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At Damien's behest, Sasson took point, heading for the nearest stairwell down the hall. The light from the first floor windows faded into deep black, having to strain his eyes to see in the darkness. Not that he really needed it. With the commotion downstairs having gone silent, no new debris had fallen to block the path, his feet remembering a clear route through the wreckage. "Are you sure he's going to be alright on his own?" Ethan hadn't stuck him as the most… reliable of Hunters. And doing something loud and stupid was likely to get him into a little bit of trouble with Abbadon. Well, if he did any of the things Sasson was thinking he would.

Sasson had taken the first step down the stairs when a thought struck him. "I'm doubting your squad is just 3 men strong. How likely is it that we'll run into more Hunters here?" His pace didn't slow, but he would really rather know the answer before he ran smack into someone hostile.
 
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Sasha and Damien followed behind, hands readily on weapons in preparation to fire. "Ethan'll be fine," Sasha smiled. "He's an idiot, but he's the luckiest guy I know." Not that being lucky helped all that much with reconnecting his entrails, but who knew? He might actually be sensible for once.

Damien considered this for a moment. "No," he shook his head. Mostly everyone would be upstairs, keeping the civilians in line or patrolling for any hostile forces around the corner. Besides... "It's too quiet down here anyway. We couldn't possibly run into any trouble."

"Ten minutes ago," a girl's voice drifted up the steps, "you've been wrong just there." Up the stairwell, advancing in the opposite direction to Cassiel and Sasson, was indeed a thin young mage with a short mess of dark purple atop her head, a silvery-haired Dökkálfr, or more specifically, a Drow in a leather jacket just behind her.

(@Ferril)
 
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Other people at last... Cail was not certain whether these newcomers were a blessing or a curse. While he was glad to have finally run into some sign of a guard presence besides himself or the dead men and women below, he could tell at a glance that none of them were arcanes. A witch hunter patrol with what looked to be some sort of civilian along for the ride, and here he had a lvl 8 mage who had already shown a propensity for slaughter. With a critical eye he looked over the witch hunters, and the odd civilian leading the way. They looked startled at their presence and the girls words most certainly did not help the situation. Before anything happened to set off some sort of firefight Cail stepped forward and produced a badge from his coat pocket, making certain to move slow enough that these guards would hopefully not secure their own deaths by giving the girl a reason to attack them," Caileron Mithraxos, head researcher of MagiSenth industries and supplementary security officer. Lvl 7 arcane." Once again his eyes roved over them, until they finally focused on the male Witch Hunter.

Constantly keeping the intruder in his sights he addressed the apparent commander," The intruder has been... captured." Cail grimaced at that, knowing full well that if she wanted she could continue causing trouble for him... he just had to hope she would not," I found her attempting to hack the servers. I put a stop to it before she could get anything but I think the EMP I blasted out may have been a little more powerful than intended." That was probably an understatement, but there was little he could do about that in the aftermath. Instead he just gestured at the girl with a wave of his hand and frowned," She is a moderately powerful lvl 8 as far as I can tell... I have nothing that can hold her currently, but perhaps with the added danger of having to fight you lot and me at the same time she will be less likely to try and make a break for it." Or not, Cail was skilled and experienced, but he doubted his will matched up to hers. If she was allowed too much time to recuperate he wouldn't truly be able to hold her...
 
The sudden, new voice halted Sasson's steps, the visage of two others appearing through the shadows. Sasson felt his body tense, the girl's purple hair giving her away as an arcane, and the other obviously a Drow. And if the girl's words were anything to go by, she wasn't the most friendly of people. He certainly felt very threatened to have her near, even with two Hunters and a lvl 7 former soldier there to contain her. At least, he was pretty sure Caileron was a soldier at one point, not having known the man personally, but battle had been the sole purpose of the creation of the Dökkálfr. He'd be very surprised if he was wrong about that.

And now he was doubly sure being around this girl was a very bad idea. A lvl 8, who had broken in and killed so many people and attempted to hack the servers. Face to face with probably the easiest hostage, if she was low on will. An easy target if she wasn't. Heck, not even that. Sasson would likely be more of an annoyance than anything, a sink for her to waste some will. He took a step back.
 
Damien looked this Caileron over. Well, at least he had identification. That proved he worked here, anyway. "Understood. We have a backup team on the way, but the situation is complicated. We have one man upstairs by the east entrance. Assume all others are hostile, even Witch Hunters. We're taking this man downstairs to gather information. We have about ten minutes before this gets ugly, so get your captive as secure as possible while you can."
Sasha noticed Sasson's uneasiness around the arcane, as did Elle. "Relax," Sasha assured him. "She's under control."
"Ha!" laughed Elle, but after a deathly glare from the Hunters, there was some hasty self-justification, and then the laugh was retroactively really a cough, honest.
 
