[rednblack]

Ace sees Sam emerge from his left, and fire a quick burst which drops the troll down by the Hotspur.  Thank Ghost, he thinks, before the GMC Bulldog drives past on his right.  Thinking their last chance for a ride is making off, Ace abandons cover, and pumps his jacks along the undercarriage of the RV, training his Lancer on where the back of the driver's head should be when he clears the open door.  The Bulldog comes to a stop, and when Ace can finally pull off his shot, he's face-to-face with an assault rifle, an Alpha if Ace had to hazard a guess, and it makes off with a quick burst.  He momentarily slows, swivels his rifle to the gunman, and misses.  For a moment, Ace doesn't know if he's hit himself, but the picture inside the Bulldog takes additional form; a troll is readying a shotgun, and the ork is running away from the passenger seat.  This is not good.

Ace curses himself for acting so hastily, and begins to retreat, readying another PowerCell pack.

[Malevolence]

Ohanzee relaxes as the final spirit dissipates. The inside of the RV has a moment's respite and Ohanzee takes stock of his situation.


The seatbelt is stuck. The jarring force from the RV overturning caused too much strain on the latching mechanism and it twisted into non-functionality, trapping the tongue in the latch. And me without a knife. He could shoot the mechanism, but the shot would be obnoxiously loud in the confines of the RV. And the APDS round would likely melt the the think into slag and still keep on going. And he had so few.


Katsina had a blade that would easily slice through the harness, though as large as it was, that thought gave him pause. She looked skilled enough in its use, but considering what she had just done to Sam, that might not necessarily be a good thing. Her aura had shown guilt over the act, but that could be interpreted in a number of ways - perhaps it was simply guilt of being caught.


Chino also didn't have a blade, but Ohanzee suspected that that might not present a problem for the ork. He seemed to be looking his way, probably counting on Ohanzee to heal him. Surely he would notice Ohanzee's plight, but it was only polite to ask. Ohanzee opens his mouth to speak when he realizes what Wolf is about to do. We need that car! he practically shouts through the link that is ever-present between the shaman and the spirit.


---------


Outside, Wolf growled in annoyance at Ohanzee's message. He was honor bound to protect the group, and while the short term needs were really all he would normally concern himself with, sacrificing their long-term survival for a short term gain would not reflect well on a master hunter like Wolf. He briefly considered sneaking up on the enemy mage and ending him like he did the other one - his ability to harm him using Astral energies was a complication he could not ignore - but the mechanical man seemed to be drawing a considerable amount of attention from the other enemies, most specifically the large one readying an attack as Wolf watched. Perhaps if he could buy the metal man some time, the ally his summoner had seen leave the RV, the glamoured one, would arrive and help vanquish the enemy.


Your weapons are but toys to me, feeble one. There will be no victory for you today, only the rending of your flesh from your bones. The words carried an ancient and terrible weight, and found their mark deep within the most primitive corners of the troll's mind. He all but dropped his weapon in panic, and the large metal box on wheels shifted and rose as he exited it in haste, following after the ork. Wolf watched after him briefly, enjoying the sight of his enemy fleeing before him, and then he turned his eyes to the mage and noted with cold calculation that the mage was blind to the Astral realm.

[Poindexter]

Instinct is telling him that ace probably went the other way around the wreckage to maintain line of fire on the GMC. If he's still alive, he'll need help to stop it. Sam's plan had been to reach the corner of the opposite side, then spin around using it as cover and splatter the drivers brains all over the dashboard with one well placed shot. However, as he neared the corner, he could hear panicked footsteps and heavy breathing from around it. You know this isn't- Pausing momentarily to let whoever it is cross the threshold first, he tries to keep one eye on the troll behind him. What's that mage doing back there, anyway? A split second later, a tall muscular form charges past and off into the open, a brief expression of primal terror etched on his face for the split second Sam can see it. It's the ork from earlier. He's fleeing from something. Ace maybe? No matter.

