[IC] Q - FLUX

[TheFake]

— Wirefort Manor —

Ian waved to the helpful fellow in the back (Jonathan?).

"I guess they would be. Who'd be crazy enough to attack you guys here? They're with me. You calling the shots out here now?"

Further conversation was interrupted. Rudely. Before he could blast off in his usual dramatic manner End took hold of him. Blitz casually picked her up in a princess carry and kicked off in a more restrained manner, carrying a cloud of dust and debris from the street into the air with him.

"We still haven't spoken to the boss and these attackers might have something on this. It would be useful to take one alive."

For now, because it would be stupid to pursue that goal on his own, he focused on getting himself and his passenger out of the line of fire.

[ERode]

End gave Blitz a sardonic glance as he picked her up instead of blasting off immediately, holding her against his chest as his magic did its work and they flew off into the sky. It was pretty much what she had wanted out of him anyways, but really?

“Unnecessary,” the raven-haired assassin said flatly once the two of them rocketed past the tallest buildings in the vicinity. She wasn’t Blitz, after all. End still had her van down there, and though her own armored car was her most expensive investment from Heavyware Industries, she still didn’t want to leave it up to just her colleagues to protect it. “Snatch some redshirt then. The mounted gunners are mine.”

With that, she activated the Valkyrie Suit hidden beneath her clothing, feeling the slight prick against her skin as thin needles pierced the skin, followed by the warmth of the bodysuit going online once more. A twist of her body and a hard shove against Blitz sent her barrelrolling in freefall, and, unconcerned, End removed her jacket, the garment fluttering violently. Beneath was the chrome and steel of the Valkyrie Suit, twin jets of flame igniting from her jetpack as the glider wings spread out. She stabilized, slowed, and finally landed, somersaulting as she disabled both the wings and the jets.

A whump sounded as her boots and right hand slammed against the concrete of the building’s roof. At this height, she was still susceptible to return fire, but at this height, she could disintegrate any threat before it reached her.

End breathed deeply, smelling the chaos that unravelled down before, as she pulled out the Punisher EMT. Lethal. Highly accurate. 15 bullets. Five targets. She just had to land one third of her shots.

But that was pathetic.

Both eyes opened wide as her heart stopped, hands as still as stone. No scope was needed at this distance. These were just stationary targets. Wasting more than a single bullet on each was a mark against her reputation.

“Warthog, I’ll leave the walkers to you.”

Moments later, in the backline of the unknown assailants, heads became roses, bloody blossoms blooming in the battlefield.

[DracoLunaris]

Right as the shooting started one of the doors on the side of the armored van leading to the back was flung open and in was hurled a bicycle, followed swiftly by a panicked advent. She slammed the door shut behind her, took a moment to collect herself now that the immediate risk of being shot was over and then promptly strapped herself to one of the available seats, retrieved her cases from the side of the bike and then folded up the bike so it was not in the way.

“Sooooo, into the Wirefort then? Also to clarify are we running away or helping these guys so we can get info from them afterwards?”

There really wasn’t anywhere else to go as both ends of the street where currently blocked by hostiles, maybe they could get through the Wirefort base and get out the other side.

---

While their creator was busy trying very hard not to get shot, three wolf like creatures crawled out of a nearby service tunnel onto the street a little way off from the conflict. What was interesting about these creatures apart from their already exotic appearance where the large cannon looking organisms attached between their shoulder blades and poking over their heads. They rounded the corner a block away from the fire fight, paused while their canons judged the range and then launched 3 large seed pods towards the groups of foot soldiers. The three then made a run for it in order to avoid any returning fire.

The three large pods landed in the mists of the attackers and then split, poisonous vine like tendrils covered in thorns rapidly growing from the seeds and wrapped themselves around the assailants. The tendrils slashed at exposed flesh as they grew, wrapped themselves around the victim's legs arms and weapons, trapping them in the tangled briar patch that had erupted at their feet. 12 of the foot slogging thugs were caught in this manner, and while not dead they would have difficulty breaking out or continuing to fight as a result of the constriction, many bleeding wounds and rashes received from the poison ivy based plant.

