Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Alexis Maaka     KOWLOON, HONG KONG, DECEMBER 19, 2097.

    The streets are littered with pedestrians tonight. The holidays aren't entirely that big a thing to locals, but a good portion of the expat population here might've helped make the city more festive, even in a crime ridden metropolis such as Hong Kong.

    There isn't exactly snow but the holographic signage has taken on a more festive theme to it, Santa, reindeer, tinsel and evergreen trees, the whole nine yards. Greens and reds and gold are the main color of the neon lights set up, and frost has formed along the roads, as well as coating anything else left outside.

    Naturally, there are ice hazards everywhere for drivers, projected so that they go from Cantonese to Mandarine to Japanese to English and every other language spoken in town conveniently.

    Even if the roads are hazardous, it doesn't stop some people. Two vehicles tear through the streets, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and other motorists as they go. The first vehicle is a van intended for people setting up Christmas decorations for money, but these men aren't as festive as their vehicle implies.

    The second vehicle is a black and red muscle car, heavily customized and roaring like a beast from Hell as it picks up speed, its driver, HER driver, firing a high-caliber revolver at the van's tires.

    Nancy's armor plating helps Maaka keep focused on the van, as she attempts to take out a gunman as he pokes out from the back door with a shotgun in hands. "HEY, SUCK ON THIS!" He roars, firing wildly and forcing Maaka to return to driving. She swears, placing the gun away as she begins to call some friends.
Shokudaikiri It's Christmas! Well, near to it, anyway. That means decorations, and Christmas music, and good cheer, and...

OK, that's not good.

Tearing through town shooting is definitely a bad thing. Very not Christmas-y. Particularly not when one bundled-up pedestrian with an eyepatch is JUST TRYING TO CROSS THE STREET when a couple of cars go tearing down the street! Shokudaikiri's remaining visible eye widens as he realizes he's about to get hit, and dives out of the way, landing in a roll. Getting to his feet, he yells something rude in Japanese, which will go inspecified here. Just know that it was very, very rude.

Though the sound of gunshots gets his attention. And in an instant he's got his radio scanning local bands. He hears the tail end of the conversation. And it's not good. So what else does he do? He takes off after the cars. He's actually fast enough to start making good headway in catching them, too. And as he does, he draws his sword from his coat, where it was concealed.
Elise Leroy     Earth-115, December 19th, 2026.

    Elise is looking over the Geoscape, pointing at and marking areas to patrol for activity, when her personal radio starts to chirp. "Huh? Central, tell Vahlen she can stop worrying about interdimensional flectures or whatever now, I've got an outside line... It's Sergeant Maaka..." A quick exchange, and she flicks to the internal comm. "Killzone to launch bay. Load for Urban Assault." The Commander then heads over toward the Armory herself. "I'm going out. Central, you have the conn."

    Bradford just looks bewildered for a moment, before snapping a salute. "Aye Commander."

    Kowloon, Hong Kong, approximately five minutes later.

    The deep roar of the Skyranger's engines shatter the Hong Kong sky, the bulbous, heavy craft tearing across the skyline as it locks onto the two ground vehicles locked in hot pursuit. "Big Sky to Durandal, we have eyes on, switching to shadow pattern until your call." comes the deep voice of the pilot.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone had been hoping to check on Alexis to make sure she was all right in the aftermath of the universal barfging as she still stubbornly calls it. She had come to check up on Alexis, the Knight was thankfully rigged for winter condtions too. This was't looking good with the chase she's going to ahve to get mixed up in it, people are in danger from this. Her own bike reves up as Kotone jacks into it and moves after the chase, she's keeping a good deal of control and cearly is attemping to avoid wreckiung anon4e as she goes and she's picking up open local traffic She's going to not pull a weapon and she doesn't need to for now as she moves after the speeding craft and she thought so that was Alexis' car after all.

She opens up a tacnet.

<<I can't even come top visit without something catching fire it seems.>>
Black Arachnia Lots of holographic decoration cluttering up the skyline (and the sky) means lots of cover for somebody who doesn't care if she has to go through holographic projections to get from point A to point B. That's one thing Black Arachnia doesn't have to complain about.