Barely taking the time to think about the action on a conscious level, he raises the rifle to his shoulder on muscle memory alone and quickly fires off a quick three round burst, striking the ork in the rear center mass with all three. Once again, the highly illegal armor piercing rounds do their job well. With a pained grunt, and a quick spray of blood and torn ballistic fabric, the ork goes down hard, face first in the snow. Sam glances back to his left again to see the tires of the GMC begin to spin briefly, hoping to gain purchase on the snowy road for a quick escape.

No!

<<@Team [Uncle Sam] Divert all attention to the Bulldog.>>

[Zweiblumen]

Still immersed in the relative calm in the Matrix compared to the chaos of the meat world, Doc and his agent notice the GMC start to pull away.  In two deft moves Doc inscribes his caduceus onto the icon, and in a flash the agent moves in to take control.  First, it powers off the motor causing the vehicle to stop accelerating and drift foward.  Doc is sure that if the agent had been programed with any kind of personality it would be cackling now!  It next goes to work on mashing the breaks and lowering all of the windows.  Meanwhile, Doc starts to look around to see if he's gotten the attention of GOD yet.  He's sent up enough ripples that he's beginning to become a bit conerned.

[8-bit]

Relieved to not be on fire, Chino heaved a sigh of relief. He nodded in thanks to Katsina, who seemed to be ignoring him, engaged as she was in a battle of wills on the Astral Plane. He was about to turn away when a spirit suddenly materialized in front of her. It was looking straight at her, seemingly oblivious to him.

Reflexively acting, he drops the fire extinguisher and lunges forward with his fists. The ghostly claws sink into the spirit's body, tearing it into two halves. The shocked spirit dwindles to nothingness as Chino steps back, anticipating another searing burst of heat. He closes his eyes, dreading what is about to come next. A few seconds later, he warily opens his eyes. The spirit was gone, and no more pain for Chino. He smiles as he realizes that he's home free.

Katsina lifted herself up, drawing her claymore, looking around. She had a strange look on her face, and was staring at Ohanzee. Chino followed her gaze and noticed Ohanzee struggling to get out of his seatbelt. Katsina started moving forward, claymore raised. Alarmed, he steps in front of her, saying, "Wait!" He approaches Ohanzee, taking in his predicament. It quickly becomes obvious that there's no way to get him out without breaking it. Looking into Ohanzee's eyes, he says, "Just hold still a moment, I'm going to get you out of here."

Taking a deep breath, he aims for the locking mechanism. He swings his fist, connecting with the buckle. It shatters, and Ohanzee falls to the ground.

[Tecumseh]

Katsina tenses, ready to sprint forward to meet the ork samurai with a Claymore Clothesline^(TM) but is brought up short by a burst of fire from Sam's XM. Three well-placed armor-piercing rounds cut the ork down. Katsina relaxes slightly, relieved that there won't be a grenade bouncing into the RV.

She turns back to Ohanzee, watching as Chino smashes the buckle as easily as if were a dry, overbaked cookie. She sheathes her claymore to free up her hands, then grabs Ohanzee by his lapels, dragging him to his feet. She makes sure that he's steady before letting go.

She yells to be heard over the fusillade of suppressive fire outside. "Destroying the obelisk destroys the world!" she shouts, hoping to convince the people that have more non-magical sway over Sam than she does.

[rednblack]

The man with the assault rifle opens up again in full auto, and Ace drops to the icy pavement, feeling his wet clothes immediately stick to the ground.  His mind is racing and numb, but at least his hands are working, dropping the power cells out of his Lancer and popping a new mag in place, Ace rolls to his back, fires an errant shot at the elf nearing the Tata, and crouches behind the GMC as it temporarily pulls away, and then stops again.  What the hell is going on over there?