[Click This]

Arsenal kept vigil atop the bare machine gun turret of End’s armored personnel carrier. Hands crossed underneath her chest, she didn’t truly expect any sort of conflict with the organized crime gang. Her watch was more of a nonchalant act of people watching, given the information gathering nature of their current affair. At the sound of screeching tires and sudden noises, however, her relaxed attitude immediately seized as her eyes flicked across her field of vision, scanning for the source of the offending noise.

By the time her blue eyes tracked the five armed targets, a shielded heavy machine gun had already appeared and was mounted on the previously empty turret enclosure.

She yelled down the turret hatch. “What are you doing? Gun the motherfucker!” Relying on whoever was in the driver’s seat to get them out of there, Rui-Hai released the safety on the machine gun.

Kicking the foot pedals of vehicle’s turret, the hydraulics spun the enclosure around to track the incoming vehicles. She pressed the trigger, and let the lead fly.

The enemy fought in armor piercing rain.

[Vega7285]

From what she could hear filtering in from the opened hatch atop the armored van, negotiations were going well. And nobody had a clue here, either, making it a...bit of a dead end. And then, in short order, the screech of rubber on asphalt, the roar of engines, and the staccato of gunfire. All hell had broken loose, not that Honoka was there to see it.

Not directly, anyway. Bullets struck the van like occasional hailstones of lead. Only the nose from the impacts got through the armor, to reverberate inside the confined space, but it was still enough to make the girl panic. In her mind, they were still shooting at her. It was no surprise she almost jumped a foot out of her seat when the door was flung open and Advent entered. At least she didn't scream too long.

"Ah...sorry, you scared me." Diva grinned sheepishly at the older woman. "No clue what the plan is, if there is one. It as bad out there as it sounds?" She sounded hopeful. It could always be less of a spectacle.

She didn't wait for a reply before she got to work on her own. No way was she going out into the middle of a firefight ,but the nature of her magic didn't need her to. She started singing, and a bright show of shifting lights began to play across the inside of the van. AS the song grew in strength, the area effected spread our from Diva's position, enveloping the battlefield nearby, and kept going until it eventually faded at the limit of her abilities. The song itself carried through the spell's area, floating on the ether as surely as if it were broadcast over loudspeakers. Subtle, it wasn't, but it would at least provide some cover for the Cleaners in the ensuing chaos.

[Zombehs]

Chris swerved onto the ramp that led him into an even lower layer of the metropolis with a smile. Traffic had been light enough for him to make good time, and he hadn’t done anything more than piss off a few other drivers. Probably. Racing down the incline at breakneck speeds, he silenced the bike’s engine with the flick of a switch. There was a brief sputter before the obnoxious roar completely disappeared and left him with ears open to the sounds all around him.

Grunting as his bike came off the ramp with a slight bump, he turned onto the rather empty street at speed, tires screeching as they fought for traction. The lack of heavy traffic wasn’t too surprising given it was practically gang territory at this point. What was surprising was the sudden gunfire that came from the direction of the Wirefort manor, and the amount. Squeezing the brakes as he came to a halt on the roadside, he clicked his tongue in annoyance as he kicked out the kickstand. “Told them not to get into a firefight,” he muttered as he walked on back to the locker and tapped in the access code.

“Right, let’s see what’s going on.”

As the mechanical arms fitted on the additional layers of his armor, Chris turned his focus inward before throwing it out. Everything seemed to fade out for the moments it took for his pulses to race out and return, but the echoes he received quickly mapped out the situation at the Wirefort’s in his mind for him. The two in th- well, one now anyways, were probably Blitz and End. The big car sitting at the gate was probably her truck, though it seemed to have gotten an attachment at the top; probably courtesy of Arsenal. It didn’t seem like there were any bodies on the ground around the truck just yet…

As for the five trucks and fuzzy groupings, well those were probably the ones making a racket. It certainly seemed like they were the only ones with the numbers capable of doing so. There wasn’t much he could do about them at this distance, and he didn’t really want to get involved in a gang scuffle if that’s what it boiled down to. For the moment he decided to get a better picture just to make sure the other Cleaners weren’t caught off guard.

