins to melt through their guns and plating, they keep firing bullets until they're down. The guards draw assault rifles, from the biggest military corporation on the planet, and begins spraying him down, even as they're immolated.

It is an absolute bullet bath that will definitely hit rip Damocles to shred if he's not careful.

The truck will probably want to speed up and turn around and smash through security now, as the drones around the corridor pull around and start spraying everything down with bullets, which may hit the truck if they're not careful. They'll get 'a useless truck' in the process, but get past the gate, closest to the storage compound and the lab.

Meanwhile, the alarm went off! Danzo, hanging from a ceiling g after jumping off the fire escape, will hear the alarms start going off. Luckily, she's not in a staircase corridor as they move, and is closer to the Icarus compound. There is one maxim of infiltration.

Nobody ever looks up. he magic sensors are active pulse, not passive. They blink over, but they're not focused on this building because the sorcerers are preparing to run outside, so Danzo gets a clear pathway. She'll find that the doors to the Icarus room have locked down, as are others, and the misson control team is hunkered down, several security guards with the same milspec assault rifles covering them, communicating with allies, and preparing to tear apart anything that gets in their line of sight to shreds. Even with her speed, if they see her, she'll have to contend with at least a round of firing.
Damocles Gatling fire and assault rifle fire.  That's what Damocles expected.  Actually a bit less, as he figured he would receive sniper fire as well.  He's sure that's coming, though.  The snipers were probably having tea or something, but he's sure they're taking aim now.

The initial hail of gunfire strikes his armor and magical barriers, which keep him from being shredded instantly, but do still take a good bit of damage.  He definitely cannot withstand that kind of fire for long.

So, he doesn't stand.  Instead, he abandons his spell all at once, and leaps backwards, then sprints to the side.  He has no real cover here, so he uses fast, unpredictable movement to keep the gunners and snipers from getting a solid shot off.  That still leaves the drones, though.

For that, he raises his staff again, and channels as much power as he dares at one time through it.  This time, he fires a bolt of lightning energy into the sky.  This energy cracks with a thunderclap as it hits a point five stories or so above, and crackles in the air for a moment, building power.  Once it's reached critical power levels, it explodes in a webbing of aerial lightning. The lightning isn't aimed at anything on the ground, and so the guards will be fine.  Anything in the air however, including the drones with their heavy guns, are targeted with a powerful arc of lightning.
Gaonoir "I hope the big guy knows what he's doing." Gaonoir gruffs, and grabs Erika's arm with one of his gloved paws as the truck starts to move and the space wizard warps out. As much as he'd like to not drag her along, the truck is likely to not be any safer once the insanity starts, so it's just best to have her at his side. "Just wait for it..."

Damocles does his thing to stir them up. Selene turns what, if there was more time, he'd make some crack about Palmon convorting with a Betamon to generate, loose on the guards. There's fire and guards and other madness being stewn about in a matter of seconds.

"Now." As Amelris is maneuvering the truck Gaonoir glances out the window, then pulls his Tamer with him into a brief pitch of blackness.

The voidstep teleports the duo out of the truck just before it's about to get shot up, and within the gates. Just as quickly Gaonoir has Erika in tow still, darting away from the gates in another direction towards one of the nearest buildings. "Time for all that running you like to joke about doing." The longer they can avoid getting dragged into the fight, the better.

"Who says it's a joke?" With her other hand Erika still has her tablet, now switched back to the aerial map. "But they're probably already locking any entrances down."

"Trust me. Already planning on it." Going Loud may make things harder, but it's also the state of affairs the digimon is familiar operating with.
Amelris Belthrone      Well, Plan B it is.

     "SHIT!" Amelris shouts out with the door slamming open and the 'trucker' leaping out of the driving cabine of the truck, rolling on the ground and scrambling up to his feet, keeping himself low to visibly 'run away' to the other end of the place when bullets and fireballs starts flying around. "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT RUN! KEEP THE TRUCK BETWEEN YOU AND THEM!" He shouts at his 'niece', at least keeping up this piece of the charade as he goes off to the forest.

     The idea is to get at least out of line of sight, then come back to the side of the wall to leap right straight off above it in one of his flips to land on the other side.
Selene      With the alarms tripped, there's no need to stay quiet for much longer. "Alright.. Plan B. Do... Thing!" She clearly does't have much planned for this method herself, but she does have a clear-ish destination in mind: That massive energy source she had detected earlier in the evening. With the most immediate threats taken care already or being taken care of, she shifts gears into NAVIGATION MODE.