Unless of course any of those holograms are 'solid,' harder light than normal - you know, the kind of thing that she actually has to go around instead of through. As long as that's not a problem, though, the robotic spider can probably outpace the van by skittering along buildings and occasionally grapneling across from one wall to an opposite one. It depends a lot on the driver's skill, the amount of ice (and pedestrians) he (or she) has to avoid, and the structural integrity of the walls in question.

And the fact that the van has to be stopped without destroying it or killing one of its occupants?

The Maximal's had tougher missions than that.

Black Arachnia double-checks her quickly-loaded map of the locale against her location and the van's direction, then lets go in mid-grapnel, reeling her beast mode's mouth back in as gravity *hopefully* does the rest. If this maneuver goes as planned, she ought to land square on top of the van's roof. Of course, if the van abruptly accelerates, brakes, or swerves, she'll have to launch the grapnel again *fast* to avoid either simply hitting the road the hard way, or getting run over by Maaka or another well-meaning pursuer ...

So instead of waiting, as soon as the mandible grapnel has retracted, Black Arachnia launches it again - this time trying to reel herself in on top of the van, instead of letting gravity and other physics do everything.
Rory White If there's one good thing about this, it's that Rory has freaky designs prepared for winter travel on roads.

    Which might... MIGHT explain the odd-looking 'vehicle' that busts out into the road from an alley! It's a silvery thing the rough shape and size of a motorcycle, but instead of two in-line wheels it sprouts four flexible tendrils two to a side. These tendrils end in... 'wheels' of a sort. The wheels aren't solid circles, but rather a radial arrangement of clawed, feline-shaped feet. Once again Rory turns to biomimicry!

    This strange vehicle comes 'wheel-slapping' out at terrific speeds, skate-skidding with terrific precision over the nasty roads... and joins the chase!

    There is NOTHING weirder than seeing a wheel made of robot tiger feet in action, but the freaky part is how effective this is. When one 'foot' has successfully latched on and pulled the mechanism forward... the next 'foot' is there to repeat the feat!

    It makes a sharp staccato racket, like heavily muzzled machine-gun fire...
Alexis Maaka     The van picks up in speed, as the gunmen inside chatter among themselves. "Oh shit, boss we got more problems!" "I noticed, get the hardware, Gus!"

    A massive machine gun is pulled from a hidden compartment, and the gunner opens up upon Nancy. "EAT IT, YOU BITCH!" Machine gun fire riddles Nancy, but the vehicle's still holding even as Maaka pulls away.

    Of course, the gunner's glee is interrupted as a spider the size of a small car lands on top of the van. The gunmen panic, screaming in horror as one of them tries to lean out and fire upon Blackarachnia. "Get the fuck off, get off get off get off!" He might be terrified, as he seems to shoot the air more than Blackarachnia.

    Other gunmen inside the van light up on Rory, Kotone and Sho, attempting to keep them off their tail with rapid fire. That van is really spacious for its size, as they have enough room for five men, including their hostage, who happens to be bound up with a bag over his head.
Elise Leroy     The Skyranger pulls ahead, and drops ropes on top of a building ahead of the projected path of the van as it continues to tear through the streets. Elise, and the Heavy known as Killzone rappel down, and Elise immediately sets to getting ready to fire on the Van's tires. her trusty .50cal Barrett rifle unslinging from her back and the sniper taking a knelt position at the edge of the roof.

    Killzone, a giant of an Argentinian unslings his own LMG, and with a leap, vaults over the edge of the building and lands in a small crater at ground level, getting ready to fire on the van as it passes if it doesn't slow down from Elise's shots.

    "Ice to Durandal, in position."
Shokudaikiri The good thing about rapid fire is that it makes a stream of bullets that you can generally track if you've got good eyes. Fortunately, despite only having one good eye, Shokudaikiri's pretty observant. Also fortunately, his human form is pretty fast. Because it's really hard to hit something that's jumping around and can jump several stories in the air. Which is exactly what he starts to do.