A few moments later and Chris tched as he picked up something possible worrisome. The nearby roofs, save for End, seemed to be pretty clear, but there was another vehicle approaching. A fair bit larger than the cars already on scene, probably the size of an 18-wheeler. Bulkier than a civi one though. “Well shit,” he muttered as he attuned the waves to dial in on a few specific frequencies.

“End. That you? Big rig incoming, can you get a look at it?”

Meanwhile the truck’s radio would crackle to life shortly afterwards, and let Echo’s voice through. “Yoh. Better haul ass, there’s an armored big rig making its way over. I’m still like two, three minutes out, so it’ll be there before me. If Arsenal’s around, you guys might need some of her bigger ones.”

[OwO]

The sound of tires screeching and gunfire broke the silence. Whatever the negotiating team did, it went wrong. One way or another, at least. Thankfully, the van was somewhat out of harm's way. He swung open the back of the van, stepping out.

"Stay here," he said to Zer0. After all, it would be rather dangerous for a young girl to participate in an urban firefight.

He quickly walked towards the fight. Five cars. Bullets raining from all directions. Advent's... things scampering around. Overgrowing plants. Warthog walked into the middle of the war zone. Bullets tore into his ragged cloak, leaving nothing left but strands and patchwork. Upon colliding with his now-exposed armour, the bullets were destroyed - either rended into dust or crushed into metal pulp.

“Warthog, I’ll leave the walkers to you.”

He had heard End speak to him, vaguely. The two of them always did work well together. Rather slowly, Warthog pulled out Jörmungandr. The heavy gun pointed towards the people unfortunate enough to be on the ground.

"I'm not really a pious man," he said to himself, his gun winding up, "but I suppose I should ask for forgiveness."

The gun roared out ferociously as lead spewed from the barrel of the gun. He didn't fire at the fastest his gun could, but whoever didn't run was sure to be hit.

[Psyker Landshark]

Runner simply grunted an assent at End as he took her place in the driver's seat, immediately gunning the engine. His eyes widened from behind his helmet as a heavy machine gun swiveled towards their position.

"I'm going, I'm going!" He roared back up at Arsenal as he furiously yanked the wheel, slamming down on the accelerator. The armored van began to erratically twist and turn around the outskirts of the combat zone, minimizing its profile to enemy fire while still giving the turret gunner up top as clear of a field of fire as possible.

"Do we leave or do we keep helping the Wireforts? This isn't our fight." He asked into their comms, drawing his pistol and leaning out the window to plug a few bullets into the heads of several assailants.

[TheFake]

— Wirefort Manor —

After End so casually jumped out of his arms Blitz continued upwards for a second, stopping well above the surrounding rooftops. High enough that even the heavier weapons would have trouble hitting him, let alone seeing him with the naked eye. He picked out targets with eye movements and mumbled commands to the operating system inside of his helmet. It wasn't as if the assailants were nice enough to use military grade IFF or anything like that.

"I'll get the other side I suppose. Let luck determine if we get anyone to talk to."

And he bolted off with a supersonic bang that rattled windows and woke anyone that hadn't already been by the gunfire. An inverted Immelman turn brought him down to street level where his path lined up up on the front side of the cars where there attackers not being shot at by End were taking cover. Blitz drew a handful of darts out with one hand, giving them enough of a nudge to barely deviate their path from his, enough to direct each into the engine blocks of each car before the smuggler pulled back up into the sky.

The steel projectiles struck through whatever the cars were armored with and utterly destroyed their engines. Lethal fragments caused by the impact were carried into whomever might have been taking cover on the other side.

[Asuras]

Slowly, as the retreating Wireforts had disappeared behind the cover of their brick front gate, fire was shifted from them to the remaining targets; that of End's party bus, End herself, and the darting Blitz. The fire power from the left side was heavily dampened as Warthog's suppressing volley forced enemy combatants to run for cover or spontaneously explode over the streets. Together with Advent's bioweapons, Warthog, Blitz, End, and Runner's firepower, the forces on the street had been cut down severely within mere minutes. A dozen or so remained as Echo pulled up from behind on the left side, squaring him up against the 6 or so hiding behind the trucks that protected them from Warthog.