Not knowing how much time he has, Ace stands, and begins to run toward the driver's side rear of the vehicle, mentally composing a message to Sam:

<<@Team [Ace] Sam, some suppressive fire?>>

[Zweiblumen]

Just as Doc goes to check how much attention he's drawn from GOD, he finds the answer.  The image of a giant hand literally smacks Doc silly.  In the real world, there is a sizling and popping sounds from under his coat, and smoke starts to escape from his cuff and collar.  As GOD ejects him forcefully from the Matrix he holds his sense of self together with sheer force of will.  With a doozy of a headache Doc regains consiousness with a gasp and a gurgle.  Already disoriented from the sudden sensory shift he is further confused to find himself on the back of the dinette with the RV on its side.  And then the fact that there is water spraying from the faucet above and parts still on fire he's even more taken aback.  Seeing Katsina sheething her sword and helping Ohanzee to his feet, they look like things have settled down in the immediate area.  Chino literally looks like a crispy critter and could probably use some immediate attention from the medic.  Doc almost jumps out of his skin at hearing the automatic gun fire outside realizing that things are not as settled as he first thought they were.  His gaze focuses and he turns his attention back to Chino.

[Malevolence]

Wolf focuses his attention to the troll mage, who has now moved to the smaller vehicle. The larger vehicle had caused him some consternation when it began moving - he was pleased at the short term tactical advantage, but it had been made clear that the vehicle had a longer term strategic function - but it then stopped of its own accord. This had the added advantage of silencing the projectile weapon one of the occupants had been using against Wolf's two "allies". For now, that part of the battle seemed capable of waiting for his attentions - those he was tasked to protect seemed capable of handling the situation there.


The mage was focused entirely on the physical world he occupied, and Wolf realized that with the prey blind to the Astral it provided a perfect opportunity to approach unseen. Wolf dissipated his physical form, though the trauma inflicted on it still caused his essence to roil and fray. In the Astral, he moved in a blink near the form of the mage, and then focused on reforming his physical presence as discreetly as possible.


----------


In the RV, Ohanzee could hardly react to the events going on around him. As he'd hoped, Chino had freed him from the uncooperative safety belt, but unexpectedly Katsina had helped him up, though he'd cringed away from her hand, fearing her intent. But she was fast, and his effort had failed, and he now found himself standing, and a little bewildered.


"Destroying the obelisk destroys the world!" What kind of drek was that? Ohanzee was familiar with magical artifacts, and knew that they contained vast amounts of magical energy that if released all at once could create magical disruptions kilometers in effect, if not in size. But the world? That sounded almost cultish in its scale. Perhaps it was meant for the people that had attacked them, but if so, how did she know that they were some cult and not a kill squad sent by the younger Nately? And even if she was correct in all that, how could they have such trouble getting information about a powerful magical artifact that also happened to be a religious icon of some sort? Ohanzee was certain that Katsina knew more than she was letting on, and resolved to find out what she knew. As soon as the immediate danger was past.


Ohanzee was keenly aware of how many life threatening gaps in knowledge related to Katsina he was putting on the back burner, and the little voice that was responsible for keeping him alive was all but shouting at him to rearrange his priorities, but before he could come up with a decision on whether to ignore it or not, Doc sputtered back to consciousness and sat bolt upright (no mean feat considering the awkward sprawl his body had been in), wide bloodshot eyes staring into nothingness for a brief moment before his brain fully engaged with his meat body. Ohanzee had seen that look before and was vaguely familiar with the term the denizens of the Matrix had for it - Dumpshock. It never heralded anything good, and the smoking and sparking coming from the compartment in Doc's arm where he kept his deck only confirmed Ohanzee's fears. The fact that his commlink was pushing an ARO into Ohanzee's view indicating that it's network configuration had changed due to a missing master device was redundant. We are hooped with a capital 'H'.

[Malevolence]

>>@Team [Ace] Sam, some suppressive fire?


Ohanzee saw that Doc was okay - okay enough to function, anyway - and that with him back he could start applying some first aid. While Ohanzee couldn't pinpoint where he knew it from, he did know that he would have to wait until Doc was done applying his mundane medicine before Ohanzee could apply his magic if they wanted to maximize the benefit. That left Ohanzee with a little time to help keep the Bulldog from escaping before he was better utilized off the battlefield. And the best way to do that would be to clear the occupants out of the vehicle. If only I had a grenade - not that I could throw it right if I did. And besides, he couldn't have the grenade go off because they needed that car to be in operating condition. But the enemy didn't know that.