Still, if you're throwing that much lead around, you're eventually going to hit something -- cuts and gashes appear on the sword-spirit's human body, even as he tries to avoid the bulk of the shots. They're red inside, but they spill no blood.

In one leap, the sword in his hand quite literally leaps from the sheath of its own volition, and goes spiraling through the air, aimed for the one who's shooting at Shokudaikiri. Hit or miss, the sword will again literally leap back, this time to the sword-spirit's human hand, where he then sheathes the blade again.
Black Arachnia Right. They have guns. Of course. Fortunately, Black Arachnia's spider form is pretty well designed for hugging whatever surface she's clinging to - and right now, that surface is the van's roof. The guy who's leaning out a window and trying to plug her might get lucky and put some holes into one or more of her legs, but the Maximal doesn't plan to let him roll the dice often enough to do it. On the downside, trying to 'kick' him would most likely mean spearing him with the kicking leg ... but she has another option.

So the guy leaning out the window and trying to shoot Black Arachnia is about to have an even WORSE night, as she attempts to 'grab' the gun with her rarely-used telekinesis and wrench it out of his grasp, tossing it away - and it might just happen to come down where Maaka can grab it, or where someone else can scoop it up and put it to better use.

"Sorry, boys," Black Arachnia calls out over the noise of engines and gunfire, "but your passenger was supposed to be in another car. I'll just take him off your hands ... unless you'd rather I just take off your hands." And with *that* said, the spidery Maximal starts trying to cut open the roof along one side of the frame, without stabbing her claws in so deep that she's going to risk injuring any of the occupants ...

Even if MOST of the van's occupants don't have enough brains in their skulls for a stab in the head to be immediately fatal.
Rory White Z@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@M!

    That is ALMOST how the footwheel-cycle's approach sounds!

    Apart from where bullets are spanging off of it! Horrific scratches and dents are the result of the ancient, low-caliber bullets, but the sheer KINETIC ENERGY of the volleys is enough to repeatedly drive the Flexbot back and force Rory to slow down and back off... given the terrain, pushing much further would be disastrous!

    "I can't get close. Facing a wall of bullets! This is putting others in danger..."
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone is coming under fire sghe takes a shot to her self its' grazing but it'snot fun and she keeps going. Kotone is going to keep with them and she knows she needs to not attck until sh gets the moment tyo do so andshe also notices she's not the only Paladin involved in this crazy action. She does her dmanest to keep close to the van and even if they fire? She does not givne the request. However Sho's already on it and she keeps there trying to keep them busy before she'll take her attempt to get aboar or she's going to get ready to get on, she does check to see if any of the guys on board hav wireless though she can tap ainto and mess with them or their hardware maybe she can /shut/ the van down? Or better yet? Take control.
Alexis Maaka     The gunner Blackarachnia disarms freaks out more as his Uzi's yanked right out of his hands. THe gun looks ancient, especially by 2090s standards, which means the fact it still works is a miracle. Not that it matters, as the machine pistol is thrown to Maaka's vehicle. She reaches out and catches the gun, storing it in a compartment before she picks up speed. She draws a pistol, firing at the disarmed gangster and dropping him. "Splash one. Whisper, hurry up that exfill!" She barks out.

    As Sho flings the sword at the gunner in back, he finds that his aim is true, as the man is pinned against his seat by the flung sword before it returns to his grasp, killing him instantly. Galvanized by the loss of two of their number, the remaining henchmen go towards a narrow alleyway, driving down it.

    Kotone will find she can hack through their rudimentary security programs, and get a direct feed on the van's destination as it goes for the industrial district. She'll also be able to screw with their software as well, disabling their GPS or their implants directly.

    Maaka's car stops and makes a 180, before she heads down that alleyway as well. "Ice, Killzone, head for the industrial district. Go for warehouse 3, I think..." She radios.
Elise Leroy     "Copy, moving position." replies Elise. "Big Sky, quick-vac, drop the ropes and take us to the following coordinates. Killzone, get your ass back up here." she barks to her subordinates.