On the right side, as each armored vehicle had been rendered inert by Blitz's pinpoint eradication of their engines, the remaining fighters turned and ran, well aware of the clearly turned tides. All that was left, then, were the six sandwiched between Echo and Warthog. Gunfire subsided for a moment as vision between the parties was lost. The final crack of a bullet exiting Warthog's weapon rang out alone in the crisp cold air.

Silence was interrupted by a loudspeaker booming across the city block.

"Citizens. Lay down your weapons or face immediate execution." The message was simple, direct, and stern. To Echo's left, and perhaps within sight of End from her vantage point, a big rig lurched to a halt on the street. Where sonar had revealed only the size and shape of the vehicle to Echo, seeing it in person revealed far more.

A yellow and black symbol across the side of the big rig revealed its origin; a Policus vehicle. The armor too revealed that the big rig was beyond their firepower. The thickness of even the tires looked as if they were built to withstand salvos from main battle tanks. Despite the warning, the vehicle seemed uninterested in actually granting mercy. Like claws, the body of the rig's cargo split aside to form virtual ramps onto the street below. Contained inside were a uniform line of machines that promptly shuddered into life. Four-legged robots with long, slender rifles situated atop stirred and began to file down onto the streets. Though they were only 6 in number, their formidably was made immediately aware to Echo.

With little more warning than a quick swivel of the turret and millisecond pause, one of the robots fired a shell at Echo and pelted his helmet dead-on. Their accuracy was, for all tends and purposes, perfectly accurate. The armor forming his helmet instantly shattered to reveal a portion of his face, though he was left unharmed. Where the bullet wasn't powerful enough to penetrate his armor, the rifle of the robot was of the smaller variety; two of the six featured far larger weapons, clearly meant to penetrate armor.

[Vega7285]

Diva stopped singing the moment the announcement boomed throughout the area. "Ah...shit," the young girl hissed out the swear quite emphatically, to anyone inside the vehicle. Just about anyone would know what that meant. It was...ok, it was only probably Policus, she couldn't see anything that would confirm it. But either way, it was NOT a good sign. The only sorts who'd make that sort of announcement were he ones who rolled in able to back it up and that was not good. This would, in point of fact, be the ersatz idol's first encounter, however indirect, with a Policus urban suppression team.

"Are we...gonna cooperate," she asked, sounding less than hopeful. She was, unlike most of the Cleaners, more of a law-abiding citizen than not. She didn't come from some dark past as a Painstaker, or otherwise do anything to already run afoul of the law, but that didn't make her want to start, either. Nobody would hire an idol with a criminal record, unless they could make that into her entire gimmick.

"Or, are we just gonna run?" She didn't advocate a direct fight, at least. Was there even a reason to stick around, though? Maybe they wouldn't give chase if there was no actual battle left to stop. "I can cover our retreat, if you need me to. Or...something. Still, uh, getting used to this part of the job."

[ERode]

As Echo’s voice echoed within her earpiece, End put a final bullet into the unknown assailants that were entangled by Advent’s freaks of nature, before turning her eyes towards the surrounding streets. She was on the highest building at this point, and though she would have preferred to at least have a scope, it wasn’t too difficult to pick out the large vehicle blazing through the streets.

And, it was for that reason that End was the first to curse. Policus warbots, huh? Though she could rest assured that these things weren’t reinforcements backing up the ragtag gunmen the Cleaners just decimated, their presence meant that the fight was over. She counted her bullets, considered switching to armor piercing rounds, before shaking her head.

AP bullets were more expensive than normal ones, and she couldn’t generate those types of bullets with her reassembly spell. She wasn’t going to waste it on things that didn’t die even with a full clip inside them. The Punisher EMT was holstered, before End walked away from the edge of the roof. She may be faster than a normal grunt with her Valkyrie Suit, and she could practically tear them apart with her Disassembly…but against their perfect aim, she wasn’t going to risk it.

“I’m pulling out. Blitz, this is a good chance for you to snatch whichever goon’s still alive and scram. Runner, I’m collecting your life insurance if you don’t make it out with my van in one piece. Diva, cover for Warthog. His own van isn’t going to survive the Policus’s arsenal.”

End paused for a moment, before letting out a deep breath.

“Let’s meet at the Rash’s base. Good luck.”

