[IC] Q - FLUX

[Vega7285]

As far as Diva was concerned, the retreat was going just fine, until the impact of a bullet sent more horrible reverberations in the cabin of the van. And the next few instants were sheer terror, as Zer0's chest bloomed into a spray of red, and the girl fell into her lap. She was already screaming in panic, to the point that warm wetness beginning to soak her lap almost didn't register. It was her first encounter with the truly ugly side of this sort of clandestine work, and not something she was in the least mentally prepared for, so the panic was perhaps quite understandable.

Any magical tricks she could otherwise maintain were quite forgotten. "Ohgod, ohgod..." It took quite a bit of effort to stop herself from freezing or choking up, but after a few deep breaths, Honoka had managed to at least get herself under some semblance of control. "We've got someone hurt back here." She tentatively tried to at least roll Zer0 over, before looking near-helplessly at Advent. "You're a doctor, right?"

She'd probably be game to try and help, but it was all she could do not to start shaking or worse. Certainly, she was in no condition to report in beyond to announce someone was hurt. And probably start panicking again soon after, spouting too much information about getting covered in someone else's blood.

[Psyker Landshark]

"God DAMN it!" Runner bellowed as the impact shook the van. "End's going to be on my ass for months now! Everyone in the back alr-" He glanced back to check on the passengers before pausing as he took in the hole in Zero0's chest. Shit. This wasn't good.

"Diva." His voice fell steady, trying to take command of the situation and calm the hyperventilating girl down while keeping his eyes on the road. "Breathe. In and out. Advent, can you stabilize her? I'll call it in."

"Runner here. Bad news, Zer0's down. Armor penetrating round to the chest. Advent's attempting to stabilize, but she needs immediate medical attention. Cash, can you call in a medevac?"

[DracoLunaris]

“Oh fuck!”

The armor piercing round had completely ignored the van’s armor and embedded itself inside Zer0’s chest after much ricocheting. Sabrina unbuckled herself and moved over to the panicking Diva, pulling the medical case after her. She knelled down in-front of the wounded girl looked up at Diva.

“hold her steady and I can save her. Just try to remain calm.”

Sabrina then proceeded to draw a ring in front of Zer0, and as it had done before a column of light extended forwards into the woman's chest. The coulomb then expanded, hiding most of the girls upper body in a golden glow. She first had to remove the large slug that was embedded in her, reaching a gloved hand into the column and extracting the bloody chunk of metal, following this she removed the cloth from around the wound and began to use the same technique she had used on the boy from yesterday to try and save a life.

“Stay with me Zer0, you're going to live I promise, so don’t give up”

While the slug had stayed mostly in one piece unlike the bullet from yesterday it had made a considerably greater mess of her body and Advent would have to actively replace a lot of her insides rather than just sealing the wounds. She focused, remembering how to mold and grow human cells like she had done to herself so many times. Zer0’s insides began to grow back together as Advent used her magic and the stem cells form the case to massively accelerate the rate of natural healing. It was fortunate that the whole had neither reached her spine or hit her heart. The holes punched in both her lung and trachea was sealed with new growth, split blood and broken bone were recycled and made into their replacements, flesh was regrown and skin would be knit back together. Eventually, so long as Zer0 maintained the will to live and there were no more complications, she would be able to put her back together, but the process was a long one. It would also be an incredibly draining process, mentally for her and physically for Zer0.

“Runner, try and keep us level or even better just stop somewhere, I need her to stay still as fix her!”

Unfortunately odds were there would be Policus, or worse mages, after them which would be incredibly bad for the prospects of Zer0's survival, being knocked about in a car chase would severely hamper her work.

[TheFake]

— Way up there —

Blitz held his guest at a distance, letting him dangle and flail for a moment until reality set in. It took slightly longer than expected. After letting the fellow hang in the wind for a moment he spoke.

"Done? Okay. Start talking or I drop you. None of this playing stupid nonsense."

His radio was off for the entirety of this.

[OwO]

With End's armoured van fleeing and Policus surrounding the area, Warthog decided it was a good idea to escape. Especially after seeing the anti-armour round penetrate the van. He wondered if everything was fine in there. Rather quickly, he needed to escape. He wouldn't want to try his chances against that gun. Who knew if his armour could hold against whatever ammo the main robot used?

He began to walk backwards, still providing covering fire, but he prepared to dash into an alleyway to try to escape the large truck.

[Asuras]

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line as Cash listened intently to their gripes and yelling. Another moment of silence as he, presumably, gathered his thoughts on the situation. As Advent did her best to mend the ugly wound, Cash began to speak in an unfettered manner. A single sigh betrayed the coolness of his tone, however.