    Killzone turns, leaping BACK UP onto the roof from a standing start, though kind of has to flip-cling a couple of times until he's back topside.

    The Skyranger turns back, dropping the ropes, then setting off again as the ropes retract, pulling the pair back inside. "Dagger Team moving, ETA, three zero seconds."
Shokudaikiri Sadly, lethal results are all but inevitable, at least against the gunners. Fortunately, the surgical precision of the one-enemy strike keeps any further injuries from happening, so there's little danger to the VIP. VIP? Hostage? Whatever the situation is.

Narrow alleys usually mean buildings that can be leaped up on. So Shokudaikiri takes to the roofs to follow. He doesn't know where Warehouse 3 is, but so long as he can keep an eye on the van, he should be able to follow.
Rory White Well, things got lethal in a hurry! Rory would flinch, but she's not really capable of such expressions in her present form. All she can do is REVV UP A BIT FASTER in the time that's been bought. She has little trouble catching up with the van with the gunners downed and the moment she's upon it she VAULTS onto its roof... the one that Black Arachnia's been tearing apart. Electromagnetic clamping holds her in place easily. NOW she is HERE but the question is... now what?

    A panel opens on the flexbot, allowing a camera to deploy and swivel down into the van to see what's going on better...
Black Arachnia Well, if Maaka hadn't taken out the guy who was leaning out the window like a complete slagging moron, his buddy behind the wheel would have taken him out instead in a much more messy manner. Black Arachnia pays little heed to it, instead continuing to slice open the roof; she has to reorient herself *quickly* so the walls on either side of the alley don't scrape *her* off the same way the moron almost was, but that lets her finish cutting out the back corners of the roof, allowing her to finally peel it back and check the interior.

Odds are the professor whom Maaka wants rescued is going to be highly disconcerted by a giant, mostly-cybernetic-looking spider gazing in through the torn-open roof. Odds are also that the crooks who made off with him are - if they have still have guns with working bullets - going to be shooting at the aforementioned giant spider. And odds are further that if she doesn't do this right carefully, there'll be some bullet holes in the professor, not just in Black Arachnia.

Decisions, decisions.

"Sorry, Professor," Black Arachnia says as she reaches down with one arm to try and grab the tied-up old guy - and to just as quickly flip him up onto her back. "I think we missed your stop, but I'll get you back to your student now."

She doesn't even bother with the mandible grapnel, just leaps as high up as she can - and then digs all eight legs into the walls on either side of the alley, just before she starts to fall. In the worst case, her legs SHOULD stop the prof from rolling off one way or the other, but she's going to need a moment to get him untied or whatever ...

And right now, providing that relatively bullet-free moment is all up to her allies.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone now mworking to hack, first up she's going to turn off the GPS, she'll only however turn off implants that are not life threatening, She's a Paladin after all and she has to operate in a certain way as she does so. She aqlso then attempts to give her allies a direct feed on the van's planned path. It's always the quite ones isn't it? She'll keep pace with the craft and hope she can contioune to support things.

<<Hacking their GPS and turning off any implanmts that will mess them up without killing them. I'm seriously wanting to get some time off on this!>>
Alexis Maaka     Blackarachnia has no problems with getting the van cut open like a sardine, and the target's there, looking more annoyed even with a bag over his head. As the Maximal cuts him open, he seems to pay little heed to the GIANT spider stealing him, as he clings tightly. "Ah, hello there. Ms. Whisperwire was it?" He pulls the bag off of his head, revealing a fifty something Korean man with a scraggly beard and receding hairline, as well as fancy spectacles with broken lenses. He's a bit sore about those, the glasses cost him a ridiculous amount.

    "And it's doctor, by the way. Doctor Howard Choi, now if you don't mind, I'd like to be out of this vehicle."

    He holds on tight, and the gangsters inside the van open fire upon Blackarachnia and Rory alike. "Get the doc back, we need him!" The machine gunner calls, before pistol fire from Maaka catches him in the shoulder, leaving him out of the fight.