With that, she walked off the edge of the building, a burst of jet-flame sending her airborne, away from the Policus vehicle.

[TheFake]

— Wirefort Manor => and upwards —

"I'm inclined to agree."

It only took him a second to loop back and grab one of the fleeing attackers. A burst of acceleration and a sharp turning climb was enough to force the man to pass out while Blitz's suit kept him conscious.

He would have been confident in his ability to take one a single one of these murder robots, even one of the larger ones but four was too many. They weren't here to fight anyway and the information he could get from this one individual could make or break this whole case.

Once he was clear of the megafoundation that loomed over the Wirefort estate Blitz climbed sharply, zig zagging sharply to both throw off the aim of anything that might still be tracking him and to continue to keep his captive unconscious. He continued rising until the vehicles below were mere specs and not even the traffic below could be heard.

And then he waited for his unfortunate guest to wake up, holding him upside down by the foot.

[Psyker Landshark]

Shit. Policus was here. That limited their options immensely. Even if they were to waste time and effort fighting enforcement bots, destroying them would only bring the wrath of a heavy-response team down the Cleaners' heads. And a more magical option might have Policus leave it to the Prohibitum Agent's jurisdiction, which was an even worse death sentence for himself and certain other members of the team.

End had the right idea, and Runner immediately whirled the van around, starting to hightail it out of the combat zone.

"Roger that, End." He keyed his comm. "Don't worry, I've driven worse clunkers than this in firefights and came out in one piece." With that said, he glanced back and up to the roof for a moment, gesturing for Arsenal to get back down before her presence drew attention from any pursuers.

[DracoLunaris]

It appears they were running. This was probably a good idea, it had been Advents solution when she was info running the necronomicon. Still it would be a shame to come here and not get any information out of the Wirefort gangers.

Sabrina pulled out a pen and paper and rapidly scribbled down a throwaway email address and the words “we want to trade information about the massacre of the Himuras“ on it, before throwing the scrunched up paper out the window at one of the Wirefort mooks and shouting.

“give this to your boss. good luck with the cops.”

Now all she could do was sit and wait and see if their escape plan went well.

---

Down the street and round the corner from the killbots the 3 seed launching dogs returned and, making sure they weren't in line of sight of the hyper accurate rifles on the robots, fired 2 barrages of pods at the 3 cars blocking the road. These 6 pods joined the existing 3 and quickly made the cars into a makeshift barricade, their dense and entangled foliage blocking off most of the road, hopefully slowing down the robots or at least stopping them from getting a clear shot at the armored van as they made their getaway.

The 3 then made their way back to the sewers the way they came and made off after their creator, once again following here below street level as best they were able.

[Vega7285]

"Cover...uh, got it." It was something she could do, although indirectly. Everyone would know where the van was, but actually being able to easily spot and hit it would be another matter. Apparently, nobody at that fancy Thremont school had bothered to tell her that visual concealment spells should be subtle, or involve mist or darkness.

She started singing again, renewing PRISM_RIOT, this time with a new target. Instead of centering on her, she now anchored the effect to Warthog's van. Otherwise, it was identical to before. A real, pretty light show with no real rhyme or reason, beyond to be visually dazzling and make it difficult to keep track of anything in the area due to shifting light and shadow. I really hope those things don't track with means outside of vision, Diva thought.

[Click This]

Arsenal let fly another string of expletives as the situation escalated at the overbearing sound of the loudspeaker announcement. With the presence of Policus, it made the battlefield all the more complicated. As much as she wanted to test her weapons against the truck and its robotic enforcers, the blue-haired girl agreed with her peers that it was far better to run at this point than to engage. Listening to the communications between the others from her earpiece, she kept the heavy machine gun mounted on standby as her eyes tracked for the robotic drones.

“Runner, hold on, but pick up the pace. I’m going to lay us some smoke – lots of it.”

Refocusing her attention down the street, a trigger appeared in her hand as the long, metallic muzzle of a 155mm howitzer barrel appeared through a portal position just aft of End’s vehicle. Merely using dead reckoning, she aimed the gun a block down, a position equidistant between them and the Policus bots.