"I'll call one in. Let me know where you can stop for a heli," he said. There was the sound of a snapping finger on the other side of the phone as Cash beckoned for a servant to do something. He continued, "Goons? Of who? Other mobsters? How fast did the Policus arrive? Before or after the goons?" As he continued with the questioning, Advent's work seemed to be stabilizing the still unconscious Zer0, though Diva's mental stability likely needed work of its own. As the team answered Cash, he took a moment to consider the meaning before giving an opinion on the situation.

"If anything, I'd hazard a guess those were Rash mobsters that attacked as revenge, which means either someone else did this, or the Wirefort's really are the culprits. I'm willing to bet it's the former. But then the question is who and why." Cash hummed briefly over the line.

"I'm going to direct you guys to the people who got me the information on the nightmare initially. Talk to them and see if they can't dredge up some more information on how the spell disappeared. I'm sending you a text with an address." In a few seconds, their phones buzzed as an address appeared. From the numbering, they could tell their destination was obviously quite low in the city, deep down near the earthly foundation of it all. Slums awaited them where vehicles could no longer tread.

Meanwhile, Blitz's captive took little time to size up his situation, eventually stopping his flailing and resigning to limpness. "Fuck you man," he grumbled initially before speaking. "This is for those damn Wireforts and whatever the hell that spell is. Going around killing off our brotherhoods like this...! It's genocidal!" he yelled.

[TheFake]

— Way up there —

Blitz sighed, looked the man in the eye and opened his mouth as if he were going to say something.

Then he let go.

"Woops"

For a second he briefly considered letting the fall end in a typically messy fashion. But Blitz had more questions. This fellow had to be a Himura then and someone had led them to believe that the Wireforts were behind the attack. Maybe the intent was to start a war. It only took another second to catch up and catch his prisoner so that the interview could continue.

"So who told you that the Wireforts were involved?"

The moment gravity took hold of him, the man cried out with a blurred mess of slurs and screams, abruptly ending with a, "Shit!" just as his leg was grabbed hold of again.

"What the fuck man! I'm not fucking hiding anything from you! The Himura's were hit and then we were hit! Only the Wireforts have that set of grudges!"

He shook the man a little. So someone other than the Himuras was hit.

"Interesting, but if they have that sort of capability, why hold back at all? And they only had a skeleton crew at best on the gate, not what you'd see if they were gearing up for a war. It's just bad luck for you that we happened to be paying them a visit."

"The fuck are you guys anyways? You're not Wireforts, that's for sure," he said, tone still riddled with anxiety.

"That's right, we're not." He didn't exactly want to say enough to lead back to Cafe Thaza and the Cleaners. "But we want to find whoever hit you guys as much as anyone."

Maybe trying to appear to be on their side would help. If only they hadn't killed a bunch of his friends…

"Why were you at the Wirefort's then? We could've taken them down ourselves! We deserve our revenge!"

"Trying to get a meeting with their boss to actually ask him instead of just attacking. You know, diplomacy."

He thought for a second.

"And I doubt you would have gotten past the front door. Did you see how fast those Policus drones showed up? You would have been put down like dogs in the street and the Wireforts would have been the ones getting revenge against you. Now think. Who would benefit from a war between your three groups?"

The man was clearly following Blitz's line of thinking, because he fell silent for a moment rather than dismissing what he was throwing down.

"That... makes sense. But the Policus don't resort to shit like this!"

"Think. Who else would want the Wireforts, Himuras and your guys at each others throats. Because it looks like the Policus might just be another pawn like you."

Except for someone like Blitz, of course. Conflict always meant big profit to the ones selling the tools of war. He hadn't entirely written off any of the three groups as a suspect either. If someone would resort to this level of violence he wouldn't count out the idea that they would kill off some of their own.

"I don't know anyone else man! The bigger brotherhoods don't give a shit about us, so there's only Policus that could benefit from us being wiped out. But like I said, this isn't how they operate!" Clearly the man was beginning to lose his patience again, as he started struggling once more. "Now settle me down safely. This shit is all I know!"

This guy didn't seem to know anything else. Blitz flew him down to a building and then took off again before turning his radio back on.

[ERode]

Rash mobsters attacking as revenge? While the Wireforts may have been the real culprits? No, perhaps that wasn’t correct. Just because they, on an organizational basis, had reason to hate each other and send otherworldly nightmares, that didn’t mean they hadn’t accumulated grudges from others on an individual basis.

It simply would have been a clean answer if it were a large organization. End sighed. Still silence from Blitz. That flamboyant idiot didn’t do something stupid and get himself killed by that random thug he picked up, did he? End scowled as her Heinbox beeped once more. The slums huh? Looked to be an entire day wasted on trips down the memory lane.

With a shrug, she began the Iron Revolution once more, bits of metal disintegrating around her and forming into new bullets to slot into her handgun. It would be a pain to go there with nothing but six bullets in the chamber, and the slums was one place that she did not want to be caught bulletless in.