    Kotone will have plenty of luck, messing with their guidance and also blinding the driver. As the van drunkenly pulls out into the industrial district, it tears rubber towards a warehouse, before it skids to a stop just in time. The two remaining thugs pull their friend free, heading inside.

    Maaka's car stops in front of the warehouse as well, and she pursues them with a shotgun in hand. <Maaka to all hands, the warehouse is our target. I'm not leaving without taking these fuckers out.>> She communicates.
Elise Leroy     "Engaging." comes Ice's emotionless voice over the radio, as the loud report of her .50cal spits a red tracer round into one of the fleeing thugs. if it doesn't splatter him, he'll be down for the count, the Reaper Round designed to punch through a Muton's reinforce armour front-plate.

    Killzone lives up too his name, as he braces his LMG on the lip of the building he's atop, and unleashes a steady stream of red tracer fire to suppress the thugs and get their heads down.
Rory White MORE BULLETS! They can't dislodge Rory, but they do make a mess of what she's CLINGING to and that's certainly a problem. Once again Rory's forced to worry about her footing more than advancing much of an agenda. The Flexbot's BACK has begun a metamorphosis to accomodate for this, sprouting a thick trunk with what looks like an axle. More mass is slowly crawling up and becoming... rotor blades? A giant propeller?

    Well, that'll probably take a solid minute to complete, but in the meantime she swings about weirdly while Black Arachnia handles extraction. With a WHUNK she repositions herself on the chunks of the roof... and returns fire with seemingly NOTHING. Just a dish pointed her attackers' way.

    ... The dish is of course a MICROWAVE AGONIZER, and he'll quickly feel like his skin is EXPLODING FROM WITHIN AND ON FIRE even though it isn't. Horrific, crippling, yet.... mostly harmless pain!
Black Arachnia "Doctor Choi, pleased to make your acquaintance," the Maximal spider says mildly. "And -"

She pauses, glancing backwards with a couple of her spider mode's eyes. "- good, good. I have a different shape, but let's get you safe for now." And with that, Black Arachnia starts ascending ... not by swinging to a vertical position and climbing the wall, like a normal spider probably would, but staying horizontal and taking advantage of her mechanical nature, just pulling alternating legs out of the wall, pushing herself further up with those that remain affixed, anchoring the 'free' legs, and cycling back and forth. The effect is probably like a slightly but steadily ascent in an open-air elevator: disconcerting to the uninitiated, but comfortable enough if you don't have a problem with heights.

She could probably go down the same way, but the roofs are *probably* closer at this point, and even if not, she's not too sanguine about taking Dr. Choi back down to ground level when those gangsters might potentially have allies on the street. "So, what did those guys want you for, anyway?"

They reach roof level - whichever roof is lower if they aren't at the same height - and Black Arachnia comes to a halt. "Descending should be faster and more comfortable, plus I can carry you better in robot mode," she states. "Unless you'd rather take the fire escape." Which, she thinks, will probably STILL be more comfortable.
Shokudaikiri Once it's made known that the hostage has been rescued, Shokudaikiri heads for the roof on which Whisperwire and the doctor are situated on. He's aiming for a short distance away from Whisperwire and the rescued doctor. Though since he's jumping down from a much higher roof... he juuuuust might crack the roof under him, just a little, when he lands in a crouch.

"...Ow." He winces as he stands up. "I'm gonna have to seriously think about whether the looking cool for that is worth the pain of doing it again." He rubs the knee he landed on. Then he looks between the doctor and Whisperwire. "Are you both okay?" he asks.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa sees the thugs are nor moving on and she's managed to get into their heads and manged to mess them up. She grunts and she skids to a halt on her bike as they pull into th ware house. Kotone starts moving she doesn't like the lethal force used here. She halts her bike, the cables snap out of her head and she's on the gorund making for the warehouse. She also has lighting crackling about her hands, she's got her eelware online intending ot take down any of the mooks she can get her hands on.
Alexis Maaka     Choi shrugs, "They needed me for some sort of operation involving cybernetics. I refused, saying the methods were unethical. Coming from me, that doesn't mean much, but..." He frowns, looking disturbed as he releases Blackarachnia, standing on the roof.