So Ohanzee decided to make his own grenade. With an effort of will he brought the grenade into existence, then a person to deliver it. Oddly enough, the first person he could think of was APB, the elf woman they had lost so soon after waking. Bringing her back into the fight seemed a fitting way to honor her memory. The elf crouched low and hurried forward, Ohanzee trailing slowly behind. The spell's energies had not been channeled as gracefully as he would have liked and his focus had taken a bit of a beating.


Once he had moved to the front of the RV and found a point where he could view the Bulldog well enough, the elf stopped, stood upright, and lobbed the grenade toward the Bulldog. The device sailed in a beautiful arc, landing with a loud clink! on the floor inside the open side door of the van. The momentum of the throw carried the grenade into the far wall where it clanked again and bounced back, careening toward the front of the van, angling sharply off the roof with another loud thump before hitting the dashboard where the windshield met it, and rolling to rest in the corner farthest from the driver.


Ohanzee smiled a little through the pain he was in. There was no way any of the occupants of the van could have missed the show. He debated having it beep a countdown like the bombs in the Trids do, getting faster and faster leading up to the explosion, but decided against it. He'd seen enough real grenades (where? when?) to know that that was not the reality. He kept watch on the grenade. If that failed to have the proper effect, he could always turn it into a gas grenade and fill the interior with a lethal looking fog.

>> @Team [Ohanzee] Grenade in Bulldog is illusory

------


At the Tata, Wolf was nearly in position behind the mage, watching the prone form struggle to stand. This will be an easy kill, he thought, licking his chops. Then the struggling mage slipped and fell, striking his head against the smaller motorized wagon and the mage's aura shot through with a deep pain, brilliant in color to Wolf's senses. It took him a moment to realize that the brightly colored aura was not just a result of the strong emotion, but that the mage was actually astrally perceiving, opening himself to Wolf's attack without his needing to re-form his material body.


Welcome to dinner, Wolf growled happily, then sunk his teeth into the mage's astral form.

[Poindexter]

A few more heavy steps of enormous feet pounding into the snow bring Sam up even with the driver of the sputtering GMC. He hopes it's having troubles due to something Doc did before the Avalon had informed him he was offline and not due to anything mechanical. Either way, he's got no time to figure it out. With a quick mental command through the trodes in his goggles, he switches the XM30 over to single fire mode, raises the weapon to his shoulder, and in the breath of time before he pulls the trigger, he gets a message.

>>@Team [Ace] Sam, some suppressive fire?

He barely has time to think, Not enough time or ammo, before squeezing the trigger and putting a single armor piercing round directly in one side of the drivers neck and out the other side. It isn't quite a kill shot, but based on the fountain of blood he can see spraying the interior of the vehicle, he's certain it had enough of an effect to be satisfied with. He glances quickly through the mayhem around him, trying to assess any immediate threats. The gunfire is starting to die down a bit and he doesn't want to let his guard down too soon.

[Tecumseh]

Katsina turns away from Ohanzee and Chino, then springs toward the front of the RV as if she had been shot like an arrow. She easily sidesteps the seat Ohanzee had been trapped in, then leaps over the passenger seat and out the front windshield, hitting the ground running. She pivots at the front of the RV and races into the street, disregarding cover in favor of standing and taking account of the situation outside. Counting on her (admittedly weak) Combat Sense preparation to keep her alert for surprises, she spins her head right, then left, allowing herself a personal sigh of relief when she spies Ace alive and kicking.

<<@Team [Katsina] Ace, I have your back!>>

She watches with some amusement as Ohanzee's illusion throws a grenade straight through the Bulldog's blow-out window. The troll perched on the passenger side, who looked like he might have been ready to fire on Sam, drops his weapon and flails wildly for the grenade. The troll tries to leap over the passenger seat but there's not enough clearance between the headrest and the ceiling for such a massive metahuman. He stretches his long arms out desperately but can't get a handle on the threat. The driver, meanwhile, has bigger things to worry about. Namely, Sam has just put an armor-piercing round through his throat, leaving his gasping and clutching his neck.