The reassurance that Sasha offered didn't really do much to ease Sasson's worries, but the gesture was appreciated. The sooner they were away from the mage, the better he'd feel. Still, he found himself smirking at Damien's words. Oh yes, they were bringing him down, which was why he was leading the way. Made perfect sense. Keeping an uneasy eye on the mage, Sasson and the Hunters attempted to squeeze past on the stairs. Like Damien had said, they had about 10 minutes to figure out just how useful he was going to be, and then everything was going to hell.
 
The Hunters followed Sasson as he slipped past the two, Elle smirking at their backs until they were out of sight. "Wonder what they meant by 'ugly'?" she pondered, half to herself. It was for the benefit of her escort rather than herself of course, because she knew full well what they had been describing. It wouldn't be long until Abbadon arrived.
Then everybody's screwed.


Sasha frowned as soon as the group was out of earshot of the mages. "That girl creeps me out."
"Why?" Damien raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know, there's just something about her... Don't you get the feeling you've seen her before?"
"No."
"...Really?"
"Fine. I do. Maybe we've arrested her before."
"I don't think that's it, Damien."
"Must we discuss this now?" he sighed. "It would be best to focus."
"Yeah, if you say so. Let's just find some locked door already."
 
Sasson looked over his shoulder as the two hunters bickered with each other, filing the words away to memory to bring up later, when there wasn't a pressing issue that they needed to deal with. The halls down on this level were littered with bodies, mostly of mundane security force hired by MagiSenth. The man did his best to ignore the carnage, pushing down the panic and revulsion that bubbled up inside. While not always the most healthy of gifts, Sasson had a remarkable talent of delaying emotional responses. They would need to be felt and dealt with at some point, but he could put them off almost indefinitely, as long as they didn't pile up. The blood and bodies just became blurs of colour as he walked on, searching for a something locked with magitech. It didn't take long, an arrow pointing to the armoury and a whole room of weapons, locked behind magitech. Sasson approached the nearest lock, frowning. "So, we just need to bring up the… the rune circle to show, right?" He asked, mirroring Ethan's earlier words. "How would one go about doing that?"
 
Damien didn't bother to speak. Instead, he fired a shot in the general direction of a metal plate besides the door, and while the bullet whizzed straight past its target, it did so with enough force to tear the panel clean off, exposing a circle of pale green light, filled with elaborate and complex shapes that fluctuated and changed, as if they couldn't make up their mind what they were supposed to look like.
"Go ahead," the Hunter shrugged, surprisingly casual about the fact he'd just torn down a large portion of a wall as collateral damage of a single bullet.
 
The shot made Sasson flinch, turning a shocked glare at Damien, ears ringing. "Maybe a bit of warning next time?" He hissed, willing his heartbeat to return to normal. His attention returned to the panel, marvelling at the different shapes and patterns that flickered in the green light. Given enough time, he could probably trace out every shape within the circle, finding where one pattern started and another ended. But time was something they didn't exactly have. Sasson took a breath. Well, moment of truth. His hand reached forward, fingers touching the circle of light and shapes.
 
Kind of a lame question but what time is it currently in the RP? Somewhere around 2-3 AM?

. . . . .Silence was disrupted in one of District 11's apartments by a sound of a ringing phone. A lone drow woke up and scuttled to get her PDA. Upon finding it buried under the sheets she caught a glimpse of the number before she answered it. One she had not seen so far.

. . . . ."Hello." She answered the phone calmly while pushing her hair behind her ears.
. . . . ."Are you the transporter?" A rough male voice asked.
. . . . ."Courier, I don't transport people. Only small packages." They would have to know this if they had my number specifically. She thought and then opened a drawer to take a rubber band to tie her hair. She leaned her head to the side and held the PDA against her cheek and shoulder.
. . . . ."Right, right, the courier. We need to hire you, it is a matter of extreme urgency. Meet us in the District 12." The man responded
. . . . ."Fine, we'll meet by the Tram station in the centre of the district." She hung up immediately after saying that, they will either follow her rules or get another courier.
. . . . .After hanging up she quickly put on her dark blue pants, hoodie and sneakers. She rummaged her stuff, that was mostly just thrown around the room anyway, for her backpack. In it she found her gloves and after putting them on she took the backpack and left the apartment.