     After following Amelris behind cover, at least. Once she can't see anyone/anything shooting at Damocles, she points at the ground behind what looks like a blind spot to her. "That weird energy source is pretty close... Ish. I'm gonna go check it out. Let's get digging, Reginald!"

     With all the subtlety of a leafy jackhammer, the Ivysaur gets to work digging into the ground, vines and meaty paws working to try clearing a path through the ground diagonally to get them underneath the horribly flaming bullety kill zone and closer towards... Whatever it is that energy source is!

    Hopefully, not too close.
Big Boss Damocles' has to avoid the guards by moving, and as he suspects, snipers begin ringing out shots, as do sorcerers begin ringing out their own fire and lightning. It's hell.

But, he has an advantage. Once the lightning goes down on the drones, they've taken enough surprise damage that they go down (though there's many more inside), and his teleportation allows him to go wherever he can inside its limits. He'll find out something absolutely surprising in the process - they're not suspecting teleportation whatsoever. Not even a little bit.

Amelris manages to get out of the way of the fire, though he probably has a couple close calls or grazes just by the sheer density of bullets. He can jump the wall, as can Gaonoir. They can get into buildings - it's just the question of which ones they're targeting, and what they want to try and do. Storage is the closest - it's a big warehouse full of various mechanical parts, old suits, old weapons locked up tight, and a man in a uniform cowering behind a box. Yeah, they certainly made a mess. But, there might be useful, valuable, or otherwise special stuff in here, depending on what they seek.

Selene decides to go down. As her Ivysaur digs, she hits a wall. The sheer power of the Pokemon, though, could rip the wall open, allowing her to dig down and smash a hole through, into the supply closet. Also score!

As she exits into a corridor, where security patrols heavily now that the alarm is off and scientists are bunkering down, she'll find out why the basement is so heavily guarded and powered up - it's a replica of one of the space stations, for testing and experimenting. But which one? Either way, if it's their target...she might be able to get valuable information for the actual assault down here.
Damocles Sniper fire comes in, as Damocles expected, but even worse, local mages begin offering fire as well.  That signals more or less the end of Damocles's attack.  He can't keep up against the mages without hunkering down and reinforcing his own reserves, which he can't do without exposing himself to sniper fire. 

Also, his barrier spells are almost completely exhausted, his armor is breached in several places, and he's taken a few bullet hits which would have completely taken a normal human out.

It's definitely time to go.

Damocles raises his staff again, channeling another spell through it, but this one is purely defensive:  Just an energy shield erected from his shield to provide extra defenses while he turns and runs away from the base.  All he needs to do is get enough distance that they can't see precisely where he goes. Then when he teleports away, they'll have to commit a large bulk of their guards to searching the surrounding area for him.

It's a simple plan, with but one flaw:  That location marked down below.  He still doesn't know what it is. It really doesn't matter, though.  It can't possibly be as important right now as survival.

Except that he has to know.

So, when Damocles gets to the proper distance and finds some cover to hide behind, he ducks behind it, and teleports.  He does not teleport back home, or to a safe location, though.  No no.  Damocles teleports to the point Selene had marked for him earlier.  Right into the belly of hell.
Selene      "Keep digging. Keep it going, we'll find something!" And then they find something. The Ivysaur falls out of the hole in the closet first, providing a soft landing zone for Selene shortly afterwards. Once she's down, she peeks into the hallway, noticing all the hustle and bustle, then hides in the closet again while getting her Rotomdex out once more.

     "Okay... Plan bee-point-two. This looks like a space station mini, but I dunno which one, so..." It's time to start digging into their system again! With her brief stint working out so far, she starts probing around once again to try and gather some intel from inside the belly of the beast, connecting to nearby terminals and searching for some more clues as to whether this space station replica she's in would have sufficient room or power to launch powerful ordinance.
Danzo Katou     A disaster happening anywhere near the facility is something that Danzo, as a master shinobi, had elected to avoid for a reason, but now that there is chaos in the halls, she has no choice. Adapt to the situation. Change your course action as the action changes. Be flexible and be ready. Those are shinobi maxims as well. Chaos is where some of their best work comes from.


Danzo times lightning speed dashes between the active pings of sensors, the magical waves lighting up red in her vision, allowing her to slip through them like the most basic of automatic traps. She releases herself from the ceiling when the guard brigade leaves, scanning heat signatures through the locked door, cupping her ear against it to pick up the faint vibrations of sound and movement. Scoping it out. Double checking her options.