Katsina whips around to see the elven woman open the Tata driver's side door and slip inside. The troll on the ground attempts to get up but, weak from lead poisoning, slips on the ice and dashes his head against the pavement. It shatters one of his horns and leaves him rolling on the ground. He grabs his head, inadvertantly going astral and finding Wolf leering above him. He sticks a hand out reflexively, mentally pushing back the invisible Wolf as the spirit snarls and snaps just inches from the troll's astral face. Katsina, having just suffered a kick in the astral teeth from a decidedly smaller spirit, does not envy the troll.

[rednblack]

After completely missing the elf with his Lancer, Ace curses himself.  Not only is this group good, but he's been remarkably bad.  He doesn't have the ammo to spare on misses, and there's a good chance none of it would've been necessary had things worked out differently with the Natelys.  Ohanzee's comm burns in his memory.

>> @Ace [Ohanzee] Maybe a little heads up first next time?

Maybe a little heads up, maybe a little better planning, maybe you just don't knock out a rich corper when she's on her phone with Junior, huh? 

>> @Ace [Ohanzee] Maybe a little heads up first next time?

Ace tries to clear his mind.  They're still in this, and he thinks they're all still alive.  He's approaching the rear of the GMC when a comm comes in from Katsina.

<<@Team [Katsina] Ace, I'll get the door!>>

Relieved to read that she's still up, Ace adjusts his pattern and approaches the GMC straight from the back.  Katsina is there in a flash, palming a dagger and opening the rear passenger side door as Ace kneels between the driver's.  The man with the assault rifle looks back, surprised, and tries to peel off out of Ace's view, but not fast enough.  Ace pulls the trigger once, and the man is knocked flat from the power of the blast.

[8-bit]

Chino turns around at the sound of sizzling and sparks. That sound is never good, and the, quite recent, memory of the spirit setting him on fire comes to his mind. He shudders as he pushes the thought away. Doc's arm seems to be producing smoke, his nose is bleeding, and his eyes are open. If he's here, that means something really bad just happened. Oh shit. As if we didn't have enough authorities chasing us, now the Matrix people have been alerted?

Chino shakes his head and sends out a quick message:

<@Team [Chino] Doc just woke up, and I think his deck is bricked. We're vulnerable on the Matrix again. I'm going wireless off.>

He quickly turns the wireless capabilities of his few devices to the off setting. He sees Doc is still a little disoriented from his experience, so he leans down and lifts him to his feet. At this rate, I might as well be a fragging nurse. The contact sends another streak of pain down his burnt arm, a sensation that Chino is getting pretty damn used to feeling.

He looks around for the medkit they had brought with them. It takes him a few moments, but he spots it on the floor, underneath the nearby seat. Hopefully he's still able to use this thing. He pulls it out and grabs the handle.

"Never mind what happened, are you able to stand on your own? Can you still work this thing?" he says, as he holds up the kit for Doc to see.

[Poindexter]

Keeping the rifle near his shoulder, Sam runs toward the passenger side of the GMC, noticing some sort of commotion inside as he nears it. As soon as he's near enough, he swings the door open with one hand to see another troll frantically searching around for something. Without taking the time to look for whatever it is, Sam puts another round into his back, causing another small splatter of red on the interior of the vehicle. The troll groans and attempts to retreat into the rear of the van, but he's already bleeding really bad. He doesn't have long either. It's then that Sam sees what the little bastard was looking for. A LIVE GRENADE!? It simply HAS to be one of the morons in the van who dropped one before throwing it or something. None of my team is dumb enough to throw a grenade into our escape vehicle.

>> @Team [Ohanzee] Grenade in Bulldog is illusory

Ohanzee... Sam allowed himself a tiny smile at the resourcefulness of his team leader before sending off his own messge.

<<@Team [Uncle Sam] Ohanzee, grab the Obelisk and get it over to the GMC.>>