The loud crack of a white phosphorus shell leaving its barrel led Rui-Hai to draw back under the turret as she pulled the trigger. Hitting its mark in the middle of the street, the white particles immediately began to fan out into the open space, leaving their trail invisible to the human eye, and hopefully to the sensors of the robots as well. Not wanting to get hit or taste some of her own medicine, she climbed down from the turret, closing the hatch tight as she did so.

“That better fucking work. Those things don’t come cheap.”

Shit, she was sounding like End now.

[Zombehs]

“Fuck,” Echo hissed as he snapped his head back around the corner. God fucking damn it that was going to cost a pretty penny to fix up. Of course the killbots took aim and started firing, the warning had already been given after all. What the fuck had he expected them to do? Dance the fucking macarena for them?

Noticeably annoyed if the partially revealed scowl was anything to go by, Echo hurried over and hopped onto his bike. He kicked it into reverse and spun the bike around before pausing for a moment to concentrate. The bots were probably fairly well shielded, but it didn’t hurt to try and disable them, however momentarily. Gritting his teeth, he twisted reality above the killbots’ position and slammed a powerful pulse of EM radiation into them from above. A bead of sweat fell through his broken helmet as another pulse manifested and crashed against the killbots, hopefully slipping through the minutest of cracks and frying something important.

With a few strained breaths, he gunned the engine and raced down the street. He didn’t know if his efforts had actually paid off, but if they hadn’t then he wasn’t sticking around to find out. Now then… how the hell did he get to the Rash’s from here?

[Asuras]

The disengage went almost flawlessly, if a single death were the difference between almost and perfect. Piloting End's car towards the opposite end of the street, Runner weaved between two of the attacking force's parked and burning vehicles. The single way forward was, evidently, just the path that one of the robots had predicted; as if waiting the vehicle to be sandwiched between, it fired a round straight into the back of the truck and penetrated its armor. At the very least it wasn't one of the tank-busting rounds from a larger robot, but it did do more than bore a hole into the vehicle.

The fragmented projectile bounced off of a wall inside the cabin and embedded itself straight into Zer0's chest.

The girl was immediately rendered unconscious as blood swept across onto Diva's lap, body slumping over. A second shot rang out just as the car turned around a corner, and Runner could see in the side-view mirror as an explosion jetted off of the side of a building that would have otherwise been End's car.

Besides Zer0, the team was unharmed as the party bus, Echo, End, and Blitz split off from the scene, leaving the Wirefort's to their fate. Echo's EMP temporarily put the smaller robots out of commission, some longer than others, but did not last. Alternative systems found their way into working condition to get them up and running again, eventually bringing them to the biological barrier Doc had raised. Even then, they were delayed little more than a second as powerful legs launched them a dozen feet over the cars and in front of the manor entrance. In the distance, gunshots could be heard, along with the occasional explosion.

A few minutes into their drive, the team received a phone call from Cash, unaware of their recent failure to contact the Wireforts proper.

"How's it faring guys?" he asked, but did not wait for a reply, "News, news. The Rash's apparently just got hit too. Same method, reported by the Prohibitum. I've got someone at the scene right now, and he says it was on one of their warehouses. Not as many people dead, but still a considerable amount. Did you get any information?"

[ERode]

“Fuck you, Runner,” End snapped back, “My van is be-”

A crack and a pop suddenly sounded through the communications line, and the woman’s red-ringed eyes narrowed. That was a bullet, wasn’t it? Runner decided not to use his chronomancy to protect her van from getting shot up, right? He REALLY wanted to pay for all the damage, huh? End bit back her reply and focused on her retreat, bringing out her Heinbox from her pocket once more. A holographic display revealed a map of the area, and soon after, End landed in an alleyway, before walking out and merging into a pedestrian street.

Beggars and hookers were abound, and being on foot would delay her more than she would have liked, but even though her Valkyrie Suit mainly ran off electricity using a rechargeable battery, she still had to pay for fuel. No point in wasting it, especially when it turned out that the Rashes were attacked by random assailants as well. Irritation formed on End’s expression as she holstered the Punisher EMT.

“No luck here. Didn’t even get to chat with the Wireforts before goons and Policus cracked down. Blitz, give me good news.”