    She turns her back to the wall and presses her fist to her palm with two fingers extended, focusing on the inside of the room she can't see by feeling out the distance directly. At the legendary illusionist's behest, a section of ceiling breaks open as a black-clad Runner kicks it down, slipping out and down on a braided nylon cord, down which two friends slide to the floor. Wearing full masks and sensor goggles, they spot the guards immediately, snap a machine pistol, hand cannon, and dual-wielded autoloaders at the guards, and dive behind control room desks while firing.

    Of course, the guards aren't in danger, as the gunfire is purely illusory. To them, it's like it's hitting all around them, but they're getting lucky so far, having to trade fire with mystery enemies popping up and down and blind firing around corners. Something that instantly demands anything of a military-type's attention; that's what they're trained for above all else.

    It's also all happening on the opposite side of the door. Though it isn't the most subtle use of her strength as a magically animated doll, Danzo works her fingers into the mechanism and slowly pulls it apart one bit at a time, the snaps unlikely to be heard over all of the fake gunfire. When she can swing the door open, she slings a ceramic sphere the size of a gold-ball into the room under arm, which bursts open with a little fiery pop, and instantly fills the entire room with a choking haze of smoke, blocking the cameras and sensors, and, more importantly, a fine dust of specially prepared contact poison, capable of knocking out a grown man in under a minute.

    Danzo, can, of course walk right through it. The minute the action stops, she rushes through the room to collect the command staff, not having much trouble in the way of heaping a few bodies over each shoulder with her carrying capacity. She uses her enhanced vision to scan around for any documents, hard disks, keycards, or other important items that'd glow with an Interact Aura before moving to leave.
Gaonoir This is not the time to be picky about locations. The closest building is close enough, which turns out to be a storage facility.
And one guy cowering in the corner.

Gaonoir and Erika both just look at him for a long moment. Then Gaonoir points in his direction. "Stay put, stay off the radio, and you don't gotta get hurt." This world has a lot of weird creatures, but hopefully a jet black, upright walking, talking dog is still weird enough to get the guy to just stay in his hiding spot.

"Well, this isn't the primary objective." Erika pushes her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose from where the running had dislodged them. "But and oppritunity is an oppritunity." The tablet is tucked under an arm so she can take out her digivice smartphone from a pocket and flicks on the camera.

The man is forgotten for a moment as Gaonoir looks after her. "Not sure I follow."

"Look, its a storage facility for a space program." Erika is, well, being a geek like usual. "This is a first hand look at the kind of technology they're using. Possibly on the place no one is suppose to know about."

"... You actually have a point." That's enough to convince Gaonoir to take a look around.
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris leaps over the wall in one smooth, tall backflip. It's a bit tight but at leasthe makes it, landing near the new location, this storage facility. Apparently at the same time as Gaonoir and Erika. The 'Trucker' blinks, clears his voice and adjust just jacket, nodding.

     "Yeah! What they said!" The disguised Miqo'te calls out, waving menacingly a pistol(!?) that he had holstered inside his jacket. He have no bloody clue how this thing works, beyond point and pull the trigger. Also that the saftey is on but the guy REALLY don't need to know that part.

     "You look at that." Amelris comments, keeping an eye on the guy behind the box, reaching out to the equipment storage. The suits, the tools and things to 'live in the void', as they called it. Spacesuits? Spacesuits. Do they HAVE spacesuits?
Big Boss Damocles blinks away, appearing on the other side of the massive lab Selene is in. He's out of the line of sight of guards and scientists for the second, but he'll have to start moving, otherwise they'll start firing on him immediately, being clearly 'not one of them'. It's a replica of the 'orbital station Icarus', he'll find from his angle, as well as astronauts who were previously in testing for a launch situation. This has obviously ruined the entire simulation. If he wants to get some answers, though, these are the people to ask.

Selene begins hacking. She finds the Icarus information, several important passcodes...and something locked behind the heaviest security they have. Black ICE, which could bleed through and fry her device if she's not careful, which could be very bad for a sapient Rotom.

The Thor launch codes.

If she wants to crack them, she'll need a distraction, before she makes too much noise and gets the door busted down!

This is the right station. Danzo had guessed correctly - Icarus, the boy whose hubris took his life, is certainly the namesake for the WMD station.

Speaking of Danzo, her illusionary skills are impeccable. The runner team slides in, misses every shot, gets missed with every shot, and creates a bullet hell that almost, almost, gets caught. The guards start to get suspicious, and are about to radio in more backup...

When the door is opened, and the smoke-mist bomb goes flying. "Contact!" One shouts, but not in time, as the sleep-mist causes coughing, choking, and then unconsciousness, as well as a complete blockout of who did it thanks to the cameras getting obscured.

