[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Sagramore[/color][/h3][/center]

They had made hellacious progress, under the sudden and unforgiving time crunch Ciradyl's presence had imposed, bounding up the sides of the tiered estate with what could essentially be called impunity once he'd helped Esben stow the pair of fresh cadavers out of sight. The man had once again vindicated his instincts to take what he said at face-value— distracted by the sudden wrench in the gears or otherwise, the same instincts that had roused Rudolf right out of a dreamless sleep in the desert hadn't even clocked the man was gone until he'd reappeared.

It was a good thing their interests had still been in alignment thus far.

But he'd known better than to expect a free ride. Honestly, the luck of running into two bum-ass guards right at their initial point of entry was so cosmically terrible that he had half a mind to throw out a half-hearted [color=c0392b]"my bad"[/color] in the wake of the second's exsanguination. He pilfered one of the katanas as the team pressed onward, using the unremarkable, unfamiliar blade in place of the usual suspects well enough to maintain their hurried pace in dispatching the two- or three-man patrols as they surged further upward— at a basic level, a sword was still a sword, weird weight distribution and balance be damned. This one wasn't terribly remarkable beyond that, anyway.

[color=c0392b]"Not good. They're sequencing their fire."[/color]

And the staircase itself was under guard by the time they'd gotten there after the alarms sounded, a churning drumline of gunfire and smoke impeding their progress, forcing them into cover. It made sense. Even while the Valheimr weapons they were using were more advanced than anything he'd run into before this quest, there was still a little downtime between shots where you needed to get another projectile ready to fire— if they [i]all[/i] shot at once, the Kirins were definitely fast enough to pounce within that window. Staggering it closed the hole.

[i]KRAK![/i]

Directly in the wake of one such shot, a tall, pointed piece of leather and cloth peeked out from behind the cover the Kirins had—

[i]KRAK-PING![/i]

—and flew right off the sword it had been carefully mounted upon, sailing back through the hall with new ventilation as the katana swiftly withdrew from their cone of suppressing fire with a hissed [color=c0392b]"[i]dammit.[/i]"[/color]

And what was worse, they were keeping their eyes open for sudden movement instead of getting lost in the rote load-shoot-reload down the line— With their infiltration ruined, they were on even more limited time. Could he come at an oblique angle? Maybe, but the ceiling wasn't terribly high and bounding off Ospreyan walls seemed untrustworthy to get there. Could he sidestep the whole ordeal by bursting through one of them, then? Maybe. It could split their fire if he reappeared from a flank, but he'd be wasting time if he ended up getting bogged down by the rotate process. Not to mention, the specific layout of this place wasn't familiar, and he wouldn't have had much ability to check his angle of approach before just sending it and dealing with whatever bullets came.

He needed to work with what he knew now if he wanted to regain tempo. If [i]they[/i] were to. He had to find a way to break these lines up from here. Destabilize them.

...His hand crept to the pouch on his belt, palming one of the two orbs that pulsed with mana within. Unlike the one he'd shown Galahad, this was much more geared towards offense, and swirled with a light purple tint to its depths. He had taken it with him in the vain hope he could pass off any swirling black flames as something that looked vaguely similar...

But in true Rudolf fashion, he'd bungled that idea before he could even test it. Eve could sense the spirit's presence, and Galahad was plenty familiar with what Shield [i]actually looked like[/i]. Arrogant and half-baked. Might as well just dispense with the whole plan now, and smoke em while he had 'em.

[color=c0392b]"I can break this up! Get ready!"[/color] he called, bringing his nonfunctional dead weight blade to bear. The thing had blocked Valheimr bullets for him already. If it didn't wanna be useful any other way, then...

Leveraging it out in front, he stepped into the breach, vitals behind the flat of the blade, and focused his will around the Gravity materia in his other hand.

Within the midst of the goons, a well of purple and black sprung forth, drawing everything inward, and [i]down[/i], as though their weight had suddenly doubled. He doubted this would kill anyone, but if it could just buy the team a [i]moment[/i]—!