. . . . .She boarded the tram heading for District 12. The man said the package needed urgent delivery, that made her really excited about the job. Something that requires such urgency is bound to pay well. Still she had this feeling that something about it was not quite right. "What have you gotten yourself into now, Balaena." She smirked to herself.
 
Exactly 01:53:42 in Earth time.

"Sorry," Damien simply said, but it didn't seem especially sincere.
Sasha held her breath as Sasson reached out for the insignia. She couldn't bear this. What was happening?

As Sasson's fingertips made contact, the green light became green... dark? Either way, it only lasted for a moment, and then it was gone, taking the circle of runes with it.

The theory had been right. Whatever had happened to fix the Witch Hunters, Sasha realised, it had definitely come from this mundane. But who-- or what-- he really was still was a mystery.

Which apparently had been established just in time, because the sound of three gunshots drifted down the staircase from the lobby.
 
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Sasson watched in amazement as the light of the rune circles suddenly died, before they too fell away into nothing. Well, that settled that. The red head gave a distrustful look down at his own hand, wondering what the hell was going on with him, and how he hadn't known about this years before. There had to have been one time, at least one, where he'd handled magi-tech or something of the sort. Hell, he worked and studied magic every damn day. How did he not know anything about this?!

There wasn't time to dwell on these things, however, three loud gunshots resounding down the steps, echoing off the walls. "Well, that was certainly loud and stupid." Sasson mused, turning to head back out of the room, steps quick and quiet. "Any last minute advice?"
 
"Don't get shot," Damien replied helpfully as he began to slowly advance up the stairwell, gun in hand. Sasha looked at the two, then shrugged.
"Really great advice, Damien," she muttered sarcastically under her breath as she followed him. "He wouldn't have thought of that if you hadn't mentioned it."
"I heard that."
"Good!" She turned to Sasson. "You can come up or stay down here while we buy you time to think of something. I don't know how long we can--"
"If he stays, it defeats the object of the plan."
"Shut up just for a second, would you?" she cried. "It's his choice to make, not yours!"
 
. . . . .Balaena sat down during the transit. She looked around for anything of interest. A few hobos and a group of drunk students. Balaena took a look at the time, it was almost 2 AM. This was usually the time most underground operations are executed meaning no honest person wants to be caught out by either the Law or the criminals. It went on to become a time of day that Balaena would call "Danger Hour". "A time of day when the whole city erupts into one unified sludge of violence and bloodshed."

. . . . .She took of her Ankh earrings and placed them in her backpack, she only took them off during jobs, she ever wore them in bed and shower. After securing the earrings, Balaena, took out her mask. It featured a beautiful female, seemingly ageless. She had a beauty mark above her lip and perfectly symmetrical face. Balaena entered the second cart of the tram and put on the mask.
 
"Don't get shot."

Sasson snickered at Damien's attempt to be helpful, letting Sasha take the chance to chew the man out herself. Honestly, the man's dry humour was helping him to relax, if only slightly. However, the shouting could probably be heard in the upper levels, and that would lose him the element of surprise that he needed. "It's fine, Sasha, I'm coming upstairs." He interjected before she could keep yelling. "Can't stay down here." It came out more of a murmur, taking the steps two at a time as they came back up to the main floor.
 
Sasha nodded, before beckoning silently.
"When we get up there, we'll probably try to pin them down first. Move round and try and get them while they're distracted," she suggested. Then she checked to make sure her weapon was loaded and began to follow Damien.

The two Witch Hunters proceeded upstairs with haste, eventually entering the lobby and doing exactly as Sasha had predicted, with their guns aimed at two new Hunters either side of Ethan, one a tall male and one an remarkably short female. The young man with the dark blue hair gave the two of them a quizzical look, examining their firearms.
"Don't be silly," he told them calmly, pointing outside. "Somebody else is holding a machine gun less than two hundred metres west of here and they're watching everything that's happening in this lobby."
"Prove it," Damien demanded immediately. He was determined not to fall for anything.
"There's a laser pointer hovering over your heart, rookie," he pointed out.
"We're aren't rookies," Damien replied. "We're three-year veterans, and participated in the Rupture War personally."
"Is that so?" the dark-haired Hunter raised an eyebrow. "I was just worried because you left your safety catch on."
"Wha...?" he blustered, tilting the gun slightly to check.

Then the pistol abruptly shattered. Nobody saw the Abbadon Hunter draw his handgun, but there it was, and it had just fired a blast of electrical energy that had scorched Damien's hand and pulled his gun to bits. The Strategic-Class inhaled through his teeth as he clasped his injury under his arm, mirroring the way Ethan had earlier.
"You idiot," the shooter sighed nonchalantly. "Revolvers don't even have safety catches. How the hell did you survive three years of active duty?"
 