    He nods to Shokudaikiri as well, "Yes, thank you. I can't say I've met either of you, but I suppose that will have to wait." The doctor brings a finger to his head, "Maaka, what's your status?"

    Back over at the warehouse, Maaka's taking cover behind her car, firing upon the last of the thugs as Rory and Elise both neutralize the others. The shotgun kicks against her shoulder, and the man drops dead.

    She approaches the door to the warehouse, blowing it off its hinges with a few shotgun blasts as she takes cover. Priming a grenade, she throws it inside, letting it go off before she goes in to clear the inside.

    <WOrking on clearing out the warehouse, I got an inkling as to why they wanted you.> She transmits, as she goes from the hallway towards the warehouse interior. Should others follow, there's still work to be done.

    Men toting automatic rifles and shotguns come to meet her, firing upon her as she takes cover and returns it.

    <I may need backup.>
Black Arachnia With her passenger safely disembarked, the spider clambers onto the same roof, giving Choi and Shokudaikiri a little more distance than she might need for politeness alone. "Black Arachnia, maximize," she intones - and she transforms into her humanoid robot form, keeping her leg-lasers and shoulder shields at full size; she's probably about to join another fight, after all. Maaka certainly sounds like she could use some help. "If you really need a ride to street level, Doctor, now's the time to ask ... and you probably need a bodyguard to help you get back to a safe haven or something, don't you ..."

Slagging rescue missions, always having to protect the person you just rescued until things are actually *over* - and sometimes even after. Black Arachnia glances at Shokudaikiri, as if wondering whether the big cyborg is inclined to play human shield for Dr. Choi; then she just walks over to the corner of the roof which overlooks the warehouse, and starts looking for targets. If she can see anyone from where she is - that is, any bad guys - then she might try sniping with her lasers; otherwise, she's just doing a little recon before she descends to street level and moves to Maaka's aid. Either way, Maaka's getting some kind of help from Black Arachnia in fairly short order.

And if the Maximal has to join the battle inside ... well, she's not going to let the gangsters see her coming in. She hasn't needed the electro-disruptor yet on this mission, so it's still at full charge capacity.
Elise Leroy     Killzone leaps over the lip of the building, landing like a ton of bricks and cracking the pavement. He shrugs it off, as he hauls ass to back Maaka up, letting some bullets ricochet off the thick front-plate of his Carapace armour. The mountain of a man roars as loud as his LMG as he returns fire on the rifle-armed gangers, trying to suppress them so the others can take them out. "THEY SEND BABIES TO FIGHT ME!? AAAAHAHAHAHA!"
Shokudaikiri "I can keep the doctor safe," Shokudaikiri volunteers, regarding the doctor. "I'm not supposed to be using lethal force anyway, but I don't have a lot of non-lethal options." He's pretty sure there's going to be a 'use of appropriate force' talk after this, if the Paladins catch wind of it...
Rory White "It's so disheartening how many choose crime and power when the Multiverse offers far more." Rory explains as her target drops into a screaming heap of twitching muscles and agonized nerves. He'll be pretty well disabled for the rest of this!

    By now Rory's been forced to shift modes again. The propeller that had been forming is gone, and instead the Flexbot is now shaped much like a tiger!

    A tiger that bounces out of cover, opens its maw wide and...

    *SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!*

    It helps that none of her intended targets are IN THE WAY or they'd hear something MUCH WORSE. The skull-rattling noise will WRECK balance and aim by temporarily stunning the inner ear...
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is into the warehouse with her interal weapon ready as they come after her Kotone's going to get into it by using every bit of her agility she has. She's clearly a full agument at this pint she bounces about rbouncing off walls, goons and other thing but every time she gets ahold of a thug. She's thankful Shokudaikiri is guarding the door. She moves hunting the thugs, it's kinda creepy to see little Kotone hugigng or pouncing someone before the electical light show of her eelwarse taser systems going off.
Alexis Maaka     The gangsters drop to their knees from Rory's sonic assault, screaming in pain like the guy Rory ADS'd back outside.