For better or worse, reaching the sunless landfill of Neo Babylon took only a half hour’s walk, and within the perpetual gloom of the dank streets, Josephine couldn’t help but wish she had a gas mask with her. Too many years spent in a comfy, odor-free apartment suite meant that the stench of blood and shit was particularly pungent, but, if nothing else, there were few down-trodden losers occupying the streets. If she wasn’t making sure to stare down every single one of those desperate plebians, Josephine could have actually ignored them.

But she used to be the ignored in here, and knew just how great that advantage gave.

Soon, the raven-haired woman found herself at a heavily bolt door to a tin shed. The others may have been heading towards Cash’s informants, but End had her own. With her left hand, she thumped thrice on the door.

“Jamieson? It’s your cousin.”

[Psyker Landshark]

A few minutes later, the van was clear of any pursuit thanks to a few well-placed time dilation fields placed to slow any pursuers. Runner stopped the van by an empty lot, letting go of the wheel to walk back and check on Zer0's condition.

"She's stable? I'll call for the medevac then?" He murmured, pulling a disposable phone out and dialing Cash's number.

"Cash? It's Runner. We're stopped in that empty construction lot on the corner of 34th and 8th. If you've got the medevac ready to go, this'd be a good time to send it in." He said before ending the call and checking what he'd been sent.

"Right, once Zer0's been moved, we'll head as close to the slums as we can on vehicle before proceeding on foot."

[DracoLunaris]

“She’ll live but she’s going to be out of it for a while I think. You did well Diva, thank you for your help.”

Sabrina moved her arms under the wounded Zer0 and lifted her off of Diva before stepping outside, watching the helli that was coming down to fetch the poor girl, her hair and blood stained coat flapping in the downdraft it was creating. A rope was lowered and a man in what looked more like an army medic than a doctor rappelled down it. He was followed shortly after by a stretcher that was lowered after him.

“This the patient?”

The man asked in a gruff tone as he approached, looking about him for any threats with the discipline of a professional soldier or mercenary.

“Yes, I've managed to stabilize her. She was shot by a railgun when we were attacked by”

“I don’t need or want to know why she was shot. I am paid to not ask questions. We will take her from here”

Sabrina agreed that was probably for the best and stepped forward towards the stretcher. Together the two of them straped her down, after which the man and Zer0 where both hoisted up to the chopper. Through the seeker that was currently high enough to see inside the heli while it kept an eye out for persuades she could see several more traditionally dressed medics secure Zer0, look over the wounds and inject her with morphine for the immense pain she was in. After that the heli took off into the sky, heading to a medical facility of some kind. Hopefully Cash was paying for the best, but she worried about what kinds of people they had just handed the kid off to. She hoped Zer0 would live.

Sabrina reentered the van, closed her medical case and sat down in her seat once more. The bloody slug was still sitting on the floor where she had placed it.

“So. where too next Runner? Did cash have any other leads?”

[Vega7285]

Diva nodded. "I'm, uh, going to step out for a bit..." She didn't look too good, as she staggered out of the van and away from prying eyes. The sounds of vomiting could be heard from her hiding place, and she returned a few moments later, looking even more ashen. "Ah...sorry. I'm doing better now." She climbed back into the van.

She started stripping off her bloodied clothes, not caring about anyone else in the van. She re-dressed in her "usual" stage outfit after pulling it out of a gym bag she'd stashed under her seat. Nice, clean clothes free of blood, at least. It did have an overall calming effect for her. She took a few more deep breaths. "Ok, that's better." She pauses. "More or less."

She looked a little nervous about the slums. "Go to the slums, huh? I...try to stay out of those parts of town." She was too much of a good girl to actually frequent the nastier areas in the city. There was a whole entire world in Neo Babylon that Honoka remained quite intentionally unaware of. A young lady wandering around without several well-armed chaperones probably wouldn't last very long, especially in such an outfit. As it was, she'd do well enough. Because she had those armed chaperones, and was armed (if not well) herself. She checked her taser, just to be careful.

[Zombehs]

Fuck. The slums? Of all the times his helmet had to be ruined… His shades glinted with every light he raced past and hair blew wildly without a helmet to keep it in place. A few mutters had his phone send out another mass text as he tried to figure out what route the the van might have taken. “Where’s the van? Need to stash my bike.” Thankfully one of them got back to him before he spent too long driving in circles, even if he had to kick the bike into a u-turn to head the right way.

Even a few layers above the slums, it was easy to notice the shift as he drove lower and lower. The faint stench in the air, the worsening road conditions, and just a general lack of maintenance. He rolled up to the parked van without much fanfare, at least compared to the medical heli that took off just moments before he arrived. A quick glance at the members that remained helped him narrow down who could have possibly needed an evac. “Shit. Guess that was Zer0?”

He ran a gloved hand through his hair as he turned off the bike, and unclipped his phone from it with a sigh. “Any of you know if Blitz and End are off doing their own thing?”