Sasson gave the female hunter a brief nod to show he understood, letting the two in front of him get a bit further ahead to give him some time. The closer he got to the top of the stairs, the worse his nerves became, chewing on the inside of his lips as he manoeuvred through the main floor, keeping quiet and moving as fast as he dared.

The Hunters were talking to each other, one voice familiar, the other a stranger. He didn't listen, couldn't lose his focus. Not when the stakes were so high and the two young hunters - they really were so young, he realized. Somewhere in their teens.- had placed their trust in him. Skittering through the dark, Sasson crept as close as he could, ready to spring when he felt he had the chance, tense and motionless. There was a ringing in his ears as he waited, green eyes flickering between the two Abbadon hunters. A loud shot sounded throughout the lobby as the male Hunter fired his weapon, Sasson going into motion with the echoes covering up the sounds of his footsteps for a brief moment. The word "duty" had barely left the man's lips when the anti-mage's hand hit his back, shoving hard. The red head kept moving, not pausing to wait and see if his touch had had any effect on the other. The female Hunter was swift to react, her arm moving to raise her weapon towards him.

It was as if his body understood what to do faster than his mind could catch up, catching the short woman by the wrist and forcing her arm to aim upwards as her finger pulled the trigger, another shot filling the room, causing the man to flinch.
 
I really don't like limiting everyone, but I'm going to need control over both these two. They're pretty important to the plot, so...

The male Hunter dropped his weapon as he fell from the impact, catching himself with his hands before he hit the ground and swerving to face Sasson as he kicked himself back up again, drawing a pair of shortswords.
The female Hunter gave Sasson an annoyed glare as she simply drew another pistol and shoved the nozzle hard into his gut, switching the safety catch off as she set it to its electron fire mode. They hadn't been in the EMP when it occurred, so the battery cartridge would still be at 100%.
"If you're thinking about moving, I'm the one with the lightning guns," she warned, but her anticlimactic stature and knee-length twintails just made it that much more difficult to take seriously.

But it was her that moved when she suddenly became aware of Sasha aiming at her with her own gun, with her pistol withdrawing from against Sasson and firing at Cassiel's Assault-Class before she could take a shot.
Fortunately, Sasha saw this coming, and nimbly evaded the blast's path moments before her opponent pulled the trigger. She drew her own shortsword in the other hand and Damien drew his own, with Ethan grasping both his weapons and pointing them at the male Hunter, who just sighed.
"So tedious," he muttered to himself.
 
Under a veneer of calm, Cail was seething. He had banked his hopes of keeping this intruder under control on the probability that he would be able to get some support from the witch hunters, or possibly from some other members of the arcane guard detail, but the group that passed him on the stairwell crushed those hopes with ease. A single witch hunter upstairs would be the only support he could hope for, and the possibility of further hostiles seemed high if the words of that squad captain were any indication. If it came to that he had no way to fight and keep the girl under wraps... or did he?

With a nod of his head he sent the girl to a side door," This way girl. We are not wading into a fight just yet..." She went along without much protest, but was obviously confused. If she knew the floor plan she would likely know that this level held little of importance, and no real exits besides the one they had come from. For all intents and purposes it was merely a testing area where new weapons and armor were given a practice run, and it was where Cail had been before all of this had broken out in the first place. They passed room after room of empty desks, the everyday clutter of papers coffee cups and various other items still sitting where their owners had fled when the evacuation order had come down. It was desolate and eerily silent, their echoing footsteps the only sound to be heard... At least until a single shot rang out from the lower levels. Cail merely picked up his pace and forced the intruder to pick up hers as well, else risk him walking right over her.

It wasn't long until they reached the door he had been searching for, the one to his own team's research area where his computer and those of his sat, as fried as every other electronic device in the building. He passed all of that without a second glance, heading straight for the door on the other side. With a grunt of effort he opened it, and let the intruder inside... Beyond was a blank walled room with a small device in the center, but before the girl could ask anything Cail slammed the door shut and bolted it shut the old fashioned way.

Cold Iron... The walls in many of the testing rooms were reinforced with it in order to keep the devices and magic used here to cause any harm to the building. Even a level eight would have trouble breaking out of a room such as that. It was not exactly the most pleasant way to handle the situation, but as more shots began to ring out, this time from up stairs, Cail figured he had little time for niceties. Especially for one who had so cruelly slaughtered innocents here today. With one last look at the door behind him Cail took off, sprinting down the hall back towards the stairwell. Things were getting heated up there, and a mage might be just the thing needed to tip the scales.
 
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