    Maaka fires blindly at the gangsters, just in time to see Killzone arrive. "Hey, big fella." She greets the massive Argentinian, before he lets loose with machine gun fire. He takes out two of the gangsters, shredding them with his weapon as Maaka pokes out to drop the last one with a shotgun blast. "Move up, on me!" She orders, before she dashes down the hallway. Blackarachnia will find several ways in, including through the skylights. As the others shred through hostiles left and right, they won't see her coming until she actually engages.

    Meanwhile, Maaka stacks up near a door, kicking the door down as she storms inside the warehouse proper.

    The storeroom is massive, containing rows upon rows of supply cases. Markings say they are intended to supply hardware, but bloodstains indicate something nastier is inside.

    Maaka drops another guard as she clears the storeroom, and it becomes apparent why they wanted Choi.

    She sees a table containing freshly removed cybernetic implants, covered in blood. This isn't just an illegal cyberware safe house, it's a cyborg chopshop.

    "Jesus Christ." Maaka says quietly, approaching the table as she looks over some neural cores. "Zhang is going to hate this."
Black Arachnia Searchlights sound good - slightly less predictable as a rule, more likely to give her a head start before anyone can shoot .. and by dint of actually opening the skylight and rappeling through, instead of smashing through like some comic-book superhero, a stealthier entrance than she might have attained. Although given the time it takes Black Arachnia to get in quietly, crossed with Maaka's briskly efficient assault, there probably isn't much left of the gangsters for her to help take down.

She helps with the mopping up, nonetheless, and starts recording visuals as she makes her way through the warehouse, taking note of the supply cases and their markings ... and then the storeroom.

Or rather, the butcher's shop. Because organic or technological, that's the only thing the Maximal can call the chop-shop that they've discovered. Honestly, if Black Arachnia had a stomach the way humans do, even *she* might be at risk of puking. Honestly, in her opinion, calling this 'barbaric' is putting it NICELY. Cutting people apart to take out additions to their brains ...

The Maximal just captures as much video data of the place as she can tolerate storing internally. Once it's offloaded for evidence, she *WILL* want to purge those datatracks, overwrite them with something more pleasant, then purge them AGAIN to make sure the offending data are all gone for good.

And by Primus, 'offending' is the word ... if not, again, too mild for her reaction.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone is now just being an tiny little bug zapper and then as she finishes up dealing with those she can deal with and Kotone finally makes her way in she stares in abject horror. Cyber chopshopping happens on her world, the most notably infamous one being Blindfold Ivan. She just dry heavs here. Kotone has perfect recall she can not remove memories without damaging herself. She just braces herself on the wall tryiung to look away she's seen some horrible things but Kotone? Has not seen anything quite like this, she's making a good show of it on the Comm but she's shaken /heavily/
Alexis Maaka     Blackarachnia will find all the intel she wants when she begins to hack. She finds footage of operations conducted on countless civilians, mostly people who ran afoul of the gang if not their loved ones, as well as records of the cyberware extracted from each 'patient'. The records date back three months, intended to be carried out in the name of a rival group to the 108.

    As Zhang hails the group, those with comms software, mostly Kotone, Rory, and Blackarachnia as well as Maaka, and possibly Elise, will see as well as hear Zhang. She's a woman who looks thirty, but talks like she's twice that age. She's gorgeous in that 'too perfect' kind of way, like an elegant China doll with red glowing eyes, cybernetic implants along her temples, and also arms that are gold plated with retracted, razor sharp blades along the fingertips. Her dress is an elegant, red qipao as she sits in a chair, enjoying a cigarette in one of those old-timey holder sticks.

    Sitting with a leg draped over the other, Zhang cuts a striking figure in the video feed, and she seems to be accessing some sort of terminal off-camera. "We'll be in touch. It was a pleasure to do business with you all, try not to let this be your first impression for my city. Merry Christmas.~" The feed goes out, both audio and visually.