The command staff is acquired, as are several keycards, and the most important thing.

A disk of coordinates and ship access codes. This will allow them to actually get into the station, even if it won't let them bypass all the security.

Amelris and Gaonoir get into storage. There, they find quite a few space suits - enough for a full Watch crew, if they can carry them, as well as some old parts that have probably not been seen by other competitors. The problem, that'll make them have to go fast...

Is that the cargo technician absolutely believes in the conformity. He is a cog in the machine. He presses his compad and begs for security's help, crying at the gun waved at him, and while security's currently distracted with the front gate, they'll be rushing storage soon. The group should probably prepare an exfiltration, after they get everything they want here.
Damocles Damocles takes a moment to look around after he pops in.  A mock space station?  Why would they need that?  It's certainly interesting.  Icarus station.  That definitely should be their target, he thinks.  Even if it doesn't have the Thor, whatever it DOES have is clearly more important to them.

He does take note of his surroundings, and moves to get to some cover.  Doubtful he'll be able to hide, but there are some advantages.  They probably didn't expect anyone to come in here, so the heavy firepower will likely be replaced by lower caliber weapons.  Fewer guards in tighter quarters.  That all works to his advantage.

First things first, is attending to his own injuries, though.  Once behind cover, he slowly waves his hand over his own wounds, using his magic to regenerate his injuries and heal up as much as he can.  He also channels energy through his staff to repair his magical barriers.  He doesn't need too terribly much time to get himself back into fighting shape. 

If he can hide, great.  If not, he'll be ready for Round 2. %
Amelris Belthrone Carrying this stuff is easy enough. Aether carrying capacity just kind of is a thing, reducing the weight and size of the things he needed. That part is not really a problem. What's a problem is that guy calling off to security. He probably should've just knocked him out when they came in here.

Amelris's ears beneath his cap wriggles, hearing the man pressing on his compad. Amelris have enough reaction speed and experience with such thing that when someone is crying into it, he's probably calling for reinforcements.

     The gun is gone in an instant, the disguised Red Mage making a dart, almost instant dash at the man with the first thing he could find in the way to him -- a long PVC tube, that's probably be used for the plumbing of the station of some sort.

     The pipe slams against the compad to break it with unrelenting accuracy, twist it then swing it away into the far end of the room. "Think it's time for us to go."
Selene      Now she's really getting somewhere. It's not quite as bashy-smashy as Selene would like considering her general... Everything, but it's for the sake of the mission! For the sake of one day saving her friend!

    She'll just have to suck it up and keep on digging into this system, testing her limits, and broadening her abilities. She snickers briefly when she spots the name of the space station, saves those passcodes somewhere in the sapient computer thing's storage space/mind, then cracks her knuckles when she meets her next roadblock.

    Black ICE. She's... Actually hasn't really looked into it at all, but the name is ominous enough, and seeing what it's protecting can only mean this is the thing thatcould ruin her day if she's not careful. She calls in assistance from her allies as she slips a small vial out of her messenger bag, inspecting it for a moment before chugging what's inside.

    She shivers once, then gets right back to work. It's her against the Black ICE, all attention on this thing! She won't have her mind on much else, though, so she'll have to hope nobody shoots her in the face during this whole process.
Gaonoir "I hate to interrupt your nerdgasm girl, but we're not going to have time to poke through everything." If the guard actually listened or not was unimportant to Gaonoir, Amelris can deal with it. They had to keep the operation moving quickly and he's not in the mood to pussyfoot around with a wage flunkie.
Erika sighs, but relents because he's right. As tempting as industrial espionage would be, the primary mission they're hear for comes first.. not that she doesn't snap a couple of pictures anyways. Got to be able to keep her conspiracy board up to date. "Okay. Grab the spacesuits, some of the equipment they use if you can find it and load it together." She looks back to her partner. "Time for an airlift operation?", she asks, even as she starts grabbing some of the stuff they need to escape with.

"Yup." A brief surge of dark energy engulfs the digimon, moments later leaving the taller jetpack sporting cyborg wolf version standing in his place. "Agreed on that, Red... Good thing we don't have to really worry about sneaking out with this stuff."

Not when he can scoop up a bunch of the suits and stuff in his arms, being as strong as he is, and once Erika has climbed onto his back, ignites his boosters.

Door? Who needs a door? He'll just smash his way out and rocket off as fast as he can.
Danzo Katou     Shortly before piling command staff up on her back, Danzo pockets the obviously critical data, taking it up her sleeve and into a secret compartment in her arm so that there is no possibility of losing it. Strapping up her 'cargo' with silk ropes across her shoulders and midsection, she adopts one more genpou stance, and puts the icing on the whole spontaneous affair.

    When Danzo rushes back out of the room, she looks exactly like a black-clad shadowrunner wearing goggles and a face mask. There are bullet marks on her ceramic vest. She skids slightly around the corner as she begins sprinting at maximum speed towards the nearest exit door, in the opposite direction of the checkpoint, literally hurling a keycard like a shuriken into its slot if she has to -- so that the second she gets outside, she can disappear into a shroud of invisible air once again, having vanished completely in the small section between inside and outside surveillance and thus 'could have gone anywhere'.

    From there, she takes it at a bit of a less insane pace, so as not to risk physically injuring her abductees, once again extracted in a bloodless infiltration. She heads to the same wall she came from, firing a grapnel line from her wrist to reel herself up and over, and then kick an external camera right off its mount on the way down.
Big Boss Damocles is able to hide for a bit if he ducks into a closet, but not for long with the noise. He's also able to memorize layouts of the station - which he can share with the others, or use for himself if he joins the next mission.

Selene begins hacking against the Black ICE. It tries to fry her system to nothing, but she's a skilled hacker. The question is simple, as she proceeds. Take a temporary hit to her device and get the code immediately in a kamikaze attack? Or play it slow and safe, but waste time that the security will absolutely use to gun her down?

Amelris's pipe shatters the compad, stopping security from coming to cargo. Gaonoir grabs the space suits and cargo, and begins to fly off. If they can escape quickly, they can get out before security raids this building eventually.

Danzo gets her cargo, and makes an escape. She has the mission control - this has some clear immediate downsides, though many clear long-term upsides.

The downsides is that the Icarus Station will know they're coming, and Ares is gonna have a grudge, something very rare for them.

The upsides? Too many to count.
Gaonoir Dark MachGaogamon has 'mach' in it's species name for a reason. Both for speed, and because it can hit like a sonic boom. Right now, we're mainly worried about the first reason. The additional cargo will slow Gaonoir down a little more than usual, but once he's in open air he can use his teleportation power to make up the difference, and harder to figure out where they're going as they rocket off into the night.
Amelris Belthrone      Amelris adjusts his hat, pleased of his handiwork and then dashes right out after the TRANSFORMED DIGIMON wow what the heck.
Selene      Selene doesn't even notice that her allies are wrapping up their ends of the job as she puts all her focus into fending off that Black ICE, initially trying to get the code in question without getting her Rotomdex too jacked up. As things start heating up, though, she can see the options laid out before her and takes a deep breath while weighing them carefully.

     "... Hang in there, Rotty. I'll getcha some good food and stuff after this." Yes, she's talking to her device because the Pokemon's going to need some encouragement to stick through this whole process! Selene opts for the fast and dangerous option since she's fairly certain it can survive the process better than she can survive the bullets.

    Once her work is seemingly done, Selene follows the path she took to get in, letting her Ivysaur lead the way/drag her out of the hole before riding it away!
Damocles Damocles hangs around until Selene decides to make her exit.  He isn't particularly invested in what she's doing, but as he's her only cover, it would  be kind of a dick move to just up and leave her alone.  When she decides to push through and do this quick though, he follows suit. 

He steps out of his hiding place, and strides forward, tall and ominous, holding his staff in front of him.  His barrier spells are back up, so he relies on them to soak some initial fire.

"Hey, quick question," He asks in a conversational tone, ignoring any defensive fire thrown his way.  "How long can you guys hold your breath?  Hypothetically speaking?  Actually, wait, no.  It's the opposite of that."

He lowers his staff, and from it, a gout of flame erupts.  He swings the staff and lays down a wall of flame, sweeping it wide enough to create a nice, imposing wall of fire.  The fire keeps burning, Damocles theorizing that, if this place is modeled after a space station, then, like a spaceship, having a big ol fire eating up all your O2 would be bad. 

He leaves that alone, letting the defenders worry about their breathing more and the Watch personnel less.  Instead, the sorcerer slams his staff into the ground, and in a flash of violet fire, is gone.  This time he actually DOES go home.
Big Boss Selene gets the launch codes. Big Boss will send her a private contact asking for them as soon as she reports in, for safe-keeping.

Damocles burns away the oyxgen, meanwhile, which is going to cause guards to asphyxiate if tehy're not secured by their allies.

He makes it out. The group, as a whole, manages to escape with no Watch casualties and an overall successful plan, even if they went much louder than they expected. Next time...they'll have to take over the station.